Should Facebook Be Worried About Diaspora? —

As Facebook has become an increasingly powerful magnet for controversy — over privacy and the way it handles user information, but also over the sheer size and dominance of the social network — interest has grown in finding some kind of open alternative. Perhaps the most obvious sign of that is the frenzy of support for a new project called Diaspora, which describes itself as “the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network.” But does this upstart platform, or any open-source alternative for that matter, stand a real chance of competing with Facebook?

Diaspora was put together by a team of students from New York University and went public on the “crowdfunding” platform Kickstarter in April, and within weeks had raised more money than any project the site had ever seen. By the time the fundraising closed, it had more than $200,000 from thousands of donations. That’s definitely a big vote of confidence in the idea, which is essentially to build an open and distributed social network that could duplicate some of what Facebook does, but without the proprietary standards and without being controlled by a single company (the team describes its vision in a video embedded below).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg likes to say that the thing he is worried about the most is an unknown startup, but the fact remains that his company has 500 million users, and an estimated $1 billion in revenue, and even the team behind Diaspora admits that it is currently little more than an idea and some rough code. At this point, it seems a little like a contest between a mouse and an 800-pound gorilla — and those typically don’t end well for the mouse. Some observers have also raised questions about whether the money Diaspora has gathered through donations — some of which, ironically, came from Mark Zuckerberg himself — will be enough to produce anything workable, given the promises that Diaspora has made to those who donated (including T-shirts, CDs and a year’s worth of phone support). Jason Fried of 37signals argued in a recent post that the project has actually been “cursed” by the attention it has gotten, because it has raised expectations too high.

While there are other attempts to put together an open-source alternative to Facebook — including Appleseed, which has been around for several years — Diaspora seems to have tapped into a rich vein of anti-Facebook sentiment, fueled in part by the company’s recent changes to its privacy settings. There has also been increasing pressure on Facebook to allow users to extract their data from the social network and either back it up or move it elsewhere. The social network has pledged its support for the Data Portability project in the past — and Zuckerberg reiterated it vaguely in his recent speech launching the network’s new privacy controls — but it has done little to make that a reality.

The big unanswered question, however, is just how much of the frustration and irritation with Facebook exists only in the insular technology blogosphere — elevated by activism on the part of consumer advocacy groups in putting pressure on government — and how much is a real reflection of widespread dissatisfaction with the social network. And even if there is dissatisfaction, it’s not clear how deep it runs, or how long it will last. Facebook managed to weather a similar storm of controversy following its introduction of the news feed, something that was widely criticized but has since become hugely popular.

Alternatives like Diaspora have to prove that they have something compelling that will justify users adopting the service as a new standard or a new home for their content, or even justify exploring it as an alternative. Facebook, for all its flaws, is a known quantity with a well-established use case, and network effects mean that virtually any user of the site has dozens of friends he or she is connected to, which means that moving elsewhere will take a significant amount of psychological effort. Diaspora is going to need some pretty big incentives to change that behavior. It seems unlikely that “we are more open” will do the trick.

In addition to the psychological barrier, Diaspora and its fellow alternatives require users to have a certain amount of technological know-how, and that is going to restrict their appeal. Using Facebook is as simple as clicking a mouse button or typing in a text box, but from the sounds of the project, Diaspora in its initial stages will require users to run a version of the software on their own PCs (although the site says there will be a professionally hosted version as well). Not everyone is going to like that idea, or be able to implement it. Twitter has at least one competitor with a similar model — Identi.ca — but it has gotten very little uptake from mainstream users, even when those users were outraged about Twitter’s repeated downtime problems.

Everyone loves to root for an underdog (some are optimistic about Diaspora’s chances), and Facebook is clearly in the spotlight on privacy and other issues for a number of very good reasons. But it is going to take a lot more than some clever code and $200,000 to build something that can be a realistic alternative to the world’s largest social network.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Facebook Tries to Navigate the Privacy Storm

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Fabbio

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When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. As far as organizational structures are concerned, I'm a man with a hammer. That hammer is none other than #1 on Charlie Munger's list of causes of human misjudgment : Under-recognition of the power of incentives.

Take for instance, Jean Louis Gassee's criticism of Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Setting aside that Gassee failed to sell to Apple at a good price, and BeOS never did very well in the market, it's not clear that any of his the things Gassee would have Ballmer do was really actionable.

Microsoft is a 60,000 person company. There's a very strict limit to how much one man, even a CEO can do to move a 60,000 person company. The reality is, when you're at the stratosphere at such a company, the only thing you can do is to really set up incentives so that people do what's good for the company by doing what's good for them.

Take Vista, for example. Vista broke one of the most important rules of Microsoft Windows development: it broke backwards compatibility. Now you can rationalize that Windows' code base is better as a result. But the whole rationale behind Windows was that you can buy any $25 piece of hardware at Fry's and it would work. Windows XP, for instance did that marvelously, and I still have Windows XP boxes attached to various pieces of hardware that won't work on any other operating system. The minute Vista broke that compatibility, a customer would have to buy all new hardware for his new computer. At which point, Apple could (and did!) come along and say, "Hey, why don't you buy my shiny machine? It looks cool, it scores points with members of the opposite sex, and while it can also run Windows if you have to."

But presumably Microsoft knew all that! Why despite knowing that Vista's lack of compatibility would screw with Microsoft's revenue and dominance, did it do so? I asked a current Googler who was an ex-Microsoftie this question in 2006. His response was: "The new driver model? The one that broke all your devices? Well, you don't get your promotion to Staff Engineer for being someone who keeps it compatible with the old cruft. You get your promotion for designing a whole new piece of infrastructure that has huge impact on the world. Well, whoever did that got his promotion, and who cares if it tanked the company!" Ouch. People have argued that the new model is indeed more stable, but other techniques such as MicroReboots were also available. There really was no reason for Microsoft to take the risk of defection of customers to other operating systems.

One would think that such perverse incentive systems that can cause companies billions would be fixed, but my guess is that these incentive systems lie deep in the heart of the corporate culture: inventing new things will always be better rewarded than either making existing things run faster, or keeping things compatible, despite the latter two jobs usually being far harder than inventing a new subsystem out of whole cloth. And executives, even C level executives frequently still under-estimate the power of such incentive systems. As an example in late 2008, I had a conversation with a top executive at a well-known Silicon Valley company about what these perverse incentives were doing to his company. His response? "I don't believe it all comes down to incentives. After all, if you do good work and do good things, when you leave and work for other companies or when your friends leave and work for other companies, they'll remember you and bring you new opportunities, so you always have an incentive to do good work." When I heard that response I did not know what to say.

Months later, the company unveiled a "good citizenship award" internally. It was driven by the same popularity-contest-based incentive system that had already failed to promote good behavior. Not surprisingly, things have not changed as a result. When you see repeated examples of such behavior, it becomes much less of a surprise that startups without an incentive system other than handing out stock to everyone will continue to outperform the large organizations. Which again begs the question: Why the rush to get big?

Amazon’s success as an online retailer is the stuff that entrepreneurial dreams are made of. In 15 years, Amazon has defined and continued to shape how we shop online — especially for media like books, movies and music. The company controls 8 percent of media sales, whether online or in stores. Wal-Mart, by contrast, controls 7.7 percent of all retails categories. So Amazon has emerged as the Wal-Mart of media retail.

But as opposed to printed pages and plastic disks, media is increasingly being consumed in the cloud. And there, from a media sales perspective, Amazon is finding much less success.

According to NPD Group, Amazon controls just 12 percent of the market for Mp3 sales, roughly one-sixth of Apple’s 70 percent share. True, Amazon is growing that share, mostly at the expense of smaller rivals like Rhapsody. But it has yet to put a dent in Apple’s dominance.

And thanks to portable, cloud-friendly devices like smartphones and iPads, Amazon is up against tougher competition in movies and books as well. Netflix’s subscription-based iPad app is a much more immersive and intuitive movie experience than downloading a movie from Amazon’s site. Kindle, meanwhile, seems destined to become a niche e-reader. The iPad dulled Kindle’s status as a must-have device. Instead, Kindle’s best hope is as an e-reader app on tablets, where it must compete with iBooks, Nook and scores of other e-book options.

Sales from its media business is central to Amazon’s business model. But media revenue in North America rose 11 percent last year to $6 billion, while sales of electronics and other non-media merchandise grew 43 percent to $6.3 billion. So even though non-media revenue was larger than media revenue, it was still growing four times as fast. In the first quarter of 2010, the trend continued: Media revenue increased 22 percent while non-media grew by 73 percent.

To be clear, Amazon isn’t in danger of being the next Yahoo — a tech giant that lost its way and can’t find it back even with a sharp CEO at the helm. Amazon’s flagship retail site is still the biggest online retailer, and continues to expand its share of the global retail market. It will sell plenty of e-books and Mp3s. And Amazon will remain a crucial player in determining how companies, startups in particular, tap into the cloud for their operations.

But it’s Amazon’s early and deep expertise in cloud computing that makes all the more puzzling its lackluster performance in cloud-based media. Amazon should have been the leading retailer of cloud-streamed media, but instead it’s handing that over to companies that write the OS for the most popular cloud-based devices, companies like Apple and even Google, which may not sell digital media but will try to sell ads on top of it. And that’s a pretty big missed opportunity.

What could Amazon do? Aggressive, smart acquisitions could help — Amazon has $5 billion in cash and marketable securities. But in some cases, its hands are tied. It’s long been suggested — and frequently rumored — that Amazon buy Netflix. It would be a strong fit except that it would open Amazon up to sales taxes in states where Netflix operates. Amazon could also simply rely on its core market of selling printed books, CDs and DVDs. It’s still a big market, but it’s also dangerous to peg your future sales on media formats that are becoming less popular by the day.

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Facing increasing pressure from Apple’s red-hot iPad, Amazon intends to fight back with a thinner, sharper and more responsive Kindle that will be introduced later this year.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon will introduce a new version of its popular e-reader in August. It will boast a thinner build, sharper contrast, and faster page-turning. However, it will not be a touchscreen device, nor will it boast color.

Apple is gunning directly for Amazon’s e-book business with its iBooks store, which publishers have embraced as an alternative to Amazon’s long-standing dominance in the e-book space.

The iPad’s multitude of uses and starting price point of $499 are a threat to the Kindle, although the iPad’s LED screen isn’t as well suited as the Kindle for extended reading. The Kindle utilizes black-and-white e-ink technology to make reading on the device less strenuous on the eyes.

While the upgrade should help Kindle stay relevant, we’re likely to see color and a touchscreen on Amazon’s e-reader device at some point. In February, the company acquired Touchco, a startup specializing in color touchscreen technology. It’s going to be some time though until Amazon is satisfied with a touchscreen interface that is also easy on the eyes.

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Tags: amazon, apple, ipad, Kindle

Mark Zuckerberg: I Donated to Diaspora project —

You might expect that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg would dismiss the four NYU college students who want to take on Facebook’s dominance of social networking by building a distributed, open alternative that includes a way for people to run their own servers.

But instead, Zuckerberg said he donated to the Diaspora project, adding to the $190,000 it has raised, in part because he appreciates their drive to change the world. (Note: This reporter followed up with Facebook’s press office Thursday to ask how much Zuckerberg donated to Diaspora, but the press office said they’d rather not answer.)

In an interview with Wired.com on Wednesday after announcing simpler privacy controls for Facebook, Zuckerberg also talked about where he sees the site going, his drive to make the world more open, why the face in Facebook is so important and why he wouldn’t start a social network if he were launching a site today.

Wired.com: What do you think of the push for an open, federated social network and the four NYU students who raised $200,000 for the Diaspora project without having a single line of code?

Zuckerberg: I donated. I think it is a cool idea.

Actually it reminds me of this cool thing we built early on called Wirehog. Early on, it was clear that users wanted more photos on the site. There were a set of users who would change their one profile picture every day. And we looked at that data and took that as people want to share more photos.

But photos are expensive and we didn’t have an infrastructure. We were just trying to grow the site and add more colleges to the site. So we built this personal web server that people could install on their computer where they could put all their files on it — which at the time were mostly photos but it supported videos and music — and share it with your friends. So in a way it was the prototypical platform app, but it was also a decentralized way to share information.

So I think it is a cool idea just based on that.

I think it is cool people are trying to do it. I see a little of myself in them. It’s just their approach that the world could be better and saying, “We should try to do it.”

(Editor’s note: Wirehog was killed off by Facebook after Facebook’s then-president Sean Parker — who co-founded Napster — argued that Wirehog would face the same ugly legal death that the infamous peer-to-peer music sharing site did. On Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Parker called it “illegal” and said he “put a bullet in it.”)

In an interesting way, a lot of the privacy stuff is much easier to do in a centralized environment. Some of the simple stuff like friend-to-friend, peer-to-peer stuff is simple, but once you start getting into friends-of-friends, you start running into problems like we did with Wirehog. If someone can come up with a new approach, then [that's] awesome.

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Browser Testing: A Family Tree —

One task drives web professionals to distraction more than almost any other: testing whether their design works equally well in a multitude of browsers and on different devices.

The list of browsers and platforms to verify against keeps getting longer, and as designers, our tempers are getting proportionally shorter; IE6 will probably feature in nightmares for years to come!

Yet doing our work in an ever-widening range of situations is becoming increasingly important.

This article highlights the most common issues that arise when testing with “the usual suspects” and explains why a change in tactics may soon be needed. Your entire perspective on compatibility testing could change.

The Fantastic Five

Back during the browser wars, designers had to suffer through constant bickering between Internet Explorer and its rival (some things never change). The turning point came when newer browsers committed to supporting web standards, which gradually eroded Internet Explorer’s dominance of the browser market.

Times are changing. The increasing relevance of mobile browsing devices and new rendering engines has led to a desire among designers to curb the need to test on every device imaginable.

Designers now resort to playing a numbers game, usually by testing their work in the five or six most common browsers, then claiming coverage of the rest. While this seems like an easy fix, it presents a few problems, because unlike in print, one size certainly doesn’t fit all.

Although the market is dominated by five browsers, designers shouldn’t disregard the orange “Others” slice. Visitors on other browsers still need to be accommodated.

The key to accurately presenting your website’s lovely design to the end user is the rendering engine. One might assume that if you tested a website in the most popular browser for each of the Trident, Gecko, Commit and Presto rendering engines, then you could safely ignore other devices that share the same engines because you would have covered the vast majority of users.

I generally agree that testing in these browsers alone would catch any problems that are visible to the user, but testing in a broader range of browsers, devices and systems has its benefits. It’s worth examining potential problems and deciding whether further testing is required in order to give visitors the best possible experience.

Trident (Internet Explorer), Gecko (Firefox), Webkit (Chrome and Safari) and Presto (Opera).

Beyond the Breaking Point

An obvious issue these days is device (or plug-in) dependence, which affects browsers not only at the browser level but at the rendering level. The Apple faithful are surely aware of the iPhone and iPad’s issues with Flash—and because Adobe and Apple started boo’ing each other, we’re still hearing about it.

While Flash does indeed handle the general rendering of content all by itself, testing only in the most popular browsers wouldn’t necessarily show problems with it. While mainstream technologies (both open and closed) are at risk of exclusion, expanding your test base can be critical.

Flash renders outside of the browser, but not every web browser can make use of the technology.

Another issue is the versions of rendering engines. While having the latest and greatest browser is key to taking advantage of new technologies, the continued use of older versions (especially the various devil-incarnate versions of Internet Explorer) requires that we limit ourselves not only to the latest builds of a renderer but also to those that can still function in environments where upgrading software would be either unsuitable or impossible.

Even in compatibility mode, testing in current browsers does not account for old versions of the browsers that use earlier versions of the rendering engines.

Internet Explorer 6.0 uses an older and buggier version of the Trident desktop browser rendering engine.

Rendering issues might also occur if there are differences between the device and platform being used. It goes without saying that testing your website on a range of mobile handsets and pocket surfers may drive you to the brink of insanity, particularly given how different everything can appear.

Designing for such a small screen can be quite a task, especially because conventions for mobile devices are still in their infancy. But this issue applies to desktop platforms, too. It’s not uncommon to see minor rendering issues crop up between Windows and Mac versions of Firefox, for example—a worrying thought indeed.

A List Apart cares so much about rendering differences that it has a separate design for mobile devices.

Another key component that might differ from browser to browser is the JavaScript engine. In the early days, the only question about JavaScript was whether to use it.

These days, browsers with the same visual rendering engine often have different JavaScript engines (Chrome and Safari are a perfect example). Using multiple browsers to benchmark your website’s ability to render those gorgeous jQuery scripts is of equal importance, especially if your design has a lot of functional interactivity.

Chrome Experiments showcases the rendering performance of Google’s browser.

And finally, a topic that gets some people cheering and others groaning: accessibility! In many people’s eyes, accessibility and the way a browser renders a website aren’t related. But it’s worth noting that when people visit your website, their accessibility software might force them to use a particular browser, one that supports the computer’s screen reader or their accessibility device.

In such cases, minority browsers may be overlooked entirely. Remember that your design should also work for these people whose needs are often forgotten.

Opera may have a small market share, but its voice options can be a lifesaver for those with special needs.

The Long-Term Cure

Given all of the accessibility needs, different JavaScript engines, cross-platform issues, display differences, technology dependencies like Flash and the mobile revolution, one could be excused for resenting how much testing is needed. Still, have a look at your target audience’s needs to see whether expanding your current testing workflow would yield long-term results.

Take some time to communicate with your visitors. Perhaps you could run a poll asking which browsers and devices they’re on, and then examine your statistics to see whether they’ve mentioned ways you could improve or expand the interaction on your website.

You may find that you need a mobile design, or maybe there is enthusiasm for an iPhone app, or you may simply get more bug reports for minority browsers. Encouraging feedback is paramount in the evolutionary process of design.

Statistics packages can give a clear idea of which devices have been used to visit your website.

Reaching customers on an increasingly broader scale is something every website owner should consider in the context of usability. Good communication creates an emotional connection with visitors; they feel like their interest is being validated and their time well-spent, and this can turn clicks into customers.

Staying on top of things at the testing stage, then, goes beyond fixing visual flaws. A wider testing field could lead to new features and unique ways of navigating the website. One reward could be a deeper bond with your website’s regular visitors and fans.

Start Your Engines

How you would expand the testing process is beyond the scope of this article, but the simplest way to improve your website’s appearance and the user experience is by ensuring that everything looks presentable on screen.

Below is a list of a wide range of browsers, both mobile and desktop, which might help you widen your horizon as you test. While some will render your design the same, these browsers should help you ascertain the scale of the tests you will need to perform.

More browsers will no doubt be created (and some may already exist), so consider the future as well.

Both desktop and mobile platforms have a broad range of rendering engines.

While browsers built with Trident, Gecko, Webkit and Presto are included (along with their older variants Tasman, Mozilla and KHTML), other rendering engines with a user base have not been included here because of the very limited range of devices that support them.

Devices and browsers with unique rendering engines (text, visual and mobile) that are not mentioned here can be tested individually and could potentially increase the compatibility of your design.

I recommend the browsers highlighted below for each platform. With the exception of the Mac, which uses Tasman, all of these use the Trident rendering engine:

All of these use of the Gecko (previously Mozilla) desktop rendering engine:

All of these use the Webkit rendering engine (or the KHTML fork in Konqueror’s case):

Because Presto is a proprietary platform, it’s no surprise that it is limited to Opera projects:

Over the Rainbow

Perhaps your website is entirely free of errors. Perhaps it looks great in every situation. But if you consider the sheer scale of the requirements for compatibility across platforms, no longer do the big five give you an accurate picture of web users as a whole.

If you take away only one thing from this article, then understand the value of spending more time analyzing your visitors’ needs, because that will help you re-evaluate the testing phase to encompass a wider range of scenarios.

Spend extra time going over browsers for each rendering engine, and don’t forget about the following: other operating systems, which might have differences; other types of devices (such as mobiles), which might render very differently; unique JavaScript renderers, which have implications for speed; older versions of web browsers; and in general the wider scope that is needed as code evolves and changes the web itself.

Summary

In a world where people are willing to invest time, effort and money into making their websites as friendly as possible by catering to search engines and social media, ensuring that your design works (rather than focusing on pixel perfection—remember, the web is not print) can be more valuable to the hundreds or thousands of people who access your website in different ways.

It certainly could mean the difference between attracting customers and having frustrated “Hi and goodbye” visitors.

Written exclusively for WDD by Alexander Dawson

How do you go about testing your carefully crafted designs so that they perform flexibly? Do you plan to optimize your testing workflow so that it is less restrictive? Could your website encourage more visitor feedback on its design?

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: z9jc0l

Google vs Apple: Google Doesn't Need To Win —

So now we're apparently in a Google versus Apple fight to the death. Google open-sources VP8 (now WebM), and Steve Jobs immediately throws cold water on it. Apple got their share of scorn at Google's I/O conference. Google thinks they have mobile/cloud/desktop integration nailed--and if what they demo'd last week actually works in FroYo (Android 2.2), they probably do.

But the notion that this is a "fight to the death" is a bit bizarre, even though it's been portrayed that way, and by none other than Steve Jobs, who earlier this year said that Google is out to kill the iPhone. If it is a battle, the terms are uneven.

My own disclosures: I'm definitely a Google fan. And I'm also an iPad-equipped Apple fan, though I am also very unhappy with the closedness of the Apple platform, and the way they treat their developers. But they make beautiful hardware, and they really understand "it just works."

Vic Gundotra nailed it in his second keynote at Google I/O. When he was starting at Google, he asked Andy Rubin why Android was important; why did the world need one more mobile platform? Andy's answer was that Google had a very dismal future if they didn't address
mobile; we'd end up with one platform, controlled by one vendor, and one carrier. It was a wise and prophetic answer. If I've pieced the chronology together correctly, this would be about the time the iPhone was coming online. And the iPhone is a great device--great, but ultimately closed.

Apple makes hardware, and the more hardware they sell, the more money they make. So Apple clearly wins if they sell iPhones to everyone--the more iPhones (and iPads), the more they win. There would be nothing better for them than driving the other smartphone manufacturers out of the market. (They don't seem to be interested in low-end, low profit margin phones, but that's another story.) So what it takes for Apple to win is clear: dominance of the smartphone market.

Google's stakes are different. They don't make money from selling phones, and they even abandoned their retail NexusOne store with very little pain. They don't make money from licensing software either, as far as I know. Google makes money from selling ads. And the more ads they sell, the happier they are. Apple is fighting for market share in cellphones; Google is fighting for market share in ad placement.

This asymmetry is very important. Google does not have to dominate the smartphone business; they just have to make sure that there's an environment in which the business of selling ads thrives. While Apple wants to dominate smartphones, Google undeniably dominates online ad sales--and they clearly see ad placement on mobile as a huge opportunity. Conversely, failure to dominate mobile ad sales would be disastrous. At best, it would limit their potential; at worst, if we're heading for the end of the "desktop/laptop era", it could seriously threaten their core business.

Making money selling mobile ads requires that Google keep the smartphone market open, plural, competitive. As long as there are multiple smartphones in the market, content developers will be driven towards open standards like HTML5. Developers will build richer and richer HTML content for the phones--and Google will thrive in its core business, placing ads on HTML pages. Google doesn't need to "win"; they just need to "not lose", to keep the game open, and to drive open technologies to the next level where they can compete successfully. In the long run, a closed system can only thrive if it's the only player in the game. If we've learned one thing from the growth of the Internet, it's that open standards that can be implemented by many vendors trumps closed systems, and enables the kind of competition that drives out monopolies.

Just as an athlete will inevitably perform better when he's relaxed and not worried about losing, Google's big advantage in the smartphone wars may well be precisely that they don't need to win. Googlers are justifiably proud that US Android sales have snuck ahead of iPhone sales. Of course, that's 50-odd phones available for all US carriers, versus two iPhone models available only from AT&T. And when the iPhone 4 comes out, Apple will certainly see a big burst of sales. But that's not what's really important to Google; all they need to do is keep the game open, for themselves, Palm/HP, RIM, and the other smartphone vendors--and to establish the kinds of standards that enable a competitive market to thrive.

There is a real threat to Apple, though; just because Google doesn't need to win smartphone dominance doesn't mean they wouldn't like to. And in the wake of their FroYo demos at I/O, that seems increasingly likely. Dan Lyons (Fake Steve Jobs) makes a lot of good points in his Newsweek blog:

• Google's technology is way ahead of anything Apple is offering, or likely to offer. Streaming music from your desktop is only one example. Google, not Apple, is offering what customers want.


• Apple's response to Google's claim that they are shipping more phones was "so what, we have more market share." Lyons says he's heard that before, it's the song of a company that's losing and in denial. I've heard it too. Lyons is right.


• It's easy to think that Apple fell apart in the late 80s and early 90s because a clueless Coca Cola exec booted Jobs and took over. But the real story, if you're old enough to remember, is that Jobs mismanaged the company after a series of stellar technical triumphs. History appears to be repeating itself.

I am genuinely sad about this; Apple is a great innovative company. There's no reason they can't do everything Google is doing. Analyzing each players' strengths, Apple really understands user experience and design. They have a lock on that. Google really understands cloud computing and connectivity. However, it will probably be easier for Apple to get up to speed on the connectivity issues than for Google to get Apple's design sensibility. Nothing Google is adding to Android is fundamentally that difficult, and Apple has no shortage of engineering talent.

But--and this is important--Apple will not be able to take Google on in the areas of connectivity and cloud computing as long as they insist on a closed platform. Not because Google's FroYo features can't be implemented on a closed platform, but because it just wouldn't occur to you to do so. Furthermore, you can only go so far telling customers that you know what's best for them. I hate Flash almost as much as Steve Jobs, but you know what? If I were building a platform, supporting Flash would be a requirement. Flash is everywhere. Getting tied up in a pointless fight with Adobe is silly. Vic's daughter is right: she wants the toy that can run her favorite online games. That's going to be an Android phone, not an iPad or an iPhone. Apple is insisting on playing the game in a way that they can only lose.

Having said that, why is Apple so interested in HTML5? Why are they supporting it with almost as much energy as Google? I think Steve Jobs really understands that HTML5 is the "right thing" for the future of the web. Apple is not going to drop native applications. But Jobs has always had an uncanny sense of when things are done right.

Although Google doesn't need to "win" the battle with Apple, Apple's hysteria, along with its insistence on fighting the wrong battles, means that Google has a decent chance of winning. HTML5 may be Apple's last chance to change their ways, and make decisions that aren't dictated by their desire to control the platform. If they don't, they will lose, and that would be tragic, both for Apple and for users.

Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic and the lead dev on WordPress, has written an important post about the Twitter API. Lots of interesting observations and more than a little telegraphy here! Well-worth a careful read.

The conclusions:

1. The Twitter API had a chance of becoming a defacto standard, but it didn't happen, for a variety of reasons.

2. It sounds like there's a WordPress client coming from Matt's company (unless there already is one that I'm not aware of).

3. It sounds more and more like Matt sees Twitter as competition. Or maybe this is wishful thinking on my part.

As a founder of this market, and someone who has the ear of most of the participants, I'd like to make a recommendation.

1. You have to support twitter.com, and this means working with whatever changes they make to the Twitter API. At this point they have the most users and the most influential users. Not supporting twitter.com, for most of the client developers, seems like it's not an option.

2. You should also support an open protocol, and by open I mean replaceable and simple. I explained that in yesterday's post in response to Chris Saad's piece. There really only one way to go here, and that's a good thing -- RSS 2.0 as the format, and its <cloud> element to add the realtime component. It's decentralized, doesn't depend on any of the BigTechCo's, and isn't owned by anyone. It also isn't controlled by the W3C or IETF, which means it cannot be corralled by the BigTechCo's. It's easy to support, doesn't require a massive R&D budget and is not a moving target, and cannot become a moving target.

You must have a route-around of the dominance of the big vendors if the smaller independent and open source projects are to have a chance in the market.

Hewlett-Packard has killed off it’s much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter.

The device was first unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 in January and was supposed to hit the market in mid 2010. But our source tells us that HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system and has terminated the project (something CrunchGear mentioned months ago).

HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for it’s slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system.

So what will HP use as an operating system? Look for Google-powered devices, which have already been announced. And HP really does seem determined to make a go of the Palm WebOS. They said how important it was to them yesterday, and they will likely experiment with porting it to a slate-type device.

Will WebOS emerge as a successful operating system for tablet devices? That seems very unlikely given the dominance of the closed Apple OS and the likely success of the open Android and Chrome operating systems from Google. To get traction from third party developers with WebOS HP will need to sell a lot of units. And it’s not clear what they’d gain from all that effort, anyway. HP knows how to build and sell hardware, not operating systems.

We’ve reached out to HP for comment. Here’s the video promoting the HP Windows tablet from January:

On Facebook Dominance, The Closed Web, And AppleThe —

My personal stance on Facebook hasn’t changed much since last year when I nuked my account wrote about general feeling of distrust. Reasons: they’re building a largely closed, alternative version of the Internet, and second, have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, meaning they make moves that clearly favor other companies (advertisers) over users, and then retreat to tweak things when users complain.

So their recent talk f8 is a grand continuation of these same intentions, and more evidence that I’m right in avoiding Facebook.

• Their new ad scheme is “opt in” by default.
• Despite all the platitudes about making a better, more relevant web, this is all about displaying more advertising.
• Companies will fall in line and add Facebook hooks to their websites because Facebook is so ubiquitous.

Now my personal take: I generally do not like ads, period. Sure, relevant ads are preferable to irrelevant ones, but the ideal is still: no ads.

The thought of happily surfing the web with my travels being tracked across multiple locations for the purpose of serving up better ads is a personal privacy nightmare. I clear cookies on every browser close, log in and out of Google on every visit, and have never activated that “web history” feature. It’s not that I have anything to hide; it’s just the perceived feeling of some semblance of anonymity that’s very valuable.

This may be a personality type, but I like walking into a store and having nobody know who I am. I like going to a restaurant and making up my own mind about what to order without any input from others.

It really creeps me out that someone else would know what I like better than I know myself, and particularly creepy that it would be a corporation, learning these things based on tracking my behavior.

And Yet, Facebook Will Win It All

Now all that said: I cannot deny that Facebook is almost totally ubiquitous and is onto something huge. I personally feel they won the whole social web game over a year ago. And this whole data sharing, ad serving game will succeed.

What’s personally interesting is how users have clearly chosen Facebook’s “closed” web vs. open alternatives. Facebook’s huge user base means everyone is on it. The site is relatively clean and easy to use. Complaints about Facebook being “closed” have fallen on deaf ears. The Facebook users, happy with the user experience, simply continue on using the site.

Then There’s Apple

And this is where I see an Apple parallel: Similar complaints about “open” vs. “closed” are recently directed at Apple, in regards to blocking Flash or being picky about developers, or the iPad not having USB ports. And similarly, I feel those complaints are falling on deaf ears. iPods, iPhones, iPads, all selling like hotcakes.

Yes, I’m all in with Apple and avoiding Facebook. The reason? Ads. Apple, until iAds, has remained a distinctly ad-free zone – the best example: paying for iTunes TV show downloads sans commercials.

Facebook + Apple = Google’s Nightmare

A very amusing thought: Google is in direct competition with Facebook on the web, and with Apple in mobile. A really amazing – and bone chilling – development would be Apple and Facebook working more closely together. Facebook has a good chance of becoming the next Google, so it becomes increasingly likely Apple will want to work with them.

And yes: at that point, because of my love for Apple – I’d throw up my hands in surrender and give Facebook another shot. The iPad / iPhone Facebook app will likely be too cool to ignore.

Given Mark Zuckerberg's announcements at the Facebook F8 conference, one thing is certain: newspapers can no longer ignore Facebook's impact and reach. Whereas publishers continue to scapegoat Google for many of their current troubles, they should be equally, if not more, wary of Facebook.

Whether they acknowledge it or not, newspapers are losing out to the social networking site on the fundamental fronts of community relevance, attention and information dissemination. Yet behind the perceived threat from Facebook, there is also a new opportunity for publications to achieve newfound audience relevance.

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Guest author Chris Treadaway (@ctreada) is founder and CEO of Lasso, and author of the upcoming book Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, an imprint of Sybex. He blogs at treadaway.typepad.com.

Facebook's rise to dominance has been astounding. It is currently the most visited site in the United States, and boasts 400-plus million worldwide users. We've seen it go from a dorm room distraction to now being larger than the combined population of the United States and Mexico. With the social network claiming that roughly 70% of its user base is outside the United States, that means that there are at least 120 million Americans on Facebook today.

Taken down to the local level, though, this means that Facebook might just already have more reach in the community than any other media outlet - especially local newspapers. With the unveiling of their Web-ubiquitous "Like" button and "social bar," as well as their Graph API, Facebook is now using its strengths to redefine how we interact with the Web in its entirety.

So what does all of this mean for the publishing industry and for newspapers in particular? A few very important things:

• Facebook is now a legitimate threat to Google. It has accomplished this by changing the game from search discoverability to social context, which wasn't doable with 40 million users but is with 400-plus million users. Facebook is trying to become the first place people visit when logging into their computers every morning. The site that leads this battle carries the most online leverage, at least until it is knocked off the pedestal.
• Facebook is attempting to become pervasive across the entire Web, and without permission. Like it or not, site owners are going to have to deal with social media, but now in a much more pervasive way than ever before.
• Facebook is a competitor for the attention of local audiences. One minute spent on Facebook is a minute not spent on another Web property. Facebook will become a more interesting place as it aggregates data on what people are doing and how they are reacting to the Web as a whole, not just Facebook's network. So it isn't just necessary for media outlets to build a better Web sites anymore - they have to build engaging content that can appear on Facebook and drive value to their paper. It isn't impossible, but it has to be a priority.
• All of these things impact discoverability of a newspaper's content, who monetizes it and how. Those that succeed in becoming a viral Facebook content commodity will grow rapidly. Likewise, the decline of those news sources that fail to realize the necessary potential of Facebook will be swift. A deep and complete understanding of social media is necessary for publishers of any kind to modernize, grow and ultimately survive. It's becoming a necessary core competency, and fast.

Yesterday, The Washington Post announced their "Network News" initiative, integrating Facebook into the paper's website. The Post's incorporation of activity from users' Facebook friends immediately creates a value of social relevance that trumps efforts like the New York Times' similar, though detrimentally insular, TimesPeople network.

More importantly, however, are the possibilities such integration might provide for local newspapers. Relevance is a central theme to both the content shared on social networks and the community publication. Facebook offers those newspapers a readymade audience that is already connected to their desired local demographic. Local publications need to recognize the importance of tapping into Facebook's community, because, first and foremost, it is precisely where their readers are finding, sharing and discussing the types of pertinent content that the papers seek to champion.

Newspapers no longer need traditional Web developers. Papers now need Facebook developers, experts who can partner with creative social-savvy businesspeople who know how to take advantage of the social graph. In the wake of Facebook's new features, it will not be long before newspaper and media executives are attacking and blaming Facebook for their problems in the way they do Google today. However, those publications that more progressively pursue the opportunities and value opened to them by Facebook's new tools will have a very different reaction.

Photo by Michael Rogers. Discuss

We may finally have a solution to help open video out of the morass its currently stuck in. Recently, all eyes have been on Google to see if it would open up the VP8 video codec, which it very recently bought the rights to when it acquired software maker On2.

According to NewTeeVee, Google is stepping up to the plate.

Google will soon make its VP8 video codec open source, we’ve learned from multiple sources. The company is scheduled to officially announce the release at its Google I/O developers conference next month, a source with knowledge of the announcement said. And with that release, Mozilla — maker of the Firefox browser — and Google Chrome are expected to also announce support for HTML5 video playback using the new open codec.

If this actually happens, open video will get a huge boost on the web. It will take a few years for VP8 to gain dominance, given the huge penetration of Flash and H.264, but it’s a significant step forward. Since Google owns YouTube, a major game piece is already in play.

One big question remains — will VP8 videos play on the iPad and iPhone?

See Also:

• YouTube Embraces HTML5, But Stops Short of Open Web Video
• Royalty Deadline for H.264 Extended, But It’s Still Bad for the Web
• Can Google Save Free, Open Web Video With VP8?

Opera announced today that its browsers are now used by more than 100 million people worldwide, saying that the distribution between mobile and desktop users is a nearly even split at 50 million a piece.

While 50 million desktop users means just a tiny fraction of the browser market for home users, 50 million mobile users actually represents a dominance in the mobile browser market.

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According to the latest numbers by StatCounter, Opera for the desktop comes in fifth (essentially last) place, behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Opera accounts for just under 2% of the browser market, while IE holds 53% of the market share, and Firefox comes in around 32%. Safari, Opera's nearest competitor (and default Mac browser) accounts for twice as many users as Opera.

Looking at the mobile browser numbers, on the other hand, we see Opera Mini with 28% and iPhone's native browser following with just under 20%. And all of that could change, of course, if Apple would just accept Opera Mini into the AppStore. Opera submitted its mobile browser just under three weeks ago at the time of this writing, but has a policy that prevents other browsers from operating on the iPhone.

While the numbers seem to say that Opera just isn't cutting it on the desktop, Opera Mini has been holding the lead as far as mobile browsing goes and we'd sure love to see it on the iPhone sometime in the near future.

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It’s that time again — time to tap into all the tips, tricks, apps, and expert advice that may have flown under your radar this past week. We’ve corralled these must-reads into one handy list for your browsing convenience.

This edition is ripe with valuable info, including the biggest trends to watch on Twitter, some creative advice on keeping your business strategy social, a list of the best new web apps built for Google Buzz, and plenty more. And if you’re in the mood for a bit of web-based entertainment, see below for some fun YouTube compilations and amazing iPad video demos.

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Social Media

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• Facebook vs. Google: The Billion Dollar Battle to Be Your Default Social Profile

  Both of these Internet giants are vying to become your main destination for social, search, and shopping. This posts discusses the seeds they are sowing now in the hopes of future web dominance.

• 5 Simple Social Design Tips From the Masters

  Good design is a critical component of the social web. We asked the experts for some simple advice that can make or break your next social design.

• 5 Big Twitter Trends to Follow Right Now

  Day-to-day Twitter trends are interesting to follow, but it’s important to step back and take a look at where the social network is headed, and the challenges it will face in the future. This post takes a meta look at the state of the Twitterverse.

• 10 Amazing Magic Trick Videos on YouTube

  YouTube is home to some amazing content, and the prestidigitation department is no exception. Check out these ten close-up and street magic tricks, each of which packs a solid wow-factor, and will leave you wondering, “How’d they do that?”

• Top 10 Funny Dog Videos on YouTube

  If there’s one thing the Internet is good for, it’s funny pet content. This post rounds up some premium canine hilarity from YouTube that you simply cannot miss.

• 5 Free Ways to Identify that Song Stuck in Your Head

  The days of agonizing over those relentless and unidentified melodies are over. The Internet, in all its musical genius, offers up a handful of ways to pinpoint the tune that simply won’t let you go.

• Why Chatroulette Is More Than Just Penises

  The stunning viral runaway success of Chatroulette is often overshadowed by the “naughty bits” that are so prevalent on the service. This post delves deeper into the trend to discuss what the phenomenon of random, anonymous video chat means for the greater web culture.

• 12 Fresh Web Tools for Getting the Most Out of Google Buzz

  Though still in its infancy, Google Buzz is quickly gaining traction with the help of eager developers who have pounced on the network’s open API. If you’re looking to integrate, connect, and spread your Buzz around the web, check out these 12 useful tools.

• 5 Ways to Go Green for Earth Day with Social Media

  The social web is the perfect medium for spreading the word about an important cause. This post offers up five ways to get involved with the environmental movement, just in time for Earth Day.

• 15+ Great Ways to Find Web Design and Development Work

  For web designers and developers looking to take on new projects, the Internet offers a great number of online resources that can help them find work. Here are more than 15 places for web creatives to land gigs.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

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Mobile

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• 10 Essential Money-Saving iPhone Apps

  Though the iPhone is a pricey piece of hardware, it could pay for itself in the long run if you use it to find deals and live more frugally. This post examines 10 essential iPhone applications for living the frugal life.

• How 5 Brands Are Mastering the Game of Foursquare

  Foursquare could easily be mistaken for a frivolous mobile application with little to no value for businesses, but here are five businesses that are proving the value of location-based social media apps.

For more mobile news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s mobile channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

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Tech

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• 10 Amazing iPad App Video Demonstrations

  If you haven’t gotten your iPad yet, but you’re jonesing for your Apple app fix, check out these truly awesome video demos that showcase the power and versatility of the new tablet device.

• 10 Insanely Great iPad Apps We Can’t Wait to Use

  For those of you that have gotten an iPad, has it lived up the hype? Which apps are you enjoying the most? Here is a list of the 10 iPad applications were most looking forward to checking out.

• 10 Must-See Google Street View Sightings

  You can’t drive around photographing the entire world without running across at least a few oddities. Check out this list for some strange and hilarious images captured by the Google Street View car on its quest to virtualize the globe.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

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Business

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• 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page

  If you’re turning your business’s Facebook Fan Page into a real destination for customers, you may want to consider incorporating more content. These five apps are a great way to build more value into your Page.

• Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Foursquare

  The location-based darling Foursquare has seen staggering growth in its one year on the scene. We spoke with the company’s founder Dennis Crowley about some of Foursquare’s unique business strategies.

• How One Small Biz Turned Their Company Retreat Into Social Media Success

  WooThemes, purveyors of premium WordPress themes, recently made the most of their biannual corporate retreat by turning the working ski trip into a social media event for their customers — and the strategy paid off big. This post explains how they did it.

• How Startups are Using Social Media for Real Results

  Startup money is often the hardest to preserve, but many small business are turning to social media to squeeze the most out of early budgets. We spoke with some socially-savvy startups to get their take on how the web can make things easier for burgeoning companies.

• HOW TO: Integrate Paid Search and Social Media for Better Marketing Results

  While the goals of paid search (sales) and social media (brand awareness) are different, the two strategies should work together for maximum ROI. This post discusses some concrete strategies.

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tags: business, Features Week In Review, List, Lists, small business, social media, tech

According to statistics published by Hitwise yesterday, Facebook has become the most searched brand in the United States. This is calculated by Hitwise as all the search terms which “included the root word ‘Facebook’” of which there were 10,673 search terms. While MySpace still has a substantial number of searches, the research suggested that MySpace has continued its historical decline.

Facebook has been experiencing ongoing growth domestically, previously outstripping Google as the most visited site in the United States. This is yet another metric which points to Facebook’s continuing growth in dominance. It has been expected that this year Facebook could become larger than Google on most measurements, even including global traffic.

Both revenue and traffic continue to grow at Facebook, giving the company something to be extremely proud about. Do you navigate to Facebook or Google more frequently each day?

SharesPost Report Values Facebook At $9 Billion, Estimates 2010 Revenues At $1 Billion —

SharesPost, a private equity market that allows employees and founders to convert some of their shares into cash launched a publication platform to include reports that give greater insight into the valuations of companies like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We examined last year’s report, which estimated Facebook’s valuation between $4 to $6 million. Today’s report pegs Facebook’s valuation at around $9 billion, which is higher than last year’s number but lower than the $10 billion valuation the social network earned during its latest funding round last year.

The report, which is embedded below, estimates Facebook’s current valuation between $8.4 and $9 billion after using two methods of analysis comparing revenues with steady-state enterprise valuation ($9 billion) and comparative enterprise valuation ($8.4 billion). The steady-state valuation estimates use a 25x market multiple and normalized net margins of 30%. Assuming that Facebook will make $2.5 billion in 2014, the report arrives at a target 2010 enterprise value of $9 billion. For the comparative valuation, the report uses a secular growth rate of 25% and EBITDA margins of 50%, to arrive at a conservative valuation of $8.4 billion (assuming the company’s revenue to be $1.3 billion in 2011.)

SharesPost’s report estimates that Facebook is currently burning through $200 – $300M of cash a year for its operational expenses and for capacity expansion, and is cash-flow positive, which we knew. The report highlights Facebook’s 400 million users and its dominance as the world’s largest social network, wide network of developers building off the platform, and the amount of ecommerce and advertising revenue flowing through the network. For example, Zynga spends between $5 million and $8 million per month on advertising on Facebook. The report estimates that Facebook’s revenue for 2010 will hit $1 billion and nearly $3 billion by 2015, another stat that we’ve heard before.

SharesPost also released a report on the valuation of Twitter, estimating that the microblogging network is worth $750 million. Strangely, SharesPost’s recently-launched Venture-Backed Index has Facebook’s valuation listed at nearly $12 billion. We’ve contacted SharesPost for comment on this discrepancy.

Sharespost Facebook Valuation Report

Nintendo announced today in Japan that it will launch a new 3DS handheld game player in Japan during the fiscal year that ends March 31, 2011.

The move shows that Nintendo is serious about fending off challenges from Sony’s PSPgo as well as Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. Rumors of the new machine have floated for a bit, but Nintendo finally confirmed that the new platform will feature a 3-D display that does not require the use of 3-D glasses. It will hit the Japanese market first, and it will be compatible with the Nintendo DS and DSi software. The company will reveal more about the 3DS at the E3 game conference in Los Angeles in June.

On March 28, Nintendo is releasing the latest handheld, the DSi XL, which sports a screen that is 93 percent bigger than the DSi’s. The rapid pace of introductions shows that Nintendo is serious about maintaining its dominance of the portable game business. The first DS debuted in 2004.

There's no doubt about it: the iPad is the elephant in the ereader room but there's one thing I'm certain: it won't kill off the ebook readers. Amazon just took another length in the Kindle's already strong position on the ereader battlefield with the announcement of Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers. This app picks up where the standard desktop Kindle program drops off. Just like nearly every other desktop application, the original PC and Mac Kindle app isn't optimized for finger navigation with small buttons and drop down menus. Plus, it's not pretty and almost utilitarian in design. The upcoming tablet program, however, takes styling cues from Apple's iBooks and looks finger friendly enough. This is huge. No longer can the iPad claim dominance on the color ebook world. The upcoming Kindle tablet program will be able to run on presumably any PC tablet and still sync to the other Kindle apps, mobile or otherwise. Knock "color ebook reader" off of the iPad's list of Pros. The tablet race just got a bit more interesting.

Nexus One Flopped, but Android Didn't —

A new report from mobile analytics firm Flurry reveals some interesting numbers about Google's first attempt to sell their own custom branded Android device, an HTC-built phone called the Nexus One. It's a flop. After 74 days, the same amount of time it took the original iPhone to sell its first million units, the Nexus One sold only 135,000.

But before you read too much into these numbers, thinking that it has any meaning with regard to the Android ecosystem as a whole, think again. Android market share is growing fast - it more than doubled from September to December of last year, for example. Oh and the Droid, Android's fastest-selling phone to date? It actually beat the iPhone by day 74, Flurry says. All this new data shows is that Google is no Apple when it comes to marketing their own device.

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iPhone Killer? Not Hardly

In January of this year, Google hosted a press event to showcase their new Nexus One phone, a HTC device sold exclusively by Google on its own website in both a carrier-specific and unlocked version. When asked if the new phone was meant to be an iPhone killer, Google's Director of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin simply replied that "choice is a good thing."

Prior to its launch, many technology insiders suspected (or rather, hoped) that the new "Google phone" would be exactly that - a killer, the first real rival to challenge Apple's dominance in the smartphone market. With features like support for multitasking, Google's own GPS navigation application, Google Voice (the VoIP app Apple banned from iTunes), a 3D photo gallery and, of course, heavy integration of Google services, the Nexus One had a feature lineup that Apple's iPhone couldn't beat.

Why Did the N1 Flop?

So what happened? Why don't the sales numbers match up with the excitement surrounding the device? The problem likely has to do with the fact that the phone is sold online only. You can't march into a store and purchase a Nexus One and, apparently, that's how most customers want to shop. Another problem is that the U.S. carrier for the N1 is T-Mobile, a much smaller network than either AT&T (iPhone) or Verizon (the Droid). Also, the N1 isn't available worldwide like the iPhone is.

However, don't count the N1 out just yet. According to Google's website, it will arrive on Vodafone in Europe by Spring 2010 and, in the U.S., Verizon will get a version of the device at the same time. Given how well the Droid has done for Verizon, the Nexus One may have a shot at boosting its sales soon.

Meanwhile, Android, as a platform, is doing quite well even if the Nexus One isn't. The Droid recently became the fastest-selling Android phone to date, beating the sales of the myTouch 3G by more than four times, the Android market share has been growing by leaps and bounds, Android's application store is now the second largest, second only to Apple's iTunes and finally, some companies found their Android website visitors increasing by as much as 350% over the past year.

In the end, the Nexus One may not have succeeded the way Google had hoped, but clearly, Android itself has.

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