-
Website
http://www.scobleizer.com/ -
Original page
http://scobleizer.com/2007/10/02/steve-ballmer-still-doesnt-understand-social-networking/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
We live in interesting times, indeed. If you look at just the last 2-3 weeks and what news came out of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo - there is an interesting synchronicity going on here: Office, Social Networking, Search, Office, Social Networking, Search, ... - is it just me, or is there a pattern here?
And it all revolves around platforms for advertising dollars :)
http://www.xmlaficionado.com/2007/10/google-mic...
Spot on. Damn, it's frustrating being a MSFT shareholder, seeing them 4th in advertising, and trying to buy or re-build things again and again and not succeeding.
Let's take one simple example - calendar sharing. It's "Built In" to Office 2007/Outlook 2007. But damned if I can figure out how to actually find the calendar it's sharing on Live/hotmail/something, and worse, tell someone how to subscribe to my free/busy data, even from another OUTLOOK!
Meanwhile, Google Calendar just works like that. Arrrgh.
Yes, I know microsoft has some SN features in Live and Spaces, but, as you said, my network is elsewhere.
Ultimately I have to say this is a great post. Nice one once again.
Twitter addicts tolerate more bugs and downtime than anyone cares to admit, but the loyalty is ferocious. Why? Because you migrated there, during the Mean Kids fiasco, and we followed you. Now we're hooked on the community.
The messages are personal trivia, cool links, or technical remarks, but aside from the content, the community seems like a summer camp, in the style of "Goodnight Johnboy" intimacy.
Making the technical product is irrelevant. Showing a human face and voice, entering into the rushing river of brevities, and riding it to the bitter end, that's what counts in Twitter.
It's the vision, the idea, and the implementation of tools that meet unfulfilled needs.
It's not "who's smartest?"
Rather, it's "who's more in touch with people?"
And, btw, I analysed Digg and found that your blog is the most dugg wordpress.com blog. I tweeted it, and did it @scobleizer. And, very probably, you missed it. Too much volume, Scoble, too much volume :)
I said it before, and I'm saying it again: Just waiting for December to come so I can analyse your blog, Linkblog and Twitter together...
BTW, as for not leaving services: Twitter's been going down nearly ever hour lately and none of us are going anywhere!
[Would love to see a post by you defending podcasting]
If that's what happens "post fad" I want more of it!
Someone (TC or R/WW) should write a piece. I'd look at the Comscore/Alexa of the top podcast websites as well; along with launch date of podcasts being available via iTunes easily. How many podcasters exist now? How many listeners?
I'll be first to admit I'm not into podcasting, so I could be speaking from my own silo. But I'd bet that podcasting listenership hasn't increased all that much, if any, in the past year.
This is nonsense. Podcasting allows me to listen to my favorite NPR shows and "Eyes of the World" (Grateful Dead) and "Friday Night Fish Fry" (blues) as I work during the day. How is this a "fad" or not useful? Yes, we have local radio, but how can I select the exact content I want, when I want it?
BTW: did the Zune ever get Podcasting? Not meant to be a "smarmy" question-- just curious.
On the other hand, MySpace is the best way for a band to get exposure and spread their music. Almost every band has a MySpace music page. There's very little high tech about it - the community is what makes a difference.
Should we not be looking to the social network of social networks!!
The next big thing on the Internet will disintermediate marketing processes that have traditionally built their value on the ability to target media, products and messaging based on demographic consumer characteristics.
Although this will not necessarily be enabled by some revolutionary, yet to be invented technology, it may be. The current social networking paradigms and mechanisms haven’t yet evolved to the point where editing, conversation, trust and targeting are completely embedded, in a zero-overhead fashion, into our use of the Internet, but platforms and technologies will hit this explosive seam soon enough.
It's shocking that Ballmer would primarily evaluate a property on the basis of the code and how many developer hours it would take to replicate it. You're probably right that it's a negotiating ploy. As you said: the value of Facebook is that my friends are on it. (Oh, yeah... and it's a platform and there's an advertising model coming.) But for now... it's the friends thing.
Here''s the nugget of truth in what Ballmer said: everyone is vulnerable to a breakthrough that offers something radically more useful to the customer--also vlulnerable to internal rot and decay.) Office, too, may be a "fad."
Twitter is the same thing, I really don't care to know what where or what someone is doing from moment to moment, some of these things are creative and may have some legs over time, but I'm not in the school of get on board just because everybody seems to be doing it.
Microsofts problem is that they wait to long to get in to some of these markets and then they contemplate overpaying for something like face book.
I hope they don't do it
I seriously doubt that they could accomplish this in all honesty, they’d be totally buried in “let’s integrate with SharePoint… and Word… and whatever else we can come up with”.
When was the last time Microsoft got anything of that magnitude done in 2 weeks?
I think you missed Ballmer's point on the faddish potential of Facebook. I think he meant that Facebook itself could be a fad -- not that social networks are. (Or at least that's what I hope he meant.) And I think this is a very serious concern. I don't even have to raise the spectre of MySpace and Friendster to make this point -- I can just point to all of my friends who joined Facebook in the last 6 months and now say "There's nothing to do here."
I'm not saying who's right or who's wrong -- I don't know what will happen with Facebook. All I know is that this isn't a simple bet, and I'd be worried that Facebook could be a fad too.
(I admit, your general historical points about Microsoft seem accurate.)
http://tinyurl.com/28lf5e
I am a Sr. VP of a very old Internet company. I just attended a social marketing conference a few days ago (which was at the University of Washington in Seattle); I guess we should have invited Steve so he could see where this is all going. Anyways, I keep my FaceBook account up to date as do most of my collegues and wife's collegues, many who are over 42 and professionals (myself included). It just so happens we get social networking - Ballmer does not. Maybe he just does not want any "friends".
Or maybe he does and realizes how much of a stir he will create by this post. As they say, "crafty like a fox". I have already used his comments in my own blog so maybe he does get it :)
Facebook is for me simple: "Confirm or Ignore"... i get friends requests, that's all i do.. Using it is entirely different story and "attraction economy" inside facebook imho is over-rated much like Second Life..
Great concept, little execution.
That's the business card of four years ago. It's really not all that different than Facebook's business card of today. Or, for that matter, MetaFilter's business card -- a low user id -- eight years ago.
"If these things have utility (they do) then it doesn't matter if they are getting hyped up or not."
No, what matters is if they are getting *used* or not. If Facebook is only a business card box, then I'll be using it once a month.
Again, I don't know if Facebook is different than the history that brought us MeFi --> Friendster --> MySpace. If you force me to bet, I'd bet it is different. But then if you told me I had to bet $500 million, well....
But, we'll see. Someone will look stupid in a few years. Maybe it might be me.
Robert, I agree with the stuff you're saying but you've got such an arrogant attitude saying that just because you haven't tried something it's lame.
If you grew up using these online services, you'll know technology comes around. That's like a filesharing noob saying that Napster is lame compared to Bittorrent. How could one even fathom the idea of Bittorrent at the time? Likewise, when Altavista was king, no one could envision what Google would bring to the table.
Sometimes big ideas just arrive and stick around. Maybe Facebook is one of those big ideas, maybe not. Regardless, these ideas evolve and it's simply naive to dismiss predecessors as 'lame'.
Interestingly, with all this social networking craze, email is still the no-frills dependable foundation for the rest world.
To the above person that said podcasting is a "fad", you are very wrong. Podcasting is here to stay. But I do doubt the survivability of companies that are completely based on podcasting. For example, I don't expect PodTech to be around at this time next year, two years at the latest.
Microsoft won't follow your advice because they see potential revenues in advertising. Advertising is gonna force them into social networking stuff cause I think that's where a LOT of the revenues in this business will be.
You nailed it buddy. They are clueless.
It was nice to hear your perspective on how micosoft thinks. I actually blogged about this midday and just day that this topic is on techmeme at th top ;)
I was just dumbfounded at hearing him say it was a fad... lmao.
http://facereviews.com/2007/10/02/microsofts-ba...
See you this weekend at graphing social. Should be good times.
Rodney Rumford
Microsoft is beloved of CIO's because it's "safe" tech. After having Oracle abruptly shove poorly implemented webtech down their throats, it is immensely comforting to have Microsoft represent the "old guard". There's a comfort in knowing that MS will *eventually* promote a tech, not when it's new and hot-but when it's old, mature and safe.
My company is involved yellow pages - every time you open a yellow book you likely see our work. We work with hundreds of companies and dozens of publishers (Verizon, SBC, RH Donelley, etc.). From anecdotal evidence, to the vast majority of these people, Myspace is what their kids are on. That's not intended as a slam, by the way, just my experience.
When Ballmer calls Facebook a fad people like me breathe a sigh of relief. It's irrelevant if Facebook actually IS a fad, but it means that I won't come in to work tomorrow and find that the next version of Office is Google Spreadsheets writ large. I won't have to drag my entire company through a decade of technology in a day, and replace 3/4 of my staff. I suspect the same feeling holds true for our vendors, and our clients.
I see Mr. Ballmer's statement as an affirmation of stability. In the personal computing space, he may be way off base, but for business computing his is the type of idiocy that will help my career.
Ballmer is missing the boat, big-time. I know it must pain you as a former Softie. :(
just yesterday, you said the death of blogging has been heralded, and today you say you don't think blogging is a fad? If people are leaving it to do the next thing ("tweeting"), then that _is_ a fad, by definition.
pk.
GPS + Social Network Tie in + Keyword Search all wrapped up in a brushed aluminum package less than the size of a pack of Marlboro Lights is scaring the bejeezus out of Mr. Balmer.
Think about what pulled the internet out of the first slump. It was Google and this word auction crazy business. Now take that power, ease of use, care of customer, and then think about how much money gets spent in the car, compared to how much gets spent on your computer. In less you are 1 in 10,000 or more, the answer is much more money gets spent in the car.
When you enable advertising to the other 95 percent of all countries GNP, now we are talking paradigms. Now think about Office. What is your corporation going to do? Give Microsoft 5million dollars a year to use it's phones and office suite? Or take the free advertising supported one that works much better from Google? Google will get the complaints nailed out, Microsoft better hurry or it's going to be ugly.
I'd add to that ... whatever happened to good old research .. and listening. Even a small dipstick immersion or deep dive into the social networking space and its communities would reveal that while morphing all the while, they are here to stay! "The desk is a dangerous place to view the world" - John LeCarre
What matters is these tool communities are becoming mainstream at an alarming and astonishing rate: the critical mass you predicted in Naked Conversations has arrived.
It's irrelevant if many business are still stupid about blogs, podcasts, live event streaming, VoIP, Twitter, YouTube.
What matters is customers are enjoying these, and they're largely supplanting the MSM and corporate PR "messaging".
Ballmer is dismissive, to explain away the fact that Microsoft has not responded adequately to the social media trend that began in 1992 and is gaining that critical mass that is making it totally mainstream.
Microsoft hates missing a mainstream technology. Ballmer is sour grapesing it, and poo-pooing specific services.
Popularity of services waxes and wanes, but is that a reason to not jump in with a version like almost everyone else is?
Microsoft is backing Yippykaya. Does Ballmer consider that socnet a silly "fad"? What happened to Microsoft Spaces blogging thingamajig?
Microsoft is caught with it’s pants down, asleep at the switch. That’s all. And Ballmer is putting a positive spin on it.
Don't believe me? Ask some of your VC friends. Ask them if *they* would invest in Facebook at that kind of price. I guarantee you that none would. So, why do you want Microsoft to value Facebook at $15B? Now clearly, Microsoft doesn't need the same kind of returns that a VC needs, but the question over valuation remains.
You deride some Microsoft people's the use of the term "business value"... I'm not sure why. From the way I read what you've written, you actually mean that you saw business value in areas that Microsoft did not. So, in concrete terms, what do you think the value is, to Microsoft, of taking a 5% equity stake in Facebook? In other words, what $ price should Microsoft value Facebook at?
Good points!
usenet -> bbs -> email -> compuserv/prodigy forums -> geocities -> friendster -> myspace -> facebook/linkedin -> mash/ning/???
Because history, technological evolution and the inherent fickleness of trendsetters tells me why. Balmer isn't totally out of his gourd, he may just be unintentionally right.
I don't think you're being quite fair to Ballmer, however... especially since you seem to agree with him on most points.
Ballmer's claim that social networking sites aren't technically complex is true - we all know this. I'm not sure why you complain about this. IMO, he was underscoring that you cannot "buy" community... again, something I think you agree with.
In addition, you mock him for not hyping the value of Facebook... but what do you expect him to do? Talk up Facebook until any investment is completely inviable? You need to think about this from a business standpoint as well as a Social computing standpoint.
Ballmer will incur ire no matter what he says on the topic - if he says that Microsoft is investing they'll say that you can't "buy" community... if he doesn't talk about investment they'll say that Microsoft isn't focusing here. In addition, he needs to walk a fine line not putting business at risk... something most in the social computing world understand as little as those in the business computing world understand about social networking.
If you want to hold some people to task on Web 2.0 and Social Networking - focus on Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie. Getting the platforms, technology, and strategy in place for this is their job.
Gotta give SteveB credit for hiring them.
-Dan
If there is no business model now (business model = making money), theres not going to be one in the future. Skype proved that, build it and they will come, but they might not pay.
Facebook is not a fad for many reasons - mostly the network effect as you have said. Valuations of a business HAVE to be on future earnings potential. Problem is, by releasing the "platform" facebook have essentially conceded they don't know how to make money.
When will people learn - when you aren't making money, as cool as it is, its a HOBBY.
More on that thought at: http://tinyurl.com/3bvupt
~Jim
Today I was browsing my cousin's wife's profile on Facebook and I saw a post by her father on her wall (he's obviously also "hardly young"). Translated directly from Dutch, this is what he wrote:
"I am trying out Facebook because 'Scobleizer" basically says you are an idiot if you aren't on it"
Thought you might enjoy!
Even us engineers understand that sometimes the fact that you can build something doesn't mean you should.
Which of those are making money?
From a usage perspective the above is ALL correct.. From a business perspective (and Steve IS a business man) this is crap. We now all know that YouTube is bleeding .5 billon anually and that even Facebook is loosing millions every month.
The fundament of Web 2.0 is an open, free environment that relies on advertising. Trouble is that the last years have shown that the market value of social networks IS perishable (as everything is), meaning that investors need to invest continuously in creating and marketing new online brands to keep the longtail going. The cost of this investment cannot (to date) be earned back.
It may seem that big brands such as YouTube and Facebook are the winners with millons egaged users, but in fact they are in the 'autumn' of their life cycle... In the end: the bigger the brand, the bigger the stakes and the bigger the growth expectations. But also, the broader the audience, the lesser the the social context, the lesser the user is known, the lesser advertisers are willing to spend per dialogue,...
From a usage perspective the above is ALL correct.. From a business perspective (and Steve IS a business man) this is crap. We now all know that YouTube is bleeding .5 billon anually and that even Facebook is loosing millions every month.
The fundament of Web 2.0 is an open, free environment that relies on advertising. Trouble is that the last years have shown that the market value of social networks IS perishable (as everything is), meaning that investors need to invest continuously in creating and marketing new online brands to keep the longtail going. The cost of this investment cannot (to date) be earned back.
It may seem that big brands such as YouTube and Facebook are the winners with millons egaged users, but in fact they are in the 'autumn' of their life cycle... In the end: the bigger the brand, the bigger the stakes and the bigger the growth expectations. But also, the broader the audience, the lesser the the social context, the lesser the user is known, the lesser advertisers are willing to spend per dialogue,...