Craig's Lemonade

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

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

Attensa joined by TouchStone with another take on Attention

Like some 90 thousand or more folks (according to FeedBurner stats) I monitor the TechCrunch blog through RSS subscription. Late last night I ran across this post by Marshall Kirkpatrick who Mike has pulled in to help monitor and report on this web 2.0 world evolving around us. Marshall covered new entrant Touchstone and their beta of their consumer facing "attention engine." I was made aware of touchstone some time ago and read the blog of its founder occasionally, Chris Saad, though I hadn't looked for a while....until the TechCrunch coverage.

And I did post this reply in the comments (and fixed some typos here):

" “First Attention Management Engine” …ummm, I don’t think so. But, it looks kinda cool though.

“Information overload” is indeed a problem and has been our focus at Attensa for some time now. As our name implies, our “attention engine” is the core of our IP. We clearly have a different approach than touchstone from a business model perspective, but we agree with muc of the “manifesto.”

Attensa has invested literally millions over the past several years on our attention engine technologies, with some work dating back to 2000. While we agree on the requirement of client side attention engines (like the one that communicates with and is in Attensa for Outlook 1.5) we believe it is equally important that this capability be buttressed with a massively scalable server side infrastructure to glean the same attention benefits for the community at large (or affinity groups) for intelligent priortization and recommendation. Doing this with very large amounts of transient meta data - in real time - is very, very complex. And, obviously, we believe, very very useful.

Incidentally, RSS just happens to be the first data type we are utilizing to enable our customers to cut down on information overload. The “first attention management engine” was shipped a long time ago - by Attensa. We didnt say anything for a while but did unveil the existence of the technology at Gnomedex in summer 2005 surrounding our “attentionstream” technology. It handles instantaneous syncing for us but in the background it is monitoring literally hundreds of detailed behaviorial characteristics and, btw, clickstreams are hardly the most interesting or useful mecahnism for deriving attention value. For ad targeting, MAYBE, for attention, NO.

In any event, welcome to the show Touchstone, we’ve been carrying this bag solo for some time now. "

Attensa is focused on business, enterprise business more specifically, and recommendation and prioritization are priorities. Further, while our "Attention Engine" is a well-functioning client side app running on hundreds of thousands of desktops, the real value of what we call attention streams are best realized when applied across users and groups. The Attensa Feed Server is the first such implementation of our server-side attention engine and I'm happy to report that it was installed (as an appliance) in the data center of a Fortune 500 company just last week and working beautifully! Stay tuned for more info on that...

Lastly, TouchStone's Saad has also commented that their offering is a companion to RSS readers. He is spot on with this too, to a point. Long term, I'd love for Attensa to not have to do the actual readers, but to create the necessary attention data and deliver the optimal user experience - in real time - it is a necessity for now. Outlook 2007 and its RSS? It is a DREAM for us, but I'll save that for another post. We are licensing our technology to others are in in some exciting discussions, but our business model (for the time being) is not in the web 2.0 "mash-up" genre. We are doing some very complex math on a massive scale (client and server side) to make all of this work without end user intervention - such as creating rules, filters, or manual overrides. Client-side only engines are the small part of an exciting equation, or at least that's my view.

The net, net is that attention is getting more attention. For consumers (web 2.0) and for business (enterprise 2.0.) "Are you paying attention?"

P.S. More posts soon from me on Microsoft's impact, open XML spec for attention, and where Attensa is going (not just RSS readers...)

Technorati Tags: Attensa, Attention, Enterprise RSS, microsoft outlook, Touchstone, Marshall Kirkpatrick, RSS, TechCrunch, Touchstone, Web 2.0

CEOs must read Naked Conversations and The Tipping Point

I suppose it is obvious that these two books are "must reads" for current or aspiring software CEOs, but I wanted to draw attention to them nonetheless. By pure coincidence (I swear) I went to the Naked Conversations home page and was surprised to see a post on The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell which is one of the two books I just finished.

The other is Naked Conversations, by celebrity bloggers Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, is a must read because so many software CEOs are still not on the bandwagon to 1) understand the basics of the blogging phenomenon and 2) are not participating directly themselves (either as a blogger or a reader.) Much of it is obvious if you are aware of this blog revolution we are all living in and actually paying attention, but there are lots of interesting tidbits around the genesis of blogging, early vendors such as Six Apart, "how-to" checklists for aspiring bloggers, and even a blogger's "manifesto" which supposedly has been updated on the Naked Conversations blog but I didn't check.

Both of these books are important for CEOs to read; one to catch up with the blogging revolution, and the other to stimulate creative thinking in the corner office to break out of the typical processes typically used in defining and marketing great - truly great - software products. Whether in the software business or not you and your senior folks should make these two a must-read.

P.S. I also started reading Freakonomics and not sure I can recommend it yet but it is entertaining.

Tags: Naked Conversations, Shel Israel, Robert Scoble, Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, Software CEO

Live Live Live! Enough already...

Mary Jo Foley’s Microsoft Watch has a great post entitled Microsoft's 'Live': Another .Net Disaster in the Making? 

To paraphrase from the story…“After running the .Net moniker into the ground, Microsoft backtracked and undid its branding mistakes. Will history soon repeat itself?” The warning signs are mounting fast and furiously. Microsoft's "Live" branding campaign is in danger of succumbing to the same fate as its .Net one.

I read this article and the first thing that came to mind was a resounding “No Shit!” So much of the new web 2.0 “Live” work is interesting, useful, and hell even cutting edge in some cases. But Sheesh, ease up with the "Live" monniker folks!

P.S. See just SOME of the Live branded stuff here.

Mary Jo Foley’ Microsoft Watch is a no-brainer, do-it-now, “must subscribe” for anyone in a software company CXO seat. Virtually all of the posts are product focused but I thought this post was timely and insightful.

Morning DEMO 06 so far...Riya wins

Jeff Clavier's morning summary here for DEMO 2006 in Arizona. Standout for me this afternoon is... Riya

Riya is awesome and useful for anyone who has digital pictures. Beta is a few weeks out or so. You define who people are by selecting several examples and the service will go find all instances and automatically catalog. It also automatically discovers and converts text in photos (including even nametags on people's jackets as an example) into tags so you can categorize automatically and later easily find images. The Riya demo was impressive. One of the big guys will buy this one.

In the meantime my old company Extensis should license the engine and build into Portfolio (DAM). Perhaps Adobe would be an even better fit, but for professional photographers, seems obvious and useful to me. Maybe ononesoftware could build a plug-in for Photoshop to go along with their other commercial photographer offerings?

Attensa implication? well, we are just looking for more data that can be part of the attentionstream and any means of reliable automated tagging can only lead to improved results.