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Yahoo Spreads the Peanut Butter

Posted on May 4, 2007 ·

A key idea in Brad Garlinghouse’s Peanut Butter Manifesto was to eliminate redundancy within Yahoo, kill overlapping products that compete with each other.  Yesterday Mr. Peanut-Butter himself, along with Flickr Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield broke the news to TechCrunch: Yahoo will shut down Photos, in favor of Flickr.

A lot has been written on this move (see below), let me just point out two seemingly controversial metrics:

The chart shows Flickr’s US traffic has caught up with that of Yahoo Photos.  However, Flickr only has about 20% of the photos stored on Yahoo: 500 million vs. 2 billion. 

How many of us have “layaway” photos stored on Yahoo, that we uploaded buried quite some time ago, never to touch them again?  Flickr’s photos are tagged, searched, used – there is activity.  That’s the difference between dead and alive. 

The contrast in the stats is a perfect illustration for a trend we see with other services, too – although it’s supposed to be Yahoo’s day, Gmail vs Yahoo Mail comes to my mind.  Yahoo has a huge incumbent user base that will never move. Change is evil for them.   Gmail is much smaller, but it picks up the innovator, productivity-oriented crowd – that is if they pull their act together)

Last, but not least, when will Yahoo have it’s Youtube?   “Butterfield also confirmed that Flickr will “soon” allow users to upload videos in addition to photos.”

Related posts:

TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, SmugBlog, mathewingram.com/work, Between the Lines, Scobleizer, Laughing Squid, Digital Inspiration, Ben Metcalfe Blog, Webware.com, parislemon, WebProNews , UNEASYsilence, Read/WriteWeb.

Update:  If it’s up to BillG, Flickr will soon be a Microsoft property, along with the rest of Yahoo.  Others on the subject:

paidContent.org, Between the Lines, Internet Outsider, Rough Type, IP Democracy, Mashable!,  BloggingStocks,  Search Engine Land, WebProNews, TechBlog and franticindustries

 

Filed Under: Business, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Technology ·
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Gmail, I Love You – Don’t Let Me Down

Posted on May 3, 2007 ·

I’ve been a Gmail fan long before I actually migrated to it. More than a year ago I wrote up a few tricks on how Gmail Can Boost Your Non-Gmail Productivity – this post still gets a lot of hits, although the my Gmail-usage evolved renders most advice there obsolete.

When I started using Gmail with my own domain, I continued downloading it to Outlook for a while. I no longer needed my paid email service, but frankly, the benefit was not saving $0.99 a month, but the much better spam-filter and to dual access (pop and native Gmail online). Then I realized I was missing out on some of the best productivity enhancements Gmail offers by not using it’s native interface, at the same time grew sick of the ever-growing number of Windows, Outlook, Office problems, so I finally cut the umbilical cord, and moved (almost) entirely online. I’m Outlook-free, using Gmail (at least for now) as my email service and Zoho for everything else. My How to Import All Your Archive Email Into Gmail became a classic, 50 thousand or so people read it here, not counting the numerous re-posts.

So I am in Love with Gmail… but that love may not last forever. It takes two to ….smile_embaressed

Not long after I made the transition, Gmail started to have performance problems. Occasional outages, just for a few minutes, sometimes seconds. When it works, it’s no longer lighting fast. Recently I’m starting to wonder what happened to its legendary strength: the spam filter. Look at my Inbox this morning:

Yes, this is the Inbox, not the Spam filter. There is actually one (!) legitimate mail there, the rest is crap. I looked inside, they are not even using the image-trick to bypass spam filtering: all are the most traditional text emails, most of them the “classic Nigerian type” – Gmail’s filter must be sleeping (perhaps enjoying one of the many Google perks?)

Gmail, my dear, I still love you … I think… but you know, my love is not eternal. I’d like to be loved back – sooner, rather than later.

Update: A (somewhat) related post at Web Worker Daily: 3 Ways to getting email without Spam. I tried and promoted method#1, “plus addressing”; the only problem is that far too many places won’t accept the name+tag@gmail.com format as a valid email address. Besides, smart spammers have likely already automated the removal of the +tag portion.

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Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS ·
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iGoogle, but Which One? Time to Fix the Google Apps Chaos…

Posted on May 1, 2007 ·

(Updated)

Now that they got a snazzy name (whatever happened to Google’s naming convention of coming up with beauties like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Docs & Spreadsheets & Presentations & Wikis, & insert-new-product-here? smile_wink ) perhaps it’s time to eliminate the chaos Google caused by sloppy implementation of the otherwise great Google Apps service.

If you’re not familiar with the latter, I strongly suggest reading David Berlind’s excellent overview at ZDNet. He concludes that there are two parallel Google-worlds: the consumer, public one we all know, and one that’s being built somewhat under the radar, allowing businesses to customize their own domain, maintain users, security, business email, calendar, documents – essentially white-labeling Google’s applications.

That’s all great, except that access to the private-domain features is accidental at best – let me share my experience. When I signed up, I linked my own domain to may existing Google Account, which is tied to a Gmail address. Now I’m a happy gmail user while preserving my own domain. So far so good – trouble starts trying to access any other Google Apps.

  • I can easily get to them by direct URL’s in the form of calendar.mydomain.com, docs.mydomain.com …etc – but what happens when I try to *really* use them, say, import a calendar entry from upcoming.org, zvents, or any event site? The “old” calendar at myname@gmail.com comes up as default.
  • Recently I tried installing the Etelos CRM add-on to Google – guess what, it went to the personalized homepage (now iGoogle) at myname@gmail.com and I had no way to force it to install at start.mydomain.com – which is attached to the same Google account.
  • What about Gmail and Google Docs integration? If you use your “regular” gmail account and receive a Microsoft Word/Excel document, there’s an option to view them as a Google Doc or Spreadsheet. The first few times I tried to use the same option from my branded gmail account (name@mydomain.com) I got a “document not found” error. Google must have realized the trouble, they now removed the “View as Google Doc” option from Google Apps email.
  • Even the otherwise excellent Google Groups is messed up: when I am logged in as name@mydomain.com, Google Groups I am a member of with this account won’t recognize me. I actually have to have duplicate identities created in Google Groups: one to be able to send email (my own domain) and one to be able to access Group’s other features via the browser (@gmail format).

Perhaps it’s obvious by now that the trouble is not with the individual applications. The Google Accounts concept is a total chaos. It creates a dual identity, and while I can always access the private-label Google Apps via direct URL, in a short while the default pops up its nasty head and the original, public (@gmail) format and applications take over. Net result: I gave up trying to use Google Apps, except for Gmail. And I can’t help but agree with this TechCrunch commenter:

“…Instead I have this hamstrung barely functional thing where my login refuses to work anywhere else on Google and none of the apps have a link back to the portal page! So much for Single Sign On. And forget importing from an existing account in any slick way. A huge missed opportunity whilst the waste time playing with logos and bad branding on /ig”

Now, on a less serious note, back to the naming issue: If (when?) Google’s phone comes out, will it be an iPhone? After all, Steve Jobs has just demonstrated that being first does not matter… smile_sarcastic

Update (5/7/2007): I’ve been wondering why there was no huge outcry because of the above – after all it renders some apps quite useless. Now I understand: apparently you can now sign up for Google Apps directly with your domain, without having to tie it to a pre-existing Google Account. This is good news, since a lot less users are affected. This is also bad news, for the very same reason: less users, less pressure to fix it, so the early Beta users are stuck…

Update (1/20/08): I think it is fixed now. :-)

Related posts:

The Official Google Blog, Google Blogoscoped, TechCrunch, Lifehacker, parislemon, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Techscape, VentureBeat, Micro Persuasion, Reuters, Search Engine Land, Googling Google, PC World: Techlog, Search Engine Roundtable, WebMetricsGuru,, Read/WriteWeb…

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Filed Under: Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, SMB / SME ·
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Technorati Replaces User Data With Advertising

Posted on April 25, 2007 ·

Here’s the Technorati homepage.  If you’re signed in, your blog’s basic stats would appear at the upper right corner, which is now covered occupied by advertising:

It’s frustrating enough to see ads hide actual content on Yahoo..etc, but normally there’s a way to click and close it. Not this one. This is a solid ad, you read it or leave it, it won’t go away. So where’s the account data?  Your guess is as good as mine … it’s gone!  You can randomly click around, and find it after a few clicks via Favorites, Ping ..etc – but the most important information, along with your inbound links is completely missing from the Front Page.

Perhaps Technorati are just as confused as I am… the WTF button on the left takes on a new (old) meaning…thumbs_down

Update (4/25):  Apparently it was a bug, Technorati fixed it. Kudos for responding fast!   At the same time…I know it’s “release often, release early” but I didn’t think testing became a 100% user function…

Filed Under: Blogging, SaaS, Software ·
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Amazon >< Statsaholic: Who’s Blackmailing Whom

Posted on April 23, 2007 ·

The Amazon / Statsaholic (previously Alexaholic) fight just got a lot uglier: details of Alexaholic owner Ron Hornbaker’s past conviction surfaced, and are being played out in a lowly game. 

TechCrunch reports rumors of Hornbaker attempting to blackmail Amazon earlier, while Hornbaker claims that “Amazon is using his conviction as leverage in the case, threatening to disclose it publicly if he doesn’t settle immediately by paying $25,000 and transferring all Statsaholic assets to Amazon.”

I’m not going to provide details of the old conviction, what’s done is done, it has nothing to do with the current case, and it’s really unfortunate that it surfaced now.

But something is seriously wrong here: the assertion that Amazon “outed” Hornbaker as part of  a smear-campaign is ridiculous.  Just think for a minute… wouldn’t any half-brained PR person know digging up dirt on the “little guy” would backfire, negatively reflect on Amazon?   Amazon can railroad Hornbaker all they want, but they would be using money, lawyers, the court system … the entire war machinery much rather than doubtful methods that so obviously can hurt them.

And Amazon blackmailing “the little guy” to pay $25K?  C’mon, this is just pathetic.

(Disclaimer: I have no factual information on the case, the above is just my opinion – although I’m obviously not alone…)

 

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Filed Under: Business, Marketing / PR, SaaS, Software, Technology ·
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Google Charts, Presentations (Pre-Announcing a’la Microsoft)

Posted on April 18, 2007 ·

Almost a year ago I wrote about a visual comparison of Google and Zoho spreadsheets. At the time, Zoho simply KO’d Google, which had no charting support whatsoever. Of course this was more then just a “beauty-contest”: charting is simply the most effective way of visually conveying a message, and as such a “must have”.

It’s time to update that comparison (I’m using the same spreadsheet, updated to today’s numbers), since Google has announced charting capabilities today, adding 18 types of charts to select from (Zoho has 27, and ThinkFree 32).

Clearly, Google is catching up on the appearance front, the new charts are appealing. (Click on the pics to view the public version of the original spreadsheets).

On the publication side, Zoho still leads: instead of using images, like I did here for the sake of comparison, I could have simply embedded the system-generated script which would keep my Zoho Sheet inside this blog post up-to-date. In fact sometimes it makes sense to publish only the chart, without the underlying spreadsheet, like this:

Feedburner Subscribers in % - http://sheet.zoho.comThe chart to the right is not an image, any changes in the originating spreadsheet will be immediately reflected in the published article.

The addition of charts was announced today in Google’s usual, understated style; in fact the first blog post on the subject was titled How to make a pie. For all I know it could have been Grandma’s Apple Pie recipe. smile_tongue

Contrary to this the other Google announcement came with a lot of hoopla, CEO Eric Schmidt dropping the news of Google’s Presentation software in front of ten thousand Web 2.0 Expo attendees. The only problem is, unlike Zoho and ThinkFree, Google does not have the Presentation creator/manager yet, it won’t be coming for months, and as Google Blogoscoped observes, this preannouncement “Microsoft-style”, instead of just releasing products and let users discover them is “uncool” – and a break away from Google’s good traditions.

Talk about announcement, Zoho, which has made it a tradition to launch a new product at just about any event – and in between – surprised: there was no announcement. Are the sleeping? I think not, in fact as Advisor to Zoho I am quite happy with them announcing no announcements: they plan “not to release any new application until we open up our existing private-beta applications (Notebook, Meeting & Mail)”.

Those who attended the SMB Application Marketplace session at Web 2.0 Expo may have picked up on something more to come though: responding to a moderator question, Zoho Evangelist Raju Vegesna stated they want to “become the IT department of small businesses“… and there is clearly more to SMB IT than just an Office Suite.

Like I’ve stated before, 2007 will be the year when it’s all coming together.

Update (4/18): Note to Google: it’s *not* a very good idea to display my email address on spreadsheets I choose to make public. Sorry, Google, my mistake, I used the wrong URL (not the public one).

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Filed Under: Collaboration, Marketing / PR, Personal Productivity, SaaS, SMB / SME ·
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Freshbooks Launches Benchmarking Service: SaaS Will Never Be the Same

Posted on April 16, 2007 ·

Way back at the Office 2.0 conference FreshBooks CEO Mike McDerment dropped a bomb in the last 20 seconds in his presentation: being software as as service, they can aggregate customers’ data, categorize it by industry, size ..etc, and once they do that, why not turn it into a service, providing customers with their own performance metrics as well as benchmarking them against their peers.

A few months later, the Small Business Report Card service will launch tomorrow at the Web 2.0 Expo as well as online. The service will be free to all Freshbooks customers, who will:

  • all receive their own performance metrics, and
  • if they select their peer group based on (currently) 80 types of business / professions, geography and several other business criteria, they will also receive their relative position, “score-card” within that group.

The sample below is a mock-up of the actual Report Card, but is shows the initial metrics reported. Clearly, as they further enhance the program, there will be more and more criteria, and FreshBooks customers will have a say in what performance metrics they find valuable.

Remember, FreshBooks’ customers are mostly small businesses who don’t have an army of MBA-types crunch the numbers and look for business (in)efficiencies. In fact it’s probably fair to say some would not even know how to interpret the numbers, until they are put in prospective – hence the value of relative benchmarking.

But why will SaaS never be the same? This isn’t just about FreshBooks and its customers.

It’s *the* hidden business model enabled by SaaS. An opportunity not talked about, but so obvious it has to be on the back of all SaaS CEO’s mind. Benchmarking is a huge business, practiced by research firms like Forrester, Hoovers, Dunn and Bradstreet, as well as by specialized shops like the Hackett group – none of which are affordable to small businesses. More importantly, all previous benchmarking efforts were hampered by the quality of source data, which, with systems behind firewalls was at least questionable. SaaS providers will have access to the most authentic data ever, aggregation if which leads to the most reliable industry metrics and benchmarking.

Being pioneers always carries a risk, and clearly, Freshbooks will have to keep an eye on their customers feedback. There may be a backlash due to data privacy/ownership concerns; some customers will not opt in, they may even lose some customers entirely. But I believe the majority will see the light and benefit from the service. If Mike’s blog post on the subject is any indication, the feedback there was overwhelmingly positive, with 13 comments for, 3 against.

I suspect a year or two from now benchmarking based on aggregate customer data will be standard industry practice, and little (?) FreshBooks will be looked upon as the pioneers who opened up the floodgate of opportunities.

Last, but not least a word on the creative launch – or a lesson on how to launch from a conference you don’t officially participate atsmile_wink:

Yugma is a web-conferencing company and an exhibitor at Web 2.0 Expo. What better way to demo a web-conferencing product than by showing real-live use… without Yugma having to move a finger to create content. They created Stage 2, a platform for companies to showcase their products remotely at the Yugma booth and simultaneously to the World through a Net broadcast. Both the presenters and Yugma win – congrat’s, and my personal Creativity Award to Yugma thumbs_up

Update (4/19): read Jeff Nolan’s comments.

Update (10/8/2008):  Congrat’s to Freshbooks for getting on  Fox Business.

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Surprises @ Web 2.0 Expo

Posted on April 15, 2007 ·

thumbs_up Surprise #1: It’s early Sunday morning, and there’s a huge crowd! Wow!   ExpoCal only showed a few dozen names for the Sunday sessions, so I figured this was just for the crazy-enthusiasts, the real crowd hits tomorrow.  It’s great to see so many participants. 

thumbs_down Surprise #2:  Registration is a disaster. A Case Study in how the best technology becomes worthless without the right process.  I’m guided in the pre-registered line, it goes quite fast, then in the data entry area I enter my name and click “print” to initiate printing my badge.  So far, so good: next step is another (not-too-long) line to actually pick up the badge. 

The line is somewhat pointless though, you have to wait till they call out your name. After 15 minutes or so, I do step up, and ask, only to find out, that if I checked in on any but the first three rows of computers, it goes to another bank of printers, at the other end of the check-in area, where all the crowd for on-site registration is. Great!  Nobody has told this before.

Over to the other line, nobody seems to have my badge, am told to wait till my name is called. I’m sure I was called earlier, someone must have picked it up, it’s been over 20 minutes now. After a while, I have a crazy idea: walk up to a computer again, let’s see if I can re-print my badge.  I shouldn’t be able to … but wow! it works!  Here we go: send to print again, and voila! I am called and have the badge in hands in 5 minutes.

Now I only have to walk back to the area where I started to pick up conference material .. then up to the workshop floor.  Dear organizers, despite Surprise #1 above, this is still just the rehearsal, tomorrow the real crowd arrives, you better fix this chaotic process.

Update: It’s Monday, the first full day, and I’m glad to see the problem fixed: there are clear signs that match the computer rows to the printers, registration is easy, no crowd to be found.

thumbs_down Surprise #3:  Web 2.0 needs connectivity, we all know that.  Wireless works, albeit sloooowly.  But…but: we need, power, too. I know, it’s my fault, should have carried extra batteries.. and there’s never enough power outlet for all attendees. But I haven’t been to any conference where’s not a single power outlet in the entire room. I’m sitting outside, next to a watercooler (which runs on power, so it led me to a spare outlet), trying to recharge my hungry laptop.  I’m afraid starting tomorrow, there will be tough competition for these spots.

That’s it for now, joining Ismael’s session.

Update, Monday: power still non-existent, wi-fi dying. It’s useless, and I’m sitting in the Mindtouch wiki session, where Ken  Lui just gave up trying to demo anything, due to poor connection.   Web 2.0 Expo with Web 0.5 connection:-(

 

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Social Networking, Software ·
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Microsoft Patches Outlook, Creates PR Nightmare

Posted on April 15, 2007 ·

Computerworld reports that Microsoft issued a patch to deal with Outlook 2007’s sluggishness, this time for real.

“I can’t say that this will 100 percent solve the latency issues, but users should see a big improvement,” – says Jessica Arnold, Outlook’s program manager.

 Why won’t it solve the latency problems?  Because they were largely introduced by design changes to accomodate:

  • RSS handling – a new feature.
  • Indexing – fixing what hasn’t worked for years, i.e. finding email.

So, is Microsoft saying it’s the improvements that brought Outlook down to its knees? Ouchsmile_sad

Arnold said that while Microsoft had started hearing about problems even before Outlook’s release to businesses last November, “until we had enough users, the data wasn’t clear.”

Oh, I’ve got it now.  This is Microsoft’s way of becoming Web 2.0 complient: “Release early, release often” – don’t test, I might add.  Sorry Microsoft, this works for startups with early-adopter techno-enthusiast users, not for the corporate world’s #1 communication platform. And where’s the “Beta” moniker, anyway?

“Outlook wasn’t designed to be a file dump, it was meant to be a communications tool,”  – says Arnold, recommending users archive their email often, reducing the size of their .PST file.

Yeah, right. For years I bought into that, and was a religious auto-archiver.  There’s only one problem with that concept: we’re not storing old email for the sake of having it: it’s for the occasional need to actually find old information.  Have you tried to open an archive.pst file?  Since the contents are not kept up-to-date in your index, you can launch “find”, than take a coffee-beak.  Better yet, go for lunch.plate

Archiving, limiting storage was indeed the only solution for a long while.  But now there is a better one.  Ever since I’ve dumped Outlook, moved ALL my archives to Gmail, my PC is fast (desktop index, online backup, virus checker all have less to do) I have an efficient, fast email system, and can retrieve any email sent/received in the past ten years in a second.  That’s the real solution to Outlook’s performance problems.

I’ll take it one step further: for doc, spreadsheet, presentation needs I use the Zoho Suite.  Signing documents: EchoSign.  Incidentally, I am typing this on an offline editor, while sitting on BART, on my way to the first Web 2.0 Expo session: Ismael Ghalimi presenting how he runs his business entirely on Web-based services.

Update (4/16): Built For vs. Used For by Jeff Nolan.

Filed Under: Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Technology ·
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Webmail: PC Magazine Confuses Productivity with Popularity

Posted on April 11, 2007 ·

PC Magazine compares the 3 major Webmail providers: AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, and makes the summary call of declaring Gmail “left behind” – without reviewing Gmail.  How funny.

They key criticism is that – unlike the other three -, Gmail does not have the look-and-feel of Microsoft’s “killer” Outlook. Wow. That’s quite a statement.  I fail to see Outlook a killer product, it simply is a the dominant product on the market, and will remain so for quite a while simply due to Microsoft’s weight.  By the way, I recall the time when Lotus 1-2-3 was a market leader. Or Wordstar.  Or dBase II.

While not giving Gmail a dedicated review section, PC Mag refers to it as part of the discussion on Yahoo Mail:

“Gmail, beta for life (or at least three years so far, is beloved by millions (including me), and still has cachet though it lacks AJAX features, isn’t easy to use, and doesn’t have a sensible sorting ability”

I agree and disagree. Yes, Gmail is not easy to use if you’ve just come from the world of Outlook, Yahoo..etc. No, Gmail is easy to use once you “get it” – in fact at that point you will start seeing just how hard-to-use the other products are.  

Sorting, for example is the “poor-emailer’s” tool for finding information.  You can spend looong minutes sorting, scrolling up-and-down, trying to piecemeal together a conversation thread from your Inbox, Sent Mail and various other folders.  Or you can just pull the entire thread up by smart use of labels and keyword search.  (of course in Outlook I would only attempt a search when it’s time for a coffee-break).

PC Mag talks a lot about drag-and-drop and other bells and whistles – I agree, these are nice, but when it comes to productivity, there are 3 fundamental reasons Gmail beats all:

  • Threaded Conversations: in business conversations last weeks, include dozens of emails, and are basically a pain to put together before you respond to someone.  Gmail handles it automagically, and as a side-effect, it presents a lot more information on it’s list screen – since the dozen individual emails are now compressed into one line.  (Oh, and don’t forget the nifty feature of picking up the first line of the email body, instead of dumbly repeating the subject line)
  • Labels.  Folders are a crime. How often do you feel the need to file an email to several folders, yet you can’t.  Logical grouping and physical storage of email have nothing to do with each other, need to be de-coupled, and that’s exactly what Gmail does.  You can assign multiple labels to any email, pull of conversation based on labels, and your labels can still give you a sense of ‘folders’ by having them listed on the left pane.
  • Search. Find. That simple.   I can pull up email on any subject from 1999 before you even start thinking of which folder to look into, how to sort, scroll in Outlook.

 

Does this make Gmail a better product?  Certainly, for me.  Perhaps not for you. 

Not everyone needs productivity.  Not everyone wants to go through a paradigm change.  AOL, YAHOO, Hotmail are the absolute market leaders,and they should do whatever it takes to keep their customers.  Their mainstream users are corporate employees who use Outlook in the Office, whether they like it or not is irrelevant, they are used to it. When they go home, they may not email a lot. Some will check their emails daily, once a week, or less. They want a personal email that resembles to what they already know.  Familiarity is more important than productivity.

Gmail is for the frequent users and increasingly for people who use it to conduct their business: in other words, the productivity-freaks like yours truly.  Or Web Worker Daily’s Anne Zelenka, who rightly states:   GMAIL: NOT BEHIND, JUST GOING IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION.

 

Update: If you’re thinking of migrating to Gmail but can’t figure out how to deal with years of email history, check out my guide: How to Import All Your Archive Email Into Gmail.

Update: Webware reports on a prize fight between Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

 

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Technology ·
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