Journalist Explains Away Information Phase Change
August 4, 2009
I enjoy finding articles that find a way to explain that what young people are doing is not important. Even more delightful is the notion that the kids with parents who are clinging to traditional media for their livelihood fuel the phase change as the parents remain clueless.
An interesting example of this type of write up is “It’s Easy to Forget that Most people Don’t Twitter, Use RSS Feeds or Read 20 Blogs a Day.” I am an old geezer, writing for my personal enjoyment as the addled goose. But I am sufficiently aware of my digital surroundings to recognize that the information environment is quite different from that of my childhood or the mid 1990s when Chris Kitze, my son, and myself created The Point (Top 5% of the Internet).
Etaoin Shrdlu pointed to a post that said:
“Publishers aren’t exactly fools to not throw everything into online. Print is where the eyeballs are; it’s where their best customers are.”
The post attracted some interesting comments as well. One jumped out:
First, you’re using the top five newspapers as the premise for all papers. Secondly, you’re comparing two different products but only using The standards of one. While the Los Angeles Times may be worth thirty minutes of my time, the Sierra Vista Herald or the Reno Gazette-Journal is not. In fact, many if not most of those small newspapers are boring once you get past the front page. This, of course, is completely subjective. Prove me otherwise and I’ll buy you a beer. Blue Moon, too. he other issue with your data is that you ignore the entire utility of the Internet. A newspaper by its physical nature, limits you to only read what was published. The Internet is all about linking, metadata tagging and search engines. People’s reading habits online are vastly different than reading a printed product. Haven’t we known that for years now?
My question is, “If I were going to start a money making information service today, would I include a print component?” I would not for these reasons:
- Too slow
- Too difficult to control costs such as printing and distribution
- The topics which interest me do not lend themselves to big, fat printed documents
- Online marketing can generate consulting work, so the “report” is mostly an advertisement.
The better question is, “What will those who depend on selling hard copies do to generate revenue in a post print world?”
Stephen Arnold, August 4, 2009
Wave Ripples
August 3, 2009
Ars Technica recently reported that Google revealed a couple sets of source code from Wave, the company’s new collaborative messaging platform (Check out the code at http://code.google.com/p/wave-protocol/wiki/Installation). The article is at http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/google-releases-wave-protocol-implementation-source-code.ars. While the code manipulation concepts are all very tehcnical, to the layman like me, Wave looks like a souped-up version of Google Docs where changes from multiple users apply visibly in real time. The code is available by Apache license, so third-party developers will be able to adapt Wave to new products. If the GOOG continues its course, it could become a major supplier of open source code, even further solidifying its dominant presence online. With Wave starting to roil the open source waters, Google may be looking to expands its reach into new oceans of data manipulation that could prove very useful to businesses and individuals alike.
Jessica Bratcher, August 3, 2009
Google Relationship Map
August 3, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Muckety.com and its relationship map of Google. Same Googlers and former Googler whom I track appear on the map; for example, Anna Patterson (University of Illinois Ph.D., developer of Xift, Google inventor, one of the founders of Cuil.com) and the Digg-hyped Marissa Mayer(keeper of the user interface and authority on Internet anonymity).
But there are some omissions. You can click around as I did, and you may be able to nail down Steve Lawrence or Sanjay Ghemawat. Perfect? Nope. Useful. I think it is suggestive in light of IBM’s alleged “invention” of relationship maps discovered by processing data.
For the purposes of comparison, here’s the Cluuz.com map of Ms. Mayer:
I assume IBM’s relationship maps put these two free systems to shame.
Stephen Arnold, August 3, 2009
Semantic Sig.ma
August 3, 2009
We’ve found a tool that offers results from multiple and varied (and sometimes unrelated) Web sites by using semantic analysis of embedded site data. It’s called Sig.ma, http://sig.ma/. What it returns is a mashup, a bulk treatment of data that may or may not help you. As the site explains: “It might be noisy but you can spot gems, e.g. interesting description differences in different sources.” Sig.ma can be a data browser, a widget to paste into e-mail or HTML, or a semantic API.
Sig.ma is also interactive and capable of learning; if you delete an item it will process that info to exclude that data next time. The catch right now is that only pages exposing RDF, RDFa or Microformats will appear. So while Google spiders the web like crazy, Sig.ma is delving into more specific caches of information. Does this mean Google is lagging behind Sig.ma’s services: Sindice, Kkam, and Boss? We’ll see what the future holds for semantic search.
Jessica Bratcher, August 3, 2009
Generational Data Conflicts Loom
August 3, 2009
Governments are making data available. A good example is Data.gov. Not perfect, but interesting. On the other side are the commercial database publishers. Examples include the dinosaur-like Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis, and Cambridge Scientific. Each of these commercial enterprises charge money for data. The fees are high because each of these companies tries to deliver Google-type services without Google’s advertising business model. This means that the person wanting the data has to pay a great deal even to learn if the commercial database has information of use to the customer. Libraries, once the cash cow for some commercial database publishers, have fallen on hard times.
Where’s the conflict?
In my opinion, the Digital Beat story “Open Data Is the Future of Web Discovery” makes the potential problem easy to grasp. The story contains this interesting passage:
For now, we need one of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to make toolbar data available to see if there’d be massive advances by third-party developers. The first company to do this will open a new market, so who will be the first, and why? These big companies could find a way – like Facebook has – to build a vibrant developer community using their data and distribution. Perhaps the data provider can participate in the value created by charging for accessing and using the data. Or maybe Facebook, Twitter (or Twitter developers) will be the first to share click and other usage data. No longer would you have to build a multi billion dollar company to get access to data that could be used to make significant advances for users. All these companies would need to feel comfortable that users’ privacy is protected. Googlers tell me it’s highly unlikely Google would release toolbar data because the data is too valuable, privacy concerns and users might be surprised to see how much Google knows about them. Maybe the data is too important to Google so the company must hold it close to maintain its competitive advantage, but perhaps Yahoo and Microsoft would be willing to share data with select partners while tightly protecting user privacy for a chance to increase their competitiveness with Google. Or maybe these companies will try to build discovery services themselves. In the meantime, those potential advances in search, discovery and more are being stifled. Developers using Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft search APIs could make better services for users with more data from those companies as well as Google, Facebook, Mozilla and others like data analytics companies. The chance these companies will share more data with developers aside, it’s worth figuring what would be possible if they did.
The warring factions will be:
- Governments who make data available for all and permit commercial entities to repurpose government crated information into commercial products
- Social and real time system that offer free data and make it possible for commercial entities to create new products and services so that monetization models emerge
- Commercial database companies who want to preserve their proprietary content and create new, high value products using traditional business models
- Individuals who write Web log posts that become fodder for aggregation and often play the role of “information farmers” raising wheat that food companies process into high value products.
My thought is that these forces may split along generational lines and engage in quite interesting interactions.
Stephen Arnold, August 2, 2009
Magazines on Slippery Slope
August 3, 2009
I fielded a question about magazine publishing on Monday, July 27, 2009. A small publisher with a handful of titles wanted me to offer some new ideas for generating revenue. Magazine publishing has been a challenging business since the implosion of Life Magazine. I have seen interesting business school case studies about the impact of shifting consumer preferences for news and information upon the weekly that provided many Americans with news and visual information. You can now explore in a clunky and limited way some of the Life Magaazine pictures on Google. The service is free, which baffles me, but I am an addled goose and not able to keep pace with the really swift and smart bicoastals who make decisoins about high-value informatoin.
Like newspapers, magazines have some brutal economics with which to wrestle. Paper, ink, distribution, and other must have lubricants for the business are expensive. Forget what the White House says about inflation. The costs for these traditional publishing essentials continue to climb. Printing is a money pit as well. Digital technology helps by eliminating the centuries old multi-step plate process. But direct-to-press requires expensive hardware and software. Printing remains expensive. Finally, there is the cost for human brain power, even if those brains are contractors and 22 year olds from fancy universities. Try as publishers might, it is tough to create a newspaper or a magazine without people to write stories, make ad deals, and place the phone calls to suppliers.
Long a niche business, magazines find themselves on the wrong end of a pointy stick from Web sites such as Alltop.com. I can create a magazine with a few clicks. If Alltop does not suit you, try Congoo. There are quite a few choices created by people who don’t have the same fondness for flipping through Mechanix Illustrated or the Saturday Evening Post that I had when young.
$17 dollars worth of hard copy magazines from big gun publishers.
In short, magazines on paper are finding their corner of the publishing world under the same pressure as people who make wooden shoes or spin wool by hand. Even niche magazines for fanatics of a particular activity such as crafts or kit airplanes are going to have to come up with some new ideas.
In my conversation, I had to say, “Let me think about some ideas.” This blog post is my preliminary thinking about what is likely to be the next zero point in publishing. Let me run down the thoughts that I am pushing around.
The Traditional Product
I went to Barnes & Noble, a recently remodeled store. The magazines are still upfront but the selection has been culled. The new layout not far from my goose pond pushes book lights, book ends, and Moleskine products. The books are pushed to the rear of the store, and the computer book section has been eliminated. The free WiFi was not working but Barnes and Noble is a bricks and mortar business which is now jumping into electronic books. That will be interesting to track.
The magazines occupy four wooden bays. Crafts and kit airplane titles were not to be found. I could not locate the specialist magazines for those interested in archaeology. I noticed that the magazines devoted to watches and luxury goods were few and far between as well. When I did find a specialist magazine like Hemmings Motor News, there were three copies on the shelf. Maybe Hemmings is a big seller at this Barnes and Noble?
I bought two magazines with the idea that I would look at the hard copies and review my subscription copy of the recent New Yorker Magazine. The total cover price for the three magazines discussed below was about $17, excluding tax. Three magazines for about $20. Hmmm. I remember the commutes between New York and San Francisco when I bought four of five magazines on every flight. Not any more. I have info on my iTouch.
Car and Driver
My recollection is that Bill Ziff was into car magazines before he hopped on the computer magazine trend. Automobile fanatics are ideal for niches. I don’t pay much attention to automobiles or automobile magazines. I live in truck and gun-rack country. Car and Driver reviews vehicles that work well in Palm Springs but don’t have much to offer to a person who drives on dirt roads. I flipped through the magazine with the cover date September 2009 and in tiny, tiny type the $4.99 price. (I wonder if the small type communicates modest value?) The feature in this issue was new cars. I may have missed something but three points hit my knee like the weird door design on my 1973 Pontiac Grandville convertible:
First, where were the Hondas? I like Hondas. These are vehicles I can buy over the Internet, sight unseen. I drive them 100,000 miles and then get another. Odd omission in 140 page magazine. Honda is one of the top selling vehicles in the US. I wondered if the news hole was too small to slug in some Honda information or if the Honda vehicles were no longer interesting to Car and Driver readers. Ah, well, editorial decision. Honda information is available online.
Second, some vehicles rated data tables and others did not. I wondered why there was no Web link to the Car and Driver Web site for additional information about each automobile. I solved the problem with a quick visit to The Auto Channel. That outfit has data about the new cars.
Third, the writing was not crunchy. This means that if Bing.com or Google.com indexes an article, false drops are likely to pepper the search results. Let me give you one example. Writing about the Jaguar, Car and Driver used this phrase “evinced a strong whiff of femininity”. I hope Car and Driver has a great search engine optimization program because this type of writing will get the article in a list of results about women’s fashion. Maybe that’s the Car and Driver audience?
Social Media Analytics Round Up
August 2, 2009
Social media is the hot buzz phrase right now. People who already joined Facebook (networking) and delicious (bookmarking) are jumping on the Twitter wagon, as well as joining Digg, Stumbleupon, and about a hundred other function sites, all in the name of making connections. So if your company is tapping social media, what now? You need to be able to quantify the return on investment. This article at http://mashable.com/2009/04/19/social-media-analytics/ gives a rundown on available analytics such as Google or Omniture and what other add-ins are available. For example, if you need to shorten a URL to use in Twitter, you could choose the Bit.ly service, which also tracks information like number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur. So spending some time selecting your tools will pay off in data aggregation in the end. Determining the payback of spending time on social media is still not perfect, but progress is being made.
Jessica Bratcher, August 2, 2009
IBM and Social Graphs of Mobile Callers
August 2, 2009
Slashdot’s article “IBM Uses Call-Detail Records To Identify “Friends” tickled my memory. First, you will want to read the technical paper “Social Ties and Their Relevance to Churn in Mobile Telecom Networks” which is a Portable Document Format file. Next navigate to i2, now a unit of Silver Lake Sumeru I recall hearing. As you browse through the i2 site, do you see indications that the Analyst’s Notebook permits similar “friend identification.” I have also seen other tools that can process a range of data and generate relationship maps and graphs. The comment that interested me in the Slashdot item was:
IBM claims its patent-pending snooping software can now identify circles of ‘friends’ who tend to exhibit the same profit-threatening behavior. ‘We believe that our analysis is a first of its kind that exploits the underlying social network in a telecom call graph,’ boasted a team of IBM researchers and a UMD prof.
It will be interesting to see if IBM’s approach conflicts with other patents. I wonder if i2 and the other companies in the i2 market sector will push back on IBM’s claims for its technology. i2 has been around for a number of years, and in its early days was the bright eyed lad for some UK intelligence operations.
Stephen Arnold, August 2, 2009
US and UK Sing Different Tweets
August 1, 2009
Apparently Twittering at the White House is a no-no, but government agencies in the United Kingdom are getting a 20-page how-to (“…why and how we intend to establish and manage a corporate presence on the microblogging social network Twitter.com.”) You can get a copy at http://www.scribd.com/doc/17313280/Template-Twitter-Strategy-for-Government-Departments or http://mashable.com/2009/07/28/uk-government-twitter-guide/. Included is a basic Twitter how-to, objectives for using it, plans for data crunching, risks inherent and how to recognize them (Reduce by registering alternative names), and guidelines for setting up accounts to properly represent the departments. There are also tips on third-party tools to help the effort. In my opinion, it’s a good guide to using Twitter that focuses on the positives. Also check out Mashable’s guide to Twitter at http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/.
Public Records Pro
August 1, 2009
Here’s a useful list for the budding detective who is searching for people-related data: http://buyvoa.com/internet-computer/online-records/public-records-search/. One of the options is Public Records Pro, http://www.publicrecordspro.com/search.php?hop=bodyany, a search service that returns public, birth, death, marriage, and divorce records. It touts that its search interface combines 23 unique databases and 400+ million public records. Government Records.com, http://www.government-records.com/?hop=bodyany, is another service. Be aware that some services charge fees for complete reports. I did a search on my own birth records at Public Records Pro, and it wanted $2.95/month for complete access. Using online services like this can offer unparalleled access to huge amounts of material spread across the country or world through one site with a single interface, so if that’s your interest, this article might help you.
Jessica Bratcher, July 31, 2009
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