Build a great app, destroy 90% of your value proposition

Have you been following the ongoing dispute between satellite TV provider DirectTV and the ubiquitous Weather Channel?

For those not familiar with the story, essentially it boils down to this - when it came time to renew the contract that allows for the Weather Channel to be carried on the satellite service, DirectTV, citing a 20% decline in customer viewership of the Weather Channel, has requested a commensurate decline in the fees it pays to the channel. The Weather Channel, citing, well, things other than actual ratings, is holding out for a (small) increase in carriage fees from DirectTV. While the two sides continue to negotiate and toss barbs at each other, the channel has been taken off DirectTV and has been replaced with an alternate weather information channel.

While these kinds of TV distribution service and content producer disputes kick up from time to time, (there was a pretty widely reported spat between Time Warner Cable and CBS TV a few months ago for example), they have almost always been centered about one thing - costs. Almost invariably, and not surprisingly, the content producers want increased fees from the TV distributors for the right to carry the content/programming. After all they have a compelling argument. No one subscribes to DirectTV for the sheer joy of seeing one of those tiny satellite dishes bolted to the roof of the house. The value is in the content. 

But in the DirectTV/Weather Channel spat, DirectTV has introduced another element to the mix, one that serves as a bit of a warning too - that creating an amazing, relevant, easy to use, and distilled to its most important elements mobile app might actually work against the Weather Channel in the long run. 

What do I mean by this?

That since the Weather Channel has an incredibly popular mobile app, one that millions of people check everyday, and does not typically get deleted once it has been downloaded, it has in effect, reduced the need for the 'full service', i.e., the TV version of the Weather Channel. Nine or maybe even nine and a half times out of ten the weather information that people need can be and is delivered perfectly capably on their mobile device and within a few seconds. Everyone checks the weather on their phones. And unless there is a major storm or natural disaster type event, the information you get on the phone is a perfectly suitable substitute for watching the actual TV version of the Weather Channel.

Step back a second then and think about what this suggests more broadly. Whether it is a media property like the Weather Channel or a technology solution like an HRIS system or even an organizational entity like an HR department - going down the path of mobile deployment or offering a mobile service element usually means a reduction or a distillation of the offering/value proposition such that it actually works on a mobile device.

And the service or solution has to meet the additional demands of the mobile user - simplicity, speed, ease of use, fun, and most importantly, has to deliver value at that moment.

In the Weather Channel example, their mobile app clearly delivers on those requirements. It is one of the most popular apps across all mobile platforms. And it pretty clearly demonstrates and reinforces the long standing and seems to work everywhere 80/20 rule. Except for the hardcore weather nerds, almost all of the value the Weather Channel creates comes from about 20% of what they do.

The problem now, at least according to DirectTV, is that when you give people the choice to consume only the valuable 20%, well, they don't need, want, or care about the rest of what you do.

I don't have a great big insightful takeaway on this, I just thought the story was interesting.

Mobile-first, or mobile only services certainly don't run into this problem, but for the rest of the world that continues to struggle to squeeze years and years of legacy operations onto a 4-inch screen, I think we will see this scenario playing out more often.

Giving people an amazing mobile experience might be all they need and it might make the rest of what you are doing look and feel kind of old, kind of antiquated, and kind of unnecessary.

Have a great weekend! 

WEBINAR: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting

You know what niche industry is really suffering right now?

Ok, that was a dumb question, there are hundreds of possible answers, (luxury electric cars, shoe shine stands, sites trying to peddle surplus Jeremy Lin 'Knicks' gear), but the one I was going for was gossip magazines.

You know the ones I mean - National Enquirer, The Star, The Weekly World News. The rags that line every supermarket checkout counter in America.

Why are these publications feeling the squeeze lately? It's not for a lack of juicy news - heck the Kardashians alone take care of providing all the content they need. It's because while people are stuck waiting in the checkout line, when they used to scan and once in a while make an impulse buy of one of these magazines, now they are heads down on their iPhones.

Texting, Tweeting, Facebooking - whatever. The attention they used to pay to the starlet of the moment on the magazine rack is now diverted to their mobile device.

Face it - our attachment to our devices is changing everything - from gossip mags to reading news to looking for a job - and yes I just made that leap. Candidates are looking for jobs, (maybe your jobs), on their mobile devices instead of reading about the latest world's largest baby. And guess what? You probably are not ready for that.

That is why your friends over at Fistful of Talent have you covered with the latest in the FOT Webinar series - The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, Wednesday April 24 at 1:00PM ET.

What will FOT's Kris Dunn and Jason Pankow cover?

Jason and Kris will lay down FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, brought to you by the mobile sages at iMomentous by hitting you with the following:

A survey of the mobile recruiting landscape and the factors driving the need for HR and recruiting professionals to develop their mobile recruiting strategy.

Mobile site vs. Native App? FOT tackles the great debate, presenting scenarios of how each fit into your mobile recruiting strategy.

The five keys to enhancing your mobile recruiting strategy by capitalizing on features like quick apply, SMS, social media and QR codes

The ultimate checklist for selecting your mobile recruiting vendor, including the top questions you need to ask when vetting potential vendors

How to go beyond the optimized screen to attract top talent to your organization by incorporating video content and thought leadership into via your mobile recruiting strategy.

So what are you wating for, register here for the April installment of the FREE FOT webinar and start laying down the foundation for your mobile recruiting strategy.

As always, the FOT Webinar comes guaranteed - 60% of the time it works every time.

Preparing for the Post-PC era

Last week the analyst and advisory services firm Gartner released a new set of market estimates and predictions about the market for 'personal' computing devices - traditional PCs, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The Gartner predictions are summarized in the chart below:

The main takeaway, at least for some analysts, from these market estimates? The PC market is dying.

Their argument being as PC shipments begin to decline, while smartphone and tablet sales continue to rise, then the simultaneous impact of software and application developers focusing their efforts on the growing market segments, combined with individual (and possibly business), lengthening the typical useful life cycle of the PC (essentially making do with an old PC or laptop while making sure you have the latest Samsung Galaxy or iPad), will combine to further erode the PC as the primary personal computing platform. 

I think both these arguments make perfect sense, particularly when thinking about how people are engaging with technology for their personal needs. The skeptic would say that for work, for 'real' work that usually, (but not always), involves content creation or heavy, data-intensive tasks, that the PC is not going anywhere - not for a long while anyway. That is a pretty compelling, and I think still somewhat valid, defense for the PC. Tablets and smartphones and even 'dumb' Chromebook-type devices are simply not yet up to the heavy tasks that workplaces demand.  We may be moving to the Post-PC era, but we, at least in the workplace, are not there yet.

But not being there should not be an excuse for organizations or software providers to think that one day and probably sooner that we all will be ready for, the PC will no longer be the primary or dominant device via employees engage with enterprise technology, creat content, and engage with each other. If you don't yet buy-in, check out this excerpt from a recent interview with Aaron Levie founder of Box, a consumer-to-enterprise cloud storage and collaboration company that continues to make major waves in more and more large, global organizations.

"I think like everybody else we recognize the opportunity that mobile has created. This idea that there's going to be, I don't know what the latest figure is, over a billion smart devices, smart phones, probably two billion. But mobile devices are outselling PCs three to one, two to one, and at a rate that is really unstoppable at this point. We think that fundamentally changes how businesses are going to work. Not just the fact that now I have another device that I can access information from, but more importantly, this becomes a primary computing device for a whole new set of job functions.

We see that as kind of our PC moment. If you think about the transition from the mainframe to the PC, how that created new leadership opportunities for Microsoft and Intel and others, we see the same kind of transition from PC to post-PC as creating those kind of leadership gaps and opportunities. We happen to be a company that was born right at the center of this shift. On day one of our company we thought about the mobile implications of having access to your information from anywhere. We were rapidly orienting and organizing our company around that effort. You're going to see a lot of stuff from our platform, from our hiring, from where we're building out our teams that is completely oriented around the mobile enterprise, the post-PC enterprise, and we really want Box to be the hub for content and for information in this new post-PC enterprise."

The money line from that long quote from Levie is this:  On day one of our company we thought about the mobile implications of having access to your information from anywhere. 

Levie and Box were and are thinking about this market shift from a vendor's perspective - they make and market solutions for content management and collaboration. But the sentiment - preparing for a workplace where everyone demands access to their information, (used in a really broad sense), from any device and at any time - well that is not just a vendor problem, it's your problem too.

Take the Gartner data, take the comments from a guy like Levie for what they're worth, but if you really need to know what's going on in your organization just ask some people, or better yet, just observe them when they are not chained to a PC. Chances are they are still trying to work on whatever devices they have or that you've provided. The question really is are you doing enough to think about and focus the way that Levie describes - are you actively thinking about how to provide access to the information your employees need, when, where, and how they want it?

The post-mainframe era was a b$%^& if you were on the wrong side of the divide. The Post-PC era figures to be the same.

The Monthly Results Book - now just another app

Ages ago I worked in a big company corporate finance department where our major group deliverable was something we called the 'Blue Book', a collection of charts, financial reports, and analyses of our division's monthly financial and operating results that was developed, compiled, printed, collated, (really eerie 'Office Space' flashback happening right now), bound up in you guessed it, blue report covers, and distributed to 50 or so leaders and executives across the organization.

The Blue Book was our version of the truth, the single source for financial information for most of these business and operations leaders, most of whom carried around the most current version of the package in their briefcases as they commuted to the office or tucked under their arms as they attended the next in what seemed like, (and probably was), a series of interminable meetings at the office. It was all ver 1990's and if you know the Office Space re-set, then if you equated the Blue Book to the TPS reports from the movie, then you would not be too far off.

From time to time we made some incremental changes to the Blue Book contents - we made some fancier charts - remember Harvard Graphics?, dropped a few reports we were pretty sure no one used, and once in a while tightened the distribution list to reflect organizational changes, after all the division financial results were strictly 'need-to-know' material. But we never really changed the manner or method of information dissemination or distribution. Each month we either hand-delivered the books to recipients who were at our HQ, or shipped them off in one of those formerly ubiquitous manila 'Inter-office mail envelopes'. No matter how much better we made the contents, (frankly not that much better), the packaging and delivery never changed, 30 or so pages, three hole punched, six sections, and the familiar blue report cover.

I have not thought about the Blue Book in a long time, but it came to mind after I downloaded and checked out the 'America's Economy' app the was recently released by the US Census Bureau, (image on this post taken from the App). 

The App provides real-time updates for 16 key economic indicators released from the US Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Things like employment and unemployment rates, manufacturing measures, international trade balance and flows, and more.

It is a pretty neat, if simple little App, that allows anyone with access to a smartphone a quick and easy way to find, review, and with Twitter and Facebook integration, optionally share information to their networks.

So if you have hung in with this (admittedly dull) post to this point you might be wondering what is the point really, besides talking about the America's Economy app and a boring tale from corporate days gone by?

Here it is - I suspect that many of us are still distributing, communicating, and providing whatever passed for the modern version of our 'Blue Books' in much the same way we have been for years and years. Sure, you probably replaced the printed reports and binders with email and attached PDF files, or set up some kind of online platform or repository to house the data, but my guess is you have not yet been willing or able to change the way you think about sharing and disseminating information all that much.

My guess is that your executives and managers don't have a simple little app like the America's Economy app where they can, with a couple of fast swipes and taps, see all the relevant data, charts, analyses, trends, etc. that they want and need to know. My guess is that they have to either chase the information, wait until they are in the 'right' place to access it, or perhaps even take decisions without the data.

The age of the App means that for you, an enterprise service provider, that the bar will continue to climb, and the expectations for ease of use, real-time updates, and having important business information always in hand will only increase. If you have not yet been asked by your leaders questions like, 'That is a nice report, can I get it on my iPhone?', I bet that you will soon.

And if you don't have a good answer then you might be asked 'Well, the monolith known as the US Government seems to be able to do it, what is your excuse?'

How did you get this number?

The Next Web ran a short piece a few days ago about the results from a survey of mobile and smartphone usage in the UK, commissioned by the UK mobile operator O2, that revealed some interesting data about how people are actually using their smartphones.Mojave phone booth

The hook line from the piece, and what is interesting about the data, (taken from a survey of about 2,000 users), is that making actual phones calls, i.e., talking to other people, (or at least attempting to), rated as only the fifth most popular activity for these smartphone users.

According to the 'All About You' survey data, here's where people spend their time on each day with their phones:

Browsing the internet - 25 minutes

Checking Social Networking sites - 17.5 minutes

Listening to music - 15.5 minutes

Playing games - 14.5 minutes

Making actual phone calls (not including conversations with SIRI), - 12 minutes

If you read the rest of the Next Web piece on the survey data, it talks about how the mobile phone has become an indispensable part of modern life, has replaced for many users the need for other 'single-function' gadgets like alarm clocks and watches, and continues to utterly transform the way that we interact with the world, with information, and certainly, each other. And of course that is the kind of positive spin that O2, a mobile phone provider would want to attach to this kind of data.

But the cynical take on this, and perhaps backed up with we see more and more in our professional and personal lives, is that, increasingly, we don't want to actually talk to each other, at least not as often as we want to check LOL Cats, hang out on Facebook, and drop the latest Adele track.

It's not really new news that people do lots of really cool things on their phones, and I suppose it's not really news anymore that actually talking to people has become a much less common and much bigger intrusion on our time that we ever used to think. Sherry Turkle has already covered that ground better than I ever could.

But I guess I'll leave it to you to consider - the little device you are carrying right now lets you connect with the entire world, almost everyone in it, and more information than was ever dreamed would be accessible even just a few years ago. 

With that power, potential, and promise, why would you want to spend any time dedicated to talking with just one person?

We love, (especially the professional networkers out there), to say that meeting people, talking to them, interacting one-on-one is the ultimate way to connect, and is necessary to forge true and meaningful relationships. But the data keeps showing what we say we believe and what we actually do continue to diverge.

What do you think? How much less do you actually talk to people since you got your iPhone?

And you can call me to let me know what you think if you like, but I probably won't pick up. Maybe.