Is there any money in Web 2.0?

"Daily voucher company Groupon has reported an unexpected loss.

In its first set of results since listing on Nasdaq stock exchange in November, Groupon reported a net loss of $42.7m (£27.0m), when a small profit had been expected.

The loss for the last three months of 2011 compares with a loss of $378.6m in the same period of 2010."

BBC News - Groupon reports unexpected loss

A year ago the hot world was 'social', from conferences to the hunt for VC social was everywhere. Suddenly young good looking people nothing like Mark Zuckerburg were trying to make a career of social.

It was all like the dot bomb all over again maybe.

Recent filling by Facebook shocked us to see that the giant with almost a billion users earns less than $5.00 per user per year!

If you try to think of the entire social media pie you have to imagine right now Facebook has a large piece of that pie. And yet it only earns about $4,40 per user per year. Foursquare and Twitter along with YouTube will be taking most of what is left of the pie.

What does this mean? It means that maybe there is not much of a pie. Facebook and Twitter had explosive growth because of the massive population with web tool that needed something to do with them, but the fact remains the web seems better at free stuff than pay stuff.

There simply may not be any business online.

But wait, didn't we go through all of this before? Didn't dot coms collapse because of the market pulled out only to have the industry return with even more power.

Well yes, the web came back with Web 2.0, dot coms funded by IPOs collapsed to be replaced by new social firms funded by VC, but still the large sustainable ecosystem is not there. So far the companies to make money off the web are Apple and Google.

But that is not the full story, thousands of smaller companies make more money because of the web, people make more at their jobs because of the web, the web reduces the costs of many firms.

Maybe we have a new kind of economic model coming up. One that has a few massive web companies that take up what little profit can me made, a lot of non-profit projects like Wikipedia and Debian and a huge network of smaller firms that make smaller revenues doing specific work.

Android Faces Windows 8 Tablets

"The platform will be bigger threat for Android as compared to iPad because Android is already facing a tough time against Apple's tablet. The sheer survival of any single Android tablet is difficult when it comes to facing iPad. Amazon's Kindle Fire has come for its rescue and has contributed majorly to the Android's market share but that's pretty less as compared to iPad's lion's share. "

Why Android Should Fear Windows 8 Tablets?

We see three key factors that are going to make Windows hard to beat:

• They have lots of money and resources to fight it out.
• Windows and Office are still familiar productivity tools, and the tablet's main application will be as an office tool opposed to the smartphone which is more of a toy.
• Windows 8 will give a single experiences from PC to laptop to Tablet to Phone, that will be powerful. Mac is struggling to get the set of iOS and OSX working for people and Android has no presence outside of the PC Chrome browser.

But there are major problems Windows has to overcome:

• No history of mobile presence with consumer.
• A very crowded tablet space with Amazon, Google, Apple and now Microsoft fighting in a battle which is turning out to be much larger than we had anticipated.
• iPad and Android ecosystems.

Microsoft Bribing Nokia to use its phone?

"In its statement, Nokia also revealed the amount that it receives from Microsoft for its utilisation of the Windows Phone platform, acknowledging that the Redmond-based company paid it $250 million in “support payments” over the last quarter:"

Microsoft Paid Nokia $250m for Windows Phone Use

It looks like Microsoft had to bribe Nokia to use its platform for Smartphones. There is no question now that if Nokia had started producing Android phones a couple years ago rather than trying to promote its own Linux based MeeGoo project, sales would be very different right now. That is not to say we don't like MeeGoo, but with a competitive market for ecosystems MeeGoo, along with WebOS was just to much to ask of developers who are struggling to build apps for the iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and Symbian ecosystems as it is.

Now just because Microsoft is bribing Nokia to use its OS does not make the OS bad, Microsoft is a master of combing unfair business practices with just the right quality of product to win market share, that is until the Web went mobile.

We have been testing the Lumia a great deal lately and we like it, we like it a lot. The OS is great too look at and easy to use, and it shows JQuery mobile pages as well as iPhone or Android devices. Nokia knows how to make a camera that feels right in your hand and the excellent Lumia should be attractive to many.

But good is not demanded and one of the strange states of the market is how excellent machines again and again don't catch on. Four years ago we were excited about the netbook running a Linux like Puppy, this seemed like the obvious course of the future of computing. But it seemed people were more interested in toys like iPhones and iPads than powerful small computers with solid OSs. The quality of a product will not predict its sales, and the Windows Phone still has not proved itself in the market, and it is trying to launch in to a major economic downturn where people might decide to hold on to their iPhones, Androids and Blackberries for a few more months.

CES - Samsung's Smart Window

Is Microsoft Releasing the Next Version of SharePoint in 2012?

: "As rumor has it, a new version of SharePoint will come out this year -- why else would Microsoft plan back to back SharePoint conferences? But while some are pondering what the next version

may bring, most are still working on how to best leverage the current SharePoint release.

01-10-2012 - Is Microsoft Releasing the Next Version of SharePoint in 2012?

"

'via Blog this'

Microsoft 8 its do or die

The latest version of Microsoft's operating system for smartphones is a revolutionary product for its parent company because it is considered to have both taste and culture. Windows Phone uses the company's Metro interface, whose graphics are so cutting-edge they can make the iPhone seem out of date. Its creators, Microsoft's in-house design team, claim it is changing not only how their products appear, but the company's philosophy.

Windows 8, the latest version of Microsoft's world-dominating PCsoftware, will be released later this year and has been given a Metro makeover. The worry is that Microsoft has discovered the power of good taste a little too late.

Windows software is installed on 95% of the world's estimated 1.5bn home and business PCs, but in the western world sales of laptop and particularly desktop computers have reached a plateau. When Windows 8 is released later this year, millions of Microsoft customers will ask themselves whether they should spend money upgrading an old computer, or treat themselves to new one. For many, that new machine is likely to be not a PC but a tablet, and until now Apple has been the only company capable of selling tablets in large numbers.

"The ground is shifting under Microsoft," says Jean-Louis Gassée, former head of Apple Macintosh development and contender for the chief executive role in the late 1980s. "The world will no longer be PC-centric. We will see growing numbers of smartphones and tablets and we as users will spend more time on these devices. PCs will be reserved for the tasks of content creation."

Microsoft sees a future through cleaner Windows | Technology | The Observer

One thing Yahoo! can teach us all, that it takes a long time for the new giants of IT to die. In the case of firms like IBM the dying process is so slow that the company has the ability to rebuilt itself before it dies. That is once a company like Oracle, IBM, Yahoo!, HP, or Dell reach such a size the vibrant growing nature of the IT market and the massive barriers to entry prevent normal market forces from working. There is simply too much increase in demand ever year, and too few new big players to cull the failures.

In the case of IBM this allowed a great firm to survive to become a great firm again, just a different kind of great firm. In the case of Yahoo! it just is a slow pathetic death.

What is going to happen to Microsoft is not entirely clear. Its now certain that everyone who works with Microsoft gets that Windows and Office will not take them in to the future for much longer. Microsoft is facing a world of more mobile devices and the Cloud. So far they have done a very good job of the Cloud. I am confident that Enterprise Cloud will be dominated by Microsoft back ends for some time to come.

The problem has not been the large solutions that run in Cloud farms, but getting Microsoft in to a small device. This is kind of pathetic because their name in MICROsoft. The company was born in the race for the micro computer leaving older mainframe computers in the dust to provide the OS, programming languages and productivity tools for the desktop computing and then laptop computing. Its just that Microsoft has utterly messed up going PALM top.

But this is much more than just a change is overall size of devices, its also a failure to keep up with the change in the social role of computers made possible by this change in size. Microsoft is still stuck in a world of Offices and Windows, a world where computers were grey and used mostly for creating presentations for customer days. Since this time firms like Apple, Google and Blackberry have managed to make computers cool.

Microsoft not only needs to establish itself in the world of small devices running ARM based technology rather than just INTEL chips, which they can do technically without a doubt, but they also need to establish products that can grap the new consumers imagination in the way Android, iOS and Blackberry have, and become as cool as twitter and facebook. This is something they have NEVER done, and probably this element of style and 'class' is where Microsoft looks most like the next IBM or Digital. Computers are never going to be grey again. Can Microsoft live in a world of color?

Time to Close the Book on Windows Tablet

Consumers’ interest in buying a Windows tablet has plummeted in the past six months, according to a new Forrester Research report on November 29.

Consumers' interest in Windows tablets plummets, study claims | ZDNet

Again more very bad news for Microsoft's effort to be part of the new wave of mobile devices. I have been saying for two years that this new device space is war for how new tablet or slate space is imagined: are slates big phones or small computers.

As the Forrester survey above indicates consumer initially saw these devices as small PC but more and more they are starting to image them as extensions of the phone. This is critical for Microsoft to re-establish the tablet as a place for Windows before Android and iPhone change how people think about computing.

Can Microsoft do it? Over the past year in the mobile space Microsoft has gone from failure to failure. But with the legacy of Office documents and SharePoint I suspect that the Office tablet will likely be a Windows tablet.

But time is running out.

Intro to SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions

Intro to SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions

View more presentations from Toni Frankola

Opps Duqu infection linked to Microsoft Word exploit

"The Duqu computer infection was spread with the help of an infected Microsoft Word document, according to a report.

The research says the Trojan exploited a previously unknown vulnerability embedded in Word files, allowing Duqu to modify computers' security protection."

BBC News - Duqu infection linked to Microsoft Word exploit

Yelp and how dumb is social media

Yelp sent me the following email. Now what is interesting is the idea that Yelp might have a hunch, which imp lies some kind of AI. And the hunch seems to be about me.

Well actually I have not had brunch in a restraunt ever in my life. I might actually love brunch because I have never ever gone out to have it. It has never crossed my mind to have brunch.

Its not that I am ignorant of brunch, for a year I worked as a waiter at a place that did one of the biggest brunch trades in the Chicago area. I have very familiar with the practice of brush, of what is eaten in brunch and of when it is eaten.

The thing that strikes me in this email, as in so many other social media effort to understand me is how not only is it wrong, but like Facebook and Twitter recommends it actually contradicts my own clearly expressed interests.

Anyone who knew me well enough to have a hunch on me, even if it was an AI tracking me on social networks, would clearly know that I have a tendency to hiking on Saturdays. Rather than having a tongue feeling like wall paper and a empty pantry I am far more likely to be out on trail in the green belt around London. Anyone who followed my fairly regular posting to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and blogger would notice this pattern. Saturdays I generally stop posting, because I am out of mobile service reach, if I post post photos of nature or photos from various locations within and around London when I can't walk in the woods because of rain.

So its pretty clear that Yelp has no hunch at all about me. Okay its a marketing email. No sin there.

But the problem is that this email illustrates the key problem about social network services. Social network services from Facebook to SharePoint talk a big talk about understanding social networks they manage, but do nothing about it. Their data is held in extremely dumb networks and their conclusions about users are at best shallow and often stupid.

Now for civil libertarians such as myself this is not a bad thing at all. Its probably a good thing that computers really can't understand our motives given all the facts about us that are being gathered. If software could understand us, well the prospects for democracy go pretty dim pretty quick.  I believe that smart computers that understand social networks can be a danger to our democracy, and may need to be regulated if they ever emerge.

But why does social networks feel the need to lie about understanding me. Why not just be honest and say we offer you a communication channel that you can use as you want and nothing more? Why imply you have some social intelligence you don't have?

My observations from watching online dating market is that this is precisely the question more and more social network users are asking. Online dating services used to advertise that they somehow would help you find the right person. This false promise only lead to high levels of disappointment by users. Now more and more online dating is selling itself on availability and access not intelligence.

My vision of social computing is pretty simple, computer can not understand people in a reliable way that will mean much to any given user. But computers can make resources of communication and search available to users who can then use the tools to make the social patterns they need. The human genius has to be enabled, not replaced.

Occupty Wall Street is the hot ticket in New York

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET

Foursquare for OccupyWallStreet

currently checked in: 21

This tops Brooklyn Bridge with 11 and all other trending sites in New York, making the Occupy Wall Street the largest ongoing even in New York right now.

'via Blog this'

RIM and Microsoft Office 365

RIM is rolling out a new cloud-based service for Microsoft Office 365.

(Credit: RIM)

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has launched a new service that not only extends access to Microsoft Office 365 but lets businesses better manage their BlackBerry devices.
Currently available as a beta for Microsoft Office 365 customers, BlackBerry's Business Cloud Services offers four key benefits to potential customers, according to RIM:

• Access to Microsoft Exchange online email, calendar, and organizer data from BlackBerry smartphones.

• BlackBerry Balance technology, which lets users see both personal and work-related content on their phones but keeps the two separate from each other.

• Online access to smartphone security features where users can remotely lock or wipe their smartphones or reset their passwords.

• An online console where IT admins can manage and secure the BlackBerry smartphones used by company employees.

"BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is an easy and cost-effective way for businesses and government agencies to extend Microsoft Office 365 to BlackBerry smartphones and manage the deployment in the cloud," RIM Vice President Alan Panezic said in a statement. "We have been working together with Microsoft and select customers through an early access program and we are pleased to now launch an open beta for the service."

RIM unveils cloud service for Microsoft Office 365 users | Webware - CNET:

Frankly we at the Web 3.0 Lab have never fully understood Microsoft mobile strategy.  They seem to be perfectly happy with the iPhone being out there, they complain about Android though they collect license agreements on most Androids sold, they have a strategic relationship with one of the top business phone vendors and they push their own phone.

For Microsoft the future is the cloud.  Even if the make a OS for small devices this OS may gain them little more than Internet Explorer, a long term headache.  Frankly the web industry would be delighted to see IE in all its version vanish.

Mobile devices are becoming nothing more than windows to the Cloud, and Microsoft's Cloud is a business cloud.  RIM has a well established proven technology that could easily catch up, and the Blackberry remains popular in the Enterprise.  Microsoft should abandon the sinking ship of Windows Mobile and purchase RIM and turn that in to their platform.

But there may be method to the madness, unlike Apple Microsoft and Google make software, and being trapped in a single hardware platform is not where Microsoft wants to be.  But also being forked between two main platforms, where one is highly established does not really make sense either.

See also Microsoft and RIM make partnership
What is Office 365
All my posts on Office 356