Comments on: The Leading Class and the Lagging Class on the Web

By: Geoge St John

Geoge St John — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:38:39 +0000

Our research indicates that the web is entering a period of consolidation. It confirms that the gap between the a leading class and a lagging class is already a reality.

By: Kevin Kelleher

Kevin Kelleher — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:10:34 +0000

I sort of agree with you on Apple. They take existing technologies but they improve on your experience of them, which is no small feat and requires a lot of creativity. Before the iPod, I had a Creative Zen mp3 player and when it broke I bought an iPod. The product was the same, but the experience of using both was like night and day. Very quickly, the iPod was the leader and the Zen the laggard.

By: Kevin Kelleher

Kevin Kelleher — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:44:49 +0000

I think the difference between AOL in the 90s and Facebook today is the difference between isolation and privacy. AOL was designed as more of a fortress – you didn’t need to roam out onto the Web because everything you’d want online was supposed to be there. Facebook can potentially be isolating, but in my experience it is more like a private conversation with people I know, who often help me discover other things on the Web. Facebook is less open, but the privacy element makes that work for now. Whether it helps or hurts in the long run remains to be seen.

By: The Park Paradigm - Digital Divide.

The Park Paradigm - Digital Divide. — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:15:23 +0000

[...] GigaOm writes today on the growing divide between the leading and lagging companies on the web: The web is entering a period of intense creativity. Companies like Google and Apple are positioned to ride, if not generate, the momentum driving that creativity. The laggards are at risk of being stuck in perpetual catch-up mode. If that happens, the bluebirds will have flown for good — and the landscape of Internet companies will soon look dramatically different. [...]

By: Jacob Varghese

Jacob Varghese — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:59:37 +0000

“They’ll be able to endure for years serving the people who haven’t taken to Facebook or maybe tried and then abandoned Twitter, people who are comfortable with a simpler, more familiar experience on the web.”

Kevin,

To me this seems to be a contradiction. I see Facebook as the new new AOL. It’s a walled garden in which people interact. To me that seems short-sighted. These gardens come and go – aol, myspace, and facebook….
What lives on are advances on how to share ideas and communicate – IM, Email, picture hosting/sharing, maybe Wave? While Flickr or Yahoo might not be around forever, those technologies will continue to exist.

By: AndreaF

AndreaF — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:56:21 +0000

Although there is some good truth in the post, I’d like to make a different point. Innovation is very important and thank god however Apple and Google cannot be put in the same group for example. Google is an innovator and as such gets 90% of its products wrong, the 10% that make it are real hitters; this is a strategy. Apple uses mostly existing technologies and executes very well because it looks at the consumer; they are obsessed about the end user and that is why 90% of their products are a success. Microsoft is actually very similar to Apple. Its execution is not as good but it is playing on many more fronts than the other players. In my view, utilising Farecast and Powerset (existing technologies) to offer a better solution for the end user is a very clever startegy and one that more companies should look into. When you add the recent advancements with Zune HD, with Xbox integration, Sky on Xbox, Netflix through Media Player and how all this will be integrated with surface and connected through Windows 7, I think you cannot say they are not working hard to satisfy consumers’ needs. Of course it comes down to execution, but if they fix that they may actually come up on top in a couple of years.
Won’t comment on FB vs MySpace as I think it’s too early to call a winner and I think actually both may survive and thrive.

By: Kevin Kelleher

Kevin Kelleher — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:34:30 +0000

Only I’m not sure how long Microsoft can keep profits growing by leaning mostly on Exchange and Office or even Sharepoint.

You make a good point about Microsoft’s head versus its heart and enterprise vs. consumer markets. It’s acting like someone in a perfectly good marriage but always pining for someone he developed a crush on in 1994.

By: Kevin Kelleher

Kevin Kelleher — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:21:44 +0000

Thanks, Om.

Agree on creativity. Too often the ideas patched together are borrowed ones.

By: Lanjack

Lanjack — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:58:25 +0000

Lol, yet another valley area press circle jerking over the next great thing on the cloud and of course their precious iCorporation. Lamenting, snarking and sniding about Microsoft has gotten old in case you havent caught on.

This bizzaro world where everyone uses unibody macbook pro’s, has 5mbps broadband, iPhones and communicates in 140character burts thankfully isn’t reality and never will be.

By: Stark Ravin

Stark Ravin — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:13:12 +0000

Om’s last point is on the mark. On Microsoft in particular, it just doesn’t know who it is and does indeed have a patchwork of businesses, many of them copycats of innovators who have succeeded before them. It thinks it can be everything, but everyone on the outside knows it is, at heart, an enterprise software company.

After the dotcom bust, Oracle did a brilliant thing: it dug deeper into it’s core enterprise expertise by buying up competitors that took it further into that space. Oracle knows who it is and what it is good at, and so the company just keeps flourishing. I never figured out why Microsoft didn’t do the same. It’s corporate mentality and model is that of an enterprise software company, but it keeps trying to be a consumer tech company.

Worst of all, it just keeps doing what it has always done: chase after the innovators, copying their products. That worked in the enterprise markets of the 80′s. In today’s consumer driven technology markets, that mindset leads to failure.

Microsoft’s core competence lies outside the stuff that Apple and Google do. They should stick to their knitting selling Exchange and Office to MIS managers in the Fortune 2000. It’s not too late.