Online Paywalls: British Users Click Elsewhere
July 29, 2010
Internet users in England are the biggest online penny pinchers. Net Imperative recently reported these finding in an article, “British Least Likely to Pay for Online Content According to a New Survey.” The survey, performed by global accounting firm KPMG, discovered nearly 81 percent of Brits polled would prefer not to pay for online content, no matter what it was.
According to the article: “UK users will make some concessions though: almost 75% of UK users are happy to have free or heavily subsidized content supported by advertising. In addition up to 48% are happy to allow their personal data to be tracked if it means cheaper content, though some remain concerned about online privacy and safety.”
Regardless of ad space, this is a sign that there is too much valuable free information, like the kind found here, to ever force readers to pay.
Commercial database publishers in the 1980s knew how to generate revenue. Pity those lessons have been ignored. But today’s managers are just so much more informed.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2010
Freebie unlike the paywall crowd
Recommendation Engines May Engineer the Soul
July 29, 2010
“Recommendation engines aren’t designed to give us what we want. They’re designed to give us what they think we want, “ says Lev Grossman in his recent Time Magazine article, If You Liked This… . And that’s the crux of the difference between recommendation engines and perfection.
In my perfect world, I would open a retail store called “YOU” and you would shop there all the time because every product in the store would suit your taste. I would use your buying habits to build my inventory. You would spend almost all of your money in my store. You would be happy and I would be rich. Fair trade.
In a sense, that’s what recommendation engines do. They use what you’ve already purchased to guess what you might like to buy next… and they offer it to you immediately. It’s you recommending something to yourself with the computer as an intermediary.
Word of mouth from a friend is, by far, the most relied upon source of confidence, says a recent survey. Statistically, almost 90% of us trust a friend’s recommendation to some degree. So wouldn’t you assume that, by being your own best friend, you couldn’t go wrong? You know the answer to that loaded question.
“The trouble with recommendation engines,” says the author, “is that they’re really hard to build. They look simple on the outside—if you liked X, you’ll love Y—but they’re actually doing something fiendishly complex. They’re processing astounding quantities of data and doing so with seriously high-level math. That’s because they’re attempting to second-guess a mysterious, perverse and profoundly human form of behavior: the personal response to a work of art. They’re trying to reverse-engine the soul.”
Technology can engineer one’s soul directly or indirectly, the addled goose assumes. Source: http://www.gizmowatch.com/images/bci_48.jpg
A lot of companies are trying hard to link one preference to others but, unlike the alphabet, human beings just don’t go from A to B to infinity and beyond in any algorithmically defined order.
Pandora, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, eHarmony, MySpace and the like are tying hard to get it right. Industry studies show that about a third of us buyers choose another selection from the recommendations, so the value is obvious to both merchant and buyer. But getting it right is proving much more problematic than anyone thought.
Facebook Now a Springboard
July 14, 2010
Those us in the Internet marketing aren’t surprised, saw it coming, will all now stand in a line and scream ‘I told you so’ to all those who thought that the social media frenzy might have just been a fad.
According to an article in ReadWriteWeb.com, Gigya, a company that provides social optimization platforms for firms that want to take advantage of these new tools, Facebook is the most common jumping off point for people logging in to other sites from social media. The gap that was widening last January is getting bigger too. Presently Facebook accounts for 46 percent of logins from social media.
Strange how the real competition from Google is coming from social media and not Bing. Maybe it’s time real innovators start targeting that site for some competition since Facebook is the preferred starting point for surfing when it comes to social media.
Rob Starr, July 14, 2010
Freebie
Gizmos and Concentration: The Odd Couple
July 8, 2010
So I am in a convenient store near Harrods’s Creek. There are two people in line in front of me. One of my neighbors is paying the stupidity tax by snagging a fist full of lottery chances. The other person in full yuppie boating regalia is buying a 24 can carton of beer from the giant beer cooler. I have a lousy bottle of chocolate milk. The clerk. A high school junior. Tomorrow’s leader here today.
The clerk is talking on the phone, yapping at motorists trying to get the 1950 vintage gasoline pumps to work, thumbing through the mind boggling number of lottery tickets, and casting furtive glances at the front door. Robbers who dropped out of grade school think that Harrods Creek convenient stores have bags of cash ready to hand out on demand.
The clerk gave the person paying the stupidity tax the wrong tickets. The guy with the beer put the carton on the floor and left. I stood there waiting with exact change. I have no idea if the guy beating the gas pump with the nozzle was trying to get the pump to work or venting rage because the clerk did not turn on the pump. When my turn came, the guy clerk did not interrupt his conversation, took my $1.45, and turned his attention to the water running in the sink. It was overflowing.
Get the picture. One convenient store guy unable to do one thing at a time and do one thing correctly.
Too much anecdote and not enough data. Point your browser at “Excessive ‘Screen Time’ Said to Affect Children’s Attention Span: Report.” Here is a keeper of a finding:
Researcher Edward Swing, a graduate student at Iowa State University, along with his colleagues assessed 1,323 children in the third, fourth and fifth grades over a 13-month time period. Swing said: “Those who exceeded the AAP recommendation were about 1.6 times to 2.2 times more likely to have greater than average attention problems.” What’s interesting is the study also included a one-time survey of 210 college students. The middle school students, he reported, were a slightly less likely than the college students to have attention problems.
Maybe the real life experiences on a college campus are different from what I witness everyday. It is good to know that the future convenient clerks will exemplify unfocused behavior. Is that not special? No wonder search systems are giving online users what the numerical recipes determine the user wants. Hey, it’s fast and correct because it is from a computer. For sure – UX.
Stephen E Arnold, July 8, 2010
Freebie
Exalead and Mobile Search
July 5, 2010
Podcast Interview with Paul Doscher, Part 4
Exalead’s Paul Doscher talks about Exalead and mobile search on the July 5, 2010 ArnoldIT Beyond Search podcast. Exalead, now part of the large French software and services company Dassault, continues to ramp up its search, content processing, and search enabled applications. (Now part of Dassault, one of the world’s leading software and services engineering firms acquired Exalead earlier this year. You can read about the acquisition in “Exalead Acquired by Dassault” and “Exalead and Dassault Tie Up, Users Benefit.”
In the July 2010 podcast, Mr. Doscher talks about Exalead and mobile search, one of the hottest sectors in information retrieval. Exalead has assisted one of its clients (Urbanizer.com) has developed an innovative method of locating information.
The Exalead user experience approach makes it possible to deliver access via a range of mobile devices for consumer and special purpose access.
You can listen to the podcast on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. More information about Exalead is available from www.exalead.com.
The ArnoldIT podcast series extends the Search Wizards Speak series of interview beyond text into rich media. Watch this blog for announcements about other rich media programs from the professionals who move information retrieval beyond search.
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2010
This one is a freebie
Podcast Interview with Paul Doscher, Part 3: Exalead and User Experience
June 28, 2010
Exalead’s Paul Doscher talks about Exalead and user experience, sometimes shortened to “UX” on the June 28, 2010, ArnoldIT Beyond Search podcast. Exalead, now part of the large French software and services company Dassault, is entering a new phase of growth. (You can read about this tie up in “Exalead Acquired by Dassault” and “Exalead and Dassault Tie Up, Users Benefit.”
In this podcast, Mr. Doscher talks about Exalead’s technical approach to enabling licensees to use a wide range of graphical user interfaces and display conventions. The Exalead user experience approach makes it possible to support iPhone-type interfaces and presentations tailored to the needs of a particular user or workgroup.
You can listen to the podcast on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. More information about Exalead is available from www.exalead.com. The ArnoldIT podcast series extends the Search Wizards Speak series of interview beyond text into rich media. Watch this blog for announcements about other rich media programs from the professionals who move information retrieval beyond search.
Stephen E Arnold, June 28, 2010
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