VoIPWatch

Apple Idea of Privacy Could Be Trusted Advertising - Meet The Ad Store

Apple has made a bold move in the world of privacy. They are cutting off the IDFA at the knees. Some may call it digital castration, as John Koetsier points out in his Forbes story.  But I think there's more to this. While Apple does sell ads inside the app store, Apple is really the only one of the giants - Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft which has never really leveraged its' own user base or platforms for ads. 

So here's a concept that may come true.

Right now Apple has radio inside iTunes. It has TV. It has News. It also has apps. And, if those are apps with in app payment or which charge a fee, Apple takes its' cut of 30 percent. But if  Apple was able to insert ads, then it could offer a shared reduction cost to app developers who want to make use of an API that ran ads for services.

Think about it this way. Take Salesforce and their apps. Or Slack. Or even Google. All play in large ecosystems of loosely referred to partners who need to promote their services to one another. If those could be "promoted" inside the app via the Apple Ad store, where Apple knows exactly who has installed and is using the apps, and then combined with the app owners own data of users, data that sits inside SalesForce, HubSpot, Marketo and other marketing automation programs, the idea of direct marketing and targeting becomes even more relevant. Apple, and in reality, Google Android, all become ad or offer delivery platforms. This approach would combine the offer with the "in app purchase" option and Apple would win twice.

Apple has always been the master of the two sided business model, and the App store, where you pay for the right to access it buy buying a phone, tablet or computer, then leads to apps that pay the Apple tax. By offering marketing,  promotion, and ads, all of which the user or the developer can opt into or out of Apple takes the high road. And given that Apple reaches into just about every executive suite in the world, they have access to some of the most powerful decision makers, because those folks have Apple in the palm of their hands every day.

And, since Apple takes the position of protecting user privacy, you can bet that the data it uses will be two-factor separated from the advertiser, until you want to be known. With an approach like this, Apple can still give you the level of privacy you want, and pay you through service credits for giving up some, or all of it it, or you can simply keep paying what you pay today for devices, apps and services, and remain unknown, and void of advertising.

This is all pure speculation on my part, but....and it's a big but...I've been right before.

 

Dilemma of Being Early

I've been on WhatsApp for so long, I can't remember my first message or call on it. As someone who was traveling the globe on a regular basis from 2004 until early this year, overtime I found more and more people I was coming into contact with outside the USA were on the free app that did the basics better than just about anything on the planet. For the past few years I've been using Signal, which is just about the best encrypted app for text, voice and video around. I've dabbled with Silent Circle, only to find that not too many of my friends use it. On the other hand, WhatsApp and Signal are loaded with friends of mine. The same with Telegram. 

The trio of Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, plus iMessage/Facetime and Duo/Hangouts have all become phone alternatives for me, and every service bypasses the traditional PSTN, and is FREE.  Heck, even Slack calling has taken a large chunk of my calling life too. 

But three apps that I was also using back in the 00's were RocketTalk by San Diego's Rajiv Kumar and James Tagg's Truphone's mobile app. We started working with both in the 00's. RockeTalk had everything that WhatsApp eventually had years later, but fits and starts, funding challenges, and being from San Diego held it back, all the while it was gaining traction in India. I'm convinced that had RT been in the Valley it would have been the winner. The third was TalkPlus, a pioneer in second lines on mobile phones.

Of the three, Truphone had the best success, and was the biggest threat to Skype in the 00's also. Its last versions of the mobile app, that combined on-net and PSTN calling originally pioneered on Nokia's N series, based on the Symbian OS were on all the OS'. iOS, Android and Blackberry by 2010. The arrival of the iPhone in 2007 and the development of apps for iOS in 2008 had Truphone on a path of converged calling between WiFi and 3G/4G/LTE.

Clearly the London upstart was shaking up the telecom world. A 2007 attempt by T-Mobile in the UK to block calls to and from Truphone failed, as Truphone won in court. Truphone also had secure calling way before any service other than Skype even considered it. Truphone was also a media darling, and had users all over the globe. It's SIMless calling on devices gave people a second line and features that weren't available from the mobile operators.  But a shift in leadership twice between 2009 and 2014 led to its eventual pivot and Tagg's departure. The benefits the company is seeing today are a result of James Tagg's relentless inventing, and patent filings. Tagg's vision of converged WiFi and 3G/4G/LTE calling wasn't wrong. Nor was his dream of data roaming on the fly. He was just too early.

TalkPlus in the mix of being too early. They did second line on the Motorola Razr and Nokia phones, and eventually on the iPhone. They did this before Line2 and Jaxter, integraing with the dialer and receiving calls to the second number using VoIP and DIDs to redirect to the primary line. 

All three companies were born in 2005/2006 and suffered though from one common factor. They were too early. Truphone, with Russian investment, has survived, pivoted to the eSIM space and is doing well. RockeTalk's found Rajiv Kumar secured his IP back a few years back but it's too little too late.  Both companies were way ahead of WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, but were just too early. TalkPlus was an enigma. Great idea, tech that worked, but challenges on direction led to it withering away.

Sometimes the dilemma of being early is the right idea.  But as they say, timing is everything.

Text Fragment Linking By Google

Google just redefined sharing in a very powerful. It's called text fragment linking, and it works really well for a first time out of the box.

For me, it's like having a highlighter and sharing the copy of the page with others in color. With the text fragment linking extension added to my Chrome browser I simply highlight the section, click on it with the alt key, and then copy the link. Then I'll share the link with someone, and if they're using Chrome, or another browser that supports text fragment linking, they will be taken to the web page and right to where the text is being highlighted.

All the details are found on this Google post.

So why is this so important? For years people have been sharing links, but really, the important part that you want someone else to read is on the page. In the past you would copy the link, then go back and copy the content. With Text Fragment linking, that multi-step process is eliminated. 

Here's are a few scenarios where this new function within the browser becomes super useful. Quotes. Commentary. Reviews.

Often, especially in sports or politics, or when anyone is interviewed, different news accounts will have different quotes pulled and used in a news article. Movie, book or music reviewers will often whip up memorable comments. Those reviewers may be in the same city, or now, around the globe. The comments they make in the past have been gathered up, compiled and you'll see them quoted. But often, pulled quotes don't tell the whole story.  Now with the links available, the reader could easily go back to the source material, and see the context, not just the content.

As a wine lover, I enjoy reading wine reviews and notes on a winery, or a particular wine, and often will want to share the notes with others. Now, I'll be able to highlight just the one wine review from a page full of reviews, save that note in Keep, and do the same with other reviews of the same wine, winery, region, etc. Another use is restaurant round up. Many sites will have best of roundups, or recaps of various cuisines. As I'm reading through the write ups I'll often think, "gee, that's a restaurant I'd like to go to" or "if I go there, this menu item seems like something I'd like." With Text Fragment Linking I can not only recall the article, but the exact restaurant or menu item that caught my eye. But instead of cutting and pasting multiple times, I'll just highlight, copy and paste the link in my Google Keep or Apple Notepad. While I could do much of this in Evernote, this just feels easier, as it ties to the idea of a journal of links surrounded by my notes as opposed to a link to a page, and lots more explanation.

As someone who likes to use the information, and the facts, I find what Google has done super useful. Once Google gets around to indexing the highlighted and searched text fragments, we'll likely have a new search engine function available to us,  on a personal, if not global user basis.