Walter Adamson

Create a Google Wave with Wave This button

I added a Google "Wave This" button to my post "How Small Business uses Facebook for B2B" clicked on it, and whammo! It created a neat Wave.

That should improve the viralness of Waves. There's nothing better than instant!

Google explains how to add the Wave This here. Hopefully Typepad will build it in as a option soon.

I wrote this introduction to Google Waves a little while go for an IT in Aged Care Magazine. It's a little prosaic but if you're starting from scratch it explains the concept (I think!?).

http://xeesm.com/walter

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• Google Wave and Why You Should Care (scottberkun.com)
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Managed services are not SaaS - it's about Marketing Martha

Debates rage all over the planet about SaaS and what it is and is not. Some claim, as they do for Cloud, that has been "around forever" and is just marketing making up new jargon.

If you are a Linkedin member you can check this discussion where one of the participants insists that SaaS has been here for 30 years and that it was invented by airline industry who continue to understand it best.

For my part, I disagree that Cloud is not something new (according to my definition) and that SaaS is not something new - again according to my definition. 

In fact I think the reason that many software companies fail to make to transition to SaaS is precisely because they limit their thinking, and their business transition, to the "on demand" mindset, or the "managed service" mindset. That's way I was pleased to read the work of Michael Dunham of Scio who has written two very useful articles - SaaS & XaaS: What Makes Up A "Service?".

I particularly noted this comment: 

ISVs build a lot of expertise in building software and internal operations to fit that model – expertise in managing the development, marketing and sales processes to match the cyclical nature of licensed software sales. Moving to an incremental revenue model is one aspect of SaaS and many ISVs have made the transition – however difficult that might be. But when it came to marketing the product – they are still selling it as a technology – even if they see it as embodying special expertise for their market and not as a service.

That's why we focus on the business modelling and the Go-To-Market transformation for ISV's to SaaS, and why we have explicit frameworks and methodologies to address this issue.

Michael continues: a true SaaS product needs to embody the relationship between the vendor and the end-user community they are serving. But – unfortunately – very few vendors have figured out how to market that service-based relationship successfully. Not just because it is hard for established vendors to do – primarily because it is just not a part of their strategic view of their product. They still see themselves as technology vendors, not as service providers.

And he addresses the business modelling and cash flow issues, which we also focus on: Further, the standard model conveniently supported a split set of payments to the vendor. The vendor set license fees for the product and a separate set of support and maintenance fees to provide ongoing services. In other words, the support services were almost an “optional add-on.” Those same vendors, moving to a “as a Service” model, have to rethink their cash flow and put services in all its various aspects up front while still maintaining enough bandwidth to support ongoing development.

These ARE the big issues, along with business agility, in converting to a SaaS model. It's nice to see others confirming our experience, which we have gathered over hundreds of assignment. Mikael Blaisdell of MBlaisdell & Associates contributed to the discussion, and I often find myself agreeing with him on SaaS business matters.

Ningoids - some Ning stats, from Forbes

Forbes wrote It's a Good Ning explaining how "old media was sidling up to new media" in the way Martha Stewart enlisted Ning to build them a social network for female entrepreneurs - Dreamers Into Doers.

"Created by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia on Ning"

Forbes says: Martha Stewart Living asked [Ning] to build the network after realizing articles on its main Web site about female entrepreneurs attracted significant interest from advertisers and readers. By operating a small biz-focused mini-Facebook, Martha Stewart's editors and producers can keep up with the specific issues that a narrow segment of its readers care about and create new content targeted for them...

The article also gave some interesting statistics about Ning:

• Founded in 2004 by Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen;
• 30 million registered users;
• 1.4 million networks have been created; which means
• the average network has 20 people;
• 215,000 networks are active; which means
• 15.4% of networks are active;
• investors have so far put in about $119 million.

What can we figure from that?

Let's say that the 15% of networks which is active accounts for 85% of registered users - that's 25.5 million users, that's 119 members per active network on average. On the other hand the 80% of non-active networks, then, has an average of 4 members.

Let's then say that 20% of these active networks account for 80% of active users, that is 20.4 million users, among 43,000 networks, means 474 people per active "active network", and 30 members per ordinary active network.

So the activity is concentrated in:

• 20.4 million people; on,
• 43,000 networks;
• with an average of 474 people per network.

Twitter has 50 million members, but probably fewer than 20.4 million in active networks. On the other hand the growth rates of Twitter and say Facebook are astoundingly better than Ning's.

For the investors, looking for say 6X ($714 million) on their investment, with an investment horizon of say 6-10 years (2010 - 2014), then it looks a stretch to hit that jackpot from the current activity base. Although, it is only $35 per user of the most active users, which is far below some valuations per user on Twitter and Facebook.

By the way, Bianchini is "upbeat about the growth patterns she sees"  - the rate of active Ning networks is growing faster than the total number of Ning networks. Her translation: more and more people are staying involved.

What do you think Ning is worth now and and it's prospects for the future - it's best assets and the greatest threats?

Google News adds quotes from people searched

I heard in passing this morning that Australian cyclist Robbie McEwen had abandoned next season (2010) due to injuries sustained in a fall in May. When I searched Google News tonight I was surprised to see a quote from him leading the stories, a "quote snippet":

"Being forced on the sideline to watch, you can learn a fair bit about your rivals. I did see things [in the Tour] that can be useful. But that has always been a part of my tactic"

Aug 16, 2009 Brisbane Times                                             ...more by Robbie McEwen

It's a quote search "/news/quote?" within News, and clicking on more quotes gets a list of recent quotes.

For example, you see all publications which have published quotes from Albert Einstein in the last week.

If you search for "facebook" you get no quotes, but if you search for Mark Zuckerberg you can get his latest musings which have been captured in the press, or just the last one week's worth.

Neat!

By the way, I was glad to see that I had misheard the morning's report - McEwan has called an end to his "disastrous season" which has been marred by a bad fall and two other accidents. McEwen called his May 28 accident on the second stage of the Tour of Belgium as "by far the worst one I've had during my 14 year pro career and the effect has been that my 2009 season is over".

	| | | | | | Save to Mobile Scan my QR Code	I blog about the IT Industry & the Cloud Shift, customer engagement & social media , and business value & innovation, and in particular where they overlap.
Melbourne Lead for Kinship Digital - delivering to business social strategy, tactics, monitoring, governance and tools. IT exec since way back, former Internal Auditor, blogging since early 2004, Tweeting since 2007, certified social business strategist since 2009, still learning. CoFounder and Partner of the Social Business Consulting Group. Qualified in Mathematical Statistics, Computing Science. Old eyes, new views. Give me a tweet. More bio here. Contact: walter@walteradamson.com  m: +61 403 345 632 Keywords: Social enterprise, social governance, social monitoring, community platforms, predictive analysis, IT strategy, customer value proposition,SaaS, cloud strategy, go-to-market, digital engagement.