Archives for February 2006

There is a new kid on the block called PayTextMe that lets you do PayPal style transactions with a mobile phone using SMS Text messages. But the thing that really impressed me was their Go-To Market Plan:

• Since, PayPal is their obvious big brother, they advertise using PayTextMe for your craigslist transactions (eat that EBay!)
• They give you $5 just to sign up. This part reminds me of the dot-com boom days. But then there is a X-Box give away if you sign up 36 friends. Now that is cool viral marketing.
• I learnt of them through my co-worker (Vishal) who noticed them on Craigslist.

So here are some ideas for others who want to copy-and-extend from yours truly:

• Do a 3Bubbles on PayTextMe by allowing people to send and receive money in realtime while reading a blog or conversing in an IM. Why do I have to go to my PayPal account just to send money? (Answer: Authentication. But that can be done as a post-step with authorization via email or cell phone.)
• Work out a deal with Cell Phone giants to offer this as a service. The Telco giants are desparate to make money with anything other than voice.
• Figure out a way to combine this technology with RFID and/or biometrics

Just food for thought.

Jeff Nolan asks the following question on his blog:

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what the benefits of a pure SOA application framework are. While the technical benefits are important, of equal interest are the actual end-user business benefits for companies investing in this technology.

I predict that the biggest benefits of SOA will not come from SOA directly. Just as the greatest benefits of the Internet did not come from IP. SOA will break up our applications and allow us to hook them up- that is the easy, obvious part. The real value comes from the ‘community’ or ‘network’ effect. Example: If TurboTax were to take on SOA, initially the users would see little benefit. But over a few years (or quarters), Independent ‘service’ providers will start building speicalized services for HSA (Health Savings Account), Tax Deduction tracking, real-time analysis of tax implications of your buy/sell decision on E-Trade, and so on. The same is true for big-giant-vendor’s enterprise apps (SAP, Oracle, anyone else?).

The examples of what services would be interesting in this SOA ecosystem include:

• background checks in HR process
• provisioning new laptop, accounts, corporate credit card, discount on a car
• In Finance, OFAC Compliance (don’t-pay-terrorists-compliance) is available as a service that you can invoke from your Financial applications
• Enhanced CRM functionality by showing customer profile by getting data from the internet or Dunn & Bradstreet
• Check CDC alerts for drugs in the Prescription Applications used by Hospitals and Doctors
• the list goes on.

The revolution will be in the way these services are composed together to deliver new functionality- the services themselves are rather mundane.

Kintan asks in his blog as to what is the killer app of Web 2.0. My bet is on Email. Any software company (enterprise or otherwise) that can successfully change our email experience will be a huge winner. And to the naysayers out there- it has already happened once. Hotmail is not what email started out as in 90s. Its actually a web-based application that looked like email. For example, note that Hotmail-to-Hotmail email may never see SMTP- its actually a database (or file) centric web application.

It can be done again. But who? I know that Google is trying and that Microsoft has the incumbent’s advantage and the incumbent’s curse.

“Eat your own dog food”- that adage is not working for Microsoft or any other ‘big’ software company. The problem is that they do not have people that really appreciate good dog food i.e., Dogs.

Our friend at Innovation Creators blogs about Google winning the race for Web 2.0 office tools.

Yes, Google is definitely leading this race and the likes of Microsoft will continue to play catch up. Here is what is interesting though, and give it some thought:

The engineers and PMs at Microsoft are as smart as Google, if not smarter. The difference, my friend, is the culture. The Google culture of innovation means that Google engineers and PMs live in the Web 2.0 world- I am not so sure about our friends from Microsoft.

You have to be Dog to know what good Dog food tastes like!!

If I were a Microsoft Exec, I would hire 200 young engineers right out of school and let them build the next Google-killer without guidance or supervision from experienced Microsoftees.

And if IBM, Oracle, HP are listening, do the same for your new businesses.

(Note: These views as all views expressed in my blog are personal.)

Here is a detailed report on the Web 2.0 event. I would really like to know how many people understand Web 2.0 as would help understand where we are in the Hype Cycle. The consumer Web 2.0 space seems over-crowded.

Or is the fundamental folly is to think in terms of looking for the next big Web 2.0 start-up. Perhaps the focus (at least for me) needs to shift back to identifying and solving real problems rather than analyzing Web 2.0 trends. You don’t create the next EBay by focusing on ‘what the Web means’.

The key is to analyze old (and new) problems faced by business and consumers- and see if their can be a better solution today in the context of today’s technology.