Free And Paid

Image via CrunchBase

Dalton Caldwell: What Twitter could have been

Perhaps you think that Twitter today is a really cool and powerful company. Well, it is. But that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been much, much more. I believe an API-centric Twitter could have enabled an ecosystem far more powerful than what Facebook is today.

Dalton Caldwell: Announcing an audacious proposal

Contemplate for a moment how scary a theoretical purely ad-supported Dropbox would be.

Fred Wilson: In Defense Of Free

This post is in reaction to the idea that services should be paid to ensure that they are appropriately focused on the consumer/user as opposed to the marketer/advertiser/sponsor..... Think about the Super Bowl, the World Cup, the Olympics, the Oscars, the Presidential Debates, the news coverage of important events. These things are ad supported ..... The fact that at its base level TV is free does not mean that all TV has to be free. Free TV does not commoditize paid TV. They co-exist nicely. But we had free TV well before we had paid TV. Free is the foundation that creates a paid tier. ..... Why is over the air radio still the most popular way to listen to music? Because it is free. ..... let's look at servces where the users provide all the value. Wikipedia, Craigslist, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Wordpress, etc, etc. There is no value to any of these platforms if the users don't create the content. The users create the service, curate it, and make it what it is. I do not believe it makes sense to charge users to create the value. ...... When scale matters, when network effects matter, when your users are creating the content and the value, free is the business model of choice.

Dalton Caldwell: Fred Wilson is wrong about “Free”

Companies like Facebook and Twitter have actively encouraged companies to think of their APIs as “platforms”. They want people to base their businesses on top of them. If you unpack that word, they are saying that you should think of the APIs they provide the same way you think of an operating system like Linux, or a hosting platform like Amazon Web Services, or a programming platform like Ruby on Rails......... Building on top of a platform is a foundational risk, and if your platform decided one day that it doesn’t like what you are doing, or likes what you are doing so much they want to compete with you, it’s Very Bad. ...... My arguments are that platforms should not be ad-supported. I never said that “free” is the wrong business model for everyone. ..... The vast majority of innovations created by digital music startups will be crushed because the labels have a fundamental financial incentive to do so. .... Attempting to create a huge platform business that is at its core about controlling and monetizing “bits” is a fool’s errand..... The propagation of “content” through our pipes is just the side effect of providing an amazingly useful service. In other words, content is not king– it’s just bits passing through our system, at the behest of our customers..... In my view of the world, digital “services” are valuable/easy to monetize, and digital “content” is not. If we think of Twitter and Facebook as communications platforms, rather than media/entertainment sites, it seems that their business models are on the wrong side of history.

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Bad Public Policy And Internet Speeds

Emblem of Hong Kong (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tokyo, Seoul, and Paris get faster, cheaper broadband than US cities

The most expensive city surveyed was New York, where Verizon charges $154.98 for the cheapest fiber triple-play package...... In contrast, Riga, Seoul, and Paris all offered triple-play packages for less than $40 per month. London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Hong Kong all had triple play packages available for under $50. .... The best-performing American city was San Francisco, where Webpass offers a 200Mbps service for $37.50 per month. New Yorkers and Washingtonians can get 25Mbps service for less than $40 per month ...... way behind the world leaders. A Hong Kong service provider offers 500Mbps service for $37.34 per month. Providers in Tokyo, Riga, Seoul, Paris, Bucharest, and Berlin all offer services with 100Mbps download speeds service for less than $40 per month. ..... Residents of Chattanooga, TN, can get gigabit Internet access. Unfortunately, that service costs $317.03 per month. Verizon offers 150Mbps service in New York for $159.95 per month, and Comcast offers 105Mbps service in Washington, DC, for $105.00. ..... In Hong Kong, you can get a gigabit connection for $48.59 per month. Amsterdam offers a half gigabit for $83.33 per month. Tokyo residents can get a symmetrical 200Mbps connection for $26.85 per month. ...... incumbents in the United States don't offer ultra-fast speeds even in urban areas whose high density ought to make them cost-effective ..... broadband policy in recent years has been based on the "really flawed assumption that telephone companies and cable companies are going to compete with each other." Instead, he said, we've gotten a "negotiated truce" in which cable incumbents enjoy a de facto monopoly on high-speed broadband service, while Verizon and AT&T focus primarily on their wireless platforms ..... policymakers should re-evaluate the 2005 decision to abandon line-sharing rules. In many other countries, incumbent firms are required to lease their facilities to competitors at regulated rates. ...... more cities should consider municipal fiber projects.

The two policy prescriptions make tremendous sense. One, incumbents should be required to share their pipes with competitors. Two, cities should lay down fiber optic lines.

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Microsoft: Too Big? Too Old?

Image via CrunchBase

Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft

Microsoft also gave out corporate-branded gizmos, laser pointers, memory keys, plastic crystals and other toys. When I raised a suggestion that we divert some of those funds to charity, my communication style was flagged as inappropriate and antagonistic.

In time, my eyes opened. We were box tickers and pen pushers. Any original thinking was sacrificed at the altar of time-proven, common sense process. Efforts to break the mould were all but punished.

Microsoft culture expects you to be in meetings. Calendars need to be decorated with sufficient colourful blocks, to signal over-activity.

Dig a bit deeper and you’ll realise that Microsoft meetings are a way to diffuse and evade responsibility for decisions. Yes – let’s spend weeks on weeks “reviewing with stakeholders.” It’s so much safer that taking swift decisions ourselves. The company places no trust on the individual to make the right decision on their own.

So what happens in those meetings? Are they brainstorming earth-shattering new ideas? Are they inventing new products? Why are they getting paid to join so many of them? How can Microsoft afford to have so many of its employees fluffing about?

Because they can. Microsoft sits on stockpiles of cash, with about $60 billion earning interest in the bank. With that mystery out of the way, let’s take a look at some of those meetings: Strategy reviews, deep dives, virtual coffee breaks, quarterly off-sites, monthly get-togethers, director summits, leadership meetings, etc.

Yikes, who is going to organise all that? Fear not. Every team has their very own “business manager.” And since business managers are too senior to be bogged down with logistics, enter the legions of “support managers” and “administrative assistants” reporting to business managers.

Group Managers, Program managers, General managers, together with ‘Senior’ flavours of those and a whole new breed of directors, stakeholders, business owners, relationship leads coupled with their own countless derivatives.

All those meeting-goers are not making anything. Deciding upon and making something is hard. And if this onerous activity has to be done, then hire external consultants for it. It’s easier and less risky.

There is no creative tension, no vision these days. Left to Microsoft’s hands we’d still be toiling on overheating Vista desktops.

This company is becoming the McDonalds of computing. Cheap, mass products, available everywhere. No nutrients, no ideas, no culture.

Why write up dozens of monthly scorecards when nobody ever reads them? Worse yet, why join follow up conference calls? Why schedule get-togethers when there is no agenda? Why spend a month chasing stakeholder-committees for trivial project decisions. Why spam people’s inboxes with monthly newsletters and weekly narratives about how great our team is?

They called it out in my performance reviews: I lacked “respect for authority.”

I became cynical about the whole process. I was seen as a “rebel” and the leadership team began to marginalise me. My planned and promised promotion was cancelled.

.......

Within hours of sending this email I was summarily fired and escorted to the door, days short of my 5-year anniversary with Microsoft.

Steve Jobs managed to turn Apple into "the biggest startup in the world." So I guess it's not the size of the company that gets in the way. Someone like Steve Jobs shows up once or twice in a generation. So it is unfair to compare every tech CEO to Steve Jobs. But I do think it is possible to make the Microsoft corporate culture less sclerotic.

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At What Point Is A Company Too Big?

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, presents his pre-show keynote at the 2010 International CES in Las Vegas Wednesday evening. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Microsoft’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Decade

Technically Windows 8 is a step in the right direction, but there are plenty of folks who are stuck at XP and ain’t going anywhere. Those same people will complain when Windows 8 won’t run on their hardware

Whose problem is it that a lot of people still use Internet Explorer 6?

Okay, okay, I am not trying to come up to Microsoft's defense. I have no dog in the show. But I also don't feel like Microsoft should have come up with the search engine that Google did or that it should have come up with the social engine that Facebook did. I don't begrudge Microsoft for not having bought or begot Instagram.

And I think Microsoft could still get back the sexy in the gestures department if they could make it as fundamental as touch.

But that having said I do think Microsoft has been more slothful than it needed to be. It has not been a lost decade, but it sure has been slow.

Gesture will do for Microsoft what Big Data will do for Yahoo. Getting the sexy back is hard work. Some of it is to do with youth.

And I don't think a CEO change is in the offings. Through Ballmer Bill Gates gets to feel like he is perhaps still remotely running the company. That feeling. And he probably feels like noone else could do better.

Bringing touch to the PC is a big deal. Bringing gesture to all screen sizes is an even bigger deal.

I guess both Ballmer and Microsoft could lose some weight. 92,000 is a lot of people reporting to you. But then FoxConn hums just fine at 1.2 million workers. What gives?

Cyber Threats

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 17: U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement on the worsening nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan March 17, 2011 at the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC. Obama said that harmful level of radiation is not expected to reach to the U.S. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Barack Obama: Taking the Cyberattack Threat Seriously

Taking down vital banking systems could trigger a financial crisis. The lack of clean water or functioning hospitals could spark a public health emergency. And as we've seen in past blackouts, the loss of electricity can bring businesses, cities and entire regions to a standstill. ..... Nuclear power plants must have fences and defenses to thwart a terrorist attack. Water treatment plants must test their water regularly for contaminants. Airplanes must have secure cockpit doors. We all understand the need for these kinds of physical security measures. It would be the height of irresponsibility to leave a digital backdoor wide open to our cyber adversaries. .... a society that cherishes free enterprise and the rights of the individual. ..... reflects the insights and ideas of industry and civil libertarians. It is sponsored by a bipartisan group of senators. It is supported by current and former homeland security, intelligence and defense leaders from both Republican and Democratic administrations

Cyber security gaps are the chink in the armor. I compare it to mental health. So many of mild mental health issues go unreported. Similarly numerous low level cyber attacks are pushed under the carpet. There is a basic unpreparedness right now.

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Hope

Yahoo: Tech Or Content

Yahoo! Art (Photo credit: Kapil Karekar)

Yahoo Needs a New Technology

Every month, more than 700 million people around the world visit Yahoo's sites .... Yahoo's U.S. audience is second only to Google's, and larger than those of Microsoft and Facebook. ...... much of it may come from the outside, too, both from hiring promising tech executives and acquiring hot startups—two things that could be easier now given Mayer's cachet. .... Yahoo has struggled to decide whether it's a technology or a media company.

The fundamental shift Yahoo has to make with Mayer at the helm is to go back to being a technology company. That is a tall task. Yahoo is not in as bad a shape as Apple was when Steve Jobs took over. But it sure has suffered major brand damage over the years.

Good content is good news, great content is great news, but Yahoo fundamentally has to go back to being a technology company.

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Bol Bachchan

Corporations Are People

jack welch (Photo credit: challengefuture)

Jack And Suzy Welch: It's True: Corporations Are People

Buildings don't hire people. Buildings don't design cars that run on electricity or discover DNA-based drug therapies that target cancer cells in ways our parents could never imagine...... Buildings don't show up at a customer's factory and say, "We won't leave until we solve your inventory problem." Buildings don't encourage their employees to mentor inner-city kids in math and science. Buildings don't fund homeless shelters in Boston or health clinics in Rwanda. People do. ...... people in corporations do indeed love and cry and dance. If you don't know that, you've never been part of a team that has pulled together over coffee and late nights and shouting and laughing and created something amazing to hit a deadline. You've never been in the room when a longtime client says it's not working anymore and she's taking her business to your biggest competitor. You've never sat in the lunch room when someone runs in and says the new medical device that no one thought had a chance, the little heart valve or something like it that every engineer in the place has been working on for two years, has just passed its first human clinical trials with flying colors.

It is not either or. I believe in entrepreneurship and in market forces. But there is also a place for government action. And there are spots where both have consistently failed.

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