May 29th, 2008 |
Published in
Business, Marketing, Mobile, Search Engines, Web Development
Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat down with the Frantfurter Allgemeine (FAZ.net) to discuss things mobile and social networks among other things.
On mobile:
Just take the success of the iPhone: It has the first really powerful web browser on a mobile device - and many more are still coming. Nokia has one coming, Blackberry has one and Motorola has one. They are all supposed to be released this year. By these products, the advertising gets more targeted because phones are personal. So targeted ads are possible. And that means the value of the ads will grow. The next big wave in advertising is the mobile internet.
On social networks:
MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you´ll buy a washing machine.
Some good stuff in there. I recommend the full article.
May 2nd, 2008 |
Published in
Business, Friends, Portland
My former co-worker Tricia Butler has reduced her hours at her job and started her new catering business Sassafras Catering. I’m so happy for her.
I remember a couple of years ago during one of her performance reviews, Tricia felt like she had to break bad news to me. She talked about her love of her job, her respect for her co-workers, and her thankfulness at being given the opportunity and responsibility of her position.
BUT, she had to let me know that she was eventually going to start a catering business. Owning a catering business was a life-long dream of hers. She was sorry that her path and the company’s path might not be the same in the long term.
To which I replied, “Where is the bad news?”
Too many people spend their lives in fear of their own aspirations. For all of our talk about people in America having the freedom to chase their dreams, most people are afraid to really do so.
So from that day forward I’ve known Tricia as a caterer who happens to work in technology instead of a technologist who happens to love cooking. That’s why I’m so pleased to see her make the jump and get her business going.
I’m also pleased because I can unequivocally vouch for both her ability to cater events and the food that she has provided. Since that meeting, I’ve both attended and helped organize events that she has catered. Combine that with her business’s commitment to sustainability, and you have an amazing combination for the Portland market.
So congratulations to Tricia for following through on her dreams. If you are in the Portland area, I highly recommend hiring Sassafras Catering for your next event.
March 19th, 2008 |
Published in
Business, Site Performance, Web Development
One of the arguments I made in my presentation on site performance last year was that making small changes to your site to speed it up can make a big difference in your revenue. This was based on bandwidth savings.
However, now marketers using Google Adwords have an additional incentive to make their pages load quickly. Google is incorporating landing page load time as one of the factors for evaluating the quality ranking of an ad:
“Users value ads that bring them to the information they want as efficiently as possible. A high-quality landing page should load quickly as well as feature unique, relevant content. Fast load times benefit advertisers as well, since users are less likely to abandon a site that loads quickly.”
For companies that are spending thousands of dollars on text ads, ignoring their landing page load time could be spendy.
January 1st, 2008 |
Published in
Business
Evan Williams has a very useful post describing a different matrix to use when evaluating ideas for new businesses—particularly technology companies.
Over the years, I’ve talked to a lot of people about what their business ideas. Many of the ideas fail to pass more than a couple of the criteria that Evan describes.
During these casual conversations, I’ve struggled to figure out how to help people see the same picture I did about the likelihood of their ideas being successful. I don’t want to discourage them from pursuing their dreams—there are far too many people already discouraging people from taking risks. At the same time, I want to help people understand where the limits of their idea are and help them have a realistic picture of the challenges they face.
The next time I find myself in one of these conversations, I’m going to point them to Evan’s post to help them evaluate their own idea. Maybe this will help us develop a common language to use when discussing how the viability of the idea.
September 26th, 2007 |
Published in
Business, Emerging Technology, Mobile
Amazon recently shut TXTReview out of their e-commerce web services. TXTReview provides book and movie reviews via test messaging on mobile devices.
The interesting thing about this story is the clarification that Amazon gave for why they had stopped allowing TXTReview to use their APIs:
We do limit access by some mobile-focused companies to just that service. Its says in our license agreement for that service that developers must first get permission from Amazon Web Services prior to using Amazon ECS in connection with any handheld, mobile, or mobile phone application (see 5.1.4 here) . The reason is that it’s very early days in the mobile space and Amazon.com is still thinking through how to best serve customers who want to use mobile devices to shop on Amazon.com. At this point, we’re being cautious about exposing our catalog data for use in the mobile space.
So unlike most people who take mobile devices for granted, Amazon believes the mobile space is in its infancy. They see opportunity there and are being cautious to not lock themselves in. They see so much possibility there, that they’ve codified this perspective in their terms of service.
This shows more foresight than most companies have on where technology is going and is further evidence that the mobile web is likely to take off in the near future.
September 22nd, 2007 |
Published in
Business, Emerging Technology, Social Networks, Web Development
A quick follow up to my previous post on platforms. In Marc Andreessen’s article on The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet, he writes:
- In the Internet realm, the first Level 2 platform that I’m aware of is the Facebook platform.
Marc defines a Level 2 platform as a platform that lets “developers build new functions that can be injected, or ‘plug in’, to the core system and its user interface.”
Is Facebook really the first to do this? Does anyone have an example of a company that was doing this before Facebook?
September 22nd, 2007 |
Published in
Business, Emerging Technology, Web Development
Dave Winer recently wrote a post asking the question, “Should every app be a platform?” My one word answer when bookmarking Dave’s post in my delicious account was a resounding “Yes!”
Not everyone sees the benefit of building your application as a platform. People often fear the loss of control, the idea that they may lose potential revenue or the fear of being fettered to support APIs that prevent you from making unforeseen changes.
Even if you can get agreement on the benefits of opening a platform, the definition of what it means to be a platform varies greatly. That’s why I highly encourage you to read The three kinds of platforms you meet on the Internet by Marc Andreessen.
Marc’s post is lengthy, but well worth the time. It gives you language to use when describing the different types of platform and an honest assessment of the challenges in building each type.
As more people move from trying to build holistic web sites hosted on a single server and move towards a vision of a web presence that combines information stored in multiple places on multiple servers, the focus on platforms will grow. We need to communicate clearly about that types of platforms we are both delivering and looking for others to deliver to us or we will likely be disappointed in the platforms we choose and disappoint those who choose to build on the platforms we develop.
September 20th, 2007 |
Published in
Announcements, Business, Community, Portland
Silicon Florist announced Jive Software’s award at the OEN Awards based on my tweet earlier tonight. So in the interest of getting it right, here is my wine-colored recollection of the winners:
As always, the Awards Ceremony was fun, the food good, and the videos of all the finalists were inspiring. Congratulations to all of the finalists and winners.
(And I hope I remembered the winners correctly. Did I mention that the wine was good?)
September 19th, 2007 |
Published in
AJAX, Business, CSS, Community, Design, Portland, Site Performance, Web Development
Speed Matters: Presentation and Resources
We had an exceptional audience tonight at DevGroup NW for my presenation on how to speed up web pages. There were a lot of good questions and an engaged audience. Thank you to everyone who showed up. Here is my presentation from tonight as well as some of the resources I mentioned.
The great irony is that I used so many images in my presentation that I can’t compress the pdf files to the degree that I would like. Sorry for the large file size. If it is any consolation, you’ll likely get to fully use your broadband connection unlike when you download web pages and are limited by current connections to a fraction of your connection speed. :-)
Books on Site Performance
Articles & Resources
Measuring Site Speed
Minimizers and Compressors
Statistics & Studies
Thanks to all of the Flickr users who posted their images with Creative Commons licenses. This presentation wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting without their photographs.
September 14th, 2007 |
Published in
Business, Marketing, Mobile, Public Relations
Brian Solis has again posted an insightful examination of crisis communication. This time he has taken a look at the iPhone price drop, the customer outrage, and Steve Jobs’ brilliant open letter response. This is particularly timely because Apple today announced the details of the $100 store credit for early purchasers of the iPhone.
Brian’s article doesn’t cover the one question that I’ve wondered about since Steve’s open letter—would Apple have been better off having the store credit ready when announcing the iPhone price drop or not?
Most of the coverage has pointed out that Apple dropped the ball when the iPhone price cut was announced by not having a plan in place for early adopters. Yet after the uproar and subsequent Apple response, Apple is seen as a company that listens and responds to its consumers. And as Brian points out, the letter “turned a negative into a business and vision discussion about how the iPhone is going to capture significant market share.”
So my question to you (and particularly to Brian) is would Apple have been better off addressing this ahead of time or has their brand and corporate image improved more by responding successfully to the upset customers? If you were at Apple and you could turn back the clock and do it over, would you?