10 Internet Biz Predictions For 2010 December 5, 2009
Posted by bernardlunn in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Brave or foolhardy? My 10 Internet Biz Predictions For 2010 by Twitter. Self-imposed brevity.
# 1. The US economy will have another dip and unemployment will stay close to current levels. The creative part of creative destruction does not keep pace with the destruction part.
# 2.The stock market will be up for the year, despite some nasty moments and despite a lousy economy, as interest rates will remain low
# 3.Return of the Internet IPO. Media heralds the “golden age of the Internet” but we are all careful not to utter phrases such as dot com that recall funneling $100 notes into a furnace.
# 4.LinkedIn IPO is the poster boy for the return of the Internet IPO perfectly timed for the combo of a lousy economy and rising stock market.
# 5.Facebook does NOT IPO and there is lots of Blogosphere chatter trying to figure out why not.
# 6.Twitter is acquired by either Microsoft or Google for an amount that creates a lot of talk about a bubble.
# 7.VCs find it easier to raise money in aggregate. But almost all the real returns go to a very small number of firms and most struggle for a sustainable role.
# 8.25% of the financial services industry find work doing something different and some of them will be very successful and create a lot of positive impact.
# 9.Google’s stock underperforms a broader Internet stock index as pundits focus on their lack of advantage in the golden triangle of social + mobile + real time
# 10.Do Not Track legislation roils the behavioral marketing market and the smart bets on monetization move to transactions and subscriptions.
(yes to math folks, this version does not restrict to 140 characters, pre TwitEdit)
Online Transparency: Mega Wave Building Now December 3, 2009
Posted by bernardlunn in capital markets, Web 3.0 Semantic.Tags: data.gov, open university, transparency
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During the US Presidential election campaign, Google ran a series of amazing meet the candidates events that were broadcast online. They were the opposite of the sound bites on mainstream media. The candidates had plenty of time and were questioned by a highly intelligent audience. Barack Obama was one of the candidates (other ones worth watching IMHO are McCain and Bloomberg). There was one point that made me really appreciate the “audacity of hope”. It was when Obama was asked how somebody with so little experience in Washington could stand up to the special interest lobbies. His response (it is around 0.50 minutes on the video), which previewed what became Data.Gov, made my hair stand on end. Data.gov is real and in this video he describes the initial vision and mission.
Could Data.Gov Become Obama’s Greatest Legacy?
The question seems absurd. But listen to what Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the UK for 8 years, described as his greatest legacy. Despite many high profile achievements at the pinnacle of power, dealing with big crisis and initiatives on the front page and prime time, he chose his work to create The Open University.
The Open University was founded on the belief that television and radio could bring high quality degree-level learning to people who had not had the opportunity to go to university.
At the time, the creation of the The Open University was lost amidst far more high profile news. But 40 years later all the high profile urgent stuff he worked on is simply material for the history books, while The Open University still has tremendous impact on the lives of millions by improving access to quality education.
Data.Gov will also take years to have a big impact. But it is a toothpaste out of the tube dynamic. Once the data is out, nobody can get it back in. And this is riding a massive wave of online transparency. There is no need to fight entrenched interests – just ride a massive wave that will effortlessly wash away those entrenched interests and lobbyists.
The Decline Of Asymmetric Information Intermediaries In Consumer Markets
Online transparency is about taking away the power of asymmetric information from an intermediary. We have already seen this play out in consumer markets. Buyers now have access to much better data about pricing and costs. The most notorious intermediary exploiting information asymmetry was the car dealer. That game has changed forever.
Cars, houses, travel and many other big consumer markets now have the consumer in charge. Good data and social ratings have changed these markets forever. These are the big and complex purchase decisions for most consumers. But the data is still totally simple compared to information about how laws are made in Washington and who influences how those laws are made and how they benefit from those laws.
The Big 3 Markets That Will Be Impacted By Transparency
These consumer markets are also really simple compared to these three big markets:
1. Scientific Technical Medical Publishing.
2. Capital Markets.
3. Healthcare.
The data that drives these markets is horrendously complex. And what happens in these markets really, really matters to all of us.
Enter Stage Right, The Semantic Web
The Semantic Web, the geeky guy that web 2.0 hipsters like to poke fun at, is about to enter the stage and finally has a big role to play.
The data complexity in these markets is overwhelming for a the “slap some HTML and Ajax on top of RDBMS” that is the de facto technical approach today. The best data modelers in the world cannot design upfront for these markets.
Obliterating Data Obfuscation
Software engineers use “obfuscation” techniques to deliberately hide the underlying code designs in order to prevent a user from making an illegal copy through reverse engineering. That is a reasonable objective. What is not reasonable is “intermediary obfuscation”, the deliberate obscuring of reality through layers of complexity and impenetrable jargon. Special interests use data obfuscation to protect their profits.
Three Powerful Forces Driving Transparency
We are now seeing three powerful forces driving transparency:
- Political will from the leader of the largest economy in the world.
- Consumers and B2B buyers expecting transparency from sellers and rewarding the sellers who deliver it with more business.
- Semantic Web/Linked Data technology that is increasingly mature with many passionate proponents seeking a prime time role for the technology. In the capital markets, XBRL is the key enabling technology.
Online transparency is a mega wave to ride.
CIOs Think XBRL Impact Will Be Big (But It Is Not High On Their Priority List) December 1, 2009
Posted by bernardlunn in Uncategorized.Tags: capital markets, cio, compliance, governance, risk, transparency, xbrl
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I have developed a journalistic habit – try to find THE STORY. It is valuable habit when sitting through long conferences. You can learn lots of detailed stuff at conferences but it is too easy to get lost in the trees and not see the forest.
The story at the XBRL Conference jumped out at me when I saw two slides from a presentation by John Van Decker of Gartner. This generated the headline:
“CIOs Think XBRL Impact Will Be Big (But It Is Not High On Their Priority List)”
Of course headlines and sound bites can suffer from a different problem – oversimplification. So take a look at the underlying data as shown in the presentation slides. Specifically look at: John Van Decker, Vice President – Corporate Performance Management and Financial Management Systems, Gartner in Beyond The Mandate. See slide marked: Technologies that will have major impact.
# 1 at 37.1% is no surprise: Web Oriented Software. Actually that’s a catch-all term that includes almost all the other categories
# 2 at 29% is the big surprise: XBRL!
Add in the related # 3 at 24.8%: Governance Risk & Compliance (GRC) and you can see what is keeping CIOs awake at night. Arguably, XBRL is a tool to enable GRC:
XBRL + GRC = 53.8%.
To put this in perspective, check out the % for some “hot” subjects:
- SAAS: 15.7%
- Enterprise Mashups: 6.2%
OK, so much for the first part of the headline:
“CIOs Think XBRL Impact Will Be Big”
What about the second part?
“But It Is Not High On Their Priority List”
Look on the next slide labeled: XRBL adoption is SLOW!
For those relatively new to XBRL, the 1,2 and 3 relates to the SEC Mandate, where 1 is the first wave of filers. My takeaways:
- There is a lot of work to educate the 3rd wave of filers. 72% cite “lack of knowledge” (and therefore, not surprisingly lack of budgets or technology).
- Nobody has provided a compelling use case beyond the mandate, so the 1st and 2nd wave filers are not doing more than they absolutely need to in order to meet SEC mandates.
For more basic intro to XBRL, see my recent post and links on ReadWriteWeb.
