BlackBerry 9650

I very rarely call the “time of death” of a company.  It’s really not my place.  But, after my customer service experience with RIM (Research In Motion, the makers of BlackBerry smart devices) the other day, I think it’s safe to say that BlackBerry has passed on! RIM is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you weren’t holding it in your hand it’d be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are now history! It’s off the twig! It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! This is an ex-Parrot!  Err, um … smartphone.

All kidding aside, I had a 53 minute call with RIM’s customer service/tech support departments that was so remarkably annoying, that I am sure there is no hope for the company or its products.

The BlackBerry 9650 is about the best BlackBerry RIM has ever created.  It has a physical keyboard and it’s powerful enough to get real work done.  It’s 3G, has decent still and video capabilities and, although not “modern” by Android or iPhone standards, it was big step up for BlackBerry enthusiasts.

That said, there are many things that BlackBerrys don’t do in 2012 that I consider fatal.  First and foremost is the lack of compatibility with Google Apps for Business.  Now, it is possible that BlackBerrys are compatible with Google Apps for Business, but I will never know.  After 30 minutes on the phone with Verizon and 53 minutes on the phone with RIM, (the call was dropped at 53 minutes and I could not get back to the person and she never got back to me), the only thing I am sure of is that I’m done with RIM forever.

This particular BlackBerry belonged to my head of client services.  She was having trouble getting it to see Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts in our corporate Google Apps for Business account.  I was pretty stunned at this development, so I said I’d do it (figuring it would take me 2 minutes).  To my surprise, three hours later, I’m writing this article and she has a new iPhone.

The very sad news is, I know exactly what is wrong and exactly how to solve the problem.  It’s not a Verizon issue; it is squarely a RIM problem.  Any skilled tech, who knows what an MX record is, could solve this problem in 10 seconds.  But … and I do mean, but … there is no way to reach this person inside of RIM.  There is only the voicemail tree, customer service operators reading from scripts, supervisors who will waive the $49 one-time tech service fee, but will not come to the phone. Then there are junior tech support people who don’t know what an MX record is, endless three-to-five minute periods on hold (with highly distorted rock and disco music blasting) and a mysteriously terminated call at 53 minutes – no resolution – just silence.

Alas, RIM … we hardly knew ya.  It’s so sad to see a once great product die such a slow, agonizing death.  But it’s truly over.  There is nothing, short of reinventing BlackBerrys, that can save RIM.  From the BlackBerry Playbook debacle (someone inside the company actually thought that it was a salable product), to the needless complexity, to the lack of features — there’s nothing good I can say – even the benefits of BlackBerry ownership have ceased to be.

I loved every BlackBerry I ever owned, right up to the time each and everyone one of them became obsolete.  With the Samsung Galaxy S III about to break all Android sales records and a new iPhone around the corner – I’m sorry to inform you that, we did all we could … but RIM’s self-inflicted injuries were too severe.  Despite all our efforts … well, you know how this ends.

Facebook Ticker

Facebook is going public today.  The share price is set at $38, which should put approximately $18.4 Billion dollars into Facebook’s treasury, and value the company somewhere in the $104 Billion neighborhood.  No mater who you are, that’s big money.

People have been asking me for guidance on this IPO for months.  Is Facebook worth it?  Can it make any money?  Should I buy it?  What’s the right price?  Who do you know at Facebook that can get me an allocation … and on and on and on.

With all the smoke and mirrors surrounding, what is sure to be, one of the biggest IPOs in history, it’s hard to separate the hype from reality.  Which really isn’t a problem because if you’re playing in today’s Grand Casino Game of Facebook, hype and reality are one and the same.

Facebook’s management and its bankers are about to translate the perceived value of Facebook into an extreme amount of wealth for themselves.  They are going to get richer by turning shares of Facebook into cash.  Your cash.  It is very likely to be the biggest payday of most of their careers.

Now that you own your shares of Facebook, how will Facebook translate the value of its service into wealth for you?  What fundamental business practices will be accretive to shareholder value and cause the share price to follow the path of Google or Apple?

Over time, will Facebook sell enough advertising to justify its P/E radio?  (I don’t want to make this a primer in the stock market, you can do your research on E*Trade for that.)  There is nothing about Facebook’s business model or earning potential that justifies what will probably happen to the share price today – but today has nothing to do with business fundamentals … just the American dream.

There are dozens of great articles about Facebook’s advertising model, it’s lack of a mobile strategy and even the fact that the people who really own Facebook have chosen this time in its history to sell.  If you’re interested in that kind of analysis, just Google it.

I’m fascinated by how easy it is to create value online and how difficult it is to translate that value into wealth.  Facebook’s management is going to do a great job translating Facebook’s value into their wealth, but I just don’t know how they are going to translate its value into anyone else’s.  Especially the new shareholders.

If you’re really thinking about purchasing shares of Facebook in the next 24 hours, please, please, please consult a trusted financial services professional beforehand.  This is not a game for casual players – not today.

One more thing … I have been inundated with questions about GM’s little, “we’re not going to advertise on Facebook” bomb that was dropped a few days ago.  As you know, the blogosphere, the tweetosphere and even Facebookistan itself were alight very smart and connected people trying to explain, rationalize and exploit this bit of news.

The real story, as told to me, cannot be published. But here are some things to think about: 1) Who at GM initially allocated the funds and who pulled them?  2) This week all television advertisers will allocate the vast majority of their advertising budgets in a process known as the “upfronts.” Silicon Valley and Investment Bankers don’t know what the upfronts are, so the timing of the announcement though unfortunate, was coincidental. 3) What is the correct way to measure and evaluate Facebook advertising? 4) Sometimes when people get caught in a tough spot, the best strategy is an unexpected attack. 5) By the time you read this Facebook will be worth $104+ Billion, GM will be worth approximately $33 Billion.  Is America a great country or what?

Seriously, if you hit the market today with your hard-earned cash, please get professional help and think before you buy.  This may be the greatest feeding frenzy since Bruce (the mechanical shark) ate Robert Shaw (Capt. Quint)ph at the end of Jaws – but you still have to know you’re in the water with sharks.

Cybersecurity

“In the past year, one in seven large organisations detected hackers within their systems.” This is the highest level recorded, said the recently released PwC 2012 Information Security Breaches Survey.  It was completed in conjunction with Infosecurity Europe and supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The survey goes on to say; “This year’s results show that security breaches remain at historically high levels, costing UK plc billions of pounds every year.”  The additional summary stats are compelling as well:

• The average large organisation faces a significant outsider attack every week – small businesses one a month.
• 20% of organisations spend less than 1% of their IT budget on information security.
• Customer impersonation up threefold since 2008 – financial services affected most

This survey is Euro-centric, but the stats are similar all over the free world.  Between good old-fashioned hackers, Anonymous and other self-described “hacktivist” groups, the world is becoming a much more dangerous place.

When bad guys attack businesses the results can span a range from inconvenient to very expensive to completely disruptive, but what will happen when the country gets attacked?  What will Cyberwar 1.0 look like?

China is home to some of the most dangerous hackers in the world.  Although the Chinese government denies any formal ties to any hacker groups, most experts agree that the level of sophistication demonstrated by Chinese hackers betrays that denial.  It would surprise no one to learn that these groups are funded and trained by a government that can conscript its best and brightest citizens.

Here in the USA, our cyber-defense is lumpy.  Our best, most digital businesses are well protected by the smartest cyber-defenders money can buy.  If you’re wondering how that’s possible, Google brags that is employs more PhD’s than any other organization on earth.  America’s high-tech community is second to none.

Sadly, this extraordinary private cyber-army does not work for, nor is it conscripted to protect our country or its population – it is employed by corporations to protect corporate assets.

Where does our “federal” cyber-army come from? Obviously, municipal agencies and the military do not have the kind of HR budgets, nor stock incentive plans that high-tech companies are famous for.

Let’s review.  I’ve got Chinese hackers, who are government-sponsored, highly paid (in relative terms) and fully incentivized vs. American civil servants, whose digital skill sets perfectly positioned them for government work.

We’re doomed.  What do I mean by doomed?  You know, Armageddon, end-of-days, extinction level event doomed.

Sometime in the very near future, some hacker group (probably from China) is going to hit us hard.  Maybe 20 million Americans will wake up one day and find their checkbook balances at zero.  Maybe the power grid in the Northeastern part of the country will go dark.  Perhaps we will find ourselves with our credit reports altered, or our credit card bills in disarray.

If the hackers are really smart, they may wait until too many people have too much sensitive data in cloud storage facilities, and take them out.  If you can think of it, so can a hacker and, I can assure you the outcome will not be good.

Right about now, you’re probably wondering why I have chosen to write an alarmist, fear mongering, sensationalist article about cyber-warfare.  The answer is simple: Very few people are paying attention to this subject.  Cyber-security is a lot like air, you don’t miss it until it’s gone.

What can you do?  First and foremost, get into the subject.  Do what you can to understand what your best practices business continuity plan should look like.  Start with the question, “What will happen if …” and keep the dialog going.  Involve your C-suite, your tech guys and your customers.

Start a dialog with your colleagues.  How will your company function under the stress of digital disruption?  Where is the breaking point?  When do you switch over to backup systems?  Who is in charge of the decisions?

In the aftermath of most terrorist attacks someone from some agency goes on CNN and tells everyone how they knew it was coming and how everyone should have prepared for it.  Why wait?  You can prepare now and, trust me, the economics of your organization will benefit from the planning.

What will the outcome of Cyberwar 1.0 be?  If we’re ready, the vast majority of us will never know it happened.

FiOS

I have waited about 18 months for FiOS to finish wiring my apartment building in midtown Manhattan.  It was worth it.  After a short, truly painless, 7-hour conversion, I can say goodbye Time Warner Cable, so long old-fashioned Verizon landlines, adiós cable modem, hasta la vista backup DSL modem – hello 150 Mbps down, 62 Mbps up – awesome!

I have heard all kinds of horror stories about Verizon FiOS installations – it was not my experience.  I was given a window when the installers would show up.  They showed up inside the window.  They knew exactly what they were doing and what needed to be done.  They were extremely respectful of my existing systems and worked as quickly as practical.  In the end, they just killed the Time Warner Cable and old Verizon infrastructure and replaced it with new, extraordinary FiOS infrastructure.

The first thing I noticed was that nothing, and I do mean nothing, prepares you for browsing the web at 152/62 (Verizon’s published specification is 150 Mpbs down and 35 Mbps up).  It is so fast, well … if have an older computer or you have a slow graphics card, you will feel like you hit the limits of your hardware before you hit the limits of the bandwidth.  The speed is truly mindboggling.  You may wonder if you need that much speed.  Time is money – you do!

The next thing I noticed was the FiOS user interface.  I’ve seen it many, many times before, but I’ve never spent the night with it.  It makes the Time Warner Cable user interface feel very old and irrelevant.  On the other hand the FiOS user interface is feature-laden and completely intuitive.

The multi-room DVR rocks!  You can add your own 2TB drive to expand its storage capability (although most people won’t need to), the functionality is flawless and the picture quality also makes my old Time Warner Cable installation look like I was watching TV with the aid of stone axes and bearskins.  The downsides of multi-room DVR include no pause function, no record indicator and no clocks on the remote set-top boxes.  I didn’t think the “no clock” thing would matter, but there are certain members of my household who rely on that function.

If you really want to have some fun, start playing with the phone system that comes with the FiOS triple play.  The web interface, the keypad interface, it doesn’t matter, the phone is so over-featured you will want to read the manual.  And, most importantly, the sound quality is as good or better than the twisted-copper pair telephone service it replaced.

As for the content packages available on FiOS, pretty much everything you’d ever want to watch (or could watch from other cable/satellite providers) is available.  Plus, the interface has widgets that truly expand your video viewing, information gathering and communication capabilities.

All in, day one of my FiOS Chronicles has been awesome.  Having just programmed my FiOS multi-room DVR from my iPhone, I can tell you … FiOS is fun and convenient.

I’m sure that I will find several things to complain about for my next installment.  I like to complain, and there’s no way that I will be this happy with FiOS next week.  That said, maybe I will.  Oh … I forgot to tell you, the FiOS triple play is costing me about 50% of what I was paying for my combo Time Warner Cable/Verizon Phone package.  Better service, more features and half the price – seriously — what’s not to like?

Emma

Today was one of the happiest days of my life.  My 3 ½ year old granddaughter is one-year cancer-free!

On March 27th, 2011, we learned the unthinkable: my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter was diagnosed with Pancreatoblastoma, an extremely rare form of pediatric cancer.  She was treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Emma is cancer free because of the extraordinary team of Doctors, Nurses and Specialists at MSKCC who work tirelessly to provide the best care possible to all of their pediatric patients.

Please support us, by making a donation or joining us as we walk for Kids with Cancer on Saturday, May 12, 2012 at 1:30pm in Central Park at Mineral Springs. 100% of the funds received will support Memorial Sloan Kettering Pediatric Cancer Research.

When Emma was diagnosed, she knew something was wrong, but could not fully understand the problem. We told her that she had “yuckies” in her tummy and that the doctors were going to make them go “bye bye.” Since then, “Bye Bye Yuckies!” has been both our cheer and our prayer.

We are walking so that more families like ours have a chance to say, “Bye Bye Yuckies!”

Thanks for your support.

For Offline Donations:
If you would like to make a credit card donation over the phone, please call Stephanie Rigione of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at 646.227.2120. Please make sure to mention Team Bye Bye Yuckies!

You can also give by check.  Make your donation payable to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, write Team Bye Bye Yuckies! on it, and send it to the address below:

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Attention: Kids Walk for Kids with Cancer
633 Third Avenue, 28th Floor
New York, NY 10017

For more information, please visit www.emmazinberg.com

Google

You could think of Google Drive as Google’s answer to Dropbox or Microsoft’s SkyDrive or any one of a dozen cloud storage systems, but it’s not.  Google Drive is so integrated with Google Apps for Business, Google Docs and Google that it is destined to become the seminal point of “the” paradigm shift to business in the cloud.  Or, as I like to think of it, business with a single point of failure.

The allure of Google Drive is so great, that I am thinking about dumping Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office (specifically Outlook) and taking our relatively insignificant Gmail accounts and making them central to our business.

Google Apps for Business has some very attractive features.  It’s relatively inexpensive, it’s integrated perfectly with Salesforce and now, it’s integrated perfectly with Google Drive.  Seamless integration of all of our documents, shared Google Docs and Spreadsheets, client folders, scanned documents, email, calendar, etc. is like the ultimate geek fantasy.

Angel Geek: “Whoa … Hold on to your hard drive. This makes no sense at all.”

Devil Geek: “Why? What could possibly be bad about having all my stuff in one place?”

Angel Geek: “Duh! How about a single point of failure for my entire business.”

Devil Geek: “Yes … that would be bad.”

Let’s look at in another way. There’s a reason that a balanced portfolio of investments requires you to spread your money around.  It allows you to survive an unexpected, catastrophic disaster with any one investment.  A well diversified portfolio of investments, properly hedged, is the gold standard for professional hedge fund managers.  In fact, the term “Hedge Fund,” actually describes the business model – a hedge against downside risks.

Now, as most of you know, I consider Information “the” currency of the Information Age.  And right now, my business information is in my version of an Information Hedge Fund.  I have documents stored locally, in the cloud, in another cloud.  Financial data backed-up on physical media, in a different cloud and locally. You get my point.  I’ve got information, the currency of my business, stored in all kinds of places – some safer than others.

So, what would possess me to put all of my InfoCurrency in one place?  What is the upside?  There is none.  It is a remarkably stupid idea.  Single threading your business through a single point of failure is like putting all of your money in one pretty good investment and hoping for the best.  You could make a profit, but if anything goes wrong, you lose.  Of course the things that can go wrong are completely out of your control, just like financial investments – you have no say over new regulations, lawsuits, market conditions, you’re just hoping that your investment advisor picked the right investments.

Will professional IT guys use Google Drive and Google Apps the way amateur IT guys use it? Of course not, the pros know how to hedge against single points of failure.  But 99.99% of Google Customers are not IT professionals, they’re just people.  And, people will not understand the inherent risks of a single information investment because they don’t think of Information as Currency.

The concept of a single point of failure is not specific to Google Drive. If you’re a Microsoft-oriented business (Office 365 and SkyDrive) your single point of failure will be at Microsoft.  Same/same.

That said, now you know that Information is “the” currency of the Information Age and you are not going to be lulled into putting all of your data in one place.  You are going to figure out how to spread it around into a plurality of safe to mostly-safe places.  Because now you know that, in the event of a crash or a cyber-security breech or if something bad that none of us is smart enough to foresee happens, your InfoCurrency is safe and your business survives.

Nielsen

The idea of ratings for online campaigns has been talked about for years.  Some people, especially media buyers who work for brand advertisers have practically been demanding it.  But how would it work?  Panels, surveys, census?  What would be the best methodology for such measurement and who is in the best position to do the job?

According to my friends at Nielsen Media Research, they are — and they wanted to prove it to me. So, a few weeks ago, we hooked the Nielson Online Campaign Ratings system into a standard ad unit that runs on all of the pages of shellypalmer.com and got an up close and personal view of our audience.

As it turns out, people who saw the ad over-index male, are over 25, and are overwhelmingly college educated.  The reports were interesting and informative.  Not surprisingly, the estimated number of ads served did not match our logs (or any other analytics program we run).  But, even though we could not get the numbers to line up, the demographics are in-sync with other tools we used concurrently and tools we have used in the past, as were the KPIs.

While it’s early days for this tools set, Nielsen may be on to something great.  Here’s what they have to say on the subject:

Marketers, especially brand advertisers, need a simple and consistent way to measure the combined reach of TV and the web to determine marketing program ROI in conjunction with other cross‐platform effectiveness metrics.

Nielsen Online Campaign ratings launched in August 2011 to answer the online industry’s need for creating transparency and accountability in audience delivery in the same way that television and other media allow. The service provides overnight audience reach, frequency and Gross Rating Points (GRPs) for Internet display and video advertising.

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings combines aggregated, anonymous, privacy‐protected demographic information from participating online data providers, including Facebook, with Nielsen’s Cross‐Platform Homes panel data.

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings is part of the Nielsen Campaign Ratings suite, which provides a full range of premiere advertising audience measurement. Nielsen’s full suite of solutions also includes Nielsen Cross‐Platform Campaign Ratings, which integrates media planning and measurement across television and the Internet to provide clients with total and overlapped reach and frequency of their marketing campaigns, and a Breakthrough metric for web campaigns for a more complete view of campaign performance, including how much of the total audience actually recalled the ad.

Nielsen goes on to say that the system combines Facebook and Nielsen panel data to report overnight age, gender, and DMA daily.  Which is a very interesting way to approach the problem.  It provides unduplicated measures of people –not cookies –by campaign and site/network.  Also a good attribute.  And, the system offers two other important features – it enables Cross‐Platform Ratings (TV + Web) and it is the only such system accredited by the MRC.

Who is using the system?  According to a spokesperson, AOL announced it would leverage Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings to offer TV‐Like GRP guarantees for online video.   And, back in March, GroupM and Nielsen announced a pioneering collaboration to create Cross‐Platform Campaign Ratings, a new measurement service that integrates media planning and measurement across television and the Internet.

All in, I’d say this is a great first step toward real ratings for online advertising campaigns.  If you’re in the business of buying or selling online campaigns, it’s definitely worth a look.

Verizon Wireless

It’s near the end of your obligatory two-year contract and you’re all excited about upgrading to a new phone.  Awesome! What’s this … an upgrade fee!  Yep, for the honor of getting a new phone, Verizon is going to charge you a $30 upgrade fee.

Are you upset?  Outraged?  Incredulous?  Don’t be. Verizon has never advertised itself as a low-cost provider. The Verizon brand is synonymous with America’s best network, and that comes at a price.

In case you were wondering, AT&T and Sprint have been charging even higher upgrade fees for a while and, as you well know, neither could be described as “best in class.”

So what’s this really about? Well … um … $30 bucks.  Verizon knows that you don’t have anywhere else to go.  If you want super-peppy, kick-butt LTE (that’s Verizon’s 4G network) and you don’t want any dropped calls, you’ll pay.

That said, if you really want to be upset, outraged or incredulous about something, you might consider the proliferation of hidden fees.  You have no idea how much your phone costs – your carrier subsidizes it.  Under normal circumstances you can’t separate the cost of the device from the cost of service.  The only time this isn’t true is when you lose your phone and you need to purchase a new one a full retail price.  This isn’t actually real either, because if there was anything like competition, the phones would probably be sold at a discount.  Alas, they’re not.  So, you really never know what you’re paying for or how much anything should cost, you just know what the phone company charges.  Which, for some reason, always feels like too much.

I wish this story had a better ending, but it doesn’t.  Verizon is in a position of absolute power.  It has created a premium network at a premium price.  And, just about anyone who relies on a network for communication can justify paying for the best.

When will this backfire?  Probably never.  It is incumbent on Verizon to test the limits of our ability to pay.  And test they will.  How much is enough?  As much as they can charge until you find an alternative or enough customers churn-out — which will force Verizon to become more competitive.  I am not holding my breath for a price war anytime soon.

At the end of the day, we are going to pay.  We will pay to exceed the data caps, we will pay for faster connections, we will pay for cloud storage, we will pay for cpu cycles, we will pay for virtual servers, we will pay and pay to live in a connected world.

Being held hostage by data networks does make me a little sad, but — since the alternative is smoke signals or carrier pigeons, we’ll have to grin and bear Verizon’s decision to charge upgrade fees.  Anyone got $30 bucks I can borrow; my two-year contract is up and it’s time for a new phone.

With Xbox Live and Microsoft Exchange integration, this phone takes advantage of what Microsoft does best. While the platform isn’t yet a hotbed for mobile gaming, the Xbox Live component gives it the potential to be. The Windows Phone Marketplace does not have the wealth of apps you would find on a iOS or Android device, but all the classics are there, with more to come as more users adopt the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

The polycarbonate body makes the phone feel solid; the weight is just right, and the phone really feels like it could take a beating. The buttons positioned along the right side were a bit awkward, but not so sensitive that they respond to unintended input.

When Nokia announced the tech specs of its new Lumia 900, skepticism abounded. On paper, the Lumia 900 underwhelms, but in practice the phone possesses surprising speed and agility. One might have expected its 1.4GHz single-core processor and 512MB RAM to deliver lackluster, underpowered performance, but this phone defies these boundaries and zips through tasks on AT&T’s LTE network without encountering the classic AT&T problem of the dreaded dropped call.

The 4.3-inch, 800-by-480 pixel AMOLED ClearBlack display may not feature the resolution of some of the other phones currently on the market, but fares quite well in sunlight. The 8-megapixel primary camera that shoots video in 720p also falls short of many other phones on the market boasting 1080p. However, these shortcomings come at a highly accessible price point that makes the phone a solid buy.

If I were one of those all-Windows people, I don’t believe I would think twice; for the price and what you get, they may really have something here.

Instant Access

The asymmetry of knowledge (where one party has more knowledge than the other) has been the distinguishing characteristic of profitable transactions for all of recorded history.  Actually, I’m sure it predates recorded history; I just can’t prove it.

Economists have long studied the imbalance of power caused by information asymmetry and have nomenclature for special kinds of examples.  After you Wiki “information asymmetry,” check out “adverse selection” and “moral hazard.” Now, just browse around Wiki and Google and you will assimilate the knowledge contained in two semesters of undergraduate Econ classes in under 10 minutes – oh, wait!  That’s what this article is about …

Among the benefits of living and working in a connected world, there is one that stands out as “the” change agent for humanity – virtually instant access to information.  Now, I have said time and time again that information is not knowledge, but … in the hands of someone who can contextualize it, the speed of information is directly equated to economic success.

The simplest of the information asymmetry problems has many names.  Some like to call it, “price transparency” or simply “transparency.” But that over simplifies and undervalues the problem.  Just knowing the wholesale price or cost price of an item does not always help you get the best deal – although most sellers would consider it a challenge to constantly deal with consumers that knew their margins. The bigger problem is that the underlying engine of all transactions is now imperiled at scale by instant access to information.  And, to make matters worse, the technology that makes all of this possible is trending upward at an exponential rate.  Doing business is about to change in a fundamental way, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Transparency is powerful.  In the very near future, sellers will not be able to overcharge for non-essential and non-time-sensitive goods and services.

You may push back and say that the auto industry has been dealing with this since the advent of the net, and that they have survived the onslaught of commodity pricing.  You may also think that online auto sellers and brick & mortar auto sellers have reached equilibrium.  This is patently false.  The sticker price on a car has nothing to do with the price the dealer is paying, neither does the invoice price – if it did, there wouldn’t be any car dealers.  Do you really think you can run a floor-planned car showroom making $25 per transaction?  Seriously?

On the other hand, when you are looking at a Samsung 46″ HDTV Model number UN46D7000LFXZA at an electronics retailer, then take out your handheld device and search the web, you will instantly find it at a significantly lower price.  You know it is exactly the same unit you are looking at in the showroom.  Can the brick & mortar retailer match the online price?  Will it? As this problem gets bigger, retailers are going to be highly de-incentivized to purchase inventory they cannot sell at a profit.

If retailers don’t stock items, manufacturers will have to perfect just-in-time inventory.  They will (many already have).  But what will become of the post-4G retail store? How will the retail environment have to adapt to be relevant in a world where everyone who walks-in has instant access to the lowest price, free shipping and no tax from an online vendor?  Buyers already know more than sellers about the features and benefits of products – the web is the perfect tool for that – what does the retail store or showroom have to offer? How will manufacturers adapt production and finance to accommodate the change?

Now, let’s expand this idea to every other business we can think of.  As we move towards transparency, retail transactions certainly get tougher, but service businesses get hit just hard.

If the job of a service professional is to transfer the value of their intellectual property into wealth, how much will transparency hurt?

If I have made a living knowing more than my clients know, I’m in trouble.  If I do deals by bringing my clients to third parties who add value, transparency takes away my value (since lists of my preferred vendor/partners, case studies and clients lists are readily available).  Do I really need to hire a private wealth manager to figure out who the best hedge funds are?  Not any more.  Do I need to hire a consultant to tell me who the most interesting start-ups are?  Nope.  Do I need to hire an agency to get me the best talent?  Of course not.  All the metrics and information I need to arrive at a business decision are at my fingertips. Transparency is going to strengthen us in ways that traditional competition has not, or it will destroy us.

Is knowledge power?  No. It really never has been. Information asymmetry in a transactional environment is power.  And now, thanks to transparency, information asymmetry is becoming harder to create.  To survive, the basic structure of transactions will have to adapt. Welcome to the information age.