At the lauch of the Internet Special Interest Group, Ram Shriram, founder of Sherpalo Ventures, and one of the founding board members of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), offered a word of caution for entrepreneurs: You need to continue to innovate – Google survives because they’re trying to stay relevant, and constantly improving; you don’t have the comforts of a traditional, proprietary environment. One thing is – once you build a brand, people will not desert you overnight because they have comfort in the brand. Success is about user growth – not about revenues. Google, Skype and Myspace were all about that. But it’s just the world we live in – if you choose to be on the Internet, you live dangerously. Some vignettes from the talk:
Software As A Service (SAAS): Shriram feels that the next wave of the Internet is around software applications “in the cloud”, where the world will move beyond the desktop and use remotely hosted softwar. But it’s not just about reinventing the software model – it’s about new application, and sharing and collaborating using these apps.
Video: The founder of Skype, a couple of days ago, told Shriram that that 50 percent of their usage has shifted to videoskype…point being – grandma’s want to see their grandkids. YouTube has 10 hours of content being uploaded every minute, and each video has at least one viewer – the person who uploaded it. P2p (peer-to-peer) traffic causes more bandwidth issues than video sharing sites, and there are primarily DRM and copyright issues. Cost of storage and bandwidth will continue to go down – which is spurring the growth of video.
Copyright & Privacy: India needs their version of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act: the ISP is worried about hosting any kind of content because they may get sued. Shriram mentioned the take-down policy of YouTube as a solution (Ed: not all agree that the onus must be on the content owner for repeatedly pointing out violation). Shriram also sidestepped the question about user privacy, saying that it’s the buyers choice.
Mobile: 2.5 billion people have cellphones, which are becoming computers. North America and parts of Western Europe are mobile illiterate, compared to India and China…it’s a cultural thing. If there is a Web 3.0, it will be mobile – using the mobile as an information, sharing device, location based services. Usability on mobile phones is pretty bad right now. WAP is the most cumbersome way to use the phone – as more broadband functionality comes to phones. The biggest revolution worldwide in terms of usability is the iPhone.
Why the online retail model (like Amazon) not been funded in India?: Shriram put it down to low labour costs, though he did add that retail startups have been funded – just that they aren’t talking about the funding yet. (Ed: if you know, there’s an anonymous tip box in the left column)
By the bye: Shriram mentioned that he’s on Facebook…but incognito.
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