The Next Organization

Make Data Useful by Greg Linden, Amazon.com

A concise set of slides with a few key ideas that Internet business needs to care about:

• Measure and optimize toward a goal
• Data first, then the algorithms
• Encourage users to forgive you
• Help when help is wanted
• Surprise and focus on the new
• Speed matters

Web 2.0 Summit 2007 - High Order Bit Presentation from Morgan Stanley

Web 2.0 Summit is often a very important event to discuss new developments and trends in the area. One of the most interesting sessions of the event this year is the presentation from Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley. The presentation addresses technology trends in general and is very interesting, except that it cites quite a few Cisco's info (which is a clever company, but still biased, though).

The slides and video however was not included in the official site. I found them so included here.

New natural language searches - in search of knowledge, not information

Most of people I talked to was very happy with the information they got from Google Search. Natural language searches on the other hand try to synthesize information and give a more definitive answer. I tried AskJeeve and found out that I most of the time, it gave me information similar in type with Google. A few exceptions are for simple definitive questions, e.g. "how is weather in Rome in December" comparison below.

Recently, Powerset and TrueKnowledge launched beta service with promise to give people more power to get the correct answer to what they want. Barney Pell, Powerset's CEO pointed out that to a keyword-based search engine, "book for children", "book by children", and "book about children" are all equivalent to "book children".

According to TechCrunch, "Powerset is both indexing the web and working to convert natural language queries into database-understandable queries. True Knowledge is only tackling half the problem - the conversion of queries. They are not indexing the web. Instead, True Knowledge is grabbing data from structured databases, like, for example, the CIA Factbook."

From descriptions, both services are quite interesting. I tried to register for both Powerset and TrueKnowledge, but haven't got any invitation, yet. It will be quite challenging, though, to change the short form of queries that people got used to. The new generation's preference, short attention due to information overload and the trend for mobile device searches will probably prefers the keyword search.

Below is a short video about features and architecture of TrueKnowledge. I particular love the fact that it gives the answer immediately and cites facts leading to the conclusion.

Interesting Web 2.0 Slides from Ed Yourdon

The slides are very informative and surprisingly comprehensive.

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Tim O'Reilly on Web 2.0

I have been quite busy with my job and family works, so posting was a bit light recently. This is the first comeback with a light version of an excellent session by Tim O'Reilly at SAP TechEd this year.

The video is available here but is quite big, so I also include below a summary courtesy of SAPInfo.

"Invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not in the world it is started," Tim O'Reilly quoted at SAP Tech '07, being held in Las Vegas, Nevada from October 1 - 5. The founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media is convinced that, despite past pitfalls and bloated hype, the Web is the crucible (still) producing the greatest inventions of tomorrow. These inventions often carry the descriptor Web 2.0, a term he coined in 2004 and which has permeated technology copy around the world ever since. And Web 2.0 was the focus of his keynote.

O'Reilly commanded the stage nearly as well as he commanded the subject - and exuberantly ran off his six rules of Web 2.0 to an immersed audience:

Web 2.0 Business Models (Part 2 of 2)

My last post covered the first five types of service categories, namely:

1. Virtual world, virtual goods
2. Online tools
3. Market broker platforms
4. Social media sites
5. Social networking sites

In this post, I will analyze the business models for other categories of services and point out some of my observations concerning the economy of attention, the long-tail, light-weight business model, young people's opportunities and the issue of partial attention.

Again, the list is not exhaustive and service categorization is mainly for the purpose of business model analysis. I would like to invite readers to add and give me comments.

Web 2.0 Business Models (Part 1 of 2)

Web 2.0, the new set of Web, or more accurately, hosted services was featured by O'Reilly Media in 2003 as having lightweight business model. After a few years of development, the concept is still quite valid, but in more detail examination, Web 2.0 has been dominant an economy of sharing, attention and creativeness.

I did a quick summary of the major types of Web 2.0 services, benefits and business models and came up with a summary as in the picture below:

a more detailed version with examples can be downloaded here:

Download web_2.0 Business Models - a quick survey.pdf

Social networking will soon go mainstream

New wave of social network is changing the way employees communicate and collaborate. Small and distributed IT companies are pioneers in this area, in both usage and technology development. Big companies have been recently awaken. Among the examples are: IBM’s global meetings on SecondLife, Oracle’s inclusion of Web 2.0 into portal product, SAP’s alumni network, etc. Recently Cisco acquired Utah Street Networks just for its software knowhow in social networking and aimed at blending it into its Media Solution Group. Clearly, all signs point toward social networking’s going main stream not far in future, I believe.

Profiling Europe’s bloggers

Forrester Research recommends that firms get active bloggers on their side. Jaap Favier, research director at Forrester, states: “Active bloggers can make or break a brand in less than a day. Firms shouldn't fake a relationship with them or they will experience a backlash. To get bloggers on their side, firms should gain bloggers’ trust by establishing an honest and transparent relation with bloggers first. They should get to know them and give them the tools to connect easily with their peers and pass along messages.”

Forrester's survey shows that European bloggers are southern European. The population of bloggers is highest in southern Europe. France, Italy, and Spain make up 57 percent of the blogosphere while Germany lags behind with only 13 percent. Today, France is still the European blogging leader with almost one million active bloggers.