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Tech RSS and Blog Feeds
I had an interesting but somewhat disturbing exchange with a Google guy on Twitter today. It reveals a bunch of disconnects, that Im going to try, in this post, to address. brbr
1. Please take these statements at face value. brbr
2. I am just a person, I am not in competition with Google. brbr
3. I am a Google user. My primary email account is on GMail. I just bought a Droid, and started a Droid blog to help other people get started. I like it primarily because it connects so well with Google services.brbr
4. I am a former Google shareholder. I made a shitload of money from my Google investment. Thank you. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr
5. I think Google is a big company. I think the people at Google, like most people everywhere, mean well. Like every big organization there are some who dont mean well. But I judge each individual as a person. I dont assume because a person works at Google that they are good or bad or otherwise.brbr
6. I dont have the first clue what its like to be inside Google, and honestly I dont care. brbr
7. Now about PubSubHubBub. When I first looked at it I saw Atom all over it. I quickly hit the Back button.brbr
8. There was a time when I seriously considered implementing it. But it required me to understand concepts I didnt understand and had no interest in investing in. It seemed to me that I would have to reimplement a lot of stuff I already had working. This is something big companies ask you to do a lot of. brbr
9. One of the reasons I revitalized rssCloud was to influence Google to support RSS better in PSHB.brbr
10. One of the clues that PSHB needs to be reconstructed is that its so hard to describe. Whats needed here is easy to explain: iInstant updates for RSS./i If you think RSS is a bad choice of terms, do some research. The world sees it that way. If you make that more general, you lose people. They get confused. PSHB is very very confusing to people. That hinders adoption.brbr
11. Fostering adoption of complex technologies is something I know a lot about. Im very good at it. You can ignore me if you want, but I usually am right about this stuff. brbr
12. Switching gears, I like the Internet because it means I can ignore big companies and still create meaningful software. brbr
13. I think Google doesnt like RSS. I see that in a lot of things Google does. brbr
14. I wish Google would give up on fighting RSS. I think its pointless. I dont think defeating or blunting or obviating RSS has anything to do with Googles business.brbr
15. You can argue with me on any of these points, but remember #2. If you convince me Im wrong (which is unlikely, btw, Im no different than anyone else in that regard), you still have just convinced one person. brbr
16. All this disclaimed, we have a common interest, I think. I dont want to pretend to speak for Google, so I dont want to try to say what that is.brbr
a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_acorn_helmet/3410324855/img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/20/radishSpirit.gif width=145 height=212 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named radishSpirit.gif/aa href=http://www.ustream.tv/channel/crunchupI watched/a the morning session of TechCrunchs second realtime conference, including the half hour interview with Dick Costolo, the COO of Twitter.brbr
Of course Mike Arrington asked him the Is RSS Dead? question, and thankfully Costolo didnt want to go there. It would be ingracious of him, of course, because he made a href=http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/23/google-buys-feedburner-for-100m/$100 million/a with RSS. brbr
He said RSS had been pushed down the stack, and it was now a protocol like SMTP or HTTP. brbr
In a way I agree with him, but only so far.brbr
RSS was never anything more than a protocol like SMTP or HTTP. So it hasnt gone anywhere. Its still exactly where it has been since 2002, its part of the fabric of the Internet, and is the standard format for news distribution. Were lucky to have a standard format for that. brbr
But...brbr
Had Arrington asked me the question, I would have answered it differently.brbr
RSS will form the basis for the open distributed version of Twitter. brbr
The loosely-coupled 140-character message network.brbr
RSS already has everything we need, including a protocol for realtime updates. brbr
Further, any vendor of a Twitter client would, imho, be well-advised to spread out to achieve independence from the Twitter company. One way to do that, and they should all do it, is to support Facebook on an equal basis with Twitter. But that isnt enough. They should all make an investment in the open distributed way of doing what Twitter does. What that means is to ioffer the user the option to create a backup of their tweet stream in RSS, as a publicly-accessible feed./i And once theres a base of apps doing that, they should add a feature to subscribe to those feeds. brbr
Key point: Once theyre there, they can add core features without waiting for Twitter.brbr
Of course Arrington didnt ask me that question, and thats fine -- thats his a href=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prerogativeprerogative/a. But theres nothing to stop me from answering it anyway! img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr
a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_Awayimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/19/keychain.gif width=65 height=238 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named keychain.gif/aEveryones asking questions about the decade thats coming to a close, Id like to ask whats the coolest software you used this decade? brbr
For me, it might be a href=https://www.dropbox.com/Dropbox/a. I keep thinking of new uses for it. brbr
For a guy with a huge number of computers (I dont even want to count them), its not only a lifesaver but an idea factory. Ive already built utilities on it. The basis: polling a folder is incredibly low-cost. You can do a lot of it without impacting the performance of your machine. That was true in 2002 when we made Radio do upstreaming. Its even more true today.brbr
Because Dropbox wires together folders on any machine you link into it, its a very simple content distributor. You can have 18 computers looking for something, when one finds it, they all find out and get the thing. It could be large or small. brbr
Like all cool things, its fairly obvious, and has probably been done many times before. But they put it together now and it works and is trivial to set up. I keep thinking of things to use it for. All of which makes it very cool. Unless Im missing something, its my CSOTD. brbr
Update: Theres a a href=http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951219thread/a on this topic on Ycombinator.brbr
a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_acorn_helmet/3410324855/img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/19/radishSpirit.gif width=145 height=212 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named radishSpirit.gif/aI sort of understand why people dont like the new retweet, but I like it very much, and probably for many of the reasons they idont/i like it. brbr
a href=http://twitter.com/davewinerIf you follow me/a on Twitter you know that a lot of my tweets are links to stories on the web. I would probably forward other peoples links more if there were a way to give them credit for the link without adding all that overhead to the text. I find that once you add a bit of text to a tweet you dilute its meaning. Do it two or three times and its a confusing mess. I dont know who said what. brbr
Worse, often the meaning of messages are ireversed/i when theyre retweeted. Not only does the person show off that they didnt understand what was said, but they propogate the mistake by sending it to all their followers. brbr
In the new method, forwarding a link through Twitter is error-free, no noise is added because it cant, and the lineage is carried as metadata, and doesnt take up any of the 140 characters.brbr
I applaud features that dont use up the 140 characters, and like even more features that give them back to us. I think Twitter should be encouraged to do more to pull data out of the text of a tweet and carry it as metadata, so apps can do stuff with it, and so people get to use the 140 chars to say what they have to say. brbr
I do almost no retweeting in the old regime. But I already do a lot more now, and will do even more once everyone has the feature. Once its been out there for a few weeks I think well wonder how we ever lived without it.brbr
One of the cool things about riding on a train is that you meet a lot of people.brbr
There are Europeans who are visiting the US and have the train riding habit from home.brbr
There are people who remember the golden age of trains and can tell you how this or that is a shadow of its former self.brbr
And there are people who are afraid of plane travel and prefer trains to buses.brbr
There are also people like me who had a cross-country train trip on their a href=http://www.squidoo.com/100thingsbucket list/a, and found that the fantasy was better than the reality. (Partially because this trip follows the a href=http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/03/08/travel/0308-california-map.htmlroute/a of I-80 and I-70, which for me is well-traveled, by car.)brbr
When youre sitting with strangers in the dining car, conversation turns to What You Do, and part of my story is Rebooting The News. In explaining what was happening with the news system in the US, I came up with a new analogy this time, which I told in a href=http://rebootnews.com/2009/11/17/rebooting-the-news-33/Rebooting The News #33/a, and thought I should repeat here. brbr
Journalism is like skiing in the 50s or 60s. Previously it had been a sport that very few people enjoyed, and they were all very good. But now the doors were opening to amateurs, as it did with skiing. The pros are going to have to share the slopes with people who dont take the sport as seriously as they do. Theyre still going to be able to ski, but the rest of us are not just going to admire them for how skilled they are, were going to do it too. They can even earn a living as ski patrol and ski instructors. Or lift operators or more mundane jobs like people who work in hotels and drive the shuttle bus. There are still jobs in skiing after the arrival of the amateurs. But the exclusivity is gone. brbr
My chin fell to the floor this morning as I read a a href=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8368750.stmBBC article/a quoting Twitter co-CEO Biz Stone advising Rupert Murdoch to be more open. brbr
This got me to think about where Twitter is and where theyre going and how similar it is to where Murdochs newspapers are. brbr
In a newspaper, reporters get the prime space with the big headlines, and the readers are placed in a corner, Letters to the Editor. Or represented by a Public Editor who does a better job of representing the editors and owners.brbr
In Twitter theres a similar hierarchy developing, pretty rapidly. brbr
The prime space is allocated, in a totally non-transparent way, to certain people, and the rest of us are mostly talking to ourselves, in very small numbers.brbr
I was having coffee the other day with a former colleague at Berkman, a href=http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/Ethan Zuckerman/a, who said he would try to do something special if he had the millions of followers you get when youre on the Suggested Users List. Ive seen people go that route. All of a sudden its not good enough to be yourself, now you have to do something to take advantage of the flow youre able to generate. I wonder if that distortion, when it all shakes out, will be all that different from the feeling a reporter gets that he or she is more than a person writing from their own point of view. My guess is that its more or less the same thing.brbr
Stone has made a mess of something that could have been great by not being tranparent. How ironic that he advises Murdoch on something he himself so badly needs to do. Pretty typical of the way the tech industry relates to media.brbr
Anyway, I think its inevitable that Murdoch and many others in the media business will see the need to challenge Twitter for dominance in the realtime message distribution network. I dont see Twitter as being any more or less open than Mudochs company. The basis for success will come elsewhere.brbr
One of Jays ideas for rebooting professional news applies equally, imho, to personal news. I wrote it up over a href=http://rebootnews.com/2009/11/17/rebooting-personal-news/at rebootnews.com/a.brbr
a href=http://droidie.com/2009/11/17/traveling-with-droidie/See the Droidie site/a for observations on the tools I carried with me on my latest trip.brbr
Tim OReilly is going to give a keynote at the Web 2.0 conference about the War of the Web. You should a href=http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/the-war-for-the-web.htmlread his piece/a, many good points, I agree with most of it. brbr
The tech industry sure loves its wars. brbr
And death. This is dead that is dead, everyone is dead, but me. brbr
Isnt that every childs fantasy -- to have all the world to himself, to be able to drive any car, eat any food, play with any toy, and not have to share with anyone? brbr
The other day I read that the URL was dead. brbr
Anyway one thought Id like to share. brbr
If theres going to be a war for the web, fine, I already know what Ill do. Ill build the refugee camps. They will be very nice. Hiltons. You can have a beautiful ocean view or a view of the battlefield. brbr
Well all take pictures from our balcony.brbr
So have a nice war, techies.brbr
a href=http://www.scripting.com/2008/08.html#moreRepublicanHumorimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/15/missile.gif width=55 height=444 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named missile.gif/aIn the early part of this decade, after the first dotcom crash, a lot of us thought that wed all have personal servers by now. brbr
We called them a href=http://www.google.com/search?q=fractional+horsepower+http+serverfractional horsepower/a servers because the issues were different. Ease of use mattered more than scalability. And communication between servers and authoring tools was also essential. Hence XML-RPC, OPML and RSS. brbr
Instead, iuser generated content/i emerged as a business model, and many people went with the free hosting offered by startups. I never have depended on it, Ive been inside too many tech companies to be willing to trust my writing with them, esp not long-term. The UGC business model only iseems/i good for the users -- as they say if the offer appears too good to be true, it probably is. If you read the user agreement, they have no long-term obligation to host it. They probably dont even have to give you a copy of your own stuff. brbr
People ask how I use a href=http://newsriver.org/river2River2/a while I travel. Well, my ISP, ATT, offers a plan where you get five static IP addresses. Im pretty technical so I know how to set it up, and I have an old laptop in my house that runs River2. I log into it even when Im getting on from the house, but I can check whats new from an airplane at 35000 feet, where I am a href=http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightStatus/flightStatusByFlight.do?id=175983253utm_source=airlineInformationAndStatusutm_medium=cpcutm_campaign=co-opright now/a. Ive not mentioned this before, but a couple of people asked me how I do it, and I told them, and neither thought I was crazy. Thats a good sign. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr
Not that Google Reader isnt an excellent product, it is. But it isnt what I like. Its okay, not everyone drinks the same beer or drives the same car. And with broadband becoming more popular, and computers cheaper, and old laptops lying around doing nothing, maybe for some people nows the time to start looking at having your own server running in your own house. brbr
Itll be interesting to see what kinds of comments this post gets.brbr
PS: Theres a a href=http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943261thread/a on this topic at YCombinator. Major misunderstanding, by personal server I mean one that you pay for or own, it idoesnt/i have to be running in your house. If you pay for a server at Rackspace or EC2, thats fundamentally difference from the UGC model. Thats the important difference.brbr
Woke up in the middle of the night in Salt Lake City, went back to sleep, and by dawn we were in the middle of a whiteout with snow on the Wasatch front. Headed east from there, roughly following the path of Interstate 70, through Green River and Grand Junction. Well get to Denver at about 7PM, which is where I will get off the train, and head to the airport tomorrow for a flight to an unnamed destination to hang with friends for a few days. brbr
a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/sets/72157622796055474// title=Storm clouds over desert mountains by scriptingnews, on Flickrimg src=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2765/4102664151_50451c61fb_m.jpg width=240 border=0 height=180 alt=Storm clouds over desert mountains //abrbr
Taking pictures all through the day!brbr
img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/13/santa.gif width=125 height=199 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named santa.gifIn response to my a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/11/12/workingOnNewEditorialTools.htmlpost/a about the new editorial tools I am using, a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/11/12/workingOnNewEditorialTools.html#comment-22905558Bill Seitz asked/a why its so important to have a representation of the pre-rendered content stored in public on the web. My first answer was incomplete, I said I wanted an archive. I dont feel comfortable having the only copy of things I write reside on servers of corporations who might decide at some point theyre not interested in continuing to store the stuff, or might have a technical failure and lose the stuff. Or whatever. Praise Murphy.brbr
But theres another even more important reason. I hope that at some point we might swing back with everyone having their own home base and that we might still have the benefit of real-time updates, iand/i scatter the bits all over creation. I want the best of both worlds. A place where all my writing is collected and preserved and can be commented on, and having that same content appear in as many other places as people want to view it. This was the point of syndication in the first place, to give people lots of options for viewing. And while not many people knew about the cloud element in RSS, it was there since 2001, so I dont think I have to work too hard to persuade anyone that real-time updates was always part of the vision of RSS. It was.brbr
If were going to get there, we have to start. Thats what Im doing, starting.brbr
Ive always wanted to take a train across the United States. Today, Im going to do a big part of it, from Emeryville CA to Denver. Not sure where Ill go from there, playing it by ear.brbr
I dont know how much of the trip Ill document here on scripting.com, but you can see all the activity on a href=http://protoblogger.com/2009/11/13/friday-5/protoblogger.com/a, including a a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/sets/72157622796055474/set of pictures on Flickr/a. All part of a grand experiment to pioneer the next generation of creative writing tools for the web.brbr
a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/4100518273/My tools/a: An Asus Eee PC 1005HA, standard issue (no upgrades). Im using my Droid, tethered, and Verizon for connectivity, but have my Sprint MiFi and iPhone with me as backups. The camera is a Canon PowerShot, but I may use the cell phones for quick pictures.brbr
Im on the a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ZephyrCalifornia Zephyr/a, have a bedroom so Ill get a good night sleep, meals included and coffee (thanks for that).brbr
Want to know where I am at any given moment:brbr
iframe src=http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/badge/api?user=-8701046744080915636type=iframemaptype=roadmap width=180 height=300 frameborder=0/iframebrbr
This week I set a goal to get my next generation of editorial tools to a level where I could use them for almost everything I do online. Not yet for others to use, this is how I develop stuff. I do more than eat the dog food, think of it this way -- I am the dog. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr
So, while I have been writing very actively online for the last few days, very little of it has been appearing here at scripting.com. Eventually Ill figure out how to migrate so that it is. Right now the place to go for it all is a href=http://protoblogger.com/protoblogger.com/a. Which is an apt name, because I feel like what Im doing now is the prototype for what blogging will be like in the future. brbr
Like the first generation, the new stuff mixes linkblogging and writing of longer posts.brbr
The first time I did this stuff, it was easier, all the content flowed to one place, a static server that I ran.brbr
In the second gen life was more complicated, I was running a dynamic server on the back-end (Manila) and using an outliner for the front-end.brbr
Then I went back to static on the back end, which is how Scripting News currently runs. Then I stopped linkblogging here and started on Twitter, which still must be part of my work environment, but I have a lot more to say than fits easily in 140 characters. The challenge has been to create a tool that does both, in the same place, with agility. And empowers the author. And makes it easy to scatter the writing all over gods creation and at the same time create a feeling of home for the author.brbr
After Automattic adopted rssCloud I decided to look at using wordpress.com as the back-end, rather with a static server. As I explored WordPress, I realized it could solve a huge amount of the problem for me, and I had no interest in doing yet another dynamic CMS, so I embarked down this path.brbr
I gotta say, now that its all working, its very fucking cool.brbr
I have 8 different WordPress blogs and my links flow through Twitter too, all from one window. This gives me so much more power than I had before, and I suspect a lot of other people are dealing with this kind of complexity too, but I am imanaging/i it. I love the complexity instead of it being in my way. It took a lot of work, both conceptual and programming to get this right, but Im there now.brbr
Anyway theres no purpose to this post other than to Narrate My Work and let other developers know that this kind of editorial system is coming, and it has special needs on the back-end. Theres no single rendering of the content, since its scattered all over the place (the lifestyle of our time). But there is a new position for a static server that stores the users full content flow. Its a low-tech workhorse of a server, but its super-important.brbr
I have to maintain a server for the a href=http://static.lifeliner.org/dave/2009/11/11.opmlunrendered/a a href=http://static.lifeliner.org/dave/2009/11/12.opmlcontent/a. That works fine for me, but wont work when I get users. So the back-ends should probably evolve to not just display the rendered HTML but to allow tools to store the source code for the writing along-side. Thats how writing tools should be working, imho.brbr
And gets the answer.brbr
a href=http://droidie.com/2009/11/10/can-android-tether-today-for-0-extra/http://droidie.com/2009/11/10/can-android-tether-today-for-0-extra//a brbr
Blogging at its ibesssst. /ibrbr
Just got a link from my book agent Steve Hanselman, to this a href=http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/11/wordpress.blog.mullenweg/piece/a by Matt Mullenweg, on CNN -- 10 blogs to make you think.brbr
I was really proud to see my humble blog at the top of his list.brbr
And Im proud of Matt -- hes done really well with WordPress. Im using it all day every day and building my newest software around it. Why? Its pretty simple, and Matt says it in his piece. He listens. brbr
a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/06/03/olderPeopleGetToMeToo.htmlimg src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/11/timeLovesAHero.jpg width=125 height=125 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named timeLovesAHero.jpg/aAnd when I asked him to add a feature to WordPress he said yes. I didnt even have to call him, or buy him lunch -- all I did was ask on the blog. He must have been reading. img src=http://www.scripting.com/gifs/QBullets/qbullets/sidesmiley.gif width=11 height=11 border=0 alt=smilebrbr
There isnt enough trust in the world, imho. People cant tell, or dont take the time to find out, if someone is trustworthy. The other day I asked this question of an editor at a major newspaper -- why dont you trust your readers? I ask this of Apple, why dont you trust your users? What about the government, why doesnt it trust its citizens? Ultimately all these institutions must listen to the people they serve. The news and tech industries, even governments -- iwill/i eventually listen. brbr
The reason people are reluctant: If you extend trust, sometimes youre going to get burned. And if you never trust anyone, youll never be hurt. But you wont have much of a life. So you have to develop a sense of who and what you can depend on.brbr
Not many guys in Matts shoes take a chance on a guy like me. But it just takes one to make some amazing things happen! And while todays news people dont seem to trust me, all it took was a href=http://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/02/09/how-the-ny-times-came-to-support-rss/one/a to revolutionize how news flows through the Internet. Just one. Thats all.brbr
I look back to the times when I have been most effective, its always been in partnership with someone else. Thats the big secret. Take a chance, and when it works, take another, and another.brbr
Pretty soon Im going to put another invitation out there to the universe, and I know Ill get a listen from Matt, and I hope from some other people too.brbr
Support on Twitter cant possibly work, for two reasons.brbr
1. Can you really explain the problem in 140 characters? brbr
2. Can it can be solved in 140 characters? brbr
Better: Find a way you can ask in a comment or email, and explain icarefully/i what went wrong.brbr
For some reason there are two bits of movie dialog stuck in my head.brbr
1. In a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_%28film%29Fargo/a, theres a a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy2HfixB9_8scene/a where a random cop is talking to a bar owner whos shoveling his sidewalk, telling the story of the funny lookin guy played by Steve Buscemi. At the end of the story, which he just told in a beautful midwestern you know you betcha way, when he runs out of story, he says Thats it. (Big pause.) End of story. The moment wasnt awkward at all, quite dignified, beautifully done.brbr
a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/scriptingnews/4088930596/img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/11/fargo.jpg width=240 height=180 border=0 alt=A picture named fargo.jpg/abrbr
2. The big my sister moment in a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_%28film%29Chinatown/a with Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson. That might be the most perfect bit of dialog in all moviedom. I dont want to spoil the plot by saying why, but... Wow.brbr
a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IBZocFkXGYThe video of the scene/a is on YouTube. But dont click the link if you havent seen the movie yet.brbr
Some movies you can only watch once, these movies never get old. For some reason Fargo works really well on mobile computers like the iPhone or Droid.brbr
a href=http://www.google.com/search?q=Ries+TroutRies Trout/a wrote a series of books about Positioning. brbr
I love these books and have a href=http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ascripting.com+ries+troutwritten/a about them many times.brbr
img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/10/ladder.jpg width=145 height=358 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named ladder.jpgThey explain markets in terms of metaphors that help you visualize that markets work differently from the ways we were raised to think they did. Markets are not about features, or about what you remember, theyre about the map in peoples minds, and about the iimpressions/i products leave, not the details.brbr
In a href=http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Warfare-Al-Ries/dp/0070527261Marketing Warfare/a, they depict the marketplace as a battlefield, and used the principles outlined by the a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PrussiaPrussian/a general a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_ClausewitzCarl von Clauswitz/a in his a href=http://www.amazon.com/On-War-ebook/dp/B00161KY3A/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8m=AG56TWVU5XWC2writing/a about war. Minds are where the war is fought.brbr
Then they depict the market as a collection of ladders. On each ladder theres a number one, two and three in any market. Every marketer thinks his or her product is unique and stands alone, but whats important is iwhat the prospect thinks./i In colas theres Coke, Pepsi and everyone else. Poor 7Up wasnt even on the ladder, so they invented a new one called Uncola. It worked (but it usually doesnt).brbr
iA creneau/i is one of these new ways of explaining something so that it stands separately in the mind of the prospect. Some creneaux exist, like laptop computers and desktop computers -- we all know the difference. Some creneaux dont exist, though marketers would have you believe they do. The leading realtor west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies. Yeah yeah yeah. :-)brbr
What about ladders and creneaux in markets that are developing right now. a href=https://www.yammer.com/Yammer/a proved that there is a segment you could think of as iTwitter Behind the Firewall/i or iTwitter for Workgroups./i The product and company are doing well, because that is a real segment and they are the top guy on the ladder.brbr
Some products are new but so useful that they pretty much form the whole market. a href=https://www.dropbox.com/Dropbox/a is an example. That means one of two things may happen: They may add a feature or find a new way to explain it that puts it either into a new segment of an existing market or on the ladder in an existing market. Ries Trout believe they would do better if they did one of those. Either be second guy on the ladder in a booming market, or split off a piece of a market and own it. Standing alone isnt such a hot deal for the first guys in a market. Just ask Cromemco, Altair and Radio Shack about their leading positions in the personal computer market in the 1970s.brbr
img src=http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2009/11/10/coke.jpg width=150 height=150 border=0 align=right hspace=15 vspace=5 alt=A picture named coke.jpgSo what about a href=http://droidie.com/Droid/a. It does so much, its really hard to figure out what creneau it might be occupying, so I think its on the iPhone ladder, maybe #2 or #3. Probably #2. Call it the iCellphone as Style Statement/i market. The other one is probably the Palm Pre. Microsoft, Blackberry and Nokia are on the old ladder, the one that the iPhone refused to get on.brbr
Then there are creneaux that Im isure/i are there, but with no products in them, yet. brbr
iCommunicating Cameras./i Oh boy what a great market thats going to be when someone goes after it seriously. No one has, yet. The iPhone is a dress rehearsal for the real product whose communication ability will be as seamless as the a href=http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Original-Wireless-generation/dp/B000FI73MAAmazon Kindle/a. The tech industry hardly notices that Amazon has solved a ihard/i problem, in typical Amazon fashion, completely. The Kindle isnt glitzy like the iPhone or Droid, but it works so well you could say It Just Works. A high compliment.brbr
Others: a href=http://www.scripting.com/futureNews.htmlCheckbox News/a and a href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/06/14/newIdeaSocialCameras.htmlSocial Cameras/a.brbr
Another creneau that Ive been yammering about for years, which I called ia href=http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/09/28/payloadsForTwitter.htmlPayloads for Twitter/a,/i Im now conceiving in a different way -- Im giving up on Twitter doing this -- and instead hoping that a href=https://www.dropbox.com/Dropbox/a may get there first. They have already done an RSS feed for changes to dropboxes. And they have a public folder in every dropbox. If they do a minor cleanup of their RSS and support a realtime protocol such as rssCloud or PubSubHubBub, they will be squarely in what I think of as a new creneau with enormous potential -- iTwitter for Content. /ibrbr
PS: This piece ran earlier today on my a href=http://unberkeley.com/2009/11/10/twitter-for-content/Unberkeley/a blog. There are some comments there you may want to read. brbr
I wrote two pieces over the weekend on the new a href=http://droidie.com/Droidie/a blog.brbr
1. a href=http://droidie.com/2009/11/07/net-net-i-love-the-droid/Net-net: I love the Droid/a.brbr
2. a href=http://droidie.com/2009/11/08/the-holy-grail-in-communicating-cameras/The holy grail in communicating cameras/a.brbr
3. a href=http://droidie.com/2009/11/09/press-up-to-play-huh-wazzat/Press Up to Play? Huh?? Wazzat!?/abrbr
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