Disqus - Latest Comments for Tim O'Reilly

Re: What's next?

Tim O'Reilly — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:37:00 -0000

Brad -- This is a really important point. As you know, I've long argued that "Data is the Intel Inside" is the hidden underbelly of Web 2.0, and in a post the other day, I argued that there's a cycle of open and closed technologies that progresses according to Clayton Christenson's "law of conservation of attractive profits." But I'm not sure I buy the idea that it's governance that is the new differentiator.

Craigslist gets its "lock in", to the extent it has it, from its critical mass of data. Its lightweight governance (i.e. its business processes) are definitely a competitive advantage, and you have a great insight into how important that is. But if someone emulated those processes exactly, they still would have a hard time displacing craigslist, because of the critical mass of listers. That is, governance gives advantage, but not proprietary advantage. It's not comparable to the kind of lock in that IBM had with hardware, that Microsoft had with software, and that Web 2.0 companies are now achieving with their proprietary databases.

That being said, one of the commenters on my post suggested that when data is open, proprietary algorithms can still provide lock in. And governance is a kind of algorithm. So perhaps you might broaden this concept a bit.

Commenters also pointed out that infrastructure may be a source of lock in. WalMart is a good example. Their integrated supply chain is a key part of their competitive advantage. It's a combination of data, business processes, and infrastructure. The question is when you open up each of these, what advantage is left?

When the IBM PC opened up hardware, advantage moved to software. When open source opened up software, advantage moved to data. When some future open data movement opens up data and makes it mobile, what is the source of lock in?

Re: What's next?

Tim O'Reilly — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:37:00 -0000

Re: Web 3.0 Nonsense

Tim O'Reilly — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:38:34 -0000

FWIW, I don't like the term "Web 2.0" much either and I'm the one who made it stick! But for a bit of context, remember what it's origin was: we wanted to do a conference that said "the web is back" after the dot com bust, and everyone thinking the web is over. That's the 2.0 part.

Then in explaining what made 2.0 "different," I spent a lot of time articulating what made some sites survive the bust, and what I saw in the ones that were up and coming.

So my question about Web 3.0 is simple: what's going to make us need a 3.0 term? Will it be after the next bust? Meanwhile, there are lots of trends that are going to converge to make a significant revolution. But it's not more of the same stuff that's already driving Web 2.0.

The kind of stuff Jason is talking about is at best, Web 2.0.1 if it were to succeed to its fullest. It's just not anywhere near a revolution.

Re: The "Feedization" Of The Web (continued)

Tim O'Reilly — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:24:15 -0000

Totally right on, Fred.

Re: BlueOrganizer Tip: Uninstall

Tim O'Reilly — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:02:04 -0000

I aborted the facebook login because I wanted to go back and take a screenshot. There was no way to back out gracefully. Deleted account as the only visible way to start over. Bad design to have no way to go back.

Re: Chopra named Obama CTO, White House tech plans coming together

Tim O'Reilly — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:23:59 -0000

The quote at the end of the paragraph that you attribute to Chopra was my reflection on a conversation we had, not an actual quote from him. There were no actual quotes from Chopra in the piece that I wrote, and that you quoted from.

Re: Why Do I See So Many Open Source Advocates Using Twitter?

Tim O'Reilly — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:01:00 -0000

Jesse,

In addition to twitter, I happily use Mac OS X, gmail, amazon, google, and many other proprietary program. Arguing the benefits of open source software doesn't mean that you use it exclusively. That was part of the split with the free software movement. This isn't a religious/political issue, but a practical one.

I became an open source advocate to help people realize how much of the software that they used and valued came from an "invisible" open source community - programs like apache, perl, python, BIND, php -- that were widely used but didn't get enough respect. Ditto for Linux as server infrastructure.

As to Linux on the desktop, I've always seen that as a massive distraction for the Linux community, the distraction that allowed for a new layer of proprietary "infoware" to become dominant on top of open source web servers. (See http://tim.oreilly.com/opensource for the series of essays in which I argue this position.)

My principles have NEVER argued that I should use a program because it is open source. I use whatever works, happily. I do argue that programs should interoperate.

I believe it's perfectly reasonable to use twitter instead of identi.ca if twitter works better for you. Let identi.ca compete in the marketplace because it's really better, just as apache beat out IIS and Netscape, perl, python, php and other scripting languages beat out VB, ruby on rails beat out asp.net, and not because of some so-called moral injunction. Not only is it silly, it doesn't work.

Re: 13 Geek-y Programmer Quotables

Tim O'Reilly — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:01:23 -0000

"if carpenters built buildings the way programmers write programs, a single woodpecker could come along and destroy all of civilization." (unattributed usenet signature quote)

Re: How You Can Use Social Media to Help the U.S. Auto Industry

Tim O'Reilly — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:21:14 -0000

Scott -

This is a good post, and does make the case that Ford is not GM, and has been making proactive changes.

Two things:

1. All of the things you talk about are incremental changes. There is little in the way of truly transformational change, or "moon shot" style initiatives designed to change the game. If Ford is truly coming to grips with long term issues like climate change and the coming end of cheap oil, it would be working a lot harder to come up with disruptive changes to the industry. You say "No one could have foreseen" the economic collapse. That was also said about 9/11, yet there were ample warnings of both problems, to those who were paying attention. In any event, great corporate strategy makes an effort to develop robust strategies that are designed for radically different scenarios, not just variations on a theme.

2. You fail to address the continued opposition of Ford (as well as the others of the Big Three) to higher fuel economy standards. If you hadn't done that, you would be in a far better position today. The Prius first went on sale in 1997, more than ten years ago. The technology was clearly there. You guys made a decision to favor short term profit over long term values. I know that the American buying public was a big part of your decision, but that was partly a failure of leadership. If you guys had broken with GM and said "We NEED higher fuel economy standards," you could have moved the industry forward instead of holding it back.

I really appreciate your attempts to speak up for Ford. But without acknowledgment of past mistakes (and even current practice, still opposing higher fuel efficiency standards), your efforts come across as a kind of greenwashing, rather than a real change.

Re: Web 2.0 Summit: Meg Whitman, eBay CEO

Tim O'Reilly — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:44:35 -0000

John, were you at the same talk as everyone else? My opening question to Meg was about the slowing of their core auction business as reported in yesterday's earnings call. I also zinged Meg on the growth in GMV being driven by currency fluctuations.

As to the questions about paypal as a web service and next gen internet operating system play -- well, this is a technology conference, not an analyst call. I think you guys will be asking that question a year or two from now when eBay's failure to seize that opportunity (or their rising to the bait) has material impact on their finances.

This is way more important than yesterday's earnings call.

Re: Breaking News: Google to Release GrandCentral Out of Beta as Google Voice - Hello Google Voice

Tim O'Reilly — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:38:21 -0000

FWIW, that's an old slide deck that has nothing to do with any upcoming announcement. Part of the problem when "breaking news" from anonymous sources.

Re: Web 2.0- Was It Ever Alive?

Tim O'Reilly — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:52:14 -0000

Frankly, Dennis, this post demonstrates a shocking ignorance of what Web 2.0 is really all about. It's the move to the internet as platform, and the rise of applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. Social media is a tiny part of that.

And you're kidding yourself if you think that hasn't affected business, or delivered tangible ROI. The companies that have learned how to leverage networks are outperforming.

You mention SAP. Guess what: they understand that harnessing users is good for their business. At O'Reilly, our InPractice division is working with them to actually turn their documentation into an open source, crowdsourced project. They are doing fascinating experiments at SAP Labs with how to integrate virtual worlds into property management. They have built a great internal social network for employees that has already affected their HR practices.

Your comments remind me of people who were saying "the PC is just a toy" at the same time as it was taking over the world of the enterprise, from the bottom up.

Yes, businesses want to know what's in it for them. But that starts with understanding what matters. The network as platform (Web 2.0) does matter. Any particular application may fail, but the trend lines are pretty darn clear. Figuring out the networked enterprise is critical.

Re: Web 2.0- Was It Ever Alive?

Tim O'Reilly — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:55:52 -0000

I should add that your complaint that the content is not "new" also misses the point. It's the very enterprises you so value that are coming to this material for the first time. Just because it's not new to you doesn't mean it isn't new to others. Technology takes time to diffuse.

Re: Web 2.0- Was It Ever Alive?

Tim O'Reilly — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:18:13 -0000

Graham -

I hear you. I remember when Clay Shirky held a "social software summit" four or five years ago. I told him I didn't think that the term would ever catch on. But now I think I was wrong. And I think Dennis is wrong too. "Social media" is a good description of an important new trend.

The "shocking ignorance" I was referring to was the idea that the benefits of Web 2.0 adoption are marginal. That's a straw man: creating a VERY limited definition of web 2.0, arguing against it, and then using that to damn the entire meme.

Words are always only pointers. Let's remember what they point to, and not get hung up on which term gets used.

Re: What you all are missing about Google

Tim O'Reilly — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:24:38 -0000

Robert --

I totally agree that the next big game is in mobile. (See my post Static on the Dream Phone, in which I complain that the NYT took out the most important line from my op ed, namely that Google's mobile initiatives are their most strategic.)

And Microsoft also has some credible strategic focus there. But if they were really thinking that way, they ought to be acquiring Adobe, because Flash is also getting big traction on mobile. Meanwhile, I thought that the suggestion that Nokia ought to get into the running for Yahoo! was intriguing.

I imagine your comments about email were partly a response to my piece Yahoo! Plus Microsoft Strategic Assets in Email. This was not to say that mobile was not important, just that it would be easy for Microsoft to miss some real strategic assets they might be acquiring.

But more to the point, it seems to me that email and IM are still under-rated applications. Just as in 1998, no one thought search would be monetizable, now people are ignoring communications applications. And so the applications languish. There's been little real advance for years. I believe that the company that pays real attention to adding value to these applications, making them much more useful for their customers, will reap real benefits. Just as Google didn't start out with a monetization model for search, but just figured they could do a better job for users (and even when they did turn to monetization, just focused on how advertising could be better for users, not better for them), someone needs to rethink email and IM with a real focus on the customer value proposition.

We're all dealing with email overload. Meanwhile, social networking has given us new ideas for how to filter, manage, and exploit our connections. Smart entrepreneurs are building new value here. Why can't the big guys spend some time on customer value rather than shareholder value?

Re: What San Francisco/Silicon Valley can learn from the Twittering company: Zappos

Tim O'Reilly — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:39:10 -0000

Damn straight. I was furious when I saw that someone in our marketing department had made the claim that getting lots of followers was one of the things we'd teach in the Twitter Boot Camp. I totally agree with Tony, and with Robert, that this is not why anyone should use twitter. It's a conversational medium. I use it to learn from my community and share what I learn.

Re: NYT's Keller: We're Looking For Ways To Charge For Online Content Again

Tim O'Reilly — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:46:21 -0000

Carolyn's got it right. The aggregate subscription model that we saw on Cable television was the inspiration for our very successful subscription service for computer and business books, Safari Books Online, which now contains over 6000 books from hundreds of publishers, all for one monthly price. Revenue is allocated out to books and authors on a usage basis, and so publishers are competing within the service for the reader, but the customer only has to pay one provider.

Safari now provides nearly 20% of our book revenue at O'Reilly, and is our second largest distribution channel after Amazon. It's definitely a model that newspapers ought to look at.

Re: What's next?

Tim O'Reilly — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:37:00 -0000

Re: Scoble Is So Right About Kara Being SSSSSOOOOO Right About Silly Facebook Apps!

Tim O'Reilly — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:45:43 -0000

This may be one reason why Facebook applications don't show the powerful long tail typical of most online marketplaces. 87% of Facebook application usage goes to only 84 apps.

I think that there's real opportunity to build a social network platform that allows for useful applications. Right now, there's an enormous outpouring of trivia. I'm excited by the potential, but like you, disappointed by most of the applications so far.