Marketspace Advisor

Three Gems From IT Conversations

via Phil Windley's weekly message:

The Future of Entertainment - Web 2.0 2005 (Rating: 3.0)

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A diverse panel of players in the current and cutting edge of entertainment discuss the future of entertainment at this panel discussion from Web 2.0. Mark Cuban, Michael Powell, Evan Williams, and Reed Hastings share insights about the effect of the increased availability of broadband on entertainment delivery and discuss the conflict between the forces of control and the forces of freedom. They also discuss the future of content delivery, the inherent differences between audio and video, and the trade-off between convenience and quality.

http://ipost.com/rd/9z1z3e58m4ii8v9q5b4q17v6f4rdkp38uk91k2qbj60

Social Applications - Where 2005 (Rating: 3.2)

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The future of social mobile applications is wide open, according to the Where 2.0 Social Application panelists. They expect to see many new applications with clean, rich client interfaces that provide significantly more functionality and managability than is currently available. However, they are all quick to point out that the future is as much about social aspects as about the technology. The discussion focuses on breaking down barriers and energizing participation, as well as controlling usage and unforeseen behaviors.

http://ipost.com/rd/9z1ztr9e45hqvj68ntqo935ju9kna9r8dg28gi5hceg

Seth Goldstein - Applications for the New Attention Economy (Rating: 3.7)

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The new Attention Economy is grabbing the attention of alpha geeks and businesses hoping reap the rewards of innovation in this emerging marketplace of clickstreams. In this talk, Seth Goldstein introduces us to Root Markets' Root Vaults, one of the first applications to make use of the data provided by the AttentionTrust's Attention Extension. These new applications and analytical tools help individuals take charge of their own attention data in order to understand patterns, share with others, and harness attention's growing economic value.

http://ipost.com/rd/9z1z2ig3bga9pm3udphaf7g1nsbdt7l8pmnurvb82mg

The Washington Post Company's Excellent Internet Adventure

Via Slashdot, (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/19/221222), ten years'  lessons in three articles.

AT&T's New IPTV Service: Will It Keep Its Promise?

Both CNet and ZDNet covered today a story about AT&T’s new IPTV service: U-Verse, a large-scale Internet-based TV service which the company is expected to launch in 20 cities by the end of 2006. AT&T has been quietly testing and launching the service in Texas since the beginning of the year.

IPTV promises to improve the TV watching experience, but not all of its promised benefits are completely unique or new, as explained in my previous post, and consumers are not expected to switch from their cable and satellite TV overnight. To make things more challenging, AT&T is planning a “soft launch” of the service, with limited features. Although details of the offering have not been disclosed yet, the initial service offering will provide around 200 channels, video-on-demand, and an internal DVR: not much more than what is already being offered by cable providers.

So how can AT&T succeed in this initiative?

AT&T will need to focus on the following aspects:

1. Offer a comparable and appealing price offering – the service needs to be in the same price range of cable / satellite services, at least at the beginning when the U-Verse offerings will not be much different from other cable providers;
2. Conduct extensive consumer research to understand which market segments are more likely to adopt the service first, and which features they would value the most. This understanding will allow AT&T to tailor their service and their marketing communication initiatives around the key features that are beneficial to customers and that will truly differentiate U-Verse from currently available cable services;
3. Provide easy-to-understand and easy-to-use features (this will be key – at the end of the day, consumers will still want to watch TV, not figure out how to make a complicated piece of hardware work)
4. Invest in extensive consumer education (tell consumers in easy words why they should switch to this service)
5. Continue to monitor the market as it adopts the new service to incorporate feedback and valuable input and add improvements to the service (but don't rely on trial and error to do so – consumers are not very patient)