Chat Roulette new internet hype

Every now and then a new hype emerges on the internet. The newest is Chat Roulette, a simple website that connects people randomly with their web-cams. You go to the site, you give permission to connect with your cam, start new game and there you go... In no time you'll be connected with a perfect stranger somewhere in the world who's staring in your face.



It's weird, it probably won't lead to deep and meaningful contacts and it's certainly not meant for underaged. But it's understandable why it's such a big hit. The procedure is dead -simple. You wonder why this wasn't invented earlier. You don't need to do anything, just watch what comes along. You can start a chat - even talk with each other - but intelligent conversations are very rare as most will click you away instantly after seeing you're not a beautiful girl willing to show boobs.

The site already has made one guy famous: Merton. He's playing the piano and improvises songs based on who appears on the screen.

The web 2.0 revolution on the workplace

In a guest post on TechCrunch of feb 24 2010 Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce argues that enterprise software should take its cues from Facebook and become more social.

"In this decade, I’ve become obsessed with a new simple question: “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?” ( ) The compelling aspect of feeds, profiles, and groups, amplify the service’s stickiness. So does its functionality on a mobile device like an iphone—necessary to secure a service’s status as a “killer app.” Facebook is where I start my day to find out what my friends and family are doing. It’s where I go to see the important events in my social life. Everything I care about and need to know is pushed to me—and it requires no work on my part.


Now, we need to take this idea to our businesses. We need to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation. Market shifts happen in real time, deals are won and lost in real time, and data changes in real time. Yet the software we use to run our enterprises is in anything but real time. We need tools that work smarter, make better use of new technology (like the mobile devices in everyone’s hands), and fully leverage the opportunities of the Internet."


Anticipating on this coming revolution Salesforce has developed Salesforce Chatter an application that presumably unites the best of Facebook and Twitter and applies it to enterprise collaboration - making people more productive and businesses more competitive.



Other companies like Yammer, SocialText, Jive, SocialCast, and others compete with similar applications, some running "in the cloud", others running on internal servers. No doubt one force not to be taken lightly will  come from Google that recently opened up an open source marketplace for Google Apps and Gmail integrated contextual apps extensions. See earlier post. These let developers integrate all sorts of enterprise data right into Apps and Gmail. Whilst a company like Salesforce has a few million users, Google already has 25 million Apps users and apparently this number is vastly growing. For companies like Salesforce this is potentially a huge marketplace that they should either embrace or compete with.

For whom it may concern: here's Google's elaborate "Campfire presentation" where they announce the marketplace. The presentation is divided in several different 10 minute video's including a number of business cases.

Android: Something happened

On iTunes U you can find audio and video from loads of universities. The course "The future of the Internet" from Ramesh Johari from Stanford University dates from 2007. In this fragment he discusses "Network Neutrality" on mobile networks. At the end he tells about rumours that Nokia is developing an open-source Operating System based on Linux and discusses the consequences if that would happen.

"An open platform on which people could develop anything they wanted... It seems to me that's not likely to happen, but it also seems to me it would really be nice if it could happen. I just don't know - given past history - what the economics are that line up with the technology..."



Less than 3 years later we can conclude something did happen - not with Nokia though.

Google Apps opens open-source marketplace

Today Google announced a marketplace that'll give third party developers the opportunity to sell   applications to businesses that use Google Apps. According to Google there are currently 25 million Apps users divided over 2 million companies and it's growing at fast pace. Up ´till now Apps mainly consisted of `GMail`and gmail-linked apps like `Talk` and ´Tasks´, ´Calendar´, ´Docs´, ´Discussion Groups', ´Sites´ and ´Video´.

The main advantages of Cloud-Computing are

• No more need to update/upgrade software
• Savings on IT maintenance
• No more need to back-up files on (external) data servers

These advantages combined with an open source platform where an unlimited amount of third party software can be offered, opens up the road to a potentially very powerful marketplace. 

At the start of the marketplace today there are already more than 50 businesses selling applications across a range of categories.

Example of Manymoon: a social productivity tool that simplifies your work life by letting you organize group projects, tasks, documents...  

From the official Google Blog

We've found that when businesses begin to experience the benefits of cloud computing, they want more. We're often asked when we'll offer a wider variety of business applications — from accounting and project management to travel planning and human resources management. But we certainly can't and won't do it all, and there are hundreds of business applications for which we have no particular expertise.
In recent years, many talented software providers have embraced the cloud and delivered a diverse set of features capable of powering almost any business. But too often, customers who adopt applications from multiple vendors end up with a fractured experience, where each particular application exists in its own silo. Users are often forced to create and remember multiple passwords, cut and paste data between applications, and jump between multiple interfaces just to complete a simple task.

Android analogy
How powerful an open source platform combined with an open market for third party developers can be is proven by the Android Market. Within a year more than 20,000 applications - the majority offered for free - were developed, and consequently Android became in no-time a major threat for Apple´s iPhone dominance. See earlier post.

Microsoft and Apple team up against Google

Meanwhile the dinosaurs  from the 20th century  - former arch-enemies Microsoft and Apple - are more and more beginning to feel the heat from the Open Source threat to their closed-source fundamentals. They even begin warming up to each other when it becomes clear to both companies that Google is becoming their biggest competitor. Microsoft and Apple are reportedly close to adding Bing search to the iPhone. BusinessWeek on Jan. 19 reported the companies were in extended talks about replacing Google as the iPhone's default search service.

Google pulling a Microsoft on Apple

This week Apple announced a lawsuit against HTC. It's quite clear that the lawsuit is all about Android, being Apple’s response to its skyrocketing popularity.


from the 1996 PBS documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" in which Jobs quotes Picasso's "good artists copy, great artists steal" and adds, about Apple: "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

The iPhone is currently clearly the leader with 63.7% market share. But this position is challenged by Android, in February the iPhone lost 3.2% of its market share while both Android and RIM gained market share. Since its introduction in the end of 2008, Android has steadily been gaining ground on the iPhone, but the growth has accelerated considerably over the last four months. For example, Android’s market share has grown 44% over the past quarter, and has doubled over the past year. All the while, the iPhone has lost 5% from last quarter and 10% from last year.


Apple always relied heavily on the integration of hardware and software. Mac computers with Mac OS. iPods with iTunes. iPhone with its own closed operating system and closely controlled applications. They undeniably give a product that does the things it does very well. It will look cool, it will function as advertised and it will be integrated with the other core Apple products.




History repeating
In the 1980's however, this strategy was crushed by Microsoft's operating system - DOS - that evolved to Windows, gradually adopting many of the features that initially were developed by Apple. Whilst the hardware became a commodity with loads of manufacturers, Microsoft managed to achieve a near monopoly with their complementary OS. This actually looks an awful  lot like the strategy Google has deployed with their Android OS for mobile smart phones that's now flooding over the market. The big difference: unike Windows, Android is free and it's open source, thus challenging the principles iPhones are built on. Google does not necesarily need to make money out of it because for them both device as OS are just  links between people who click on and companies that pay for their ads.

New York Times, march 12 2010: Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal

Battle for Bandwidth

Google recently announced plans to offer experimental fiber internet access 100 times faster than standard DSL connections to 50 - 500,000 households in the US. While Google is characterizing the move as an "experiment," it clearly strikes at the core of companies like AT&T. The approach is similar to the way Google has taken on incumbents in other industries, offering a radically different approach within a marketplace. For telecom industry this threat follows:

• The Development of Google Voice - that offers free sms text messages and - eventually - will make free Skype-like VoIP conversations through your mobile phone possible. 
• The development of the Android open source operating system for mobile phones that gives developers and users the opportunity to develop and install software without intervention of neither manufacturers nor cellular phone companies. 
• And lately the introduction of the Nexus One `Google Phone` that´s being offered unlocked without the ususal ties with a long-term contract with a cellular phone carrier. So, manufacturers (who are at the mercy of the cellular phone companies selling their product) and cellular companies (who ultimately give the final thumbs up or thumbs down with regards to which apps can run on their networks) have no say in what happens on or with Nexus One. 

Google's long term business strategy is to be a major hub on the expanding internet and sell ads on their (partnering) sites.It's a quite simple numbers game: the more time people spend on the internet the more money Google makes. So, you need e-mail? No problem here's G-mail. Need to make a phone call or send a message? We'll give you Google Voice. Need to search the web? Speak out your query and Google's "voice to text" takes you to the nearest gas station or coffee shop making use of their Google Maps Data. Then there is Google Docs, Calendar, Wave, Picasa, Youtube, etc. Everything you need from the cloud and always on. 

A world wherein internet will be available as a datasphere around the planet - accessible from everywhere at any time - is dawning and Google wants to be the major hub in this sphere. In order to accomplish that, they have to either dominate or commoditize what sits between the person clicking on an ad and the company paying for the ad. According to Chris Dixon this roughly breaks down to:

Human - device – OS – browser – bandwidth –  websites - ads – ad tech – relationship to advertiser – $$$

In this chain Google obviously dominates websites, ads (search and syndicated AdSense partners), ad technology and relationship to advertisers (adwords). Devices are already highly commoditized (except for mobile hardware, hence Google Phone Nexus One). Operating system and browser are dominated by archenemy Microsoft. Hence Chrome, Chrome OS and Android. 

Bandwidth is dominated  by wireless carriers, cable operators and telcos. Because of massive infrastructure investments it's a hard market to get into for new players and consequently it's expensive, competition-free, and scarce. A recent FCC report concluded that 93 million Americans lack access to high-speed Internet service, with affordability being the primary barrier. This is a serious obstacle to Google's continued growth. The same goes for Facebook, eBay, Twitter, Amazon.com, Apple's  iTunes Music Store and every other website or online service you can think of. But it's Google that has the pocketbook and the self-regard to attempt to do something about it. Besides, it might prove to be a wise investment of a part of the mountain of cash they've piled up in recent years; profit margins on internet services were no less than 95% last year...

How Apple and Google's Romance Turned To Hate - Apple - Gizmodo

How Apple and Google's Romance Turned To Hate - Apple - Gizmodo