NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: What do users want
At 10:59 AM 12/27/2007, Barry Gold wrote: >We've had a lot of discussion here that makes assumptions about what users want. Among other things: > . "All you can eat" internet access > . Ease of use > . Low prices > . No surprises All true. > . Unlimited usage, including running servers. Actually, not true. Most of them would not know what a server was if it jumped up and bit them. And they have no idea at all that when they are pirating music via file "sharing" applications they are running servers. >Let's look at this a little more closely. We say users want X and Y and Z; the problem being that I doubt any of us here is a "typical" user. I'm surely not. However, I am an ISP, so I do know what users want because they tell me. They're certainly not shy about it. > We're the most knowledgeable 1%. Most people here are (I'd guess) capable of downloading, installing, _and configuring_ a measurement tool, especially if somebody else tells us what configuration parameters to set. > >That's not going to be true of the average user. I swear to you that I know somebody who is convinced that if he does anything besides look at net sites, his computer will burn up or melt down. He's even afraid to download and keep, say, a PDF or WMV file. WMV files actually can contain executable content such as worms and viruses. Our mail server has an option to block them, and most of our users leave it turned on. >So to a large extent Brett is right. _Most_ of his customers aren't going to care about P2P. All they're going to do is surf, shop, maybe read Wikipedia. And a lot of porn. You better believe people care about porn. "Recreational" sites, as we call them in the trade, are always at the top of our Web statistics -- in both bytes and hits. >(*) I also made the mistake of trying to back up his computer onto mine. I ended up with directories with names that aren't legal under Windoze, so I can't even delete the junk. One of these days I'll hook up a mac to my desktop again and delete that huge tree. You don't need to. Just use Windows' "normalized" names (dir /x). >So, what do _I_ think the average user wants? Basically the first four things above. But interpreted a little differently than we think of it. > >"All you can eat"? Not exactly. Yes, exactly. No overage charges and instant Web browsing. Oh, and they'll quit if there's ONE unexpected surcharge. >What they want is "no surprises". If they buy net access for $40/month, then they expect to pay $40/month (plus a few odd $ for taxes). Not to find an extra $30 tacked onto their bill because they watched a few episodes of their favorite shows on CBS's website. So "all you can eat" really means "all that _most_ users _will_ eat". That's all that "all you can eat" EVER means. Same as at a buffet. >It doesn't matter to them if you get cut off after 300 GB/month(+), because they'll never hit that limit. (That represents using the full 1.5MB/sec "burst rate", continuously for 2 hours a day, every day of the month.) Brett, or any other ISP, needs to provision his system for his average customer's usage, plus a little extra to allow for inevitable growth. If he gets one or two customers who want a lot more than that, he can throttle them down and/or suggest that they buy a higher tier of service with more bandwidth and/or a higher usage limit. We always throttle users. Any user, even the little old lady who only surfs on Sundays, can get a bandwidth-sucking worm or Trojan. >(+) substitute whatever limit realistically represents your user's expected usage. > >They also want "ease of use." That translates as "I don't want to mess with it, I just want it to work." Most users are intimidated by Outlook's or Thunderbird's setup screen. Heck, they're intimidated by any e-mail program. Period. Any user who has a POP mailbox is effectively a power user. Ever wonder why Hotmail is such a success, even though it lets Microsoft spy on your intimate e-mail? Because people don't even feel comfortable using an e-mail client. > They don't want to have to mess with it, and that's a large part of why ISPs need support staff -- to tell Joe LUser how to get his email working again after Outlook lost his settings. And I've noticed that most ISPs don't even bother to support any browser except IE, any mail client except Outlook/Outlook Express (plus whatever is most common on the Macintosh this year). Actually, this is not the case. We get our users onto Firefox and off of IE as fast as we can. And if they are capable of handling an e-mail client, we give them Thunderbird or Eudora. >Why? Because Firefox and Opera and Konquerer and the other browsers out there account for maybe 2% of customers -- combined. Not correct. Firefox and other Mozilla-derived browsers are, by most accounts, in the 20-30% range. Some sites peg it as high as 40%. See http://www.kottke.org/05/02/browser-stats >So it's not worth the money to write scripts for the support drones to follow for those other programs. > >P2P? Most users are way too unsophisticated to configure a P2P server, or any other kind of server. It's no wonder Brett can (mostly) get away with telling his users they aren't allowed to run a server. We're not "getting away with" anything. Those are the terms of service for our residential class of service. > Yeah, sure, I can just see the average non-programmer user configuring Tomcat. Not gonna happen. > >That said, Brett really does have an "attitude problem". I would assert that it is you who has an attitude problem. You are attempting to dictate how I do business, regulate my business and my industry, and regulate the Internet. Who made you king? >To a large extent he thinks of his exceptional users as enemies, using terms like "stealing". The term "stealing" is quite an accurate term for piracy of intellectual property. And my "exceptional" users love my service. It is the college kids who download Limewire because a friend told them it's a way to get free tunes (but really know nothing about what they're risking -- especially the spyware) who are frustrated when we prevent them from taking over the network. Ditto the life-less gamers who are frustrated when a gigabyte update to WOW takes more than a minute. >What he really needs to do is think of them as potential _extra_ revenue, that just need to be educated. "Hey, want to run your own servers? No problem, we'll even help you set it up, only $X setup and $Y/month." You clearly do not know the details of our business and therefore are not qualified to comment on it. We do have business-class service at additional cost. >Finally, they (we) want "low prices". "Low price" of course means different things to different people. Every American consumer wants everything to be free. That's just normal. >I'm glad I'm not running an ISP. You probably would not enjoy it. It's not fun being attacked, badgered, and told how to run one's business by people who have never done it and do not understand how. --Brett Glass