Twitter: Bombed Out of Existence
March 18, 2009
Interesting write up and comments here. The post that caught my attention was “Can Twitter Survive What is About to Happen to It?” by Twine’s founder Nova Spivack. Twitter as an application does not fascinate me. Twitter as an indication of what can be done with pervasive connections and real time messaging does interest me. If you want a good run down of the weaknesses of the present Twitter, check out this write up and be sure to review the comments.
Stephen Arnold, March 18, 2009
Google Stat: On Target or Just Wrong
March 18, 2009
Google bashing is a popular sport. A new March madness? Navigate here and read “One Stop Cop Shop”. The headline baffled me, but I found this paragraph from the Guardian (UK) Web site surprising:
But figures just released by netmarketshare.com show that Google now has 97.5% of global mobile search. The time has come to ask what the long-term implications of this are. Any investigation would have to be done by an international body whether the OECD, the World Trade Organisation or a coalition of regulators. But it would be in everyone’s interest, not least Google’s, to have a serious look at the implications of all this before it is too late.
Two points: quite a market share for Googzilla. And more legal agitation ahead for the kids in Mountain View.
Stephen Arnold, March 18, 2009
Google and World Domination
March 13, 2009
Ryan Singel’s “Google Voice Speaks of World Domination” here gave me a wake up call. Google’s prowess in telephony has been a topic that I long ago accepted. The company has had telephony and communications on its agenda from 1998. When we ran around the country in 2007 doing briefings about Google’s communications systems and methods, the attendees were eager to deny the Googlers’ cleverness in voice search (a Brin subspecialty) to cute ways to replicate a wireless infrastructure with low cost, low power gizmos and lots of innovation in between.
To be frank, slapping chat, SMS, and Skype-type comms into a Google “container” or service is not rocket science for Google. Sure, the company has to make sure that dependencies don’t befuddle its system or a line of code ruin a Googler’s lunch hour. The work is not invention; these are slipstreaming type features.
The title of the article–“Google Voice Speaks of World Domination”–was striking. The author Ryan Singel did a good job of explaining Google Voice, the “new” service that has the Twitterworld aflame. For me, the most important comment in the article after the title was:
Google Voice also threatens to disrupt voice-to-text startups like SpinBox, with built-in support for turning your voicemail messages into searchable text. Voice-to-text is one of the cornerstones of Google’s drive into mobile search. Google already uses the same technology to power GOOG-411 and the voice-activated search app for the iPhone. Getting even more samples — from messages left for users — will only help tune the algorithms for more lucrative ventures.
This paragraph makes clear the integration of the Google comms service and its disruptive potential, not just for smaller firms but for the big, telco dinosaurs. I say this with some affection since I was a Bell Labs’s contractor, worked on the Bellcore billing system for baby Bell charge backs, and also the USWest Yellow Pages service. Google is not a telco. Telco is just an application running on the Google infrastructure, what I call the Google infrastructure or Googleplex in honor of the buildings off Shoreline Drive.
Should you care? Yes, if you want to reduce for the short term your telecom hassles. Should the telcos caer? No, in my opinions telcos missed the train, and I don’t know when another will drop by Bell Head Station again. Should regulators care? Maybe. But regulators have a tough time understanding cable versus satellite TV so there’s a knowledge gap to fill. Should the blogosphere care? Absoltutely. Those who get it will carry Google type services to the future as the “obvious way” to perform certain functions.
Is this world domination? Not by Google in my opinion. The “legacy” of Google is that it shows the way cloud based services will supplant more widespread methods. Google’s legacy is that the company is a trail blazer. Others will follow and then go further. If this sounds like an interesting premise for a book, check out my 2005 The Google Legacy. This is the story I followed between 2002 and 2004 when I did my primary research. Old stuff to the addled goose. Just not world domination. That’s a reach in my view.
Google Invents Dynamic Virtual Input Device Configuration
March 13, 2009
The addled goose loves Google open source information. A case in point is US20090070098, a patent application for “Dynamic Virtual Input Device Configuration”. You don’t care! Well, I do. The conjunction of “dynamic” and “virtual” are significant to the addled goose. Vlad Patryshev and Google legal thought so too. Here’s the Googlespeak modified by legalspeak about what I think is an important disclosure:
In one aspect, a virtual input device can be configured by detecting a language identifier associated with a selected data entry field, determining a key mapping corresponding to the detected language identifier, configuring a virtual input device in accordance with the key mapping, wherein the virtual input device includes one or more controls and the key mapping specifies a character corresponding to at least one of the plurality of controls, and presenting the virtual input device to a user. The language identifier can comprise one of an Extensible Markup Language tag and a Hypertext Markup Language tag. Further, user input selecting a second data entry field can be received, wherein a second language identifier is associated with the second data entry field, a second key mapping corresponding to the second language identifier can be determined, and the virtual input device can be configured in accordance with the second key mapping.
Take your breath away? I thought of the applicaitons of this invention for data input and behind the scenes manipulation of those data–dynamic, virtual device configuration.
Stephen Arnold, March 13, 2009
Dinosaur Conference Starved with Limited Quarry
March 10, 2009
A short item to underscore the sad state of the dinosaur conference. I have been a critic of the traditional trade. These “networking events” — a new phrase much loved by organizers — cost attendees and exhibitors a lot of money. The programs are usually info mercials and not particularly compelling info mercials at that. The brontosaurus of European tech conferences is or maybe was Cebit Macworld reports that this yea’s edition experienced a downturn in attendance. You can read “Cebit Sees Big Drop in Visitor Numbers” here. In a nicely crafted understatement, Macworld said:
The drop comes as little surprise considering the current state of the global economy. Many companies have cut back or eliminated travel budgets and Cebit itself saw around 1,000 mostly Asian exhibitors cancel during the last three months of 2008 after economic problems hit.
That was a news flash. Economic troubles are not exactly invisible. I am not sure what conference organizers are going to invent to address the nuclear winter that may be approaching for the old fashioned trade show. Some pundits skip conferences, leaving them to the sales professionals. Information is often available more quickly and in more easily analyzed form via Web logs and even Twitter or live blog posts from those attending. Maybe boutique or niche conferences are the way forward. I don’t know. I rely on my trusty Internet connection to find wheat and chaff in the grist mill.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Twitter Bashing Not
March 10, 2009
Network World’s “To Tweet or Not to Tweet, That’s Not an Option” is an interesting write up about Twitter here. Twitter is a micro blogging service much loved by the mobile phone crowd under the age of 24. Most oldsters in heart and mind don’t understand why anyone would want to know that someone is eating breakfast. I suppose an Athenian would express similar surprise after listening to a chunk of Iliad and then having a colleague point out the wonders of the haiku. The article includes a link to a video with tips for social networking. This is another one of those info pellets designed to eliminate the need for a person who in theory knows something to write a sentence or two. For me, the most interesting comment in the semi clever article was:
Even if my explanations so far aren’t enough to persuade you to put some serious effort into “getting” Twitter” just consider that according to a blog entry on Compete.com in February this year Twitter ranks as the third largest social network with 6 million users and 55 million monthly visitors (it is only beaten by Facebook and MySpace, No. 1 and No. 2 respectively).
A good snip for my Twitter file and maybe yours too. Hey, with a url that would be a Tweet.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Searching Twitter
March 9, 2009
At dinner on Saturday night, the conversation turned to Twitter. One of the guests asks, “Why would I want to use Twitter?” Another asked, “What’s it good for?” I listened. I will forward to each person in the dinner party Chris Allison’s “Welcome to the Hive Mind: Learn How to Search Twitter” here. Mr. Allison does a good job of documenting Twitter’s real time search system. If you too are baffled by Twitter, read the article and give Twitter a whirl. Join the growing number of intelligence and law enforcement and business intelligence professionals who are also learning about real time search. Note: most of the information in a Tweet is inconsequential. Aggregated, the micro blog posts are useful.
Stephen Arnold, March 9, 2009
Twitter: SWAT or Sissy
March 8, 2009
Farhad Manjoo’s “What the Heck Is Twitter?” here joins the team suggesting that Twitter is a sissy; that is, Twitter can’t kill Google. Google is a tough customer. Underneath those primary colors, Google has a dark core. Mr. Manjoo points out that some blogeratti see Twitter as a SWAT team able to take out Google. Google has “special” search engines. Real time search is a category of search. Twitter has “a great future” (maybe) but it does have the T shirt that says, “Fail whale.”
You should read the Slate story because the online publication has considerable clout, certainly much more than the feather duster the addled goose brandishes.
I would offer several observations:
First, Twitter has a content stream and search is a relatively recent trendlet for Twitter. Twitter is primarily about inconsequential content that when passed through a user filter–that is, a query–can yield timely information. The point, therefore, is that the content can yield nuggets. These are not necessarily “correct”. Google doesn’t have at this time the content flow. Real time search is a logical jump to information that offers the pre-cognitive insights much loved by some analysts (business and intelligence).
Second, Google has been a company with great potential and game changing technology. Twitter may flop. But it has become for me an example of a segment that Google has not been quick to seize either with its own technology or with its Google bucks. Twitter is not my go to search engine, but it has become a case example of a company that has managed to make clear Google’s inability to decide what to do and then do it with the force of will the company demonstrated between 2003 (pre Yahoo overture settlement) and 2006. Since 2007, Google has been, in my opinion, showing signs of bureaucratic indigestion.
Third, users of Twitter see the utility of the service. My hunch is that if I showed Twitter to my father’s friends at his Independent Village lunch group, no one would know what the heck Twitter is, why anyone would send a message, or what possible value is a Tweet like “I am stuck in traffic.” Show Twitter to a group of sixth graders, and I think the uptake will be different. That’s what’s important. Who cares if someone over 25 understands Twitter. The demographics point to a shift in the notion of timeliness expectations of users. To me, Twitter is making clear an opportunity from micro blog message traffic.
Therefore, I am not a Twitter user. I have an expert on staff who sends Tweets as Ben Kent, so we can see how the system interacts with the Twitter-sphere. I am an addled goose, but I am coherent enough to look at the service and see possibilities. I would opine that unless Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo don’t respond to this opportunity, Twitter may become much more than a wonky service with a “Fail whale” T shirt.
Stephen Arnold, March 8, 2009
iPhone and Web Use: 65% Share
March 7, 2009
I missed this March 1, 2009, story. I wanted to snag the date and the data. My hunch is that both will become useful at some point in the future. You can read the story “Apple iPhone Controls over 66% of All Mobile Web Use” here.
Net Applications’ February results show the iPhone operating system having managed over nine times the usage of its next smartphone competitor, Windows Mobile, which had just 6.91 percent of the traffic measured across tens of thousands of sites. Other smartphone platforms haven’t fared any better, according to the metrics. Google’s Android and Symbian were both locked in a tie for 6.15 percent. Research in Motion’s email-centric BlackBerry OS was used less often at just 2.24 percent and was even outmatched by PalmOS devices, which represented 2.37 percent of cellular web use last month.
To me, we have an interesting duality in two different sectors. Google in Web search mirrors Apple in mobile. The other duality is Facebook and Twitter in the social space. Will the four become three? What happens to the also rans?
Stephen Arnold, March 7, 2009
Twitting Ain’t Search and Google Used to Suck
March 6, 2009
I am an addled goose, an OLD addled goose. I liked some of the points in “Twitter Ain’t Search” but I had some qualms about accepting the assertion that Twitter is not search. You must read the article here. For me the most interesting comment in the write up was:
I kind of view Twitter as dead simple blog platform for the masses (hence the adoption of it by the masses). Blog platforms like the one for this blog (Movable Type) can be complicated – especially for the mainstream folks who don’t know/ want to learn html commands.
My view is that Twitter is indeed micro blogging. But the significance of Twitter is in the information flows and the access thereto. Here’s why:
I have learned that electronic information generates enough paradoxes to give Epimenides a headache. Example: online information gave way to CD ROMs. The commercial online giants said, “CDs suck. Too small.” Yep, CDs then changed some unexpected sectors of the information industry and this was in the 1983 to 1985 time period. Then Lycos came along and people said, “Lycos sucks. No updates.” AltaVista.com came along, figured out the update thing and HP said, “AltaVista.com sucks.” So Google.com came online. Some people said, “Google sucks. It’s not a portal.” On and on.
Twitter is an example of the type of information opportunity that occurs when a sufficient number of users generate information flows. Who cares whether an individual Twitter message is “right” or “wrong”? Who cares if Twitter crashes and burns or whether it is bought by Verizon and turned into a subscriber only service. The US is not where the action is in information flows in case you haven’t heard.
Twitter is important because it represents a model of what one or more companies can use as an example. Google cracked Web search, but the real time SMS flows are new territory, and if you don’t understand that where information flows, money exists. Quick example: you are a law enforcement professional. You are dealing with a person of interest aged 17 in Rio de Janeiro. The person of interest coordinates a group of eight to 10 year olds. The “pack of kids” distracts a tourist, probably a complacent American pundit. Whilst engaged, the kids take the passport, billfold, and camera and scamper off. The whole deal is organized by text messages sent on disposable mobile phones thoughtfully provided by the person of interest. A system that permits searching of these SMS messages or Tweets in Twitter speak * could * be helpful to law enforcement. The messages could be baloney. But a search takes a short amount of time. If useful info0rmation becomes available, that’s a plus. If none becomes available, the law enforcement professional has learned something useful about the person of interest. I am sure one can think of other examples of the benefit of real time information flows generated by the technically hip, the permanently young, and middle school to college people who just see Twitter as another part of the everyday dataspace.
I am coming around to the view that Twitter-type systems are important and are likely to reshape the notion of real time search.
Stephen Arnold, March 6, 2009
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