::.. Timing ..::

:: 2003/03/07 ::

Microsoft Releases Greenwich Beta

Thursday, 6 March, Microsoft released the beta for its next generation real-time collaboration server technology, code-named "Greenwich." Greenwich is planned to be commercially released in the fall, and Microsoft is looking to hundreds of developer partners to begin working with this beta, to establish the techology as a real-time application development platform of choice. The beta release was a week late (see earlier blog blurb).

One key point of integration is MSN Messenger Connect for the Enterprise, which will allow Greenwich-based applications to support communication with the large user community of the free service.

IMLogic's corporate proxy server and archival capabilities will be integrated with the solution, but other real-time infrastructure and application developers are likely to jump into the mix. Microsoft held a Developer's Conference in January with about 400 attendees. They are committed to creating an ecosystem for developers, while aggressively building channels to get to market with the next generation solution.

The most compelling aspect of Micorosoft's next generation vision is voice as an adjunct to instant messaging. It is reputed that 40% of IMs lead to a telephone call -- with the IM channel providing presence status leading to a short "can you talk" message -- and Microsoft has the most aggressive plans for tight integration of voice and telephony into the world of real-time communication. This is a topic I will expand on elsewhere, probably a near-term issue of Message.

The transition from Exchange Messenger will be a significant issue for users, since Greenwich requires Windows Server 2003 (the server formerly known as .Net 2003 Server), and integration of Greenwich with Exchange will require a server upgrade.

Its a transition well-worth making, but the cost justifications are likely to slow uptake of Greenwich. Microsoft will need to move fast to get a few major corporations to adopt Greenwich, and to demonstrate the benefits of this revolutionary generation of real-time communications.

Microsoft definitely is targetting IBM Lotus Sametime, the market leader, and has put a lot of energy into catching up where IBM's solution is strongest: real-time conferencing. But the combination of Greenwich with telephony and the MSN network will be putting pressure on IBM to make something more than PR out of its announced partnerships with AT&T and AOL.

It's a horse race. Don't ask me to give odds yet.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/7/2003 07:02:05 AM [link] ::
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Raging Cow's PR Firm sees blogs and IM as key marketing channels

Market exploitation of blogs has promising shelf life, although this looks like a good meme gone bad.

In a widely reported story (Newsweek and Filchyboy, for example), Dr Pepper sees the use of blog-based communities as a potent means to push their new dairy drink, Raging Cow. However, the blog community is spun up about the stealth creation of bogus blogs touting a product for financial reward.

The PR group behind this concept (according to Filchyboy, who did some great snooping), is Richards Interactive, who have some interesting -- and totally dead-on -- comments about grass roots marketing among teenagers:

"When it comes to talking to teens, instant messaging speaks volumes

Want to talk to teens online? Better get up to speed on instant messaging, three out of four teens use it. One in five don't even bother with telephones any more. And most are holding several conversations at a time using ICQ, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger. Those names are probably Greek to most adults, since only 44% have ever even USED instant messaging.

According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, 13 million children ages 12 to 17 --that's close to three out of four teens who are online -- use instant messages. One in five teens who are online consider instant messages their primary form of keeping in touch with friends.

The instant message, or IM, allows its users to carry on simultaneous conversations with other IM users via text windows that pop up on a computer screen. America Online and certain Web browsers and Internet providers include built-in IM functionality; in other instances instant messaging is accomplished through a downloaded program. Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger and ICQ are a few IM programs. Instant messaging also allows users to conduct more than one real-time conversation simultaneously and in different text windows, which pop up on a user's computer screen.

The Pew report touched on this as well, giving "the phenomenon of carrying on multiple, individual conversations simultaneously" its own name: split attention. It's a skill at which teens particularly excel; the report states that, on average, a teen IM session includes online chat with more than three friends simultaneously.

Teenagers use IMing to do everything from flirt, ask someone out, break up, even talk with teachers about homework. And 37% of teens say they use IMing to say something to a friend that they would not say face-to-face or over the phone. The report says that many teens now give out their IM "handles" to prospective friends and dates rather than their phone numbers.

USA Today carried a story about the report in its June 21st edition.

The implication of all this teen instant messaging for those of us in the marketing business is clear: if you want to reach kids with your message, you have to take instant messaging into consideration. It makes incorporating a "pass-along" factor into your message, especially a message aimed at the teen audience, crucial."

Whatever your feelings about blog-based marketing, there is no doubt that it is coming. Both blogging and instant messaging leverage the emergent value of online networked communities, and there is no way the business won't try to tap into it. But they need to be real communities of real people, not cam girls and paid shills.

However, there must be a better way, where companies are less surreptitious, and where their sponsorship is open and aboveboard. This stuff smacks of the subliminal marketing of Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, a form of marketing that is illegal, as well as unethical.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/5/2003 01:59:34 PM [link] ::
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Going Slow on Real Time

In the March 1 CIO NetGains, Mohanbir Sawney pours cold water on the overheated Real Time Enterprise meme, and suggests that analysts and software vendors are simply reheating the business process reeningeering concept in an effort to thaw a frozen marketplace.

While I agree with some of his points -- that it will take some time to get there -- I disagree that there is little new in the idea of a real time enterprise. However, if you look only to the industrial-strength analyst firms and software companies for thought leadership, well, it should come as no surprise that things sound a lot like last year's buzzwords, recycled.

Mohan (which is, as I recall, what he likes to be called) doesn't discuss other elements of the real time shift. In particular, the emergence of real-time communication is a radical departure from prior media. Not because people communicate 'in real time' -- which is what you do, after all, on the telephone -- but because of presence information. Presence is basically an individual's online status information: Am I available to talk? Am I available to you, or customers, or partners, or family? When can you get me at my desk, cell, PDA, or conference room?

Presence is a transformational concept, and is a major driver for the adoption of instant messaging, along with its low cost. 30% of the 3 billion instant messages being sent everyday are business communications, and 85% or more of businesses are planning to roll out corporate instant messaging solutions in the near term, or have done so already. Presence and real time collaboration are quickly being envisioned at real time leaders Microsoft and IBM as the core foundation element for the next generation of enterprise applications. These firms are developing real time messaging infrastructure -- linked to the so-called public networks like AOL, MSN, and Yahoo -- so that enterprise applications -- SAP, TIBCO, Siebel, and so on -- can communicate with people based on presence information, roles, and business rules.

While some aspects of the real time enterprise are likely to be a long time coming, some elements -- those linked to how people communicate, collaborate, coordinate, and negotiate with others -- are likely to be drastically changed in the next few years.

Like most other major shifts in communication media, this is not being centrally planned by CIOs. Just like cell phones, PCs, Internet browsers, and faxes, the adoption of real time communication is happening at the business unit or at the CEO's office. CIOs are likely to make arguments like Mohan's -- its nothing new, let IT handle it through continuation of the projects we are already involved in, we're already doing this, we need to slow roll this so it doesn't get out of hand, yada yada yada.

But it's too late already. Mohan aptly quoted Yogi Berra, who said "The future ain't what it used to be." Companies are saving millions, today, on the roll out of just the first wave of these technologies, and my bet is that in the second wave they will not only save tens of millions, but will gain enormous competitive advantage -- for those who take the first steps earliest.

Companies are going to learn, once again, how to do new things, not just do the same things faster. But then again, some of them won't.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/4/2003 03:55:04 PM [link] ::
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Even Smaller World

So I kept sniffing, and I find a really great plug about Timing at Due Diligence, written by Tim Oren, managing director of Pacifa Fund, and once again an outgrowth of Evan Williams' link to a recent piece of mine (see Small World).

A great blog about instant messaging and collaboration

Stowe Boyd, ex of Ikimbo, is keeping a blog with inside dope and great analysis on the messaging and collaboration front. See, for instance, his posts on identity ownership in IM and sales channel issues for IM startups. Solid stuff from someone who's been there done that.

Well, damn. If people like Evan Williams, Tim Oren, and David Weinberger are reading my pap, I must be on to something.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/4/2003 11:57:53 AM [link] ::
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Small World

I received an email today, requesting contact info for Todd Tweedy, highlighted in a recent piece (The Coming Power Shift). The person who asked was unknown to me -- although I am aware of her organization -- but I wondered what had pointed her to the story. She has yet to return my email, but it made me wonder: Who's reading my stuff?

I did some Googling and Blogdexing and discovered the following, that I hadn't known:

• The CEO of Pyra, Evan Williams has a link to the piece on his personal website, evhead. I can only imagine that the piece I wrote on Google's acquisition of Pyra (Google Buys Blogger: Indexing the Blogosphere) came to his attention. Perhaps someone pointed it out to him? Or he just googled it?
  
• Some guy in Italy, Gaspar Torrieiro, has me hardlinked on his blog, but I don't know if that has anything to do with this round of six degrees or not.
  
• Some French blog, A Frog In The Valley, picked up on the link at Evhead and expanded on it, at some length in French (which Google translates this way: "The Coming Power Shift in Messaging Moment. . Of excellent points especially on the denomination. For example, for a company, there is no reason that the address and the management of the attribution of the addresses are made in a chaotic way by a central authority which does not belong to the company. Would Pourqoi MSN decide which can have addresses of messagarie in the @afroginthevalley.com field, and why not on field to start, but what of the addresses @hotmail.com? Thus problems of namespaces to be regulated, management of identity, property, trust ... thus hold, part of these problems find already their solution in the traditional Internet > ... Does DNS Ca tell you some thing? In fact, truths innovations in the instantaneous transport and the related fields come from Jabber and of what turns around, they took time to solve the basic problems, remains to regulate the challenges of the software customers and waiter installations of... but level of the protocol, bine that sometimes complex, they really included/understood, in any case of what I include/understand... With reading and to reflect [ initial bond via evhead , now employed of Google ]" Completely unintelligible.)
  
• Emmanuel M Décarie's weblog picked up the link from A Frog In The Valley, but instead of translating the French into something I could understand, he merely excerpts the first paragraph of my piece, which I already understand (more or less).

Anyway, its interesting for writers to think about the word of mouth and blogrolling buzz that gets generated when you throw some thoughts up on a blog. Hey, there are real people out there reading this junk. So, you guys don't have to be anonymous. Drop me a line, anytime.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/4/2003 11:31:55 AM [link] ::
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Clay Shirky on "Kasparov versus The World"

Clay Shirky opines that the lack of real-time communication was the root cause in what turned out to be a PR nightmare for sponsor Microsoft.

"It was generally agreed that The World had made a serious tactical error in move 52, but that there was still the possibility of a draw. Then, on October 13th, Ms. Krush's recommendation for move 58 was delayed by mail server problems, problems compounded by a further delay in posting the information on the Microsoft server. Without Ms. Krush's input, an inferior move was suggested and accepted, making it obvious that despite the rhetoric of collaboration, the game had become Kasparov v. Krush with Kibbitzing by The World. Deprived of Ms. Krush's strategic vision, the game was doomed. The World responded to this communication breakdown by collective hari kari, with 66% of the team voting for a suicidal move. Facing the possibility of headlines like "The World Resigns from Microsoft," the corporate titan rejected the people's move and substituted one of its own. The World, not surprisingly, reacted badly."

The moral of the story? Email isn't real-time, even from the sometimes glacial pace that grandmaster chess is played.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/3/2003 02:36:01 PM [link] ::
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Boston Globe Touts IBM as "Dominant Force" at IM Planet Conference

Boston Globe writer, Hiawatha Bray, writes in today's Boston Globe, that "the meeting didn't draw Comdex-style crowds, but these days, neither does Comdex." (Personally, I think the organizers simply don't do any marketing, but that's another story.)

Bray goes on to state that IBM Lotus was the "dominant force" at the conference -- despite the fact that IMLogic, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Sprint senior executives gave keynotes, while Lotus presence seemed limited to Jeremy Dies, a senior product manager in the Lotus Advanced Collaboration Group.

I have to agree. IBM is the 800 pound gorilla in enterprise collaboration, and they are moving with surprising agility to consolidate their dominance in the enterprise marketspace. Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, and other major software houses have a big game of catch-up to play. IBM's recent announcement of layoffs as the result of the company's worst quarter in a decade (see USA Today) may seem to suggest that the company is distracted, but I think that IBM management is reading the tea leaves very well. Collaboration is key to the company's future, and is being threaded into everything. Laying folks off in the servers group, or other downmarket sections of the 320,000 strong company will not have an impact on the higher growth elements in the company.

I have always patted myself on the back for selling IBM at $140, but it might be time to buy back in on Big Blue.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/3/2003 02:14:08 PM [link] ::
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AOL Aims to Cash In on Instant Messenger Success

Washington Post cover story on AIM as the bright spot in AOL's otherwise dismal situation.

Given the numbers, AOL has got to be able to monetize the service -- but seemingly is still unable to:

"Every day, about 2.3 billion instant messages are sent around the world via America Online, eclipsing e-mail as the favored way for people to communicate with family, friends and co-workers. About 40 percent of all Americans from age of 14 to 24 use AOL's instant messaging services," writes David Vise in the article.

Amazingly, the article's author, Daniel Vise, just doesn't get into the real value proposition for instant messaging, which isn't messaging, but presence.

Businesses will want to pay for accessing presence of employees, partners, and clients, and cross-pollinating them with each other. Real-time collaboration will rework how we work, and AOL has the biggest and fattest presence pipe in the world. Presence-enabling all the enterprise applications within the corporation will be an enormous benefit -- presence information about the author of a document, or the availability of project team, or finding who is on-line who knows the answer to this critical business issue.

But AOL management -- with the exception of Bruce Stewart and his crew, who I have met and admire -- seems to be stuck in low gear on turning AIM into a source of revenue.

The company's model -- of partnering with outside software and services firms to create enterprise interfaces and software integration points to AIM -- is short-sighted. AOL should make a big investment in building -- or buying -- a software solutions and services company to exploit the leverage that the AIM network offers. Players like Facetime, IMLogic, and the like, and even HP may not be getting AOL where it needs to go. Letting others build all the integration points and services that will provide the added value to AIM will divorce AOL from the source of value creation in this market.

If AOL continues to treat enterprise instant messaging as a sideline, they may wake up to find that MSN and Yahoo have surpassed them. Microsoft obviously has a consolidated plan for Greenwich and MSN integration, while Yahoo is the fastest growing service.

AOL better dream up a response and act fast.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/3/2003 01:23:56 PM [link] ::
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