Category Archives: microsoft

AOL lawsuit over data release and, more importantly, storage of search database of intentions

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Over at TechCrunch there’s a discussion about the lawsuit against AOL for releasing search data and also challenging their right to store the search histories of AOL users. I’m surprised this took so long because Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc have been storing all of our searches for some time and probably are using that data to adjust the search experience including refinement to advertising and organic results.

It frustrates me (or I should really say it pisses the heck out of me) that 1) Search engines think they should have rights to my search info with no obligation to tell me what they do with my info and 2) there is a lack of concern in the online community about this. John Battelle has been one of the few voices pointing out that this issue is big and getting much bigger, that these privacy issues need a lot more clarification, and that search companies are sneakily dodging many key issues with search and privacy.

Contrary to many comments I read from other onliners, the Government viewing my data is low on my list of privacy concerns because I doubt they’ll choose to or be able to effectively process the information in sinister ways. However it bothers me a LOT that my search “fingerprint” is getting used without my consent, understanding, or permission in an effort by Google, Yahoo, et al to sell me things and adjust my search and internet experiences.

If they want to do that they need to let me know the process they use to do it. If they think sharing that process violates their need for commercial secrecy then…do NOT use my stuff. I never gave you permission, and you should not assume you have my permission. In fact few people even know that Google and Yahoo and MSN store every single one of their searches – Google, Yahoo, MSN cannot reasonably claim they have implied permission for the search storage identified to individual computer level when very few people are even aware they are doing it!

Blog readers are not blog writers.

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Check out the top Searches at Technorati for today:

 Top Searches

  1. Cicarelli
  2. Pinky
  3. Facebook
  4. Chavez
  5. Onewebday
  6. Hugo Chavez
  7. Bitacle
  8. Grey’s Anatomy
  9. Black
  10. Daniela Cicarel…
  11. Myspace
  12. Melinda Duckett
  13. Youtube
  14. Assparade
  15. Sophia

 Now look at the top Tags, which I would think are a reasonable proxy of what bloggers are writing about:

Top Tags

  1. Bush
  2. youtube
  3. Islam
  4. Microsoft
  5. Politica
  6. Pensieri
  7. Iran
  8. torture
  9. vlog
  10. chavez
  11. Riflessioni
  12. Terrorism
  13. Amore
  14. Segway
  15. Israel

They are totally different, which is very interesting for several reasons.   Readers are clearly a very different blog interest demographic from writers.  The two groups are not even close in the subjects that interest them.

 

It also suggests that bloggers are not after viewers as much as they are writing their own interests.  I predict this gap will narrow  as the barriers to entry approach zero and the advantages of blogging things of interest to the masses goes up (ie blogs are better monetized than now).   However I doubt it will ever close completely since the guy who just wants to surf for blog porn is unlikely to become much of a wordsmith.   It suggests that bloggers have a more ‘refined’ set of interests in the sense that “assparade” is lower brow than, say “Segway”, though I suppose some would indeed call a Segway convention an ass parade if they were trying to double entendre the scooter crowd.  Hmmm – maybe I’ve got this all ass backwards?

The death, and rebirth, of user generated content is coming to a home theater near you

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I think it’ll take a few years for regular folks to figure out ways to measure the value of their content and for many to even understand the value of what they give away to many sites for free.

User content contributions to  Facebook,  travel sites, myspace, Google, Yahoo, and many many more make up what I think is an increasing share of the total value of all web info.   When people understand this it may – it certainly should – change the internet landscape and hopefully shift more control from big companies to regular users.    It also may increasingly commercialize the landscape, which is probably not a good thing though the world has never seen a very democratic and global commercialized landscape controlled by any old mom or pop who sticks up a site.   It’ll be interesting to say the least.

To one extent this has already begun with Google adsense allowing publishers to share in revenues, but note that Google itself is built on the backbone of billions of web pages they didn’t have to create.
Most of their money comes from people using Google to search *other peoples stuff*.    When will Yahoo or Microsoft wake up to the fact that people will abandon Google search quickly for a variety of reasons including inferior quality, change in habit, inconvenience (Vista Search!?), or payment to use alternatives (cha-ching!).   Seems to me that Ask is doing a better job of changing habits than Yahoo or MSN though I haven’t checked the market share numbers to see if ASK’s massive ad campaign is working.

The current thinking by most Web 2.0 sites is that if you create a high traffic community site you’ve got it made, and that has certainly been true with Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, and many more.   However users may soon start to realize that the content is more valuable than the  consolidation of that content.

You might suggest that Adsense recognizes this since it a pays publishers about 70% of the ad click revenue from their sites.   However this does not factor in that the collective site content around the world, indexed by Google et al, is the big money ticket.   Google shares none of the revenue they get when somebody clicks on ads presented after a search at Google even though they’d have nothing to show if, say, the collective internet world did what the news agencies are starting to do – challenge Google’s right to present their content.

John Battelle’s Federated Media understands this and is providing mechanisms to better monetize high value content.

However it’s the low brow stuff that brings the big money and I wonder how long before banners above sites will read “Webbers of the World Unite!”

Yahoo is doing a LOT of great stuff. 2.0 Stuff.

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I’m slowly working on creating some travel related mashups and Yahoo keeps coming up with better and better mapping tools and tools to add travel information to any website. Even restaurants with reviews. Flickr makes it a snap to add pictures to blogs or websites as well as manipulate your own photos. I pointed out how great the Flickr features were to some Picasa developers at Google last month and asked about Picasa integration with websites. They sheepishly replied they were working on it, but I wish my pal Jeremy could have heard that conversation and gloated a bit, because Yahoo’s still not getting anything like the credit they deserve for fully embracing the new web and easily beating Google by most measures in API development.

Google employees do embrace the principles of the new web, but I’m increasingly skeptical that Google can fully promote the openness of the new web and maintain the huge profits they now enjoy. Increasingly profit protection will collide head-on with the old spirit of openness and innovation, and compromises will be made.

The Yahoo 2.0 enabling tools are great stuff and unless I’m really missing comparable things going on at Google, MSN, ASK, and other big players out there it is clearly Yahoo where the really good enabling development has been going on for some time. Yahoo Hack Day is coming soon and they are inviting developers to hang out and camp out down there for hacking and mashing. Open, fun, and free. Neat.

I just hope all this good stuff translates into better press and success. Go Yahoo go.

Microsoft ads will monetize Facebook Faces

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Nice play by Microsoft to capture future users, though I’m still very intrigued that all these models can thrive by giving users a very modest number of tools to put themselves online, providing common space for people, and then keeping all the money.    I don’t mind *sharing* some revenue with big players but I think it’s remarkable how people simply let the big players nab all the bucks that are the result of their collective …. efforts.

Even *current* Myspacers, most of whom are young teens, envy Facebook accounts which are more restrictive and targeted. I’d guess Facebook eyeballs will be worth 2+ times Myspace Eyeballs in terms of advertising value – maybe much more.

Why is everybody writing off MS and bearish on Yahoo? Once they stop being idiotic they’ll realize they have the same sized audience as Google and will monetize that viewership.

With Vista’s launch, MS will control viewers in ways only their lawyers know for sure.

Google’s at 60% of the search market.   That’s probably about as high as it will ever go.

Yahoo! too much 2.0 can be a … confusing…. thing.

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Awhile back I failed to make my point about Yahoo doing “too good” a job at 2.0 for their own good, but now I see they are back at it again.    Yahoo Photos looks like some really good stuff, and if I remember correctly they have a huge library of pix and a user base  that is something like 10x greater than Flickr.    But I’m already confused.   Yahoo owns Flickr, which is a great application.   Are they expecting Flickr users – and more importantly developers of picture applications – to switch to Yahoo Photos?  Why? Are they rebranding here?   Sure I could spend a little time trying to answer these questions but this is not high on the list.  I know Flickr and love it and I’ll use it until further notice.

My earlier point was that offering people too many choices, or unclear choices, gets in the way of people *accessing* those quality innovations.   One of Google’s virtues has been to offer simple, targeted  solutions.   MSNs vice has been to offer cumbersome, bloated and confusing applications which change names every 6 months.

Yahoo, please follow the Google “instructions for use should be obvious and intuitive” plan.

If Scoble is worried, your 2.0 should worry too.

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Robert’s concerned about potential failures of Web 2.0 companies.   He’s one of the best connected online people and his departure from Microsoft last month to join podtech signalled some *optimism* about the potential of Web 2.0.   Now that he’s in the trenches with other 2.0 startups it makes me nervous to hear him worry, though I think his concerns are legitimate and notable.

To me a key question remains unanswered, and relates to how people will relate to community niches which I predict will dominate the future of online activity, though I’m not sure how search will fit into the mix and it may continue to generate most of the revenues.

Will people primarily:

1) Join online communities as they grow up organically from the ground up ?
(e.g. Myspace, Facebook, PlentyofFish, Flickr)

2) Join communities that they are directed to via advertising and other activities at Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL?
(e.g. Yahoo360)

3) Start with 1 and finish with 2 after the big company aquires the 2.0 company?

There are other possibilities but I think option 3 is going to be the pattern we’ll see for most companies.  FOX’s aquisition of Myspace and Yahoo’s of Flickr suggest that the big guys may just wait to see what creamy companies rise to the top and skim them off.    This experimental approach seems logical given the very high level of uncertainty associated with all things online.

Reason Rules! Not.

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Over at the House of J there’s some discussion about the irrationality of some security measures and about the AOL search results privacy scandal (which I also think is a questionably rational concern).

I’ll put up my comments from over there:

IMHO people are missing the key point about privacy — that cat is out of the bag. We need rules about how to penalize for abuses of information, not the pretense that AOL/Yahoo/Google/MSN will do a great job of keeping information away from Govt or commercialization. People worry about abstract Government abuses even as their search stream is processed to invoke better manipulation of their behavior.

RE screening pilots … sounds logical, but the FAA’s record of identifying flight school terrorists is not … impressive. I think the “answer” is for us all to realize that we can’t lower the risk threshold to zero so we should optimize the costs and benefits, allocating resources to the “low hanging fruit” problems in all sectors that are cheap to solve. Solving terror problems in the current fashion is so expensive it’s breaking the bank which will lead to more vulnerability.

Can the long tail wag the big internet dog?

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Obviously niches of human interests will be a very powerful force in the shaping of the online world, and it would seem the best way to serve niches, especially a small one, is more along the lines of medium or  small business rather than big biz.  However the mega sites seem to be increasing their share of the action, and are shaping the new access and community tools.

I’m wondering which of the following models, if any, will be most prevalent in the future.  How much will the long tail wag the internet dog ?
Big Corporate Website model:  Yahoo, Myspace, Google, MSN as giant info, tools, purchasing portals, community centers.
Medium Website model:  I see this as content aggregator sites like technorati that serve large niche markets and use Web 2.0 sensibilities to help users slice and dice the overwhelming amounts of online content.

Mom and Pop model:  Local or niche specific info-rich sites where users will spend most of their time researching/buying/socializing.

Obviously there will be all of this and more, but I think the trends are important and it *makes intuitive sense* to me that onliners, especially the next generation, will seek niche specific social interaction that is not handled well by anybody right now.   Big sites mostly lack enough of a human element and sites like Myspace that do have a powerful human element fail to deliver a high quality or info rich experience.

With that in mind I’m off to Silicon Valley to hear 1) pitches from the Search Engine Strategies vendors about how they can get me to the top of the search heap (thanks, but I’ll just take the T shirt for now).  2) Google Party!   Always fun to talk to the search and labs teams there.  They be clever folk.