Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Turn on a Dime

Tomorrow Bill Gates (convicted monopolist) and Ray Ozzie (respect) are expected to announce the third coming of Microsoft. Just as they turned a massive organization on a dime to embrace the Internet, they will break with the past to offer software as a service. Initially it may be a storage offering, communications package for SMBs and CRM because of competitive pressure, but this pressure is from all sides.

The difference this time is it requires breaking something, not venturing out into whitespace. Steve Gillmor may be right that they are discounting the defensibility of the Office empire. But if they shift the value to serviced software, they also directly undercut their VARs, the distribution muscle that profits from overcoming the complexity of bad software.

As an entrepreneur with software as a service as an important part of my business model, I'm not worried in the slightest. Initially it is FUDing out the next rev of the web. But then the task is making stuff simple because the burden shifts back to them to service it. And with this move the game is on, on the turf of other credible Giants. Sergey Brin wasn't wrong when he said at Web 2.0 that Google Office, with the disclaimer that it may not exist, wouldn't be anything like the old Office.

You see, replicating Word for the web isn't social computing. Office and PC era apps do a great job serving the lone producer's need to complete finished documents. But the process of creating that document is only served through clumsy means (read: email). The next generation of productivity gains will come from something new.

I'd also make an argument that the business model for software is shifting to a blend of software as service delivered as hosted or appliance with the production dynamics of open source. At the end of John Markoff's book on the birth of the PC era, he juxtaposed the freedom to share sought by Hobbyists vs. the profit motive of Microsoft as the defining conflict. As that era comes to a close, a compromise has been found in commercial open source.

I think Microsoft's turn was first made when they readdressed the flaws in their security model. They had embraced the Internet, but with a weakness that today provides a negative user experience. Spam, spyware, adware and viruses plague the PC and Microsoft is held accountable for it. The opportunity they realized is that trusted computing models can put them back in control of the network. They will have their own DRM'ed lightnet in which any competing software as service or unsanctioned content vendor will have to get through them to the desktop. Not just through the web, but as deep as P2P itself.

Jerry Michalski said something brilliantly simple the other week at a collaboration conference. That we are certainly not waiting for Vista, we have lost trust in these guys and it's time to get these things out of the OS.

Jonas Luster Joins Socialtext

Many of you already know Jonas Luster, known quantity in open source and social software, who just joined Socialtext as our Open Source Community Facilitator.

Jonas has played an active role in OSS projects including Apache, mod_ruby and Drupal.  He is has worked with Lycos, CollabNet, Technorati and Blizzard Entertainment.  He got his doctorate in Social Psychology and Criminology from the University of Amsterdam, and is an occasional guest lecturer at UofA.

We could think of no one better to work the community and make it fun at the same time.

Come by and see Jonas at Wiki Wednesday.

Social Valley

I only got to pop in and out of TagCamp twice this weekend.  But it's been great following the notes on the wiki.  Ingy and Casey West did a Kwiki microformat plugin for hCard, a simple way to generate a ContactList wiki style with Ajax goodness.  Go play with it.

Someone told me I should blog about how happenings made the Valley social again, at least in code.  Funny how we used to stay at work too long to be with our families, and now we have ad hoc events instead.  The smart ones at least encourage kids to participate.  Lately I've been thinking about holding KidCamp.  That's right, camp, for kids, a novel idea.

As an aside, yesterday was sports day.  Got to coach my daughter's soccer game and stopped by TagCamp with her for a bit.  Walked over to the UCLA-Stanford football game witness one of greatest comebacks ever. When Stanford led 24-3 with 7:03 remaining, I left a game early for the first time I can remember to drownd sorrows.  From a tailgate (I didn't hold one this year) I listened to roars and the radio as UCLA came back to send it into overtime.  Ran back in the stadium to witness the momentum that shouldn't have resulted a 30-27 victory.  What a 4th quarter team.  Even the Trojans are concerned with this undefeated dark horse.  There's a reason for the colors of this blog.

The other Football game had LA on top.  The San Jose Earthquakes had the best season record, and got ousted from the MLS finals by archrival LA Galaxy (.500 record, almost a wildcard, played for a tie).  Hard to be an MLS fan, but today I'm just nursing a hangover.

This week the whole team is in town for an on-site retreat.  Many will meet F2F for the first time, and you can at Wiki Wednesday.

Wikisphere

The consumer wiki space just heated up.  Paid Content has the news that Wikisphere, founded by a guy from Blue Nile, raised $5.2 million from Trinity Ventures and others.  This is a very good thing for the market, more wiki good, but I've only see one consumer wiki model that made sense to me (hint: obviously it's not mine) and this isn't it.

UPDATE: More from the local paper.

On Time Departure

It was abundantly clear last night when my connection was delayed that the airline industry is running on the wrong metrics.  Half of the plane missed their connecting flight, most by minutes, when doors were still open, but gates closed -- for sake of on-time-departure.  The last planes left within a half an hour and we were left stranded in Virginia without hotel rooms in the vicinity. 

On Time Departure rankings have become the quality obsession for the industry.  Holding for connections used to be the practice.  Today you get cascading failure that abandons customers, but still credits airlines as though they are doing their job.  Planes are mere vessels, the average measure gets gamed, the system is fragile in hubbed networks -- and you would think that on-time-delivery of individuals might be the goal.

The basic conflict isn't that loosing 12 minutes in their system cost me 12 hours in mine.  Airline shareholders count on detailed yield management systems for profitability that don't account for the service-profit chain.  This should be a priority for United (79% OTD) shareholders who are depending upon customer loyalty and consideration for Northwest (77.4% OTD)shareholders considering outsourcing their front line employees.

Wiki Wednesday November 2nd

The whole Socialtext team is in town for an on-site retreat next week, so we are having this month's Wiki Wednesday in Palo Alto.  Some great suprise guests are coming by.  Mark the date and sign up on the wiki.

Also, a few of us are coming to TagCamp this weekend. Unfortunately it overlaps with the UCLA-Stanford and Earthquakes-Galaxy football games, but I'll stop by for some geek time.

Enterprise Podcasting with IBM

Podtech.net, the best podcaster in tech, has been making some moves to serve the enterprise.  They have been using our office as a war room, so it's fun watching them grow like gangbusters.  The big news is IBM has enabled Podcasting enterprise-wide.  John Furrier has an interview with the IBM corporate podcasting team.

When I gave a talk to some IBM researchers a while ago, it was the first time I was asked in a non-public forum to have the session podcasted.  Maybe it was just a brain suck, but it is a way of making meetings accessible through time-shifting, and with 130k employees it should become a vibrant stream of conversations.

BTW, my interview on Podtech from the beginning of the month is still in the top three.

Bubblop

David Hornik is calling today's market Bubble 2.0, or Built to be Bought:

I even had one company pitch me at the Web 2.0 Conference that if all went well they would be acquired by Odeo (don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Ev's and I certainly think that podcasting is exciting, but it strikes me as a tad premature to bet your company's future on being acquired by a pre-revenue company).

You will recall the last time Venture Blog called a bubble, a bubblet that centered around social network, and they were right.

I'm wondering for the record, if I was the first to call this one, five months ago.

Long-armed Law of the Wiki

I'm just an amateur, but it seems to me that Mike Langberg is afraid of loosing his job.  Can't blame him, The Mercury News just went through a round of layoffs and print media economics are in shambles.  But one of my favorite local columnists took the easy way out when buying into Nick Carr's argument on the amorality of Web 2.0 with a column called An Internet fed mostly by amateurs is frightening.

Oh, wait, I am a pro, at least about one thing -- wikis.  So I guess I have to speak up about this:

Carr added some perspective last week by proposing what he called the Law of the Wiki: ``Output quality declines as the number of contributors increases. Making matters worse, the best contributors will tend to become more and more alienated as they watch their work get mucked up by the knuckleheads, and they'll eventually stop contributing altogether, leading to a further fall in quality.''

Wrong.

I'm very much on Carr's side of the fence. I don't want to read blogs by political extremists, listen to podcasts recorded by droning amateurs, or watch videos produced by talentless would-be directors -- even though the Internet makes all that possible.

I want to get my news from highly skilled professionals, listen to music by the world's most brilliant performers and composers, and be entertained by big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas.

Of course, I'm biased. I make my living writing this column, and my paycheck is threatened if everyone decides freely available blogs -- even at lesser quality -- are an acceptable substitute.

Output quality increases with edits over time.  Yes, you can find one edit where it declines, but odds are the next edit will revert or improve it.  Now I don't know what quality is, but I know it when I see it, and I'm a lot better seeing it with a group.  It's not that Wikipedia is faster, it's that the community process that once wondered about quantity continues to raise the bar with quality.  Don't take Jimmy Wales' comment that two pages need improvement as a sign of systemic failure (no, I haven't talked with him about it).  Authority is another matter. 

See my response to Carr for more on how Wikipedia works. 

Back to being an amateur. The frickin Internet was made by amateurs.  I'm in good company.  Mike should know that, given the exposure he has in the Silicon Valley.  Or from his peers and former colleagues. Mike may be writing tongue-in-cheek, but 'Nuff said.

Carr's argument concerns me for the same reason IT Doesn't Matter did.  The claim then was that IT no longer provided competitive advantage, music to the ears of every other industry under disruption.  JSB and Hagel and others tore apart that argument, fortunately, and today those other industries are working with tech to invest in competitive advantage again.  The concern is it is an argument that will resonate with the disrupted, gaining a core constituency and create a false divide the engenders further disruption.

Case in point, let's get back to Mike's job.  If every columnist seizes on the threat of disruption that social media represents and and argues for the status quo, they will be left in it.  This can easily seep into the newsroom and when the publisher side of media relates the disruption to revenue, a core bias can set in (note that Mike more than disclosed the inherent bias -- and I have to disclaim that I wish him well and it is unfortunate I am using his single column as an example). 

Don't argue for quality, deliver it.  There will always be demand for quality.  The masses are not asses.  This isn't a broadcast degradation of news into entertainment.  Readers are becoming more savvy, not less.

Social media presents an opportunity for mainstream media to save itself -- not from blogs or people spending more time online -- but from a 20 year trend of bad economics.  If print media asserts it will stand on it's brand it will end up on the cutting room floor.  Now is the time for piloting things where the economics were the barrier before, because amateurs are here to participate.

UPDATE: Techdirt, Jeff Jarvis, Om, Mitch, Tim

Stickers are the new Business Card

Rafe has the scoop.