All Things

I started out writing this as yet another comment to my earlier post about Twitter, but think I’ll make it a separate post. In any case, here are two good articles about serious uses of Twitter that I found from a post on the Setting Contexts blog:

The Top 5 Ways Smart People Use Twitter

What Twitter Means for Marketers

Regarding the 5 uses in the first article, I’d add:

1. Marketing & Communication: It’s interesting to just look at Twitter and quickly see what so much of the buzz is about. I do think there’s a good chance of picking up on tech or consumer trends much quicker, if you’re listening to the right folks. A good tool for finding those “right” folks is an obvious key add-on to the service.

2. Microblogging: Not everyone’s brain works this way, but for me there’s a lot of times I want to throw out a random thought, question or link that might be of some benefit or deserving of further investigation (e.g. by a journalist). I’ve added my Twitter account to my Technorati blog list, so now there’s a somewhat decent chance these thoughts might get discovered, though Twitter does need an automatic ping function.

3. Business Networking: I’m hopeful about this; I do well in one-on-one conversation but don’t stand out in a crowd. There’s a lot of folks I’d like to connect with that I’ve never had an immediately compelling enough reason to do it, though it would probably be beneficial for both sides.

4. Breaking News & Getting Scoops: I got this part as soon as I saw the CNN logo on Twitter. Unfortunately, I don’t think most news outlets have figured out how Twitter could drive traffic to their sites. As with RSS, the NY Times is at the forefront of this.

5. Streamlining Your Electronic Inboxes: I’m really hopeful that Twitter can help to reduce the email onslaught, since reading a Twitter update is so instant. I made a suggestion about this, for example, to Kristin at French Word a Day last week, as I thought it was an excellent example of a daily email service that could benefit from a Twitter update.

As I noted before, I expect we’ll see a whole lot of other uses emerge for Twitter, since in essence it’s a whole new basic form of communication. Here are a few more interesting examples of Twitter applications I’ve found recently:

Austin Weather

Kansai Train Announcements

French Practice

Interesting Links Forwarded by Robert Scoble

Twitter Timer

Also someone reportedly found some help after a car accident: Thoughts on Twitter.

Finally, with regard to the second article mentioned at the beginning, there’s this interesting assertion: If Markets Are Conversations, Then Twitter Is Money.

Years ago, Apple ran an ad with a bunch of lemmings all following each other off a cliff. After all, why think when it’s so easy to just NOT think? Well, here we go again. This year it seems like most all the major blogging/social networking services are one by one getting blinded in the headlights of MySpace.

As if we really need more of the lowest common denominator! There’s so much opportunity for innovation in this area, yet everyone wants to be the same. I’ve complained previously on my MSN (now Live) Spaces blog about Microsoft in this regard, and now the latest casualty apparently is Facebook.

With only 10 million users after two and a half years of operation, I guess Facebook just feels like a failure next to MySpace. Never mind the fact that they own the campus network space, they would rather throw out that distinctive so they can compete head-on with everybody. Usually these sorts of commoditization strategies don’t end up being as profitable as the competitors expect (the airline industry comes to mind).

Perhaps the Facebook users will again make a big fuss. Maybe management will listen, but chances are, based on the past history of fast-growing tech companies, they won’t. Most keep determinedly going in the wrong bone-headed direction until they go right off the cliff.

Xanga, which I use for my blog AeroGo and perhaps my favorite of the bunch, is likewise feverishly adding multimedia features, to compete not only with MySpace I suppose but also Flickr and YouTube. So far these changes seem mostly positive, but if Xanga can add these features so readily, they will very likely end up as standard on all sites.

Hasn’t anybody (or at least any VCs) noticed that there are a lot of people out there who don’t like MySpace? I mean really, it’s pretty raunchy by and large. It’s as if there was a town full of nice, somewhat distinct neighborhoods, yet all the developers were racing to fill these places with trashy businesses and dumpy apartments.

So why don’t any of these sites carve out a unique identity for themselves? I think the only plausible answer is the dramatic, rapid growth of MySpace. Why have 5 or 10 million users when you can have 100 million? Of course, these users apparently are also spending a lot of time on MySpace and so, presumably, potentially a lot of dollars.

Nevertheless, it seems that money is best made on the net by tightly targeting customers, not with mass marketing, so I suspect sites that are oriented around specific topics, activities and user demographics will ultimately yield a superior return. As I’ve noted before, these social networking sites need to differentiate themselves and find niches where they can thrive, as Facebook has (even if they don’t grasp the value of this).

Let me use Facebook as an example, since it has done the best job of targeting a very large yet tightly-defined niche (high school and college campuses). College students in particular have so many things they have to (or want to) buy, that the marketing/advertising opportunities seem almost endless, both at the local and at the national or branding/name recognition level. Everyone from the local pizza restaurant to students selling used textbooks to Hollywood film studios will want to target their users.

I’m not in school so I don’t use Facebook and don’t know how good a job they’ve done of capitalizing on this opportunity, but the folks developing (and funding) these sites need to remember that traffic often, but not always, equates to sales. Ultimately, it boils down to trust. I suspect that MySpace, as many city centers did, will begin to collapse of its own weight as many head to the “suburbs” of seemingly safer sites like Xanga and others.

The planned growth ideal for urban development might in fact be a useful metaphor for these social networking sites, which may do best if they concentrate on growing at a sustainable pace with a clear demographic or interest group in mind. Users need to come to trust these sites and feel safe in them. Then they will end up spending a lot more time and money there, and for the long run.

Google has been catching some criticism for its deal to pay $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL, but I can see several reasons why it may make sense, at least for them.

First of all, the deal is a defensive move, in multiple ways. Google can afford the billion but doesn’t want to lose a substantial portion of its revenues and cash flow. As any experienced entrepreneur knows, managing cash is Job 1. Maybe Google is so big it could afford to be a bit sloppy in this area, but it’s good they are being disciplined about this and defending their revenue and cash flow first before worrying about maximizing return on investment.

Of course, it’s also defensive in that it locks Microsoft out, thereby sustaining Google’s online ad momentum while restraining Microsoft’s. Though some seem to view things differently, I think Google’s brand, on the net, is still way more valuable than Microsoft’s, and the brand must be defended.

Second, AOL’s valuation seems to be nearly completely a function of the perspective from which it is viewed. At the time of the merger (with Time-Warner), it was viewed as a top internet property/portal/brand that was key to driving traffic, and was given a sky-high valuation. Today it is viewed as just a dial-up ISP going the way of the dinosaurs.

A couple of weeks ago, I got another AOL disk in the mail (what does that make - about one a month for a decade?). This one, however, was different, and got me thinking. Instead of just trying to sign me up for AOL, the cover says, “Get Your Business Online”. This was such an obvious growth direction for AOL that I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it before.

It seems to me that AOL’s members align pretty well with Sams Club shoppers, i.e. upper middle-class folks who often own their own businesses. Of course, these are all switching to broadband and AOL is no longer viewed as the premium ISP. As someone noted the other day, however, AOL’s core competency may really lie in getting newbies (or now their businesses) on the web.

Of course, AOL has a lot of work to do if it wants to make this really profitable, but considering that the local web is something that really hasn’t happened yet, at least most places, there’s still a lot of growth potential there for helping small business owners. Those who have been AOL customers and used to the web are likely smart enough to know there’s more their business could do online, if it was simple enough to implement.

Consequently, a third reason Google’s deal may make sense is that it solidifies its relationship with AOL, which has already proved to be a strong partner in generating ad revenue. Google hasn’t really tried to be a portal like Yahoo, Excite, or the others, but AOL could provide that part while Google drives development of new online services.

One opportunity I keep waiting for Google to tackle is local classifieds, which would capitalize on their compelling brand and near 100% user base. A single, strong brand for local classifieds seems so obvious (and needed), I don’t know why they haven’t been more aggressive about it. Maybe they’re just trying to be merciful to the print newspapers.

I enjoy reading about how Google is turning the business/venture capital world on its head. I use Google every day, and haven’t paid them a dime, yet they’re making billions. It’s interesting … fascinating!

Friday Peter F. Drucker, often credited with founding the field of management science, died at his home.

It was perhaps ironic that Drucker died on Armistice (Veterans) Day, as he once attributed the quick start in his career to being placed early in positions that should have been given to men in the middle of their careers, except Europe in the 1930s didn’t have such men. They had most all died in the War. Gifted with the ability to see and clarify trends years ahead of others, Drucker left Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and London, for the U.S., in 1937.

Drucker was one of a handful of prescient Austrians of the 20th century, able to see past the blur of rapid technological change and political upheaval to discern more fundamental social issues and the need for moral action. Unlike Ludwig von Mises‘ analysis of macroeconomics or F.A. Hayek’s work in sociology, Drucker ostensibly focussed on management of profit and non-profit organizations (including government), and managing oneself. Nevertheless, his insights into social trends were some of his most valuable contributions.

Drucker’s own preference was for French economist J.B. Say, who supposedly coined the term “entrepreneur” around 1800. Innovation and “knowledge work”, a term Drucker himself originated, were always important topics in his writings, including his valuable Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Drucker frequently emphasized the need for receptivity to the unexpected market and for disciplined abandonment of yesterday’s successes. In this he seemed to parallel the thought of yet another Austrian, famed economist of innovation Joseph Schumpeter, with his similar concept of “creative destruction” as the driver of growth in an economy.

Regarding Drucker’s impact on my own life, I first discovered his works as a sophomore engineering student, while volunteering with an organization known as the World Space Foundation. WSF was trying a new, non-profit approach to space exploration, and garnered some attention for its work on developing a solar sail spacecraft, though its greatest contribution was likely in the area of Earth-crossing asteroid research.

At this time NASA was really in a funk concerning lunar exploration, which had completely dried up (and would remain so for another dozen years, until the military’s Clementine spacecraft and, after a long history of determined development, Lunar Prospector). I was intrigued with the possibility that maybe we could do a lot with even modest funds in a non-profit context.

Having already concluded some time previously that innovative organizational forms might play an enabling role in space development, over the next couple of years I developed an appreciation for management science and for Drucker’s works in particular. Drucker’s thought-provoking books have always proved fascinating, even if not so easy to apply directly, and were an engrossing introduction to the study of management.

Eventually I concluded that a non-profit organization would have a difficult time maintaining enough control to pursue a long-term research program, but that for-profit enterprises might do this effectively, though much discovery and innovation in the areas of organizational and individual function was still needed. This area of research, in fact, has been my primary focus for the past 18 years.

Perhaps Drucker’s best-loved book is The Effective Executive, originally published in 1966. Drucker described it as a real-world treatment of the subject, and argued that effectiveness was a set of practices that must be learned - and practiced - starting with the executive’s managing of his time, not the work itself. Newt Gingrich, after capturing the House of Representatives for the Republican Party and becoming Speaker, credited the book with guiding his success, which led to a new surge in its popularity.

One of Drucker’s strengths was his ability to see that management, as a discipline, transcended particular organizational forms. He was equally interested in improving effectiveness in both the profit and non-profit sectors, and his latest brief but valuable work, published this year, was Managing Oneself.

It is in the profit realm, however, that Drucker’s comments are sometimes most difficult to unravel. His discussion (Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Ch. 6) of the role of business, and of profit in particular, is thought-provoking yet seemingly incomplete. Similarly, some of the concepts brought out early in Managing for Results beg to be pursued at a conceptual level rather than with the detailed analysis of product contributions that follows.

As with any great researcher, Drucker was as adept at asking the right questions as answering them. I continue to find his works profitable reading, however that may be defined!

I wrote about justifying R&D investment on my sites AeroGo and RealCurrents, and how an understanding of the techniques of targeting and scaling of R&D investment is more important than merely raising funding.

I’ve held off mentioning this until I had several posts on it, but I’ve recently started a Xanga blog, AeroGo, that may be helpful to anyone interested in the aerospace field, especially high school and college folks.

I’m going to use the site to give out information about the aerospace field that could help those trying to make educational and/or career choices. It will be very practical, tell-it-like-it-is stuff, what may be hard to discover for those not already in the field. My aim is to give readers exposure to a lot of stuff they might not hear about otherwise, but could benefit from knowing.

I picked Xanga because it has a pretty well-developed blogring setup that allows me to connect with a number of different aerospace interest groups in that community. Of course, if you know someone who might be interested, I’d appreciate your pointing them to my site.

Today I discussed some of the new crop of space companies that may give NASA a real run for their money, and eventually move commercial space into manned spaceflight.

Back in the 1980s, I came up with a fascinating technical concept, very advanced. I spent some time pursuing it but came to two conclusions. First was the painful realization that I’m not really a hardware person. I am fairly good with machines and electronics, but I can’t work in the speedy and adept manner that a true hardware person does in building something.

The second conclusion was that it didn’t really matter for the time being, because virtually none of the technologies needed to build it were ready. Many were starting to be developed, but some were completely obscure.

Even today it’s hardly certain that the concept would work, even in principle. Nevertheless, I have noticed a curious trend over the past two decades. One by one various of the technologies needed have popped onto the radar screen and become available, or at least in steady development. Yet there’s still been a key ingredient missing, an appropriately dense power source.

There are several possibilities already apparent, but none appeals to me as much as sonofusion, the claimed attaining of a fusion reaction from extreme pressures reached by cavitating/collapsing bubbles stimulated by ultrasound. The initial experiments, done by Rusi Taleyarkhan and a team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were reported in 2002. The methodology was soon questioned and little has been reported until recently.

Now an experiment done at Purdue by Yiban Xu and Adam Butt appears to provide further support of the possibility of sonofusion. The researchers also claim to have made progress in understanding how the required pressures could be produced by cavitation.

Obviously, much work likely remains just to confirm that fusion may actually be occurring, let alone to make practical use of it. Nevertheless, the prospect of a tabletop fusion reactor would excite any aerospace engineer.

As an engineer, I have been trained to be skeptical of technology, yet as an entrepreneur, I know that sometimes good surprises do happen, and that it pays to be positioned to take advantage of them. The payoff on sonofusion, should it prove to be real, would still be quite a ways off. Nevertheless, I continue to be amazed and delighted at how the pieces of a complex puzzle seem to be steadily falling into place.

There’s a lot of things I like about Business Week, but one thing that really stands out is its unfailing promotion of the importance of industrial design and related creative disciplines to business. Every year, it sponsors (with the Industrial Designers Society of America) the Industrial Design Excellence Awards.

Now they are ratcheting things up another notch, as outlined in the August 1st issue, on using creativity as the centerpiece of a systematic strategy to build innovative companies. It seems the impetus for this new step is a firm conviction on the part of the BW editorial staff that the creative disciplines are key to American industry’s competitiveness in the global market. According to Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler: “we’re saying … that innovation and design point the way out of a lot of the difficulties U.S. companies face as high-paying jobs in tech and manufacturing shift overseas.”

Beyond just an interesting issue on creativity, BW has added a new Innovation & Design Channel on its website. With this step, BW’s editorial staff continues to show unusual foresight (more on this later).

I hope they will continue to lead the way in breaking down the walls between corporate America and the vast body of research that is being done elsewhere, whether in academia, government, or a multitude of private efforts. As I noted in my last post, there are a lot of good ideas out there.

Having done R&D myself for the past 18 years, I know BW is just scratching the surface with the research covered in the August 1st issue. Progress has been rapid in many fields, especially in understanding the differences in how people think and work. Moving forward, I suspect one of the key issues in design and marketing will be determining when to focus like a laser on a particular kind of customer, and when to tailor a design to interface with users in multiple ways that appeal to a broader range of customers.

What we really need at this point is a more rigorous theory of design, which will not only help shore up industrial design’s public image but also make it possible to reliably sort out such issues. In the meantime, BW is to be commended for not letting the issue rest. American industry has a long history of discovering industrial design, turning around its decline, and then redeveloping amnesia about the whole field. With today’s global market, as the BW editors observe, this is no time to let this happen again.