03 April 2002

Software for the people People use tools and software that work for them rather than for the company hierarchy or the IT dept. "People... cultivate personal networks of people inside and outside their companies and call on them when their expertise is needed for a project". KM fails because it is top-down: "designed to manage knowledge within enterprises rather than support individual networks". IM succeeds because it allows the user to set-up and get on with it easily. Related: Clay Shirky's Enter the Decentralized Zone: "Faced with an IT department that thinks not opening attachments is a reasonable option, end users have done the only sensible thing: ignore the IT department." 4:22:11 PM     comments

Time for change as Vodafone hits 100m subscribers Voda's future growth engine is improve ARPU (average revenue per user) rather than finding new subscribers because many of its markets are now saturated. Therefore it's betting on data services. So... Vizzavi (its joint venture with mediaco Vivendi), is being restructured towards premium services for sms, wap etc (but why no news since June 2001 on Vizzavi's voice platform??), and in the States its wireless unit Verizon (jv with Verizon) is following other mobile operators with SMS interoperability, but will there be enough money in sms?. Voda also needs to address branding, and possibly regulatory, challenges ahead... but it's the Microsoft/AOL of mobile, so don't bet on it disappearing. 2:14:03 PM     comments