Evolve

Rise and fall of Microsoft

AxelS — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 08:26:11 +0000

In the late 90′s Microsoft killed Netscape by simply giving the browser away for free. Back then it was very hard to compete against free. By end of 2003 Microsoft’s Internet Explorer reached 85% market share for two reasons: 1) There was no contender in the field wanting to compete with Microsoft. 2) Microsoft tried to make people believe they take the Internet serious.

In 2005 FireFox started to compete with Microsoft on “Free”. That was clearly a game changer. Firefox was faster and better but most importantly it was not Microsoft. That was the beginning of the end of the Microsoft era. Microsoft never took the Internet serious. Today January 2012 Microsoft dropped from 85% market share in the browser business to an insignificant 20% market share and rapidly declining. See details at w3cSchool

The Microsoft executive team never understood to harness the power of the Internet. And by loosing that connection to the market they couldn’t pickup the next big evolution: Social Media. Even with the 8 Billion $ Skype acquisition where Microsoft had at least a theoretic opportunity to enter the social web, but they didn’t do anything. And whether Microsoft buys Yahoo or not, there is no way to stop Google growing further and continuing to dominate the search business. Whether Google’s G+ will make it or not is not so important as Google has a very solid position in the Internet industry. Google’s market share in the search market is 65% and still counting. Bing remains below 15% in accordance to comScore.

I’m sure Microsoft Windows, some parts of Office and maybe some of the other MS utilities will remain in the market for a few more decades. Corporations build all their office infrastructure around Microsoft and the maintenance alone is a good business to keep 20,000 engineers busy. Microsoft (MSFT) will not go away, but in the end it became a commodity no different than a GE, Ford, GM… that has lost it’s glamor.

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A new tropical age

AxelS — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:03:15 +0000

The German language has two distinct periods: The “Ice Age” and the “Tropical Age”. In english it is just called glacial and interglacial.

People look at our current period as “global warming” and connect that with pollution and all kinds of sociological and economic events rather than looking into the mega cycles that happen in not too accurate but rather predictable cycles. We had many ice ages and many tropical ages or “interglacials” before.

The graph shows the huge swing in climate changes over the past 500,000 years

Now – when you look into it more carefully you find an interesting connection between the long range geological cycles and the time it takes for our solar system to circumnavigate the core of our galaxy. Like Earth has seasons when it travels around the sun (takes one year) our solar system has seasons circling around the core of the Milkyway. We are moving at an average velocity of 800,000 km/hr. But even at that high rate, it still takes us about 230 million years to make one complete orbit around the Milky Way! As we look closer we realize that Milkyway is a spiral galaxy that means we are moving closer and closer into the core of the galaxy which is today understood to be a black hole.

While we believe we have approximately 4 Billion years until our sun collapses to a supernova – we may have only 1 Billion years or 4 cycles around the galaxy core until we come so close to the Galaxy center that earth is no longer inhabitable.

In any case I would hope that our respective political and scientific leaders would look much closer into what our mother earth has in store and where it is going than simply accusing energy consumption for the climate change. Once we learn about all the implications, we will have a much better handler on our future :)

Axel

http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

(my social presence)

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Social Presence Management

AxelS — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 06:39:16 +0000

When you start your social media engagement you probably start on LinkedIn or Facebook. You explore Twitter and maybe have already an account on YoutTube or Flickr. As you get connected with people you hear about Foursquare, Yelp and Google+, maybe SlideShare and Quora. Others introduce you to LonkedIn Groups or Facebook group, maybe Focus and Plancast, Tumblr and WordPress. Over time you play with social bookmark tools such as Digg, Delicious or StumbleUpon. Then you get introduced to Klout, Posterous, PeerIndex and approximately 100 or more other tools.

Before you even started to make notes about all your profiles and accounts you have a bigger presence than you think. And now it’s getting messy.

Mistake No.1
You make the same big mistake many others did before you and probably many will make after you. You simply ignore where you think you don’t have time, you forgot or simply don’t care. Why is this a mistake?
Because people who see your dormant profile only see ‘a dormant profile’ which is not very compelling. If you lived in a shed and all people have is the address from the old shed, that is how they see you.

Mistake No.2
You create a new profile but all you do is add a link to another profile saying “you find my bio here”. It’s like joining a party telling everybody you are leaving soon because you go to another party. Not a good idea either.

Mistake No.3
You share only your primary networks i.e. LinkedIn and Facebook but ignore all the others which actually constitute your entire social presence.

And there is a long list of all the little mistakes, missteps and issues which would exceed the scope of this post.

What you may consider is a more thoughtful Social Presence Management

Step 1
Create a list of all the networks you ever signed up for. Include the groups and communities. Add all the profile URLs to it so you can quickly go there.

Step 2
Make a very short note for you – and later for others what that network is about or why you like it. You may also want to make a note for yourself whether it is an A-Place that is important to you or a B-Place that is of less importance (just keep it simple)

Step 3
Now let everybody and his dog know where you all are. I’m on 58 networks and places right now. Yes, it’s a lot but it is what it is.

Step 4
Make sure that you have a pointer on each and every profile to all the other networks and profiles. Mainly because you want ‘cross pollination’ of your networks. That enriches your networks, makes it easier to communicate and propels your presence.

Step 5
At this stage you probably noticed that most of the above is almost impossible without a professional tool. How can you add 58 of your networks and groups to Twitter for instance – it is not possible. And even if it would be possible, you don;t want to manage 58 different places with all that information and if you add or remove a network go back to 57 remaining profiles and update them.

Therefor you need a tool like XeeMe, where you keep all your social presences, manage them in one place, point from every network to that one place and use it to share your entire presence with all your contacts and those who should become your contacts.

From here on you can start to professionally manage and monitor your social presence.

http://XeeMe.com/AxelS

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Saving life in the universe

AxelS — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 02:48:17 +0000

Inspired by a report about hypernovas

“Hypernovas” – The Most Violent Object in the Universe Confirmed”

It came to my mind, that whether we are created by accident, purpose, or a god, humans are the only being at least on earth who have a chance to move life from a given planet (in our case earth) to another planet, and in some time even to another galaxy.

If we trust that all life is created with the idea in mind to spread and grow – we have a hell of a responsibility in the next 10,000 years to bring life to other systems in the universe – or vanish away as we would have never existed.

Saving earth is an important undertaking but only a tiny first step in protecting life in the universe.

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In Empire Avenue Social Capital Rules

admin — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 23:25:09 +0000

If you are on EAv you may enjoy this post that I wrote on the Social Media Academy Blog

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The Social Capital

AxelS — Fri, 20 May 2011 05:11:00 +0000

Empire Avenue has become very popular just recently. It’s a game that plays on ‘social capital’. It allows you to trade based on social capital by buying and selling shares of friends that are active in the social web. The ‘market value’ or connection score of players is determined by the value they’re contributing to their social web including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, their blog and the engagement on the empire avenue site.

The value of a player’s shares is based on two factors: their activity and their audience size. As each of these change, so does the value of a user’s shares, measured in ‘eaves’, the currency of the game.

Buying and selling

Buy shares like at the stock exchange:
Buy low and sell high. Keep those that have a bright future and sell the ones where the people are likely to be not very active.

Value Definition

Your value in EAve is based on your activities and your network size in Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. In other words the larger your network and the more activities you have, the higher your value or number per network.

For instance I have 61 on LinkedIn, 42 on Twitter and only 9 on Facebook right now. My Friend Robert Scoble for instance is just the other way around, he has 67 on Twitter and 21 on Facebbook. It simply indicates where we are playing and the value is shown differently.

Eaves to $

At the current stage it looks like 1 cent gets you approximately 20 Eaves. On the internal advertising side of the game, a page view is E 0.20 or a CPM of E200 or $0.10. The good news is that by growing your social capital, which translates in Eaves you can invest in advertising, which makes motivates to grow your capital and drives adoption for the game… Makes total sense, doesn’t it?

Social Capital

In the end it is all about social capital.

How to Increase Your Share Price

	Get More Shareholders Every time someone buys a share in you, your share price will go up! Encourage people to come join and buy your shares, promote your profile! Search for interests and people to invest in so you can promote yourself to them!
	Improve your Social Media Interaction A large part of your share price is made up of what you do both here on Empire Avenue and outside on the Social Networks you have connected. Have none connected? Go connect your networks! and look at your Stats Advisors! See below for specifics!
	Facebook and Facebook Pages Post items which get people to comment, like and share your posts. Increase your friends so that more people see the things you post.
	Twitter Increase your audience: Get followers (but get good ones, “bots” or fake followers will not help your share price). Post Tweets that get people retweeting. Converse with people online using the @replies and more.
	Empire Avenue Get Shareholders and keep them! Participate in Empire Avenue Communities and create great discussions everywhere on the site. Promote your Empire Avenue Profile!
	Flickr and YouTube Post great content which others will view/watch, comment and thumb up! Increase the audience on each network, but make the audience relevant to you! Search for people on Empire Avenue!
	LinkedIn Increase your LinkedIn professional network by creating good connections. Get recommended by great connections!
	Blogs Connect your Blog RSS Feed to Empire Avenue! Post great content on your blog that gets viewers and comments. Get your blog endorsed by people on Empire Avenue

How to Increase Your Wealth

The money you can spend on Empire Avenue is called Eaves. You can check your Bank and balance here.


	Get More Shareholders Each time someone buys shares in you, you receive 50% of whatever they pay (this amount decreases as you become more sold, but it is the fastest way to get Eaves). You should invite friends and people you know and get them to buy your shares!
	Invite Friends through your Referral Link Every time someone joins through an Invite you send and connects a network like Facebook and Twitter, you both receive an extra 2,000e. You have a special referral link you can send on Facebook, Twitter or E-mail, or you can invite your contacts
	Buy or Earn Eaves Running out of Eaves? You can purchase more eaves to get those great investments and upgrades! Check out The Shop
	Complete Achievements Check out all the achievements. Every Achievement carries an Eaves reward. Easy ones include filling out your profile and connecting your social networks
	Get Great “Dividends” Every person you invest in will pay you a “dividend” of eaves once a day based on the activity they do online. Dividends are paid out per share you own.

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Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years in 4 Minutes

AxelS — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 08:43:01 +0000

An amazing story, and amazing way to educate… got to see!

Thanks Michael Green for discovering it.

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50% off for everybody stupid

admin — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 23:06:18 +0000

Black Friday starts and people get in lines for hours, trample other to death and buy stuff they don’t need – all because they believe they get a deal of a life time.

‎50% off has many meanings:
1) That shop is ripping you off the rest of the year
2) It was produced to be 50% of the original quality
3) The product is so bad no one else wants it
4) They added 100% to give 50%

and probably a few other meanings.

Now what would 50% off actually mean for a business?

You have to check balance sheets and P+Ls to figure it out but since many of the crazy offers are from public companies we can look at how this might be possible:

1) Cost structure
Overall production, sales & marketing and overhead leaves any given company with something like 5 to 15% profitability if everything goes well. Some make it to 20% others just breaking even. In other words taking 50% out of a product sales price is mathematically impossible or those companies have to calculate a huge loss.

2) Marketing
Now most of those Black Friday offers that would lead to a huge loss are even heavily advertised, which would further increase that loss. That is not likely to happen.

3) Profitability
Volume is certainly a good answer – but volume at 50% discount is still a loss if the company is only able to get to 5-15% profitability.Everything above the 5-15% mark would actually kill that company.

4) Consumer Idiocracy
Consumers at large are a rather primitive species. Give them a discount sign and they buy as long as there is something on their bank account. Test: go through any grocery store and you will find the following “Specials”: Product X is $2.39 if you buy 3 it is only $7.49 – people buy the tree pack. $2.39 times three is only $7.17 so it would be cheaper to buy three individually but most still buy the pack of three. Why? Because “discounts” don’t address our brain but much deeper in our “Pyramid of needs” the sense for winning something.

5) How to offer something for 50% discount?
a) Nobody knows what the product is actually worth – the discount sticker could also say “At night it is darker than during the day”
b) Produce well understood products with either less quality, less raw material, no packaging…. so that the price in the store can appear as less. But produce it especially for that event

6) Offering even 200% discount
I came across this “great offer” of 200% discount. Hmm – 100% would mean it is free because it is 100% of the original cost. Now 200% would mean I buy it and get the original price for that product payed on top of it. My discussion with that sales person wasn’t very fruitful. It would be the same as I would explain to my dog what the red shift in Astronomy is.

7) Shopping fun

Now for those who just have fun shopping in that environment all the above is a boring explanation. It’s like explaining a gambler who sits for three nights in a casino in Vegas that he/she can’t really win. And for the rest of us – we can go shopping when it’s over and normal humans are back in the shops.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend

Axel

http://xeesm.com/AxelS

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ASP – MSP – SaaS – Cloud Reloaded

admin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:32:15 +0000

In the 80′s people discussed replacing Mainframes with PCs. It didn’t happen – now 30 years later the mainframe business is as vital as it was in the 80′s.

In the 2000 people talked about replacing on premise applications with SaaS. 10 years later it didn’t happen. While the ASP/MSP/SaaS/Cloud industry has nicely grown to a Billion $ industry, traditional IT is a Trillion $ industry (1,000x the size).

By looking at the evolution pattern you may recognize the future trends:

The Mainframe market reached maturity. Pretty much every business that had a potential for mainframes is using mainframes. No more growth but still a very vital market.
The market maxed out at about 500,000 businesses (globally).
However an enormous potential opened up by reaching companies who really wasn’t a potential for mainframes, but PCs. Going from 500,000 to 5 Million.

On premise applications is reaching maturity. Every business that has a potential for business software is using business software. No more growth but a very vital market.
This market maxed out at about 5 Million businesses (with tens of millions of users in aggregate).
However yet another gigantic potential opens up by reaching companies who are simply to small to maintain an internal IT infrastructure like the small family shop owners.

We have approximately 55 Million registered businesses world wide.
Going from 5 Million to 55 Million is where online applications, delivered from the cloud has its biggest potential. :)

What can we learn from the past:
People who tried selling to IT by replacing mainframes with PCs failed.
Those who opened up new markets became eventually market leader.

People who try selling to IT by replacing onpremise with onDemand will fail again.
Those who sell to even smaller businesses will eventually lead that market.

I guess it doesn’t matter what we call it – as long as we provide a good solution to the most potential audience.

Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS

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The next facebook

admin — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:10:00 +0000

Facebook will become the next Google which is the next Microsoft.

Microsoft never innovated any product. Windows was innovated by Xerox PARC, and so was the mouse. Word was invented by Wordstar and Excel like PowerPoint was acquired. Google didn’t invent anything anything either but built the most robust business model of advertising distribution, displacing traditional media. By accident it happened around a search engine. Also Facebook didn’t invent anything but took whats out there to the next lever, very similar to Microsoft or Google.

The next non inventor is probably 12 – 16 years old today and will build something on a technology that is out already but in an infant stage.

Like most others, it’s probably a high school drop off, a crazy guy, a nerd, whatever.

By the time Facebook is celebrating it’s 1 Billion’th user – probably in 2 years or so – Facebook will be the single most active software application ever built. By then open graph will help to make the Facebook ID the ultimate person identifyer to login anywhere and replace email as username. In five years from now people who argue about security breaches and privacy issues will be retired and no longer discussing things that an openly connected world just doesn’t find that relevant.

Microsoft wanted to be on every desktop. Check – done.

Google wants to distribute every conceivable bit of advertising. Pretty close.

Facebook wants to be the utility for every networker on the planet. Getting there

??? will be the application every human being is using from birth to death

What will it be? I have no clue, so we will see. But the pattern is already there. When will we see it? 2020 isch – I guess.

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