Twitter Adopts a Business Model

When it leaped to popularity in the last couple of years, Twitter joined a long list of popular internet ventures without a business model. They have some elite company. Amazon spent years thrashing around for a business model that would work. So did Google. So people have been waiting with bated breath for Twitter to act.

Yesterday, Twitter announced its model. As expected, it is an advertising model, centering around the concept of "promoted tweets." "Users will start seeing paid messages, which will be labeled "promoted," at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. "Initially, as many as 10% of users will see the promoted messages. Twitter will work with Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America to roll out the first ads," he said.

Whether Twitter's new plan will work is an open question for the present. It depends on how Twits react as well as how much value advertisers see in the program. It has a decent chance for success though, given the immense coverage of Twitter. There's more about this in Computerworld.

Business Intelligence (BI) for the Masses

Business Intelligence has been a major driving factor in the development of electronic business. Through the use of BI, companies have been able to leverage the vast repositories of data in their systems to help in achieving corporate goals and objectives. Traditionally, BI has been driven by large, complex applications often requiring installations on the scale of ERP systems and calling for sophisticated users and support functions.

Now Microsoft is moving to broaden the scope of BI adoption in business by expanding the functionality of its popular Excel spreadsheet, combined with its collaborative platform, Sharepoint. The large user base for Excel along with the fact of its widely known and understood interface will provide a solid launching point for the new initiative.

The result could be greater usage of BI and considerable improvements in efficiency and productivity among companies who need to make better use of their data. A summary of Microsoft's initiative can be found in Informationweek.

Data is Not Free

While data continues its trek towards a global world of availability, companies moving to the cloud are observing a curious quirk of the legal framework. It seems the geography that data is related to is important in determining compliance with such laws as privacy, because of course the laws are geographically based. The move to the cloud is more difficult that many originally thought. Eventually this issue as outlined in this article will have to be tackled head-on.

E-Buyers Still Have Security Concerns

When e-commerce began, there was a great deal of concern about security on the internet. For good reason, people just did not trust it and were hesitant to put their credit card information on a site. Since that time of about 15 years ago, there has been a vast amount of money invested in better security for online shoppers. Most people are aware of this effort. On the other hand, the media has reported numerous cases almost on a daily basis of instances of fraud, phishing and hackings. Some of those stories are scary, involving situations in which people lost substantial sums of money and experienced difficulty in getting it back, if they ever did. So consumers are still fearful of e-commerce, and more than careful about which sites they buy from.

To some extent this fear is healthy, but it may be that it is now being overdone. Security has indeed improved, and the volume of e-commerce activity has continued to increase, albeit not as at great a rate as it would have if the concerns about security weren't there. Sites attempting to sell online need to include as much calming material as possible, to try to assuage the fears of the skittish consumer, as indicated in this article.

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Babbage - A New Blog

The Economist Magazine has launched a new blog called Babbage.

"Named after Charles Babbage, the father of the computer, our new blog aims to understand the world through the technology that now impacts our lives and reveals so much about us. Recent posts investigate the role of geeks (they are now officially cool, running companies and making millions), mourn the demise of the analog car, and ask just who Apple's iPad is for. Answer: no one knows, not even Apple."

The blog is at this URL. It's worth bookmarking, as the Economist is always on point.

E-Books Continue to Grow

Predictions as to the market for e-books vary from 2% of the total book market over the next five years to 25%. My prediction is that the higher number will be closer to the mark than the lower one. eBooks have just gotten started, and already there is a plethora of readers out there and people are paying attention.

What is emerging is that people so far are indicating that they wish to consume their books on a variety of devices, ranging from PC's to tablets to smart phones, including the specialty readers such as the Kindle.

Kobo of Toronto, an increasingly notable player in the ebook market, has it right in this respect. They have just released a new reader to be sold in Borders stores in the US. presumably to be made available in other markets, such as in their home base. Kobo also has a "Powered by Kobo" technique which will enable a variety of devices play ebooks.

Watch this arena. It will be a major one. And check out this article on Kobo.

Another Step towards Convergence of TV and the Web

Ever since the Web got really started in the early nineties, its followers have been predicting various kinds of convergence, including computers and TV, telephones and computers, Computers and kitchen appliances, etc. Every day we see new evidence of these convergences taking place. The recent explosion of smart phones is just another big step in that continuum.

In another potentially big step, Google has announced, along with several partners, that it is working to have its web applications to be made available on televisions, using its Android operating system along with a new version of its Chrome Browser. Whether it actually reaches market mass is an open question, but the move is significant because it represents a significant convergence initiative by a major player. Even if it doesn't work, it will work eventually, because that's the future of the World Wide Web. See a press report here.

Shopping made Easier

Finding products may get a whole lot easier if Google and Milo.com are successful with their new mobile version of the Google Product Search feature. The idea is that if you want a specific product, like a HP Photosmart Printer, in a specific city, like Mississauga, then you can use the search tool to find which stores in the area currently have the specified printer in stock. Having this app on your mobile phone, of course, makes it possible to make these searches while on the run.

Milo and Google have enrolled several retailers in this service for trial runs. Eventually, they hope to have more retailers in the fold, which may make the app a necessary part of every shopper's tool kit.

Click here for an article on this application.

Boeing's Supply Chain Management Headache

Boeing began building the much hyped Boeing 787, a large innovative aircraft built of carbon composites rather than aluminum approximately seven years ago. The company outsourced heavily, as is common in this technology enabled age, but they carried it to an extreme. This led to a whole new world of supply chain management, in which outsourced suppliers were vying for difficult-to-obtain parts and supplies, which the suppliers found hard to provide because of the erratic and unplanned nature of the buying. Eventually Boeing had to take over some of the buying so a reliable supply of parts could be ensured. Boeing's experience with the 787 is a case study in Supply Chain Management in an outsourced environment, and carries some important lessons for other companies. For a good report on the building of the 787, see this article in Technology Review.

How People Read the News

An interesting survey by Pew Research Center sheds some interesting light on how people get their news. No longer do they rely on a single source, such as a newspaper or TV. Indeed, Newspapers come low on the list for many. The internet dominates news gathering. But not just a favourite website. People tend to scan news items when the spirit moves them or when they have an extra minute of two. 33% of cell phone users read at least some of their news on their phones. Many use various websites, which they seem to check on an opportunistic basis.

There seems to be a trend towards increased use of mobile internet sources, such as smart phones for news access. Since the power of mobile internet devices is growing quickly and their popularity increasing, one would expect this trend to continue. You can read a summary of the survey on the Pew website.

Freedom of Speech vs Privacy

There has been a conflict between internet based free speech and privacy legislation since the beginning. nowhere does this conflict become more obvious that in the area of social media. Do we really have the right to say those things about other people publicly? Should we?

Freedom of speech has been a central mantra of democratic countries for centuries, well at least a couple. However, the internet has brought in important changes that haven't been digested yet by our institutions. While freedom of expression will hopefully remain a central tenet of our society, we may have to redefine it somewhat. At one time, freedom of speech would have been tempered by traditional courtesy and respect for others, those aspects of society have dissipated considerably. As with so much else, the moderation may have to be legislated.

See here a writeup on a recent case in Italy which may change the situation a lot.

Has Social Networking Run Its Course?

A recent poll - unscientific and all - has resulted in some 400 readers of Internet Evolution to call for the elimination of Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. The poll asked the question: "If you could eliminate one Web service, which one would it be?" Biased, for sure, but nevertheless food for thought.

There are plenty of reasons why social networking could run out of steam. It started with teenagers, notorious for social interaction but - - between themselves. Now that it has gone mainstream, it loses its appeal to them. Also, the privacy and security implications of social networking are becoming increasingly evident to everyone. That will turn off many people - as it already has employers and other organizations.

That said, people are inherently social and it could be that social networking is just going through a fine tuning stage. Stay tuned.

For a write-up on the survey, follow this link.

Faster Wireless Downloads

Mobile units are the future of the internet, or at least a very important part of it. But one of the problems constantly experienced by those downloading data is slowness and dropped packets. A new protocol, fasp-Air by Aspera promises to fix this problem by addressing some of the shortcomings of TCP, the standard protocol used to date. The new protocol was used when making the movie Avatar, to speed up data transmissions from New Zealand to the US. Fast data transmission is critical to the future development of e-business, as transmissions become larger and more frequent. Read up on fasp-Air in this article.

ROBO Shoppers

Research Online Buy Offline, has been a phenomenon almost since the web started to be used for commercial purposes. Initially, it happened because people found useful information about products on websites but were reluctant to buy online. Now, many people are more comfortable buying online, but the amount and quality of information about the products they might be interested in has grown exponentially. Now online research has become routine for most consumers.

The importance of ROBO shopping is something that companies should recognize in their website design. They need to work in features that will encourage the customer to stay and buy or else come back when they do buy, whether it be incentives, necessary local information, etc. For a good article on this aspect of e-commerce, see this article in E-Commerce News.

The Pricing Struggle over E-Books

In a recent move in the ongoing chess game between Amazon, maker of the Kindle, and the Publishing industry, Amazon has agreed to a scheme under which the publishers would have a say in the price of the e-books and retain 70% of the proceeds. That's a major shift. The publishing industry is under pressure to prove it deserves a piece of this pie and in the long term it will be the consumers who decide. E-books are not going to go away, and should be cheaper because they do not have the production costs, such as binding and printing.

One major thing that the publishers do bring to the table, however, is quality control. While self-publishing is big, there is not yet a good mechanism to screen out the good from the bad, other than the open market, which is not good enough. There is quite a lot of shake-out yet to come in the publishing industry and its relationship with ebooks. Here's an article on the topic.

Mobile Shopping

Evidence that the recent emphasis on mobile devices being used for e-commerce has been put forward by eBay. Their latest statistics show that shopping by mobile users has tripled during the latest holiday shopping season. Around 750,000 people have installed the eBay mobile mobile application. That's a significant number! For a thorough rundown on eBay's latest sales profile, see this article.

Seizure of Laptops at Borders

The policy of some countries to randomly search and seize laptops of visitors at border checkpoints has been under fire by many civil liberties groups. Most recently, the American Civil Liberties Union has begun the process of launching a class action seeking to cause changes in the existing practices in the US. One can see the need for search and seizure of laptops and other electronic devices in certain circumstances, but there are significant privacy issues involved, and the governmental policies should recognize these issues. A clear and transparent policy is required. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "The man who sacrifices his freedom to achieve security deserves neither." Increasingly, as security policies driven by fear are tightened, we need to be aware of the sacrifices being made of our freedom. This is happening not just in the US, but also in Canada and other countries.

New IBM Technology Predictions

IBM has released its top ten technology predictions for 2010. Many of them are directly relevant to e-business. For example, there are predictions for a growth in cloud computing, more high speed internet access through wireless devices, further restructuring of the banking industry away from the branch system, and growth of services delivery through technology. It all makes for an interesting year or two as these areas develop further and trigger changes in business models. The predictions are published in IT World Canada.

TV - The Struggle for a Business Model

Television is in process of  the biggest struggle for a business model since its inception in the 1940s. The original model, the broadcast model, depended on advertising revenues for its funding. But then the cable model entered the scene, which gets not only advertising revenue but subscriber revenue. That made possible more, and more expensive, programming. In the past few years, the big cable operators have been going head to head with the broadcast companies, and the broadcasters are losing, especially those who broadcast local programming.

The internet is looming as the major delivery vehicle of programming. It is there now through the sites of the major networks and specialty sites like tv.com. But for content, it depends on the traditional sources. When internet TV matures, there will still be an issue of which business model to adopt - the same old alternatives - broadcast or subscriber. There could also be another approach, such as paying for individual programs. Something like iTunes, where subscribers pay 99 cents for an episode of a program.

The outcome of the current struggle between the cable operators and broadcasters will be an important indicator for the future. But it won't determine the final outcome. The final outcome will be determined on the internet.

For an excellent article on the current clash of business models, see this article.