isabel wang

Towards a social operating system

Wired Magazine (Aug 2007 print issue, page 50) defines "social operating system" as a platform for online living; a social network such as MySpace that seamlessly integrates activities including entertainment and shopping.

But Jon Udell points out that MySpace is not Your Space. He envisions a future in which each child would receive his or her own chunk of managed storage at birth. These virtual containers would be home to everything from baby pictures to grown-up blog posts. Of course, we'd want the ability for Bob's Space to connect with Jane's Space - suppose they are siblings starring in the same family vacation video, or co-authors of a research report? This means we'd need:

1. A universally accepted naming system - such as DNS, perhaps? Each container could be associated with a domain name;

2. A similarly universal "social OS" that governs container-to-container relationships, and allows videos to be syndicated to YouTube and MySpace, for instance, or wish lists to be accessed by multiple ecommerce providers.

I think the folks at GoDaddy sort of, kind of share this vision - but they stop at promoting domain names for kids. According to chief marketing officer Barb Rechterman, "a domain name may help contribute to the child learning about technology; eventually the family may be able to make an activity out of creating a Web site together." But why eventually instead of immediately? And why intimidate users with the need to learn about technology? Why not present BabyName.com as a hub for keeping friends and relatives in the loop? Organizing logistics such as medical appointments and daycare? Connecting with other new parents?

Dotster goes slightly farther in exploring the connections between domains, social media and personal identity. Its MySpace promo suggests pimping your email with YourName.com. But its latest email newsletter's headline was "save 25% on Windows VPS!" There's a huge gap between wanting to have an online identity and knowing what a VPS is. And FAR more people are interested in the former than the latter.

Demand Media comes closest to building a social OS with ChannelMe - but only if you register a .TV domain name.

I think ChannelMe is a fantastic way to describe Jon Udell's hosted lifebits. At the moment, Channel Isabel is scattered across Google, TypePad, Flickr, Twitter, etc. Many of the services I use are RSS-accessible - but what if there were one unified interface where my friends could create customized feeds out of all available ChannelMe programming? Where I could simultaneously update my Google Calendar and dopplr account, or Flickr and Picasa albums?

Ironically, while GoDaddy is the domain registrar for IsabelWang.com, it's neither the gateway to ChannelMe, nor home to any of my content. Could Demand Media do better - if/when if frees ChannelMe from .TV? Or will the first social OS come in the form of "Google Apps for Me"?

GoDaddy vs Facebook

15 months ago, I wrote a post comparing GoDaddy's $250 million valuation (according to MarketWatch) relative to Facebook's $550 million. MarketWatch said social networks could be great environments for conducting business in. At the time, I didn't think Facebook delivered on this promise, and I suggested GoDaddy could step up to the plate:

"I'm envisioning a Linkedin-like service where GoDaddy's many million customers could create business profiles which might include photos/descriptions of products/services, links to investors/vendors/partners, memberships in industry associations and networking groups..."

I exchanged a couple of emails with GoDaddy VP Technology Mike Chadwick, who ultimately shrugged off the idea.

Since then, Facebook has evolved first towards - then far beyond - Linkedin. Although GoDaddy has grown by leaps and bounds, its business model remains unchanged. Which is why Facebook director Peter Thiel gets to call $3 billion a "low ball offer" for his $7-10 billion company, while GoDaddy's Bob Parsons doesn't. Just think: where would Facebook be today if it squandered its resources on Superbowl advertising instead of innovating??

Also since then, Demand Media has become GoDaddy's closest competitor. Led by former MySpace chairman Richard Rosenblatt, the company is currently the second largest domain registration provider. During his HostingCon keynote, Richard hinted that the social networking tools behind ChannelMe.tv aren't just for the consumer market. As of late 2006, Demand Media already had a $580 million valuation...

Doesn't it seem like GoDaddy should reconsider the value of social media? I really, truly think the most important benefit that GoDaddy (as well as 1&1, Hostway, Endurance International and its other traditional web hosting/domain registration competitors) fails to deliver is facilitating connections among its customers.

On evangelism

Last November I wrote that an evangelist like Amazon's Jeff Barr is what The Planet (as well as any other traditional web hosting provider) needs to succeed survive. A few weeks ago I was very excited to see that SoftLayer has given my friend Kevin Laude the title of API Evangelist. And yesterday, The Planet announced that it's got an evangelist too (and his first name is also Kevin). Very cool!

Kevin Hazard says he's here to provide corporate transparency. And to "improve the user experience on our corporate site and in our order process." Which are great starting points, but I hope he will take on a much broader role. For instance, he could...

1. Maximize both The Planet's and his own "surface area" through not just blog posts, but also building networks on Linkedin/Facebook/other communities and sharing media on Flickr/YouTube/SlideShare/other services

2. Play an active role in local developer groups (of which there are plenty near The Planet's home base)

3. Attend relevant conferences (some great upcoming opportunities include OSCON, Office 2.0, Web 2.0 Summit... After all, every developer and web app startup needs hosting?)

(BTW, Chris Brogan has a really good post-event follow up guide)

4. Track down and subscribe to as many customer/vendor/partner blogs as possible, and participate actively in these communities

Kevin says an evangelist is someone who listens, but I think Seth Godin has a better job description: it's like "being the head of a big trade association, but without the bureaucracy and tedium". It's about "seducing stragglers into joining the group" and "balancing huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out". Which is pretty much what Jeff Barr does. If Kevin wants a fan club (like Jeff has), he will have to measure up!

PS - On a somewhat related note, Rich Miller over at Data Center Knowledge writes that Savvis is marketing its data center tours like rock concerts. Sun's Black Box tour is pretty sexy, too. Check out those crowds in Vienna! Does The Planet's new evangelism program represent a shift away from steep discounts towards more up to date forms of Internet infrastructure marketing? Stay tuned...

Death to email?

Last October the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article entitled Email is for Old People. It (as well as a 2005 Pew Internet report) said that teenagers see little need for email when they've got IM, text messages and social networking profiles. I remember thinking, just wait til they get jobs! But earlier today, I came across a bunch of different things that made me realize today's 12-17 year olds might not grow up to have email-centric professional lives.

Stephen O'Grady already doesn't. If you need to reach him in a hurry, he says you'll have better luck via IM than email. And if you'd like to schedule a meeting, check out his free/busy calendar. RedMonk also has an IRC channel, and all three analysts twitter.

Jeff Barr recently moved one stop closer to a future without email with the launch of Amazon's Evangelist on Demand, where interested developers can put themselves on his schedule. As Jeff explains it, this self-serve system cuts down on email traffic, leaving him more time to actually go out and talk.

Dennis Howlett has spent 7 weeks using Facebook as a business tool; he says the speed at which problems are solved is breathtaking. In particular, he mentions Robert Scoble's post on the Facebook + Google Reader combination. Instead of emailing interesting articles to individual friends, you could simply mark notable items as "shared" and let Facebook help prioritize by showing top shared items for the past 12 hours, by certain friends, across its entire system...

Many of my web hosting friends have told me that technology early adopters like Stephen/Jeff/Dennis aren't necessarily relevant examples. Their customers are "regular people" who aren't hip to newfangled communications tools; they're plenty happy with Hosted Exchange. Check out this New York Times article, though. It says Moosejaw Mountaineering's text message marketing campaign got a 66% response rate! In contrast, you'd be lucky if even 6% of your email newsletter's recipients opened it.

Email is not a killer app!

groupSPARK CEO Ravi Agarwal has an interesting take on Google's $625 million Postini acquisition.

"Overall the SaaS messaging space is heating up... After all, email is the killer app for SMBs...  This is the first volley from Google attacking Microsoft's hold on the lucrative messaging software for SMB's. Google ultimately wants to go after the Microsoft Exchange Server market, but hasn't much success so far getting SMB's to pay for services... Google is playing catch-up here, but clearly will pose a strong challenge to Microsoft in the future."

But email is NOT a killer app (let alone THE killer app)! Instead, what SMBs really want is a coherent, 360 degree solution for managing their front- and back-office operations. As SMBLive CEO Matt Howard puts it, running a business is all about maintaining 5 conversations: you use office productivity apps to organize your own ideas, collaboration platforms to share information with colleagues and partners, transaction and contact management tools to keep track of current vendors and customers, sales/marketing/networking services to connect with new ones...

While email can play a role in these interactions, it's a means rather than an end. A means whose usefulness may one day end. As Dennis Howlett writes on ZDNet: "I see a combination of Twitter and Facebook as having the potential to replace 90% of the email I receive while improving my personal productivity."

RedMonk (the most influential analyst firm on the web, with THREE top 10 spots on Technobabble's league table!) recently switched from Zimbra to Google Apps, a move which Stephen O'Grady described as trying out a new *collaboration platform* rather than a different messaging service. That makes me think it's Microsoft, not Google, that needs to play catch-up.

Every Google Apps account (whether paid or free) exposes new users to not just Gmail, but also Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Docs/Spreadsheet. Sooner or later Google will integrate Google Checkout, Google Base, JotSpot, GrandCentral, etc. Google Apps is evolving into a switchboard for our 5 conversations (whether we choose to conduct them via email, wiki, IM, phone calls...). Its all-in-one-ness will turn the SaaS messaging space into a too-narrow niche for most SMBs to explore. Unless Microsoft begins bundling Office, SharePoint and everything else it's got with each Exchange Server license, it won't be able to hold on to the email market. And neither will its hosting partners.

Aironz may have started a trend!

A few months ago, Aaron from FastServers mentioned that he sent out cameras to a handful of customers and asked each to shoot a testimonial video. Tom Green, Devin from PingZine and Ben from HostNine are some of the folks who got involved. You can see their videos here.

It looks like LayeredTech has just launched a similar marketing campaign. Karen is offering a $100 credit in exchange for a 5-minute "how LT has helped you succeed" video. (I hope LT has generously sized mailboxes. Customers are asked to submit videos via email.)

I think customer videos are way cool, but there's something... awkward about straight-up testimonials. Imagine meeting someone new at a party and having all of his friends tell you what a great person he is. After the umpteenth "Joe is sooo awesome" conversation, you might not look forward to the next. In contrast, if you hear about trips people have taken with Joe, sports games they've been to, etc, you might think you'd like to hang out with him too.

On that note, here's an alternative to video testimonials. How about a YouTube-based contest for the most interesting application running on a specific type of hardware equipment (Celeron 2.0 with 1GB RAM, let's say)? Awards could be given for most viewed/most commented on/highest rated videos. You could also set up a poll  asking viewers to choose the most creative/most useful/most world-changing projects. And of course, you'd offer a smoking deal on that particular SKU.

I think a promo that takes place outside of a vendor's own walls is more likely to generate interest beyond its existing community. And by focusing on customer accomplishments, the vendor will enjoy a halo effect that's more compelling than explicit endorsements. (In other words, never outshine the master.)

Think about it - "my hoster is great" case studies are mostly alike: fast support, reliable network/hardware, flexible configs. But a "what's on your Celeron" contest? That leaves room for lots of interesting surprises.

Undervalued & illiquid near-equals a long way from achieving escape velocity

Andy Schroepfer wrote a long post about the WebSitePros/Web.com merger earlier this week. He points out that the combined entity joins Hostway/Affinity and Endurance/iPowerweb as new members of the $100M+ annual revenue club. The "undervalued and illiquid near-equals" he says, remain "undiscovered for the most part, and still battling for a slice of the massive SME market opportunity, which both firms have always talked about but barely shown the results..."

Will consolidation make WebSitePros/Web.com more appealing to end users? Based on the services that they offer, I'm not optimistic. WebSitePros says its "web designers, copywriters, editors and quality control specialists" will "take the time to get your site right". Sadly, your content will start going stale the minute your brochureware package is delivered. And Web.com's site creation software provides "relevant starter text based on the template you select". With this wonderful time saver, you could launch a website just like 1000s of others!

In short, both WebSitePros and Web.com (not to mention many of their competitors) are still stuck on the increasingly antiquated notion of web presence. Microsoft's Chris Jones, on the other hand, says web services are all about helping customers stay connected. Marc Andreessen, too, thinks over 1 billion people have become Internet users because we want "new ways to connect, new ways to share, new ways to communicate -- new ways to be part of the network, part of the world."

With many millions of MySpace and Facebook users, Marc says social networking has reached escape velocity. With 234K subscribers, WebSitePros/Web.com haven't - and won't. Unless they start thinking beyond hosting static websites to helping customers engage their audiences. BT Tradespace (which is powered by software from my friend Matt Howar'ds company SMBLive!) for one, invites visitors to rate and comment on vendors' products. And TypePad offers a growing catalog of widgets that help site owners collect feedback and build communities.

Of course, Web.com, as Andy mentions, is holding on to the hope that its control panel patent claim will be upheld.  The legal proceedings might cause GoDaddy some grief, but it sure won't create market leadership in the "massive SME opportunity".

That's how hosting companies should sell SaaS

About a year ago, I had a conversation with 1&1 CEO Andreas Gauger about open APIs. He liked how you can set up TypePad so that any photos you post on Flickr would automatically appear on your blog as well. But when I asked why 1&1 doesn't make it just as easy for customers to integrate external apps with their hosting accounts, he said (after a long pause) that he'd think about it.

Web hosting companies are much better at being gatekeepers than party promoters - which is why few have made much progress with selling SaaS. In contrast, check out what Marc Andreessen says about the new Facebook Platform:

"Facebook is providing a highly viral distribution engine for applications that plug into its platform. As a user, you get notified when your friends start using an application; you can then start using that same application with one click. At which point, all of your friends become aware that you have started using that application, and the cycle continues. The result is that a successful application on Facebook can grow to a million users or more within a couple of weeks of creation."

Just think: could any software provider reach a million users within 2 weeks of partnering with any hosting company? No way. While 1&1, GoDaddy and many others do have significant reach, there are two things most are missing: a plug-and-play platform, and a social network, so that customers form a connected community instead of remaining isolated individuals.

SoftLayer recently announced its open API, which is awesome. BUT it doesn't allow third party developers to benefit from network effects within its user base. GoDaddy launched a social-ish app called HostingMetroplis (you can only access it if you have a GoDaddy login) some time ago, but it's product-centric ("customers who've installed X give it 3 stars") instead of people-oriented ("lots of customers in your line of business/your network/etc seem to be using X"). Any hosting company that can combine these two concepts is going to kick serious ass.

Real World MyBlogLog, Brick & Mortar Ning

1. I got a fund raising email from Alley Cat Allies a few weeks ago. It said in exchange for a Valentine's Day donation, my cat would get a spot on a "wall of hearts". My immediate reaction was, why not make it a virtual wall, where donors could post comments and upload photos? They do have a Myspace profile, which doesn't feel like a focused community. But what about Ning? Dennis talks about Ning for clients of the same accounting firm, so why not Ning for supporters of non-profits?

2. David and I met up at Sparky's the other day. It's a coffee place down the street where lots of local folks regularly hang out. Was thinking they could create a Ning community also - until I saw my photo on Cote's MyBlogLog widget while reading his post on Twitter. He suggested projecting conference attendees' Twitter streams in a public place... What if Sparky's had a projection screen that showed photos of the last x visitors? (David would sooo not approve, but he doesn't have to sign up.) And maybe their Twitter streams while they're in the store?

3. Some sort of Ning/MyBlogLog combination might be useful for the MidCity Business Association, a cluster of neighborhood retail stores that host events together, hand out each other's coupons, etc. Wouldn't it be great if the stores had data on the extent to which their visitor traffic overlapped? That opens the door to Aggregate Knowledge for the real world. Imagine Amazon-like recommendations of where 67% of shoppers like you go after lunch at Ben's Chili Bowl? Meanwhile, a network of Minority Report style billboards could show you contextual ads...

Ok, maybe that's getting a little too far-fetched. But it seems there lots more room for declarative living in the world beyond our computer screens?

I am a Bad Tag Gardener

I noticed yesterday that I had almost 500 starred items in Google Reader. I'd gotten into the lazy habit of highlighting great blog posts that I want to re-read, interesting information that I might send to a friend, unfamiliar topics that I'd like to learn more about...  Anything that catches my eye, basically.

As I scrolled through the looong list, I wished Google Reader had some kind of search/sort feature for helping me make sense of the jumbled mess. But after looking up James Governor's old post on declarative living, it seems clutter is what I get for being a negligent tag gardener.

When people who don't blog ask me what I've gotten out of blogging, my usual answer is, better perspective on everything I've blogged about. It's a form of thinking out loud that encourages more thoroughness and coherence than thinking about an idea in passing.

Taking my argument to its logical conclusion, wouldn't it make sense to attach tags/comments to the feed items I want to keep track of instead of absent-mindedly moving everything to one giant "read later" folder? If I can't easily explain why I'm saving an article now, I most likely won't have reasons to come back to it. Besides, I'd have better luck searching for it on Google than combing through a growing haystack of unrelated items. Hmm... could that be why so many people  use the del.icio.us blog thingy?

I guess I hadn't set one up until yesterday because of the distinction Jon Udell describes between personal information management and blog-level editorial sensibility. He bookmarks some items under obscure tags for his own reference, and posts other links because he wants to draw attention to them. As he puts it, the friction involved in this kind of either/or decision makes him less likely to bookmark publicly or privately.

But maybe the solution is to live declaratively and not worry about the distinction? For instance, I always look forward to seeing Steve Rubel's daily links, but I usually click on only a few of the items he's bookmarked. More importantly, the links that interest me most might or might not coincide with what he feels are highest priority.

It doesn't matter, though, because tagging isn't about filtering information for the benefit of a specific and monolithic audience. Instead, it expands opportunities for people who may be 99% unlike you to leverage your research on the 1% common ground you share. And that's pretty cool. So my belated New Year's resolution is to be a better tag gardener. Thanks, James!