Yesterday I posted my opinion on where the Comcast decision would take consumers on the Internet – based on my past experience, watching the FCC’s decisions over the last year, and knowing (thanks to past experience) that the “stars were aligning” for the Big Telecoms to gain a monopolistic edge over the consumer’s use of the Internet. Ultimately, this would reverse the “affordability” of its use at a time when Americans can least likely afford the additional costs.
Today, the Washington Post adds to my concerns of yesterday about how the ruling might affect the Internet: http://bit.ly/ComcastRulingSpeculation and consumers in the near term. One thing I disagree with in this article is their correction remark where they say that ISPs cannot choose to throttle or block based on “type” of service. To a degree that is correct, but to a larger degree what the ISP is able to do is block ports that types of traffic specifically use. For instance, VoIP uses specific ports to transmit it’s traffic. If those ports are blocked and filtered, it is true that an ISP could exclude Skype, Vonage and other VoIP provider’s service, while at the same time, permitting the ISP’s choice of providers (who are paying their way) or simply allow only their own offering.
My post on Facebook yesterday was a warning, a ‘shot over the bow’ from a former “last mile provider”, or “Local LEC” as they called us small competitive ISPs who resold major carrier lines using our own routers and created unique special services. Those days were great – we were the R&D for the ‘big boys’ in the ISP world. If we succeeded, they copied. Eventally they shut us out by lobbying the FCC hard and long to overturn the original ruling that allowed us to co-op their lines at wholesale rates. This Comcast lawsuit, and the Appeals Court ruling, are just another “nail in the coffin” for that kind of growth and ingenuity. It also does not bode well for the Consumer who will soon find themselves being nickled and dimed for eveything they want to do online…or worse simply being told “sorry, we don’t support that”.
This is not a “property rights” ruling, it’s a ruling that creates a future monopoly of the Internet by large ISPs, (think MaBell and the phone industry before it was broken up and prices were regulated), as they slowly and almost silently slink through the night, negating any gains that the consumer achieved in the “early days” of the Internet prior to 2006. I sincerely hope that the FCC works fast to try to stem this tide.
This is a video assignment in our Viral Marketing Class for my Internet Marketing Degree.
Week 1:We were assigned a fictitious company. I chose GIft Baskets for All.
We created a Discovery Brief on that business in week 1.
Week 2: We the had to develop a Creative Concept Brief, describing the outreach concept of our Viral Marketing Plan.
The goal of the marketing plan was to reach new market segments and increase sales/revenues throughout the year, trying to level the peaks and valleys of the prime selling season that evolved mostly around the holidays and purchases for Women (birthdays, Mother’s Day, Easter, etc).
Week 3: Where we had to create a movie as the outreach product of the Marketing Plan. The goal of the movie was to speak to the new market segments we wanted to reach.
I decided to target two verticle segments: College Students and Men – neither of whom receive many gift baskets, but both of which would benefit from them.
The emotional hook I tried for was that men were suffering the lack of gift baskets, and knew that certain favorite items would be easy to put in along side other premium items that would surprise them. The gift baskets for college students evolved around “care baskets” – students cannot survive on pizza and cafeteria food entirely – they need fruit and – well yes, even candy!
I admit, I am NOT a movie producer, but I did my best -with the help of my friends (whose names I promised to keep to myself) to get the point I needed to make across to the audience. LOL
Just in time for the 2010 Olympics, Google announces their Street View Snowmobile. I love this idea! So many years I’ve wished for a more “community-centric” view of the Olympics – more visuals of the snowy peaks and the villages.
This year, we will be able to become even more immersed in the Winter Olympics than in years past! All the thanks goes to Google’s newest addition to Street View – the Snowmobile!
This is such a great idea, it makes me wonder if they are working to retrofit a BOB with video equipment for the Summer Olympics!
CAFFEINE, THE NEXT BIG GOOGLE UPDATE WILL SOON TAKE PLACE:
Why is that important to YOU?
Similar to the major changes that took effect when the “Florida Update” was done in 2003, this update is significant because it hearlds in the time WHEN LOAD SPEEDS BECOME A RANKING FACTOR!
Google has made a concerted effort during the last half of 2009 to speed things up and improve processing. Speed, or the time it takes to process information, has become a consistent theme as the company began work on the next version of its search architecture, Caffeine.
Google began previewing Caffeine to webmasters in August. Last year, Matt Cutts wrote on his blog to expect Caffeine after the holidays, confirming that speed will become a ranking factor on Google.
Reliable-SEO Founder David Harry tells of Google’s need for speed in organic search results that affects not only page-load speeds, but Google DNS, updated analytics code, ability to incorporate new signals, social search, real-time search, deeper personalization, Google Wave and more.
