Ways of screaming, “LOOK AT ME!”

What do the following companies have in common? Ebay, Facebook, Myspace and Microsoft (please suggest others in comments).

Answer – they’ve all launched an ‘open’ platform for developers in the hope of stimulating or rejuvenating their core business. It seems that in the web world, once a company hits a certain size/maturity level that throttles and chokes the development of new ideas, the trend is to throw out an element to the developer space in the hope that something better will come from it. But is that always necessarily the case? They could just sell stuff.

Let’s compare that notion to Amazon who launched S3 and their suite of web services with an immediate openness so that it would be embraced from the word ‘go’ by developers as a strong yet flexible tool. Granted it’s in a different arena, but is there something to be said here about having an open strategy from the beginning of a business’ operations?

As well as opening up another chunk of their site, Ebay have partnered with a Vietnamese startup. This type of behaviour is not new from Ebay who, quite sensibly, have in the past collaborated or acquired national/local level auction sites in Asia to gain the specialisation of language and culture. One wonders if they’d adapt their structure in the future to take the trading down to a much more local level in Craigslist style, or if they’d look to go social by pushing their own messaging systems and allow greater in-site sharing on top of their current activities loading Ebay widgets into every other social network on the web.

When putting my face on the Zuckspace, my concerns lie primarily in what the media and authorities tell me about privacy, and then my experience as a consumer begins to become tiresome with the constant nagging of a thousand different invitations to join up to some virally marketed application with zero useful functionality. Imagine a parallel world where from day 1, Mark had opened doors on thefacebook to the developer community and attracted business through being 100% public about changes to services, rather than the ‘by-the-way we added this’ approach. Myspace wouldn’t have stood a chance, and maybe we’d have a half decent set of apps that are useful for our daily routines. It sickens me how much VC money goes into widgets and such, with no real revenue coming back out.

I think openness is something that business analysts should start to use to gauge the level of maturity or desperation of a company. Perhaps in some instances it’s just something of a gimmick in which case the company in question should be exposed as a surfer of the trend wave. Opening a developer platform or a part of your product is a huge move, and any company taking steps down that path should learn to walk before they start to run. I look forward to a time when VCs and angels see in potential investments the strength of an idea that embraces community, social and open concepts in a sensible and straight-forward blend. As the last couple of years have seen the web turn social, it is certain that the immediate future holds for someone the opportunity to make a big win by finding the perfect business model and in my opinion that will find its roots in the beekeeper open source example.

Openness for the purpose of having some hope to clutch on to as your firm levels off isn’t something anyone should push for, so instead we should ask these maturing companies to get smart and openly talk to each other. The future lies in good communication and the portability of services. EA Maxis have released their new game Spore which is the perfect example for what I’m trying to illustrate – there’s a real market out there for products that make sharing information simple and that blur the boundaries between our online and offline experience. The ability to make YouTube videos of game play and add them in-game is incredible, and I hope that GameVee take note of where games like Spore are going, and try to get some good partnerships in motion with game makers.

The directions that companies in the general tech but especially web2.0 fields need to be looking at are vertical (online and offline – helped already by Google Gears and Yahoo! Browser Plus), horizontal (desktop, laptop, giant plasma screen, UMPC or cell/mobile/smart phone – lets have a seamless experience wherever) and everything else in between which I’m naming ‘diagonally’ for want of a better word (integrating and cooperating with services provided by others that could make for sensible partnering and sharing). We’re all still waiting on total perfection in the ‘horizontal’ direction: I’m talking about mobile browsing and the recognised unfulfilled potential.

The latest developer craze is surely all about Apple’s shiny new iPhone (or not). VC activity is bound to go off the scale as startups show the world how you really make use of a platform. I’m praying that mobile platforms generally, whether Android or LiMo or iPhone, find productive and helpful apps housed, and that they don’t spin out of control like social network platforms have all seemed to. I’d love to be able to take ‘digital nomad’ really mobile… or rather, on my mobile. Currently that project is, for me, simply limited to getting all my operations inside a browser.

Firefox 3 has been officially released today, and hopefully now that’s out of the way Mozilla can take a step back and analyse their next moves on mobile platforms. Being a browser maker, they certainly sit in a favourable position, one in which they could stand to soak up an even greater number of users should they adapt products for ‘touchy’ devices.

Unsurprisingly RIM’s Blackberry line up contains a touch phone, and the phrase ‘line up’ is the exact reason that they’re going to keep making money despite just how great the new iPhone might be – there’s so much more choice for consumers. Besides, let’s not forget the business users that swear by them and their hardcore functionality.

Now that Windows 7 is in motion and we have days of staring at our grubby finger prints to look forward to, I think it’s high time that Windows Mobile caught up with Apple’s shiny software. I make no apology for using the word ’shiny’ twice next to ‘Apple’ – I’m no Mac Fanboy, I just think they deserve credit for making flashy (even though, laughably, Adobe Flash STILL isn’t on the iPhone) gizmos that everyone else can copy and make more practical. Microsoft need to push and push their speed at rolling out products and services because I don’t think it’ll be long now before their competitors gain enough market share and publicity to make everyone locked into their brand able to see the shiny stuff and lust after it.

Talking about the Big 3 (and AOL) is unavoidable in this blog post, and I’m not sorry about that. I’ve been avidly following this drama for months and have watched Microsoft’s obsession with joining the online advertising business grow. I strongly agree with Henry Blodget’s latest comment that this isn’t what Microsoft needs, it should focus on corporate business and make its core products so strong that they keep hold of their oligopoly.

I ca(h)n’t take this (bad pun? I don’t care) obnoxious muscling in on affairs and trying to force a sale just as much as I can’t believe how resilient (perhaps arrogant) Jerry has proven to be. He’s frozen the hiring, offered up a package to his quitting employees, and signed the deal with Google. Most incredible of all is just how severed any ties are with Microsoft and how badly this is reflecting on stock, as raised by NYT’s Joe Nocera. So what’s next?

I was so convinced at one stage that Microhoo would happen, and now it hasn’t I’m keeping my lips sealed. Others have not, and think that whilst Yahoo! would do well from acquiring AOL, it’s not going to happen because Microsoft will continually inject an offer that’s higher than Jerry’s, both out of spite for that poison pill and to feed the ad obsession.

REEELOOOAD!!!

“Had to reload, had to rewind. It’s a standard reset, no long ting.” – MC Skibadee @ NYE/NEC Drum n Bass Event 2008

Whilst I would hardly deem the tactics “standard”, the Microsoft-Yahoo state of play has seen this reload/rewind situation unfold, with Yahoo! trying to back-pedal their rejection of Microsoft’s $33 offer. After the last 5 days of frantic maneuvering we can’t predict what comes next, but we can say that it won’t take long to happen.

My internet connection has been wobbly over these last few days, making blog-reading a challenge and quite exciting when the bursts came in. All sorted now. This screen shot taken of my Gmail shows just how much coverage the pair have had:

It seems that for a time I was the only person happy that Microsoft had walked away from the deal. I’m a big user of Yahoo! services, mainly flickr and delicious, and don’t want anything to change with these services. I also like that there are a “Big 3″ of the internet – Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! – because everything in this universe comes in 3’s (a theory that will discussed in the future on my openness tumblog).

The question on everyone’s mind now is “What’s next?”

We’ve seen a real shambles of negotiation, and I enjoyed reading Henry Blodget’s extensive coverage where he discusses the seemingly amateur nature of a certain CEO’s performance. I believe that walking away from this deal came from Steve Balmer losing his temper combined with a slight delusion that this could be a smart move if it drops the Yahoo! value to a price that’s “not a dime more” than what it ’should’ be; but also because Jerry Yang has been a very stubborn founder throughout this period and has refused to accept that his company is worth anything less than what he sees it as being worth. To both sides of this equation: GET REAL. Please take some time to think properly about the outcome, where you want to end up, and what decision your stakeholders really want you to arrive at.

Either Microsoft and Yahoo! will get back to the table and work out a deal properly for a value currently estimated at $34, or the walking away gesture finds its roots and we watch Yahoo! get tied up with Google and AOL. I’m still semi astounded that despite the deadline for decision making, despite the supposed end to all this with Microsoft walking away, and despite the real flux that respective valuations have found themselves in, we are all STILL confused as to what will come next, and there’s still more than one potential outcome.

My next question is who will be in Microsoft’s sights next? Microsoft need to adopt a web presence and they seem unable to do that without acquisition. Could they snatch up AOL like pulling the rug out from under Yahoo!s feet? Peter Kafka believes Facebook (SAI 25 Live no.1 spot at the moment) could be an option. That’s not wildly inappropriate seeing as Microsoft have already bought an ad slice of the ZuckSpace. If they’re looking for a social network, LinkedIn might be an option which they could go on to leverage for business use, although something tells me they’re looking to spend serious cash to ensure a better chance against Google.

Microsoft’s latest offering Live Mesh is being deemed by many harsh (and overly critical) M$-hating journalists as an idea that completely misses the point. I can see what they mean, having run my Digital Nomad project, all services are moving to the cloud so that user experience is the same across platforms, and we only have to worry about the browser we use. They are missing this huge glaringly obvious fact though – just because web2.0 means you CAN doesn’t mean that everyone in the world DOES yet.

The cloud represents the next phase in technology and human interaction with it, that’s unquestionable. At this point in time there are problems- it creates concerns about privacy and security, not to mention the fact that not every computer in the world is connected to the internet. Mesh is the right idea for Microsoft at this phase in their product life cycle, because it sees their users encouraged to own all the devices that are available and effortlessly (ok, that part remains to be seen) sync them all and use them from other devices.

This mesh system looks to start the paradigm shift from local desktop activities to a harmony of synchronised files, tasks and processes on a series of machines and devices using the cloud to achieve this. Presumably users can also expect some flavour of collaboration and sharing experience to go hand-in-hand with this. We can assume that stage 3 of this system would then look to migrate users entirely out onto the cloud.

In the same way that Microsoft’s size and maturity makes quick and scaled change a real mission, it can look to its heavy adoption by users worldwide to make this thinking acceptable. For the mean time, having a stronger web presence seems out of reach, and acquisition is Microsoft’s only smooth route. Developing that web presence would give them time and means with which to build up services ready for integration with Live Mesh, but wait – wouldn’t that mean Microsoft would be pioneering user experience and the relationship between local and cloud based features?

Steve, you should have bought Yahoo!