May 06, 2008
Blogged.com Rates My Blog #1 for Telecoms
I was contacted the other day by Blogged.com, saying that they've been following my blog, and it looks like they like it. So, I've got two pieces of good news to share on that front...
1. Blogs are rated out of 10, and mine rated 8.3. This puts it in the "Great" tier, which is the third highest tier, behind "Excellent" and "Superb".
Only the top, top blogs get the Superb rating, which is a perfect 10.0. How hard is that to get? Well, they've tracked and rated 17,149 blogs under the "Technology" banner, and only 2 rated Superb. One is TechCrunch, which should be pretty familiar to readers of this blog, and the other is WiredScience (from Wired magazine), which is a bit off-center from my day-to-day coverage. Following "Superb", anything between 9.0 and 9.9 is "Excellent", and "Great" covers blogs with a rating between 8.0 and 8.9.
2. My blog is rated #1 among all the Telecom blogs they're tracking. Telecom is a tiny subset of all the Technology blogs, and only includes 84 blogs. While there are roughly 550 "Technology" blogs with ratings higher than my 8.3 rating (hey, I'll take that among 17,000+ total blogs!!!), there aren't any rated higher among Telecom blogs - I'll definitely take that.
There are a few familiar blogs in this category for what it's worth, including VoIP News, Jajah's blog, Brough Turner and IP Business Magazine. These are all pretty good blogs, so I consider myself to be in good company, and it's great to get such a positive rating among this crowd.
So, what does this mean? Lots of ways to look at this. First, it's great to be recognized at all, and second, it's also great to get a solid rating amidst so many good blogs and bloggers. If you're curious, I urge you to scan through the top blogs, whether the Telecom blogs, or the massive list of over 17,000 Technology blogs. The list of Tech blogs is as interesting for who is there and who is not. I had a quick scan of the blogs with ratings of 8.3 or higher, and aside from TechCrunch, I really only found 3 that I follow regularly - Jeff Pulver (9.2), Ken Camp (8.7) and Tom Keating (8.3). Interesting, huh???
How do they rate these blogs? Well, I can only go by what the website says - the ratings are done by sector-specific editors, and they base these on four criteria: "frequency of updates, relevance of content, site design, and writing style". As you can see from the site, all readers are welcome to rate these blogs, but I'm not sure how much impact these ratings have on the editors.
You can also suggest other blogs for evaluation, which is great since I suspect they're missing quite a few very good blogs that we all follow regularly. I haven't explored the Tech blogs rated below mine, so there could well be many familiar blogs there, so I urge you to look for yours if you're wondering. Are there better telecom blogs out there than mine? Absolutely. Blogged.com is a work in progress, so by all means suggest other blogs you'd like to see them rate.
For someone like me, Blogged.com is a good story. As you may know, my blog is 100% content-driven - there are no banners, ads, sponsors or Google links. As such, my traffic is minuscule compared to most - if not all - the bloggers I follow, and I suspect my blog is invisible to a big swath of the market. I'll never generate the kind of traffic that most bloggers have, and I concede that my following will be small, but hopefully loyal.
Furthermore, I'm a writer at heart, and take a lot of care in what I say and how I say it. I'm at ease saying that most bloggers are not great writers, and their notoriety comes from other competencies. So, I like what I see with Blogger.com, as their criteria is based more on what the blogger is creating rather than how many people link to them, or how well their blog is search-optimized.
So, who is Blogged.com? Well, I've been asking the same question myself. Their site launched in February, so it's pretty new, and you can read a brief review about them here from Webware's Rafe Needleman.
For those of you into social media, what makes Blogged.com different from things like Technorati is that it's based on expert evaluation of the content itself as opposed to key words or tags embedded in the content. It's a bit like Digg in that it makes use of crowdsourcing - a big buzzword in social media - which draws on input from readers to gauge the importance and relevance of a blog within its peer group. So, it's very Web 2.0 by nature, building on sharing and mass collaboration, but with a judicious mix of editorial objectivity (or so we'd like to think)and collective input from readers and other bloggers.
I really can't say how much stock you should put in these ratings, but Blogged.com seems like a pretty good barometer to me. Sure, they're new, and their universe of blogs will continue to expand, and whether you agree or disagree, you have plenty of opportunity to speak your mind and recommend other blogs for them to evaluate.
And if nothing else, I love their website because it's a great collection of blogs, and I'll use this as a regular resource now when I need to drill down for granular industry research.
Technorati tags: Blogged.com, Jon Arnold, telecom blogs
Posted by jonarnold at 08:50 AM | Comments (2)
May 02, 2008
eComm Presentations
For those of you who couldn't/didn't attend eComm2008 this March - and that's probably most of you - I just wanted to say that the content is slowly making its way to the eComm website.
The quantity of presentations was overwhelming, and the quality was excellent, and despite seeing almost everything, it's impossible to really digest the whole ball o' wax. Lee was forward-thinking enough to video tape the presentations, and he's even gone to the trouble of getting some of these transcribed. Wow - that's impressive! He's not doing this to get rich, folks - it's there for anyone to access, no charge. I've been talking with Lee about this, and he genuinely feels the communications sector is undergoing an historic transformation, and he simply wants to chronicle the proceedings.
So, to see what's there, go to the eComm Blog, where he's got a few of the presentations - video and text - up now. More will be coming in time, so come back soon if you haven't found what you're looking for.
Lee - friendly suggestion - put a Tip Jar on your site! This stuff is great, and I'd like to think at least a few people would like to send something good your way for all this hard work!
Technorati tags: eComm, Jon Arnold, Lee Dryburgh
Posted by jonarnold at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2008
Jeff's Social Media Breakfast - Toronto Edition
Bright and early today, Jeff Pulver brought his world tour social media breakfast to Toronto. Lucky me, it was held at my neighborhood deli, so it was a quick 5 minute walk. I'll take that commute any day.
Jeff has been doing these for a while now, and even a casual visit to his blog will tell you how important these have become for his regimen as well being an incredible way to leverage the energy he has been putting into Facebook.
The turnout was great - about 40 or so came, including a number of familiar faces. That said, there wasn't a lot of social media going on, but the traditional sitting at the table over breakfast human networking was just great. Many of the people attending were new faces for me, and they looked to be more of a Facebook crowd than a VON crowd. Jeff is a master at creating grass roots communities, and this was a great example. If there was time I would have eventually gotten around to everyone, but I ended up having productive chats with just a few people.
The takeaway for me was having more inspiration and purpose for making greater use of Facebook, and I hope to use it soon to connect with some of the people I didn't spend time with this morning.
Jeff, thanks again for bringing this event to town. Funny how it takes a New Yorker to come all this way to get a bunch of local techies, bloggers, VCs, etc. together in one place. If that's what it takes, so be it - beats staying here at my desk all day!
Photos courtesy of my Nokia N81...
Jeff welcoming us in his standard issue attire - Hawaiian shirt - summer or winter, you can bet on him wearing one...
Jim Courtney chatting with Dan York via Skype on his Blackberry 8320. Love it - hi Dan!
Technorati tags: Jeff Pulver, Jon Arnold, Toronto, Facebook
Posted by jonarnold at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2008
eComm2008 - Q&A with Lee Dryburgh/Discount Offer
Got two updates to share with you about the eComm2008 conference, which I did a background post about on Monday.
First is an interview I did with Lee Dryburgh that just ran on IP Convergence TV the other day. Lee mostly talks about his views on convergence technologies, but also a bit about what you can expect to experience at eComm2008. Hope you enjoy it, and comments are welcome.
Second is a special discount offer I can share with you to save 15% on registration for the conference. Hopefully, you've heard by now from many sources how promising this event will be, and if you're thinking about going, please drop me a line, and I can pass on the information you'll need to save 15% on your registration.
Technorati tags: eComm2008, Jon Arnold, Lee Dryburgh
Posted by jonarnold at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2008
Next Stop - eComm2008
Next conference for me is eComm2008, coming up March 12-14 in Mountain View, California.
Got a few things to convey about this event in my post...
For background, eComm has picked up where eTel left off last year, and is largely the vision of Lee Dryburgh, who I have recently gotten to know a bit, and am looking forward to meeting next month.
I'm late posting about eComm as it's taken a while to formalize my participation, which I'll get to in a moment. So, if you haven't been reading up eComm, you should start with the press release, and then move on to some of the recent blog posts, including today's from Thomas Howe and Andy Abramson, and earlier ones from Martin Geddes and Alec Saunders' Squawk Box interview, which includes Lee Dryburgh as a guest.
Myself - I've got small part, but at least I'm there, and am really looking forward to hearing from such a first-rate roster of speakers. I'll be moderating the Mobile Mashups panel, which currently includes Tom Howe (oh, what a surprise!), Dean Bubley, Irv Shaprio, Boaz Zilberman, and James Body. If you're coming, the session is on Thursday, from 2:00 to 3:00.
Finally, being on the West coast, I was really hoping to participate in Spring VON - now known as VON.X - which is the following week in San Jose. Very hard decisions to make here, but my circumstances just don't make it possible to do both. Turns out eComm takes place during our March break, and the plans have unfolded such that my 15 year old son, Max, is coming with me and will be with me at eComm, at least for as long as he finds it interesting. So, if you've ever wanted to meet Max, here's your chance. He'll be with me at eComm, but we're flying back after that so he can get back to school. Will have to miss VON this time around, but I certainly plan to be there in the fall.
Technorati tags: eComm2008, Jon Arnold, Lee Dryburgh, VON
Posted by jonarnold at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2008
PR 2.0 - it's all about Advocacy
I've been out and on the go all day, and had two industry events to attend this morning downtown. One I'll share with you here, and the second will be in my next post, probably in the morning. First up was a presentation by Weber Shandwick about how they're helping clients utilize social media, and after that I attended Mitel's analyst update event.
Pretty interesting event put on by Weber Shandwick, and this was their "inaugural power breakfast". With a promising headline like that, how could you not want to be there, right? I wanna know though, with PR folks being so media savvy, if this was a subtle reference to the venue being located in an art gallery called The Power Plant, or if I just make these crazy connections that most people don't get? Somehow I think it was the latter. Not so sure there was any grand messaging scheme behind this. I think it was more an issue of convenience. The Power Plant just happens to be one building over from WS's offices, so it's a no brainer for them to host the breakfast there. I digress...
Back to business. The event was really a showcase for Screengrab, which is WS's "Interactive, Social and Emerging Media" practice. That's a mouthful, and if you ask me, for something so hot these days, they should probably come up with something shorter and snappier. Anyhow, all the PR agencies are fast falling into line here as everyone is scrambling to make sense of this tidal wave of digital democracy the Web has opened up. With the Internet now truly mainstream, there's just an overwhelming amount of information out there, growing exponentially every day, and everyone is trying to harness it and ultimately make money along the way. I could go on and on and on, but you get the picture. Today's preso was basically WS's vision of PR 2.0 for a room full of clients, prospects, a few media types, a ton of WS people, and me - the lonely analyst. :-)
They had 2 speakers, and both were really interesting. First up was Bonin Bough, their EVP, and then David Alston, Marketing VP for Radian6. Bonin gave a really good - and thought-provoking - overview of what's going on out there and how WS is helping clients make social media work for them. David gave a run-through of Radian6, which is a social media monitoring tool developed specifically for the PR space. It's a higher-order solution for tracking how people interact with brands via social media.
There's a lot more to it than that, but suffice to say these are the types of tools necessary these days to get meaningful data out of the bottomless pit that Google has opened up. It's turning the advertising world upside down, and once reliable metrics can be established, things will get really interesting. You need to somehow measure audience reach and effect to determine advertising rates, and the Internet economy really doesn't get off the ground until that happens, and Radian6 is clearly one of these enablers. It's very early days still, but we all know big changes are coming, and this is a pretty good glimpse into what shape these changes are going to take.
A few photos courtesy of my Nokia N95 (apologies, the lighting was absolutely brutal for taking pictures)....
Bonin Bough
David Alston
Weber Shandwick's new mantra - Advocacy starts here. I like it...
Ugh - Toronto in mid-February. Without a doubt, THE dreariest time of the year. Can you really tell the difference between the land, the water and the sky? Just a pastiche of dull, drab gray. Believe it or not, though, we had blue skies by afternoon - winter will eventually run its course...
Technorati tags:
Weber Shandwick, Jon Arnold, Bonin Bough, social media, public relations, Toronto
Posted by jonarnold at 08:24 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2008
Where's voice going? Ask Tom - Mr. Mashup
Mashups can mean many things, but in the world of voice and VoIP mashups, Thomas Howe is the guy. He's carving a great niche for his company in this space, and I want to point you to his latest thinking which was just posted the other day.
Thomas did a long, but thought-provoking interview (34 minutes) with Lee Dryburgh, the main force and vision behind the upcoming eComm 2008 conference. It's been posted to their blog page in podcast form, and includes some summary comments and excerpts from the interview. Definitely worth a listen. As an aside, the eComm event looks very promising, and you'll be hearing more about it from me soon. I should also add that Lee has posted an even longer interview there on the outlook for telecom and broadband with the renowned Martin Geddes, who is quite involved with the eComm event.
For those of you following the mashup space, I should note that this builds on another recent podcast that Thomas did a couple of weeks back with Iotum, on their inaugural ConCast. It's also worth a listen, especially since it's a group discussion featuring other notable and familiar voices.
Technorati tags:
Thomas Howe, Jon Arnold, Lee Dryburgh, eComm
Posted by jonarnold at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2008
Are Bloggers Smarter than Backpackers? Find out Sunday Night!
I recently posted about how getting on TV was a nice benefit of blogging. Well, it's coming - this Sunday night - 8pm on CBC television. The show is called Test the Nation, and if you live in Canada, you can watch it then - it's live, coast to coast. It's a quiz show using a team format and I'm on the Blogger team! Don't ask how or why - it's happening, and it should be fun.
So, there are 6 teams squaring off - Bloggers, Backpackers, Celebrity Look-Alikes, Flight Crews, Cab Drivers and Chefs - and beyond that, I don't have much else to say.
Well - the only downside is I miss the Patriots/Chargers game - we need to be at the studio in the afternoon to prepare. And there's no live blogging onsite, so there won't be any posting on the fly.
Somehow, I think we're gonna win. Why? Well, the show has its own blog page and a Facebook Group. These are tools of the trade for us bloggers - not so sure about all those other folks - and the CBC people are pretty smart, and of course they look to us for all the latest in modern ideas...... hmmm, let me re-think that one...
Well, don't listen to me - you can vote any time for which group you think will win - the poll is on their site and blog page. So, speak your mind, tune in, and watch us prove what know - or don't know.
Technorati tags: Test the Nation, Jon Arnold, J Arnold & Associates, CBC TV
Posted by jonarnold at 12:39 PM | Comments (4)
January 10, 2008
Iotum's Voice Mashup "ConCast"
Today, Iotum put a great idea into practice, and may have a new product on their hands - the "ConCast". I love it, and think they're on to something good here. This was their first ConCast, and is a great way to demonstrate their conference calling application that's been running on Facebook for a few months now.
The idea was this - a half hour scheduled concall/audio webinar - with a roundtable speaker format. Voice mashups was the topic, and the call was led by none other than Thomas Howe - who else? Joining Thomas was Alec, Andy Abramson and Jim Courtney. They all chimed in at various points, and about two dozen people were in and out listening to the discussion. You could tell they were doing that because in the background you kept hearing that "ping" sound that tells you when someone has joined or left the group.
I wasn't able to be on the call as I had a concall of my own going this morning, but I got a chance to listen to the replay, which you can do as well. You can find it on Alec's post, along with his post-game review. The session runs about 27 minutes, and if you're interested in mashups, this is about as good as it gets for listening to people who are living it.
Great going, guys, and I hope you have more of these soon! And, the faster you build up your numbers, the faster you'll attract sponsors and then you'll have a money-maker on your hands - that's the kind of mashup we're all after...
Technorati tags: Alec Saunders, Jon Arnold, Facebook, voice mashups, Thomas Howe, Iotum
Posted by jonarnold at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2008
Alec Saunders' Privacy Manifesto
Really thoughtful post today from Alec Saunders that I want to draw your attention to.
Anyone who is concerned about what Facebook's Beacon initiative could lead to, or how they recently handled uber-blogger Robert Scoble should read Alec's post. Actually, it's a guest post on GigaOm, which is a great way for Alec to give back and support Om Malik as he recuperates - am not going to go there right now. I certainly wish a speedy and safe recovery for Om, and in his absence, people like Alec are stepping up and providing fresh content for his site.
I don't have much to add, and Alec does a great job laying out some of the key issues around Internet privacy, and more importantly proposes some rules of conduct and engagement - his manifesto - that would have prevented these from becoming bad situations.
As with any good blog post, the best indication of its impact is in the comments, and there are quite a few of them - well worth reading, and an indication that Alec has tackled this issue very well.
Furthermore, if you surf over to Alec's own blog, you'll see an updated post where he talks about the aftermath of this morning's post, and how the very comapanies he discussed are now part of DataPortability.org, a working group to establish guidelines and best practices for porting data from one site to another.
Great stuff, Alec - all in a day's work....
Technorati tags: Alec Saunders, Jon Arnold, GigaOm
Posted by jonarnold at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
December 24, 2007
Is Facebook killing blogs? The conversation continues....
I really wasn't planning on posting much at all this week, and just got on the PC now for a quick scan of email and blog stuff before heading off to the same family get-togethers all of us are about to start doing.
I see that Jeff Pulver posted a nice follow up today to my post from Friday about this topic.
Sure glad to see the dialog continuing, which really is the point of blogs in the first place, right?
For anyone following this topic - and I really think I'm hitting on something here - it's clear from Jeff's experiences that the conversations are shifting from the blogs to the social media sites, namely Facebook. What's a blogger to do? Jeff has built up a fantastic network of engaged "friends" on FB, and by rights, he should be getting great conversations going there. What's really amazing is not how big his network is - and lots of avid FB'ers have large networks too - it's how quickly he's done it. Again, nothing unusual there in the FB world, but I'm sure Jeff would agree, he's built up a large following there much faster than it took on his blog.
I don't know about you, but I'm still not sure what to make of all this. I still stand by my position that FB could well be killing blogs, but of course it's not so simple. FB is just another forum for communicating, but it's much more social, whereas blogs are really all about the writing - and for some, the photos too. That's the primary reason we go to blogs - to read what the thought leaders are saying. That's not why we go to FB - we go there to be social, and if we happen to see something interesting to read, well, we'll do that too.
It really doesn't matter where the conversations are taking place - as long as they're happening - that's what I think is important. So, again, Jeff's posing a valid question about why the comments have fallen off at his blog, but at least people are still talking - so no harm, really.
All I can say from here is that as this trend continues - and why shouldn't it? - blogs are going to just look so 1.0. For me, it doesn't matter, since I don't anticipate becoming a rabid FB user. I'm pretty old school, and the blog is where my public writing goes, and I don't see anything changing that.
For Jeff and all the others who are big on FB, no doubt this has to be creating some dissonance, and I guess you just go with the flow. As Jeff says, some posts he duplicates on FB, but only a few - you just have to experiment and see what happens. Nothing wrong with that.
The ones I worry about are those who are trying to build businesses around blogging, where the name of the game is attracting sponsors and/or advertisers. Social networking sites will only continue to fragment readership, so if eyeball and page counts are materially important to you, I suspect you have a bigger problem on your hands than what Jeff has been sharing with us.
That's my piece on this for now, but I'm all ears if you want to keep this dialog going. I'd love it if you did, but in my case, you'll have to do it here, not on FB! :-)
Over and out for now. No idea when I'll be blogging next, hopefully before the year is out.
All the best for the holidays!
Technorati tags: Jeff Pulver, Jon Arnold, blogging, Facebook
Posted by jonarnold at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2007
Is Facebook killing blogs?
Real interesting post from Jeff Pulver yesterday. Titled 'where have all the comments gone?', Jeff raises some troubling points about the impact that Facebook is having on where the best conversations are taking place. It's a valid lament for any high traffic blogger who regularly generates a healthy flow of reader comments - which I think is the true measure of what a blog is really worth.
This isn't a problem for me, as I don't have A-list traffic, so I don't get the volume of readers that usually yields the stream of comments that make blogs a much more interesting read. To some degree, this is by choice, as I don't take advertising or get into the SEO game, so as a matter of course, my blog will never show up on mainstream radar. However, I'm happy to have a small core following, and I get my share of reader input, both online and offline. Of course, Jeff doesn't take advertising either, but he's a globetrotting icon who attracts attention wherever he goes.
And that's the dilemma Jeff is sharing with us. The blog has been his soapbox for years, but since he's become enamored with Facebook this year, he'll be the first to tell you that's where his day starts now, and that's where he's spending his online/public time. So it's no surprise that that's where the conversations are happening now. His post touches on many facets of this issue, and as anyone who has taken the Facebook plunge knows, its pervasiveness has basically changed our behaviors. It's become the hotspot to meet, be seen and see who's doing what. It's a lot more fun, sexy and less work than a blog, and the expectations certainly aren't very high for what goes on there.
The blog is still a much better forum for articulating ideas, but sites like Facebook really are more engaging, and certainly have a great sense of immediacy. At any given time of the day, the chances of finding your posse are far great there than on your blog, so that's where the comments are going.
I can totally understand Jeff's issues, and others do too based on the comments he's received on this post. Interesting that a post that asks where have all the comments gone, is in fact, generating lots of comment for Jeff. That aside, it addresses some of the realities of trying to maintain an active, engaged presence in multiple places, whether real or virtual.
The big takeaway from all this is that FB is not really built for this type of dialog, and there's pretty good evidence from the threads running through Jeff's post that fixing this would be a good idea, making FB that much more powerful as a central meeting place. On the other hand, that may NOT be what FB has in mind as it might introduce elements that take away from what's already working so well. That's their problem to solve, and I have no doubt that the mashup community is coming up with all kinds of ideas/widgets/add-ons/whatevers.
I'm more of a casual FB user, so it's not keeping me up at night, but it sure will be interesting to watch if Jeff's dilemma is the catalyst for some potentially disruptive change with FB. The title of my post is more likely to keep me up at night, and I'm sure it holds true for any blogger who is living multiple online lives via FB, Myspace, Twitter, etc. If this is where people are really investing their online energies, it doesn't bode well for traditional blogs like mine.
Makes you wonder if blogs are going the way of print media and other 1.0 media. I sure hope not, and would like to think the world still needs forums like these for personal expression that runs longer than IM-style messaging. Much like the way LinkedIn is becoming more social media-friendly to stay relevant, Jeff's post is a wakeup call to say that blogs need to evolve too. Interesting times, no?
Technorati tags: Jeff Pulver, Jon Arnold, blogging, Facebook
Posted by jonarnold at 09:07 AM | Comments (3)
December 17, 2007
Iotum- Let it snow, but let's talk about it....
Quick post - a twofer for Canadian cohort Alec Saunders and the team at Iotum.
First,Ottawa got buried with its worst snowstorm since anyone can remember - about 2 feet yesterday. A lot of Eastern Canada got hit - we got it pretty good here in Toronto, but Ottawa got way more. The US Northeast got socked last week, but that was a different storm. Well, there's no doubt now it's going to be a white XMas.
Anyhow, if you want a geek's take on the weather, Alec has a great post today. Oh, as I'm writing this post, Alec has just updated his blog with some photos - nice work.
I was in San Jose last week for Cisco's analyst event, and even though it was quite chilly there - and even an outdoor skating rink next to the hotel - I'll gladly head back there now compared to what we've got here. I don't ski, but it's not hard to see how the Alpine set is over the moon about all this snow - no thanks....
Second item - since I have your attention - today Iotum announced something really interesting and fun with their Facebook conferencing app. For those of you who plan to be online on New Year's Eve - and I'll bet that's a lot of you, Iotum has a great way to reach out and touch 1,000 of your closest friends. They've been building some nice traction with their voice conferencing application on Facebook, and are using this opportunity to add some festiveness to social networking. Alec's post tells you all about it, so if you want to have some social networking fun on New Year's, and do a virtual midnight countdown with a cast of thousands, you just gotta be there.
It's a great idea, and to help promote it, Iotum has even produced a demo video, which you can view off of Alec's post. Aside from all the fun people can have doing this, the promotion is a great test to demonstrate the scalability of Iotum's platform, and I think that's the real story. This is the kind of proof point that up and coming vendors like Iotum need to convince large operators that their application will work for them and that they can make money today using it. In the world of social networking, New Year's is about as social as it gets, so hats off to Iotum for connecting the dots and creating a great opportunity for themselves. Can't wait to hear how it turns out.
Technorati tags: Iotum, Jon Arnold, Alec Saunders, Facebook
Posted by jonarnold at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2007
Cisco C-Scape 2007 – Parting Thoughts
I mentioned in passing in my earlier post that compared to last year, Cisco has certainly come a long way in its focus on video and network-centric solutions. Lots of talk last year about unified communications and SMB – not so much now. Telepresence is front and center, which is not a bad thing. And why not? I don’t know how much traction Halo or Tandberg or Polycom are getting, but Cisco wasn’t shy telling you how many deployments they have in less than a year’s time. If the numbers are to be believed, it’s pretty hard not to conclude that Cisco has bet right with Telepresence.
There really are 2 major story lines related to TP. The first is telepresence itself and the second is how this fits into the broader constellation of video-based solutions that Cisco seems to be betting its future on. Many presentations and sessions ended with the reassuring messaging that Cisco is ‘uniquely positioned’ to deliver video and bring customers into the Web 2.0 world. Well, if you say so, then it must be true. There was a lot of Kool Aid served at C-Scape, but on this count they just may be right. To the extent you believe that - it’s too early for me to tell - Cisco is poised to become a force in the video a lot faster than you might think.
So, first to TP – Telepresence. The big message there is that if you just think of this as high end videoconferencing, then you have very 1.0 view of things. Absolutely, that’s what it does, but from day 1 Cisco has not called this videoconferencing, and has staked out higher ground trying to get the world to see this as an entirely new category. The Cisco view is that this a tool for business transformation, that changes the way people communicate, and more importantly, the way we do business. They provided pretty good examples of this, particularly in health care, and we’re not just talking about cutting down on travel. It’s about enabling new processes and accelerating workflow. I’m just an indie, so I can’t really envisage this in my world, but can definitely see where this really can happen.
If you want to see the wow factor of where they’re coming from, check out this much-watched video off of YouTube. It runs about 4 minutes, and was mentioned often at the event, and gives the term virtual reality new meaning. In this session, John Chambers is speaking live in Bangalore, and Marthin De Beer appears hologram-like on the same stage as if he was right there with him. This isn’t from a Hollywood special effects magician – it can happen at your next board meeting. An interesting example they provided was how an Arab Emirates country wants to use this as a way to virtually bring Western celebrities into their local events. Well, that makes sense – a lot of rich and famous people will not – or cannot – travel to this part of the world, so TP is the next best thing. I get that.
Also, if you want to see a more extensive video from which this demo was done, there's an official version running on Cisco's website. It runs about 11 minutes, and has John Chambers telling the TP story in more detail.
I should also add that as good as the TP story is, there was no mention made of some interesting news from late last week. Cisco announced they’ll be opening up TP to interoperate with other standards-based videoconferencing systems. I’m all for that, and it positions Telepresence as more of a 2.0 solution, making it even more interesting. Not sure why they didn’t play this angle up at C-Scape.
Lots more to talk about here, but you get the idea. Anyhow, the second idea is the bigger picture of video. This is Dan Scheinman’s world, and Cisco demonstrated on a few levels how committed they are to video. They see it as the killer app of the Internet, and they just might be right. And of course, to do video right, you must have the right network, and who knows networks better than Cisco, right? Networks are not my forte, so I really can’t challenge on this front. What I do know is that 2008 will see the launch of EOS – their Entertainment Operating System – which puts all the pieces to together, including search capabilities that are a big part of their secret sauce.
I agree with Dan’s premise that there’s simply too much content out there, and people generally don’t know what they’re looking for most of the time, and when they do, they really don’t know how to find it. So, a big part of what will make video a big deal is having search tools that don’t just help you find things, but that help you discover things. It’s a subtle difference, but a big one in my books, and again, I get that. If EOS lives up to its promise, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo will have some catching up to do.
Missed opportunities? One comes to mind for me. One of the quiet stories that I think is cool is their focus on digital signage. I see lots of interesting applications, and once Cisco Field is built you can bet it will be a living test lab and showcase for this. Anyhow, given the size of the main hall for the big presentations, there were large video screens flanking the stage so everyone could see what was going on. At the back and the edges of center stage, however, were several smaller display screens draped in semi-random fashion to give the feeling of a more intimate, home-theater type setting. I’d guess they were each approximately the size of a flat screen TV you might have in your home.
Ok – I get it – video is the big message, so sure, the more video displays the better. Unfortunately, for the most part, these display screens only had static images - usually the conference logo. Ugh - not very exciting and, to me, a missed opportunity. Not only could those screens have been used to enhance the overall video message with streaming media, but even more so, they could have been a great vehicle to demonstrate their digital signage technology. It’s pretty neat stuff, and like TP, you really need to see it to get the idea.
Of course, you could argue that having too many screens showing streaming video/media – using both big and small screens - would be too distracting from what’s going on center stage. That may be true, but hey, we’re all smart, media savvy analysts. I’d say a little Hollywood razzle dazzle – even at just a few choice break points throughout the day – would have made a great impression to show off not just the power of both video and digital signage, but also to make a statement about how much of media company Cisco is becoming.
I can’t help but mention at this point that doing something like that – and it couldn’t have been that hard to do – would have been far more effective than the morally ambiguous Telepresence commercial they ran to close out the morning session. If you saw this, you’d know what I mean, and after a morning full of interesting and engaging presentations, it’s hard to see what they were thinking here. On a brain-dead level, the commercial was very sentimental and touchy-feely about an everyday American family keeping in touch with their son who is in some far-away place. That’s an easy message to send about the power of Telepresence. But it sure was hard to tell whether their son – who was holed up in some form of a tented base camp in the middle of nowhere – was doing noble Peace Corps type of work – or was in the military doing other types of work.
Maybe it’s just me, but I found this commercial confusing and a bit suspicious rather than uplifting and singing the praises of TP. I didn’t hear anyone else reading it this way, so I guess it’s just me. So either it was just way too subtle for everyone, or I spend too much time reading meaning into things where there’s nothing really there. The latter is probably closer to the truth, although I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about this stuff as a Psychology undergrad enroute to my Marketing MBA. Or maybe I should switch fields and go into advertising....
Much more to talk about, but that’s about all that will make it to my blog. To sum up, instead of hearing talk about VoIP, IP telephony, unified communications, SMB, the language this time around was about collaboration, Web 2.0, blogging, social networks, innovation, content, community, personalization and the experience. If it was just words like these, you’d be right to be sceptical. But they sure seem to be walking the talk, and even though their Web 2.0 Kool Aid was pretty strong - if you were there you’d know what I’m referring to – I do share their vision and can see how the pieces fit.
John Chambers loves to talk about never losing a battle where they’ve had a head start and how they’ve had a good track record capitalizing on market transitions. It’s also pretty clear that innovation is a major mantra at Cisco, and they’re living it as an organization, signs of which became increasingly apparent the more time I spent talking with them during the event.
Well, video sure is one of these ‘market transitions’, and they seem to be right on target for what’s coming in 2008. In short, his vision is to transform Cisco from a plumbing play to a platform play, and if they do, their branding message ‘welcome to the human network’ will ring true, and give them the one thing they don’t have – cachet in the consumer market. Apple has it, Microsoft has it, and Cisco’s dying to have it. If I’m a betting man, I say they’ll get it in 2008.
Technorati tags: Cisco, Jon Arnold, Telepresence, C-Scape
Posted by jonarnold at 02:42 PM | Comments (3)
November 22, 2007
Deloitte's "State of the Media Democracy" Highlights
Earlier this week, Deloitte hosted a really engaging webinar titled "State of the Media Democracy", and I listened through the whole thing. The webinar featured extensive highlights from primary research conducted for Deloitte earlier this year. I'm not exactly sure when the research was done, as I've seen highlights of this study published as far back as August. However, it's reasonably current, and with a base of 2,200 U.S. consumers, it's a pretty solid sample.
As far as I can tell the webinar was done for the Canadian market, and given that the research findings were very U.S.-centric, I'm sure Deloitte has done similar webinars in the States for their American clientele.
Anyhow, this webinar was hosted by Gary Gluckman, the leader of Deloitte Canada's Media and Entertainment Practice. I've cited Gary on some of my posts, and have done several others around other Deloitte initiatives that touch on IP communications.
Sorry for the long preamble, but I think it's pretty likely that I'm sharing new information for my readers, and that you probably weren't on this call. So, if you have even a faint interest in how consumers are engaging with the media and technology these days, you'll want to read on.
I'm just going to share some high level takeaways, as I'd be here all day doing justice to the research. I'm privy to the full slide set from the webinar, and since Deloitte spent a lot of time and money to get this great research done, I'm not exactly going to give it away here. Same for me - I don't make a living blogging, although a lot people seem to think so. Anyhow, even a taste is worthwhile, so here we go....
- Big idea #1 - yup, we've finally crossed the line. Overall, consumers are spending more time on the Internet than watching TV - 16.6 hours per week vs. 15.2. We knew this day would come - and it's probably the biggest shift in media consumption habits since TV supplanted radio. Aside - the research sample is segmented into four user groups - Millennials, Xers, Boomers, Matures - and I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions about how each one consumes media.
- User generated content is very popular. For every two hours people spend on regular Web browsing, they're spending one hour engaged with user-generated content. It's not clear to me how much of that hour is spent creating their own content vs. watching YouTube-type videos, but it's still significant. Not surprisingly, the mix was 50/50 among Millennials. They spend as much time with user generated content as they do with everything else on the Web.
- Reading books still rocks (hoorayyyyyy!). I'm so old school, and damned proud of it. When asked what 5 things people expect to spend more time doing next year, reading a book rated the highest aside from socializing with friends and family. Even more interesting - and encouraging - is how this finding held up pretty steadily across all age groups - not just with Matures. Actually, I think this may be the tip of the iceberg for a backlash that's coming against multitasking and media/technology saturation. I can definitely see that happening, with people getting zoned out on virtual living, and just wanting to do simple, singular things like read a book, go bowling, baking bread. Remember those days?
- Big idea #2 - TV is just background noise for doing other things. Only 10% of the sample just watch TV when watching TV (I'm in that camp). Everybody else is doing other stuff while "watching" TV - Web browsing, snacking, homework, email, talking on the phone. Talk about a medium that isn't very engaging. This is why going to the movies is such a powerful experience - you can't do all this other *hit - you actually have to pay attention and watch the movie. And - we're happy to pay for the privilege of doing so. What a great business model. I can see a whole bunch of other businesses that could be started based on the same premise. Gee, I can think of SOO many things to talk about here - I see a book coming. Don't get me started, unless you come running with a publishing contract or a cable TV show.....
- Big idea #3 - the advertising-driven model to support Internet content doesn't work for everyone. No surprise there, and the data shows that more than 1 in 4 (28%) would be willing to pay for online content that was free of advertising. Hey, that's good news for my blog, which is so Stone Age on this front - it's no wonder nobody can find me. I'd rather have a handful of engaged, loyal readers than thousands of strangers any day.
- People prefer to read print materials than online. Overall, the sample spends more than twice as much time reading printed newspapers and magazines than online versions of these - 4.3 vs. 1.8 hours a week. And, practically nobody reads online magazines - just 1/2 hour a week on average. Advertisers beware.
That's all I can tell you for now. There is a 3 page summary doc that Deloitte has made available, so by all means, get a copy here if you want any more detail. Beyond that, you should call me, and I'll be happy to get you in touch with Gary.
Technorati tags: Deloitte, Jon Arnold, social networking, Millennials
Posted by jonarnold at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2007
Use Facebook to make Conference Calls - You Could Win an iPod Touch
I don't normally promote contests, but this one is of note for a couple of reasons.
Fellow Canadian colleague and Iotum CEO Alec Saunders pinged me the other day about a special promotion they're running right now on Facebook. For those of you following Iotum, you'll know that they recently launched a free conference calling application for Facebook users. So, just like Skype, you can use their app to organize a voice-based con call with all your Facebook buddies.
To be fair, I should clarify that the free part of this is organizing and hosting the call. Each caller still needs to pay long distance, since the bridge number is not toll-free. That's where Iotum - and Facebook - makes their money, and in return they provide this capability. Fair enough, at least here in North America, where LD costs are pretty low.
Alec provides more detail about this on his blog, as well as explaining what you have to do to be eligible to win an 8 Gig iPod Touch.
So, why is this worth blogging about? Well, aside from trying to support a Canadian startup that has a really great app running on Facebook, it's a good segue to the whole topic of what people use sites like Facebook for. I think the takeup of early stage services like this will be important indicators as to whether social networking sites can become Web 2.0-style communications platforms - or simply places to check up on your friends and do stuff that's fun and free like IM.
It's neat that Iotum is using a contest to drive usage of their app, and I guess we'll find out soon how well it works. These things can be very effective - or not at all. There's always a risk out there that nobody is really paying attention, especially to use a service that's going to cost you money. As we all know, monetizing these platforms at the end user's expense has been very difficult to do. I would argue that Skype still hasn't figured out how, and nobody else really has either. However.... if the app truly has value - which conferencing can have - then we've got a winner here.
This brings me to the second point of the post, and it's really an exension of the above. In between the time I learned about Iotum's promotion and now, Stuart Henshall has put up a link to an interesting post, basically saying that VoIP apps aren't getting much traction at all on social networking sites.
Alec Saunders has since jumped in with his take, and covers both ends of the issue. First, he concurs with Stuart's view that there's little reason for people to make voice calls using apps on social networking sites - 'minutes stealers'. Why bother, when our local rates are so cheap, and there are so many cheap/free options available elsewhere, including mobile. Agreed.
At the other end, Alec takes issue with Iotum being grouped in this mix of "VoIP apps" that just aren't going anywhere on these sites. He's right on a technical level, in that Iotum's calls are toll calls, and not VoIP. So, the flip side there is you're getting PSTN-quality conference calling, but of course, you have to pay to do this. Intuitively, you might say that nobody would bother to do this since people using social networking sites don't spend money there.
That's what my reaction would be, but the good news, as Alec shares, is that people ARE making conference calls using Iotum on Facebook, and if that trend continues (beyond this iPod promotion), it would be reasonable to conclude that this is really is a value-added app, and that would be great news on several fronts. We really need proof points that social networking sites can succeed beyond being aggregation points for online advertising.
In my mind, Iotum's conference calling app is very much a 1.0 service, and that's not very exciting. However, if they can make money with that, it will be the next generation of 2.0-style apps from them that we'll really want to see. I don't know what those would look like yet, but I suspect Alec has some ideas about that - right, Alec?
Technorati tags: Facebook, Jon Arnold, Iotum, Alec Saunders
Posted by jonarnold at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)