What do Celebrity Photo Leaks, Google Stories, and Salesforce Wear have in common?

Google & Yahoo have tracked thousands of my web searches; they know me pretty well.  They know I'm interested in business, technology, politics and celebrity news.  This last week they targeted me with three news stories.

1. Nude photos of celebrities were stolen from Apple's iCloud and shared across the internet.
2. Google Stories is a new Google product that interprets the context around a series of photos and videos you post and turns them into a creative presentation.
3. Salesforce Wear was released.  This allows developers to design apps specifically for wearable devices like Google Glass, smart watches, and smart rings.

So what do they all have in common?  They are an ongoing debate about the value contextual information can bring you with cloud technology.  Even though Apple has stated that their iCloud has had no recent break-ins, it's hard to argue that the photos could have been stolen without being in a cloud.  Somehow the celebrities' usernames and passwords were stolen and hackers retrieved the pictures from the cloud.  Many of the celebrities are blaming Apple and wondering why their pictures are in the cloud.  Well, why are their pictures in the cloud when new iphones have dozens of gigs of storage?  So they can see their pictures from any device? That doesn't seem to be enough value.

Companies that collect contextual information about you (where you are, what you are doing, etc.) must continue to innovate and provide their customers with value or customers will simply stop sharing.  Google Stories tries to provide value but I think it falls short.  It uses highly sophisticated algorithms to be mediocre at something I can already do on Facebook and Instagram.

Salesforce Wear is an important step in the right direction.  Why would I spend hundreds of dollars on a smartwatch if its features are disappointing and it tracks me everywhere I go?  Maybe within a few years smart devices will provide enough value for consumers to buy and trust them.  Ultimately, their price must come down substantially.  This will happen when consumers use them enough that the services they come with subsidize their cost (just like smartphones today).

Until then, I recommend companies stop advertising their products are in the cloud.  Being in the cloud is new, different, scary, risky, etc.  It's an inherent negative until companies can prove its value (as they have with enterprise cloud products).

If you read my last blog entry, the experiment is going well.  It's definitely harder to remember to log expenditures then I thought it would be.  However, overall, I am spending less money....I think that's value :)