Steve: Notes is dead
by Volker Weber
According to police reports, Notes was killed by inventor Ray Ozzie, 45. Ozzie entered the Notes space on the Ides of August -- Aug. 15, 2002 -- armed with Version 2.1 of the Groove collaboration platform and its new peer-to-peer e-mail functionality. ... Notes, 20, will be interred after a private service.
Now, this is going to stirr up some debate. :-) The "Notes is dead" story reminds me of this:
Notes may be in the same state as Windows or Office: Lots of people use it, hate it, depend on it for their daily business. There are interesting new players in the field, but it is going to take a while until Windows can be declared dead.
Comments
1) Blogging as a way to communicate with customers is no revolution. As implemented by Ray Ozzie, it is a monologue, and it reads like it is written by his PR department. He's not actively participating in, for example, a discussion forum with his customers as we do at Lotus on our Developer Domain site.
2) If e-mail is so tired, where's Ray's IM address published, and why do his readers have to e-mail him their thoughts on his blog?
3) What is with Steve Gillmor? This guy gives blatant endorsement to Ozzie's statements about SharePoint (gee, that $51 million investment looks pretty good right now) and his quotes from two e-mails. Is Steve's column an editorial or letters to the editor now? Why does Infoworld give Ray Ozzie so much ink without showing actual results of how the world is changing using Groove?