Derek Moore wrote:
>Food for Thought:
>
>I agree with Ren in that I believe the true "value" of the internet lies in
>convenient, high quality, relevant information that makes our daily...
>
>I propose that the walled garden model can provide the best of both worlds.
>When people are within the garden, they benefit from a secure, comforting,
>and organized environment. The security within the "walls" is something most
I don't know about the "beauty" of walled garden vs. non walled garden,
but who decides which services are "convenient, high quality, and
relevant." In Europe and the US, this is _exactly_ what mobile operators
have tried to do, and the services they have picked have been bad. In the
US, operators give spots on their WAP homepage to whomever pays them the
most money -- and never mind if its what customers actually want or not.
This is why sprint offers 5 identical stock quote services, 4 identical
email services, and 4 identical sport score services off its home page.
AOL, Yahoo, MSN etc. all paid for a spot, and they all offer the same
thing. Unsurprisingly, customers reaction has been cool.
Having an organized environment is helpful to people, and this is the
role portals can play. The problem is that people cannot pick which
portal they want to use. It is good that they automatically get a
standard portal when they first turn on their phone, but over time they
should be able to customize it to things they are interested in using.
The problem is compounded when people cannot venture beyond the walls,
what is "convenient, high quality, and relevant" to one person may be
boring drivel to someone else. France Telecom recently lost a law suit
when they tried to limit access outside of their walled garden.
To add to another thread in this group, the micropayment system is really
a key way to make internet content business viable, and DoCoMo's
implementation has been very good. I personally think that they should
extend this to all sites, not just those who pay DoCoMo money. After all,
all sites that customers access generate usage fees for DoCoMo, and make
DoCoMo's services more valuable. Its important that advertising is kept
off the already tiny screens. Here in the US they are cooking up horribly
intrusive advertising supported business models, all of which would be
unnecessary with a simple micropayment structure.
zimran
zimran@creativegood.com
Creative Good
http://www.creativegood.com
212.736.2075
NEW: Download our paper on the wireless customer experience (free)
http://www.creativegood.com/wireless/
Received on Thu Oct 19 18:19:11 2000