Blogs: The Honeymoon is Over

By Mark Evans in Blogs 17 Comments

Is it just me but is the buzz about blogs not what it used to be?

Not that long ago, people were really excited about blogs, and the wave of great new content being created about anything and everything. Heck, Robert Scoble claimed to read more than 700 blogs a day, which inspired lots of people to read lots of blogs themselves.

Today, however, blogs don’t have the same kind of mojo. Sure, the blogosphere is just as vibrant, busy and interesting but there’s less excitement.

It may have to do with the fact the novelty about blogs is over. Blogs have now been around for a few years, and have become an entrenched part of the media landscape. In many respects, the honeymoon is over, and blogs have settled into a solid, long-term relationship. It’s not to suggest the “marriage” is no longer exciting but it’s probably less passionate.

Another thesis is people have less time for blogs at a time when their digital lives are becoming increasingly busy and multi-pronged. A growing number of people, who used to spend a lot of time reading blogs, are spending time with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and, of course, their e-mail. The reality is people are becoming digitally stretched, and blogs are getting less love these days.

The concept of being digitally stretched is something I’m going to talk more about later this week. I think the market is ripe for services and tools to streamline, prioritize and simplify our digital worlds so that the time we have is spent as productivity and efficiently as possible.

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Different Strokes for Different Folks

By Mark Evans in Web 2.0 No Comments

You look away for a second, and almost miss a weekend Techmeme bitch-a-thon; this one involving whether Facebook is going to kill Twitter, or Twitter is going to kill Facebook, or whether Friendfeed is going to kill both of them, or visa versa.

Confused? Don’t worry, it’s simply the blogosphere trying to fill some weekend hours when things are quiet.

The crux of the “discussion” is whether Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed are arch-rivals or whether they’re simply co-existing. VentureBeat suggests the latter because all three services are enjoying strong growth, suggesting there is room for all of them.

Here’s my take:

1. Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed are different beasts. I use Facebook, for example, mostly as a general status update tool. At most, I’ll update it once a day, and share some news/blog posts. I take the same approach with LinkedIn, Plurk, Jaiku and MySpace – using Ping.fm to cover all my bases in one move.

On Twitter, I’ll update several times a day to talk about what’s happening, or exchange information and ideas with people. I’m not an avid Friendfeed user but I do like to share stuff on it.

2. With the Web 2.0/social media phenomena around for a few years, the landscape features established players. Sure, there’s no lack of competition but the number of viable players is quite small; consisting of Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, MySpace, WordPress, Blogger, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Digg and del.icio.us.

This is where most of the action is happening, which makes it difficult for new players to establish a foothold. Think of the invitations you receive to join new, cool looking services. Many of them are quickly deleted or only superficially checked out because it’s so difficult to migrate from an established service you have been using for years.

So, the argument about Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Friendfeed doesn’t matter much compared with the reality the playing field in social networking, blogging, video-sharing and microblogging appears to have been established with little room for new competitors. Now, that’s the more interesting discussion.

Here’s a chart showing unique visitors (U.S.) for Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter. Over the past year, Facebook has gained 14.9% more visitors; Twitter, 34.7%; and Friendfeed, 26.6%.


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Google’s Love Affair with GMail

By Mark Evans in Google 8 Comments

At a time when Google has started to prune its portfolio, it’s interesting to see how much TLC it’s giving to GMail.

The latest improvement includes multiple inboxes, which is a huge step over GMail’s useful but not-quite-there labels. For people (like me) using GMail to receive e-mail from different accounts, the introduction of multiple inboxes makes GMail even more useful.

Aside from Google’s flagship search service, GMail probably ranks as one of the Google’s most valuable services/utilities that people would use on a daily basis. With improved functionality and features, anyone thinking about migrating to an online e-mail service seriously needs to look at GMail.

Of course, there are still an army of Outlook users who will never embrace an online service but GMail has been making some great strides recently.

GMail

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Public Mobile Goes Public

By Mark Evans in Wireless 3 Comments

Public Mobile
If anything, one of Canada’s newest wireless players has displayed a knack for attracting a lot of attention.

Earlier today, BMV Holdings held a press conference – something that rarely happens these days – to announce its new corporate moniker, Public Mobile. The venue was standing-room-only with media, bloggers, industry and investment analysts, and industry consultants. Either it was the novelty factor of actually getting to attend a press conference or there’s serious interest in how Public Mobile is going to break into the market with an all-you-can-eat, no-frills package that will sell for $40/month.

The challenge facing Public Mobile is converting all this buzz into customers. The company is clearly banking on the belief there are still many people hungry for a low-cost wireless offering at a time when Rogers, Bell and Telus are aggressively pushing their lower-cost Fido, Solo and Koodoo brands respectively.

Alek Krstajic, PM’s chief executive, is adamant the market is ripe for an affordable product for people who don’t currently have a wireless phone, or those looking for less expensive alternatives that come without a long-term contract. He looks at what Rogers, Bell and Telus are doing with their discount brands as an effort to keep customers from leaving entirely, as opposed to a concerted push into the lower end of the wireless market.

What will be particularly interesting to see is PM’s marketing approach. While online advertising and social media are gaining a lot of traction with consumer-facing brands, a good chunk of PM’s market is not actively engaged with the Internet or, for that matter, technology.

So, how do you reach those consumers without spending big bucks on billboards and newspaper advertising? Krstajic, said a key part of the marketing approach will be relationships with retailers as a cost-effective way to reach consumers. While Krstajic, did not provide specifics, my sense is no one should be surprised, for example, is PM unveils a deal with a mass-market retailer such as Wal-Mart, Zellers, Home Depot or No-Frills.

There’s little doubt there is room for more wireless competition given penetration rates in Canada are nowhere near what they are in many other industrialized country. The challenge will be reaching consumers, and convincing them now is the time for a wireless plan, while fending off the incumbents.

It should be a very interesting Fall within the Canadian wireless industry.

Note: It’s encouraging to see Public Mobile use the .ca domain name. With more than one million .ca domains registered, .ca has become a mainstream online vehicle. Of course, I’m sure PM would also love the .com domain if they can convince the owner, Beau Buck, to give it up.

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George Orwell Would be Proud

By Mark Evans in Google 7 Comments

Latitude
We certainly live in interesting times where what you’re doing and where you’re located are becoming increasingly public and transparent.

With services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you can provide people with updates on your daily activities, while you can tell people you’re location using services such as Brightkite.

Now, Google – the Big Brother of the Web – is getting into the market with a new service called Latitude that you download onto a mobile device, and then displays your location at all times to friends and family.

The service is opt-in so no one can your location unless you give them permission. Even so, all this location broadcasting makes me somewhat uneasy for some reason. Every time something like this is introduced, our privacy and anonymity – even if it does sound cool and it comes from Google.

To be honest, I’m not keen about the idea of anyone knowing exactly where I’m located at all times, and I’m really not that interested in knowing where anyone else is located, although I can see some situations where you’d want to know (e.g. tracking your children).

That said, we live in a world where much of movements are tracked when you think about cell phone calls, credit card and debit purchases and closed-circuit security cameras.

With new services such as Google Latitiude, which many people will happily embrace, the cloak of privacy continues to disappear.

George Orwell would be proud that his vision of “1984″ is gaining more momentum.

While the blogosphere seems to be downright bubbly (see Walter Mossberg’s review) about Latitude, Alexander Van Elsas has some good perspective on whether services such as Latitude are really needed.

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What’s Twitter Doing With its Dough?

By Mark Evans in Venture Capital, Web 2.0 3 Comments

Fred Wilson had a blog post recently talking about business models, and how that operating costs are as important as revenue.

As part of his argument, Fred cited some of Union Square’s portfolio companies, and how few employees they employ. This included Twitter, which has 20 people on the payroll.

Now, if you take 20 people and multiply it by $100,000/employees (pretty standard back of the napkin operating cost estimates), we’re talking about $2-million/year. So, what I’m curious to know is how and where Twitter is spending all the venture capital it has raised.

This is a company that raised $15-million in May 2008, and apparently looking to raise another $20-million.

How is Twitter spending so much money given its payroll is relatively modest? Is it server costs? Development costs?

It’s hard to believe that Twitter is burning through that much cash given there doesn’t seem to much, if any, spending on marketing, for example.

More: The San Francisco Chronicle has an article looking at how Twitter is going to unveil a revenue model soon. I’ll see it when I believe it.

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