trends - Trends and thoughts

EU data protection regulation – right to be forgotten

70% of EU citizens are worried about misuse of their personal data according to EU justice department. One might think are the remainin 30% in groups of ignoranda and unaware. Naturally nobody wants misuse of personal data.

source: European Commission

One way to give control to indiciduals is the defined “right to be forgotten”- rule. Tricky part is how that can be implemented.

From individual point of view it is impossible to know where you have left some information about yourself while wondering through web. All systems are storing huge amounts of information in their logs. Picking and deleting few individuals out of that might prove to be tricky. Easy answer would be that no-one is allowed to store any logs, but that would be quite huge change effort for all systems running in web. For example my blog remembers you visiting here and staying on this page, which is basic functionality for all web based applications.

From company point of view this rule would have big impacts on need to invest renewal of systems so that unwated data can be deleted. It would impact also on business models: imagine what amazon would look like without any memory of your earlier visits.

On the other hand, if right to be forgotten would be limitted on registrations into services like Facebook and such, what would be the benefit? Your information will be collected into different web services which are crawling the content all the time and you do not know from whom you should request you information removal. Check out Way Back Machine, it shows nicely what i mean.

So nice attempt to increase individual control on personal privacy, but naturally there are some minor details to be considered while implementing it.

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Speed of internet connection – good position for consumer to be is in middle on trends, but what is operators next move?

Living in area close to city, but too far for proper fixed line connection. All operators offer 8M/1M connection and the actual measured speed will remain at level of 4-5M.

I am watching TV through that connection and began to wonder, if I could achieve a bit better quality for movies. 1M stream is ok, but I would prefer to get 2M stream for bigger screen.

I took a mobile phone capable to 4G connection. Made it distribute WLAN network and measured the speed. For my supprise I got almost symmetrical connection 25M/24M!

Naturally this luxury will not last as my neighbours figure the same thing out and start to utilize 4G, but for time being I can enjoy speed. So in some cases it is usefull to be early adopter moving from fixed to mobile connection.

Other thing that might change the situation in future is new pricing models of mobile subscriptions, that operators are talking about. Data buckets and other pricing limitatios will make it too fuzzy for consumers. At the moment mobile subscriptions are charged on fixed monthly basis similarly to fixed line connections.

Interesting to see what happens. I naturally understand that operators have to earn they money, but i am worried how pricing change will affect end user behaviour. Hopefully they will find a balance and we will not fall back to stone age. Like earlier times of mobile usage in USA: people did not dare to answer their phones as they felt uncertain about the expenses and stick with fixed line phones.

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Net attitude – details change, but thinking out of the box remains important over time

A book from history: beginning of this century. I don’t know if this book is anymore available anywhere. I started to read it out of curiosity: how development and future of internet was seen by this book?

Writer had interesting edge into story as he started to think about internet and its opportunities already during 1993. At that time they were considering if it is possible to monetize this new technology. While considering how, they came to conclusion that they don’t know.

Basically book is pointing out the handicaps of thinking that was common during early 2000. Most of those examples seem amusing ten years after, but if you abstract those though a bit there might be some relevance for today’s business world too. When you try to move your old business model into new environment you are making mistake. You need rethink what you are doind seizing the opportunities created by new environment. Some things might have changed to be mandatory, even they were considered optional earlier. Those companies who figure out new rules fasted, will gain the benefits too.

I don’t know if i would recommend to read the whole book, but rather consider the main thought: think out of the box when entering the new arena with new rules and especially consider your timing. It seem that often first mover advantage is a myth or lucky strike. In many cases second wave hits into more mature market and picks the berries.

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Mobile traffic to local sites is growing faster than total internet traffic – is there any difference anymore?

The share of Non-PC traffic has grown from 7% to 15% during last year compared to total internet traffic as illustrated in enclosed analysis made by comScore. During same period of time tablets and smartphones have developed significantly what comes to their internet capabilities and display sizes.

I would tend to argue that basically most of mobile traffic to websites is quite similar to traffic created by PCs. I even locations might be similar. What is the difference between me reading newspaper with smartphone at my breakfast table compared me reading it with PC in my study? In many cases mobile users are also consuming content with same layouts as PC users.

PC is dying, no doubt about that. Does this shift of consumption have any impact on way how web sites are designed in future? I think it is about time to stop thinking mobile and fixed internet as separate things. It seems more academic question out of reach for people creating the web traffic.

http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2012/10/mobile-phones-and-tablets-now-account-for-1-in-8-u-s-internet-page-views/de-traffic-share-data_september-2012/

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On demand streaming vs scheduled TV – technology disruption challenges old business model

Companies like focused streaming content providers (ie. Neflix, TV-kaista) and TelCo’s (ie. TeliaSonera, Elisa) are expanding their role among end users time consumption. Citi claimed that

Streaming is already nudging out regular old TV.

This might already be true in some markets and it continues to develop. Some TV broadcasters have already reacted to this (ie. ABC, YLE) by creating their own streamed offering.

Interesting thing here is, what happens to the money spend on TV advertisements? There are no more so many minutes of spare time, that people would consume watching commercial breaks. You could try to add commercial breaks into streamed content too, but user adoption of that might be difficult to achieve.

For example there was a projection that TV-advertising will continue to grow from 65B (2012) to 72B (2016) in US market. My question is why it would grow if people are moving more towards new way of consuming streamed content. I would expect to see heavier shift towards online advertising here.

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To BYOD, or not to BYOD – that is the WRONG question

Discussion around “bring your own device” is quite heavily focused into devices and whether those should be allowed or not. I think the key question is do organisations want to make their services available any time, any where. After answering yes to that question, it really does not matter any more who brings the device (naturally the security concerns need to be taken care).

I think that services that are openned to be available out side organzations office network are increasing productivity. They are not so weird thing either anymore as there are readily available services like salesforce.com and other real SaaS solutions also handling companies key assets: customer information. So why not consider similar approach for other services too?

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Trends have two dimensional role in relation to technology

Information technlogy has both implementing and enabling roles in organizations. Equally technology trends have impact into business development and new opportunities. New business trends can open up new ways to utilze and benefit from information technlogy.

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