Social Networking Displacing "Knowledge Management?"

Sometimes it isn't easy to understand how dramatically-new technology can be applied in a business setting. Consider "social" software and networking.

As it turns out, enabling workers to set up profiles, form groups and "follow" each other's status updates can provide direct business value. It isn't just the social connections. The new software increases productivity by making it easier for employees to identify who does what within an organization and to share their knowledge.

Some of you might instinctively recognize that these are the sorts of problems "knowledge management" was supposed to address, a couple of decades ago. 

Social networking might be providing some of that value in a new way.

That doesn't necessarily or primarily mean using Facebook, though. Tibco Software launched a service called tibbr that not only enables users to follow what colleagues are doing, it also allows them to follow data, such as the status of an order or invoice.

The 25 Brands Small Businesses Respect Most

A list of the 25 brands small business executives respect the most has Apple at the top, followed immediately by Google. The l;ist was developed as a part of surveys sponsored by the Business Journals.

The study was based on interviews with more than 2,000 small and medium business owners, CEOs and presidents. This year, 291 brands were included in the proprietary study conducted annually by the Business Journals.


The study shows increased business usage of mobility products such as tablets, smart phones and cloud computing. But no communications company appears in the top 25, though. 

Retina Display Appears to Drive New iPad Sales

If Changewave survey respondents are indicative of broader buyers, the new "Retina" display on the latest Apple iPad accounts for the buyer interest. The high-definition display far outweighs other attributes consumers indicated were their favorite attributes about the latest iPad.

The High-Resolution "Retina" display was cited by 75 percent of buyers as the attribute they liked best about the device. Battery life, processor speed or faster mobile broadband ranked much lower.

Mobile Commerce Seen as Biggest Transformation of Telecom Industry

Mobile commerce, mobile banking and mobile payments  will have more impact than converged services, next generation networks or Long Term Evolution, a survey of 137 global service provider executives suggests.

That might come as a surprise. Keep in mind the survey was largely of revenue assurance professionals, whose job roles and perspectives are different from those of marketing, operations or financial professionals, perhaps.


But the rankings might also reflect a clear recognition that new revenue sources from banking, payments and commerce will have new revenue leakage impact to account for.


Billing and security issues also will increase, and those also are issues revenue assurance personnel would be acutely aware of.

Will Google's New Tablet Store, and Tablet, Succeed?

The fact that Google is launching an online store to sell a new line of branded tablets is not as major a move as opening a line of retail stores, something Amazon apparently actively is considering. The bigger issue is whether Google can create a successful tablet.

Some might speculate that Google will have no more success than it did when it launched the Nexus smart phone, attempting to sell it essentially over the objections of the mobile service providers. Some would have suggested that would not work.

But selling PCs is different from selling mobile phones. Tablets are more like PCs, in terms of the "necessary" involvement of any third parties. PCs, tablets and other personal devices are bought at retail outlets, not just phone stores, where most mobile phones get sold. In principle, selling tablets online will not be as difficult as selling mobile phones online.

The bigger issue is whether the Google tablet has developed, or can develop, the app ecosystem and cachet of the iPad, or create some new identity and niche in the tablet market.

Users of the Kindle Fire might note that the Amazon "content store" is so rich with book and magazine content that the relative availability of other mobile apps, compared to the iPad,  is not a real problem. One might argue the Kindle gets used frequently for reading and other Amazon purchases,  so has a distinct niche in the market. The Kindle Fire acts as a portal to Amazon content, to a large degree.

Google will have to find some role of its own, one might argue.


Some might argue that there is, functionally, no way for any other firm to "compete" with the Apple iPad. Instead, other distinct niches have to be discovered. 

Google's Android Doesn't Generate Much Revenue for Google: Maybe it Isn't Supposed To

Multi-product firms tend to sell products with varying profit margins, and different gross revenue contributions. Google doesn't appear to be any different. Most of Google's revenue is generated from advertising, and some from software licenses.

It appears the open-source Android effort has generated less than $550 million in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011.

The figures also suggest that Apple devices such as the iPhone, which use products such as its Maps as well as Google Search in its Safari browser, generated more than four times as much revenue for Google as its own handsets in the same period.

If correct, those figures would not be terribly surprising. The whole point of Android was to create a widespread mobile ecosystem that is the foundation for the actual revenue-generating activities, not a terribly important revenue creator in its own right.

Is Multimedia Messaging Service a Success, or Not?

Is $30 billion worth of revenue, on a global basis, a big deal or not? In a business that generates $2 trillion annually, perhaps not.

Still, expectations often are crucial when assessing the relative success of any new communications service.

Multimedia Messaging Service, for example, was viewed through a text messaging lens. Compared to some other services, MMS contributes a meaningful amount of revenue, though not compared to text messaging.

Portio Research thinks MMS to generate over $180 billion for the five-year period 2012-2016.
Such a demonstrable pedigree over the years has made it all the more baffling as to why such a valuable service never shook-off the industry misconception that it was a failure.

Some would say MMS launched with the unrealistically high expectations that it would mirror the success of SMS. It hasn't.