Recently in Web 2.0 Category

Telecom has some of the most crowded and confused markets. Dial-Up, broadband, cellular, VoIP, POTS. T1 - all kind of flat. Not a lot of Differentiation. It's filled with "I'll save you 10%". The battle cry of the telecom sales dude. It's no wonder there are price wars -- what else do you have to go on?

Now, there is another battle field. A subset of VoIP. The mobile VoIP app. (Like SO many folks want to use VoIP on their cell phone.)  i2, Raketu, Vyke, Skype,  iSkoot, Nimbuzz, mig33, Truphone and so many more. In fact, so many, I can't keep track. EQO just died. And Fring is laying off 20% of its staff. TalkPlus died. Tpad (who?) and Nimbuzz just hooked up.  VOX hooked up with UTGI for mobile VoIP.

Can they all survive?  What size do they need to reach? Is it a matter of users like Skype (or mig33 with 9M users)? Or today is monetization important?

Even in VoIP, is 900 customers and 28,365 seats significant?

Bandwidth caps have more to do with preserving TV revenues than network management business. Yes, there are issues of last mile and node congestion for both telco and cableco networks. It is also a function of the band-aid approach that these companies take. instead of one huge upgrade (like say Verizon with FiOS), there have been baby step fixes.

It's also about preserving revenue. If you switch from watching Broadcast TV to just downloading Netflix and Amazon, how do the TV Providers make money from VOD (video-on-demand)? If you are watching shows via Joost and Hulu (and the coming network to replace Showtime), how does the big upgrade get paid for? The duopoly is preserving its content revenue - plain and simple.

Personally, the FTC should be investigating false advertising by the carriers - both on cellular data and broadband. In many cases, it is sold as Unlimited, but isn't. That's false advertising.

This will present an interesting challenge as people will switch. The duopoly is doing everything it can to compete on price and not value. Neither company is trying to court customer loyalty.

The ripple effect on this may be to stymie Internet business growth. Software and Application companies (SAAS, ASP), Web 2.0, and entertainment companies will find it hard to maintain customers and grow revenyue under a bandwidth cap.

I wonder how AT&T's partner, Apple, who makes the Apple TV and owns iTunes, feels about a cap, which will eventually flatten its revenues.

Not for nothing but these companies can't bill correctly anyway. There are certain to be many folks billed for overages where there are none. An even bigger erosion of customer satisfaction is coming.I guess we forget about Customer Acquisition costs and the lifetime value of a customer.

By accident, I ran across JobVent today. On first examination, it's just one more Web 2.0 forum for employees to complain about their bosses. AT&T has 5 companies - 4 are rated as bad. Cbeyond and XO are on there. Verizon is on there with 6 listings - VZW gets good marks. How is your company doing?

Conferencing is growing and there are so many players in the field. Not much differentiation that I can see. But Gaboogie has at least one differentiator: It calls the participants!

Another differentiator is Dimdim, which states that "When they wanted to share what was on their computer screens they discovered that existing web conferencing products were all either too expensive or too complicated (or both)." Dimdim is free for up to 20 attendees.

I use Freeconference.com and pay for the recording ability. I handed 2 calls off to my podcast folks and it turns out that the call quality was too low. Not good because you can't re-do a call.  Skype is good for one to one call recording (or podcasting) but I don't have an inexpensive fix for this. Do you?

On Wed. night, I am moderating a discussion at the American Marketing Association - Tampa Bay Chapter (New Media SIG) on the Deep Dive into Blogging. 

In a Biz Journal article, the author notes, "It is a new world for business. Embrace the opportunities. Open your mind to a new way of connecting. It is a great way to prosper in any economy."

I say that in today's business world, you have to be connecting with your customers and prospects - even your employees, vendors, and prospective employees. Reward programs are old school. Social media - in the form of blogging, Facebook groups, YouTube channels, Twitter, etc. - is the way to really form a bond with your customers.

For years, we heard about WOM (word of mouth). We read books about turning Customers into Evangelists and BuzzAgents and Sneezers. But how do you do that? According to Seth Godin's latest book, you build a Tribe. You lead people. One way is to be a Thought Leader in your industry. Blogging helps.

If you have an authentic dialogue on your blog whereby you give value to your readers, you will eventually build a tribe. (It may not be a big tribe, but a tribe of followers nonetheless).

Here is a sneak peek at my presentation:

 

Congress joins the Web 2.0 world thanks to a bill pushed by some grass roots groups like this one and that one. There are Congressmen already using Twitter. They are listed here. You can watch them with this widget:

Now there is an open source microblogging service like Twitter called Identica. CNET has the interview with Identica. A further explanation about Identica and Laconia are here.

With all the buzz about Twitter, businesses have a platform for creating an internal app. I think people puke too much on Twitter. Try following some of these folks using Twitbin (a Firefox plug-in) and the page quickly fills with one person's messages. Ridiculous even if his name is Guy. I wonder how much puking Congress Critters will do -- or if they just tell their aides what to Tweet.

The news this week in online music is that Best Buy is buying Napster and now has anti-trust approval from the FTC to do so, according Yahoo news.

Also, Yahoo News  reports that "After approval by the U.S. House and now a nod from the Senate, the Webcaster Settlement Bill is headed to President George W. Bush's desk for his signature. The bipartisan bill will allow copyright owners and artists, on behalf of SoundExchange, to negotiate with Internet radio services. The bill is expected to benefit all Webcasters, including National Public Radio, small Webcasters, and college Webcasters, who put their stations on the Internet."  And my favorite, Pandora, who pushed a grass-roots effort to get the bill through Congress.

In other online entertainment news, Netflix adds Starz. 

In grass roots fashion, Pandora, the online music genome project, urged its users (like me) to contact Congress about extending the royalty deadline. The bill passed the House. "Pandora and other Web-based radio services have been negotiating with music-industry groups for more than a year now, hoping to agree on a workable royalty structure before the existing structure bankrupted webcasters." [Dallas Morning News]  Who was the biggest opponent of the bill? NAB. Go figure!

AT&T bought USi in Oct. 2006. My friend Jack sent me an email from ATT Wholesale:

With AT&T's Payroll Services, powered by USinternetworking (USi), an AT&T Company, your payroll management headaches are history! You still keep control with full access and visibility, but we handle the tough jobs for you. Our know-how and tools will save you time, reduce your risk of errors and keep dollars in your pocket.

Would you let the folks that can't get your phone bill correct handle your payroll and payroll taxes?!

After thought: why is this ATT WHOLESALE?

Network World has a story about how an online storage site, Linkup, formerly known as MediaMax, shut down this week after 45% of the data was lost. Who's fault is it? Well, the article tries to figure that out.

As we have seen, outages are everywhere - Amazon, Google, etc. Five Nines is difficult especially now. My thoughts are that there are more hackers worldwide with broadband. More compromised machines. Less security precautions. Buggy, bloated software that goes unpatched. Less common sense.

All these free services have a cost to deliver. If they don't have a revenue model that is working (like Google or Amazon), then how can they afford to provide secure services to you for free? As we have seen, even GOOG and AMAZ who not only can afford it, hire top notch talent to manage it have issues that cannot be avoided. Power outages. Broken parts. Redundant failures. As any data center tech can tell you, these things happen.

A CLEC client called today with a DS3 card outage on his class 5 switch - and the redundant switch-over wouldn't work. What can you do?

Plan for the worst. Test. Communicate with your customers in the case of an event.