Do You Actually Own Your Brand, When Social Networking is Growing?

Some day we are going to look back at this period and wonder "what were we thinking?" about how social networking is integrated with business processes. Consider "branding," the creation of a company image. These days, an actor can do so much. After that, users take over.

Recalling my management studies in grad school, is "leadership" something leaders do, or is it something "followers" give? That's leadership as distinct from bureaucratic management (I give an order and you follow it). Think of the normal military chain of command--that's management--and contrast it with combat leadership.

Managers must be obeyed because of their roles. Leaders are followed for different reasons.

Management is the sum total of all the efforts firms make to create and sustain a brand; brand leadership is the voluntary assent of consumers to agree with a firm's promise, or to give the brand a new promise.

What is clear is the serious attention enterprises now are giving to social networking and how to use it.

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2009/05/social_networki.html

New U.K. Satellite Broadband Service Launches

Eutelsat Communications has launched "Tooway" consumer Internet access service in the U..K, offering 2 Mbps downstream access for £29.99 per month. Company executives say 14 to 20 percent of U.K. homes cannot today get service at 2 Mbps. Service had been launched in France earlier in the year. Service providers in Italy and Spain also use Tooway.

But more is coming. In 2010, Eutelsat will launch a new Ka-band satellite that will offer downstream speeds of 10 Mbps. By way of comparison, the new bird will have the capacity of 40 traditional satellites and will offer service comparable to terrestrial ADSL2 networks.

Eutelsat says video services will be available using a single receiver and antenna once the Ka-band satellite is operational. It is possible that VoIP services might also be possible, though some latency issues will remain for online gaming.

Voice support would be key, as it would allow Tooway to offer an actual triple-play service over a single network, much as terrestrial competitors do.

BT 21CN Hits Turbulence

BT Group might be rethinking or simply slowing deployment of its 21CN voice network architecture, based in large part on a network element called a Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN), intended to dramatically simplify access plant operations.

It isn't clear whether it is the architecture or simply the price points at which BT now is able to source MSANs that are the issue.

But at least one Internet service provider that wants to use the 21CN network has found the cost unappealing, lending at least some credence to the notion that the costs of its MSAN-driven access infrastructure remain higher than desired.

"Things are not entirely going to plan," says says Andrews & Arnold Ltd., operators of AAISP.net, on the company blog. "Some of the cost reductions we expected are not happening as we expected, which means 20CN lines will continue to cost us a lot more than 21CN lines."

"Until we get a new service (WBMC IPStream connect) from BT (which could be 6 months off) we don't make any savings moving lines to 21CN and in fact increase costs," AAISP says.

But "the last straw" is the cut-over process, AAISP says. Many customers were out of service for days as the network cut-overs were executed. "We have had something like six whole exchanges that have not worked in the last week alone," AAISP says.

So AAISP is trying to cancel all planned customer upgrades to the 21CN network. BT normally charges AASIP £15 for each cancellation so AAISP is seeking a mass waiver these charges so it can cancel all pending cut-overs to 21CN.

Separately, BT Wholesale has been under pressure as well. We hear that the cost of fully integrating what used to be the Infonet network now are so high that BT is simply going to run its legacy network and the former Infonet assets separately.

Unfortunately, it appears the complexity of the BT Wholesale networks overall are great enough that salespeople have been quoting costs that actually are less than the cost to provide services. Those of you who have had to deal in such things will appreciate the complexity of those sorts of issues.

Most of us will be wishing BT the best of luck resolving both the 21CN and BT Wholesale issues. Some competitors obviously will not be saddened, and perhaps some retail customers are happy they are buying service below cost.

But the U.K.'s broadband infrastructure hangs on BT getting things fixed, since so much domestic capability is dependent on the carrier of last resort.

http://aaisp.blogspot.com/2009/04/state-of-play.html

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=176244&f_src=lightreading_gnews

200 Goats at Google

200 goats "mowing" the grass at Google headquarters.  Google thinks it is a lower carbon approach than the typical mowing using gasoline-propelled mowers.

That might or might not be true. The goats have to be trucked to the site and then back home.

Don't get me wrong; I love goats. They are a more pleasing way to cut back weeds and other flammable material. I'd do it, too.

But I'm not sure it actually produces less carbon, overall.

Here Comes the Cloud Computing Hype Cycle

Nothing is more predictable than hype cycles in the information technology business. So here comes the peak of the "cloud computing" hype cycle. 

Click on the graphic to expand it. 

No Consumer Cutbacks for Communications, Video, Survey Finds

Cutbacks in home communications and entertainment services have yet to emerge as a measurable trend, despite the ongoing recession, say analysts at Pike & Fischer, who just completed a nationwide survey on that subject.

Most consumers are spending the same amount on phone, Internet and multichannel video as they've spent in the past, the survey found.

Respondents say they would rather keep Internet, video and voice services in their budgets than any other type of expense, including gym memberships, personal care products and apparel.

But the results also point to customers becoming more aware of ways to spend less on those services. One example is people switching to prepaid wireless and dropping their postpaid accounts. In other cases people simply are buying fewer pay-per-view events or ordering fewer on-demand movies.

All of those trends are consistent with consumer behavior in past recessions, and first quarter financial results from a growing number of service providers also suggest the Pike & Fischer survey study of reported attitudes and behaviors is reflected in actual behavior.

Despite fears that "this recession will be different," so far it hasn't been. Knowing nothing other than how consumers have behaved in past recessions, one would have predicted precisely what we are seeing.

The big question marks, though, have been around newer services such as broadband Internet access and wireless, neither of which had become such mass market services during the last recession. But behavior in those two segments seems to mirror video entertainment behavior we have seen over the years.

People are careful about upgrades and premium services. They might be more prone to switch providers to get better prices. But they are not droppoing subscriptions. The single exception is that some pressure continues for wired voice, which is a product category in secular decline.

100 Mbps is Really Nice: How Many Really Need It?

Aside from the general observation that marketing bragging rights are a key reason for touting really-fast broadband connections, one wonders how much real value the typical consumer customer gains.

Cablevision Systems, for example, is on the verge of launching a 101 Mbps (downstream) service costing $99.95 a month. Other service providers have been marketing 50-Mbps services (downstream).

But one wonders how much traction such services will get in the consumer space. To be sure, a 101-Mbps access connection better matches common in-home or on-premises bandwidth supported by Wi-Fi routers.

But it remains unclear how much incremental value the additional bandwidth provides, as many factors affect perceived performance. It won't help to have a really-fast access connection if the servers holding the content one wants to access are not capable of spewing out bits equally fast, if the backbone networks are congested or if there are end user device limitations.

A single user on such a connection (50 Mbps to 100 Mbps) might not have an experience any different from a user with a 10 Mbps or 20 Mbps connection.

To be sure, one can note that bandwidth requirements keep growing. The change from text to graphics generated a one to two order of magnitude increase in bandwidth requirements, for example. A text screen is typically 400 bytes, while a graphic screen can be 50 Kbytes to 100Kbytes, an increase of 10-100 times.

Similar changes can be noted for streaming audio or video. So bandwidth requirements will increase over time. The issue is how much, and for whom.

Locations with many users to support--businesses and large families--will have higher requirements.  In some cases, a family might benefit from having that much bandwidth if multiple users, working simultaneously, frequently are downloading or streaming high-quality video, for example.

Still, one fact is incontestable: the larger the degree of sharing, the more efficient the multiplexing becomes. The ability to share bandwidth becomes more efficient as more users are sharing any single link. So the increased demand will not be linear.

A typical single user, on a single link, might not require so much. By the same token, it isn't clear how much bandwidth a single user, on a single link, actually benefits from really-fast connections, beyond a certain point, as other variables also condition and limit the experience.

That isn't to say access bandwidth requirements are not growing, or to argue those requirements will stop growing. Having the opportunity to buy faster connections is valuable for some end users, particularly those with multiple users in a single household. It is much less clear how much additional utility is gained by the typical single user.

2007 was the Inflection Point for News

This is what you call an inflection point: a dramatic surge in people using the Internet as their primary source of news happened in 2007.

By late 2008 and early 2009, the dominoes started to fall and major U.S. newspapers began to disappear. 

Remote Work Might Pay Off During H1N1 Threat

Yankee Group survey results from April show workers to be highly receptive to a mobile lifestyle:  Fewer than 50 percent of respondents believe their work needs to be completed at their primary workplace.

And 58 percent of workers strongly agree that "allowing employees to work from home benefits companies." Employees who work from headquarters locations are just as likely to think that teleworking is a good idea as those who already are teleworkers.

With the H1N1 virus threat reaching global pandemic status and growing talk of the need to avoid large public gatherings where possible, the value of organized remote work capabilities is obvious.

Not every job can be done as effectively on a remote basis as in a physically co-located mode. But many more jobs can. As it turns out, remote work is not just an employee satisfaction enhancer, a cost reducer and in some cases a productivity-boosting measure, it also provides protection from pandemics and other potential disruptions of civil life.

Disney Joins Hulu: More Pressure for Linear Video

Disney and Hulu announced a new partnership and content distribution deal, under which The Walt Disney Company will join News Corp and NBC Universal as an equity partner in Hulu, an ad-supported online content distributor. The deal means content from ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, and SOAPnet, as well as some classic ABC TV content now will be made available on Hulu.

Hulu also has overtaken Yahoo! and become the third-most-used Internet video site, even as Time Warner plans a test later this year of its own distributor-friendly online distribution. As envisioned, the "TV Everywhere" plan will make online content available to paid subscribers to a qualifying cable, satellite or telco linear programming package.

With Apple, YouTube, NetFlix and others looking to grow their streaming operations, distributors might welcome the Time Warner approach, even though Hulu has undeniable traction at the moment.

And therein lies the distributor's problem. If Hulu is able to keep growing, with an obvious ad support mechanism, it necessarily will devalue linear video subscriptions. That isn't to say Hulu will completely replace linear TV offerings, simply that it becomes incrementally more attractive for at least some users.

But content companies aren't dumb. They know with great precision how much value they derive from their distributor partners.  That doesn't mean they will ignore new "direct to end user" venues that essentially disintermediate the middle man. But they aren't going to disrupt profitable arrangements with distributors, either. 

Consumers Wary of Trying New Brands, Are Businesses?

Consumers around the world are more wary of trying new consumer goods products in the midst of a recession, say researchers at Ipsos Marketing. The global survey of consumer attitudes and behavior in 18 countries suggests that more than half of global consumers shy away from new grocery, personal and household products during an economic downturn.

One wonders if that same pattern extends to the business market as well, and explains the lower churn some service providers are reporting. There is anecdotal evidence that business customers, for example, are showing more hesitation about switching communications service providers, even as more seem to be receptive to pitches about "saving money."

Indeed, it would seem that many consumer attitudes also have a parallel in the small and medium-sized business markets. Some 70 percent of global consumers say they are not likely to try a new beauty product, for example. So new products and unfamiliar brands face an uphill battle. That might apply to hosted communications services or even, in some cases, uptake of new IP-based phone systems.

On the other hand, some 80 percent of global consumers say they are "very" or "somewhat likely" to switch from their usual brands to lower-priced brands or brands that are on sale during an economic downturn. That suggests a heightened sense of insecurity is likely in the background whenver a new provider or offer is weighed.

Communications is more a relationship than a one-off purchase, so consumer trends do not translate neatly to the world of communication services. Some 72 percent of consumers say they would switch to "store" or "generic" brands. The analogy would be switching from a recognizable communications "brand" and a company "they haven't heard of before."

“It is discouraging to think that new product introductions and carefully planned brand strategies might suffer from bad timing,” says Sunando Das, Ipsos Marketing VP. But one bit of advice clearly does apply to most communication services.

"Marketers can, and must, focus is value," says Das. Value obviously is a higher priority for consumers during an economic downturn. That doesn't necessarily mean pricing has to change, he says.

But consumer perceptions about benefits compared to cost should be explored to make sure consumers think there is a fair trade-off, he says.

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=4337&wt.mc_id=1110011&ce=garykim.denver@gmail.com&link=4337&top=

Does it Matter Whether VoIP is Dead or Not?

It's typically pretty easy to get a robust conversation going about whether VoIP is dead or not, and what each of us means when taking a position either way. Interesting viewpoints exist on either "side" of the debate, relevant for technology enthusiasts and developers but rarely of interest to the mass market that will use the technology.

One might as well say, in advance, that now that Twitter seems to be reaching some sort of inflection point or critical mass, lead technology adopters and developers will move onto the next big thing. Technology rarely is interesting to technologists when it is simply "there."

I remember the same thoughts expressed about session initiation protocol. The disenchantment isn't worrisome. Technology enthusiasts simply have different values than mainstream users, who just want value they understand, easy to use, acquire and support, at fair prices.

Technologists love technology. Most people don't care, so most large, successful businesses are built in ways that hide technology from end users. It makes about as much sense to argue about whether "electricity is dead, or not," as it does to worry about whether VoIP is, or is not.

Technology always is most successful, and most ubiquitous, when it is just furniture. VoIP isn't yet "just furniture." But that is where we inevitably will go.

http://blog.radvision.com/voipsurvivor/2009/04/30/it’s-about-time-we-kill-voip/

58% Local Search Growth in 2008

Local search, using online search tools to find local businesses, products, or services, grew 58 percent in 2008, reaching an annual total of 15.7 billion searches, says comScore. By comparison, overall core U.S. Web searches grew 21 percent year-over-year, nearing 137 billion searches by the end of 2008.

About 75 percent of the top 100 keywords searched on Internet Yellow Pages sites were non-branded, indicating that a majority of consumers have not decided on a specific company or product brand when they begin their search, comScore says.

Nearly half (45 percent) of Internet Yellow Pages and local online directory searchers made an online purchase in the fourth quarter of 2008.

One wonders whether Google Maps and mobile Web access have at least something to do with the growth. Local search makes much more sense when one is out of the home or office, and Google Maps, with or without global positioning satellite support, makes it really easy to search for something one needs, where one is at the moment.

The other angle is that small businesses, which operate locally, now are investing more heavily in Web sites, which would allow them to be found more easily.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/local-search-grows-58-outpaces-overall-online-search-8929/?utm_campaign=rssfeed&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/smbs-poised-to-triple-website-spending-8894/

Satellite Broadband: What Will Reviewers Do?

There is little doubt but that satellite broadband providers will try to secure broadband stimulus funds to subsidize the cost of customer premises equipment, a move that Hughes Network Systems SVP Mike Cook believes could increase its subscriber base by an order of magnitude.

WildBlue presumably also would see customer lift if such subsidies were possible.

There also is some speculation that funds could be sought for new satellite construction to offer customers much-higher access speeds.

Anything is possible, of course. But if I were reviewing grant applications, I'd be looking for projects that get broadband services to people as fast as possible, to as many people as possible, creating new jobs now, are sustainable after grant funds are gone and can get services to the most-isolated locations, across the United States, now.

Anything is possible. But looking at funding for new satellites that might not be launched for years, and consuming lots of program cash, compared to spending lots less and serving lots of rural customers now, would rank a lot higher.

Politically, I'd also (for better or worse) be looking in advance for evidence to justify why I made my decision. Enabling new broadband services to rural residents in all 50 states, within months, is safer than defending a relatively signficant capital investment that won't result in new services for some years.

Also, as a reviewer, I would be looking to get the biggest bang for the buck, spreading the money as widely as possible. On that score, subsidizing CPE would seem a more defensible choice that building satellites.

Social Gaming Grows

The number of people playing social games is expected to surge to 250 million in 2009, from 50 million in 2008, by some industry estimates. And there is a shift in the way games are used. Connecting with friends, and doing things with friends or other people, now is becoming more important.

It's but one more example of how social aspects of gaming, media and content consumption are growing.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090429_963394.htm