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March 31, 2006
About Time
Susan Crawford: "How did the ICANN meeting go? Progress. Definite progress. We had a good public discussion about transparency...."
ICANN is important. And I know a number of people involved with it (Susan, Joi, Esther, Vint, Elliot) who are well-intentioned, thoughtful, and committed to making it work the way it should. I have nothing but respect for their efforts.
Yet I can't get this thought out of my mind. It takes seven years for the closest thing the Internet has to a global governance body to have a "good discussion" about transparency? And that's progress?
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:18 AM | Comments (2)
Corporate Blogging: Where's the Proof?
Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels pushses back on blogging advocates Shel Israel and Robert Scoble. As Werner makes clear, Amazon is one company that shouldn't have to defend its commitment to heeding customer feedback. So if he thinks the case for blogging in the enterprise doesn't have enough data or concrete arguments behind it, the rest of us should listen.
I'm a huge blogging fan, but I agree that warm fuzzies aren't enough to convince organizations to institutionalize the practice. And the data has to be there. We're what, six years after Cluetrain was published?
Scoble and Shel have diferent perspectives on the Amazon presentation, and I wasn't there myself. My point is that Werner is clearly right in his larger argument.
Both Werner and Scoble will be be speaking at Supernova, FYI, so perhaps we can continue this debate there!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:56 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2006
Supernova podcast on online communities
Knowledge@Wharton has posted the first Supernova 2006 podcast, What Makes an Online Community Tick? Knowledge@Wharton is the online business journal of The Wharton School, read by over half a million subscribers worldwide.
The interview is a conversation with Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist.org), Julie Herendeen (VP of Network Products at Yahoo!), and Bill Flitter (CMO of Pheedo). The podcast explores how to facilitate, nurture, and benefit from online communities, which are becoming not just major social forces, but significant drivers of business activity both online and offline.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:08 PM | Comments (0)
First Life
To answer Halley's question, yes, of course we have a first life. It's called World of Warcraft.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:30 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2006
Plaxo turns over a new leaf
Plaxo CEO Ben Golub is apologizing on his blog for his company's practices:
To everyone who hated getting Plaxo update messages, felt we were generating acquaintance spam, or otherwise were harmed by the service, I personally apologize on behalf of all of the people at Plaxo.
Believe me, I despise spam. I live in email, so I feel the loss of productivity acutely. Yet I also realize that (1) there is blatant spam, and then there are a lot of grey areas, and (2) the vast majority of spam is of the blatant kind, meaning that if all the Plaxos of the world shut down tomorrow, you'd hardly notice an improvement. And, I'll add, it's easier to take potshots than it is to find a reasonable balance between email senders and recipients.
So, I'm willing to give Ben and the new team at Plaxo the benefit of the doubt. This apology is just a starting point; actions will speak louder than words. I just think we'll do better combatting spam by working with the email senders who want to behave responsibly, rather than shunning them.
In full disclosure, Plaxo is sponsoring this year's Supernova. I'll admit that I thought twice about accepting the sponsorship. I decided that having companies like Plaxo in the room helps to facilitate a frank conversation about where to draw lines. They haven't fully convinced me that they are drawing the line in the right place, but they are entitled to make the case to everyone at Supernova.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)
"It stops being the Net"
Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web has joined Vint Cerf, co-creator of the Internet Protocol, in speaking out against telcos' plans to violate network neutrality.
As I suspected, though, the telcos are winning on the battlefield that matters.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:59 AM | Comments (1)
March 27, 2006
In Defense of Contrarians
I'm with Catrina. The good time to start a company was when she and Stewart started Game Neverending, which became Flickr -- otherwise known as the depths of the crash. That's when I started Supernova, and when most of the other Web 2.0 darlings (Technorati, Six Apart, Weblogs Inc., etc.) got off the ground. It's also, by the way, when Google went from good to **INSANELY HUGE**.
Sure, you can start a great company today. And you could fail with a company started in 2002. And, you can be optimistic -- as I am -- while questioning the excess of hype and hyperbole we're seeing today. Entrepreneurs are going to be entrepreneurs, whatever the climate, because that's what they do. It's important, though, for the rest of us to keep some perspective.
Some people get lucky; if they didn't, Las Vegas wouldn't exist. But I'm putting my retirement money in a diversified investment portfolio, rather than the lottery or San Francisco real estate, because I like the odds better. Same dynamics here.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:55 PM | Comments (0)
Operating Systems of the Future
If, as Scoble suggests, Second Life is an OS, then it's MacOS, to World of Warcraft's Windows.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:51 PM | Comments (0)
Don Park: "What I have seen glimpse of in the game world is the next generation of groupware."
I agree wholeheartedly. Of course, I would, given that Don is a guild-mate of mine in World of Warcraft!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:42 AM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2006
Lucent's strategic choice
A couple weeks ago, I judged a Wharton business case competition to develop strategic initiatives for Lucent. Well, it looks like the company has chosen a road none of the students proposed -- merging with Alcatel. It's not easy being a telecom equipment vendor in this market.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:53 AM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2006
As I say, or as I do?
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says the FCC has the authority to enforce network neutrality, and AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre apparently said at the same conference that his company won't block Internet applications.
OK, if that's the case, what's so scary about an explicit FCC network neutrality policy?
Perhaps it's that both Martin and Whitacre (and their supporters) want the freedom to do something different, when push comes to shove.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:44 PM
March 23, 2006
The End of Operating Systems?
Another delay in the rollout of Microsoft's Windows Vista. At this rate, the *next* version, after Vista, won't roll out until after the 20th anniverary of the commercial Web browser. By then, I have to think, virtually all of the action in software will have shifted to the network in one way or another. Microsoft is fighting an uphill battle -- valiantly fighting, but struggling. I wonder if this is the last time it seriously tries to push the boulder up the hill.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:13 AM | Comments (1)
What True Interactive TV Means
John Battelle: "What if there was some kind of TelevisionRank that noticed, in real time, what people were paying attention to, right now? ... Now that would be powerful. Is it possible? Oh hell yeah, it is. And it's coming in the next five years, I'll wager."
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
There's gold in them thar MMOGs!
"One farm owner told me that there are more than 2000 gold farms in China and more than 200,000 gold farmers." (From TerraNova)
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
The Broadband Speed Gap
Mark Cuban: "We will reach a point in the next few years where we are complaining about internet speed all the time."
A useful cautionary note about how the Internet won't replace TV any time soon. (Which, as Mark acknowledges, doesn't mean it won't affect the TV business significantly, or that video through the Internet won't be a big deal.)
Though it's not Mark's point, reading the post made me even more concerned about how telephone companies will behave as they build out fiber networks. If they are over-promising their video capabilities, they are likely to (1) blame users and Web-based content providers for the problem, (2) argue to regulators that they need even more "incentives" to justify their investments, and (3) tilt their networks even more aggressively toward closed, proprietary services, and against Internet-based content and applications they don't control.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sun's on-demand Supercomputer
My friend Jonathan Schwartz is announcing on his blog Sun's launch of it's on-demand grid computing service, network.com. The idea is to make massive distributed computing power available to anyone through the Web.
This announcement, along with Amazon's S3 network storage service, and the initiatives in this direction that I have no doubt Google will soon launch, represent a turning point. The concept of the Internet as a vast sea of virtual computing capacity has been around for some time. It's now becoming real, in the form of commercial services. I honestly don't know what kinds of innovations this shift will spawn, but I'm confident there will be many.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Net Backbone Ownership
Bill Cheswick of Lumeta has put together an updated map for CIO Magazine, showing who owns the Internet's backbone networks. Not surprisingly, Verizon, AT&T, and Level 3 dominate.
As I've mentioned before, this is the less-discussed other side of the network neutrality debate; whether backbone providers can impose a tiered Internet on content and application providers, separate from what residential broadband providers might do with their customers. Although in the case of Verizon and AT&T, those could be the same company. (Thanks to Greg Staple)
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2006
"Great new ideas will never get off the ground"
Brad Templeton nicely summarizes the case for network neutrality as an extension of the Internet model.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:28 PM | Comments (0)
Send me a voice message
This looks like an interesting widget from Ev's podcasting company, Odeo. Maybe we can use it for Supernova. Click below to send me a voicemail message:
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
Mobile convergence
Nokia thinks mobile phones will kill the camera industry, the portable music player industry, and the video camera industry. Who's to say they are wrong?
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2006
My Dean Gets It
Looks like I'm not the only one who sees applications of massively multi-player online games for business-school education. Pat Harker, the Dean of the Wharton School (where I teach), apparently said the same thing in a recent meeting with MBA students.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 14, 2006
The Tyranny of Usefulness... and Giving Fun its Due
Umair Haque: "There's this curious notion in America: everything must be useful. This is why, at heart, there's little, if any room, for thinking; for the long-term; for the creative."
Go read the whole post. Though you can't tell from this excerpt, it's actually about blogging and "micromedia."
Umair is right, of course. These kinds of insights are why I've invited him to run a session at this year's Supernova. It's equally obvious that the veneration of "usefulness" made the US the dominant political, economic, and cultural force in the world. There's no point joining that debate, however, because the 20th century -- the American Century -- is over. And the 21st century hasn't fully arrived yet.
I completely agree with Umair that innovation is the great challenge for business in our new, pervasively networked, era. I've written and spoken a great deal about innovation over the past eight years, and yet I have to admit I still can't define it. It's clearly not just usefulness, or what we could call invention, for the reasons Umair identifies, among others. And it's not just change, or novelty.
I'm starting to think that innovation means something about passion, about love. Games produce innovators for the same reason Google did in its heydey -- they are fun. You can compete and win and be succesful and get rich by focusing on the objective, but you're much more likely to innovate if you concentrate on enjoying the journey. (I should go re-read Michael Shrage's prescient book Serious Play.)
Let me tie this back to Umair's challenge. Fun, perhaps, is America's secret weapon. A billion people in India and more in China want the quality of life we've been blessed with, and in an era of globalization, they can suddenly beat us at our own game. In the struggle for wealth and productivity, there are no entitlements. Many American individuals and corporations find this deeply scary. Yet, we, who have the luxury of starting off fat and happy, can more easily devote our energies to what we love. If we are to succeed in the post-networked century, we must learn to kindle innovation in this way. I don't mean leisure and entertainment; I mean passion with a purpose. Useful creativity, if you will. (Hey, Umair, I can't help it -- I'm American!) Our choice is whether to amuse ourselves to death (stealing a title from Neil Postman), or to lead a great explosion of human potential in the 21st century.
---
Hmmm.
That's not where I expected that post to go. I wonder if I was just rambling, or if I hit on something there.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
Verisign: The Dot in Web 2.0?
Another intriguing acqusition by Verisign, which most pople know (if at all) for digital certificates and domain names. It's buying Kontiki, the company founded by former Netscape CTO Mike Homer that offers a P2P private delivery system for video. What's the connection?
I once called Verisign potentially the Microsoft of VOIP. I still think the company could occupy a pretty significant position in the converged broadband Internet ecosystem. Vernon Irvin, the EVP of Verisign who oversees the Communications group, will be speaking at this year's Supernova, so I look forward to further discussion there.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:18 PM | Comments (0)
Countervailing Power
Mere minutes after I suggested that the best way to preserve the Internet's open innovation platform is to find powerful interests to counterbalance the telecom incumbents, an email arrived in my inbox from Dan Berninger. He forwarded a column that appeared a cable industry trade journal, arguing (pretty convincingly, I think) that network neutrality is actually in the interests of cable companies. The key point -- which is relevant to the entire discussion -- is that we're really talking about neutrality in two places. One is the interface between applications and the local broadband access network (where today cable leads). The other is the interface between those local networksn and the backbone (dominated by AT&T, Verizon, and Level 3).
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:10 AM
How games train tomorrow's business leaders
Joi Ito has a great post today about leadership in World of Warcraft. Massively multiplayer online games aren't just fun; they (like open source projects) are the training grounds for a new generation of managers. Coincidentally, we talked about this concept a good deal at the IBM "Global Innovation Outlook" event I spoke at least week.
We really ought to be using MMOGs to teach MBA students at Wharton.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:38 AM | Comments (1)
The WiMax alternative
Om Malik has the skinny on a comprehensive OECD report about WiMax, a promising wireless data technology that has been promoted as "WiFi on steroids." It's not -- though it's a powerful backhaul option for alternative broadband networks, with WiFi meshes at the edge. The cost of building such a network across the US, according to In-Stat, is about $3 billion. That's not chump change, but it's within the reach of, say, Google, not to mention some of those telecom private equity funds sitting on huge piles of cash. And the number is bound to fall as equipment costs decline.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:30 AM | Comments (0)
Substrate
Susan Crawford nicely captures the essence of the network neutrality debate:
"When [the telcos and cablecos] say 'internet' they mean infrastructure. They mean substrate. They say they built the substrate and now own it. ... But when users say "internet" they mean relationships. We forget, because so many machines are involved, that the internet is a social world. Users don't think about transport -- they're indifferent to the substrate. They care about what they do there. And what they do is create a complex adaptive system unlike any other communications network we've ever had before."
Susan is right that the "frame" of the issue poses problems for supporters of an unconstrained Internet. The "network" is the emergent phenomenon generated by physical infrastructure + users; what we're really talking about here is neutrality of, to use Susan's phrase, the physical "substrate."
Susan is a brilliant thinker and a compelling advocate (and a friend). For years I've advocated a layered model for telecom policy, so I'm rather sympathetic to her project. I'm pessimistic, though, about the larger battle, as well as her immediate reframing effort. "Substrate" just doesn't sing to the masses (or the mass media that propagates memes).
Personally, I'm thinking more now about the next phase of the war for the Internet, after the telcos and cablecos win. We need to create, to appropriate a concept from John Kenneth Gallbraith, "countervailing power" structures that rein in the baser instincts of the infrastructure owners. And though I heartily support efforts like Susan's OneWebDay, I don't think the most effective countervailing power structures will come from citizen action. It will be the Googles and Skypes and, yes, Microsofts and John Malones of the world who will be our salvation, if anyone is. Of course, these are also the players most likely to drive a nail in to the coffin of the open Internet. Guess we have some work to do.
Nothing like some happy thoughts to start the week. And FYI, I'll be talking about network neutrality on Wednesday at a panel discussion organized by the Federal Communications Bar Association.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2006
Experiencing conferences virtually
As a conference organizer myself, I'm always interested in observing good tech conferences. Three great events are happening back-to-back around now: O'Reilly ETech, South By Southwest Interactive, and PC Forum.
I'm not attending any of them, although I'd love to be at all three. The good news is that, in today's world, you can glean a tremendous amount about the content and "vibe" of a conference by participating virtually, through the blogosphere. A conference is a physical event delimited in spae and time, but it's also a dense cloud of ideas. When I first put up a wireless data network (pre-WiFi!) at PC Forum in 1999, and when I started doing trackback aggregation of attendee blogs at Supernova in 2002, I was thinking about opening up that idea cloud to the world, in both directions. Today, it's nice to see that concept becoming real.
(Although I must admit, I'm still surprised by the number of tech conferences with bad WiFi connections. After we had problems because of heavy demand at Supernova two years ago, I basically got rid of everyone involved and made a significant financial and time commitment to rock-solid connectivity. With the level of usage we have, I can't guarantee perfection -- especially when hotels charge something like $1500/day for a T1 line that costs them less than that on a monthly basis -- but it's a priority of mine, because it's so crucial to the Supernova experience.)
I've learned a great deal so far by following ETech on the blogs, and expect to do the same with the other two events. My Supernova planning wiki is filled with new ideas. And it's great to see people like Linda Stone, whose talk last year at Supernova on continuous partial attention opened many eyes, getting invitations to speak at so many other events. Reading the commentary from many ETech participants gives me a sense of the "temperature in the room," which is crucial for a conference organizer to understand. To my mind, a good conference is an artful mix of giving people what they want... and what they don't know they want yet.
Of course, virtual participation isn't the same as actually being there. The in-person networking and conversations with attendees and speakers are how tech conferences earn their registration fees. In an environment where it's so easy to get the content from events online, and with many free or low-cost "unconferences" playing a valuable role, a conference better be good to justify a fee of $1000 or more.
Registrations for Supernova 2006 are running two months ahead of last year's pace, which makes me happy, yet also scared. It's a great challenge to create an amazing conference experience in this market. Then again, I love a challenge. This week's troika of events are raising the bar, but hey, that's good for everyone. After all, I'm not just a conference organizer, I'm also a client.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 6, 2006
Ma Bell Redux?
So, AT&T is buying BellSouth. Ho hum.
Predictably, a flurry of reports call this the return of the pre-1984 Bell System, when the old AT&T held a monopoly on telephone service in most of the US. In reality, it's just another small step in the direction the US telecom industry has been moving for several years. Somewhere along the way, we gave up on the idea that local telephone companies would compete with each other. Instead, we put our faith in "intermodal" competition, brough on by cable TV operators, wireless connections, powerline broadband, and VOIP.
I have many concerns about this choice, but there's no point crying over spilt milk. The New AT&T is different than the old Ma Bell AT&T -- in many ways weaker, but far less fettered by regulation and inertia. It faces real threats to its core business in the form of wireless substitution and, increasingly, VOIP. But that was the story two months ago, and a year ago, and even two years ago. The BellSouth acquisition just moves some numbers around on a spreadsheet.
Don't expect this is the end of consolidation in the telecom sector.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 7:27 AM | Comments (0)
March 4, 2006
The benefits of competition
Competition means users enjoy innovation and lower prices. Take broadband Internet access, for example. Cable and telephone companies are slugging it out, and their customers are the beneficiaries.
Oh, wait. It turns out the price of DSL high-speed Internet connections in the US actually rose last year. (And, according the the same study, even though the cost of carrying ordinary voice phone calls is plummeting, the average US local phone bill also went up between 1991 and 2004.)
Has economics been proven wrong? Someone call Friedrich Hayek! After all, it couldn't be that the raging "competition" in today's US broadband market is more of a regulated oligopoly, could it? Could it?!?!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)
March 3, 2006
Old new telco thinking
Ahh, so the telecom incumbents have come up with a "new" idea for the Internet -- usage-based pricing. That's right, more usage (for things like VOIP and video especially) means more costs to operate the network, so users should pay by the bit, or some similar metric. It's all so logical!
But wait a minute. I thought what sparked the consumer Internet revolution was the fact that ISPs didn't charge by the minute, but offered flat-rate monthly fees. And what catalyzed the boom in cellular usage here in the US was the shift from heavily usage-based pricing to the largely flat rates we see today. This "new idea" is actually the oldest one in the telecom book. Even with respect to the Internet, the debate over flat vs. usage pricing is a decade old. It was at the heart of the "modem tax" debate back when I was at the FCC. At that point, the telcos were complaining about dial-up Internet access, not broadband video, yet the argument was the same. They lost that battle, but really they (and users) won, because usage and innovation skyrocketed.
Experimenting with new pricing and business models is all well and good; there's nothing written in stone about the current fee structure for broadband access, for example. But be wary any time you hear that "economics" dictates an "efficient" consumer pricing model. Sure, as a fundamental rule, prices in competitive markets are related to marginal cost. However, local access is still not truly a competitive free market, and cost numbers in telecom are inherently fuzzy and manipulable.
Given the option, users tend to vote with their dollars. If the pricing model doesn't reflect the value they get from the application or service, they use it less. With the kind of rhetoric we're hearing today we should be wary about pricing decisions by network owners choking off future growth and development of Internet-based services.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)
March 1, 2006
Supernova 2006 -- deciding what's important
I'm spending much of my time now pulling together sessions for this year's Supernova conference. It's always a stimulating process, because it forces me to think hard about what developments are truly significant, and what isn't getting enough attention.
We're also assembling another awesome group of speakers for this year's event. Just a few of the people who will be coming include:
• Jonathan Schwartz (President, Sun Micrsosytems)
• Esther Dyson (Editor at Large, CNet)
• Werner Vogels (CTO, Amazon.com)
• Jeremy Allaire (CEO, BrightCove)
• Saul Klein (VP of Marketing, Skype)
• Euan Semple (Former Head of Knowledge Management, BBC)
• John Garstka (Asst. Director, Office of Force Transformation, Dept. of Defense)
• Jonathan Taplin (USC Annenberg School)
• David Sifry (CEO, Technorati)
Stay tuned for more details here about the conference. I deliberately don't nail everything down way ahead of time, because this world changes so quickly. If you're thinking about coming, though, register soon, before things fill up and the early registration discount goes away!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:31 PM
Free or not?
British Telecom this week apparently suggested that it would soon make broadband service free for all its customers, and then hastily backtracked. It's hard to know what this means -- probably just an executive being misunderstood in an interview or presentation. Nonetheless, it suggests how wide open the broadband landscape is going forward.
While the focus in the US today is on whether broadband access providers can charge more -- to their customers, and to content providers -- the long-term trend must be toward charging less. That's what competition does in an industry where costs are falling all the time.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:27 PM | Comments (0)