Jagdish Vasishtha

Email on its way out!

I attended the recent concluded cloudforce conference in Bangalore and where the discussion was around email on it's way out in the consumer space and how the same trend will follow inside corporate walls. This is a theme which I have been continuously discussing in the last two years and have seen many organizations using social tools to reduce their email dependency considerably. Here is a video of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at Nielsen Consumer 360 where she talks on the same theme. Email on its way out !

 

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Apple executing AT&T 3 Screen strategy

For Tecos it has always been tough to shed the old stogy carrier image serving voice calls. Most of them even created separate brands for their Mobile phone services to be able to look next generation. AT&T being the oldest carrier in US after having resurrected itself from SBC started to look at tapping the consumers again in a big way. The management had espoused the so called "3 screen strategy", which essentially meant that AT&T had to dominate all the 3 screens which consumers use for their daily information needs. 

1. Mobile phone
2. Computer
3. TV

The goal for AT&T is to increase the bandwidth usage from consumers so that it could increase its ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). The problem though with AT&T was that how do they create compelling Applications for consumers to increase their usage/utility of mobile phone and on the other hand tackle TV content and compete with the Cable providers (Like Comcast, TWC). On the computer side the story was more of providing high speed connections. There also AT&T (SBC) experimented with tie ups with Yahoo (remember SBC Yahoo DSL). Also having a very diverse set of phones means that creating a set of Apps which could work on multiple phones would be a huge challenge. Somehow AT&T did not move out the walled garden approach and adopt a more NTT DoCoMo style model for serving Apps. That could be also again due to the traditional monopoly, control mindset.

Things have changed for AT&T and that is due to its new key partnership with Apple. As Apple fortunes revived with iPhone, AT&T has hugely benefitted from the increasing demand for it's own service (Since they have a exclusive partnership with Apple). Here is how Apple is benefitting AT&T. 

1. Iphone and the App store: With Apple now dominating the smartphone segment, it has turned a windfall for AT&T. The millions of addictive Apps on Apple Appstore has meant that people use the phone much longer and which in turn means that the network usage for AT&T has gone up and that translates to higher ARPU. With the concept of Appstore taking off AT&T does not have to worry about creating mobile apps or tying up with  a whole host of vendors for serving apps. 
2. Ipad and the new way to work: Ipad put Apple into a new league of what was earlier termed as Netbooks. As more and more office productivity Apps move to cloud the need for larger desktop/Laptops go down. Ipad have been selling like hot cakes almost at the rate of 1 Mn a month and that does not seem like abating. With Applications like Facetime which work on AT&T 3G network again it will mean higher bandwidth usage by consumers. Actually AT&T and the likes are now revising their mobile broadband tariff plans. No more free lunches!
3. Apple TV & Content on demand: With Apple recently announcing the new Apple TV itunes combo, people can now rent TV programs through same iStore which people are used to for their iphone and IPAD applications. This effectively now means that you can seamlessly work your content across the 3 screens Mobile, Netbook/PC and TV.

So maybe now it would be the era of computer and tecos pairing up and dominating the market (Apple+AT&T) wimilar to the older era of chip makers and software makers dominating (Microosft+Intel). Share your views on this still developing partnership and how it will impact the tech scene. 

Other interesting links:

Comcast TV control now on IPAD

Alan Weinkrantz's 3 Screen Blog

The new Apple TV Interface

Email on its way out

 

Why software patents stifle innovation.

The technology world especially the software product firms has exploded with humungous amount of innovation and new product creation due to the bottom-up approach by an always increasing number of startups. This destructive creativity has been possible due to a global collaboration between software tech community and the ability to create products in a boot strapped model. One of the legacies of a bygone era which still exits as a thorn in this process has been patents.

In an recent article by Prof. Wadhwa he discusses that the only beneficiary of this archaic system has been the legal folks. Companies still apply for defensive patents to avoid law suits from competing firms. IMHO this stifles innovation and reduces the confidence level of teams to continue to extend the boundaries of technology. Leading companies should look at fostering innovation rather than take cover under the patent system. Look forward to seeing a constructive discussion on reforming this system.

 

Humble and Nimble - The new Aol. Logo

 

I liked the new Aol. logo (erstwhile AOL www.aol.com). Apart from being young and funky what I really liked is the way the lower typography is used and with a period ("."). Period gives the logo a sense of mystery. To be very frank I like simplicity and mystery which the period brings. When we were working with the brand designer for the logo of my startup, Injoos (www.injoos.com) we finally selected the design which was simple with multiple dots. I have had many interesting discussions with people on what the brand stands for and the design aspects.

Humble and Nimble

AOL having separted now form the larger Time Warner entity is aspiring to connect back with it's customer base. It has been a truly humbling experience for AOL in the last decade when it market capitalization tumbled from $100Bn to now around $3bn. Also the challenge will now be to differentiate it self from the packs of Yahoo, Google et. al. and carve a niche for itself. I am getting a feeling of Dejavu having been part of AT&T earlier and having gone through such an experience. After it's merger with SBC and then rebranding it's service AT&T(www.att.com) became at&t. Recognizing that it is no more a monopoly and has to connect back to it's customer base in its new avatar. The new logo gave it a sense of being humble and nimble.

How AOL Logo has changed over the years

How AT&T's Logo has changed over the years

 
 
  

According to the CEO Tim Armstrong “There’s always something behind AOL. That’s the thing that we’re hoping to get across with our AOL brand. The AOL brand is composed of many different things.The nomenclature of the dot is what comes after the dot,”

Video showcasing the new AOl branding and Tim Armstrong's interview:

There have been many contrary opinions on this new redesign. Om Malik has described the new logo as; "It is ambiguous at best, and as sexy as the obese, shapeless humans living on Axiom, the flagship of the BnL fleet in Pixar movie “WALL-E.” on his Blog .

From my perspective though Hubble and Nimble is the way to go Aol.

Some related links:

AOl. branding stories

http://gigaom.com/2009/11/22/aol-reveals-lame-new-look-logo/

http://www.liquidbrandexchange.com/what-do-you-think-about-the-new-aol-brand/ 

AT&T Branding stories

http://design.weblogsinc.com/2005/11/22/at-t-rebranded-wait-no-reinvigorated/

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2005/id20051212_770492.htm

Employee communication challenges in today’s environment - Part 1

Here is Part - 1 of series of blogs I plan to post on this subject.

Current scenario:

• People in general are better informed now than before.
• Speed of viral messaging. 
• Faster speed of communication through SMS, Twitter, 
• Everyone has an opinion. Blogs!
• Management still stuck with old paradigms and old notions.
• Nothing beats a personal touch even today in the digital age.
• How do we handle scale, multi geo communication?

Some of the best practices used in leading companies:

Case 1: Small sized IT firm

The organization in it’s infancy has 200+ IT professionals and has been growing. The internal Information systems team had setup couple of online Bulletin boards. Basically  this was implemented using Microsoft outlook shared folders visible to all. The employee and management bot could post messages, the Bulletin board was divided into various section line Official, Buy and Sell, Sports & Interests, General etc. There were also email IDs published for various functions such as Canteen, facilities etc. The employees could send emails to these concerned person or team using these mails ids. There was bulletin board usage guidelines published. Anyone violating the norms was communicated by the HR team.

Since the general culture of the organization was open people tended to discuss issues of concern on the bulletin board for e.g. quality of food deteriorating in the canteen and the response of the food manager. Th HR person kept regular tab on these messages and immediately caught any issues early before it blew into a major fiasco. The HR Manager also quickly brought relevant issues to the notice of senior managers to take actions and communicate back to the concerned parties.

The advantage of the electronic medium from this example is obvious that the manage could detect issues early and come up with solutions. But the fact is that it takes a daring employee to go and raise issue in the bulletin board. What if there was mechanism where casual discussions or chats happening between employees could be looked at to see if there are common patterns and identify issues. Something like having casual canteen discussions and see what the hot topic is. 

These things are now possible in the online world with web2.0 tools used widely in social networks and social media sites. For example rating news posted bubbles up the hit news to the top or looking at a tag cloud shows what are the hot topics being discussed. If mechanism like these are adopted inside organizations for example having a platform to support organization wide groups and teams will help HR and senior management unravel many of these issues way in advance, get feedback on policies implemented etc, Thus overall improving the communication with the employes.

 

Don't limit knowledge flow with Wikis

Wiki introduced the paradigm of collective intelligence "that many people can contribute to topic thus enriching the same". Was popularized by the publicly built encyclopedia the "Wikipedia". Wikis have become popular as new way of organizing content and sharing knowledge inside enterprises and business. One of the main attraction is that there are many free (Read open source) Wiki applications available e.g Twiki. MediaWiki, PbWiki, etc. But as we found with our own experience and with experience of many of our customers these applications are not user friendly and requires effort to maintain.  Wikis have many drawbacks for effective adoption and I am listing a few:

1. Editing content is tricky. The editor has been designed keeping more tech savvy uses (I would say coders) in mind. For e.g. who will remember to use markups like "bold" just to highlight few characters.

2.  Firstly you will need an in house IT team (or a outsourced vendor) to configure and setup. Also wikis cannot be customized or I would customization is not for the faint hearted.

3. Very textual and cannot mix multiple type of media. Though some versions do provide plugins to social media sites like Youtube etc.

4. Lacks the social nature popularized by networking applications like twitter and facebook (Web 2.0). As we have seen by experience that recognition and instant gratification are key to success of sharing and collaboration in teams.

So what are the alternatives? Social collaboration platforms (Enterprise 2.0) provide as great alternative to Wikis and solve all the problems listed above while being an effective platform for knowledge sharing. Only few platforms like Injoos provide a way to capture both structured (Read Blog, Documents etc.) and Unstructured (Read discussions, Micro Blogs etc.) in an integrated and seamless manner.

 

Impact of online media on the elections, democracy and giving power to the people

As I watching the debate of US Presidential candidates on CNN one thing which amazed me was the complimentary support which the online channels like Blogs, Online Polls, Emails, Chats etc, were provided to the TV anchors and the analysts, ultimately making the program much more richer and enjoyable. I thought of collecting various articles and interesting stuff on this subject and posting on this blog. My belief is the that collective action by various groups for their candidates online will cause a major shift on how elections are run and won in future in the various democracies of the world. Here are some interesting articles:

• Crowdsourcing the elections
• Facebook and US elections
• YouTube debate changes the rules