For all the talk about convergence and all the lip service that most telecoms give to the idea I don’t see any result.
A person getting their phone bill, cable TV bill, and Internet service bill all in one is NOT convergence. Perhaps from the POV of the company, but not from the perspective of the consumer.
The only application I consider right now to be delivering on some element of convergence is Visual Voicemail on the iPhone. That integrates the voice phone and my contact’s information.
What we need to do is allow people to pivot of two different points. An example is voice and text like with Visual Voicemail. Another is the two points of entertainment and communication, where a number of companies are trying to innovate, such as to allow people to “watch” a TV show together even though they are in different physical locations. Commenting and sharing communications with each other while consuming a television show. Or with recommendation systems like Netflix but truly integrated into your set-top box.
5 Reasons Why Convergence Is A Bust (so far).
- Stove Pipes
Most of these big companies are organized into stove pipe and the cable division doesn’t like the Internet division which distastes the phone division. Who wins – not the consumer, because these little battles keep companies form coming together for the sake and benefit of the consumer. - The Pipe and the Piped
The industries are still thinking like they are separate – the pipe and the piped are separate. That was done because of distribution and production challenges that existed in the past and now are very different. Those companies that combine the two are the ones who can move fastest in the space – watch them closely. - Messier World
Combining these things makes it a very messy world. Companies and VCs like to keep this stuff easy to measure, easy to track, when we start combining it all together how do we count things for media buys and market segmentation. That messiness is scary, but it’s real, and its only going to continue to happen. - Losing Control
It is not about just combining two concept, but combining two actor networks. The business and the consumer. Some control is now flowing to the consumer and that is something that is also scary. But again, it is happening, get over it and get on-board. - What People Actually Do
This is the most important point, because here companies are still too focused on what people SAY they want. I too like to listen to people, but with my anthropological training I know I need to SEE what they are actually doing. (Just like many times what people say they do and what they actually do are different.) Entertainment consumption is often about identity and managing that is an active yet subtle practice for people. I want to build things that aren’t just easy to use, or what people TELL us they want, but things that people will use and want to use.
Loading ...Acknowledgements:
I want to thank Peter Van Dijck for a great conversation last night that inspired me to post this. Any errors in this post are, of course, my own.
A great movie that harkens back to the 
While I was busy making the crepes and giving them to the kids as fast as I could make them, they were eating them almost as fast. My son would give me back the plate as they finished the crepes. I would know exactly which kind they wanted more of. One plate was labled WUNBGCHESE and the other plate was labeled GRAPE. I made big cheese crepes and grape jelly crepes. Beside the obvious work on spelling for ONE, BIG, and CHEESE, I thought this is really ingenious. It reminded me of the Just-in-time Kanban system. 