Marketing

I came across a copy of the September 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review a few weeks ago, and have had it in the pickup for emergency reading. I'd never read the magazine before, probably because it is almost never seen in Trinidad, so despite the exotic price of TT $149.99 (US $23) I picked it up. It's always good to read what others are writing, and reading broadly is something I do as a reflex.

Within the magazine were some interesting articles, yet the one that bothered me the most was Don't Try This Offshore (HBR Case Study and Commentary). I couldn't quite put my finger on why - the article is well written, funny and a little controversial for American businesses. I re-read it, as well as the commentary, and re-read it again. I thought about it for days. Then it struck me: the premise of the article is what disturbed me.

To summarize the article in one paragraph, the article is about a fictional business in the United States - 'management-metaphor boutique Serendipity Associates (SA)' - is suddenly challenged by a competitor with a lower price tag, and that lower price tag is linked to outsourcing creative work. This comes as a surprise in the story to Serendipity Associates. And that, you see, is what I found disturbing. That people even thought in this way - that creativity is geocentric or, in the Internet era, business-centric. Is this the way that people really think? That an accident of geography or hiring creates the perfect creative business? I don't think like that, but the article's premise clearly demonstrates that at least some people think like that. { Read more }

When I wrote about Mobile Phones as a Technology Platform, I was writing about something that at least a few people on the planet have been aware of for at least 4 years - perhaps 5. We can add Google's employees - at least some of them - to that mix: Google's For the Birds. It seems that Google is a part of group which plans to 'deploy world’s first high-speed, low-cost satellite system to transform communications access for billions worldwide'. O3b Networks, supported by Google, Liberty Global and HSBC, tackling the digital divide.

Clark Boyd chimes in:

...Fine, but broadband speed data access? Greg Wyler, founder of O3b, says these sats will fly lower, which will reduce the latency, the lag time between when you click, and when you get the webpage. Now, to be clear, O3b is not selling service directly. Instead, it's going to sell wholesale to local WiMax, 3G, and eventually 4G providers. So, not just for data, but for some of that cell phone backhaul.

Glenn Strachan, an independent IT consultant with extensive experience in rolling out wireless broadband in the developing world, sees some real sticking points. He notes that while some countries like Kenya and Rwanda have liberalized their ISP and cell phone provider markets, the same does not hold true for many African countries. "In Senegal," he told me, "the controlling monopoly is Sonatel. And they're not about to disperse, at low cost, this new Internet access. There's no regulatory environement in Senegal that would allow alternative ISPs to gain access." { Read more }

Update (14 Sep 2008): I mentioned my own experience on the DRM to Steve Rothery on Facebook. He pointed out that you can get it from MusicGlue.com.

From a press release on Marillion.com that I found through Steven Rothery's notes on Facebook, it seems that Marillion is trying a new approach to getting their music out there which thumbs it's nose at existing systems of distribution.

Peer to Peer. Or P2P.

Marillion is my favorite band due to their evolving style, their lyrics, and did I mention their evolving style? Over the years, I have maintained as many albums as possible - at times having to hunt them down prior to the creation of Marillion.com. From there, despite my geography, I can download albums in MP3 format which I willingly pay for.

To me, it is important that they survive - and this is geared toward their survival, as Steve shared in one of his notes:

The band debated and agonized the best way to do this for quite a while. The reasons we chose this path are

1 File sharing is a fact of life as are dwindling cd sales (see http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ for some insights into how the industry is changing and why the major labels are in such decline) { Read more }

In a fun and interesting twist, Marillion's latest song - 'Whatever Is Wrong With You?' - comes with a challenge:

Make a video, upload it to YouTube and, if your video gets the most views by 0:01 GMT on 1 December 2008 you get £5,000. Marillion meets Web 2.0 in style! And the lyrics are so... well, explain why Marillion remains my favorite band of all time. Both Fish and Hogarth eras, you splitters!

I honestly wish I had some video skills so I could take a shot at this - but who knows, maybe I'll toss something out there at them. Just for fun. I don't expect I will win, but I know I do have an original idea and it's something I actually related to something I sent the Marillion folk a few months ago... but, of course, I probably got trapped in the electronic or human spam filters. Obla di, obla da.

If you do have some video skills - and I know some readers of KnowProSE.com do (as well as some people who should be reading)... why not give it a try? Go check out WhateverIsWrongWithYou.com and check out the rules, download the MP3 and... get out your scissors and silver foil, toss some Christmas lights on your clothes, and go a little... Marillion.

On another note - brilliant marketing, great way to get We of the Marillion involved more. Now I have to go see someone about a dog with Christmas lights...

When Adaptive Path decides to share some of it's knowledge outside of the Adaptive Path blog, it's worth taking notice. Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer and David Verba got together and wrote Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design (Adaptive Path), a book whose title and authors cannot fit within the title of this book review. Fortunately, the book is not as thick as the title would indicate.

The trouble with designing just about anything these days is uncertainty. While business is risk, business is also mitigating risk, and the book promised some insights into mitigating risk by dealing with the uncertain world we live in. How could one not consider reading the book? From the high school kid with a dream to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, dealing with uncertainty is a necessary aspect of success.

The Book

The book is only 164 pages between bibliography and covers - relatively light but by no means diminutive in content. Throughout the book there are real world examples dating back to the days of Eastman Kodak and up to the present day success of the iPod (the latter's success still confounds this reader). { Read more }

Back in February of 2005, I headed up to Boston for Linux World as the Editor of LinuxGazette.com - I looked a tad different - and one of the last parts of the show I got to see was Kirix Strata. I wrote about it on the now gone LinuxGazette.com site, as I recall, and I remember seeing Kirix Strata as a solution waiting for problems. I had a licensed copy, but never seemed to have the right problems to toss at it.

Ken Kaczmarek, who I met at the show, dropped me a note about a post from the Kirix blog which he thought I would find interesting: it deals with the all too often forgotten Benford's Law. In a nutshell, Benford's Law states that in lists of numbers from many non-artificial sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. Take a look at the video for a better understanding.

Pretty Cool On A Few Different Levels

Aside from the ease of use of Kirix Strata demonstrated in conjunction with Benford's Law, I was impressed with a few other things. First, I hadn't been paying attention to Kirix because I've been busy with other things - and I didn't even know that they had a blog. Next, the whole demonstration of Benford's Law is probably the best true piece of marketing I have seen - not because it will make you want to buy the software, but because it demonstrates Kirix Strata with some real data in a context that gives Kirix Strata a voice. I'm not a fan of most methods of marketing, but this may well educate a few people in some cool math while showing a bit of Strata's muscle without it ripping it's shirt off. The video uses data from the Census Bureau, the Wikipedia and Digg.com itself. { Read more }

When Richard Jobity pointed me at How I got a Windows Vista refund from HP, I was not only happy to see that Hewlett-Packard had refunded the person who did not want to accept the Windows Vista End User License Agreement (EULA), I was impressed with the fact that the fellow had gotten his money back. While I am known for supporting Free Software and Open Source, that isn't really what pleased me. What pleased me is that someone took the path least traveled. It also pleased me that he is running Drupal.

Here's the thing: When you get a laptop, either you accept Microsoft's EULA - or not. Most people don't bother with even trying to say 'no' when the EULA pops up on the screen, they simply click through and say yes. Why? It is simply the easier thing to do; you can accept the EULA or just toss Linux on the machine. What you can't reasonably do is choose not to accept the EULA and get a refund for the software on the laptop. One person got a refund from Hewlett Packard because of persistence. They stayed on top of it, they did not budge.

Question: If you sell a product that has a precondition of use in accepting the license of a software package, but you do not have other options available to users who choose not to accept the license, is this really a choice?

This is apparently what Hewlett-Packard, as well as other computer manufacturers do. Leave all the Free Software/Open Source stuff on the side: They sell a product that asks a user if they will accept a software license after the product is purchased. That doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem right and it most certainly doesn't seem like they care about their customers as much as Microsoft's EULA. Granted, they may be shooting products out with a shotgun for the masses, but if you offer a choice it should be legitimate. { Read more }

After reading Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations, as well as reviewing the book, I've been considering a lot of things. Mix in a dash of Andy Oram's The Behavior Gap: Three Persistent Problems for Internet Technologies and my reaction. Squeeze some more efficiency for users in. Add an economy for users of Social Networks. Remember the Cluetrain Manifesto, and that 'markets are discussions'.

It seems to me that a large portion of what will be Web 3.0 will stand a lot of what caused success in Web 2.0 on it's head - inverting it so that the users gain some dominance. After all, without users, Web 2.0 would not exist - and while it is all well and good to make money while providing a service - the question is how much the users will tolerate. Just as there was a tipping point for success, there may well be a tipping point for failure. Alienate your community and you alienate your business base - keep your community happy and it will stay consistent and grow.

One of the problems with Web 2.0 has been, and continues to be, that it is focused on how very few people or legal entities make money providing services to many people. At some point, the majority of people who are interested in such things may well figure out that Web 2.0 is only about them as much as they allow themselves to be. Somewhere along the line, people may figure out that they are financial pink bunnies to the remote controlled social network - that they are only benefiting casually while others literally cash in on what the masses do. It is no different from traditional business in a sense; in this way social networking businesses are not too different from McDonalds. Lots of people eat at McDonalds (ask any dietician), but few people work there. Even fewer people gain the ability to improve their own positions through working at McDonalds.

It is a little reminiscent of Levitt & Dubner's observation in Freakonomics about crack dealers in the 1980s averaging $3.30 an hour. { Read more }