Narrowcasting

WSJ writes:

The long-fragmenting world of mass media may finally have reached the stage of a la carte network television.

CBS, NBC and ABC now have all agreed to let viewers buy some of their top-rated shows an episode at a time.
...
Executives have long resisted efforts by cable operators to offer so-called on-demand viewing of popular TV shows, worrying that it could cannibalize their existing businesses by eroding their ability to sell advertising for programs and reap lucrative profits by selling reruns. But technology is forcing their hand. The Internet has encouraged widespread piracy of media content, and digital-video recorders have allowed users to save shows and watch them at their convenience – without commercials.

TransMedia's Glide Suite

Information Week writes:

On Nov. 15, a New York-based startup called TransMedia plans to release an integrated suite of consumer media applications that has the potential to radically alter the balance of power among Internet and software service providers.

The software, disclosed in mid-October, is called Glide Effortless. It's a set of 12 applications for content creation, communication, E-commerce, and sharing. The apps are Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Video, Glide Docs, Glide AllMedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline (Glide’s search engine), Glide Mail, Glide Cast (audio, text, and video conferencing), Glide Share, and Glide Shops. Because the apps were developed simultaneously, they work in concert with elegance not evident in other loosely linked software programs like Apple's consumer media applications or Microsoft Office.

Glide is browser-based and thus can be used on the three major PC operating systems -- Linux, Mac, and Windows. The Mac-compatible version is coming Dec. 25. In January, Glide will be available on portable devices such as cell phones. Shortly thereafter, it will run on digital set-top boxes.

Evolution of Search

The New York Times has an article by James Fallows who spent a day at Yahoo recently:

[The chief technology officer, Farzad Nazem] and everyone else really wanted to discuss what lay beyond these keyword searches of the entire Web. "You can look at the evolution of search as a play in three acts," said Jeff Weiner, the senior vice president for search and marketing. "The first is the 'public' Web, where if different people type the same query they'll all get the same results." The second, he said, was purely personal search - finding a file or photo, usually on your own machine.

"The third is the one that we are very interested in," Mr. Weiner said. This is "social" or "community" searching, in which each attempt to find the right restaurant listing, medical advice site, vacation tip or other bit of information takes advantage of other people's successes and failures in locating the same information.

The idea that human judgment can improve a search engine's automatic findings is hardly new. From the dawn of the Web's history - that is, over the last 15 years - companies have invented tools to help users assess the quality and relevance of information, often by relying on others' opinions. Examples include Amazon's user reviews, eBay's feedback ratings and "trusted networks" created on many sites.

Attention Importance

John Hagel writes:

Why is our attention so valuable? Because it is so scarce or, more accurately, because its relative scarcity has been rapidly increasing. Attention is a constant resource for each of us – we only have 24 hours in the day. It is up to us how we use those 24 hours. What’s changed is that we have more and more options competing for our attention. We face increasing abundance both in the production and distribution of goods and information about those goods. Some people think this is a curse. I happen to believe it is a blessing for many reasons.

But it does pose a challenge. Each of us feels more pressure to increase our return on attention – given more and more options competing for our attention, we run significant risk of fragmenting our attention and diverting our attention to lower value options. Anything or anyone who can help us increase our return on attention will likely get more of our attention over time, especially if they can further increase our return on attention over a broader scope of activities. A powerful increasing returns dynamic can be unleashed if the game is played right.

Google Future

Forrester Research (George Colony) offers the following view: "Here's Google's playbook: 1) have the best search; 2) have more of the world to search than anyone else through the digitization of university libraries, earth images, maps, etc.; 3) attract the most advertising and syndication; enabling the company to 4) give all of its software away for free; which enables it to 5) change the rules and economics of the software business and define the future through its pioneering work in X Internet...In the past year, Google has proven to me that it is way more than just a great search company. It can jump into the program game — and play under a completely new set of rules: executable Internet and free. Unless Larry and Sergey lose focus and the company's charter devolves into esoteric pet projects, Google is going to change the world."

TECH TALK: Microsoft Live: Analysis (Part 2)

An News.com article traced the roots of Windows Live to MSN:

The main Live.com Web page is similar to the Start.com page that has been in testing since earlier this year. Windows Live Mail is a long-planned update to Hotmail designed to make the service more like desktop e-mail software. Other existing products, like Microsoft's MSN Spaces and its OneCare security service, are also joining the Windows Live party.

Windows Live is most certainly not an online version of Microsoft's venerable operating system, as the name might imply. But the company insists the move is more than a name change.

Indeed, some of the technology that Microsoft demonstrated goes beyond not only what MSN has done, but also what Google and Yahoo have covered in their personalization efforts.

The most striking examples were ways of tying Windows Live to the desktop. On stage, Microsoft showed how people could share file folders with instant-messaging buddies and use the Live.com page to view not only Web content, but also things like recently opened documents or a corporate SharePoint portal.

Charlene Li wrote in a Forrester report: “Microsoft has embraced a new way to do business — a mindset that is based on software-as-a service, open platforms, and continuous innovation; a model previously mastered by Google. Ad-supported software for consumers and very small businesses is only the beginning. Microsoft's real aim is to build and host a service platform that will attract the investment of developers looking for a way to reach these market sectors. It is also a foray into offering its traditional client/server software to customers on a hosted or on-demand basis. Forrester believes that these "Live" services won't cannibalize Microsoft's existing software revenues and instead will drive significant upside as Microsoft develops new advertising and subscription revenues. However, it has tried this before and failed. The strategy will be successful only if Microsoft offers its partners a ready market, a fair revenue sharing scheme, and a strong support system that develops trust.”

She also addressed the question of whether this was going to cannibalize Microsoft’s core software and enterprise revenues? “Not anytime soon. Office Live is targeted at a very different audience – small businesses with less than 10 employees – that today don’t buy Microsoft’s varied enterprise solutions. And they won’t anytime soon because they don’t a) have the IT resources, and b) they don’t need these mission critical solutions. That’s why a hosted solution is ideal for them, and Office Live’s initial 22 applications will address many of them.”

Charlene also pointed out the developer angle to it. Developers have been Microsoft’s greatest strength. Charlene notes: “I believe Microsoft is fully embracing hosted services and supporting developers, and more importantly, now have different mindset in how they approach the market. Sure, they would still love to be central your personal and work life (that IS what Windows and Office Live are about, after all), but they know they can’t do it alone. This is especially true with Google and Yahoo! breathing down their necks. While not yet available, the APIs will allow developers to build on the Live platforms, leveraging all of the communication, payment, and identity systems that have already been built.”

Amy Wohl analysed Microsoft’s offerings for her blog on software-as-a-service:

You will remember that Microsoft often starts out in a new market segment by feeling its way, making small changes from its current product offering and business model, and then making more drastic changes as it gets broad market reaction. It was that way with its entry to the Internet and I suspect it will be that way here, too. That means expect the offering not just to broaden, with lots more features, but also to possibly change. We expect:

(1) More emphasis on small business-oriented services
(2) An effort to attract business partners' applications
(3) Lots of adjustments between the advertising-based and the subscription-based models to see just what users will pay for directly and how much.

Tomorrow: Analysis (continued)

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: Microsoft Live: Emerging Markets Opportunity [November 11, 2005]
TECH TALK: Microsoft Live: Analysis (Part 3) [November 10, 2005]
TECH TALK: Microsoft Live: Analysis [November 8, 2005]
TECH TALK: Microsoft Live: The Launch [November 7, 2005]