Protection allows much more complex applications to run with lower risk of crashing or affecting other applications. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had too many problems with this yet. But I guess Google thinks (probably rightly so) that it’s going to be an issue as applications move to the cloud.

By owning its own browser, Google can have much more influence on which features are built into browsers. I think it’s only a matter of time before Firefox and the other browsers include protected memory. And Chrome’s emphasis on fast javascript rendering is definitely creating a bit of a (great) arms race in that regard.

All of this dovetails with Google’s strategy of pushing toward browser based applications. Their Google Apps just came out of beta, and are making a good run at the enterprise… even threatening Outlook (long term). Google’s strategy is simple, and probably inexorable. They can provide high quality solutions for free because they make money from ancillary sources, e.g., advertising.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is building Office 2010 to include web-based versions of Word, Excel, etc. However, MS Office will cost money, and over time the feature discrepancies are likely to narrow. There’s also the issue of fundamental focus: Microsoft just doesn’t really seem to get it. Or at least they’re deeply afflicted with the innovator’s dilemma.

One way to look at this is fat client versus thin client. One complaint I have about Windows is that it has gotten very “fat.” Google’s Chrome OS is much thinner, but it’s not a true “thin client.” Google Chrome is based on a Linux kernel, but it’s ultra simplified. It sounds like just enough of Linux to run a web browser and little more. Instead of the heavy, feature-rich nature of Windows, Google is betting that users want fast, easy, and (mostly) free applications on the web.

So, are we all going to be using Chrome OS by this time next year? My guess is no. It will be popular, particularly on low-end netbooks. But there are 4 major limiting factors that I see:

BANDWIDTH:

Our network infrastructure renders certain applications (such as video) very hard to manipulate efficiently through a browser application. I don’t think video, image, or audio intensive applications are going to the web any time soon (at least for professional purposes). Maybe if we could improve our network to the levels they have in Japan, things will be different.

LATENCY:

When I click, how quickly does the server know it? And how quickly can it get the proper response back? Desktop apps still have browser apps beat when it comes to responsiveness. I’m an incredibly impatient user, and I brook no defiance from my (always too slow) computer. I think a lot of others users feel the same. When will this be fixed? I don’t know. Rich media interfaces can be optimized to reduce latency, but until we fundamentally improve the network infrastructure we will be dealing with this issue.

BROWSER LIMITATIONS:

Browsers have limitations in terms of the interfaces they can support, and security restrictions. Rich media solutions such as Flash can help interface a lot, but there are still issues remaining. Javascript is still too slow for highly complex interfaces. Big Flex apps still take too long to download. Of course, this is all improving rapidly, and I don’t think it will be a limiting factor for much longer.

USER HABITS:

Computer users are habituated to local applications. In particular, I think we are used to local storage. If Chrome OS permits only remote storage, users may be reluctant to use it. And until a broader array of web applications are available, many users may put off switching to Chrome OS for everyday computing.

Conclusion

I think many people will desire a Chrome OS – in addition to a desktop. A highly portable device dedicated to surfing the web? I want one. My iPhone is great, but it is just too small and too slow. I think the upcoming Crunchtablet will tap into this need. I want one, but only in addition to my desktop. For now.

It is easy to set up a single-server web application, or even to separate the major tiers onto separate servers. But when it comes to scaling out to more servers, particularly more database servers, life gets difficult. You face data concurrency issues, latency challenges, failover needs, and backup requirements. Solving each of these is complex, time-consuming, and often expensive.

None of this is conducive to building the next big Internet startup. Solving the scaling issue is a necessary evil… for now. In my opinion, whoever fixes it will make a heap of money. It’s a commodity problem. Someone ought to fix it.

The cloud computing services (such as AWS and now Google AppEngine) are the first steps towards effortless scalability, but they leave a lot to be desired. With a combination of EC2 and S3, you can build a very credible Linux (or even Windows with emulation) solution that can scale with reasonable ease and cost efficiency. However, you still have to bake your own solution for load balancing, database clustering, and server provisioning. Amazon’s SimpleDB is not a great database alternative (it’s not really a database in my opinion), and has some limitations (eventual consistency, data type limitation) that require a substantial layer of custom code to serve the needs of most applications.

I want a better solution. I suppose the market is heading for it, but just in case, I’m going to whine until I get it. I want effortless scalability.

What is effortless scalability? I build my application on my local machine. Once it’s working, I upload it to the cloud, assign it a URL, and I’m done. I get 100 visitors, I pay a bit. I get 10 million visitors, no problem (although I pay a lot more). Some key requirements:

• No server requisitioning… computing resources are allocated automatically as needed
• Built-in database scaling, without the limitations of SimpleDB
• Automated load balancing, with configurable settings for picky developers
• Automated data storage that looks like a file system to me (think cPanel like you would see in a shared hosting environment)
• Flexible stack support (check out CohesiveFT for an example of how that might work)
• Automatic failover

Amazon Web Services is a good start. A highly scalable relational database in the cloud would be a great next step. Or at least a cloud datastore that more closely approximates the capabilities of a relational database, and abstracts away the complexities from the developer.

Some will argue that one of the things that makes Amazon Web Services so powerful is its very simplicity. Complexity abstracted away from the developer will inevitably accrue to the cloud. That is likely true, although from an allocation of resources standpoint, it makes more sense than requiring developers to solve the same problem over and over.

Solutions such as Media Temple only chip away at the problem, for example offering dedicated MySQL containers as their database scaling solution. How can that support a heavy duty site?

Anyway, someone please turn application scaling into a click of a button. I’ll be happy to pay for it.

[Disclosure: I have a relationship with CohesiveFT mentioned in the post through my role at OCA Ventures, a venture firm that has an investment in the company.]

These sites all share one thing in common: they are to one extent or another social web ventures. These ventures harness the social interests of their customers to create value, enabled by an Internet platform. This category includes obvious players such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, and Digg. A less obvious example is eBay, a sort of social commerce site where reputation determined by other users plays one of the key roles in the platform’s success.

But what are the factors that differentiate a successful social web venture from a bust? Our user participation hierarchy provides the beginning of a framework for this sort of analysis.

The User Participation Hierarchy

Traditionally, mainstream media content has been created by a few select entities. Hollywood studios, big record labels, newspaper and television journalists created small libraries of content and generated significant value by attracting large audiences through limited distribution channels like cinema chains, music stores, and television networks. This top-down value creation model concentrated power in the hands of select creators and distributors.

At the same time, consumers created content, like photos and written content, which were shared primarily with their friends and family. Yet the mass distribution of this user-generated content was limited by technological constraints.

In recent years, these technological constraints have been removed. The increasing comfort of consumers with online activity has changed the way that content is consumed. Traditional media, like television shows and movies, are now accessible online and can be viewed on demand anytime by consumers. At the same time, user-generated content can now be shared with a mass audience, setting off an explosion of new types of content like blogs, social imaging sites, wikis, and online videos. This online phenomenon is changing the rules of media creation and creating a new hierarchy of participants – creators, distributors, collaborators, and consumers. It is also rapidly blurring the divide between the consumers and the creators as consumers move up the hierarchy through collaboration, distribution, and creation.

Creators: Person(s) who define and create the original content. These people seed the original idea and occupy the top tier of the user participation hierarchy. Based on the frequency distribution there are mainly two types of creative activities: commercial and non-commercial. The commercial (typically mass media) creators occupy a narrow high traffic band. Non-commercial users (typically individual and purpose specific creators) create the majority of the content and occupy the long tail.

Distributors: Person(s) who provide outlets and utilize channels for consumption of content. These people are credited with cross-fertilization of the content which they take from original channel and inject into other channels. In some sense they work as filters by cross-planting content that is high quality and provides value. Distributors use word of mouth to spread ventures, ideas, websites, and content.

Collaborators: Person(s) who add secondary value to the content (e.g. reviews, tags, or comments). The value added is highly dependent upon the level or service and options provided by the social ventures. An ideal website would make it easier for consumers to become collaborators. Collaborators could themselves be subdivided based on level of involvement – tagging, rating, commenting, reviewing, and responding.

Consumers: Person(s) who passively consume content without adding any value to the content itself. But we would point out that consumers in fact do passively add value to the creators by spending time on the content. Thus each view constitutes a value activity for the content and the website. The consumption activities are also mainly of two types based on frequency distribution: a narrow band where high frequency of unique consumers occurs and the long tail where most of the consumption takes place.

Social web disrupts the status quo ante

Social web sites introduce the means for a much broader group to participate in creation, distribution, and collaboration. As users move up the user participation hierarchy, their participation expands to include additional roles. In traditional media, creators, distributors, and collaborators comprise a minority of the market, and a relatively small percentage of the user population falls into those categories.

The social web dramatically increases the scope of involvement, bringing a broader array of perspectives, interests, and skills to the creation of original content. This evolution of the content creation model creates a substantial increase in consumer utility through greater variety and volume of content.

Why is the user participation hierarchy so important? Because it leads to useful insights into why certain social web ventures were more successful than others. The successful ventures consistently followed two rules:

1. Focus on providing value to consumers
2. Encourage and facilitate consumer movement up the hierarchy

Stay tuned for a follow-up post examining why these rules are so important, and how to assess the value of a social web venture.

Note: This article derives from a paper I co-authored in 2007, “Understanding Key Success Factors for Social Web Ventures”.

]]> http://www.josephdwyer.net/2008/04/05/the-user-participation-hierarchy/feed/ 0 http://www.josephdwyer.net/2008/03/20/how-far-ahead-of-the-chasm-am-i/ http://www.josephdwyer.net/2008/03/20/how-far-ahead-of-the-chasm-am-i/#comments Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:20:03 +0000 admin http://www.josephdwyer.net/?p=21 This is my first blog post. Ever. I should have done this years ago. Apparently, the first bloggers started at it in 1994, around the same time I began my first technology startup, a web consultancy. Although I was knee deep in the web, I had never heard of blogging, and was sleeping about four hours a night. No blogging for me at that time.

By 1999 when blogging became more popular, DDS (the unfortunately unappealing acronym for my first startup) had grown so much that I had to split it into two companies with a total of perhaps 60 employees. I was also an executive board member and CTO of a venture backed online mortgage company. In retrospect, I probably would have both enjoyed and benefited from starting a blog at that time. But I was too busy, or at least that is what I told myself.

Which leads us to the question, “How far ahead of the chasm am I?” I am speaking of Geoffrey Moore’s chasm, of course. Am I an enthusiast or a visionary? Or (shudder) am I part of the early majority (the first post-chasm group).

My wife would like to peg me as the earliest of enthusiast adopters, always trying out the newest and uncertain technologies. As evidence, she would present the very nature of Blir, one of my more successful (prior) companies.

Blir was a custom software development and technology strategy consulting firm. For clients such as Albertson’s, Exodus Computing, and Bain & Company, we cut deep into the bleeding edge of technology to find ways to improve performance or create new business opportunities. The technologies we used were typically so new that our clients had very few people to turn to for implementing them. It was, of course, a critical part of the way we won business against the much bigger players in the market.

In response, I would point out that while we used cutting edge technology, our goals were eminently practical. Enthusiasm for the technology itself was far less important than excitement about what it could do for a company. In 1996-97 I had failed with an angel backed e-commerce marketplace. That (hard) lesson taught me to think twice about technology opportunity. Part of Blir’s marketing was that we could leverage our past failures to benefit our clients. The web, after all, was still a very woolly and frightening place.

By now, I can tell far too many stories about how uncertain web technology and startup businesses can be (mine included). Have these experiences changed me? Made me more reluctant to jump into new technologies? For example, I have put off purchasing an iPhone until version 2 comes out (I want 3G support). Also, I’m rarely the one playing with the latest nightly builds of an open source project. I go straight to the most stable release, and stick with it until there’s a reason to change.

As a serial entrepreneur (and sometime venture capitalist), it is my job to keep abreast of the latest technology. I like to think that I’m in the “visionary” bucket of adopters, which is where I think people such as I belong. But are hard knocks pushing me back along the adoption curve? Am I becoming a part of the “early majority” of adopters? My wife would tell you no, but it’s definitely something I’m keeping an eye on.

Readers, where are you on the adoption curve? Where do you think entrepreneurs should be?