Google Social Search

Google search keeps getting more social, adding the ability to integrate web content, profiles, personal results and other content, including local content.

Social Search will include Google+ posts, for example plus user personal photos, making any single user's search results highly personal (and private).

Now, typing just the first few letters of a friend’s name brings up a personalized profile prediction in "autocomplete" mode. A results page for a friend will include information from their Google+ profile and relevant web results that may be related to them.

In addition, you’ll find profile autocomplete predictions for various prominent people from Google+, such as high-quality authors from our authorship pilot program.

Once you select that profile, if you’re a signed-in Google+ user, you’ll also see a button to add them to your circles right on your search results page.

Since some of the information you’ll now find in search results, including Google+ posts and private photos, is already secured by SSL encryption on Google+, Google decided that the results page should also have the same level of security and privacy protection.

"Search plus Your World" will become available in mid-January 2012  to people who are signed in and searching on https://www.google.com in English.

"Next Big Thing" Will be Mobile-Related, But Give it a Couple Years

Hot new mobile devices have been the big reason people have spent money on mobile services over the last several years, you might argue. For starters, it often is impossible to purchase a device without also buying other products, such as mobile data plans.

You can get a tablet and use Wi-Fi for connectivity, but in the U.S. market, for example, it is virtually impossible to buy a smart phone without an accompanying data plan. The caveat: you can buy a full price, "unlocked" smart phone, not from a service provider. But almost nobody does this.

With the Consumer Electronics Show now in full swing, you will not be able to avoid hearing about the "next big thing," or the "lack of the next big thing" coming out of CES. Sometimes the hype matches an eventual trend, and sometimes it does not, so be circumspect.

Among the devices of recent years to have been the "big thing" at CES are netbooks (up and down), 3D TVs (hasn't taken off), tablets (clear winner). But in decades past, there have been entire shows where nothing even that pronounced really has emerged. Some years, the industry itself looks only to refine an existing trend, because there is, in fact, no "hot" new product category.

To the extent you can say there is a "new category," it would be ultrabooks, the new "thin and light" notebook PCs that are supposed to compete with the Macbook Air. If you think about it, you can probably see the problem here. Most people do not buy the Macbook Air, when they buy a PC.

They mostly buy notebooks, it is true. But the Macbook is at the high end of the market, and most people do not buy products at the high end, in any market. So a reasonable person might argue that although ultrabooks are nice hardware, they will not create a big new market.

If pricing stays high, then few will be sold. If pricing drops, as virtually everybody expects, then ultrabooks will simply become the new form factor for many notebook PCs.

The other problem some might note is that with very few exceptions, hardware doesn't drive the market the way it used to. You can say the Apple iPhone did so, and you can argue the tablet does so. But PCs haven't created sizable new markets for some time. I'm not saying they are less useful, but it is an established category.

The other problem is that as most of a consumer's devices, and virtually all the portable devices, become multiple-purpose devices, more of the value has moved to software and communications. Some 48 percent of the respondents to a survey conducted by CTIA-The Wireless Association and conducted by Qualtrics say their mobiles have become their primary ways of using voice communications.

Also, when asked what they thought was the most important function of their mobile devices, 61 percent said the Internet; 42 percent said text messaging or instant messaging and 40 percent said voice. Smart phones are multi-function devices.

"You've got a computer in your pocket, you've got a computer in your briefcase, you've got a computer on your desk — and pretty soon you're going to have a computer in your TV — all running apps — and they're going to do most of what you want to do," says Selburn. "The problem is: How do you wrap up an app and put it under the tree at Christmas?" CES: No killer app?:

Some 48 percent of the respondents to a survey conducted by CTIA-The Wireless Association and conducted by Qualtrics say their mobiles have become their primary ways of using voice communications.

Also, when asked what they thought was the most important function of their mobile devices, 61 percent said the Internet; 42 percent said text messaging or instant messaging and  40 percent said voice.



It would be fair to note, with regard to CES or device trends in general, that we sometimes hit periods when there is no "hot new category." Tablets were the last clear winner. But that doesn't happen every year. Ultrabooks are interesting. But it is reasonable to ask whether they can create a whole new category, or simply change an existing category in some significant way.

Communications Overload?

Communications overload

Communications overload has gotten to be a more-frequent topic in the last decade, as the types of channels and variety of tools has exploded. That has lead to some thinking on the part of enterprises, for example, about how to limit and manage communications overhead.

Recently, French IT service provider ATOS Origin announced its intention to be e-mail free for communication between employees in three years. CEO Thierry Breton cited the move as a response to the data explosion that has managers spending five to 20 hours a week attending to e-mail and 25 percent of time at work searching browsers and social network sites.

A part of their solution is to replacee-mail with more efficient social community platforms that bracket communications and assemble information by communities of interest. Another? Restrict non-work browsing. Should You Dump E-mail?

Some of us probably are skeptical that anything other than "unplugging" or "ignoring" messages will work. The whole movement of communications in recent years has been towards "ubiquity" in terms of ability to reach people anytime, anywhere, using a variety of modes including social networks, instant messaging, blogs, text messages, voice, email, tweets, video messages and more unified communications software.

Mobile communications, which according to some studies already is the preferred mode of voice communications, and rapidly becoming the main messaging platform and Internet access portal as well, is a key contributor.

Device	More this year	More next year
Mobile	33.6%	39.1%
E-mail	38.4%	34.2%
Texting (SMS)	30.7%	32.2%
Social networks	26.5%	26.2%
Desktop video	12.8%	26%
Instant messaging	18.6%	21.3%
VoiP calling	12.1%	21.3%

Source: Skype (December 2010)

48% Say Mobile is "Primary" Voice Channel

Some 48 percent of the respondents to a survey conducted by CTIA-The Wireless Association and conducted by Qualtrics say their mobiles have become their primary ways of using voice communications.

Also, when asked what they thought was the most important function of their mobile devices, 61 percent said the Internet; 42 percent said text messaging or instant messaging and  40 percent said voice.

Not only has mobile become the primary voice tool for nearly half of respondents, Internet access and messaging were deemed more important than voice.

The survey of about 1,000 U.S. female mobile users also shows that substantial percentages of respondents likewise rely on mobiles as their primary way of accessing the Internet.

More than 38 percent of the women said their mobile devices were their main access point to the Internet and almost a third (32 percent) said mobile broadband had replaced their traditional Internet service.

Wireless substitution, one might argue, has reached truly significant levels. The survey does not, in and of itself, suggest how fast users might decide they do not use, and do not need, their fixed network voice lines.

The public results did not suggest that those same percentages of respondents have stopped buying landline voice service, only that, of the two forms--wireless and fixed--nearly half have shifted their primary voice activities to mobiles.

Apple's Enterprise "Trojan Horse" Strategy is Working

Steve Jobs famously argued that he'd rather sell to consumers than businesses, because he'd rather sell directly to an end user than a third party. It would appear that Apple's prospects are improving, in part because enterprises are more lenient these days about allowing some employees to use their own tools. Consumer markets more sustainable

But lately Apple has been able to use a "Trojan Horse" strategy, selling products to lead business buyers who have acquired and prefer Apple products in their roles as consumers. Tablets and iPhones are the two best examples.

 

Millennials Prefer Smaller Companies? Perhaps, But What Does it Mean?

Only seven percent of the Gen-Y generation (some say this is people roughly 18 to 29, other might use a slightly-different age range) works for a Fortune 500 company, according to Millennial Branding.

Some would argue the pattern exists because start-ups better reflect Gen-Y ("Millennial") values.

It is a simple demographic fact that Millennials will represent 75 percent of the workforce by 2025. But some might argue that "culture" and "values" have rather little to do with employment patterns of Millennials.

Since about 1980, enterprises, such as the "Fortune 500" firms, have been employing a smaller number of U.S. workers. Concurrently, there are more and more people working "for themselves," as well.

For example, “owner” is the  fifth most popular Millennial generation job title, according to Millennial Branding.

 Some would say this is because they are an "entrepreneurial" generation. Perhaps there is some truth to that characterization, but one might also note that the numbers and percentages of workers who work for smaller companies, or independently, have been climbing for decades.  Millennials choosing start-ups

So though it is possible that Millennials have a preference for start-ups, it also is possible that this simply is where the jobs are. The entire workforce has shifted since 1980 or so, one might argue.

Mobile Now Drives Enterprise Cloud Adoption

Up to this point, it might have been reasonable to consider the impact of "mobility" on enterprises mostly in relation to remote or distributed work, and separately from other trends, such as "consumerization" or "cloud computing," though all three are related.

Increasingly, though, it is looking as though mobility is now driving cloud adoption. That's new.

When cloud storage provider Box tracks its enterprise sales, it finds there has been a 30-fold increase in the number of enterprise deployments that are mobile-driven.

So while mobile user growth may be up nine times, enterprise activity is producing more revenue growth.

The Box enterprise customer base now includes 82 percent of the Fortune 500, the company says. Mobile drives cloud adoption

That mobile drives enterprise cloud computing adoption should not be surprising. Networked computing has been driving most application trends for some time. Most consumer apps now run in the cloud. And though enterprises can afford to run apps using their own data center infrastructure, it increasingly makes sense to create web interfaces for enterprise apps, whether the facilities are run "in the cloud" or on owned facilities.