by stuart_henshall
May 3, 2008 at 2:57 pm · Filed under
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I made my first visit to the Dharavi Slum yesterday. Often described as Asia’s largest slum it remains central to Mumbai’s development and thriving economy. I have a few stories and themes that I want to weave together.
I cannot help having the stark contrast in mind when we define the US middle class. Recently the US election candidates have been touting income spans up to $200K as middle class for tax packages and planning. I grew up with the stereotype of two cars in the suburbs and a color TV. This isn’t what middle class means in India, even though they now talk about a middle class approaching 250 million. It isn’t the middle class we know and yet this group is changing everything and on the cusp of India’s change and boom.
What’s middle class? In part, this is what I saw with my eyes and yet the other details I cannot begin to get my head around. In the Dharavi Slum you may have up to 650 families per acre. Redevelopment programs are happening and people are being displaced; although it is hard for me to see how this place would be better as a result of such developments. There continues to be local resistance to these programs.
Sakina invited me into her home. Entry is by a steel ladder. Her home is much lighter than the home below with a “clearstory” open air skylight. In total it is 225 square feet. Basically 10 feet wide and 22 feet deep. Near the entry there is a nicely tiled toilet and shower and running water. (This is not common!) She has a small kitchen with LPG stove and refrigerator. The house also has a TV (older) a landline phone for inbound calls only and an Aquarium close by the front door. Bed and bedding cover the rest of the space. I sit on the bed almost afraid to stand with the two ceiling fans on and not wanting to tower above them.
While drinking Chai members of her family come and go. Her son is in the 9th Standard (15 years old) and will get a cellphone after passing the 10th standard she says. Her daughter in law comes in and starts preparing vegetables. She squats on the floor and starts cutting them in her hands and dropping them into a stainless steel bowl. Pottery or china is a luxury with perhaps the exception of tea. You can see why everything is done sitting on the floor or perhaps sitting on the bed. They will eat sitting on the bed probably watching TV. I don’t even remember a chair or stool in the place. No table.
Her husband works in Dubai she didn’t want to go and leave family and work permits probably made it impossible. I must say the room was spotless. She had a mobile phone. No PC, or computing equipment in the house. A huge picture of Mecca. Many of her family members work outside Dharavi. For many it’s a choice to continue living here. My guide too although his “car for hire” business is run from one of the suburbs.
After having tea we dropped down into the street. Two doors down, downstairs I entered a similar sized space. 4 people were making sandals. These were for wholesale and would be branded later. They make 15 to 20 pairs a day. They had a number of clear plastic bags against the wall. It represented about a weeks work according to them.
Upstairs there was a T-Shirt manufacturer. Maybe 5 sewing machines. All were busy. There was almost no room to move in there. They would have gladly stopped for me. Oh did I say it was close to 100 degrees in all of these spaces? You can also forget about safety, wiring, etc.
Both these factories would appear to be owned by the same person or someone in the family and perhaps some relation to Sakina. Not really quite clear. They all pointed out the Redevelopment Banner. I really can’t see how they would be better as a result. I doubt they enable the factories in these new housing centers.
Around the corner there are STD (phone kiosks) everywhere. I passed an Internet cafe in this area (15 rupees per hour, no discounts etc.) There were 7 PC’s in it and the owner actually worked for another man managing clothing production for Marks & Spencer. The cafe was full.
This world remains a long way from being connected beyond the cellphone. Then I learnt more about that from a group of 13 year olds and that’s another story.
This little visit and snapshot for me was invaluable. Too few companies and visitors come and see these things. While you can commission research in India unless you have a keen eye or some way of internalizing that knowledge back home you aren’t going to come up with better products. Often it’s a few stories that you will take back home Whether Finland, Chicago, or Palo Alto you won’t begin to understand “sound” or “dust” or “recycling” in an Indian context.
Let me close with a couple of examples. PC Dust covers (not seen in Dharavi but covering electronics is common) and just the thought of a hot laptop burning one’s thighs (where are the tables!) or the inadequate speakers that laptops come with. Laptops fit the space better and it would be worth exploring the “lap” factors. Similarly, my learning from the “China Phone” (yet another story) is that all laptops have inadequate audio built in. They cannot even compete with the latest phones for “music”.
In a market that is exploding with mobile phones (10 million sold last month) low end laptops (15000 to 20000 rupees) are competing against them (full featured china phone 4000 to 6000 rupees) and new TV’s (5000 to 10000 rupees). I didn’t go into the PC markets this time. I’ve visited them in Delhi in the past and just running out of time.
I just suspect that the ALL in One that we see in mobiles (There are “China phones” available with TV’s built in plus the MP3 and FM radio) means…. no requires one to really rethink the multimedia laptop. I certainly would be if it was my job! There are a huge number of opportunities here and a dumbed down Macbook is not the answer.
For a few more pictures. Huge thanks to Dina for arranging it. I’m cross posting this week.
by Howard Greenstein
May 2, 2008 at 12:06 am · Filed under
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The BBC has been able set up a malicious application that can steal details of not only your information but the people you’re connected with. This is because in Facebook, applications have permission to ‘walk the tree’ of your friend contact details, letting the apps do things like populate the list of people for you to forward to, when you choose to “forward this and see what happens.”
BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | Identity ‘at risk’ on Facebook
We have discovered a way to steal the personal details of you and all your Facebook friends without you knowing.
The article is worth reading. Wow, good job British hax0rz! I won’t say “the sky is falling” because this has been pretty well-known among the geek-o-rati for a long time. BBC notes MySpace apps run on MySpace’s servers, giving MySpace a much clearer idea of what an application is doing with the data.
Perhaps the media attention this is sure to draw will move FB to a more secure model. One can hope.
(note: republished from my blog at http://howardgreenstein.com/blog/archives/2008/05/bbc_scares_everyone_in_the_world_off_facebook.html )
by stuart_henshall
April 30, 2008 at 7:17 pm · Filed under
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Going into the field is one of the things I really enjoy. This week I’m in India and apart from enjoying the food I’m generally on the lookout for the loud music playing phones from China. India is both noisy and an environment where the music is almost incessant. Your phone’s capability to play music is being used everywhere. I’m frequently seeing groups of young guys listening to a phone playing through its speakers. The music is most likely MP3’s although could just as easily be via the FM radio. The music is “blasted” just like “boom boxes” were once used.
This is the “China Phone” (not made by china phone just called a china phone) it’s not a Sony despite the “Walkman” brand name. You can see it has bluetooth and and antenna that can be pulled out for the radio. It also boasts a 1.3mpx camera. The young lad that had it was playing his Hindi music at a volume that far exceeded what I could play on my Nokia N95.
He was very dismissive of the Nokia sound and smirked proudly that his was better than mine. Despite the fact that he bought it for 4200 rupees (Just over $100). He said that “China Phones” come with up to six speakers. His primary reason for buying was the sound quality. He loaded the MP3’s from a computer shop.
While I didn’t get the opportunity to really inspect it I’ll be looking for these more carefully from now on. This example just illustrates how competitive and fast moving the market is here. While Nokia still has a commanding share a new phone twist (big speakers and antenna) has got kids buzzing. For this user it was a smart and cost effective choice. I cannot vouch for the after service care although my bet is the reseller he bought it from will do his best. Spare parts are likely scarce for these phones, by contast you can get any Nokia fixed almost anywhere.
by stuart_henshall
April 28, 2008 at 2:56 pm · Filed under
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I’m in India for a week and one of the things I’m doing is getting an update on the local mobile phone explosion. India just had their single largest month an quarter for new cellphone registrations. India is now the world’s second largest mobile market after China with 261.09 million users. In March 2008 operators here added 10.16 million users.
Unlike China where China Mobile which has 392 million subscribers the market in India is much more fragmented. Bharti Airtel the largest has 64 million subscribers and added just over 2 million per month in the first quarter of 2008
Rates here are amongst the lowest in the world. Almost each time I return I see the rates being cut. The latest cuts are to SMS pricing with offers at half a rupee commonly advertised. So less than 1 cent per SMS to counter the Indian norm of “missed calls”. Call costs are similarly down at the same sort of rate per minute. Bharti reported average caller minutes at 505 per quarter.
Growth which is not expected to slow down anytime soon is now moving to the rural areas. The auction for the 3G spectrum is likely to take place later this year. It will have to happen soon otherwise WIMAX or another technology may surprise us.
The ramifications and the changes mobile is bringing is visible everywhere. From kids in the streets of wealthier suburbs to small traders and service providers everywhere. The missed call behavior is endemic. Why pay money when you can signal for free “pick me up”, I’m ready, call me etc. It’s worth looking into “sharing” too as with limited “Internet connectivity” sharing both takes on new meaning and is in high demand.
Users are also increasingly savvy about features. Any large phone retailer or large mobile bazaar will have 100’s if not 1000’s of different models on display. It’s almost overwhelming and all the more impressive that Nokia continues to have a huge share of market. Phone are not subsidized US style. You get what you pay for and there is a ready repair market. In fact I returned with my daughters broken N73 and had a new case, new keyboard, and repairs to the sound control made. All for less than $50 using original parts. Had I gone for “unofficial” (I really couldn’t see the difference) I could have made that $15 and perhaps bargained for less.
Then for most this is outrageously expensive. New low end mobiles are approaching the 1000 rupee price barrier ($25). Prices for top end phones like the Nokia N95 are running 20000 rupees. As a comparison you can get a new laptop here for the same money. Of course that will be running pirated software.
The iPhone is available here for 24000 rupees. I also know a few are using them with Twinkle (a twitter location client) because others have updated within a few miles of me. It’s a good demo of how fast technology is disseminating. I also note the real demand for all in one phones with cameras, MP3’s (they will load them up for nothing) and radios built in.
by Christopher Carfi
April 27, 2008 at 3:33 am · Filed under
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Embracing blogs to connect with a company’s network of customers is fait accompli for the tech industry, but what about the rest of the planet that doesn’t put its every movement up on Twitter?
Here are four retailers that are using blogs and social media in an attempt to better connect with customers.
WalMart
Revenue: $375 Billion
# Locations: 6,800
Notable URL: http://www.checkoutblog.com/
Notable post: "Great News About WalMart’s Milk" (over 230 comments)
After several failed attempts at blogging, most notably the reviled "WalMarting Across America" shill blog, the planet’s largest retailer might be starting to get its act together. In 2007, the Bentonville, Arkansas company launched the "Checkout Blog," a group blog penned by nine of its corporate buyers that covers topics from the garden to video games to sustainability. A definite step in the right direction for the company, with actual employees communicating about their individual areas of interest, with minimal company shilling taking place.
McDonald’s
Revenue: $23 Billion
# Locations: 30,000+
Notable URL: http://csr.blogs.mcdonalds.com/
Notable post: "A Trip Down Memory Lane" (Good handling of a troll in the comments)
WalMart wasn’t the only retailing behemoth to receive derision for its initial forays into blogging. McDonald’s, too, had its challenges. (Hopefully, you missed the fake "Lincoln Fry" blog, about a french fry shaped like the 16th President of the United States. Yes, it was as abysmal as it sounds.)
The company behind the golden arches now has a "Open for Discussion" blog with weekly postings on topics regarding "Corporate Social Responsibility." While certainly better than the LIncoln Fry, there are still some challenges here:
1) It looks to me like someone at McDonald’s headquarters has committed to some sort of MBO of "one blog post per week." As such, the posts are infrequent and not heavily trafficked.
2) While it’s great to spread the wealth, all the most recent posts on the site (March-April 2008) are from different authors. Accordingly, each post is starting with a "who I am and what my role is" statement. This also means that the revolving cast of characters hasn’t a chance to connect with readers. It’s drive-by blogging.
3) To their credit, comments on the blog are open. However, the paucity of comments makes me think that either (a) the blog is receiving almost no traffic or (b) the comments are being heavily moderated. The bold TERMS AND CONDITIONS of the blog also state: "McDonald’s owns any comments or other content that you post on this
site. That means that McDonald’s has the right to make, have made,
offer for sale, use, sell, copy, distribute, perform, transmit,
display, modify, adapt and otherwise use your submission(s) throughout
the world in perpetuity in any manner that it sees fit without
compensation to you. McDonald’s also has the right to use your name in
connection with any use of your submissions." This is not the best method to develop trust and a long-term relationship with a customer.
Starbucks
Revenue: $9 Billion
# Locations: 15,000+
Notable URL: http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/
Notable post: "Vote For All Day Bold" (Giving contrarian viewpoints their due)
Of the four retailers profiled here, Starbucks has gone the furthest with respect to using social media to not only connect the organization to its customers, but to enable customers to rally around ideas as a community. Their "My Starbucks Idea" site is a venue where customers can submit suggestions to the organization, vote on the suggestions of other individuals, and see which ideas are going to actually be implemented by the organization.
The best part of the site is not the technical implementation but, rather, the cultural one. Starbucks does not seem to be censoring comments about their organization in any way, even when the feedback is less-than-stellar. For example, one representative comment on the site states:
"Decaf drinkers want strong coffee also. I go (or used to go) to
Starbucks because of the decaf Sumatra, Verona etc. I can get Pikes
Piss coffee from Tim Horton’s or McDonald’s. My grandmother makes
stronger coffee. Starting today I am no longer a customer of Starbuck’s
coffee except for whole beans. I urge everyone reading this to follow
my lead and make Starbuck’s understand that the reason we (used to)
spend our money on their overpriced coffe is because it is the best and
no one else offers a strong decaf. There is strength in numbers - walk
away today!"
The key thing that Starbucks realizes is that these conversations are taking place anyway. If this site didn’t exist, customers such as the individual above would be making these comments in other forums that were removed from the organization, or on his or her own blog. With My Starbucks Idea, the organization is getting the feedback in realtime, and has the opportunity to address issues in a rational and constructive way.
Whole Foods Market
Revenue: $4 Billion
# Locations: 270+
Notable URL: http://wholefoodsmarket.com/socialmedia/blogs/
Notable post: "Slow Down and Green Up" (Rich conversation)
Although their CEO got himself and the company in some hot water by commenting negatively about a competitor using a pseudonym (n.b. the investigation into his actions has now been concluded), Whole Foods has a farmer’s market full of blogs, podcasts and videos they are using to give customers a variety of methods to learn more about the organization.
by Isabel Hilborn
April 26, 2008 at 2:56 pm · Filed under
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Supernova’s theme for 2008 is “Challenges for the Network Age” - you can read more in this post by Kevin Werbach, Supernova’s founder.
One of my clients, Scott Draves (known as Spot), is an award-winning software artist, some of whose art is based on a complex network. I’ve interviewed him to learn more.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: To create your art, you work with networks — made up of both people and computers. Can you explain how networks factor into your creative process?
Scott Draves: Right, much of my art harnesses a large collection of computers and people into a cyborg mind: “the Electric Sheep“. It’s a distributed screensaver that produces an abstract animation influenced by everyone who watches it. My intention is to produce artificial life in virtual reality.
So there’s the literal network of thousands of computers working together as a supercomputer to animate the “sheep”, a distributed render farm. These computers also form a p2p bittorrent network for sharing the final animation files.
The people behind the computers form another network — everyone who’s watching can vote on whether not they like what they see, and the more popular sheep reproduce with a genetic algorithm including cross-over and mutation. So the sheep evolve to satisfy their human audience.
There’s also “intelligent design” in the sense than people can use additional software to make their own sheep, and submit it to the gene pool. So there’s an artificial intelligence competing and collaborating with crowd-sourcing. What makes this design network go is Creative Commons licensing, which reduces the resistance in this circuit of mind, binding it together.
There’s another and much larger network: the software that implements this work is itself Open Source. The client and server are free software under the GPL, programmed by a globe-spanning team. They are made from components and tools developed by thousands of programmers over decades, based on science and mathematics published worldwide.
The Electric Sheep are standing on the shoulders of these giants, our technological and artistic fore-fathers. This is a network too, the web of ideas, in which every artist, and every person, is ultimately engaged.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: How long did it take to build what you have? Can anyone make a network?
Scott Draves: The Electric Sheep started in 1999, but were based on a rendering algorithm that I developed in 1992. So the Electric Sheep have been growing for a very long time, but there are certainly networks that have gotten larger in less time, like say MySpace. So yes, anyone can start a network, but whether or not anyone will join is another question.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What are some of the key differences you see between working with a network and working independently?
Scott Draves: When working with a network you have given up a degree of control, so you have to very carefully consider everyone’s motivation. The network only exists by the will of the participants.
Some networks move at a glacial pace, which can be frustrating. For example, writing software portable and reliable enough to run on almost any Windows PC or Mac is hard enough. Doing so through a “committee” is glacial compared to solo hacking where I can try out ideas every minute, instead of monthly. I can only roll out a new client/server protocol once per year.
The reward, however, has no substitute.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What benefits have you gained from creating a network to make your art?
Scott Draves: In my case, the network is an essential.
Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What are the main challenges you see coming from your network?
Scott Draves: On the technical side, the biggest challenge has been finding the bandwidth to run the server. Ultimately broadcast should get built in to the infrastructure of the net (what if ISPs ran torrent seeders?).
The human side is more complicated. The GPL and CC have done a good job of handling the intellectual property issues so far. But we still face simple problems like vandalism, and what I call the “Las Vegas Effect”.
The screen-saver is based on the popular vote, and often the most popular sheep seem to appeal to the lowest common denominator: they have bright colors and fast motion. I call this the “Las Vegas Effect” and it’s something I struggle with. As “god” of the system I could obliterate any sheep that displeases me, but I almost never interfere so directly.
Instead I channel my personal aesthetic into the “Dreams in High Fidelity” which is the dual to the screen-saver: instead of low resolution for free, it’s High Definition for a price. These limited edition works contain only sheep actively selected by me, assembled according to my design, and re-rendered at vastly higher quality.
The two versions are symbionts: neither could survive without the other.
by stuart_henshall
April 19, 2008 at 11:54 pm · Filed under
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Last week I went to a session at Adaptive Path hosted by Peter Merholtz. Jan Chipchase (who writes a great blog - Future Perfect) was the reason I went along. His presentation was called “Street Hacks“. He’s also been getting lots of exposure for Nokia most recently in the New York Times. These are his slides from the night.
During the week I also semi lost my eyesight (eye infection undercontrol now) and so I spent more time than usual reflecting. An iPhone in its current guise isn’t much use to a blind man. Jan and his fellow team members have probably studied the blind and certainly looked into ways to help the illterate. Their stories sent back to HQ or R&D are often basic. He provided great examples of mobile repair shops, the limited tools, how knowledge is shared and phones adapted etc. Another example was the observation or idea that perhaps in some environments having a way to hook the phone up on the wall is important. etc. In fact I felt a great affinity for many of his stories. I’ve seen many of the same things on my trips through India.
It also convinced me of a few things that are worth keeping in the consideration set. Jan shared the fact 6.6 billion, 3.3 billion cellular connection 1 billion phones sold per year etc…. In fact 400,000 are retired daily in the US alone. These are my reflections after revisiting his presentation and thoughts.
- The recycle market is going to feed the bottom end very soon; because it is shrinking. And yes there are many options that could help with recharging. While there is still a good percentage of the world that lack coverage that’s going to come.
- While the dirt cheap phones are great for market share when the market becomes more sophisticated and data plans more prevalent what type of phone and features will they adopt? It’s the burgeoning middle classes that interest me. When the new mobile phone becomes a better upgrade than a new PC or laptop in the home I think we will see real change.
- How long / how many years will the $30 or $20 cell phone be attractive for? While I see it now the mobile platform for tomorrow is not what we hold in our hands today. In India I’ve already seen the impact of just putting radios, mp-3 and cameras into phones. While swiss army type devices are often brushed off as good at nothing; it’s a big deal if you never had a watch, an alarm clock, a radio or mp3 player etc.
- How quickly will WiFi / WiMax reach some of these zones. May still be years for rural and yet I know people in India that could be on WiMax later this year (Here stateside?). Broadband is going in very quickly and in some cases it’s dirt cheap. Now it isn’t speedy broadband like we see here, it is connectivity. Still some plans are getting better and cheaper.
- Texting is already cheap; India a rupee or less (2.5 us cents outbound - why do we pay 20cents both ways?) and “missed calls” even cheaper. Yet if I look at SMS messaging rates (my daughter sends over 1200/month and has a friend sending over 6000/month) it’s like IM to them. Unlimited, it’s just a commodity. There’s a certainty that “always-on” connections will replace SMS. Messaging is actually the killer app of the mobile age not telephony. Context is becoming king. Voice Mail doesn’t work in India.
I’ve probably gone off track. Still I’d love to be looking more deeply into the lives of people traveling a lot through the day. In mega cities like Mumbai people can travel for hours to work (I guess they can in London or New York too) in both crowded public environment or in the back of the chauffeured car. Effectively I’d like to see both coming to grips with an iPhone. The former won’t be able to afford it. The latter can afford it without a problem. (India apparently gets the iPhone in September).
In my view people can deal with the present and what’s in their hands. What I want to know is how it helps them in their environment and how it expands either what they do or the unexpected things they do with it and the things they want to do with it. I’d like to see their initial reactions, after an indepth understanding of what and how they use their mobile today. Then I’d like to come back in a week and then again after they’ve lost it and get a followup.
For the future there’s incrementally better and smarter things. These ah ha’s we can keep finding. What really matters is the researchers have some “ruthess curiousity”. That’s something one needs an “eye” for. These are the real step change innovations. I like the things Jan keeps discovering and clarifying. New lenses on old problems. Still I hope Nokia’s looking at the other end too; I think they are and yet the simplicity required for success at the bottom is not emerging with the new products at the “smart” end.
I am left feeling that we still look too easily mobiles and telephony just like we have for the last 20 and hundred years respectively. Let’s make sure our views aren’t so limited.
by Christopher Carfi
April 19, 2008 at 1:17 am · Filed under
Uncategorized
All sorts of good things going on this week. Here we go!
1) The “networks don’t have people…people have networks” concept floated here has become a full-fledged snowball.
- Ross Mayfield - “Here’s some related Soylent Green.”
- Demian Entrekin - “Individuals create value for organizations through the impact of their Project Network, not through their position in the organization chart.”
- David Wallace - “It’s about the people, people.”
- David Cushman - “When you aggregate personal data in profiles (eg facebook) you risk imposing structural limitations on the conversation and on the way groups form. This leads to severe restrictions on value and growth creation in your network.”
- Marshall Lager - “It’s why Facebook (for example) has been having trouble - it takes ownership of pieces of you.”
2) A point of caution on the “social media divide” from Francine Hardaway (with more here) - “Fellow geeks, we live in a dream world — a world of Twitter - Twhirl - Friendfeed - AlertThingy - Seesmic. And if you think most people reading this can identify any of those things, think again. Moreover, if you think there’s a chance of any of those crossing the real chasm in the next ten years, think again.”
3) A pragmatic step toward mobile networking for the iPhone (disclosure: we helped with this one)
by Isabel Hilborn
April 18, 2008 at 12:08 am · Filed under
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Last December there was a Slashdot post about the possibility of Blockbuster being sued by Facebook users for releasing their movie-rental history without permission.
Today Wendy Davis wrote on MediaPost that sure enough, Blockbuster has been hit with a lawsuit out of Texas that threatens class action. Either some enterprising class action lawyer started beating the bushes for a greedy client, or someone was really pissed off enough to want retribution. I wouldn’t be surprised if both were true.
Imagine suddenly discovering that your entire queue of movie rentals was distributed to your Facebook network. Did you want your ex-boyfriend to know that you were renting every single boo-hoo chick flick ever made? Did you want your friends from work to find out that you actually love those third-rate sci-fi thrillers you always make fun of? Did you want your constituents to know you were renting porn?
How nobody could have thought of this, on either the Facebook side, the Blockbuster side, or the agency side, before it happened, is astonishing to me. They actually set this up as an opt-out, not an opt-in, program. A slashdot user (IcyNeko) posted text he received from Blockbuster:
“If cookies detect that you have a Facebook account, regardless of whether or not you have installed the Movie Clique(TM) application, then activities on blockbuster.com such as rating movies or adding movies to your Queue will be sent as notifications to your mini-feed and friends’ profiles… If you want to permanently disable the Facebook integration … you can easily change these settings … .”
Unbelievable!
I especially hate it when social apps are improperly implemented because it causes a chilling effect for other businesses interested in trying out new word of mouth marketing techniques or entering into the social media realm. Risk-averse corporations don’t need any more incentive not to innovate. Remember the SCO debacle, that dissuaded many Fortune 100 companies from trying open-source applications out of the need to protect their deep pockets? What a waste of time, that it took the market a while to correct. (Incidentally, April 29th is a trial date for SCO v. Novell that John Fontana of Network World says could be the “last nail in SCO’s coffin”. Really, though, SCO died long ago.)
To conclude: There’s bound to be some fallout as people try to build businesses out of new technologies, especially while the revenue models are still under development. This is only natural. My hope is that the more egregious uses of networking technologies will fall by the wayside and be forgotten in the wave of successful apps. We can learn from the mistakes and move on. I count on public sentiment (like the Facebook Stop Invading My Privacy group) to correct the wrongs. But I guess the jury’s still out.
by Christopher Carfi
April 15, 2008 at 5:12 am · Filed under
Uncategorized
"If it happens twice it’s coincidence; if it happens three times, it’s a trend." - Anonymous
For the past few months, I’ve been dealing with one of those gut, right-brain feelings — not enough hard data to draw the graph, yet well-more than enough to get the spidey senses on alert. That gut feeling tells me that business is about to get really weird. Happily, I also have a feeling that ultimately said weirdness is going to manifest itself in a positive, transformative way.
The key driver behind this feeling has been the humanization of so many organizations that, heretofore, have been opaque and, well, corporate. Dell. GM. Salesforce. Wells Fargo. Oracle. In all of those cases, the organizations have started to make transformations from being purely represented in the marketplace by their sanitized, focus-grouped-to-death marketing departments into organizations where at least some identifiable number of their employees or representatives are having "real" identities online that integrate both their "corporate" and "human" sides.
As we discovered here, individuals from Big Companies self-identify online with a variety of sites online that they state as their "home base." For many of us, our blogs are "home" — when someone asks us "where can I find you online," we give our blog URLs. (This is the camp into which I fall.) For many others, a Twitter stream, or even a Facebook or LinkedIn profile might be that touch point. Some of us have separate homes, one for our "professional" self, and another for our "personal" self, perhaps even under a pseudonym. I have a feeling (again, no hard data here) that the generation coming online now will more strongly identify with themselves and their peer networks, rather than any organizational home online, regardless of how benevolent that organization may be.
Here are three other posts that are poking on different side of this:
Umair Haque: "There’s only one real answer: rethinking strategy itself. A world of
cheap, abundant, always-on interaction, where value is shifting to the
edges, demands a fresh understanding of what’s truly strategic and
what’s not."
Fred Wilson: "We are in the midst of a groundbreaking shift from a centralized
economy dominated by large "orthodox" companies to a "edge economy"
dominated by end users."
Jeff Jarvis: "Where orthodox strategy advises hiding information and making things
less liquid, what does edge strategy advise? Exactly the opposite:
release information bottlenecks and make things more liquid."
What do you think? Will organizations continue to fragment, and become more networked and organic, or is the current vogue of online individualism merely an outlier that will eventually return to a more traditional strategic state?
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