Would You Update Your LinkedIn Status? I Sense Status Overkill...

When I installed the LinkedIn iPhone App last night, the first thing that struck me was the focus on the "LinkedIn Status"... and how almost every status update in my network read:

"... Is testing the LinkedIn App"

Is that useful? And when are there so many status feeds and updates that the general concept of 'status' becomes meaningless? I'd argue it's already happened. I sense that Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed are having trouble figuring out how to play together vs. compete together.

How will LinkedIn now play in the status world? I imagine they'll find out pretty quickly that it will be tough to gather enough status alerts to make their network feeds useful. LinkedIn is not the community (or mindset) that has people actively updating their lives. It is, however, a community that wants to alert their networks of other things: job openings, business questions / needs, etc. I would argue that these are not statuses though... and I would argue a step further that alerts like "... is testing the LinkedIn App" actually degrades the LinkedIn experience - which compared to the other status-based networks, is typically very clean and focused.

New Linked In iPhone App could be the Killer App... But Not Yet

I've written before that there are many great iPhone Apps... but nothing that is truly game-changing (yet).

I've also written about how the iPhone's contact management system needs serious improvement.

So when yesterday's LinkedIn App hit the iPhone - I got excited because it was a chance to merge your business contacts with your phone... and it's close, but not perfect. The app gives you full access to your LinkedIn directory and even gives you the ability to call contacts directly from the application. Search is easy and smooth - whether it's within your contacts or across the larger network. And you can build and manage your network from within the application.

But where the application fails to impress me: you cannot save contacts to your phone.

The ability to download vcards from LinkedIn.com is the feature that I find most useful and the reason I most log in to LinkedIn. I am not sure whether it's because the iPhone doesn't enable it or LinkedIn has made a conscious decision (realizing it would reduce the application's stickiness)... but merging contacts between the iPhone and LinkedIn immediately improves the phone's contact system and motivates me to actively grow and manage my LinkedIn network.

Until then... it's useful for a now-and-again search query.

Improving the iPhone's Contact Management Product

While at dinner two nights ago, the four of us around the table started talking about our new iPhones... which we had all traded in blackberries for. After some apps were showed off and the general 'cool factor' wore off - we talked about how painful it is to sort through the contact album... which really is the root of how the iPhone operates as a phone.

At the most extreme end, Vinny (of Synthasite) showed how it takes 20 seconds to load his contact list (which has 4,500 entries). Now that's absurd on a few levels... but even my album of 500 contacts takes 5-10 seconds to load. That's inexcusable and really makes it really tough to navigate as a phone.

Here's what I'd like to see:

- First, I want the ability to add contacts to the deck... just as you can clip webpages and add them as icons. I would then create a homescreen of the top 20 people I call. This seems relatively easy to do and I am amazed it's not currently offered. The Blackberry offers hot-keys for assigned / auto-calling.

- Second, I'd like to break the contact list into groups that are independent of one another so that the entire contact list doesn't have to load with each usage... after all, that's where the pain comes from.

- Third, I want universal search. I want to be able to find people by first AND last name. And I want the search function to load independently of the contact album and be the first function to load. The current search function requires you to navigate to the top of the album and then search... big pain.

- Fourth, I want to be able to place calls / add a contact from the SMS menu without scrolling to the top of the chat history. It is bizarre that contacts and interactions are treated uniquely throughout email, phone, SMS, etc.

Facebook is Gunning for Twitter & FriendFeed - I Might be Converting

I love Twitter. I've come to love FriendFeed. And I really love my new iPhone 3G. And I've never been a huge Facebook user.

All of these come together thanks to Apple and my new iPhone. After installing the Facebook App (which now has 1,000,000+ unique users by the way), I've slowly become more attracted to the Facebook Feed updater than to the Twitterific App. I still don't fully understand why, but I do understand the three following points:

1) My network seems to be updating their stream more regularly through Facebook than through Twitter 2) I actually know all of the users of who can access my Facebook feed (though I am not sure this is a positive!) 3) I am too lazy to update both Twitter *and* Facebook

And while I love Twitter, my network seems to prefer Facebook... which by definition would drive me towards sending my content into Facebook rather than Twitter. The direct feedback and traffic through Twitter, however, is more significant than through Facebook - and that means quite a bit (selfishly) as a blogger and a networker.

I am not sure where this will lead for me - but I do know that I am consequently spending more time on Facebook (via the iPhone App) than on Twitter.... I'm also not sure if this is permanent or a temporal iPhone fascination.

The New York Times iPhone App - I Love It, But Here are 10 Suggestions

Despite getting unfairly ripped with iTunes ratings, The New York Times iPhone Application is by far and away my favorite app. Sure others are cool (MLB.com and virtually anything using the accelerometer), but the NYT app is the most useful. In fact, in just a couple weeks, it's transformed by morning ritual - I roll out of bed, thumb through the newspaper and do it without waking up Anette with the annoying Blackberry clicking noises. So we're all happy.

And while I love the NYT app and appreciate that they've made it free - I do have some suggestions... so if you're reading, how about some of these features for v2?!

1. Let me email articles directly from the app. Hugely annoying that I can't load up the contact book and/or enter an email address!

2. Use those emails to add to the 'Most Emailed' section. With the number of users actively using the app - this is a ton of useful data.

3. Let me rate articles and photos. Use my preferences and ratings to eventually build out a recommendation engine.

4. Load the app faster. The photos in particular load slower than any other app on my iPhone. I'd use it more often, if I could load pages faster.

5. Add a touch-based scroll bar to the article pages. It can take for ever to scroll through lengthy articles one thumb-touch at a time. There has to be a faster way to scroll or at least jump to the bottom of the article.

6. Get some new ads. I'm all for placing ads in the app as long as it's free... but I can only see so many Westin ads and act interested.

7. Make the author names clickable. For great articles, I'd like to read other pieces written by the author. Link the name to his / her other articles. Again - it would increase my consumption.

8. Give me a pivot point off each article page. Currently, the only option to view the next story (blindly I might add!) or pick a new category... add other options such as related articles. At the very least, add the categories that the article sits within!

9. Add a headlines / tag view I love the photos category and enjoy browsing visually. This would be equally interesting if there was a finding experience by headline or tag.

10. Allow favorite searches to be stored. There are searches that I would like to keep either as a category or (at least) within the search category. Let me store them!

Sergey Brin: iPhone Users Conduct 30x More Mobile Searches (and other fascinating stats)

On Sunday July 13, Apple announced that 10,000,000 apps had been downloaded via the App Store. A little over a week later - on July 21st, 25 million apps have been downloaded. Now there are 1,0001 apps in the directory - but there doesn't seem to be major acceleration in the volume of new content being released. For instance, there were nearly 500 apps for iPhone's debut... so the directory has doubled since the iPhone's launch.

I expect that there will continue to be a lull in new apps as developers and development teams are hard at work pushing out new products (which is a relatively lengthy experience). I also suspect that Apple will streamline the process of approval and developer registration... I registered for an account five days ago and haven't received a single confirmation / follow up.

So why is this important?

First, the iPhone offers an opportunity for businesses to acquire users en mass and/or define business models. For instance, Pandora had 350,000 app downloads in the iPhone's first week - and that's 350,000 users since you must register to use the service. In Pandora's 18 month life-cycle, they've apparently hda 12,000 monthly subscribers through their other mobile offerings / platforms... but with Apple, Pandora has an opportunity to monetize the free app and their huge user-base with innovative advertising.

Second, mobile search is being redefined by the iPhone. Via VentureBeat (quickly becoming my go-to-morning read): "Google’s Sergey Brin says iPhone is pushing trend toward mobile search – During Google’s recent Q2 earnings conference call, Brin estimated that “on a rough order of magnitude” iPhone users do 30 times as many mobile web searches as users of other devices."

The major question I have is how will Apple get involved directly in the mobile monetization chain. They have undisputedly defined and accelerated the mobile market... but they are currently missing a huge portion of the business by only being the dock and charging the directory fee. Every additional iPhone search is opportunity for Google, AdMob and the Pandoras of the world... and not for Apple.

InGameNow Opens API for Sports Scores & Interaction. What Can You Do With It?

InGameNow formally launched a few weeks ago - giving sports fans the ability to receive real-time scores and analysis via the web, the cell phone and instant messenger.

Today, InGameNow took a major step forward by opening a private API. We are looking for developers who are interested in using our APIs to develop something interesting with our sports community and content... and there are numerous opportunities to engage users and enable real-time interaction / information-sharing for sports fans.

So whether you are interested in taking sports mobile, creating sport / team specific communities, or something completely unique... InGameNow wants to hear from you. You can contact me directly.

InGameNow: Twitter for Sports

AdMob Nails Universal Mobile Advertising via the iPhone

Earlier in the week, I wrote about how AdMob, Google and Developers seem best poised to monetize iPhone Apps ...instead of Apple. Now AdMob is demonstrating that monetization can uniformly move beyond Applications and across all of the browsing / web-based utilities that the iPhone enables. AdMob has released a suite of iPhone specific real estate / ad units - and the interactivity is far better than the mobile text ads that are rendered through the Blackberry, sit across many sites and/or are used by Applications like Sports Tap (who uses Google). The question is how much rich inventory currently exists for these formats? Asking advertisers to produce a new 'standard' of creatives is always difficult and a potential bottleneck.

I love AdMob's approach: universally release the new ad units and showcase the formats in a simple, well presented video that coincides with MobileBeat 2008. I am excited about the innovations coming out of AdMob and companies like Twitterific and the New York Times who are creatively integrating ads into their popular iPhone applications.

Who is Monetizing the Free iPhone Apps? Google, AdMob, Developers - But Not Apple

I believe that most of the content-based iPhone applications are going to be free over time... and early indications are that this is the case with top free apps include the New York Times, Wordpress, Twitterific, Sports Tap, Jott, etc subscribing huge numbers of new users and downloads.

But as free becomes more prevalent on Apple's App Platform, it's early business model starts to crumble. The premise is that developers charge for downloads and Apple takes a cut of each purchase; but developers are doing two things that jeopardize that model:

1) justifying the apps and 'free' distribution as an effective lever for user acquisition. Jott and other brands are experiencing huge recognition and user-growth.

2) monetizing the app with-in-application advertising.

The latter point is fascinating because it cuts Apple out of the direct monetization path. Here are three prominent free applications and their in-app monetization:

SportsTap has a persisent Google Mobile ad atop each 'page'. Notably, I've missed clicked the remarkably-small "home" icon and accidentally made SportsTap a fair amount of AdSense revenue.

Twitterific introduces ads inline among the message stream. The ad unit seems to be built and sold in-house. It's good looking and says "Ads via the Deck".

New York Times also seems to be selling in-house ads that are colorful and persistent on the bottom of each article page. No ads appear on the home screen or category screens.

So who wins here? It's a major platform for AdMob to extend their mobile advertising reach and for Google Mobile to make a serious splash. Google has struggled to win mobile thus far but could hypothetically increase publisher payouts to win real estate being opened via the iPhone (akin to how Yahoo tried to win real estate during the Yahoo Publisher launch). The ad formats aren't (yet) standard, so I also suspect we will see a significant amount of ads sold in-house by the major players... similarly, I don't suspect there will be huge ad variety in the short term (inventory and quantity of advertisers does not yet match the available real estate).

But what will Apple do? Clearly the platform growth is important and beneficial... but as Google, AdMob and Developers monetize their applications, you can bet that Apple will try to figure out how to get in that stream.