Is Twitter today's CB Radio? so what...

If you were born after 1975-ish (younger than 35-ish), chances are you won't get this post - but if you were a kid (or a trucker) during the 1960's and 1970's, you might relate. It struck me that the CB radio was basically Twitter - just on a different channel (quite literally) - using audio airwaves rather than the character-based internet. "Citizen Band" (CB) Radios were primarily used by truckers to keep in touch with each other and with a base station - maybe a dispatcher. The CB was their practical tool to communicate. Then, kids and geek hobbyists got a hold of them. I got one as a kid - probably in 1973 - when my dad finally gave in to my persistent begging. My dad certainly made me pay for it - but he risked his life on the ladder to install the antenna... I clearly remember him dropping the antenna once as he almost fell off the ladder. But, even bent, the antenna hooked me up to a world of tweets... voices of other people and truckers with whom I purposelessly interacted (that sound too familiar?).

Then, on a long car ride to Florida, the value of the CB became clear. We took the CB in the car and formed several temporal voice relationships with some truckers on the same route - down i95. On more than one occasion, we were warned of trouble, radar traps, accidents - and the previously useless banter became useful - almost necessary in hindsight.

Some other characteristics of the CB which seem analogous:

• We had "handles" - names that represented who we wanted to be... sometimes fun, sometimes close to our real personas. The only one I remember was my uncle's: StoneMan. You figure it out.
• We had our own language, which I think follows police radio language... like 10:4 ("ok") or 10:20 ("location") or "smokey" (policeman). wow... tricky.
• We had Channels - similar in my mind to #hashtags - but much less traceable.
• Short Tweets... after all, you could only hold that little button on the side of the mic for so long...
• CB's were trendy! (tweet tweet!) There was even a hit song by CW McCall called "Convoy"

This loose analogy between Twitter and the CB radio is not very enlightening, unless you want to believe that Twitter will face the same fate. So what was that fate? I'm guessing that hobbyists found more interesting and extendable platforms (not to mention the Internets ;) and truckers still use the CB in it's original form. If it were searchable, linkable, with more traceable social structures and usage patterns and without any locational limitations, maybe CB radios would have kept growing.... or maybe they did keep growing, right out of that stupid box in my room as a kid and into a chat room, then into that phone in my pocket and then into Twitter.

Maybe someone reading this post will take a hint and help those truckers still using CBs by launching a product that has the familiar, voice-based interface of the CB, but with the added the practical advances of Twitter! Traceable, linkable, bit.ly-able, followable CB Radios! ...
Hmmm.  Maybe not.
10:4 good buddy.

"May I have your attention, please"

Attention... Some want it. Some need it. Some give it. Some don't.
...and, yes, the mere existence of this blog puts me in category one, I guess.

An interaction with my 7-year old son brought up this whole stream of thought... He and my nephew were making impressive noise right at our feet while we were trying to have normal adult conversation about something which was completely irrelevant to the lives of these two resourceful first-graders. They decided that blowing a whistle and banging a drum – loudly – was the best way to get our attention. At first I treated the noise as part of the persistent, expected din you find in any house with kids. Then I realized that I was practically yelling to make myself heard, and finally shouted to them, “ENOUGH!... “ (hey, that worked). Followed by the gently delivered comment that every sensitive father must learn: “Please. Stop blowing that whistle or I really will crush it”.

“We’re just trying to get your attention!”.

I have to give them points for honesty and awareness - it's usually much more sub-conscious than that.

It struck me later that “getting attention” might be more a basic human need than just a phenomenon of competitive commercial coercion (although the latter is much more common). And now that web-based social networks have finally become recognized as potentially a more effective attention channel than others - here come the herds.

(this post grew pretty long... click here to see the whole story)Any business marketer, advertiser, publication, author, blogger, entrepreneur, actor, musician, politician, even Uncle Arnie is looking for anyone who will listen (“...you know why oil prices will never go lower? I’ll tell you why...”). And while most of us play both parts – attention seeker and attention giver (or withholder), we walk through life now being blasted from every angle with people blowing their whistles or banging their drums.

So we invent filters, methods, channels, for optional listening. Specialized cable channels, Syndicated feed readers, NetFlix, podCasts and iTunes. On our social networks, it's our circle of friends and connections which (apparently) "control" the flow. And attention-seekers invent new ways to blast us. Spam, Pop-ups, elevator video screens, billboards, even street performers. So, while the attention market is mostly based on gaining customers, there are three other goals at work here...

First, friend seekers. Date-seekers in many cases, but also the likes of Uncle Arnie, looking for people to agree with him – to find people who share his view, trying to get attention in small ways, maybe just to prove to himself that he’s right or to get some recognition that he is smart – or hopefully, looking for more diverse opinions which can help him refine his own ideas.

Second, fight seekers. Like that dude at the party who moves from group to group just waiting to find someone who disagrees with his theories so he can more loudly describe them (after all, it’s hard to justify telling people your detailed theories when they already agree. It’s more fun for this category of person to try to convert others to their cause).

And third, is a common one: Fame. There’s a high degree of respect given to those who become famous (even ignoring, I think, the potential monetary value of such fame)... and, therefore, there’s a powerful draw for people to win the kind of attention that brings fame. Like the guys from that show ‘Jack Ass’, who, week after week, would risk personal harm, humiliation, and hatred just because that was their best devised shot at becoming famous (which, they eventually did).

Now comes the popularity of social networks - LinkedIn, Facebook, Orkut, etc. as semi-controllable (implying semi-uncontrolled) communication channels... and here come the attention seekers. First the date-seekers and friend-seekers, then, the fame seekers (they only come after there's enough people watching to create fame)...and then, the professional, commercial attention-getters (businesses, advertisers, etc). I'm suddenly getting poked, compared, bitten... I'm getting virtual gifts and invited to play games... all by people I either know well or at least recognize as those I've invited into my virtual social circles. I'm also getting some valuable attention requests from people with really good ideas and invites to keep in touch with old friends. These new(ish) channels can really be powerful to control the inflow once you learn how - but they're even more powerful for the attention seekers, as we are all more likely to give our attention to someone who has already gotten the attention of one of our friends.

No matter the channel, we each have this powerful resource we can either offer or withhold – our Attention. But manage your network of friends or you might find you've opened your door to more attention seekers than ever. Just like the theory of email-bankruptcy - where people are just starting over and tossing aside their old email piles, you might find yourself declaring social (network) suicide, and killing off your current social profile and the network of 'friends' as the only way out from under the weight of that news feed.

When we are looking for entertainment, or a product or a service or a friend, we can offer our attention and listen for a while, or we can say “Please, stop blowing that whistle, or I really will crush it”.

Competing with software today vs. yesterday

It used to be very hard (more investment) to crush (win) a given business area with a killer software product - corporate or consumer. It was harder to actually code (program) quality, easy-to-use software (I think) – which meant it would take longer to produce, which meant you better get it right. “Getting it right” meant spending more time on requirements gathering, more time on testing and therefore, (in our infinite developer wisdom) less time on usability – after all, there was no time for those “nice-to-haves” and no recognition of its value in comparison to getting the business rules right. All of this, by definition, meant that the software took longer to deliver, which, in turn meant that it was more common for users to outgrow the software by the time it was delivered - particularly in the corporate environment.

Users often never got any value (ROI) from software which took 1-2 (or more!) years to deliver. But, even in that environment, (which I think I describe as more grave than it was) sometimes you could get it right and win – and then, as a software vendor at least, you could win big since it was so hard for others to compete (for the same reasons it was hard for you to win).

Gaining market share was even harder. From the customer’s perspective, in the face of their large investment in a software product (nothing was free back then and just the installation cost was something never to take lightly), they had a much stronger “follower comfort” motivation – perceiving it to be safer to go with the leader (“you can’t be fired for using IBM”). That meant you needed customers to get customers. A key reference customer was necessary and critical mass was, well, critical to succeed. In Financial Services, if you did succeed as a software vendor, you were bought by Sungard – they knew how hard it was to win, so they let other companies do it and then just bought them (all... so many, in fact, they have to present them in an alphabetic index ;).

Today, it costs less to enter a given market with an idea and then to fix it, expand it, scale it – or even abandon it. Less up-front time on requirements gathering (because you can credibly limit v1), which means getting software into the hands of users earlier, which provides better usability feedback, which produces better software. There are even basic automated services - APIs - , like transaction processing, storage, etc, which are a snap to integrate.

Overall, the time to produce something valuable is shorter and it's more iterative, delivering value in stages. Programming is easier. And deployment... OH! Deplyment! Those barriers are lifted almost completely – at least for web services (SaaS) – allowing developers to get software into the hands of end-users immediately, without even an approval or onerous legal process (if both sides willingly participate).

All this means there are more competitors. Big companies need to compete with small companies (who, by the way, might be able to alter pricing due to their lower R&D legacy). Old companies compete with new. Customers probably have lower switching costs too, due to their ongoing demand for ‘switchable service’ as part of the service they choose (ironic, isn’t it – that to win a customer’s business today, you hove to prove to them that they can easily stop using your service).

Competing today is actually, well, fun! Got an idea? Try it! Get it out there!

Office 2.0: what it looks like

These were some notes I made before the conference when thinking about "What is Office 2.0?". I didn't bother trying to mention most of this stuff on my panel, as it seemed over-covered, but thought it was worth putting some of these here for...well... just to put it somewhere (and for dispute or expansion, if you are in the mood). I also didn't focus on the technical characteristics of the tools, but rather some higher-level perceptions of the business environment (not really knowing whether that is useful)...

Workforce:

• Mobile and Remote
  
• Flexible (full-timers, specialized part-timers and contractors)
  
• More productive and happier (when working)?
  
• [negative point] Too connected - difficult to draw the line between work and home life
  

(ignore the buzzword 'knowledge worker' if you're like me, but still fun to check out acidlabs' view which seems relevant here)

Processes:

• Collaborative (available, easy and practical via the technology)
  
• Easily procured, standard business services (yes, SaaS)….
  
• Self-customized services (yes, a mix of standard and customized)
  
• More integration between automated tools to support custom workflows (e.g. human interaction supported through integration with communication tools like sms and email)
  

Technology:

• Collaboration supported as an expected feature (as prevalent as copy/paste is today)
  
• Lots of standard services used underneath business-specific apps (e.g. S3, Checkout, etc.)
  
• Practical do-it-yourself customizations (via options and integrations, not programming)
  
• Less package software installations locally
  
• Less custom developed corporate software
  

Competitive Environment:

• More competitors
  
• Faster pace of innovation
  
• Many smaller niche businesses quickly meeting specific vertical needs
  
• [negative point] Too many choices for businesses, if that's possible, in the shorter term (until real winners rise to the top)
  

...maybe all too obvious to justify a blog post... oh well - too late.

Popularity caused by Popularity

Thinking about the competitive environment in web applications as part of the whole Office 2.0 conference pre-think, it seemed worth analyzing (a gross overstatement) what makes some new applications just zoom past the competition in terms of user popularity - and therefore, success (from a usage, not a revenue, perspective).

The examples already seen are obvious, including auction markets (eBay), Video (YouTube), demographically-focused social networking (MySpace, LinkedIn, FaceBook) and plenty of others. Popularity seems to bring popularity. Once a winner is chosen in a certain cross-section of function and demographic (or business vertical), it becomes a peer magnet. The obvious reason this occurs is:

• Critical Mass. It often adds value to have more people involved in a service – for example with bidding services, you want 200 potential bids, not 2... or with social networks, there's not much sense to using one which your friends won't use.
  

But there are 3 other reasons people (or their companies) select particular apps, which might apply more to non-social business-focused apps or at least apps which do not rely on critical mass:

• Trust. People perceive something that other people already use as more trustworthy and safer. "If Avis and Budget already use Salesforce.com for CRM, than I'm probably ok selecting it for my business".
  
• Laziness. Given the time commitment of a proper analysis to chose a service, people are willing to save time by going with what peers are already using.
  
• Promotion and Buzz. The more people use a service the more other people hear about it and the more likely they are to at least try it (then it must rely on it's own value).

The speed at which people communicate in this new environment, fosters this phenomenon, since the above reasons given rely on knowing what applications or services others are using. Maybe this is why it seems that a winner in more recent years becomes a winner faster than in the past... or maybe it's just that time seems to be going by quicker...

New product is ready for distribution

The analogies of garden growing to product development turn out to be pretty good - the only difference being that you don't need too much experience, training or skill to achieve greatness in the former (I know some of you might say the same for the latter). In fact, in about 60-80 days, and without much more than about a day or two up-front investment (dig!) and about $25 acquisition cost (to improve my time to market - I could have started with $1.99), I had produced the most incredible tomatoes. What a great confidence booster! From virtually nothing more than dirt, water and some labor, it turns out you can produce something that tastes great with a bagel and cream cheese - and looks good too!
I'll have to try this at work... If the analogy is right: some up-front design (just layout and spacing), promotion (dig), some positive energy (sunshine), some incentives (water), checking up every couple of days (yeah), some bug eradicating (uh huh), some hand-holding (stakes to keep them from falling over)... and bam! A Great Product!
Now - how does all this work in the winter?

Growing Products, literally

Probably the most over-used analogy is to compare almost anything which requires work - businesses, products, even relationships - to a garden (or even a single plant). You know... water it, give it sun, pull the weeds around it, rid it of pests... and one day you'll reap the rewards of the fruit. It's a good analogy usually. But the other day, I got a view of the most beautiful flowers, close up, in my kitchen, which made me think that the analogy goes deeper than the obvious.

There were about 70 peonies, cut from the garden, practically exploding in color on my kitchen counter, and I was totally frozen by their beauty (I know, too much feminine side.. deal with it). First of all, I immediately realized "that's why she does it", thinking, of course, of the hours of time and energy my wife spends planning, ordering, planting and caring for these (and hunderds of other) plants. The basic part of the analogy, about how hard work and proper caring can really bring rewards, was truly proven here... but then it occurred to me, that there is also a time limit to the reward. In this case, the appreciation of these incredible blooms could only last for a few days at most. In fact, in time, no matter what we did, the beautiful flowers would turn into crumbly, dead vegitation, rotting away in stinky swamp water vases (yuck). I quickly grabbed my camera in an effort to prolong the time I had to appreciate the flowers in their current colorful state.

So that whole analogy, including the time element, applies nicely to human relationships.... they take work to bring continuous reward and in time, no matter what we do, relationships fade and die... whether (but hopefully not) due to lack of proper caring, or just the natural aging of life into death. (that's the deep part...sorry... no more of that..)

The analogy also applies really well to Products (ah.. again.. my point... at the very end of a long post... I have to stop that). Some products take tons of work for a very brief, but powerful (or mild) reward... like a great event... a family reunion or wedding, for example... which takes lots of work, but brings great joy only for a very brief period of time. Other products also take lots of work but continue to flourish and live and bring reward for many, many years. Developing pharmaceuticals, for example, have the potential to bring great reward for as long as we can see. The Polio vaccine is an instance of that. Imagine the work involved - but the reward is continuous.

...and the key thing that I learned by looking at those flowers the other day, is to appreciate the reward as fully as possible while you have it - particularly since you know the reward won't last.

"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying."
by Herrick, Robert
Quote Provided By Quotations Book

Your whining sales person is living in my house

A friend was recently complaining to me about their woes of selling products to corporate IT departments - knowing that I can relate to their pain from a previous life. He's sure the people working at the target company would love their product - in fact they've told him, but he can't convince the corporate IT guys. This is no surprise, given that the IT guys are in the business of risk aversion as a priority over innovation or risk taking - even if there is a huge potential gain in productivity or revenue or whatever... (I'm not sayin' that's right, I'm just sayin' that's how many corporate IT groups operate)... So.. my friend's product continues to grow (albeit slowly) by appealing directly to the people working in operational jobs within the company... under the radar of their IT group.

We've seen many products succeed by being offered directly to the end customers rather than those in charge of purchasing - either by chance (the end customers find it and fall in love with it) or by design (the product is targeted to the end customer directly as a sales method to get around those in charge)... then the end-customers sell the product to their guardians from within - they become moles.

So it struck me that kids are probably the most powerful moles - little sales people living amongst us... How else could you sell sneakers with concealed wheels in the soles - you can't market those to sane parents directly (apologies to the 95% of my parent-friends who have purchased these). But when a kid whines for a few months about getting this seemingly insane product - the parent has about one choice to stop the whining - and that sells product. Drug companies selling perscription drugs directly to the public, inject every doctors office with whining patients who suddenly start requesting certain drugs... TV Show producers get their target audience to sell their product when they "ask their cable company to add the Freak-of-the-Week-Channel" (they probably bought ads on Desparate Housewives for that specific show).

Who is your end customer? Are they whining enough to sell your product for you? Just be forewarned - if I ever get a hold of the people who put candy bars in supermarket checkout lanes, I'll lock them in a room with my kids for a few hours during a good sugar high from their fabulous, artificially flavored food-stuff.. and I'll leave them there during the post-sugar-high crash too...

Product Managers aren't exactly artists... but...

Making my first foray into the art world this weekend, I went to a demonstration by an artist, Elizabeth Pruitt, in a gallery near my home. It was intriguing... to watch someone slowly turn blotches of paint into a practically alive version of still objects. And, while watching Elizabeth, an analogy of painting artists to software product creators came to me quite clearly.

Elizabeth set up her still life model to be a pre-defined image of what her product would become. If you didn't like the way the roses sat atop the box, or if you just don't like brass urns and grapes, than you know in advance that you probably won't like her finished product - even before her brush hits the canvas. On the other hand - if you love the way these objects fit together the way she has created the physical model, and you've already enjoyed the beauty of her other paintings, than you will love this particular painting when done (which we did!).

The point is (yeah, I'm finaly getting there) that Elizabeth defines her product well before she paints it. She figures it all out before any tubes of paint are even opened. The objects, their relationship to each other, the colors, the shadows, the light (!), "the story" (as she puts it). Do all painters work this way? I think not. I'm guessing there are some which start painting without a real vision of where they'll end up...and while they still may achieve brilliance, they couldn't convince anyone else of that until the work was done.

It seemed so clear to me that product managers - at least in the software space - also work closer to one of those methods or the other... either diligent about defining every behavior of their finished product, every graphic, every navigation, every functional feature - or - loosely outlining only the highest level definition of what they are creating (uh..."web-based collaboration", as an example)... while most fit somewhere in between these two extremes (guess which side I am closest to ;)

As I thought about this blog entry - it also ocurred to me that this line of thinking is very close indeed to a brilliant Malcolm Gladwell speech (a rendition of which I heard at a sales conference about a year ago) which expands on the concepts put forth by David Galenson in his book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses".... Here's a quick excerpt from his site:
"Experimental innovators work by trial and error, and arrive at their major contributions gradually, late in life. In contrast, conceptual innovators make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas, usually at an early age."

Seems like analogies come easy when comparing creators in any medium - just took my a bit by surprise at first since it seemed painting was so far from my work for me when I first stepped into that gallery.