Analysis
Apple vs FBI: The possible end of encryption
Here is a German version of this article.
It’s still completely open how the conflict between Apple and the US government about unlocking encrypted iPhones will end. But eventually, one of two outcomes will become reality:
- Apple will legitimately be freed from the demands to unlock encrypted iPhones through backdoors, even if this means that particular investigations involving criminal or terrorist acts will not be provided with the requested data access.
- Apple will be forced to obey investigators who in specific cases demand access to encrypted data by building a backdoor into its software.
If Apple manages to establish a legal or political right to protect user data through encryption as well as to fend off demands for backdoors (which could compromise the safety of millions), this would lead to at least some sort of legal certainty, not only for Apple but for every other tech company in the business of hosting and storing encrypted user data. In addition, Apple would manifest its increasingly thoroughly crafted image as defender of civil rights and might be rewarded with new sales records. Continue Reading
Simulating worlds
Some time during the past weekend, I ended up in a rather silly but for me entertaining thought experiment: I was musing about that there should be a way to produce the so called “hindsight bias” in advance of an event. What started as a joking idea quickly led me to some more serious reflections.
The term hindsight bias (according to Wikipedia also called “knew-it-all-along effect”) refers to a cognitive bias which brings people to the belief that the outcome of a certain event or situation was the only logical and possible result. Before the specific event, uncertainty about what happens next is widespread and predictions about the future are varying widely. But in the aftermath people experience a feeling of obvious and overwhelming retroactive predictability of whatever happened. Suddenly, everyone claims to always have expected this very outcome.
If you debate the question of how Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality or self-driving cars will change human life, you can hear plenty of different theories and predictions. However, in 20 or 30 years, people will point out that whatever will have happened after AI, VR and self-driving cars took over, was the one and only logical scenario. Continue Reading
Yik Yak or Jodel?
When it comes to the Internet business and especially to apps and services intended to connect people, history repeats itself: As soon as a new player (usually U.S.-based) shows signs of success, its idea is being adopted by startups elsewhere in the world. Often these imitators fail, but sometimes they manage to capture market share in their “home” regions before the “original” service is being made available there. We have seen this playing out with many of today’s leading social services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram.
Right now it is happening again, at least partly: Yik Yak, an Atlanta-based app for anonymized, location-based public messaging which got very popular among high school students, inspired the Berlin-based company Jodel to launch a very similar app last year, which managed to become a success in Germany.
But here is where history follows a slightly different path this time: Jodel has managed to grow beyond its home market. Google Trends shows Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Austria and France as the current Jodel hotspots. Yik Yak on the other hand sees most of the searches in Ireland, the U.S. New Zealand, Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Searches are not a perfectly precise measurement for popularity, but good enough. Continue Reading
An alternative interpretation of Uber’s rebranding
Here is a German version of this article.
When Uber two weeks ago presented its new branding, the company’s CEO Travis Kalanick explained the changes and elimination of the widely recognized “U” icon with the company’s evolution from being “everyone’s private driver” to becoming a transportation network; one not only for moving people, but also for food, goods, and “soon maybe much more”. It’s a reasonable explanation supported by marketing theory – an evolving company might need a rebranding to update and upgrade its perception among the public.
However, there is another possible interpretation of the move and the departure from the iconic design elements that people around the world would recognize: By giving up on the branding that everyone associates with Uber’s – in many parts of the world controversial – people transportation services, the company might try to change the narrative. It does not want to be seen anymore as the company fighting to out-compete the taxi incumbents and being embroiled in legal battles all around the world. Because this turned out to be extremely challenging. Applying the successful US-strategy of aggressive, ethically questionable and rule-breaking behavior has not led to the same success in many other markets. There Uber often plays the role of an obscure (and often illegal) niche player. Europe is just one example. Continue Reading
Why I hope that the Unconditional Basic Income will become reality
If you follow the weekly reading lists on this site, you might notice that I frequently express my sympathy for the idea of an unconditional basic income (UBI). In fact, the UBI is the single most socio-economic and political idea that I am passionate about at the moment. I explicitly don’t state that I “believe” in the UBI, since that would make me sound too confident in its feasibility. I prefer to use the term “hope”. I hope that the various experiments and initiatives that currently are ongoing (e.g. Finland’s experiment, Y Combinator’s research, the Swiss referendum) will lead to positive results that eventually make one country become the first mover in introducing the UBI for its citizens.
While the concept of the UBI currently has a momentum and receives a lot of attention within certain circles, mainstream politics in the majority of countries have, for the most, not acknowledged the UBI as a serious undertaking. Also, many people are sceptical when they hear about the idea of giving “free money” to people. Which is fully understandable. It can be a strange thought and provoke all kinds of associations. Continue Reading
Slack & the next step in the evolution of messaging
German version of this article
I am now communicating with my parents on Slack, having been inspired by this account of someone who uses Slack for family-internal communication. So far it works well, with no major issues encountered. Previously we have been using a messaging app – not WhatsApp like many, if not most other families in Europe, but Kik (don’t ask me how that happened). In any case, the concept of smartphone messaging was not foreign to them.
I created a new team on Slack, invited my parents, introduced them to how “public” channels and private messaging work on Slack, how to post content such as articles or videos. I created a specific channel for links to good articles (which we until now have been exchanging via email) and I informed them about that they can run Slack in the browser, too (Slack’s desktop app does not work with older Windows versions). My mother already asked me if she should recommend Slack to her friends as well, but I advised her to wait a bit since after all, the service is not optimized for the average (German) leisure user belonging to the generation 55+. Yet.
“Yet” because I start to think that what Slack offers in regards to functionality is the future of group communication in general. For all kinds of groups, not only those comprising of people who work together on projects. Slack represents the evolution of messaging and possibly even of social networking. Continue Reading
Inside the hype
Do you remember Joost, Pownce, Friendfeed, diaspora, Oink, Google Buzz, Google Wave, Color, Hashable, Poken, App.net, Gowalla, Quote.fm, Empire Avenue, Highlight, Secret, Frontback, Ello, Meerkat or Peach? All these are names of online services that at one point in the past enjoyed a short moment or fame within parts of the tech and startup community (some of them only locally). Most of them don’t exist anymore today, because the sudden adoption and attention by tech geeks was not followed by sustained user growth past the fickle group of early adopters.
I had to think of this reoccurring phenomenon when I this morning stumbled upon a video showing the Silicon Valley-based blogger and evangelist Robert Scoble raving over an upcoming Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality technology by a company called Meta, which he called “the most important product since the Apple II”. He compared the technology to Magic Leap, a secretive startup from Florida that managed to score about $1.4 billlion (!) for its yet to be released Augmented Reality product. According to Scoble, Magic Leap might be undervalued. Continue Reading
Countering monopolistic tendencies in tech
The Federal Cartel Office of Germany is evaluating whether it should broaden the set of criteria that it applies to investigate and approve company acquisitions. Specifically, it could start to consider the transaction volume of a deal in order to assess the significance of a planned acquisition, according to the agency’s president Andreas Mundt (interview in German).
News about enhanced examination procedures have already made the rounds over the past weeks and, according to German startup magazine Gründerszene, caused a stir within the country’s startup scene. Not surprisingly, the prospects of even more rules are not popular among German entrepreneurs and investors, who are chronically faced with the infamous German bureaucracy and hostility towards entrepreneurship. Continue Reading
A suggestion for Twitter: stop looking for new users
The acceleration of Twitter’s growth and identity crisis has motivated many tech pundits, journalists and bloggers to present their take on what Twitter should do in order to find a way out of its dilemma. I have a little contribution myself. I promise it’s short and (hopefully) different to what you might have read elsewhere.
So what should Twitter do? It should stop to desperately look for ways to get new users onto the service. Instead it should turn Twitter into the best experience imaginable for its officially 320 million monthly active users!
Continue Reading
How incumbents can disrupt themselves to remain competitive
A couple of days ago I compared the rise of the 2 peer-to-peer payment apps Venmo (U.S.-based) and Swish (Sweden-based). I noted in my post that Swish, which is owned by the leading Swedish banks, is a rare case in which incumbents succeeded in “disrupting” themselves.
After I had written my article, I came to think a bit more about the success of Swish, which according to my estimates has a market penetration of more than 50 % among Swedish adults. I happened to have an electrician at my apartment who helped me to install a new stove. After the work was done, I paid him through Swish (his company uses the business/retail offering that was recently launched by Swish). He told me that Swish is great and that he also uses the service in his private life, e.g. to send money to his son. He looked like about 50 years old. It’s only an anecdote but it shows the user penetration past the usual early adopter groups of teens and tech savvy people.
At first, the story of Swish might not appear to be very relevant to people outside of Sweden, since it is not available abroad. However, if you look closer, it provides some valuable insights for companies, industries and organizations that are trying to adapt to the digital age. The success of Swish should serve as best practices for how incumbents can reinvent and disrupt themselves. Here are some of the lessions I find noteworthy: Continue Reading