Monetizing Information to Find a Job via Social Media
January 15, 2010
Two unrelated conversations triggered my alarm clock this morning. One conversation concerned the hot trend of social networking. The other conversation pivoted on the value of knowledge.
Value of Social Networking
The social networking conversation surfaced an observation that was completely new to me. The person who made the observation said to the best of my recollection:
I was surprised to learn that some of my friends from my MBA class did not make a connection between their activities on Facebook and their job hunt.
The link seems obvious to me. Anywhere there is a network, the possibility exists that one of the friends may know about an opportunity or may have an idea that the other party to the conversation did not know about. I have been thinking about how to convert this assertion into a fact backed by data. The more I thought about this comment, I wondered if that a “gap” problem exists for avid users of social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The question I considered this morning was, “What is the value of connecting a person looking for work with the method for finding work via social networking?” The use of social networking is widespread. How could this statement that “some of my friends from my MBA class did not make a connection between their activities on Facebook and their job hunt” be true? The “value” of social networking would rest on a more casual use of a powerful and, to my mind, flexible system. I poked around for some information about the use of social networks to find work and turned up lots of hits. Obviously quite a few blog writers and poobahs have written about the use of social networks to make money. Frankly the comment puzzles me.
A perpetual motion machine cannot exist in the real world. Can it exist in a virtual world? Google seems to be close to a subsidizing financial model that may be getting close to permanet. Image source: http://cdrucker.com/files/labsphys/forceworkenergy_files/b2-3.gif
Value of Knowledge-Based Services
The second conversation focused on an upcoming trip I am making to Europe. The deal is in place, and the job is underway. However, one of the coordinators for this project asked, “What is your method for calculating the value of the work you do?” That comment was surprising as well. Assigning value to an intangible like expertise or information triggers in my mind endless hours reading about Austrian economic theories. I asked the person, “Why?” Her reply to the best of my recollection was: “I want to be a consultant, and I don’t understand how to value my time.”
What joins these two comments is the issue of the value of knowing something. A person who can use social networks to find a job interview or maybe sell a consulting engagement has connected the dots in the fuzzy world of online. A person who has not may be unwilling to pay for the information necessary to use online to locate work in today’s economic siroccos. My hunch is that the value is going to tough to define accurately. The person who “doesn’t get it” may not pay anything due to a lack of understanding due to my inability to make something clear. A person who does get it may work like Mozart, who sucked in music data and could then with what looked like little mental strain generate new melodies. The budding Mozart of social media may be unwilling to pay because from that person’s point of view, the insight was a trivial one. Why pay for what’s obvious?
The pricing of services is in some ways faced with a similar problem. The customer who “gets it” may be willing to pay for certain types of knowledge work because its value is obvious. The customer who doesn’t “get it” may not want to pay anything. Thus, the European MBA’s question about charging for a consulting project is a valid one.
Information, not necessarily electronic, is a slippery fish. What struck me is that each domain or “era” in technology imparts a different spin on the notion of “value”.
In our technology-infused world, the domain of experience includes different options (maybe more options as well). The methods of exercising those options would be influenced by the person’s knowledge of methods, tools, and tactics. A person without an Internet connection might know about Amazon, but that person might not have the methods, tools, and tactics to take advantage of an Amazon discount.
A Domain Problem?
My present uncertainty about the value of social networking is a domain problem, not just a knowledge problem. The technology domain requires a different type of knowledge. Where knowledge is lacking, friction will exist between the abstractions and the specific activities required to buy a leather jacket from Amazon or from a local big box store.
The differences are not just in the “how” part of the process. The differences cut across social norms, methods, thought processes, and abstractions like figuring out what is the “right way” versus what is the “wrong way” to accomplish a task.
What about those MBAs who did not see Facebook or LinkedIn as the method for generating employment opportunities? Is that a failure of the instructor? A failure of that group of students? A failure on the part of Facebook and LinkedIn? In fact, how could anyone familiar with online or popular culture for that matter not “know” something about the utility and instrumentalities of Twitter.com?
What about the European who wanted to know how to put a price tag on expertise? What has happened in that person’s education to make fixed price and time and expense based pricing puzzling?
My hunch is that the factors at work are easy to spot and difficult to identify. Online and knowledge are paradoxical, and I think that quite a bit of mental friction takes place when domains collide. A publisher who creates a printed magazine or newspaper knows how to cost estimate, price single copies, and set ad rates. When that publisher moves the information online, the old rules don’t apply because online is a different domain. This means that a publisher trying to embrace a new domain may face the business process risks not “part of the woodwork”.
Google and Free Information
Online vendors in the 1980s charged a customer to run a query in a specific database. The customer paid even if the database did not contain the needed information. Explaining the value of a null set was tricky in my experience. Charging for certain types of information that is free on a government Web site or marketing blog like this on may find a small group of buyers willing to pay. But a lower cost or free service will reduce the for fee company’s options. The genius of Google is that people subsidize certain services. Users get something that looks free. It isn’t. Google has found a way to subsidize a service. The power of Google is its business model and the company’s technical expertise to keep the “perpetual motion machine” running. Advertisers who want sales leads have to advertise on Google. Google has magnetic power because its free services pull users to the service. Once this machine is running, competitors and others disrupted by the business model have to find a way to gum up the works.
Why should a customer pay for information and knowledge if the customer cannot know the value of the information and knowledge? A failure to communicate is easier to correct than a failure to understand. Is this a purloined letter problem or a certain blindness problem? Maybe it is a bit of both? Or, could it be a different class of problems entirely.
More Questions
What if individuals cannot connect the dots in a hyperspace, abstract world of information? Those who “get it” have an advantage in some situations. Those who don’t will find themselves baffled by certain informationized functions. I think an information flow about ways to use social networking for specific purposes like finding a job might be useful. I will have to think about that, of course. I don’t know how to tackle the gap between many dots that must be connected on a broader scale. Traditional education may be able to help some, but what about those who need information about knowledge value and are not in school? Maybe those who “get it” will become a new elite and those who don’t slip to a lower social stratum? If you don’t know what you don’t know, you may be behind the eight ball.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
It pains me to say, “No one paid me to record this ill formed ideas.” I suppose I am under the jurisdictional control of the American Battle Monuments Commission to which I shall report this sad fact.
ConceptSearching and Its Busy January 2010
January 14, 2010
Concept Searching (“Retrieval Just Got Smarter”) has had a busy January 2010.
The company made several announcements about its information retrieval software.
First the company inked a deal with Union Square Software to use the Concept Searching technology in Union Square’s Workspace product. The Union Square Workspace is an email, document, and knowledge management product for the construction industry.
Second, the company announced support for Microsoft Windows Server R2’s File Classification Infrastructure. Like other Microsoft centric solutions, Concept Searching provides a snap in that extends the features of the Microsoft product.
Third, the company landed a deal with the Consumer Products Safety Commission to deliver search and classification to the CPSC’s public Web site and for the corporate Intranet.
The company was founded in 2002 with the goal of developing statistical search and classification products that “delivered critical functionality… unavailable in the marketplace.” The company’s software processes text, identifies concepts, and allows unstructured information to be classified via semantic metadata. The company supports SharePoint and other platforms. The company says:
Concept Searching are the only company to offer a full range of statistical information retrieval products based on Compound Term Processing. Our unique technology automatically identifies the word patterns in unstructured text that convey the most meaning and our products use these higher order terms to improve Precision with no loss of Recall. The algorithms adapt to each customer’s content and they work in any language regardless of vocabulary or linguistic style.
The company’s headquarters is in the UK, and the firm’s marketing operations are in McLean, Virginia. If you want more information, you can download a 13 megabyte video from K2 Underground.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
Oyez, oyez. A freebie. I shall report this public service to Securities House next time I am in London.
Enterprise Search Deployment Time
January 14, 2010
Our Overflight service snagged a news item in May 2009. The title was “Airbus Licenses Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform”. The release was good news for Vivisimo and straight forward, saying:
Vivisimo (Vivisimo.com), a leader in enterprise search, has entered into a major agreement with aircraft manufacturer Airbus for the license of the Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform. The license covers the corporate-wide intranet for Airbus and some extranet services for Airbus customers, indexing up to two petabytes of data for more than 50,000 users. Vivisimo had already provided search for a group within Airbus before winning the company’s broader corporate business in a competitive setting. In a solution proof of concept, Vivisimo Velocity demonstrated its capability to handle the complexity of Airbus’ many data repositories while respecting the company’s various security parameters.
When I read this, I thought that Airbus made a wise decision. A deployment and an evaluation process was used. That’s smart. Most organizations license an engine and then plunge ahead.
The news item I received in my email this morning was equally clear. “Airbus Lifts Off Vivisimo Velocity to Provide More than 50,000 Users the Power of Search” states:
Vivisimo (Vivisimo.com), a leader in enterprise search, today announced the successful installation of its award-winning Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform with the world’s leading aircraft manufacturer Airbus. Through this deployment, Velocity is powering search across its corporate-wide intranet and its customers, indexing up to two petabytes of data for more than 50,000 users.
After a quote the news release said:
In less than one month since the completed installation of Velocity, search has become the fastest growing application on the customer portal (AirbusWorld) homepage in terms of usage, which has resulted in increased page views.
I think the uptake information is good news for Airbus users and for Vivisimo. The other upside of my having these two statements is that it is possible to calculate roughly the time required for a prudent organization to move from decision to deploy to actual availability of the search service. The deal was signed in May 2009, and the system went online about January 2010. That means that after the trial period, another six months was required to deploy the system.
Several observations:
- Appliance vendors have indicated that their solution requires less time. One vendor pegs the deployment time in a matter of days. Another suggested a month for a complicated installation.
- The SaaS search vendors have demonstrated a deployment time of less than four hours for one test we ran for a governmental unit. Other vendors have indicated times in the days to two week periods, depending on the complexity of the installation. The all time speed champ is Blossom.com, which we used for the Threat Open Source Information Gateway project.
- System centric vendors with solutions that snap into SharePoint, for example, have indicated an installation time of a half day to as much as a week, depending on the specific SharePoint environment.
- Tool kit vendors typically require weeks or months to deploy an enterprise search system. However, in certain situations like a search system for a major publishing company’s online service, the time extended beyond six months.
What’s this mean? Vivisimo’s installation time is on a par with other high profile systems’ deployment times. The reason is that the different components must be integrated with the clients’ systems. In addition, certain types of customization—not always possible with appliances or SaaS solutions—are like any other software set up. Tweaking takes time.
With Google’s emphasis on speed, the Google Search Appliance is positioning itself to be a quicker install that some of the high profile enterprise systems.
What’s this mean? It looks to me that one group of vendors and services can deliver speedier installations. Other vendors offset speed with other search requirements. Beyond that obvious statement, I will have to think about the cost implications of deployment time.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
No one paid me to write this short article. Why would anyone pay me? It’s been 65 years of financial deprivation. I think I have to report this monetary fact to the Social Security folks.
Google Odds: A Possible Search First
January 13, 2010
Amidst the furor of the Google – China issue, I noticed that most of the pundits ignored the global disruptive power of a Google decision. I may be one of the few—maybe the only addled goose—pointing out that Google operates like a nation-state, not a garden variety company. Another example of Google’s significance popped up in my Overflight service this morning. PaddyPower.com, an online wagering operation, issued a news release with the headline “Bookie Calls Google for Chinese Takeaway.” The company has put odds on Google’s action. Here’s the relevant passage:
Bookies Paddy Power are offering odds of 3/1 that Internet giant Google will follow through on it’s threat to quit China before 2012. The harsh warning by the worlds biggest search engine was sparked after the illegal hacking of Chinese Gmail accounts and comes amid increasing tensions between the US and China over Internet censorship. Any move by Google to quit China will no doubt comes as good news for China’s leading search engine, Baidu, that currently enjoys a 60 percent share of the Chinese Internet search market. Paddy Power are quoting odds of 10/11 that their market share will increase to 65 per cent by the end of 2010. Paddy Power said “China is obviously a massive potential market for Google so it will be interesting to see what the long-term strategic impact will be should they effectively give two fingers to the Chinese government and jump ship”
Three to one. If I were a betting goose, maybe?
Stephen E. Arnold, January 13, 2010
No one paid me to write this news item. Since it relates to wagering, I will report it to one of the many lottery commissions. Now which state governs geese?
Search Merging with CMS
January 13, 2010
When you have a CMS “hammer”, you have the opportunity to see an information problem as something that can be pounded with CMS. Let me be upfront. Most organizations are not in the information business. The idea that Big O’s tires in Kentucky is an information company is not just silly; it’s a financially imprudent assertion. Big O’s is a retail operation that sells tires and services. The company’s Web site is a marketing is a marketing effort, but when you need tires for your Hummer with a gun mount, you have to haul on over to the closest Big O’s, pony up cash, and get your tires mounted, balanced, and bolted on. Sure, information is important to the Big O operation, but like many other businesses, Big O’s moves tires. Information is an enabler, sort of a digital lubricant. A person dressed up in a Daniel Boone outfit holding a sign that says, “50% off Tires. Today only.” is information. But the pointy end of the business is selling tires.
Just hop right into the CMS tanning bed. It will make you look and feel great. Oh, there may be some risks, but what’s more important? Looking great or becoming a human Blutwurst.
When I read CMS Wire’s short article “MySource Matrix” I was surprised that search is becoming part of CMS. Yikes. CMS, content management systems, refers to a bunch of software components that perform integrated content operations for Web sites. There are document management systems that help nuclear power plants keep track of engineering change orders. And there are really expensive enterprise publishing systems from Hewlett Packard and StreamServe that manage and output certain types of enterprise information. I grant that when you can’t find a document, you can’t do much with any of these systems. So, search is a utility. Search in any of these three types of content systems often is not particularly good. Vendors license “stubs” stick them in CMS and related systems so when more features are needed, the vendors can turn on the taxi meter. Software cannot put an editorial sense into an organization. Humans have to do that, and humans often are not able to perceive the problem or its optimal solution when basking in the vendor’s tanning salon.
Here’s the passage from Squiz that caught my attention:
They’ve [Squiz, Funnelback, and MySource Matrix] chosen this direction because they see the lines between CMS and search blurring, where some projects may need search-based vertical applications rather than starting with a separate CMS and search library. According to Morgan [Squiz executive], this approach will reduce integration costs and increase access to data across an organization.
Note: Squiz owns the Funnelback search system. You can see this in action on the Australian Resource Centre for Healthcare Innovation or ARCHI.
Most CMS, DMS, and enterprise publishing systems are complicated beasties, and each has a contribution to make to certain organizations, the path to a functioning, easy to maintain content system can be a long, difficult one. In my experience, CMS means managing a Web site. CMS has been stretched into DMS territory, and some of the vendors with the biggest marketing horn have floundered and ended up chum for the M&A crowd. The document management systems that focus on a specific content purpose like the aforementioned ECOs work well, but one needs to have an records management specialist handy. The enterprise publishing systems are not widely known outside of certain market sectors. These cost a lot of money and suffer from one fatal flaw in my opinion. Most lack an information infrastructure service or foundation. No foundation, the structure built on it is dicey.
This notion of having everything in one place so anyone can edit, repurpose, and search is a great idea. Today, the cost of achieving that utopia can be high, both in time and money.
I can see the direction this marketing angle will lead. Thank goodness I am old and won’t have to deal with the wackiness these big marketing ideas unleash on cash strapped organizations struggling to keep their systems from breaking the bank each time those systems crash. There’s a lot of opportunity in content, but fuzzy thinking may not be what Boards of Directors and CFOs want.
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2010
I want to disclose to the Office of Management and Budget that I was not paid to point out the financial issues of fuzzy thinking. I bet this article was a surprise to them. Don’t Federal content and document managements systems work like spinning tops?
Copyright and the Generation Angle
January 12, 2010
Short honk: If you are into the copyright battles now underway, you may find “The Copyright Bubble” interesting. At a minimum, it makes clear that a demographic blip is part of the problem. The thought I had was that parents of copyright ignorers may want to take another run at changing their children’s behaviors. If a child—now 25 –embraces the copyright bad mentality, perhaps more aggressive parental action is needed. The implication of the write up is that when old folks head to the traditional heaven where the Internet does not work, copyright will be okay. Failing that, the author of the Copyright Bubble may be correct.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2010
I know the disclosure ruling became effective on December 1, 2010. It is the new year and I still am writing this baloney for no money. I think I will reveal this fact to the Marine Mammal Commission.
The Paywall Chronicles: The Value of Fuzziness
January 9, 2010
Short honk: Getting money for electronic information is tough. A peek inside a new media financial concept appears in “Steven Brill’s Growing Mound of Twaddle.” The most interesting part of the write up is a chart that plots alleged customers with announced customers. Zero seems to flat line as the announced customer tally soars.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 9, 2010
A freebie. I know at least one reader thinks I am a PR bunny. I suppose I must report this to the Fish & Wildlife crew.
Autonomy Targets Marketers
January 7, 2010
A number of pundits, poobahs, and mavens are beavering away with their intellectual confections that explain enterprise search in 2010. The buzz from those needing billable work is that enterprise search is gone goose (pun intended) and that niche solutions are the BIG NEWS for 2010.
I thought I wrote an article for Search Magazine two or three years ago that made this point. But the Don and Donna Quixotes of the consulting world are chasing old chimera. I nailed the real thing for Barbara Quint, one of my most beloved editors. With Gartner buying Burton Group, the azure chip crowd is making clear that the down market push of Booz, Allen (now a for fee portal vendor) and the up market push of the Gerson Lehrmans of the world is making their sales Panini toasty and squishy.
Against this background, I noted this Reuters’ news item: “Autonomy Interwoven Enables Marketers to Deliver the Most Relevant End-to-End Search Experience.” I have difficulty figuring out which articles branded as Reuters-created is from the “real” Reuters and which comes from outfits that are in the bulk content business (sorry I can’t mention names even though you demand this of me) and which comes from public relations firms with caviar budgets. You will have to crack this conundrum yourself.
The write up points out that Autonomy makes it possible for those engaged in marketing to provide their users with “relevant end-to-end search experience.” I am not clever enough to unwrap this semantic package. For me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
A recent report published by Gartner entitled Leading Websites Will Use Search, Advanced Analytics to Target Content states: “Search technology provides a mechanism for users to indicate their desires through implicit values, such as their roles and other attributes, and explicit values such as query keywords. Website managers, information architects, search managers and Web presence managers can adopt search technologies to improve site value and user impact.” The research note goes on to say, “Choose Web content management (WCM) vendors that have robust search technologies or that have gained them through partnerships, acquisitions or the customization of open-source technology.”
The explanation of “most relevant end-to-end search experience” hooks in part to an azure chip consultant report (maybe a Gartner Group product?) that is equally puzzling to me. Here’s where I ran into what my fifth grade teacher, Miss Chessman, would have called a “lack of comprehension.”
- What the heck is relevant?
- What is end-to-end?
- What is search?
- What is experience?
- What is a Web presence manager?
- What is a robust search technology?
I try to be upfront about my being an old, addled goose. I understand that Autonomy has acquired a number of interesting technologies. I understand that azure chip consulting firms have to produce compelling intellectual knowledge value to pay their bills.
What I don’t understand is what the message is from Reuters (this “news” story looks like a PR release), from Autonomy (I thought the company sold the Intelligent Data Operating Layer, not experience), and from Gartner (what’s with the job titles and references to open source?).
I will be 66 in a few months, and I don’t think anyone in the assisted living facility will be able to help me figure out the info payload of this Reuters’-stamped write up. What happened to the journalism school’s pyramid structure? What happened to who, what, why, when, where, and how? Obviously I am too far down the brain trail to keep pace with modern communication.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 8, 2010
Oyez, oyez, I have to report to the Library of Congress, check out a dictionary, and admit to the guard on duty that I was not paid to explain I haven’t a clue about the meaning of this write up. I do understand the notion of rolling up other companies in order to get new revenue and customers, but this relevance and experience stuff baffles me. I am the goose who has been pointing out that “search sucks” for free too.
IBM and Its SEO Guru
January 5, 2010
I read an unusual write up on the DCDCQ.com Web site. No, I don’t know what the domain name means. The article was called “SEO in China Will Never Be the Same as Google’s James Mi, Adverted’s Stephen Noton and IBM’s Bill Hu [sic]”. The article explains how to get a site on the first page of a results list. I find this type of intentional manipulation annoying and usually misleading. But there are some folks who want to put more effort into spoofing algorithms than creating substantive content and providing information of high quality on a particular topic. It takes all kinds. I was going to blow off the article until one section made me laugh.
Here’s the passage that stopped me in my tracks:
The finial speaker, Hunt, might just be the most experienced SEO person on this panel because, china, unlike Noton (who headed to Asia to work with more startups and the upcoming corporate elite) is based, china, in the US and works with the current corporate elite including being the man behind IBM’s Search Engine Optimization success. Hunt’s talk involved him showing some of, China, the work he’s done with IBM, which really complimented, China, the other speakers. Hunt showed how changing text in images into pure text and how proper navigation and title tags can make a clients site like IBM grow from being in the top 100 to being #1 within 3 short weeks.
What! Several years ago at the Boston search engine meeting, there was a presentation by an IBM search engine guru that made zero sense to me. I had one of my goslings follow up with this person on a technical matter and she reported that he had zero clue about search and content processing.
Now we have a Web site that I have pointed out as essentially non functional used as an example of great SEO. Yo, dude. I don’t care what country is the searcher’s home base. I know that if I cannot locate information about a specific IBM product or service, the Web presence is fatally flawed. The notion that IBM can become the number one result for Web queries is interesting but essentially not supported in my experience.
Wow. The New Year is off to an amazing SEO start from IBM. Number one with a bullet. Try this query: “content management system”. Keep in mind that IBM owns FileNet, iPhrase, and other CMS systems. Scan the result list. No IBM on the first page, right? IBM is number one in the query “mainframe right after the Wikipedia entry.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 2, 2010
Full disclosure: A freebie. I shall report to Defense Field Activities when the government opens for the new year.
GrabIt Described for Noobs
January 4, 2010
Usenet can be a treasure chest of information. If I mention Usenet in a lecture, I see few sparks of recognition. PCWorld’s “Old-School Secret: Delve Into Usenet With GrabIt” does a good job of explaining Usenet content and providing useful information about GrabIt, an open source tool for accessing the content and assembling split files. The write up also includes links to other software that makes Usenet suitable for the under 25 cohort. Useful write up which is not about search or content processing. But findability and access are close cousins.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 4, 2010
A freebie. Whom do I tell? I know, I know. When Washington DC reopens for the new year, my oversight authority is probably the National Institute for Literacy, an entity which I am confident reads Usenet postings.
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