Net Neutrality

The problem of bandwidth has cropped up again, as it periodically does. If anything, I'm surprised it's taken this long: I expected that the explosion of content that arose when "Web 2.0" enabled individuals to dump exabytes of text, photos, and video on the Internet would have jammed the network long before now.

The core conflict is between companies that own the networks an the companies that use the wires to transmit data. The latter camp has been more successful than usual in getting the media and certain members of the public spun up by representing the problem as a civil-rights issue rather than a technical problem, under the banner of "net neutrality."

Naturally, the propaganda has overwhelmed the facts, which are a bit complicated and far less interesting than a shouting-match among flamboyant buffoons. And naturally, those of us in the industry are being asked, "what's all this noise about net neutrality?"

And so ...

While the metaphor of "information superhighway" is a bit outdated and hackneyed, it's a good way to visualize the problem of traffic on the Internet, which sends data packets across networks in much the same way as vehicles travel across the network of roadways. In that way "bandwidth" can be understood as the capacity of the roads, and "congestion" as being akin to a traffic jam.

The challenge, since the beginning, has been in building out the roads to accommodate the traffic. Traffic can change in an instant, whereas it takes a significant amount of time and money to expand a roadway - and while the network providers have generally been attentive to the problem, there are times when the change in traffic patterns has taken place more quickly than expected, and the roads have become jammed.

When traffic jams occurs, traffic is diverted from the main highways: motorists discover that they can make their trip faster if they exit the main highway and cut across residential streets, which, in time, become jammed up with "highway traffic," such that the people who live in the neighborhood cannot back out of their own driveways due to a stream of traffic traveling across residential streets that were not designed to accommodate a constant flow 18-wheelers.

The solution for the residents is to close neighborhood roads to freeway traffic - in effect, to put up a "no trucks" sign and limit the traffic through their neighborhood to the residents and certain companies that are making deliveries to the neighborhood. With such a measure in place, the residents are happy, but the trucking companies who want to cut through their neighborhood to avoid the freeway traffic are stymied.

An in the case of "net neutrality," the trucking companies are claiming that they should have a right to drive their trucks through the neighborhood, and have spun up the residents of other neighborhoods by claiming that their inability to drive across the residential streets prevents them from delivering certain goods to the market - and therefore, that the "no trucks" restriction has harmed all by preventing certain goods to reach the marketplace.

Naturally, there's more to it than the metaphor will allow. When it comes to the Internet, even the superhighways are owned by private companies, the trucking companies pay for the right to use certain roads, the companies that maintain the roads are either unable to provide them with more capacity or unwilling to do so at a price customers are willing to pay, etc. You can easily stretch the metaphor to the breaking point, but I think it highlights some of the fundamental issues:

Primarily, while Internet congestion is a problem that ultimately affects users, the front lines of the battle are drawn between companies: specifically, the companies that own the networks, and the companies that want to send more traffic than the network can presently accommodate, without paying to upgrade the system.

Second, that "freedom of expression" has very little to do with the matter. To return to the analogy, the network providers don't care about the cargo inside the trucks, merely that there are too many vehicles on the road, and their restrictions are based on volume, giving preference to their own high-volume customers who pay for the use of their roads.

Third, that Internet congestion is temporary. Eventually, the lanes will be widened, traffic will flow, and everyone will be happy once again ... until even the expanded capacity is being consumed and there is yet again a need to expand. Seems to happen every so often, and I think it may be a while before it's possible to predict fluctuations with any degree of accuracy.

And finally, to be very cautions about the causes you support during times of crisis - because the restrictions and regulations put in place to cure a "temporary" problem will be even more damaging to your freedom and well-being in the long run. Witness the effects of the legislation put in place to address the great depression, or the terrorist incidents of the early 21st century - and the long-term effects of ill-conceived solution to short-term problems should be very clear.

Needs-Based vs. Solution-Based

Some notes from a discussion on the differences between needs-based and solution-based strategy:

In theory, needs-based strategy begins by examining a market segment and identifying a common set of needs, then defining a solution that will satisfy the needs (at a price consumers will be willing to pay), whereas solution-based strategy begins with a solution (product or service) and then seeks to identify needs in the marketplace to which that solution can be applied.

In practice, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two, as it's highly speculative as to whether a company that sells a given product began with the notion of the solution or an examination of the need. Several examples were discussed, and in each instance, the discussion ended in stalemate.

It's also not a given that needs-based strategy is the better approach. It certainly is the newer of the two, and there's often the notion that "new" is somehow better. But upon detailed consideration it seems reasonable that a solutions-based approach can be successful (in that there is a coincidence of solution and need) and a needs-based approach can fail miserably (if the company lacks the expertise to deliver a satisfactory solution).

Neither is it a given that the choice is necessarily exclusive to one or the other. A solution-based company can identify additional needs for its product, or make modifications to its existing product to suit different or changing needs. The argument that it is in a better position to do so that a company that may be aware of needs, but lacks experience in providing the solution, holds some merit.

Learning from Customer Defection

I chanced upon an article on the topic of customer defection - didn't notice the original publication or date - and posted reading notes. My sense is that it may be a decade or so old, because some of the concepts were fashionable in the late 1990's, and have since fallen from favor, but the general topic remains valid.

The author's sense is that companies pay lip-service to the notion of customer loyalty and have a vague sense that it's important to retain customers, but it's difficult to put into practice. Traditional marketing (hence the performance metrics for "success") are all geared toward gaining new customers, and some degree of "churn" is taken for granted - the solution to which is simply to ramp up new customer acquisition to outpace the attrition rate.

Aside of the common notion that it costs more to attract a new customer than to retain an old one, it's noted that even a minor improvement in retention has a major impact on the bottom-line performance of a firm due to the profitability of a customer who makes more purchases over a longer period of time, while needing less effort to be constantly "incentivized" to continue doing business with a firm.

The author suggests some practices and metrics to address the problem of defection, and to leverage the knowledge of "lost customers" to improve service and prevent others from leaving. I don't think it's a sure-fire approach, or a quick cure, or even very comprehensive, but it's an interesting perspective that merits further consideration.

Comment Moderation

I've been meditating lately on the topic of comment moderation, chiefly in regard to blogs (though obviously, not this one, as comments are disabled due to its nature), and chiefly, because the notion of comments seems to be of questionable value.

Originally, the value of providing site visitors with the ability to provide feedback was done with the intention of getting bug reports: a link is broken, the graphics don't load, and so on. Site visitors would help the site owner maintain the site, and would also provide some helpful suggestions along the way. I don't sense that's the value of comments anymore. Site owners are expected, and rightly so, to maintain their own content, and since the Web has settled down quite a bit, the problem of outbound links constantly breaking is no longer a major issue (and there are utilities that will automate the task of finding them).

It seems to me that the chief value of comments in social media is giving site visitors the opportunity to contribute to the conversation. A "good " comment suggests a revision to the content of the page that will ultimately improve the quality of a site, or suggests a point of view that the author may not have considered. I'm generally glad to get these comments, though there are still a handful of kooks and trolls in the woodwork who are either amusing themselves or trying to provoke an absurd reaction.

Sadly, the reaction I get when I post such a remark to another site is generally less than grateful. It tends to be along the lines of "how dare you disagree" - or at best "gee, thanks" from someone who doesn't intend to consider what I've attempted to contribute. That could be in the nature of blogs, in which entries are dated and, once a person clicks "post," they feel that their job is over, and that the content will be preserved as written as a historical document, regardless of any errors or omissions. Which is probably the reason I seldom bother, anymore.

The majority of comments I see on blogs are flattery - which say "what a good post you've written," and add nothing at all to the topic. My sense is that people like to get praise as a reward for their work, and consider the praise of others to be a credential for their ideas, which is probably the reason that so many posts have a long queue of hollow praise in which any substantive comment is well buried.

When a company does this, it flows from the same spring, but my sense is that companies are more cautious than people, and people are more critical of companies. A corporate blog that contains only positive comments (and excludes any unflattering remark) seems untrustworthy and disingenuous. I don't think that it's any different when it comes to personal blogs, but we're more forgiving of vanity when it comes to individuals.

In blogs where comments are accepted, I've taken to rejecting comments that contain only hollow praise. There was a brief period of time when it seemed to me that people were posting positive remarks without even having read the blog entry, because they expected that I would be eager to publish praise of myself - and because most blog comments contain a link back to their sites, flattering others can be an effective form of self-promotion.

The problem is that, when you weed out all the spam, there doesn't seem to be very much at all left over. In my "convenience sample" of the comments I've received in the past week, 72% were either outright spam, or "good post" spam. Looking around at the other blogs I follow, including a number of topic-driven blogs, I have the sense that the proportion is much higher - though admittedly, these are only the "approved" comments, after the authors have decided to weed out comments they didn't feel merited posting (though if they consider hollow praise to be worthwhile, I'd have to question whether their judgment is worth considering).

It may be a while before I get around to coming to a firm conclusion on whether this practice is worthwhile - but for now, I'm lumping hollow praise in with the rest of the spam. I expect a few people may feel offended at being ignored, but if they have nothing of value to say, and are just looking to get a link to their site by flattering me, perhaps it's not high-value traffic anyway.

And so, my sense is that I have more thinking to do and more data to collect - and the topic of comment moderation is to be continued ... sometime.

Browser Wars

A number of the blogs I read are on about Google's "Chrome" browser, which is gaining steam very slowly. The latest news is that a firm that provides a statistics service to small Web sites has put out a Web release stating that Chrome has passed Safari in usage statistics, implying that it's on its way to being a contender.

I don't know if I agree with that assertion. While the numbers seem reasonable, it's just not very newsworthy: like crowing that your off-brand cola sells more than another off-brand, even though you're clearly unable to compete with Coke or Pepsi. But even if/when Chrome is able to rival the big players, I don't know if I can get excited, or even remotely interested, in the competition.

What seems to be missing from this late stage of the "war" is any appreciable benefit to using one browser or the other, or any impact of the competitors on the nature of the game. Back when Netscape and Microsoft were the contenders and the battle was more heated, I definitely had the sense that the outcome of the battle for market share was constant and dramatic innovation - and regardless of which browser was "on top," the internet itself benefitted from the struggle for dominance.

Netscape, in particular, gave us the ability to use forms in Web pages, choose typeface and color, use script to control browser events, and a number of other capabilities we now take for granted. Although it was painful and time-consuming to have t develop two or three different versions of each page to suit the capabilities and limitations of different browsers, the long-run benefit to the medium was enormous.

Now that the war has cooled off and the major players are generally adherent to standards, the "benefits" of using one versus the other are negligible ... and innovation has slowed to a crawl.

And while I'm thankful for the breather, I wonder if it's been a good trade in that sense.