No business sector moves as quickly as Internet technology, where companies ride an accelerated roller-coaster to success -- or failure.
The going will only get tougher in 2012. Markets will force much change as Europe's financial crisis leads to more cuts and consolidation, competition grows in Asia, the clamor for mobility builds to a crescendo, and unique content becomes a prerequisite for success anywhere eyeballs gather online.
Yes, we've been here before, but perhaps not quite on this scale. Today's Internet technology market is no place for the hesitant, the misguided, the hubris-driven, or the confused.
Sadly, all of these kinds of firms are represented in today's Web arena. And we at Internet Evolution think these flaws and others will trip up at least 12 Internet firms next year. We've spotlighted our picks, in reverse order from least likely to most likely to stumble.
Do you agree with us? Disagree? Let us know on the message boards.
Click the image below to start the slideshow:
Facebook
Facebook continues to be surprise-attacked by privacy violations -- the latest, hilariously, exposing Zuck's personal adventures killing and cooking a chicken. And we don't see evidence of a cohesive business model just yet. Maybe the IPO will help -- or not.
Just as an additional observation, our latest poll shows respondents's most frequent vote so far is about the end of Reed Hastings's tenure as Netflix CEO.
Haha! Great anecdote, Christopher. I would indeed say Reed Hastings wins some kind of dubious achievement award for foolish decisionmaking. There is a story about how the Netflix CEO told a colleague on a boat trip about his idea for splitting the Netflix DVD business off, only to hear what a terrible idea the colleague thought it was. Why didn't he listen?
Nokia already has made most of their stumbling. I find it hard to believe they can stub their toe much worse than what has happened to their market share in the past few years. The decision to jump on the Windows phone market has essentially sold the technology leading company into a 'Me To' maker of generic phones. They will need to have an absolutely steller product to take on Android & iPhone with an industry failing OS on the hardware. And the chances of getting a premium for their hardware is long since gone.
This leaves Nokia with the possibility of being able to leverage their market share and manufacturing capacity to be a high-volume low cost producer of handheld phones.
Mary - I like that you included NetFlix. This is a case where the market has been quick to respond and the years of market building were set back in one brilliant move. It reminds me of seeing the Coke executive talking about receiving a letter asking for his autograph - going on to say the reason that the person wanted it was to have the autograph of the person made the dumbest decision in corporate america (or world) when they introduced New Coke.
Ha! Who would want to take control? It's a real challenge. Maybe Jerry Yang is the only person willing to do it. Word on the street is that Alibaba has a bit of a conflict of interest, a reason not to want Yahoo to succeed in competition with some Chinese sites. We'll see.
I entirely agree. I am amazed that the board seems to be looking for another way to extend the current misery rather than looking for an outright buyer. Maybe there aren't any outright buyers - Alibaba doesn't want to take it on; Microsoft has been sniffing around to participate in a consortium, but doesn't want to take control.
Which way, indeed? I'm not sure there is a way out of the mess that won't leave Yahoo hurting even more -- for the moment, anyway. At any rate, I don't see Yahoo surviving in its present form.
Yahoo seems to set on choosing between a series of half measures. The asset swap with Alibaba would give them cash, but not a new CEO or a new direction. Taking on one of the private investment suitors would probably hand control back to Jerry Yang. Which way out of the maze?
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Facebook and Twitter are great for posting cat pictures. But are people really using social media for life-changing communications? Like, if a hurricane comes by and blows down their house?
In a standout presentation at the Jefferies 2013 Global Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in New York this week, the UK government talked about becoming a "very intelligent client."
A consumer business would have to be crazy or desperate to change call-center software in December, the peak of the holiday season. But that was exactly Positec's position.
To help enterprises deploy software faster for mobile, social, big-data, and cloud applications, IBM this week acquired development tools vendor UrbanCode.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
Companies need to take advantage of new technologies to simplify interfaces, improve capabilities, and enhance back-office processes. But they can't upgrade their Websites too often.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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