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Tim Cook To Speak at D10 Conference

Apple CEO Tim Cook will be the opening night speaker at the D10 Conference, AllThingsD confirmed today. Taking place at the end of May (May 29-31) in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, the D10 conference, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, includes names like Zynga’s Marcus Pincus, Sean Parker, and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg among the list of confirmed speakers.

Walt Mossberg and I could not be more thrilled to announce that Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, will be the opening-night speaker at our 10th D: All Things Digital conference.

It will be Cook’s first appearance at D, as well as his first time being onstage at an event not run by Apple or for investors since he was named CEO last August.

AllThingsD’s “D” conferences saw a number of important speakers sharing their views on the world of technology on stage. As AllThingsD describes it, one of D’s greatest strengths is the focus on unscripted conversations:

D is different from other conferences: no canned speeches, no marketing pitches, and no bull. Instead, creators and executive producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher put the industry’s top players to the test during unscripted conversations about the impact digital technology will have on our lives now and in the future. The results are unprecedented glimpses into the ideas and strategies of the industry’s most creative thinkers.

In Apple’s case, Steve Jobs made a series of appearances at D over the years, including one at D8 two years ago, where he famously discussed Apple’s stance on Flash, the lost iPhone 4 prototype, Apple’s internal culture, and more. The D10 conference will certainly be a good opportunity for Tim Cook to calmly and publicly go on the record about recent controversies and debates such as the one about China workers at Foxconn, the dividend, or more simply, the direction where Apple is heading.

In February, Tim Cook also spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference.

Everyme Review

Oliver Cameron thinks there’s something special, intriguing, about the address book. As a personal list that smartphone users have curated over several years, one could wonder about the stories, the people, and the interactions that are part of the creation and curation of an address book. But what can software developers do to leverage the data of our address books to redefine the way we get in touch with our closest friends?

Over the years, digital address books have exponentially increased the amount of data associated with names and phone numbers. First came dedicated fields for email addresses and contact pictures; then, when smartphones gained decent networking and data connections, the address book turned into a richer solution to store people’s information, rather than just addresses, and keep it always accessible on multiple devices through the cloud. Either through Gmail, Exchange, iCloud, or something else, it’s very likely that your address book contains names and phone numbers, but also email addresses, Twitter and Facebook usernames, location data, birthdays, family relationships, and various notes. The address book is, in fact, a people database that’s exclusive to each person. There is no address book like each other.

While the composition of an address book differs from user to user, some interactions and relationships are reflected on multiple instances of the address book, and the cloud can sometimes access a portion of these interactions to create lists of people “you may already know”. If I have you in my address book as a “friend”, maybe I also have your email address, and perhaps you have my information on your address book as well. With the right privacy settings, services like Facebook, Twitter, and just about any app with a social component these days allow us to look up friends that are already signed up by simply matching email addresses. This is a way to leverage the information stored in our address books to facilitate the sign up process for new services. They make it easier for us, using the address book we have been curating over the years.

Sometimes, however, people don’t want social apps that force them to share with everyone. Services like Twitter and Google+ are the polar opposites when it comes to determining how users engage with each other: whereas Twitter’s model of following/unfollowing may result overly simplistic to some people, Google’s insistence on Circles has found users confused by the plethora of options Google+ comes with. And then there’s Facebook, which has been experimenting for years with the concept of private groups, albeit they never really took off, and so Facebook preferred implementing deeper privacy settings, rather than forcing people to manage groups and names and lists. But is there a sweet spot between Twitter’s simplicity, Google’s circle management, and Facebook’s wide adoption both on desktop and mobile? Something that can leverage the data from our address books and social networks we’re already using to build a new platform to bring us closer to the people we know “in real life”? That’s what Oliver Cameron and his team are trying to build with Everyme. Read more

“Facebook Gets More Data”→

“Facebook Gets More Data”

Matthew Panzarino has a great take on today’s Instagram + Facebook news:

Facebook doesn’t need Instagram to make money. Instagram will probably never get ads.

I think it’s a win for everyone. Now Instagram doesn’t have to shoehorn a monetization model it would hate —and you would hate — into its service in order to survive. The users get a better experience. Facebook gets more data. Users that are quitting Instagram because the service may be ‘ruined’ are barking up the wrong tree. Facebook sees the value in the network as it is, a photo creation machine with a lot of user love.

While mobile ads could be a huge deal long-term speaking, it is true Facebook doesn’t “need” Instagram to make money right now. For a company as large as Facebook, this kind of acquisitions can be put on hold from a business perspective, to see how things evolve once users figure out they are effectively using a Facebook product. But you can’t put off the mobile explosion – it’s only going to get bigger – and can Facebook afford to miss out on “mobile advertisements done right”? What if someone else figures out a way to monetize millions – soon billions? – of users sharing photos from their smartphones?

It’s a good problem to have. And I agree that access to more data (patterns such as likes matched with photo captions, for instance, or location) is what matters for now. Let’s check back on ads and mobile monetization in six months.

More Instagram + Facebook coverage here.

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Facebook, Instagram, and Ads→

Facebook, Instagram, and Ads

Oli Watts thinks Facebook’s recent statement on revenue from mobile users offers a clear indication of things to come soon in newly Facebook-owned Instagram: ads.

I think the real reason for the Instagram purchase, and the incredible price tag, is access to a potentially lucrative mobile advertising product.

Mobile advertisements are potentially more lucrative than standard “desktop” web advertisements, yet most companies have been doing them wrong for years. The majority of mobile advertisements have tried to replicate the web’s model with simple images users can click to be directed to a website. Others, including Apple with iAd, have tried to do things a little differently, yet the numbers are smaller, and incredibly so, than, say, Google’s revenue with ads on search and desktop websites. Mobile advertisements could keep users more “engaged” with promoted products by leveraging aspects like location, cameras, touch, apps – yet only a handful of companies seem to be betting on the future of ads as richer experiences built for mobile, not extrapolated from computers.

Facebook is a company that along the way found a business model and a culture that allows them to believe they are doing good things. That’s in their IPO filing. With the Instagram acquisition, one can only assume Facebook will want to start making some money with it eventually, and because Instagram is mobile, and photos are huge on mobile, Facebook will find a way to monetize both Instagram and Facebook’s mobile products.

Like Instagram’s photo sharing model applied to a company like Facebook, the potential for different mobile ads is largely untapped.

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Why Facebook Bought Instagram→

Why Facebook Bought Instagram

Om Malik, writing at GigaOM:

Facebook and Instagram are two distinct companies with two distinct personalities. Instagram has what Facebook craves – passionate community. People like Facebook. People use Facebook. People love Instagram. It is my single most-used app. I spend an hour a day on Instagram. I have made friends based on photos they share. I know how they feel, and how they see the world. Facebook lacks soul. Instagram is all soul and emotion.

I am indeed interested to see how, on an emotional level, Instagram users will react to the Facebook acquisition. Will the “love” Om and others mention survive the migration to Facebook’s infrastructure? Or maybe Facebook will really keep Instagram as a truly separate product, perhaps only slightly more integrated with the social network – even if that doesn’t make much sense for a $1 billion acquisition? We’ll see.

In the meantime, it does appear the “social paradigm” Instagram reinvented (here’s my take from 2010) intrigued Facebook enough to give away 1% of its market cap.

Also worth keeping in mind: the photo sharing app Facebook was building, and the popular content on Instagram.

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“Sometime Down The Road”→

“Sometime Down The Road”

Yours truly, writing about the improvements to Instagram’s API in March:

Instagram, on the other hand, is taking an interesting path (no pun intended) that, sometime down the road, might turn what was once an iPhone app into a de-facto option for all future social sharing implementations. A few months from now, would it be crazy to think Camera+ could integrate with Instagram to offer antive uploads? Or to imagine built-in support for Instagram photo uploads in, say, iOS, Twitter clients, and other photo apps? I don’t think so. Just as “taken with Hipstamatic” stands out in today’s Instagram feeds, “Upload to Instagram” doesn’t sound too absurd at this point.

It took 19 days, and “upload to Facebook” has a different ring to it.

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Facebook’s Brilliant Move→

Facebook’s Brilliant Move

Smart take by Dan Frommer on Facebook acquiring Instagram:

The biggest threat to Facebook is a mobile-only or mobile-first social network that captures the increasing amount of time spent on smartphones in a way Facebook can’t or doesn’t.

In my experience, that’s exactly what Instagram does. I’m still addicted to Facebook on the old desktop-browser web, but when I’m on my phone, I gravitate to Twitter and Instagram. Path is another example, but Instagram is more developed — that’s the deal I’d make, too.

That’s exactly what Facebook should be doing: take the photos experience, and invest on a more intuitive way to share quickly and nicely from a mobile device. Instagram was the best choice.

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The Obvious Ending Of Instagram’s Tale

Earlier today, Facebook announced it has “agreed” to acquire Instagram, the popular photo sharing service that recently launched an Android app, adding 1 million users in 12 hours to its existing 30 million iPhone users. Here’s Instagram’s announcement, Zuckerberg’s post on Facebook, and some nice numbers for context. Both companies say Instagram “isn’t going away”, though they will be working on expanding the network while keeping the Instagram “we know and love”. If it sounds confusing on a practical level, here’s how we can put this announcement in perspective.

Unlike Flickr, Facebook didn’t miss out on mobile (its iPhone app is the most popular free app on the App Store, ever), but unlike Flickr, Facebook is also many experiences in one. Facebook is the social network, not just the photo network or the bookmark network. Facebook is none of them and all of them at the same time. And as such, Facebook understands that the mobile photo sharing aspect of the social network could be done better.

How better? Instagram better. Even without a business model – something the company has been criticized for not figuring out on day one – Instagram amassed more than 30 million users in roughly 2 years, and it has somehow redefined the way we think of photos shot quickly, modified, and shared on the go on multiple social networks. Photos that don’t require a sign up to be seen, but that do require registered users to “like” and comment. Photos that, even if not of the highest quality, still appeal to the mobile user who wants to touch up his picture of food or a concert with some nice, vintage-like filters. Instagram is fast, intuitive, and free to use for anyone.

Some are already comparing Instagram’s acquisition to Google buying YouTube years ago. I can see the similarities, but there are some differences to keep in mind. Whilst Google’s publicized core product, search, hasn’t directly benefitted from YouTube, Google’s real business, advertising, certainly has in some way. With the Instagram acquisition, I do believe Facebook knows the app is fascinating because it is an app, separate and fun to use, rather than a complicated interface for the big, large network with thousands of features. And I think Facebook could figure out a way to keep the essence of Instagram alive, at least from an interaction perspective, while altering the network in ways to bring tighter integration with Facebook profiles.

The obvious hypothesis is that Instagram could remain a separate product – maybe just rebranded “Instagram by Facebook” – to become the Facebook app for photos. Facebook already has a dedicated Messenger app for messages; they understand that Facebook is so complex and rich now, people want some experiences of it to become standalone, more intuitive products. Photos are perhaps the biggest experience of Facebook – well, aside from the concept of “friending” itself – and Facebook must have figured out mobile users want to be able to shoot, edit, and share in seconds. They also must have noticed how users liked Instagram’s self-contained approach to a feed of photos that tell stories without necessarily using text captions. So perhaps Facebook could leverage its most visual experience yet – the Timeline – to integrate Instagram in a way to ensure photos are automatically saved in a dedicated album, nicely laid out on Facebook.com, but also available as a separate, still Facebook-made feed that only displays photos.

The “Facebook app for photos”, indeed: allow users to easily migrate Instagram accounts to Facebook, turn old Instagram comments and likes into Facebook’s versions of the same things, allow users to enjoy Instagram as a way to a) post photos, b) share them publicly, and c) have a feed of photos from friends or people you follow. It helps that Facebook has already enabled Subscriptions, which could be translated to Instagram followers. The transition should be simple, technically speaking; Facebook could benefit from a product that already has some users that are sharing to Facebook anyway, and that seemingly like the whole idea of filters.

Facebook was already playing around with that idea, too.

But will the transition be simple from a conceptual perspective? As with most popular acquisitions these days, nerds – who tend to be early adopters of social products – react with outrage and disbelief to news like today’s one.

There are five stages of web grief:

  • Disbelief
  • Outrage
  • Data exporting
  • Account deletion
  • “Five best alternatives to [x]”

In two hours, we have already seen all these headlines. You can love or profoundly hate Facebook, and I’m no judge of your criticism for Zuckerberg’s company. I am just trying to make some sense out of this.

There are some people who fell in love with Instagram, and now don’t accept the fact the company “sold out” to Facebook. It’s an understandable sentiment, as Facebook clearly will try to do something to connect its network with Instagram, otherwise they wouldn’t spend $1 billion. These are the people that liked Instagram because it was a social, but intimate, fun experience to share photos. A separate network with very few features, a focus on photos, and a general feel of “independence” that contributed to its rise to 30 millions. We all root for the small guys to succeed in this era of recession and corporate acquisitions. These people don’t simply fear Instagram will lose its “cool” – they are genuinely concerned their data is going to be acquired by Facebook. That’s why Facebook must be careful in how they figure out a migration from Instagram to its large network. But as for the factors above, there’s no doubt Instagram will lose its product independence eventually.

Some people, however, are more judgmental. They seem to think that every business is a mission, and that we’re all in this intricate, complex Web labyrinth to change the world one app at a time. We are not. A very few people, the Steves and Bills of this modern age, are in for the long haul – to change the way we think, and the way we live through technology. But the majority of founders – even the most passionate ones – run businesses as they should: like a business. With real money, not just ideals, to administer at the end of each month. With employees to take care of and investors to respond to. With privacy concerns, legal departments, offices, salaries, support teams, and families waiting at home, wondering why you’re sweating so much for a website anyway. Instagram is a startup with 10 employees, two co-founders, a lot of users, and no business model to start making money. Facebook comes in and offers $1 billion. What is Instagram going to say, no?

I am not saying what Instagram did was “right”. Let’s get real, it’s not about “right” or “wrong”. It’s a business. And if the solution to this business happens to be a huge social network with lots of money in the bank, and possibly a decent existing structure to migrate our product without screwing our users too much, even better. Facebook and Instagram did the obvious thing: they understood they needed each other and got together. The outcome of this choice is more blurry for now, because while Instagram gets the money, Facebook will have to do things right and figure what makes Instagram great, keep it alive, and improve on it while further connecting it to Facebook. I do hope Instagram will be kept around for the long term.

As usual, the users decide. If you are using Instagram on a daily basis, and you are sending all your photos to Facebook, then maybe this announcement won’t change anything, and perhaps you’ll enjoy some new Facebook-only perks too. If you are concerned about privacy, think Instagram has no way to work as a Facebook product, or generally don’t like the idea of a “Facebook owned” service, then you are perfectly justified to delete your account.

But we should stop thinking about web services as experiences bound to stay independent to change the world, because that is a bubble. The obvious ending is what’s best for the business.