Tag Archives: business models

Is the web really dead?

Posted by on May 1, 2012 No comments

Maybe this is a tired debate, but since Eric Jackson brought it up in his recent article, I thought I would share my thoughts. The article is worth a read because I think, in spite of not agreeing entirely with his line of thought, it touches on the big picture issue of how companies like Google and Facebook (pre IPO valuation of $140BN?) will sustain their business models in light of rapidly changing technology and cultural norms.  Read the article or see my summary below followed by my 2 cents:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/04/30/heres-why-google-and-facebook-might-completely-disappear-in-the-next-5-years/

Synopsis of the article…

  • different generations (i.e. boomers v. millenials) have significanty different perspectives that impact buying behavior / social interaction; their life and lifestyle model is fundamentally different;
  • “More and more in tech, it seems that your long-term viability as a company is dependent on when you were born. (launched)” because…paraphrasing…your organizational community is influenced by their broader community, or perhaps, generational peers who collectively determine the viability of your business.
  • Tech companies that started with Web 1.0 (content/commerce) couldn’t quite get over the hump into Web 2.0 (social) who will now have a difficult time making the jump to Mobile.
  • …but there will be no Web 3.0 because the web is dead. Its all mobile now. And most new startup are focusing on mobile devices as their platform of choice. Instagram is cited as a proxy for many new startups who don’t even think about launching on the web. Mobile is expected to be the platform that everyone will use.
  • the final thrust. Innovation is accelerating. The big guys won’t be able to keep pace, and new startups will make them obsolete. Perhaps not bankrupt, but ‘shells’ of their former selves…web monopolies are more fragile than their predecessors.

My take? Myopic perspective.

The soapbox: During the Web 1.0, the industry was naive. VC was ready to pour money into anything that looked like a web-based business and it imploded. And we may be seeing a rehash of ‘non-business model’ funding in the social realm of Web 2.0 - Quora, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter (I love twitter and glad to see that after five plus years of healthy burn, it is finally attempting to make money…various flavors of ad revenue ) while we also see mega-successes such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Automattic, and Amazon (so maybe not pioneering social technology, but think about the innovation in recommendation analytics).

In hindsite its easy to say they most Web 1.0 companies failed to adopt, but at the time, the business models to which they would have adopted, had not existed. And even when the overlap occured, The business models themselves were very different and not intuitively connected (yet): Lets look back.  Web 1.0? Disintermediate the supply chain and transact online. Web 2.0? create social platforms through which people can find, connect, and interact in new and interesting ways – oh, and fall back on ad revenue.
Mobile is an extension of both efforts (social, content, commerce) with the added value of lifestyle computing tied to location based services, mobile-to-mobile interaction, and mobile payments.  I’m sure I’m missing something. But in the end, its another device to support. The technology has been around for a long time and we just needed the carriers to remove the walls in order to accelerate innovation…

Side bar. To say Instagram launched on the smartphone and would never have thought about launching on the web is an interesting observation since its app is designed to share photos taken by the camera in the phone. The use case / model came in part from the experience on the device. We already had Flickr ‘online’ and now we’ve added Pinterest to the mix.  Granted, there are dozens if not hundreds of startups with a mobile / tablet strategy because its greenfield  - there are many gaps to fill on these devices where the ‘web on desktops / apps on desktops’ has already gone – but the ‘web’ itself is still very relevant.

In the grand scheme of things – I imagine we’ll see gaps being filled in both directions to address a three screens model to support any number of end-user-devices. Hootsuite (social, web 2.0) –> three screens; Twitter (social, web 2.0) –> three screens; LocalMind (social, web 2.0)–> three screens; Facebook (social web 2.0) –> three screens; Bing (search, web 1.0) –> three screens; Angry Birds (gaming, web 1.0) –> three screens; iTunes (content, web 1.0) –> three screens…

So all this said, do I think that because a company launches in a particular ‘era’ or by a particular generation that they are stuck or destined to fail? No. At the end of the day, its a combination of awareness and decision making that dictate the direction of an organization (for better or worse). Yahoo! sat idle for too long and passed on a once in a lifetime bid from Microsoft…now it wanes. MySpace arguably doesn’t execute as well as Facebook and may not have had the forethought to pursue the model of interaction quite as far…The better experience will typically win out. Its true for vacations, its true for cars, its true for devices, its true for apps, its true for websites…

As for Google and Facebook? I think 8 years is too short of a runway. Both have deep pockets and both have armies of very smart people driving ‘big innovation’ – it may not always be obvious to us, but we have to expect that its happening.

the rise of the context provider

Posted by on April 18, 2010 No comments

Something has been stuck in my head since bing.com launched as a decision engine. I recently thumbed back through some knowledge management texts and it struck me. With the sheer volume of data on the web, the emergence of  context providers to tailor the web’s data for personalized consumption is now emerging. Rather than simply pushing back indexed content (search engines / aggregators), we are seeing technology that provides context through meta data and sometimes fragmented and/or disparate information (- may be better to say that it responds to our context?). Either way, I think about location-based services and augmented reality as just two examples…I am here. Tell me about my surroundings from my perspective, or let me know when I’m near something that may be of interest to me. Results are real-time, informative, and interactive. new knowledge is gained.   Broadly speaking, I think we’ll soon see more businesses emerge to help individuals extract increasingly specific knowledge out of the web’s vast data stores. The BIG questions – who controls the data? and how can it be accessed?  Won’t solve it tonight but interesting to think about… – B

Blyk. A new social experiment in mobility.

Posted by on November 16, 2007 No comments

This reminds me a bit of the old netzero play. Free internet as long as you were willing to take on a few pop-up ads from sponsors. Hopefully they’ve worked out the kinks. Blyk in their own words  “is the new mobile network for 16 - 24s” thats funded by advertising. Blyk links young people with brands they like and gives them free texts and minutes every month.” Not a bad value proposition for young people who have limited resources (but otherwise what seems like an endless supply of disposable income, right parents?). Free minutes and free texting for opting-in to a social network with sponsors. The Blyk team goes on to explain that they “have developed [their] offer by finding out what [their] members consider most valuable – this will evolve over time as their needs do. ” In other words, Blyk controls the channel and the sponsorship will evolve based on market trends and consumer demand.  The constant becomes the social forum in which consumers and sponsors meet. Not unlike a shopping mall perhaps?

This should be very interesting to watch. Blyk expects to launch a pan-european program in 2008 targeting an estimated 40MM subscribers (they launched UK today). So, there are certainly a number of mobile operators in Europe who will be keeping an eye on this (and I need to find out whose network they’re riding on). I  actually posted this morning on challenges that mobile operators face today with ‘walled garden’ services. Perhaps this model is a game changer for communication service providers across the board? Time will tell.

Consumers in this age range are very particular. The novelty might grab their attention, but the service will need to be exceptional and the sponsors will need to be cautious. If users think they are talking through an ‘ad phone’ of sorts, I think it will crash and burn – even if it is free.  Avoiding hassle is one reason why we pay a premium for things sometimes, right? Blyk is headed by Pekka Ala-Pietil, former president of Nokia and 28 other industry veterans.  I’m guessing that they’ve thought through these issues but I’ve been surprised before. UK launched today, so we’ll start seeing take rates, and more importantly retention rates, in the next few weeks and months.