The first set is "Missed opportunities" by big name companies in our digital age. That will be followed closely by "10 biggest tech support blunders".
Now in all honesty, even professional companies like the Geek Squad, Chipheads and even Caincorp.NET (Yes, that's us) can make these mistakes. So, I guess the war of the technical support battleground will wage on.
We hope that you find this to be both comical and informative, as it does remind us just how fragile we can be as a service based company if we don't listen to the market and our fanfare. So, without further delay . . .
Some of the biggest high-tech deals never happened. Some of the most promising products and services never came to be. Why? Because the people and companies involved didn't realize what they were letting slip through their fingers, or they simply couldn't foresee what would happen afterward.
Change just a few circumstances, and there might not be an Apple or a Microsoft today. Yahoo might be the king of the search hill, with Google lagging behind. You might be reading this on a Xerox-built computer via a CompuServe account while listening to your favorite tunes on a RealPod.
People say hindsight is 20-20. If so, our vision is acute. Here are our picks for the biggest missed opportunities in the history of technology.
1. Yahoo Loses Facebook
In 2006, Facebook was a two-year-old social network that most people thought of as a digital playground for Ivy League brats. In the world of social networks, MySpace's 100 million members totally swamped Facebook's 8 million. So when Yahoo offered to buy Mark Zuckerberg's baby for a cool $1 billion--nearly twice what Rupert Murdoch had spent for MySpace in 2005--people said, "Take the money and run, Mark." In fact, the then-23-year-old and Yahoo shook hands on a deal in June 2006.Then Yahoo posted some bad financials, and its stock dropped 22 percent overnight. Yahoo's CEO at the time, Terry Semel, reacted by cutting the purchase offer to $800 million. Zuckerberg balked. Two months later Semel re-upped the offer to $1 billion, but by then it was too late.
Today, Facebook boasts some 250 million registered users and is worth roughly $5 to $10 billion, depending on who's counting. Three years and two CEOs later, Yahoo is still struggling to survive.
2. Real Networks Punts on the iPod
People think Steve Jobs invented the iPod. He didn't, of course. Jobs merely said yes to engineer Tony Fadell after the folks at Real Networks rejected Fadell's idea for a new kind of music player in the fall of 2000. (Fadell's former employer Philips also turned him down.)By then MP3 players had been around for years, but Fadell's concept was slightly different: smaller, sleeker, and focused on a content-delivery system that would give music lovers an easy way to fill up their "pods." (Jobs is famous for driving the design of the iPod.)
Today that content-delivery system is known as iTunes, and Apple controls some 80 percent of the digital music market. Fadell worked at, and eventually ran, Apple's iPod division until November 2008. Real Networks is still a player in the streaming-media world, but its revenues are a fraction of what Apple makes from iTunes alone. (Photo: Courtesy of Apple)
3. Sony and Toshiba Agree to Disagree Over HD
Few format wars have been as costly to their participants as the fight over a new high-definition disc standard. In one corner stood Blu-ray, championed by Sony. In the other corner was HD DVD, led largely by Toshiba.From 2002 onward the two sides wrangled, each signing up allies to support its own competing, incompatible format. In 2008 Sony slipped the knife into Toshiba by paying one of its biggest backers, Warner Brothers Studios, a reported $400 million to drop HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.
Interestingly the same parties had battled in the mid-1990s over a new high-res format for movies. Back then they settled their differences, combining the best of both specs into something called Digital Versatile Disc, better known as DVD.
The missed opportunity to come out with a single HD format sacrificed years' worth of sales for every company involved. Had the two sides joined forces in 2002, high-def discs would be the dominant delivery medium for movies and shows now. Instead, today DVDs still outsell Blu-ray titles by ten to one, and the future belongs to streaming media and video on demand.
4. Digital Research: The Other Microsoft
This one is a classic. In 1980, when IBM was looking for somebody to build a disc operating software for its brand-new IBM PC, Microsoft was not its first choice. In fact, none other than Bill Gates suggested that Big Blue approach Gary Kildall of Digital Research, author of the CP/M operating system.The legend is that Kildall blew IBM off to go fly his plane. The real story is that Kildall was flying to deliver a product to another customer, leaving his wife to negotiate with IBM. Dorothy Kildall didn't like parts of the deal IBM was proposing and sent the executives packing.
Big Blue went back to Gates, who with his partner Paul Allen whipped out MS-DOS, based on Tim Paterson's QDOS (the Quick and Dirty Operating System), which was itself based on CP/M. IBM ended up offering both Microsoft's DOS (for $60) and a version of CP/M ($240) to buyers of the original IBM PC. The cheaper product won.
Before DOS, Microsoft's biggest products were versions of the BASIC programming tool. After DOS, well...you know the rest. Would Microsoft have grown into the monolith it is today without the IBM contract? We'll never know.
5. Xerox Goes in an Alto Direction
Here's another classic tale. More than a decade before the Macintosh and Windows PCs, before even the MITS Altair, there was the Alto, the world's first computer with a window-based graphical user interface. Invented at Xerox PARC, the Alto had a mouse, ethernet networking, and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text processor.But in 1973 the personal-computer market didn't exist, so Xerox didn't really know what to do with the Alto. The company manufactured a few thousand units and distributed them to universities. As legend has it, in 1979 Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, saw the Alto, and incorporated many of the Alto's features into Apple's Lisa and Mac computers. Shortly thereafter Xerox finally realized its mistake and began marketing the Xerox Star, a graphical workstation based on technology developed for the Alto. But it was too little, too late.
6. Recording Industry Plays the Same Old Tune
Perhaps no other industry has missed more tech opportunities than the music business.In 1999, Shawn Fanning's Napster made it incredibly easy for people to share music online. The record companies reacted by suing Napster for contributing to copyright infringement. Then-Napster CEO Hank Barry called for the music industry to adopt a radio-style licensing agreement that paid royalties to artists for music distributed via the Net. His calls fell on deaf ears.
Napster fans quickly moved on to other peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as Gnutella and Grokster, and music "pirates" became the RIAA's public enemy number one.
In 2000 MP3.com launched a service that allowed members to upload songs from their own private CD collection and stream them to any PC. The recording industry sued MP3.com for copyright infringement and eventually won. MP3.com was sold and changed business models.
Add to all that the RIAA's suits against Grokster, Morpheus, Kazaa, and some 30,000-odd music "pirates." Talk about your broken records.
Today, of course, music-subscription businesses and streaming services such as Pandora dominate digital music. Had the record companies partnered with Napster, MP3.com, or any of the other file sharing networks instead of suing them, they might control digital music sales today--without nearly as many problems with piracy.
7. Compuserve Blows Its Chance to Dominate the Net
Look at today's interactive, social-media-obsessed, user-content-driven Web, and what do you see? A spiffier version of CompuServe circa 1994. But instead of dominating the online world, CompuServe got its butt kicked by AOL and that company's 50 billion "free" CDs.In the early 1990s the Compuserve Information Service had "an unbelievable set of advantages that most companies would kill for: a committed customer base, incredible data about those customers' usage patterns, a difficult-to-replicate storehouse of knowledge, and little competition," says Kip Gregory, a management consultant and author of Winning Clients in a Wired World. "What it lacked was probably ... the will to invest in converting those advantages into a sustainable lead."
Then AOL came along, offering flat-rate "unlimited" pricing (versus CompuServe's hourly charges), a simpler interface, and a massive, carpet-bombing CD marketing campaign. Organizations that had an early presence on CompuServe forums moved over to the Web, which CompuServe's forums were slow to support. In 1997 AOL acquired CompuServe, and "CompuServe classic" was finally laid to rest last June.
CompuServe's failure wasn't due to a single missed opportunity so much as a collection of them, says Gregory. "I really believe [CompuServe is] an important example that reinforces a critical lesson--never stand on your heels in business."
8. Newspapers Fail to Read the Writing on the Wall--Craigslist
Newspapers are dying, and by nearly all accounts (certainly, all newspaper accounts), Craigslist's fingerprints can be found all over the crime scene. People have blamed the mostly free online ad service for cutting the legs out from under classified advertising, one of the newspaper industry's cash cows.As recently as 2005, classified ads brought more than $17.3 billion into U.S. newspapers' coffers. Since then, the use of classified ad sites like Craigslist (as well as Amazon, eBay, and Google) has more than doubled, according to the Pew Research Center, while classified ad revenues have been halved.
If a consortium of newspapers had bought out Craigslist back in 2005, when classified ad revenues were flying high, things could be quite different today. But first they would have had to persuade Craigslist creator Craig Newmark to sell.
In a January 2008 interview with InfoWorld, Newmark said that his company's role in the collapse of the newspaper industry has been greatly exaggerated--mostly by newspapers. "I figure the biggest problems newspapers have these days have to do with fact-checking," he remarked.
9. The Google Before Google
In the mid-1990s the hottest search engine technology wasn't the work of Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, or Hot Wired; it was the Open Text Web Index. Much like Google today, Open Text was lauded for its speed, accuracy, and comprehensiveness; by 1995 Open Text Corp. claimed that it had indexed every word on the roughly 5 million documents that constituted the Web at that time. That year, Yahoo incorporated Open Text's search technology into its directory.But two years after partnering with Yahoo, Open Text abandoned search and moved into enterprise content management. A year later Google made its debut. The missed opportunity? Not realizing how big search was going to be.
"If anything made Open Text special, it was that they came closer to having Google-like technology than anyone else in their time," says Steve Parker, a communications consultant who helped publicize Yahoo's launch of Open Text's search technology. "With a three-year lead on Google, you have to consider whether Google would have been forced to burn cash at a much faster pace, and if they might have run out of time to overtake the market leader. If things had gone differently, that might have been good enough to get [Open Text] to king of the hill."
10. Microsoft Saves a Rotting Apple
Ten years ago Apple was in serious trouble. Mac sales were being eroded by cheaper clones from Power Computing and Radius. The company was running low on cash, its stock was trading for around $5 a share, and it was hunting for a new CEO to replace Gil Amelio.Then Apple received a much-needed infusion of cash--$150 million--from a seemingly unlikely source: Microsoft, which also promised to continue developing its Mac Office suite. The deal was negotiated by then-Apple adviser Steve Jobs, whom the Macworld Expo faithful booed at the deal's announcement. Shortly afterward, Jobs took over as Apple's "interim" CEO. We all know what happened after that.
If Microsoft hadn't missed its opportunity to let Apple wither? We'd be struggling to play WinTunes on our WinPhones. The online music and video markets would be stagnant--or worse, controlled by Hollywood. And we'd be longing desperately for better alternatives to Windows.
Oops! Top 10 Tech Mistakes to Avoid
Call it the "oh-no second." You know—the interval between clicking the Send button on a private e-mail and realizing you just cc'd the entire universe.
But it's not just e-mail. Thanks to the ease, speed, and reach of technology, we now have the potential to be bigger doofuses in front of more people than at any other time in history.For example, nothing says "I am a professional" more than intimate messages from loved ones popping up on screen during a presentation to the board. Then there are the pricey pocket-size gadgets that always seem to wind up in the swimming pool, the washing machine, or worse. Don't forget about social networks that allow you to get up close and personal with the mucous membranes of complete strangers. And if you're wearing a wireless microphone while you read this, turn it off now. You'll thank us later!
Tech Embarrassment 1: Bad Husband, No Nookie
Making snide sexual comments about someone in an e-mail and then accidentally sending it to them is embarrassing. Making snide sexual comments about your wife's colleagues--and accidentally copying her boss on the message—is a recipe for unemployment...if not celibacy.Mike, a book author in New York, learned that the hard way.
"I was writing about a Christmas party thrown by my wife's employer," he says. "She's a professor of nursing, and they had an annual 'Nurses Ball' for faculty and student nurses. I sent one of my frequent 'what we're doing now' e-mails to several friends, and I accidentally included the dean of the nursing school where my wife taught. I jokingly referred to the party as the annual 'balling of the nurses.'"
In his defense, Mike says he was taking medication at the time. As for the dean: "I don't believe she was at all happy with me," he writes, "which may be why my wife no longer teaches there.'"
How to avoid having this happen to you: Before you send your pharmaceutically enhanced e-mail, try on a pair of Google Mail Goggles, which make you solve simple math problems before sending late-night Gmail missives.
Tech Embarrassment 2: Is That a Laser Pointer, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
You can probably think of many things that you don't want to see displayed on a wall of a classroom, but there's one thing in particular that you don't want to see ten times larger than life.Karen, a technology instructor in Texas, was showing a roomful of teachers how easy it was to get onto the Apple Learning Interchange. She writes:
"My computer desktop was being projected up on a 5-by-5-foot screen. I started typing the Apple Web address in my browser. Unfortunately, I mistyped one little letter—and suddenly there appeared lots and lots of mad, male porn on the screen. The faster I closed the boxes, the faster new ones appeared. My co-presenter was laughing too hard to help me."
After a few seconds (which she says seemed like a few years), Karen managed to turn off the projector. Fortunately, the audience was amused. Maybe they learned a few things.
How to avoid having this happen to you: Bookmark the URLs you need before you get up in front of the crowd. And bone up on your Ron Jeremy jokes, just in case.
Tech Embarrassment 3: The Audience Is Listening
Christopher Buttner, founder of PRThatRocks in Northern California, had just finished a 2-hour speaking engagement in front of a large university crowd when he dashed off to the loo for a long-awaited respite. With his wireless microphone still on."I had to go so badly that when I made it to the urinal, I let out an incredibly loud moan of pleasure, augmented by the sound of streaming water-on-water," he writes. "The wireless lavalier mic I was wearing was still broadcasting live through the PA system in the lecture hall. My lecture, and subsequent moment of relief, was also being recorded."
When he returned to the hall, Buttner received a standing ovation. And, apparently, immortality. "I think my moaning sound sample, and various water-on-water audio clips, are used in a sound library somewhere at a major digital recording institute in Northern California," he says.
How to avoid having this happen to you: If you can't remember to unclip the mic, be sure to strap on a Motorman's Friend.
Tech Embarrassment 4: Your Cell Phone Is Not a Flotation Device
We don't know what it is about smart phones, but they seem magnetically attracted to bodies of water--particularly in the bathroom.Patti Wood, a motivational speaker in Georgia brave enough to use her full name, writes:
"I was in a hotel room, talking to my sister on the cell phone while I put on makeup to give a speech. I got mascara in my eye, so I reached over the toilet to get some tissue. Sure enough, I blinked, and the cell phone dropped into the toilet. I reached in and grabbed it soaking wet, and managed to dry it off. It is still my cell phone. My sister still teases me about talking on the phone near the toilet."
Not to be outdone, Jill, a chef (and CrackBerry addict) in Chicago, says she was on a flight home and really had to use the facilities. So, she...
"...went to the lav and sat down, and heard a disheartening 'thunk.' It was my BlackBerry hitting the airplane toilet—never to return to my hands. In my confusion and rushing to make the flight, I had slipped it into my back pocket before getting on the plane, and I forgot to take it out."
Fortunately, she had both insurance and current backups of all her data. Less than a day later, she was up and cracking again.
How to avoid having this happen to you: When you really gotta go, leave the phone behind. And be sure to back up your mobile data daily, just in case.
Tech Embarrassment 5: When You Animate E-Mail, the Terrorists Win
Generally it's a bad idea to send e-mail with cute little animations embedded. But if you must send e-mail with cute little animations, don't do it the day after a national tragedy.Neal, an executive with an Internet consulting firm in Georgia, shares a story about working for a small midwestern Web agency in 2001 that had just opened an office in New York:
"We were planning to have an open house in early October. The e-mail invitation was scheduled to go out on September 12 (yes, one day after 9/11). That morning I told the owner's secretary not to send the invitation because nobody was in the mood for a party in New York. I was overruled, and the secretary pressed the Send button. The invitation embedded a small animation: An airplane leaving Milwaukee and flying to New York City—directly toward the Twin Towers."
Within a minute the phones started ringing. Angry e-mail poured in. Neal says the company disabled the animation, but it was too late. The party never happened, and the New York office closed shortly thereafter.
How to avoid having this happen to you: Did we mention that it's a bad idea to send e-mail with animations inside?
Tech Embarrassment 6: Change Your Wiki Ways
Getting caught "sprucing up" your own Wikipedia entry is embarrassing. Getting caught doing it for your girlfriend—and then breaking up with her via Wikipedia--can only mean one thing: You're Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, founder of the online encyclopedia.In February 2008, Wales publicly dumped former Fox News commentator Rachel Marsden after a brief fling, following accusations that he had changed Marsden's Wikipedia entry to be friendlier to her. She apparently found out by reading a statement he'd posted to his personal Wikipedia page (now since moved to his own blog).
Marsden responded via an e-mail that magically found its way to Valleywag:
"You are the sleazebag I always suspected you were, and [I] should have listened more carefully to my gut instincts—and to my friends. No, in fact, you are much, much worse than I ever expected. You are an absolute creep, and it was a colossal mistake on my part to have gotten involved with you....There is nothing good left to say whatsoever. Goodbye Jimmy, and good riddance."
After sending the e-mail, Marsden sold clothes that Wales had left at her apartment on eBay.
For the record, Wales denies giving Marsden special treatment. We suspect she doesn't think it was all that special either.
How to avoid having this happen to you: 1. Don't date Jimmy Wales. 2. Don't date Rachel Marsden. 3. And if you must date either of these people, don't leave dirty laundry behind.
Tech Embarrassment 7: Good Morning...Now Please Clean Out Your Desk
Firing people via e-mail is truly tacky. Writing a sample fired-by-e-mail message for the bosses to review—and then sending it to the entire company instead—is something worthy of The Office.But on September 3, employees at a struggling New York ad agency came to work and found the following message in their inboxes:
"I have some difficult news which that affects you and your position with the company. Based on the continued reduction in our client's' spend ...we no longer have a role for you. ...Your last day with the company will be _____________. If you would like to go home today and come back tomorrow to clean out your desk or office, you are free to do so."
According to Roger Matus, author of the Death By Email blog and CEO of InBoxer, that message was to be sent to 10 percent of the employees at New York's Carat agency after approval by senior management. Instead, everybody got it—along with detailed charts, PowerPoint slides, and strategy memos for the as-yet-unannounced companywide reorg.
Did we mention that the person who sent it was the company's "Chief People Officer"? We're guessing there's at least one person at Carat who was asked to clean out her desk.
How to avoid having this happen to you: Get an enterprisewide e-mail management system from a company like InBoxer or Permessa. And, really, drop the cute job titles—it isn't 1998 anymore.
Tech Embarrassment 8: Don't Show, Don't Tell
When your computer is hooked up to the big projector in the room, you want to give off a professional impression. That doesn't include intimate chat with your lover boy.Laura, a tattoo artist in Pennsylvania, was in a computer training class when she decided to check her e-mail.
"Halfway through [my] reading a scandalous e-mail from a then-boyfriend, someone said, 'Um...you probably want to get off of that,'" she writes. "I forgot that the computer I was using was the 'sample' screen broadcast in front of the whole audience."
Jennifer, a PR associate in California, says she was giving a presentation during a meeting when her Outlook e-mail kept appearing on screen.
"At the time, I was dating this guy that kept calling me Babydoll," she says. "He sent me an e-mail saying, 'Hi Babydoll, last night was great ;-)'"
How to avoid having this happen to you: Unless you absolutely need to go online during your dog and pony show, disconnect from the Net first, Babydoll.
Tech Embarrassment 9: Photo No-No's
The embarrassing online photo is such a staple of the Internet age that we dedicated an entire story to it earlier this fall. Even then we missed a few good ones from people who really should know better. If these guys aren't embarrassed, they should be.Like Sergey Brin in drag, for example. As a Stanford undergrad, the Google cofounder apparently liked to explore his feminine side.
Not to be outdone, blogger Chris Pirillo is just ten fingers away from an obscenity charge in this candid outdoor shot taken somewhere in Alaska. We understand he has unusually large hands. Really.
Meanwhile, tech blogger Robert Scoble makes Pirillo look like Brad Pitt with this PR photo for his Naked Conversations book, substituting a laptop for a big pair of mitts. We think Bob needs a bigger computer—much, much bigger.
(Thanks to former Valleywagger Nick Douglas for digging these up in the first place.)
How to avoid having this happen to you: 1. Learn how to use Photoshop. 2. For pics that escaped in your carefree college days before you sobered up and got a real job, services such as Reputation Defender will search for and destroy them for a fee.
Tech Embarrassment 10: Twitterrhea
Twitter and other microblogs have inspired folks to share everything. And we mean everything. If you can say it in 140 characters or less, it's guaranteed somebody has said it on Twitter.
Here are tweets from five different Twitterati found via search.twitter.com. These people should be embarrassed, but probably aren't.
- One of us is puking, one has diarrhea, one has tension headaches and one has a sore throat and congestion. Playdate, anyone?
- Parasites, Parasites, Parasites. Where else can you find such words as "diarrhea," "megacolon," and "frothy vaginal discharge" together?
- Awesome...the lady behind me just coughed phlegm all over my jacket. Gross.
- Forgot I ate lots of fresh beets the last 2 days, almost thought I had hemorrhoids. Happy Thanksgiving!
- Check out these beautiful bowels
People, people, people. Please. Does the phrase "too much information" mean anything to you?
How to avoid having this happen to you: Besides deleting all your gross friends, using tools such as Twits Like Me or Twubble can help you find Twitter users who share your interests in (we hope) less earthy matters.
There you have it folks! It is quite the eyeful, nonetheless it is good info to consider before you just jump in to anything! And remember, almighty technology is only as good as those who use it!
Caincorp.NET
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