Tired of Being a Digital Peasant!

By Mark Evans in Telecom Regulation, VOIP Services, Competition 25 Comments

Skype
It wasn’t that long ago that Canada was considered to be on the leading-edge of the Web.

We had the highest penetration when it came to high-speed access, and the regulator – aka the CTRC – had decided not to regulate the Internet.

Today, Canada is falling behind and, in the process, we’re becoming digital peasants.

Perhaps the most frustrating is our inability to access cool new services. You want to listen to music using Pandara? Forget about it; not available in Canada. You want to watch TV using Hulu? Forget about it; not available.

The latest slap in face is the fact Canadians won’t be able to use Skype on their iPhones. So for all of you excited on Skype’s new foray into the mobile world, forget about it; not available.

Chaim Haas, a public relations representative acting on behalf of Skype, told the CBC that the application is available in every country in which the iPhone is on sale and in which Apple has an iTunes Store — with the exception of Canada.

Haas said this is because of patent-licence restrictions but would not elaborate except to specify that it is a patent issue related to Skype, not Apple.

Personally, I don’t care about patent issues. What I care about is using leading-edge and innovative services, and the lack of Skype is just another example of how Canada is becoming an online backwater.

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Google Ventures (aka What’s In a Name?)

By Mark Evans in Venture Capital No Comments

You can only be amused that Google has launched a new venture capital operation but that much of the early coverage is devoted to the fact Google doesn’t own the URL.

I guess that’s an interesting twist but the “news” is that Google’s decision to get into the venture capital business is probably perfect. With many VCs, in general, hunkering down amid the collapse of the financial markets, a non-existent IPO market, and the lack of exits, the market is ripe for Google to sprinkle some of its AdSense dollars on investment-hungry start-ups.

In theory, difficult economic periods and industry downturns are great time to invest because valuations are reasonable, costs (people, hardware, bandwidth, office space) are lower, and high-quality people are more readily available.

By launching Google Ventures now, Google will likely have the pick of start-up litter and have more control over the investments it is making – as opposed to what’s it done in recent years by spending millions acquiring start-ups.

As a result, the isn’t so much “what’s in a name?” as opposed to Google getting into the venture business.

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Social Media is Going to Disappear

By Mark Evans in Social Media 64 Comments

Social Media
A few months ago when I was exploring the idea of starting ME Consulting, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to describe myself.

At first, I was a “social media expert” but that seemed over the top and, well, un-Canadian. Then, I was a “social media strategist”, which felt more comfortable until realizing that scores of people armed with a blog, a Facebook profile and a Twitter account were calling themselves “social media strategists” or “social media consultants”. So, I settled on “digital marketing and communications and social media consultant”, which, while not exactly snappy, seems like a good fit.

In the scheme of things, the job description process is just nomenclature and the title on a business card. But to be honest, the major reason I backed away from describing myself as a social media expert, strategist or consultant is I believe social media is going to disappear.

I know what you’re probably saying “Social media is going to disappear? What’s in his morning coffee?”

By “disappear”, I mean that sooner rather than later, social media as a hyperbole-driven, standalone, new-kid-on-the-block entity is going to evolve into a communications, marketing and sales strategy and distribution vehicle that happens to rely on a variety of valuable and useful online services.

For now, however, social media is being sold as something revolutionary. And there’s no lack of people positioning themselves as strategists and consultants when, in fact, they’re really “enthusiasts” who love using the tools but have little or no experience actually applying them to achieve business objectives.

At some point, there’s going to be a realization that social media is a far more than the tools; far more than being able to set up a blog, write snappy updates in less than 140 characters, or upload videos to YouTube.

In time, people will realize that social media success is built on three elements:

1. A strong platform of communications, marketing and sales expertise and strategic focus

2. The ability to effectively deploy a wide variety of social media tools and services to deliver information, campaigns, etc.

3. A willingness and commitment to engage with your constituents – customers, employees, suppliers, investors, partners, etc.

In time, I think “social media” will lose its sexiness because it will become a widely accepted way to do business – whether you’re communicating, marketing or selling. In a good way, social media will fade into the background.

Addendum: Some inspiration for this post came from a post on MarketingProfs Daily Fix called “How Long Does It Take to Become a Social Media Expert?” that explores whether Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours theory can be applied to social media.

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Skype to Storm the iPhone

By Mark Evans in Wireless 8 Comments

Skype
According to GigaOm, Skype for the iPhone, possibly at the CTIA Wireless conference next week in Las Vegas.

It will be interesting to see how the availability of a free VOIP service will change the economic dynamics of the iPhone-carrier relationship. While it will impact the amount of long-distance business that the carriers generate from iPhone customers, it may balance out if iPhone users eat up more wireless minutes to make long-distance calls. (Note: This is assuming consumers aren’t on bucket plans or high volume minute plans.)

As Om points out, Skype’s ability to go mobile is a key part of its growth strategy. But it’s still interesting that Skype is being able of launching zn iPhone application given how closely Apple guards the application “garden”.

Another thought is how much of an impact will Skype having an iPhone application have on eBay’s efforts to sell Skype. It can’t hurt to have an application on the world’s hottest wireless device.

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Puzzled by Facebook

By Mark Evans in Social Media 13 Comments

Facebook
To be honest, I don’t get Facebook.

I don’t get why Facebook continues to see major growth (150 million registered users and counting).

I don’t see why companies and marketers are so fascinated with tapping into Facebook despite the fact Facebook users show little interest in advertising and marketing.

And I don’t understand why Facebook seems to operate in what appears to be strategic isolation by making decisions that are universally rejected.

Case in point is the recent overhaul of Facebook’s home page design, which was panned, criticized, attacked and disliked. Facebook has been forced to do a mea culpa, and make all kind of changes to appease the angry masses.

In typical fashion, Facebook doesn’t really admit to making a mistake. Instead, it suggests that it did extensive testing, and will now do a redesign of the redesign based on valuable feedback.

Of course, Facebook making strategic stumbles and then brushing them aside is nothing new. The same thing happened when it introduced Beacon, which was, frankly, a strategic disaster. To Facebook, Beacon wasn’t a mistake but something not properly implemented, and offered to let people to opt-out of Beacon.

If you want more evidence of strategic bumbles, what about the applications ecosystem that Facebook ignited only to try to reign it when third-party developers starting to see huge financial success.

It makes you wonder whether Facebook is doing enough due diligence on the decisions being made, and whether its strategic focus is too insular as opposed to serving the needs of its users.

Facebook’s biggest challenge may be its success. When you’re growing, life appears to be so good you fail to see or refuse to see things you’re doing wrong.

Update: The New York Times has a story (March 29) looking at whether Facebook has grown up too fast. What caught my attention is the fact Facebook is adding one million new users a week.

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Social Media’s Big Opportunity: Intelligence and Insight

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media 7 Comments

Jeremiah Owyang has an interesting post today about how Twitter could seize on a huge opportunity be creating a CRM (customer relationship management) system that would let companies track and respond to what people were saying on Twitter.

His thesis is Twitter is becoming an increasingly important customer service tool but it’s becoming more difficult for companies to track everything being said. The solution is Twitter creating and offering their CRM system to help companies “track and manage the conversations within the 140 sphere”.

This approach makes sense and it could be the business model that turns Twitter, well, into a business.

But I think what Jeremiah is touching upon is only a part of the story.

The reality is all social media platforms have huge challenges and opportunities when it comes to providing value-added services that help companies monitor, measure and understand the conversations taking place.

It’s not just Twitter but blogs, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, YouTube, et al that need powerful analytics tools so they can provide services to companies looking to take advantage of social media activity by doing more advertising and marketing.

Right now, social media is the Wild West when it comes to marketing and advertising. The growing sentiment, for example, that social networks don’t work for advertisers because users are there to communicate rather than look at advertising. This approach, however, suggests many companies just aren’t getting the intelligence and insight they need to make smart advertising decisions.

Meanwhile, companies are looking to do more advertising when it comes to social media. A new survey by the Aberdeen Group found that 63% of companies plan to boost their social media spending in 2009. A key part of providing companies with incentives to actually spend more on social media – as opposed to saying they plan to spend more – is giving them actionable data to make decisions.

Owyang has picked up on what I think will be one of the key online trends over the next few years as companies look to spend more online but do so with more information and insight at their fingertips.

Social Media Marketing
More: For additional thoughts on the Aberdeen study, check out Online Media Daily.

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