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Strategy Execution Transactions Writing Internet/Media Strategies Inc. is a leading provider of hands-on business strategy planning, execution and, through a unique financial services partnership, transaction-related services for media companies. Since 1996, I/MS has played key roles in the development of leading media companies' use of the Internet and cross-media strategies to increase customer revenues and retention. We have provided business planning, business development, content and interface design services to America Online, Time Warner Inc.'s Sports Illustrated, EarthWeb, SoftBank Ventures, SoftBank Comdex, Personify and ZD Net, among many clients. Mitch Ratcliffe, principal of I/MS, also developed the content and editorial divisions of ON24 Inc., the online streaming news and financial information network, as vice president of content and chief content officer between 1999 and 2001. We have helped to launch many new companies that exploit the Internet opportunity, including Audible Inc., TheDigs Network (acquired by i-drive, now Anuvio Technologies), Web-X Inc., MailMediary, LoudVox Productions and LoanTek. Our editorial services have powered Digital Media, the seminal newsletter of the networked economy, and The Wired Investor, an investor newsletter, as well as ZD Net's ZDY2K (Year 2000) and eCommerce Alert web sites. Mitch Ratcliffe's reporting and commentary have appeared in Forbes, Fortune, PC Week (now eWeek), MacWEEK, ZD Net, PC World, WorldlyInvestor, GlobalNet Financial, In Formation, FEED and many other publications. Many of these articles are available via links on this site. Mitch is also the co-author of three books on mobile computing published by Random House.To discuss what I/MS can do for your company, please contact us via email or at 253.328.1222. |
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The RatcliffeBlog: Ruminations on the day's news and opinion from Mitch Ratcliffe. Blog now!
March 6, 1995: "By linking the online service [MSN] to the operating system, Microsoft simultaneously links all Windows 95 applications to the new publishing platform. This sounds like a developer's dream come true. However, this close association also serves to block other emerging, competitive technologies, like Secure HTTP, the apparent leader in Internet commerce backed by Netscape Communications and others." April 10, 1995: "People will not be satisfied with a single channel of interactivity, nor with 500 channels that can be viewed one at a time. Consumers will happily pile channel on channel on their screens to gain a better perspective. They want to see outside the eye of the camera." December 5, 1994: "There will be no global electronic marketplace in virtual cash and credit transactions on the horizon until the export laws change. Consequently, card-based transactions will continue to be the mainstay for consumers and the future of financial cards is smart cards." May 10, 1995: "There's nothing singular about the single market, and therein lies the heart of the European digital media story. Rather than viewing the continent as a single, quantifiable shelf in the global marketplace, companies must identify and exploit niches that cut across cultures, classes and countries…. The fatal flaw in most European plans for American product releases is a mirror of the American misunderstanding of the single European market. There is no such thing as an "American market" - there are many markets in America that can be served with targeted editorial and creative products." May 10, 1995: "Progressive [now Real Networks] has not announced any intention of offering baseball programming, but it is an apt example of how the company will compete with its [server] customers…. Starwave [is producing] ESNet SportsZone, a Web sports news service and potential competitor in netcasting baseball games. Progressive would want to sell a RealAudio server to Starwave, but it would also want to build a market for its own baseball netcasts. PC vs. TV has been one of the great bouts in the early stages of the information era, but RealAudio and HotJava show this controversy is a lie of the mind. Any idiot can see that the two media are embroiled in a wildly incestuous relationship." February 10, 1995: "Microsoft is at a critical point in its life. Its size and strength have outstripped its old heart. Gone are the days when a few critical projects could drive the entire company, and with that bygone era have gone the young hackers who will give their all and even their personal lives for five years in exchange for a small fortune…. Product lines have longer lives, and engineers and marketers are not so easily interchangeable - today it takes more than half a Microsoft career to master the intricacies of a Word, an Encarta or an NT." "Assistant Attorney General Anne Bingaman complained in federal court last month that her department "got all the relief we could possibly get" in its 1994 consent decree…. She may have got some relief, but she got it two and a half years too late. Microsoft successfully linked its new operating system to its aging DOS not to ensure compatibility but to tie consumers to an upgrade path to Windows. Now Bingaman and Justice are declaring victory when they should be enjoining the extension of the Windows franchise into online services and electronic shopping…. she wasn't even looking at the relevant factors in the emerging information economy." January 2, 1995: "They made it work. A movie, The Crow, appeared on-screen when I asked to see it. For that Time Warner Inc., Silicon Graphics Inc., AT&T and Scientific-Atlanta are due a measure of awe. No one else has rolled out a video-on-demand network with a working 3D interface controlled by a handheld remote. No one else is going to learn harder lessons than these companies when they try to make this network work on a large scale, because it's not up to the challenge." October 11, 1995: "Digital Media predicts that, at current rates, it will take until sometime between 2010 and 2015 before 80 percent of American homes are receiving services akin to 1994 predictions (video-on-demand, customized information services and multimegabit data services delivered via fiber)." DM Index of Megamedia Milestones 1997: There will be five Baby Bells 1998: Copper networks will provide 350 Kbps bandwidth capabilities 2001: 50 percent of U.S. stations will offer digital terrestrial television broadcasting 2002: Wireless cable subscriptions will reach 10 million households October 5, 1994: "The companies that will succeed in the information age are those that successfully re-imagine themselves, purposefully, with an eye toward the technosystem and from the inside out. The tast is to get from the disconnected, disjointed analog organization of today to a digital one that provides a cohesive culture and corporate image at every point of contact among employees, customers and suppliers. It will require not only intelligent investments in information technology, but a serious reevaluation of human skills. Today, that means making your organization look and work more like information networks." November 7, 1994: "The convergence once thought the catalyst of change in Hollywood has proved a collision, and it looks as if Silicon Valley may be run over by the dream makers of Tinseltown…. So far, "repurposing" has proved itself an unworkable concept in interactive entertainment. Movie-based games have the look and feel of a health-care system only a policy wonk could love, filled with technicalities and details rather than a good story." September 13, 1994: "Adobe is a publishjng-oriented company that has the technology, tools, money and commitment to make Acrobat work as the format of choice for electronic publishers." September 13, 1994: "Sex is a useful tool when selling deodorant and beer. So why is everyone shocked that on the Internet people are talking about having sex with animals, poets and the cast of Star Trek? Violence insinuates itself into every relationship on television, whether it is carried out with a gun or a snide comment. Meanwhile, the general press has launched an attack on the Internet for its lack of civility?" June 5, 1995: "After reenacting Romeo and Juliet in 1994 - which culminated in the aborted Bell Atlantic-TCI merger - cable operators and the phone companies are presently acting out the climax to Macbeth. Virtually everyone dies in Shakespeare's play, and it looks like some giants will fall in this modern drama too." August 7, 1995: "[I]n practice, Internet advertising is expensive and offers little accountability; for some advertisers, even its effectiveness is in doubt…. Companies that pay high prices today for a Web presence probably won't be disappointed if they put that cost into their education and research budgets. Those who hope for near-term returns are in for a letdown…." December 18, 1995: "There are many good ideas in the Net appliance vision. Unfortunately, they are wrapped in a lot of assumptions that defy technical and business reality. "The idea of 'disposable software,' programs that are downloaded from the Net, executed and erased once their business is done, is an important one; the belief that these micro-applications will completely displace the stored applications used today is foolish…. For all you speculators in the stock market, it's time to buy hard disk companies. "[T]he Web world is on the verge of a major standards war…. Java applets that don't run in Netscape's Navigator 2.0 but not Sun's browser. Granted, these are very early versions of the technology. Yet the incompatibilities don't lead me to believe that Java applets are going to run in whatever machine they land on." March 12, 1996: "All the premium online services are at a turning point; they have to transform themselves and abandon their legacies as access providers. As the cost of Internet access bottoms out, AOL and others must migrate from being online connection companies to become content kingpins like Time Warner and Viacom. At AOL, this transition is already underway…." March 12, 1996: "How does a company make a profit carrying bits in an age when bandwidth is becoming a commodity? Answer: Sell yourself to a bigger phone company. Which, of course, is exactly what the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 will encourage in spades. The massive consolidation of phone, cable and Internet service companies will speed up this year. Remember, you read it hear in October [1995] that by the end of 1997 there will be five regional phone companies." June, 1996: "This next year will show whether the promise of Java will actually be delivered. While the sheer amount of money invested precludes a quiet fizzle into oblivion, high expectations can lead to disappointment, and once disappointed, consumers are very leery of technology, to wit the Newton experience. The question is whether the computer companies involved in delivering Java can resist their impulses to divide and conquer their markets rather than to unify and conquer them. If the past is any measure, Java is in for a rough ride that bound to end in tears." October, 1996: "By the year 2010, bankers will likely represent a variety of financial institutions rather than one. They'll use computer and network access to a wide range of instruments to assemble customized investment and money management tools for each one of their customers." October, 1996: "Ask yourself, would you contract with FedEx [BusinessLink service, which provided back office services in conjunction with shipping services] to handle payroll if it cost the same or more to deliver checks to your employees in traceable packages, or would you stick with ADP because they specialize in payroll services? You'll go with ADP. FedEx wraps the real benefit - that packages can be tracked earlier in the ordering process - in a lot of additional services and interface issues…. It would be much more effective for FedEx to address a different problem, that of how to put product into a traceable delivery system from anywhere on the planet, regardless of whether the sender has a long-term relationship with FedEx…. This is a distributed network feature which would be relatively easy to implement. FedEx need only develop an application programming interface which exposes the tracking system to outside applications through secure channels, then disseminate it for free on the Net." September 11, 1995: "The zeitgeist of the '60s has
a lot to do with the definition of cyberspace today. Try blindfolding
yourself and having a passage read to you from Tom Wolfe's The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test, followed by a passage from Stewart Brand's The
Media Lab or Kevin Kelly's Out of Control. The similarities are
remarkable, not to mention as damaging as LSD in the company coffee
pot would be for any major telecommunications firm…. The problem,
from my perspective as a refugee from the '70s and '80s, is that
the visionaries who tout cyberspace believe that they have invented
from whole cloth a new world of opportunity and commerce." Tell me if you would be interested. Tell me, would you subscribe?
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Sites on my mind: Far
Eastern Economic Review
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