I've noticed recently a few high-profile bloggers – Om Malik and Michael Arrington – have switched to a new blogging platform (WordPress). Both have experienced technical woes and problems in moving their blogs but unlike the rest of us, they seem to have a small army of technical help and/or tech-savvy friends to work out the bugs. Their troubles have put the spotlight on how difficult it is to switch “horses” in mid-stream, and how it could be time for blog publishing standards to be established to make it easier to migrate from one platform to another – assuming TypePad, Blogger, WordPress, et al have any interest making this happen. I considered moving from Blogware but passed on the idea after thinking about issues such as amending blogroll information and access to archived posts. It's not that Blogware isn't performing well but there is no harm in exploring whether there's something better out there.
The Battle over Net Neutrality
I'm a bit late wading into the increasingly-contentious “net neutrality” bugaboo but if you've got some reading time over this last holiday weekend, you may want to check out a feature I wrote in today's National Post about what's going on. I've tried to boil down why some of the large U.S. telecom carriers such as SBC and BellSouth are so adamant about charging downstream tollgates and/or packet prioritization fees. A basic argument is their local phone businesses are shrinking due to VoIP and cable telephony so they need to find new sources of revenue at a time when the marketing of broadband access is becoming increasingly sophisticated with a variety of plans offering different speeds and packet quotas. I believe another reality is telecom executives such as SBC's Ed Whitacre (picture, above left) and BellSouth's William Smith are waging a high-profile lobbying campaign to influence the U.S. government's overhaul of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. By asking for the stars and the moon, they hope to get something more realistic from the folks in Washington. In Canada, Telus Corp. concedes it is looking at options such as downstream tollgates but in typical Canadian fashion, it doesn't want to act alone. Frankly, I do not believe the concept of tollgates and packet prioritization fees will happen because they will fundamentally change how the Internet works and the industry's economics. As it now stands, consumers are paying carriers - and cablecos – to access the Web while online service and content providers are paying fees to have their data centres and servers connected to the network. The carriers may be crying poor but broadband access is a very good business for them. The real issue is they want a bigger piece of the action but they must come up with more creative ways to do it than downstream fees.Update: Here's a recent BusinessWeek story on net neutrality.
Must-Have Web 2.0 Apps..and Some Much-Needed Pragmatism
TechCrunch (a.k.a. Michael Arrington) offers up a list of Web 2.0 applications he couldn't live without. It includes most of the usual suspects – FeedBurner, Bloglines, Flickr, Measuremap, Memeorandum, del.icio.us, Technorati and WordPress and Skype. It was a pleasant surprise to see Pandora, which offers a streaming music service (free and subscription-based) that adjusts to your preferences. Arrington is also keen on Omnidrive, which offers secure, hosted storage. My additions to the list include Talk Digger, Blogbeat, Firefox and Pingoat and Qumana. Over the past couple of weeks, I've become a big Blogbeat fan because of its clean, user-friendly interface. Pingoat has become the default ping tool; the new-and-improved Talk Digger offers a good snapshot on how a blog is resonating within the blogosphere; Firefox becomes more and more useful with version 1.5 and the growing list of cool extensions; while Qumana is a great blog publishing tool that has become more interesting with the launch of its Adgenta advertising network.
If I had to offer some pragmatism to temper the enthusiasm about Web 2.0 applications (however you want to define them), it's the lack of business models for many of them other than positioning themselves to be bought by Google, Yahoo, AOL, et al. The ability to develop and distribute Web-based services at minimal cost has encouraged the proliferation of new and cool ideas. The big problem, however, is too many of them have adopted a “build it and they will come” business model based on the idea that you attract a critical mass of users first and then come up with a way to generate enough revenue to build a viable business. Unfortunately, this is a flawed premise because once you offer a service or product for free, it's difficult to get users to pay for it. Far too many Web 2.0 start-ups also seem to be relying on AdSense as the foundation for their businesses. That's fine if you're an enterprising entrepreneur hoping for a few bucks to help pay the mortgage but it's not the revenue stream to build a real business.
Another criticism/suggestion is there needs to be a way to link your favorite Web 2.0 applications together – be they personal or business services. In other words, there must be a way to either seamlessly make work together or have a single place (a Web 2.0 portal?) to easily access them without having to go from one Web site to another. I see this issue as a major point of pain for the Web 2.0 landscape. If 2005 was the year of developing Web 2.0 services, perhaps 2006 will be the year when their usability takes a major step forward. I also expect some major carnage in 2006 as many start-ups disappear after failing to come up with ways to generate revenue and/or attract a buyer. For many entrepreneurs and wanna-be entrepreneurs, 2005 was fun but pretty soon the party will be come to an end and only the independent Web 2.0 businesses left standing will be those with a solid business models.
Update: Reuters has a story on how some of the popular Web 2.0 services are being challenged technically as more people rely on them. The article cites recent service problems at TypePad, del.icio.us, Blogines, Feedster and WordPress.
Update: Reuters has a story on how some of the popular Web 2.0 services are being challenged technically as more people rely on them. The article cites recent service problems at TypePad, del.icio.us, Blogines, Feedster and WordPress.
Google-Opera Deal…But Not "The" Deal
In the wake of the speculation about Microsoft acquiring Opera, Google has done a one-year deal that will make it the default search engine for Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. The wireless space appears to be where Opera has a good chance of thriving as opposed to the desktop where it, at best, has 1% market share. To be honest, it's a bit of a mystery why Opera hasn't done better on the desktop. It has many of the same features as Firefox but hasn't captured anywhere near the buzz as Firefox. This may be a long shot but I'm thinking Google will acquire Opera in 2006 to create the much-anticipated GBrowser. A Google browser makes complete sense. If you're going to offer a huge menu of Web-based services, why wouldn't you want to own the way people access them? A Google browser could incorporate search, GMail, Blogger, Picasa, Google Analytics and Google Local, Google Base and Google Maps – making it a Flock-like, multi-purpose browser. Google buying Opera somehow makes a lot more sense than Microsoft acquiring Opera – for whatever reason.Update: John Battelle (I think) believes mobile search will be big in 2006 based on a cryptic post he made today.
Nortel Sells Volt Delta Stake
Only Nortel would come out with a double-shot of news during the week between Christmas and New Year. Earlier this week, it acquired Tasman Networks for $99.5-million in cash to establish a presence in the corporate router market. Today, it discloses the sale of a 24% stake in Volt Delta for $56.4-million. Nortel picked up the equity position in August, 2004 after “contributing” some assets and liabilities of its directory and operator service business to Volta Delta. Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski has been at the helm for only six weeks but he certainly has wasted little time putting his mark on the company. It's been out with the old (Brian McFadden, Susan Spradley, Clent Richardson, Volt Delta) and in with the new (David Drinkwater, Joel Hackney, Tasman Networks). I wonder what we can expect from Nortel in 2006. The Tasman deal suggests it has no intention of getting out of the corporate market so perhaps the optical business is the most vulnerable. The next hurdle for Nortel is $1.275 billion of debt that comes due in February. Nortel CFO Peter Currie suggested the company could tap the junk bond market to re-finance it.FT Names Brin, Page Men of the Year
The Financial Times has named Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin as Men of the Year (apparently beating out Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko). I guess it's difficult to argue with the choice(s) given Google's growing presence and popularity but did Google really have more of an impact this year than 2004? Sure, Google's stock soared, its financial results continued to blow away Wall St., it rolled out several new cool services, and it capped off the year by spending $1-billion for 5% of AOL. It sounds like it was busy but was it a Men of the Year year? I would boldly suggest the Man of the Year – at least in the online world – was Rupert Murdoch, who took News Corp. from zero to sixty on the Web with a series of bold strategic acquisitions. After sitting on the online sidelines, Murdoch decided News Corp. needed to get into the game so his M&A people went out and bought IGN Entertainment, which owns AskMen.com, TeamXbox, Rotten Tomatoes and GameSpy, for $650-million. They also purchased Intermix, which owns the wildy-popular MySpace.com, for $580-million, and Scout.com for $60-million. These deals made News Corp. a major online player in a matter of months – putting the company firmly in the middle of the Web's advertising tsunami. You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks but you can sure try if he has enough money…and Rupert Murdoch seems intent on making sure he doesn't miss out on the the Web's next growth spurt.