Last week stories broke about a significant change in the way Internet addressing will be managed. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has opened up the process of assigning new top level domains (TLD’s), such as .com and .net. Potentially any string of letters could be a TLD — maybe we’ll see www.products.walmart? However there appears to be lots of procedures to iron out before any prospective new TLDs hit the market.

Here’s some coverage:

Ars Technica:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080626-confusion-icann-opens-up-pandoras-box-of-new-tlds.html

NY Times:

http://tinyurl.com/5a35kn

Here’s a very detailed read from John Levine at CircleID:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/86299_icann_new_top_level_domains/

Clearly nothing is going to happen right away, and the devil(s) will be in the details. Plus there are already at last count 162 million registered domain names, so a lot will be required to produce a new TLD that actually makes a difference. Here’s my early list:

• User adoption — the old chicken and the egg. An organization with a lot of money and influence will have to invest both to change user perceptions of Internet addressing. It’s a steep hill to climb. Combined, .com and .net total around 85 million domains (with .com about 74M of that) and will be the TLD leaders for a long time to come. (Granted both China’s .cn and Germany’s .de are now bigger than .net)
• You’ll need a solid sales channel. The successful TLD operator will need good connections to the existing base of registars, and a compelling value proposition for registrars to sell the new extension over other, more established ones.
• Global resolution is a big responsibility. The new extension will have to always work, anywhere on the globe. That means servers and data centers in multiple locations, load balancing, maintenance, etc. etc.
• Domain names in foreign languages sound very interesting. But as Levine notes these could get hopelessly bogged down in litigation, and many countries particularly in Asia have been forging ahead with their own fully native language solutions while ICANN has dithered over this question for years.

No doubt this will be a very interesting story to follow. If I had to bet my lunch money today, I’d say that the established players in the registry market who already know how to operate and support TLDs will be the main beneficiaries of ICANN’s decision. They’ve made the technology investments and mastered ICANN esoterica. Any newcomer will have to partner with one of them if a new TLD hopes to attract wide spread adoption.

Saturday night Gabe and I had a very enjoyable experience at Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria. Eve is the crown jewel of the restaurant group owner Cathal Armstrong and his wife Meshelle have built in Alexandria over the past three years. http://www.restauranteve.com/home/index.html

We’ve eaten there once before, and originally intended to just have a drink in the bar prior to dinner elsewhere. The bar at Eve is small but has a very nice atmosphere, and talented bartenders who go the extra mile to put out some impressive cocktails. A sudden summer storm made leaving inconvenient, and we were already having a good time so we stayed and ate at the bar.

It’s a sure sign of a quality place when you can eat at the bar and the service doesn’t suffer. We had a wonderful steak tartare as an appetizer, and then red snapper and veal specials for dinner. The entrees took a while to arrive, but we were told that was due partly to a brief loss of power. And supposedly, the editor of Bon Appetit magazine was there with a large party, backing up the kitchen.

With dinner we had an enjoyable Oregon Pinot Noir, a 2006 Jezebel. Jezebel is a second label of Daedalus Cellars, and was highly drinkable with lots of fruit without being simplistic. It had just enough spiciness and complexity to stand up to the tartare and veal, and still be good with the snapper. But the fun new experience came after dinner.

Gabe likes dessert wine more than I do, and she wanted something to go with the banana creme brulee we were sharing. The bartender immediately suggested a “Tokaji”, which neither of us were familiar with. It was Oremus Tokaji 2004, a Hungarian late harvest dessert wine. It was a great combination. The Tokaji was obviously sweet, but with more acidity than most dessert wines we’ve had. So the wine didn’t add sweet on top of sweet, but in a way cleansed the palate and provided good flavor very distinct from the dessert. An inspired pairing and great suggestion.

Next time you’re in the mood for a dessert wine, I recommend you give it a try. We were happy to discovery that Total Wine carries 375ml bottles for $24.

Last night I attended a big social media gathering at MCCXXIII (1223 for those not into roman numerals) on Connecticut Avenue. It was pulled together quickly by Robert Scoble, noted tech blogger and roving fastcompanyTV producer. He hooked up with Andrew Feinberg of Capitalvalley.net to preach the gospel of new media to Capitol Hill. Gary Vaynerchuk of winelibrary.tv joined them to throw a “Wine, Politics and Geeks” party Wednesday:  http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/769544/

Thanks to them all for a fun event and to Gary specifically for some pretty drinkable free wine. Gary was there, but I didn’t see Scoble or Feinberg. I really wanted to hear first hand what kind of reception they got on the Hill, what specifically might come from it, etc. I’m sure he’ll write it up soon. Here’s how Robert describes the trip — pretty impressive itinerary of stops:

Tonight my 14-year-old son, Rocky (my producer), and I leave SFO to start what is bound to be one of the most interesting weeks in our lives. One thing we’re going to try to do is bring you along whenever possible. Before I get to that, though, I can’t say thank you enough to Andrew Feinberg of Capitol Valley.net and Washington Internet Daily enough for getting us into see some really interesting people. He, and his team, have been doing all sorts of work with us for months to make this trip happen and he’s been doing it for free without any expectation of anything in return. Unbelieveable guy and team and all of us at FastCompany greatly appreciate his partnership.

TUESDAY: Most of these interviews will be 15 minutes and we’ll be literally running from one interview to the next. I am not sure which ones I’ll be able to Qik, but we’ll try to Qik at least some of them:

• We have the morning mostly free to get acclimated and get our press passes and all that.
• Noon. Senator Tom Coburn. (R-OK)
• 1:30 p.m. Rep. George Miller (D-CA)
• 2:30 p.m. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Speaker of the House.
• 3 p.m. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH)
• 4:30 p.m. Rep. John Culberson (R-TX)
• Private dinner to thank Andy Feinberg and his team for planning this schedule, then a night-time photowalk of the Washington Mall.

WEDNESDAY:

• 11 a.m. Kyle McSlarrow, President of National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
• Noon Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL)
• 1 p.m. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)
• 2 p.m. FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein (D)
• 4:30 Erik Stallman (Tech Counsel to Rep. Zoe Lofgren)
• 6 p.m. Party with Gary Vaynerchuk and Jim Long (about 200 already signed up).

http://scobleizer.com/2008/06/21/visit-nyc-washington-dc-with-us/

Even if Robert didn’t make that last stop on Wednesday, the gathering demonstrated the vitality of the local DC tech scene. (Despite what the Wash Post may say: http://cparente.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/is-somethin-lacking-in-the-dc-tech-scene-or-the-coverage/) And the power of social networking — it was pulled together with very little advance notice, then promoted via Facebook, Twitter, etc.

It was a strange sensation standing in line to get in at 6:15 on a Wednesday with the sun still shining. I joked with others in line they better make this line move, with all the people using Twitter at this event they could have a “digital riot” if the wait was too long. Maybe the club thought that too, since then the line started moving and we all jammed in. 

I ran into loads of developers, evanglists and contractors, most of them very excited about the changes taking place locally. Companies and organizations are realizing they need to think about communicating in different ways, and they are allocating budget and resources to make it happen. And they need help, which last night’s attendees are only too happy to provide. I took a few shots to try and convey the scene.

 
Maybe not the 500 claimed, but darn packed

 Lindy “Miss Association” Dreyer and Saul “Magic Man” Colt

Melissa Clark of Siteworx and Shaun Farrell of CACI, ever vigilant web developer at the Library of Congress

An interesting survey came out of the telecom industry’s NXTComm show last week in Las Vegas. It’s been getting a lot of play in trade publications. Attendees to the show were asked a number of questions, including whether they thought the Internet could ever “break” due to increasing traffic levels. The study was conducted by network equipment provider Tellabs and the research firm IDC:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080618/aqw073a.html?.v=3

Respondents didn’t “break” one way or the other — half said yes, and half said no. But if you look at the answers to another question in the survey, 80% said carriers are already doing things to control the strain on their networks during traffic spikes. This is very interesting to me, and some of these activities — metering service, packet inspection, slowing down traffic during peak hours — have been very much in the news lately. Apparently there is a lack of confidence that current network capacity can support the supposedly “unlimited” packages many of the providers are selling to consumers.

As some readers will know broadband is a recurring theme of this blog. While tracking the issue I’ve gotten to know Drew Clark, who started the organization BroadbandCensus.com to get a clearer picture of broadband availability in this country. I asked him what he thought of this new survey:

“Whether or not new bandwidth demands on the Internet cause carriers to offer tiered pricing or to throttle particular applications or protocols, independent monitoring will be crucial,” Drew said. “The core purpose of BroadbandCensus.com is to provide bandwidth consumers, both individuals and businesses, with a place to find local information about broadband availability, competition, speeds, prices and quality of service.”

Drew also suggested I read a recent post of his regarding broadband metering, which can be found here: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=12

Marc Hausman, a colleague of mine at Strategic Communications Group shared a great saying with me a few years back. People show you what they think not by what they say, but by how they spend their time and their money. Providers seem to be spending a lot of time and money on the issue of rapidly rising Internet traffic. Time as represented by coming up with preventative measures like those described above, and money spent for upgrades to their networks.

I’ve blogged previously my belief that all parties will need to be involved to improve broadband in this country. The transparency Drew is seeking is an important piece of any solution and if you haven’t already, take the census that is located on his site.

The government can help by supporting more transparency around availability, and streamlining and increasing economic incentives for broadband providers. Providers need to be very open on ways they are trying to control traffic spikes, and stick to throughput promises made to consumers. Content providers need to remember they have built lucrative businesses that depend on reliable connectivity, and should work with carriers for mutual success.

Working together sound too simplistic? That’s what Google and Sprint are doing (along with Intel, Time Warner and others), collaborating to support WIMAX development and deployment under the Clearwire brand. If Clearwire is successful, that will put pressure on the mobile networks of other carriers to get faster, and so on, and so on…

It’s been a few days since Microsoft reportedly walked away for good from discussions with Yahoo, and the vitriol being hurled at Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is really something to behold. There certainly are facts to back it up, but the uniformity of the conventional wisdom and the level of anger puzzles me. Some of the coverage has taken on a very personal tone.

You can easily picture the veins bulging as Michael Arrington at TechCrunch screams Yahoo can’t possibly make more mistakes:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/13/massive-destruction-of-shareholder-value-employee-morale-and-internet-health/

Joe Nocera in the NYTimes rips into Yang and accuses him of violating his fiduciary duties and “stiffing” shareholders: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/business/14nocera.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

Kara Swisher at All Things D already has a list of possible successors prepared:

http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080617/boomtowns-short-list-of-yahoo-ceos-sorry-jerry-but-fortune-favors-the-prepared/

Each executive departure is shown as proof of internal chaos — even when people like Jeremy Zawodny go out of their way to deny any connection:
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010336.html

So what’s wrong with the conventional wisdom? Seems to me it’s focused too much on stock watching, assumes a merger with Microsoft would be successful and would curb the dominance of Google, and can’t conceive of the status quo changing. Let’s take those quickly in order:

• Didn’t techies used to complain about business types obsessing over quarter to quarter numbers, and failing to see the need for the long-term view? And do the shareholders of Yahoo need Michael Arrington to go into a frenzy on their behalf? Investment comes with risk. If you don’t like how a company you’ve invested in is performing, you sell the stock.
• A majority of mergers fail. Everyone knows this, many forget in the excitement of mergers and acquisitions. Poor planning, executive distraction, culture clashes and an internal focus on integration that hurts day-to-day performance are just some of the common causes. And is there any proof that Microsoft and Yahoo today exerting any moderating influence on Google’s rates? If not, then why assume a combined MicroHoo would?
• To think the status quo can’t be changed is showing a lack of faith in technology and innovation. Who saw Google coming when Goto.com first started offering bids for search ad placement in 1998? Will no company ever challenge Google? And this view is very North America centric — in other global search markets Google has nothing like the share it has here. Internet growth is fastest in areas like China, where the search engine Baidu.com reigns supreme.

So I’m not totally alone on this ledge, a couple of interesting posts. Tim O’Reilly talks about an Internent Operating System of which search is just a piece, and encourages Yahoo (and Microsoft) to find new ways to excel:

Meanwhile, Yahoo! has let itself be defined by the same kind of penis envy. Here is a business that has beaten Google in area after area, that is unquestionably the #1 media company on the net, and yet has let itself be defined by the one area in which it is #2 — and where it could be much more profitable and successful by partnering with #1 than by competing with them.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/05/microhoo-corporate-penis-envy.html

And here’s a good read from Bernard Lunn of ReadWriteWeb, where he outlines 11 areas of possible opportunity around search:

My first post for ReadWriteWeb (nearly a year ago) started with the premise that search was “game over”, that Google had won and the only opportunity left was (re)search - i.e. what one does after the basic search. Unfortunately, none of the search start-ups since then has made a dent in Google’s relentless march towards search market dominance. In this article, we outline 11 search trends that may change that.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/11_search_trends.php

None of this means Yang is necessarily the right guy for the job — he could be gone very soon under the avalanche of negative coverage. Unlike Kara Swisher, I’ve never spoken to him and can’t give an opinion on his abilities based on first hand knowledge. And unlike Michael Arrington I’m not on the speed dial of every disgruntled Yahoo exec with a juicy leak. (maybe someday this blog will get there…)

The reporting around the poison pill that was rushed through to make any MS acquisition harder sure sounds bad. A shareholder suit has been filed, and time will tell on that front. But it would be nice if some of the reporting allowed for the possibility — just the possibility — that Jerry Yang understands the company he founded and can lead Yahoo to success on its own.

UPDATE — Awesome, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land agrees! Of course he writes a more thorough and detailed post:

Yahoo The Failure — Myth vs. Reality: http://searchengineland.com/080620-094239.php

Lately Gabriele and I have been impressed with some wine from Courtney Benham, part of the the Martin Ray family of wines. http://www.martinraywinery.com/about/index.html

Recently we’ve had the 2006 Mendocino County Petite Syrah and Pinot Noir. Both are good wines at very good price points — $11.99 and $15.99, respectively. The Petite Syrah was surprisingly light for the varietal, with nice fruit and balance, easy drinking but with a zing at the end. We found at the McLean location but wine should be at all Total Wine stores in Virginia.

The Pinot Noir was also good, interesting aroma and taste, light and fruit forward but not thin or boring like some inexpensive Pinots. Here’s a short clip in which Gabriele and our good friend Nigel share their thoughts.

A new survey came out during a Broadband Policy conference here in DC. It was put on by Pike and Fischer, a subsidiary of BNA (http://www.bna.com/about/companies.htm) that looks at broadband from a policy perspective: http://www.broadbandpolicysummit.com/

The survey found that 40% of attendees ranked high speed as the most appealing advanced service, substantially more than services like HDTV or digital phone service. It’s a small sample of 280 people and it would be nice to see more details about the survey without having to buy the full $600 report (hint hint P&F), but Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica uses it to lead a good post on broadband that weaves in other recent studies from Akamai and the Communications Workers of America. The conclusion is we need to do a better job in this country:

Despite this difference, it’s clear that the US has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to broadband speeds. Pike & Fischer points out the fairly obvious (to us geeks, anyway): without high broadband speeds, millions of other features being offered to us by cable companies and telcos will have a harder time getting off the ground. “This suggests to us that, while multichannel video providers may be spending a lot of their ad dollars promoting their high-def channels and their ‘triple-play’ bundles, they still rely on their broadband speeds to seal the deal with customers,” Pike & Fischer Broadband Advisory Services Scott Sleek said in a statement. “Every one wants to claim that they offer the fastest Internet access, and believe that will be more important to customers than how many HD channels they offer.”

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080612-study-consumers-lust-after-high-speed-broadband-not-hdtv.html

Drew Clark of BroadbandCensus.com was in attendance, and here’s his take on the keynote address by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=23

I know Drew, and will try to get in touch with him for some additional color on the event. Of course the rub is how to get more speed to millions of Americans. What’s the biggest gating item — lack of accurate information, infrastructure investment, government support, consumer adoption to justify the investment needed for fiber to the home?

Content providers, service providers and government all have their particular perspectives, but can’t the parties work together and craft a strategy that serves the national interest while at the same time making economic sense?

I was interested to read a few days ago that Verizon plans to discontinue its branded social community and move it over to Facebook. Their Facebook page has over 18,000 “fans”:

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/06/04/verizon-moving-its-branded-social-network-to-a-facebook-page/

Of course it’s very smart of Verizon to particpate in social networks — Strategic Communications Group has its own page, and we regularly help clients identify and reach out to communities of interest on Facebook. But Facebook pages do not offer all the tools of a true social network site, and it’s a closed environment. On the other hand, the pages are easy to set up and come with a huge built-in audience.

I’ll be joining Verizon’s page to help me determine which phone I should upgrade to — it’s way past time. But until Facebook upgrades its features and opens up its walled garden, Verizon should wait to shut down their own social community located at http://community.verizon.net/index.jspa.

Fierce competition is back on the web browser front. After Microsoft crushed the Netscape challenge in the mid to late 90’s, Microsoft Explorer cruised for years as the overwhelming leader in the web browser market. It still is, with approximately 75% market share. But out of the Netscape defeat rose the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit that launched the open source Firefox browser and has been refining it since. Here’s a good overview from Brad Stone of the NY Times:

http://tinyurl.com/6rux9g

Yesterday Microsoft struck back announcing a deal with Hewlett-Packard. Starting in January 2009 Microsoft’s Live Search will be the default search engine on all HP computers, taking that spot away from Yahoo. The deal is for North America only — Microsoft probably decided it has enough anti-trust issues right now with the European Union. Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand has a typically good piece, highlighting the US market share numbers of the various PC manufacturer/search engine alliances. I also like the idea he floats — why not cut consumers in with lower PC prices when the manufacturer gets big $$ from the search companies?

It fails to mention that HP will gain cash through the deal for effectively selling out their users. That’s not to single out Microsoft. The Google-Dell deal is exactly the same situation. Yes, in both cases, the computer owners are getting access to good search resources. But maybe the vendors should charge less for computer where they benefit by choosing for the consumer? Or maybe they need to disclose more fully why the defaults are the way they are?

http://searchengineland.com/080602-090000.php

But the struggle isn’t over when the default is set. Users can of course change their search option. Or they can be cajoled/coerced into doing so. Here’s a piece from Danny last year on that mostly behind-the-scenes battle:

http://searchengineland.com/070115-111111.php

There is one element of the HP/MS deal Danny doesn’t focus on, maybe because its not related to search. In addition to Live Search being the default on HP computers, Microsoft’s Silverlight animation software will be built in as well. This is the MS product that competes with Flash, and having millions of computers on the market that can view Silverlight without needing any plug-ins should be a big market advantage. Ars Technica thinks that will end up being more significant than the default search element:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080602-new-hp-microsoft-live-search-deal-is-all-about-silverlight.html

Personally I prefer Firefox. It seems faster than Explorer, and useful add-ons like the Alexa traffic reader are easy to implement. I don’t mind that Firefox has decided for me that Google should be my default choice for search — at least not yet. We users need to remember we can always make up our own minds.

The WSJ reported today that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods is back online with a vengeance. He was cleared by the SEC of any wrongdoing relating to anonymous postings on Yahoo Finance message boards. Mackey had attracted media attention by posting critical comments about the rival food chain Wild Oats under the screen name “rahodeb.” Story here — registration may be required:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121190074263322887.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

Mackey also wrote a long post on the Whole Foods web site giving his side of the story to the whole affair. It’s a detailed and well thought out explanation:

http://wholefoodsmarket.com/socialmedia/jmackey/2008/05/21/back-to-blogging/

I believe you need to clearly self-identify when posting/commenting/interacting online, and that’s the counsel I give my clients. But I tried to read the post with an open mind. Honestly, I’d love it if more of my clients took blogging and online content as seriously as Mackey clearly does.

As a disclaimer, my wife and I enjoy shopping at Whole Foods — the seafood is really good. All that said, his explanation left me feeling ambivalent.

Mackey admits to poor judgment in the post, but nothing unethical. His post is persuasive, but he wants it both ways. He didn’t do anything wrong, but he’s sorry anyway. He says he’s very competitive, anonymity was the custom on message boards, all the information was publicly available, and he was just exercising his free speech rights. OK, well then why apologize? You’ve been cleared, right? Pick a position and stick to it.

Two of his points were not persuasive to me at all. One was his opinion that an anonymous poster has no real influence, so how could he have been trying to injure Wild Oats?

It was infuriating to be accused of trying to manipulate Wild Oats’ stock price downward so that Whole Foods Market could buy it more cheaply. This is malicious speculation and an accusation with no basis in fact. My last Yahoo! post occurred in August 2006, and Whole Foods Market did not begin talking to Wild Oats about a buyout until January 2007—a five-month gap. In addition, almost all of my posts that were critical of Wild Oats were made when its stock was far lower than the $18.50 per share Whole Foods Market paid for it. When I posted as rahodeb, was I trying to “hurt Wild Oats financially or otherwise?” Of course not! The question assumes that someone named rahodeb posting on an online message board could actually hurt Wild Oats if he wanted to. How could rahodeb possibly hurt Wild Oats on a digital message board? The answer is obvious: rahodeb couldn’t.

But if we stay with that logic, why participate on the Message Board at all? Earlier in the post he said he started particpating to defend Whole Foods from criticism. Why bother, if those criticisms were harmless? Most CEOs I know don’t look to waste their time. And ask any Investor Relations person if messages on Yahoo Finance are always harmless. Investing isn’t purely rational — people can be swayed by these conversations.

The second point was not realizing he had become a “public figure:”

Perhaps part of the problem here is that when I first started participating in these Yahoo! online communities back in 1998, Whole Foods Market was only 15 percent as large as we are today. We had yet to open any stores in New York City and we weren’t taken particularly seriously by most of our competitors or the media. Whole Foods Market’s tremendous growth over the past 10 years hadn’t yet occurred. As the CEO of Whole Foods Market I was seldom interviewed and few people knew or cared who I was. I wasn’t a public figure and had no desire to become one. However, as Whole Foods Market continued to grow and as we opened large and exciting new stores around the United States, both the company and I became better and better known. At some point in the past 10 years I went from being a relatively unknown person to becoming a public figure. I regret not having the wisdom to recognize this fact until very recently.

Come on now. You don’t have to lead a huge company to realize that the personal and professional merge. And there’s something called Director’s and Officer’s (D&O) insurance I’m sure he had, which makes explicit the link between professional activity and personal accountability.

Do I think the media ran with this in part due to its unique nature and easy plot line? Sure I do. I’m also willing to grant that back in 1998 there were far fewer ways to engage in online communities than there are today. (But by 2006, there were plenty)

Mackey’s post is a more erudite than usual version of something too common today — the “I’m very sorry if what I did upset you” statement. It tries to give the appearance of apology, without really accepting responsibility.