If you can, go over to Amazon and donate to the American Red Cross to help those in need from the catastrophe in South Asia.
The link is on the home page, they have raised $5 Million dollars already.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Friday, December 17, 2004
Browser Share On The Move...
A month and a half ago I blogged that Firefox was up to 28% of my browser market share... well now that figure is all the way up to 45%. While I get a lot of traffic due to firefox related searches, it is hard for me to imagine that FireFox isn't continuing its gain on IE.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Consumer Technology Adoption... and other ramblings
While I love trying out new technologies, I am FAR more likely to try out a technology if the "trial cost" is low. For example, the cost to try out a new HD-DVD player is high both from a monetary and time perspective. At the same time, the cost for me to try out new software is very low... it is often just the time to download / install since most software has free trials and can be downloaded off the net.
In order for me to try new tech products that carry an up-front cost they must have a crystal clear value proposition which is differentiated from what I am currently using. Well, VOIP has finally hit this point for me... my last bill from Qwest was $77, and that is FAR too high for local and long distance telephony over a landline. Vonage at $25 bucks a month will end up saving me a great deal of cash but also provide cool services like being able to listen to voicemail over the net and take my phone number with me when I travel.
I find many companies simply don't focus on the correct factors when it comes to driving consumer adoption. For example, if you are selling hardware technology products you should focus on different factors of technology adoption than software makers. Let me list out some factors of consumer technology adoption:
Relative Advantage - How do consumers perceive your product compared to the competition?
Ease of Testing - How hard is it for consumers to test your product?
East of Evaluation - How difficult is it for consumers to evaluate your product in comparison to the alternatives?
Compatibility - Is your product compatible with other products within the same ecosystem (example to follow)
Complexity - How complex is the product for consumers?
As you can easily imagine almost all of the factors listed above are easier to overcome if you are a software company compared to a hardware company. Imagine you are TiVo... You have to worry about:
Relative advantage - Do consumers really see a NEED for TV "time shifting"
Ease of testing & evaluation - TiVo's were expensive in the past so it made it difficult to test, but once someone used the product evaluation was simple.
compatibility - The funny thing about adoption of products "in the CE stack" is that most consumers expect that new products ARE NOT compatible with their current CE products. A study last year showed that only 52% of consumers felt that a DVR was compatible with their current TV set.
Ok... think about this for a second, if you are a TiVo exec, which factor of consumer technology adoption should you be focusing on... and how should you address it?
In order for me to try new tech products that carry an up-front cost they must have a crystal clear value proposition which is differentiated from what I am currently using. Well, VOIP has finally hit this point for me... my last bill from Qwest was $77, and that is FAR too high for local and long distance telephony over a landline. Vonage at $25 bucks a month will end up saving me a great deal of cash but also provide cool services like being able to listen to voicemail over the net and take my phone number with me when I travel.
I find many companies simply don't focus on the correct factors when it comes to driving consumer adoption. For example, if you are selling hardware technology products you should focus on different factors of technology adoption than software makers. Let me list out some factors of consumer technology adoption:
Relative Advantage - How do consumers perceive your product compared to the competition?
Ease of Testing - How hard is it for consumers to test your product?
East of Evaluation - How difficult is it for consumers to evaluate your product in comparison to the alternatives?
Compatibility - Is your product compatible with other products within the same ecosystem (example to follow)
Complexity - How complex is the product for consumers?
As you can easily imagine almost all of the factors listed above are easier to overcome if you are a software company compared to a hardware company. Imagine you are TiVo... You have to worry about:
Relative advantage - Do consumers really see a NEED for TV "time shifting"
Ease of testing & evaluation - TiVo's were expensive in the past so it made it difficult to test, but once someone used the product evaluation was simple.
compatibility - The funny thing about adoption of products "in the CE stack" is that most consumers expect that new products ARE NOT compatible with their current CE products. A study last year showed that only 52% of consumers felt that a DVR was compatible with their current TV set.
Ok... think about this for a second, if you are a TiVo exec, which factor of consumer technology adoption should you be focusing on... and how should you address it?
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