Are "killer" apps "killing" data?

Microsoft had a distinct vision in its early days that was expressed in a short sentence: A computer in every desk in every home... This was considered ambitious, even foolhardy by some, but was also considered a bright and shining vision of things things to come. People talked about fridges with computers, desk surfaces that accessed real and virtual files, and an information superhighway that would unify the entire world. And for a time, such a thing looked very possible.

There was a second part to Microsoft's vision statement that got them in trouble: ...running Microsoft software. In the 1990's there were antitrust suits about everything from the operating system to the media player to the web browser. What was supposed to be a great convergence became a scattering of the tribes. While progress continued, the shape of what the goal looked like became less and less concrete. Now as opposed to access to all information, it was about controlling your own. This is around the same time the phrase "content" started replacing "work". It no longer became who controlled the levers of the machine, but who provided the fuel for the engine.

In the weeks since the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and a number of associated announcements there has been a lot of ink spilled about the next "killer". Is The Palm Pre the iPhone killer? Is Kindle the print killer? Is Kindle the iPhone killer? Will Twitter kill Facebook? Will the Facebook API hurt Twitter's....whatever Twitter does? It got us at The Times to thinking: Isn't this what got us into this mess to start with? Why do we NEED a killer app? Why do we need ONE app in each field?

Twitter is a great example. We've enjoyed following people on Twitter, and making our own posts that are a mix of informative and mundane. At the same time, there are a lot of posts from people that are "So-and-so has joined twitter," and "Twitter influence grows", but there's no context to what this means. Some pundits have said that Twitter would take off as soon as major celebrities joined, but never have really said what that would MEAN. That's the problem with Twitter: it's a wonderful, creatively open channel that can be used for....ummmm...you know....stuff. Combined with this has been comments about what Twitter's growing popularity means for Facebook.

Here's a question just as valid: What does the weakening of the British pound mean for the jelly bean industry?

Facebook and Twitter are two applications that do very very very different things. Twitter is a microblog: short, focused posts, either biographical in nature or a link to some other information that you can access independently, or join the service to keep closer track on those microblogs. Facebook is a social networking service that allows you to link to friends and people with common interests (normally linked through other friends) and share information about yourself and your experiences. There may be some overlap (the decline of the pound might impact the price of jelly beans) but in the end they are two totally different things that serve different needs (We like jelly beans a lot, and will probably find a way to pay for them no matter what happens).

The thing common between the two is data. They both share data, and share them in their own ways and for their own purposes. The same goes for the iPhone and the Kindle: you can read books on each, so it is really how the books are disseminated that is important, not the media they are consumed on. We believe that Amazon would be smart to offer a Kindle-like app on the iPhone as opposed to try to position itself to be an alternative to the iPhone, because they do different things. Too much worrying about making sure that everyone consumes the data in the same way is a great way to ruin any platform and put a throttle on progress.

The problem is that more and more tech writers seem to be concerned about who will win this battle, when there is no battle to be had ("With the rising British pound, and recovery all but certain, people are wondering if the red jelly beans will still be as delicious as they have been the last 18 months).

There is a great confusion amongst those that watch tech between something being popular and something being revolutionary, and the desire to call the everlasting "FIRST" in the message board of history. Twitter is a great example: statistics can be quoted about how many people use it, how many people follow, and how many famous people are on there. That's great and makes for a great PowerPoint presentation. But what are people DOING with the platform determines it is revolutionary. Apple had only 10% of the market, but has over time changed the way people look at how they interact with computers. Too much time is being spent on WHO, but not enough and HOW and WHY? And with Twitter, there is no HOW and WHY yet so for every person that joins today there are probably as many throwing up their hands, unsure of what this offers over what they already use.

There are similar issues in the smartphone industry, and here it is even more absurd. People can use any number of social networking tools that they want, or even run multiple blogs (Ed note: Keep watching the stars.....) but in reality they only need one or two phones. The idea that the Palm Pre, or the G1 is going to kill the iPhone or the Blackberry is absurd. Buying a phone and the associated plan is hardly an impulse purchase, and people aren't going to change their mind because of cut and paste.

We do believe, however, that this is the field to watch for true innovation, The cell phone plans and the costs associated with them and the hardware, you're going to see more and more companies learning and adapting for the moves that other companies make: The Pre has many iPhone like qualities, and expect the next iPhone, suspected to be in an airlock (not quite wild, not quite free) to have learnt a lot from the G1. The idea of there being one smartphone to rule them all: unimportant and unlikely, but most of all, undesirable.

We all loved Microsoft's vision of a computer on every desk, but didn't like the trade off. It turns out what we didn't care about what the hardware, or the platform, but the information and access to it. We feel that the constant fretting about which platform is the next big thing and which one should be championed is essentially counter-productive and in the end very dangerous. It's time we started worrying more about the data, and making the data accessible, than about the font that the data is displayed in.

Maybe the main point is really this: everyone needs money, but not everyone needs to spend it on jelly beans. If we choose to purchase jelly beans with our money, that's our choice. And if we want to put that in our Facebook status using our iPhone, or Tweet it using an app on the G1, that's our choice also. But please don't think that doing one is necessarily at the expense of the other, because it's not. One is just the better tool for the job.