AOL: Spreadsheet Fever Revealed
May 28, 2012
Some Googlers and Xooglers are persistent folks. Once an idea takes hold, look out, mama. Public examples of spreadsheet fever and Xoogler behavior are difficult to find. I wanted to document this rare sighting, tuck it into my “case study” file, and capture the main points in Beyond Search, the blog with one or two readers worldwide.
You may be able to located “For AOL, a Costly Gamble on Local News Draws Trouble” online. I am looking at a dead tree instance of the write up in the May 23, 2012, Wall Street Journal, pages B-1 and B-2, a News Corp. publication focused on “real” journalism.
The point of the story is that AOL is losing money on upscale local news. The site and service scoped by the “real” news people is Patch, a local news service. I don’t pay too much attention to local news because I live in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. I can hear gun fire from my goose pond, and the local newspaper focuses on recycling two-day old corn from the Associated Press content grinder and a handful of thrift shop columnists.
Luke levitates the crashed X wing fighter. Yoda “teaches” the young Jedi to perform a seemingly impossible task. “Use the Force, Luke. Use the force.” Image source: http://prayingmentis.blogspot.com/2012/02/faith-and-impossible.html
But AOL’s local news effort has compiled this track record, according to the News Corp. unit:
Mr. Armstrong has held his ground in defending Patch, which he co-founded in 2007 before he joined AOL, but he recently promised to make it profitable by next year. In a small step toward that goal, AOL said Tuesday it will cut around 20 jobs at Patch, or less than 2% of Patch’s workforce…As the ad-supported network has expanded to more than 850 towns from 30 in the past two years, its annual loss has widened sharply to more than $100 million in 2011…That would be twice the size of AOL’s operating income for the year.
Not bad. What was omitted at this point in the “real” news story was the fact that Mr. Armstrong, a former Google executive or Xoogler, sold Patch to AOL for $7 million. No big deal. Another “real” news outfit asserted that AOL “may never be able to patch up Patch.” Who took this view? The “real” journalists at Fortune Magazine.
I quite like the notion of building something, getting some cash, a job at the outfit which purchased my operation, and then having the luxury to invest big bucks in trying to do the Yoda thing. As you may recall, Yoda taught Luke Skywalker to life a space war ship by thinking about it. Cheaper than $100 million, but about as practical as the AOL way.
The real gem in the write up, however, was the revelation of spreadsheet fever. Here’s the key passage in my opinion:
Mr. Armstrong developed the business model for Patch with Jon Brod, the former president and chief operating officer of his private investment group. The idea was to target wealthy small communities that generated about $20 million a year in advertising through TV, radio, newspaper, and direct marketing. “We basically said, based on our model, if we could get [less than 1%] of that $20 million, we would have a profitable Patch in that community,” Mr. Brod said.
The News Corp. publication continued:
Patch, however, has fallen well short of that target. AOL says the business is on track to bring in between $40 million and $50 million in revenue this year. That translates to an average of $50,000 for each of its 850 local sites. But the average Patch site costs between $150,000 and $200,000 a year to operated, Mr. Armstrong told investors last year, or a total of $160 million.
What I find useful is the revelation about the revenue assumption and the apparent goof on the actual costs of doing local news, selling ads, and keeping the ship afloat in the midst of Facebook and Twitter. Both services work pretty well to find out what is going on in a particular location. Since both generate local information as exhaust, the entrepreneurs behind Patch may be guilty of looking at an Excel spreadsheet, modifying assumptions, and concluding, “Winner. Tiger blood.”
I don’t have an opinion about Patch. I do find the persistence demonstrated by Mr. Armstrong Googley. I find the patience demonstrated by the Board of Directors interesting at a time when Boards of Directors are doing a bang up job. I wonder if Yoda is available to provide levitation lessons to the Jedis at AOL. Xooglers have the Excel fever under control I assume.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Watson Goes to College
May 28, 2012
From Jeopardy to the college campus — Watson goes to MBA school, we learn in eWeek’s piece, “IBM’s Watson Challenges University of Rochester MBA Students.” Will an art history PhD challenge be next? I’d like to see that one.
For this project, U. of Rochester‘s Simon School of Business worked with IBM to sponsor the first Watson Academic Case Competition. Twenty-five students worked in teams to develop new ways to apply Watson‘s technology to complex problems in the realms of transportation, energy, retail and the public sector. For the faculty, business leaders, and IBM execs who chose the three winners, a strong understanding of how to use big data strategically was a key criterion.
Third place went to a project designed to streamline the customs process in airports while boosting security. The second place entry is designed to help energy companies project environmental impacts as well as manage regulatory and safety issues. Both are fine projects with strong real world potential, and I hope each gets developed further. The first place entry, though, might just save some lives. Writer Darryl K. Taft describes the winner:
“First place went to ‘Managing Data in the Eye of a Storm,’ which showed how IBM’s Watson technology could be put to work combining weather-related data and the latest census numbers to help organizations better prepare for a crisis administration and allocate resources accordingly. The first place student team concluded that Watson’s ability to look at unstructured and structured information could more accurately identify weather patterns and help improve response times.”
Big data analysis in the service of humanity—much more valuable than winning at Jeopardy.
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Facebook: Fad or Future?
May 28, 2012
It looks like Computerworld is buys into the Facebook-as-a-fad thing with their piece, “U.S. Facebook Users Skeptical of Site’s Privacy, Longevity.” The privacy thing I can see; I approach posting anything on Facebook as if I were shouting in the middle of a crowded square surrounded by cameras. But Facebook on the way out? I don’t think so.
This latest kerfuffle, timed interestingly so close to Facebook’s much-discussed IPO, was spawned by a poll by the Associated Press and CNBC which found half of Americans think the site is a fad, though 43% see it a more of a fixture. My money (metaphorically) is with that 43%. Keep in mind that there’s still a chunk of the American public that isn’t even comfortable with computers yet. I’d bet a number of older folks think Facebook is a passing fancy because, to them, it’s still one of those new-fangled techy thingies that could never last.
Regarding that privacy issue, even dedicated Facebook users seem to realize they should not be shouting out their credit card numbers in that crowded, camera-encircled square. The article tells us:
“According to the survey, which sampled 1,004 U.S. adults earlier this month, three of every five Facebook users say they have little or no faith that the social network will keep their personal information private. Only 13% trust Facebook to protect their information, and only 12% would feel safe making purchases through the site.
“The AP noted that half of those who use the site daily — Facebook’s most loyal users — say they would not feel safe making a purchase on the network.”
No, Facebook is not a haven of confidentiality, but it was never meant to be. Users who understand that do just fine. As for staying power, the company is nothing if not innovative and responsive to change. We shouldn’t be so quick to count it out.
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Angoss Trumpets New Features
May 27, 2012
Angoss is upping their predictive analytics game with new features, MarketWatch informs us in “Angoss KnowledgeSEEKER and KnowledgeSTUDIO Version 8.0.” The additions aim to boost analytic and data mining capabilities. The press release explains:
“The new features within KnowledgeSEEKER and KnowledgeSTUDIO version 8.0 enhance companies’ ability to improve business processes and decisions by increasing the types and volume of data that can be analyzed. Data scientists are able to import and prepare massive amounts of data—both structured and unstructured—into memory with 64-bit addressing; and to perform in-database analytics using extremely large datasets and numbers of predictive variables so data can be mined and analyzed faster and more accurately.”
Angoss has teamed up with text and sentiment analysis firm Lexalytics to advance the text mining, extraction, and sentiment analysis capacities in KnowledgeSTUDIO. KnowledgeSEEKER introduces new powers of data preparation and manipulation; graphical wizards transform the data for analysis, eliminating the need to write code.
See the write up for details on these new features, but some highlights include: the optimization of the In-Database (big data) Analytics module for use with Oracle databases; 64-bit in-memory analytics; aSQL Function Code Generator; and an ODBC Import Wizard.
A leader in delivering predictive analytics to businesses looking to improve performance in sales, marketing, and risk management, Angoss offers desktop, client-server, and in-database products as well as cloud-based solutions. The company boasts that their tools are user-friendly and agile. Leading financial, insurance, retail, health care, communications, and technology organizations use Angoss to grow revenue and reduce risk. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Angoss also has offices in the US and UK.
Cynthia Murrell, May 27, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
uReveal Business Intelligence Chosen to Secure Democratic National Convention
May 27, 2012
As the political season gears up, we have been learning about more security features that are a necessity for politically charged events. The news release, “Democratic National Convention Security to Rely on uReveal” discusses the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s choice for security at the upcoming DNC in Charlotte, North Carolina.
uReveal seems to offer tight security via business intelligence. Not only do they scan for potential threats and have alerts set up when dangers arise, but they can also analyze almost anything that poses a potential problem to the event or city across tons of data.
According to the article:
“uReveal’s scope will be broad and robust, monitoring and analyzing news websites, social media and other web resources. And this will be done in harmony with internally generated crime and intelligence data without the complex and costly database processes and support that this effort traditionally requires. Users will be empowered with a fast, flexible platform that provides a better, more complete data picture for the duration of the event, while requiring less time and technical support.”
IxReveal’s uReveal platform is an alternative to costly traditional database processes because it empowers users, a trend we’ve seen across many innovative technologies. The intuitive user experience allows anyone to search, define, collaborate and analyze data.
Megan Feil, May 27, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Interesting Sales and Service Approach from mnoGoSoftware
May 27, 2012
We’ve discovered what we think is a fascinating marketing angle for mnoGoSoftware: the company charges almost $1,000 for a basic desktop search system and then charges for email support. Hmph. But the really interesting point is this statement on the support page:
“We reserve a right to have 20 business days off within a calendar year, for vacation (usually not more than 10 business days off per quarter). During days offs support service won’t be available.
Support users will be notified about upcoming days off two weeks prior to anticipated service interruption lasting more than three days.
“Monthly support users will have their contracts automatically extended to cover any and all days off taken during the support month.”
Interesting.
The company must be doing something right, though, because the site names several awards it has won and lists over 230 Web sites that use its Web search software. They also offer versions for use with Windows and Unix.
Cynthia Murrell, May 27, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Is IBM Delivering a Speedier File System?
May 27, 2012
IBM’s Parallel file system just got a makeover, but speed and synchronization took a hit in the process. The article IBM Parks Parallel File System on Big Data’s Lawn gives us a breakdown on the pros and cons of GPFS 3.5.
On a positive note, this is a big data friendly system. GPFS has a multi-cluster synchronous replication feature enabling a central site to be mirrored with remote sites. The user gets continuous file access to mirrored sites.
Clients lose some control with the new GPFS. Data access is only available at a lessor local network speed instead of high speed. Users also can’t control the amount of data they take in from mirrored sites.
GPFS adds additional user requirements as;
“IBM expected GPFS customers to use flash storage with de-clustered RAID to hold its specific metadata.”
“GPFS is pretty much independent of what goes on below the physical storage.”
“GPFS 3.5 can also be run in a shared-nothing, Hadoop-style cluster and is POSIX-compliant, unlike Hadoop’s HFS. GPFS 3.5 is big-data capable and can deliver big insights from a big insight cluster. This release of GPFS does not, however, have any HFS import facility.”
One might view the overall convenience as a balance to the issues. However, when speed and synchronicity are necessary, GPFS’s efficiency is put to question. We like the parallel file system, but we have to wonder if synchronization is a concern?
Jennifer Shockley, May 27, 2012
Big Thoughts on Big Data
May 26, 2012
CorrelSense recently reported on one of the hottest IT trends to date in the article, “Big Data is Truly Transforming the Enterprise.”
According to the MIT’s principal research scientist, Andrew McAfee, Big Data can be likened to the invention of the Microscope in the sense that it exposes information that we couldn’t have found before the way that the Microscope allows you to view things that previously could not be seen.
The article states:
“As IT Pros, you are going to have to learn to process this big data and find tools for the non-technical experts and suits in the C-Suite to mix and match the data. The big difference between this and traditional business intelligence is that with BI you were looking back where you were at a given point in time, whereas with Big Data, you can analyze data in real time and begin to make more intelligent decisions about where to put your resources at any given moment.”
Rather than reducing jobs, as many people fear that technological progression may do, it rather will create them. We’re obviously going to need more people to decipher through this growing pile of data.
Jasmine Ashton, May 26, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
InQuira Antecedents: Answerfriend and Electric Knowledge
May 26, 2012
I have had to look up the antecedents for InQuira again. I wanted to create this post to make it easy to reference these two firms which were combined to create InQuira. InQuira was acquired by Oracle Corp. in that company’s push to address its long-standing search and content processing issues. I have in my Overflight system the 2006 InQuira marketing collateral which, I noticed, provides a crib sheet for the many enterprise search vendors piling into the customer support segment. What’s interesting is that customer support is one of the sectors where open source search is getting some attention.
The antecedents of InQuira were:
- Answerfriend. The company had software which could understand text. In 2000, the company landed Accenture as a customer. Answerfriend pivoted on its natural language processing technology. Allegedly Answerfriend could handle both structured an unstructured data. Sound familiar in 2012?
- Electric Knowledge Inc. This also was an NLP shop. The technology was based on computational linguistic technology. This company had licensed its technology to Bank of America, an outfit which has had a long history of trying to find a search system which meets its requirements.
InQuira was created in 2002. The notion of hooking together two separate vendors to do the 1+1=3 thing has been used more recently by Lexalytics and Attensity.
At one time, InQuira was the answer system used by Yahoo’s customer support service. I encountered this when I tried to cancel a Yahoo service. The InQuira service was not too helpful to me. I just killed the credit card and solved the problem.
The marketing pitch of InQuira is as fresh today as it was in 2002. How much progress has there been in search and content processing in the last decade? Could the marketing collateral for a 2002 Oldsmobile be used without any changes? Probably not. Search has a limited supply of jargon, and it gets recycled endlessly in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, May 26, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Game Time for Google
May 26, 2012
It’s game time for Google, but small businesses have the ball, the cheerleaders and the referee’s on their side of the field. It looks like the search giant doesn’t have anyone shouting ‘hooray’ for their team according to Microsoft-backed groups praise EU’s antitrust ultimatum to Google.
The European Commission reviewed Google’s play book and voiced their concern as:
- Google displays its own links differently from its competitor links for vertical search services alongside the general search service.
- Google copies content, such as user reviews from competitors to display without authorization.
- There is an antitrust agreement issue between Google and partners that use Google search on websites.
- Google puts restrictions on the portability of online AdWord search advertising campaigns to competitors’ platforms.
Almunia stated:
“Google has a matter of weeks to come up with proposals of its own. Failing that, the EC would continue its investigation into possible anti-competitive practices by Google, including the possible sending of a Statement of Objections, a list of formal charges.”
“Because these issues impact small businesses the hardest, it is critical that the EU takes decisive steps to address the Google antitrust problem.”
EC is examining the rules, so we’ll see how it all plays out. If pregame chatter impacts the end result, than the odds are against Google this season. It looks like the cheerleaders aren’t the only ones with a bone to pick.
Jennifer Shockley, May 26, 2012
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
