The whole concept of ‘OPEN’ is a nice one.
For example, American Express $AXP has the nerve to use ‘OPEN’ in their latest bullshit ‘TARP” backed ad campaign to get new customers for the ones they pissed off and kicked out. They are as ‘OPEN’ when it comes to selling your data and ‘Closed’ when you need them.
Twitter $TWIT is pretty damn open, but so is the backing from their VC’s. Twitter is a miracle and it is hard to start miracles. They just happen.
You can brag about ‘OPEN’ when you have CUSTOMERS. Until than you have USERS. USERS are generally very difficult to get and than expensive to keep. As the cloud expands, look for this to equation to get harder and more expensive, not easier and cheaper which everyone thinks.
Customers are what you want.
Steve Jobs can fart around at the edge of the ‘Social Web’ because he has customers. Apple has the luxury to ease into social. Steve can tease his customers with Social because for the most part, they don’t care. People have declared their social lives for now. Steve does not want to overpay for the current leaders or even help them. He can afford to do that.
The perception of ‘OPEN’ when you have CUSTOMERS is all that matters.
My favorite investment to date with an exit was GolfNow.com. I loved it because we had customers. At board meetings I would rant about us not turning customers into hard core fanatics around everything golf. I always lost. We had an amazing exit to Comcast in 2007 so it is hard to project the ‘coulda wouldas’.
To write off Steve Jobs and $aapl with their very uninteresting first launch of PING would be dangerous. They have the customers. They have my credit card info and my kids have my passowrd to itunes.
i dont think he cares about ping. if he did, this would not have been
launched. He has something else up his sleeve. i guarantee that.
PING has users NOT customers. It’s free, just like all the other social sites. Only difference is that Apple’s PING is a digital walled garden. He won’t have customers until he OPEN’s it up and that’s never going to happen. At some point iTunes collapses under the weight of code. Apple has a monopoly in Music – it’s hard to innovate at that point (look to Redmond). He’ll have customers when he has a three little icons like yours in iTunes. Until then it’s just Users who don’t have a clue about what to do with Ping.
i dont think he cares about ping. if he did, this would not have been
launched. He has something else up his sleeve. i guarantee that.
howard,,you can bet your ass he does,,people cant se the forest for the tress right now,,Steve is going to get in every living room before its over ,,he has the industry running scared,,aapl is still a baby in its lifecycle imo,,it will go up and down,,but barring WWIII,,she goes up the next five years,,may go up huge in next 12 months,,much more than all the pundits are saying,,i have never owned anything appl till wife got me ipad,,withing two weeks of ipad and went and spent over $2500 on new mac,,just ordered appl tv day it went on sale,,once you own an appl device you will buy more,,the apple experience is a good one,,if i have an issue i call the support line and it gets dealt with,,,never had that w msft,dell,hp or any other product,
I did that in 2005 but yea long and agree
Since the beginning of time, the objective has been to develop something proprietary (closed) and leverage the hell out of it (to make money). As an investor, give me Apple any day of the week. As a consumer, sometimes the free OPEN crap is cool. Most times I would rather pay for something that just works…..
verizon and t examples of closed that dont work . overpaid execs and not
enough people on the street…
thx man
PING has users NOT customers. It's free, just like all the other social sites. Only difference is that Apple's PING is a digital walled garden. He won't have customers until he OPEN's it up and that's never going to happen. At some point iTunes collapses under the weight of code. Apple has a monopoly in Music – it's hard to innovate at that point (look to Redmond). He'll have customers when he has a three little icons like yours in iTunes. Until then it's just Users who don't have a clue about what to do with Ping.
howard,,you can bet your ass he does,,people cant se the forest for the tress right now,,Steve is going to get in every living room before its over ,,he has the industry running scared,,aapl is still a baby in its lifecycle imo,,it will go up and down,,but barring WWIII,,she goes up the next five years,,may go up huge in next 12 months,,much more than all the pundits are saying,,i have never owned anything appl till wife got me ipad,,withing two weeks of ipad and went and spent over $2500 on new mac,,just ordered appl tv day it went on sale,,once you own an appl device you will buy more,,the apple experience is a good one,,if i have an issue i call the support line and it gets dealt with,,,never had that w msft,dell,hp or any other product,
Given your success with GolfNow around moderate customers, do you think trying to inspire fanatics was a mistake?The social web thing is built on open (Ads!), if Steve finds a way to do it inside iTunes without Ads, he might be on to something. I don’t think the Apple folks will though.Because the social stuff is not about buying crapple wear (i’m on a 3Gs).
It’s about rich people talking to poor people, pros talking to pros from other companies, folks from India talking to Americans, and famous people talking to themselves.
I did that in 2005 but yea long and agree
Given your success with GolfNow around moderate customers, do you think trying to inspire fanatics was a mistake?
The social web thing is built on open (Ads!), if Steve finds a way to do it inside iTunes without Ads, he might be on to something. I don't think the Apple folks will though.
Because the social stuff is not about buying crapple wear (i'm on a 3Gs).
It's about rich people talking to poor people, pros talking to pros from other companies, folks from India talking to Americans, and famous people talking to themselves.
Steve Jobs also has hardware – devices that people want, and that he puts in their hands and on their coffee shop tables that are both fashion statements and social statements. Huge advantage for his software business – as you say, don’t write them off.
Steve Jobs also has hardware – devices that people want, and that he puts in their hands and on their coffee shop tables that are both fashion statements and social statements. Huge advantage for his software business – as you say, don't write them off.
having customers is great. getting NEW customers is what’s needed for Ping to do well. Only thing I’d change in this product would be to have it as part of the Apple site (think .mac) as opposed to within iTunes.
iTunes Ping is captive customers, which yes, could encourage them to spend more money. Ping as a website or with tighter integration to Facebook would yield incremental new customers and encourage them to *start* spending.
Since the beginning of time, the objective has been to develop something proprietary (closed) and leverage the hell out of it (to make money). As an investor, give me Apple any day of the week. As a consumer, sometimes the free OPEN crap is cool. Most times I would rather pay for something that just works…..
verizon and t examples of closed that dont work . overpaid execs and not
enough people on the street…
thx man
having customers is great. getting NEW customers is what's needed for Ping to do well. Only thing I'd change in this product would be to have it as part of the Apple site (think .mac) as opposed to within iTunes.
iTunes Ping is captive customers, which yes, could encourage them to spend more money. Ping as a website or with tighter integration to Facebook would yield incremental new customers and encourage them to *start* spending.
Sure rodney, the apple experience is great – but don’t forget their products cost 2-4x the competition. Yes, higher income earners will buy more, but that’s not likely where the developed world is moving right now – less discretionary income in 5-10 years is the emerging story … so I would have to say, good luck to aapl shareholders in particular
in 4 years when it mattres, the phones will be free
Sure rodney, the apple experience is great – but don't forget their products cost 2-4x the competition. Yes, higher income earners will buy more, but that's not likely where the developed world is moving right now – less discretionary income in 5-10 years is the emerging story … so I would have to say, good luck to aapl shareholders in particular
in 4 years when it mattres, the phones will be free