Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had some provocative prophecies to share with the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France, declaring that within 10 years all content will be online.
There won't be newspapers, magazines and TV programs. There won't be personal, social communications offline and separate.
But will there be Windows?
After all, the trend Ballmer spots in the media world is almost exactly the same thing that is roiling the software markets as software shifts to subscription-based cloud computing, a weak area for Microsoft but a strong one for Google.
Yes, Microsoft has Azure, an attempt to blend cloud services with on-premise software. But its cloud story remains a bit complex and the company doesn't seem overjoyed to be telling it.
After all, it has billions of dollars of revenue tied up in the old world of on-premise software installations. Who can blame it for dragging its feet on the way to the cloud?
Ballmer correctly noted at the conference that media companies have yet to figure out how to make money online. I guess it takes one to know one.
However painful it might be, Microsoft, like the print media that Ballmer eulogizes, must change. Microsoft must get online, and much faster than is comfortable. Otherwise it stands to lose to Google which has no built-in dependency on on-premise deployments.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Top 10 Feeder Sites for The Open Road
I was looking through the visitor traffic to The Open Road this afternoon, interested to see from which sources most of the traffic derives. It turns out that CNET is the first and second most important source of traffic for my blog.
This may not be a good thing.
On the one hand, it means that CNET is delivering additional content to its existing customers, keeping them with the brand. I don't have access to CNET's data but I'd hope it means that people stay on CNET's site longer and therefore end up "spending" more advertising clicks with CNET.
But on the other hand, could it also mean that rather than creating net new customers it's simply cycling its existing customer base, pushing readers around to different pages within its content network but not necessarily generating additional page views. If true, it's a phenomenon that must be common to all websites: keeping customers is easier than finding new ones.
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