Everything Old Is New Again: The Return Of Push

from the this-ain't-your-father's-pointcast dept

Recently I mentioned that I think services like Twitter are likely to help stitch together the variety of short-messaging options that are becoming available to mobile users. There's another story here, though: the shift in net architecture that's taking place in order to support these new services.

Jive Software has an interesting blog post about one of these technologies: XMPP, aka Jabber (ReadWriteWeb also has a thoughtful post on the matter here). Jabber is an increasingly popular XML protocol that powers instant messaging services like Google Talk -- and many other things. As the Jive post points out, Tivo is beginning to use XMPP to notify its customers' set-top boxes of schedule updates. The old alternative involved each Tivo polling a central server every so often to check for updates, the same way that email and RSS clients do. But that's inefficient, particularly if the polling needs to be done frequently. An IM protocol is ideally suited to delivering messages with little latency and in a lightweight manner (and will know how to traverse users' NAT routers, too). XMPP is particularly extensible and comprehensive, making it useful for many different applications.

And XMPP isn't the only technique being used to solve these problems. Comet is another emerging technology with a similar purpose, but focused specifically on the web. Instead of repeated polling, a Comet app keeps one very long-running HTTP connection open, along which messages can be sent without waiting for the browser to ask for them. This lets applications like Gmail and Meebo deliver performance that's virtually latency-free.

Although I'm tempted to avoid the baggage that comes with it, this trend does fit pretty comfortably into the push/pull paradigm of the late 90s. I have good reason for that reticence: as anyone who's lived through periods of both thin and fat client triumphalism knows, enthusiasm for different technological approaches is cyclical, driven by whatever applications people consider most exciting at the time, and along the way shoehorning a lot of ill-suited apps into the hot paradigm du jour.

But this time the demand for push protocols is more than just a fad. It's also a sign of our increasing technological sophistication. Polling is no longer an option for a lot of reasons, but all of them have to do with computing's ubiquity: there are too many users, too many devices, and no patience for less than immediate performance. Broadcast was fine when technology was just entertainment; pull was fine when technology was just a supplement to our lives. But now it seems that the network is driving our daily activities, and we can't wait around for it to do so.

Tom Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tom Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Mobile Advertisers Can't Resist Thinking That A Single Call To Action Means Universal Rights To Bug People

from the pull,-not-push dept

For years, we've been trying to convince advertisers that mobile advertising needs to be about "pull" rather than "push" advertising. Since mobile users are "on the go" and often busy with something else, interrupting them with their mobile phone is going to be seen as a tremendous intrusion, often pissing off most recipients. Instead, the focus should be on setting up situations where the ads are effectively "called" by the user who is specifically looking for something (think Google ads, rather than pop up ads). For example, having a billboard that offers someone something if they punch in a code on their phone. Or, perhaps, making it easy for someone to proactively check if there are discounts at nearby coffee shops -- rather than simply bombarding them with offers as they pass-by coffee shops.

Unfortunately, it looks like some advertisers are only getting half of the message. While they understand the importance of there being some kind of "call to action" by the user to initiate any kind of advertising relationship, many seem to think that after that initial call to action, users are more open to receiving ongoing communications. That's unlikely to be true -- as many users may want a particular type of communication at one time, but will not be in the mood to get something similar the next day when they're in a rush to get somewhere. The companies pay lip service to not bothering people by saying things like: "If there is no response after several times, the phone will stop sending alerts." However, by that point, you've already annoyed the person "several times" after they only opted-in to hear what you had to say once. It's hard to see how that's beneficial at all.

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