Convergence: Can Web 2.0 names smarten the pipes?

NET SENSE

The power of brands

Commentary: Can Web 2.0 names smarten the pipes?

By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch

Last Update: 7:51 AM ET Mar 20, 2007

NAPA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- As voice, television, Internet and wireless services converge, the question facing the players is: Who accrues the most value?

 

Will it be the companies the content, such as Walt Disney (DIS) , Google (GOOG) , Viacom (VIA) or News Corp's (NWS) MySpace?

 

The device makers, such as Apple (AAPL) , Nokia (NOK) , or Motorola (MOT) ?

 

How about the network operators, such as cable companies, Comcast (CMCSK) , Time Warner Cable (TWC) , Sprint Nextel (S) , Verizon (VZ) ?

 

The issue was the focus of a technology retreat on Sunday and Monday in the Napa Valley wine region in California hosted by Synchronoss Technologies (SNCR) . Synchronoss makes back-office technology to provision and activate customers. While that work doesn't sound glamorous, Synchronoss appears to be firing on all cylinders as it benefits greatly from consumers who want communications and entertainment from multiple vendors.

 

For instance, when Time Warner Cable gets one of its cable customers to sign up for wireless service through Sprint, Synchronoss does the backend work for the cable company. Synchronoss will also be doing a lot of the order management support for the Apple iPhone on the Cingular network.

 

Most of the conference attendees came from the carriers of content or services, such as Time Warner Cable, Sprint, Cox Communications, Vonage. They were all there to understand how to better collaborate with one another to deliver bundles of services consumers are demanding.

 

In order to satisfy their subscriber base and grow, these operators know they may have to consider offering their competitors' services or risk losing the subscriber altogether.

 

In the language of the day, triple-play bundles refer to voice, data and video, and quadruple-play bundles add wireless as the fourth service.

 

Content and brands are king

 

Few attending the retreat made any outright predictions regarding the question posed above, with the exception of Rich Wong, a venture capital partner at Accel Partners. He argued that content players would be the big winners, if market capitalization was the measure. He pointed to the $140 billion market value of Google versus the paltry valuations of the Internet service providers which managed to survive.

 

Of course, if Apple's iPhone or AppleTV are as successful as the iPod, Steve Job may prove that device-makers can also be the big winners.

 

And, should the phone be a success, Cingular will get a big boost for partnering with the iconic Apple.

In fact, as an AT&T broadband subscriber, I may even be convinced to switch to Cingular as my wireless carrier. Not only will I be able to get the quadruple-play bundled offering -- wireless, Internet, voice, and video -- I won't have to worry about my library of music and podcasts stored in my iTunes account on my Mac. The Apple relationship certainly makes the switch to Cingular more compelling for many consumers.

 

This raised another question: Would partnerships with the new Web 2.0 content providers -- MySpace, YouTube, Facebook -- that have well-known brands give the network operators a leg up on one another? After all, these carriers do risk becoming dumb pipes, unless they offer something exclusive or compelling.

 

Social samba

 

Vivo, one of the leading mobile operators in Brazil with 30 million subscribers, is considering working with Google's social network Orkut. According to Roger Sole, marketing director of Vivo, partnering with Orkut could create the sticky social networking applications that could drive more usage and subscribers. Vivo has its own service called Moblog, whereby users can upload photos, but if Vivo were to create its own social network, it might prove to be a futile exercise. The alternative is to partner with a popular social network that drives people to the Vivo service, said Sole.

In the case of News Corp's (NWS) MySpace, that's exactly what Helio, a joint venture between EarthLink and SK Telecom did. Helio has some 70,000 subscribers, and it's likely the case that the connection with MySpace probably helped drive subscribers. Just take a look at Helio's homepage with MySpace all over it.

 

But what is working for Helio doesn't look worthwhile to Time Warner Cable's Mike Roudi, vice president of wireless. "Sprint doing a partnership with MySpace won't change the game, but if the wireless carriers build a real high-speed network, now that's a competitive threat," he said. "Whether there's a marketing relationship with Google doesn't change that."

 

Others agree. The carriers just have to be the "best enabler," said David Hudson, senior vice president of Telephia, a research company specializing in observing the consumption of digital content on mobile devices. "They don't need to have commercial relationships."

 

I have to agree with both Roudi and Hudson. My view is that partnering with a Web 2.0 company won't really matter in the long run if the network operator can't provide a reliable service.

 

But it certainly wouldn't hurt.

Venture Capital: How the landscape has changed

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NET SENSE

On the road to a being a target

Commentary: How the landscape has changed

By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch

Last Update: 6:43 AM ET Mar 9, 2007

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- At the Montgomery & Co. investment banking conference here this week the obvious sentiment was life is good: money is flowing, bankers are courting, private company CEOs are presenting to an audience wearing rose-colored glasses.

 

These are the same conditions that were prevalent during the good old days of the mid to late 90s, when a whole boatload of private companies teed up and eventually tapped the public markets.

 

But times are very different. A lingering memory of the painful and wrenching downturn six years ago is forcing even the most hopeful to adhere to some financial discipline. The IPO market isn't as attractive as it once was, mainly because of the strict and costly rules around corporate governance. Public companies are scrutinized and executives are eviscerated with regularity. The environment for public companies has become so unattractive one might mistake the U.S. for being "Communist," quipped Bob Grady of Carlyle Ventures Partners.

 

Don't let that seemingly negative comment fool you, though.

 

Grady, Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bob Davis of Highland Capital Partners and Jerry Murdock of Insight Venture Partners were on a panel of high-profile venture capitalists offering their views on the private capital outlook for this year.

Undoubtedly, it was a panel full of optimists. Capital tension in the U.S. markets or not, there is always the exit-strategy option of going public on an international exchange as well as the opportunity to exit through an acquisition.

 

Big companies are willing and eager to make purchases these days, as they buy research and development rather than spend for it in-house. Big companies have reduced their R&D budgets to a few percentage points of their revenue, according to Draper.

 

And, if government regulators were to change some tax laws -- such as the Venture Capital Tax Credit, which has come under some scrutiny -- to make venture investing less attractive, well, VCs would just get around it, quipped Draper. The bottom line: There would be liquidity and venture capitalists will continue doing what they do to support their troops' mission: spend money.

 

The moderator of the discussion was Jamie Montgomery, the CEO of the eponymous bank, who is a self-proclaimed optimist himself. His questions, the answers, the tone, Montgomery's subtle hint to the powerful men to keep his investment bank in mind for any banking assistance their companies may need, resulted in a discussion that was by and large positive. No one would walk away thinking that times weren't good and cash would be drying up anytime soon.

 

That said, one might think that Silicon Valley Kool-Aid was flowing again and making its way down to LA after Draper -- with tie wrapped around his head and suit jacket on backwards -- gave his best performance as a rap artist.

 

But the overall sentiment at the conference seemed to be this: Being acquired probably is more realistic than pulling off an IPO. Perhaps that was apparent to me because of the buyers in the house I bumped into on several occasions.

 

IAC's (IACI) Jason Rapp, senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions, was roaming around looking for deals. Rapp was the person who led the recent purchase of local review site InsiderPages by CitySearch, a unit of IAC. InsiderPages was reportedly sold for some $13 million, though Rapp wouldn't confirm that.

 

Also at the conference was WPP senior vice president Lance Maerov, who seemed very keenly interested in Break.com, a video site targeting men. WPP is a major advertising company.

 

For the buyers, the companies present at the conference were all very good.

 

The youngest was a company called M:Metrics, which is one of the few companies measuring behavior on mobile phones. M:Metrics is 30 months old. Its rivals would be Telefia as well as Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore, which today measure online behavior on the Web, but in the future will have to expand into the mobile market.

 

But many of the companies have been around for years.

 

Seven-year-old Quigo is growing sales by 100% annually and is expected to be profitable this year. It's wooing and winning a lot of publisher clients to its advertising platform, which could be a scare to even Google (GOOG) the largest ad agency on the Web. It's unclear whether Quigo can get big enough for an IPO, but its CEO Mike Yavonditte is inclined to believe this company will survive long enough to achieve that exit.

 

Daily Candy, an online media company targeting women, is seven years old as well. It started out by sending out some seven email newsletters a week. These days it appears to be a cash-generating machine. Last year, it generated $16 million in sales and sported 60% margins. Daily Candy targets women with email newsletters that promise readers "the ultimate insider's guide to what's hot, new, and undiscovered." According to the company, it can garner $280 for each 1,000 impressions for its newsletter products.

 

Three-year-old Break.com, which targets males between 15 and 35 years old, generates 550 million pageviews per month, with each unique visitor viewing nearly 50 pages each month. Break.com has no venture funding, but is certainly an interesting asset for anyone seeking to tap this demographic. Less than 4% of the 400 million streamed videos a month are considered "adult" in nature.

 

Other companies that would likely be interesting targets include SinglePoint, a sort of middleware company for mobile content. SinglePoint's competitors have been snapped up in the last year, such as m-Cube, which was bought by VeriSign for $250 million.

L.A.-based RazorGator, whose VC backers include Kleiner Perkins, is a company that competes with StubHub, which was acquired by eBay for $310 million earlier this year. RazorGator sells tickets to events, such as the SuperBowl, online.

 

Fandango was another online ticketing company that presented at the conference. What is interesting about this company is that its ability to sell tickets to movies can be -- down the road -- a forecasting tool for studios to predict whether a new movie release will be popular or not. BurnLounge was one of the new companies I had not heard of, and of interest, if only because it was the only company that seemed to be obviously going after dominant social network MySpace.

 

This company is trying to go after News Corp's (NWS) MySpace, with a platform on which consumers can create a "Burn" space rather than a "My" space. The difference is that on BurnLounge, a consumer can create a store and sell goods. The company is expected to generate $42 million in sales this year. This is a good idea. Unfortunately for BurnLounge, MySpace is moving in this direction and plans to work with Swapedo to help turn its 150-plus million members into merchants if they choose.

 

There were so many companies presenting that it's hard to mention them all. But the Montgomery team seemed to vet them pretty well. For anyone interested in buying a future revenue stream, this was a pretty good place to find it.

 

Funniest observation

 

Probably one of the most laughable moments and ridiculous but ridiculously true statements made at the conference came from Draper, who suggested that the proliferation of video online is changing behavior in ways we won't even be able to imagine.

For instance, children may not even have to learn how to read to know what's going on in the world around them. They merely just have to turn on Google's YouTube, or the many other video-sharing sites, point and say: "Look!" quipped Draper.

 

Draper's comments certainly held some truth. Video is exploding all over the world. Mobile television company MobiTV has 2 million subscribers. MobiTV CEO Phillip Alveda said that 85% of new phone subscribers in the U.S. have phones with video-viewing capabilities. Paul Zuber, CEO of Dilithium Networks, a wireless media company, said that he expects the number of minutes video will be consumed on a mobile phones this year is 13 billion, up from 1 billion last year.

Commentary: How consumers hijacked the media model

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NET SENSE

Inside out

Commentary: How consumers hijacked the media model

By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch

Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Mar 23, 2007

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- It is no secret that the traditional media are under assault from audiences.

 

Not only are some consumers not paying for content, some are displacing those heretofore assigned to create it and others are affecting the economics by their online-sharing behavior.

 

That additional power given to the audience is evident in the financial results of many companies.

In the magazine industry, advertising pages at Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX) Time magazine were down 23.8% in 2006 from 2000, according to Publishers Information Bureau. Newsweek's ad pages fell about 17.6% in the same period.

In the newspaper industry, the New York Times (NYT) stock has been halved since trading above $50 in 2002.

In the music industry, sales of CDs have been declining in the last seven years and fell 20% in the first quarter of this year. And a significant distribution channel of music in the last two decades -- retail outlets -- saw 800 music stores shut down in 2006.

 

So how are media companies responding? In more ways than I can enumerate in this column. Each week, there is no shortage of a new response to the Internet-era's audience participation phenomenon.

On Thursday, News Corp. (NWS) and NBC Universal joined forces to create a joint site that will host both their popular shows. Additionally, the two entertainment giants inked deals with the Web's leading portals -- Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) , AOL and Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) MSN -- to distribute their shows and movies. The new site, which will accept user-generated content, is being created to serve the new TV audience, which to date has preferred YouTube-styled showcasing. See related story.

 

The audience also will determine which shows or movies, News Corp.'s or NBC Universal's, will get top billing on the joint site, according to News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker. Again, the ability for the audience to vote or rate the content they wish to see is changing the way media companies are operating. See blog post.

 

Moreover, this week Time remade its magazine cover with skyboxes plugging other stories that highlight brand-name voices. In my opinion, what the magazine is doing is countering the easy information that's accessible all over the Web, thanks to the audience now contributing to the news- and information-gathering process. The breaking news bubbling up from the crowds is found everywhere on blogs as well as on new sites, such as NowPublic, which collects stories or eyewitness accounts from anyone willing to share.

In order to compete, the monolithic traditional magazine, newspaper and television networks appear to be relying on reporters to move up the value chain and become brands themselves to attract the audience. Why? It's not a one-size-fits-all media world. The audience is learning or becoming conditioned to identify with a personality or expert or show, rather than one big institution. So each reporter/columnist must provide more analysis, more insight and more dedication to his or her trade to outperform and outshine the crowded stage of free stuff.

Regarding Time, the Wall Street Journal writes: "In addition to the new look, editors have invoked the Economist as a role model for the new Time -- less of a news digest, more of an opinion journal." It goes onto to say: "It's a risky strategy for a mass-market magazine. If the appeal is too narrow, circulation could suffer, bringing advertising down with it."

 

Risk worth taking

 

But throughout the last half-dozen years, I think that many people who've led traditional companies have looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the risk was, in fact, worth taking. Blockbuster Inc.'s (BBI) slow move into the online DVD-rental business underscores the risks of not adapting to the new audience, now influenced by automated recommendations based the collective rental habits of others. Today, it's fighting to get the customer base now loyal to Netflix Inc. (NFLX) Essentially, the greater risk for Blockbuster was not changing or accommodating to new consumer behavior.

 

In like vein, the media are undergoing a significant overhaul of business models, and this is driven by the customer, now involved in producing and marketing content. The consumer or audience has a lot of power today.

It is with such power that magazines, such as Time, are trying to relate to the new consumer while not abandoning the old by testing out new models.

 

One new business model is in the economics of sourcing content and talent. At least for now, new sources of content can be bought cheaply -- meaning free.

 

At some point, however, the 1% of those who create the majority of the content that's retaining an audience will demand some form of incentive. That is why we are seeing an enormous amount of competitions as incentives.

Viacom Inc.'s (VIA) VH-1 just launched Acceptable.tv to find talented undiscovered filmmakers and producers. On the new site, amateurs can upload their 2-minute short comedy clip and submit them for a vote. One winner will have the chance of getting his or her production aired on national television.

 

According to Michael Hirschhorn, executive vice president of programming at VH-1, some of the user-submitted videos are "surprisingly good." ( Go to my blog to watch my interview with Hirschhorn.) Though VH-1 has no plans to hire any of these would-be filmmakers, it might have to consider this option down the road, since talent that attracts an audience will always go where the money is.

 

So what appears to have changed in the economics (at least for now) is the winnowing process of finding talent. Perhaps it's cheaper than hiring an agent? Still, there are new costs. The costs are the burden of exposing talent for free for someone else to capitalize on. Will one talented filmmaker go to Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube or other sites, such as Metacafe, to get paid and be in front of a larger audience?

 

The economics for freelancers in media also appears to be changing. Google just introduced a "pay per action" advertising model, requiring a potential customer to do more than click on a page for the publisher of the advertisement to get paid. This pay-for-performance model is also finding its way to the content-generating process. On Metacafe, video producers only get paid after their content is viewed above a certain threshold.

 

Higher-quality demands

 

What about the editors, now that there are the people who want a say in what is news, like on Digg.com? Will there be fewer? Not necessarily. Editors and those who are paid to make decisions have been given their posts because of their ability to make good judgment calls. Those editors become more important to keep the audience who are more passive about ranking and rating news, but would prefer someone to spoon-feed it to them.

It's even more important for journalists to resonate with the audience as well. Time magazine seems to be doing just that with its big print announcements of its star columnists. Those are the new costs of supplying content, thanks to user input.

 

What other ways are models changing? The models are changing in the distribution of content. In a recent panel on citizen journalism, I noted that user-generated content isn't just in the form of creating it; it's in the form of their actions -- such as sharing, e-mailing or embedding little widgets on their social-network profile on News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace or blog. It is in these actions that they are changing the distribution economics on the Web.

At MarketWatch, the power of big-media distribution has been at our roots from our early days with CBS. Now we're part of Dow Jones & Co. (DJ) But distribution can also be had in new ways.

 

Today, users get their media content piecemeal, and they get a lot of it from their friends who share bits and pieces of information by e-mailing or tagging or posting single stories on their social networks. Sharing news via word of mouth has become an incremental way of getting distribution thanks to today's users.

In the old pre-Internet days, consumers went to the newsstand or subscribed to periodicals. They also paid for cable channels to get a bunch of shows they liked and didn't like. They bought albums with songs they liked and didn't like. On the production side, talent moved up the value chain within big organizations to broadcast or publish their creations. This is all changing thanks to the audience.

 

Is it good or bad? Neither. It just is, and everyone will have to adjust to this new world order.

Google - Gestão Corporativa - Reflexão

Stacy Sullivan, primeira gerente de recursos humanos da Google, se lembra
da primeira vez que os fundadores da empresa a fizeram quebrar um
paradigma. No seu segundo dia de trabalho, no final de 1999, Page e Brin -
fundadores da Google - apareceram em seu escritório com a sugestão de
transformar a sala de reuniões em uma creche para cuidar dos filhos dos
funcionários.

Sullivan ficou horrorizada com a idéia de quebrar tudo na sala de reuniões.
A idéia parecia "não apropriada" para um ambiente de trabalho corporativo.
Além disso, somados TODOS os filhos de TODOS os funcionários da Google
naquela época, você chegava ao incrível número de 2.

"Depois que eu expus todos os argumentos que eu conhecia, Page e Brin
olharam para mim e disseram, 'Legal, mas por que não podemos transformar a
sala de reunião em uma creche?'".

Com esse ESPÍRITO quebra tudo, a Google acaba de ser escolhida - primeira
de muitas futuras vezes - O MELHOR LUGAR PARA SE TRABALHAR NOS EUA.

Ou seria melhor dizer, O MELHOR LUGAR PARA SE VIVER NOS EUA?

Comida não falta. Sergey Brin, fundador da Google, acredita que o
funcionário da empresa não pode trabalhar distante mais que 150 metros de
uma boa cafeteria repleta de comes e bebes saudáveis. Dito e feito.

Sujou a roupa? Leva para o escritório. A lavanderia da Google fica aberta
24 horas. Tá precisando trocar o óleo do carro? Enquanto trabalha, a
oficina da Google dá um tapa no carango. Se estiver sujo, o lava carros da
Google dá o toque final. O verão tá chegando e você quer entrar no shape?
Dá uma passada na big huge academia de malhação da Google. Tá faltando
motivação para malhar? A Google subsidia o personal trainer. Tá estressado?
Passa na sala de massagem do escritório. Já domina o inglês? Inscreva-se
nas aulas de Mandarin, Japonês, Espanhol e Francês. Chegou o dia de
comemorar o aniversário de casamento com a patroa? A equipe de concierge da
Google faz a reserva para o jantar no melhor restaurante da cidade. Quer
comprar um carro novo? Se escolher um carro híbrido, a Google te dá US$ 5
mil doletas para comprar o carro. Você conhece algum amigo que se encaixa
naquela posição recém aberta na Google? Se a companhia fechar negócio com o
cidadão, o googleniano leva 2 mil dólares para casa. Nasceu o filhote?
PARABÉNS! A Google te dá 500 doláres para bancar os gastos extras com o
pimpolho nas primeiras quatro semanas. Sente-se sozinho e deseja fazer
novas amizades? Compareça as festas TGIF (Thanks God Its Friday!) onde o
networking rola solto.

Tá cansado de dirigir até o escritório da Google? Sem problemas, o ônibus
da empresa pega você em uma das dezenas de paradas pela cidade.

Ops, não viu nenhuma novidade nesse benefício? E se eu te disser que todos
os ônibus da Google são equipados com rede sem fio wireless para você se
conectar a web no caminho para o escritório? Melhorou?

E tem mais, cada um dos 10 mil funcionários da Google tem direito a:

* Ficou doente, fica em casa. O funcionário tem "sick days unlimited".
* Passeio anual grátis em estacão de ski, todas as despesas pagas.
* Fantástica Série de Palestras semanais com FAMOSAS e RELEVANTES
personalidades.
* Comida grátis.
* Equipe grátis de médicos residentes.
* Piscina, quadra de vôlei, paredes para escalar, scooters e mídia
centers.
* 20% do tempo de trabalho livre para se dedicar a projetos FORA DO
BARALHO.

A Google oferece tantos benefícios aos googlenianos, que o difícil não é
trazer o funcionário para o trabalho, mas mandá-lo embora para casa. A
turma simplesmente não tem motivos para ir embora!

Até quem não trabalha na Google quer conhecer a organização por dentro.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher e Muhammad Yunus são algumas das
celebridades que passaram por lá recentemente para aprender alguma coisa.

"A Google não é uma empresa convencional. Nós não temos nenhuma intenção de
sermos uma." Primeiro parágrafo da lendária carta assinada por Page e Brin
distribuida para os potenciais acionistas da Google pouco antes de abrir o
capital da empresa em 2004.

Fazer esportes, assistir a palestras interessantes, ter acesso 24x7 a
internet, comida saudável a qualquer hora do dia, ajuda para resolver com
tranquilidade os pequenos grandes problemas da vida (lavar roupa e carro,
melhorar de um resfriado ou cuidar dos filhos, conhecer novas pessoas)
existem por um único motivo: ATRAIR E RETER OS MAIS INTERESSANTES SERES
HUMANOS DO PLANETA. Seres Humanos que querem mudar o mundo, não amadores
que procuram por uma boa teta para mamar.

A Google não é um clube de campo paizão. Eles não estão relaxados. Eles
querem mudar o mundo, "Organizar, disponibilizar e tornar útil toda a
informação disponível no mundo". A turma da Google não vive para escrever
códigos ou vender links patrocinados, eles tem uma causa e estão com
pressa.

A Google oferece benefícios para provocar o SENSO DE URGÊNCIA e não a
complacência nas pessoas. Cada benefício é escolhido a dedo para estimular
a mente criativa de todos nós.

Esse espírito quebra tudo da Google atraiu muito talento e muito dinheiro
nos últimos anos. Hoje, dinheiro não é problema para a Google. Com apenas 8
anos de idade, a empresa fatura mais de 10 bilhões de dólares por ano. O
valor de uma única ação ultrapassa 483 dólares!!!! Eles tem mais de 10
bilhões de doletas na poupança para investir, comprar, reformar, inventar o
que quiserem!!!! Eles têm todo o dinheiro do mundo para comprar o maior e
mais confortável escritório do planeta, entretanto, os funcionários da
Google trabalham "apertados" em cubículos próximos uns dos outros,
simulando o permanente ambiente de sala de estudo de faculdade onde os
fundadores começaram a empresa.

A indústria de tecnologia é privilegiada. Talvez por ser uma indústria
jovem, liderada por pessoas jovens (Bill Gates e Steve Jobs) - muitas vezes
sem nenhuma experiência em mega corporações regradas e engessadas -, que
negam, renegam e desprezam as regras medíocres do mundo corporativo que
CASTRAM a criatividade do SER HUMANO.

Inspirado por essas histórias, um empresário brasileiro da indústria de
tecnologia, líder de 300 pessoas, implementou boa parte dessas idéias em
sua empresa. Café-da-manhã a vontade, cafeteria abundante, artes e música
por todos os escritórios, carros da empresa, horário livre para ir e vir,
bônus agressivo. RESULTADO: Complacência generalizada. A empresa quebrou 24
meses depois.

Pergunta que não quer calar: Por que a oferta de tantos benefícios gerou
senso de urgência na Google, enquanto na pequena empresa brasileira gerou
complacência?

Pergunta que te faz pensar: O que vem primeiro, os melhores seres humanos
ou os melhores benefícios?

Pergunta que você precisa fazer: Seres Humanos talentosos precisam de
piscina e quadra de vôlei para fazer acontecer?

A pergunta das perguntas: A Google é o que é porque oferece tantos
benefícios, ou, porque oferece tantos benefícios ela é o que é?

A pergunta final: Se a Google retirasse todos os benefícios, a empresa
continuaria a superar as suas metas de crescimento?

Uma única resposta para todas as perguntas: O que faz uma empresa são os
Seres Humanos de CARÁTER. Nunca duvide disso. Pessoas por pessoas, não tem
valor algum. Capital Humano é balela! O que move as coisas é o CARÁTER das
pessoas. Se as vendas estão ruins, o problema é o vendedor não o mercado;
se todos os dias os funcionários tem que "sair do sistema" para a coisa
funcionar, o problema é o programador não o sistema. CARÁTER vem antes de
pessoas e benefícios. Os Melhores Seres Humanos do mundo tem CARÁTER. Para
eles, os benefícios são uma mera alavanca para atingir os objetivos sempre
maiores que perseguem em todos os momentos de suas vidas. Quem perceber que
é importante respeitar isso, e facilitar a vida dessas pessoas, irá criar o
ambiente ideal a uma geração de riqueza sem precedentes.

Os melhores Seres Humanos do mundo não nasceram para mamar nas tetas do
Estado, mas para transformar o Estado de benefícios em um Estado de
Caráter. A Vida é sobre usar o que recebemos para produzir riqueza para
aqueles que ainda não tem o que recebemos. Quando vai cair a ficha?

Cordialmente

Carlos André C. N. dos Reis
Analista de Qualidade Senior
DPTA/MERC/VSMM/QUALITÉ

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Yahoo! Pipes and The Web As Database

Yahoo! Pipes and The Web As Database

Written by Alex Iskold / February 13, 2007 / 19 comments

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_pipes_web_database.php

Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus. In this post Alex tests out and explores the emergent world of Yahoo! Pipes. He sees some interesting parallels with Relational Databases in the 90's, concluding that with pipes, the Web essentially becomes a giant database that can be queried and remixed in any number of ways.

One of the central concepts in Complex Systems is Emergence. It is this automagical process through which elements of a system give rise to a higher order system. Emergence is how physics becomes chemistry and chemistry becomes biology. It is how web 1.0 evolved into web 2.0, and how that, in turn, will become the next web.

While the exact mechanics of emergence is complicated and far from being completely understood, scientists know that a new system emerges as a combination of its elements and their interactions. In other words, complex systems are really networks - where elements interact with each other and give rise to a new system.

Perhaps today we are witnessing one of the most vivid examples of emergence - the remixing of the world wide web. The parts of the new web have crystallized - blogs, photos, video, audio, maps, RSS, social network profiles and even plain old HTML pages have formed an impressive network, that now can be mined and remixed. Mashups are really nothing new, the web has been a programmable oyster for at least a few years now. 

What is new though is the recent systematic thinking about the web as a database. A few companies, including Dapper, have been working on the problem. But with the recent launch of Yahoo! pipes, we are beginning to see the real power of remixing.

Ye Olde Relational Databases

The Web is just a vast database of information. Everyday, we interact with it without thinking about that too much. We simply take our best query tool, usually called Google, and fire away. Yet decades before the web made its way into our lives, a different kind of database revolutionized our lives. The Relational Database qualifies as one of our best computer science inventions. Lesser known to the non-techie crowd, it nowadays quietly stores terabytes of information behind most familiar ecommerce and corporate sites.

Microsoft Access Circa 1999

But Relational Databases are remarkably simple. They are collections of tables (structured data) that can be joined (mixed) together via keys to produce a new set of results. For example, the table of sales can be joined with the table of employees to produce a report of who sold what. By combining the tables in various ways, programmers are able to bring seemingly hidden information into the spotlight (think emergence). For example, by combining the sales information with employee records and their geographical locations, one can determine the best sales people in each country.

Another thing that Relational Databases are famous for is visual query and UI tools. Because databases are so simple, and the data is well structured, people have created GUI builders like Visual Basic or Power Builder to automate the UI for fetching and exploring the data. We got so good and so perfect at mapping the databases to the UI, that it's become quite a boring thing to do since about 1997. 

Well, now Yahoo! is making this whole business cool again, by changing the rules of the game - the Web is now the new database.

Yahoo! Pipes - Applying Old Wisdom to the Web

Yahoo! Pipes Circa 2007

Yahoo! Pipes is a remarkable offering that was announced last week. It is the first GUI builder for the biggest database in the world, the Web iself. When compared to Visual Basic and Power Builder, Yahoo! Pipes comes out as more inventive and no less rigorous that its predecessors. It empowers developers to remix the building blocks of the web in a whole new way. And it does it with remarkable simplicity.

In Yahoo! Pipes, what used to be a table in the relational database is now: a web page, an RSS feed, etc. The current list of sources includes: Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Local, Fetch (RSS feeds), Google Base and Flickr. Each source can be searched or queried using either pre-defined or user-defined parameters. For example, there can be a search of all french restaurants in Chicago via Yahoo! Local. The data source and the searches can be mixed together (think emergence), using a reach set of operators. Among them is the iterator (which lets the user loop through the results), a counter and many other functions that facilitate cleaning, manipulating and recombining the information.

By bringing together many sources and operators, the user can build sophisticated queries that fetch interesting, non-obvious information from the web. For example, one can build a pipe that extracts the listings of all French restaurants in Chicago, along with their Flickr photos. Since the underlying data is virtually limitless and the set of operators is quite powerful, the number of interesting possible pipes is vast. And for this reason, unlike its predecessor the Relational Database, Yahoo pipes will never get boring.

Evolving Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! pipes are cool, but they have ways to evolve. The biggest issue is that, unlike in Relational Databases, the data is neither structured nor clean. For example, how can we ensure that Flickr pictures of restaurants in Chicago will be the right ones? We really cannot. The same problem will exist in all pipes, simply because the underlying data online is not as precise and polished as data usually is in a Relational Database. What are the consequences of this? Well, users currently forgive some imprecision in tags on Flickr and del.icio.us, yet they expect near perfect answers from Google. So having precise instruments to clean the data in the pipes would go a long way.

Another, very different, axis for the evolution of the pipes is to make them usable by a less technical crowd. As it stands right now, like Relational Databases, the pipes require a techie brain to be used efficiently. Yet, it seems like there is a possibility, particularly from the user interface and operator simplification point of view, to make this tool usable by moms and pops. But even if not, judging again from the Relational Database, getting wide adoption in the technical community would be just fine.

Conclusion

So what is the catch - why did Yahoo do it? The answer is the same old: search and ads. The majority of the current data sources are from Yahoo! and so that means Yahoo! will get the ad revenue when the pipes are run. So empowering thousands of enthusiastic techies to remix the web using Yahoo's data is a great idea.

Will this work? Will developers start using pipes? At the time of this writing there are over 5,000 pipes, which is an impressive number given that the application is not even a week old. But we should check in a month or so to see how things unfold. Certainly the key to its success will be polishing the UI and adding new operators and data sources. Since Yahoo! is known for its good design and focus on the user experience, it is likely that we will see the pipes improving in that regard over time. 

Please give the pipes a try if you have not done so yet, and let us know what you think is going to happen to it over time.

Web 2.0: The Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Mobile Social Networking Opens The Door For Advertisers

Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Mobile Social Networking Opens The Door For Advertisers
By Cory Treffiletti

[http://mediapst.adbureau.net/iserver/acc_random=022813507/SITE=EMAIL/AREA=ONLINESPIN/AAMSZ=TOWER/GUID=022813507/QUAL=0]<http://mediapst.adbureau.net/adclick/acc_random=022813507/SITE=EMAIL/AREA=ONLINESPIN/AAMSZ=TOWER/GUID=022813507/QUAL=0> Mobile social networking -- I have to admit that this one takes me a little by surprise, but only because I hadn't thought of the implications and the ways that it could be used.

It hit me while I was flying this week to Orlando for a series of meetings and catching up on the reading I let pile up while I was busy the previous week. Time magazine, my continued source for the establishment of mainstream thinking, wrote an article concerning mobile social networking and some of the tools being developed to allow customers to keep tabs on their friends using mobile GPS devices and software integrated into their cell phones.

The part of the article that woke me up was the part about the guy who checked in on his roommate, saw that she was at Wendy's, so he called her up and asked her to pick up some 99-cent chicken sandwiches. That single sentence launched a plethora of epiphanies in my head and probably the heads of many other entrepreneurial advertising execs. There was finally a concept that resonated in the mind of the consumer with an obvious marketing extension.

To date mobile has been a category all about promise. There is the impending promise that carriers are seeking out ways to monetize their customer base further -- and with decreasing sales for new handsets, the only options they have are increased data services or advertising. While data services are certainly important, they will undoubtedly become cheaper in the coming years because no one (myself included) wants to spend $200 per month on their cell phone.

Advertising is certainly inevitable in the mobile environment, but it's a pickle to figure out how and where. Users don't like the intrusive nature of push ads displayed on their phones, plus they cost money to receive, which can be a nightmare of consumer backlash. These mobile social networking opportunities finally present something that can be used for marketers to tap into a customer's mindset.

The obvious opportunities are those where consumers can identify some of their favorite brands -- and their phones could alert them whenever they are in proximity to those brands. For example, are you a BMW fan? If so, the phone could alert you whenever you're near the BMW dealer with the new 6-series. Are you a Burger King guy? If you are near a BK, say within ½ a mile, your phone could ping you to let you know! Are you a mom with kids eight to 10 years old? Then your phone could ping you to let you know that there's a Chuck E Cheese just around the corner, and they have a special today!

The slightly more advanced opportunities would be for the phone to become a true "smartphone," where it learns the people you call, keeps track of these people, and applies this information to your GPS map. For example, if you regularly call your friend at 555-1234, then the phone may let you know that your friend is at Safeway or is around the corner from you. If you typically call the doctor because you're a hypochondriac, then maybe the phone will alert you the fact that Safeway is having a sale on vitamins. Of course, you would have to initiate these types of services, unless the carrier just decided these would become standard with your service, for a reduced monthly charge, of course.

For these ideas to truly become commonplace, the next generation of phones will still need to step up. The interface still needs to improve and the delivery speeds for data services will still need to accelerate. That will happen, certainly by next year, and possibly by June when the Apple iPhone finally comes out -- provided it's not nearly as buggy as some people are saying.

What are your thoughts on the future of mobile?

OnlineSpin: Consumer-Generated Ads Will Disrupt Existing Production Models

Friday, March 2, 2007
Consumer-Generated Ads Will Disrupt Existing Production Models
By Max Kalehoff

[http://mediapst.adbureau.net/iserver/acc_random=030279535/SITE=EMAIL/AREA=ONLINESPIN/AAMSZ=TOWER/GUID=030279535/QUAL=0]<http://mediapst.adbureau.net/adclick/acc_random=030279535/SITE=EMAIL/AREA=ONLINESPIN/AAMSZ=TOWER/GUID=030279535/QUAL=0>

One of the things that surprised me most about the much-hyped consumer-generated ads during the past Super Bowl was just how subtle they were and how naturally they fit into the entire mix of 30-second television spots.

To be sure, the consumer-generated ads were not purely consumer-generated, nor organically or independently spawned. They were carefully prompted, prodded, filtered, exposed and promoted through the highly controlled hands of advertisers and their marketing agencies. In the case of Super Bowl XLI, those advertisers were Chevy, Doritos and the NFL, and they each had a heavy hand in the outcome. But the truth remains: For most viewers, the ads, whose creation was heavily driven by consumers, were pretty darned easy to mistake for the purely professional ones.

So even if the consumer-generated ads didn't live up to the hype, most agree they lived up to the standards and value of all the others. And despite the advertiser control and apparent lack of spontaneity -- akin to a highly produced reality television show -- the bar they reached is terribly significant.

And here's why:

First, the success of the consumer-generated ads relative to the professional ones will force marketers to reevaluate the long-held assumption that agencies are the primary place to go for advertising creative and execution. Perhaps there's some value in crowd or customer sourcing? Ahem, yes.

Second, following Super Bowl 2007, marketers will think much harder about the production costs historically associated with traditional advertising, especially television spots. The fact is that a huge and growing percentage of PCs today are being shipped with free multimedia production software, which massively narrows the gap between amateurs and the ivory tower. Not only are the technical tools ubiquitous, but so are the number of people fluent in them.

Third, as production tools and techniques become democratized, agencies increasingly will be pushed to rethink what their core role and value is. Sorry, this will not be an open discussion; the topic will be diminished, disregarded or flat-out denied. But the hard reality is spreading. Agencies that revel in and rely on high-production gloss are slowly having their lunch eaten. Anyone can be glossy now.

Fourth, more consumers, or amateurs, will begin to realize their work has value and potential for greatness. The perception of greater attainability and a level playing field with the so-called professionals will prompt more consumers to enter the ad-creation fray. They may do this to compete for traditional advertising compensation, but also will be motivated by raw passion, brand interest, or a desire for self-expression.

Finally, with production value commoditized, as signaled above, glossy creative not only ceases to be a differentiator, but risks becoming a turnoff. This trend will cause advertising interest and expectations among consumers to shift quickly to more fundamental points of differentiation, particularly interestingness, affiliation, locality, candor and authenticity among others. More than ever, raw content will need to stand on its own.

Don Hewitt, the creator of CBS' "60 Minutes," understands this point, as evidenced in a recent Village Voice interview<http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/runninscared/archives/2007/02/welcome_to_hewt.php> about his new online news venture targeted to young people which aims to garner content submissions from young students,. The technical requirements for submission are low-budget -- even cell phone camera footage is OK -- but the storytelling must be authentic and compelling, according to his recruitment email: "If you're interviewing others, make sure they are interesting... Strong characters can save a weak story. Weak characters can sink the strongest of stories. Cast your story with people whose personas make you pay attention.... people who are forceful, animated, quirky, whatever... you'll know it when you see it."

The bottom line: Regardless of how big consumer-generated advertising becomes, or whichever direction it morphs, the phenomenon is going to prompt faster reevaluation of the current ad-production model, among all stakeholders.

Now, be honest. Beyond the me-too hysteria, have consumer-generated ads prompted meaningful soul-searching in your advertising team?

Max Kalehoff is vice president of marketing for Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a global measurement service for consumer-generated media.

mobile marketing advertising space

(reposted from mobile)