Facebook and Minnovation

Well, I don't
know about you but I was
pretty disappointed by
Facebook's announcement on
Thursday. I was expecting
something more meaty than
what Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook's CEO, described as
"a set of apps."
Now perhaps I'm being a
little harsh as I know full well
my expectations were
artificially raised by the hype
and rumor mill that preceded
Thursday's announcement,
but, on the other hand, a set
of apps for Android called
Home? That's the big
announcement?
Given that Facebook is still
struggling to figure out how
to justify its IPO share price I
would have thought we'd get
something with a little more
"wow" factor. What we got is
a mobile-oriented Facebook
interface with "Chat
Heads" . . . pop-up
notifications with pictures.
Zzzzz.
Zuckerberg enthused: "On one
level, Home is the next
mobile version of Facebook.
On the other, it's a change in
the relationship with the next
generation of computing
devices." What utter
nonsense. But that's pretty
common nowadays; all of the
big players' "big"
announcements are now
merely iterations of existing
products.
So where's the next iPhone
coming from? Where's the
next iPod? Where's the
next ... I was going to cite
something from Microsoft but
it's been a long time since
Redmond produced a real
"wow!"
Perhaps the problem is we're
all out of innovation in the
computer products world.
Where the mass market is
concerned, the computer
industry has become
minimally innovative, or, if I
might coin a term, it has
become "minnovative"; it's
turned into a flood of tiny,
incremental improvements
and the reason is very
simple: For the majority of
the world, Windows XP was
and still is good enough.
Sure, the latest computer
hardware has staggeringly
fast processors and
unbelievably huge memory,
but we've reached the point
where, for most computer
users, last year's hardware
can run this year's
applications perfectly well
with cycles and storage to
spare. Indeed, hardware from
the year probably can too, or
even from the year before
that.
Those of us who can and
actually do use all of that
performance and dream of
having more do exist, but
we're a tiny minority. The rest
of the world's computer users
not only barely scratch the
potential of whatever
computer they use, they
barely understand what it is
they're using!
Even so, the hoi polloi are
eschewing regular desktops
and laptops in favor of
smartphones and pad
computers at a remarkable
rate for three main reasons:
The first is simplicity,
because managing one of
these new devices is generally
far simpler than managing
Windows, OS X or Linux. The
second reason is that apps
for iOS and Android are
cheap or free. And the third
reason is all of the fancier
stuff users might want to do
is out there in the endlessly
hyped "cloud," again for free
or dirt cheap.
But the truth is that precious
little of that fancier cloud
stuff isn't really that fancy.
It's more of the same old
stuff you can do on the old
and new hardware but
prettied up. It's got its new,
sexy party frock on, but it's
still dancing to the same old
tunes of word processing,
spreadsheets, databases,
image editing, email and
social media.
So, where's the real
innovation going to come
from? I have no idea, but I
know given Thursday's
performance, it ain't going to
be coming from Facebook.
Gibbs is underwhelmed in
Ventura, Calif. Does your
mileage differ? Tell him at
backspin@gibbs.com and
follow him on Twitter and
App.net (@quistuipater) and
on Facebook (quistuipater).