Deviant Abstraction

Fred’s post reminds me of an interesting conversation I had with a friend yesterday. Actually, marketers are irrelevant in this Internet age. You need new kind of marketers and marketing tools. People who can hold conversation online instead of pushing information to the presumed consumers.

For instance, everybody is building a blog tracking application, but I see none targeted toward enterprise. I assume those will be mainstream in 2 to 3 years.

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In his excellent column, Cringely just told us he is turning next week to blog (instead of Precambrien HTML), which is in itself a great news.

He also explains why YouTube is actually profitable and how they were so smart not to tell anyone (as the saying “To live happy, live hidden”).

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This is one refreshing from something which seem benigm: widgets such as the MySpace player. This post is right and this blog is a good example.

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We all know this chart is already obsolete and somewhat irrelevant. However, reflecting upon it is always useful.

What it really shows is the mainstream view of these technology. You can see VoIP or Web 2.0 but not P2P which is an emerging system trends (in the sense that a lot of its potential is still untapped). Some points are senseless (Grid computing: what does it mean? MPI is already there and battle-tested) and mix commercial application (VoIP), applied research (sensor networks) and fundamental research (quantum computing). In a way, this is good: it lays down some frontiers the academic community has artificially created.

Via JdN

His advices apply also to most creative outsourced work.

Here they are:

1. If you want average (mediocre) work, ask for it. Be really clear up front that you want something beyond reproach, that’s in the middle of the road, that will cause no controversy and will echo your competition. It’ll save everyone a lot of time.
2. On the other hand, if you want great work, you’ll need to embrace some simple facts:
3. It’s going to offend someone. If it doesn’t offend them, then it will make them nervous. The Vietnam Vets memorial offended a lot of people. The design of Google made plenty of people nervous. Great work from a design time means new work, refreshing and remarkable and bit scary.



4. It’s not going to be easy to sell to your boss. That’s your job, by the way, not mine. If you want me to do something great, you’ve got to be prepared to protect it and defend it. Come back too many times for one little compromise, and you’ll make it clear that #1 was what you wanted all along.
5. You can’t tell me you’ll know it when you see it. First, you won’t. Second, it wastes too much time. Instead, you’ll need to have the patience to invest twenty minutes in accurately describing the strategy. That means you need to be abstract (what is this work trying to accomplish) resistant to pleasing everyone (it needs to do this, this and that) and willing, if the work meets your strategic goal, to embrace it even if it’s not to your taste.
6. Help me out by pointing out the work you’d like this to be on a peer with. If you want a website to be like three others (in tone, not in execution) then point it out. In advance.
7. Be clear about dates and costs. Not what you hope for, but what you can live with!
8. You don’t know a lot about accounting so you don’t backseat drive your accountant. You hired a great designer, please don’t backseat drive here, either.
9. If you want to be part of the process, please go to school. Read design magazines or take a course from Milton Glaser or get a subscription to Before & After. By the way, that one link is the single best part of this post.
10. This one may surprise you: don’t change your existing design so often Not when your kids or your colleagues tell you it’s time. Do it when your accountant says so.
11. Don’t get stressed about your logo.
12. Get very stressed about user interface and product design. And your packaging.
13. Say thank you.

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This article proposes a valorization of a network of n log(n) instead of n^2 according to Metcalfe’s law. They try to differenciate value in each link through this.

A must-read.

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Don Dodge has been given seven rules through which Kleiner Perkins (the VC company behind Google, Amazon, Netscape and so on) invest or not in a start-up.

(source: roland from Flickr)

• Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use
• Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
• Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
• Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.
• Personalized user experience - customizable.
• Easy configuration based on application or usage templates.
• Context aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.

My few comments:

• It shows how much the business landscape has changed. As others have put it, no one is anymore listening to sales pitch. In the Internet age, most deals are initiated by customers and not by sales guys. Other deals are handled directly at executive levels. Making needs emerge from an interaction with a sales guy is out of the norm nowadays. Internet and new media own this role. Of course, doing so allow easy scale up for a start up.
• The KP second rule about minimal IT footprint seems obvious. You want to build a product. You need to lower as much as possible any obstacle to adoption. KP want company serving markets. Not projects based ones.
• It is also interesting to see how automated adaptation is the norm now for every product: you expect the product to be easily customizable to your need. Whether adding new levels on a videogame or a functionnality in a software, it should be easily doable. If the software is doing it by itself then even better. For instance, Chandler is trying to add it as seen here or here. There is still of values in customization and integration but only if it is automated. Customers want to be empowered. As Bruce Sterling puts it we are moving away from a “systemic” economy to a “spimes” one
• Value lies in community and mass adoption. As we have already seen, customers want to be empowered. They want to be able to manage on their own the product and have it customized to their needs. This fact opens space for mass products which are automatically tailored to one’s needs. For instance, Google, Amazon,… Why do you think they all invest in data-mining?
• Those rules summarize what is hot right now. Not what will be hot next year (next month?).

Via Don Dodge’s Blog

Update Ben Barren is also blogging about this.

One of the few blogs understanding mobile content and market. I work in it so I know a few things about it and this blog has a really deep and interesting vision. I don’t say this only because I think the same myself.

Link

Yahoo! presented itself to their financial analysts. It is a great (and huge) read. I will try to comment on it later. In the meantime, I invite all of you to at least open it and look at the webcast and the slides.

Yahoo! is not anymore the much touted company it used to be. However, it is still an Internet giant and it builds quietly a new Web through careful acquisitions and good R&D (mobile, semantic web mostly I think).

It has a huge power as a mainstream platform and totally underestimated (they did not build their brand through PR as did Google). The Web people are on Yahoo! They used to be on AOL. They hope to be on Google.

Yahoo! is taking a path worth following and an original one.

Other blogs have mentionned it; especially the excellent Read/Write Web. But no one really seems to care, especially the blogosphere. They might be missing an important event. Yahoo! has defined its strategy quite precisely for the next five years.

Their new home page is a consequence of their new strategy. Their declaration of war to the old Web. (OK at least of intention). They were still supporting Netscape 3 last year. It is a very meaningful step. (Terry Semel is a Hollywood guy: he knows the power of symbol). We will see how far they conquer and if their declaration of intention (those links below and the new home page) will work. We will watch them.
If you want to sell them something, I would suggest to read all this carefully.
Link to the event page

Link to the slides (PDF - 12.2 Mb)

Link to the webcast

Update 05/25/06
One article on this

Seth Godin’s excellent blog has propagated this well known excerpt from the Dalai-Lama.

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s: Respect for self, Respect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

I won’t judge them from a philosophical standpoints but from a marketing one: Seth Godin advocates viral marketing and a total refoundation of marketing. Yet, this post was sent to him in an email probably mass-mailed as you receive everyday from your friend (please don’t…). Those emails has been sent since the dawn of Internet. Ironic isn’t it? This is pure and perfect viral marketing!

See for yourself