Big Ideas

Ads are bad mmkay?

So says Philips:
Advertising Age - Philips' Innovative Ad Campaign Makes Media the Message

Of course, they're using ads to get this message across... Feels like a Sprite campaign :)


Technorati Tags: advertising, consumer attention,

Embracing and supporting developers..exploring the ecosystem a bit more.

Forbes has a piece today on Google's (and yes, all the other online players too...but that's not a sexy headline :-) ) approach towards developers. This touches on a point I made previously (see: "This is an important point in time.." ).

I thought that this was a pretty good discussion of why empowering developers is important and how it can help companies: a) Grow more quickly b) Create good will c) Get people to work for them for free. To their credit, unlike many of the bloggers and journalists who like to portray Google as inventing something brand new here, they actually highlight the fact that Microsoft and Oracle have been playing the developer game for a long time.

This brings me to a question: What do you need to do in order to persuade developers to develop for your platform?

The article says that Eric Schmidt comments on the fact that developers aren't making much money at the moment and draws a parallel to the early days of the PC. Ok, so, assuming that I buy that it was tough going early on for PC developers (it strikes me that there were/are a lot of consulting opportunities for these guys, just like the consulting opportunities that the Hotcatcha developer is seeing) what's the evolution for the web service developer? Is the model always going to be advertising for these developers and if so, are they really able to make enough money this way? Is money even the primary motivator?

Going down this route of logic leaves me with even more questions:
- Does this mean that a developer can't just be content programming, they also have to be concerned with traffic creation?
- In the PC sector, weren't developers able to keep basically all of the revenues associated with their work? How does that fit with the fact that the advertising players (Google, Yahoo!, MSN etc) are keeping a share of the revenues?
- What does this mean for the margins of the advertising players? It occurs to me that Microsoft never had to face margin issues due to revenue sharing deals.
- What's the real motivation for developers to develop on top of these platforms? Is it mostly financial or is there something else? It almost feels like there's more to be said for the enjoyment of developing something cool/unique using the infrastructure and data of a very large company. You don't have to deal with the pieces that you don't like, you can just focus on what you really want to build.

Now, this is just a half-baked blog entry, to be honest. I don't have a definite opinion on several of these things, but I believe that they are issues that need to be thought about. (The margin item, in particular, is something that makes me wonder about Google as an investment. If Microsoft/Yahoo! make inroads in search market share, Google's revenue split would shift to its Network, where the gross margins are worse, which would then really change its valuation right?)

But where I think there's something really meaningful here is when I think about my last question. There are many reasons that a developer might want to tap into your platform and develop for it. I don't think it's clear that you have to offer the most money to developers. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I'm pretty sure that money isn't good enough if the development options aren't appealing. If you take a look at Open Source software development, I think it's pretty clear that the people involved in Linux weren't envisioning a financial reward at the end, they just really liked the project. So in my view, the key task, for anyone wanting to tap into the development community and to get them to "work for free" for you, is to ensure that they can pursue their interests. If you can simultaneously figure out how to structure the work in a way that presents developers with options that are appealing to them and that takes care of the work that they find to be mind-numbingly boring, you probably have a winner on your hands, regardless of financial incentives. Essentially, a developer is probably saying:

"Find a way to tap into my interests and I'll give you my free time, provided that you remove the crap work that I don't like doing."

Wait a second! Is that only applicable to developers?

I don't think so :-)

More to come on this later. Think it over for a bit though. Comment if you're confused, I'll try to clarify the things that don't make sense. Gotta get back to work for now :)

Technorati Tags: business strategy, supporting your ecosystems, creating an ecosystem, open source strategy, supporting developers, economy of influence, satisfying interests

Here's a quick prediction/suggestion

A piece on the upcoming Nintendo Wii in the NYT (New Product by Nintendo for Holidays - New York Times) prompted this thought:

Microsoft's got its own networked strategy (that is pretty damn intelligent and should yield them a pretty penny in a few years), Sony thinks it has a strategy (it really doesn't) but what is Nintendo's?

So here's my prediction/suggestion: Nintendo should partner with one of the big online players (of course I would favor Yahoo! :) ) for some of the Internet services they're looking to provide.

Why go down the path of building their own photo services and Internet destinations? Work with one of us (or hell, several) to provide interesting web services that are particularly suited for the Wii. Sure, go ahead and develop casual games, but adapt the ones that Yahoo! has for play on the Wii. Take the casual games that Nintendo develops and make them available to the broader Internet community via Yahoo! It seems to me that there's a lot of complementary work that can be done here AND both Y! and Nintendo have stated their intentions to really focus on the mass market. Yes, both co's want to satisfy the needs of the hard core techie/gamer, but they also want to take the really innovative work in their respective spaces and apply them in ways that benefit the average user.

Am I missing something here? Is this a stupid idea for any reason?




Technorati Tags: Nintendo Wii, Yahoo!, Online gaming, partnership idea, prediction

A quick take on dating and honesty...

This is awesome.... Not only funny, but pretty insightful and accurate. They've got a whole series on this stuff

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=74973

Technorati Tags: dating, comedy central web shorts, honesty, insecurity and attraction

For all of you Lost fans..

Over the past several weeks I must have had 4 different people tell me that they're getting addicted to the show Lost and that I should check it out. Well, I still refuse to do so (mostly because I'm sure that they're right and I really don't have time for more tv addictions) but Chuck Klosterman, one of my favorite writers, says that it's the, "bets network drama in the history of television".

Not only that, but his piece on the continued success of reality television and why it's here to stay is excellent. It's not the most upbeat of viewpoints, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
Esquire:Feature Story: Tenacious TV

So, what kind of tv fan are you? Do you prefer to see the "ungreat" or the extraordinary. I'm sure you can guess which camp I'm in :)




Technorati Tags: Lost, Chuck Klosterman,

Newsflash: Quarterly focus sucks the life out of CEOs..

An interesting piece that my friend Viktor passed on to me that discusses the increasing focus upon LBO opportunities in the tech sector:
The LBO Gang Storms The Valley

Now, it seems pretty natural to me that as businesses mature, they become increasingly attractive to the LBO shops. Companies have a tendency, over time, to hire too much and become inefficient while establishing sustainable lines of revenue and cash flow.

What I found interesting in this piece is the emphasis on a different storyline: that the management of the companies in question are tired of the stress that comes with managing on a quarterly basis. I personally believe that the quarterly focus of most public companies is one of their largest Achilles heels'. When you're trying to lead a company, you have to think about the long run, but the quarterly emphasis of the stock market has the tendency to shift the thinking of company executives. I often wonder if the best approach is the one that's been adopted by a few companies: to not provide any guidance or talk about future expectations whatsoever. This doesn't feel particularly novel, however. What I'd really like to see is a market that better accepts and rewards those who take the long view of their companies.  That endorses management teams that make investments for the future, that bet on numerous projects and that are willing to shift strategy quickly if they see the trends of their market changing. Is it possible? I don't know. But I'd really like to see it happen.





Technorati Tags: buyouts, management for the long run, the burden of quarterly reporting

Evolving the mobile interface

My friend Mike pointed this out to me last night:
New BlackBerry is an absolute Pearl - Wireless World - MSNBC.com

I've talked about the importance of interface a couple times before in my blog (http://bigideas.typepad.com/index/2006/03/welldesigned_us.html  and http://bigideas.typepad.com/index/2006/03/its_the_interfa.html). I'm going to keep bringing this up though: the interface matters. More than most of us give it credit for. Make the interface terrifically intuitive and powerful and you'll broaden your initial appeal and probably be able to convert a portion of a larger audience to your product/service.

Which is exactly why when I read this review I basically leapt out of my chair when I got to this point:

"Aside from its size, Pearl’s best new feature is its revolutionary
pointing device — a tiny, full-function trackball. Of course, it’s made
to look like a little pearl. It’s easy to use and makes this device a
snap to navigate.  Better than up, down, left and right buttons. All
other manufacturers take note — a trackball seems to be the way to go
on a small smartphone."

Oh man, I wish I'd thought of that. It's genius! Seriously, a trackball??? I always hated them as a replacement for the mouse; they were clumsy and not nearly as accurate, in my opinion. With laptops they were perhaps a little better, but I felt that the position of my hands on the keyboard in relation to the trackball always hindered my competence with them. But a small device that I hold in one hand and lends itself to using my thumb in a pretty intuitive manner? That makes sense to me. I imagine that there should be some interesting developments in how the trackball is refined but I'm betting that it catches on. If they can get the tactile feel right, make sure that the trackball rolls smoothly but not too freely and they can also incorporate the ability to select items by pushing on the trackball well... I think we might just have the makings of an iPod interface killer here :)

What do you think? Does a trackball sound like a great idea to you? Do you want one? This review alone made me want to go buy one and damn the carriers for signing stupid exclusive deals.




Technorati Tags: interface, mobile interface, mobile devices, blackberry pearl, blackberry, simple genius