The Web’s Eventful Week in July
Last week was so eventful as far as the web world goes that it would be blasphemous not to make a note of it.
FIRST, THERE WAS THE IPHONE 3G FRENZY…
The crazy queues you witnessed have generated $330 million in sales over a few short days and caused a month-long inventory shortage. It is just a month’s wait if you really want one. However, If you find that you are being tempted to lie, cheat and steal to get one, don’t do it because there are always some on eBay.
FORRESTER LOSES TWO
Earlier in the month, Charlene Li one of my favorite analysts (co-author of Groundswell) announced that she was leaving Forrester and Friday was her last day. Coincidentally Peter Kim announced that Friday was also his last day at Forrester. He will be joining Jeffrey Dachis (founder of Razorfish, Inc.) to start a social computing endeavor. Their insight and presence as analysts will be missed, but I’m sure the wealth of information and skills that they have gathered at Forrester will be used to the fullest extent to excel in whatever they will be dabbling with moving forward. In short, we won’t be hearing the end of them.
Let us all hope that Josh Bernoff and Jeremiah Owyang will continue to stay with Forrester for a while longer, and that we didn’t just witness the beginning of an exodus of top-class talent from the IT research company that many of us really smart people have come to depend on for insight. Saying that, Forrester is hiring more researchers and analysts so if you would like to give it a shot now is the right time to send your résumés and CVs across!
JASON CALACANIS RETIRES FROM BLOGGING
An even more dramatic news last week was Jason Calacanis‘ announcement that he will be retiring from blogging. The CEO of Mahalo.com states that he will be maintaining an exclusive mailing list of no more than 750 people (so far that is the news) so for the hundreds and thousands of people who have fallen in love with Taurus and Fondue… this is your cue to go get your own pet.
SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
Other than that, Twitter acquires Summize, FriendFeed has been getting a lot of coverage and a spin-off aggregator called Moopz is all-the-buzz. I thought I’d cover last week’s underground headlines for you in a neat and nice little summary.
Project Management: More Templates on OnProjects.net
This is a short but useful post while I am busy working on a major piece. I wanted to share more documentation and project management templates with project managers and folks who have real businesses to run from OnProjects.net. There’s a wealth of project management templates and project toolkits from Cornell University, The Tasmanian Government, and even some more Prince2 templates thanks to the blogger called Duardo. Let me know what you think!
What Every Company Needs to Know: The 7-S Framework
I stumbled upon a presentation on the 7-S Framework by Lowell Bryan, a director at the McKinsey New York office while watching another presentation in the same series featuring the Structure Conduct Performance (SCP) model.
While business school pedigrees may not be strangers to the 7-S framework, many real business owners continue to operate while being completely oblivious to tools that actually help them determine what their Critical Success Factors (CSFs) are.
Bryan explains that one of the common mistakes that most organizations tend to make is to think that organizational effectiveness is about structure. In this presentation he explains what the 7-S framework is all about (shared values, structure, systems, skills, style, strategy and staff) and how its relationship with one another paints a picture of failure or success in an organization.
All of this business school gibberish may not be as exciting as the day we hear Donald Trump needing to wear adult diapers, but fact is these “enduring ideas” from McKinsey have stood the test of time in analyzing and determining organizational effectiveness. Whether you are a small shop or a large corporation, the 7-S framework is an invaluable tool in understanding which areas of your organization needs improvement. It will aid in the discovery of what your real CSFs are and with that information you will be able to make better decisions that help your organization flourish in an erratically competitive marketplace.
P/S: To watch the presentation, you’ll have to be a registered user at McKinsey Quarterly.
What About User-Generated Advertisements?
I wanted to share this blog post, Letting your Community Create your Advertisements by Jeremiah Owyang. I think what Dell has done with their Regeneration campaign and the way they are pointing in terms of how the advertising industry will pick up from this is not something to be ignored.
Seesmic: A Video Hello from Jackie
iPhone 3G: Apple Store in London
Here’s Mike a.k.a. @sizemore lurking around at the Apple Store in London before heading off to the Coach and Horses. Maybe I should have gone to tuttle today.
Queue in NYC for the iPhone 3G
Here is Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com streaming the crazy queue to get the iPhone 3G at 5th Ave in NYC minutes ago. I know I’m one of the least sensationalistic people when it comes to i-anything, but at the kind of prices the iPhone 3G is going for (approx. US$199) for the features it provides, it is understandable what the hype is all about!
iPhone 3G Dismantled
Check out these guys in New Zealand who dismantled the iPhone 3G they so laboriously waited in line to buy!
AdBlock Plus : More on the Ad-Killer
So I covered a story about AdBlock Plus yesterday and one of my subscribers (whose primary source of revenue is from ad banners) reacted rather acerbically toward them.
Unfortunately, we now live in an online world run by social behaviors that naturally work toward a tipping point and there is little you can do to stop Adblock Plus’ proliferation except at the policy level.
If you are for it, you don’t need to rally support because people are being recommended the plug-in upon installation of Firefox 3.0 and its immediate benefits to the user seems to justify their action. However, if the Internet is not monetized through online advertising, users won’t be able to get content for free anymore. Somebody has to pay for it and that person will likely be the user. There’s no such thing as a free meal and ad dollars keep websites running and content creators paid.
Still, that is not going to change the fact that people hate banner ads and will block them to create some mental peace and quiet. So, how can we all win?
You’ll have to wait for my next post to read about how I would work around this problem. 
Whatever your position, here are more leads to other people who are discussing about the Adblock Plus.
Firefox and AdBlock Plus
Jason Dunn, JasonDunn.com, June 24th, 2008
Drugs and Adblock Plus shouldn’t be in the hands of everyone else
Andrew Brown, The Guardian.co.uk May 1st, 2008
AdBlock Plus can quietly kill ads - and perhaps the internet economy
Nick Carr, Guardian.co.uk - Sept 20th, 2007
Who blocks the (ad) blockers?
Chris Soghoian, CNET News.com Sept 11, 2007
Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?
Noam Cohen, NYTimes.com Sept 3rd, 2007
Adblock Plus threatens the online revenue model
Noam Cohen, International Herald Tribune Sept 2nd, 2007
Feel free to let me know what you think.
The Armageddon Begins for Online Banners
For those of us in web development, the birth of another browser is trouble amplified 100 times as we now have to add another browser to the QA list, but for users however, anything newly enhanced and improved as far as browsers go is as sweet as honey on the lips.
Never mind how grateful I am of the speed of Firefox 3.0, today I want to talk about this handy add-on tool Adblock Plus which enables users to block banner ads directly on websites and what that means to the online ad industry.
The first thing you have to realize is that we are not talking about pop-up blockers anymore. We’re blatantly talking about “Ad” blockers, that’s right, particularly AdBlock Plus which was developed by Wladimir Palant. This add-on literally shuts off all banner ads with the click of a button to all the websites that display ads. Major media owners like Yahoo are not exempt from it either. No ad space can escape the eradicative powers of the AdBlock Plus.
There is no harsher reality to the traditional online advertising industry than this. Adblock Plus has logged 21,434,766 downloads (as of today). That’s 21 million 4 hundred thousand and bla bla bla… people and their machines, and that is only for the Firefox browser; I think you get the idea.
I downloaded and tried it and it stripped and got rid of all the ads on all the websites I frequent, no joke.
Here’s an example of what RedHerring.com looks like normally.
This is what RedHerring.com looks like after I enabled AdBlock Plus on Firefox 3.0.
Here’s another example of what CNET.com looks like normally.
And here is what CNET.com looks like when AdBlock Plus is turned on.
Notice there are no ads!
With 21.4 million downloads to AdBlock Plus, this renders all banner ads useless because it won’t even show up with the tool turned on. This feature is not media-owner controlled, it is user-controlled so there goes your audience. They choose not to be your audience!
I question how and why internet advertisers believe their ad banners are communicating the right messages across. Common sense stuff… people are hating banner ads to the core because they are distracting, intrusive, and annoying. The only banners they don’t mind clicking on are (frankly) from sources that they trust and the deal has to be really, really good. For example, if HSBC advertised an offer of a “no-questions asked” 10% interest paid on a month-to-month basis on your Savings account if you switch from your current bank to HSBC, yes, you’re going to get millions of people clicking on it. Still, with AdBlock Plus, even ads I don’t mind clicking won’t be showing up anymore.
People channel surf on TV during advert slots. With the web, they’ll turn you off completely because they can. The only way users cannot turn you off is if you infiltrate and build your brand and products into the very marrow and breath of the content they bask themselves in.
Although this post is not about my proposed strategies (you can hire me for that :)) a good example would be to have a brand like Pizza Hut build an online ordering facility for home delivery into a virtual world for online RPG games like the SIMS, instead of offering coupons online via ad space.
There are no absolute answers and ad space will still generate revenue for media owners, but with things like the AdBlock Plus being allowed to exist, online banner days will soon come to an end.
Who?
JACQUELINE MIAO
Web Strategist
PRINCE2 Project Manager
Location: London, U.K.-
