Oh,Ok! Zoho just got more powerful!

Techno Evangelist Ed predicts that

“Yahoo will buy Zoho and build a business suite around that and Zimbra.” 

Here is the post in detail :-

We’re 3.65 days into 2008 and I haven’t done a predictions post yet. With 99% of the year left, here it is.

While I’m proud of my success rate with 2007 predictions, this year I’m going to shoot for something closer to a 50% record. To do that, I’m going to go for predictions that I believe will happen, but may not make it by the end of this year.

1. Netflix will deliver more content digitally than via mail in December 2008.
2. Google will enable video-specific advertising for YouTube videos.
3. Apple will drop Apple TV for the Mac Mini and a Mini will be available for $499.
4. A usable wireless keyboard with touch pad will make couch surfing on a TV fun.
5. Google Docs will add “export as .ppt” making the Presentations application awesome.
6. Yahoo will buy Zoho and build a business suite around that and Zimbra.
7. A team of striking writers with non-Hollywood backing will create an online show that blows away what we’ve seen to date.
8. The biggest news stories of the 2008 US presidential election will consistenly break on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube rather than mainstream media sites.
9. The biggest trend in YouTube videos will be how-to dance steps for popular songs. It will start to influence wedding song requests.
10. The Wall Street Journal’s online edition will go free well before the November election. Influence will trump revenue short-term.

http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2008/01/eds_2008_technology.html

Yahoo is in the throes of change. It is undergoing a painful period that is common in all ‘big,old’ companies.  Yes, Zoho can be a good win but will Zoho sell to an ailing Yahoo?  Yahoo will get quite a few legs up with this no doubt as it will leapfrog to handle Google’s web-based Office services. But what will Zoho gain by this? Zoho has done fairly well on its own without needing any backing of the Big Boys and has certainly gained more ground over the last year.

On the other hand, Google taking over Zoho will be news indeed. Wonder what it will do to the adwords-salesforce integration-buyout program???? Google prides itself in being an engineering powerhouse, so is Zoho. Google thrives in innovation(allegedly), Zoho certainly does. Google does not need marketing (The name is sufficient) but of late, since it started giving out half-baked fun projects as serious stuff, putting them out and pushing Zoho to the front will certainly help Google regain its engg image.

In any takeover, there is always the culture issue. Wonder how that will go. By the looks of it, Zoho guys are fierce-fighting underdogs, Google the no-fighting-just-walkover top dogs. Interesting, very interesting ..

Ed, my money is on Google mate!

2008 : The Web3.0 year

2008 : Year of Cross Social Networking Applications= Web 3.0 by my mind

2008 will be a year where we should see much of cross social network applications like Bunchball come up. This will lead to much more closer interactions among the social networks and we may see some Data Mining Applications coming up as a result of these interactions, something like Google Analytics if you will.

It will be interesting to see how Open Social fares with this challenge.

Advertising on these Data Mining Applications may be interesting as one of the Social Networks may be big and have a proprietary ad-mechanism while the other may not have so. This is going to open up new grounds in advertisting business models.

It will make the world a lot smaller and hopefully secure place to be in.

No doubt, with more social interactions and cross-connections, we will have grave privacy issues too. Privacy will be THE main concern with these new applications. Data Mining Applications will also have the ability to sell-off whatever data is mined to other 3rd parties and that will make quite a lot of ruckus.

Here’s hoping for the best- Welcome 2008

BunchBall: A real cross-social-networking App

BunchBall is a new application that is able to connect Facebook and Bebo, and that too in real time. This makes 2008 a very very interesting year to watch. I am sure that we will get to see these cross networking features soon. More on BunchBall here

That makes a good competition for Open Social.

I think 2008 will be year of the web3.0

An ideal web2.0 student application

My ideal web2.0 student application will have the following features :-

1. Tracks the student’s School notes
2. Tracks the student’s School artifacts/records
3. Tracks the student’s GRE/GMAT/SAT scores
4. Tracks the student’s various emotions and phases of growth
5. Has feeds coming in from various educational sites regarding exam dates, tips on preparation, etc
6. Has a graph which tracks his scores
7. Has feeds for various online tests which the student can relate to and improve
8. Has his private den area where all non-school stuff can be taken care of

These make the ideal application; 2.0 becos the students are inherently impatient

Wonder if there is anything out there which does these. It will be really helpful to a lot many folks.

Google – A 1-trick pony??

Comscore figures indicate that Google maintains its lead as the top search company with Google Search drawing most of the traffic.

Techcrunch has covered this in an article over here .

“It would appear that users aren’t using Google to buy goods, with Google’s worst performer in 2007 being Google Product Search (shopping), down a whopping 73.26%. Google Scholar search dropped 32.14% and perhaps oddly in a year that Google added YouTube videos to its index, Google Video search dropped 11.82%.”
I have been stating long that Google has its core competency in Search but just does not do justice to the other features it puts out. There has to be coherency in what it does. Some of these features seem abysmally layman-ish.

Mind you, the features are good in their own right but not something that one would invest his company’s resources on. So yes, in a way, it is good to have these features come out but then until and unless there is a commercial scheme of things behind it, Google is not going to see any great growth in its Active Repertoire(Search) like features. It will remain  a 1-trick pony for me.

On the other hand, what will be interesting is if Google incorporates the facial mapping/recognition feature in its Image Search. This will be really very handy and I am sure ppl will be willing to pay for the same. This is a very much sought after feature. Google can come up with Google Collage and that will be a good thing too as ppl do maintain online Albums where there is no intelligence to map similar/same fotos together yet.

TechCruch has also carried out an assessment on the popularity of the mail services – Yahoo and Gmail and states that Yahoo Mail is way ahead of Google.  This may be so becos ppl are not comfortable changing email accounts and that may also be because of the track record and the user experience with the service. Google is a relatively new entrant but has to think seriously if it needs to even compete with Yahoo. These are small things for Google but then on a bigger scale of things, these convey impressions of testing its features on live guinea pigs. The Google Brand is taking a beating by putting out some of the features that do not merit being out so long. You make an experiment, make it within a specific time period and then shut it down. This will help you get the data you want and also tell the users of user time-bound service that it is not going to go any further than that. This builds credibility.  I am not really sure what Google plans to do with its email feature. There has to be more to it or nothing at all.

The Google Ecosystem has to be solid and coherent. Google could do well with providing localized enhancements. For example, I am in India, Delhi. If I have to get something done for me locally, where is it that I look at. Right now,I make a mass ping on Google Search but it would be more pertinent to have something like Google Delhi or something in which all the local info is stored. Google has the cash to do it and this is something that has not been done before. So y leave it? Instead of providing generic features, it will be good to provide pointed local features which actually address live human needs. This is more satisfying and relevant to all concerned and ppl will be ready to pay for it if need be (though initially it must be free to get ppl used to the idea).

2008 will be interesting. Google will be gifted DoubleClick and then we will see …

Will Zoho get into Social Networking like MakaMaka?

Google’s answer to FaceBook -     MakaMaka.

A top-secret meeting was supposed to have been held in the GooglePlex.  The attendees had to give written statements stating that they will not reveal the juice of the meeting out. Man, that, is some security.

Google is also supposed to be coming out with some APIs Facebook-style on November5 or so.  This is unusual of Google to state dates in advance but then we will wait.

Will Zoho also come up with something of this kind say Zaka-Zaka or something ?

Why should someone store their data on other’s servers?

Why should someone store their data on other’s servers?

This is the fundamental question that all the Web2.0 services are going to be asked.

If someone has the expertise to have a service on their premise then I would suggest that they go for it. Mind you though that the operations overhead, the maintenance overhead, etc have to borne by the company. But you should also wonder how many are really capable ofdoing this? That is not their core-competancy. An unwanted overhead me thinks. It is more efficient to let someone else take care of this and focus on what one is good at.

Service companies like eBay, Yahoo, Google take care of this overhead. They provide you the service and that is what you should be bothered with. There is no overheads to worry about. You use the service, pay for it and leave it if you find a better system. As simple as that.  But wait, have I addressed the security issue yet ?

H ow many of you question the security provided by Google, Yahoo, eBay, etc when you deal with their services? These services have to bloody well ensure that they are providing secure connections and that the data stored with them is kept safer than Fort Knox stores its gold.  These giants have a brand value and just one slip up, just bloody one slip up and their brand takes a hit and that is not all, the competitor will ensure that he paints the entire town red with this news. Now, that is one word-of-mouth that they do not want, right?

I think Security is something that we have to assume will be top-class. These services’ reputation is at stake if something hanky-panky happens.  Things will be secure till they are not broken by some Guru. Till then, ignorance is bliss for all. Once the Guru does get in, there will be a furore and then the fix will be made better than ever before and probably they will even hire the Guru so that he can find out other loop holes in the system. (Now that is one job I would love to have. Imagine everyone crapping their pants worried what skeletons may fall out of their closets ).

Gartner also states that most of the companies in the next 3 years or so will be service-based. Now, that is an ode to the security provided by the softwares, no?

Google Vs Zoho faceoff

This is an interesting article that I came across.

http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-faceoff/zoho-suite-vs-google-docs-315256.php

Do read the reviews too. It is very interesting.

I think Zoho should start developing the Feed Reader. It is something that is widely used and would do a world of good to Zoho’ s arsenal.  I am not so much bothered about the Web Site Hosting parameter though. I do not think that is too widely used anyway (ie I do not use it ).

My list of features for the Reader would be :-

• All that Google has plus some more.

What is important is to note that Zoho is not resting on its laurels. Moreover, Zoho has not bought any company and does not hence have a culture/engg-ego clash to worry about.  Zoho is more deadly as they are organic and have not taken any short-cuts. That means, that they have overcome quite a lot of hurdles in the process of getting here and that in turn means, they would have learnt quite a lot in the journey( well, I assume that they are smart enough to take a wide-angle look at what all they have learnt) and that should ideally propel them up further.

The only caveat for Zoho is there marketing. They have to get that act right. Google does not have to press the accelerator as it IS the accelerator. Zoho will have to earn that.

Engg wise they have already earned my respect. It will be interesting to see if they will earn the marketing honours too.

Zoho creating an ecology around itself

Zoho is providing a huge list of services (bigger than Google). These services are actually flanking attacks on what the competitors have. If A has feature x, so do I.  If B has features a,b,c,d,e so do I and listen, I have some more too like w,u,v,w.

This is flanking the competition. Try and give whatever the market has and then some m0re. For every competitor these folks have built up a competing product.  In essence, what they have done is they have created an ecology now.  It is actually a very very smart idea because now, they are in a position to capitalize on the folks using this ecology and give feedbacks which they will further incorporate into the services. Then, they will start providing integration services among these individual services and then, can they charge for it.

That is smart. Patient, relentless execution is the key for Zoho. Well Done

Advertising: The ONLY money making alternative?

Most of the services are providing services at nominal prices. Also, there are multiple competitors coming up each day with better, cheaper services. If that be the case, the prices will keep going down further and will become almost negligible (okay, do not take it too literally but then yes, it will be damn cheap).

Now, the revenue source is the services. If the services are being given so cheap, how doe the company make money? Rather, how will a company survive?

More and more, I find that the services are moving towards advertising as their revenue source. The USP of the sites is their traffic. Traffic means eyeballs. Eyeballs means reach. Reach means brand and Brand means Sales. So, it seems logical that putting ads in places that have high eyeball-count, is the way to be.

• Facebook is experimenting with ads.
• Meebo is experimenting with ads.

Will Zoho be taking that route too? I bet their traffic must be going up by leaps and bounds and they really cannot make money on their Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet kind of products.  It will also help them keep their dev team up and running. The only money making services that are available in the suite are Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects but I doubt if they have reached a large enough customer base to sustain these folks.