Microsoft Live launch
There has been a lot chatter lately about Microsoft’s new Shopping Live not supporting Firefox, Opera etc.
People are using the term beta pretty loosely these days and that’s fine. But I think we need a few ground rules. If it doesn’t support Firefox it’s Alpha. Not Beta.
Having said that, I did fire up a copy of Explorer and try it out. It’s pretty cool actually. I wouldn’t fire up a browser that I don’t use to go shopping but when this service does support Firefox I will actually spend some time here. It seems to be very well done. Layout and usability are top notch. Performance felt slow but that may be because they are getting a lot of unusually high traffic related to their launch. Apparently, most key aspects of the system such as catalog information, comparison features and ratings are services that are not directly tied into the shopping platform so Microsoft would be free to expose that data and those features on any of their forthcoming services. Or, they can use some of that functionality to enhance existing properties. More than anything else, this system is one of many that Microsoft will be working on to learn how to develop and innovate on an independant basis from group to group and export that work to other future systems being developed in unrelated organizations.
Microsoft looking into the crystal ball
Like many people, I’ve been following Ray Ozzie’s vision for Microsoft’s future because there really hasn’t been any other single person since Microsoft’s inception who have been held in such high esteem by both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Without a doubt, other execs (Mundie) are heralded but Ozzie seems to have a responsibility to a) clarify the strengths and weaknesses that Microsoft has amassed over the years since its founding and b) apply that clarity against a new strategy where Microsoft stays as relevant as it ever was in the high tech community.
What I often read about his vision for Microsoft’s future is interesting. Perhaps its something Rob Glaser figured out earlier than even Billg. Advertising and subscriptions! Building better software is certainly important but Real eventually got out of the server business when it saw that it may be unwise to try to beat Microsoft at their own game. This is what Google did. Knowingly or unknowingly, they went where Microsoft wasn’t. They built the best ad network on the planet. Certainly it took smart developers. Speaking of which, it is now Google who gets the frequent mention about the high levels of “developer IQ” that permeate its ranks. “The best and brightest” they say. Debatable but the press these days loves saying such things.
Ozzie’s vision for the future is one of connectedness. Its about “webification”. None of that is surprising so the devil will be in the details. But consumers are going to benefit in a major way as the tech giants duke it out. Why? Because webifying everything requires billions and billions of dollars in infrastructure. Storage and bandwidth will continue to become a commodity because the world’s largest tech communities must build out cluster after cluster after cluster to support the apps of tomorrow. Ozzie knows this. And they’ll continue to invest in their own clustering technologies (which are still relatively new) so that they can get close to the home-grown server OS that currently drives all of Google. More storage, more bandwidth at less cost. In 10 years, it could be at no cost.
In 10 years, Microsoft will need to be making a significant percentage of their overall revenue from advertising in order to grow the business. That is a KEY growth market. Could it be possible that in 2016 you’ll get Excel for free as long as you agree to consume some ads from time to time? I think its entirely possible and maybe the notion is even necessary for Microsoft to stay as hot as they’ve been all these years.
The year is not even half over yet…
Earlier this year, I had predicted a fairly bright future for the tech market in 2006. I may very well be WAY off on the stock market prediction but stock market predictions are basically opinions and you know what they say about opinions.
Nonetheless, I see that social networking site 900 Seconds Gets $6.5 Million in funding today. For those in the tech reporting business, this must be a fun year since an announcement like this seems to be flying at us 7 days a week. The name “900 Seconds” sounds like a bit of a shameless rip of the 43things branding style but then every good thing gets copied doesn’t it? There is very little information about this new start-up but I’m intrigued by the amount of money they raised in the first round. Certainly, this year seems to be all about one web 2.0 funding after another but this is a decent chunk of money so I’m hopeful that this is really an interesting concept.
In any case, this makes me think about the web 2.0 phenomenon and how that might equate to the number of overall financings that are announced this year. Will it be dramatically more than the number of VC financings last year? The pace feels pretty hot to me but so far but it’s only April. We’ll see. I’d be interested to know if anyone has tracked this so far. If not, I’ll try to tally it all at the end of the year.
I sense a new trend…
Companies like Plum, Kaboodle and Stylehive all aim to help people share what they see on websites with others. Certainly, you can cut and paste HTML into your email client or send a URL but that experience isn’t particularly rich. These sites combine several basic concepts (such as the idea of a wishlist) and sharing via tags just as you might share your bookmarks via de.lici.ous
The ability to use community and people’s inherent desire to consume and want for more should cause a raft of similar such sites over the next year. This is a fun and interesting way to shop.
But, there is so much room for improvement. I’m still waiting for one of these companies to break out.
The year of online video
Macromedia must be enjoying themselves. They were sold to Adobe whose shares are up significantly since the acquisition and the whole world seems to love their video format. What happened to Real? What happened to Apple?
Now, there is a new video site popping up every week and the world is loving them. Nobody can stop talking about the YouTube’s and the Click.tv’s and the Addicting Videos. And Flash is a heavily used format throughout this ecosystem.
And why not? The possibilities when embedding the video are pretty much limitless. The authoring tool itself is incredibly slick. The encoding process is easy enough. And, the integration with other Macromedia tools such as Dreamweaver makes it easier still. But the video quality is also fantastic. My bet is that Macromedia embraces a new codec in the future though.
That’s a very interesting discussion. h.264 could be looming.
Looking for a great interface designer
We have a short term need for another interface designer. This would be a person that understands information architecture flow and can design with that logic in mind. The work is contract work and could be anywhere from 1 week to 2 months depending on how good the work is 
An idea is mostly about timing…
I love this recent post about distributing short films on the Internet.
Mika Salmi and I were doing this 6 years ago. Of course, Atom got a bit further with that plan while we opted to go a different route at the end of the day.
An old friend Chase Norland did the YouTube concept 6 years ago and it was called ShareYourWorld.
Now, I see dozens of people trying to build Flickr. Consider Zoomr.
There is too early and there is too late. Both can be fatal to a great idea.
Following actually works pretty well if you implement big improvements using market data gleaned from earlier executions.
Rising tides lift all boats so it helps to get good at determining when certain markets get “hot”. Online video is hot again. So, YouTube won’t be the only success story in that space. I suspect Addicting Videos and Revver will get a decent chunk of that market. RealNetworks (as the pioneer) should have been all over this.
Something I’ve been learning about start-ups
Before starting this little venture called Curious Office, I labored for about six months searching for something that might become the “next big idea”. Alex over at the www.milliondollarhomepage.com certainly had a rare kind of big idea that worked right out of the box and made a lot of money very quickly. But, usually it doesn’t happen that way and I would bet that he probably won’t have another idea to hit quite like that one. Usually, money isn’t easy. When it is, I think most people call it luck. Like the lottery. Doesn’t get any easier than that but the odds aren’t great so you can’t plan your retirement around it.
I had another former colleague from RealNetworks who had briefly “retired” for about a year. All the while, he toiled and considered a wide range of business plans, most all of which were in the mobile space. My other friends who did work in the mobile space met with him and reviewed dozens of his ideas. He didn’t do them even though some seemed to have promise. But he was looking for the “big idea”. Eventually he did settle on a very compelling start-up concept which I expect to do very well. But, that idea really came from some other folks and he joined on and is helping take that concept through to a real business.
I suppose my point is that ground breaking “ideas” are typically NOT what makes things work. It’s here that I disagree somewhat with the recent blog post from the founder of GoDaddy.com (the world’s largest registrar). None of the ideas he lists as being “big ideas” seem ground breaking to me. They sound like a normal evolution of the business he chose to be in. Nothing all that innovative but small details that represent evolving adjustments to the original plan.
And that’s the bigger point. Starting a start-up is a fine idea. But, be prepared to be flexible. If you choose a business concept and 12 months later all the data in the world seems to suggest that you should shift 5 degrees to the right, then do it. I’m already thinking this way about ImageKind. Before we even launch, I’m constantly reviewing related spaces. What can we learn? What could we offer that is a close cousin to our business? What products could we add that would be relevant and not be confusing to our customers? Consider my former employer RealNetworks. We started out selling audio servers. Then we sold video servers. And, we sold “premium” audio/video players. Then, Microsoft’s Windows Media happened. Today, RealNetworks sells MP3 albums and games and a whole lot of advertising. They don’t really sell a lot of servers. Their current business is a close cousin to their original plan. But it isn’t the same at all and I’m very certain that Rob (as smart as he is) didn’t image selling games on the Internet when he started the company as Progressive Networks in 1994.
Look for the close cousins and little ideas every day. The business you’re in doesn’t have to be the business you’re in. If you’re learning as you go, the business you’re in could lead to other lines of business that could very well wind up being some unexpected revenue streams. This isn’t about big ideas as far as I’m concerned.
Expanding Curious Office
The last month has been quite interesting. We’ve been contacted by venture funds both small and large who have expressed interest in investing money in what is currently a privately funded operation. It makes me think that more and more VCs are starting to think that an “earlier and smaller” strategy is well worth considering. I don’t know what we’ll do with these discussions. On the one hand, it’s quite nice to be able to operate as informally as we do. On the other hand, it might be nice to have some other capital to work with. None of this was something we expected. It should be an interesting year.
AllRecipes
Congrats to the guys at AllRecipes. The company was “expected” to bring in $4 million this year and they fetched $66 million. These days, if you aren’t sure what kind of company to start…may I suggest a consumer facing site that drives eyeballs?