A Problem for Apps to Solve: Turning (Social) Streams into a River
With the recent release of Google Buzz, we have yet another social stream of information to consume. Google Buzz joins Facebook’s Updates stream, Twitter, Yammer, and, outside of the U.S., Yahoo Meme and various other micro-blogging services. As there are more and more streams feeding us, it will become more cumbersome to manage and review the data in these streams. A crowded marketplace of services, while increasing competition (this is good), defeats the purpose of these streams; that is, the availability of broad-based real time information with an emphasis on simplicity. It could be confusing for users to manage each service individually and that is a problem for apps to solve.
I downloaded an app for my iPhone recently, called Momento. This app seamlessly hooks up four of my social streams: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Last.fm and presents the information in terms of social events based on the day they occur. This is all done in a fantastically designed, easy to use application. Essentially, I see this app acting as a tributary, merging these streams into a river. The only problem with this app is that it only pulls in my social moments. It doesn’t allow me to identify or define moments that, while not my moment, are compelling and relevant to me. This app is making a good first step to solve the problem of too many streams.
Overall, the app market is headed in this direction – the creation of apps that act as powerful tributaries, allowing a user to go to one place to view streams of information in a neatly organized and personal fashion. All of this solidifies the fact that apps play a huge role in simplifying that information we consume and the way we interact with it. This is an undeniable fact –the release of the Apple iPad is a testament to devices designed around the utilization of apps. Given the proliferation of apps in the recent year, apps will provide the solution to the problem of an increasingly crowded marketplace of micro-blogging services.
Eric Montag, Product Manager, W3i, LLC
Eric is a Pragmatic Marketing Certified Product Manager and uses his experience in internet marketing to lead the charge in product research, planning, and execution from both a consumer and business standpoint.
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February 23rd, 2010 at 2:43 am
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