Web X.0

Plaxo... Ugh...

Plaxo is one of my favorite online services (I know I'm pretty lonely at that...) [1]. If you peel away the spam issues they had, etc - the core idea is pretty powerful:

If historically I had to maintain and keep up-to-date the contact info of 100's of people in my address book, with Plaxo I could instead worry about the contact info of just a single person - myself.
Plaxo would do the rest keeping my friends up-to-date on my contact info automatically, and vice versa.

The only real issue was how to bring enough people onto the platform to make it meaningful for everyone. But as this service is extremely viral (the more friends I bring into Plaxo, the easier it gets to maintain *my* address book) - that took care of itself and millions of people now use Plaxo.

Being THE address book synchronizer of the world is a very powerful position to be in, but it seems like that's the point where Plaxo started fumbling on its strategy (of course now that I say that, Microsoft will probably acquire them next week for $1B and I will look totally stupid... whatever...).

Instead of focusing on its core strategy - being the world's address book sync'er -  they started copying and dog-chasing the flavor-of-the-day companies and tried to become Facebook. I don't get the whole Plaxo Pulse thing... why do I need to 'friend' again the people that I already 'friended' within Plaxo when we exchanged our business cards? And once I do that 2nd friending process - what value am I supposed to get?! It's clear that Plaxo got valuation-envy from Facebook and decided to go in its footsteps. The trouble with that, is that you can only copy what's already out in the open... if the strategy is not genuinely *your own* strategy, then you have no idea what to do next and why to do it. Which means that almost by definition, if you're copying someone else's successful strategy you're almost doomed to fail. The proof - Pulse is a pathetic copycat of Facebook that adds absolutely zero value (to the user at least... who knows - if they can spin this to some stupid acquirer it might end up adding a lot of value to them...). Last week they even tried to start scraping data out of Facebook (violating FB's T&C's...) and use it within Pulse. Ugh...

Now it seems like they're shopping themselves for $100M. It's sad to see because this is one rare example of a product that made total sense, which could have made a ton of $$'s by sticking to its core strategy and not trying to copy others. Here's what I think Plaxo should have done. I offered these ideas to Todd, their co-founder, a couple of years back. But since they obviously chose to become Facebook2, I'll publish it here. Feel free to take it and build a $1B company out of it:

Plaxo pretty much perfected the product for syncing contact info between me and *my friends*. The next step, and where the honey pot lies, is to let me sync my contact info between me and *businesses* I have a relationship with.

Think about the simple case of moving to a new apartment. It's a huge headache for me to update all the banks I use, magazines I subscribe to, insurance companies, etc, etc. It takes months to get all of them updated. It's a similar, or even bigger, nightmare for all those businesses that need to stay in touch with me. They need to put systems and people in place to manage their contact databases, they need to hunt down people after mail is returned or calls aren't answered, etc, etc.

Introduce "Plaxo for Businesses", and let me share my Plaxo info with businesses the way I do with friends. A business would have to be insane not to pay say $5-per-year-per-client to automatically and permanently maintain a perfect contact record of each of its clients. A magazine that's printed, shipped and returned probably costs more than $5... If it makes sense for a magazine, it would make sense for pretty much any other business.

It's rare to have a product that would make so useful for the end user, and would also be so attractive for businesses to pay for [2]. And as this is one of those winner-take-all type of platforms, there ain't going to be much space for more than 1-2 major players. Plaxo was (and still is, if it wakes up) in a great position to become the world's address book syncronizer. It might be less sexy than being 17th Facebook, but I think it's a MUCH better business to be in as the leader. If Plaxo lets this opportunity slip, it'll be Microsoft (or maybe Yahoo Mail or Gmail/OpenSocial) that takes this. Again. I'd hate to see that happen... :-(

===
[1] Actually - to get this absolutely correct - the app I really loved was Contact.com which was released way before Plaxo even existed ('98 or '99 I think). Contact.com was founded by Eyal Herzog, one of the smartest Israeli web entrepreneurs who went on to start MetaCafe later.  Contact.com was one of the best internet apps ever, and unfortunately it was waaay ahead of its time.

[2] Is this what Doc Searls refers to as VRM?

Pop-up blockers blockers

I use Firefox, with Yahoo and Google toolbars installed. I also occasionally use IE7 (directly, or via the wonderful IE Tab extension). And I have a bunch of anti-virus, anti-adware, anti-spyware, etc programs installed.

When the first pop-up blockers were introduced, they were great. But with ~10 different applications all attacking those poor helpless pop-ups, I'm finding that this once useful tool is becoming a real nuisance. The reason: On those few sites where I actually do want pop-ups to pop I now need to go and disable (or white-list) 10 different apps and toolbars.

I thought there must be a solution for this growing pain, but couldn't find any. So here you go with a free idea - feel free to take it and build your next mega-business with it.

The idea is to develop a Pop-Up Blocker Blocker. As the name implies - once installed, this software would block all the pop-up blockers from doing their thing for a given website.

I think this can be huge.

I don't get Twitter

There - I said it.

(BTW - this is becoming a nice little mini-series... started with my long and thoughtful confession about Second Life).

I'm going to make the following predictions:

1. Within a year, people will vaguely remember what that whole Twitter craze was about (and those that do will be terribly embarrassed they ever wasted time twitting bugging each other). It'll sit comfortably in the dustbin with the Tamagotchis and The Macarena.
2. Or - I am going to look very very stupid in March '08.

Anyhow - feel free to twitter me at: http://twitter.com/galai

What a shitty day...

Kids wouldn't let me sleep all night. Took an hour and half to get my boy out to day care. In torrential rain. Which caused the subways to stop working. Waited for 35 minutes. With a million other people. Couldn't squish in the first train. Waited 10 more minutes for the next one which was squishable. Sort of. Got to the office. LAN cord vanished. Need to get to a Staples, so - back to the subway.

10am, and that was all the better part of the day. From there it quickly went down hill...

OK - I get the hint. Tomorrow I start using Dilbert's advice:

Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.

Diggbait (or - outbrainbait?...)

Interesting tidbit -
A couple of weeks ago I posted a list of the top-5 rated WebX.0 posts. I just noticed that that post itself has since been rated at an average of 4.67, making it the #1 most favorite post on this blog! (The post titled "What business are you in?" was previously #1 but has recently slid to 2nd place with an average rating of 4.08).

I'd never expect that top-5 post to be rated so high... I guess the rumors on top-X lists being an audience favorite (aka Diggbait) were true...

I don't get Second Life

There - I said it.

On profiling, part 2

I recently posted my thoughts about the highly effecient process for screening all those toothpaste-bombers that are roaming US airports these days.

A few random followup points:

1) Another good post about this by Tom Evslin, fellow blogger on the MyWay network. From it:

They didn’t even glance at the rat’s nest of wires and strange devices that always lives in my nerd bag, much better potential there for an explosive device but profiling made it clear that I’m not a likely mascara carrier.

2) Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) confesses to becoming a toothpaste smuggler:

So, like millions of other travelers (I assume) I plan to become a smuggler. I figure I can take one small tube of travel-sized toothpaste in my pants pocket and make it through security without being busted. I rationalize that there is no danger to the public in doing this because I use a brand of toothpaste that rarely explodes.

(BTW - good opportunity to recommend the excellent Dilbert Blog).

3) It just occured to me that the FAA airport screening policies might be one of the biggest marketing opportunities of all time. I can just assume that the toothpaste and nail-cutter industries, for example, have shot through the roof overnight, courtesy of the US government.
How long will it be before a creative product marketing manager for say, Ray-Ban, pays some dude to get on the plane and make a small show out of concentrating sun light through his glasses and directing them to the plane's fuel tank?

For less than $200 you get a marketing campaign that immediately moves more merchandise than being the exclusive sponsor for the superbowl for the next 10 years....

4) Reading the comments on my post and on Tom's, it seems like the word 'profiling' might be a bad choice of word. It's not about setting up a government database for tracking the religion of each passenger and screening accordingly. It's about a simple thing - empowering the piles of security staff to actually use their brain when seeking out potential problems. The 'god-forbid-should-we-ever-insult-anybody' mentality that's driving today's brainless screening is bad for the 99.999% innocent passengers and good for the bad guys.

Fighting yesterday's attacks

In my post yesterday about terrorists and profiling (or lack thereof) I said:

I guess the US Homeland Security uses the old cliche about 'preventing the previous attack instead of the next one' as its founding principle.

The best example proving this, is the fact that security in airports is tightened to an insane level (no toothpaste allowed?!), while you can still board a train packed with many hundreds of people with a suitcase full of explosives without anyone even glancing at you.

Unfortunately, a train will be eventually targeted by terrorists in the US... it's inevitable. The tightened security on trains which will follow will be as useless as remembering to put a helmet on your head when you're lying in the hospital after smashing it in a bike accident.

As long as you look exclusively for bad stuff (instead of the bad people), you will be taxing the innocent people for yesterday's attacks while providing a very accommodating environment for tomorrow's attacks.

On profiling

[UPDATED: Great post on this topic by Tom Evslin here]

Following last week's arrest of the terrorists planning to explode airplanes mid-air by mixing explosive liquids, the Homeland Security Office released these new boarding regulations:

NO LIQUIDS OR GELS OF ANY KIND WILL BE PERMITTED IN CARRY ON BAGGAGE. SUCH ITEMS MUST BE IN CHECKED BAGGAGE. This includes all beverages, shampoo, sun tan lotion, creams, tooth paste, hair gel, and other items of similar consistency.

Ugh... I guess the US Homeland Security uses the old cliche about 'preventing the previous attack instead of the next one' as its founding principle.

You see, the problem is not the bad stuff, but rather the bad guys.

For example (and I know this may come as a big surprise to members of the law enforcement forces here in the US) the risk to planes is not inherently in this...:

...or in this:

...but rather in this:

I simply can't understand the 'no profiling allowed' policy. What it essentially means is that collectively we're willing to sacrifice the whole lives of hundreds of innocent people, just to prevent a couple of minutes of inconvenience or embarrassment to those unnecessarily profiled[1]. Huh?!?!

In Ben Gurion airport in Israel, security seems to be based primarily on profiling. Between the time you approach the airport and the time you board the plane, you are "casually" spoken to probably 5-6 times by security personnel (not necessarily in uniform). Asking a seemingly casual question and observing the person's response, stress levels, accents, behavior, etc, etc has 100000000x higher chances of catching a plotting terrorist than does asking millions of people to dispose of their toothpaste and take off their shoes.

Sure - once in a while, an innocent person with a combination of accent, skin tone, behavior, whatever will be mistakingly delayed for screening for 10 minutes. Sure, it's annoying when you're picked out of the crowd just for being an Arab, black, Jew, young, Muslim, single, Pakistani, whatever.

But that's all it is. It's annoying, it wastes 10 minutes, it might be embarrassing. That's it. Put that in contrast to a plane loaded with 400 people crashing into a building.

Any claims that profiling is racism or prejudice are ridiculous because profiling isn't about discriminating anyone eventually, but rather about making everyone more secure by focusing the effort on higher risk groups[2].

Furthermore, trying to prevent the previous terror attack makes life real easy for  terrorists because they have a simple play book they need to avoid. "Hmmm.., OK... so I can't hide my explosives in my shoes, and I should avoid liquid explosives... but it should be fine to hide some gun powder in a capsules looking like Advil, and try to explode the emergency exit mid-flight". Hey - even Richard Reid could figure that one out! (and I hear that intelligence was not exactly his sweet spot). It's a whole different story for a stressed-out, sweaty, 25-year old Pakistani male to disguise the fact that he's a stressed-out, sweaty, 25-year old Pakistani old male...

If you try to stop exclusively bad stuff (vs. trying to find the bad people), you are bound to spend shitloads of money trying to prevent yesterday's attacks while practically ignoring tomorrow's. 

So stop wasting time on wanding her for 20 minutes (even if, god forbid, she attempts to board the plane with shoes and toothpaste!!):

...and pick up your head to look for folks like him:

Worst case - if he turns out to be an innocent artist with high anxiety, a sweating problem and strange shoes, apologize for the 5 minutes of his time wasted and move on.

 

 

[1] Not to mention the humongous price we pay for hoards of people and machinery we buy to scan people who a 3rd grader would know beyond doubt are innocent.

[2] Here's a possible solution to this problem: Provide special "no-passenger-screened" planes on which you board all those folks who resist being screened for profiling reasons, together with all the hypocritical politicians who pass laws preventing profiling, and with basically anyone else who prefers to fly those planes. This will both guarantee that no one ever feels discriminated by profiling, AND will reduce terror attacks on planes flying reasonable human beings to practically zero.

Best spent marketing $$'s...

I've never seen an ad for:

• Whole Foods Market
• Starbucks
• Google
• In-N-Out (and while we're at it - Shake Shack too...)
• Chipotle
• TiVo