You Cannot Keep Up with Google, in Mobile or Desktop Mode

Marketers spend inordinate amounts of time, it seems, trying to figure out better ways to convince Google that content they want to share is important, and ought to rank favorably and high in search results.


And, as you might fear, some people spend lots of time just trying to "game the system," something Google also spends quite a lot of time attempting to prevent. 


One might argue that such efforts are doomed to fail, in the long run, simply because the environment changes so quickly, and because Google works virtually every day to weed out such attempts at manipulation. 


About 20 percent of daily queries are new requests; specific terms or questions Google has not seen before. That means a losing battle for anybody who really tries to insert such "trending" key words into copy. There simply are too many changes in trends to keep up with, and those trends change all the time. 


Ultimately, all you can do is product interesting, relevant content, frequently, and let the cream rise to the top. Search engine optimization "experts" always will argue that SEO works. You'd expect them to say that; it's how they make their money. 


As a purely practical matter, few people or companies will ever have enough time to do all, or most, of what SEO experts recommend. What works today might not work in a couple of months. What worked two years ago doesn't work today. Nobody knows how the algorithms will change tomorrow. 


So some of us are simply going to do the best we can, without worrying about "optimization" beyond a few simple pointers. Google says it conducted more than 6,000 discrete search algorithm and performance experiments in 2010 alone. 


It is safe to say no other content producer has time to match that, or even much ability. Most of us can barely keep up with even the broadest of trends, such as the growing shift to mobile consumption of content. Even that is complicated, since "mobile" now includes small screen phones, medium screen e-readers and full-screen tablets and notebooks, plus "big screens" such as TVs. 


Then add the changes in user interface, touchscreen versus keyboard-and-mouse being the most important, and content producers have lots to consider, just in terms of form factor and user input methods. And mobile access, which implies a greater trend to touch interfaces, is getting to be more important.


Google says mobile search has grown 500-percent over the last two years, replicating the rate Google saw with its desktop search engagement. 


Overall, including mobile and desktop searches, Google queries amount to more than a billion requests every day.

Inside Google Search

Can "Freemium" Model Work for "Access"

Freemium, where no-cost versions of a product are offered, with a revenue model built on incremental services or more-robust features, is a well-established model in the content, application and gaming businesses. So the issue is whether freemium can work in the retail telecom business or mobile business.

To be sure, entrepreneurs have thought about, and some have tried, to create sustainable "free calling" services that are supported by advertising. It really has never worked, but the notion continues to appeal. 

Over the last decade or two, lots of entrepreneurs have tried to create "free" broadband access services that are funded by advertising or sales of additional products. Municipal Wi-Fi networks are recent examples.

In some ways, the model has been tweaked by some firms that use free Wi-Fi as an amenity to boost sales of other products, ranging from coffee and food to hotel stays.

FreedomPop, for example, hopes to use the LightSquared network, which has not yet received permission to operate, as a way of offering "free broadband and voice services to all Americans."

FreedomPop is lead by Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Skype, and his venture capital firm Atomico. The company hopes to launch in 2012, in what it calls "under-served markets."  FreedomPop

In the communications service provider space, it arguably has been the case that there have been more experiments with advertising-supported approaches, but we will probably continue to see some variants of the freemium model in telecommunications.

Over the past decade and a half, for example, lots of U.S. firms have contemplated, and a few have attempted, to create “free” broadband access services, with the intention to make revenue by advertising or selling premium tiers of service. There are no examples of outstanding success one easily can point to, though.

But that is not going to keep firms from trying. FreedomPop, a start-up backed bySkype and Joost co-founder Niklas  Zennström, hopes to create a freemium service for broadband access in the U.S. market.  

FreedomPop says it will launch in 2012, with a revenue model similar toDropbox, the cloud-based storage service that also uses a freemium model. Dropbox offers up to 2 Gigabytes for free, and sells access to additional storage for a monthly fee in different tiers. Netblazr, a Boston-based access provider, uses a co-op model, giving small businesses free best effort digital subscriber line in exchange for the right to to put a microwave radio at that location, helping Netblazr create its network. Netblazr

Advisory Committee Maintains LightSquared Will Cause GPS Interference

The Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing national executive committee, which is made up of nine federal agencies that coordinate GPS issues, has concluded that LightSquared's proposed wireless network would significantly interfere with GPS devices.

Based on two rounds of tests by federal agencies and separate tests by the Federal Aviation Administration, the group said it had unanimously concluded that LightSquared's original and modified network plans "would cause harmful inference to many GPS receivers." LightSquared interference

"Based upon this testing and analysis, there appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significantly interfering with GPS," the group told the Commerce Department, which continues to study the interference claims. GPS receivers, rather than mobile phones, seem to be most affected. 

Some speculate that LightSquared faces little chance of gaining approval from Commerce Department officials or the Federal Communications Commission.

Auto Vertical Illustrates Key Few Mobile Opportunities

Consumers express strong support for automobile communications features, Accenture found when it surveyed 7,000 drivers in seven countries.

When asked about future technologies, 83 percent of respondents would like to have in-vehicle technologies that can automatically contact a vehicle recovery organization when their vehicle breaks down, and 75 percent want a system that automatically calls the nearest emergency center if a crash were to occur. Auto M2M

Why is that important? It illustrates the potentially-important role that machine-to-machine communications could play as a significant revenue driver for mobile service providers.

Virtually every executive, at every communications service provider organization, is at some level constantly thinking about significant-sized new lines of business that can offset declining voice, texting, video or other revenues.

But the opportunities a small rural telco or competitive local exchange carrier or ISP might consider are vastly different from the types of opportunities a major global telco can consider. Revenue scale and asset base are key constraints.

An organization that earns $100 million year can look at an incremental $50 million a year opportunity and it is a big deal.
An organization earning a billion a year can look at an initiative that generates $500 million, and that is a big deal. A major global telco cannot bother with incremental revenue at those sorts of levels.

In fact, there actually are a relatively small number of initiatives that a large global telco actually can consider, when looking to affect its top-line revenue in a significant way.

“Needle-moving” new lines of business generally have to represent fairly-large areas of activity with substantial revenue.

Put another way, “C” title executives at global telco organizations cannot, and arguably should not, be bothering with any proposed growth initiatives that are incapable of providing $1 billion a year in new revenue.

Not $1 billion of potential revenue for all providers in the market; $1 billion for each actor. An opportunity “has to be big to be interesting,” notes Amobee CEO Trevor Healey.  Tier-one opportunities

As you might guess, thinking naturally runs to ways to leverage the existing networks business in some way. You would be hard pressed to find any proposed new initiatives of any size that do not build on the customer base, assets and network services capabilities telcos and mobile service providers already possess.

hat does not, by the way, mean that the new businesses necessarily will be run by “telco people” who do not have the background. In all likelihood, the new initiatives will succeed only when professionals with skill sets and perspective in the proposed new businesses are running them, and when telco executives do not handicap those professionals.

Consider the range of initiatives you often hear about. Broadly speaking these are financial services (mobile payments is part of this), machine-to-machine services, mobile advertising or specialized services provided to some business verticals, such as health care or security, for example.

That's about it. In the near term, most of the revenue will come fairly directly from “things service providers already do.”  One thinks of efforts to create new services for some industry verticals or ways to generate more revenue from business partners. Cloud computing probably falls within this basket of initiatives, building on what telcos already do.  

Other initiatives, such as mobile banking and payments, will take a while to reach the serious level of revenue contribution. Mobile advertising likely is that sort of investment as well.

That is not to say that all sorts of experiments get conducted, all the time, at various other levels within a service provider organization. But it typically is true that unless any of those experiments can suggest why they can generate $1 billion of incremental revenue every year, they won't become part of the strategic discussion.

The Accenture study reinforces the fact that consumers are currently focused on IVI safety-driven technologies.

However, it also shows that in the future, they would like their cars to be equipped with more communication- and information-related capabilities – creating the ‘connected vehicle’.

For example, the survey shows that nine out of 12 technologies consumers would most like to have in their vehicles are safety-related.

Specifically, 83 percent would like anti-lock breaking systems, while 74 percent and 72 percent, respectively, would favor having night vision and reversing sensors.  

The survey also shows that in the future, 63 percent of the respondents would like to use car-to-car communications, and 59 percent would be interested in having Smartphone controls on their steering wheel.  

Moreover, 58 percent of consumers would like to be able to read and dictate e-mails while in their vehicle, and 57 percent would be interested in having a windshield that acts as a visual monitor, showing the driver’s vehicle speed, for example, as well as what is happening on the road ahead.

To be sure, such auto vertical apps are but one vertical that could benefit from machine-to-machine communications. Health applications, utility operations and other sensor applications also frequently are mentioned as lead M2M opportunities.

Social Networks are "Over-Valued?"

As Facebook prepares for a much-expected initial public offering, it might be worthwhile to review the difference between value and "valuation." If you follow the history of technology innovation, a good general principle is that observers, including market researchers, tend to over-estimate the near term impact and growth, and under-estimate the longer-term growth.

Another way of putting matters is to note that important new technologies take longer to achieve dominance than people expect. Important mass market technologies take longer to hit critical mass than most expect, but then seem to hit an inflection point and accelerate suddenly. It's an "S" curve.

Market valuation, though, also seem to under-estimate value in the early phases, than over-estimate after the inflection point. In other words, sentiment is too frothy, once a new technology has clearly gotten traction, and is on the way to mass adoption. At some point, overly optimistic expectations come back down to align with underlying value.

If it happens on a widespread scale, you get an investment "bubble." So some would say there is a danger now of a valuation overshoot, to be followed by a correction, in the "social" software business.

ESPN Commentator on Why He Believes in Tim Tebow

I believe in Tim Tebow

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By Rick Reilly
ESPN.com
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Tim Tebow FoundationTim Tebow with Jacob Rainey, one of the many people dealing with health problems Tebow hosted at Broncos games this season.

Every week, Tebow picks out someone who is suffering, or who is dying, or who is injured. He flies these people and their families to the Broncos game, rents them a car, puts them up in a nice hotel, buys them dinner (usually at a Dave & Buster's), gets them and their families pregame passes, visits with them just before kickoff (!), gets them 30-yard-line tickets down low, visits with them after the game (sometimes for an hour), has them walk him to his car, and sends them off with a basket of gifts.

Home or road, win or lose, hero or goat.

His story is here.

Broadband, in all Forms, Grows in 2011, Mobile Broadband Grows Fastest

By some estimates, 2011 was the year when mobile broadband subscriptions surpassed fixed broadband connections globally for the first time, according to Ericsson.

Others would say mobile broadband subscribers surpassed wireline broadband subscribers in 2010 (558 million in June 2010, compared to  500 million in 2009).

In 2016, Pyramid Research forecasts there will be 592 million LTE subscriptions in service, equivalent to 7.3 percent of all cellular subscriptions at that time, and almost certainly surpassing the world’s total of fixed-line broadband connections.

The largest LTE device segment will be dongles used to connect PCs, through 2014. But after 2014, the PC segment will be replaced by smart phone connections. LTE forecast

To date, 35 mobile operators have launched commercial LTE networks, a range of 197 devices have become available and the technology is maturing since the first network became live in late 2009.

Still, three out of five device models (60 percent) are discrete modems, either routers or PC add-on devices. 
The initial focus of all operators is mobile broadband access for PCs, Pyramid Research points out, and these subscriptions represent around 80 percent of all mobile data traffic, even though they account for fewer than four percent of mobile subscriptions.

Also, a  total of 17.4 million broadband lines were added globally during the third quarter of  2011.
Fiber to home, building or cabinet connections grew by 19 million lines during the third quarter.

Broadband Forum says that now fiber technologies account for 16 percent of total broadband market share and will soon catch up to cable, which stands at 19.5 percent. Broadband growth