Rubicon Insight Newsletter: Comments

Comment on "Web Strategy Needs to Create an Experience, not a Transaction"

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:18:20 -0800

Insightful piece as always, Nilofer. Your deconstructions of what it means to be successful in a web environment that's increasingly personalized and collaborative are always worth the read, and you never fail to come up with great (and fun!) examples of companies that have managed to forge a bond between their brand and customers in new and innovative ways.

Keep up the great work!

- Julie

Comment on "Web Strategy Needs to Create an Experience, not a Transaction"

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 06:08:41 -0800

hi, Nilofer, how are you?

This is my first time reading your work & I love this piece.

I think Sears, Nikon & Panasonic are great examples & I think they share a similar problem. Nikon & Panasonic aren't used to dealing two-ways with end users. They're still selling through channels, but they're now in a position where they have to interact direct. Sears on the other hand is a sales-only company. You go to a store & their job is to sell to you. You pick up a catalog & it's designed to sell to you - & nothing else. On the web, customers expect more &, really, all of these companies have a huge amount to gain from offering more.

I remember reading the question recently "Why didn't Nikon set up Flickr?" - they have the budget, they have the people, but their strategy just isn't there yet. They still think of themselves as pushing product direct through channels.

I look forward to reading more of your stuff in future!

daniel

- daniel

Comment on "Amazon S3: No More Flat-rate Pricing"

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:14:31 -0800

Is it just me, or is that diagram copied from the Wikipedia article on "Economic surplus"?

Great article otherwise.

- Daniel Denovo

Comment on "Separating "How" from "What:" An open letter to the tech industry"

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 22:11:15 -0800

Still wonder, cause if you can answer that five questions to your plan, others will do the same. And you will find there is already a good product already existed. Or maybe better than your plan.

- proper

Comment on "Separating "How" from "What:" An open letter to the tech industry"

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:04:01 -0800

Couldn't agree more. However, I don't see a problem with releasing a product with at ton of "how" features just as long as that product has a key "What" feature and you focus your energy on Marketing that Key "What" feature.

- The African Nerd

Comment on "Separating "How" from "What:" An open letter to the tech industry"

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:16:21 -0800

I am wondering if the technology savvy people are about 20% of the targeted market for the PDA devices. It seems to me that the adage of 20% of the people do 80% of the work may apply. If that is the case, no wonder gadgets can fail at an alarming rate.

- Emil J Lesner

Comment on "Separating "How" from "What:" An open letter to the tech industry"

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:58:24 -0800

This article makes a clear distinction between two completely different types of users and markets. I'm not sure about the "how" and "what" terminology, but the overall point is important, enlightening, and very well made. Thanks!

- information

Comment on "Separating "How" from "What:" An open letter to the tech industry"

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:24:37 -0800

As a technoclutz, I couldn't agree more with the above article. There are many gadgets out there that are little too complicated than the average person can use. That said, I do use a Palm PDA to help me as a physician. However, there are many things that can be done with it that I simply cannot figure out. I find Palm devices are a little more intuitive than Window Mobile devices. In fact, my partner got a Dell PDA for Christmas and doesn't use it because it is "too complicated. I rather just look it up in a book." And she is not a dumb woman. Quite the contrary, she is a very bright woman who has very little experience with technology. Please help these folks figure out that simple and easy can be better.

- AnthonyC

Comment on "The Devil Dials Prada"

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:51:55 -0800

Great article! How about links to photos of these many new, cool devices? Would great to view as reading the article...all the best, suzanne dowling

- suzanne dowling

Comment on "When the Best Defense Is Growth"

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 13:52:50 -0800

Good advice!

I have found Crossing the Chasm to be a useful guide to where you might be in the growth curve of the market. What's the total addressable market? Are you still reaching early adopters? Can you get to the mainstream? (Are you selling a VHS VCR - or a Tivo, or a WebTV?)

The advice to grow ahead of a competitor seems sound. Giving up on growth, if the potential is there, just means leaving open doors for the competition.

- Floyd Smith

Comment on "Cluetrain 2007: Ten Commandments for Communicating with People Online"

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:35:12 -0800

This is a good list of 10 commandments. I think you're off base on one point, however, where you say: "Most of the people who write blogs or participate in discussion forums are motivated not by money (because they don't make any online), but by a love of the subjects they're discussing and a hunger to influence others."

That statement leaves out an important motivation for online activity by many. Much of the online participation in forums and writing on blogs (at least among small business owners) is very much commercial in nature. It's a marketing activity.

People have complex motivations for online activity. Sure passion plays a role, but you'd be foolish to overlook the fact that they are spending all that time to be more visible online, driving traffic to their websites, because it is low-cost or free marketing.

Take out the marketing element and you wouldn't have anywhere near as much participation. Bottom line: people are motivated by money more than you have suggested here.

It would be wise to consider that factor in online conversations.

- Anita Campbell

Comment on "Cluetrain 2007: Ten Commandments for Communicating with People Online"

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:16:19 -0800

Part of what made the Cluetrain Manifesto so powerful and memorable was the over-the-top flower language (Manifesto?!!?) That was good marketing on the creators behalf.

But it also made it hard to comprehend for the people who most needed to hear it.

Thank you for this MUCH needed update and translation into English.

Now we just need to get as many people as read the Cluetrain Manifesto to read this.

I'll do my part - I've probably turned over a hundred people on to the Cluetrain over the years (was I the one who showed it to you?) - and now I have an even better place to send people who need to be hit with an Internet Marketing clue-by-four.

- chris

- Chris Dunphy

Comment on "Web 2.0 vs. SaaS"

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 10:31:33 -0800

By and large, you've nailed it, Michael.

One thing to keep in mind is that it's not just the big enterprises that fear and distrust Web 2.0. Other startups do too. The Spouse is the IT manager at a successful startup and there's no way in hell he'd recommend that Web 2.0 tools be adopted at the corporate level. The lack of control and the potential security issues are simply nonstarters.

I think that eventually some enterprises are going to start seriously talking to some of the better Web 2.0 companies and say to them, "Either license us the software so we can run it on our own servers or give us an appliance version that we can host inside the firewall."

And don't forget the SME market. There's a whole range of comapnies for whom buying, say, an appliance version of Writerly could be a lot more cost-effective than 75 copies of MS Word.

Eventually, I think the Web 2.0 companies who really want to play in the business space will discover that they have more in common with their SaaS bretheren than they thought. And that's when things will really start to get interesting.

- fiat lux

Comment on "Web 2.0 vs. SaaS"

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:46:50 -0800

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your response. I found this a lot more coherent than the blog entry itself. I understand the desire to have a style that may bring in the reader (and it did), but I think it also obfuscated some of the points you were trying to make. Thank you for taking the time to clarify.

I think you have nailed many valid points about the differences between tne encumbents and the new market entrants. But I question framing their differences as a lack of familiarity between Web 2.0 and SaaS. You've characterized this as a need for two camps to meet. I think you've got the Web 2.0 camp mostly correct, but I don't see that SaaS is the other party.

Is this simply the difference between new and old? Between encumbents and entrants? (Wtih your indulgence, I'll continue with the issue reframed that way.)

As with any set of changes, it will take time for those changes to manifest themselves in broader contexts. And the "enterprise" is by definition one of the larger bureacracies in which the technology will manifest itself. But it will take time.

You say that you see the Web 2.0 crowd talking about the enterprise market. I am unable to attend the conferences you are attending, but frankly, I'm just not hearing the same thing. Web 2.0 right now seems to be about providing solutions for individuals. Will those techniques and skills push into the enterprise? Undoubtedly. But I haven't seen any evidence of how that may be done. The Internet bubble started as a belief that businesses could sell directly to individuals online. Then came B2B.

I think we're in the same place we were in the early Internet days, but hopefully with a lot less hype, and a lot more critical analysis about the perceived benefits.

I think you're very much correct that Enterprise Web 2.0 doesn't really mean anything yet as the two haven't found common ground upon which to build a relationship. But it's also early. I think rather than talking buzz words, people need to talk problems and solutions.

The problem is I don't see that the two are even going in the same direction, and a lot of what Web 2.0 espouses seems to be an anathema to what the enterprise wants.

But regardless, the desire for that dialogue is right where I think you started.

- Bradley Mazurek

Comment on "Web 2.0 vs. SaaS"

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:48:28 -0800

Hi, Bradley.

Thanks for the comments! You're asking great questions.

I wrote the post because I've been attending a number of Web 2.0 and SaaS conferences this year -- Future of Web Apps, Software Business 2006, Software 2006, etc. They're all good conferences, but to me the contrasts were incredibly stark. Based on what I'm seeing, I think ideas are not flowing between the two worlds at all well.

I talked with a couple of other people who have their feet in both worlds, and they agreed. So I think there's something real here, but I'm not explaining it well.

Let me take another shot at it. Here's my perspective on the specific disconnects between the two worlds. I'm interested in your feedback...

Generational. The leaders in the Web 2.0 crowd are generally younger than the SaaS crowd. A lot younger. That means the two groups lack a shared context, both in terms of culture and experience. It's hard for them to communicate with one-another.

For example, it's not at all unusual for a speaker at an SaaS event to reminisce about the mainframe era and draw some analogies to things that are happening today. The audience sees that as good, a sign of acquired wisdom.

At a Web 2.0 conference, it's not at all unusual for a brilliant 20-something CEO to announce on stage that "working for someone else is dead," and then go on to dis the whole traditional organizational structure of corporations. Nobody blinks an eye.

Each side views the other through a distorting generational filter. That hinders communication.

Incumbency and attitudes toward change. A lot of the players in SaaS are established software companies, large and small, that are trying very hard to adapt their business models to the online world. They tend to make incremental changes, and focus on short-term increases in productivity. They are often trying very hard to protect their existing business models and revenue streams.

The Web 2.0 folks, by and large, are startups. They have nothing to defend and very low cost structures. They delight in identifying incumbent companies and industries that they can disrupt (watch the feeding frenzy that's about to develop around the Yellow Pages industry).

Summary: A lot of the tone in the SaaS world is defensive and risk-averse. The tone in Web 2 is aggressive and risk-loving. Another barrier to communication.

Networks of innovation. One of the most striking developments in the Web 2.0 world is the way the companies are learning to coordinate around defining new APIs and enabling their products to talk with and build on top of one-another. This goes by the cutesy term "mashups," but it's actually the old dream of component software being implemented in steps. This is driving very rapid growth in the capabilities of the Web apps platform.

The Web 2 folks understand very well how to work in this world -- basically, they know how to share. The SaaS folks, in general, are much less aware of this, and it's often foreign to their way of working. At a Web 2 conference I hear all about Ruby on Rails and AJAX and Adobe Apollo. At a SaaS conference I hear all about the logistics of outsourcing traditional programming to India.

Support and robustness Web 2 companies offering software to consumers get away with a level of reliability and availability that would be utterly unaccceptable to enterprises. Flickr brags about the way they can take down parts of their service while others keep working; a SaaS developer would ask how they can make the whole thing redundant so that none of it ever goes down.

Have you tried using one of Google's services for an extended period of time? I'm on Google'sBlogger for my personal weblog, and the site breaks down pretty predictably -- lost posts, broken features, and so on. And good luck getting tech support.

There's a level of discipline needed to get a company to rely on your software, and I don't see that in most of the Web 2 crowd. I know there are exceptions, but we're talking overall.

Understanding of the needs of enterprise. I think most of the Web 2 crowd doesn't have the faintest idea what enterprises need. They talk about the enterprise market constantly, it always shows up on their list of important growth areas, but when you probe for ideas on actual problems they plan to solve, their thinking is usually incredibly superficial. Or they'll say "salesforce.com" and then change the subject.

The opportunity. In my opinion, the Web 2 folks are creating a much, much more efficient way to develop software, but aside from a few players like Salesforce they don't know how to apply it to enterprise problems. The SaaS folks understand enterprise problems exceedingly well, but don't by and large understand the new ways of developing software (at least not the companies I've been talking to at conferences). They get some of the technologies, but not the communities or the ways companies work together in the new model.

If we could bridge those gaps (and I think we can), I believe the sum would be much greater than the parts. That's the idea I was trying to get across.

- Michael Mace

Comment on "Web 2.0 vs. SaaS"

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:32:32 -0800

Sorry Michael, but I must really be missing what you're driving at here.

The SaaS concept is one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is fully aware of SaaS and leverages it to great effect. SaaS is a subset of Web 2.0.

You say Web 2.0 is only paying lip service to it's interest in the enterprise.

It's early in the natural technology adoption life cycle. The enterprise will adopt a technology when it provides them an advantage or fills a deficiency. Just because something is aimed initially at the public, doesn't mean it is not destined for the enterprise. Crossing the Chasm made it abundantly clear that there is a lot of work that needs to be done before a large enterprise sale can be made. You need to enlist the technolgy enthusiasts and the visionaries. There is a lot of pain in there. You describe some of it. But I don't think either of these are the real challenge Web 2.0 faces in the enterprise.

Or is it the challenge that the enterprise faces from Web 2.0?

Can the needs of the enterprise really be met by Web 2.0? No. The enterprise is scared to death of giving up it's data. You're right, they won't change. But many of them will die as a result. Think about how Web 2.0 (in the form of Wikipedia) has gutted an Encyclopedia industry. We're seeing something similar in the music industry. It will take a long time, but it will continue to push from industry to industry. Currently, we're only seeing the effects on things that can be easily duplicated digitally. But when you see physical objects being produced on the fly, like a hummer axle being fabricated on the spot from what is essentially a 3d printer, you start to get a sense of what the future may hold. We may be a long time before there is a sea change, but it will happen.

In a nutshell, you seem to be implying that there are characteristics inherent in SaaS that are not present in Web 2.0. Precisely (and less flowery, please!), what are they?

- Bradley Mazurek

Comment on "Don't Be the Dinosaur Brought Down by Mosquitoes"

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:23:02 -0800

Excellent article! I discovered it quite by accident as I Googled "Zillow as Dinosaur." Now, I am wondering whether they are a mosquito or dinosaur, and lean toward the latter because their home valuations are based on dated information. More than ever, it is important for Realtors--and all business thrivers--to deal with the most current information available. Web 2.0 is contributing much to that immediacy.

Again, thanks for a tremendous read. It is a keeper!

- Roberta Murphy

Comment on "Understanding the full impact of the web"

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 19:56:21 -0800

The major issue(s) for Web-based applications are not all that dissimilar to the limitations encountered by networked client-server applications in the past.

Going to web-based apps puts a premium on network speed and stability, the absolute necessity of the application server(s) remaining online 24/7, significant hardware investment on the server side, excellent coding to reduce software bottlenecks, and of course data security.

Now, all of those problems are solveable. But essentially, you're trading off of one set of technical challenges for another set. Some of what you gain in faster software development gets eaten up by the need for more and better IT staff and infrastructure. On balance, you probably still come out ahead, but you need to look at the total picture to be sure.

There's other issues as well -- for example, how to provide web-based applications for companies who either cannot or will not allow critical data outside the corporate firewall. Again, it's an issue that can (and presumably will) be solved, but a company that doesn't solve it properly will be just as endangered as the ones who don't embrace the opportunity.

- fiat lux

Comment on "Understanding the full impact of the web"

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:37:09 -0800

"The only way you can cope with the flow of two-way communication is to turn everyone in the company into potential contact points, and to turn your best customers into partners who help communicate your messages out to the market."

Amen.

One minor addition to your thoughts on applications moving to the web... I agree with you, with a few exceptions. High-end games are probably safely going to remain targeting native API's for a long time to come because they need so much access to the raw hardware. Professional video and even photo applications may stay native for a long time too, for the same reasons.

On the one hand you have an X-Box, on the other a high-end professional workstation. If you are targeting anything in between, you'd be foolish to not focus on Web 2.0.

Cheers!

- chris

- Chris Dunphy