I am not sure if it is a show of weakness, or just another table-upsetting play by our old friend Son Masayoshi, but Softbank is now offering a Free 8GB iPhone as long as you sign up for the two-year data plan. We’ve seen this model before: Japan pioneered the ‘free crack pipe’ model almost 10 years ago with game consoles and cell phones. But as functionality, swiveling screens, and other doohickeys made their way into the small devices, prices started to creep up. Hardware prices took a real hike as the portable chips made jail breaking the phones an assumption, and as all signal carriers standardized. (In fact, most electronics stores will transfer your chip into your new phone right there when you buy it.)
But Softbank has two things going for it: 1. jailbreaking the iPhone is possible but not easy, 2. the 3G network is still somewhat proprietary. With these, Softbank can go back to the market-share giveaways that made them famous. Earlier, I didn’t see the iPhone taking off so strongly inside the Empire. Now– maybe we’ve got a real race. In response, competitors could go either way:
a) Use Android to lower the cost of the hardware (also offer for free), and then use VoIP wherever possible to lower radio costs. However, this doesn’t work because– believe it or not– open wifi networks are not that common in Tokyo
b) Use Android or another OS platform to out-app the iphone (weak strategy)
If the iPhone can get sufficient marketshare, it will be fascinating to see what unexpected apps the Japanese developer community comes up with.
My good friend has decided to look for a new job. Today, she brought in some good Mexican food for the crew as a thank you. It was, however, not a free lunch. In return for the tacos, we were supposed to go to the white board in the conference room and suggest where she might work next. For the price of 2 dozen lunches, my friend tried to crowdsource her next job.
Soon enough (if not already), everyone will be connected to everyone else in their immediate market segment. We’ll all have a Kevin Bacon number of 3 or lower. Linkedin, which originally provided value as the “inside connection” to a given company or executive, now has become the ubiquitous contact folder for everyone. Where recruiters used to thrive on Linkedin because it complimented and extended their most valuable asset: their rolodex of contacts, it now threatens to replace that rolodex completely. The Recruiter still has value, as someone who knows how to interview a candidate and get at the soft chewy center of a person to see if they are a good match for the company with an open position, but not as a simple nexus of resumes in one hand and job openings in another.
Given that Linkedin has given us all that magic rolodex, why not try to crowdsource positions? How could one simultaneously incent the armchair recruiter in all of us, yet invoke enough friction to keep out the spammers and robots?
Here is my idea:
- Vigorously pursue companies to list their open positions on the network
- Invite people to recommend people in their network for the open positions, with a standing bounty of 10% of first-year salary (still leaving room for the recruiter doing the actual interviews to make 10-15%)
- If Andy is going to recommend Betty to C Corporation, then Andy needs to pay $5 to Betty (she’s the one looking for a job, and probably needs the $5 anyway)
- C Company would see that Betty is recommended by 7 of her friends (all willing to stake $5 on it), and therefore she is probably worth a look. If Betty is hired, the 10% is split amongst the 7 people who recommended her.
- Andy just profited $1423 for his work (assuming 10% of $100,000 job, spilt 7 ways, minus the $5)
Hmmm. This might work. I should ping Harry or Alex or my old friends at Daijob.
UPDATE: 27 May 2010: Looks like I called it. http://www.notchup.com/ is almost a perfect match for this business model.
The haters are out, there is no profitability on the horizon. Facebook is definitely well on it’s way to Stage 5 of the cocktail party: the cool kids are leaving, only the hucksters and sham artist are left. This party is no longer cool.
At the same time, we have a new administration that owes its existence and success to a mass movement of online communities binding together around key issues. That same administration is now trying to rally an even larger group– all 310 million of us– around key points of its agenda. Back in the 50s, the Feds would have duped Jimmy Stewart into making a propaganda film. That won’t work anymore. Thanks to those hippies over at the ACLU, the government cannot invade our privacy.
If only there were some way to get down to a majority of the citizenry, and find out their known associates, their political and sexual preferences, and their GPS coordinates. If only there were some network out there where people were ready to hand over all this information in exchange for some cheap games and zombie bites.
The federal government should nationalize Facebook. It’s not seeing any profit, yet it is sitting on top of an incredible amount of personal information, all surrendered willingly. The Obama administration could forward its plans at the grass roots level. Anyone who doesn’t play ball could be outted to their friend list. Together with Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates on terrorist threat levels and natural disasters, the Federal Government could finally achieve the true Jeffersonian democracy mass movement that has stood as an idealistic utopia since– well– Plato’s Republic.
Nationalize Facebook Now!
I’ll be in Orlando this next week for the Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum. The noise from vendors is discernibly more quiet, compared to last year. I am also getting a vibe that not so many people (customers like me) will be attending. I’ve got some specific people to visit, and some intel to gather on a couple of vendors. We’ll see.
i’ll be sending updates at @davejenk1ns.
I promise I'm relevant 
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