Comments on: Update: Twilio’s Deal with Ma Bell – Creative Disruption in Action http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/2012/09/27/twilios-deal-with-ma-bell-creative-disruption-in-action/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=twilios-deal-with-ma-bell-creative-disruption-in-action Analysis & Expertise in Conversational Commerce Tue, 21 May 2013 19:12:32 +0000 hourly 1 By: Dave McClure http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/2012/09/27/twilios-deal-with-ma-bell-creative-disruption-in-action/comment-page-1/#comment-33457 Dave McClure Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:01:34 +0000 http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/?p=5607#comment-33457 Dan,

Good insightful reply. Thank you and I apologize if my remarks sounded overly-negative. I am still waiting for the real disruption to begin… ;)

Dave-

]]> By: Dan Miller http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/2012/09/27/twilios-deal-with-ma-bell-creative-disruption-in-action/comment-page-1/#comment-33453 Dan Miller Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:26:43 +0000 http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/?p=5607#comment-33453 Dave: It does raise Twilio’s profile among AT&T’s growing community of developers, but you raise a very important point. This whole arrangement “isn’t soup yet.” There is no clear way to “provision” Twilio services through AT&T. The integration, if you will, is very shallow and that is uncharacteristic of Ma Bell. For example, over on the speech processing side, it has taken decades for the company to move “Project Watson” out of the labs to become seven well-defined APIs addressing specific use cases. The announcement has a “toe-dipping” aspect to it. As you know, developers are opportunistic and constantly shopping for a platform that shortens the path to revenues. Right now, the likes of Appcelerator, Google Play or Apple iTunes get most of the attention. Telco’s largely disqualify themselves because they like the idea of exclusive deals and see their billing relationship with customers as an indication of loyalty.

I can’t agree that this has “ZERO point” to the industry (nor that I’m sure which “industry” you’re talking about). If we’re talking about mobile application development, it matters because one on the largest issues hanging over the “transformed telecom industry” is what will become of incumbent network operators. Insurgent IP-telphony carriers and app developers have largely ignored them (or treated them like barriers to success). Some of us have even wished for them to take a “fail fast” strategy for their old business models and introduce something new quickly. I’ll admit that the announcement is tremendously out of character for Ma Bell and may turn out to be a total outlier. Still, it reflects a possible path for other incumbents to examine as the figure out how they want to deal with OTT service providers and foster app developers to continue to employ their networks and related IT resources.

]]> By: Dave McClure http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/2012/09/27/twilios-deal-with-ma-bell-creative-disruption-in-action/comment-page-1/#comment-33423 Dave McClure Fri, 28 Sep 2012 06:01:04 +0000 http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/?p=5607#comment-33423 Why would this matter in the slightest? Oh, because AT&T has a ton of developers that have never heard of Twilio and this is a big distribution model for them? Oh wait, there are probably not many developers that really focus just on AT&T and if there are, they probably have already heard of Twilio so this bears ZERO point to the industry.

Last time I checked, you can’t even provision a phone on Twilio or AT&T’s service (or at least they are not allowing it).

]]> By: Dave Michels http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/2012/09/27/twilios-deal-with-ma-bell-creative-disruption-in-action/comment-page-1/#comment-33421 Dave Michels Fri, 28 Sep 2012 03:50:34 +0000 http://opusresearch.net/wordpress/?p=5607#comment-33421 Excellent post Dan.

This agreement is painful news for those that depend on the old/current model of communications.

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