Talking with G; Round 2

Several days ago, I decided to reinstall GTalk at home. It turns out that they had fixed the issues I was seeing on my laptop (freezing and the like).

Today, GTalk came out with a new feature: Roaming Chat Histories! I had alluded to this idea in an earlier post–it was a natural progression of having your Mail in the sky, searchable, with context-based ads; to having your IMs in the sky, searchable, with context-based ads. [Apparently I’ve heard that MSN had such ideas a long time ago but has yet to deliver on the feature (I’ll leave it to the reader to speculate why).] So the idea’s not really that innovative. But GTalk’s still the first to do it. And they do it well.

I just love it. Someone IMs you a phone number or an address. You don’t bother writing it down. You can log in from anywhere (like the public library’s kiosks) into GMail and seamlessly search for it. And going "off the record" is a neat little feature as well. This is just so cool. It’s unfortunate that MSN does not (yet) have this feature. And it looks like GMail’s getting its own version of WebIM very soon.

One of the misconceptions that people (in general) have about IM is that it’s just the network of users that matters. Certainly, people will argue (as I have) that it’s very tough to move people off AIM/AOL, even with their crappy client (or at least, it used to be crappy–I haven’t tried Triton), as all their friends are on it. This certainly was the case in college. But I think people don’t realize that the network effect only goes so far.

Case in point: Koreans used to be absolutely fanatical about MSN Messenger. They had 3rd party plug-ins and avatars long before Messenger even supported Dynamic Display Pictures. They had the whole revenue stream figured out years before Messenger even considered the pay-per-download model. Now? No one in Korea uses MSN Messenger anymore. They’ve all switched over to NateOn. What happened? Messenger didn’t pay close enough attention to the Korean market. So Koreans found something else that was "cooler" and catered to their tastes and everyone left. Everyone.

The argument that some network doesn’t have "enough" users is only valid up to a point. There’s a threshold that can be crossed. And once it is, the network effect is no longer valid. Cause your network’s gone.

At some point, people will get fed up that Messenger randomly takes up 99% CPU and their computer freezes to a halt. You can give them all the Winks in the world and they won’t care. And they’ll head for that IM program that costs them 5 MB RAM. Not to mention the ability to archive messages in the sky.

Out with the Old, In with the New

at·tri·tion    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (-trshn)
n.

1. A rubbing away or wearing down by friction.
2. A gradual diminution in number or strength because of constant stress.
3. A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death.
4. Repentance for sin motivated by fear of punishment rather than by love of God.
   

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   [Middle English attricioun, regret, breaking, from Old French attrition, abrasion, from Late Latin attrti, attrtin-, act of rubbing against, from Latin attrtus, past participle of atterere, to rub against  : ad-, against; see ad- + terere, to rub; see ter-¹ in Indo-European Roots.]

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   at·trition·al adj.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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Attrition

The reduction in staff and employees in a company through normal means, such as retirement and resignation. This is natural in any business and industry.

Investopedia Commentary

This type of reduction in staff is one way a company can decrease labor costs: the company simply waits for its employees to leave and freezes hiring. Such a method contrasts the more severe labor-reduction techniques, such as mass layoffs. Waiting for attrition is usually better for company morale.

Source: Investopedia.com. Copyright © 1999-2005 – All rights reserved. Owned and Operated by Investopedia Inc.

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[Attrition] is natural in any business and industry. But no matter how you think of it, attrition is not good for morale. No matter what the departing people say ("I wasn’t looking; something just came up…", which is akin to, "It’s not you, it’s me…"), something about the current state of events just didn’t measure up to the other opportunity for them. And this inevitably causes others to ask themselves, "Does he see something [that drove him away] that I don’t see?", "Are there better opportunities out there for me too?", "Am I stagnating?", "What am I doing?", etc.

Obviously, from a management perspective, you hate to see people leave (unless they’re underperforming). People that have ramped up on the product, understand how things work, are, to some extent, valuable. (Some are obviously more valuable than others.) Training new employees is not a particularly productive for the team as a whole. The investment had already been made and you were reaping the rewards.

One of the Messenger folk mentioned to me once that it was amazing how fast Messenger can grind you down. Most probably this is due to our relatively fast release cycles and constant barrage of fires to fight. This post wasn’t spurred by anything in particular–it was more a multitude of things: the several people that have left the team over the years, and others that are now taking that big step (I’ve seen people come and go); Dare’s post about leaving within 5 years; Mid-Year Reviews coming up; and so on.  A time for reflection…

I guess the good news is that We’re Hiring! Work on the MSN Runtime, the Messenger Edge Team, the Presence Platform, or the Bot Platform!