Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Our little Norwegian-based company, Opera, is at it again with a bold claim that it will "reinvent the web" with its new Opera Unite service.
 
Some of the features available to Mac, PC, or Linux/Unix users:

• File sharing -- securely share files direct from your computer
• Web server -- turns your home computer into a web server via Opera Unite URL
• Media player -- direct link to your music collection from any web browser
• Photo sharing -- shares your image library over the web without requiring a photo service
• Lounge -- self-contained chat service running on your computer
• Fridge -- a place where friends and family can post notes

All sounds good on paper. But we have some skeptics here:

"These Swiss army knife apps that attempt to do everything for everyone tend to fall short in the end. The convenience of having all that functionality in one place often comes at the expense of the robust functionality we expect from dedicated apps.

Take the photo-sharing feature. Sounds nice, but are you really going to use go for that over Flickr or Picasa? Especially if it means fragmenting your library? Will the media player have the codec support I have in my dedicated media player?

Looks nice on paper, but I'm not buying shares just yet."
- Dan Neumann
 
"I'm wondering how this would compare to Google Wave. Google Wave is claiming to 'reinvent email', but it sounds like they are trying to do a lot of the same stuff by making it more collaborative, real-time, and enable sharing."
- Marta Strickland
 
"Opera's promo video and new list of features are uninspired, in my opinion. One could replace Opera with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Xbox, and probably countless other platforms, and no one would notice the difference. This is a failure in branding and product strategy.
 
As for this vs. Google Wave, the Wave team has truly examined the experience from the user's perspective, and uniquely rebuilt communication online, while Opera Unite seems to be just adding on functionality that certainly isn't revolutionary. That is, the elements of Wave aren't new, but most people don't use things like Wikis and Twitter... Wave is positioned to take over because of its simplicity and intuitive structure.
 
And btw... 'Fridge?' Dumb."
-Craig Ritchie

 
These are all valid points and they've left us wondering three questions:
1.  Will people really make the leap from their "trusted" current browser?
2.  How long before other browsers copy these services?
3.  And last but not least, the privacy issue. Will people be fearful of sharing their stuff?
 
Opera has been around for over a decade and had features like tabbed browsing and a search bar at the top of the browser before Firefox did and is looked to as an innovator on the web browser front by companies like Mozilla. So the thought about other browsers copying Opera's services is absolutely correct.
 
Opera claims their mobile and computer-based browsers are very secure - even safer with user data than Firefox and any product they develop tends to include the same encryption and security. Even if people trust that, it may not get past the legal barriers. The file sharing aspects of this product may be frowned upon by the U.S. legal system, as they will likely fall into the same category of services like Grokster and Napster. However, with a much larger following for Opera outside of the US, and being Norway-based, we don't really think they're concerned about that.
 
Do you think the new Opera will do as they promise and "reinvent the web?"
 
Tyler King
Sarah Jo Sautter