All That I Know (About Technology + Marketing)

Launching new services is rarely a silky smooth process, especially for a large enterprise. Take for example my recent “experiment” with Fancast:

A few weeks ago, I tweeted about the streaming service from Comcast called Fancast. While other streaming services allow you to watch videos from the major networks, none give you streaming content from premium channels like HBO, Cinemax and Stars. So when my DVR started being flaky this past Saturday night, I decided to give it a try.

The log-in process was painless and the search functionality worked well. To watch premium content, the service required a special Adobe AIR player, which I promptly downloaded and installed. Everything was smooth sailing until up to the point when I tried to start Watchmen. For some reason, the service kept displaying a message that I was an HBO subscriber thought I was. After reading the FAQ’s, I confirmed that was I logging in with my primary Comcast.net account, which is a requirement, so I decided to call in to Comcast’s local customer service. After waiting on hold for a short while, the representative confirmed that all of my account settings were correct but indicated that another department would be better equipped to handle the issue. She tried to switch me to that department by I kept getting disconnected.

When I called in to customer service again, I spoke with another representative but the second one didn’t even know about Fancast. Yikes! Even though I explained to her how the service worked, she questioned me whether it was something that Comcast offered. My wife, who was sitting in the room, was rolling on the floor laughing as I attempted to convince the woman to help me. When the rep tried to switch, I was promptly disconnected again. So, I searched Fancast and (finally) found the toll-free number for support. When I called it, the Fancast rep informed me that my account was working correctly but error that I kept getting was due to an issue that Comcast/Fancast has been having for a week. And there’s no ETA for when it will be fixed. Now that’s a bummer!

While most would chalk this up to Comcast’s poor service, I think that the issue is actually a combination of poor user experience and internal communication/training. NOTE: I challenge you to name a cable television provider that you think is doing a great job these days! While the integration between Comcast and Fancast isn’t where it should be (and there’s a myriad behind the scenes reasons why that’s the case), I would have liked to see a simple error message that indicates that the service is currently down and that they’re working on it. Also, it would have been nice if the customer service reps at Comcast get training on Fancast so that customers like me don’t have to feel like I’ve just made a prank call. Lastly, both Fancast and Comcast should communicate on a regular basis about system status — it would have been much better if the Comcast rep told me that the service was down and to try again later instead of trying to fix my when in actuality it wasn’t the problem.

Comcast must be feeling the pressure to adapt to shifting consumer behavior and increasing pressure from competitors. According to eMarketer, nearly 25% of all TV content watched each day will be time-shifted, on-demand, on the Web or on a mobile device by 2012 (source). Viewers are abandoning television for the internet. Also, both Apple and Google are looking to challenge traditional video distribution channels by offering their own subscription services (source and source). While the service is still in Beta, it is just a shame that Comcast wasn’t able to deliver on the concept.

After spending more than an hour trying to use Fancast, I’ve decided that I need to give Comcast another few weeks to work out the bugs — eventually this service is going to be Comcastic.

WordPress is one of the best known PHP-based blogging platform. It serves as a trusted platform for both personal and enterprise blogs, including brands such as AMD, Best Buy, Ford, General Electric, and Wall Street Journal (source). It is also very extensible: WordPress bloggers can customize their blog by installing one of the many free (or pay) themes and extensions that provide enhance the functionality (like Twitter Integration and Ratings & Reviews). Overall, WordPress is a flexible, lightweight blogging platform.

Recently, the WordPress development created multiple flavors of their platform. One of the flavors is called BuddyPress. It is described as a social networking layer on top of a multi-user WordPress installation. The primary difference between the standard WordPress platform and this flavor is that BuddyPress is pre-configured with standard, social networking functionality, including:

• User Profile
• Statuscasting (Activity Stream)
• Buddylist
• Forums

The WordPress team recognizes the future convergence of blogging and social networking platforms, especially for internal collaboration. Both kinds of platforms allow users to participate in two way communications, which is the hallmark of Web 2.0 websites. Microsoft has also recognized this trend and has responded by releasing SharePoint 2010.

As an internal collaboration solution, BuddyPress posses slew of social networking features that enterprises require, including LDAP/AD integration (thank you @apeatling). But enterprises also require LDAP/AD integration capabilities to assist with user management (since one would expect more users/employees at enterprise installations than at small business installations). The shear number of users/employees makes LDAP/AD integration a critical user management feature to enterprises. However, employees may start the collaboration process via a tool other than a blog (eg: a Wiki, an email, a chat session, etc.). And regardless of where they start, enterprises need to utilize a social measurement tool to better understand the value of their community to their members. These tools are present in enterprise solutions such as Telligent (see Harvest social measurement tool). Of course that comes at a price.

For now, BuddyPress is the prefect social networking solution for companies where the conversation originates in a blog or forum.

I’m constantly looking at new technologies at Engauge. So when Google announced that I can set up my very own Wave Server, I naturally jumped on this opportunity. To speed up the process, I set up an Ubuntu server on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and followed their instructions. And after some pain (and some help), here’s the result:

The above is a screenshot of the console client of me connecting to our Wave Server. If you’re old school, you’ll recognize the telnet-like screenshot. Unfortunately, it is nothing like the slick Wave client that Google provides.

That got me thinking — are there no good Wave Clients out there?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used Waveboard and I think that federating a Google Wave server is cool but what I really want to do is to share the Google Wave love with those at our company that do not have a Wave account at the moment.