The setting
The setting
- Hardware: smartphones dropped sharply in price; low-cost Android phones brought cameras, GPS and sensors to a mass market.
- Network: from 3G (2009) to 4G (licenses issued at the end of 2013), data prices keep falling and Wi-Fi spreads.
- Capital: a global mobile-startup boom, followed by consolidation and the first platform-scale apps.
- Users: internet users expanded from urban professionals to a mass market; mobile access became the default in many countries.
- Policy: data-protection, app-store and platform rules expanded as mobile services scaled.
The pressure
What needed to change
- Screen-size and system fragmentation: the same page has to adapt to the iPhone, hundreds of Android phone models, and PCs.
- Mobile networks are slow and unstable, and phone performance and battery are limited.
- User counts and instantaneous traffic peaks explode (Singles' Day, Spring Festival travel ticketing, Spring Festival Gala red packets), and building your own data center can't scale up fast enough.
- App releases have to pass app-store review, and users don't necessarily update, so iteration is slow.
- Offline consumption and payment haven't moved online yet, and paying on a phone is a hassle.
- User behavior data grows many times over, and traditional databases can't analyze it.
- Servers keep multiplying, and releases and operations are done by hand, which is error-prone.
- Account passwords leak on a massive scale (the 2011 CSDN incident), phones get malware and premium-rate fraud, and development toolchains get poisoned (the 2015 XcodeGhost); privacy and data-security problems surface.
- Acquiring new users for an app gets more and more expensive, and the traffic dividend begins to peak.
The building blocks
The building blocks
- Responsive design (2010), HTML5, and mobile-first -> pain point 1: one set of pages adapts to many kinds of screens.
- Native apps (iOS/Android) and hybrid development (Hybrid, and React Native in 2015) -> pain points 1 and 2: get better performance and offline capability on phones.
- Node.js (2009), frontend-backend separation, and RESTful APIs -> pain point 1: the backend only provides interfaces, and the same set of interfaces serves the web, iOS, and Android at once.
- Cloud computing (AWS, Azure and other providers going mainstream) and elastic scaling -> pain point 3: add machines temporarily during demand peaks, then release them afterward.
- Hot updates, embedding H5 pages inside apps, and gradual rollouts -> pain point 4.
- QR codes plus mobile wallets (Apple Pay, Google Wallet and local payment apps) -> pain point 5: offline consumption moves onto the phone, and on-demand services take off as a result.
- Hadoop/Spark big-data platforms and NoSQL -> pain point 6: user behavior can be collected, stored, and analyzed.
- DevOps, automated deployment, and Docker containers (2013) -> pain point 7: consistent environments and one-click releases.
- The spread of HTTPS, mobile security testing, enterprise security response centers (SRCs), and the white-hat community -> pain point 8.
- Personalized recommendations (Toutiao launched in 2012) and deep-learning breakthroughs in image and speech recognition (AlexNet in 2012) -> an early answer to pain point 9: use algorithms to raise the value of each user. This leads into the next era.
The people
The people
FrontendFrontend Engineer
Builds mobile H5 and responsive pages, uses Node.js for build tools and a middle layer, and SPA frameworks appear (AngularJS, and React in 2013).
BackendBackend Engineer
Writes APIs, builds high-concurrency systems (flash sales, ticket rushes, red packets), and begins splitting services apart.
ProductProduct Manager
Mobile product managers focus on growth, retention, and conversion, and "user growth" becomes a methodology.
DesignInteraction Designer
UI design moves from skeuomorphic to flat (iOS 7 in 2013), centering on app interfaces and icons, and design guidelines start to become systematic.
Shifts from manual operations toward automation and DevOps, and starts using cloud servers.
SecuritySecurity Engineer
Mobile application security and business security (anti-cheating, anti-fraud), with enterprise SRCs collaborating with white-hat hackers.
OperationsOperations Specialist
User growth and campaign operations become the core work, corresponding to the operations role page `/roles/operations/`.
Full-stackFull-stack Engineer
A single developer could ship a mobile client and an API, often with a small team and a managed backend.
Trust & safety
Trust & safety
Selected moments
Selected moments
Ethan Marcotte proposes "responsive web design"
Sources: alistapart.com
AlexNet wins the ImageNet competition, a deep-learning breakthrough
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issues the Decision on Strengthening the Protection of Online Information
Sources: flk.npc.gov.cn
Docker is open-sourced
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Snowden discloses US mass-surveillance programs
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
The Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization is established
Sources: zh.wikipedia.org
The "Heartbleed" vulnerability is disclosed
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Amendment (IX) to the Criminal Law is passed
Sources: flk.npc.gov.cn
Google open-sources TensorFlow
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
The first commercial LTE network opens in Stockholm and Oslo
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Instagram launches on iOS
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Looking forward
Looking forward
Everyone now has a smartphone; new users are fewer and fewer and acquisition more and more expensive, while systems are split ever finer and data piles up ever higher. The industry's question becomes "how to earn more from existing users with data and algorithms" and "how to keep increasingly complex systems under control," and the misuse of data also begins to draw legislation.
Dates and scope
Era boundaries
- Boundary start
- 2007 Apple introduces the iPhone; 3G networks and app stores follow
- Boundary end
- 2015 mobile access becomes the default for most users; the traffic dividend peaks