Android Less Open than Facebook?
April 15, 2011
I have been thinking about Google and openness since I learned that Facebook is “opening” its data centers. Suddenly Google looks a lot less open than Facebook.
ZDNet’s “Taking Back Android: Should Google Be Controlling the Ecosystem?” raises an interesting question. The article actually questions Google’s commitment to openness.
Google, the worlds search engine, can’t seem to stay out of the media spotlight these days. This time though, the controversy does not stem from the inadvertent disclosure of personal information. Now Google seems to be tightening grip on applications that utilize Android. According to Bloomberg, Google is no longer allowing Android to freely form partnerships or customize software without it’s approval. Kind of like the “big brother” approach to doing business.
This need for consent before creation is directly in opposition of Google’s pledge to the truly open mobile OS they claimed to support and is being compared to Apple, with it’s control of iOS. Though in all fairness, the Android ecosystem has become a tad unruly. Its multiple device makers and many carriers have caused a bit of chaos and confusion and in some cases compromised user experience. For Google it seems to be about quality over quantity which wouldn’t be so awful except that Google doesn’t actually sell a product, the telecoms companies sell the product, Google simply provides the platform.
This leaves us with a couple of questions. Just how much of a role and responsibility should Google be shouldering in all of this and why don’t telecoms create their own platforms? And Facebook’s open data center angle makes Google look less open and slightly clumsy, doesn’t it?
Leslie Radcliffe, April 15, 2011
Google and Its New Management Method: Pundits Throwing Punches
April 10, 2011
I read the modest flurry of quasi-MBA analyses triggered by “Larry Page’s First Blunder”. I liked the word “first” because it implies that Mr. Page and his co-founder have been management “perfect 10s” since 1998. I thought about pointing out that the present range of challenges Google faces is a consequence of earlier blunders.
But I wish to ignore that admittedly trivial point.
The Computerworld article focuses on the idea of linking a Googler’s annual hefty cash bonus to becoming or coding social apps, systems, solutions, etc. I don’t know about you, but I have a number of high powered technologists working on projects. None of these individuals is what I would describe at fraternity or sorority president material.
Last week, at lunch, Dr. Tyra Oldham, one of my colleagues, pointed out that the three nerds and myself constituted a small world of insiders which was pointedly anti-social. In fact, as I recall, she said, “You are in some weird alternate universe where normal people don’t go.” In addition to a PhD in operations, Dr. Oldham holds an MBA degree and is well qualified to comment on management-related behaviors.
Dr. Oldham pointed out to some of the ArnoldIT.com engineering team, “You are not social.” With considerable pride, the engineering team agreed. One asked, “How can one be an excellent engineer by being more social?’ Dr. Oldham shook her head. We think it meant that the three ArnoldIT.com engineers were in need of social remediation. Good luck with that.
That’s an important point to consider: expected behaviors regarding “social.”
I live in rural Kentucky, commune with large boxer dogs, and spend my time in front of my various computing devices. As I look around my office, I count on April 10, 2011, 14 multi-processor machines, an assortment of electronic components and gadgets, the two large dogs, and white boards covered with diagrams. I have a cleared space for my new Sandy Bridge machine which will arrive on Monday. (Hooray.) My office bookcases are stuffed with technical manuals, cables, and “stuff.” If you know where to look, you will see a container of IBM’s weird computer fasteners from the now retired NetFinity 5500. Ah, nostalgia! To me, my little world is plenty social, thank you.
The film “Revenge of the Nerds” does contain elements of truth that age and money cannot alter with alacrity.
Now if Dr. Tyra Oldham were correct, a financial incentive might get my attention for a while, but I think I would drift away from social innovation. Money is not what makes ArnoldIT.com and its Managing Director go. Social is, at this time, not that interesting to me because Facebook and other services have okay systems. Maybe there is something that might catch my attention? However, I have personal projects that are going to get my attention and my time. Weaponized information, for instance, is really quite promising here in Harrod’s Creek. Curious? Well, lots of people are and many are writing checks to understand the system, method, and technology. Social? Not so much for me and some of my team.
Now back to the Computerworld, here’s the passage that may echo through the online grape vine:
Facebook and Search
March 26, 2011
I found “Bing Windfall: Facebook Testing Web Search Box” quite suggestive. The idea is that Facebook is going to have (maybe) a search box. My view is that Facebook is a head to head competitor to Google and Microsoft in search but, once again, I learned that my view is different from others’ views. Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
No doubt Bing would pay a serious amount of money for access to the 500 million plus members’ search queries when using Facebook. It is this type of deal that would dramatically increase Bing’s market share of search. Between the addition of Questions to help let friends answer questions you may go to Google to find answer, this test box must be a serious shot across the Google bow.
I agree, but I think that the future of Facebook in search is to crawl the Web sites its members input. The Bing angle might be a lucrative temporary step. With lots of Xooglers at Facebook, search is going to be part of the woodwork. Darned interesting challenge for the Google as its management team starts to think about Ohio’s grousing about alleged Google activities.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2011
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Facebook, Semantic Search, and Bad News for the Key Word Crowd
March 16, 2011
You can wade through the baloney from the pundits, satraps, and poobahs. I will cut to the chase. Facebook can deliver a useful search service without too many cartwheels. There are three reasons. (If you want to complain, that’s what the comments section of the blog permits. Spare me personal email and LinkedIn comments.)
First, there are upwards of 500 million users who spend more time in Facebook doing Facebook things than I would have ever believed. I don’t do “social” but 500 million or more people see me as a dinosaur watching the snow flakes. Fine.
Second, the Facebook users stuff links in their posts, pages, wall crannies, and everywhere else in the Facebook universe they can. This bunch of urls is a selection filter that is of enormous value to Facebook users. Facebook gets real people stuffing in links without begging, paying, or advertising. The member-screened and identified links just arrive.
Third, indexing the content on the pages to which the links refer produces an index that is different from and for some types of content more useful to Facebook members than laundry lists, decision engine outputs, or faceted results from any other system. Yep, “any other”. That situation has not existed since the GOOG took the learnings of the key word crowd, bought Oingo, and racked up the world’s biggest online advertising and search engine optimization operation in the history of digital mankind.
Navigate to “New Facebook Patent: the Huge Implications of Curated Search” and learn Bnet’s view of a patent document. I am not as excited about the patent at the Bnet outfit, but it is interesting. If one assumes that the patent contributes to the three points I identified above, Facebook gets a boost.
But my view is that Facebook does not need much in the way of a boost from semantics or any other hot trend technology. Facebook is sitting on a search gold mine. When Facebook does release its index of member-provided sources, four things will take place over a period of “Internet” time.
- The Google faces a competitor able to index at lower cost. Google, remember, is a brute force operation. Facebook is letting the members do the heavy lifting. A lower cost index of Facebook-member-vetted content is going to be a threat. The threat may fizzle, but a threat it will be to the Google.
- Users within Facebook can do “search” where Facebook members prefer to be. This means that Facebook advertising offers some interesting opportunities not lost on the Xooglers who now work at Facebook and want a gigantic payday for themselves. Money can inspire certain types of innovation.
- Facebook is closed. The “member” thing is important to keep in mind. The benefits of stateful actions are many, and you don’t need me to explain why knowing who a customer is, who the customer’s friends are, and what the customer does is important. But make the customer a member and you get some real juice.
- Facebook competitors will have to find a way to deal with the 500 million members and fast. Facebook may not be focused on search, but whatever the company does will leverage the membership, not the whizzy technology.
Bottomline: Facebook has an opportunity in search whether it does laundry lists, facets, semantics, or any combination of methods. My question, “When will Facebook drop its other social shoe?”
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2011
Freebie unlike the ads big companies will want to slap into Facebook outputs for its members
Who Defriended Google?
February 24, 2011
Did Facebook defriend Google? Did Google defriend Facebook? With Xooglers making up about 20 percent of the Facebook staff, the questions are not innocuous. The fate of Google’s new social play may hang in the balance. What are friends for?
Meow.
There’s something catty about how Google has snubbed Facebook in the latest iteration of Google Social. The official blog post to announce the new improvements says not one word about Facebook, the elephant in the room. In “Analysis: Google Social Search Is All About Blocking Facebook/Twitter Search” Tom Foremski’s take is that this
“Google move is better understood as a blocking measure to stop people from asking their social network directly. “
Will it work? Let’s think about it.
Google Social has been around since 2009, but these latest improvements take results that were at the bottom of the screen and place them high up in the search results, as well as adding notes for links your connections have shared, and expanded the ways you can connect your accounts. Google, of course, always tries to act like it’s taking the high road when it comes to Facebook, stressing that Facebook is a closed system while Google is as open and free as the air we breathe. Personally, I think public data is overrated and I think many other people do too. Why else is there a huge backlash every time Facebook tries to sneak in more openness to its users’ profiles?
What happens when the big dogs set up a pack without a little dog? Answer: Bowling alone.
When I look at Google Social, I have to ask myself if people would choose this over Facebook. Facebook, of course, has momentum on its side since nearly everyone and his grandmother is on Facebook already and accessing it frequently. Another question is how can Google know whose opinion I actually care about when giving me search results?
Salesforce and Facebook: Dating Now
February 17, 2011
A year ago, Salesforce.com discovered collaboration. The company hired a former journalist to be an evangelist. We were not sure how the marriage of trendy chat chat would fit with the wild eyed sales orientation of Salesforce.com. We still are not sure.
We did notice that Facebook has a brand new friend and they are working on a project together, so writes Read Write Cloud, “Salesforce.com and Facebook Strengthen Ties Through Force.com Platform.” The two companies are currently looking for an application developer who will maintain and develop Force.com applications for business and external purposes. At the moment, they’ve released the Facebook Toolkit in beta. It still needs tweaking, but both companies have high hopes for it. Items in the Toolkit include Auth 2.0, JSON, pagination, REST API, and extended pagination. According to the story:
“It [The deal with Facebook] shows the value Salesforce.com places on the experience that it wants to provide customers. And for Facebook it opens a new window for the reach of its service and integration with the modern enterprise.”
Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud champ and Facebook is the social networking king. Does this mean that Salesforce.com’s original strategy was flawed? Is there a benefit to Facebook from this deal that Salesforce.com may not see? Interesting tie up.
Whitney Grace, February 17, 2011
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Social Search Excitement
February 16, 2011
Rumors abound. Will Google or Facebook buy Twitter. The idea is that Twitter can do the news better than more traditional services.
Business Insider reports that “Whoever Gets Social Search Right Will Beat Google — Just Like Google Beat Alta Vista.” Quite an assertion. However, we’ve been monitoring the tense rivalry between Google and Facebook. Facebook has edged Google out as the most popular website due to its social networking functions. What’s interesting to note is that back in the 1990s when Alta Vista was searching content, Google realized the number of links on a page reflected it’s relevancy. After that epiphany, they controlled the web. Now social networking data is the factor that needs to be analyzed. If you figure out the formula for social searching, you’ve got it made. The write up says:
“To be really good, a social search site should also take into account a huge range of user behavior — text messages, IMs, opinions in online forums like Yelp, even online purchases — and somehow stitch all of those pieces of information together into a coherent view.”
Here’s another thorn in Google’s side, Bing and Facebook have a business relationship. Bing will incorporate Facebook’s information into its searches. Excitement ahead.
Whitney Grace, February 16, 2011
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A Facebook Revolution?
February 15, 2011
On a flight across the US this afternoon, I thought about “First Facebook SIM Card Released.” Facebook in firmware: An even bigger deal that the smart money at Kleiner Perkins pumping cash into the Facebook corporate body. What kept nagging at me was the Google Egypt revolution person talking about Facebook. Why didn’t the revolutionaries use Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo? I think the reason is that those services are like the old marketing chestnut: buggy whip businesses. The idea is that Facebook is the motor car and the buggy whip crowd needs to make seat covers or 20” inch wheels with flashing lights.
The SIM card underscores the opportunities Facebook creates as Googlers use Facebook, Microsoft cuts deals with Nokia, and Yahoo tries to reinvent itself more quickly than AOL. What occupied me was the steady push of social interaction on Facebook. Sure, there are many other successful social sites, but none has the motion picture, the smart money, and the exposure on 60 Minutes. I keep thinking, “Facebook was the method for some of the Egypt turmoil.”
Search, although interesting to me, was not where the action was in Egypt. The innovators were not cooking up a gizmo for Android. The Kleiner JP Morgan-tinged folks were not yammering about Google. Nope, Facebook.
As the jet lumbered along below its cruising speed ostensibly to arrive when a gate would be available, I formulated three thoughts:
- Facebook is going to rise and then fall faster than any of the other Internet super kids. But that exposure on 60 Minutes and that money suggest a collapse may take some time.
- Facebook morphs into an application platform with SIM gizmos becoming just the first of a series of innovations to make social interaction the cat’s pajamas for lots of people under 30. In short, a different type of revolution is brewing.
- Facebook becomes the tool for altering governments. No wonder France wants to censor the Internet. Facebook might be the method that will reinvigorate some ageing UCal Berkeley types and some unemployed youth in countries scattered far and wide.
What’s this mean? I am not sure, but I am glad I am not competing with Facebook. I am glad I am not a wobbly government. I am glad I don’t have to explain to investors why it took six years to invest in what looks like a company on the upswing. And what about Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo? Time to retool the buggy whip factories perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2011
Freebie, definitely a freebie
Facebook: User-Centric Model
January 23, 2011
Allowing individuals to friend barely recognizable high school classmates and give scintillating updates on fetching lattes has garnered Facebook over 650 million global users and $1.86 billion in advertising revenue for 2010 says the recent Advertising Age article “Facebook Books $1.86B in Advertising; Muscles In on Google’s Turf”. eMarketer estimates that a majority of sales come from small- and medium-size companies making use of Facebook’s self-service system—territory that earned Google more than $200 billion in the last decade.
“Those advertisers are really juicing Facebook’s growth,” said Debra Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer. “They buy advertising in bulk. They’ve done it for years on Google, and now they’re taking that expertise to Facebook.”
More surprising is Facebook isn’t pandering to big brand advertisers to rack up revenue but continuing to focus on developing consumer-centric products that attract users. This makes us question whether this type of advertising opportunity is better than Google’s options. If Facebook remains attractive to advertisers and can up their response rate, they will pass Google’s benchmark.
Christina Sheley, January 23, 2011
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Content Freedom Threatened
January 15, 2011
I am not sure if I agree that Apple’s App Store is a threat to Internet freedom. “Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: App Stores a Clear and Present Danger” voices this concern. I know that walled gardens are in the future. Money flows when folks control the customer. Loss of control of the customer spells trouble at some point in a company’s future. I think it is easier to make money when one has a customer list and keeps it secret.
Content is a magnet, so in order to increase the “pull” of content, walls are a useful architectural consideration. In fact, walls are going up everywhere. Facebook is a big walled garden. Oracle’s database is a big walled garden. Even open source friendly companies are going to need a walled garden. Without walls, an smart 20 something can nuke a business intentionally or inadvertently. Facebook, for example, wants to reinvent or support the reinvention of enterprise applications as social apps and services within its walled garden. How do you think that will work as more Facebook users enter the workforce. Even companies “on top of Facebook” are likely to have some heart stopping moments.
Here’s a snippet I liked from the article about Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales:
The app store model is a more immediate threat to internet freedom than breaches of net neutrality. That’s the opinion of Wikipedia chief Jimmy Wales. According to Wales — who was quick to stress he was speaking in a purely personal capacity — set-ups such as the iTunes App Store can act as a “chokepoint that is very dangerous.” He said such it was time to ask if the model was “a threat to a diverse and open ecosystem” and made the argument that “we own [a] device, and we should control it.”
Walled gardens are not new. As the competitive arena heats in the warm financial gusts flowing across certain areas of the online ecosystem, old style information silos are going to be built inside these walls. The challenge will be choosing which garden is the one to make home.
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2011
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