GetConnected Hires Executive Vice President

On 06.25.06, In Boston, Opinion, Startup, by David, Comments: 2

GetConnected, an ASP that provides back-end transactional services to help retailers sell digital services such as broadband, wireless, digital and high definition cable video, and satellite TV announced last week that it appointed Howard Lamb to be Executive Vice President of Technology and Operations Engineering with the objective further “strengthening GetConnected’s position as the most widely deployed technology platform used for enabling digital sales for retailers.”

The are two reasons this announcement caught my attention. First, it’s good to see companies that you were familiar with from the Web 1.0 boom still breathing. In 2000, I helped launch a consumer collaboration software that shared an incubator space with this company. This was back when it seemed like every HBS graduate was required to start an Internet company, raise alot of VC funding and burn it on some revolutionary service to change the world. The founders here were not much different.

GetConnected, at the time, was an online comparative shopping portal for communication services such as wireless, internet access and cable. Consumers would enter an address and the site would return a comparison of all available services. It never really took off for several reasons but the company survived by shifting focus to being more of an ASP platform and kiosk offering (reportedly doing well and profitable). The online comparison engine still lives here.

Looking back, however, the online version of their service may have been ahead of it’s time. I’m surprised that a scrappy web 2.0 company has not yet popped-up with a competitive offering (probably just missed it that week on TechCrunch) using current web and other syndication services, social aspects and slick CSS layout. That’s the other reason this announcement caught my eye. Like many other ideas from the first boom, could this be another concept that could be re-born and better executed as a Web 2.0 app?

With telcos, ISPs, cable companies and VoIP start-ups treading on each other’s territories and blurring the lines between services, real choice is becoming a reality for the consumer. So much is happening within this space including recent legislative developments that not only is choice a real option, confusion is as well.

I know it may be hard for some of the local techies in the audience to understand but for most consumers, the requirements are a dial tone, is-my-show-on and check-my-email. They would like to have the best service for the lowest price but there are a lot of details to consider and navigating this choice is getting less clear for the non-technical (a.k.a 90% of the population). This spells out a very basic consumer need that could be filled by a well designed web app.

Let me know if you are aware of a service like this…I’m switching up all of my services soon.

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David

David Laubner is an expert in the field of online marketing, product management, user-generated content and new media technology. His background includes numerous technology product launches and the founding of several internet startups. Follow David on Twitter.

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