December 2007 - Posts

• Despite Challenges -- Telcos Remain Well Positioned to Play and Win on the Web...

  Anyone familiar with this blog, with me, or with my company will know that I am passionate about a few things – including my steadfast belief that global telcos and broadband service providers – despite being underdogs in the fight against facebook  -- possess a unique and powerful legacy that makes them very capable of becoming a serious player in the race to blend online advertising and social networking.     Over the past few years a number of different people – mainly VCs -- have reminded me that Telcos have a horrible track record of delivering application services innovation – and it would be much wiser to build SMBLive by taking our application services directly to the market. A direct quote from one person was “don’t weigh yourselves down with telco bureaucracy”.   To be fair, I certainly understand and appreciate the perspective, especially when I continue to read fascinating articles like this one published on the cover of this week’s issue of Information Week. The story recaps how the world’s telco giants – fat, dumb, and slow – gathered in Monte Carlo this past spring for some fun – and, oh yeah, highly strategic planning pertaining to IP Multimedia Subsystem, or IMS -- the technology that big telcos had once identified as the platform for creating web based applications quickly and easily. According to Graham Finnie, author of the article, IMS was the long awaited savior that would “enable telcos to finally escape their dependence on a handful of commodity services”.  Yet for all its benefits, IMS has been slow to progress into practical reality. Simultaneously, outside the telco castle walls, web innovation has progressed at lightning speed.   Finney remind us that Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the Facebook Platform just 4 weeks after the ill fated telco gathering in Monaco and suggests that Facebook is the perfect surrogate for the types of issues that inherently prevent telcos from rapidly innovating. It’s a well told and fascinating story that I happen to agree with on many levels – especially the conclusion which suggests that despite the rapid rise of Facebook in the midst of continued telco stagnation – the game is far from over.   Consider innovative new services such as BT Tradespace which is a simple way for small businesses to promote themselves on the web so they can attract more customers, sell more things, and manage important relationships with prospects and friends -- with no IT expertise required. Still not convinced, consider what actual small businesses are saying – “Tradespace incorporates both an area to advertise, and a community area…BT Tradespace looks like it will be the sort of place to kill two birds with one stone.”   While Telcos continue to struggle with service innovation – it would be a mistake to forget their highly exploitable strengths such as brand awareness, big balance sheets, millions of customers, and long-standing regulatory privileges.  In the end, I continue to believe that telcos in general have what it takes to give Facebook and others a run for their money by blending online advertising and social networking into easy to use service offerings. The question is who among them are brave enough and fast enough to adapt??? Posted Monday, December 17, 2007 1:04 PM from Matt Howard | 0 Comments

• Phonebook vs. Ph-acebook – The Battle is Brewing

  The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Facebook is a fascinating dichotomy – and far from a guaranteed success.   On one hand, with a reported 60 million user generated profiles, thousands of third-party developers creating innovative new apps every day, and a $15 billion valuation – Facebook is clearly on fire. A true force in the business of “social networking” facilitating conversations among online communities of people.   On the other hand, with revenue rumored to be strangely opposite to conventional business and marketing interests, and an embarrassing failure in their first effort to monetize via advertising – Facebook is clearly a work in progress. A baby in the woods filled with giant, old school, highly profitable, competitors greatly experienced in connecting millions of people via traditional communications and directory listings.   I am not naïve about Facebook’s position of strength – and I am not suggesting (even for a second) that they are going to disappear tomorrow. I am simply suggesting that it’s very early in the game – and that the web is a killer platform for connecting people which is open to everyone in the world for rapid innovation. In that sense, I believe that the dynamics that helped make FB an overnight success -- could easily accrue to the benefit of experienced players who are well positioned to facilitate conversations and connections among online communities of people at a massive scale.   Idearc is one example of a formidable, publicly traded, player with > $3 billion in revenue and literally millions of consumer and business listings already populated in their collection of online and offline directories. While these guys don’t have a developer ecosystem, and they can’t hold a candle to Facebook in terms of innovation – they do have decent technology, they know how to sell directory ads to “main stream” small businesses, and they have the muscle necessary to put listings in front of lots and lots of eyeballs, both offline and online.   Another example of a formidable player is Yellowpages.com. The company is led by Charles Stubbs, an old school telco guy who seems to deeply understand the importance of driving “commerce centric” value for small businesses on the web. In a recent interview Stubb’s said he “wants to deliver what small businesses want most -- customer leads”. How’s that for a simple and powerful value?   While Facebook is well positioned to continue to grow as a facilitator of “socially centric” networks of people – I think that global telcos are even better positioned to succeed as facilitators of “commerce centric” networks of small businesses and people. I also believe that this “commerce centric” battlefield is where the “social networking” war will be won or lost. Posted Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:11 PM from Matt Howard | 1 Comments

• Ph-acebook vs. Phonebook -- The biggest fight you've never heard of

  hold Posted Thursday, December 06, 2007 4:19 PM from Matt Howard | 0 Comments

• The Canary Sings an Apology -- Facebook CEO Says Sorry for Beacon Fiasco

  This just in from the WSJ.  Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook Inc., issued an apology -- delivered via the company's blog -- for mistakes the company made in rolling out the Beacon advertising system. In  a purely naked post Mr. Zuckerberg wrote "We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them," Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it." With > 30 million users around the globe -- and with a newly minted $15 billion valuation -- Facebook is clearly the early favorite in the race to blend social networking with online advertising. In a race like this -- i am not sure if it is better to be the favorite, or, the underdog?  Don't get me wrong, i'd kill to be in Facebook's shoes because they clearly have the scale and an amazing opportunity to define an entirely new game on the web.   That said, i think the beacon fiasco and the events of the past few weeks show that it is still very early days and Facebook's world domination is not going to come as easy as some people think. So while it's definitely better to be the favorite -- i truly believe it is dangerous to under-estimate the underdogs, of which there are plenty of very large and capable players learning every step of the way from Facebook's good, and bad, moves. Posted Wednesday, December 05, 2007 4:11 PM from Matt Howard | 1 Comments

• Light Me Up a Cigar -- We're Going to the Fumoir

  Ivan Croxford, has started a blog.   If you’re familiar at all with BT Tradespace and you’re interested in understanding some of the strategic drivers behind it – then I suggest you take a close look.   The blog has a cool name – plus it provides a truly interesting perspective on how a self professed digital strategist, entrepreneur, and intrapreneur is capable of leveraging agile methodologies and sound market research to persuade a large, incumbent, and bureaucratic organization to rapidly innovate in the race to combine social networking and online advertising – two of the internet’s most powerful forces – into a logical and elegant service for connecting people and facilitating naked conversations between small businesses and consumers. Posted Tuesday, December 04, 2007 5:22 PM from Matt Howard | 0 Comments

• Facebook as the canary in the coal mine -- Where will it fly? Who will follow?

  Ben Kepes made a nice post here referencing BT Tradespace as potential player that could effectively follow the canary in the coal mine (a.k.a. Facebook) on the path toward big-time blending of “socially networked groups of people” with “small business advertisers looking for customers”. In the spirit of full disclosure, I personally and my company, SMBLive, are obviously betting that BT and other Telcos will indeed become significant and rightful players in the race to combine social networking and online advertising into a logical and elegant service for both small businesses and consumers. Obviously there are lots of other competitors following Facebook’s lead to build application services that effectively tap into a social graph – but given the Telco’s legacy strength in connecting people via communication channels – and given their legacy strength with advertising directories in the old days of the phonebooks – I think it’s entirely reasonable to think they are well positioned to play a significant and rightful role in this critical game. To be fair, I am naïve about the challenges inherent in working with Telcos as a primary distribution channel – and even casual observers of telcos would be right to question their ability to innovate rapidly and their appetite for protracted and agile investment in Web 2.0 software development. Where does the canary go? And who will follow fastest? Only time will tell. Posted Monday, December 03, 2007 12:06 PM from Matt Howard | 0 Comments