When the Social Tables Turn on You

By Mark Evans in Social Media 4 Comments Tags:

Earlier this week, I had an “encounter” with someone who used a string of colourful language to show his displeasure about the fact I was temporarily riding my bike on the sidewalk rather than on a busy street. The fact I had young children riding with me didn’t strike him as a reasonable excuse.

After a brief back and forth discussion, the other party took out his camera, snapped my photo, and declared he was going to post it on his Web site.

While the disagreement was uncomfortable, the photo-taking was unsettling because it seemed to take the argument to another level. It’s one thing to have a verbal disagreement, it’s another to distribute it globally.

Another interesting angle was how this incident came on the heels of the riots in Vancouver in which social media was used to put the spotlight on people who had caused damage, acted in an uncivil way, or looted from stores.

While many of these people simply did something stupid on the spur of the moment, they’re paying the price because social media was able to catch them red-handed in the act. With social media, it’s increasingly difficult to go unnoticed. At the same time, social media distributes any indiscretions to a global audience with no way to reign them back in.

It’s an entirely new world. While I saw it as a good thing that people in Vancouver were thrust into the spotlight for their mistakes, it was quite another thing to have the spotlight turned on me.

Seven Survival Tips for RIM

By Mark Evans in Wireless/Research in Motion 5 Comments Tags: , ,

With all the talk about Research in Motion’s financial and marketshare struggles, many people tend to overlook it is still a wireless behemoth, albeit one with intense and growing competition. That said, it’s far from being a doom and gloom scenario that will see RIM pull “a Nortel.”

Still, RIM needs to make some major moves to jump-start and revitalize its prospects. Here are some ideas:

1. It should hire a chief operating officer with strong marketing expertise, as well as a kick-ass chief marketing officer. While no one is going to match the coolness of Apple, RIM’s marketing efforts in the pro-sumer marketplace have not been inspiring, creative or noteworthy. That said, there’s lots of potential to develop compelling campaigns that appeal to non-corporate users. Here’s a free one: the young’uns love the BlackBerry keyboard so they can pound out BBMs, text-messages, tweets and Facebook updates. How about a fun, quirky ad campaign that worships the keyboard?

2. BlackBerry’s Web browser needs to rock the house. I’m not talking about good, I’m talking awesome. For years, RIM ignored the sad reality it’s Web browser was crap. Now, people are surfing the Web anywhere and any time so RIM must make browsing on the BlackBerry easy, efficient and intutive. If need be, make a major acquisition to get it done.

3. It should make strategic acquisitions to enhance the BlackBerry features. The deals for Tungle, a scheduling service, and Scoreloop, a social and gaming application maker, were smart moves. RIM should make more small, but strategic, acquisitions so it can provide BlackBerry and PlayBook users with a strong suite of in-house applications.

4. Do whatever it takes to bring the developer community into the tent. With multiple devices and two operating systems – the upcoming BlackBerry OS 7 and the next-generation QNX – it is challenging for developers to play with RIM. While RIM will never have the same size developer ecosystem as Apple or Android, it has to have a big enough community to provide the BlackBerry and PlayBook with enough support. And, at the same time, RIM needs to bend over backward to keep its current developer partners.

5. Lose the hubris and arrogance. When I first started covering RIM more than 10 years ago, it was a friendly, accessible organization. As it grew, the company became more remote and impenetrable. At the same time, its co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, seemed to become more cocky, which no longer goes over well when you’re no longer king of the hill.

6. Fix the PlayBook as quickly as possible. Without sugar-coating it, the PlayBook was launched as a half-baked product. Anyone who purchased one out of the gate was a fool. Sure, it has some nice features, including the ability to handle Flash, but there are also so many holes it’s nowhere ready for prime time. Yes, I can understand why RIM had to get the PlayBook out the door but it must bring out a ready-for-primetime PlayBook 2.0, along with an ad campaign that delights and entices.

7. Share the love with the blogging community. I’m only talking from personal experience but I find it strange to have almost no relationship with RIM even though I consider myself to be a modestly prominent member of the Canadian high-tech community. In the past five years, the only time I’ve been invited to a RIM event was a launch party for the Torch last year. Then again, nearly everyone was invited to that party, which was held at a nightclub in downtown Toronto, which struck me as odd. Other than that, RIM and I are strangers, which means I’ve never had a chance to check out the PlayBook, for example. Maybe it’s just me but I suspect RIM has a similar approach to the overall community.

Links:
- Last week, I had a blog post about why RIM is different from Nortel.
- Here’s a Globe & Mail feature on their suggestions to fix RIM.
- A RIM employee writes a letter to Balsille and Lazaridis, and provides eight suggestions about to get the company back on the right track.

The Official and Sad End of Nortel

By Mark Evans in Telecom Equipment Makers 4 Comments Tags: , ,

Pretty soon, Nortel will finally disappear after two and a half years of bankruptcy protection.

The final chapter will be written when an auction of 6,000 patents will be completed – a process that has apparently attracted more than 100 interested parties, including Google and Research in Motion. The auction is expected to generate $1.5-billion.

It’s sad ending to what was a telecom powerhouse and Canada’s leading high-tech company. It was only a decade ago that then-CEO John Roth was talking about Nortel reaching $40-billion in sales.

There are a myriad of reasons why Nortel went from the penthouse to the outhouse – a lengthy list that includes bad acquisitions, terrible strategic decisions, CEOs that never should have been CEOs, financial scandals and intense competition.

But perhaps the hardest pill to swallow is how Nortel, specifically its senior management and the board, surrendered rather than fight on. After filing for bankruptcy protection, Nortel could have restructured to emerge as a smaller, more focused, more competitive and less debt-laden entity.

Instead, Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski and the board, no doubt pressured by debt holders, decided to launch a scorched earth strategy by selling everything. While these sales have generated billions of dollars for creditors, Nortel will soon be no more.

The sale of Nortel’s patents is disheartening because there is so much great technology within the portfolio, particularly the company’s long-term evolution technology that will increase the speed and capacity of mobile networks. A former Nortel director, Sorin Cohn, estimates the buyers of Nortel’s patents could make as much as $15-billion from creating new products.

Astounding and saddening.

In an ideal world, Nortel would still be alive and well. Maybe it would only be a company with 5,000 employees operating in a few markets such as wireless. But that’s a better scenario that completely disappearing from the telecom landscape.

RIP, Nortel.

Are Paywalls Really Catching On?

By Mark Evans in Uncategorized 4 Comments Tags: ,

Round pegFor the past decade, a growing number of publishers have valiantly attempted to make paywalls work to generate revenue from sources other than advertising. Unfortunately, it’s been like trying to pound a round peg into a square hole.

The problem is consumers have too many content choices so if they are forced to pay for even quality content, many of them will opt for something that’s free. At the same time, consumers have grown accustomed to not paying for anything online.

But is this resistance changing? A Bloomberg story suggests paywalls are slowly gaining traction, illustrated by the New York Times having 100,000 subscribers while Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London has more than 80,000.

“The mood is changing,” Charlie Beckett, the director of the Polis media research unit at the London School of Economics told Bloomberg. “Murdoch and the New York Times have taken the leap, and that encourages people. It’s still a leap”.

For publishers, they are desperately hoping the mood is, in fact, changing because they’re still scrambling to determine how to convert pageviews into revenue. Despite a decade of experimenting, they have yet to come up with a winning formula.

Leading the paywall charge this time around is Murdoch, who is intent on making paywalls stick even if inflicts terrible pain in the short-term. To give payrolls a shot of working, someone needs to be the sacrificial lamb, a role that Murdoch seems to have embraced.

If Murdoch is willing to stay the course, it might – and this is a huge might – encourage more publishers to introduce paywalls. If enough of them take the plunge, it could shrink the number of high-profile free sources to point where more consumers may – and this a big may – be willing to pay for content.

Of course, there will always be free content that will compete with paid content for attention. At the same time, many consumers will be happy to pay for good enough if it’s free rather than pay for high-quality content.

This isn’t to suggest paywalls are doomed or will enjoy only a modicum of success but anyone who suggests paywalls on are a major roll toward a lucrative future are probably fooling themselves.

The mood may be changing but it’s not changing fast enough and I suspect it won’t change enough to fix all the woes of online publishers.

Why I Wouldn’t Buy Into Groupon’s IPO

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , ,

Groupon logoIf you could buy into Groupon’s $750-million IPO would you do it?

Most people would probably say “Absolutely” given Groupon’s strong brand and its dominance of the group-buying marketplace. Not me.

There’s no doubt Groupon shares will pop after they start trading but this will be a matter of supply-demand and the reckless enthusiasm of retail investors as opposed to a focus on fundamentals. You also have to remember IPO offerings tend to be priced to generate a first-day pop so investors feel better about their purchases and the company gets to bask into the glory of a successful offering.

But don’t be fooled by GroupOn’s market stature or the sexiness of its IPO. Groupon smacks of the crappy IPOs that suckered too many investors during the original dot-com boom.

Why the skepticism? Fundamentally, I don’t think Groupon is a good business with solid fundamentals. Its balance sheet clearly demonstrates it is spending way too much money on marketing to acquire new customers. In the first quarter of 2011, it lost $146.5-million after being $413-million in the red in 2010.

Second, it’s a business that will have a difficult time scaling. The company has more than 7,000 employees, and the more it grows, the more employees it will need.

Third, the marketplace is ultra-competitive and the barriers to entry are low. While Groupon is the market leader, there are plenty of strong rivals, including many who raised large amounts of venture capital. It means Groupon will need to continue to aggressively spend on marketing to grow or even maintain market share.

Fourth, I’m not convinced the group-buying phenomena will maintain its sexiness or appeal. For consumers, group-buying has been a novelty but pretty soon that will start to wear off. At the same time, many Groupon customers will fall off the bandwagon after realizing they haven’t taken advantage of the services they have purchased.

For companies, Groupon won’t make a lot of sense because offering deep-discount to attract customers on the belief they will stick around to buy products or services at regular prices isn’t a good way to do business.

Finally, the struggling U.S. economy will have a major impact on consumer behaviour. U.S. consumers have taken a cautious approach to spending so it’s uncertain whether they will be attracted to the kind of deals Groupon is offering, even if there are attractive discounts.

For more on Groupon’s IPO, check out VentureBeat, which has a cool infographic via Online MBA about the company’s history. BusinessInsider also has a good post looking at Groupon’s financials.

How Many Apps Do You Really Need?

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Wireless 3 Comments Tags: , ,

On the 37Signals blog yesterday, Niall Larkin’s post on how many mobile apps people really struck a chord.

Larkin argues he only needs 10 apps, mostly because the iPhone comes with many of the apps (e.g. Safari, photos, weather, Mail) he uses all the time. It’s a great point that talks to one of the dirty little secrets of the mobile world: most people only use a few apps but they really like the idea of having thousands of options.

It’s one of the reasons for the iPhone’s massive appeal, while the BlackBerry gets roundly criticized for the shortcomings of BlackBerry App World. Truth be told, BlackBerry App World likely has most of the apps people really need but it gets pounded for not offering thousands of more options.

It’s probably not unlike going to Denny’s, which features a menu with dozens of choices. I suspect the majority of people eat a small number of items, which lets Denny’s offer multiple options with the knowledge that many of them will not be selected.

In the technology world, however, perception is often reality. Consumers like the idea of choice, options and features even though they many not use many of them. It’s the same reason why consumers upgrade devices, hardware and software when what they have is perfectly good.

When it comes to my personal use of apps on my iPhone, most of my time is sucked up by TweetBot, Safari and the camera. Once in awhile, I’ll use Yelp, Dialvetica, Tweeb, AroundMe, Tumblr and Angry Birds. In total, that’s nine apps so I’m clearly in the same camp as Larkin. That said, there are 81 apps on my iPhone, which means most of them collect a lot of digital dust.

So how many apps do you really use or need? And if you had to pay for apps, how many would you have on your device?

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