The New Truth in Advertising in 2010

I was surfing recently on one of the tech sites I visit when I saw this ad from Microsoft purporting to show a live stream of people thrilled with their Windows 7 installs:



I thought, "Wow, really?" So I quickly searched the Twitter stream for Windows 7 and Win 7. The results are a lot more like what I would have expected. Some "nice," yes, but balanced with a troubles, dislike and the unintelligible.

You're Taking Ballmer Too Literally

There's a discussion on a listserv (remember those?) I'm on as well as some Internet discussion about Microsoft leader Steve Ballmer's remarks that paper media will go away in 10 years. Only he doesn't say that, exactly. He says it's immaterial whether it's 8 or 10 or 14 years. The exact timing isn't his point.

He also doesn't literally mean, I would guess, that all ink on paper production will cease in toto, full stop. Horse and buggy still exists, as do books made by hand, despite the invention of the press and moveable type. But his point in a larger strategic sense is, I think, well-founded. That the lion's share of media -- media that matters in a larger, societal and business sense -- will be delivered over an IP network, at least in the industrialized world. Who can refute that, honestly? Newsprint and fuel costs rise, we're choking on garbage and need to recycle, our forests are becoming denuded. Meanwhile, the technology of the next next next generation Kindle and Sony reader and iPhone and e-paper and tablet computer will all be better better better, and eventually get good enough that people will be comfortable opening their flexible, reaable (and listenable and watchable and networked) thin, bendable screen (or goggles or mini-projector or who-all knows what?) as they do a newspaper or book today.

People love books and magazines and newspapers not because they're ink on paper, but because they're right now the best technology around: quick, easy, never need rebooting, easy to fold, put in a bag, read in nearly all conditions, don't need power, etc, etc. If the IP device technology approaches those attributes, it will be immaterial on what surface people read, and the cost- and other pressures I mention above will move folks to digital (or IP, if you prefer).

Sure, some glossy magazines will still give a "luxury" experience that won't be well-approximated by the screens. And some may get news on paper -- those at the bottom rung who can't afford digital or at the very top who CAN afford good apper -- but the mass will probably be digital. So, yes you'd win the bet if you said there will be print around in 10 years. But if it's 14 or more, you might lose if you say it will have primacy above digital.

Yahoo, Microsoft and Google

Ian Schafer has it about right: What Microsoft sees in Yahoo is the chance to increase its ad serving reach, cover more of the market, and improve not only reach and frequency but also the third all-important, beyond “GRP” component in today’s ad sphere: targeting. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have been in furious competition with Google and AOL (and each other) to build or buy ad platforms like Blue Lithium and aQuantive that have a variety of ad-serving, targeting and amalgamating solutions for a networked society.

One thing Schafer hopes for (and Henry Blodget calls for) doesn’t seem likely: that Microsoft will let the Yahoo brand live separately and distinctly. Not only does that not seem to be the Microsoft way, it also would make it hard to achieve some of those efficiencies Microsoft keeps talking about. Ask yourself, if Microsoft buys Yahoo:

• Will they subsume their Hotmail (integrated with Passport and .msn) into Yahoo’s mail? Or are they more likely to migrate Yahoo’s mail over to MSN?

• Are they likely to let Yahoo’s small business and Web hosting area live on its own, or try to migrate all that small- and medium-sized business over to Microsoft (encouraging it all the while to buy Microsoft Office products)?

• Will they let Yahoo’s social networking and blogging and tagging and bookmarking properties live separately, or try to integrate them into Microsoft’s properties, trying to get some long-missing traction for Microsoft’s initiatives?

Blodget talks a lot about the different cultures and the difficulties of integrating the two companies, how Microsoft is already battling on many fronts and is unlikely to be able to fight all these battles and make itself into a GE-like conglomerate. He also talks of Google’s play to help Yahoo stay out of Microsoft clutches and in his post and another alludes to Google’s “Ahabian” desire to sink Microsoft’s Office products with cloud computing Web software.

All that cultural stuff is big, and important, and he’s right that senior execs at Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Internet division, will be working scared for the foreseeable future. But, as said above, the real rubber and the real road here is advertising reach and targeting. That’s what has to work for this deal to be worth Microsoft’s while.

Apple Gaining Ground

I agree with Henry Blodget that the Apple is gaining ground in computers. The reasons go beyond the ones he states -- that the "network effect" of Microsoft is waning due to the increasing number of applications like mail and Google docs based on the Web. (I noted in comments on his site, Silicon Alley Insider, that a number of apps, even Web based ones like the Netflix movie viewer, some sports event media viewing over the Internet and a bunch of business software still require Windows and/or Windows Media to run. (Fortunately for the new Apples, they can run Windows, though I've found the process of loading it a bit cumbersome -- and expensive, potentially.)

Some more reasons I see Apple gaining ground, largely from my own experience running a small business, but also working in a lot of larger corporate environments:

- The machines, as their marketing says, just plain work. I've got friends and acquaintances and professional relationships with PC technicians, and so by now I'm pretty familiar with the ins and outs of getting around a Windows-based machine to make it work, anything from defragging to dumping programs that are hogging memory, to adding more memory and other things -- but I find that even my tech friends are often stumped as to what is making a PC belch or hiccup. (One of my Windows laptops is being wiped clean and reloaded with the basic software as I type this because it's too onerous to figure out what the heck is wrong. Spyware? System glitch?) I've paid tech support at both Best Buy and Circuit City, but they're not as responsive and don't give the thorough answers and elbow grease effort of guys at the Mac store, where I've bought Apple Care and OnetoOne lessons. If you have a tech dept that you can hand your computer over too for a couple hours every day of the week whenever something's wrong, PCs might be better. But for ...
- An increasing number of people who are on their own in one way or another and can't afford to spend so much of our time hassling with tech issues. The small business economy is growing (job growth in small outpaces large) and don't have big tech depts. We need things that just work.
- The Apples and the software we put on them just work in many instances because things are tested and approved and can generally just plug in and make something run. There are fewer options with Apple -- they only sell, maybe, a half-dozen laptop models, for example -- but that control has the "up" side of consistency. They Apple folks basically know what to look for with whatever malfunction there might be, can figure out how to make programs work across machines and operating systems, and can give clear rather than ambiguous answers. Yes, you CAN run that monitor off that computer, or NO, we don't support three monitors on one machine. It might not have as much ability to manipulate in multiple ways, but for someone like me simplicity helps.
- Software, too tends to work generally the same way no matter the application. Similar commands, a lot of the same utility.
- Plus, a lot of software comes loaded on the Mac. Sure, Apple might cost $1000 compared to a PC that costs $300 or $400, but when you add up the software you get -- legitimately -- Apple comes through very strong. Movie editing, sound editing, picture grabbing, and so on. And their version of Office, iWorks, comes with perfectly good programs that in some cases make things very easy, for example converting a text document to a PDF. And it's cheaper than Microsoft Office.
- The new Apple stores are a great support system. For $99 per year, I can go in there every week and throw questions at a dedicated person for an hour, then spend 20 minutes with a "genius" to ask more pointed tech questions. They try really hard to solve the issues I've had (everything from Entourage -- the Microsoft version of Outlook for the Mac -- not synching properly to issues with slowness booting up. It's not perfect, and there have been glitches, but compared to what I could get from Windows lapstops I bought at Circuit City and Best Buy, there's no comparison. CC, in fact, gave me the runaround when they Acer they sold me died (twice) and always kept trying to charge me more to do things like defrag my disk, back up the hard drive and so on.
- The commercials are funny partly becuase there's truth to them. Now, I don't have a half-beard, and I think my persona is more a Bill Gates than a Steve Jobs (look at my nerdy pants and shirts, and pocket protector), but I want something that works easily and well.
- The Apple Stores are a stroke of genius. There's a consistency to them, if not perfection, which is unlike anywhere else for retail computer service. Even if buy computer and all software from the one store -- which virtually impossible -- with Windows, I could never get so many people to attack a problem knowledgeably. Where could I, in one spot, get someone to both teach me how to network my computer, do complex word processing, help me synch my email, get a workaround the frustrating DRM restrictions on a video iPod, AND build a Web site -- all in one place. Many of the courses are even free.

In short (and I'm sorry for going on so long), Apple is building its own "network effect," people like me to evangelize, the stores that are much more than sales and therefore a stroke of genius for marketing and keeping people like me in the fold. They've put free apps on the computer like iChat that make it easy to talk to others with Apple, and make it easy for Apples to share calendars and files and other things over a .Mac account that costs $69/year.

Now, some dangers and downsides.
- The cultishness can be a downside. People at the Apple store seemed trained (or brainwashed?) to never say anything that would acknowledge any inferiority of an Apple product. If you point out something better than a PC they'll pile on. If you point out something you wish the Apple could do (like access certain Web sites noted above), they might just pretend you never said it. I have heard from more than one tech person or bizdev exec about Apple people's arrogance vs. Microsoft peole's eagerness to fix things.

For example, Leopard's got some problems. (One important reason I paid, I think, $69 for a yearly subscription to a .Mac internet access account was for the "Back to My Mac" function, mimicking the "Go to My PC" software that's supposed to let me access a computer from anywhere over the Internet. Only, it doesn't work. Leopard's also turned some peoples' computers into blue-screened bricks, and taken hours and hours of peoples' time.) If Apple works at lightning speed to ackonwoledge the issues and fix them, then it will keep picking up speed and market share.

- Lack of openness on the software side. The locked nature of the iPhone kept me and many other people from buying one. I like GSM networks because you can unlock a phone and use it on another GSM network. Only not iPhone -- not without voiding the warranty, anyway. Apple should open up, and also allow more developers to work on Apple.

- Money, cost, etc. While they're not as rapacious as the service desk at Circuit City -- asking me to give $60 to push a few buttons I could push myself -- they do seem to fairly frequently suggest I spend another $60, or $70 or $129 dollars, and sometimes that amount is for a yearly subscription of some sort, so they'll get a lot more out of me than the one purchase. OK, what do I expect, to get great service and product for free? And it is a STORE, right? But, still, I think there has to be a little softer on the "sell" for someone like me who's recently forked over thousands of dollars and a little harder on the "service."

Still, I wouldn't short Apple stock, and I wouldn't even be surprised, if they can find good fixes to Leopard and make sure it has all the networking and other capabilities it's supposed to have, if Apple starts to make inroads in the traditionally Microsoft-beholden corporate suites.