Problem solver at the cross roads of middle age life! Husband, Father, Technologist , Reader and who knows what else.

— Alaa El Nawawy

Twitter…..Avoiding the Yahoo End !!

February 28, 2016

Well articles have been going around talking about Twitter’s future, fueled by financial results , but I guess the more worrying thing is the number of active users, between stable number or declining number , the elephant is in the room as it seems.

A once giant like Yahoo after years of stumbling, shaking and disarray I think has reached tipping point and is literally about to collapse whether a self imposed collapse it will be or externally forced , does not matter, the reality is the sun is about to set on Yahoo marking an end . Is Twitter heading possibly to the same future ?

Been thinking about this for a while, and trying to figure out what could be wrong , first thing came to my mind is to try and understand or rather define what Twitter stands for, most importantly what it stands for me as a user , in no particular order I came up with the following :

Informative in a short but sweet manner
Right next to me, no complication to post or read
Its casual, I can follow and un-follow no strings attached
Its close to real time, I can find news there instantly before any other place
Its always on, I can literally find something to read or engage in anytime of the day and night
Multiple media mediums presented in a non-complicated manner.

Did you notice something? Its not a place where I learn about goods or services through ads! That’s the core issue…the way the timeline is built and the flow of your experience as you browse your timeline on twitter does not really give you a chance to stop and look at the ads. Yes they are there, yes we all noticed there are ads on our timelines, but the interaction is what actually counts and pays the bills for Twitter.

This actually might answer part of the story with relation to revenue from ads, is it the correct medium etc, but does not actually answer the staggered or declining number of users . So what’s with that ?

Possibly Twitter folks have many explanations on this that accurately describe the issue, cause and probably they have come up with a plan to counter this, but from a user stand point what makes people more eager to get on Facebook than on Twitter?

To start with I think that is the main problem, Twitter is a micro-blogging platform , while Facebook is a community totally different , this is a failed comparison to start with. So if we stick to the fact that Twitter is a micro-blogging platform which it is , what should I be able to do with it that I can not do today and this is where Twitter should focus to get more users on it , so here are some I thought off :

I would like to tweet about topics at different times, but still be able to correlate them into a proper homogenous story (blog) later on. I am not talking hash tags here, but rather category, topic, story, call it whatever . The only way you do that right now is to use hash tags, which does not help the purpose of making it unique to you OR threading the tweets, but yet again your thoughts about the topic might not all come at the same time.
Twitter needs to exploit the fact about it becoming a main source of news for many people by further enhancing the platform to be more helpful to news creators and consumers, an option would be allowing a “group” or “page” type setting for news sources where it’s a more expanded timeline, that both gives more bursts of 140 character pieces of news , but also allows a more expanded advertisement space
Closed twitter groups , suitable for use by project groups , sport teams etc.. where they can communicate in 140 character bursts around their common topic or update about certain progress . Again the interface should allow better tracking , more expanded space for ads.
Twitter for corporate ? possibly but that needs more thinking J

In summary , if I was a new twitter user I would need a reason to join other than it being a hype , I need to get something back, which I believe is missing at the moment specially that the hype is gone ..

A vow to Transform…. not a New Year’s Resolution

January 4, 2016

Alaa el Nawawy

Life

Add comment

2015 marked an important year for me, it was the year of the 10’s as I called it…on November 2015 was my 10^th wedding anniversary, and in March 2015 was the completion of the 10^th year of my career…to sum up my feeling I can not be more content with what I accomplished on the personal and professional front in those 10 years. Been an absolute blessing…

Through out 2015 I was always on the search of what the next decade would be about, what will I stand for, what will I aim to achieve, accomplish or even create? Just the thought of the next 10 years being like the previous 10 is in itself discouraging…all of sudden sometime in October everything started to fall in place with a rush of thoughts and wishes.

First move came on the 1^st of November, decided it was time I delivered to myself, my health and my family something that I have for a long time wished for, being fit. Dropped the cigarettes smoking and dragged my legs into a neat new gym close to where I live, and the first thing that struck me there was their slogan “ This is where we belong”…it was different, never thought a gym would be a place I would belong too, so was really curious to know more, is it just a slogan or something that they deliver on. Not a big fan of weight lifting machines nor the dreaded treadmill, I signed up for CrossFit classes and oh boy did I do the right doing that. Two months have passed since then and one of the most magnificent and enlightening experiences of my life. Not just from a fitness point of view, but from a whole experience, revelation and inner change of human soul.

I found myself actually belonging, actually looking forward to it , it hurt too much , but I have learned to love the pain and enjoy it . The feeling of accomplishment after every work out , was enough fuel to get me to progress much more in all other parts of my life unlike ever before. Its then that I realised what the next 10 years are going to be about, they are going to be about my WILL to do things and accomplish long parked goals and objectives that span from family to silliest of things like my long lasting wish to learn to play the piano. So be it, a new year is coming 2016, and I will not list my new year resolutions for the first time in my life , but I will list my promises to transform and get on doing things I have ignored for a long time , so here goes some of what I would do :

Continue with my fitness transformation along the CrossFit track and not just that, a journey in cycling is about to begin. More on my cycling challenge to self soon…
Bring to light something I am very passionate about, working in corporates! How is that I actually wrote a book J …Very very soon I will publish it online. Here you go a life long dream about to come true. Will share the details very very soon
Increase the time I spend with my family, each member of them but not just in quantity but in what they like spending time on, not what I like spending time on.
I have found my passion for technology at a new intersection between human life and the internet, or what is called IoT ( Internet of things) . I will learn, learn and learn, till I can influence, create and advance that domain.

Finally, I have also decided to challenge myself to share more about the transformation journey aiming to inspire if at all possible..

17th Century Service…Revamped by Technology!

August 14, 2015

Alaa el Nawawy

Technology

Add comment

History reads that the first concepts of taxi’s started in 17^th century with horse carriages, continued to from then to develop aiming at better service , speed etc , and obviously the concept totally changed with the invention of cars.

It wasn’t until 1891 when the taximeter was invented, and the world’s first dedicated taxi in 1897 called “Daimler Victoria”. Since then and over time , the service of taxi has evolved massively as the growth of human population , massive expansion of cities , rising costs of fuel, car ownership etc has fueled multiple variations of the taxi service . However I have to admit I have not seen a great leap in the quality of the service like what I noticed with Uber.

I know I am bit late in talking about Uber , after all I think they have spread now in some 200+ cities across the globe , but my intense interaction with Uber in the past month has been a massive eye opener to me on how technology has influenced our life in a positive way , and managed to revamp a service that is centuries old. I had to stop and write a review on Uber both as a customer but also as a technology professional.

I happen to use Uber in 3 different cities in the last month Cairo, London and Paris. Immediately a couple of important things catch you eye :

How the service is almost the same across 3 different countries, where drivers coming from different cultures, yet the company managed to dictate and enforce a certain quality of service that you can not miss.
No driver in what I think 15 something drivers I have been with in the last month has created a different variation of the service, attempted to make alterations or add like I would say their own “touch” to the service.
Across the 3 countries, the price of service was always less than the regular price you would get from any of regular taxi’s you can stop on the road. (on regular pricing from Uber not in Surge price times , we will come to that later )

If you also google Uber you could not miss that they have raised some issues in some cities and caused traditional taxi drivers to go on protest, which honestly I find very comical . Imagine if mail service workers go on protest objecting on the availability of email cause it has caused a reduction in their business! I think with Uber technology has struck once again, left a mark on something very traditional and conventional that has no means of turning back.

Despite my overall extremely positive impression about Uber , I have to say there are still some vague points for me on how they operate that on the long run Uber as a company will have to tackle , to name a few :

The concept of surge pricing still seems to me to be following some unknown guidelines. I have seen at instances the surge factor go to 2.2 , but I have seen people talk about a x7 factor. Regardless of it does go to that level or not , the company needs to get into explaining why and when apart from the standard sentence of we apply surge pricing to get more Uber’s on the road .
From a technology point of view I think Uber can further leverage technology to boost a few more extra features like :
1. When no cars are available allow the user to request and launch the call to the Uber drivers, maybe someone wants to go the extra mile and go execute on the ride.
2. Leveraging better analytics of the pattern of their drivers to indicate when a car can be next available if no cars are available.
3. Expand on the concept of charging to corporate credit cards , and making Uber the preferred service for large corporates when their employees travel , looking at ways to integrate with corporate used applications like Concur , Tripit etc..
Integrate with one of the free messaging/calls apps like Whatsapp , Facebook messenger to allow more cheaper communication between passengers and drivers.

Overall I have to say I was impressed by the concept , the service and the easy way in which I consumed the service.

Long live Technology!!

Affectiva …..not just a marketing tool …

January 4, 2015

Alaa el Nawawy

Technology

Add comment

Been hugely interested in the technology startup scene in the Arab world and in the whole world at large in general. Recently came across “Affectiva” ,which showed up on the CNN’s top 10 start ups to watch . The idea of extracting intelligence from facial emotions looks extremely appealing . I think its actually a marketer’s dream come true to be able to gauge the response of their consumers to their products, their ads or commercials.

Repeatedly you get pulled in during a stroll in a shopping mall, park or an airport by some sales person to talk about a certain product or solution, many of us just give the continuous nodding gesture on our face and the famous “I will think about and get back to you” quote, which does not really leave the product owners with any valuable feedback on what we consumers think of they have to offer , such an intelligent in-direct way of interpolating facial emotions sounds really appealing .

However , reading through the affectiva.com website , and the different research papers and use cases , a different use case came to mind about how this ground breaking solution could be used in fighting terrorist acts and security at large . I am not an expert on face gestures and emotions nor on security, but there must be something we can detect on a face of a individual that is about to commit a series act of crime like walking into a shopping mall and shooting people , or maybe walking into an airport, metro station, train station etc , with a bag of explosives and is about to set it to explode killing many innocent people. Imagine an integration between a solution like Affectiva and regular CCTV systems in those vital locations that is automatically scanning facial expressions of people walking in and correlating it against algorithms and what seems according to Affectiva website as an ever growing data base of analytics gathered from around the world.

I tried searching for studies that talk about facial expressions of criminals prior to executing a criminal act but could not find something credible to share here, but I am sure something must exist some where. Such a use case for Affectiva could be really ground breaking in the area of crime prevention and could be a major contribution in that domain.

Hats off to the Affectiva team (which I do not know any of them by the way) , as they are up to something really cool and ground breaking . Check them out on www.Affectiva.com .

Facebook…Time to go Enterprise !!

November 18, 2014

Alaa el Nawawy

Cloud Computing, Social Media

Add comment

Well everybody who has been closely watching must have seen this coming, the vast world of the consumer social media interactions , is actually becoming small for Facebook. Its no longer this startup company that everybody is excited about it now has wall street to look after, shareholders to please and a future to secure.

No wonder why Facebook has been rumoured at looking at a new flavour of Facebook, “Facebook at Work”. Which in a nutshell means that Facebook wants to tap into the millions being spent by large enterprises on software to further enable their work force , cause the money coming from the consumer/advertising business is no longer sufficient. I find it outstanding how this shift is happening to Facebook very soon after the enormous price tag is paid for Whatsapp !! , which kind of signalled that Facebook is more committed to the consumer market and not really interested in the enterprise sector.

So what would “Facebook at Work” if the rumour is correct would look like. Articles have been popping here and there all round suggesting that Facebook is building the new rival to LinkedIn, well I certainly hope they are not , cause that kind of really adds nothing to their portfolio and does not move them into the enterprise space . I am more of the idea that if this rumour is true , Facebook is actually creating a 21^st century collaboration tool, so kind of what Yammer, SharePoint , Box, and Syncplicity failed to do over the past years.

If I would be in the room with people working on the “Facebook at Work” I would aim to create something that would be:

Being for work does not mean a crappy interface so something really neat
Proper mobility that does not loose the functionality you would get when using the desktop version
If we talk work then we are talking documents here not pictures, so a new innovative document changes tracking mechanism
Easy sharing functionalities
Proper multi-tenancy
Extreme control for every user, you do not want to end up with something that suddenly breaks your entire PC’s privacy and gets everything shared there.

In short if Facebook is to walk down this root of licensed software for the enterprise, it needs to do the collaboration aspect what Salesforce.com did to the sales force of every company which is practically almost everybody now.