Slashdot Mirror
Likely Success of Internet-Related Business Models?
guess-for-success asks: "In Lester Thurow's latest book, published by HarperBusiness Books (Fall 2003), Fortune Favors the Bold: What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity, there is a chapter which discusses the beginning of new industries. During this time, several business models are introduced and only a few will survive. Looking at the PC industry, Commodore was the industry leader in the 1980's, but ultimately failed and went bankrupt in 1994. Successful business models such as Dell were not introduced until years after the industry began.
I now ask the Slashdot community: which internet business models they believe are going to succeed? Which companies will rise to the top? Will they be infrastructure related companies such as Cisco and even FedEx, or will they be true dot.com's such as eBay or Amazon?"
"You can find out more about Lester Thurow here. He is a professor of economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been the Dean of the Sloan School of Business at MIT. He has three New York Times best selling books to his credit and consults widely around the globe."
This is essentially Frodo meets Oregon Trail, right? Instead of your son getting dyssentry, Frodo gets knifed in the shoulder. Instead of breaking a wagon axle, you get consumed by Barrow-wights. Instead of meeting friendly travellers, you meet ring-wraiths.
Who have installed "mysql errors" instead of our
dimunutive hero, the hobbit Frodo. Not even the mighty
"Slashdot Effect" could stop them! Sauron will
recover the one ring and we are all doomed!
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
*Already* this site is /.'ed beyond usability. It's too much. Slashdot needs to provide a local cache of pages it links to, for all non-major league sites. To not do so is irresponsible - and makes the point of posting the links at all pretty much moot.
Wow, nothing captures the grandeur and rich detail of a 1000+ page epic like 128 colors, 160x200 resolution rendered by a graphics chip running at 1.19 MHz. The screenshots transport me back to 1986 when I first read the book.
google cache of /. linked site (old):
E :w ww.atariage.com/
o ur ney.html
w :w ww.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/journey.html +%22lord+of+the+rings%22+atari+game&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5qsLqbqhik
Doing a google search I found the game on another site (with a screen shot):
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/j
and the cache:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wpuA4XgOLV
Perhaps Slashdot should expand it's horizons as a place to get news and chat about current trends to something a bit more ambitious. Since many websites due either to incorrect configuration, bad design, or lack of bandwidth, seem to crash or not survive being Slashdotted. Perhaps is the time to start giving out Slashdot Awards. Those who survive being Slashdotted should have a placard on their website saying "We have been Slashdot Harddened."
Okay, lesson learned. Stay as far away from Slashdot as possible if you want your poor server to live longer than 30 seconds once an article has been posted to the front page. :) Here are some links to the images on the server that will bypass MySQL, so you can at least see them:
:)
Screenshot #1
Screenshot #2
Screenshot #3
Screenshot #4
Screenshot #5
Screenshot #6
Screenshot #7
Prototype Cartridge
Prototype Box
Binary Image
Here's a MySLQ-free writeup we did, although many of the lnks internal to AtariAge won't work right now.
Information about 2600 Lord of the Rings
Enjoy!
Well, I don't know much about this vaporware Atari 2600 LotR game, but a lot of other games based on Tolkiens world has been made. ;)
... which reminds me: Mudconnecter has a list of some MUDs based on Tolkien's books. Of those, Elendor MUSH is probably the best one. I remember playing it some years ago...
Check out this neat site. It has all the info you need about computer-based Tolkien games. LotR for Super NES is probably the only one I've tried so far, and it didn't quite meet my expectations
Oh, and didn't someone announce a MMORPG a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it
Ahhh, google wins again:
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games
Lots of LOTR games! Apple II, C64, Atari 400 and ST, Amiga, Acorn, etc...
-nate
A program called "Bored of The Rings" was produced for the BBC, Spectrum and Amstrad home computers many moons ago by Tolkien Games. These days it can be downloaded for emulators from here.
:v)
Oh, they did the real Tolkien Trilogy too, which can be downloaded separately via links from here. I just prefered the spoof.
Vik
Here's what I know about the game:
This game was programmed by Parker Bros a long time ago, and was pretty much finished (I'm not sure what (if anything) they left out... it looks finished to me). However, there are two parties that apparently own the rights to the LOTR stuff, and there were problems getting the liscensing rights and other legal mumbo jumbo. As a result, the game couldn't be released because the two sides couldn't come to terms on things.
As for what to do in the game, the other goons at AtariAge and I have figured out this much:
1. You have to get to Rivendell, the city at the top of the map. To do this, you basically run up and to the left. When you find the path, follow it. It's much faster. If you need to look at your map, duck into the forest (or a town) and press the button.
2. You can pick up other party members along the way. I'm not sure exactly where they all are, but one is for sure in the city on the left.
3. The birds don't seem to do anything (we haven't figured that part out yet), and the only way we know of to get the horseman off your back is to dodge into the forest. He won't follow you. As for turning white when you press the button? I have no idea what that does either.
4. Eventually, if you get far enough along the path, you'll come to a river (It's flashing for some reason). There's a bridge across it if you look for it.
By the way, AtariAge is back up... sort of. You can view the LOTR article and associated material, and you can get to the forums... but everything else is offline until their MySQL server is put back online.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Using a local cache would require Slashdot to serve vastly more data than it does now.
Serving lots of data to a large audience costs a lot of money. Linking to a site doesn't. It's that simple. Slashdot wants to save a buck.
However, one hit from Slashdot can eliminate a small site's readers for the rest of the month, if they have monthly traffic limits. Or worse. It is irresponsible to link to a small site this way.
What I don't understand is why Slashdot just doesn't start a policy of linking the actual site AND its Google cache. Let the readers choose. If Google complains, work something out with them. Some sites would kill for this kind of traffic. Use it as an asset. And stop killing the little guys.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
I used to work with a fellow who was in Parker Bros. during the Atari heyday and even into the PC gaming arena for a short while. What he says makes a lot of sense and it does lead me to believe it to be true...
For each new game that came out, four were actually made. The reason for this was that it cost $250,000 to produce a game and about $3-4M to actually market and sell the damn thing. Thus, it was crucial that they picked winners. Looking at the type of games that Parker Bros. was coming out with, you can easily see how these games were not destined to be classics... The loss of developing 3 losers for every winner was covered in the returns made on the one game that was released. While it may still sound like a weird way to do it, the return on investment proved it to be the correct thing to do. They were able to release new games on a regular basis without worrying about a single game bogging down their cycle.
Note for those who dispute development costs: The ratio of marketing costs to development costs still holds true for a lot of development that happens today for a variety of different products. A dozen cubicals of programmers is a lot cheaper than TV spots, magazine ads, distribution, packaging, art work, product placement in stores, etc...
So we can see how it was entirely possible for a LOTR game to not be selected because by comparison to the other games coming out at the time, it sucked. How could such a classic suck? As someone mentioned earlier... How exactly are you going to get a 1,000 page book filled with rich imagery into a 4k cart running on a 2600? The people who would buy such a game (LOTR fans) would have held it up to a higher expectation and been disapointed. The rest of the world would have said "Lord of the who?" and ignored it. And *click*... There goes $4M down the drain...
Here are some screenshots:
- lotr1.png
- lotr2.png
- lotr3.png
-jfedorYou do one thing (in their case) and you do it well. Then you use that one thing to make money.
Trusted computing gives control of YOUR computer to the company that made the software or hardware. It means that the company can trust the computer. You can't trust a TC computer.
The Internet-Enabled Remote Bitchslap(patent pending) will be the biggest thing EVAR!
Oh yeah, and an addition to CallerID called CallerIQ.
Roku is the high-end digital media player for HDTV buyers with money to burn. Roku was founded and financed by Anthony Wood, who made out well when he sold ReplayTV to SonicBlue. He's a rich guy selling gizmos to other rich guys, but not all startups have Anthony's resources. Here is a success story from one resource-challenged startup. Wallflower, which is also in the digital photograph display business, managed to get itself off the ground with a strategy I've seen only once before: dumpster diving.
The company makes (expensive) digital picture frames that compete with Ceiva, Digiframe, and Pacific Digital. Nothing special there. But Wallflower's startup plan was based around building its high-end products with pieces from recycled computers. To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture frames--most importantly, working 12" LCD panels.
Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software. Basically, the Wallflower displays are Web servers that appear on a Windows desktop as disk drives--you put one on your network and you can just drag pictures onto it, and call up its internal home page to manage its settings. Now you have a nice big electronic photo frame to show your digital pictures, and changing the display is as easy as typing a URL into your home computer.
Frankly I can't see spending $500 for one of these things--but what do I know? Shortly after Forbes ran an article about the product, Wallflower sold out of its inventory of Frankensteined picture frames. Left with nice cashflow from its rising order volume, and needing more certainty in its supply chain than Weird Stuff Warehouse could provide, Wallflower recently gave up on the whole recycled kick and started buying components from manufacturers, the way most computer companies do.
With the new manufacturing strategy, the company is able to offer more features and bigger screens, but it had to raise its prices since these components are more expensive. Although I imagine they save a fortune in assembly costs, since they no longer have to dismantle laptops to get their parts.
There is a thriving economy in the leftover computer business. Lots of old equipment ready to be used in new and exciting ways.
Ebay has just taken the traditional auction and used the internet to automate much of the process.
Really, most internet businesses are just innovations, taking a new technology and using it to replace or suppliment an existing medium. The problem with most internet businesses in the dot com era was they didn't understand this and/or fell into the trap of "This is compeltely different" and it wasn't.
Now the internet has helped reduce cost in industries like mail order because it is possible to reach billons with one site unlike say a traditional catalog that would have to be mailed out which costs a lot of money in print and postage. However, there is no secert method to business models. Its still breaks down to: provide a product or service to fulfill a need. Do it well, keep down costs, and hopefully make a profit.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
- Amazon: Found a need for an online bookstore where there was none, and capitalized on it...
- Fedex: Found a need for overnight delivery service where there was little, and capitalized on it...
- Cisco: Regarded as the highest quality maker (tho some may contest but the reputation is there) of networking equipment, realizes the need for the best hardware for the best systems...
- Ford Motor (my pick): Recognized a need for cheap automobiles and capitalized on it...
Now the negatives:- Commodore: Entered an industry well penetrated by apple, IBM, Tandy (back then) and company and tried to play along, didn't make it....
- Webvan (my personal pick): Tried to make it in an online grocery world where profits are slim and competition in related industry (traditional grocery) is fierce.
See a pattern here?In short, to launch a successful business, you need to have a core competency in mind, that is an idea that is:
- Rare
- Unique
- Hard to duplicate
- Hard to substitute
If you have that, and all the other elements of a proper business (good management, proper quality, good promotion, etc) fall together, I should see no reason why a business couldn't succeed. I'll defend this against any reply or email to the contrary.Anyways there's my 2 cents from a person who just graduated with a Bachelors in business, I'd love intelligent replies from people who think otherwise, thanks!
...in bed
Being a FedEx employee I think it's obvious which one I hope will survive.
However, massive restructuring will have to occur if this is to happen. Sure we are a market leader in margins and, as a cargo airline we have a good record of adapting new technologies, but we're still running on a heirarchy reminiscent of the generation that brought us Fred Smith. Reworking our buildings from warehouses to more dynamically creativity-inspiring circular buildings would be a decent start. We work on a hub concept. We need more creativity and flexibility in on-road route planning, more power taken from beaurocrats in Memphis who really don't get a good picture of on-road day to day activity other than pages full of numbers at the end of the day and share that power in the form of actual couriers and managers being able to make more broad decisions based on their locality. We have our own form of standards. The point is that practices that work in an inner city (which spawns the greatest density of deliveries and pickups) are completely wrong for people out in the country who may have ten to twenty stops a day.
And I'm not saying this as a courier. I'm an administrator, but I think it's very important to put more faith in our frontline employees. Unfortunately not all of the higher-ups share that point of view.
Dotcom ventures, all negative late-nineties stigma aside, are still in the realm of providing virtual services. Even if those are for real products, people will STILL want to feel like they're interacting with other people. Make it too impersonal, and you'll ultimately lose touch with your customers (and their reality). It'll be interesting to see what "they" do to reverse the trend.
Not to mention there will, in the forseable future, be a consistent and even increasing demand for companies like FedEx. As more people migrate to do their shopping online, they'll need companies like us to deliver the goods.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska!
... Dell and Walmart. They don't do anything
rare, unique, hard to duplicate or hard to substitute...
Au contraire.
Both companies are extremely adept at taking cost out of their respective supply chains. Consequently they are profitable at price points their competitors cannot easily match.
Advertising is what keeps AOL afloat (at least for the time being). Not word of mouth. Microsoft dominates for any number of reasons, but none of them are customer loyaltyor good community relations (though to his credit, Bill does give plenty to charity).
I'm not saying that you can't make money with your method. Apple managed to stay around during the late '90s, prior to Jobs's return, largely due to fanatical customer loyalty, from all accounts. But Apple is now on the way back up (perhaps, though they aren't exactly profitable yet, if I remember right) because they've managed to expand their customer base by good, expensive advertising.
Consumers aren't exactly rational. It's cheaper for Dell to advertise how good their tech support is than actually improve it. It's cheaper for Apple to advertise how amazing their PowerBooks are than, say, bring the price within range of Intel laptops (not that I don't covet a nice 12" AlBook). You can get business through word of mouth. But you get ahead through sound business practices and aggressive marketing.
You mention iTunes MS but forget the iPod and Mac product lines which is the real money maker for Apple.
WalMart and Microsoft stores don't *follow* Apple's internet business model.
If the next bubble is content, you need to device a profit center. The internet is good at distribution, therefore removing the costs associated with it. I suspect the next bubble is not so much content, but content awareness: If Apple can make it easy to find stuff you like amidst a sea of choice, then you will keep using iTunes MS and a future prototypical Video Store.
The money of course is when you buy a device to store/facilitate all this content. A video iPod is about as likely to occur when you start seeing 300 disc DVD changers; then Apple will produce the digital equivalent, iPod2, which can store 300 DVDs in a convenient footprint and equivalent quality.
GPL Deconstructed
In the 70's, 80's and early 90's, we had a proprietary unix system which we sold to a customer that was about 80% of their business system. This system wasn't too flexible but it was the defacto business model for centralized order and business transaction processing. We had to provide the user everything from the hardware to the network to the software. It was a turnkey solution for the most part but it wasn't as flexible in providing revenue streams.
In the mid 90's we developed a windows application solution. Now we provide the application CD and tell them the requirements (SQL server, windows network, recommended hardware requirements). Everything except our software is a commodity on their network now and so we extract ourselves from the costs of having to work on buying it. We allow the customer to pick their own or they can pay our consultants to help them out. We negotiate contracts for how much an hour they would have to pay for consulting. Everything is driven by consulting, custom work, training, services. Our software is the only hard good we produce any more, and its questionable if you want to call that a hard good these days. In fact we aren't worried too much about piracy, because our main source of income is the customer paying on the contracts we sign for purchasing the software (which requires a huge amount of setup) and for supporting the software, which is a percentage of their initial purchase contract.
Expertise is never a commodity and as companies find a way to make hardware construction cheaper, people move to providing quality by just having a bunch of knowledgable people sitting around who know how to provide some kind of technological help (read: billable consulting, not tech support) to a specific market space.
I also see the tech support outsource trend swinging back to the US a bit as US companies demand better quality of support. Between the cookie cutter, script reading mentality of overseas operations and some unintelligible accents, customers, especially businesses, will demand a change. They already are.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Ok when you are looking at losses and profits, your really not getting the whole picture. I smart company never makes profit, unless it worries about it's stock going up. The less profit you make the less taxes you pay. Amazon has a lot of assumed costs, that aren't necessarilly real, these include depreciation and some other things that are set as standards by the IRS. For instance I buy a machine for 200,000$ the IRS says it depreciates at 40,000$ a year. Whichi means that for five years I have to right off a depreciation of 40,000 dollars, keeps my taxes down, but to the bottom line it looks like a cost, I didn't actually spend 40,000 dollars, that is just the assumed cost of replacing said item. It will be fully depreciated in 5 years even though I may not replace it for 10 years, do you see what I mean? Trust me amazon is doing very well.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
The final blow was when in fall of '93 Mehdi decided to build a few 10's of thousands of the new (AA/AGA) machines (A1200, etc), and 300,000+ of the old chipset-based machines (A600). Needless to say, the old machines didn't move off the shelves very fast at Xmas, and that was the final nail.
There were other instances like that too. Mostly it was caused by not following up on successful products (C64, A500, to some extent A3000) and trying to milk them for too long. The A1200 was the right machine; it was just too late by a year or two. Engineering had it's issues too, in particular biting off more than we could chew on the total redesign of the chipset which was never quite finished ("AAA"), and not giving enough attention to the potential high-volume products, though in general engineering was pretty focused on them.
It's tough when the CEO won't let marketing talk to engineering directly, and insists all contact go through him and his cronies... Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Commodore engineer from these times, and after bankruptcy was declared, we burnt Mehdi Ali in effigy in my backyard (literally).
Do you shop for books and music at the brick-and-mortar WalMart? If you're here, you almost certainly don't.
If a store doesn't have what you want, the lowest price doesn't matter.
It's widely known that WalMart selects its intellectual content to be "family-friendly" and forces publishers to censor what it does buy.
I don't buy censored books and movies and you probably don't, either.
Amazon makes its money selling to literate people, a market the WalMart doesn't even understand.
Tech Public Policy stuff