thinks

What’s it going to take for the mobile web to catch on? Om Malik gives a view of the underlying business of mobile data vs. the mobile web. Well worth the read. He’s certainly right in talking about the adoption of mobile broadband cards. I practically sleep with mine these days. But I think the phone will improve, too. As many of Om’s comments note, the iPhone changes the experience dramatically. Additionally, they’re easier to tote, cost less, and far more common. Once screens adopt more iPhone-like capabilities and networks improve - and Verizon’s recent “bring your own device” plan is a step towards that - expect consumer adoption to grow.

Fred Wilson asks interesting questions about the utility of Kindle as a blog reader, particularly given the $0.99 monthly subscription cost per blog Amazon is tacking onto the thing. I wasn’t aware of that “feature” and agree with Fred that I want my content to be free (though if you want to buy a book and support this site, that’s OK too). Here’s the thing, though. How many folks interested in an e-book reader will think that $0.99 per month is unreasonable? Clearly, the early adopters will - and that’s likely the current audience for the Kindle. But what about a year down the road? I don’t know. Does Amazon think they’re playing nice with the blog community and encouraging a new business model. Maybe. It does seem awfully weird to me that the company who essentially invented the concept of disintermediation (remember the “how to avoid getting Amazon’ed” meme during Web Bubble 1.0?) is now trying to become a content intermediary. I wonder who’ll Amazon them this time around.

That’s right. Overrated. It might be the most overrated topic in business today. Sure, you need to innovate. But a boatload of good ideas gain you nothing if your culture, capabilities, or competencies keep you anchored in the same spot. One good idea delivered trumps fifty great ideas sitting in your head.

Take this example. Maybe you’ve heard of Facebook? Been in the news lately. Facebook didn’t build the first social network. They weren’t the first to open their site to new customer types. They didn’t even build the only one targeted at college students. They simply delivered on the needs of their customers and then fed that network back on itself repeatedly. In other words, they executed. They delivered what they planned to do. What brilliant ideas sit on the whiteboards of Facebook product managers? Probably the same ones that sit on the whiteboards of product managers at MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing, ClubMom and so on. Ideas on whiteboards don’t matter. Only ideas that see the light of day have any chance of growing into something special.

A reporter once asked football coach John McKay how he felt about his team’s execution. McKay deadpanned, “I think it’s a damned fine idea.” A joke, sure. But the point’s the same. The best innovation is the one that gets to a customer.

Are you innovative? Or are your competitors eating your lunch? Do they really have better technology, tools, processes? Or is it that they’re just better at getting to market?

Anne and I debated information workers vs. web workers some time back (you can review Anne’s side of the argument here and here and see my arguments here and here). Now, Anne seriously ups the ante over at GigaOM, making a strong case for what’s truly different about web work. While I’m still not ready to concede the point that Drucker didn’t presage this perceived shift (although that’s not really the important part of the debate), Anne’s argument has merit on its own. Without a doubt, ubiquitous connectivity changes behaviors. It seems to follow that workers’ behaviors would exhibit similar shift. Additionally, the traditional concept of a corporation no longer occupies the central place in business that it once did for many workers. Anne’s notion supports Jason Calacanis, who claims who you know who knows is more important than what you know or even knowing where to find it (though I’m not getting into the Web 3.0 versioning debate anytime soon). I completely support this notion (as does Stowe Boyd in an excellent corollary). The intelligence of the network matters; “we” is smarter than “me.”

A particularly relevant theme emerging in the comments to Anne’s post is the importance of trust in this connection economy and how intermediaries offer trust by proxy. You don’t need to trust the folks on Craigslist, Rent-a-Coder, eLance, eBay, and the like so long as you trust the site itself to insulate you from risk.

What do you think? Does web work change the game for everyone? And how do you establish trust with folks you might never see face-to-face?

I need to read Mike Moran more regularly. He’s more than brilliant; he’s useful. To me, we should all aspire to usefulness. As Garrison Keilor once said , “There are far too many decorative people in the world.”

In any case, Mike points out the risks to business from blogging and why “blogging policies” fail to miss the point (credit where due: the original concept comes from David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”).

I’m going to take Scott’s “if you allow your employees to send e-mail” meme one step further: The same holds true if you let your employees talk to customers, friends and neighbors, too.

Now, many companies have long restricted employees from speaking with the media, for the obvious reason that the media traditionally has had much broader reach than the person next door. But, is that still true? And which one has more credibility with your customer in the current, fragmented media landscape? Which one has the potential to do more damage in the long run? I’d argue they’re roughly equivalent. A disgruntled customer, speaking to their friends and acquaintances, and, increasingly, their blog audience or favorite review site about how you conduct business may have equal impact as a page B17 story in the New York Times. A really pissed off customer/employee/whomever likely has much, much more.

Smart companies - big and small - should enact policies making clear what employees may or may not share. With anyone. The same holds true for harassment and discrimination policies. Blogs are just another conversation. Treating them differently is like locking a window while the front door remains wide open.

I don’t mean in the figurative, “down with it” sense. I mean for real. When will the Web (1.0, 2.0, mobile, what-have-you) achieve dial tone-like availability levels? VOIP, in particular, demands it. But so do your customers.