Yammer Gets Bronx Cheers from the Blogosphere. Why?

September 15, 2008 by 20 Comments

Yammer, as much of the free world seems to now know, won “best of show” at TechCrunch50. Yammer is an enterprise 2.0 company. The blogosphere had a fairly negative opinion about this. I read a number of these posts, and the table below outlines the reasons Yammer was viewed negatively:

Links to source posts: Dennis Howlett, Rafe Needleman, Rob Diana, Mathew Ingram, Svetlana Gladkova, Chris Cardinal, Chris Brogan, Jennifer Leggio, Bernard Lunn, Joe Duck, Stephen Baker, Mike Gotta, Fred Wilson, Duncan Riley, Liz Gannes

It’s a diverse collection of bloggers, and they each bring different perspectives. But there was enough commonality that I bucketed the reasons into the five groups you see in the table.

The reactions surprised me a bit – although there were positive reactions too. Let’s break down these five buckets.

Another Twitter Clone

Understandable reaction. We’ve seen Plurk, Identi.ca, Rejaw, etc. So I get the weary “Yet Another Twitter Clone” reaction.

Key difference here is the market Yammer is pursuing: enterprise. That makes all the difference in the world.

  • For Identi.ca to succeed, people would have to stop using Twitter (see Louis Gray’s post for analytical back-up to this point)
  • For Yammer to succeed, the more people use Twitter, the better.

Twitter ain’t enterprise, and I’d be surprised it gets there anytime soon. But using Twitter makes people understand the value of microblogging, which in turn helps Yammer.

Twitter/Others Will Do This

Given Twitter’s problems with keeping the service stable, I’d be shocked if they had also been putting in cycles figuring out how to go after the corporate market.

The other key difference is this. Enterprise is a different world than consumer. Probably one of the better explanations of the differences was by Mike Gotta, in discussing microblogging inside the enterprise:

“Within the enterprise, it is highly probable that IT organizations will classify these tools as messaging platforms (I would BTW). As a messaging platform, these tools would have to support security, logging, audit and archival functions to satisfy regulatory, compliance and records management demands.”

To succeed in the enterprise, you really need to focus on the enterprise. Twitter is having a field day in its growth in the consumer world. Wachovia just added their Twitter account to the website Contact Us page. Keith Olbermann is now on Twitter. Twitter should really focus on the consumer market, and own that.

Yammer is more likely to bump up against SAP’s ESME and Oracle’s OraTweet.

Extortion Revenue Model

The extortion is based on the fact that Yammer is free for sign-up and use. But if a company wants to control it, access to the administrative functions costs money. So companies will feel compelled to pay in order to manage the goings-on inside Yammer.

I’ll admit it’s a pretty creative enterprise pricing model. It seems to address two issues that bedevil enterprise software vendors:

  • How do I get a company to try my software
  • How do I prove employees will use it and get value from it

Companies don’t pay until they’ve seen employees use it and get value from it. Not bad, and it really wouldn’t be that hard for a CIO to tell employees to stop using Yammer (and block the site).

It is sneaky, but it’s also a clever way to address the adoption and value proposition issues that enterprise software vendors will always face. Atlassian Confluence achieved a solid share of the wiki market via viral adoption. Atlassian doesn’t have sales people – it’s all word of mouth.

Workers Won’t Adopt

This is where Yammer faces the toughest road. Getting people to microblog. Twitter is available to the hundreds of millions of people around the globe who might be interested. And it’s gotten a very small percentage of them.

Inside the enterprise, you need a much higher adoption rate. People already on Twitter are natural adopters, but a lot of employees will still have the “why would I do that?” reaction.

The “sell” has to compare Yammer to existing communication modes:

  • Email
  • Instant messaging
  • Forums

Note that relative to Twitter, Yammer has immediate context and built-in users. Context comes because the internal messages will generally center around work that colleagues have a stake in. In other words, they care more about each Yammer message than they do about individual tweets out in the wild.

The other thing is that managers at the departmental level can join and start using Yammer. On Twitter, if you don’t follow an A-Lister…so be it. On Yammer, if you don’t follow your boss…you’re going to miss something.

Cloud Computing Is Scary

This is an ongoing issue for the entire cloud computing/web apps world. Amazon S3 and Gmail’s recent outages highlight the issue.

Salesforce.com experienced outages back in late 2005 and early 2006. They were a blow to the software-as-a-service sector, but the company appears to have righted the ship since then.

Salesforce.com has a market cap of $6.9 billion. Yammer doesn’t.

But Yammer doesn’t have the database-of-record mission that Salesforce.com does, so the threshold for Yammer is lower. Still, ideally for Yammer, people will message about critical issues for their companies, not just what they’re having for lunch. So Yammer’s scalability, security and reliability will be important.

Cloud computing still has a sell-job of its own, but I like the way Anshu Sharma put it:

“No one (at least not me) is suggesting that on-premise software will disappear – its just that growth in enterprise software will come from SaaS and not on-premise (which is growing at about 4%). Venture capitalists like Emergence Capital and Humbold Winblad are voting with their dollars!”

A lot of action is around SaaS, it’s a question of how long the adoption curve will be. Yammer is counting on this one.

Gartner’s Hype Cycle

Gartner puts out updates on something it calls the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. The hype cycle tracks the market views of various technologies, which go through predictable cycles:

  • Technology Trigger
  • Peak of Inflated Expectations
  • Trough of Disillusionment
  • Slope of Enlightenment
  • Plateau of Productivity

In July 2008, Gartner released its latest view regarding the hype cycle. This one included both microblogging and cloud computing, Yammer’s model:

Courtesy marketingfacts on Flickr

Courtesy marketingfacts on Flickr

Neither microblogging nor cloud computing is anywhere near mainstream uptake. Gartner pegs that at a 2 to 5 year horizon.

The companies that are in now, though, will be best positioned to figure out what drives the Plateau of Productivity. It takes time to learn a market, get some positive customer stories and gain a wider customer base.

I’ll be watching Yammer.

I’m @bhc3 on Twitter.

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Riding Coach: A Day in the TechCrunch50 DemoPit

September 9, 2008 by 2 Comments

I spent a day in the DemoPit of the TechCrunch50 launch conference on behalf of my company Connectbeam. We didn’t debut at TC50 (two year-old company already has customers), but it was an opportunity to raise awareness among different communities.

I’ll say this: DemoPit is like flying coach, while the folks on-stage are flying first class. You don’t get the amenities or attention, but you still get to travel.

Here’s a quick summary of the experience.

Demo Tables

The tables are like 30 inches across. Not huge, but they were fine. Enough for a big display screen, a sign and a laptop. And that chip tip jar.

Wifi

Absolutely awful. The wifi was spotty early in the morning. Then it went down for several hours. That’s right…several hours. A bunch web-based companies without Internet access. Brilliant.

Jason Goldberg of SocialMedian went out for an EDVO card at the local Best Buy. He was back in business, so my colleague went out for one too. After an initial blue screen of death, we had Internet access again.

Late in the day, a TechCrunch staffer came by to offer another day to do demos since we had it pretty rough. Cool that they acknowledged the issue, and came up with a solution.

Demo-ing

Enjoyed myself when I could show off the product. It was great to take real-live data from someone visiting, punch it in the app and have it do all the cools things I said it could.

Lots of Visits by Tuesday-Wednesday DemoPitters

A lot of guys hitting the DemoPit on Tuesday and Wednesday came through the area on Monday. Smart. They wanted to see how we pitched, and find out what to watch out for (uh..the wifi).

Ashton Kutcher

Yup, Ashton Kutcher was in the house. He was up on stage pitching his start-up Blah Girls. You can read people’s tweet reactions here. It was amusing to see him on stage talking up his site. 10-12 year old girls might like it. Might…

Later this entourage-like crowd of people came through the DemoPit. It was Ashton Kutcher and Jason Calacanis’s were walking Jason’s bulldogs. There were several people accompanying them. Quite the scene.

And still later, Sarah Lacy was interviewing Kutcher. Do you think he got Zuckerberg’d?

FriendFeed Friends

I had a couple unplanned FriendFeed meet-ups, which was really cool.

Here are their handles on FriendFeed:

Weblebrities

Saw a few weblebrities: Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Stowe Boyd, Jason Calacanis, Dan Farber, Loren Feldman.

Big Companies

Three big communities were out in the DemoPit: Yahoo, Salesforce, MySpace.

Jason Goldberg of SocialMedian

Jason’s Social Median table had a steady flow of traffic during the day. And he did well with those DemoPit chips. People give poker chips to companies whose products they like. The company with the most chips gets to go on-stage at TechCrunch50 on Wednesday.

Social Media had a pretty good haul. Hope Jason makes it on-stage Wednesday.

Yammer

I liked TechCrunch50 participant Yammer. Enterprise Twitter.

On to Other Conferences

TechCrunch50 was tiring but fun. I enjoyed the scene. Next, Connectbeam will be at the KMWorld Expo September 23. And Defrag after that.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=who%3Aeveryone+%22Riding+Coach%3A+A+Day+in+the+TechCrunch50+DemoPit%22

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Use FriendFeed Lists and Rooms As Your Platform for Information Flow

September 8, 2008 by 2 Comments

Fred Wilson tweeted this recently:

i want to follow less people and more keywords in my twitter timeline. can’t wait for summize to get integrated into twitter

I agree with this sentiment – selected topics from a broad population, and broad topics from a selected population. When it comes to learning about particular subjects, it’s right on. FriendFeed’s beta version now gives you the ability to do exactly what Fred Wilson suggests for any topic. I’ll describe how I’m using them to track developments in the world of Enterprise 2.0.

Streaming Keyword-Based Content into the Enterprise 2.0 Room

About three months ago, I tried a little experiment. I created the Enterprise 2.0 Room on FriendFeed.

Not having time to be a Room Community Manager, I set it up to stream in content related to Enterprise 2.0. I did this as a search on FriendFeed for “enterprise 2.0“.

Well, the idea was neat. The actual implementation pretty much blew.

Because a search on FriendFeed, piped into FriendFeed as an RSS? It produces a lot of recursive results. Made the room pretty noisy and not particularly attractive to follow.

So I’ve cleaned up my act. Here’s what’s up:

  • No more FriendFeed searches
  • Using Summize Twitter Search to source content
  • Using Del.icio.us tags to source content

I’m piping in RSS feeds from Twitter and Del.icio.us. Twitter is great for those little hits. The links to content. The expression of a single perspective. And Del.icio.us is great for leveraging what people decided was worth saving.

Here are the search terms I’m using for the two services:

  • Twitter: “enterprise 2.0”, “E2.0”, “social computing”
  • Del.icio.us: enterprise2.0, enterprise20

In Case You Don’t Want it in Your Home Feed

Rooms can be set so that their entries don’t hit your Main FriendFeed stream.

You can un-check the box there that says “Show me this room’s items on my FriendFeed home page”. This works fine for Original FriendFeed.

The other option is to use Beta FriendFeed. In Beta FriendFeed, Lists have become the cool new feature. I have to admit, I’m finding it a lot easier to manage content via Lists than Rooms.

You can create a List called Enterprise 2.0. Rooms can be added to Lists. As if the Room was some sort of person on FriendFeed, streaming all sorts of content. Cool idea.

So you can run the entire Enterprise Room through a List if you want:

As you can see in #2 above, I’ve taken the Enterprise 2.0 Room out of my Home Feed. It only pipes into my Enterprise 2.0 List.

The cool thing about using Lists is that you can supplement the Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds of the Enterprise 2.0 room with other people or Rooms you like. For instance, I’ve included the FriendFeed accounts of Dion Hinchcliffe, Charlene Li, Ross Mayfield, Thomas Vander Wal and others into my personal Enterprise 2.0 List. For people not on FriendFeed, I also have created imaginary friends to pipe them into my List, such as the tweets of Harvard professor Andrew McAfee.

The Future: Keywords + People

Repeating Fred Wilson tweet from above:

i want to follow less people and more keywords in my twitter timeline. can’t wait for summize to get integrated into twitter

That pretty much describes my List set-up of the Enterprise 2.0 Room + specific FriendFeeders.

If you’re interested in a single place to track the happenings of Enterprise 2.0, I invite you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Room. Then personalize things with your own List. If you think of any search terms or data sources I should add, please let me know.

And feel free to start your own Rooms and Lists for topics you care about.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Use+FriendFeed+Lists+and+Rooms+As+Your+Platform+for+Information+Flow%22&public=1

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How Enterprise 2.0 Fosters Innovation: Stop Groupthink

September 2, 2008 by 20 Comments

I’ve had a chance to read some interesting research about innovation. In this case, whether more quality ideas emerge…

  • When people are in group sessions; or
  • Thinking independently

The background of this research ties into a well-known corporate activity: group meetings. I imagine most of us go through the ritual team meetings. Team meetings are good for a lot of things, but innovation may not be their highest and best use.

Turns out, research says that companies would be better off if employees had a way of coming up with ideas on their own, not in group meetings.

Here are three separate findings:

Via Marc Andreessen’s blog, the findings of researchers as related by Frans Johansson in The Medici Effect:

Via MSNBC, the findings as reported in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Via MIT Sloan Management Review, research published by INSEAD Business School

These observations about brainstorming ring true to me. I’ve been in enough meetings to know that strong personalities and prior relationships can hold sway over a group. The quote above by the Indiana University associate professor describes a dynamic I’ve seen time and again. An idea suggested early in the session gets traction, and becomes the focal point of the brainstorming. At some point, groupthink takes over. Maybe it’s exhaustion, maybe it’s an inability to focus on the other ideas anymore.

Yes, good ideas can emerge. But often, the whole exercise feels forced, and in my personal experience, employees don’t expect much from these meetings. Particularly if they’re run by outside consultants.

It Turns Out Group Brainstorming Does Have Its Attractions

The INSEAD paper referenced above does have some good news about group meetings. The paper studied two types of brainstorming groups:

  1. The traditional model, assembling a group of people.
  2. The other group took a “hybrid” approach, working on ideas by themselves before coming together to share their thinking.

The quote I selected above is from the research. But the study also has this to say about the two types of brainstorming:

Which technique yielded the best ideas? Strictly speaking, the traditional brainstorming groups consistently came up with the very best idea — and the very worst one, too. In other words, the quality of their results varied much more than those that came out of the hybrid groups that combined individual and group idea generation. However, the hybrid groups produced more ideas that were, on average, of higher quality. Nonetheless “for the very best idea, you need to have a pure brainstorming group,” notes Girotra. “Random interactions are likely to produce better-quality ideas.”

A few thoughts from that quote. One, the best idea can emerge from the group brainstorming, but I suspect it takes a truly motivated group. People need to come to meetings energized, ready to participate in a rapid-fire exchange of ideas and counter-arguments. In my experience, most meetings aren’t like that.

Also, how does that research that both the best and worst ideas emerge from group brainstorming play out there? Who doesn’t want the best ideas to emerge, but are you ready to put up with the worst ones too? Is there an argument for maintaining a larger number of ideas that are consistently above average?

Why can’t we get the best of both worlds? I want a higher quantity of good ideas, and I want the best ideas to emerge. While avoiding the worst ideas, if possible.

Enterprise 2.0: Hybrid Between Individualism and Group Dynamics

The graphic below describes the way Enterprise 2.0 captures the advantages of both brainstorming styles, group and hybrid:

Source Ideas: In the model above, the bottom level speaks to the core driver of Web 2.0: user-generated content. In this case, employee-generated ideas. Applying the familiar design and functionality of the consumer web (e.g. Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed, WordPress, etc.) allows the easy creation of ideas.

Filter Ideas: Something I’ve learned by participating in social media is that your peers are amazing filters. Find a group of people with common interests – but with different opinions – and you’d be amazed at how the most useful stuff floats to the top. Happens in blogging, photos, videos, tweets etc.

Execute Ideas: After all this idea creation and filtering is done, the ideas need to be executed. Here’s where the group dynamic becomes a huge plus. Most ideas in a corporate setting will touch a number of areas, and the group makes it happen.

The key to getting the best of both worlds – more ideas of better quality, identification of the top ideas – is to create a culture where ideas are rapidly created and evaluated, while also letting advocates gestate their ideas to fix areas of weakness.

The ‘Source Ideas’ part of the model speaks to the best of brainstorming as researchers have found, in the above quotes. In my own experience, it’s hard to find those channels for new ideas, either fully baked or based on a hunch. You’d typically have to email someone, or call a meeting with several folks. Coming up with new ideas is challenging enough…you then have to go through workplace Olympics to see an idea get discussed and considered.

‘Filter Ideas’ gets to the heart of what makes group brainstorming powerful, when it works. The rapid creation and analysis of ideas helps everyone. Different points of view, people seeing unique opportunities with an idea or recognizing weaknesses…all are vital to the corporate innovation process. Currently, this can only happen in a group setting, but the group brainstorming dynamics have to be “right”.

Enterprise 2.0 has this figured out. Ideas are easily created and shared. Proponents and opponents can develop analyses of ideas. Simple commenting is very powerful, while longer form blogging can lay down foundational elements. Proposed ideas and discussions live longer than the one hour everyone is together in a conference room.

I know this, because I see it everyday in places like FriendFeed, blogs and Twitter. The diverse opinions, knowledge, creativity and world views result in some really good ideas and perspectives.

I’m not prescribing the particular technology to capture the best of individual and group brainstorming. There are different ways to approach that. What matters is letting the employees try this out for themselves.

Groupthink has its place. A unified group taking on the challenges of the market is vital. But groupthink should kick in after the innovation processes have occurred. First, a healthy scrum of ideas, ultimately filtered to the ones that a company will execute. Then everyone working together with a common sense of purpose.

A utopian vision? Perhaps. But like all stretch goals…if you get halfway to them, you’ve accomplished a lot.

*****

If you want an easy way to stay on top of Enterprise 2.0, I invite you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Room on FriendFeed. The room takes feeds for Enterprise 2.0-related items on Twitter, Del.icio.us and SlideShare. To see this room, click here: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/enterprise-2-0

*****

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How Would Social Media Help You in Your Job?

August 26, 2008 by 8 Comments

I’m having a ball with social media out in the consumer web. Blogging, FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook. I’m learning so much about technology, new companies and people’s attitudes regarding Web 2.0. Along the way, some collaboration and a new job actually happened out of all this fun.

Now why can’t we see some of these same effects in the place where most of us spend a third of our day? We’re seeing live implementations of social media inside organizations (aka Enterprise 2.0). It’s a good sign.

I’m now in a job where I’m thinking about this a lot. And I figured I’d start with myself. Where would social media have made a difference in my two previous Big Corporate jobs:

Both companies were examples of today’s modern company, with a heavy information orientation. It’s been years since I worked at either, but here is how social media could have helped me in my jobs.

May Department Stores

The buying office of a retailer is responsible for picking the merchandise you see on the floor. Buyers also plan and execute promotions, set prices and ensure optimum amount of inventory on the floor and in the warehouse. We also had to communicate with the department managers of dozens of stores.

Here are the social media that would have helped me (if we had the Web back in 1990-1994):

  • Twitter: Yup, I would have loved Twitter. An easy way to fire off updates out to the field of department managers. And they would have sent back news of things they were seeing. Would have been a huge help during the crazy Christmas season.
  • Blog: I would have blogged about the weekly promotions. There’s a fair amount of work that went into them (promo prices, signage, focus of the ads), and documenting all that would have been useful. New products that we bought would have been good to discuss as well.
  • Bookmarking and notetaking: Assuming we had the world wide web back then, I would have bookmarked and noted a number of things for the job: competitor ads and pricing, product promotions I liked, new products I’d seen elsewhere.

Bank of America

At BofA, my group raised debt for corporations. Deals could run anywhere from $25 million to $6 billion. It was an information-intensive job.

The work consisted of three primary activities: (1) win the deal; (2) sell the deal; (3) close the deal via documentation. You had to stay on top of comparable deals, industry trends, capital market trends and general market chatter. Our group was divided into Structurers (me), who worked with clients to win and structure deals; and Distribution, who sold the deal to the market. Distribution always had the best information.

Social media I would have wanted:

  • Twitter: Again! I really would have wanted to see the ongoing chatter of the Distribution guys. They picked up all sorts of incredibly valuable market intelligence during the day. They used to IM. Now I’d want them to tweet.
  • Wiki: Every deal should have had a wiki space, with its “win the mandate” phase, its “sell it to the market” phase and the documentation phase. Wikis would have been good for handling the whole deal cycle.
  • Feed Reader: There were market data publications to which BofA subscribed. Getting a feed of deal information would have been a huge help. We were chasing information down in paper publications.
  • Bookmarking and notetaking: When deal, market or industry news came through, I needed a place to save it. I was always going back to find stuff I’d seen earlier. Bookmarking would have helped a lot. Note taking too – capture some information or thoughts, tag it and come back to it later.
  • Blog: My group wouldn’t have had much use for a blog amongst ourselves. But a blog that updated the rest of the bank as to what was happening in our particular capital market (syndicated loans) would have been perfect. We had other groups asking us often about market conditions.

I’d Love to Hear About You

Maybe you’re already using social media inside your company. Or perhaps you’ve been thinking, “my company really needs…”

If you’ve got any ideas to share, I’d love to hear them.

*****

If you want an easy way to stay on top of Enterprise 2.0, I invite you to join the Enterprise 2.0 Room on FriendFeed. The room takes feeds for Enterprise 2.0-related items on Twitter, Del.icio.us and SlideShare. To see this room, click here: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/enterprise-2-0

*****

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We Track Tweets and Genes. So Why Not Tomatoes?

August 1, 2008 by 1 Comment

The recent salmonella outbreak is yet another reminder of the vulnerability of our food supply. It was the latest in a series of food contamination events that have hurt and killed consumers:

Stopping the spread of bacteria that cause the problems will be an ongoing battle. And it’s not just natural bacteria, but any type of tampering that might occur.

While we can’t stop all forms of contamination that might occur, we should be getting better at quickly tracking down the sources of the contamination. What’s needed is a way to track the “chain of custody” for produce from the fields all the way to the grocery store or restaurant.

Apparently this is still pretty challenging to accomplish.  Consequently. the food industry has resisted imposition of expensive tracking systems, according to an article by the Associated Press:

The [food] industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sicken consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

Surely there are ways in which improvements can be made. We continue to make strides everywhere in tracking things down to their unit levels. Is the produce industry that different?

We’re Tracking Genes and Conversations

Two areas that come to mind as examples of dramatically improved unit-level tracking are genes and online conversations.

Scientists have successfully mapped the human genome. Amazingly, we now have the ability to track which genes affect in our bodies. From this work, scientists will develop genetic diagnostic tools and therapies.

Entrepreneurs have successfully built platforms that track conversations. Twitter tracks each tweet individually. Many writers use individually tracked tweets as references for blog posts. Being able to reference what people has advanced the cause of accessibility of ideas everywhere.

We continue to get back at unit-level tracking in so many areas. How about produce?

The Tomato Industry’s $250 Million Loss

The timeline below highlights two issues with the lack of well-developed produce tracking processes:

The first reports of salmonella occurred in April. People were getting sick. I assume health officials at various levels of government started to investigate. The outbreak continued in May and June, when the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning that tomatoes were suspected of carrying the bacteria.

Now let’s stop here for a second. Reports started in April and the whole month of May. It took quite a while for the initial warning to be issued.

After the warning, government investigators continued their efforts to track down the exact point of origin for the salmonella. In total, 1,700 samples of soil, water and tomatoes were analyzed. But still, investigators were unable to pinpoint tomatoes as the source for the salmonella.

On July 17, the FDA cleared tomatoes as carriers of salmonella. The focus turned to jalapeño peppers as suspects.

So the tale of the timeline?

  1. People have been exposed to the risk of salmonella for four months now. For two months, no one had any idea of the source. For two more months, investigators were tracking down tomatoes. More than 1,300 people have become sick with this particular salmonella strain.
  2. The tomato industry lost $250 million after the FDA issued its warning about tomatoes.

One reaction to this? From the New York Times:

Industry leaders have said they hope to get compensation from Congress to make up for losses, and those who are to appear Thursday said they also planned to demand a stricter burden of proof before the F.D.A. blames a particular food product for any future outbreak.

It’s an understandable request. But the industry itself can do more to reduce these problems as well.

Post 9/11 Legislation and Industry Efforts to Manage Cost

Tracking a full chain of custody for produce was one of the proposals for the post 9/11 Bioterrorism Act of 2002. The costs to implement the legislation were a concern to the industry. As the New York Times reports, the actual legislation does not sufficiently meet chain of custody requirements:

The rule requires importers, processors and distributors to keep track of where they buy produce and where it goes. A major hurdle facing investigators in this outbreak, however, is that processors frequently repack boxes of tomatoes to meet a buyer’s demands. In doing so, officials said, they are not required to record the tomatoes’ farm, state or even country of origin.

The rule requires only that produce handlers keep track of food one step back and one step forward in the supply chain and does not apply to retailers or growers. Because the rule does not specify the format for records, investigators are sifting through a hodgepodge of paper trails to identify the source of the contaminated produce.

I understand industry resistance to new regulations which can add costs to their operations. Particularly an industry like agriculture, which we’ve been doing for what…10,000 years?

Unfortunately, the industry’s success in reducing the regulatory burden may have come back to bite them. Tomatoes were not the culprit in the salmonella outbreak, but the existing tracking infrastructure hindered the speedy determination of that fact. With the business losses and loss in consumer confidence, industry leaders are waking up to the reality of their lobbying success:

“In retrospect, yes, if they (the regulations) had been broader and a bit more far-reaching, it could have helped with this,” said Robert Brackett, senior vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

What’s Needed to Unit Level Tracking

Some things that come to mind in tracking produce at the unit level:

Unique Identifiers for Units of Produce

Tweets have unique identifiers. So do FriendFeed entries, genes and vehicles. Assign unique identifiers to produce at the unit level. The picture to the right shows a typical unit of tomatoes in the grocery store: 6 tomatoes on their original vine. There’s a label per bunch of tomatoes. How about using that label to record the unique identifier for the tomatoes? The unit-level IDs are assigned at the field level.

The FedEx Approach: Every Step of the Way Is Recorded

Once we’ve got unique identifiers, every point along the way from the field to the grocer or restaurant is recorded. Location, time. This system needs to be quick, efficient and relatively inexpensive like FedEx.

Web-Based Lookup and Retrieval

Once all this great information is assembled, it needs to be easily accessible. A hosted repository that appropriate parties can tap as needed.

Once an outbreak occurs, officials can find the unique identifiers on any suspected produce. They look up the unique ID, and immediately know where to focus their investigative efforts. No more fumbling around, running forensics to determine from where the food came.

With quick access to the chain of custody, people’s health and lives can be spared, business losses are minimized and consumers can be more confident in the food they eat.

We’ve put a man on the moon. We’ve confirmed water on Mars. We’ve mapped the human genome. We track conversations.

How about tracking our food supply?

*****

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Cuil and Business Models: Complement, Replace or Create?

July 29, 2008 by 1 Comment

Cuil went live Monday. The new search engine promises dramatically better search results:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Cuil went live with an incredibly high level of publicity. Alas, the promise of the company’s press release has not been met initially:

So Cuil has its work cut out.  And Cuil is running into the classic 9x problem anyway. As Harvard professor John Gourville explains it, new products need to be nine times better than the product they replace. Two parts to that nine times rationale:

  1. Risk aversion: the market will overvalue the incumbent product, with all its warts and limitations, because the benefits are certain and entrenched
  2. Uncertainty: the described benefits of the new product may not be realized

Three Philosophies to Building Products

I lack any build-your-own-company experience, so my observations are those of an outsider looking in. From what I see, companies build products that do one of the following:

Each product strategy entails its own risks and rewards.

Complement Strategy

In the Complement strategy, companies plug into an installed based and existing ecosystem. They see an opportunity to improve the functionality of the existing product.

The nice thing with the Complement Strategy is that there is a defined market. The incumbent provider has done the hard work of creating it. And the way customers use the incumbent product is well-known, so creating an experience consistent with that makes the new company’s job easier.

The Complement Strategy company ties its fortunes to the incumbent’s installed base and future product roadmap.  A nice exit strategy is to be acquired by the incumbent. There is the risk that the incumbent company will just add the feature on their own to their product.

One good example was Summize. Summize built a very nice search application in support of Twitter. Summize didn’t ask you to use it for micro-blogging. It worked on top of Twitter, making up for a limitation in twitter: search.

9 times better impact: Companies that pursue the Complement Strategy buys themselves a much easier time of it. The issue of risk aversion is put to bed because customers are not asked to give up their existing products.

Replace Strategy

The company that pursues the Replace Strategy aims to dislodge the incumbent. This is a tough thing to do. Customers know what they value in the existing product. They know how to work around the limitations of the products. They built their own processes around the product.

That’s going to be tough to disrupt. But the rewards are terrific. Typically, the incumbent has a large market size. The customers’ use cases are well-developed, and the shortcomings of the existing product are easy to identify.

Still, it takes ripping out a lot of entrenched processes and mindset to replace.

The iPhone is a good example of a product successfully employing the Replace Strategy. Not that it has actually replaced the bast majority of existing mobile phones yet. But it has gotten vital traction in the mobile market and is carving out its share.

9 times better impact. This strategy is the one that runs hardest into the issue of a product needing to be nine times better than what it replaces. Customers are going to overvalue what they have, and the completeness and reliability of the replacement product will be questioned.

Create Strategy

The Create Strategy is a storied one in the world of entrepreneurship. To create a whole new category of usage. Companies that pursue this are riding the visionary edge. Fun place to be.

The landscape is littered with companies that have tried this approach. That’s the big risk with this approach. It takes a lot of experimentation to find the new products that resonate with the market and really change people’s experience.

If a company hits on success in creating a new category, it will enjoy first mover advantages. These are important as Replace Strategy competitors inevitably crop up.

Twitter is an example of this. Twitter is the leader in the micro-blogging/social messaging movement. Other companies are trying to move into the space (Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, Identi.ca), but Twitter continues to enjoy a dominant position.

9 times better impact. This strategy has an easier time relative to the nine times better requirement. The Create Strategy does have replacement aspects, but they’re often more time replacement issues. Using Twitter as an example, Twitterers were likely replacing some of their activity on email, instant messenger and social networks. But they really weren’t replacing those. Twitter stands on its own merits, not in comparison to other apps.

Diigo: A Hybrid Case

Diigo is a new bookmark and tagging service. Ultimately, Diigo would like to replace Del.icio.us as users’ go-to site for bookmarking (Replace Strategy). But Diigo is being sm,art about it. They have made it easy for sites bookmarked in Diigo to be exported over to Del.icio.us at the same time. So by bookmarking in Diigo, users are suimultaneous bookmarking in Del.icio.us. In this way, Diigo is also pursuing the Complement Strategy. This allows users to get comfortable with Diigo while not losing their existing investment in Del.icio.us.

Cuil: The Challenge of the Replace Strategy

Google Search has en established brand. It has a huge share of mind. People have Google Toolbars. Google Search is a popular add-on to the Firtefox browser. Google Search powers myriad corporate websites.

Louis Gray has a nice post describing the challenge start-ups face when they take on incumbents. Often they start out with dreams of becoming the next big thing, but may have to settle for niche market positions.

Cuil’s initial approach is one of being better than Google Search. Not carving out a particular niche. But based on the initial feedback, Cuil has not come anywhere near being nine times better than Google Search. Cuil is not trying to create a new category. It is not trying to complement existing search. It is firmly in the Replace Strategy mode. Here are its options:

  • Completely replace Google Search: continue to compete against Google for more content that is searched and superior relevance.
  • Replace Google Search for a niche segment: be better than Google at just one thing. But really be nine times better.

Might there be a hybrid strategy for Cuil? You get your Google search results, but get to see what Cuil found? Perhaps like dogpile.com. Not sure how that would work though. And it really doesn’t address the entrenched ecosystem that Google has.

Choose Your Strategy with Care

Dave Winer makes a nice point when it comes to competing against an incumbent like google:

Google is a thriving coral reef, and one doesn’t just show up one day with an idea and compete with an ecosystem.

I don’t know if the Replace Strategy or the Create Strategy is harder. Both have their challenges. It seems Complement Strategy is the easiest, but probably has the lowest market potential.

What do you think? Did I miss any other product market strategies?

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Cuil+and+Business+Models%3A+Complement%2C+Replace+or+Create%3F%22&public=1

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Weekly Recap 072508: Twittering into the Mainstream

July 25, 2008 by Leave a comment

Twitter got some big play this week: 2 good, 1 bad…let’s start with good…

USA Today had a nice feature on Twitter, Twitter took off from simple to ‘tweet’ success…this quote from the article really gets it right about Twitter these days…

Twitter has become so popular, so fast, that keeping up with its fast-growing user base is a real issue. So many people now use Twitter to update friends that the system often crashes.

The outages are the markers of a company that is experiencing success beyond its expectations…

The New York Times ran a story about how companies use Twitter, blogs and other social media to keep up with customer issues and questions…

If you’re scoring at home, that’s two mainstream, huge-circulation newspapers writing positive stories about Twitter this week…if you wonder a couple years from now how Twitter became so mainstream, remember weeks like this…

But not all was well with Twitter this week…the company inexplicably chopped off subscribers from every user…there were a lot of pissed Twitterers…people threatened to leave Twitter…but when the followers were restored?…

“Temporary retraction .. comes back up 50 more followers ? I can’t help it … it’s sticky”

Twitter’s je ne sais quoi…

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I’ve never said jailbreaking…

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SmugMug seems to have figured out FriendFeed’s visual dynamics…SmugMug pictures come thorugh big, bright and beautiful on FriendFeed, especially compared to Flickr pictures…

SmugMug pix on FriendFeed, courtesy of Dave Cohen:

Dave Cohen SmugMug Pictures

Dave Cohen SmugMug Pictures

Same pix, this time Flickr on FriendFeed:

Dave Cohen Flickr Pictures

Dave Cohen Flickr Pictures

Great advertisement for SmugMug…and the little guy is cute regardless of the photo service…

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Noticed a change in my Google Reader shares these days…I’m tending to share blog posts that I haven’t already seen a few times on FriendFeed…that means fewer TechCrunch shares…more emphasis on those nuggets that haven’t seen wide circulation yet…

Figured people were seeing the big blogs enough already…

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I got to do a guest post on Louis Gray’s blog this week…really good reactions out there in the blogosphere, which was great…blogger Barry Schwartz thought enough of the post that he wrote his own post in response, Am I Losing the Connection?…

Unfortunately, Barry got the author wrong…he overlooked the “guest post” announcement at the start of the post, and naturally figured Louis wrote it…from Barry’s post…

  • Louis Gray wrote a blog post named Bloggers’ Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence
  • Louis Gray documents what are “interactions:”
  • “It’s these two dynamics that cause some bloggers to head onto the next stage,” explains Louis.

Sigh…I am happy the post resonated, but it’d be nice to get a little recognition…so I left a comment on Barry’s post a few days ago:

Barry – glad you liked the post. One small correction – I actually wrote that particular post. Louis was kind enough to let me guest post on his blog.

As for losing your connection to the industry. Look to people like Fred Wilson and Louis Gray as examples. I don’t think any blogger should feel the need to connect with every reader. Just like connecting anywhere else – pick your spots, right?

Despite the comment, Barry hasn’t updated his blog…Barry – you’re losing touch with your readers!…

Well, I’m not alone…Rob Diana wrote a piece on Louis’s blog, Can Microblogs Just Talk to Each Other?…Dave Winer thought it was Louis’s post…such are the benefits and perils of guest blogging…

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According to Allen Stern, Mahalo employees are busily writing articles for Google Knol…Unsure of Google Knol’s future impact on his company Mahalo, Jason Calacanis is making sure they have plenty of articles with links pointing to Mahalo pages…

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Plan to buy an iPhone this week, if they have inventory…

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See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Weekly+Recap+072508%3A+Twittering+into+the+Mainstream%22&public=1

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Unclear on the Concept: People Complaining about Comcast Monitoring Social Media

July 25, 2008 by 11 Comments

The New York Times has an article today about Comcast using social media to respond to customer complaints. Comcast is definitely at the forefront of this move to engage customers out in the wild. Comcast’s efforts have previously been documented on ReadWriteWeb. New York Times coverage helps move the concept, and Twitter, closer to mainstream adoption.

What caught my eye in the NYT article is that some people are concerned about Comcast doing this. They feel like Comcast is acting like Big Brother. According to the article, 20 year-old Brandon Dilbeck blogged about his dislike of ads on Comcast’s programming guide. A Comcast representative found the post (Google blog alert perhaps?), and responded to him via email.

Hey dude! Your blog had some impact! Isn’t that cool?

Well, no. The blogger apparently thought it was weird:

Mr. Dilbeck found it all a bit creepy. “The rest of his e-mail may as well have read, ‘Big Brother is watching you,’ ” he said.

Here’s what I don’t get. Blogs are publicly available. Anyone can find a blog and comment on it. Sometimes, your blog posts result in actions you wouldn’t have expected. This is the power of Web 2.0.

If you’re going to write publicly, how on earth can you be concerned about Big Brother? Sure, if Comcast had monitored his email or phone conversations, that’d be Big Brother (and illegal).

But to air your concerns publicly and have someone from the company read it? If you’re concerned someone would actually read your post, then don’t blog. I’m actually surprised this 20 year old was concerned. The Gen Y folks are supposed to be pretty open about everything in their lives. Maybe Mel McBride is right when she made this comment on FriendFeed with regard to Facebook:

I’m just getting tired of dopes buying into the surveillance of their personal history, daily activities and personal associations as a “convenience” – wake up people.

Social media: If you write it, do it or video it, people can find it. That’s the great opportunity for all of us.

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Unclear+on+the+Concept%3A+People+Complaining+about+Comcast+Monitoring+Social+Media%22&public=1

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Weekly Recap 071108: iPhone’s Big Gulp of Humility

July 11, 2008 by 4 Comments

Today was Apple’s big day, the release of its new 3G iPhone…geeks lined up days beforehand…stores were full of new iPhones…money was burning holes in pockets…the doors opened…customers rushed in to be the first ones to have the shiny new gadget…they claim their iPhones and go to activate in-store, an Apple requirement…and…the activation FAILS…

Damn, that sucked…

Apple is a company that has been on a hot streak for a while…here’s a quote about them from a recent Fortune article:

Apple requires a special kind of workforce. The place is divided by product but also by function along what COO Tim Cook calls “very faint lines.” Collaboration is key. So is a degree of perfectionism. Apple hires people who are never satisfied.

Today’s activation flub has got to be eating them up sumthin’ fierce…Apple has worked hard to achieve and maintain its air of excellence and coolness…

Fake Steve Jobs recently retired from his blogging…but surely this is too delicious to not write one more post…

All that said, Robert Scoble gives the new iPhone a thumbs up…

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Loren Feldman is currently following only 3 people on his Twitter account…he unsubscribed from everyone he was following…wow…he does say that he will be on FriendFeed going forward…

I’m not comfortable damning this guy, as I’ve never heard of him outside of recent events…he seems pretty tightly wound and people describe him as funny…he messed up with TechNigga…I’m willing to watch what he does going forward…and was this really Wayne Sutton commenting on Loren’s blog?

Thanks for the official statement, continue to create videos and I hope everyone from this situation has learned something and does not stop the future of sponsorship from other national outlets with the online video blogging community. I’m looking forward to your next project.

If that’s Wayne, wow…

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I’ve never said meatspace….

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Lots of discussions this week about the fast growth of subscribers for big name people on FriendFeed…Allen Stern does a nice job of breaking it down in this video…the issue is that same people tend to show up in two key places on FriendFeed…(1) the first 12 subscriptions listed on users’ Me page…and (2) the same 9 people are often displayed on the recommended page…shaking things up on those listings would be nice…

For my part, I was really surprised at the number of subscriptions (~100) that occurred because of Mike Fruchter’s post about ten people to follow on FriendFeed…thanks for the shout-out Mike…

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Two young women keeping it real out there on FriendFeed…Mona N and Michelle Miller…

Mona is a geeky gal who also attracts attention from the fellas…Hao Chen declared:

Ahh…Mona just overtook Robert Scoble as my #1 person you find interesting.

Michelle is irreverent, keeping folks entertained with updates about her dates with The UPS Guy…her blog post describing their first date was What Brown Did for Me…

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On Twitter, there are two ways to broadcast a blog post:

  1. Tweet a link to your own blog post, usually including something like “blog post” so people have a heads up its your own post.
  2. Tweet the word “reading” and the name of the blog post with a URL. This lets people know that you’re reading someone else’s blog post, and you like it enough to tell others about it.

Jason Calacanis tweets “reading” for his own blog posts. Huh? Reading? He wrote it! Here’s one example:

Reading: “Official announcement regarding my retirement from blogging.” (http://tinyurl.com/5zae7s)

Don’t hate the playa, hate the game, I guess…

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Digg founder Kevin Rose provided a great example of changing the name of blog post during its submission to Digg…

Here’s Allen Stern’s post, referenced earlier, about the ways in which A-listers quickly accumulate followers:

  • “FriendFeed Follower Patterns Exposed: How Jason, Mike, Loic & Robert Get So Many Followers So Quickly (video)”

Here’s how Kevin Rose submitted Allen’s post to Digg:

  • “The politics of Friend Feed”

Call it social media attention optimization….

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Weekly+Recap+071108%3A+iPhone%E2%80%99s+Big+Gulp+of+Humility%22&public=1

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Email’s Changing Role in Social Media: Digital Archive, Centralized Identity

July 9, 2008 by 20 Comments

Alex Iskold wrote a great post recently, Is Email in Danger? This quote lays out the premise of the post:

From the 20th century mail was a fundamental form of communication. The invention of electronic mail (email) changed two things. It became cheap to send mail, and delivery was instant. Email became favored for both corporate and personal communication. But email faces increasing competition. Chat, text messages, Twitter, social networks and even lifestreaming tools are chipping away at email usage.

When it comes to email, there are some parallels to what happened to snail mail with the spread of the Internet and email. The biggest thing is this:

Snail mail found an unexpected opportunity for growth with the rise of the Web.

Email will lose out on some of its uses, but there are some interesting possibilities that will emerge.

The Disruption of Snail Mail

The diagram below depicts the disruption that occurred to snail mail.

I’ve kept the disruption focused on the effects of the Internet. In other words, no fax machine or FedEx in here.

Back in the day, the mail system was the way you got a variety of important communications to other people. Our grandparents wrote letters. L.L. Bean mailed us the stuff we ordered via their catalogs. All our bills came through the mail. We were notified of things like jury service.

With the arrival of the Net, a good portion of snail mail’s portfolio was assumed by other technologies. And it’s had an effect. Here’s a quote from a 2001 General Accounting Office report on the future of the U.S. Postal Service:

Although it is difficult to predict the timing and magnitude of further mail volume diversion to electronic alternatives and the potential financial consequence, the Service’s baseline forecast calls for total First-Class Mail volume to decline at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent from fiscal years 2004 through 2008.

Pretty bad, eh? Electronic alternatives were evaporating the revenues of the post office.

But something else was out there which would help offset these losses in first-class mail: e-commerce. With the growth of the Internet, people got more comfortable shopping online instead of going to their local mall.

Those packages had to get to shoppers somehow. That’s where the U.S. Post Office shined. It already had the infrastructure to get things from a centralized place to multiple individual residences. What got disrupted were the trucking companies who moved merchandise from manufacturers to retailers.

Sure enough, the U.S. Postal Service saw a rebound thanks to online purchases, according to Web Designs Now:

In 2005, revenue from first-class mail like cards and letters, which still made up more than half the Postal Service’s total sales of $66.6 billion, dropped nearly 1% from 2004. But revenue from packages helped make up for much of that drop, rising 2.8%, to $8.6 billion, last year, as it handled nearly three billion packages.

And the dark mood at the U.S. Postal Service headquarters brightened quite a bit:

“Six years ago, people were pointing at the Web as the doom and gloom of the Postal Service, and in essence what we’ve found is the Web has ended up being the channel that drives business for us,” said James Cochrane, manager of package services at the Postal Service.

There is a lesson here for email.

The Disruption of Email

Email is undergoing its own disruption:

Again, similar to the previous diagram, I’m focusing on the web here. No mobile texting as an email disruptor, even though it is.

As Alex outlined in his post, the easy messaging of social media is supplanting the email messages that used to be sent. I haven’t seen any surveys that show the decline in person-to-person communications because of email. But my own experience reflects the migration of communications to the various social media.

  • LinkedIn messages
  • Facebook messages
  • Twitter
  • FriendFeed comments

As Zoli Erdos pointed out in his blog post Email is Not in Danger, Thank You, wikis are growing as the basis for sharing documents. They provide better capabilities than does email: wider visibility, versioning and searchability.

But it’s in notifications where email’s future is bright. Many of us are members of social media sites. As we go through our day, it’s hard to stay on top of activity in each one: new messages, new subscribers, new friend requests, etc.

Where is the central clearinghouse of my multiple social media identities? Email.

Email is the permanent record of what’s happening across various sites. This is actually a very valuable position in which to be. Here are two examples where email helped me:

  • After I wrote a post about nudity on FriendFeed, I lost some FriendFeed subscribers. I know this because my number of followers went down. There was one person in particular I wanted to check. This person wasn’t on my list of followers, and I thought, “maybe wasn’t subscribed to me in the first place?” Checked email, and I did indeed have a follow notification from this person a few weeks earlier. So I knew I’d been dropped.
  • I inadvertently deleted a comment to this blog. On wordpress.com, once deleted, the comment is not recoverable. I was in a bind. But then I realized I get whole copies of comments to this blog emailed to me. So I went to Gmail and found the comment notification. I was able to add the comment back by copying it from my email.

As snail mail had to adjust to the rise of email, so too will email adjust to the rise of social media:

As the number of social media sites and participation in them expands, email will find new growth and value in being the centralized notifications location.

Email = Centralized Identity Management

Much has been written about email being the ultimate social network. The basis for this is your address book and the emails you trade with others. But might there be another opportunity for email?

If email has all these subscription and message notifications, doesn’t it potentially have a role in helping you manage your centralized identity? Gmail could map out my connections across various sites. Find those that are common across the sites. Gauge the level of interaction with others.

Even add APIs from the various sites and let me send out communications from email. Suddenly, email’s back in the communication game as well.

I’m just scratching the surface of what might be possible here.

What Do You Think?

Email’s primary role as a communication medium is diminishing. Many of us are enjoying the easy, contextual basis of communicating via the various social media sites.

But like snail mail before it, email has interesting possibilities for what it will do for us in the future.

What do you think?

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See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Email%E2%80%99s+Changing+Role+in+Social+Media%3A+Digital+Archive%2C+Centralized+Identity%22&public=1

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What Interactions Do You Want from Social Media?

July 7, 2008 by 14 Comments

Mapping the different social media interactions to human anatomy:

Now…where to go to get those interactions? An incomplete list follows.

Ideas, opinion, information:

  • FriendFeed
  • Twitter

Share photos, videos

  • Flickr
  • SmugMug
  • Zoomr
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed

Music you like:

  • Last.fm

Chit chat

  • Twitter

What are you feeling?

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

What are you doing?

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • Upcoming

What are you eating?

  • Twitter

Where are you?

  • Brightkite
  • Twitter

Personally, my interest is in ideas, opinions and information. But some photos and chit chat are also nice.

How about you?

I’m @bhc3 on Twitter.

 

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