IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY

Aner’s insights from MEM2007 zoom in on the transitional phase the mobile industry is going through. The company I co-founded (TriPlay) recently launched an internet-mobile service (SyncSpace) with an Israeli operator and if there was one highlight to this whole process is that “westbound” mobile operators are sailing in uncharted territory. Here are a few key points I learned that highlight some challenges I came across (far from the complete list which could fill a book):

1. Target audience - there is no doubt that the market leaders on the demand side for web-mobile service are young people (ages 15-25 and we know that even 15 might not be young enough). They breath mobile services, consume content and eat up data services like no other target group. How is this a problem? Because WE - the mobile/internet start-up’ists, the VC partner, executives at large corporates, ALL of us who define, create, build and fund related companies and services are at least twice that age.

How can we be sure we are creating the right service?

Solution - Talk , talk, talk to them, get feedback, have them involved in your development process. Don’t force your vision on them and expect them to comply. If you don’t expect to find out at launch that you are simply not cool enough, that you have given them far too little credit and that you don’t really cater to their need.

About a year ago I read through a fascinating 200 pages research paper focusing on mobile youth. The ONE sentence I still remember a year later is that “Messaging services that fail to reinforce peer groups offer little beyond their initial novelty value to youth“. This is true for any service - there is tendency to seek technological breakthrough with less thought invested in the real life scenarios it supposed to serve. Bottom line - focus on value first, technology second.

2. Mobile operator corporate culture - analyze the typical headcount at any mobile operator and you will find that most are experienced MOBILE professionals who know a lot about mobile but less about web services, content and entertainment. Yesterday’s mission for the mobile was to ‘connect people’ by voice. Today’s Mission is about connection, voice or data and content. Tomorrow - the mobile will be an ‘IP gateway’ through which the users ‘mobile life’ will be enabled. Where mobility is the focus and not the mobile device.

The mobile device will be the users’ setop-box, entertainment and multimedia device as well as the voice/data communicator. These offerings are not only technologically diversified across platforms but also combine different schools of thought on how to launch new services. The words BETA, rapid development, on the fly, viral and other funky web 2.0ish words contradict mobile operator’s mentality. I don’t believe they need to change their skin but some of the attributes that go hand in hand with creating successful businesses in the web and entertainment industries will have to meld into their corporate culture.

Since this is not an overnight revolution, I expect this to be solved over time. Some interesting times ahead for management, HR units in the mobile operator world as well as their supporting industries. Service providers too will have to go through this metamorphoses. One that will reflect the new role the mobile device has in the future world.

3. beta? Don’t be surprised if you get this reaction. Telco’s are not used to running beta, not to mention the famous Google’s “perpetual beta” mode. Beta mean you are tolerant to bugs, open to user feedback and ready to change requirements if the market says you should. Telco’s heritage is simply different. The good old ‘telco grade’ means that when you pick up the phone (old fixed line phone) you hear a dialing tone - no ifs and buts. Web 2.0 user services launch way before they are fully tested for mass market usage. By definition they are not built for scalability and reliability from day one. They launch in beta, make mistakes, learn, fix and invest in scalability when the market demand forces them do so. When the ‘worlds collide’ this will have to change.

Mobile operators launching web-mobile services will not be able to apply this ‘telco grade’ mentality from day one. If they do they will always lag with services and not be perceived by their users as providing them with ‘edgy’ services. If users find their telco is introducing web- mobile services months and even years after independent players do they will find that the leading target users are already engaged with a different ‘off-deck’ solution. Scalability will not be an issue then since no users will use them to begin with.

Nonetheless they don’t have to be complete 37signals’ type cavaliers and mange their projects on IM chats, no meetings and launch. Somewhere in the middle would do.

4. The handset factor - most of the PC’s in the world are about the same, same OS (windows), same browser (Firefox/Explorer), same keyboard, strong memory, big screen, sit on one network - the PC internet is WWW etc etc. In the mobile world the ball game is totally different. A highly diverse OS environment - J2ME, Symbian, Brew, Windows; Countless different browsers, different screen size, open garden / closed garden (E.G Verizon) etc etc. Therefore creating a smooth, unified, simple, reliable and more important PREDICTABLE mobile experience is a mammoth task. Solution - focus on your initial target audience - what OS are they on? what devices serve them, what are the future devices - don’t try to capture all at once. Define an acceptable experience, aim for the core and spread.

On a more macro level ‘the industry’ better get its act together and start to pin point preferred OS’s, browsers etc. and not let this jungle take over. There is no doubt that when the environment will be more standard, a plethora of new services will evolve.
5. AJAX (Web 2.0) meets WML / XHTML (Mobile 0.5 ) - not a problem! The mobile and PC web experiences are not meant to be the same. Stop raping the mobile phone with overly rich ‘web like experience’. On the mobile it is highly important to focus on simple and fast flows so not having the rich PC environment is not as big disadvantage as you think. A good and simple WAP page, can provide the required experience. In any case just like I mentioned above - focus on value (and now I am adding..) usability first and technology second. All in all exciting times are ahead. The paradigm shift I am seeing is that the mobile device will be my ‘handy’ extension to my mobile life…which can be used and enjoyed on the mobile device but has extensions on the PC and TV as well. As such, when designing such services one needs to think of the three dimensional ‘fused’ world we live in, serving real life / valuable scenarios and NOT focus on connecting two or three technological dots.

      

“Obi-Wan: The FORCE can have a strong influence on the weak-minded…”

Replace “Force” with “Money” and this sums up Microsoft’s problems. Its not talent, not creativity, not assets, not brand… Just money. Not because money doesn’t enable you to achieve things but because it blinds you of the talent, creativity and assets that exists within.

I read with interest several blogs / articles (1, 2, 3) that rationalized the pros and cons of a possible Yahoo-Microsoft take-over / merger / strategic partnership. Most of them, of course, vote against or think a partnership first makes the best sense.

Personally I say “Forget Yahoo” - Microsoft’s only way out is Microsoft itself!

But not today’s Microsoft. Tomorrow’s. I believe Microsoft can reinvent itself (OK - Vista isn’t a good start) and become a leader in personal and enterprise digital services.

So with a gross cash reserve of $50bn, why not go on a little shopping spree? Why? Because all that is bad in Microsoft, I believe, starts with that. Father Bill and Co-Father Steve should tell their kids the allowance this year just got cut and they better get creative if they want to stay at home.

The big conglomerate needs to do something TOTALLY different. Something COLOSSAL to break the status quo, something that can bring REAL change and not incremental.

Like what? Like become an umbrella to 10,000 start-ups. All using Live, X-Box, MSN etc. as platforms - INSTEAD of letting these platforms becoming THE company. Convergence has cleared the borders between enterprise and consumer applications, mobile and PC, desktop and online. The old fashioned corporate divisions will not be able to sustain progress, spur innovation.

Create robust R&D centers at the core of the corporate, encircle them with brandless, nameless platforms / services (currently Live, MSN, etc.) and let new mini, independent COMPANIES (not business-units) run new products / services on them. Don’t tie them down ‘Microsoft inside’ only policy - create a loose but synergistic relationship that will benefit both sides.

Let natural selection take its effect and like a mega VC select which companies you keep funding, which you cut off, spin off and or continue to nurture. Drop what become legacy structures and regroup to smaller, fitter units. This eco-system is much more likely to create a rival to Google [in its respective field] than Microsoft in its current form. In fact, this way there is no Microsoft that can be ‘attacked’ face on.

The “loose form” corporation will be a much more formidable (yet friendly) adversary then one giant gorilla. With no anti-trust issues to carry like a hump on its back.

The biggest difference between Google and Microsoft at this point is that Google needs to take-over / merge to grow and Microsoft needs to dismantle. This is why merging with Yahoo is a mistake. Its the opposite of what Microsoft needs to focus on.

Reminds me of the famous “Opposite George” episode in Seinfeld when George comes to the realization that in order to succeed in life he need to do the opposite of what he always thought was right “I’ll tell you this, something is happening in my life! I did this opposite thing last night. Up was down! Black was white! Good was… bad [Seinfeld]… day was night [Elaine]”.

Dwelling into the micro analysis of a Microsoft-Yahoo ’something’ is NOT what needs to be discussed. How Microsoft finds its FORCE back WITHIN - is.

      

In my humble opinion headlines such as ‘The death of web radio?” or “The last days of internet radio?” are nothing but the opposite of what will turn out to be the actual result. If I had to give a 10 year outlook, my guess is that the government agency behind this current farce (CRB) has more to fear about its long term existence than web radio does. And that is (probably) the very reason it has chosen the weakest rival possible to try to prove there is a reason tax payer money funds their activity.

This was their last mistake. The nail that will seal their coffin. Ten years from now when the whole DRM / Copy Rights / Royalties issues will be solved using a completely private, voluntary and extremely efficient systems - historians will view this current battle as being the one that lead to the turn around in public awareness. Talk about choosing your battles right….not!

If they raised the royalties by so much as a penny, they would have made much more. If they could actually develop a business model that makes sense that would have even contributed something. But greed and power have caused greater empires and ceasars to fall and this will be no exception.

The public has awakened, the battle may seem lost, but its far from it. No government agency or corporate bureaucrat can stop a swell of change like the internet is creating. Not in radio, not in TV broadcast or elsewhere.

What is the end game for this? Kill the Internet radio? In an early stage industry there is so much more money on the supply side. Do us a favor, get your act together and create the opportunity. Wanna talk about making money? Get music actually heard, then tax the royalties from referrals to Amazon and iTunes. That makes so much commercial sense. This is synergy. This is convergence.

If you stick to this greedy pricing structure then you would ultimately:

1. Collect less taxes

2. Drive media outside the territory / industry

3. Get everyone to focus beating the system rather then on working with it

4. Lower incentive to develop technology, services and probably future royalty eco-systems.

Government wrath has never done any good other then get more conscripts in a time of war. Even then if it fights the right/just wars people will volunteer.

In 1610 the establishment didn’t like the fact Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of the moons of Jupiter, using this observation to argue in favor of the sun-centered Copernican theory of the universe against the dominant earth-centered Ptolemaic and Aristotelian theories.

In 1614, from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella, Father Tommaso Caccini denounced Galileo’s opinions on the motion of the Earth, judging them dangerous and close to heresy. Ultimately landing Galileo under house arrest.

In todays terms exhadurated royalty increases are the equivalent of putting internet radio under house arrest. Its not day light execution but the target is supposed to fade away.

I got a news flash for the bureaucrats - Father Tommaso Caccini won the battle but lost the war - you will too!

To learn more and and voice your opinion go to www.savenetradio.org

if you are still not convinced, read Tim’s plea (Pandora’s founder)

      

Serendipity Technologies is a unique web 2.0 company. It has earned a poll position within the Enterprise 2.0 space for a few good reasons.

Serendipity goes for for the big prize. Its Flagship solution, WorkLight™, is already helping global 500 and other enterprise customers catch up with web 2.0. The solution is a secure server-based software product that provides workers and consumers with “Web 2.0-style” access to corporate data stored in enterprise information systems and applications. Timely information is delivered using technologies such as RSS, Ajax, desktop and web-based gadgets and widgets, personalized homepages, social bookmarks, application mashups and instant messaging. 

In other words, it ports “traditional” IT systems to the latest and greatest of web 2.0, making it more manageable, natural to use and yes, sexier. Early stage execution was impressive and Serendipity have secured significant early stage funding. This created a working environment that is anything but common in web 2.0 start-ups. Being an Enterprise solution provider makes it even more impressive. The Enterprise software market, while naturally more promising in the long run, is naturally much more complicated and cautious when it comes to embracing web 2.0 technologies.

I sat down with Shahar Kaminitz, Founder and CEO of WorkLight for a holiday eve Q and A session which is hereby brought to you.

Could you tell us a bit about WorkLight, how old is the company, where are you on the corporate and product life cycle?

Shahar: The company was established in the beginning of 2006 by Yuval Tarsi and myself, at which time we also raised our first round of financing, totaling over $5M. We are backed by leading venture capital funds – Genesis Partners and Index Ventures – and Shlomo Kramer, co-Founder of Checkpoint and Imperva’s CEO. We have officially released our product, called WorkLight, in January 2007 at the DEMO conference, and it is now generally available. WorkLight is currently implemented and being used at several Global 500 corporations. We operate from our offices in Boston, MA and Yakum, Israel.  

What is your vision as the founder?

Shahar: For the last 18 years, I have been involved in different aspects of enterprise software as an engineer, manager and Venture Capital investor. The general direction enterprise software took during these years is towards more functionality but also great complexity. Information systems have become extremely complex to implement and offer a very poor user experience. In striking contrast to that, on the consumer side of the internet, things have gone drastically towards simplicity, as far as the end-user is concerned. Google, for example, has taught us all a lesson about the power of simplicity, which hides a lot of complexity “under the hood”. My vision is that employees will be able to enjoy the fun and productivity associated with all the new “web 2.0″ tools and services in their work environment. We introduce new ways of access to enterprise data, which are taken from the consumer world. For example, sales, inventory, orders and financial information will be accessible to employees in a personalized and convenient way, just like getting blog updates through RSS, building a Personalized Google page or creating a Yahoo widget.

What is the biggest challenge a modern organization needs to face in terms of information management today? How does WorkLight help solve it?

Shahar: Employees increasingly rely on information to do their job. This information is available from multiple enterprise applications, each one coming with its own proprietary, and often cumbersome, user interface. Workers need to login to each relevant application, search for the appropriate data record, and only then use it in the context of the business task at hand. The typical result is that employees either are not using the applications altogether, or suffer from what IDC calls “death by navigation”: a deadly effect on worker morale and productivity. Finding and consuming information is exactly what the Internet does so well for us as consumers. With WorkLight, people at work use the same services familiar to them at home to access enterprise data. WorkLight harnesses web 2.0 technologies to solve the information access problem. Enterprise application data become just like web content; accessible in the same form as web content and by means of the same web technologies. Furthermore, application data and web content can be freely mixed. We constantly add more web 2.0 interfaces to enterprise data to our current collection, which includes RSS, gadgets and widgets, popular personalized homepages, Instant Messaging and Social Bookmarking.

There is heavy debate regarding the maturity of enterprise 2.0. WorkLight is a Marquis company in that respect and one of the first to have raised significant early stage funding.  Would you define WorkLight as an enterprise 2.0 company?  Was it hard to rally quality investors behind the vision?

Shahar: There is indeed a lot of debate what is scope and definition of Enterprise 2.0, and I’m not sure that I have a clear position on that subject. Our customers are mostly unaware of the Enterprise 2.0 theme, but are very much aware of the widening gap between the “at work” and “at home” computing experience. What is important for WorkLight is that we solve a known and substantial business problem, and as result have a solid business model. This made things quite easy for us on the fund-raising front, not our association with a hot trend.

The borders between personal and corporate information are getting shadier. For example, you see personal blogs by executives becoming a legitimate part of the corporate and marketing strategy. But it also redefines information flow and security requirements inside the organization. What is your view on the expected evolution in that area?

Shahar: I am a big believer in blurring these boarders and eventually eliminating them completely. There is no reason why the employee needs to go back into the “dark ages” when at work. The corporation needs to take care of the infrastructure to enable this consumer-like experience in a secure and scalable way, and let the users do the rest.

Who do you believe you would eventually be “selling to”? The CIO? IT? Marketing? HR?

Shahar: Even from our first few sales an interesting picture arises: we are selling to the business units, where the business problem is painful. Often, end-users themselves are the drivers for change and incorporation of web 2.0 technologies in their workplace, facilitating a “grass-roots” process. This can be the sales, marketing, HR or finance department. IT is then engaged in the process to verify that the product adheres to corporate policies, mainly security.

At the personal level, as a start-up-ist, what are the most fulfilling moments you have? most challenging?

Shahar: The most fulfilling moments are when you see that something so young and fragile as a start-up company is able to impact people. This can be your customers, for whom you are able to generate real value and change the way they work. It can be industry analysts or potential business partners that positively react to your new technology. And it is certainly your employees who get engaged in something adventurous and innovative. Challenging moments are mostly related to the lonely feeling of a small company with limited resources “fighting” against the whole world.

How do you deal with the “chicken and egg” situation of the early stage - getting the product ready for the customers in parallel to getting the customers who define the product?

Shahar: We did not really suffer from this problem. We were able to get enough customers engaged in a very early stage, before the product was ready, just based on their need for a solution and the innovative nature of our technology. There are organizations, notably in the financial services sector, that have a strategic goal to identify and incorporate new technologies, and these people are great partners for a company in its first year.

What would make 2007 a successful year for WorkLight and for you?

Shahar: 2006 was the year of company setup and initial product development. We were delighted to be able to implement the product at several huge organizations and garner a lot of interest in our offering. 2007 is dedicated to extending our reach into more customer organizations in more markets and enriching the product with more “web 2.0″ capabilities. If at the end of the year our solution will be used by tens-of-thousand of people and will significantly impact their work experience, I will regard it a success.

      

We all know this problem. How can we get our hands around the research that is relevant to our business? Research tracking has become impossible, particularly in an Internet start-up where the full time job is already filled with several full time tasks.

Danny Cohen of Gemini decided to grab one bull by the horn. He opened a research library that covers web 2.0 and Venture Capital. In the process he has also spun his eSnips account very cunningly, showing that the potential for sharing is basically infinite given the right environment. The folder can be reached here:

I personally plan to use it.

      

This is not a real news flash. It just makes sense. Here is why:

Its not long before we see these icons added to the www.google.com/a page

All that remains is to fill in the $__,___,____ for the figure.

On a more serious note. 37signals , the smallest-biggest SME SaaS provider released “Highrise” a new contact, lead management tool (see the most updated review on mashable).

My bet is that Google is already having talks with 37Signals. These companies are so compliant it just makes sense.

In a totally unrelated event (TheMarker’s Internet Convention) - Dr. Yoelle Maarek Director at Google’s R&D Center in Haifa-Israel, said Google does not aspire to compete with Microsoft. After repeating the mantra of “we organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” she went on to say Google is about moving data to the net (only to organize it and make it more useful, of course). Well, the recent launch of Google Apps its a definite “military march” as far as Microsoft is concerned.

If you run a small business (and this will apply to Fortune500 in 5 years as well) you have got to make a decision - how do you set up your communication infrastructure? how do you manage your enterprise? How do your workers, clients and suppliers collaborate? etc. etc.

Without dwelling into a long “KPMG type” of analysis, Aner’s recent experience of selecting an online provider for his business applications proves the point. The bottom line is that he is very close to running his business “Microsoft free”. True - this is not competition - its more like a brutal hijack!

As if taken out of a sci-fi movie - users are being snatched into a new parallel reality were ‘things’ are managed away from the desktop, where new software is not measured by the length of the feature list, where the interface is simple, prices are fair and the language is friendly.

Google Apps is a step in the right direction but it doesn’t deliver the 1-2-3 punch. And we all know that Google likes to knockout.

The 1G mail was a huge knockout.

Now let’s connect the dots. Out of all the good companies which provide SaaS today, which one, joining forces with Google, could deliver the 1G knockout or more like the 1MT (mega ton) punch? I believe its 37signals.

This is why I believe tomorrow’s headlines will read “Google to acquire 37signals”

      

A year ago, following TheMarker’s “Com.vention” (a very high profile Internet convention in the local Israeli scene) I wrote a post about my Uncom.ventional thoughts.
I pulled this post out of the closet when I registered this year, to recap my after thoughts. This time I am adding my ‘bet’ in advance. My notes are inline in CAPs - tell me what you think:

• Internet Access - All the conventions I have been to in the past 2 years had wi-fi. In all of them going on line is a nightmare – no connection, slow connection, bad connection – am I missing something or are the organizers cheap?

THE ANSWER IS YES - AND NO CHANGE THIS YEAR.

• Web 2.0 - to be cool or to be fool?

HMMM - STILL A TRICKY ANSWER. YOU DEFINITELY HAVE TO BE MORE SOPHISTICATED THIS YEAR BUT MORE OF A CHANCE TO BE A FOOL

• Truth or Dare? - How can an Ex entrepreneur, now successful VC panelist answer the question “Are we witnessing the emergence of a second bubble” with a straight face? He as well as many other “guru’s” fluked their way into money during the big bubble – what do they know?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING - AND THIS TIME I HAVE PROOF (TO BE DISCLOSED AT A LATER DATE)

• Yossi Vardi 1 - Israeli’s go- “Remind me what Yossi Vardi did after ICQ?” The rest of the world - “ICQ is one phenomenal success – respect”

THE ULTIMATE PRIME MINISTERS/ PRESIDENTS PENSION PLAN - WELL PAID LECTURES.

• Yossi Vardi 2 - Having said that….does every dot.com convention in Israel have to turn into a Yossi Vardi “we are not worthy” fest?

YES - ALSO KNOW AS “VARDIGRAS”.

SERIOUSLY THIS TIME - HE IS A TRUE PHENOMENON WHO PROMOTES THE LOCAL INDUSTRY A LOT

• Dress code - Do lucky individuals who have made a huge exit get an automatic ‘pass’ to under dress? Will I do that (not if…when ).

YES…AND YES

• Babble’bation - Is the internet the mother of all channels or just another channel – I heard “definitely yes, but in certain ways not, when it comes down to it we’ll have to see how it plays out”. Oh’ by the way, it was the same person who gave that answer…hiding it in a cleaver 10 minute babel’bation . Some panelists have no shame.

NO SHAME - PANELIST ARE UNDER AN OBLIGATION TO MAKE 20 SECOND ANSWERS AT LEAST 2 MINUTES LONG (I SAW THEIR CONTRACT )

• The Google Shadow - There was a Panel called – “How Google disrupts and creates businesses” - copy paste the answer from the above. Its like dah…can I get some answers please…

HERE’S A CHANGE - NOW ITS HOW DO OTHERS DISRUPT GOOGLE FROM MAKING TONS OF MONEY. SEE ANER’S GREAT LAST POST

• The Blogsphere is a myth - Amit Shafir - President of AOL’s premium services said that the recent blogging / self reporting trend will come and go – unofficial quote - “the effectiveness of writing and distribution is maximized through centralized portals” (such as AOL). Is he a fool or prophet? BTW – he admitted that he gets much better information by speaking to his 14 year old daughter then he gets by paying tons of $$ to marketing research firms at AOL – with that I won’t argue.

IF SOMEONE TURNS OUT TO BE THIS STUPID THIS TIME - I AM PULLING MY MEGAPHONE OUT AND INTERVENING

• The Long Tail - I was exposed to the “The long tail” theory for the first time – like it! This is the one time I am for the tail that waggles its dog.

MY GUESS IS THAT ITS NOT GOING TO BE MENTIONED AS MUCH. IT WAS A HOT BUZZWORD LAST YEAR. THIS YEAR DRM, UGC AND MOBILE SEARCH ARE.

• ROI - Conventions in general – wasted time or invested time?

NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE DAMM MEASURED. WE ALL NEED SOME TIME AWAY FROM THE OFFICE TO REGROUP AND SEE EACH OTHER FACE TO FACE. PRICELESS. AND DON’T GIVE ME THIS “OHH NO I LOST 8 HOURS OF EMAILS AND MEETINGS…BOOOHOOOO”

• Real time blogging - What’s the maximum sentence for breaking the blogger’s sacred law #23? – you must report live from any visited convention floor with short and succinct posts loaded with info and smart insights.

WILL PROBABLY NOT DO IT - SEE WIFI EXCUSE ABOVE.

BOTTOM LINE - WE GO, WE MEET, WE ENJOY THEN WE COMPLAIN…AND REGISTER AGAIN THE NEXT YEAR.

SEE YOU THERE.

      

I may be just a tad over my head here, but Mark Cuban is taking a problematic stand in the Viacon - GooTube charade.

In my previous post I wondered about the sense behind this suing. It didn’t take a prophet to predict high satisfaction from the Mark Cuban front and the prophecy indeed came true.

In his You Go Viacom! post Mark Cuban praises the old litigators. That’s no surprise. His criticism of Google’s self righteous de facto piracy has very often gained my sympathy as well.  

What I didn’t appreciate is the patronizing rational this time:

it never ceases to amaze and amuse me how little understanding of the content business, or the business world in general that many in the blogosphere have.

Let me provide a simple scenario for you.

HBO. HBO charges a monthly fee to subscribers. If someone can watch an HBO show on Google Video or Youtube, even if its divided into 1,3 or 6 parts and re assembled into a playlist, they have far less incentive to subscribe or retain their subscription(s).

HBO in turn, syndicates those shows to cable networks. As an example, A&E paid a reported $2.2 million dollars PER EPISODE of the Sopranos. If the content is available online, do you think maybe it might reduce the value to A&E and HBO of the Sopranos ? And that’s before we even get to overseas syndication. Youtube and Google Video have a great deal of popularity overseas because in many cases US shows are not as readily available. Online international viewing reduces the international revenue opportunity.

Then of course there are DVD sales. YouTube downloads every video right to your PC. Google Video not only downloads to your PC, it provides the option to convert it into a PDA format including the iPod.

So tell me why it makes good business sense for HBO to let users post the content they sell for a ton of money ?

Now some of those who are so self absorbed in net culture and have no idea how the real world works might think that all of this leads to more viewing and consumption. Maybe it does. Maybe for some shows, like those on broadcast TV, it really does help to have as much promotional video for the show, even to the point of full episodes available both on YouTube and Google Video. There are definitely situations where it could help a show gain viewers and increased sales of DVDs. All of which has nothing to do with whether Viacom or any content provider should let users upload video.

I have a secret for you. ITS EASY FOR END USERS TO UPLOAD video to Youtube and Google Videos. ITS EASIER FOR THE CONTENT OWNER to do the same thing.

Hold it Mr. Cuban! You maybe smart but we aren’t all stupid. I first intended to re-battle the argument (posted a comment), then I saw a much better comment than mine, one that I agree with 100% and that is worth sharing in whole:

Mark, I think you’re a smart guy but I think on this issue your are myopic. Everyone who doesn’t have their head jammed up their portfolio doesn’t care. This is purely an issue for people who are already rich who want to exploit their IP to become richer. Real artists are happy when people see their art.

If you make money on a business model which relies upon withholding your content from the masses your model is over. Maybe there is money to be made by fighting content-sharing for another decade (maybe a lot). In the long run the more you get your content out the better. There are a lot of people out there who can get it for free who will pay for it especially when they know the companies they are dealing with are not the corporate equivalent of retarded whores. I honestly think people should go out of their way to download corporate music rather than buy it because the RIAA is such a dastardly organization.

…

Peace and keep posting
Roland

Loved to have said it that well myself.

      

The devils greatest trick was convincing man that he didn’t exist, Baudelaire

Our informal corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” Google Code of Conduct

It’s been a week since I tried moving my company to Google Apps.

(1) My domain has yet to be verified.

(2) My Partner still has no access to his old calendar.

(3) My support call has yet to receive a human or a relevant response.

I did get an automated response though, a totally useless one that copied text from the website, text I was intelligent enough to read in the first place.

Hello Google Support!! Anybody Home??

      

Shnick-Shnack is not a word you’ll find in Webster or in Wikipedia but it should get there soon. In one of my recent trips to Europe, someone quoted a big shot CEO for one of the leading mobile operators as saying early in 2000 that “ringtones are shnick-shnacks” or in other words “irrelevant” OR “not significant” ….yada yada yada, 7 years later, they have generated a multi-billion dollar industry.

The context of the conversation was one of humbleness. One should not dismiss what seems like a shnick-shnack service at a wave of hand, with a dismissive ..“…this will never catch on…” attitude. Sometimes people want shnick-shnacks. Sometimes shnick-shnacks let you get personal, express yourself. Fontip is just that kind of thing.

Is this shnick-shnack of what

Incredimail is another perfect example for a shnick-shnack service. Do you really need it?No. Does it solve any technological barrier? No. Is it innovative in a way that can’t be duplicated? No. Yet these are ‘VC type’ questions. People have psychological motivations and drives and look for services that answers such needs regardless of passing the ‘investment benchmark’ checklist.

If Fontip is first to serve the need to personalize sms’s and does it well, there is no reason why it can’t be a huge success. Making communications personal (and cool) has landed Incredimail with a huge install base with around 50 million client downloads!

Will Fontip follow suite? I’m no prophet but there is no reason why they shouldn’t. There is no reason why out of the billions of SMS users there will not be enough ‘personalization’ freaks that will go ahead and down load it.

Competition may come from the handset providers, with them creating built tools or similar services, but with such a wide audience there should be a room for them all.

Is this another 7 billion dollars shnick-shnack market, probably not, but the power of shnick-shnack has surprised before.

Gil Rosen

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The death of the Mobile Operators’ Closed Garden and the Dawn of the Smart Pipe
by Gil Rosen

Friday February 23rd 2007, 6:40 am
Filed under: web 2.0, freedom, business, Gil Bio, user experience

3GSM was overwhelming - Any trade show that takes you more then three straight days to walk through is. From system integrators, content providers, enablers, device manufactures - the industry has indeed matured.

Out of the hustle of such a big event, there is one mega trend that I’d like to focus on - the death of the closed garden and the emergence of the smart pipe.

To understand why this is happening I think we need to quickly examine the role of the ‘Garden’ and see how it came to be in the the first place.

Many Internet years ago, when the world wide web had just started reaching mobile devices, when such devices were few, when they were expensive and of with horrible quality of service - mobile operators felt obligated to fill the default Internet home page with mobile adapted content. This, in turn, was supposed to have given users a good enough reason to surf from their mobile. The mobile content market was non existent and there was simply depth for users to find their own content. In addition, the companies providing mobile content were inexperienced and scarce. WAP was a techie buzzword, but all consumers got was a poor and slow experience, very much inferior compared to what they were getting used to on the PC.

Ego was (and still is) another factor. Yes, pure ego. Mobile operator executives believed (some still believe) that the mobile Internet should not be free as the “PC” Internet. The basic “rational” was that since they controlled the ‘gateway’ already they could and should control the content. This attempt is similar to what AOL has done very successfully for a long time - provide your subscribers with a content portal through which most of the content was consumed.

Most users have supposedly basic needs and when information is prearranged for them - they supposedly just use it, many times being unaware of the rich world beyond the fence. In the regular (PC) world it would be unheard of to have your ISP control your content but in the mobile world it became the de-facto reality.

The accumulated result drove many operators to try and develop in-house content divisions whose sole purpose was to fill the portal with content and services. Since part of the problem was the scarcity of the content, this was a necessary evolutionary step for the mobile Internet to develop. Someone had to get the snow ball rolling.

Today, I believe, the snowball has reached its critical mass ad guess what? People want more. Almost all new devices come with Internet connectivity, screen quality is good, connectivity fast/er, mobile content is abundant, mobile applications easy to install, WAP is rich, an open mobile billing ecosystem is in place, there is an understanding that the mobile web is different (more passive then active), services and sites have developed accordingly and most importantly users are getting more sophisticated. They actually know how to reach the web, save bookmarks and change default settings, all in all leading to the maturity level required to change the closed garden model as we know it.

My argument is not that the portal is dead, but that it can no longer be closed. Operators must focus on two major and parallel agendas:

1. Provide users with selected, popular, edgy content through the portal - a good example is mobile TV. Mobile TV broadcast is not mature enough to be outside the portal.

2. open the portal and work hard on partnering / enabling third party, independent, niche content/service providers serve users directly. Let users roam the mobile Internet world and reach places that are far from the portal as could be - and actually promote it. When more users will roam free, the more they will understand how to use it better and increase their data consumption, overall benefiting the mobile operators more then anyone else.
The almost incredulous statement I am making is that there is such a thing as mobile Internet. There isn’t! The mobile device is only a terminal. The Internet is the same Internet only viewed by a different lens. Its the years of indoctrination that have led most people to perceive them as two separate universes.

For several years now I have heard Mobile operator executives fearful of what they call becoming a dumb pipe. I don’t know who invented this word, but the psychological association in it has made the industry paranoid of what can be (and in my mind should be) the modus operandi for making loads of money - and its far from being dumb.

Becoming a pipe that effectively channels content while creating adequate processes for billing, content delivery and quality of service assurance (and a ton of other things) is very sophisticated, far from dumb. Dumb is thinking you rule the world. Smart is understanding your users want more choice then you (as an operator) can ever supply. Happy customers and loyal. That is the focus.

Focusing on loyalty through openness and wide selection of added value service, whether in house or external, is the right challenge ahead. Trying to win ground by holding on to something that is not yours is a battle all ready lost.

Gil Rosen

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Conference mania – the tree holocaust!
by Gil Rosen

Wednesday February 07th 2007, 4:15 pm
Filed under: freedom, social, business, Gil Bio, user experience

I am hectically preparing for 3GSM in Barcelona next week. A great venue by all standards. As a presenter, there is a mountain of collateral to prepare - the service overview, the technical white paper, the content provider offering, the mobile operator offering, the stand background, the poster, the this, the that.

So here I am trying to do what most people do before a show and then it strikes me what a waste it all is. We all know but hardly admit that most of these papers will be thrown away or at best looked at very briefly. And what do we do about it? Nothing.

This stupid (sorry, couldn’t find a better word) march of industry clones that exchange papers from one hand to the next and on to the closest waste basket. We often even deliver the paper overseas and back into our offices and then throw it or put it on some shelf to stand there as a silent testimonial “we were there” … but rarely look at it again. The one or two times we do take another look is come preparation time for the next show – then we pick it up and see what interesting ideas we can use for this year’s show – and so the paper parade continues and no-one is shouting that the king has no clothes.

It’s not that the information within is useless, it has some (limited) value. That too is usually filled with empty promises and a stack load of buzzwords. That I could take. But why for heaven’s sake do we need to kill so many trees in the process?

The same info, the same sheets should not leave their original electronic formats. They should stay on websites, PCs, USB drives, you name it – put please do not print it.

We can be very critical of our politicians for not doing enough to save the world BUT WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT in our closed garden? NADA.

I would like to see the first mobile / web / telecom etc. tradeshow pick up the challenge and declare – PRINTABLE MATERIALS ARE BANNED!

Simple and to the point. It will not harm the venue quality, even help it. All these carry-on bags are useless. You want to give me something – tell me where to look it up online, transfer me an electronic file. Anything but paper.

It is we that are destroying the forests in Brazil, not someone else! Its about time we put an end to this killing spree.

Gil Rosen

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MetaCafe On the Right Track
by Aner Ravon

Wednesday February 07th 2007, 9:38 am
Filed under: web 2.0, social, Aner Bio, business

MetaCafe appointed a new CEO today. Erick Hachenburg of Electronic Arts will be replacing Co-Founder Arik Czerniak. This move is the most recent in a series of executive recruits which included new VP of Sales, VP of Marketing and Executive Chairman. A quick look at Mr. Hachenburg’s resume reveals deep experience in online media executive and business management. Perhaps more importantly, Mr. Hachenburg brings along recent and successful experience from the Asian market for which he was responsible at Electronic Arts.  

According to Allison Campa, MetaCafe’s VP of Marketing, MetaCafe had 17 million unique visitors in December, an increase from 16 million unique visitors in November. Such volume must be monetizable, period, and no one should know better how to monetize it than an ex-GM Asia from a company that generated $3B from online media last year alone. 

I argued before that YouTube has not conquered the market, simply because the market is still at it’s infancy. There’s plenty of room for MetaCafe (and others) to grow. The Asian market may prove more promising in the long run and MetaCafe have already established good presence there.

In online media market share means a little less than absolute traffic. People watch more than one TV station and read more than one newspaper. The same logic applies to the Internet as well. If video advertising takes off, so will both YouTube and MetaCafe regardless of their respective market share. If, on the other hand, video advertising will not live up to the promise then both will need to get creative.

In either case, most of the critiques would happily trade places with MetaCafe. 17 Million unique views per mo