Smart wearable devices will grow ears in 2014

There has been a lot of excitement about smart watches (Pebble, Samsung Galaxy Gear) and smart wearable devices in 2013. While those first products may not have lived up to the hype, the next wave will be more interesting and much smarter.

Smarter watches

The first smart watches from Sony and Samsung were not commercially successful. They didn’t bring anything new. Getting notifications on the wrist might be cool but a 1-day battery life is much less cool.

When the iPhone was launched in 2007, it was the best phone ever. The first Smart watches are not the best watches. They are competing with Swiss luxury watches and many people would prefer to wear a nice Tag Heuer Monaco or an Omega SeaMaster than a Samsung Galaxy Gear. True, they are not in the same price range but to be successful smart watches have to be either the best watches or bring something truly unique. It is likely that Apple is taking its time because it is working on something unique, something that takes full advantage of the fact that a watch is constantly on the wrist. The interesting news is that some companies are already taking advantage of that.

Basis is a start-up which has designed a unique smart watch, the Basis band. This smart watch contains some of the most advanced sensors on the market, continuously capturing heart rate patterns, user motion, calorie expenditure by activity, even perspiration and skin temperature. It takes full advantage of being constantly touching the end-user skin. From that angle, it is much smarter than any other watches.

With an estimated 5 million smart(er) watches to ship in 2014 and the official launch of Google Glass, the wearable connected devices market is poised to go well beyond early adopters. The IDC tempers long-term tablet forecast as competing technologies (i.e. wearable computing) heat up.

Familiar analog objects will become connected and smarter. There will be no touch screens nor tiny physical buttons to control them. As a consequence, voice will become the main user interface. In order to achieve a great user experience, advanced speech recognition and natural language understanding technologies will be needed.

A smart ring

As if a smart watch were not James Bond enough, here comes the smart ring. A project to develop a smart ring has completely blown away its funding objectives on Indiegogo. Called Smarty Ring, it helps users control their smart phones and can also be used as a clock, a stopwatch and a countdown timer. The clear trend behind this example is the smartization of smaller and smaller objects.

Smarty Ring is not only a clock, but a stop watch and countdown timer. It also helps control your smartphone. Photo from the project page, final product might look differently

Smart objects will soon become very difficult to identify and notice. People won’t be able to see that an object is smart. This will bring a new set of issues ranging from social, political and personal data security.

Google Glass and smart glasses

While Google Glass has not officially launched, it has created a tremendous amount of interest and has sparked the imagination of an army of developers and entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs once said that the computer was the bicycle of the mind. Google Glass could become the companion to your mind. Laura Baverman, a tech jounalist based in NY, made an interesting comment about Google Glass in a USA Today article

But it wasn’t until Google Glass was on my face, and a Glass Guide was talking me through its functions and features, that I really got it. Glass is like an add-on to my brain

Google Glass is extremely powerful but also potentially socially disruptive. We can expect that the next iterations of smart glasses will be even more disruptive because people won’t be able to notice that a glass is smart or not.

In 5 years, Google Glass could be replaced by Google Lens (don’t laugh, smart contact-lens are not so far-fetched. Some early prototypes are already working in labs). With Google Lens on, nobody will be able to tell if you are naturally smart or if your mind has been enhanced thanks to good answers being displayed straight to your retina.

But before this, we can expect to hear people saying “ok glass” as voice is the most natural user interface for interacting with Google Glass.

A start-up called META Pro is also working on an interesting smart glass product to be delivered in June 2014. It will offer a giant 3D holographic HD screen, 40 degree field of view and a very exciting high-end sleek light weight design. It really looks cool. According to an EnGadget article

The two bedrock technologies that set Meta apart from others in the augmented reality computing space are its surface tracking and hand tracking algorithms. These algorithms are based upon the pioneering work of Steve Mann, Meta’s chief scientist, and are essential to enabling quality holographic computing constructs that Meta wants to build.

Meta Pro promises Tony Stark-style computing with a $3,000 pair of sunglasses

In this case, the main interface will remain hand gesture. What I like about this product is technology blending with style.

Fusion of fashion and technology

With the fusion of fashion and technology becoming a reality, more and more smart wearables with no touch screens and no physical interface will be released. Some companies such as Jawbone have been quite successful in the intersection of fashion and technology.

What’s also fascinating is the fact that traditional sports and fashion companies are also launching connected products, like Nike with Nike+.

In 2014, we can expect more fusion between the 2 worlds with some surprising acquisitions and interesting moves. As an example, Apple’s Hire Of Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts is probably not only about retail. To be truly successful, the iWatch will need to be a fashion icon, not just a tech product.

One of the most striking examples of fashion meets technology is the ‘M’ from Motiif, the first smart trench coat.

‘M’ is the world’s first smart trench coat that keeps you connected to & informed about the world around you.

The ‘M’ — the world’s first smart trench coat

Lauren Bowker’s work and vision is particularly interesting. She believes that technology IS magic:

I believe technology IS magic. My vision is to create a world of seamlessly captivating science; through exquisite couture, luxury products and opulent materials; in lieu of the believer searching for special pieces and unique experiences.

To do this I will build a House and environment that both appeal intriguingly and aesthetically. That is well informed, well educated, inventive and sensitive to both Technology and Design.

Offering luxury attire enhanced with technical magic.

I trust in the unseen world around us, it can offer beauty, magic and faith. I want others to see what I see.

To me, there are very few things which seem more magic than an object understanding your voice and answering you back.

2014 will see the rise of instant social networking — and other predictions

It took many years for social networking to become mainstream. After pioneers such as SixDegrees.com, Friends Reunited, Friendster and MySpace, a social network started from the Harvard University took over the world and reached a staggering billion active users in 2012. Besides Facebook, three other networks have reached an enormous size: twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. With such a large scale and undisputed world domination, is there still a place for new social networks ?

Let’s try to make sense of the social networking landscape:

• General purpose social networks are networks which can be used for a wide range of purpose. Facebook is the perfect example of general-purpose social networks: it is used for keeping in touch with friends, liking brands, communicating through chat, sharing music taste and reading news. Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn are not general-purpose social networks as they serve very specific needs and they build more specialised types of social graph (information graph, envy graphs, business graph). While Google+ was started as a general-purpose social network, it is becoming more and more the glue between all Google services.
• Specific-purpose social networks are networks which are focused to serve one particular niche extremely well either by design (LinkedIn) or by chance (twitter as the Internet pulse of global news). There are still a myriad of new social networks that can be created in this category.

I believe that we should see in 2014:

• The rise of instant social networking
• The growth of local neighbourhood networks
• Google+ challenging Facebook as the social layer of the Web
• The decline of social networks like Path

1 — The rise of the instant social network

A new type of social network will emerge: the instant social network. It connects people with the instant, i.e. the context surrounding the user.

In traditional social networks, people are formally connected to other people. A connection is done through a unidirectional follow link (twitter, Instagram or vine) or through a bidirectional connect link (friends on Facebook, contacts on LinkedIn). Those connections are formal because the end-user decides consciously to connect to other people, by clicking on Follow on twitter or by sending an invitation to Friend on Facebook.

An instant social network is different because connections are constantly created and dismantled based on the context. There is no formal process of connection, no manual management, no long-lasting connections.

The instant, i.e. the here and now, is the only thing people are connected to.

Many startups and Internet giants gravitate around the concept but we are years away from a global instant social network. It is still difficult to figure out how an instant social network will take shape. An instant social network will have a very different purpose than traditional social networks. If we oversimplify, we can summarise below:

• A social network helps people remain informed (through a feed) about what’s happening in other people’s live. The other people can range from past acquaintance and friends (Facebook) to experts or celebrities (Twitter) and business contacts (LinkedIn). When the user posts (status in text or picture), she receives some rewards in the form of likes or retweets which in return boosts morale, social status and increase engagement.
• An instant social network helps people connect with here and now. An instant network is a new kind of augmented reality service. People expect to be informed about local information in real-time. When the user posts local information, she expects to receive answers, get support or be thanked by the community. It is actually quite possible that the best device to consume an instant network will be a pair of smart glasses such as Google Glass rather than a smart phone.

The first attempts to build some kind of instant social networks failed.

Color

Color was a start-up which made headlines in March 2011 when it raised $41 million before the app was even released. From the start, the company was heavily criticised by the press and the company collapsed rapidly amid controversy.

Color tried to reinvent the concept of networks by removing the “connection” between people. Photos were shared with the location, they were not shared with a defined list of people. In theory, people were supposed to be able to connect with the instant through the Color app, i.e. see what was really happening “here and now” through photos shared by strangers.

Unfortunately, Color didn’t bring enough value to the end-user and was quickly shutdown. The absence of gratification (through likes such as in Facebook and Instagram), the lack of gamification (through competition with check-ins on Foursquare) and data, and possibly internal issues doomed the service.

Facebook seemed to have been working on a similar concept. In 2011, some documents from Facebook were leaked to TechCrunch about a secret photo-sharing app which seemed to have a lot in common with Color. With the acquisition of Instagram and the launch of Facebook Camera app, the event-based photo sharing app was never launched.

Highlight, Sonar and the people discovery apps

Another approach to instant social networks which have been tried is the people-centric approach. Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa) describes the concept well on her Techcrunch article: The New Social Network: Who’s Nearby, Not Who You Know.

There’s a new concept for social networking services taking root, and it’s not about re-creating your offline social graph on the Web, like Facebook does today. It’s about discovering the people who are nearby you now — the ones you probably would like to meet.

This category of social networks is also called People Discovery app and it generated a lot of excitement in 2012 to the point that the Verge called the phenomenon a bubble

However, they didn’t really take off. In 2013, one of the most prominent apps, Sonar, shut down. Discovering people around you for the sake of it doesn’t seem so useful. I personally believe that People Discovery apps cannot be successful if they don’t have a very strong underlying goal such as dating (like Tinder or Badoo) or professional networking in business events.

An instant social network providing relevant contextual information without any social elements has more potential than an instant social network whose sole purpose is to tell the user who’s nearby.

Google Now, the instant companion

Google Now is the perfect example of an instant service without social elements. It is a context-centric companion providing users with the right information at just the right time. While it has been compared with Apple’s Siri because of its voice user interface, it goes way beyond its competitor thanks to the personal data (flights, events etc…) and contextual information (weather). Thanks to the acquisition of Waze, traffic information will be added.

Circle, the instant social network

Circle started as a People Discovery app and pivoted. It has become the leading instant social network and just racked in the range of 5 million users. In many countries, it is one of the most downloaded apps on the AppStore and Google Play market.

With its easy access to “What’s happening now around” thanks to local news, local posts, trending places, it is the most complete instant social network.

Other start-ups like CoEverywhere are also trying to connect users with the instant. Unlike Circle, CoEverywhere also allows people to draw and define their neighbourhoods .

Twitter is also experimenting with live event happening near the end-user and it is true that it has a trove of relevant data with people tweeting around major events. Foursquare also has extremely valuable information with its huge database of places and real-time check-ins and posts. On Foursquare, Venues can create events inside places which makes it particularly relevant to build an instant social network. The company just raised $35M and after years of decline, the service is getting back some traction.

Foursquare could definitely become the instant social network.

Prediction #1: I believe that Circle will continue to gain traction in 2014 and that Google will acquire Circle to integrate it into Google Now and will make the service accessible through Google Glass

2 — The growth of local networks

Another kind of social networks have emerged lately : the local neighbourhood network. A neighbourhood network is very similar to an instant social network as it doesn’t need people to be formally connected but the goals and benefits are fundamentally different.

The information that neighbours are likely to share:

• Local news, upcoming events, street parties
• Local issues
• Exchange, lost and found
• Lost animals
• Looking after children

Companies likes Blockboard, HomeElephant, Streetlife and DeHood have all tried to address the issue of connecting neighbours together. One company is clearly taking the lead in this space and this is Nextdoor.

Nextdoor is a US-based company and is backed by Benchmark. It is neighbours-only which means the message board is made available only to the people living in the neighbourhood. Nextdoor is being used in 1 over 6 neighbourhood in the US and people are quite active on the service.

Prediction #2: In 2014, Nextdoor will expand rapidly in the rest of the US neighbourhoods and will grow internationally

3 — Google+ will challenge the social layer status quo

Very early in its existence, Facebook wanted to become the identity and social layer of the Web. In 2008, Facebook launched Facebook Connect with 24 partners and quickly expanded to thousands and now millions of websites. Facebook Connect took over the web by storm and succeeded where countless open identity initiatives failed. With the rise of the mobile platform, Facebook also provides apps with an easy way to register and connect users.

In an interview with Michael Arrington in 2010, Mark Zuckerberg was again very clear about Facebook’s vision to become the social layer of the Web.

Our strategy is very horizontal. We’re trying to build a social layer for everything. Basically we’re trying to make it so that every app everywhere can be social whether it’s on the web, or mobile, or other devices.

This strategy has worked well for Facebook but in 2014 its position as the social layer of the Internet will be challenged by Google. Google is using Google+ as the commenting platform on its more popular properties. With Android increasing its domination on the smartphone market (80% of market share as of November 2013) and the change of the commenting mechanism of YouTube to Google+, Google is penetrating the social layer of the Web. While we might argue that it is currently more about identity than social interaction, the inroads into Facebook territory is undeniable.

If Facebook wants to remain the social glue of the Internet, it will have to counter attack. This adds up to the list of other threats from mobile messaging apps like Whatsapp and SnapChat.

Prediction #3: Google will expand its use of Google+ as the commenting platform for all its properties and will sign critical partnerships

4 — The decline of minor social networks

Social networks trying to build their networks on top of Facebook will have extreme difficulty. An example is BranchOut which wanted to become the new LinkedIn by building its network above Facebook. In 2012, they were seen as the most serious LinkedIn competitor when they reached 25M users. However, in 2013, they had to pivot due to lack of traction.

Leveraging Facebook’s social graph is necessary for many services and apps. However, trying to build another type of graph on top of Facebook is a different thing and new social networks should be very careful with this strategy.

Social networks trying to compete head-to-head against Facebook will also have a hard time. When Path was re-launched as a Personal Social Networkin 2011, it had a unique value proposition. Path 2 was one of the most beautiful mobile apps at a time when Facebook offered a very poor mobile user experience. It reached 2 millions users, just months after its relaunch. Things have changed. Today, the most successful mobile apps are messaging apps such as Whatsapp, SnapChat, video sharing apps like Vine and photo sharing apps like Instagram. On mobile, Facebook has greatly improved and is now used by a whopping 874 millions monthly active mobile users. Today, the only difference Path really offers is its famous 150-friend limit.

Prediction #4: Path will be acqui-hired by Google