There have been numerous reports today about the Chinese government blocking several high-profile U.S.-based websites including Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, Blogspot, YouTube, Bing.com, and Live.com, among others.

Most commentators that I’ve read seem to think that it’s probably an attempt to suppress information related to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Given the Chinese government’s level of paranoia on the subject, I think they’re probably right.

But most of these sites offer companion mobile applications which operate via mobile networks, rather than traditional internet service providers, and can presumably be installed on Chinese mobile handsets. Does the Great Firewall of China also block these apps? I honestly don’t know, but I would be very interested in hearing from anyone in China who uses them.

Given that traditional web censorship attempts are focused entirely on blocking DNS or specific HTTP-based requests via internet service providers and internet cafes, I wonder if mobile applications, [...]]]> http://blog.reflexionsdata.com/2009/06/02/routing-around-censorship-with-the-mobile-web/ We were recently hired by a large professional services firm to deploy a social platform that helped senior decision-makers share ideas about new revenue models amidst the changing economic environment. It’s something that more companies should be doing, and - I bet - would be doing if they understood what tools are out there to make it possible.

From a technical perspective, the solution wasn’t trivial but it wasn’t complex either, and we were able to pull from open source platforms to deliver a solution on an accelerated timeframe (in this case, we happened to use WordPress). Partly helped by the client’s streamlined process, customizing an off-the-shelf platform enabled us to deploy an attractive, polished, and functional solution over a long weekend that even a few years ago would have required weeks or months. By all accounts, it was an enormous success.

When a large company with a lot of stakeholders tries to deploy a conversational or social platform, the hurdles are usually organizational or political rather than technical. These types of tools are disruptive by design; their very deployment usually involves challenging assumptions about decision-making process and procedure that have literally been ingrained in an organizational memory for decades.

I think traditional hierarchical organizational structures are being increasingly challenged by social platforms; they’re simply not compatible with distributed, conversational media without awkward [...]]]> http://blog.reflexionsdata.com/2009/06/02/how-conversational-media-is-changing-the-enterprise/ This recession is different for a variety of reasons. It’s already the deepest recession since the 1980’s and it will probably be the deepest since the 1930’s. Charts like these are enough to make anyone feel like we’re collectively driving off an economic cliff.

But this time it’s different for other reasons too, and I think they’re the reasons why small and mid-size companies are far better equipped to deal with the challenges we’re facing than ever before.

The web as a platform for business applications has become ubiquitous. It has enabled companies to cut costs and increase productivity with tools like hosted business applications and collaboration tools. Much of the underlying “plumbing” of the web, such as open source server platforms and next-generation cloud platforms, are more accessible and offer an attractive option for managers looking to slash budgets.

Here are some of the strategies we’ve been advising our clients to consider:

David Carr wrote an article in yesterday’s New York Times about why newspapers find themselves in this very predicament, but with a twist — there’s no way out unless they cooperate. Cooperating in this scenario would probably mean something like a subscription-based paid content model for a network of websites from large daily newspapers. If you pay the fee, you get unfettered access to all participating websites. If you don’t, you get very little (except what others might be willing to repost, a possible copyright issue lurking in the shadows of what has historically been a free and open [...]]]> http://blog.reflexionsdata.com/2009/03/09/the-newspaper-industry-and-the-prisoners-dilemma/ Google is full of really smart people working on really hard problems. This is nothing new. Indeed the image of brilliant young engineers working on game-changing new products has come to define the company’s identity. What’s surprising to me is Google’s relative lack of significant innovation in recent years on its bread-and-butter product: search. Recent rumblings indicate that this may start to change.

The company is understandably hesitant to tinker with its core product, which some analysts estimate generates over 90% of its total revenue, especially given its most recent quarter which exceeded even the most optimistic expectations (in a recession, no less). But the sands are shifitng, and the sheer size of Google means it will be hard-pressed to compete with smaller, more nimble competitors who are starting to get attention, like Powerset and Twitter.

A recent article at Google Watch suggests that Google sees its future in the semantic web, a collection of standards and technologies that seek to deliver more meaning and structure to the web’s content but have largely languished due to a lack of widespread adoption. From the article, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is recently quoted as saying:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if Google understood the meaning of your phrase rather than just the words that are in [...]]]> http://blog.reflexionsdata.com/2009/01/26/googles-next-move-semantic-search/ Like the flying car, teleportation, and artificial intelligence, the concept of micropayments has been espoused for years by some futurists — and many crackpots — as not just a good idea but something that will do nothing less than transform society. Others have been less than thrilled with the idea. But what has happened over the last 10 years or so since real investments were made (and almost without exception, lost) on the concept is startling. Micropayments are fast becoming a part of the fabric of the commercial internet, although in very practical context and mostly due to two companies - Apple and Amazon - who are competing for the future of digital music sales.

The comic artist Scott McCloud made a name for himself during the early 2000’s with unique and visually compelling arguments in his own web comic form for why micropayments were the future of at least one type of digital content: web comics, drawing the ire of everyone from Clay Shirky to Tycho of Penny Arcade (many original links of what became one of the web’s legendary flame wars are dead but see Wired’s coverage of McCloud from 2001 here). Micropayments - a simple and innovative idea in principle if not in practice - has been one of the [...]]]> http://blog.reflexionsdata.com/2009/01/23/the-rebirth-of-micropayments/ (Image by nswlearnscope via Flickr)

Recently the ever-snarky tech/finance blog Silicon Alley Insider held a contest to propose how to fix what they called Digg.com’s “broken business model” (”broken” because Digg lost $2M on $6.4M in revenue, a staggering loss by any standard). The winner would have his or her proposal (and resume) delivered personally to Digg founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson. The winner was Keith Cowing, an MBA student at Cornell, who suggested among other things that Digg generate revenue by selling sponsored posts on the home page and data to marketers about its users. Probably something Digg should consider but it’s hardly a revolutionary thought and not exactly the kind of model that will transform underperforming web 2.0 properties into revenue generators.

By and large the “web 2.0″ crop of business models has been disappointing. There are no shortage of examples. YouTube, purchased by Google for $1.65 billion, has a revenue model that’s “so secret, even Google doesn’t know what it is.” While Google doesn’t publish financial information about YouTube, its impact on revenue has been [...]]]> http://blog.reflexionsdata.com/2009/01/12/in-search-of-a-next-generation-revenue-model/ Consider this: Twitter didn’t exist three years ago. YouTube didn’t exist four years ago. And Facebook, the second most-visited website in the world on Christmas Day, 2008 (after Google), was started as a half-serious side project by Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room less than five years ago. All of these websites were effectively created after the (now oft reviled) term “Web 2.0″ was coined by Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle in 2004.

By any standard, profitable or not, these are enormous web properties. And the timeline above demonstrates how rapidly the web landscape shifts and how fickle are its users.

Below I’ve identified several trends that I think will make an impact over the coming months and into 2010. This isn’t meant to be a “prediction” list per se, but an attempt at identifying how the current dynamics of social media will play out. Enjoy.