Stardust Global Ventures

I’ve been following a thread of conversation that’s got friends on both sides of the major non-question of the year end. Is VoIP dead or alive?

Here are examples from each side, followed by something to back up my views below.

From the dead side, Alec Saunders

2008: The Year that VoIP died

It seems highly likely to me that at some point in the future we’ll all look back and say that 2008 was the year that the VoIP industry finally died.  With all due respect to my very good friends Jon Arnold, and Andy Abramson, it’s about time.

Voice over IP is just a transport and signalling technology. It’s plumbing.  It may come as a surprise to some of you to know that in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s there was a TCP/IP industry as well. TCP/IP is inarguably plumbing.  As the IP stack became common on all computing devices, TCP/IP went from being a differentiator to a commodity.  The short lived TCP/IP industry was a footnote in the events that spawned the global web. The fact that a VoIP industry has existed is a similar historical footnote to the transformation of the communications industry as a whole.  The VoIP industry was a necessary phase in that transformation; John in the wilderness announcing that the real action is still to come.

And what is the evidence that the VoIP industry is at that turning point?

[Read Alec's full post]

And from the alive side of the table, Jeff Pulver

VoIP is NOT Dead!

Today is December 31, 2008 and I find it real interesting some of my friends have declared 2008 as the year that VoIP died.

On the eve of 2009 the promise of VoIP is alive and well and living in the hearts of many people who believe in the future of innovation in communications. Ask many of my friends including: Vint Cert, Henry Sinnreich, Joe Rinde or Daniel Berninger and they would agree with me that one day the vision and the promise of end-to-end IP based communications WILL happen. The Internet communications revolution is STILL happening. In fact, we are living in an Internet Communications Continuum.

[Read Jeff's full post]

And for accuracy in supporting what I’m going to say, here’s my own post from just over a year ago

12/18/2007More on VoIP as Plumbing

My friend and colleague Matt Lambert over at Conversationware posted this yesterday in response to my post A Brief Look at 2007 – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s a worthwhile read, and I ose Matt a note of thanks. Unknowingly, it was an email exchange we shared that led me down that line of thinking.

I thought it was worth revisiting this, especially after reading my friends at FierceVoip claiming VoIP crusader recants.  (And a small ego note, it’s Ken Camp, not Champ).

VOIP is just plumbing

More and more it has seemed to me that VOIP doesn’t matter. I don’t see this discussed on mainstream communications news sites, presumably it’s a question of who pays their bills through advertising.

First, I don’t think I’ve recanted much, but I will explain. Second, the plumbing analogy is certainly getting a bit long in the tooth, but this seems a good time to elaborate.

The post on FierceVoIP says

Don’t know if I would call all those edge controllers, QoS monitoring, security systems and media gateways mere plumbing, but I do agree that selling voice as a service rather than a technology is where the market is heading.

‘m not sure I’d either agree or disagree, but what I will say is that infrastructure, whether it’s SBCs and gateways or VoIP in general, isn’t what customers want. I think the FieceVoIP piece actually supports the point I’m making.

VoIP is not disruptive. It’s over ten years old. It isn’t innovative today. VoIP is a tried and true technology. It’s tested and proven. It’s been carrying massive volumes of voice calls for a long time now. It’s almost what I’d call a legacy technology at this point.

The failing of the unified communications industry segment has been that solution providers aren’t selling comprehensive integrated solutions yet. They’re still selling technology widgets. VoIP is a technology widget that is simply part of the established infrastructure. It’s not new. It’s not sexy. It’s not disruptive.

Customers don’t want to buy VoIP any more than they want to buy frame relay. Customers want solutions to business problems. Selling VoIP is still leaving it up to the customer to solve their own problem by peace-mealing together their own suite of solutions.

In 2008, I expect to see more VoIP companies that can’t move off of selling technolgy into designing and selling integrated business solutions fail in the market. That’s right, fail. And they should fail.

Plumbing parts are a commmodity. You can go to Home Depot and buy everything you need to pipe a house. Great for the do-it-yourselfer indeed. But most enterprise businesses, especially in the SMB space, aren’t looking to become DIY voice providers. They’re in a core business and they’re looking for solutions to their business problems.

So a word to the solution providers out there. Think long and hard about how you really integrate technologies to provide comprehensive solutions. Whether you call it Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) or Software as a Service (SaaS), the focus for the year ahead has to be on business solutions for business problems.

Integrating services, voice – video – data, with business applications like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management and Human Resources Management are going to be the really hot focal points in 2008. That’s where the real need is. And to succeed – to thrive – solution providers can’t offer widgets and plumbing and still win business.

So about a year ago, I claimed that VoIP is plumbing. Now let me repeat myself for emphasis:

VoIP is neither alive nor dead. It’s like air or water. It simply is. It’s time to quit kicking that particular dead horse because nobody cares. Yesterday in another post, I likened Cisco to vanilla ice cream – boring.

If Cisco is boring, VoIP conversation has moved down the contunuum to tedious. Yes, tedious. To give credit to my friends and genuinely esteemed colleague on both sides of this debate, you’re picking flyshit our of pepper. Voice services are vital, growing, and important. VoIP is tedious, mundane and debating it is actually a bit of an irritant to many of our readers.

I don’t care if it’s dead or alive. When I wrote IP Telephony Demystified back in 2002, I thought it was hot stuff too. It’s not. And for those of you doubters, think about unified communications. What matters is communications.

2009 is the year of services and customer services. It’s the year of delivering solutions and value. It’s the year of doing things right and delivering what works. It’s not the year of rehashing old protocols that are no more forward looking than copper pipes carrying water in our house.

And I’ll toss in a New Year’s resolution of sorts from Ken this time around. If you want to talk about VoIP, regardless of which side you shake out on, unless you’re really talking about service of some kind that adds value, don’t engage me. I’m not interested. You’re boring me. And if you’re really talking about services and couching it in VoIP terms because you think it will get you visibility or attention, I’ll probably call bullshit on you freely and openly.

Technorati Tags: VoIP, dead or alive, Alec Saunders, Jeff Pulver, Matt Lambert, FierceVoIP, dead or alive, kicking a dead horse, services, voice services, communications, unified communications, Ken Camp

Reflecting back over 2008 I’ve tried to think of the things that we real highlights among close friends and colleagues in the industry. I’ve come up with two highlights. Let me tell you what they are first, then I’ll explain why they’re highlights.

First from my friends Pat Phelan and Florian Seroussi, we saw TwitterFone. It’s an interesting little integration between Twitter and the telephone network that let’s you call a number and post a “tweet” from your phone. Speach to text in a nice little integration package.

From other friends Stuart Henshall and David Beckmeyer we saw Phweet. It’s a different sort of integration between the telephone and Twitter that lets you set up a conference call via Twitter.

Side Note: Read Stuart’s great story about Phweet and his year end wrap post My Year End Review and Thanks).

Why are these two apps important you ask. Let me explain.

I believe the interface to computerized resources is changing in the months ahead. I believe the old fashioned GUI is going to give way to a new VUI (Voice User Interface) as speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion engines get faster, more efficient and cheaper. TwitterFone exemplifies the prototype of how the next generation of Communications Enhanced Business Processes will operate. While this app might seem silly to people who aren’t Twitterholids, it demonstrates how users will be able to interact with voice to corporate systems for placing orders, supply chain management and any number of business activities in the future. As the work force becomes increasingly mobile and requires new tools to be productive, this technology shines a real light on that road to the future.

Phweet does something else that’s new. For telephony geeks, we remember that before SS7 signaling was implemented to take phone network signals out of band to a separate network, signaling frequency (SF at 2600 Hz) was carried within the voice badn. SS7 took signaling out of band to a separate packet network. Phweet also moves signaling out of band, but to the Internet. And not just PSTN signaling. It’s an example of using IP-based Internet technologies not just as a collaboration tool for ad hoc conference calling, but for using IP as a command and control channel for network resources in a new way.

These are two new solutions we saw in 2008 that excite me still because they demonstrate where we are headed in communications technologies rather than hang on to the past. They don’t make any effort to prove VoIP is something new (it isn’t). They don’t cling to the past. They simply integrate pieces of the past and present in simple elegant ways that demonstrate how we’ll be using communications systems and resources in the future.

That’s a big deal. Kudos to Pat, Florian, Stuart and David for showing the gloabl communications community what can be built when you simply have a rock solid idea and a thought leadership mindset on how the future will evolve.

In doing a bit of reading, I found this post by someone I don’t know and have never read before. Do you still just link hop or “graze” looking for someone saying something new?

Here’s the post from Bob Bly. My thoughts are below

Making Sense of Social Networking

I am convinced (though I don’t do it myself) that social networking has value.But what no social networking expert has come up with yet (in myopinion) is a plan to make social networking manageable, so it delivers a higher ROTI (return on time invested).Maybe together we can come up with such a plan on this blog, if you would be kind enough to post answers to 2 questions I have:

1. How much time per day (or per week) do you spend on social networking to make it really deliver positive results for you?

2. There are so many alternatives for social networking (e.g.,Twitter, Squidoo, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.). What is your favorite (or maybe your top 2-3) and what is the best way to use it?

My goal is to come up with a definitive, step-by-step plan to marketing and promotion with social networking — something like “SocialNetworking Success in Just 21 Minutes a Day.”

(Of course you can read the results free here.)

Can we do it?

First, I find it particularly interesting that someone who isn’t actively involved in social networking is talking about it in this sort of detail. I think that speaks to the impact of the genre of communications tools we use.

Sheryl and I are heavily invested in social networking, so any time I see it mentioned, it’s likely to catch my eye. I think Bob hit on a key, but flawed point in his post.

But what no social networking expert has come up with yet (in my opinion) is a plan to make social networking manageable, so it delivers a higher ROTI (return on time invested).

Why do we feel it’s necessary to measure Return on Time Invested? Let me ask the question more directly – what’s the return on your time invested in parking on the couch watching television? Do you care? Ok, you can say the return is mindless entertainment. Isn’t the return of engaging with people online via whatever social networking medium you choose, time better spent – engaged with fellow humans?

I don’t think Bob is off track from the norm, and the first question he asks his readers is a quite normal and sensible one in many regards -

How much time per day (or per week) do you spend on social networking to make it really deliver positive results for you?

Seems reasonable enough, doesn’t it? It seems like a perfectly sane question to me, but call me insane.

How many hours a week do you spend working? Be honest. If you work in the information economy in any way, it’s probably well in excess of 60. Now keep that honesty mojo working for a minute and bear with me.

How many of your social networking contacts are in any way shape or form related to your work? Or the work you wish you were doing? Or the passion that you wish was your full time sustaining work? I’m guessing it’s a higher number than you consciously realized for most of you.

The truth is that the information age, or information economy, and the broad global penetration of Internet technologies has changed society dramatically. It has changed our lives.

In the agricultural age, we all worked during the daylight hours because that’s when we had to work. Sunlight controlled our productivity. While the actual work day may have varied in different parts of the world, our day was controlled by the sun.

Humans, indomitable spirits that we are, invented incandescent lighting, creating virtual sunlight. And coupled with the shift into the industrial age, our work day continued to revolve around daylight with the 9-to-5 work shift, but evolved into virtual days known as swing and graveyard shifts too.

If we think about humanity’s social networks during those times, our social networks revolved around our work. In the agricultural era, it was family on the farm, and villagers or townsfolk nearby. Our travel, our world, our universe of conversation was controlled by how far we could travel in a day.

In the industrial age, we gave way to being controlled by the machines. We, people, became the input slaves to machinery. Assembly lines filled with hundreds of people, feeding the machine metal or component parts or liquids controlled our day. And our social circle grew both smaller and larger. Smaller because large amounts of our 8-hour shift were spent in close proximity with a few co-workers. Our closest circle. But lunch break in the cafeteria, the company picnic, and our community life expanded to include the people who worked “down at the plant.” This was most evident in that microcosm known as the “company town.” And yes Dorothy, company towns still exist today.

But the Internet, and the communications technologies around it, changed not just what we can access or what we can find. They changed not telecommunications, but communications.

Get up in the morning today, and you can be in Ireland talking to a friend in minutes. Sheryl and I did just that and had morning coffee with a friend in Ireland last week. And just last night we spent some personal time with another friend in Ireland. We regularly spend face-to-face time with our best friend who lives in Ottawa, the other side of the continent.

Our social circle – circle of friends – circle of influence. our world and universe, is planetary. Not just Sheryl’s and mine. Yours too. Ours. Humanity’s reach encircles the globe, and our social networks are simply the tools we use to sustain our relationships with the people in our lives.

I know people talk about the wonders of Wikipedia, the glory of Google, and the massive body of knowledge online. It’s a great convenience, but it is nothing more than that – a convenience. We have become a society of convenience and instant gratification, and the information age delivers. We are absolutely suckers for convenience.

I don’t think that’s where the power of the Internet technologies lies at all. The power is in connecting people to other people. Our networks are larger and richer and fuller because artificial boundaries of daylight hours, the 8-hour work day, the factory lunch room and the company town have been blown out to encircle the globe.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the power of the Internet has nothing to do with technology. It’s about people and connecting people. We’re social creatures at our core, and the Internet technologies are the glue that holds the world together for people working in the information economy.

Yes, there are still people working in agricultural and industrial jobs. They are not disenfranchised or disconnected. They have tools and many of them use cell phones to connect to this same information economy network of people.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately about how tech companies are going to thrive or fail (choose your viewpoint) next year based on innovation and funding and marketing spin and all manner of codswallop. I think otherwise.

In 2009 we’re going to see some spectacular flameouts in the broad technology sector. There are a couple of major companies I expect to see hit crisis hard times and not survive. And there are plenty of sleeping giants ready to awaken. The ones that will win big – the ones that will thrive – will be those that escape the idea that technology is about technology at all.

Those who find their way to focusing on giving people tools that connect to other people – easier, faster, more globally, in less disruptive ways to our life – are the winners waiting in the wings.

You know what? There are lots of winners and lots of losers waiting in the wings.

Which are you?

Technorati Tags: social networking, social media, communications, humanity, society

As an interesting aside, my closest and most personal connection, Sheryl wrote The year in review: My take on what’s happening out there…really while we were sitting side by side, neither having a clue what the other was writing. Talk about being connected. Most days we’re joined at the brain.

Before I go too far, let me just say this is an opinion piece. I’m not a statistician so my theories and ideas are my own. They are not proven and for every opinion I put out here, there will be at least 10 opposing ideas so I’m not going to worry about that. As I said, this is all just my opinion about what has taken place. No need to kill the messenger. The messenger isn’t bringing a fact but rather a consideration.

The past year has brought a lot of new technologies, a lot of new admissions into the world and a whole lot about social media. This has become the new catch phrase blanketing everything around the technologies we use and the relationships surrounding them. In the telco industry, most people thought the catch phrase would be unified-communications. Social media ran right past that and became an entity with a life of it’s own. Social media is people.

Let’s start with Robert Scoble. I knew who he was before I knew Ken. I had engaged with him and in fact when CBS did a piece on Robert Scoble and twitter, they showed Robert’s twitter feed on the news. My name showed as they scrolled his feed. Yeah…that would be me in early 2007, back when I was still sheryl4321. That was 07 and in 08 I met Robert in person.

Today I think Robert Scoble is who he is because of timing. He doesn’t bring anything really unique to the tech world. He’s an ex microsoft guy who got into blogging and made news over a couple of things he did, and more, the people he engaged with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Robert, but today what he does really well and CAN do because of his massive following is instigate. Case in point a conversation on twitter just yesterday. Robert made a comment and Ken responded. Robert came back with something to Ken and Ken again responded. Robert said not one word more but many of his followers started talking to Ken and in fact immediately following that one little interaction of two 140 character exchanges, Ken was followed by a dozen new people. Something that doesn’t happen for either of us in those numbers. We may get 5-10 new followers over the course of a day but in a 5 minute span, it was clear what caused it.

Ok, so what am I really trying to say with all this? I believe we’re on the edge of something really big. A change is taking place and we’re all part of it. From how we do business, to how we engage socially with friends. Our lives have truly become part of a global structure and traditional boundaries will soon be removed, not unlike the Berlin wall.

Friends with companies have moved on to start different companies, other connections have moved on to different countries, change is taking place. Social media will quickly be called something else because it has been so over used and we are saturated by people calling themselves social media experts, I have heard time and again the comment, “I am the only person on twitter who is NOT a social media expert”. It’s true. Almost everyone on twitter has in their bio something about social media.

Marketing is trying everything they can to get some benefit out of twitter but they will probably ultimately be the reason twitter fails, if not this year, certainly very soon. In the last month alone I have blocked over 100 new ‘connections’ because when I look at their link it goes to a smooth sales pitch page that annoys the hell out of me.

We’re seeing old media trying to find a way to mesh into new media, and in fact one of my twitter pals, newmediajim, aka Jim Long, NBC cameraman in D.C. has taken to twittering in abundance about his escapades along 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. et al.

I’ve met authors, interviewed some, spoken to MANY, all using Facebook as a way to connect with readers. Some using twitter as well. I’ve watched PR people throw together Facebook profiles for actors they represent with little engagement and no thought to why it might matter.

I’ll tell you why it matters. I’ll tell you what I believe the ‘regular’ people get and the media mavens and social media hounds don’t understand at all. This new world we’re living in requires something of us all. It requires engagement. The benefits are huge because we now have a big database of people and connections we had no knowledge of before. Engagement is necessary for the marketers to gain anything at all from the use of twitter. People are too used to shutting out what they don’t get anything from. Without engagement you may as well not go to the trouble of pretending you want to.

Last year I started using facebook pokes as a tool to touch base with people. I lost some followers because of it. Lost some others for reasons known only to them. I gained a whole lot more than I lost and I did that because I put myself and my belief system on the line in full view and let people make the choice over whether or not I bring anything of value to their world.

I don’t wish to debate the idea of following 15000 people. To me that seems ludicrous. I have always believed quality is more important than quantity and yet I see value in having large numbers to draw from. Chris Brogan is someone I think does a good job of that because he gets a lot of information by having a lot of people to glean from.

So what’s next in 2009? It’s going to be wild. I hope a new term replaces social media, though what that might be I couldn’t say for sure. I do think as social media gains a bigger foot hold we are going to see business embrace it more freely and in truth, businesses who fail to accept it will quickly find themselves without an employee base. Maybe they’ll have to support the senior citizens of the world because any kid in high school today, you know the kids who have grown up with technology as part of their daily lives, well, they’re not going to search out a job that doesn’t allow them to engage in their world the way they always have. They’re looking to have the ability to use im on the job and receive sms on their smart phones. They fought and found ways to have cell phones in school even when just a decade ago the school systems were not allowing them to have them at all. Our kids are more resourceful than we ever gave them credit for.

Times they are a changin’, to quote Bob Dylan. Isn’t it exciting?

Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, Jim Long, Chris Brogan, social media, engagement,

I’ve been seeing a lot about Truphone lately, but have been a bit reluctant to comment. Reluctant because the folks at Truphone are friends. But, I feel compelled to be honest, and my friends know me for speaking my mind.

First some links to the current conversation:

Truphone Looks Forward to an Exciting 2009
By Greg Galitzine, Group Editorial Director
Truphone (News – Alert) is a free application that’s designed to allow users to inexpensively make international mobile calls from their own phone over the Internet. Earlier this year the company announced a native VoIP client for the iPhone developed with Apple’s (News – Alert) own SDK, available via the online iPhone App Store. The solution routes calls over WiFi, so if the user finds themselves near a hotspot and needs to make a call, they can simply call up the Truphone application on theiriPhone ( News – Alert) and place the call.
[Read Greg's Full Post]

Greg’s very up on Truphone, and his interview questions with Matt Rowntree reflect that. There wasn’t anything but fat pitches in there – not one hard question.

Truphone is a finalist in the 2008 Crunchies.

And they’ve gotten lots of praise in the traditional press. Check the bottom of their home page.

So why am I not jumping up and down? I’ve been a Truphone user for a while – a long while, and yet I rarely find it useful or usable. I don’t think I’m the anomaly either.

I used Truphone a bit on my N95, but I move my AT&T SIM from phone to phone. I’ve been haggling with the Truphone gang for ages to put up a Blackberry version. Recently they did. And if it worked, I might say good things about it. But it seized control of the BB without noting it would in the nonexistent documentation (FAQs and docs are very thin). Then, naturally, it wouldn’t work. I could close my account and open a new one. It’s tied to the SIM so moving it is impossible without support involvement that is interesting when we’re across the pond.

So why is a service that’s tied to my phone number on my SIM set up in a way that I can’t actually use it when I move the SIM without closing the account, losing the credit, dealing with admin overhead of readding the credit. And if I move my SIM daily(and I do)? Ahh, so Truphone doesn’t fit. And to my testing, the Blackberry version may work. I’ve heard a couple of reports that it does. Non glowing from people I know. I’ve seen a lot of “my friends at Truphone tell me…”

Then we got the iPod Touch release. Sheryl installed it and we managed to make one call successfully. One success to Gizmo SIP URL only, and that after two hours of putzing with it. So I installed it on my iPod, and my account can’t work with it. I need yet another Truphone account apparently. Excuse me?

So in the interest of fairness, I went digging for info and found Sorry to our iPhone App users. We don’t have an iPhone, but to be honest, two for two failure doesn’t engender the kind of assurance that would send me rushing to install Truphone on one anyway at this point.

I want to own up to something. The gang at Truphone are friends. Yes, I could spend time on the phone working with them, helping them see the problems and rectify them. As a good friend, I should do that. As a consumer, if I have to do that, where does that leave all the people who are loading this stuff and having problems who don’t actually have the Truphone gang as friends?

I’m disappointed in what I’ve seen from Truphone. And I’m disappointed to see a product at this level up for a Crunchie. It speaks ill of our industry, devalues awards and recognition, and doesn’t serve the public well.

I’m very disappointed.

Technorati Tags: Truphone, Blackberry, iPod Touch, iPhone, Crunchies

Industry friends who have followed for a long time know that I’ve been involved with Realtimepublishers for quite some time.

Three years ago Realtime and I joined forces to create the Realtime Unified Communications Community. That work has been a labor of love and a huge investment of time, money and effort for all of us involved. As of the end of this year, I won’t be writing that blog any longer. Realtime will be reshaping things into what I expect will be more of a portal format to support the Realtime Nexus, something I think is a fantastic online digital library.

Sheryl and I both write for Realtime when projects arise that fit our talents and schedule. We cherish our relationship with the publisher and look forward to continued writing projects as our relationship evolves. And we’ve got a number of projects in mind we’ll be sharing with you in the weeks and months ahead. We’ll be telling you all about it here.

Technorati Tags: Ken Camp, Realtimepublishers.com, Realtime Unified Communications Community

Update 12/31/08 at 17:37 And my last post there is up. On into 2009 and bigger & better things!

My good friend Jon Arnold wrote a great piece this morning on VoIP. Great because of the discussion it opens up. My comments are below the snip.

VoIP in 2008 – “I’m Not Dead”

I’ve been writing my Service Provider Views column for just about a year now, and VoIP has been a constant theme. Mainstream service providers and VoIP have for the most part never gotten along very well, even though at one point VoIP seemed to be the Holy Grail of telephony.

Technorati Tags: Jon Arnold, VoIP, unified communications

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Merry Christmas

I’ve written and talked about how Twitter provides more than simply a stream of information. It’s a real-time idea exchange between people. For me, that’s an important point – it’s between people. I’ve been using Twitter for quite a long time, and am not one of those Twitterati who follows thousands of people. I follow 133 at the moment, and for now 384 follow me.

Twitter is for me about connecting with people – with my friends and colleagues in humanity – the real people with whom I exchange ideas. Here’s an exchange that took place this morning with one of those friends:

shelisrael OK. I will write a chapter about humans, brands & which is which from my perspective for Twitterville.

shelisrael I believe social media gives companies a chance to show their humanity. I think its unwise to hide humans behind a little tweeted icon.

kencamp @shelisrael Humanity is where the value of the ‘Net comes in. Brands are nothing but overhead. A tax on humanity.

shelisrael @kencamp You should flesh that idea out into a blog. I’m highly likely to point to it and maybe include in this new chapter.

And that prompted this post, because the idea is interesting, and writing a post about Twitter provides the easiest way to share ideas with Shel. We rarely see each other in person. For those of us who are active Twitterholics, with a daily habit to feed, it’s all about the people.

In Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger’s premise is that:

500 million of us aren’t there because we want a better “shopping experience.” The Web, a world of pure connection, free of the arbitrary constraints of matter, distance and time, is showing us who we are – and is undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings about what it means to be human in the real world.

The small pieces loosely joined by the Internet aren’t brands, advertisers or commercial businesses. They’re people. Stowe Boyd refers to us all as edglings because we “live” at the edge of the ‘Net.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve talked about the human social need to form communities. Twitter is such a community. The strength and value comes from people.

When people represent a brand, like RichardatDELL for example, good things happen. Richard has brought a human face to Dell because he engages as a person. As an individual, Richard reads, follows, engages in conversation and participates in the community. People add value.

I think one of the most important aspects of the engagement we see in the social networking communities today, whether they be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or some other place, is that people are truly connecting with people. The power of the Internet lies in people. It hasn’t been that long ago that the marketing buzz/hype was all about content. Many of the carriers still believe content is king, and are trying to find a way to monetize content. They are doomed to fail.

The bottom line is that people, connecting with people are what powers the Internet and gives it vitality and value.

Internet marketers, hyping the idea of promoting a brand proliferate madly. They’re out of control. For the most part, they’re snake oil hucksters whose clients deserve to lose every penny. Those clients are investing in the charlatan’s great lie that brands interact with people. Brands are nothing more than a logo. Customers will make or break a brand in the traditional brick and mortar world over time based on customer interaction and service.

In the Internet world, brands and advertising are at much greater risk. The real estate available to work with is typically something around 1280 pixels high and 800 pixels wide (or thereabouts). But the attention span of an Internet user may be slightly shorter than that of a flea (at least speaking for myself).

Misuse our time on the Internet, and your life can be ended with one click. One click and you’re history. Two clicks, and you can be blocked into the abyss forever; your message buried and forgotten for all time.

Brands and advertising are simply a tax we users pay. They’re overhead. And we pay the tax in order to connect with other people. If we want to buy a product, we know where to find it. If we want to review it, we don’t really care that somebody we don’t know personally (who is all to often a sock puppet – fake user) gave your piece of rubbish 5 stars. We’re intelligent, thinking humans. We like real interaction and we like talking to real people.

Brands are a tax on the Internet. They tax our time, our bandwidth and our attention. And we pay the price — up to a point. But as a native Californian, I remember Proposition 13 pretty well. If you insist on pretending that your brand can interact with our humanity, a point will come when we will be mad as hell and not take it any more.

The promoters of brands, whether they’re internal marketing teams or external PR teams – or for that matter the outside self-proclaimed experts in social media – need to understand the fundamental root power of the Internet. That power is with people.

People.

Not mushrooms. You can’t feed us BS and keep us in the dark.

Talking louder won’t get your message through. We don’t want to be force fed your message, but we’re smart enough to know when you try. And when you do, our ears, eyes and attention turn elsewhere. You are easily disposed of if you’re a brand. You can be sent to the bit bucket eternally, and your brand, your product, your client suffers.

That’s a pretty high price to pay for ignoring the most basic tenet of sales – people buy from people.

If you want to succeed in social media, engage your people. If you have a product, I don’t care how good it is, your people are your best asset. Set your people free to engage and watch the magic that happens when you push the brand to the background and people to the foreground.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, brands, branding, social media, marketing, sales

The past couple of days have been a bit crazy here. We live just outside Spokane, WA which got hit with record high snow. Spokane got 17 inches. Coeur D’Alene closer to 27 inches. We’re smack in the middle and our best guess is that we got hit with 22-23 inches here.

I lived in Vermont for 5 years. Sheryl lived in northern BC for 10. We’re not incapable of dealing with snow. We’ve manage to keep the driveway cleared and we’re ready to rock and roll. But this much snow is more than the road crews in the area can handle. Our street hasn’t been plowed yet, and most folks in the area are stuck inside at home. That’s where we’ve been pinned down ourselves.

We’re hoping over the weekend the road crews will catch up and we’ll be back to normal, if a white and wintery normal by Monday.

Network World has published their Top 10 predictions for VoIP and convergence in 2009. It’s very focused on SMB and Enterprise space, which I’d expect given the state of consumer offerings. Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick have been active in the convergence space for many years now and generally have a great handle on things.

You’ll have to read their column for yourself. I’m not going to quote the whole thing. It would do them justice as respected colleagues.

I think they may even underplay #2, the user experience. I think that QoE over QoS is going to be a major focus of 2009, and become the strong message from the market leaders.

I’m really happy to see they agree with me on #4, video. I think video and mobility will be the hottest communications areas next year.
I’m extermely happy about their #5. IMS has been a stalled mess and I think it will stay that way. It’s time to quit talking about it in those terms and get on with service delivery. Let’s abandon talking about IMS in 2009.

Read #10 for yourself, but I agree with them more on that one than any of the others.

Technorati Tags: Network World, 2009 predictions, VoIP, video, unified communications

Guy Kawasaki has been working feverishly for a while now to make Alltop, just that, all the top news. For those who don’t know Guy, he’s an active blogger, a Twitter addict (like so many of us) and the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Sheryl and I both interact with Guy on a regular basis on Twitter. He’s quite “touchable” and loves to engage in idea exchange.

I’m pretty proud of this because my lovely partner Sheryl is finally gaining a bit of recognition for all the value she adds in the unified communications industry. A few days back Sheryl asked Guy why there wasn’t a section for Unified Communications. Guy covers a lot of ground, and honestly didn’t really understand what ths industry was. With a little explanation from Sheryl, he went to work, and just a bit ago I spotted this on Twitter.

Here’s a portion of the Alltop screen for Unified Communications. It’s especially gratifying to see that our work here at the Realtime Unified Communications Community and the work Sheryl and I do at Stardust Global Ventures made the very top entries. It was also nice to see if you mouse over the Adknowledgements on the Alltop page that Sheryl is the only person listed. Thanks to my beautiful partner for raising visibility for our industry! And thanks Guy for that vote of confidence in our work!

This really demonstrates the power of social media communications.

Technorati Tags: Alltop, Guy Kawasaki, Sheryl Breuker, unified communications

I just got a link this morning for an article on TechCrunch. I know I shouldn’t be shocked but once again, that is proven a ludicrous ideal.

TwitorFit has blown my thinking that we are growing away from the need to categorize ourselves based on looks, right out of the water.

The premise is that you go to TwitorFit and vote for those people on twitter who you think are hot or not, Twit being not and Fit being obviously hot. However, in order to vote you must sign up and by doing so submit your own twitter profile picture to be viewed and voted on.

Am I the only one who thinks this rediculous? Seriously. What are people thinking when they submit their photos and sign up for this? Are we such an egotistical culture this is necessary? I’m grateful, I guess, that at least our pictures aren’t part of this little production unless we sign up.

Sheesh!

Technorati Tags: techcrunch, twitorfit,

There’s something new coming to the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) called the Social Media Jungle. It’s scheduled for January 7, 2009 in Las Vegas. Put together by our great socially promiscuous friend Jeff Pulver, this event will explore how social media is changing the way we work and live. It’s a topic Sheryl and I are passionate about. The Jungle is a full day of sessions that explore how companies can motivate consumers through social media to drive product sales without increasing costs.

There are no “speakers” but rather Discussion Leaders. The discussion leaders have been told the event will be a Powerpoint Free Zone. These incredible people were not invited to talk about their company, product, service or application, but rather the topic in the area of Social Media which they’re most passionate about.  They’ll present their talks as if they were sharing a blog post. And the people in the room will be asked to provide immediate comments to the content being shared which in turn will start a conversation. It will be and active and animated day!

This event costs $295 in advance and $395 on-site. Space is limited and if you are thinking about attending, please take a moment register for the event today by visiting: http://www.CESweb.org/register. Remember to choose the “Social Media Jungle” registration option.

Visit: : http://www.cesweb.org/sessions/search/trackDetail.asp?ID_track=SMJ_CES09 to see the event website.

You can also keep up with this event by joining the Social Media event on Facebook.

Event Schedule (as of December 10th)
8:30 – 9:00: Real-Time Social Networking
9:00 – 9:20: Welcome to the Jungle, Jeff Pulver
9:20 – 9:40: Navigating the Social Media Seas, Chris Brogan
9:40 – 10:00 – Industry Perspective & Update, Jeremiah Owyang
10:00 – 10:20 – Industry Perspective & Update
10:20 – 10:40 – What to Look for in Social Media Platforms in 2009, Robert Scoble
10:40 – 11:00 – Return on Social Media Investment, Ben Grossman
11:00 – 11:20 – [ break ]
11:20 – 11:40 – Learn, Baby, Learn: Turn Your Social Media Addiction Into An Asset!, Jeffrey Sass
11:40 – 12:00 – Social Media Principles, Chris Heuer
12:00 – 12:20 – Naked PR: What Marketers Need to Know in the Age of Social Media, Susan Etlinger
12:30 – 2:00 [Lunch Break]
2:00 – 2:30 – How Reporters Have to Think of Themselves as an Entrepreneur and a Publisher Using their Company as a Platform, Daniel Honigman
2:30 – 2:50 – New Media Strategy in Challenging Times: Conquering the 3 Screen World: Dean Landsman and Howard Greenstein
2:50 – 3:10 – How Small Business can use Inbound Marketing/Social Media to Help Increase Their Business, Justin Levy
3:10 – 3:30 – The Convergence of CE and Social Media, Jeremy Toeman
3:30 – 3:50 – Managing Your Reputation While Being Genuine and Authentic Online, Dave Taylor
3:50 – 4:10 – How to Botch an Agency Briefing (No Matter How Cool You Think Your Product Is), David Berkowitz
4:10 – 4:20 [break]
4:20 – 4:40 – How Trust Drives Transactions During a Down Economy, Eric Weaver
4:40 – 5:00 – Leveraging Social Media for the Social Good, Rebecca Bollwitt
5:00 – 5:20 – How New Media is Changing the World, Brian Reich
5:20 – 5:40 – Transforming Unemployed BabyBoomers via Social Media, Carlos Hernandez
5:40 – 5:45 – Wrap up
(schedule is subject to change without notice)

Hope to see you at the Social Media Jungle @ CES.