Been a while since I looked at Icerocket. Whoa. Very interesting. Not only does the ‘Rocket search the Web, it searches multimedia files (with links to legit sites where you can download the discovered media), blogs, phone pix (really) and personals. It does some sort of metacrawl through all sorts of personals sites to find the right someone for you. Pound for pound, Icerocket is a player.

Question—shouldn’t the site be called Icemaverick given its owner owns the M’s and not the Rockets?

I read the story on the front page of the WSJ today about SBC’s plans to offer IPTV services. What I read gave me a chilling reminder of efforts of yesteryear—Time Warner’s Orlando project (the set top boxes melted through testers’ TV sets); the Columbus, Ohio QUBE system; Interactive Networks; TV Answer, etc.. It’s now a graveyard of broken dreams and misunderstood consumer behavior.

I am not here to say SBC will fail at its IPTV project. I am saying there are serious issues. Among them:

*I am not convinced people want to buy all their services from one provider. Sure, you get one bill, but one provider means no competition meaning the one “triple or quadruple play” provider can easily get fat and lazy. (not to mention stupid)  The one bill story is old and tired. Is it difficult to pay more than one bill? I don’t se it as an edge.

*I am totally unconvinced that any large provider knows what consumers want to watch. Time and time again, big providers have tried and failed. The 80-20 rule applies for most satellite and cable users—80 percent of the people watch only 20 percent of the available programming. The rest is just there for show. Who knows what I want to watch on TV more than my friends and peers. They are my TV network. If you give people to ability to share and recommend programming, and enable them to become self-programmers and viral content sharers, then you are good to go.

*Tangential to the previous thought, I spoke with the CEO of Xfire yesterday. XFire has a million users, perhaps 60,000 simultaneous at a peak time. Their ability to virally share games with one another makes you wonder how they would be as TV programmers for one another. Allow one “super connector” (A Tipping Point term) the ability to find a cool, old episode of “Twilight Zone” and share it with people he or she knows would like that episode, then you have a real IPTV network. You want business models? There are many that work here. My friends and peers know what I like; the telcos and networks do not.

*While IPTV begins to shape up as a formal service, informal broadband television rapidly emerges. TV search and P2P sharing is spearheading this revolution. Short four and five minute clips (Atom Film, iFilm, Jib Jab…) are feeding this frenzy. Videoblogs are feeding this frenzy. People see something they like and then email it to their five best friends, and so on… If you think videoblogs and the like are a bunch of amateurs you are way off base. If you don’t think CNN is in peril as people look to create citizen built, home-brewed local and national TV news networks (Fueled by citizens), then you are watching the world pass you by.

*Lastly, the critics are salivating. One misstep, one big tech trial, one delay and the pundits will be all over the formal IPTV networks as another pipedream. It will be another joke along the high-tech cocktail party scene. Execution, marketing and programming will have to be flawless. Formal IPTV networks will have to work like your instant-on TV or the technorati will be all over the providers tearing them limb from limb. We’ve all seen it before.

Will IPTV work? Yes. Will IPTV as a formal service work? Yes, but not in the form described today in the WSJ. Stay tuned.