Intuit. The ultimate small business channel.

Rarely do I talk with an entrepreneur - especially ones focused on the small business market - that does not reference Intuit in some way. 'We want to be the Intuit of our sector. We want to partner with and sell through Intuit. We want to exit to Intuit.' Well, Homestead has now done all of the above.

A do-it-yourself web site builder and survivor of 1.0, Homestead almost single handedly created their own segment back when. Back when? Back when people asked why small businesses needed a web site. They mastered the art of robust, easy to use online software combined with a high touch model that got newcomers engaged for the long run. And now they have a new home inside Intuit with the opportunity to leverage all the trusted relationships they have to offer them. And a little marketing muscle.

Two things are happening in the SMB. The many silos of services spawned principally by the advent of SaaS are slowly starting to meld into fewer, bigger silos so that small business does not have to manage so many vendor relationships. And what once was cutting edge - site building - is now a commodity. When that happens, you better get out or have really strong distribution.

Congratulations to another Valley exit.

Skype and Google. Too bad this one does not have legs.

If anyone could figure out a way to make hay out of Skype, it would be Google. Some how, some way they would figure out to leverage Skype to give their advertisers more good opportunities to reach their audience. Skype is already a world-class application and does not suffer like other services from being difficult to use. And I don't know anyone that I have turned on to it that did not ultimately find it in some way useful.

What Google would do - that Ebay has not - is find additional ways to integrate Skype into other services and applications to render it that much more useful to its users. After all, look how long it took to get Skype into a social network environment.

Anyway, all this for not, it seems. At least for now. The rumor appears to have come and gone with our turkeys last week. Sooner or later though, one of these Skype rumors will come true.

Is Google Good for Small Business?

My friend Irv Shapiro, CEO and founder of Ifbyphone (www.ifbyphone.com), has for a couple of years now been asking people this question. He contends - and I must disclose that I am now a believer - that people do business with people they know. And, more importantly, since relationships are built in person or at a minimum over the phone, small businesses need to receive phone calls as a direct result of their Internet Marketing spend.

Sure, Google in some way is arguably an important part of any online strategy, but if it doesn't produce phone calls, is it good for Small Business after all. Read this post at Ifbyphone's new blog for more on this. There's also plenty else there worth reading. This is a company to watch.

Videoconferencing for everyone.

My rant on video continues. With a little support from my friends at Skype and SightSpeed (although they in themselves may not be friends...). While companies like Tandberg, Polycom and others continue to change the way innovative enterprises communicate, there is plenty of help on the way for small business.

As with so much else in telecom today, video is coming to the SMB in the form of SaaS (see my acronym post for more on this). SightSpeed, long a leader in the delivery of high-quality, low cost video-calling has stepped up its offer significantly to push video past it's novelty phase. With productivity features like multi-user calls and online file sharing - on top of its indisputable video quality - SightSpeed makes a very good case for adding video to your monthly telecom spend. By this time next year, you'll be hard pressed to find laptop without a web-cam built right in, eliminating to the only real barrier to adoption. But it is truly a try-it-to-believe-it phenomenon. As I have repeated before, once you use video, a plain old phone call seems pretty light.

SightSpeed Business, it's called. I am still testing it and will report back.

Skype - ironically - announced a deal with Logitec around the same time the SightSpeed Business product was released. Using Skype video and some new equipment from Logitec (around $100), supposedly you can go full screen with any degradation. I must say, that would indeed be impressive. I did not receive my trial camera as yet...To learn more about this, go here.