CDOQ

Adoption of innovations is my favorite topic. It integrates business, technology, systems, and human behavior. Everett Rogers developed a model to predict the adoption curve of innovations. I simplified it for our discussion with help of my friend, Tom Carter . There are five attributes of innovations which effect how innovations get adopted or customers change their behavior: 1. Relative Advantage: What advantage does the new innovation (product/service/etc.) offer over what’s available currently? The relative advantage could be price, new features, convenience, etc-anything customers perceive beneficial. Let’s take example of iPod which is one of the fastest adopted new innovations. iPod offers following advantages which were not offered by previous portable music players: a. Better design: light weight, easy navigation, different colors, cool aesthetics. b. Choice: ability to store up to 5,000 songs and no need to carry CDs. c. New features: Ability to org

Since the approach Verizon is taking is not very appealing, let's see if there is an opportunity for User Generated Videos on mobile phones. First questions is how are User Generated Videos making money on the Internet? Well, they are not! Although ads placed before Internet videos (mainly music and tv shows) have very high click-through rate and are one of the fastest growing ad-revenue categories, the user-generated videos are not making much money. Google bought YouTube for its potential (integration/buldling/advertising) and as defensive move against a competitor buying YouTube. There is definitely demand for user-generated videos since more than 100m are watched everyday on youtube.com. The challenge is how to monetize this demand. I think, in the short term, Apple will do better than the wireless companies by providing user-generated videos on iTunes. It has been very successful at selling Video iPods and selling music videos/tv shows. So why not user-generated videos? It c

Verizon officially announced a deal with YouTube today. See http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/28/business/youtube.php . As I understand it, the deal will enable Verizon Wireless customers to watch YouTube videos, they have preselected while browsing youtube.com, on their mobile phones. Sounds cool? Well, it is not! I think the news has generated more clicks than the new service will ever generate subscribers. Who do you think will pay $15/month to Verizon Wireless to get access to Vcast so that she/he can watch the videos she/he has already seen on Youtube? I would love to see the financial arangement of this deal. Most likely, this deal is more favorable for YouTube than for Verizon. The strategic issue here is that the wireless companies in the US, most of which have wireline parents, don't want to "loose out" like they did with wireline broadband. In the current broadband world, the ISPs/wireline telecom companies are pipe providers a