It was 1980, exactly 30 years ago, the legend started.
When IBM chose Bill Gates as a supplier of OS of personal computer, Bill Gates developed and supplied MS-Dos. Inspired by Macintosh, Bill Gates announced new operation system, MS-Window. Since then, many valuable companies have failed in challenging Microsoft. Lotus 1-2-3, Netscape, and even Britannica have failed. Also, even the Apple was in big crisis while in competing Microsoft.
But now, Microsoft didn’t continue its success history recently.
The alliance called “anti-Microsoft” (Google and Apple) seems succeeded.
They realized MS is not big threat anymore and started to fight against each other.
Some might say it is because Bill Gates retired and it might be true.
But I want to find the reason from somewhere else.
How did Microsoft grow? Microsoft simply grew just in way of investigate and copying other’s. MS-Dos was simply imitation of CP/M, MS-Window was of Macintosh, MS Office was of Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3, and Internet Explorer was of Netscape.
However, even they have copied other company’s software, Microsoft put their best effort to develop better product than original one.
But most important factor of their success was investigation.
Microsoft had extraordinarily good sense in knowing what will be the biggest agenda in future of IT industry. With this sense, they could find the opportunities and never lost in competition.
But somehow, it seems they lost their sense.
They haven't find any new business model for a long time and this is very big problem.
Maybe it is because Bill Gates retired, or something else. But what is obvious is that Microsoft had lost all the agendas of today. All of them went to Apple and Google who were the once core member of “Anti-Microsoft alliance”.
Without taking it back, or finding new agenda or new business model, Microsoft will be remained ordinary (but big!!) company. It will be very interesting to see how Microsoft will choose and how much ability Steve Ballmer has.
5.27.2010
5.17.2010
How are you, Foursqure??
Nowadays, even if the company is not making money right now, it seems most important business model is amount of users, rather than revenue itself. I have been searching how Foursquare is creating revenue but couldn’t find any significant profit. And also, it seems Dennis Crowley, the founder of Foursquare, is more focusing on gaining users.
Who is Dennis Crowley? Of course, he is the founder of Foursquare. But also, he is the one who previously founded Dodgeball, the friend-location-tracking application, and sold it to Google. He might know how the taste is like of founding a company and sell it.
The business concept of Foursqure is that users are publicly sharing recommendations of the businesses they frequent while company reward users with points and titles such as “mayor” and “deputy mayor” for checking in repeatedly.
It is pretty obvious that Foursquare is gaining great market power with local shops by its enormous users or potential users. And furthermore, it seems to become new advertizing media itself and forcing local shops to be aware of it. Even though it had been quiet time since internet has introduced to public, the last industry that was not much influenced by internet was the local small shop industry. However, foursquare is aiming to it and trying to change all the crust of that industry.
The business model of it can be variable. They can create revenue from venues, or advertiser with various ways, such as a restaurant who paid for premier service can be listed in place which users can easily find on the screen, or collected users data can be provided to advertiser.. and so on. However, they will never make their users to pay since the numbers of users are the most essential part of their business.
However, I think the best way to make synergy in creating revenue is to be combined with other sites, such as Google or yahoos. Because those companies had been searching for new business model for a longtime and they have knowledge of how to implicate the data of users. And also, it seems creating revenue with Foursqure alone seems little bit limited (at least, compare with synergy) to me.
On April 6th 2010, there was a news that Yahoo is trying to buy Foursquare for 100 million dollars. Even if Dennis would refuge this deal, I’m pretty sure that there will be much more news about merging Foursqure by other companies. Let’s wait and see how it works.
Who is Dennis Crowley? Of course, he is the founder of Foursquare. But also, he is the one who previously founded Dodgeball, the friend-location-tracking application, and sold it to Google. He might know how the taste is like of founding a company and sell it.
The business concept of Foursqure is that users are publicly sharing recommendations of the businesses they frequent while company reward users with points and titles such as “mayor” and “deputy mayor” for checking in repeatedly.
It is pretty obvious that Foursquare is gaining great market power with local shops by its enormous users or potential users. And furthermore, it seems to become new advertizing media itself and forcing local shops to be aware of it. Even though it had been quiet time since internet has introduced to public, the last industry that was not much influenced by internet was the local small shop industry. However, foursquare is aiming to it and trying to change all the crust of that industry.
The business model of it can be variable. They can create revenue from venues, or advertiser with various ways, such as a restaurant who paid for premier service can be listed in place which users can easily find on the screen, or collected users data can be provided to advertiser.. and so on. However, they will never make their users to pay since the numbers of users are the most essential part of their business.
However, I think the best way to make synergy in creating revenue is to be combined with other sites, such as Google or yahoos. Because those companies had been searching for new business model for a longtime and they have knowledge of how to implicate the data of users. And also, it seems creating revenue with Foursqure alone seems little bit limited (at least, compare with synergy) to me.
On April 6th 2010, there was a news that Yahoo is trying to buy Foursquare for 100 million dollars. Even if Dennis would refuge this deal, I’m pretty sure that there will be much more news about merging Foursqure by other companies. Let’s wait and see how it works.
5.02.2010
Running my blog..
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