Finding quality content over the Web & on-line advertising

December 11, 2007 at 2:30 pm · Filed under advertising, information overload, long tail, mass, quality

Hi,

Last post was about the idea of tapping on the Long Tail content base. That is, being able to have sites with a small user-base get the attention they deserve over sites such as Stumbleupon. However rather then aggregating the data according to the amount of users and ties the site generated, the quality not the quantity of the votes would be the factor counted. That is if the proven experts in that specific field the site was all about, would put their thumbs way-up on the sites content, then it would reach high on the charts.

If such a thing would prove possible then maybe advertising could be of real benefit to users, rather then a pain in the…as is the current situation. It could bring things closer to the Gmail ad service promise. Making ads relevant to the users specific interests, but at the same time turning the on-line ad business up-side-down as ads would appear according to the actual value the product created for its users and not according to the skill in which the advertiser used key words…

Say I was a user interested in open source tools for editing video, and Stumbleupon according to the paradigm explained above would rate Zulo as a grate place for such content. I’d get on the same content page ads for the extra cables, video camera etc that are necessary for creating video content. However because it would be possible to rate niche products and not only those bought by masses of people I’d have only products rated by experts as the best products, appear as ads on my content page.

While advertisers would continue paying for each user clicking on an ad. Sites would actually create greater value for their users by offering them this extra , proven expert-knowledge practical information on top of the sites-content.

There is just one small problem. How do you define “value” for a group of users. Value can be the price of the product or the performance of the product or any other character of the product . How do you decide what is most valuable for the random visitor/user?

Yael

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Sometimes its the quality not the quantity that counts…

December 5, 2007 at 8:02 am · Filed under Blog, Feature, information overload, long tail, Mashup, mass, quality

Hi,

Long time no blogging…

Here are some thoughts from this morning:

Zulo is our current-major project at Vaya. Its a wiki-style site dedicated to young people interested in Free and Open Source related technologies and topics. When we decided to create Zulo we knew that there weren’t going to be millions of users for the site. Not because its a low-quality content site but because its in Hebrew and because Free and Open Source aren’t major areas of interest for most teenagers at Israel. Nevertheless we believed that the few interested people who were into Linux, would create valuable, high-quality content, and that over time a small community would evolve.

But Zulo is just an example for sites or other content places over the web that create content that will never have, and is never meant to have, a large group of users. The problem with such sites is that they never reach the charts (on sites such as Digg, Technorati and others), they remain unknown , even if their content is high-quality. Thats because sites such as Digg are all interested in the number of recommendations or connections the site generates, and not necessarily the quality of the content produced, and the long tail remains untapped…

Which brings us to the next problem…The opinion of Moshe does not count as the opinion of Jacob, and the difference between what Moshe tagged as important and what Jacob tagged as worthy is becoming ever more important.

Information overload is everywhere, sites such as Outbrain offer to assist with overcoming RSS overload by providing users with recommendations about which of the contents on their RSS is truly worth their read. However the fact that 100 people voted for that peice of content is not always reassuring.

What ToDo?

Phase I: Acknowledge that Moshe’s vote does not necessarily have the same value as Jacob’s…

Aggregate information from wherever possible (social sites?) and find the best experts in varies topics (it all depends on the criteria set…).

Phas II: Seamless rating process
Allow those proven-experts to rate content in their area of expertise. This should somehow become a seamless operation (while reading an article these experts exclusively get the Stumbleupon thumbs…). Even offer your experts something for participating.

Phase III: Become a Jacob Follower…
Allow the user to choose the expert groups of his liking at sites such as Stumbleupon or Outbrain. Or somehow mash-it-up with Twitter so readers (signed-up to an RSS reader) know, who they are following and can be sure that in that specific area its worth their read.

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The all-in-one social netwrok spaces

August 2, 2007 at 8:21 am · Filed under Blog, Feature, Mashup, social network, Uncategorized, unpopular view, Web 2.0, widget

Ok, where do I start here? Doesn’t this remind you of the old portal’s?

Ok, where do i start here? Doesn't remind you of the old portal's?

Many things have been said about the Myspace’s Facebook’s and the Israeli social network TheMarker Cafe and their many features/widgets (blog’s, forums, like-linkedin services, e-mail, like-twitter services… and the list is endless) .

This may currently be a very unpopular view, especially as 60% of the world’s Internet users are estimated to be in one of the social network sites [my profiles alone consist at least 12.5% of the 60% world-wide figure] however, this aspiration to tie your users to your site by providing them all they need, so they don’t go else-where belongs to the web 1.0 days…

If you allow people to go, and do whatever they feel like on the web, then you may get new innovative ideas/businesses. Tie them to your all-in-one services and you get lousy content. Open API’s, mash-up’s and new tools that make mash-up’s even easier to create promise to become a strong force on the web. Instead of many sites where you get all-in-one people will also be able to use many of services offered as their building blocks to be used for their own needs and creations.

If you’ve ever tried to maintain a social entity on one of these sites you’ve probably discovered that its a full-time day+night job. Takes time to master the many features they each offer with their unique ways of delivering them, that is if you have the time. Most people don’t have the time. And to make things worse, many open a few entities, which produces lousy content.

Why not produce great single, flexible, much needed applications with open API’s, preferably open source app’s, that are easy to maintain by the end user (and the service provider), and that can easily be tied to other services/applications. Even Google with its many applications releases them one-at-a-time.

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A Blog Feature

May 25, 2007 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Blog, Conference, Feature, Yochai Benkler

Haven’t seen many people use their blog’s to include updates about their planned talks, conference participation and public appearance. By this I don’t mean mentioning their plans somewhere along their post , but have some application on-top of a calender that would organize the time, place of the appearance, and link to the relevant conference, talk etc.

For many people this could be a very valuable feature.

For a while now I’ve been hoping to have the opportunity to hear Yochai Benkler talk about his latest book “The Wealth of Networks” on one of his visits to Israel, but haven’t a clue about whether such a talk is planned. There are quite a few of us who would like to hear him.

A quick Yochai Benkler blog search, provided me with the following conclusions: 1. Yochai Benkler does not have a blog. 2. The search led to this nice blog summary of a talk Mr. Benkler gave not too long ago, you can find it at “Joho theBlog” and a more recent account here.

If you have a few minutes to spare its worth looking at this ZDNet video about Cisco’s new Telepresence, mashup application .

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Techcrunch20 conference

April 26, 2007 at 12:31 pm · Filed under Conference, Demo, Product, Uncategorized

For companies with a new product, looking for exposer at a relatively modest price, compared with Demo 2007, see the Techcrunch20 conference terms, planned to take place at September 2007 : http://www.techcrunch20.com/

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Mashing up

April 23, 2007 at 10:35 am · Filed under Enterprise web 2.0, Mashup, mass, platform, Product, start-up, Tools to expect, Web 2.0, web application

The run to provide a mash-up tool or a programming platform for the non-techi’s is gathering pace. At the same company’s such as Worklight partner to create a larger offer, while Zude promises to provide it all. Here is a short list of some of these technologies:

Programming for the masses

For managers/business people who know what they want but have little or no programming skills, and want the job done fast. And for the masses with little/no programming skills (people like me) we have company’s such as Tersus . Tersus is an open source platform for visually creating applications (truly visual, no coding needed). The company is currently building its own new web site based on the Tersus platform, also to be released as open source.

Coghead is also a visual platform for creating web applications. Their product is part of a bigger vision to be part of an agile office, of the kind that can easily be created at the coffee house near you, or in your preferred location. This makes sense when you consider consumer generated app’s that are making their way into organizations with the promise to change organizations, and with it the way people can choose to work and make business — why then not create small applications on the fly?

Small-medium size business could also be good candidates for such platforms. They can easily and cheaply create the app’s they need and later maybe even make a few buck’s by selling the app they’ve created on a Coghead or Tersus like site, or even better, open source them and release them for free to get others, to use, maintain or further develop the application.

Tools for organizations joining the big feast

And than there are the many new mash-up companies who offer to democratize the mash-up experience for the masses. Teqlo for one, which allows to build web app’s with its drag and drop interface, has recently partnered with an Israeli company named Worklight.

Worklight allows organizations to export their SAP information as a secure feed service over their Myspace or other site/service their using, and will probably be offering many new features (apart from a secure feed for inside organization info and a mash-up tool) some time in the near future as part of the tendency to offer a complete service.

Something to keep an eye on is, how do you provide a bundled service with many features, without making it too constraining for the individual user and especially the individual worker? If I understand correctly Web 2.0 for the organization is about lightweight tools that provide the worker with greater freedoms to do the job the way he does it best.

Mine not their’s

And to complete the picture, there are the new portals (not so new any more), such as pageflakes that have to my view redefined the term portal, just by changing the term “our” portal to “my” portal, generating a really convenient service that allows to find the many services I’m using in one focal point.

More on the future – the Zude way

And finally there is Zude (final just for now) which is still not available, and until it becomes available David Berlind from ZDNet, who has tried it and wrote about it extensively is a point of reference. Zude offers all in one — a personal portal, a mash-up tool and agile way for creating small web app’s, it will be offered for free. For more information read or hear David Berlind.

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Creating a Fund for Israeli Open Source Entrepreneurs

February 21, 2007 at 11:42 am · Filed under Consultancy, Database, FOSS, Fund, Growth, Israel, Open Source, Product, start-up, VC

This is something that i’ve been thinking of since the Database project and especially after speaking with some of the CEO’s of Israeli Open Source companies about a year and a half ago.

There are very few Israeli open source companies that have a product. Most provide consulting services in various areas. The numbers i’ve got are dated and are only a random sample of companies i’ve come across. However, the number of a random sample of Open Source companies worldwide, that have a product, compared to Israeli companies with their own product (by percentage) is alarming.

Out of 16 Israeli Open Source companies only 2 have a product, while, out of 65 Open Source companies worldwide (list of companies taken from the database project) , only 8 don’t have a product. 12% of the Open Source companies worldwide, that this small, dated, quasi-research checked, do not have a product compared with 87.5% Israeli Open Source companies that do not have a product (or only 12.5% Israeli Open Source companies have a product).

Most Israeli Open Source companies provide consultancy services, the problem is that without their own product they have a problem to scale up and become competitive world-wide. They are usually a one to five, max ten men/women show. They need a lot of funding to able to train new talented employees. And, while training takes time, once their employees are fully trained and experienced, they can easily open their own consultancy or join a different consultancy in the same area of expertise.

While large and famous consultancies have historically, developed their own processes of doing things, which differentiates them from their competitors (Bain for example, has a reputation for being result driven) Israeli Open Source companies are usually depended on the exceptional skills and reputation of their founder, and therefore are hardly able to scale up* (there is a limit to the amount of work one person is able to do).

One possible reason for this situation is funding. Israeli VC’s have only recently began considering investment’s in Open Source companies, and there aren’t that many, Israeli Open Source companies to be investing in.

There may also be a culture problem between VC’s and Open Source entrepreneurs. Each operates with a different set of values and priorities which are in many instances conflicting.

Open Source is about “reuse” of technology already out there and its also about organic growth. Open Source companies usually involve many stakeholders, such as community of users, customers and employees (which are in some instances prominent figures within the community) this involves a more democratized process then the one usually required from a start-up company. However seems that at-least this last attribute of open source companies will/is becoming part of many non-open-source companies attributes.

On the other hand, government funding programmes involve a licensing policy that conflicts with Open Source companies licensing programmes.

Seems that government funding at Israel has not yet discovered Open Source and the considerable economic benefits associated with FOSS.

For more figures about the economic benefits associated with FOSS refer to the EU Study “Economic impact of Open Source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication technologies ICT sector in the EU”, published on Nov 20, 2006 were Open Source is considered a power of growth for the EU countries.

Possible growing venues include, merging three to four, Israeli Open Source companies and creating one or two, medium size companies that provide a full solution to their customers.

And as for the future, it may be the right time to start considering the option of creating a fund that would not only provide seed money but also operate as an incubator environment for Open Source entrepreneurs that’s sensitive to their unique needs. This may allow Israel, in the future, to enjoy the many economic and social benefits of growth associated with FOSS activity.

*The exception being IT, were you provide a 24/7 service which requires a small group of experts and a large group of employees who are semi-experts. However such Israeli companies would only be able to provide services to their local market, and with Israel being a small market, thier ability to scale would be restricted.

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GNU/Linux @ Schools

February 14, 2007 at 10:08 pm · Filed under CMS, Education

Current efforts to offer Israeli school’s an Open Source CMS have the potential of solving, altogether, many of the problems that we face today at schools.

Our on-going attempts to implement a GNU/Linux at schools have involved a considerable overhead, and unless its backed by substantial funding and especially the approval and commitment of the Ministry of Education or other powerful organizations like Match (CET – Center for Educational Technology), its bound to involve considerable and draining efforts. It takes time before the system is smoothly integrated with the schools system, and training must take place (we’ve been putting much efforts on building such a training program for school system administrators, teachers and off-course children, you can see these efforts here).

One of the major reasons Ort Hatzor High School was interested in a Linux Terminal Server (LTSP) system was the promise they’d be able to add additional computer stations for teachers loading exam results, especially during the crowded exam period. The only problem was, The Ort portal is only compatible with Explorer. We could not find a way to overcome the issue of loading exam results to the mutual Ort respiratory.

CMS’s Iv’e seen gathering pace and fund, in the last year or so, like Drupal, Joomla — which rumor says you’ll be in pains trying to get support for, and Lahak which unlike the other two is a native Hebrew CMS overcoming bidi problems, all have the potential to be comparably, low resource intensive, overcome schools sticky layer, while solving Web Site Standartization issues that are unfortuantly so common in Israeli Web Sites.

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The changing ladnscape of work

February 12, 2007 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Future work

INTUIT published a report (PDF) about the Future of Small Business, this is a quote from page ten:

“Personal businesses are a surprisingly large part of the American economy. According to the US Census Bureau, at the end of 2004 almost 20 million Americans operated businesses with no employees…Businesses without a payroll make up over 70% of the nation’s businesses, and almost one million new businesses without payrolls were added in 2004 (the latest available data).” It would be interesting to know how many of them earned their living from Internet related activity, and what kind of Internet related activity were they involved in (ebay?)

At the same time with Web 2.0 technologies offering enterprises to feel small but stay big (a promise waiting to be fulfilled), it seems that the bigger you are the more advantages you’ll be able to rip from your Web 2.0/social networking tools.

For the bigger picture (implications of falling communication costs) there is a podcast from (2005) of Thomas Malone who also wrote The Future of Work at IT Conversations

Here is part, of a three minute summary Mr. Malone gave of his book (subscribed from the podcast): “I think we are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in business that may in the long run be as important a change for business as the change to democracy was for governments…”

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Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

February 12, 2007 at 8:52 pm · Filed under Video, Web 2.0

Digital Ethnography @ KSU

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