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Wednesday, May 14, 2003
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| Scott Rafer: "Particularly in Europe, the trend towards municipal [WiFi] sponsorship is accelerating and must be watched closely."
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| EFF on spectrum policy |
| Thanks to Cory Doctorow (way to go Cory!), the Electronic Frontier Foundation has jumped into the critically important battle over wireless spectrum policy. Here's a summary of comments in one FCC proceeding from several key players.
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| McKinsey takes issue with decentralization |
| McKinsey Quarterly: "Yet a decentralized infrastructure, though more flexible, is not only 20 to 30 percent more expensive than a centralized one but also less reliable. Although decentralized models now prevail, the pendulum is swinging back toward centralized control."
Needless to say, I disagree with this analysis. But since it costs $150 for the premium membership required to read the full article, I don't know where the conclusions come from.
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| Gory details of social network software |
| More good discussion on Joi's site about LinkedIn.
I invited a bunch of people into my network on the service in order to get a feel for it. I'm not yet convinced Reid Hoffman et al have hit the mother lode, but they've made a start. The question is how well and how quickly they can evolve.
There are two issues for any social networking service: scale and functionality. It's a prototypical network-effects business -- there's only room for one eBay, and the first one up the mountain wins. But to scale beyond the early adopters, especially with competition, these services have to do something valuable and create a good user experience. LinkedIn's core service -- trusted business introductions -- is useful but not, I think, a killer app. If the company does its job well, its may stumble on a real killer app, as PayPal did. (We know one good app for social networking is dating, but that's a different market.) There's really no way to understand the possibilities of social software other than to build networks and watch what unfolds.
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BLOGS OF INTEREST
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