Open Source Changes Business

As enterprise IT solutions grew, paid support didn’t scale with it. Users were forced to find alternative solutions.

The best customer service is no customer service – The visit to Ning.

The question is “How do you make your business pay? Google proved advertising. There will be other models.

Anything coming out of an internet browser better be free.

Controlling the internet is like boiling the ocean. Winners work with the best.

Linus’s Law - "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"

Microsoft FUD

“Open source and Microsoft were never really enemies in the first place. Open source is a business model. Microsoft is a company. It’s like pitting a noun against a verb.” Dana Blankenhorn

Microsoft hosts 2008 Open Source Awards, becomes a Platinum Sponsor of the Apache Foundation (A patchy server).

International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP) already uses open source organizing and management practices to compete.

“The future is already here, It’s just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson

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DICK DAVIES HTTP://THROUGHTHEBROWSER.BLOGSPOT.COM

WWW.DICKDAVIES.COM

What is Web 2.0…

And Why Should You Care?

Three Web 2.0 Discriminators That Allow Companies To Grow to a

Billion Dollars in Under Ten Years

DICK DAVIES

PRESENT@DICKDAVIES.COM

Introduction

September 2008 was Google’s tenth birthday. We are watching a new paradigm, from startup to a billion dollars valuation in less than ten years.

This has been accomplished several times, so we will look at three companies.

Looking at some common enablers, they are – Internet, Web 2.0, and Open Source Management.

The Companies

Google – $140B ten years. Changed the index of the web, overtook Yahoo.

Revolutionized advertising value.

Leader/organizer of global open source development.

FCC Bandwidth gambit put open source on wireless networks

Chrome changes the IT security paradigm, will change use of open source for distribution.

Facebook - $15B, founded 2004, 53 million users, 500 employees, 400,000 independent Facebook developers.

Ning $500M valuation in 2006, founded 2004. Currently 453,962 social networks (each one like Facebook).

“Open Social” broke the Facebook/MySpace duopoly

Customer base as marketing driver.

The Internet Changes Business

Potential Prospects/Customers – Finding enough prospects no longer an issue. (If everyone in China pays us a penny, we’ll be RICH!)

Uses beyond eyeballs/sales

Search – Has changed how business is planned, designed, and executed.

Modeling – “A model is a simplified version of reality” Mythical Man

Month. Analysis has always run into the wall of computing capability and available data.

200 BC Eratosthenes determined the circumference of the earth from the difference of the sun’s shadow between two points.

9/8/2008 Google Launches GeoEye-1 satellite which can show objects on the ground as small as 16 inches.

Kevin Kelley in The Technium defines the “Google Way of Science” http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/06/the_google_way.php. If you can use all the data, you don’t need a model.

Of course, if you have a million data points, there is a new business making sense of unimaginable information, like Gene Allen’s www.decisionincite.com

Web 2.0 Changes Business

Web 1.0 – Brochureware websites and shopping cart software. One way broadcast and rudimentary purchasing of defined offerings.

Web 2.0 – “All marketing is a conversation” (Cluetrain Manifesto) increased access to feedback and guidance from stakeholders. Increases data stored on the web.

Web 3.0 – Repurposing the data stored on the web. Mashups, Tony Blair, “Should I stay or should I go?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1vwKZiDsY4 and “Where did the Presidents’ children go to school? Freebase Parallax http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=131&tag=nl.e539

Web 2.0 Summary – No one is the sole source of information on any subject any more. Anyone can post an opinion. What we lose in content control, we make up in amount of information available. Welcome to the knowledge economy.

It is now easier than it has ever been to be a contributing part of the internet. New tools give us incredible capabilities. Blogs, commenting, wiki’s, and social networks are all easily available and leverage reach to tens of thousands of people.