Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Plane rides are a good way to catch up on email, and reading.  After my battery died on the way out here, I blitzed through Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail.  Highly recommended.

One of the themes of the book is the technologies that enable Long Tail markets.  There are technologies like the internet, and catalog shopping before it, which effectively eliminate distance, and enable markets of like minded individuals as opposed to mass markets.  And, there are technologies that enable highly personalized choices, such as Google, Amazon, and EBay — the services which enable better and relevant searches for the stuff you care about, based on algorithms which are highly efficient, and also highly personalizable.

These work easily in a clicks world, but not so easily in a bricks world.  As Anderson points out, it’s not so easy, on the fly, to rearrange the order of the tea (for example) on your grocery store shelf, and the supply is limited by whatever the store has at hand.  That’s not the case on the internet. 

Each of Google, Amazon, and EBay contain, in their own right, relevance engines.  Just as the iotum engine helps make highly personalized choices about how to handle calls, these use context and preferences to enable highly personalized choices for their customers.

Telephony is ripe for a Long Tail strategy.  My friend Chris Wood proposed such a thing in a guest post here some time back.  His thesis was that some conversations are more valuable than others, and Long Tail strategies would uncover that value.  That certainly was the view behind the Skype acquisition.  If the Long Tail is about niche markets, however, then the Long Tail of telephony isn’t necessarily only about uncovering commercially valuable conversations.  It’s about uncovering niches! 

In a world where basic communications services routinely cost nothing, or next to nothing, this makes sense.  Whether your business model is serving advertising to those folks, or charging for premium services, you have to find ways to reach these niches and provide services they want to buy. 

Niche markets are also the biggest blind spot that the incumbents have.  To most incumbent telco’s, and to most VONabees (Vonage clones), phone service is phone service is phone service.  You can have it any colour you like, so long as it’s black.  The marketing departments of these behemoths are only interested in new services which are broadly applicable to the entire spectrum of their customer base.  Aside from voice mail, which is 20 years old, what was the last broadly accepted service introduced to the telecom market?

The incumbents can’t, or won’t, think about niche markets.  They likely can’t execute a Long Tail strategy.

Others, however, are doing this already.  Just recently, for instance, I was introduced to an Israeli businessman who is building a global VoIP service for jewish people.  He’s brewing up a mix of affinity marketing, and targeted services, just for this small, but lucrative market.  Another example, Vivox, is building voice services targeted at gaming and dating.  And, there are many many more like these two out there.

So, if you’re entering the VoIP market, think like a niche marketer.  There’s no point in tackling the short head with a mass market service.  Try the Long Tail instead.

Today has been a day of contrasts.

We shopped at Ralph’s in Palm Desert today, and yesterday we shopped at Jensen’s.  Jensen’s bills itself as “finest foods”.  I don’t know what Ralph’s says about itself.  At Jensen’s we walked through the door, and were greeted by no less than three people wanting to help us.  At the fruit counter, Gabriel cut open sample after sample of different pieces of fruit for us to try.  His excuse “I haven’t tried that one yet… let’s try it together”.  And as we left, two cashiers competed to have us line up at their counters.  At Ralph’s, I got a surly look for paying for the last $1.65 of my bill with change.  Yes, Jensen’s costs more.  But boy, do they work hard for it.

You could make a killing with Jensen’s service and Ralph’s prices.

We’re staying at the Marriott Desert Springs I.  We own timeshares, which let us trade from our “home” resort to wherever we would like.  Our “home”  is the Royal Sands in Cancun Mexico.  The Marriott is no hell, but it ain’t the Royal Sands.  In Mexico daily maid service, garbage removal, and pool side wait staff are common.  Here, it’s all serve yourself. 

People would flock to an American resort with Mexican service levels.

Folks in Palm Desert are not technology people.  It’s nice that the resort has free WiFi, but most people look at me like I belong in a movie when I whip out my blackberry.  I’ve used it a couple of times today, and it usually gets dismissed as “Oh yea, use your toy… but I’ve got a book here.”

OK, I live in the echo chamber. 

Perhaps the biggest contrast of the day was defined by the biggest single factor in everyone’s life here — the heat.  We got up early and headed to the living desert zoo, which is a fabulous place.  Following that we cruised up the “Palms to Pines Scenic Byway”. It was 102 degrees. At 5000 feet above the floor of the San Jacinto Canyon, the weather is 30 degrees cooler, and there are trees and vegetation everywhere.  We stopped at Hemet Lake, and the town of Idyllwild as well as numerous scenic vista’s along the way. Upon our return, at 6 PM, the temperature was 106 in Palm Desert.  It’s now fallen to a comparably comfortable 93.

I am continuing to play with HDR photoraphy.  The photo above was taken at the Cahulla Tewanet lookout on the way up the mountain.  We’re in high Sonora Desert country.  This photo is a composite of 5 exposures, rendered as a TIFF, imported into Microsoft Picture It, and then retouched.  It shows greater dynamic range, and detail than the originals, but then, none of these photos was a great photo.

Perhaps that’s the biggest revelation for today.  To me, it seems that it’s only a matter of time before a camera vendor embeds multiple CCD/s, and HDR software into the body.  At that point, photography as we know it will completely change.

You can see my other pictures from today on:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alecsaunders/