GrandCentral’s “One Number For Life” Not Really

So much for GrandCentral’s “one number for life” promise. The company is turning off customer phone numbers and giving them new ones following their acquisition by Google last month.

Troy Schneider received such a notice, advising him that in 8 days his GrandCentral number would be canceled and that he would be required to immediately start using a new number allocated to him. Judi Sohn received the same message: with no prior warning she had 8 days left on her existing phone number then it would cease to operate. Sohn was fortunate to some extent: Google has offered to pay for the reprinting of her business cards, but that would appear to be a one off, and a token gesture at that.

The inconvenience of losing a telephone number, particularly for a business, is more than just stationery. Paper telephone listings must be changed (some people still use them), sign writing must be fixed, and every single listing of the old number has to be found and changed. Most land line telephone providers would offer a redirection service for the old number, however with Google it’s simply a matter of 8 days then no more phone number. Every customer that tries calling the old number post cancellation and cannot connect to the business is potentially a lost sale.

There was no comment at the time of writing from Google or GrandCentral. Ironically the last post on the GrandCentral blog talks about the wonders of being able to keep a GrandCentral Number for life.

Update: Founder Craig Walker comments below and notes that this affected on 434 users:

Everybody, thanks for your comments and I want to quickly reply to try to clear the air regarding this issue. I’ll post a full blog about this on the GrandCentral site in just a bit, but first I want to assure everybody that we are NOT disconnecting anyone’s service. Unfortunately we received word recently that one of our partners was stopping their service in part of the country and since that time we’ve been working to port those phone numbers to other partners. We’ve done this successfully for the vast majority of those users but unfortunately there were approximately 400 users whose numbers could not be ported (434 to be exact). As soon as we found out these users could not be ported to other partners, we contacted those users, set up an alternative GrandCentral number in the same area code for them, and gave them a reply email to request additional GrandCentral number choices. Vincent (our COO and Co-Founder) and I have been personally replying to these emails to help make this transition easier. This would have been these case whether or not we were acquired. We completely sympathize with any pain or disruption this might cause these users and will continue to work directly with them to help find a solution. I will post more on our blog shortly, but wanted to give you all a quick heads up.

Why Darwin Beats Danny Carlton

Danny Carlton writes a little known personal blog under the pseudonym “Jack Lewis” at jacklewis.net/weblog. But don’t try to visit it if you use Firefox, because he’s banned users of the popular browser from visiting his site. Firefox users are now redirected here.

Why? Because he objects to the fact that some of those Firefox readers are using an ad-blocking extension to block ads showing on the site. To counter the problem, he’s thrown the baby out with the bathwater and kicked 13% or so of the Internet off his site.

While Carlton is certainly enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, in my opinion this is not a good strategy to build a blog. Users are solid gold. Even the ones that block ads. They sometimes write comments, which is free content. They link to you from their own blog. And they tell friends about your site. All that leads to more readers and, ultimately, more revenue. If a user wants to skip the ads and is willing to go to the trouble of installing ad blocking software, so be it. I still love ‘em. And I gladly hand them my content for free.

Carlton doesn’t agree, apparently. Although I wonder why he continues to provide a full content feed, sans ads, at jacklewis.net/weblog/atom.xml (and it has been reposted here). Those users are “stealing” his content, too. What about them? Perhaps he’ll now turn his attention to the evils of RSS.

The Internet will certainly be a less colorful place without Carlton’s passionate editorial. A perusal of his blog posts (via Safari) tells me he thinks Barack Obama is a communist and that “fourth graders can be lied to and told the Theory of Evolution is a fact.” The problem is, Darwin was right. Only the fittest survive. And Carlton just made his blog an endangered species.

Is Orkut A Social Networking Heavyweight? Comscore Says Yes.

The upcoming Orkut redesign prompted us to check out Orkut’s page view numbers according to Comscore.

U.S. Comscore data shows, as expected, barely a blip from Orkut (Facebook shown for comparison). Orkut has 425 million monthly page views compared to 15 billion for Facebook:

But, wow, take a look at the worldwide Comscore numbers - Facebook doubles to 31 billion monthly page views, but Orkut jumps all the way up to 38 billion (we’ve also included some of the other big social networks for comparison in this chart):

Not that it adds much to the conversation, but Alexa agrees Orkut is bigger than Facebook in terms of page views.

Is this accurate? I don’t know. Compete barely shows Orkut as existing, let alone anywhere near Facebook’s traffic. But Orkut is famously popular in Brazil and other Non-U.S. countries. Perhaps, somehow, it is actually a social networking heavyweight.

Google Will Be Beaten By Facebook, Mahalo: Scoble

Above is part 3 of a 3 part Robert Scoble video blog series on “Why Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years.” To see the other parts scroll on the player; Part 2 at around the 6 minute mark gets to the main points*.

Essentially Scoble argues that Google is in trouble because they are unable to adapt their algorithms and business model in the face of social search sites such as Mahalo and even Facebook; Techmeme is thrown in for good measure as well. Scoble argues that the search results from sites such as Mahalo will appeal to more people due to their ability to be socially constructed as opposed to Google’s computer generated results.

As much as I think that Jason Calacanis is doing a good job with Mahalo, and that he is creating decent content for those frustrated by current search technologies, I’m not even sure Calacanis would be so bold as to argue that his company is going to kick Google’s butt in four years time.

Scoble though does open the more interesting question: what is the future of search?

I won’t even start linking to the many, many search startups that are trying to answer that question.

Scoble seemingly forgets though that even if Google’s current model doesn’t incorporate social search, there is absolutely nothing stopping Google going out and acquiring one of these companies then incorporating their model within the Google product family. I’m also not convinced that we are yet to see the David to Google’s Goliath, but I could be wrong.

* for what ever reason Kyte insists on showing only the latest video in the embed so I was unable to include Part 2 straight up.

Movable Type’s Version 4.0 Final Release

Movable Type is releasing the final version of their 4.0 platform tonight. We covered the beta, their turn towards open source, and new feature set previously. The new release, no doubt, comes under pressure from the success Wordpress has had as an open source platform. Unfortunately, we’ll still have to wait until later in the year for Movable Types’ open sourced version.

The finalized version includes 50 new features, a component based architecture, a new plugin directory, and some new launch partners. It looks like a solid release that comes with a lot of the functionality Wordpress MU is aiming for. Notably, Boing Boing will be upgrading soon.

We covered the upgraded features in depth before. They included a new installation and upgrade wizard, easier and more powerful template management tools that speed site development, all new default templates and themes, and a completely redesigned user interface focused on streamlining common tasks. You can see a full list here.

However, the release also includes a shift to a component based architecture running on top of a single MT 4 code base. Components will be paid extensions of the platform meant to provide greater functionality out of the box. The first example component will be their enterprise version. Instead running as a separate installation, the enterprise version of the software will run on top of the basic MT 4 code base. It will feature the original enterprise feature set, including LDAP and Oracle support.

They have also released a new community component that beefs up the basic community features. The component adds a ratings system and deeper user profiles. The ratings system consists of post specific user ratings and a buzz feature that tracks the highest rated content. The new profile pages consist of a blog, their latest comments, and recommendations on your site. The infrastructure for these enhancements exist in the basic version, but buying the community component provides them out of the box and comes with support. They plan on releasing more components in the future.

Accompanying the release, Movable Type is launching a new plugin directory. They’ll also have some partners throwing their own plugins into the mix. Partners developing supporting applications and tools for MT4 include HP, Amazon, Sphere, Technorati, Snap, Feedblitz, NewsGator, SimplyHired, SocialText, Fliqz, Box.net, Mpire, Vizu, SodaHead, and Oodle.

TechMeme founder Gabe Rivera makes an interesting observation on the Google News story all over the blogosphere today.

As Variety is reporting, NBC is gearing up to launch it’s first (well, second) “major assault” against YouTube, Didja.com (currently a parked page).

The site will “celebrate advertising as entertainment” and feature “a free online archive of current and classic television commercials, movie trailers and other brand-related content”. The name, Didja, is short for “did you see that”, the apparent reaction they’re hoping to get from viewers. The site will be cross promoted on NBC’s television channel and will eventually on all divisions of NBC Universal. It’s set to launch the beginning of next year, sometime after the still-unnamed joint venture with News Corp., dubbed “Clown Co.” by Google execs.

The site is all about advertising and NBC getting paid for it. NBC hopes advertisers will pay for prominent placement on the site or to create their own branded pages (e.g. an all-McDonald’s channel). The customizable branded pages will allow advertisers to upload commercials to the site, include product offers, store locators, and other tools.

For viewers, the site will feature an extensive social networking component as well as a mash-up tools to remix their own “advertainment”.

This territory has been heavily treaded before. TBS has their own Veryfunnyads website, featuring *gasp* “Very funny advertisements”. Clipland is a smaller site that’s been doing the same thing. Not least of all is YouTube itself, which attracts the lions share of ads and trailers people actually want to watch.

Leveraging Facebook To Compete With eBay Won’t Work

Buy.com made a splash tonight with their announcement of a new Facebook application called Garage Sale.

Facebook users can use the application to sell thing directly to others via their Facebook profile. Buy.com charges a flat 5% commission on completed sales (the seller will also have to pay Paypal or other payment fees. The application says “thanks to Garage Sale, Facebook users don’t have to leave their profile page to advertise and sell personal goods.”

There are other Facebook applications doing nearly the exact same thing. Mosoma, for example, is one that I tested a couple of weeks ago. It also allows users to sell items on their Facebook profile.

There is an argument that a closed network is a better way to sell items because the people who view the listing know you and, presumably, trust you. That gets you over a big hurdle - eBay’s feedback system provides information on the buyer and seller which helps them get comfortable transacting. Without that feedback system to encourage sales, it’s important that something else takes its place. In the case of Garage Sale and Mosoma, user familiarity is the key.

But in practice this doesn’t work so well. Sellers are looking for a big base of buyers to sell into to leverage the network effect. eBay obviously does an excellent job of this. Otherwise there is no reason they would command a long term leadership position with their high fees. Buyers and sellers put up with the fees because it is the place to go to conduct p2p transactions. The network effect perpetuates their success and newcomers have a very difficult time gaining market share.

With Garage Sale and Mosoma, sellers can’t access this large pool of buyers because only their friends will see the listings. And sellers who are looking for a specific item are still likely to hop on over to eBay and do a quick search. They’ll only buy from friends if they serendipitously happen to catch site of an item in a friend’s news feed that they were already looking for.

Microsoft experimented in this area in late 2005/early 2006 with their Live Expo product. Originally Expo was a way to buy and sell items to your MSN IM buddies, or coworkers at a company, which is very similar to the Facebook experiments now being conducted. But over time they seem to have expanded Expo to become a more generic listing service. People want deep listings when they are looking for something.

Closed networks work for some things, but they don’t seem to work for trading physical goods. My bet is that Garage Sale and Mosoma fall short of expectations, and that eBay is looking on with, at best, bemused interest.