Emergic

Esther Dyson on Office 2.0

[Office 2.0 is] about the way the platform allows the sharing of information, but the trick is managing the processes, not managing the content.

That is, we need tools that will help us keep track of the workflow. For example, I send a blog post out to three people to make sure I quoted them correctly. Now I want a way automatically to ping the ones who haven’t responded. That’s a minor problem. But I have 20 or 30 of them a way…so I want a process spreadsheet, a tool that lets me set up little processes, copy and modify and re-use them. I want to be able to share them with other people. And, perhaps my company wants a way to create them and distribute them.

But in general, as we think about Office 2.0, we need to avoid the trap of thinking that work rules are centralized and hierarchical. Rules can be peer-to-peer too-if we have tools to create and share them in a bottom-up way.

Second Life

The New York Times writes:

It has a population of a million. The people there make friends, build homes and run businesses. They also play sports, watch movies and do a lot of other familiar things. They even have their own currency, convertible into American dollars.
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This parallel universe, an online service called Second Life that allows computer users to create a new and improved digital version of themselves, began in 1999 as a kind of online video game.

But now, the budding fake world is not only attracting a lot more people, it is taking on a real world twist: big business interests are intruding on digital utopia. The Second Life online service is fast becoming a three-dimensional test bed for corporate marketers.

TECH TALK: The Rise of YouTube: Impact for China and India

SeekingAlpha [David Wolf] wrote: Apart from the fact that the deal needs to close, Kai-Fu Lee and the team over at Google China are wise enough in the ways of the Middle Kingdom to know that YouTube in the form that it operates in the U.S. would not fly with the Chinese authorities. A website that plays videos but is not a licensed broadcaster? That’s a no-go: we know that from the way the IPTV trials are being handled. A foreign website? Playing foreign videos? Or worse, self-produced videos from local Chinese? Even worse, owned by a foreign company with huge resources?…China is not the only place Google is likely to face challenges as it makes plans to take YouTube global. In Singapore and in other countries where Google does business, there will be authorities who take issue with the concept of a video sharing site, and Google will face a choice: don’t launch YouTube at all, or launch a localized version that operates in accordance with local laws and sensibilities. I’m betting on the YouTube Local approach, especially in non-English-speaking territories.

The real opportunity is likely to be around the mobile. SeekingAlpha again: Mobile content has its own particular requirements – small screens, short programming, and loads of choice. From that perspective, YouTube is brilliantly suited to mobile television: short duration videos, lots of low-definition stuff that people are used to seeing in small screens, and content that is mostly already formatted for wmv and RealPlayer. Launching YouTube in China as a video wireless value-added service provider [V-WVASP?], combined with some clever advertising techniques developed by YouTube and Chinese mobile TV pioneers like 21cms, could be the ticket.

The mobile angle was also discussed by MocoNews:

The biggest indication of any mobile results is in the content deals announced by both companies just before the merger, which is mostly with music labels and is for music videos. Theres talk of free music videos supported by Googles advertising nouse. Music videos, as well as the user-generated content which made YouTube so big, is perfect for mobile devices. For me, the question is not what will they do but why havent they done anything yet?, and if the answer is anything other than the fact that theyre still sorting out online video any speculation would be premature. But if its something they just havent got around to Im sure they will at some point. Because of data charges syncing is the most obvious delivery technique at this point, but that leaves a few issues such as the difficulty of syncing. With the higher speed networks planned Im sure therell be over-the-air downloads that dont cost to much, which could see it take off. The revenue model could be paid for content (such as some of the new music video deals) or ad-sponsored (which is Googles strength, after all) or a mixture of the two. Perhaps the biggest thing Google could bring to the deal is an easier way to find videos that interest you, which is of particular interest in mobile where you want to download only what you like.

My view is that the deal highlights the importance of social networks and community. It also brings out the coming age of video on the Internet. In India, we are still in the Web 1.0 world, so we have a long way to go before we start realising the benefits on this new Internet. But, we do have an opportunity to leapfrog to Web2.0 if we build it our around mobiles. As I have often said in the past, there is an opportunity for the next YouTube or Google to come from emerging markets like China and India. Instead of looking at what companies in the developed markets are doing, the focus needs to be on the needs of the large user base in the domestic markets. If there is one key takeaway for entrepreneurs from the YouTube-Google deal, it is this (from Evan Williams): It’s a great example of how and why a focused startup can compete with the big guys. Google not only had a video product that was a competitor, they started it before YouTube existed. Then YouTube came along and kicked their butt into paying through the nose for them. One game is over, new ones are ready to begin.

Continue reading TECH TALK: The Rise of YouTube: Impact for China and India

Knowledge@Wharton Interview

Knowledge@Wharton interviewed me recently. Here is the introduction they wrote:

Rajesh Jain has a lot in common with Marc Andreeson, co-founder of Netscape. Just as the Netscape IPO in 1995 is widely believed to have sparked the Internet boom in the U.S., Jain ignited a dot-com storm in India when his portal — IndiaWorld — was sold in November 1999 for $115 million to Sify, an Internet service provider. That deal signaled to millions in that country that the web was not just a passing techie fad and that entrepreneurs could make serious money from it.

In recent years, Jain, 39, has deliberately kept a low profile in the media, though he makes his views on technology issues widely known through his blog, emergic.org. Jain, who is now the CEO of Netcore, a Linux-based messaging software company, was a panelist earlier this year at the 2006 Supernova conference in San Francisco. He met with Knowledge@Wharton in his offices in Mumbai to discuss how mobile phones could hold the key to the Internet’s evolution in India and other emerging economies.

Here is a quote from me:

I believe another dimension will define the future of the Internet in India, and that’s going to be built around the mobile phone. Given the way that mobile phones have taken off in India during the past four to five years, I am convinced that more people in India will access the Internet through mobile phones than through computers linked to narrowband or broadband connections. We need to start thinking about the mobile Internet differently than we do about the PC Internet.

For me, three words help define the mobile Internet. They are: now, near and new. “Now” is about what is happening right now in real time. Wherever I am, I can find the latest cricket scores or the top news stories because my mobile phone is always with me. “Near” is about location — it can be as small as a neighborhood or it could be a city. If I’m about to take a flight this evening, could I get an alert on my mobile phone if the flight is delayed? Some of this is starting to happen, but it needs to happen a lot more. It could make a real difference to people’s lives. Finally, “new” is about new stuff in which I might be interested. Just as a search engine like Google is a good way to find material that has been published in the past, the mobile phone is a great way to keep in touch with future or incremental content. If there is a sale, it should be possible for my book store to send me an alert and suggest business books that I might find interesting.

Telecoms Convergence

Tomi Ahonen has an extensive critique of the telecoms survey published in the Economist last week:

They write 25 pages on convergence and the future of telecoms. The Economist is clear that convergence consists of internet, TV, fixed AND mobile telecoms. The Economist tells us that users migrate from fixed to mobile; traffic migrates from fixed to mobile; and revenues migrate from fixed to mobile. Yet they all but ignore the impact of mobile telecoms to this converged future?

A story about the future that ignores its biggest component

So here is my big gripe with this Special Report on the Future of Telecoms. If the trend of customers is from fixed to mobile; the trend of traffic is from fixed to mobile; and the trend of revenues is from fixed to mobile; why does the Economist Future of Telecoms, NOT discuss what mobile is and will be for telecoms?

The 4 Cs

Vinu writes:

All the excitement in the internet world now (sometimes termed as Web 2.0) according to me can be summarised in 4 Cs:

* Content (Micro chunking. tagging)
* Connectivity (Communication, Mobility, RSS, Voip)
* Community (Collaboration, smart mobs, user generated content)
* Commerce (platform providers, Craigslist)
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Internet is a Car. Content the driver. Connectivity which is the engine. Community the passengers. And Finally Commerce the spark! After you start the car – you actually may not need the spark.

Mobile Ajax

C. Enrique Ortiz writes:

Mobile AJAX is mobile browsing, but mobile browsing is not necessarily Mobile AJAX. Mobile AJAX is not services on the web, but might be used to consume such services on the web. With their small screens, does AJAX really matter for handsets? Will it have the same effect as it did on the desktop? The answer is that it will matter for mobile, but it won’t have the same effect as in desktops. Not until 1) AJAX is consistently supported across micro-browsers, and 2) not until the primary screen on handsets are large enough to make it exciting (and the day the mobile handsets primary screen become large, then the whole mobility thing may have been defeated).
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Mobile AJAX today is not mainstream, and is not ready to deliver the goodies it has delivered on the desktop, not because the technology per-se isn’t ready, but because it is not consistently offered across handsets, and because its effect (and experience) on Mobile is just plain different from the desktop. So when can we expect Mobile AJAX to go mainstream? Well, the sooner the better, but it will probably take about 2 years — hopefully I’m wrong and it’s before that.

Skills Gap in India

The New York Times writes:

India still produces plenty of engineers, nearly 400,000 a year at last count. But their competence has become the issue.

A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations.

The skills gap reflects the narrow availability of high-quality college education in India and the galloping pace of the country’s service-driven economy, which is growing faster than nearly all but China’s.

TECH TALK: The Rise of YouTube: Comments(Part 4)

The Economist commented: [The] pairing of Google and YouTube may come to be remembered as the moment Web 2.0ie, the web, version twocame of age…The main benefit of the deal, however, may be the difficulties it creates for Google’s rivals. Yahoo! and Microsoft, as well as News Corporation and Viacom, two media giants, all wanted YouTube. But Google pre-empted them, just as it denied them access to AOL, another portal, in which it bought a defensive stake last winter.
ForeverGeek discussed video ads (among other things):

While Yahoo and MSN may make noise about Oventure and AdCenter respectively, AdWords is the king of textual keyword based ads. Yet a juicy new frontier awaits – video. YouTube did prove one thing – people like viewing videos online. Even taking out all the copyright material out of YouTube, a lot of legitimate videos are quite popular. Instead of waiting around to see if there is market for video (which should command *far higher* prices than text links), Google has opted to take the bull by the horn. While Google may never directly put video ads on its core products, it now has one of the largest inventories of video on the internet. Google.com was a massive testbed for AdWords before it was distributed to publishers small and big. Consider YouTube as a massive testbed for Video AdWords before distributed to publishers small and big. (Note: I do understand that you cannot directly compare text-ad inventory and video-ad inventory, but the analogy serves as a useful example regardless).

Mark Cuban, who has been critical about YouTube’s perceived flouting of copyright laws, outlined how he things the battles between the media companies and Google-YouTube will unfold:

Rather than suing Gootube, the media companies will first sue several of the imitators and competitors that have no money whatsoever. They wont sue those companies to get money, they will sue a bunch of those companies to build precedent. In particular, they will sue to get clarification on the DMCA Safe Harbor laws. Are these little companies, that do basically what Youtube does, protected by the DMCA safe harbor rules ?

If they can win some judgements saying these little sites are not protected by Safe Harbor rules, then they have all the leverage in the world to dictate licensing terms to sites that until now have not proactively enforced copyright but have instead chosen to rely on rightsholders takedown notices. If one of those sites has deep pockets, then it could turn into a payday for rightsholders, whether via lawsuit or licensing terms.
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There has been a lot of discussion about whether Gootube, together or seperately would qualify under the safe harbor laws. Some think yes, others like me, think not. But the reality is this. Whatever copyright owners let Gootube get away with, there will be an unlimited number of sites that copy that approach.

Tomorrow: Impact for China and India

Continue reading TECH TALK: The Rise of YouTube: Comments(Part 4)

Selling in China

Knowledge@Wharton has a special report: “China’s 1.3 billion consumers are at a crossroads. They are embracing new economic ideas and habits, and devouring goods that have long been unavailable, unaffordable or forbidden. At the same time, they are part of a culture and an economic system that remain quite different from those of developed countries. In this special report, experts from Wharton and Boston Consulting Group offer insights on how Chinese consumers are evolving as the market develops; what companies need to know about navigating China’s convoluted sales and distribution systems; and the advantages emerging Chinese companies have over Western competitors, even as these firms face their own difficulties in entering the global marketplace. Also, Deepak Advani, chief marketing officer of Lenovo, and Hal Sirkin, senior vice president of BCG and leader of the firm’s Global Operations Practice, discuss the advantages of tailoring products and messages to local markets in China.”