| The more I read thought leaders like “Tom Peters” and the more about business models, two concepts are standing very clear. 1. Scale, scale and scale… 2. Niche, niche and niche… |  |
Scale gives you price arbitration and niche gives you value arbitration. The strange thing is they rarely co-exist.
Every great business starts with catering a niche market and its profits /growth rate will be very high. But as the business scales, focus turns to revenue pressure, profitability and the most important item...stock price. They tend to spread their wings to achieve all these and do everything within their limit to get there.
It’s the same with Software Services Business Model. We have services for everything from search, news, photos, videos, music, files, news, content, storage, computing power, and applications like CRM, Accounting, etc. These services are becoming bigger and bigger… and eventually the will become commodity.
So, how do you deliver value with services?
Let me share with you some niche services business that are simply “Service of Services”, a very valuable proposition.
You get your account on FrameChannel and pickup content from over 400 channel feeds like news, weather, sports, finance etc. You also configure framechannel with your account details on facebook, flickr and picassa etc.
Congratulations….You have just configured a service of Services!!! YES, framechannel, makes your customized content as a service!!!
You go pickup a wireless photo frame and configure it with framechannel credentials. Bingo… your customized content is now displayed on the digital photo frame.
Think about this... You are on an international trip and upload pictures to Google Picasa / Facebook or any picture sharing service. Instantly your family back home is able to see them on the photo frame in your living room!!!
In fact, it need not be a photo frame, it can even be an application like a screen saver or a gadget that connects to framechannel service!!!
Now, I call this a "Service of Services" as it aggregates various sources of information form discrete services, delivers a customized content to wherever /whenever you want... A true value.
Could Google or Microsoft do it? Probably NOT. They will surely integrate their own assets into a single service.
Will they inter-operate? Probably NOT. or it may take ages...Take for example, Yahoo and Live Messenger integration.
But, a nimble, smart bunch of kids can pull this off without any "Big Brother" attitude and "clash of strategic priorities".
Also make a note, consumers want choice, they will never stick with one single platform or a single service...
If you are thinking of a startup, or some new idea, go figure if you could come up with a niche “Service of Services”
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