Craig's Lemonade

Automated HP Printer selection.

I am in need of a decent, fast, quiet, wireless, color laser printer. Content with my HP all-in-one (other than the shitty software that comes with it and constantly asks to reinstall itself) -  I do need an upgrade. So, I went to HP's site as a starting point. I used their "automated" wizard-like selector to pick out what I wanted in three or four steps. Note: the options came from HP, I didn't make up my own and write them in myself. What was the conconclusion after selecting THEIR choices? "We're sorry, no product fit your requirements." Huh? How the hell does something like this happen?

Maybe I'll have better luck with Xerox's automated selector. Good grief.

Technorati tags: HP Printers

Transparency vs. Stealth...that is the question

I saved this wired article by Clive Thompson earlier this year about corporate transparency. It explains what "transparency" means in this web 2.0 world we are living in ranging from the CEO of Red Fin's utilization of transparency to shake things up in the residential real estate market to how some "venture capitalists now demand that CEOs be fluent in blogspeak." I doubt they demand it, though it is worth noting that I did have to explain what a blog was to some of my VCs not so long ago. (And I'm definitely not going to be transparent about that one!)

Thompson writes this about Glen Kelman, Red Fin CEO:

Like some crazed convert, he trumpeted his epiphany: "I honestly believe that if Redfin were stripped absolutely bare for all the world to see, naked and humiliated in the sunlight, more people would do business with us." Follow me, he urged.

All I thought was, wow. That's bold. I like this guy already. I am a very aggressive competitor, and I love going to toe-to-toe with whomever, but sometimes it's the marketplace that needs to be hit over the head. Playing nice (or traditionally) just doesn't work sometimes. Take now for instance, I am spending an inordinate amount of time with powerpoint assisted "water-is-wet-and-the-sky-is-blue" pitches like there is no tomorrow. Changing the status quo is not easy and perhaps "transparency" is a key ingredient for paradigm shifting in high growth markets.

Stealth, Secrecy? Enter Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs practices the exact opposite of transparency - maybe we could call it paranoid stealthaphrania. To say steve fixed Apple and then some is an understatement. I think we can all agree that for a 1.0 the iPhone is pretty fucking cool. And it was all a secret. Yes, I know he is a CEO rockstar with bottomless pockets and arguably the world's strongest brand - but aside from that lame cube the products coming out of Apple are extraordinary.

So, yes, stealth works. And you don't have to be a rock star in my opinion to reap the benefits.

FeedBurner founder/CEO Dick Costolo talks about why stealth is dead, and transparency is good and he makes some good points, but I am still leaning Jobsian. Make his blog "ask the wizard" a must -read. So, since leaving the CEO post at Attensa in April I've been in stealth and getting ready to write about it. Not sure how I'll go about my blogging yet. But there will be a little bit of RSS in there somewhere! ; )

Technorati tags: Attensa, RSS, Red Fin, Transparency, Steve Jobs, Stealth, Glen Kelman

Information overload in business!? Web 2.0 in the enterprise inevitable?! No shit.

So, despite being off on another project since April of this year, I still get my RSS  feeds and google alerts for anything touching the enterprise RSS space, attention (which is also gaining some steam), Attensa (which I and some pals co-founded a few years back), NewsGator, and KnowNow. I was surprised and thrilled to see that finally the media is paying attention to what has been going for years - yes years -  in the enterprise with regard to RSS. There were no solutions until NewsGator and Attensa showed up with our respective Enterprise Solutions. It is a big opportunity.

So, in the PC World article entitled "Companies Tap RSS to Tame Info Overload", Juan Carlos Perez hits the nail on the head about what is going on. Finally.

"The first problem we see addressed regularly with enterprise RSS systems is e-mail overload. Most knowledge workers these days are just about completely fed up with e-mail," said Oliver Young, a Forrester Research analyst.

Also in the past week Network World's Jim Duffy informs his enterprise readers that "Web 2.0 inevitable in the enterprise...", and describes how that with rampant user-driven utilization of web 2.0 technologies, if they are not careful they are going to get caught with their pants down....

"Companies should establish strict guidelines for employees' use of  social-networking platforms, RSS feeds, wikis and mash-ups, the panel participants said. Companies must consider the content and amount of information employees are sharing on easily accessible Web pages."

I have been pitching and explaining this for years, and unfortunately, the main people that don't get that this revolution is happening are INVESTORS. It guess now that is so obvious perhaps it will loosen up investments. But to be clear, e-mail is only part of the problem, RSS is in heavy use in pockets of enterprise companies already, independent of any e-mail overload problems. In the past I posted here a lot on the subject including this one about year ago about the "stellar demand of enterprise RSS." There are many other similar posts.

I am no longer affiliated operationally with Attensa, but with a vested interest I do keep my ear to the ground. Attensa apparently has finally closed a seven figure deal with a major company who will be deploying the enterprise solution to thousands of seats worldwide. Great job folks! Attensa beat out its competitors hands down...and it it only took TWO YEARS. Reportedly other purchase orders are now finally rolling in despite the lack of meaningful marketing spending by the company. This is a clear sign to the meek that the market is "real." That said, this may be a fast-paced, white-hot, changing-all-the-rules Web 2.0 world to many in the media and with the conference-going digerati, but conventional, proven, enterprise-wide sales methodologies are still alive and well - and are a long haul.

Still puzzling to me is Lotus and their new, strange and sometimes cool, Lotus Connections. While interesting they totally missed the mark. The research even says so, so not just my opinion. I wonder if they even spoke to any actual customers. How the hell did they decide to include tagging, blogging, and a wiki environment, and not enterprise RSS. Go figure. SpikeSource's Suite 2.0 got the feature set right, but it is a cobbled together "frankensuite" (as the folks at Jive Software called it.) Incidentally, s far as Jive goes, their ClearSpace is worth a look for installations who want a rapidly deployed, affordable suite for collaboration (though like Lotus Connections it is sans RSS enterprise capabilities.)

As far as Enterprise RSS via Suite 2.0, I dont see big business biting other than those early, early in the cycle that realize there is nothing else out there from one vendor that does just the critical stuff...that said, and to make matters worse, Suite 2.0 isn't even on one platform, as most of Suite 2.0 is apparently on the LAMP stack, Attensa competitor NGES is all .net. Ugh.

Looks like Enterprise RSS is here. Some of us already knew. But hey, ROCK ON!

Technorati tags: Attensa, Attention, NewsGator, KnowNOw, Lotus, Web 2.0, Jive Software, Lotus Connections, Suite 2.0, Enterprise RSS, NGES, Attensa Enterprise Server

A picture worth a thousand words...to me anyway

So, having just dropped the kids off at school a few hours ago, I encountered a big ugly garbage truck. It was blocking the road and I was forced to wait. I am impatient so I didn't wait long. I don't personally write out the bills so I was unaware who collected our garbage...turns out its RSS! I laughed out loud. No, I haven't given up on RSS, far from it, as my new gig will utilize it in a variety of ways. But as far as moving on to a new chapter in my professional life, with things really heating up for the Pump Networks team this week, I found it ironic enough to stop the car and snap the photo.

At Attensa we've raised some $12 MM to date, and I'm going to guess based on press releases that NewsGator has raised around $20 MM and KnowNow (for this effort anyway) raised about $10 MM. For all of the companies one thing I know for sure, it is not nearly enough. Not even close. The opportunity is the enterprise and it has always taken tens of millions and very long sales cycles. The real bitch with enterprise RSS is that only a few investors are drinking the Kool-Aid; Mobius, RSS Investors, SmartForest, MastHead, KPCB and a few others. I've been in the business a long time and I can attest to this - enterprise RSS does not impress investors. Investors don't see the "pain." Companies, they DO see it, the inquiries from major corporations are considerable. Having the necessary capital to go after the business however is the hard part.

All of us (though for the record I left Attensa in April) have done a lot of pitching about not only the future of RSS in the enterprise, but that it is in fact here now. It is still early, and there remains a lot of tire-kicking, but the potential is clearly huge. Unfortunately, and in my opinion, the vast majority of venture folks see RSS as a big garbage truck driving by and pay it no attention. At least I took a picture.

Technorati tags: Attensa, RSS, Enterprise RSS, NewsGator, KnowNow, Mobius, SmartForest, Venture Capital

Dave Winer thinks FeedBurner is in trouble. Me too.

I have been a FeedBurner fan for a while now, and, I think I still am. Unfortunately though, its because there is no viable alternative. Google had earlier acquired the only other similar service, MeasureMap, in early 2006, which near as I can tell was the only other game in town - then or now. I posted a few months back on my so called love for FeedBurner, and I recommend it all of the time to folks, but Dave Winer's two posts on the subject made me think about it a little more clearly. But first, the posts.

Winer's first post was spot on, in my opinion. I have had these same thoughts and similar conversations with others over the past 6 months or so. There is new FUD out there now since Google's acquisition of FeedBurner, and with good reason, and Winer articulates it clearly in this post;

So now someone at Google "owns" Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone. Reader software might have trouble working with it. They would say "Oh but the new feeds work better with Google Reader, and that's the one most people use." And by the way, more and more that's true these days. But what about other feed suppliers? Do they have to change to work with Google Reader? They will say no, but there may turn out to be practical reasons why they must.

The second post ponders how "doesn't work as well" can lead to "not at all"...

"It's quite possible in the second or third iteration that Google drops support for non-Feedburner feeds. It wouldn't be unprecedented, far from it. Google Blogoscoped has a list of Google products that "prefer" other Google products. I've never seen Google not do this when they had the chance. The instant they bought Blogger they tied it to their toolbar. If they had used an open API the toolbar would have worked with all blogging tools. Google just doesn't think that way, sorry to say."

I think businesses of all shapes and sizes, especially larger commercial publishers and the G2000 at large, need to take a very serious look at replacing FeedBurner (just to be prudent) given the relentless focus of Google on monetizing properties with targeted advertising. Businesses can still opt out and get their data, and I'm betting many of the will. In the meantime, I like FeedBurner and not going anywhere - because I can't they are still the only game in town!

What would take me away? an iPhone. What you say? Yes, an "iPhone." It's an analogy. So let me put it this way. I've had several Treos over the years, and, loved them all for the most part. Thankfully, several years back Steve Jobs and some other people at Apple tried the Treo too. They in turn realized that there was 1) a lot wrong with the Treo and 2) there was the potential to do a lot more. I mean, A LOT more. Now the Treo feels like an 8 track tape player.

FeedBurner will be "Appled" just like the Treo was. There are just too many ways to make it all work better.

Technorati tags: Dave Winer, FeedBurner, Google, MeasureMap, RSS

A quick visit with Jeremy at Trumba

It is an uncharacteristically hot day in the pacific northwest and a beautiful one to travel by train between Portland and Seattle. I spent a few hours today in the emerald city with Jeremy Jaech, founder and CEO of Trumba. I got know Jeremy years ago when I convinced him to join my board of directors at Extensis, and have tried to stay in touch over the years since selling Extensis in 2000 (to a bunch of knuckleheads unfortunately, but that's another story completely.)

Jeremy is not as well known as other Seattle based entrepreneurs but he is certainly one of the most accomplished high tech execs in the history of the software business. There are a lot of former Microsoft execs up there who are smart, impressive, rich, etc. but not many have built successful software companies from scratch. If you haven't heard of Trumba, you will, but I bet you've heard of two other companies he co-founded, namely Visio (now part of Microsoft) and Aldus (the PageMaker folks that Adobe gobbled up years ago.)

Since leaving Attensa I have gotten involved in some fun and interesting projects, and since more than one discussion recently raised the idea of sophisticated calendar technology, I decided to give Jeremy a call. Jeremy gets things quickly, pays attention, and asks smart questions...I wish he was on the board of my last few companies. Maybe I can convince him one more time when I spin up the next one.

Regardless, check out Trumba. While they are not targeting consumers, it's a full featured offering and quite impressive.

Technorati tags: Trumba, Attensa, Visio, Extensis, PageMaker

Onward

After three plus years as founder/CEO of Attensa last month the board and I decided it was time to make some changes....and I've stepped down. I've started and run software companies for nearly 22 years now, it's all I've ever done since dropping out of Carnegie Mellon in the mid-eighties, and I can honestly say I love it! Macintosh enthusiasts may remember Now Software in the early nineties, or others may recall Extensis, which is an ongoing concern that I remain very proud of to this day. Obviously, I have a vested interest in Attensa's ongoing success, and have nothing but positive things to say about the experience. So, all the best and thanks to everyone involved!

Early on at Attensa we made big bets on deep technology rather than acquiring market share via popular and solid consumer clients. History will determine if NewsGator's acquisition approach was a smarter move than Attensa's R&D focus on its attentionstream and related technologies. I believe Attensa's future is bright, especially given it's exclusive focus on the enterprise. Consumer RSS is already a commodity and Google, Yahoo, etc will own it - or one could argue they already do. NG and others may make some money from powers users wanting more but the business opportunity is clearly behind the firewall. To date and for the next several quarters businesses that actually are looking at enterprise RSS are essentially just looking for basic "plumbing" to enable RSS workflows and/or standardize on solid RSS clients for support peace of mind. It's not rocket science, or all that interesting actually, but it is where the market is today, IMHO.

Attensa will shine when information overload arrives in big business. My prediction is that this will start happening in 2008 even though I personally started talking about it in late 2005/early 2006. For now though, its just plumbing, and NG and Attensa will battle that out over the next year or so. I believe Attensa will win deals when there is a thorough technology evaluation, NG will win many due to market awareness and the multitude of RSS readers they have built or acquired for a variety of platforms. Both can succeed and thrive - this is a very, very BIG market.

So, what's next for me? It's called Pump Networks. Yes its web 2.0 (whatever that means) and has some RSS components. Look for a late summer "alpha."

I can be reached at craigwbarnes@gmail.com

Technorati tags: Attensa, PumpNetworks, NewsGator, Extensis, Enterprise RSS, Web 2.0

I love Feedburner, except for one (minor) thing

I started using FeedBurner over a year ago and love it. I don't blog as often as I should (or promise) but when I do have the time it is enjoyable - and I believe this is mainly because I can measure readership, actions, and examine incoming/outgoing links. I use Typepad now and see no reason to change, and I pretty much ignore the simplistic stats they provide. Typepad's own widget capability made it easier to quickly add FeedBurner to a blog, but you can use it with any feed simply by typing your URL on their web site and giving them a credit card. It's only $5 a month to get all kinds of metrics both for your feed and recently for your blog too. They should have multiple versions and charge more, it's worth it, and who knows what else is coming to add value. Check out the site to see all of the features, most folks I've discussed this with agree that if you are going to take the time to blog, it's no-brainer.

I really like a couple of things about FeedBurner, and they are worth calling out.

1) FeedCount - You see these all over the web, these little dynamic chicklets that inform the user how many folks are "subscribed" to your feed. I must admit, it is the first thing I look at even before the latest headline on TechCrunch....it amazes me how its grown. 

2) FeedFlares - This is what FeedBurner calls its Open API, and its very useful for developers to add capabilities both in their feeds and on their sites. There are basically two kinds of "flares." Their site describes them as follows:

• Action Flare allow you to "do" something with or to a piece of content: tag it in del.icio.us, mail it, seed it as a story at Newsvine, translate it into Finnish, and otherwise bend it to your will.
• Meta-Data Flare tell you things about how other parts of the web perceive this content: how highly linked this article is in the blogosphere, where this content originated on a map (e.g., a photo in a feed with its geographic data could be plugged into a mapping API), and so on.

You have probably seen this capability in feeds in the past and not even known FeedBurner was probably enabling you as a reader of RSS feeds to "act" on an article. Other do this, but again, feedburner makes it so simple.

From Feedburner's site, some "Fast Facts and Stats":

• According to Nielsen/NetRatings, FeedBurner is growing faster than MySpace and Digg with 385% traffic growth.
• Total feeds: 663,294
• Number of publishers: 393,805 [so I guess monthly sales are approaching $2 million?! Wow.]
• Number of podcast and videocast feeds: 103,868
• Number of subscribers across all FeedBurner feeds: Too many to fit on this page. Email us for the most recent stats and pretty graphs.
• Percent of FeedBurner employees using Macs: 39%, PCs: 58%, Other: 3%.
• Number of made-up words on this site: 3

My only gripe is that a company that gives me so much information about my RSS Feeds should actually use them to deliver the information to me! I want to subscribe to my burned feeds, not log in to a dashboard! Maybe this is possible, but I sure could find any information on it or figure out how to get a feed of my stats.

That's my only gripe, otherwise kudos to the product, business model, and of course the team.

Technorati tags: feedburner, feedflare, typepad, feedcount, techcrunch

Web 2.0 and the IT Pro - they clearly think it's all B.S.

Last week I was invited to sit on a panel at a fun, exclusive event at Microsoft put on by the IT Pro group (TechNet) for industry experts, press, IT executives at major organizations, MVPs, etc.

For a frame of reference, this is how the invite read;

Microsoft would like to cordially invite you to attend an exclusive, one-day event on Wednesday, April 18th 2007, with Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, and other Microsoft executives at the Microsoft Corporate Headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
You have been identified as one of the influential leaders in the IT Professional community, enabling IT Professionals to reach their full potential every day. And we want to hear from you!

Join us at this all day event where you will have the opportunity to engage with other community leaders, and provide your input to Microsoft senior executives through intimate panel discussions around key industry trends such as:

• Next generation of the Web and its implications on IT Professionals; both as consumers and in the enterprise

• Data Center trends such as Virtualization and Managed Services

• Evolution of the IT Professional community with new online and offline capabilities

This so-called IT Pro Community Leaders Town Hall Event was held in the elegant executive briefing center and they took some creative license by clearing out the typical tables and chairs and gave the entire audience the same comfy leather living room chairs that us panelists had up front on stage...I've never seen such a thing. Even Ballmer, who was there for an hour commented on never seeing the room so nice so "Microsoft must think all of you are important!" There were only about 50 folks from all over the country and MSFT paid for it all - airfare, shuttles, hotel, and a dinner reception at a winery (which unfortunately I had to skip.) The goal was to encourage a "community dialogue" and well, it was fun and worked well in my opinion!

I was on the first panel of just three for the day, all of which were moderated by John Rymer, VP at research firm Forrester. The panel was just myself and Chris Jones, Microsoft CVP for the Windows Live Experience. Nice guy, we chatted for about 5 minutes before stepping on stage.

The "dialogue" started with some IT guy in the back complaining that we were the wrong people on stage and wanted to know "what is Microsoft's specific web 2.0 strategy?" and that this whole dialogue thing is bogus. Most of the crowd looked at him with a "dude its not event 10 a.am. yet, sit down, grab a cup of joe and shut up." People love to slam Microsoft, even to their face as they are gifted a trip to company headquarters for a close up and personal with senior management. Another guy starting complaining about the "bait and switch" in the last cycle of licensing fees for SharePoint. Go figure. The Microsoft executive of course handled it appropriately and we moved on.

The key learnings for me, having also just spent some time the past prior few days at the web 2.0 expo in S.F., are threefold; 1) Smart, key industry folks still can't define what "web 2.0" means (and this was the bulk of our panel's discussion along with identity/reputation/authenticity issues), 2) IT Pros say - emphatically - "nobody in our organizations are asking for any of this Web 2.0 stuff" - which we all heard repeatedly, and 3) Web 2.0 is just a bunch of marketing hooey made up by both the media and the companies hawking what they call web 2.0 solutions. This was loud and clear.

There is a big disconnect, in my opinion, between the consumers and cutting edge technology companies living this web 2.0 transformation and the old IT Pro guard that don't believe there is any such thing as web 2.0 that their constituents in the enterprise want or need.

Perhaps its just still really early for enterprise adoption of new web 2.0 technologies - a.k.a "enterprise 2.0". Roaming the Web 2.0 event, most of the activity was around consumer facing web 2.0 such as widgets, search, online apps, etc. Intel had trotted out their "Suite 2.0" (which some have called a "Franken Suite" and I tend to agree), Jive Software seemed much busier with their ClearSpace solution, and Lotus was just absent near as I could tell with their "Lotus Connections" which is an impressive suite (except that for some insane reason there is no RSS capability!

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, whatever you wish to call it, we are still at the starting gate but eventually no business will be able to function without it to remain competitive.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, IT Pro, TechNet, SuiteTwo, ClearSpace, Lotus, Lotus Connections, Web2, Web 2.0, Intel, Enterprise 2.0, Forrester, John Rymer, Jive Software, Steve Ballmer

RSS and Web Analytics in a 2.0 world. Its attention.

A few weeks back a gave about an hour talk at the annual Software Association of Oregon (SAO) annual retreat. It was frankly a last minute addition to the agenda, but seemed like a poignant time in our association's history to jostle the old guard about what it means to be a software company in 2007. Great examples of new web 2.0. software companies I discussed included SplashCast, Jive Software, Aboutus.org, and others. There are no doubt dozens of budding new software companies that have yet to be discovered. Unfortunately, the SAO is the last to learn of them, in fact I learned about SplashCast from TechCrunch (which most folks at the retreat wrote down as if they had never heard of it.) So, what about web analytics in a 2.0 World?

Thinking and talking about this paradigm shift at our annual retreat, combined with my job as CEO of Attensa (where we have our own analytics component for the enterprise), it got me thinking. I believe the web analytics space is one of the more interesting established software markets to be profoundly impacted by web 2.0 than any other. I firmly believe this for three reasons;

1. RSS is a serious marketing tool for businesses of all sizes and industries and will become significant. More progressive emarketers are already seeing the benefits both for replacing/augmenting email programs and for distributing information to customers by broadcasting (rather than requiring a return to a marketers web site for information.) I believe companies will demand integrated measurement tools for RSS as through as those for email, advertising, and web site analytics.
2. Delivering the analytics TO the customer just makes sense. Currently, essentially all of the major players in this space require going to a dashboard/portal user interface. This is so 2005. Users at all levels, consumer and business, are proving that push vs. pull is the preferred means of discovering information. Industry watchers are already wondering why RSS feeds aren't used yet by the major players in the web analytics space. Using RSS as a means to distribute Web analytics updates/reports is so obvious it is inevitable, and perhaps new standards such as Microsoft's SLE, will be the best way for companies to deliver this type of information easily. I for one would like to get my FeedBurner stats this way, and I'm not alone.
3. Measuring the user is changing, and in the future its 'attention' not click residue. What is important for marketers, then and now, is getting the best read on their current or prospective customers habits. And, of course, to get them to buy. Clickstreams and clickthroughs are not the end-all, just a tiny part of the whole. Consider the phenomenon of end user tagging, which last month's PEW Internet & American Life Project report confirmed that already 28% of online Americans have used the Internet to tag content. This is pure "attention" and far more useful overtime than clickstreams or clicks.

Simon Wakeman, an industry consultant, discusses his experience using Google Analytics, StatCounter, and FeedBurner on his blog. And of course points out that he cant get RSS feeds from any of them. Steve Rubel has discovered a new service called Clicky that may be a peek at web 2.0 analytics. I have not tried it yet. Also worth noting, Google announced it will publish stats on its Google Reader and there is some chatter on the labs blog. I have a feeling all the major services will publish these stats over time and, accordingly, marketers will care.

As for Attensa, our Enterprise Server (AFS) has an analytics component, but it is focused primarily at behind the firewall use of RSS feeds for business users. We have no current plans to offer RSS for large companies that are adding RSS as a medium for communicating to customers. At least not yet.

In my opinion, the conventional web analytics software firm of the future will need to focus on the interactivity of customers across all media, not click residue. Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: SAO.org - Attensa - Attention - Attensa Feed Server - Web Analytics - RSS Analytics - Web 2.0 - Web2.0 - Splashcast - Jive software - Microsoft SLE - FeedBurner - PEW - Google Analytics - Google Reader - Simon Wakeman - Steve Rubel - tagging - StatCounter - Clicky - RSS - RSS Marketing