Internet Marketing Design Innovation ...

Books that everyone should read

Reminder to me in case if forget they exist :

The Black Swan by Nassem Taleb (mathematics, philosophy, randomness...)
The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun
Small pieces loosely fit together by David Weineberg

FON latest figures are impressive

" Number of registered Foneros is at 830,000. Number of registered hotspots is 332,000 and of active hotspots at anytime has gone up to 212,000 around the world up from 145,000 in "

 

The numbers in full : http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/general/fon-latest-figures.html

Predictive Internet ?

Are you what you Surf ?

Can you be traced  and mesured just be simply checking the sites you visit ?

If you search "Paris Hilton", go visit yoox.com and read the www.publico.pt who are you or even better what kind of a consummer are you ?

This is the internet so everything is just one click a way and even if people tend to avoid clicks on ads i think that people tend to do more and more of spontaneous clicks  - You just browse the WEB from blog to search engines to brand sites to search engines back to advertising then to SPAM emails.... its just an endless circle ...

The Web is about linking the dots between you, what you are and a given timeframe... I seek something now but i'm sure to seek something else later on... time counts as Ortega y Gasset could say :)

New man in town ? Ray Ozzie

" Ray Ozzie has a long and storied history of technological innovation, with accomplishments that include creating Lotus Notes and founding Groove Networks. But Ozzie may now be facing the most daunting challenge of his career: coordinating the work of Microsoft's various product groups to keep the world's largest software company agile enough to address the challenge of the next generation of Internet-enabled software.

It would have been difficult to predict the events that led Ozzie to this point. Growing up in and around Chicago, the middle of three children, Ozzie liked to build things, and was more interested in constructing model train layouts and assembling cool electronic contraptions than he was in schoolwork. He was, of course, a member of the audio-visual squad in his Park Ridge, Ill., high school. It was during his freshman year there that Ozzie stumbled upon his first computer -- an encounter that would set him on the path to his future career."

Read it all : http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1698

Less than 40 percent of young consumers turn to online banking: study

" Raised in an age of evolving technology, many young consumers are still banking the way their parents historically have done.

This was a key finding from a report by Chicago-based Mintel, a global supplier of consumer, product and media intelligence.

According to Mintel, 33 percent of consumers aged 18 to 34 are using online banking services. In addition, 37 percent of those aged 18 to 34 say that "better customer service" would cause them to switch banking providers.

With numerous financial service options available, Mintel's research also shows that younger consumers still have concerns about the security of online banking. About 40 percent of those who do not use online banking state it is because they "don't trust transactions on the Internet".

Also, with 80 percent of respondents in the 18 to 24 years old age group and 83 percent of those in the 25 to 34 age group owning debit cards, credit card ownership has been dropping in recent years for these groups.

However, Mintel said contact-less credit cards provide a new outlet for attracting new consumers, with over 60 percent of consumers in this age range showing interest in the newer option.

Consumers in this group are also looking more toward the future, Mintel said, with more than one-third of respondents in the 18 to 34 range stating that they already have a retirement savings account of some kind. "

Bank or not : http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/research-studies/40563.html

Competing with FREE via techdirt

Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period from the a-little-explanation dept Getting back to my series of posts on understanding economics when scarcity is removed from some goods, I wanted to address the ridiculousness of the "can't compete with free" statements that people love to throw out. If we break down the statement carefully, anyone who says that is really saying that they can't compete at all. The free part is actually meaningless -- but the zero is blinding everyone.

To explain this, it helps to go back to your basic economics class and recognize that, in a competitive market, the price of a good is always going to get pushed towards its marginal cost. That actually makes a lot of sense. As competition continues, it puts pressure on profits, but producers aren't willing (or can't for very long) keep selling goods at a direct loss. Sunk (or fixed) costs don't matter, because they've already been paid -- so everything gets pushed to marginal cost. That's pretty well accepted by most folks -- but it's still misinterpreted by many. They tend to look at it and say that if price equals marginal cost, then no one would ever produce anything. That's a misconception that is at the heart of this whole debate. The problem is that they don't add in the element of time, and the idea that what drives innovation is the constant efforts by the producers in the space to add fleeting competitive advantages (what some economists have annoyingly called "monopolistic competition," a name that I think is misleading). In other words, companies look to add some value to the goods that makes their goods better than the competition in some way -- and that unique value helps them command a profit. But, the nature of the competitive market is that it's always shifting, so that everyone needs to keep on innovating, or any innovation will be matched (and usually surpassed) by competitors. That's good for everyone. It keeps a market dynamic and growing and helps out everyone.

So, let's go back to the "can't compete with free" statement. Anyone who says that is effectively saying that they can't figure out a way to add value that will make someone buy something above marginal cost -- but it's no different if the good is free or at a cost. Let's take a simple example. Say I own a factory that cost me $100 million to build (fixed cost) and it produces cars that each cost $20,000 to build (marginal cost). If the market is perfectly competitive, then eventually I'm going to be forced to sell those cars at $20,000 -- leaving no profit. Now, let's look at a different situation. Let's say that I want to make a movie. It costs me $100 million to make the movie (fixed cost) and copies of that movie each cost me $0 (marginal cost -- assuming digital distribution and that bandwidth and computing power are also fixed costs). Now, again, if the market is competitive and I'm forced to price at marginal cost, then the scenario is identical to the automobile factory. My net outlay is $100 million. My profit is zero. Every new item I make brings back in cash exactly what it costs to make the copy -- so the net result is the same. It's no different that the good is priced at $0 or $20,000 -- so long as the market is competitive.

Read it all : http://techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml

Buzz words Open Source, SAAS

" Open Source + Shared/Managed Servers = the new SaaS Paradigm?“Open Source” and “Software as a Service” (SaaS) are big buzzwords these days. And rightfully so. Both are viable approaches to mitigating the often high cost of software and infrastructure. However, to date these two approaches have largely existed separately. There are a few exceptions to this, such as SugarCRM who offers their software with both the ability to download the open source version or pay a small monthly hosting fee.

I won’t go into the advantages of either approach here as a simple Google search on either term yields more than enough information on the topics. I’ve also touched on some of them in a previous post.

However, recently when I was looking at how to set-up a website, email and blog for my wife’s business, I stumbled across a plethora of new options that simply didn’t exist a couple years ago when we set-up Latigent.

With a little research I figured out that the Open Source Content Management System (CMS) Joomla would be the easiest way to get something up and running. The software was free and the options for plugins was mind numbing (similar to my theory on salesforce.com’s success).
"

Read it all : http://chriscrosby.net/blog/2007/02/09/open-source-sharedmanaged-servers-the-new-saas-paradigm/

Big picture and even a BIGGER picture

" Are you watching the major transformations, or just the piddly stuff?
I spoke in November in Iowa to a group of energy cooperatives, providing some different insight into the future of energy supply in terms of not what's happening today, but in terms of "what comes later" -- say, five, ten or fifteen years out.

Likewise, I'll be speaking to the Healthcare Industry Distributors Association at the end of the month. Many of the folks in the room will be focused on the short term trends that surround them; they won't be thinking about the massive transformation that is really going to impact their industry over the longer term.

That's the problem that people usually have when they try to figure out the future. They tend to focus on the the small, incidental, day-to-day, one-to-two-to-five year trends that they can see around them.

I take my time looking for the “big transformations” – the sweeping, massive, significant types of change that causes everyone to sit back twenty years later and ask, “Wow! Where did that come from?”

Read it all : http://www.jimcarroll.com/weblog/archives/000814.html

"

Innovation and location : does it count ?

"Poll: Does Location Matter in Web Innovation? This week's poll relates to a somewhat controversial NY Times article over the weekend, which suggested that Silicon Valley is more likely to create innovative and successful tech products than elsewhere in the world. Obviously Silicon Valley has a lot going for it - it's a hub for smart Web technologists, it's swimming in VC money right now, the universities there provide a steady supply of talent, and of course the history and 'myth' of Silicon Valley is well known. So yes, the chances for success are higher for a web startup living in Silicon Valley. But does that make Silicon Valley startups inherently more innovative? This article says yes, and what's more claims that "where you live often trumps who you are."

Om Malik has already written a good response, pointing out that Skype was a Nordic creation. And he links to a piece by Vinnie Mirchandani, who rightly says that "the Valley trails other global centers when it comes to many "next-gen" areas", such as mobile and enterprise software.

Like Vinnie, I think the real value of Silicon Valley is in commercializing innovation. Indeed this is something I mentioned recently in an interview I did with a New Zealand newspaper - I said that kiwis are known for their innovation and so there's no reason innovative web startups can't be created here. But I noted that to succeed on a large global scale, kiwis will probably need to take the pilgrimage to Silicon Valley. And it's not just for the VC money - the networking is just as important.

So to this week's poll, do you think Web innovation is dependent on location "

Take the poll : http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/poll_does_location_matter_web_innovation.php

Web 3.0 - definition

" I have written a few pieces already addressing the disjointed nature of the web, whereby, you go one place for content, another for community, and a third for commerce, the most notable of these is the popular, 4C: Yahoo’s Turnaround Formula.

Let’s quickly recap the terminology:

3C = Content, Commerce, Community | 4th C = Context | P = Personalization | VS = Vertical Search

This, I submit, is the formula for the future: Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS).

Web 2.0 has been a nichy phenomenon with hundred and thousands of microcap efforts addressing one of the Cs, lately, Community being the most popular force, producing companies like MySpace, Facebook, Piczo, Xanga, and Flixster.

In Web 1.0, Commerce had been the driving force, that produced companies like Netflix, BlueNile, Amazon, and eBAY. It had also resulted in the Dotcom meltdown.

The same period that is seeing the surge of Web 2.0, has also seen a great deal of investment in Vertical Search, like Sidestep for Travel.

Personalization has remained limited to some unsatisfactory efforts by the MyYahoo team, their primary disadvantage being the lack of a starting Context. More recently, Netvibes has raised a lot of buzz, but also lacks the same organizing principle: Context.

In Web 3.0, I predict, we are going to start seeing roll-ups. We will see a trunk that emerges from the Context, be it film (Netflix), music (iTunes), cooking / food, working women, single parents, … and assembles the Web 3.0 formula that addresses the whole set of needs of a consumer in that Context.

Imagine
-I am a petite woman, dark skinned, dark haired, brown eyed. I have a distinct personal style, and only certain designers resonate with it (Context). -I want my personal SAKS Fifth Avenue which carries clothes by those designers, in my size (Commerce). -I want my personal Vogue, which covers articles about that Style, those Designers, and other emerging ones like them (Content). -I want to exchange notes with others of my size-shape-style-psychographic and discover what else looks good. I also want the recommendation system tell me what they’re buying (Community). -There’s also some basic principles of what looks good based on skin tone, body shape, hair color, eye color … I want the search engine to be able to filter and match based on an algorithm that builds in this knowledge base (Personalization, Vertical Search).

Now, imagine the same for a short, fat man, who doesn’t really have a sense of what to wear. And he doesn’t have a wife or a girl-friend. Before Web 3.0, he could go to the personal shopper at Nordstrom. "

Read it all : http://sramanamitra.com/blog/484