TiEcon 2008 panel on ‘Taking on the incumbents’

Moderator(s):

Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures

Panelist(s):

Chris Larsen, Prosper Marketplace, Inc.

Peter Luethi, Jet Airways India Ltd.

Sanjiv Malhotra, Oorja Protonics

Marten Mickos, Sun Microsystems Inc.

                               

This is the first time that I’ve ever heard or seen Guy Kawasaki in person. He sure is funny and sharp as heck. Overall, the panel wasn’t all that interesting but Guy was extremely entertaining with his quips on how ‘German service is an oxymoron’ and in this web 2.0 world , ‘nothing’s a secret but there’s no verification either’. Most hilarious was when he kept trying to get Peter Luethi (Jet Airways) to confess which airline he would use if he were flying to London. I think the discussion would have been all more interesting, if he was on the panel rather than moderating it. Here are my key takeaways from this discussion:

Operate under the radar.

Incumbents usually have the attitude that the newcomers are not worth bothering about. This works in favor of the newcomers, who can fly under the radar and grow quickly until they get to a point when the competitors start noticing them but they are big enough either to thwart them or get acquired. Marten Mickos (formerly of MySQL) was very entertaining and offered some great insights. MySQL approached Oracle and Microsoft both to find an ally in its effort to take on IBM. (MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems).

If you can’t kill them, partner with them.

If your market has multiple incumbents. Consider partnering with one competitor and offer something that they are not able to offer. In other words, complement an incumbent’s existing offerings rather than taking on the incumbent head on.

Your enemy’s enemy is your best friend.

Don’t try to go it alone. If you have multiple incumbents, partner with one competitor to take on the other. Understand your market’s competitive dynamics and leverage that to create synergies that help your growth.

Rally support from your customer.

Find the underserved need in your target market and fill that gap. Go to the customer directly and create demand for your product by focusing on that. Jet Airways is trying to fill the need that no other airline currently, which is to bring back the ‘luxury’ in aviation by offering amenities and facilities that make air travel more enjoyable.

What do bloggers owe their audience?

It’s usually the blog posts that get my attention but this weekend, it was the fracas in the comment section on Guy Kawasaki’s blog post that got me thinking. Guy posted on how Houston has the "funniest Web 2.0 babes" and he went on to share this hilarious introduction by Jenny Lawson of Good Mom/Bad Mom.

… What does matter though is that Guy Kawasaki kicks ass. That Guy Kawasaki is totally famous. That Guy Kawasaki is a genius who looks a little like Jackie Chan and could probably take you out with a roundhouse kick if he wanted to. And, most importantly, that Guy Kawasaki is here with us tonight.

So without further ado, I give you…Guy Kawasaki.

You can read the full introduction on Guy’s blog. For sure, it’s very funny stuff and and I am glad he shared it. But I think the verbal free-for-all that ensued in the audience ie. the comments section is worth a mention. Here’s what I am talking about:

…This post had nothing to do with changing the world and everything to do with Guy telling us how great his is. No feed reader in the world can sniff that out. You read a para or two to see what’s up. Nobody was trying to be rude. Nobody died. You dn’t have to defend Guy. Read the blog and appreciate the fact that it’s free. We’re just asking for some consistency.

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Wow – if you hate Guy’s blog – why stick around and complain? Move on! …I like this blog and regularly read it. I am thankful for the free gift. I pay no money to read this blog. If I don’t find a particular post useful, I can move on. That’s why they invented feed readers – or come to think of it – Alltop!

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….Self-serving and off-topic posts are Ok once I a while, in the same way occasional contextual advertising is acceptabl. However a balance must be maintained.

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Denis says -  "when one posts to a blog he should largely post for the benefit of the readers."

I say BS to that! The question begging to be asked and answered is – what if anything, do bloggers owe their audience? When an author writes anything it’s going to be self-serving. That’s the point of self expression. Do you think that every great writer in history wrote to please everyone? No, one writes about what one wants to write about. Period. End of story. Get over it.

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Wow, that’s some debate! The question at the heart of this fracas is – what if anything do bloggers owe their audience? Wikipedia’s definition of blog(ging) is,

A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

In other words, a blog is supposed to be personal. But as blogging has evolved, there has been an emergence of ‘blogberties’ and professional mega-blog sites like the Technorati, GigaOM, Mashable, Huffington Post who have turned these ‘personal musings’ into a lucrative business. These professional blogs have an uncanny resemblance to the traditional news media networks. The emphasis is on constantly spewing content or being the first one with breaking news. But aside from the behemoth blogs and small select group of professional/B-List bloggers, blogging still largely remains an individual endeavor.   

Bendy3008 blogged about the relative unimportance of blogging and social networks based on Edelman’s Trust Barometer survey, which shows that consumers still find traditional news media, business magazine and newspaper articles to be the most credible sources of information on a company and/or product while blogging and social networks rank very low.

While individually, some blogs and bloggers have tremendous influence and credibility, it hasn’t translated to the blogosphere in general. Technorati claims to be tracking over 100million blogs and there are 175K  new blogs coming up everyday. That’s heck-of-a-lot of content out there and it’s challenging to separate the good ones from the bad. Not only is the volume of content staggering, blogging still remains a highly unstructured media. Bloggers control the format, content, frequency of their blog posts but there is no standard format or consistency.

On the other hand, traditional media has a very structured format, you typically don’t hear the news anchors or talk show hosts veering off-topic or devoting an entire episode to a discussion of their personal life. If that happens, how long do you think you’ll stick around before you flick the channel? So, while you get a very narrow view of things, traditional media still continues to be a much more credible source than most of the blogs out there and for a good reason.

I truly believe that the essence of blogging is keeping it human and keeping it conversational. Rankings do matter, but there’s a fine line between being ‘customer-oriented’ and pandering. As an avid consumer of blogs and a newbie blogger myself, I am acutely aware of the time, effort, and dedication it takes to churn out quality content. The advantage of blogs vs. traditional media is that there’s a great deal of value in getting unadulterated content from someone’s who’s not trying to pander to the masses or obsessed with ratings.

I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this debate. As blogs evolve, so will the audience and the expectations will go higher rather than lower. The blog audience has many choices, if they find that a blog doesn’t meet their expectations, they will vote with their feet or in this case… their mouse.

RSS and mainstream adoption

Louis Gray shared this great commentary by Brian Clark on Google Reader (via Friendfeed) today. Brian is perplexed why RSS hasn’t gone mainstream yet.

Email still has its problems, and they’re not getting any better. But the public at large either doesn’t care about RSS, or doesn’t know they’re using it (a la My Yahoo, etc).

Many technology (product) evangelists get too hung up on the technology and miss the point, which is – technology is a means to an end, not the end unto itself. In this case, it’s the need for information that’s important and the underlying technology itself is irrelevant, unless you are the developer. Even if RSS goes ‘mainstream’ (if it hasn’t already), will folks know it as RSS? Does it really matter?

Brian goes on to say,

That’s why I’m happy to see projects like Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop. It’s completely powered by RSS feeds, but it’s all behind the curtain. People want access to information… they don’t care about the underlying technology.

I couldn’t agree more. I think the fundamental question here is – What drives adoption of any technology in the mainstream? Prominent technology bloggers, innovators, early adopters play a critical role in creating awareness for new technologies. They are akin to early explorers of uncharted territories, blazing trails to exciting new worlds.

However, not everyone is keen on swimming across crocodile-infested waters for thrills. The masses need a bridge. The ‘bridge-builders’ are folks like Guy Kawasaki who are developing easy-to-use applications/sites aimed at fulfilling a need.

And as long as the car can go 0-60mph in (insert desired number here) seconds, does the average Joe Schmoe really care what’s under the hood? I highly doubt it.