Illusions of Reality

I’m fond of Google - no doubts - I hit that search page more often than I hit the applications on which I am working.

Here are some things I find good and bad about Google:

1. Google’s current integrator strategy rocks. Bringing out OpenSocial rather than another SN. Bringing out Adroid rather than another iPhone clone. With all of this, Google proves that it is working to genuinely solve problems. This also gives Google a long-term advantage of being the controller of things. Might not be lucerative in short term but is a genuine long term game winner for me.

2. Google’s advertising model and the way it has revolutionanized online advertising is great. It has taken advertising to a new level in common man’s hand and nothing else but Google’s revenues speak of this the most!

3. Google’s reliance on a single revenue source always makes me nervous. Google empire has a variety of applications and is always trying to solve newer problems but as far as revenue generation is concerned, entire empire stands on a single stem. Dont like it at all!

4. Existence of a large number of Google’s applications such as Google earth, Google Mars, Web Accelerator and so on is wierd. While these applications may be useful to some and Google’s deep pockets can afford this luxury I wonder what was the business plan for these apps looking like when these apps were proposed. Or if, there was any business plan here? Remember, its Google.COM and not Google.ORG that we are talking about.

This post was actually supposed to just talk about Joost features - a video on demand service that I like watching. I’ve been onto Joost since it was in beta. But as I was thinking more and more about Joost - another thought process kicked in and as you’ll read ahead, I kind of derived interesting things that Joost can seriously think to incorporate as they move ahead.

So, all impressed with Joost - I was thinking out what keeps me stuck to Joost. Ofcourse the VOD model offers me flexibility to watch what I want and when I want. Joost also has a large number of shows to pick from - thanks to its long list of ever-growing content partners including Viacom, Warner Bros, Sony Pictures, Turner Broadcasting and even Eros International (for Bollywood stuff!), NHL and so on! Joost’s excellent video quality with not a hefty streaming-bandwidth requirements is a great addition too. The fact that its a P2P service also ensures that extra load on Joost servers would not keep one waiting for watching a show. The advertising in between is not that annoying too given that Joost is free!

But then, an important point is - with whom does Joost compete? It competes with numerous video sharing websites in addition to some Joost clones for now. As far as Joost’s differentiation factors are concerned - its long list of content partners and high quality videos are two factors that are certainly keeping it at top of the list for now. But arent these factors achievable at ease by others? Infact, flash players with high-quality shows and movies would infact be an edge over Joost, which requires separate client software. And none of the content partners have exclusive deals with Joost (to the best of my knowledge - correct me if this is not the case). So, soon this content would float over other sites.

But then, the above factors and risks apply to virtually every second video sharing or video service company on the internet today. A new video service site can float out any day with professional or non-professional and legal or illegal content floating in days - either provided by the site or be user-shared - since the point is, end viewers dont care! So, my point of thought was - what are the real differentiation factors for Joost (or for that matter, any video service portal) in such a dynamic and competitive market?

And I beleive, in such a fast-changing market, the only way to lock down users is - have more users! True answer to competition on collaborative environments is - collaboration. Perhaps, having more and more users collaborate and interact would bring an edge that other sites/ applications may not just be able to plug in like any other feature. And perhaps, the best way for Joost to achieve this is to build socializing features around its application. But then, I have been a firm beleiver that in today’s jungle of SNs having SN applications for numerous features is way better than building separate SNs around different interests. In such a view, perhaps a partnership between Joost and one of the big SNs in the arena wont harm at all. I mean, imagine friends being able to share, rate, suggest and discuss Joost videos. This would also be great for the collaborating SN - so all-in-all a real win-win in my view. Further, with the valuable detailed user-base data that SNs hold, this would unveil a powerful edge fo targetted marketing too.

Perhaps, this model of collaboration with SNs can be generally applied for many other types of utility web portals to enable SN features.

Techcrunch has posted about an interesting report from IBM on how advertising is radically changing. For me, the juice out of the entire post and report are the following changes in modern day advertising market, which I would like to call as a 10x Change in Andy Grove’s terminology:

1. Consumers (viewers) now have greater control through option to filter, interact or consume advertisements
2. Sponsors demand different ways to measure effectiveness of advertisement and different payment models exist
3. Online advertising is a low-cost game thus new professionals competing with agencies
4. Smaller publishers and broadcasters are also trying to earn their bread from this model

I beleive a few years down the line and we would look at the current (or rather already past!) advertising scene and think of it as primitive age advertising!

Techcrunch post is at http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/10/ibm-the-end-of-advertising-as-we-know-it/

IBM report is at http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/media/doc/content/bin/media_ibv_advertisingv2.pdf.

Okay - now I know that entire blogosphere has been talking about the Google’s OpenSocial but I still wont mind adding my two cents to this one.

First up, as I have said in previous posts - social networking does require a lot more to reach to its full potential. Though it is reaching new heights every day - there is no doubt that the extent to which SN can be useful is way more than where it stands today.

Google’s OpenSocial is very certainly a step forward. Like most times - Google have certainly got it right by not trying to create another SN but rather create an integrator - something thats very much required. Social networking has a peculiar usage pattern and an important factor that a user typically prefers to enroll into an SN where his or her buddies hang out. So - porting of users is not very simple - thus just another new SN would have hardly done this world any good. But, OpenSocial - as a common API across multiple existing SN’s is a charm for sure.

But wait - here’s an important factor to consider. Tim O’Reilly’s post (at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/opensocial_social_mashups.html) very correctly talks about something of extreme importance. If the data between different SN providers wont be shareable, than all we have from OpenSocial is a comfort for developers to use same language and syntax for developing those SN applications. Though this is certainly an advantage, a bigger leap and a genuine step forward would be when these developers can build SN applications that aggregate data from multiple SNs or use capabilities of multiple SNs. I would say, as of now it is not very clear if OpenSocial supports this.

I also feel that it wont be supporting this for now since if this would have been the case, Google would have gone ga ga about this by now. Also, this capability involves user privacy issues and many other factors to consider. On the other side OpenSocial Developer’s Guide has an API called People Data API that would allow developer to extract user information - this API, though, is not yet released.

Well, I would say, lets keep our fingers crossed till the initial excitement settles down and it becomes clearer if we would see - cross SN applications coming our way - that, for me, would be the real meat!