en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/3/b7722ec0043a3046d20086f35f863842.html
With regards to social networking, I think Yahoo is wasting time and money investing in this area. The area is too competitive and overfilled with sites that add little value between each other, except in terms of minor differences or a specialty focus. But the numbers provided on the article from TechCrunch are hard to rationalize and force a major company like Yahoo to really put this kind of effort into a social networking company.

Naturally, Yahoo needs to re-think what their identity truly is. Before they "were the internet." However, now, they are an amorphous mass with little add value per service except for major acquisitions which may share their user base and infrastructure. Perhaps, this is where Yahoo may serve a real purpose: infrastructure. If they are the internet, their business plan might be in large scale infrastructure support.

And what I mean by infrastructure support should not just be hardware and networks, but the APIs, redundancy, experience and capital to allow start ups to stay competitive. Like a company that provides the tools to build companies. They have their developers network, which is a nice start. But they need to provide more. Here is a suggestion to Yahoo to refocus their business strategy in terms of specific services they can provide to improve their image:

- Allow the use of an Open ID type of scenario. Yahoo has a plethora of registered users. Making the Yahoo email address as the central point for smaller companies to manage their infrastructure would reduce the need for companies to develop authentication systems. Add value services on top of this would be options to increase security (SSL certificates, image verification, authorization schemas)
- An improved ad supported system that is flexible. Be less restrictive and improve the model. The bidding method was a great way to make money. But the quality of ads and the ability for people to control the types of ads on their websites require improvement.
- Provide the hardware, network redundancy, clustering and diverse hosting options. For instance, allow one to use Apache, PHP, mod_perl, Ruby on Rails, Tomcat, JBoss, IIS that is pre-setup and multiple permutations depending on the need of the company.
- Increase the number web services to allow companies to create new mashups. Maps, weather, stock quotes, news items, etc. are great starts. However, these must be increased and diversified to provide developers greater flexibility and companies to emerge and generate creative businesses to propel the internet into web 3.0.
- Begin contributing to major open source APIs to improve stability in development. Apache, PHP, mod_perl, etc. should be key investments that Yahoo enters rather than attempting to continuously build competing development tools. The reduction of languages and APIs and the improvement in the stability and functionality within these APIs using Yahoo's monstrous infrastructure as the testing ground should be a key focus for the company.
- Provide legal consulting services for start up companies. Perhaps a true service would be to create an automated legal consulting service that takes out the middle man and provides questionaires (a la TurboTax) to provide companies ways to generate their own businesses without being forced into hiring their own lawyer.
- Provide automated venture capital to allow people to quickly get their ideas up and running without the hassle of the normally bureaucratic and competitive area of going to VCs or banks in getting money. For example, start a program where a person wants to generate a new service and gets anywhere between $50-$1000 per month automatically after going through an online questionaire that determines in the end how much a person can receive. Other internal services like advertisement, shopping carts, etc. would be provided as part of the services to help redirect some of the money back into Yahoo in a guaranteed way. Naturally, an idea like this is high risk, but Yahoo's coffers are deep and buying people left and right without a strategy is no different in some ways than what I'm proposing above (except to the anal retentive symantics freaks).

Part of what I'm suggesting above is just standardizing some of the areas that I see many companies rebuilding over and over. Yahoo probably has some of the best practices nailed down so providing these best practices as a form of business would be better than forcing each company to reinvent the wheel time and time again. Also, it'll lock down how things are down better and allow businesses to truly focus on the core problem of making money through the internet.

If you go over the timeline for Yahoo, you can see a pattern emerging:

- Yahoo 1.0 - directory service
- Yahoo 1.5 - massive portal
- Yahoo 2.0 - massive copy cat, with no sense of identity
- Yahoo 3.0 - confused and directionless

Forget the economics of keeping this line of business or getting rid of these other lines of business. A company should have a real vision and sense of culture. Without this, no one can really go up to that company and understand what that company does. Yahoo's identity is so twisted because they attempt to do too much for everyone. But their purpose is twisted as well: do everything because they think they can do it better? Do everything because it really helps society? Do everything because they just want to increase their money?

I can't fathom how Yahoo can increase their traffic anymore than they realistically have. This is something Yahoo doesn't really need to improve their business model. Instead, Yahoo needs to utilize what they have and provide it to people. The main assets of Yahoo are their experience, infrastructure, reach, traffic, and variety of services collected into numerous lines of business.

Yahoo 3.0 should not be confused and directionless. Yahoo 3.0 as I present it needs to be the Internet platform. It has to go back to Yahoo 1.0 where the focus was on providing services to allow other people to show up since no service was around at the time to collect this information. And it'll come full circle by being not just a directory of services, but a pure information service provider, linking in the nodes of experience to the next generation of developers and businesses.

This ought to be Yahoo 3.0.

Forget social networking. It's just a phase of the internet.

The bigger picture has always been information and services.]]> Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:29:55 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/3/b7722ec0043a3046d20086f35f863842.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/6/e874bc9161afec8ca8a3171593f98ab3.html
Take a look at this old-yaji pictured below. Do you think this guy "gets it?" Do you think that someone like this has any clue about how the internet works?

The internet generation will be the ones to really motivate an propel the next few decades of technologies into the stratosphere, literally. You don't need ancient idiots like this guy representing the thought processes and spirit behind it.

Japan: DO NOT REGULATE YOUR INTERNET. you're already dead in the water when it comes to the technology because of your inability to grasp the fact that most of the technology powering it is from software and coding. And software/code is mostly an English based thing, where you still have ancient ways of teaching and lag behind many other asian countries. If you regulate your internet, you will not only continue to fall behind the curve, you will cause irrevocable damage to sink your economy further into the dust.]]> Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:25:35 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/6/e874bc9161afec8ca8a3171593f98ab3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/5/58ac9e47c869763753cce1ec6cae7740.html

• Microsoft focusing on Webtop applications. No, as I mentioned Microsoft should shift their strategy completely away from the online area and let Yahoo, Google and other smaller ventures take over that space. The better area should be in appliances, robotics, space, and medicine. Those are more difficult business opportunities with far more money collectively involved and bigger prizes at the end of the tunnel. Microsoft would do themselves and the world a huge favor by not competing in the online space, and focusing on those other areas, which I doubt these web companies will bother with.
• Apple opening up the iPhone. Truthfully, Apple's killer is that they have a bad history of keeping their resources closed. Eventually, having too much proprietary stuff just hurt them in the end and it might do the same thing here. So I do agree with this point. But in general, I think Apple should not just focus on that area but also on other aspects of lifestyle outside of music like appliances. Music is a nice-to-have, not a need. Apple should work on things like intelligent microwaves along with Sony to improve these aspects of integrating computer functionality with the rest of the home.
  
• Facebook's data retention. Yeah, I do agree that they should open up their data. But I believe this should be the case of all major social networks. The bigger picture for Facebook is the fact that they're quickly becoming a platform, not just a service for social networks. Their APIs should be expanded upon to increase the number and granularity of services while developers can focus on creating the polish. That would save Facebook the issue of doing any work outside of regular maintenance.
  And make sure that the CEO's young ego is in check. This isn't about pride. It's about making things work in a transparent manner.
• Yahoo using their traffic. I think the traffic really doesn't matter at this point for Yahoo. I think it's manipulating the traffic to employ their services in a more efficient manner. Again this is the whole problem of enforcing people to use their "My Yahoo" piece as opposed to having this ugly front site that is a clusterfuck to look at.
• ebay selling off Skype. Well, ebay's big problem is that like other big internet companies, they still want to be everything to everyone. Instead of selling off skype (because it's really a great service), ebay should consider creating a holdings company that manages the various services. Just look at what IAC did. This would work out well because the holdings company could manage all the subbrands from ebay and ebay would focus on auctions and internet shopping. The problem was that Skype along with some other websites like Stumbleupon, truthfully had no business being in a business portfolio (no pun intended) in an online auction site. I don't think ebay acquiring other potentially decent companies is a horrible idea; but I think not aligning these companies up with their core business model is a huge problem for investors.
  

]]> Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:07:26 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/5/58ac9e47c869763753cce1ec6cae7740.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/f1c22feea27dbbe450503b724cd1176b.html youtube videos or peruse numerous news articles. While the production value of the new wave of media is no way near the level of what Hollywood and big budget companies can produce, I love the things being put out by independent people, using sheer creativity over the traditional boardroom writing of Hollywood. If not that then I go for the plethora of news out there, which even as enormous as it is, I find still limited in quantity.

Sometimes, I wonder though if my viewing habits are far worse than my parents' or my friends who are addicted to TV. While the information I glean is more useful to me or vested in what I find interesting, the amount of time I spend consuming information far exceeds the amount my mom does. I was thinking of how TV shows are not on demand, but scheduled. So you can pattern your sleeping habits or viewing habits based on what's on (unless you use devices like TiVo). Internet technology though is completely on demand, which means an infinite amount of consumption.

But truthfully, the stuff on the net is the best stuff out there. It's raw and unimposing, just waiting to be grabbed by active viewers who search for these bits of data.]]> Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:18:47 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/f1c22feea27dbbe450503b724cd1176b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/b805c8197b3d77a137807e09c83a96f8.html
That said, online video is quite limited and I've not been impressed by most of the stuff out there. Occasionally, there's a good idea or two, but most fall into a limited number of categories. It's obvious that people are building things to get a piece of the pie (what's remaining at least after Google/YouTube's share), but I personally consider leftovers something like four month old food. Without giving precise numbers, here's a quick summary of the types of websites just for video out there:

• Video Hosting
• Video Search
• Aggregation Sites (i.e. adding links into a database)
• Social Networking
• Chat
• Conferencing
• Slideshows
• Podcasts
• IPTV
• P2P
• Instructional/Howtos
• Wannabe American Idol sites
• Video Blogging/Personal Shows
• Mobile versions of these
• Video Advertisement
• Studio Sponsored sites
• Specialized Media players

If you examine these closely, there's not one except perhaps IPTV that you cannot do with YouTube. And what's more amazing is the amount of money these sites receive. Many of these sites might be funded from $2 million all the way up to $100+ million. I'm honestly not certain why companies are willing to fund sites that are YouTube copies. But I'm guessing that they're hoping on making some cash from a highly risky IPO.

What's more disturbing is how these sites make their money. The forms of money that these sites can make their money off of are:

• Online advertisement (duh)
• One time fee
• Revenue sharing (with partners)
• Account basis

I probably reviewed over 100 sites now (credit: crunchbase.com). The majority of the sites earn money through some form of online advertisement. Usually, Google ads or maybe they partner up with some of these newly established video advertisement sites. But most are banner ads or ads injected into their video. I guess in some ways, it makes sense because inserted commercials have always been successful in terms of revenue generation. I mean, for the most part you can't fast forward through a commercial (unless you TiVo or record it). Video simply pacifies the audience in a submissive state so it's far more effective than banner ads.

That all said, the thing that bothered me the most was that most of these non-YouTube sites were going for extremely niche markets. In a way, it makes sense because the saying goes, "Do one thing and do it well." But there's so much duplicated work. I mean, take the media players using Flash, for instance. Some of these players are absolute crap. For example, AOL Video or Veoh. Heck, both of those are flagged as some form of spyware on my virus scanner. Also, many of these companies are building their own networks, which means they have to deal with the cost of serving streaming media and dealing with high bandwidth cost as well as facing server redundancy issues.

Unfortunately, I see online video as something where only players with big bucks can really compete in this space. Data centers and homes really need to upgrade their infrastructure to handle some of these cases to hopefully reduce the cost and lag.

Along those lines, I came to an idea as a suggestion to Google (or other big companies who have this kind of infrastructure). You really need to start opening up your media player and data moreso to allow people to customize the features. My gut feeling is that the start ups (outside of Myspace, AOL, etc.) do so for two reasons: 1) the potential to make bank; 2) the interface needs improvement. Well, perhaps as a business opportunity, Google can open up their data and interface to allow more developers from the outside to contribute, kinda like how Facebook and Myspace have opened up to allow developers to customize the look of people's pages.

My other gut feeling when it comes to the Big Players in their attempt to go online is that they're fearing a YouTube/Google dominated media market. It's quite obvious now why Murdoch/News Corp bought out Myspace. But I'm seeing a lot more partnerships between big media companies and these start ups. For instance, Hulu, Veoh, AOL, Grouper/Crackle. Disney too announced that they will purchase 20 online companies. And the main reason for these trends is that these traditional big media companies are not internet savvy companies, have tons of red tape but need to react to the market sooner.

Still, with the recent mutterings of Yahoo going online with their own type of streaming video, my belief is that you have to improve the entire experience of video. I think that everyone in the online space is simply replicating work, without improving what we can or the content of it. I mean, why put instructional videos on a dedicated site? Why have streaming video from it? I hardly commented anything positive during my 100+ website review. Perhaps the only one that was semi-cool was a website that had facial recognition.

The social networking thing is fun and easy, but it's WAY overdone. i don't see a point in trying to build another niche network. Instead, people should start reutilizing APIs out there unless these sites are not capable of putting forth something that doesn't satisfy a need. And honestly, I'm not seeing a lot of needs being satisfied through these redundant sites.]]> Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:35:53 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/b805c8197b3d77a137807e09c83a96f8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/7/89e13a3c6cc9b4706540fafdcb2661ce.html
I pondered this as I wrote a little comment to the STS-123 crew who will be/ought to be flying out in a few days to the ISS. Then a few days before, I had written various answers to some questions posted over at LinkedIn to help some people out. And I've made small contributions to VirtualTourist in terms of recommendations.

These acts as of participation are what engraves our presence on the net.

The information we can put on a single site might be accessible by everyone with an internet connection. However, that alone only signifies a tiny part of what we can do on the net, especially if our voices have limited reach due to the inability to receive a great deal of traffic to our sites. But participating in these communities and whatnot are what increases our visibility in the net.

Some people fear retribution from companies that prevent participation in such activities. Truthfully, it's a form of repression in a sincere attempt to reduce our significance in this world.]]> Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:05:46 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/7/89e13a3c6cc9b4706540fafdcb2661ce.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/8/29f9dff1168b0564e1ae4ac6e9660719.html

• Lock down of engineers. Remember the embittered battle between M$, Google and Kai-Fu Lee? All engineers would face similar non-compete clauses upon the transition. Obviously, Google would be a safe haven, but it's doubtful that they could fully employ all engineers initially.
• Lack of support for non-IE browsers. Considering Yahoo's global reach, the impact of revoking support for non-IE browsers would be a tremendous blow to the internet market, especially browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera. Don't think they'll do it? Just check out their new 3-D image technology which forces people to upgrade to Vista and the latest version just to view! It's not a coincidence people.
• Absorption of numerous user accounts. M$ has long wanted to create a standardized portal for user information management. Remember the failure called Passport? Getting Yahoo's tremendous registered user base would take them one step closer to that reality.
• Intellectual property absorption. All that information that Yahoo has collected over the years and given away for free would be owned by M$ in nefarious manners. While people criticize Yahoo for not monetizing their properties, it's almost a lock that the absorption of Yahoo into the M$ fold would imply that slowly they'd determine a method to get a return on investment for each Yahoo property. In other words, all that hard work you've done uploading photos, creating social networks, etc. would more than likely be charged in the future. The only reason for the moment while M$ gives away things for free is that they don't have the reach that collectively all these competitors have. But grabbing Yahoo brings them closer and quicker to that goal.
  
• Absorption of all the partnerships that Yahoo has. I think one of the internet's strengths, especially companies like Yahoo, is that it provides smaller players the chance to succeed by utilizing these services. Moving Yahoo into M$ means that M$ can now control these services and do whatever they want like increasing fees. In the case of APIs where other sites might employ the various web services provided by Yahoo, M$ would be able to shut them out or force them to sign new contracts and monetize those services (not a bad idea in reality, but M$ is not the player I'd want to be handling this)

A skunk is still a skunk. I think people are only looking at the dollar signs and failures of Yahoo recently rather than examining the big picture. M$ will continue to play a zero sum game when it comes to business for as long as they exist. And here it will not be any different.]]> Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:43:21 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/8/29f9dff1168b0564e1ae4ac6e9660719.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/15/6fe5d0f4867da94a01151a9fd11eb7bf.html Have's and Have-Not's. This issue has been around forever and has been a leading subject of political discourse. Two well known philosophers, John Locke and Carl Marx had differing but yet similar intents in describing the notion of capital, property, one's rights.

On the one hand, John Locke essentially felt that when one creates something, they therefore own it (link to Wikipedia's entry) This is the basis of intellectual property in that ownership is an effect of one's work. I think part of his writings were due to the environment of him living in a period where kings essentially owned their peasants. So if a peasant grew a fruit, the king, as owner of the land, had all the rights to it. In response, Locke came up with a way of repudiating monarchy through his theory on intellectual property (or just ownership).

While Marx's philosophy is socialist and his views on ownership differ, I think the intent for his writings is not too dissimilar. One key point in Marx's writing was the notion of how capital and production works. Essentially, the means of production are what enables people to have control. (link to Wikipedia's entry) The book Dune paraphrases this idea with saying, "He who controls the spice, controls the universe." The similarity in intent goes to the fact that people want and need control and want to do away with the middle man to live a prosperous life.

This is the biggest point of contention in society now with regards to media labels and file sharers. The media people, in Marx's words, are the ones who keep control over the means of production. They are NOT the people who are the laborers creating the objects as John Locke would state, but they end up being owners because they have the power to back themselves up. They are the middlemen who have fields of corn, rice, and other pieces of food that we think we need. They stand in between the artists and the consumer, reaping the rewards, controlling what can be released and how much they can get in return.

Obviously, the biggest threat to these big media companies are the threat of removing them as a middle man through these new manners of distribution (which is something that Locke nor Marx had failed to address in their writings). The media industry essentially at this point are parasites, living off like the monarchs of old, enslaving labor and threatening neighbors for picking up fruits that fell to the ground. These industries, along with other middle men distributors like retailers, are not the creators and in truth do not own, in Locke's view and from a spiritual point of view, the true intellectual property of the artists. The media companies only own the legal rights because of the contracts that artists, desperate for money, end up signing.

Naturally, TV and movies get more complex because the means of production are far more complex compared with recording music. You have more people involved in the labor, giving them a certain amount of rights as entitled to the writers, actors/actresses, directors and whatnot. Then you get the investment money for production and this is where probably the studios hold the most power and are able to legally bind people.

At any rate, as I've said continuously, the world is constantly reverting towards medieval monarchism or oligarchies. The people on top want as few people to join them to retain control and maintain the slave mentality so that they can enjoy their materialistic lives. Sometimes I consider that the only recourse is the same philosophy that you'd see at the end of the movie The Godfather, by replacing the old to create a new wave of thought.]]> Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:27:34 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/15/6fe5d0f4867da94a01151a9fd11eb7bf.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/16/421e724bf4afaa8f5999e0f6a273a492.html TechCrunch has a post about Flickr doing video. I recently did a small report for my company and tracked some of the latest online video sites. The number came out to be roughly 24-25 sites where people could upload content. This was out of about 100 sites that I reviewed online. Now, Flickr wants to enter a dense game.

Certainly, Flickr can use their brand name and their user base along with some spiffy technology to add another dimension to their brand name. However, this is the key point where I have a huge problem with Yahoo. Yahoo already possesses a few video properties including Yahoo Live, Video and some of their partnerships to broadcast video via the Yahoo name.

Adding video to Flickr seems to come into conflict with these ideas!

There was a letter sent out a while back regarding the numerous redundant properties that Yahoo has. When Yahoo terminated Photos, I thought it was a great thing because they could utilize the better product of Flickr and eliminate brand conflicts (even though I ended up just ditching both entirely and moving to shareapic). Now, we might be seeing another situation where there's no brand unification, no vision of how to leverage the Yahoo brand with Flickr and vice versa.

It seems, according to the post, that there might be an intent to differentiate it from YouTube. Well, they have to certainly do more than differentiate itself from YouTube, but Yahoo's own Live and Video as well as the other 100 sites or so that have some form of video related content!

If Flickr intends to move in this direction of adding video related content, my hope/advice to them is that they do not attempt to cross paths in the viral video space. YouTube dominates and there are numerous other sites which already has the traffic and content available. Video editing might be the way to go, but I would advise Yahoo to allow Flickr to be able to access content from their existing online video to create more of a themed cohesion between brands. Call it "Yahoo Media" to not confuse users and to unify the products together.]]> Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:51:21 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/16/421e724bf4afaa8f5999e0f6a273a492.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/5/9950c552b508261d0ae9fc4e000c697c.html
In the digital age then, one has to wonder how commodification of digital goods can be made possible. On a transactional, dollar-for-dollar basis, I think it's nearly impossible. This is like charging for water, air or the Sun. People will utterly resist an illogical conclusion that something in abundant supply requires a high cost. It's why people will continue to pirate electronic goods since availability is in essence limitless.

The age old argument of "well, such and such artist will disappear!" is completely bogus. Digitization creates a new form of ecology which will simply engender another form of Social Darwinism, leaving uninspired, uncompetitive, untalented and most importantly OVERPAID artists in the dust. Besides, any true artist will tell you that there's a real love for what they do. That's what makes them artists. If money was the only factor in doing things, these people might as well work as a securities trader, a lawyer, a doctor or even Starbucks server (since obviously they're too lazy and stubborn headed about getting a real job to support their art form).

However, the industry that will arise from digitization of goods will be service. I think the software industry, especially open source software, has proven the case that people are more likely to spend on service (for "peace of mind") as opposed to licenses with crooked, nonsensical racket schemes behind them. In the case of software, people are paying for the support models. Take Google as an antithetical example. The one-size fits all model, while being handed out for free, may not necessarily help certain businesses that require a great deal of customization. On the other hand, businesses can compete against Google's model by filling in that gap in providing support models for their software. Speaking concretely, look at Google Web Analytics. While there are a number of sites providing statistical information for free, there are too companies doing this for money. While I think that the licensing scheme isn't worth it to most companies, the support factor and customization aspect is.

Translating this into other forms of practice, we can examine how things such as movies, music, magazines, and other forms of publishing might be able to benefit from the economics and models from this. In the case of music, live events are what make artists real money. The royalties have been traditionally bad because of the middle men who take their numerous cuts. However, with live events, you have unique performances each time. Artists who do not perform live well really shouldn't be called artists. I think these people are more hobbyists, or should work as session players for commercial entities (again focus on the service aspect!)

For movies, I think the notion of the blockbuster will die out. Movie studios should focus more on proliferating their movies in decreasing the cost of ownership rather than worrying about getting people to the theaters or piracy of DVDs. Theaters though should be looked at as social events. Theaters need to reorganize how they're setup. Rather than the old huge setting, they should be shrunk to the size of a living room, where friends and family members can watch a movie in near privacy. Consider how little brats or obnoxious teens tend to spoil movies. Or perhaps some people prefer speaking and not being told to "SHUT UP!" when an interesting or funny bit comes on. For those who cannot afford the luxury of a home movie theater, private screenings might be a way to go. Then you can upsell things like food that isn't unhealthy.

For news, newspapers will simply die out. It makes no sense to get a piece of a tree that is simply detrimental to the environment. And of course the fact that any published news is already late. Reuters, AP News, and CNN will ensure that the latest world news will be at hand so newspapers need to focus creatively on how to utilize that aspect. My belief is that magazines and newspapers need to hone in on the quality of writers and editorials. News is simply facts gathered at a point in time. But editorials provide the insight to contextualize news. Unlike these social news sites which offer nothing but worthless commentary, professional editorials provide high degrees of penmanship and due diligence on subject matters. Thus, the credibility of a news site is in these areas. I think those sites which provide the highest quality of writing can easily monetize their stories because people are willing to pay for the commentary.

Then we get to publishing. I read an article over at Techcrunch where someone bemoaned the death of book writers. I don't see it happening. I know many people who will always prefer a hard copy over reading something on a screen. Even if a person pirates a novel, printing it out is ubiquitous.

Second, as a writer myself, I realize that people who want to write simply write. That's what we do. We write because we want to say something. I learned ages ago that publishing is something difficult, close to impossible in terms of earning a decent living. Without the connections, a newbie writer practically is dead. So the reality is that most of us have to get a typical job to support what little writing we can do.

The ones that are successful at writing will continue to be successful because people are willing to pay for their material. I certainly will buy a William Gibson, Thomas Pynchon or even technical book at the store given the opportunity. It's not just that I support them, but because I enjoy having their stuff available at any given time.

The person in question who griped was a recipe writer. She complained that you could find any recipe on the internet. While that is true, there should also be a point that in this situation, not all recipes might be that great. A good cook/recipe writer will be able to distinguish themselves from others. A smart one can even monetize what they do buy creating a blog site and constantly pushing out their material to their site and using ads to support it.

But it seems that this recipe writer probably wasn't very tech savvy in the first place and thus unable to determine how to monetize their skills. Also, I can't really see making a decent living off of just selling recipes and writing books on them. So the claim is spurious at best to me.

Going back to publishers, I think that better money will be made through improving how they can support upcoming writers who do want to make a living through writing, rather than just focusing on each unit of books they sell. For instance, networking to sites or increasing the reach of would-be authors and utilizing ads to help give these people a living. I don't see why any author with enough talent could not make money in this manner.

Either way, I simply feel that the industry needs to make a huge paradigm shift in their approach to goods. Rather than focusing on the goods themselves, they need to focus on the support aspect. Living in Japan, I've come to realize that while products are expensive, the customer support on average is incredible. It doesn't mean that Japanese are stereotypically polite, it just means that many companies here focus on the customer service aspect more than on the product (which at times can be frustrating). At least, they give you the illusion that you're meaningful in your experience, so there's a huge likelihood of returning to a spot.

America, in particular, has seemed to have completely forgotten the customer. Most companies are too concerned about the bottom line, shareholders, cutting costs, etc. just so their shareholders and key executives can receive their bonuses. Take the airlines industry. The true reason why it's failing in America is because these companies simply treat their customers like crap. It's a vicious cycle. People are treated like crap, they'll never fly again. I absolutely refuse to fly any American airline for this reason. I'm certain many Americans feel the same way.

Companies should change their mentality and become more service oriented. That's the key. Treating people like kings. Companies need training programs to improve on this aspect. They also should hire only people who can deal with people. I think if this happens, maybe the US market wouldn't be in as much trouble as it is.]]> Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:48:29 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/5/9950c552b508261d0ae9fc4e000c697c.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/19/4686a0b4b3306c520b4a0029cb684f5a.html
Now as part of the fallout we're seeing Yahoo's executives leaving in the troves for higher ground. I'm going to be in the minority in saying that this is a great thing.

There's a comment over at Techcrunch which says "Is this the end of Yahoo as we know it?" Well, the Yahoo as we know it isn't functioning very well. It hasn't been performing in years to the degree that we want. Well, while I do support the idea of Yahoo remaining independent, it is true that the people running the show must be either held accountable or receive the ax. Or just leave.

But more than that, you gotta see two great benefits out of this: 1) it allows younger, more energetic people to step up to the plate potentially and take those coveted spots; 2) those executives were part of the reasons why Yahoo wasn't able to maintain a higher competitive position.

People see Yahoo as the sinking Titanic. I see it as a phoenix about to be reborn. It's like the movie Spiderman where you had the Green Goblin telling Spiderman how people enjoy seeing heroes fall. Yahoo has been our hero for a long time and there's a lot of people that are jumping off the bandwagon just because of some wrong moves.

Probably, Yahoo needed this house cleaning and wake up call internally and externally. When you reach the level of dominance and market penetration as Yahoo, you attempt to figure out the next level. They've missed numerous chances to pick up key companies like Google or Facebook. But the truth is that probably in the overall scheme of things that wasn't such a bad thing (except for short term betting shareholders).

What Yahoo needs from this is to start promoting internally and/or get some external visionaries to take Yahoo to the next level. They need to re-invent themselves, not allow themselves to whore themselves out to their shareholders who have enslaved them. I've proposed several ideas about how Yahoo can achieve this (i.e. becoming a media platform for 3rd party developers and hosting service).

The other thing is that the people on top need to (in some way) shut themselves out from all the main criticism and simply figure out for themselves what they want to do with Yahoo. Forget the money thing. They already have a great position in the market but just need to determine what Yahoo means as a business. I honestly don't believe it's as complicated as people are making things to be. But until they stop being pussies and allow themselves in being bullied around by shareholders and venomous critics, they aren't going to repair their image for a while.]]> Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:11:26 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/19/4686a0b4b3306c520b4a0029cb684f5a.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/22/b9824fa5af094d779237b27531136518.html
Probably, we need to start with the deal on M$ and Yahoo that never went through. For a few months, I remember reading more than one site discussing the possible buyout of Yahoo by MSN. I believe even I suggested something like that with the threat of Google looming in the background. Despite the actual move, I never actually thought MSN would make the move so soon, but that move had triggered a chain of events that are historical and political in nature.

The natural reason for the buyout from M$'s point of view was to thwart Google. Steve Ballmer has been notorious for his outburst, directing his rage against Google. Rather than utilizing the situation as a real business opportunity, Steve Ballmer turned this situation into what seemed (to me at least) like a personal crusade to bury Google and Eric Schmidt in particular.

Ballmer ought to watch the Godfather (kinda like Bill Gates' character in Pirates of Silicon Valley) in emulating Vito Corleone in never showing his true intentions and feelings. If anything his outburst aided in the perception that M$ was purely going to do this deal to hurt Google, much in the same way Sonny Corleone would tip off Solozzo "the Turk" in being interested in Solozzo's drug deal, something Vito Corleone wanted no part of.

My interpretation of Ballmer's choice of Yahoo in particular was to get that final feather in his cap he desperately needs in his tenure as a CEO. Thus far, Ballmer's reign as CEO has been plagued by highly publicized disasters. The XBox money losing fiasco, Vista's lack of acceptance by the public, M$'s failure to capitalize on new grounds on the internet market (particularly social networking), the massive loss of ground of the server side to Linux, and Google's slow but imminent penetration in the enterprise through their free apps. Thus far, we have yet to see M$ come out on top as they had conquered the 80's and early to mid 90's.

The deal in itself is nothing new to M$. In fact, M$'s typical business practices historically have been to buy or copy, never innovate. In relation to the internet, M$ has no clue. Without monopolistic practices like bundling Internet Explorer with the operating system, M$ would have a difficult time catching up to some of the mega internet crazes such as social networking, blogging and open APIs. With Yahoo having a huge percentage of the internet in their pocket due to their longevity and brand name recognition, Yahoo would fit nicely in M$'s scheme of things.

That aside, another well known fact about M$ is their anti-competitive practices. For some reason, it seems that many of the internet writers had suddenly favored the deal, rather than remembering M$'s infamous past cases of monopolistic practices (and I for one believe that these writers probably had some stock in either M$ or Yahoo). Still, many of us remember the pre-internet days where we were enslaved to the M$ OS. With M$ potentially acquiring Yahoo, the outcome would be a monstrous capitalization on the internet ad market, something that M$ wants dearly as everyone knows for a fact how Google uses that market as their primary course of survival.

Fortunately, for whatever reason, M$/Ballmer did not go through in the end. Of course, Jerry Yang and other Yahoo executives had staved off the invasion temporarily through attempting to raise the price (although Yang himself doesn't really need the money), provide excellent severance packages for their employees and just delaying. Threats of proxy fights would be imminent as would shareholder lawsuits. But truthfully, there is far more at stake than money on the table.

From there until now, Yahoo itself would go through a new barrage of assaults. Although Yahoo and Google would ink a deal (which I will discuss hereafter), that would not halt the acid rain coming from the murky clouds of disgruntled employees and the wrath of their shareholders. The shareholders, in their infinite myopic perception, only care about immediate return, especially in this downturn economy. In some ways, Yang and company are now finding out the hard way why having a public company isn't always about just making money from stock options and that those years of loyalty were non-existent and that these people were waiting just for a moment like this to cash in their checks.

Worse yet, Yahoo, kinda like a whore spreading her legs and awaiting an infection, would receive a truly menacing threat from Carl Icahn when he would purchase up a good number of their shares on the market. I can't say anything good about this guy. I don't even know if he understands the implication of what he's doing in his proxy fight. But it's obvious how some investors had managed to manipulate him into going into this fight as a cause.

Then you have the mass exodus leaving Yahoo. As I mentioned the other day, this doesn't necessary imply a bad thing. But I'll get on to that later.

But let's step back to my previous point about the Google-Yahoo deal. I think this latest and known development is pretty blatant and really is where you have to read carefully between the lines. The deal in a nutshell is Google giving Yahoo some bribery money to appease their shareholders. It's not the level of money that the shareholders want, but it's meant to prevent them from bitching too much. It's also a (begrudging) thank you to Yahoo for helping them out before, back when they were starting out. Most importantly, it's a way to keep Yahoo in Google's pocket (which is the irony of ironies) and for M$ to stay away.

Now, one may ask, "Is that really such a great thing? Isn't that collusion?" YUP!!! It's collusion kinda like George Bush and Cheney getting hidden handshakes from the oil companies in supporting their campaigns while the administration goes through great lengths in protecting these industries. Well, if that's the case, why isn't that considered monopolistic or why would I slam M$ for only doing what Google ended up getting?

It's simple. From my point of view, I really don't fear and mind Google as much as other people. Do I trust them? No, I don't trust anyone (for that matter). But I know for a fact based on history, based on Ballmer's rants against Google, that the deal was basically the lesser of two evils. The main thing is to continue allowing a company like Yahoo to remain independent.

At this point, both Yahoo and Google are propping up a lot of smaller companies through their ad networks. Eliminating one or both would stifle competition potentially. Back in the day when I was attending UC Irvine, the "in-thing" (prior to the IPO dot com craze of the late 90's) was the MBA guys hooking up with the computer science undergraduates, building an application and hoping to get the company sold to M$ so that the founders could make out like bandits. These days, we have a lot more players that can provide that assistance in the form of eBay, Google, Yahoo, Amazon (though not as a common), etc. Eliminating those companies would mean that a more limited selection of companies and people could make it, rather than having an increasing number of competitors on the market. Just common business sense for anyone who isn't a shareholder of M$ or Yahoo.

The other thing is that when I look at Sergie Brin and Larry Page, I don't perceive the same obsessed nuttiness of Ballmer nor the domineering, business savvy of Bill Gates. I see two guys who are very smart scientists/engineers working with someone who has a good sense of business in Eric Schmidt. Maybe 10 years from now, that might all change, but seeing their interviews and such, I just don't get the same vibe as I do with Ballmer. And that to me means a lot in this episode.

Circling back to Yahoo, I have to say that when I saw the so-called mass exodus of executives or managers, I thought it was a great thing. I believe the count of people leaving was somewhere in the neighborhood of 140. Well, if you read/worship Dilbert like I do, you'll realize that having that many executives is probably what's killing the company in the first place. Sometimes, you'll get these mid-level managers who attach themselves to companies like parasites until the rum runs out. It looks like the rum is running dry at Yahoo quite quickly. But again, I feel this is a great thing because potentially, younger, hungrier people can move up the chain faster.

The other thing is that you have to realize 140 executives/managers means that you had that many more competing viewpoints to deal with. Now, with 140 less people, you can try focusing the business more. Forget trying to hire from the outside (unless it's me). Go internal and get some of those kids who are itching to climb the ladder faster and move them into more strategic positions. If anything, those people are the ones that ought to be able to re-vitalize Yahoo. You don't want to insult the employees' intelligence by hiring more external help (except me) when you have all the talent within the organization. I'm certain there's more than one person who has the energy and vision to help drive a component or two in the company back to success.

Then you have Jerry Yang and the remaining top people. Let me advise something to Yang: maybe let the people below do the driving. In situations like these, you really need someone like a Steve Jobs to rally the troops. You need visionaries who understand what people and/or need. I don't know if Yang has that vision nor passion. I think when you make as much money as someone like him at his age, it's easy to become complacent. Rather than being on the streets, hungry, yearning for that first taste of success, you're hanging out with celebrities and living a glamorous life. You need to be street to execute something like this because it's the common person that's going to be using these things.

I already know where Yahoo ought to be taking itself. I know where M$ should go too. And I leave Google alone because they've got enough vision and talent to do without me. Nonetheless, this whole year is going to continue to be interesting. Good thing for me I'm back with the net!]]> Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:50:14 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/22/b9824fa5af094d779237b27531136518.html