I recently had a chance to talk with Michael Bazeley, a journalist at Knight Ridder's San Jose Mercury Times. Today, Michael, along with partner Matt Marshall, launched SiliconBeat: News about tech money and innovation
The blog's a bit bare for now, but given the personal passion that Michael (and I assume Matt) have for blogging, I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more from them soon.
"Feedster Hacks is a weblog and directory for the various hacks that have been created with Feedster (Hence the name). My hope is to collect all of the useful, fun, and even oddball hacks that everyone has been able to create to make their Feedster experience more worthwhile. A hack can include a bookmarklet, an advanced search mechanism, or even a useful way of using Feedster to fit your RSS/weblog searching needs."
This isn't specifically about Netflix, but as it may impact their business, and I've been using them as a bit of a case study, I'm going to continue to track the trends impacting their business.
This News.com article announces that McDonalds will be adding automated DVD rental kiosks to their 13,000 locations; Grocery chains Albertsons and Safeway will add another 3000 and 3500 locations, respectively. (These rollouts will occur over several years... how many, is not indicated.)
Blockbuster, Win-Dixie and others are looking at the solution as well.
These machines have been around for a while; I've seen them in various SF Bay Area grocery stores before. This is the first large scale (contracted) deployment I've heared of... if you know of others, please leave a comment.
No surprise here; after I called them a Local Search Sleeper after the Web 2.0 conference, Google announced this morning that they had acquired Keyhole Software.
The obvious implication is that Google now has mapping technology, and can compete against the likes of Mapquest et al for Google searches such as:
- Show me a map for location X - Show me driving directions from location X to location Y
(Given that this is originating with satellite data, one might also foresee a time when you could transfer your directions to a mobile/auto GPS unit, access mapping via SMS, etc.)
What's more interesting, based on what I know of Keyhole from their online site/store, is that there database is filled with objects; that is, rather than being limited to streets, they actually know that a landmark is a landmark, making many other interesting things possible:
- Show me the View from seat 24E at Shoreline Ampitheatre, Mountain View, CA - Place my Local Search business at the corner of 5th and Main
Because they have everything from "space" to ground level, they can allow you to "pre-flight" some interesting things:
- Show me a flight route, at 7500 ft, from Honalulu to Maui - Show me the Statue of Liberty Helicopter Tour route
And of course, let's not forget that Google Image Search (in general) just got a huge boost.
Where I'm most excited about this near term is in its synergistic effects with photography and Google's recent Picassa acquisition. I'll write more about that later. (More broadly, given a Web Services API, there's plenty of room for all parties to innovate around a mapping platfrom. That too, I suppose is obvious.)
Most interesting of all? Well, either Google just wrapped up a very quick acquisition, or they were already in talks with Keyhole while Web 2.0 was going on. Either way, they still seem to be a couple of steps ahead of the competition...
John Battelle has an excellent write-up on Mary Meeker's latest analysis. It's good enough as is that I'm just going to point to it and hold comments until I've had a chance to reflect...
Apple announces iPod Photo(!), in 40GB ($499) and 60GB ($599) models. The new player offers 15 hours of music playback, or, 5 hours of photo slideshows.
iTunes 4.7 looks like a good upgrade too (surprised Apple didn't have iPhoto for Windows done in time for this launch...)
Oh, Apple also launched its EU iTunes Music Store. (All iPod, all day over at Apple.)
Good to see Apple playing for keeps!
As I mentioned here, in Flash Podcasting, the next (obvious) step for multi-sensory playback devices (with this announcement, we now have audio + "moving still images"), is a facility to synch/coordinate the various media types for playback. Hopefully Apple is thinking the same, and "slideshows" will run against a timeline metaphor, that allows me to specify which segment (of which AAC file) I want to play when a given photo is displayed; basic "play this playlist against this slideshow" would be a disappointment! 1-2 weeks, and we'll know for sure.
FeedBurner.com has announced "SmartCast", a new way for FeedBurner's service to tweak your RSS or Atom feed.
What is it (and why should you care)?
It allows those who don't have an easy way of building an RSS feed that properly structures enclosure elements to do so (semi) automatically. And, it works with all a variety of versions of RSS and Atom (which fits nicely, as one of FeedBurner's first offerings was RSS->Atom conversion).
Moreover, it also allows "GroupCasting", the notion of a collaborative broadcasting environment.
Near term, this means is the beginning of Podcasting (from a publish vs. consumption perspective) for the rest of us.
Longer term, FeedBurner points out:
"While podcasting is certainly all the rage right now, note that SmartCast is not confined to podcasts. Our service provides the same capabilities for any rich media. Whatever may come of "podcasts", we think the broad use of RSS enclosures is a trend, not a fad. SmartCast allows anybody with a feed to create enclosures that can be managed by specialized rich media feed clients. This initial emergence of specialized feed clients is just the tip of the iceberg. As more and varied endpoint uses for RSS/Atom feeds continue to pop-up, FeedBurner will continue to provide general purposes tools for publishers, allowing everybody to join in the fun."
Everyone's running the AP story (link in headline), so I'll try to add a few thoughts:
1) If I search, it's through the Google search toolbar; it's on any machine that I use regularly. The thought of having to go to Google.com to conduct a search makes little sense to me. I suspect there are a lot of people like me (in this regard).
2) Knowing this, Yahoo has been aggressively pursuing toolbar distribution. I know, because I've talked to a couple of people who they've tried to hire for toolbar Biz Dev. And, because it was a core component of the contextual advertising deal they offered us at the beginning of the year.
3) Yahoo can't turn to Microsoft (obviously), so who's the next best bet for distribution to the desktop? Yep, Adobe. (You can bet they'll be getting a nice slice of search result PPC advertising revenue.)
4) Adobe is now, IMO, trailing Macromedia pretty badly w.r.t. Internet apps. Adobe, especially with Bruce Chizen at the top, should be pushing down hard on (both corporate and) consumer Internet publishing. Adobe's answer to iLife (substitute software, hardware and web search companies to your liking)? Blogging? Podcasting? Web strategy beyond PDF? A bit of a mystery...
5) I'll be very disappointed if in two years we learn that this was really just about the toolbar. If, however, it's about Adobe & Yahoo partnering to build and integrate Adobe software on top of Yahoo Web Services APIs...
News.com reports that Akimbo will soon be selling their Video On Demand ("Queue and View") solution on Amazon.com; Amazon will have an exclusive through December. As noted, this is not the rumored Amazon Movie Rental offering.
The best part of the article:
"Akimbo is similar to Apple Computer's iTunes and the iPod, but for video rather than music."
Yeah, that sounds familiar... And that's really the problem; too many options will quickly lead to commoditization (not that I'm against customers having options).
You know things are getting ugly when you have to ask if VOD will be a feature or a business...
Does anyone (Roland Tanglao?) know if PayPal is actually aggregating these micropayments into a larger bill (ala Apple's iTunes store), or if they are actually processing the individual purchases?
Either way, given Yahoo!'s retreat from PayDirect, PayPal's dominance continues unabated. I'm actually amazed I can't make a PayPal payment at seemingly synergistic brands/sites like Gap.com.
DSE uses fuzzy matching to analyze database content and structure, so that it can return results that match a user's intent... even without matching the exact terms specified by the user. It does this by offering a parameterized query interface; what's considered a match and how important any given parameter is can be controlled on a per-parameter basis.
Example's always help in groking these sorts of concepts, so here's one to work with...
You click over to your favorite restaurant review site to plan a date. You're looking for a nice place for dinner near the theatre you'll be seeing a performance at later the same evening. Using a DSE driven interface, you specify parameters for: food quality, service, decor and price, select a food category (e.g., Greek) and specify the town the theatre is in (e.g., Springfield).
As luck would have it, there are exactly zero matches for a restaurant that exactly meets all of your criteria (which is exactly what most search engines would return). That's where DSE shows value; instead of returning an empty result set, it gives you results that are as close to what you've specified as possible, ranked by the parameters of greatest importance.
For example (assuming price was most important):
- A restaurant that matches everything you're looking for, but is in a town adjacent to Springfield shows first; followed by...
- A restuarant that is a 20% more expensive, but matches all of your other critera; followed by
- An Italian restaurant this is otherwise a perfect match; etc...
The bigger picture here is, for most of the searches we currently do, there is more than one acceptable 'solution'. Fuzzy search through Transparensee's DSE surfaces these 'substitutes', while ensuring that they are still relevant by controlling acceptable bounds for each of the parameters searched on (e.g., 10% more expensive is ok, but 50% is not).
Applications for this type of technology are as broad as your imagination. Some obvious ones include: dating, retail/product catalogs, real estate, and local events.
Transparensee is currently licensing their product to a number of small start-ups, and is in active talks with a few top-tier category players. Like most early stage companies, they are actively working on their pricing model and sales strategy, and are therefore offing classic enterprise + maintenance, per-user and ASP licensing/pricing.
While some companies have built similar internal proprietary solutions, I suspect there's a large (and underserved) market amongst traditional publisher's/media co's who would be better off licensing a solution like DSE vs. building and maintaining it themselves.
Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, Inc. posts a rational, albeit emotional, reply to Marc Canter's proposal to promote Bloggers writing product reviews for money (so long as its done transparently), which I covered here.
As noted in my post, and in a comment pointing to a TechDirt article, this isn't the first time the idea's been floated, in one shape or another.
Paying people directly to generate buzz for you in the 'blogosphere' absolutely should require disclosure (no disagreement there); I don't want to have to read through a web of "undercover buzz agents" to figure out what information I can really trust.
Unfortunately, nobody's ethics are beyond reproach today; the question simply naws away until opportunity inevitably strikes.
So, the question becomes, what is the trust system/mechanism that makes this a possibility? That is... How do I, as the user, vet you as an information source? (E-commerce -- SSL, TrustE, etc -- went through its version of a trust infrastructure buildout as well.)
Answering that should unlock all sorts of business models.
ContraCostaTimes (owned by Knight Ridder, who owns one-third of the JV that owns CrossMedia Services and their site, ShopLocal.com) writer Ellen Lee writes a fair article on local shopping site, Cairo.com.
Like ShopLocal (whose results are syndicated by AOL's In-Store shopping site), Cairo.com is focused on "steals and deals" (vs. entire product inventories), allowing consumers to quickly locate items that are on sale.
Unlike ShopLocal, Cairo.com gets its listings the old fashioned way... by indexing the web. (ShopLocal relies on CMS' relationships with major retailers, wherein CMS digitizes the printed & zoned circulars that appear in local newspapers.) And unlike ShopLocal, Cairo lets you use popular comparison shopping engines to validate your savings.
When I first wrote about the CMS deal, I noted that it was a "good basis to build upon." And I still believe that. But the time for the Newspaper Co's to build on their shopping and search platforms is now, not in another 6 to 12 months.
Newspapers... Perhaps it's finally time to really embrace them medium, and invest in Internet technologies, the same way you invest in technologies of a time long past (i.e., $1Bs of printing presses)?
Richard Hagerty's article, Mobile Search Is Almost Too Good To Be True, is a good reminder to those who might have forgotten that "Local" Search can be determined by proximity to any given "object", including the Searcher herself, including when she's mobile.
Digitally navigating our physical environment (in a more complete sense) is a big next step; certainly we've been incrementing toward it for a long time.
The next leap, in my mind, is Social Mobile Local Search; interacting with people or places based (in part) on our digital identity/profile (including our social network). Duane Wilson, founder of Totalmass (disclosure: who I know from Ofoto), has been working on a vision he and I share for a several years now. Duane's focus is on Social Mobile, based on Social Agents.
This was a long way off back when Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was out, and is now just creeping onto the radar. While I think there are broad applications for this technology, where we just might see it first is in schools, at malls, etc, wherever kids might be able to form ad-hoc mobile gaming networks for head-to-head and group play.
An SF Chronicle article earlier this week pointed to an internal Google document that forecasted 372K new advertisers over the next four years (at a fairly even ramp of 90-100K/yr).
These seem like low numbers to me, especially given that (as far as we know) it includes a) International growth, b) "Local" growth (and 'local' outside of the U.S. domestic market) and c) future advertising offerings (which might attract a new breed of advertisers).
For now, I'll chalk it up to conservative forecasting, misinformation and/or consolidation of accounts through reseller/channel partners (SEMs, IYPs, etc).
I first read about Blabble from a SJ Merc piece written by Michael Bazeley. What was notable from Michael's article was the unique position/niche Blabble was taking in providing for-pay "pr data mining" on blog posts on behalf of (presumably) consumer products companies.
This morning, Search Engine Watch (SEW) has a short blurb indicating that Blabble is now offering consumers free blog search functionality (ala Feedster, Technorati et al); their developer blog claims that they will add natural language processing (from their for-pay solution) over time.
As the SEW blurb points out, the free search results on Blabble are, well, horrible at this point. I'll be interested to see how their tech compares with, say, Feedster's over time. (I'd also be interested in hearing from anyone who's testing their for-pay service.)
Why should you care? Because, in my opinion, it's about Feed search, not Blog search. And that means classifieds and all sorts of other interesting "content" may eventually be most effectively "discovered" through these new engines.
The site allows you to post home made political videos for (or against) a candidate.
Particapatory media is a meme on the rise, and is tied in with many of the other memes (and new tech) floating around: micro content publishing, open source content, social networking, local search... well, you get the idea.
Very interesting! It reminds me a lot of BzzAgent.com, a rather clever marketing group.
I'd be more than happy to get paid to blog, so long as it doesn't impact my credibility.
Where do you see this falling between Paid Reviews <-> Full blown Advertorials?
And I guess the logical question... does everyone get paid the same amount, or does audience size impact the blogger's payment? Because if it does, well, then that grays the lines a bit in my eyes.
I'll pass on that ;) but say this instead. All of this talk about Flash has me wishing the iPod rumors were about the Flash application, not the media format.
After all, Flash would be a nice container app for playing back still images (photos), and could even be time synched against a (music) play list and a flash photo or PowerPoint presentation in the future.
Why, if Battelle would release the audio for Web 2.0, we could synch it with the recently released Web 2.0 PowerPoint decks (I love that Craig Newmark used a HTML page), and make it the first Flash Podcast'ed Technology Conference. ;) How sexy is that?
I'm definitely glad I bought my iPod Mini, and Podcasting makes it that much sweeter... but I'm ready to move beyond a single-sensory playback device. Wifi+VOIP for phone, QuickTime for video... ahh, too bad the iPod Gen 5 rumors are... false.
** Link from the Warton feed version of the article seems to let me through the reg curtain without authenticating... (
I gotta say, I'm pretty surprised that Apple doesn't see the opportunity in buying these guys on the cheap (they certainly have negotiating leverage)... or the threat if one of their competitors does. (Kinda like Google stealing Applied Semantics out from under Overture. Do No Evil ya'll.)
There are alternative providers, but that means redesign (for the wrong reason).
I had a chance to talk with Henry Whitfield, founder of TelID.com, on October 10th, 2004. (For those keeping score, Henry and I met through LinkedIn.com.)
What is TelID? A surprisingly simple idea for marrying web addresses to phone numbers in white page listings (and potentially, beyond).
Here’s the opportunity:
a) White Page listings are currently poorly monetized (if at all)
b) Publishers are motivated to optimize listings based on space (to save printing costs); the less space, the better
c) A few Publishers have allowed advertisers to include an URL alongside their phone number (for a fee). But this is problematic. URLs tend to be 1) long [see B, above], 2) transitory (especially for small businesses who go through multiple web presences early on), and 3) difficult for users to transcribe from print (or a voice call) to online
Henry proposes a fairly elegant solution:
a) Publisher’s sell an upgrade from a basic white page listing to a TelID listing
b) TelID up-sold white page listings are printed on a light blue (etc) background, setting them off visually from other listings
c) A key on the page instructs the user that they can instantly find the advertiser’s web site by entering the advertiser’s phone number at TelID.com; alternatively, more proficient users can enter “telid.com/[phonenumber]” into their browser directly.
d) TelID automatically redirects to the Advertiser’s web site when their phone number is entered at TelID.com. (Advertisers may change the URL that TelID should redirect to at any time through a simple web UI.)
e) TelID will provide basic reporting (e.g., number of redirects/month) so the Advertiser can evaluate ROI.
Is there a need?
From a Publisher’s perspective, yes. Turning the bone yard that is white page listings into a profit center makes sense. Advertiser’s who can be up-sold this modest program may also become prospects for further up-sells to yellow page listings, local search SEM services, etc.
From an Advertiser’s perspective, maybe. As long as it’s priced in the “can’t hurt to try it” range (initially), and proves its ROI by delivering a fair quantity (and quality) of leads, it’ll work.
From a User’s perspective, also maybe. Yahoo Local and Google Local (et al) want to be your source for conveniently finding local information online (and searching for a phone number should return more relevant listings than a business name, at the local level). Concurrently, InsiderPages, Yelp, Tribe (et al) want you to abandon plain old listings for “trusted referrals”.
There is definitely an opportunity here... but for how long? People have been fortelling the end of print newspapers for quite some time, but they live on. Do print white pages have staying power in the face of local search, directory and referral services?
Doc Searl's differentiates podcasting from internet radio (streaming), imparting upon us the necessity for this to be so to insure podcasting remains free from regulation (and legal persecution from the NAB & RIAA).
I had the pleasure of meeting the charming (and surprisingly soft-spoken) JD Lassica (and about 20 other fine folks) at a dinner that he co-hosted with Marc Canter in San Francisco Wednesday night.
JD was there to raise awareness and solicit support for a project that he's championing, ourmedia.org (which completely resonates with my views on the revolution happening in personal content creation). What is it? Straight from the site:
"ourmedia.org is an open source media project that seeks to expose, preserve, and advance works of grassroots creativity (chiefly, but not limited to, amateur video). Individuals, communities and organizations have begun telling digital stories that enthrall, entertain and often move audiences to take positive action. Plain text or the cool detachment of "objective" media do not come close to matching the emotional power of multimedia stories laced with personal narrative.
ourmedia is three things in one:
an open-source platform to bring personal media to the desktop;
a destination website at www.ourmedia.org -- preliminary docs are up on the site, with a beta launch scheduled for October 2004;
eventually, it will evolve into a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing amateur, hobbyist, semi-professional, and professional visual works and other media."
The ourmedia.org site is currently password protected while they are in pre-launch mode (if I understood correctly, they are looking to go live in November). Between now and then, JD is looking for some help with the site, particularly development help. To learn more about the project and/or volunteer to help, head to their open site, www.open-media.org.
Unfortunately, it's a story I wish I didn't have to write about (I'm sure you share that sentiment).
I didn't listen in on the analyst call, so your added comment of "Hastings said that Blockbuster was never considered as a threat" is news to me.
And quite frankly, it's shocking.
Reed's a very bright guy, with a strong team behind him... so perhaps I'm missing something. But I've been beating the "Netflix has no competitive advantage" drum for a couple of months now, and for him not to acknowledge that Blockbuster, with a more established brand, better capitalization, larger customer base, and most importantly, an impulse rental satisfying physical store (i.e., channel) presence... shows either arrogance or ignorance. (And believe me, I have no motive to ascribe such words to Reed, just calling it as I see it.)
Don't trust my end game analysis? Check out Herb Greenberg's article. To paraphrase, Blockbuster believes it will end 2004 (after 4.5 total mths for their online service) with more subscribers than NFLX has accumulated during its first 3.5 years. While actual subscriber numbers are important and telling, it is Blockbuster's accelerating subscriber growth curve that Netflix should find most alarming.
Reed/Netflix should be on the phone tomorrow with MSFT and Apple to see if either is interested in an acquisition, partnership or OEM offering to compliment their online music stores. Tivo is not the answer.
Update: I originally wrote that Blockbuster expected to have more subscribers than NFLX by the end of 2004, rather than more than NFLX had after 3.5 years of business. Quite a difference, as the majority of NFLX's subscriber growth (in real terms) has occurred in the last 1.5-2 yrs. My takeaway remains unchanged however; NFLX doesn't have a clear sustainable competitive advantage, and, they ought to (at least internally) recognize Blockbuster as a real threat.
"Our customers have encouraged us to offer low-priced online DVD rentals, but we have no announcements to make at this time," Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith said
In the understatement of the year, the article finishes with:
"Looking forward, Netflix said it anticipates an increasingly competitive market in the coming year."
I love Netflix. I've been a customer for years. I've met the people inside the company, all of whom I respect, a few who I call friends. But that doesn't change the fact that they have no clear strategy to maintain a competitive advantage in a market segment they created.
Want to find reliable local businesses? Yelp! believes it's the answer (as do about three dozen other sites).
Yelp!'s approach is just a tad bit different from sites like Tribe.net, in that:
- The UI is purely activity/task driven. Users are either 'Looking for a [business type] near [location]', or are 'Recommending [business name] located at [location]. Yes, there is an "invite your friends" option, but beyond that, the service is very focused. In that sense, it reminds me of Evite.com.
- It leverages a database of well-defined business names and locations (while still permitting users to add anything not in the database) for recommendations. For example, I sent myself a request, and then recommended "Starbucks near 95126" in my reply; I was immediately presented with several dozen Starbucks locations to choose from, which obviously reduces the work I need to do, and improves data integrity (i.e., there aren't 42 versions of the same exact business in the database).
- The obligatory "search existing recommendations" is waaaay at the bottom of the screen; no category crawl/browse is provided. This will probably evolve if/as their database of recommendations grows.
Like all of these services, Yelp allows you to vet the business by seeing if a given recommendation came from a friend, friend of a friend or simply another Yelp! user.
Want to create your own Feed Reader, or want to work with RSS and Atom feeds in some other way... but don't want to write and maintain the code to deal with all of the different versions of each of the "standards"?
Yet another site using social networking as part of their recipe.
I've been saying it for a couple of years... so why not kick the dead horse again... "Social Networking" desperately wants and needs to be a web-wide (i.e., platform/framework) play.
First, a grounding in a bit of personal philosophy on mankind (I promise it won't hurt or be too long)... In short, Man is an idea machine. We take in data, add perspective (forming information) and use it to form ideas, constructs, concepts, etc. Those ideas are given physicality through our corporal interaction with implements (pen, ruler, hammer, etc), machinery (computers, printing presses, etc) with the output being what we generically call "content".
As such, content is a really big deal. Always has been, always will be.
So what? Let's dig deeper...
In one corner, we have Apple, the undisputed (in my book at least) current King of Content Creation. As a turnkey solution, Apple hardware and software is the platform of choice for amatuer, pro-am and professional creation, manipulation and consumption of print, images, video and sound. This is clearly seen in their generally excellent digital lifestyle application suite, iLife. What's more, the iLife applications are artfully tied together with their online consumer service, .Mac, which makes it easy to share/present/etc the content created in iLife on the Internet.
In the other corner, we have Google, current King of Content Retrieval. Looking for anything ever published online? It's a safe bet that Google can help you find it as or more effectively (in aggregate) than any other single search provider.
And here (finally, dear reader) is where things get interesting.
Much of Google's internal development and acquisition strategy appears to be focused on vertical (backward) integration; that is, focused on content creation tools, creating a virtuous cycle with its search and advertising offerings, and of course fueling user lock-in and profiling: Blogger.com (Pyra Labs) - Acquisition. Blogs. All about self-expression, creating and publishing content.
Gmail - Internal Development. Email. Content creation, sharing and receiving.
Picasa (Idealab) - Acquisition. Sure, the photos are "created" on the camera, but Picasa gives them a bridge, and represents their first real consumer software offering (toolbars don't count in my book, sorry) and is on par with Apple's iPhoto.
Naturally, this also begs the question of forward integration, into content consumption, beyond search result pages and your Gmail inbox.
Browser? Email Client? Yeah, sure, Google could go there. But Why?
I'll put a stake in the ground and say that they "get" the content lifecycle, and will continue to move up and down its value chain to feed (off) their core competency: search.
And where might that leave Apple? Hard to say, but it doesn't seem to point to a happy place. Apple charges for software and services (enjoying far better margins than on its non-iPod hardware), and it seems unlikely that Google will want or need too; rather, they'll focus on their virtuous cycle and monetize via search.
Needless to say, it was a great conversation. Net-net? Greg's a bit more optimistic than I am (hey, he's writing an article for their national association, does he have a choice)... but we both see glimmers of hope. I'll post on his article if I can get my hands on it.
Susan Mernit's post on the Future of Classified Listings prompted this post... While I've said all of this in separate messages, it's valuable to me, and hopefully to you, to aggregate it all into one cohesive "framework".
The future of classified listings is (from the most obvious to the "most progressive", so skip ahead if you like):
1) Online: This is obvious to most of us, but just in case... Online order systems allow me to quickly enter, preview and submit my listing. Online presentation means that I can use multiple-media (text, photos, sound, etc) and more "real estate" to better express my offering.
2) Cheaper... or P4P: The days of $3000 job listings, $500 car listings, etc is over, regardless of how many media types and how much room (#1, above) I want to use. Those who lack the cost structure (i.e., newspapers) and fortitude to compete at free, low or pay-for-performance price points will suffer.
3) Geographically cast and filtered/Distribution Control: Yes, I have a couch for sale, but no, I don't want to sell it to someone 3000 miles away and have to deal with shipping... Controlling distribution based by geography, circle of associates, etc will all be important.
4) Temporal/Clearing: How many times have you called/emailed/driven-by, only to find out the apartment has been rented, the car has been sold, or the job has been filled? This inefficency (cost & hassle factor) will be eliminated by transactions that clear, offerings that expire in reaction to pre-established response criteria, or publication under real time control by advertisers.
5) Reputation/Trust based: Anonymous posting will be supported, and facilitated by "blind/double-blind" real-time and asynchronous actions. But, for certain services (e.g., baby sitting, mechanics, doctors, lawyers), certain types of merchandise (e.g., used cars) and "high priced" products (whatever that might be from the buyers perspective), the buyer & seller's reputation will be critical; amongst other techniques, reputation will be vetted by who you are in relationship to me (i.e., social networking). Need an example? Check out InsiderPages.com (my take here).
Dave Winer announced today that all ~425 people on the list for BloggerCon III will be accommodated. I'm planning to attend, and hope to make the dinners on Friday & Saturday as well.
Technology related? Well, yes, broadly, from a praticipatory media perspective. But regardless, it's a powerful message... one worth watching if you'd like to reset your perspective a bit.
I wish I could be there live at John Battelle's Web 2.0 conference, but alas, my current client is in a serious crunch, so time away is at a super premium. I won't lie; $2400 is also a bit steep IMHO.
And while the blogging that Jeremy Zawodny, Jeff Jarvis, Boing Boing and Big Media is doing is great, it's not the same as hearing the panels and drawing your own insights.
I could try to lobby crash a few hours here or there, but a lot of work goes into a show like this, so I'd rather respect the producers (and pray for a comp next time around). Besides, not everyone can be as enlightened as Dave Winer when it comes to throwing a conference (check out his approach to BloggerCon 3 if you need the details.)
So John... how about giving us access via the audio recording that I've got to assume you're doing (everyone's miked, right)? Podcasting is so very Web 2.0, after all. ;)
Jeremy Zawodny points to Keyhole.com in a Web 2.0 coverage post about Geolocation.
Keyhole has a 10TB (that's terabyte ya'll) model (both mapping and geo data); zoom from space down to near street level, calling out points of interest (or even zooming into them, as in this demo -- work safe).
Greg Sterling (and the rest of the Kelsey Group guys) ought to check this out.
PalmOne dancing with the devil? I'll leave it to you to mull over those implications.
As for me, well... a good friend of mine, Lev Brouk (aka Lev Belov) is working for Danny Shader's firm Good Technology. He was kind enough to get me an invite to come in and talk to some of the folks there over the summer.
While the people all seemed bright and capable, listening to their experience to date, and their plans for the future, I just couldn't help but feel that they were running headlong into a brick wall. Yes, they'll have some short term success while Microsoft gets its act together, but ultimately, even beyond ActiveSynch, I just can't imagine how PC<->Device synchronization isn't critical for any number of MSFT ambitions, from cell phones, to iPod clones, to PDAs, to portable video players, to... well, you get the idea.
I don't know enough about Longhorn to know for sure, but I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't ship with something akin to Apple's iSync built-in.
Deeje Cooley of RSS News points to a PaidContent.org post stating that Six Apart (famous for TypePad and MoveableType) is closing their Series B round; lead investor is August Capital.
Hmm... getting the strong feeling that I'm missing this wave... like email, calendaring, etc of the late '90s, blog publishing services will be a staple of all major media companies in fairly short order if the current trends continue.
Jason Calcanis breaks the news (via John Batelle's Web 2.0 conference) that Yahoo has given its blessing to Overture ads in RSS feeds.
Unfortunately, as I wasn't there, I don't know if that means Ads In Feed Posts or Ad Posts in Feeds. I assume it's the former.
This also begs the broader question of whether Overture's Content Match is going self-service for publishers of all sizes, ala Google AdSense and Kanoodle, or if they really meant "just" RSS feeds. Once again, I'll assume it's the former.
Either way, as I pointed out in my post titled "Actually, Google News does make money for Google", it sounds like Yahoo now clearly sees the need to make a land grab for the rapidly expanding blog/RSS advertising "real estate" that's opening up.
Very little coverage of Rodney on the blogs I read; makes sense I guess, since most are focused on the tech industry & politics.
But so as to not let him claim that he got no respect when he passed, it's worth mentioning that a good man (and a heck of a funny comic in his day) left us today.
Amazingly, not everyone was at Battelle's Web 2.0 conference this week. Some of us were enjoying a rousing webcast put on by the Media Center. Lucky for you, you can read my write-up and click-through to listen on your own! :)
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On October 5th, 2004, The Media Center held its first public webcast, entitled "We Media: The Impact of Participatory Media on Election 2004".
Set against the backdrop of the upcoming 2004 U.S. Presidential elections and a heated environment fueled by a wave of backlash from Big Media figures in response to the blog powered CBS/Dan Rather fiasco, the webcast pulled together a panel of broadcast and print journalists, bloggers, and web entrepreneurs. Over 100 people tuned in by computer or phone to follow the action.
And, fortunately, "action packed" - and "insight packed" - is an apt description of what transpired. From the rapid-fire questions and answers between the moderator and panelists, the simultaneous polling of the audience, the non-stop comments in the chat room, and the questions on the Q&A board, it was clear that everyone came prepared to participate in a conversation about media participation.
With 100+ people participating at a fevered pitch for an hour, it’s simply impossible to callout all of the great insights; rather, you can just listen (for free) yourself. (You can also check out the Media Center blog).
Some of the particularly notable takeaways, however, include:
- The continually escalating impact technology (the Internet in particular) is having on political participation, as evidenced through online voter registration, online research, blogging (and blog syndication), and instant accessibility to foreign opinions on U.S. policies.
- The ability for individuals to select (and vet) whose opinions they want to read from millions of authors (vs. the usual suspects), and the sense of personal connection and community they feel when reading and interacting with those authors and one another.
- The impact that these forces may have on this - and future - elections, with a greater percentage of Americans (particularly amongst youth and minority voters) expected to vote this year… representing the reversal of multi-decade slide.
But as mentioned, this is just a small sampling of the insights in the webcast, and may not be the ones most striking or important to you. Fortunately all of the days events are captured in perpetuity for your own analysis; so very fitting, considering the topic!
Roland Tanglao points to a post from David Temkin, founder of Laszlo, stating that Laszlo has changed its business model and has just gone open source. This on the same day that Macromedia announced free non-commercial licensing of Flex; imagine that...
I met David in 2001 during my time at Ofoto when Laslzo was really just getting started; he and then Ofoto President James Joaquin (formerly of When.com, bought by AOL in the bubble days) were good friends.
I was immediately struck by Laszlo. While it had some serious issues (namely performance, but also lousy support for local file system interaction, IMO), it had been exactly what I'd been looking for since '96 as I started to think about web enabled education titles at Davidson & Associates and again in '97 as I realized how flawed our client codebase was at PointCast. To me, Laszlo represented all of the good of HTML and AOL's Rainmaker, with comparatively little of the latter's downsides (as best I know them).
Still, things haven't gone Laszlo's way... or even more broadly, things haven't gone the way of rich media apps. But I think there's a "yet" involved here somewhere, because when applied to the right tasks today, the workflow and user experience of a rich media app is notably better than a web app.
While I'm surprised by their new business model (why not sell to BEA et al?), I hope that it allows them to continue to innovate, leading the way for the rest of the segments participants (like Macromedia).
Good news. If you've got a non-commercial (or perhaps, pre-commercial) use for Flex -- Macromedia's solution for building rich web apps on top of Flash -- you will soon be able to get a free license.
Having talked extensively with Google and Yahoo (and spent some time with the good folks at SME Global Solutions et al) about Local Search and its relationship with (online) newspapers & directories, I feel like I could write a book on this... but it's late, and you don't deserve that kind of punishment anyway.
- Agreed: A fixed price offering makes a lot more sense, and is easier to sell. (Though, if you follow the links above, you'll find that I'd much rather see companies pushing pay-per-call and online-to-offline coupons to SMEs at this point in time.)
- Agreed: If I were a Yellow Page Co (IYP) or Newspaper Co, I'd be trying to figure out how to keep ahold of my customers as the search engine company onslaught heats up.
My main concern is with the value chain that gets built (from a Newspaper/YP perspective), which looks something like this:
Search Engine COs (note: plural, only to increase as fragmentation increases) -->
SEM interface aggregator (e.g., 24/7 Search) -->
Arbitrager, converts PPC to fixed price (e.g., SME Global Solutions) -->
Newspaper/YP Co -->
Advertisers
Guess what? Only the first and last entities will be needed in the future (especially when Advertisers realize that it's not really that hard to manage your pay-for-performance spend and/or programmatic interfaces become the norm).
If anyone else remains in the picture, it's probably the SEM aggregator, who makes dealing with a fragmented search engine marketplace much easier by abstracting the interface.
Of course, there are strategies for Newspaper Co's and IYPs to deal (and even profit handsomely) from this scenario, but it requires a commitment to the dreaded "investment" and "development" words.
In the mean time, there are dollars to be had by taking the low road and setting the fixed price click fee well above the pay-for-performance bidded price... so long as one is careful with their approach to arbitrage...
I met Stuart MacFarlane on July 1st (2004) when Andy Wilson (formerly SVP Global Product Management, Overture Services... now Managing Director, Momentum Venture Management) invited me to join Stu and him for lunch.
Terms like "great guy", "brilliant", "passionate" and the like are so commonly tossed around when talking about entreprenuers (especially Internet entreprenuers) that... well... they don't mean what they should. So it is with my most sincere voice that I say all of these adjectives apply to Stu, which makes this such a (vicariously) exciting announcement.
Stu's built an offering that blends all of the things that are right about Craigslist (community, referrals), Local Search & Directory (listings, comprehensiveness) and LinkedIn social networking (trust, relevance) -- I picked LinkedIn, BTW, because people seem to be much more selective there than on most social networking sites, ala Friendster (almost by definition).
The results are exactly what you'd expect (and want). Need a local mechanic you can trust? Turn to InsiderPages.com; you can see who your neighbors have tried and how they rate them. What's more, if you've invited your friends, you can filter the results to see only those recommendations made by friends or friends of friends (whose opinion you likely trust more).
Of course, there are weaknesses:
- The service is only as good as the listings that users post, and the number of friends you invite
- If, like me, your friends are spread all over the world, you may not have enough "local density" to get the friend/friend-of-friend trust factor; the value of social networking from a trust factor drops off substantially beyond that point, at least in the focus groups I've done on the topic.
- It's only a business if someone will pay for it. The obvious candidate is the service/product provider, who may not be comfortable with an open forum (where negative comments can, and frankly should, be listed)
In my opinion, cracking the business side of the equation will be the easiest of the three; focus on Pay Per Call and online coupons (for use in-store). Local businesses will value the tangible proof of a phone call or in-store visitor long before they adopt SEM in mass.
The rest? Well, I'll save my thoughts until Stu does the official reveal. ;)
Yesterday, I posted that Yahoo's Local Search offering had gone gold, but that it wasn't drafting off the main Yahoo search box (at yahoo.com).
I was corrected by a poster over on John Battelle's blog, who said that it worked fine for her, when she entered a query such as "palo alto, ca florist".
I tried this myself, and found that it worked; so I updated my post to indicate that it still didn't work if you entered "florist 95126", generalizing that Yahoo wasn't supporting zip codes out of the core search box (my bad for not testing all permutations)...
Well, Ali Diab from Yahoo (whom I don't know, but who appears to be Director of Product Mgmt for US Search, at least as of 11/2003) wrote to clarify the situation.
Here's Ali's info:
"Y! Search does supports ZIP code based search. But, the ZIP code needs to be entered before the search term. For example: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=94089+florist.
We have historically not supported users entering the ZIP after the query term, because the level of false positives for Query followed by ZIP is actually very high. That being said, we are working on a novel query analysis technique that will enable users to enter the ZIP after the query term with much lower false positive rates than currently possible."
So, net net... Yahoo Local Search is supported through the main yahoo search box, provided you enter a city name with your search term, or, with a zip code, provided you enter a zip code before your search keywords.
Personally, while I'm glad to see that Yahoo is supporting the majority of use cases (and is working on a technique to solve for all of them), as a fellow product mgmt exec, I find this situation a bit bizzare. Perhaps it's just me, but in all of the local search testing I've done over the past ~ two years (including my time at Overture), I've always entered the search topic ("what") first, followed by the zipcode ("where").
Perhaps that's because that's how Yahoo and Google are training users to local search through their local search specific UIs!?!
Scott Johnson, VP Eng & Co-Founder of Feedster, releases usage stats on MP3 enclosures in the RSS feeds that Feedster monitors.
The numbers are small now (35 MP3s in the last 24 hours, 696 "all time"), but given the stampede of traffic that hit my site for the Anatomy of an iPodder article (thanks to a kind link from Scoble on his link blog), interest is very strong.
Evan Williams, Co-founder and CEO of Pyra Labs (makers of Blogger) announced today that he's retiring... but only for a while.
Evan will be resting, exploring life (instead of working insane hours) and contemplating his next start-up.
As a user of his software/service, a peer in his age group who has likewise made many a life tradeoff to be in this industry, and fellow would be serial entreprenuer, I congratulate him on two key success -- 1) the monetary success he now enjoys, and more importantly, 2) the introspection that will make him even happier and more successful going forward.
Yahoo Local goes gold but is only partially tied to core search
ClickZ's Chris Sherman breaks the launch of Yahoo's Local search service moving out of Beta and being promoted to the main Yahoo page in his article entitled Yahoo Local Officially Launches.
Chris covers Yahoo's company line and adds his own take on the value of a few new Local features... but most importantly, makes a statement about Yahoo's time-to-market vs. Google's (a meme worth watching).
What's missed however, is that while Yahoo Local is now on the main Yahoo page, it isn't integrated into the main Yahoo search process. Users must specify their intent by selecting the Yahoo Local tab, where they may then conduct their local search. (See update below.)
This is the same disappointing short-cut that A9, Clusty, and others are taking while the technology to automatically discern user intent matures in the labs. While it's better than going without, it falls short of the optimal search experience.
I'll have more on this meme in the next few days...
Update:
In fact, Yahoo Local is drafting off the main search box (as it ought to be)... but only if you type in a city name in your search (vs. a zip code). For example, "pizza san jose ca" works, whereas "pizza 95126" does not. Hopefully this is a bug. I'll post an additional update when more is known.
Dave Winer gives a narrative process map for a new piece of software (iPodder), which would allow an end user to configure content that they want to have (mostly automatically) scheduled for delivery/availablility on their iPod, thereby providing the necessary glue for Podcasting.
One of the main "faults" of the current iPod, sans third party add-ons, is that it is focused on replaying "aged" content.
Having a user definable software-only solution for allowing "fresh" content to be pushed and/or streamed to your iPod would be, in this iPod Mini owner's perspective, a tremendous improvement.
Deeje Cooley, IMO, hit the pause button on the RSS reader ideas and get a cross-platform offering to market for this before other offerings become entrenched.
Since their comments were public, I'm going to take the liberty in quoting them in my response.
First, Scott Rafer wrote:
"We're working solely with RSS on the inbound side so it's reasonably good semi-structured data. The site is underfeatured since it only took Scott Johnson a few hours to throw it together. There are few significant improvements that we can make once he schedules a full day for it."
See, you try to be kind and set the bar low, and some driven entreprenuerial CEO swings by and raises the bar on himself. To that, I say, Nice!
While I remain skeptical that Feedster will get to the search/presentation level of the current major job portals working solely with RSS (unless they take the painful route of building feed specific wrappers ala Junglee of old... or have some natural text/language processing tech beyond that commonly in play), it may not matter.
Why? What they have may be good enough after S. Johnson has more time to play... but moreso, if this does indeed catch on with consumers (and there's no reason it shouldn't), major employers will be inclined to structure the job descriptions in whatever way is necessary to make Feedster (and its inevitable competitors in this segment) happy; the cost would be significantly less than what they pay to run ads on Monster et al.
Rafer continues with:
"What's really going on in certain vertical topic areas like jobs is that RSS and the tools that use it well are destroying the economies of scale for large destination sites. Any small recruiter can post a job feed, get it included in Feedster, and have the reach of the large sites. Even better, anybody with a good idea of how to build online recruiting software can simply use Feedster Jobs as a web service and go compete on a features basis with the big guys as they wish."
I couldn't agree more (and thank you for saying so with a bit more clarity than I did in my initial post). Disintermediation at its finest.
Scott Johnson adds:
"The ability of RSS + a service like Feedster to say 'go out on the web and gather me what ***I*** really want' is incredibly powerful. Effectively an aggregator + Feedster amounts to a "Content Router". And we all know that routing technology has been a rather large business ..."
Also completely agreed, with the caveat that "What I really want" isn't truly satisfied by Feedster's (or any other feed/blog searcher's) current approach.
"What if, in addition to telling PubSub his specific keywords, Robert could point it to his Link Blog (which is essentially a collection of his broader interests), and have it return conceptual clusters of posts/feeds, ala Clutsy? Then, turn it up yet another notch by giving Robert an interface to score the results, providing the engine with yet more context on what Robert is really after."
Obviously this applies to jobs.feedster.com too. Don't constrain me to "internet product manager san francisco" and similar literal searches. Let me point to my blog, an HTML version of my resume, etc, in order to a) define the scope of my search, b) help me avoid the myopia of literal search and c) help me avoid info overload.
Looking forward to seeing where you guys take Jobs next, and, which vertical you decide to "disrupt" next!
Analysis of online business and technology trends, including: Search and Directory, Digital Media, Social Networking, RSS, and E-commerce. Written by buzzhit!'sTony Gentile.
