Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

Data is the New Links. Tim Berners-Lee Says Sites That Don’t Give Users Their Data Back Are Boring

Posted: 28 Feb 2008 08:00 PM CST

Who owns your friends (or rather the list of who your friends are and how they are connected to you) has been a big source of debate in the social networking world. Control over that data is what makes social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn so potentially valuable. Yet there has also been a movement afoot towards letting people take their friends with them, if you will, to other sites. In an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web takes social networks to task for hoarding data. The interview, conducted by Paul Miller, focuses mostly on the Semantic Web, which to Berners-Lee is all about linked data.

The interview is long and has everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about the Semantic Web (a set of evolving technologies to make the Web more readable by computers). But about 42 minutes into the interview (transcript here), is one of the most interesting parts. Berners-Lee says data on the Web is the new links, and Websites should stop keeping it to themselves:

I think, it is a very grown-up thing to realize that you are not the only social networking site… otherwise it is like a website which doesn’t have any links out. In the Semantic Web similarly, if you don’t have any links out, well, that’s boring.

In fact, a lot of the value of many websites is the links out.

Now if you look at the social networking sites which, if you like, are traditional Web 2.0 social networking sites, they hoard this data. The business model appears to be, “We get the users to give us data and we reuse it to our benefit. We get the extra value.”

So, first of all, are they going to let people use the data? I think, the push now, as we’ve seen during the last year, has been unbearable pressure from users to say, “Look, I have told you who my friends are. You are the third site I’ve told who my friends are. Now, I’m going to a travel site and now I’m going to a photo site and now I’m going to a t-shirt site. Hello? You guys should all know who my friends are.” . . . So, the users are saying, “Give me my data back. That’s my data.”

Of course, social networks are already moving in this direction. Last month, everyone from Google to Facebook pledged to work towards this and similar goals by joining the Data Portability Workgroup. And earlier this month, Google took a more concrete step by announcing that it would adopt certain standards in OpenSocial to give developers access to that coveted social graph (the map of connections between friends). The standards are called Friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) and XHTML Friends Network (XFN). And these are some of the same standards Berners-Lee is talking about.

It is one thing to join an industry workgroup, and another to actually implement some of these standards. More people like Sir Tim need to keep nudging the social networks and sites in general in this direction. Remember: data is the new links. Sites that don’t give it out won’t get any back, and eventually may disappear from view.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Why the presidential candidates flunked the email test
As the election steamrolls ahead, the remaining candidates need to make sure their email campaigns are maximized to the full potential. Learn from their mistakes.
imediaconnection.com

More Vaporware From Google Health. Just Launch It Already.

techcrunch.com

Google’s Marissa Mayer put out another teaser today about its long-anticipated, much-delayed Google Health service. The post on the Official Google Blog offers some screen shots (below) and lays out what consumers can expect. But other than a pilot announced last week with the Cleveland Clinic, there is no mention on when Google Health will actually launch. Meanwhile, Microsoft launched its own rival HealthVault way back in October.

Like HealthVault, Google Health will allow you to download your health records from doctors and hospitals, and create your own medical profile. Also like HealthVault, it will let you search for doctors and provide online tools to manage your health. When you log in to Google Health, you will see your health profile, complete with information about your medical conditions, medications, allergies, procedures, test results, drug interactions, and medical contacts. Security and portability of medical records are key areas of focus for the Google engineers building Google Health.

The real battle, though, is which one can become the de facto platform for third-party health apps. HealthVault is already signing up industry partners. Google has its own approach. It is not quite OpenSocial for healthcare, but that is the general idea. The problem is that most healthcare applications are not Web applications. They work on the legacy technology you find at most hospitals and doctor’s offices. Google is working hard to help port those apps to the Web. Mayer explains:

Right now, this means you’ll be able to automatically import information such as your doctors’ records, your prescription history, and your test results into Google Health in order to easily access and and control your data. Later, this platform strategy will mean that you will be able to interact with services and tools easily, and will be able to do things like schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and start using new wellness tools.

Healthcare is still a largely untapped market on the Web. Whoever can crack it first will open up a huge new market. (For both Google and Microsoft, the opportunity here is health-related search and the very valuable targeted ads that go with that). But enough teasers already. It is time to launch this thing for real. Funny that Google is the one with the vaporware in this case, and not Microsoft for a change.

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embracing the silence of disconnectivity

 

Jon Burg

http://jburg.typepad.com/future/2008/02/learning-to-emb.html

Yesterday I had a solid meeting with a great company, Zannel.  When you think Zannel, think rich media capability meets Twitter with true cross-platform interactivity.  Great people, compelling conversation, really nice product.

And this got me thinking.   What ever happened to just sitting on a park bench without a cell phone, laptop, mp3 player or other connected device in site?  What ever happened to silence?

I really enjoy silence.  But I can't stop running after commotion.  I find my self checking email constantly, and between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog reading, commenting and writing - not to mention family - there is rarely a moment of silence in my life (other than on Saturdays when I don't use digital media for religious reasons).

As our lives become increasingly more connected, we will find ourselves with fewer and fewer moments of silence and reflection.  Connectivity is great, but when will be learn to draw the line?  When will we learn to shut it all off and just enjoy the wonder of nothing, the beauty of silence?

When will we see the rise of Connectivity Disconnect Therapy?  When will we see hotels and results advertising that their rooms DON'T have internet connectivity?  When will we see the first batch of Disconnecting for Dummies style self-help books?  When will we learn to stop over-achieving, to hold off from pursuing and just live?  

Isn't life a pursuit?  Can a person truly live without pursuing?  Now that we've tasted digital social media, now that the doors of pursuit are always open, can we stop?  Can we learn to shut if off?  When does this platform cease being a pursuit and become an addiction?

In the words of the venerable Valeria Maltoni, "it's not about applications, or process, it's about choices we make : )"

Google Approaches 52-Week Low

While Google (GOOG) was considered one of the poster stocks for the bull market, at a current price of $453.80, it is now trading just 3.5% above its 52-week closing low of $438.70. If the stock hits this level, it will mark the first time in its history as a publicly traded company that it actually traded at a 52-week low.

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And The Number 2 Music Retailer Is...

profy.com

A major tide is shifting in the music industry as the digital age slowly eats away at the number of CD sales in favor of downloadable MP3s. Today, Apple has announced that the sales figures for 2007 are in from the NPD Group, and iTunes has come in as the #2 music retailer, trailing only behind Wal-Mart.

In today's press release, Apple has revealed that more than 50 million people are now using the iTunes store of more than 6 million songs, which has sold more than 4 billion songs to date. Even more impressive are the sales for Christmas Day 2007, which Apple puts at "an incredible 20 million songs."

“We’d like to thank the over 50 million music lovers who have helped the iTunes Store reach this incredible milestone. We continue to add great new features like iTunes Movie Rentals to give our customers even more reason to love iTunes.” announced Eddy Cue, VP of iTunes.

The latest release of the iTunes software, version 7.6, has now integrated access to the service's newly launched Movie Rentals feature that allows customers to rent movies to be watched on a computer, a current iPod, an iPhone, or even on an HDTV through the use of an Apple TV device. By March, more than 1,000 movie titles should be available, including at least 100 titles in hi-def. Does Apple have it's sight set on NetFlix and Blockbuster next?

It's very impressive to see iTunes so high amongst traditional CD retailers. This goes to show how wrong industry execs were in viewing the digital age as a curse to the music industry that should be avoided. All the outrageous lawsuits against file-sharers and P2P networks still has not prevented the inevitable from happening. The success of the original Napster should have shown the RIAA in advance how customers wanted their music, and labels should have jumped to develop a legal and profitable way to provide it.

Oh well, I guess that's why the deep pockets of Steve Jobs and Apple stepped in and seized an opportunity many other were too blind to see. This is only the beginning of digital music stores rivaling CD retailers. The major success of the completely DRM-free AmazonMP3 marketplace, as well as the Zune marketplace (despite its flawed pricing structure), pretty much shows us that CDs probably won't last much longer.

Now, if only the car audio industry could catch up with the digital age and start providing more logical ways to listen to those digital files in the car, while maintaining quality. FM transmitters sound horrible most of the time, and having to control an iPod as well as the car's stereo can, at times, be too much for someone driving a car at the same time as well. Really, this is the only place I even listen to CDs anymore.

Can Google's Midas Touch Turn Health Record-Keeping Golden?

Through a joint venture with the renowned Cleveland Clinic, Google is
entering yet another software category: electronic personal health
records. The two firms last week announced plans to develop a PHR pilot
program that will test the secure exchange of patient medical record
data between the Cleveland Clinic PHR and a secure Google profile.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/61826.html

Fundability: Make (Seed) Money Fast!

 

www.mashable.com

I’ve had funding for projects before.  Sometimes it has been a blessing.  Sometimes it has been a downright curse.  The lingering curse of having once been funded is being constantly approached by friends and acquaintances to find funding for their projects.  Now I have a pat answer for them that doesn’t require me to tell them outright how hard it will be to find funding for a paintball booth for a Halloween haunted house (just one random example from memory).

The answer is Fundability. I’m not absolutely 100% on it’s effectiveness yet, as it’s been a largely under the radar company, or at least largely under my radars.  What they claim to do, however, is genius. Dubbing themselves a “web based deal flow marketplace for entrepreneurs and investors,” their goal is to match projects with investors via various social networking functionality and algorithmic matching.

If you’re an investor, you can set the system up to send you pre-screened deals sent to you by creating your ‘Investor SweetSpot,’ or join a virtual investment group, which allows you to distribute to groups of investors deals you find.

For investors, they can have pre-screened deals sent automatically to them by creating an “Investor SweetSpot.” They can also join or start a Virtual Investment Group and syndicate deals with other groups or angels.

All this isn’t free, however.  Fundability gets theirs by charging the entrepreneurs who want the money a $49.99 a month fee to find themselves a funder. If the system does what it and their case studies claim, though, that $49.99 a month could be money very well spent.

Alarm:Clock says they’ve just raised $3M from Velocity Ventures in January, though no word on whether that money was raised using their own system (my money says no).

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Distributed Mass Customization: Is Etsy the Next eBay?

Read/writeweb.co

A lot of people scratched their heads when Etsy raised $27 million. What on earth? Handmade goods, that's about as low tech as you can get!

Then Umair Haque, a well respected blogger and strategist - albeit one who is known for being a bit “out there” - asked Is Etsy the next Google? Maybe Umair was just saying that this is big. One of his commenters pointed out: “not Google, but maybe the next eBay”.

That makes sense. When eBay came out, the first reaction was “huh, Pez Dispensers and junk from garage/attic?”. eBay was an online garage sale and Etsy is an online street fair.

The bloom has gone off the eBay rose recently, so it is interesting to think about what went wrong at what was almost the perfect start-up success. Many people critiqued eBay for buying Skype at too high a valuation, but that seems like a tactical error only. The big issue is that they lost sight of what made eBay special when they started selling mass-produced stuff. There is something about being a public company, with investor pressure for endless hyper growth well beyond the natural growth constraints of the market, that seems to drive this kind of brand-destroying diversification.

Selling off inventory from big companies (eBay’s diversification) may be a great business, but it was not what made eBay magical. Garage sales, antique shops, auctions….these all have a bit of magic and romance. It is about finding something unique and special.

Handmade goods have the same appeal.

Etsy Connections

The reason it is so hard for most technologists to see the power of services such as eBay and Etsy when they first come out is that we tend to look at the world through the prism of big companies and consumers. What is so powerful about eBay is that around 750,000 people see eBay as their primary source of income and double that‚ 1.5 million‚ see it as a significant contribution. Etsy can have the same income-generation impact for lots of people globally. Where do all these millions of people fit in the big company/consumer model?

According to a 2005 survey, close to sixty percent of Americans reported that they dreamed of starting their own business.

Etsy is part of a much broader economic shift. So is the Blog Networks challenge to MSM and the smaller rounds of financing for start-ups in the programmable web.

We may be witnessing the historical high water mark of giant companies in developed economies. In 1955, Fortune 500 companies generated 1/3 of GDP in America. In 2000 that had risen to 2/3. If you prefer %, from 33% to 66%. Hidden in those numbers are the countless family farms that could not withstand the onslaught of Agribusiness and the Mom & Pop shops that closed when Wall Mart came to town.

Imagine a world where the Fortune 500 share of GDP went back to 1/3 and small businesses got back the 1/3 they lost in the last 50 years.

This may be about to happen for 3 big reasons:

1. The Internet reduces transaction friction, making it easier for small businesses to do business with each other, with consumers and with big companies.
2. Big companies are no longer seen as a reliable source of employment; decades of outsourcing and layoffs at the first whiff of a problem, all cloaked in inhuman corporate speak, have had their effect. This changes the risk/reward decision for talent. The best and brightest will more likely go the self-employed route, start a business or work for a small business where at least you have coffee with the owner and he or she looks you in the eye when (s)he has to fire you. Fortune follows talent.
3. Consumers are looking for that extra special something, the customized motorbike and the grass fed local beef and the hand-made jewelry. We want what your average person does not have, the opposite of mass produced products. This growing consumer demand arise from decades of mass affluence and the fact that the Internet makes these types of products visible.

Google Bulls Try to Spin Comscore Disaster, Fail

siliconalleyinsider.com

As Google's stock slumps against the ropes (down $60 / 10+% in two days), bullish Google analysts are lobbing in reasons to ignore the horrific Comscore report. The arguments are:

• Comscore is wrong
• The paid-click drop is just the result of Google improving click quality
• Price increases will offset the unit drop

A report from Jefferies provides additional Comscore data that, in our opinion, makes it even less likely that the January Comscore report is just a wacky aberration. Specifically, Jeffries reports the Comscore numbers by month for October through January. The sharp, steady deceleration suggests that Google's click growth has ground to a halt over a period of months--a pattern that would be unlikely if the January report were just Comscore noise.

October: 37%
November: 27%
December: 12%
January: Flat

It is also hard to see how this deceleration could possibly be explained by Bull Argument No. 2--"accidental click reduction" and other quality programs (An explanation that never made sense for the Q4 shortfall anyway). It's one thing for Google to improve quality by reducing some accidental clicks, upgrading its algorithm to improve relevance, etc. But it's another thing altogether for growth to go from nearly 40% in October to 0% in January.

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney casts further skepticism on the "improved click quality" explanation:

* Per comScore, while January searches on Google's U.S. Websites grew nearly 40% Y/Y (an acceleration vs. December), a material mid-teens decline in Google's Coverage Ratio compounded by a mid-teens decline in Google's Click Thru Rate meant no growth in paid clicks. Key Equation: Searches X Coverage Ratio X Click Thru Rate = Paid Clicks.

* Potential Causes - Assuming the data is accurate, we could see two factors behind the Coverage Ratio decline: 1. Google's ongoing efforts to improve both lead quality for advertisers and the user experience for searches. 2. A macroeconomic dampening of commercial queries by searchers. The decline in Click Thru Rates, however, is counter-intuitive. A decline in Coverage Ratio should generate a rise in Click Thru Rates.

As for Bull Argument No. 3: Could an increase in pricing offset such a rapid unit decline? Anything's possible. In light of the macro-economy, however, this seems about as likely as Bloomberg winning the presidency ("de minimus")

In a final blow to the "Comscore is Just Wrong" argument, Imran Khan of JP Morgan provides the following historical look at Comscore paid click growth versus Google US site growth. It's not a perfect correlation, obviously, but it certainly appears to be meaningful. (And, again, we find the monthly slowdown through Q4, combined with a Q4 disappointment, leading into a deathly January to be persuasive).

Imran Khan:

Table 1: Google Y/Y Growth Performance vs. ComScore Paid Click Y/Y Growth

	4Q'07	3Q'07
Google US Website Revenue Y/Y Growth	46%	56%
ComScore US Website Paid Click Y/Y Growth	25%	48%
Implied Pricing Growth*	21%	8%

Source: Company reports, comScore data, and JPMorgan estimates

*Assuming comScore paid click data is accurate

Table 2: Google Q/Q Growth vs. ComScore Paid Click Q/Q Growth

	4Q'07	3Q'07	2Q'07	1Q'07
Google US Website Revenue Q/Q Growth	14%	9%	7%	10%
ComScore US Site Paid Click Q/Q Growth	8%	11%	-7%	11%
Implied Pricing Growth*	6%	-2%	14%	-1%

Source: Company reports, comScore data, and JPMorgan estimates

*Assuming comScore paid click data is accurate