Category Archives: yahoo

Travel, 21st Century Style

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A German Artificial Intelligence lab is working on a travel information network that will use on board navigation to alert drivers to  trouble down the road.     Working in real time the system would alert drivers just a few minutes down the road to dangers ahead.   As autos get smarter and transportation info networks evolve we should see a lot of benefits.  Traffic congestion could be reduced substantially in metro areas simply by providing “early warning” to commuters via websites and alternative routing using on board navigation systems.    Rural problems tend to arise from weather problems and this type of information is already flowing online, though it’ll really be useful when drivers can easily access this information from their cars.     An example is Oregon’s TripCheck website which displays road cams and conditions information and Yahoo’s integration of mapping and traffic information for some metro areas.

BBC Report

SmartKom Website (warning – this odd site is NOT the way to write for a non-technical audience, or even for a technical one?)

Who owns your attention anyway?

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Too deeply buried in the (very interesting) discussion here  and here bout how hard it is to get enough traffic to a website to make it generate big money is a more provocative question, to wit:

Who owns YOUR attention and how much is your attention worth?

Big players are making huge profits reselling your attention in the form of placing targeted advertising while you search and surf for info. I have no complaints about that in principle (in fact I feed my kids from that!) , and even agree, somewhat reluctantly, with the assertion that advertising can often enhance the search experience by providing you with sales info on products related to your searches and surfing.

However I’m not sure the power curve is properly placed right now. Rather the big players like Yahoo, Google, MS call most of the shots and reap most of the profits while we, the little sheeples, use their (good) services, often at no charge. It’s certainly a win-win scenario for most, but you can make a strong case that Google, as the big recipient of the big bucks, wins more than you do. Frankly though I don’t know the equation here – what am I worth to Google or Yahoo or MSN?

Over at Battelle’s during a discussion of Microsoft’s new plans to pay big users to use MS products a reader suggested it would take over $50 per month for him to switch to MS search rather than his preferred Google. This raises a very interesting question about what he’s worth to them. I wrote over there:

Pay to use may be the shape of things to come as users begin to realize that they, and not the big players, are the key to internet success. Yaacov’s point is key – would he really want $600 annually to use MS search? If so he’s not typical. I bet you could get most people to abandon Google in favor of LIVE (which is close, but not as good as Google), for $50 per year or less.

In fact I bet you could get most people to switch engines for $10 per month and some for $5 or less. Why don’t they do it? MS had plans and I think they eventually will try this “pay to search” model, which is strong and moves closer to the user ideal of owning their own attention.

When you sell my attention to the highest bidders, shouldn’t I get a piece of the action?

Another related NYT Article

Fixed mindset vs Growth mindset = Microsoft mindset vs Google mindset?

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Google’s legendary success, especially in light of Microsoft’s lackluster performance, leads one to wonder about the differences at these two techno behemoths.

Stanford Magazine has a nice feature on the work of Carol Dweck on personal achievement. Here is a summary of the work in a single diagram.

Perhaps the big difference between Google and Microsoft is that the Google culture inspires what Dweck calls a “Growth Mindset”, which the MS culture inspires the “fixed mindset”.

Supporting this model is the idea that where MS seems to ignore criticism Google often embraces it. Also, Google remains open to change – flexible – while Microsoft seems to resist change or even force square pegs into round holes with bloated or “bad fit” applications. For Google, the modifications to the world view are reflected in Google products. This leads to the simpler, more friendly technologies Google is known for.

Meanwhile the MS products rely more on their virtual OS monopoly, big businesses reluctance to change, and their sheer size which allows them to move the market.

Where does Yahoo fit in all this? (disclaimer – I have Yahoo stock) . I think they are the sleeper here, with a culture and people that have the potential to adopt the growth mindset but are currently stymied by market forces and the Google glow.

Related:  Scoble today bashes his ex, Microsoft, for talking BS before action.

Global community spirit

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Over at Techmeme I’m struck by three stories that nicely showcase the importance of *community* to dot commers and to the expanding online universe.

The most interesting is that Yahoo Answers is going social, offering social networking as part of the answers concept.  I was bullish on Yahoo Answers a year ago and it appears they’ve done a great job at growing this project.   Incredibly the number of answers users is comparable to the number of Myspace people. This is not entirely apples to apples comparison because I’m guessing the Myspacers spend a lot more time online at Myspace, but if Answers can get the community ball rolling there is huge potential to become something of a “thinking persons” (or at least a “questioning person’s”?) Myspace.

The second item is Kevin Rose reporting that Digg has a *million* users. That is quite a milestone (though a long way from the approximately 60-100 million users claimed by Yahoo Answers and Myspace. I’ve never really understood the appeal of Digg as more than a superficial way to identify oddball news, feeling that dedicated diggers tend to prefer goofy stories rather than substantive ones, but the concept is brilliant and provocative.

Third, and perhaps most significant, is SONY’s Playstation 3 virtual world that launches this spring. Critics are raving about SONY’s brave new world, some suggesting it’s superior to the top virtual world “Second Life” which suffers from technical complexity, a steep learning curve, and a lot of skeptics who think second lifers are just escaping their first lives. It seems to me the Playstation world could become the “Myspace” of virtual worlds and captivate the teen crowd that already is practically living online ( WI or XBOX could also get smart super fast and get their own virtual world going. Both appear to be on the road for more widespread adoption as gaming systems than Sony’s PS3, though this can all change quickly).

Social networks = people, not technologies

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The New York Times reports that Cisco has acquired Tribe Networks in what appears to be an effort to become a player in the social networking space.     The article quotes Marc Andreeson of NING, another social network facilitator, suggesting that the social networking biz is harder than it looks and Cisco will have problems.    I agree Cisco will probably fail to do much with this but not for the same reason, but for the opposite.   As with most internet stuff the technology difficulties are much less of a challenge than the social barriers to success.

Even Yahoo and Google – now brilliant masterpieces of technological sophistication – did not start out that way.     Rather they began as fairly modest “websites” with a handful of programming routines  that grew in usefulness, traffic, and complexity to become the internet behemoths they are today.   Sure there’s a lot of amazing technology behind these companies, but I still think there is a sort of “techno bias” that remains pervasive both inside and outside the industy that is both fooling and manipulating people into thinking that success is mostly a function of your technology when it should be clear to all that it’s a function of the way your online environments relate to people, and that in turn is art not science.    Is expensive, complex technology required to create a hugely popular, high traffic website?   Of course NOT.   Myspace and Facebook now use slick stuff, but they didn’t start out that way.   PlentyofFish.com, a hugely popular dating site, still uses a *single* server and very basic technology despite the fact that it competes with big players working on platforms that probably cost 100x that of PlentyofFish’s.

I think the future will be like the past – successful sites will cater to the needs of people and bend the technologies as needed.   Cisco, Ning, and other social networking technology platforms are great but they won’t define things.   People will do that.   People are, after all, what social networking is all about.

Raining on the Gadget/Widget parade, Jeremy?

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When Yahoo’s Jeremy is concerned about something technical you *always* need to pay close attention, as he’s one of the most knowlegeable observers of the internet landscape as well as a key driver of Web 2.0 innovation over at the unrivaled Yahoo Development department.

Today Jeremy listed several concerns about the challenges of widgets (aka Gadgets) including security and bloated websites.   Considering that many, including me, see a coming gadget revolution where our desktops will become littered almost beyond recognition with site gadgets, desktop gadgets, and more, it might be a good time to listen to Jeremy and solve some of these problems or at least standardize things, especially to reduce spyware and malware issues which will likely become even worse as users become less sophisticated and gadgets become more complex.

Nomenclature Primer aka Yahoo and Apple say WidgeTomato, Google and MSN say GadgeTomatoe:
Yahoo still calls gadgets widgets as does Apple, but Google changed widgets to gadgets to be consistent with Microsoft which, at MIX06, was heavily promoting desktop gadgets as one of Vista’s strong suits and website gadgets as a key web innovation.   Google leads the Gadget pack now thanks to Adam Sah and the excellent gadget team.

I think everybody should rename all these things “Little boxes made of Ticky Tacky”.

Yahoo: Piping hot content to websites near you. Brilliant.

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Yahoo Pipes (site may be down at the moment – I think they didn’t anticipate the instant global attention) is a perfect example of why I’m so bullish on Yahoo’s prospects as a company. Yahoo Pipes is a premier mashup enabling application coming along at a very opportune time.

Yahoo’s developer team is second to none, and in my opinion has a remarkable understanding of “Web 2.0” sensibilities. Pipes will simplify the process of connecting content, websites, and applications.

In an ideal world, innovation is constrained only by the human imagination, not by the limitations of technology. Yahoo pipes is a profound step in that direction.

More about Yahoo Pipes:

Jeremy Zawodny

Tim O’Reilly (is this guy ever *wrong* about stuff? I don’t think so. )
… enormous promise in turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone.

Matt Cutts

Anil Dash 

—————–

Disclaimer: I  have some Yahoo stock and as of Monday some short term Yahoo calls.

Putting my money where my Yahoo is?

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My post of about an hour ago, “Yahoo’s big day” convinced me I should put more money where my mouth is on Yahoo’s prospects so using the justifications below I just bought about $1000 in Yahoo March 30.00 calls. (in options “bought” is functionally equivalent to “bet”).

My kilobuck effectively gives me the right to sell 2000 shares of Yahoo anytime between now and March 17. For example if Yahoo falls after today it’s likely I’ll lose *all* of my bet. However if Yahoo rises to, say, $35.00 per share by March 16 I could “exersize” the options for a cool $10,000. Unlikely, but I think the market does not incorporate online advertising revenue and profit information very efficiently. In theory this means … opportunity!Today Yahoo fully launches the new ad matching routine, an artistic program formerly known by the name of “Panama”. My understanding is that if they can even come close to Google’s quality matching ads to searches Yahoo will make quite a bit more.

Yahoo’s a much higher traffic site than Google though Google still has the big search share.

Thus my bet is simple here – that people will realize this week that Yahoo has the *potential* for much higher revenues and profit, and his will bump them up 10+% by next week which would put these options in the money.

Options have “time value” which reflects the chance the stock will go up or down in value and they have “intrinsic”value which is the difference between the stock price and the option price. I paid .52 per share in the hopes the stock price will increase soon. Somewhat counter intuitive is the fact that even a modest increase, if it happens this week as I predict, could double my money without the stock ever reaching the strike price.

YHQCF
CALL YAHOO INC MAR 30
Quantity 20 Contracts $1054

Disclaimer: I also have Yahoo Stock. I could have bought about 40 more shares vs betting on these 2000 shares worth of options to rise quickly. But this’ll be more fun to watch for the next month.

Instant Update:
Wh00t Yah00000t! I’m up $120 after 15 minutes. So far this is fun.
Last Trade [tick] 0.58

Yahoo’s Big Day?

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The NYT reports that today is of great interest at Yahoo as Yahoo fully launches their new contextual advertising matching routines. If successful, Yahoo’s profits could soar this year. Ironically it was Yahoo that aquired the company that effectively invented the pay per click ad model (GOTO renamed Overture now renamed Yahoo Publisher Network). This happened many years ago, but Yahoo failed to capitalize on the head start and it was Google that created a brilliant ad matching algorithm. This ad matching routine allows Google to make a lot more money per visitor than Yahoo and other search engines. Since Google also has a lot more search visitors, their profits have been skyrocketing while Yahoo and Microsoft search profits have languished.It’s interesting to think how little tweaks can quickly impact the amount of money flowing through these systems. Google makes over ten million per *day* from online ads, Yahoo much less but still millions per day. Thus if, for example, the matching routine screws up for a *few hours* and shows irrelevant ads Google can lose millions of dollars in revenue. Conversely if Yahoo can match Google’s ad matching prowess with the new system there’s a lot of money they’ve been effectively leaving on the table that’ll flow into Yahoo’s revenue stream and profits.

Disclaimer: I have some Yahoo Stock.

Zawodny to Beal “Spammer!”. Beal to Zawodny “Get a Damn Clue!”

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You’ve got to love these spats between clever and prominent blog dudes. It’s not only the closest onliners generally come to schoolyard or barroom brawling, but often these debates give huge insight into the future of the online world.

When Yahoo bought MyBlogLog, the clever social community application, it fell to Jeremy Zawodny to help refine the project into the robust and scalable environment demanded by the world’s top website. Jeremy also decided to take on a bit of quality control, and accused Andy Beal, a top marketing consultant, of spamming MyBlogLog. Andy had used as his avatar “win a free zune” rather than using the normal convention of a personal picture.

Andy Beal shot back angrily that he was not spamming and even had permission to run the contest from MyBlogLog’s founders. Cheap trick or not, if he had permission I think Jeremy owes him an apology – or at least an upgrade to “officially approved MBL spammy tactic”.

Although I thought Jeremy was too hard on this marketing “trick” by Andy, I certainly agree with many who think that MyBlogLog is now suffering from it’s own popularity. Popularity that has brought a lot of questionable tactics outside of the spirit of a quality community.

There is no great harm in the win a free zune *except* it defeats one of the nice aspects of MyBlogLog which is that you can see the person’s face. Several prominent and clever SEO’s with great blogs like Andy’s “Marketing Pilgrim”, as well as several junk sites and junk SEOs are resorting to similar tactics. The most common is to plant a pretty woman’s face rather than your own face, encouraging signups to your blog community.

Avatars are the heart of this system since they appear at other sites. Therefore to preserve the integrity of MyBlogLog Yahoo should require that avatars reflect either the person or a highly relevant aspect of the community. I’d even consider requiring that if you want to play with MyBlogLog you’ve got to be the real person in the picture.

Andy’s a good guy and a quality SEO, but his claim that he’s helping MyBlogLog with this type of approach rings pretty hollow with me.

Update:  Jeremy retitled his post and apologized.  But hey, it was fun while it lasted!