There's been a lot of chatter lately around Twitter and its inability to remain online consistently. The service is doing its best to scale but it doesn't not seem to be improving reliability overall. People are threatening to leave, which isn't a great sign for something still very much in 'early-adopter' stage, but I find the whole thing largely amusing, and I really think the user base needs to just chill out.
Twitter itself came about almost by accident. The company behind it, Obvious had the foresight to spin it off into its own entity and remain as a investor; such a shrewd move to be sure, one that could only be born out of the experience of selling Blogger to Google and getting another company - Odeo - to a stage where it could be acquired.
To put the events around Twitter into context, let me explain the perspective I have on it. I used to make video games for a living, a job I enjoyed for the most part. Some of the best times we ever had were when we saw people do things in the game that we hadn't actually intended; it's referred to as emergent gameplay; and basically you create a set of tools and the player manages to solve puzzles according to what make sense to them (it's a little more complicated than that, but that definition works none the less) - you give someone what they need and then see what they do with it.
Prior to Twitter launching, I don't think very many people could have seen it as something they needed. Trialled initially out of curiosity than anything, people users have come to love the service. Not only that, but they applied it to different situations, certainly ones that went beyond the original vision for the application. That great, but what it means is Twitter is being used for things it wasn't designed to do. Obvious, being the clever folk that they are have embraced the behaviour rather than hinder it, spawning new micro-behaviours such as "live" or "event" tweeting, taking live blogging to a new platform altogether, along with the conversation around it.
Cue major events, marketing/tech conferences, elections, natural disasters. The Twitter service suffers because of overload on the infrastructure. People in turn start complaining that Twitter isn't reliable, or scaling appropriately. Yes a few events have taken place where it has become obvious that work needs to be done on their backend, but what the tech was created for and what it was applied to are different things. Obvious are being smart and doing their best to run with that, but it is going to take some time to get right.
What it means is we have a service which is still very much in beta but that people have come to rely on the same way they rely on pieces of software that cost them hundreds if not thousands of dollars. What a fantastic development!! Unfortunately people forget it didn't cost them anything to arrive at this point and expect the same level of service they get out of their commercial software.
I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and acknowledge Twitter is a fantastic service that is having some growing pains. We're such an instant and on-demand culture nobody seems willing to acknowledge it just might take a little time to build it into the service it can be. Twitter could never say this themselves, their users would revolt and call them arrogant. But I'm on their side.
And I think they're doing a great job.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
An open letter to Vodafone
Dear Vodafone,
We've been friends for a while now, since 2003. I was with your competition, but they were a touch incompetent. I'm an international sort of guy and I liked what you were about. Plus the girl I was seeing at the time used you, and if I can trust someone enough to swap bodily fluids, then surely I can take a punt on their carrier of choice.
Things were great initially, new number was easy to remember, the free calls to my true love, and after my friends finally stopped calling the old digits, it seemed like everyone was using you. Great! Nothing like being part of the crowd to make a guy feel good about himself.
Time passed, things changed, but you remained the same. The girl had other ideas but you stayed true, online 24/7 so my friends could call and console me, even offering me new phones every now and then so I didn't think about running to your competitors. You even stayed online once new girls started to call me. You were good to me, and I was good to you. We were good to each other (and really, how many people can we say that about?!?!).
Lately though, things haven't been the same. When my last phone was an absolute piece of shit, you weren't there for me, even though you had offered it up under the guise of a "reward". That wasn't cool. You knew better. You've been OK (generally) about my new pride and joy, but as I sit here, waiting on hold to find out when you'll be done assessing my insurance claim, I've begun to wonder if maybe it isn't time to move on.
Last week, when all I needed was to give you my poor Blackberry Pearl to be repaired or replaced after a nasty run-in with the Great Southern Ocean, you kept me on hold for 40 minutes. FORTY. With the ear piece glued to my ear as, funnily enough, I need the damn thing for work.
After that I had to drive to a store. A proper store, with bricks and things holding it up. I was willing to at least experiment with the idea, we have after all been together a while, and I do want to try and make it work. But then your people (it is probably the best way to describe them, though it is in no way indicative of their true, insidious and hidden dark form) just didn't care. Really. I don't mean they were a touch laissez faire, I mean they did not care, the way a mother turtle might lay eggs and then waddle off into yonder sea, black beret tilted just so, cigarette in mouth muttering "C'est la vie..." as the gulls make ready to swoop. Not only that, they were poorly trained. Perhaps they had skipped the sections on product knowledge, retail management and general courtesy and focussed solely on Appendices with titles such as "101 ways to ignore customers" and "Things you can do to avoid doing your job". Understand, I'm not being snooty. I worked retail for years while at university. In fact I worked it full-time while studying to help my parents pay their bills; what I'm saying is I know the job can be a bitch, and I know there are extenuating circumstances that may make you feel like not being there. And there's a word for people like that, certainly for the people that manned your store that day: useless. I have other words too, like lazy, self-absorbed, and waste-of-space. Get over it or change your line of work; I hear they're still short on sand bags in New Orleans!
I'm not sure which moment stands out more - the dull glimmer of acknowledgment once a particularly fine specimen of cro magnon man clocked my person in the store (I was the only one) or when I had to correct him on his own form, advising him that "Store contact info" probably did not mean my home address. I reluctantly left the phone in his ape-ish hands and, with little option wandered into the 3 Mobile Store located conveniently next door, to get a cheap, pre-paid Skype phone. Funnily enough, they were no better (maybe it's just telecommunications retail staff in general, I know a website that can help you with that).
I was told it would be 3 - 5 working days before I had my phone back (or a new one). Great success, I can live with that. And being a little distanced from the office by not getting my email on my phone? Good for the soul.
So when it hit seven days, I became a little concerned. I decided to call your number for a chat, thinking I would show a bit of proactivity, touch base, get an up date. Not spend 45 minutes this time waiting for my call to be answered. Seriously, I know you have problems, we all have problems. But 45 minutes? Were you making soufflé by way of apology? Did I miss the invitation? I'm pretty sure I played my part, I know this dance well as I did it once already.
The thing that really brings a smile to my face though is what your insurance people finally have to say to me, after the 45 minute rehearsal. It seems when my account was switched over onto the Blackberry and away from a device born from Satan's own loins, the miscreant we'll (for the sake of the argument) call "a customer service representative" didn't move the insurance with it. So, I have an already broken and utterly useless Nokia 6288 that I haven't had a call on since July under insurance. And I have the phone you helped me switch to meeting an untimely end on a beach in Lorne. This is the equivalent of trading in a Datsun, acquiring a Nissan Z and then the mechanic being surprised when you show up with it. "Where's the Datsun?" they ask bewildered. "Datsun?" you say, "YOU WERE THERE WHEN IT LEFT!!"
So, my course of action is pretty simple here. We've had fun, really, we've had a ball. You've been there through thick and thin and captured some things on various media devices it'd be best if my parents never saw. I'm going to call in the morning and try to sort this out with your account people. If we cannot make it work, I'm going to cite irreconcilable differences. Nobody likes a drawn out custody battle, and I think we both saw this coming.
One more chance Vodafone, what happens after that is entirely up to you.
Yours sincerely,
David Gillespie
(disgruntled customer)
We've been friends for a while now, since 2003. I was with your competition, but they were a touch incompetent. I'm an international sort of guy and I liked what you were about. Plus the girl I was seeing at the time used you, and if I can trust someone enough to swap bodily fluids, then surely I can take a punt on their carrier of choice.
Things were great initially, new number was easy to remember, the free calls to my true love, and after my friends finally stopped calling the old digits, it seemed like everyone was using you. Great! Nothing like being part of the crowd to make a guy feel good about himself.
Time passed, things changed, but you remained the same. The girl had other ideas but you stayed true, online 24/7 so my friends could call and console me, even offering me new phones every now and then so I didn't think about running to your competitors. You even stayed online once new girls started to call me. You were good to me, and I was good to you. We were good to each other (and really, how many people can we say that about?!?!).
Lately though, things haven't been the same. When my last phone was an absolute piece of shit, you weren't there for me, even though you had offered it up under the guise of a "reward". That wasn't cool. You knew better. You've been OK (generally) about my new pride and joy, but as I sit here, waiting on hold to find out when you'll be done assessing my insurance claim, I've begun to wonder if maybe it isn't time to move on.
Last week, when all I needed was to give you my poor Blackberry Pearl to be repaired or replaced after a nasty run-in with the Great Southern Ocean, you kept me on hold for 40 minutes. FORTY. With the ear piece glued to my ear as, funnily enough, I need the damn thing for work.
After that I had to drive to a store. A proper store, with bricks and things holding it up. I was willing to at least experiment with the idea, we have after all been together a while, and I do want to try and make it work. But then your people (it is probably the best way to describe them, though it is in no way indicative of their true, insidious and hidden dark form) just didn't care. Really. I don't mean they were a touch laissez faire, I mean they did not care, the way a mother turtle might lay eggs and then waddle off into yonder sea, black beret tilted just so, cigarette in mouth muttering "C'est la vie..." as the gulls make ready to swoop. Not only that, they were poorly trained. Perhaps they had skipped the sections on product knowledge, retail management and general courtesy and focussed solely on Appendices with titles such as "101 ways to ignore customers" and "Things you can do to avoid doing your job". Understand, I'm not being snooty. I worked retail for years while at university. In fact I worked it full-time while studying to help my parents pay their bills; what I'm saying is I know the job can be a bitch, and I know there are extenuating circumstances that may make you feel like not being there. And there's a word for people like that, certainly for the people that manned your store that day: useless. I have other words too, like lazy, self-absorbed, and waste-of-space. Get over it or change your line of work; I hear they're still short on sand bags in New Orleans!
I'm not sure which moment stands out more - the dull glimmer of acknowledgment once a particularly fine specimen of cro magnon man clocked my person in the store (I was the only one) or when I had to correct him on his own form, advising him that "Store contact info" probably did not mean my home address. I reluctantly left the phone in his ape-ish hands and, with little option wandered into the 3 Mobile Store located conveniently next door, to get a cheap, pre-paid Skype phone. Funnily enough, they were no better (maybe it's just telecommunications retail staff in general, I know a website that can help you with that).
I was told it would be 3 - 5 working days before I had my phone back (or a new one). Great success, I can live with that. And being a little distanced from the office by not getting my email on my phone? Good for the soul.
So when it hit seven days, I became a little concerned. I decided to call your number for a chat, thinking I would show a bit of proactivity, touch base, get an up date. Not spend 45 minutes this time waiting for my call to be answered. Seriously, I know you have problems, we all have problems. But 45 minutes? Were you making soufflé by way of apology? Did I miss the invitation? I'm pretty sure I played my part, I know this dance well as I did it once already.
The thing that really brings a smile to my face though is what your insurance people finally have to say to me, after the 45 minute rehearsal. It seems when my account was switched over onto the Blackberry and away from a device born from Satan's own loins, the miscreant we'll (for the sake of the argument) call "a customer service representative" didn't move the insurance with it. So, I have an already broken and utterly useless Nokia 6288 that I haven't had a call on since July under insurance. And I have the phone you helped me switch to meeting an untimely end on a beach in Lorne. This is the equivalent of trading in a Datsun, acquiring a Nissan Z and then the mechanic being surprised when you show up with it. "Where's the Datsun?" they ask bewildered. "Datsun?" you say, "YOU WERE THERE WHEN IT LEFT!!"
So, my course of action is pretty simple here. We've had fun, really, we've had a ball. You've been there through thick and thin and captured some things on various media devices it'd be best if my parents never saw. I'm going to call in the morning and try to sort this out with your account people. If we cannot make it work, I'm going to cite irreconcilable differences. Nobody likes a drawn out custody battle, and I think we both saw this coming.
One more chance Vodafone, what happens after that is entirely up to you.
Yours sincerely,
David Gillespie
(disgruntled customer)
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
10 reasons why digital is better than advertising
One of the most fundamental rules of blogging is someone has probably said the exact same thing you did, only much, much better. After writing my Us vs. Them post, I went over to CrackUnit and dug up one of Iain's pieces from last year; 10 reasons why digital is better than advertising. For anyone wanting a basic course in the key differences between digital and other disciplines, or if you're on the digital side of the fence and just want to read the writing of someone who Gets It™, it is well worth your time.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Us vs. Them
I had the pleasure (genuinely, I'm not being sarcastic) of bumping into the Creative Director of a very successful DM arm of a big global ad agency on Friday. She was having going away drinks, moving from one office to the country's HQ. As I congratulated her on the move she happily told me that she would be over-seeing digital as well in her new posting; it was all I could do not to grab the nearest steak knife and swing it unwaveringly into a forearm - mine or someone else's, I didn't really care.
Let's get this straight, and let's not be shy about it: traditional ad folk (I'm talking above and below the line people) do not, as a general rule, get digital. It requires a different way of thinking. You cannot serve up a message to be consumed just as you created it. That completely misses the point. I had the same argument with film people when I worked in video games; you can't just transpose a narrative into a digital setting, you must consider interactivity! Otherwise you simply take the piss out of the entire fucking thing. There's a whole other notion here about why people who are only thinking about creating traditional messages are soon to be gone, but I'll leave that stuff to Hugh Macleod.
The unfortunate flip side of this is digital people can be their own worst enemies. Aware they do not get asked for any meaningful level of input, they often wind up not sharing their best ideas because they assume they either won't be listened to or the ideas will be stolen (even though that's more likely to be done by their own creative director than the traditional media folk). This creates a gruesome us vs. them mentality where nobody wins, accounts are lost, traditional media say the digital shops are hard to work with, and the digi guys say nobody listens to them. I spent long enough at a house claiming to be integrated to make me never want to work at a traditional "agency" ever again. I saw a great quote over the Christmas break by a Sydney suit saying she hated the stereotype that advertising was filled with wankers from the 80's. She may be right, but what she doesn't say is a whole new bunch of wankers came along to replace them.
In among this are some guiding lights, eager to learn and doing great work already. One person I had the pleasure of working with is Chantelle Warren who is now at M&C Saatchi in Melbourne. If this woman's C.V. ever comes across your desk, find out how many zeroes she needs then add another just for good measure; she will reward you in spades.
Unfortunately, she was a rarity. Equally unfortunate is that as digital practitioners we preach openness, sing the praises of the Creative Commons, yet we're not often willing to put those things into play when it means sacrificing our egos a little bit. This business of Marketing 2.0, to quote Jerry MacGuire, "is an up at dawn, pride-swalling siege that I will never fully tell you about." The value as I am coming to see it, is in giving the ideas away. The reality is if people don't conceive an idea in the first place, they won't know what to do with it when you're not in the room anyway. That may sound as vindictive as not sharing ideas in the first place, but at least then the clients stick around, happy with the quality of work and eager for more.
Some things will remain more effective for the time being. Demos 35 years and older are largely still well-reached by radio, even better by TV. Marketers need to realise though that people not yet 30 (this includes myself) do not reliably consume media in any of the traditional ways they've been able to reach us on, and the digital equivalent of stuffing your DM piece in my inbox or forcing me to watch tedious ads will lose you business.
And that's the way it should be.
Let's get this straight, and let's not be shy about it: traditional ad folk (I'm talking above and below the line people) do not, as a general rule, get digital. It requires a different way of thinking. You cannot serve up a message to be consumed just as you created it. That completely misses the point. I had the same argument with film people when I worked in video games; you can't just transpose a narrative into a digital setting, you must consider interactivity! Otherwise you simply take the piss out of the entire fucking thing. There's a whole other notion here about why people who are only thinking about creating traditional messages are soon to be gone, but I'll leave that stuff to Hugh Macleod.
The unfortunate flip side of this is digital people can be their own worst enemies. Aware they do not get asked for any meaningful level of input, they often wind up not sharing their best ideas because they assume they either won't be listened to or the ideas will be stolen (even though that's more likely to be done by their own creative director than the traditional media folk). This creates a gruesome us vs. them mentality where nobody wins, accounts are lost, traditional media say the digital shops are hard to work with, and the digi guys say nobody listens to them. I spent long enough at a house claiming to be integrated to make me never want to work at a traditional "agency" ever again. I saw a great quote over the Christmas break by a Sydney suit saying she hated the stereotype that advertising was filled with wankers from the 80's. She may be right, but what she doesn't say is a whole new bunch of wankers came along to replace them.
In among this are some guiding lights, eager to learn and doing great work already. One person I had the pleasure of working with is Chantelle Warren who is now at M&C Saatchi in Melbourne. If this woman's C.V. ever comes across your desk, find out how many zeroes she needs then add another just for good measure; she will reward you in spades.
Unfortunately, she was a rarity. Equally unfortunate is that as digital practitioners we preach openness, sing the praises of the Creative Commons, yet we're not often willing to put those things into play when it means sacrificing our egos a little bit. This business of Marketing 2.0, to quote Jerry MacGuire, "is an up at dawn, pride-swalling siege that I will never fully tell you about." The value as I am coming to see it, is in giving the ideas away. The reality is if people don't conceive an idea in the first place, they won't know what to do with it when you're not in the room anyway. That may sound as vindictive as not sharing ideas in the first place, but at least then the clients stick around, happy with the quality of work and eager for more.
Some things will remain more effective for the time being. Demos 35 years and older are largely still well-reached by radio, even better by TV. Marketers need to realise though that people not yet 30 (this includes myself) do not reliably consume media in any of the traditional ways they've been able to reach us on, and the digital equivalent of stuffing your DM piece in my inbox or forcing me to watch tedious ads will lose you business.
And that's the way it should be.
CERES - a lesson in authenticity
Sunday morning I went to brunch with friends as is my want. And by morning I mean 1 in the afternoon. Bless. My friend Al picked the destination, and after acquiring a couple extra we drove over to the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES), a self-sustaining organic (NOT vegetarian) farm - they call it a "community environment park" - which regularly holds a variety of lifestyle workshops (damn dirty hippies!) but also has a fantastic cafe where the owners clearly practice what they preach. Last year they won an award from the Victorian Premier for sustainability, and have been nominated for countless others.
Aside from all the obvious ways that a belief in sustainability manifests itself, there were little touches, such as laminated pieces of paper to take orders on (thus never actually throwing out the paper on which you write) and not stocking bottled water due to the landfill and other environmental issues the plastic causes.
Wandering around the park I got a real sense of what the community goals were for the place and how focussed they were. They've been going for over 25 years and continue to expand where they can, spreading a message of sustainability by doing as opposed to talking.
For all the high profile groups out there that seem just to shout louder than others, it was really refreshing to see people quietly going about their work with a sense of purpose. It rings true and there's a lesson in marketing here that backs up my experiences with AAMI recently, along with a bunch of things I'm reading right now in Made to Stick: communicating your core proposition to everyone who works for you is paramount. Drum that in to people and then get out of the way and allow them to deliver. I doubt CERES's founders were standing around one day discussing laminating a piece of paper to take an order, its the kind of idea that springs up in the moment, borne out of the raw manifestation of a company's ideals.
How many corporations can you think of where you could imagine that sort of behaviour going on?
I can't think of many either.
Aside from all the obvious ways that a belief in sustainability manifests itself, there were little touches, such as laminated pieces of paper to take orders on (thus never actually throwing out the paper on which you write) and not stocking bottled water due to the landfill and other environmental issues the plastic causes.
Wandering around the park I got a real sense of what the community goals were for the place and how focussed they were. They've been going for over 25 years and continue to expand where they can, spreading a message of sustainability by doing as opposed to talking.
For all the high profile groups out there that seem just to shout louder than others, it was really refreshing to see people quietly going about their work with a sense of purpose. It rings true and there's a lesson in marketing here that backs up my experiences with AAMI recently, along with a bunch of things I'm reading right now in Made to Stick: communicating your core proposition to everyone who works for you is paramount. Drum that in to people and then get out of the way and allow them to deliver. I doubt CERES's founders were standing around one day discussing laminating a piece of paper to take an order, its the kind of idea that springs up in the moment, borne out of the raw manifestation of a company's ideals.
How many corporations can you think of where you could imagine that sort of behaviour going on?
I can't think of many either.
The "Bidness" Model
"I don't know how much game is here. What I do know is that they have set up a system that allows me to rent my friends on a monthly basis." - Tycho, Penny Arcade
Great quote, so succinct and apt. Sun rises, sun sets, World of Warcraft continues to do its thing. I continue to avoid it out of a desire to live a productive offline life.
For now anyway.
Great quote, so succinct and apt. Sun rises, sun sets, World of Warcraft continues to do its thing. I continue to avoid it out of a desire to live a productive offline life.
For now anyway.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
And then there were two...
I've spent the last couple days thinking about what Microsoft's play for Yahoo really means for the Wide Open Spaces we call the world wide web, it having changed so quickly and constantly. And just as the dust seemed to settle around a landscape where Facebook held everyone's attention, the most dominant software company we've known sweeps in for a hostile takeover on what was the shining light of Web 1.0.
I remember reading Po Bronson's seminal Web 1.0 text Nudist on the Late Shift and being enthralled with the chapter on Yahoo!. Bronson framed it around the notion of meeting billionaires Jerry Yang and David Filo, neither of whom were yet 35, which in his eyes made the whole thing seem even more surreal. 13 years after Yahoo! was founded it finds itself mired in lay-offs, under-performing products, and perpetually treading water while everything other than Flickr fails to gain traction, and even that has been outdone by Facebook which has become the largest photo-sharing site full stop.
The play revolves around three things; search, email, and advertsing.
Search
Microsoft have long been the distant cousin in this space. Google dominate the landscape; Yahoo! hold a distant but solid second place. Indeed it can be argued they are the only ones who've been able to hold some ground against the relentless force that is AdWords. Microsoft have failed to offer up a compelling alternative to Google, and the end result is an increasing loss of market share in search while Yahoo! bail water out faster than the guy next to them. With the need to compete for second place out of the way, both companies can down-size, hone in on strengths, and be confident that nobody else has the market share to make a play for #2. What they do need to worry about is people moving away from a Yahoo! service who had arrived there in the first place because of a distaste for Microsoft.
Email (your inbox)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO) has spent more time than I care to acknowledge talking about the social graph. Simply put, it is a map of the relationships you have with people. Facebook is supposed to represent that, but Google have already pointed out that the social graph is already well represented by email; what you send and what you receive paint a far more accurate picture of your online interactions than a site coined so loosely as a "social network"; email doesn't rely on the walled garden mentality, and as such maps a more realistic path for social interactions. If one age old rule of marketing is that the most compelling campaigns are formed around trusted sources, then having a solid understanding of who an individual's sources are is key.
Microsoft & Yahoo! will have a combined online mail share of somewhere between 4 and 5 hundred million users (depending on whose numbers you use and how you skew the data). The sheer quantity of data available and what they can learn about their users is staggering; the task there though is turning it into something meaningful. Both companies have proud traditions of innovation that have somehow been lost along the way; finding that spirit again is key to taking the fight to Google and Facebook.
Interestingly, the key differentiator between Google's Gmail and the others is Google fails to offer a paid-for premium service and instead is ad-supported based on key words in the messages you send and receive. You would think a competitor to this product would have to be in the works at at least one of the companies; hopefully these products would be finished and rolled out before any moves were made towards a single super service.
Advertising & the future of online
There have been nervous mutterings recently around Google's advertising intentions. In September last year they hired Andy Berndt who was President of Olgilvy & Mather in New York, and two weeks ago announced the Publicis Group had been brought on to assist with their creative. While this is a coup for Publicis, people don't seem to understand that Google have been the dominant force in online advertising ever since the introduction of AdWords; they have been in advertising for years, the traditional media folk just didn't pick up on it because it didn't look like the advertising they were used to.
Google's presence coupled with its now approved purchase of Double Click means it wields an influence not seen since the months before Microsoft began being probed for anti-competitive tactics. People are still so worried about a giant in Redmond that Google was able to quietly go about its business and snap up anything and everything that made its search offering stronger.
Last year Microsoft finally caught up in a public way, purchasing a series of companies to kick-start its advertising play. Yahoo! had also been on a spending spree and now a single entity gets the fruits of those labours. This page shows a period of two years over which acquisitions were made leading up to mid-2007; all the serious plays are around advertising and search, regardless of company. Steve Ballmer would have been fuming that they didn't land Double Click, the move for aQuantive was a no brainer after that.
If and when this deal goes through, Microsoft will own a handful of also-rans, but in addition to Yahoo!'s mail offering they will also have del.icio.us and Flickr, two of the most prominent and popular Web 2.0 sites. Facebook still lurks out in the ether, its next move known only to a handful of its executives. If anyone stands to gain from this, I think it is them - they can operate in exactly the same fashion that allowed Gogle to become quietly dominant. This move puts the spotlight on someone else, it allows Zuckerberg to spend some time thinking about where he wants the business to go and to focus on executing that vision rather than putting on the media darling suit that doesn't quite fit.
Google have recently reached a point where they can do whatever they please, when Microsoft reached that spot it rapidly became the least interesting kid on the block. Google need to show they are hungry, that they have the fire and the stamina to win. 2008 is going to be a phenomenal year for online, and that is without even touching the launch of Android, Google's mobile platform, the 700MHz spectrum bid, or Open Social, its vision for a completely open socially-networked web. Once Microsoft hammer this deal out, it makes for two massive fish in a (thankfully) endless pond. That's just the kind of environment the Facebooks of the world need, one where they can hide away and get back to what made them great in the first place.
And the wide open spaces just got a little wider...
I remember reading Po Bronson's seminal Web 1.0 text Nudist on the Late Shift and being enthralled with the chapter on Yahoo!. Bronson framed it around the notion of meeting billionaires Jerry Yang and David Filo, neither of whom were yet 35, which in his eyes made the whole thing seem even more surreal. 13 years after Yahoo! was founded it finds itself mired in lay-offs, under-performing products, and perpetually treading water while everything other than Flickr fails to gain traction, and even that has been outdone by Facebook which has become the largest photo-sharing site full stop.
The play revolves around three things; search, email, and advertsing.
Search
Microsoft have long been the distant cousin in this space. Google dominate the landscape; Yahoo! hold a distant but solid second place. Indeed it can be argued they are the only ones who've been able to hold some ground against the relentless force that is AdWords. Microsoft have failed to offer up a compelling alternative to Google, and the end result is an increasing loss of market share in search while Yahoo! bail water out faster than the guy next to them. With the need to compete for second place out of the way, both companies can down-size, hone in on strengths, and be confident that nobody else has the market share to make a play for #2. What they do need to worry about is people moving away from a Yahoo! service who had arrived there in the first place because of a distaste for Microsoft.
Email (your inbox)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO) has spent more time than I care to acknowledge talking about the social graph. Simply put, it is a map of the relationships you have with people. Facebook is supposed to represent that, but Google have already pointed out that the social graph is already well represented by email; what you send and what you receive paint a far more accurate picture of your online interactions than a site coined so loosely as a "social network"; email doesn't rely on the walled garden mentality, and as such maps a more realistic path for social interactions. If one age old rule of marketing is that the most compelling campaigns are formed around trusted sources, then having a solid understanding of who an individual's sources are is key.
Microsoft & Yahoo! will have a combined online mail share of somewhere between 4 and 5 hundred million users (depending on whose numbers you use and how you skew the data). The sheer quantity of data available and what they can learn about their users is staggering; the task there though is turning it into something meaningful. Both companies have proud traditions of innovation that have somehow been lost along the way; finding that spirit again is key to taking the fight to Google and Facebook.
Interestingly, the key differentiator between Google's Gmail and the others is Google fails to offer a paid-for premium service and instead is ad-supported based on key words in the messages you send and receive. You would think a competitor to this product would have to be in the works at at least one of the companies; hopefully these products would be finished and rolled out before any moves were made towards a single super service.
Advertising & the future of online
There have been nervous mutterings recently around Google's advertising intentions. In September last year they hired Andy Berndt who was President of Olgilvy & Mather in New York, and two weeks ago announced the Publicis Group had been brought on to assist with their creative. While this is a coup for Publicis, people don't seem to understand that Google have been the dominant force in online advertising ever since the introduction of AdWords; they have been in advertising for years, the traditional media folk just didn't pick up on it because it didn't look like the advertising they were used to.
Google's presence coupled with its now approved purchase of Double Click means it wields an influence not seen since the months before Microsoft began being probed for anti-competitive tactics. People are still so worried about a giant in Redmond that Google was able to quietly go about its business and snap up anything and everything that made its search offering stronger.
Last year Microsoft finally caught up in a public way, purchasing a series of companies to kick-start its advertising play. Yahoo! had also been on a spending spree and now a single entity gets the fruits of those labours. This page shows a period of two years over which acquisitions were made leading up to mid-2007; all the serious plays are around advertising and search, regardless of company. Steve Ballmer would have been fuming that they didn't land Double Click, the move for aQuantive was a no brainer after that.
If and when this deal goes through, Microsoft will own a handful of also-rans, but in addition to Yahoo!'s mail offering they will also have del.icio.us and Flickr, two of the most prominent and popular Web 2.0 sites. Facebook still lurks out in the ether, its next move known only to a handful of its executives. If anyone stands to gain from this, I think it is them - they can operate in exactly the same fashion that allowed Gogle to become quietly dominant. This move puts the spotlight on someone else, it allows Zuckerberg to spend some time thinking about where he wants the business to go and to focus on executing that vision rather than putting on the media darling suit that doesn't quite fit.
Google have recently reached a point where they can do whatever they please, when Microsoft reached that spot it rapidly became the least interesting kid on the block. Google need to show they are hungry, that they have the fire and the stamina to win. 2008 is going to be a phenomenal year for online, and that is without even touching the launch of Android, Google's mobile platform, the 700MHz spectrum bid, or Open Social, its vision for a completely open socially-networked web. Once Microsoft hammer this deal out, it makes for two massive fish in a (thankfully) endless pond. That's just the kind of environment the Facebooks of the world need, one where they can hide away and get back to what made them great in the first place.
And the wide open spaces just got a little wider...
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