Archive for mass

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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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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