Blog of Shaun McCran - Architecting robust, elegant technical and business solutions - Social media

Is it the end of the road for the telephone landline?

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:19:00 -0000

OFCOM recently published this year's communications market report detailing digital trends and usage amongst different age groups. [Link] There report starts off with a particularly punch quote: "As a result of growing up in the digital age, 12-15 year olds are developing fundamentally different communication habits than older generations, even compared to the advanced 16-24 age group." It goes on to explain how its children leading the digital revolution with mass adoption of online applications and channels. The following graph shows the 'weekly exposure to devices': One thing that this report does highlight is that over the generations surveyed landline telephone usage is on the decline. This raises some interesting questions, and a few intriguing possibilities. I put a an example case to you: When I was a child the Landline was the ONLY telephone in the house. Now it's pretty much an ornament as modern mobile contracts tend to come with so many inclusive minutes that I only ever use the landline for premium numbers that are free on that over the mobile. All of the adults in the house have thousands of inclusive minutes. Why would they ever use the landline? Despite that I still pay a month fixed line fee though, but the actual usage bill is regularly in the pence cost bracket. The OFCOM report is showing exactly this behaviour in children. Mobile usage is massively up, for a number of reasons, such as barriers to entry lowering, i.e. handset costs and contract allowances, and increased stability and speed in mobile networks means that the quality of service is always improving. Just search for 4G coverage in the UK.

What are the reasons for having a landline?

So why do people still have landlines?

1. The first reason is to make calls.
2. The second reason is because of other over-the-top services such as broadband and TV services
3. The third is as a bundled product. Often service providers will cut you a discount for taking many products instead of just one. For example if I remove my landline from my Virgin Media bundle I'll actually pay MORE for not having it.

So what is the Landline used for now?

So realistically that leaves the second reason as the most valid. Some providers are still using the landline for TV broadcasting or device communications rather than their satellite network (I'm looking at you Sky). But doesn't that seem counter intuitive? Having to have a landline to support increasingly bandwidth hungry Hi-definition TV channels? What the OFCOM report shows is that the newest generations of our society don't use a landline at all. When they come of age as to be moving into their own homes and having the conversations with service providers about 'requiring a landline because you have TV' there is going to be a serious customer backlash.

Death of the landline

So I'm predicting that he landline has to find another purpose. Or its Dead. It's not good enough to be in a bundle of service, or to merely be a cost differentiator. It has to do something. Otherwise 'digital natural selection' will occur and Broadband and satellite comms will consume it. It will follow the usual pattern of decline in as much as customer uptake will drop, meaning that the cost will rise. Suddenly all the cost and effort in dropping new lines into new housing estates and renewing old lines will start to look like a bad expenditure to the big telecoms companies. The landline will price itself out of the market, and investment in it will shrink. You just watch. Next years annual OFCOM report will show even less landline usage in the youth generation.

New stats show further SMS decline as customers switch to online messaging apps

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 03:05:00 -0000

Recent statistics from mobile operators are showing a further decline in SMS usage over the last year or so. It seems to growth of Smartphone messaging apps that's eating into SMS's usual territory. Personally I credit this to two main reasons. The advance of online messaging applications
Now this might sound obvious but messaging apps have come a long way. Not just in terms of availability, but usability and adoption. There are far more people now using messaging apps, that have a greater number of features than ever before. With this advancement we've seen aggregation of several services. Take Trillain as an example (Google Play Trillian App) Out of the box it supports 'Facebook Chat, MSN, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, and Jabber'. This allows you to forget about potential compatibility issue, as compatibility is no longer an issue. The Apps are no longer restricted to a messaging network, they are cross platform compatible. Also with the working model of App downloads people are more comfortable now downloading applications. As the percentage of mobile app downloads increases it follows that a certain percentage of that increase will be messaging applications. The push for data services
One thing that Telecoms companies have really pushed since the mid 2000's is the usage of the data network. Voice and SMS networks and usage have been relatively stable for a while now. The costs to operate them have come down and the tariffs customers buy have also come down. This may sound unbelievable based on the current operator contract process but recent statistics show that contracts are 27% less profitable than they were in 2005, partly due to pricing and partly due to the allowances included in them. The only commodity left for a telecoms company to sell is data. Data is a measurable, metered commodity that can be priced for usage. It's the perfect target to try and get customers hooked on. You pay for a limited amount, use it all, and demand more, so you pay more. This encouragement leads to more uses of data. Customers want to use the data they have, so they find uses for it. Messaging being something they are already familiar with its an easy transition to switch from SMS to a messaging app, after all SMS is pretty much a pre-installed app these days anyway. The future of SMS?
So are we only a few years away from an SMS-less mobile network? I don't think so, the problem with this is that the capital cost has been forked out for a mobile network that can support current SMS volumes, and continues to be spent on supporting it. Vodafone advertises a daily expenditure of between 1.5 and 2 million a day to support the existing network infrastructure. This is for voice, data and SMS but those things are intrinsically linked. They cannot extract the SMS functionality from the core network and stop supporting it, it just doesn't work like that. That leaves them with an expensive on-going support cost for a declining SMS market that is unlikely to ever go away. All you'll end out with there is a small resilient core of customers using the SMS network at an incredible costs (to the Telco) per SMS. SMS will never truly vanish. You can read the Guardians view on this here.

Has the golden age of massive Mobile Application growth come to an end?

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 06:30:00 -0000

Statistics over the Christmas period show that mobile App market usage is still on the increase (by 11%), but that growth has significantly slowed year on year, from 97% (2011) to 90% (2012) to 25% (2013). Is this the beginning of a mobile app decline? Or are customers just changing their usage patterns? This article looks at how I think mobile users develop their patterns and where this has led us to.

Welcome to the all-you-can-eat-App-buffet!

Let's start off by looking at previous mobile app usage patterns. Early adopters and new mobile platform customers (Tablet and handset) are initially 'wowed' by whichever App store they visit. The wealth and availability of applications in an App store is impressive, and they are all available within a few clicks. People have little to no experience with any of these new applications now available to them, so they skip around a lot, downloading applications without a great deal of thought. We snack on different applications until we are gorged with a wide selection of them. There are no repercussions to installing a lot of these things, after all the only currencies are disk space (plentiful on modern devices) and a few pounds if you are purchasing applications. We haven't really got a plan, or a usage pattern here, it's an exciting new world of easily downloaded applications.

This slightly chaotic, unfocussed view on downloading applications gives people an opportunity to find the programs that work for them. It would be really interesting to see the discard rates for installed applications. Users try them, find that it wasn't what they thought and get rid of them. Often to then try something else very similar to see if the issues they had with the first App are fixed in a competitor or if that extra bit of missing functionality they thought was there is present.

Building Application loyalty and discovering a usage pattern

There is no App loyalty at this point. People are still adding and removing Apps until they settle on a relatively stable core set of applications. Consider the last time you upgraded a device. Chances are you simply reinstalled half of the same applications that were on the old device onto the new device. Apple and Google have actually built this data migration functionality into their ecosystems now. Its become the expected behaviour. Users develop a pattern of usage, and then they tend to stick with it. Barring significant life changes that introduce new categories of interests such as Marriages, children, house moves etc. people stay within their comfort zone. It takes a lot of marketing, or a trusted social recommendation to instigate someone to try out a new application.

A statistic that has an important bearing on this is the early adopter (or repeat upgrader) figure. New Smartphone sales are slowing. This is due to all of the early adopters having already adopted them, and in all likelihood are now on their third or fourth device due to the length of contracts. So the user base is more familiar with the way smartphone work, and integrate with everyday life. There are less and less completely new users to the ecosystem. The pattern described above is attributed to these new users, so the 'snacking' phenomenon is decreasing. This is evident in modern examples of Apple and Samsung's advertising campaigns which are both aimed at the casual user, the fringes of their traditional market segments, such as the 40+/50+ or budget conscious.

Application market Stagnation? Or User Stability?

I think when you take these factors into account the figures make a lot more sense and can be explained more as a repercussion of user stability and established practices. Experienced users have experience using online App stores and don't download a dozen applications in the first ten minutes just to test them out and remove them. Downloads are more considered and planned, time is taken to find the right application as the novelty value of having ALL THOSE APP's(!!) right on your fingertips has gone. This really helps to separate the chaff, and poor applications find themselves falling by the wayside quickly.

Rather than having a statistic around downloaded applications it may be more useful to view how many times an application was opened on a mobile device. Typically applications that are kept by a user are more heavily used. Users end out in a model of fewer applications, but more heavily used.

If you want to view more or this, or see a statistical view then have a look at either of the following two articles:

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/103350/Christmas-Continues-To-Set-App-Download-Records-In-Spite-Of-Slowing-Growth-and-Globalization-of-App-Market

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/03/christmas_app_downloads/

New report recommends Limiting teens web access to two hours a day

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 05:56:00 -0000

A report released in the last few days by the University of New Mexico has recommended that a two hour per day limit on web access should be enforced by parents, on children.


Under the advice, a two-hour limit should be imposed on using the internet for entertainment, including Facebook, Twitter, television and films.

The problem with this report is that it is let down by its traditional view on internet usage, and thus data consumption. The report has a central theme, and its findings also align to this theme, despite pointing out new device usage patterns within the report. The traditional (historic) view of internet usage is that consumers require specific devices or workstations to access the internet. This lead to a 'resource' measuring model. Data and speed became the measurements for how fast your access is, or how much you are allowed to consume. With the growth of internet and the ease of access to it, both from a proliferation of network access and the abundance of internet enabled devices this traditional resource measuring model simply isn't applicable anymore. The modern view of the internet should be realigned to one of that of a persistent layer, a non-tangible pervasive entity that sits comfortably over our existing social infrastructure. This is quite a common view when you go back to classic internet literature like SteamPunk or Manga. The internet is integrating into everyday life so much that it is becoming impossible to separate it from the fabric of everyday activity. We need to stop viewing it as a commodity resource and instead move it into an amenities category. Would you deny your children access to lighting or heating? No, you wouldn't but go back in history a little bit and you'll find that those two items were also rationed against a resource model. The best thing you can do is inform them of best practices in using the internet. You wouldn't ban them from spending all day in a library, instead you'd teach them how to use it. Now this does rely on parents knowing how it works (often far less technology savvy than their children) and there is still a strong requirement to shape exactly what content they can get to. The idea here though is to shape their desire to access inappropriate content, rather than shaping their access to it. No present day internet management software can blanket cover all items of concern in terms of access, it just isn't possible. Instead of trying to measure access out, why not help integrate it into everyday life, the usage pattern will develop on its own. Otherwise education establishments will continue to produce inaccurate reports based on historical understanding that just propagate a jaded view of our modern digital era. A link to the Telegraph article is here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/10410349/Limit-teens-web-access-to-two-hours-a-day-parents-told.html

Don’t build a social community, then destroy it with product changes

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 08:02:00 -0000

The key to social media platforms, of any variety, is the user base. Phase one of any social platform launch is "how do we encourage users to join, and how do we keep those users interacting enough to stay, and encourage more users to join". It's the social media circle that marketing agencies add by default into pretty much every web project produced since 2000.

The problem with social media, from a company point of view, is that you have to maintain the user base. With traditional software models people typically pay a license to use your product. Making changes to it is risky, but you essentially know how to shape your product roadmap, and how your buying customers are going to react. With social media every change of functionality is a test of your customer base.

They joined your site / use your application / manage their profile all because it's social. There is a social investment created. Profiles mature, people record their interactions, their scores, their achievements. Any change to your platform HAS to be backwards compatible; otherwise you are throwing away all the credit that has accrued from your users actually using your system.

Online games almost always feature a competitive friend ranking system, with platforms like Facebook now allowing aggregation functionality for non-Facebook based gaming (look at Candy Crush as an example) it is incredibly easy for applications to pull your friend list and create a points comparison scale, or an achievement ladder. The users buy into this social aspect. Developers and marketing have changed their mindset to make this a goal in playing the game. You can't mess with it. As EA recently found out.

EA learns to hard way

EA Games recently took control of the Scrabble game from Mattel. Their first move was to refresh the game with new functionality that erased the history of the players. This caused outrage in the customer base as people had been encouraged to invest time and money in this game, improving their scores, and generally creating a richer account, with depth of statistics. This was EA saying 'we don't care about your data'. Why build a rich profile with a history you are proud of, if a company can just erase it with a software update?

They also changed the functionality of the game, but not everyone is going to like all your feature changes, that is just part of the product lifecycle.

The worst thing about this? EA could have probably written an ETL process to migrate the account information into the new database format for the new revision of the game. They just didn't think it was important enough.

You can read more about the EA story on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22905191

Smartphone data consumption now higher than Tablet data consumption

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 04:02:00 -0000

A recent report from Arieso shows the changing trends in mobile device usage. Interestingly Smartphone users now consume more data traffic than Tablet users. This is based on a top ten list of devices, order by data usage volume.

The report digs into detail around mobile usage for devices by brand and device type. It also looks at regional fluctuations on usage which give some interesting insight into global data consumption trends.

What's quite interesting from my point of view is the trending of device consumption.

Extract:

Users of the iPhone 5 demand four times as much data as iPhone 3G users and 50% more than iPhone 4S users (the most demanding in the 2012 study). However, Samsung Galaxy S III users generate (upload rather than download – photos, videos etc.) nearly four times the amount of data than iPhone 3G users, beating iPhone 5 users into third place on uplink data usage behind the Samsung Galaxy Note II. And in the rapidly growing tablet market, Samsung Tab 2 10.1 users have asserted their dominance - demanding 20% more data than iPad users.

This information is all based on the user operating the device, but in my experience there are considerable differences in data usage based on mobile OS (and specific version of the OS) and mobile hardware. Saying that an iPhone 5 user is a heavier user than an iPhone 4 user based on the handset is inaccurate. What else is the iPhone 5 doing in the background over the iPhone 4. A considerable amount of network traffic is not generated by the user, or is specifically user initiated.

Think about what happens when you turn on Google location services, or the Apple Facetime service polling monitor. Both of these services are continually polling against the network and location based data systems.

This is not user demand, but device and service demand. I haven't been able to work out from the report yet if this is addressed.

Also if this trend continues, does this spell the demise of the Tablet market, as users become more comfortable with mobile handset browsing?

A full article is here, along with the report: http://www.arieso.com/news-article.html?id=138

How HMV stuffed up their pricing then lied to their customers (then blamed IT)

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:38:00 -0000

This is a recent example of how a UK retailer, HMV, experienced issues, either of a pricing, technical or communications nature then managed to completely mis-manage the situation and rather than fixing it actually damaged their brand more than the initial error did. [More]

What should I study in college to get started with ColdFusion?

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:16:00 -0000

The other day I got a comment on a Blog article from a reader. The reader asked "What should I study in college to get started with ColdFusion?". On one hand this is a massively open question, on the other I'd quite like to expand it even further. [More]

Open Source Scotland Digital festival

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:30:00 -0000

Just saw on the Twitter-vine that there is an Open Source Scotland digital festival happening next year. It happens on the 13th-14th of April and looks like it is being pitched as a Digital Festival. The speaker list is looking pretty impressive and there is a Twitter hash tag already #oss2012. You can read more, and buy tickets here: http://open-source-scotland.com/2012/

FaceBook expands your profile with Pregnancy options

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:42:00 -0000

Yup, you read it right. FaceBook adds an option to your 'Friends and Family' settings that allow you setup a new family member as an expected child. You can also add their Due Date. [More]

Book review: jQuery 1.4 Animation Techniques: Beginners Guide

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:23:00 -0000

This is a review of a book that Packt Publishing (http://www.packtpub.com/) have just sent me: JQuery titles, jQuery 1.4 Animation Techniques: Beginners Guide.

[More]

Welcome to the strictly digital age: Dirt 3 for PC only available for download

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 13:48:00 -0000

I split my gaming across the Xbox 360 and the PC, so I always tend to weight up which format I want to buy new releases on. Dirt 3 was released in the UK last week, and I noticed on the tv advert that the PC edition is now only available as a digital download.

A quick search on Game's website shows this too: http://www.game.co.uk/search.aspx?s=dirt+3

I used to work for a high street game retailer so I've always know PC sales are considerably lower than console, and the prices is usually 30%-40% less, so they are a less attractive option to software companies. This is the first time I've seen a new title ONLY available as a download though.

Personally I like to buy physical versions of my software as I generally sell them on, maybe this is the start of a trend? Are you comfortable having no choice, and only being able to download a title?

Book review: CMS Design Using PHP and JQuery

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:48:00 -0000

I was recently approached by Packt Publishing to review one of their new books, CMS Design using PHP and JQuery. They mentioned that I'm always talking about JQuery so thought I'd be an ideal test subject. I've dabbled in some PHP, and JQuery is an everyday tool in my arsenal so I was more than happy to give it a read. [More]

The mathematics of solving the UK snow problem

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 16:31:00 -0000

I've had enough of the UK news whining about the weather conditions. I was raised in Scandinavia, where they have a more resolute disposition towards the snow. It is something that happens every year, and you learn to get on with it.

So I got to thinking, what do I do when it snows? I get out there and I clear it off. I grab the shove/broom and I clear it out of the way. What would happen if the able bodied population of the country did the same, instead of sitting around complaining? Manpower is free, and its readily available.

This article examines the theoretical maths involved in that idea.

[More]

Sensationalist mobile usage claims - is mobile usage changing?

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:57:00 -0000

I like to keep abreast of the technology industry in general, and one of the recent articles published by the inquirer piqued my interest.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1932583/offers-unlimited-smartphones

Its all about data plans from '3' and how they have gone from a 1 gig limit to an unlimited tariff.

The problem with the article is this quote, from Marc Allera, Three's sales and marketing director.

"We expect to see more people using mobiles than PCs to access the internet by 2015."

It's the sort of sensationalist statement that is supposed to create a band-wagon, let alone entice people to jump on it.

My point is that the mobile revolution is already here. It is taking place already. People are subtly integrating smart mobile devices into heir everyday life, without really realising it. The statement above is supposed to make you think, "Hey why aren't I using my phone for all my surfing! I need to do that too!".

The reality is far different. Your home pc (or Mac) is a multi functioning beast. It plays the role of several different appliances, all happily bundled into one. You surf, play games, do your banking, watch TV and a whole host of other activities, because it is an adaptable technology platform.

Your smart mobile device is not a replacement product. It's not even in competition.

To quote a recent argument I was involved in, if a PC/Mac is a 'Car' then a smart mobile device is a 'motorbike'. They both fulfil similar roles, but in totally different ways. Just as you would use each type of transport for specific journeys, you would use your pc/phone for different tasks. To suggest that the functionality of the two is totally interchangeable is wrong.

Suggesting that more people are going to use a mobile to browse the internet on does not signify an increase in mobile browsing, it signifies a fundamental shift in how people use the internet. And that sort of social change is never driven by technology.