Entries by Alan Patrick

Our regular readers may have noticed a hiatus in posts, this was due to the annual holiday - which was spent sailing a yacht along the Turkish coast. What was interesting compared to the last time I sailed a real sea-going yacht (about 8 years ago) was the amount of extra electronics that it now comes with - GPS / SatNav / Autosteer / Radar / Wind direction etc.

To be sure, these thing existed 8 years ago but (i) quite a few were analog, (ii) the digital stuff was very expensive whereas now they are standard for even a relatively small boat, (iii) the electronics were quite rudimentary then - instruments, whereas they are now clearly computers, and (iv) everything is far more integrated.

What was also interesting was the speed with which the kids picked up on the electronics on the dashboard - it was almost like a computer game to them, using all the input to then navigate and sail the yacht (see picture below)



The impact of this has been to massively reduce the skill level required to sail a yacht - a good thing in that it allows people to access sailing after far fewer hours logged, but also a potentially bad thing for two reasons:

(i) There is a tendency to be overconfident in conditions where instruments, for all their effectiveness, cannot yet sail the ship - for example freshening winds (ie when to release / reef sail), and dealing with non measured things eg side on swell, other boats etc

(ii) The lessening of hours put in meant - in my observation anyway - some of the sailors understood less of the "rules of the road" conventions. This has long been a problem with power boats, where the only qualifications needed in many countries are the ability to write a cheque and to turn an ignition key, but it is more problematic with sailing yachts as they are more complex devices.

(Incidentally, I wonder if the yacht/powerboat thing is an allegory for green technology overall - it is just harder to use it well?)

However, looking at all the data coming in from my own yacht, plus all the potential network data that was also available, it clearly will not be long before even small cruising yachts will be running with pretty sophisticated sailing algorithms (I'm sure big ones do already).

The other thing that interested me was internet access - I was connectable at nearly all times to the 'net, but nearly always via mobile (usually 2G). The issue, though, was cost of data download (hence restricted myself to email only). I can think of a huge number of functions and mashups (incl indirect services such as social nets etc) that could exist if yachts could be networked online on broadband at a low cost, and these too will no doubt come.

...and all seems well. We'll be playing with the new features in the latest release, hopefully our capricious captcha "feature" will be fixed.

So Dave Winer got fed up with not getting enough tech product news and built his own memetracker, Tech Newsjunk. Sez Dave:

I created the site because I wasn't getting enough news about products. It's that simple. I'm interested in the other stuff too, the finance, trends, parties, puppets -- but that's adequately covered on TechMeme. What wasn't getting through is the stuff I, as a product developer, care the most about -- news about products. And the interesting new products I'd find wouldn't make it onto the bus. If it got bought by Google or Microsoft, that would likely show up on TM, or if a VC invested a lot of money in it. But I like to find out when things are small, before other people invest.

So off to the site we trots, and lo an behold, there on page 1 is news of another memetracker, PolyMeme's launch on Read Write Web:

Polymeme is a hybrid system. Its front page is determined by a group of editors who pick the most interesting stories to be featured on the site from the pool of popular stories in the blogosphere as determined by Polymeme's memetracker back-end. This memetracker is never fully exposed to users, but the 'Popular Memes' section is determined algorithmically.

Because Polymeme only has a limited pool of editors, it can take some time for a story to appear on the front page. As Evgeny pointed out to us, though, having editors look for stories that would otherwise stay off the radar is 'a feature, not a bug.' Also, Polymeme argues that while the tech blogosphere moves very fast, other blogging verticals move a lot slower. In general, the site refreshes every 2-3 hours.

And there, buried under the New Media heading, is a page of news that would not look amiss on TechMeme where I got the Dave Winer story from.

Ah, the (re)curse of memetics.....

Objections are emerging to Google's Street View, a service that matches photos of locations to maps, including passers-by who were captured as the photograph was taken. The BBC notes that:

Privacy International, a UK rights group, believes the technology breaks data protection laws.

"In our view they need a person's consent if they make use of a person's face for commercial ends," said Simon Davis of the group.

Street View has already been launched in the US and includes photos of streets in major American cities. Photographing of areas in the UK, including London, is believed to have started this week.

Furthermore.....

If the group does not get the answer it seeks within seven days, Mr Davies said it would write to the Information Commissioner seeking a suspension of the service in the UK.

"We've spoken to Google in the past about this and received a snide response telling us to look more closely at their blogs.

"We've been told by engineers at Google that the technology is not ready to be deployed."

In the US it is legal to take photos of people on public streets. But Mr Davies believes that because Street View is being used for commercial ends anyone in the UK who appears in the photo needs to grant his or her consent.

I thought that was also true in the US if company logos etc are photographed, my understanding is that this makes quite an issue for rights clearance in the US for movies.

Must say, when I think whether I want the entire world to be able to look at my house iI don't embrace the idea with glee, there is a feeling that an element of privacy is being compromised. I loved Google Earth when it came out, but at its level of magnification - to date anyway - it seems more private. Its a very interesting area and thus should be - in my view anyway - tested in court just so some form of agreement can be hammered out, or else you can imagine a number of abuses can be added to it.

Interesting story today on RADAR about Gawker Media cutting revenue per impression for its hacks even while revenue and traffic increases:

....the per-employee traffic isn't that much higher than it was a year ago. And yet the site traffic is up more—meaning the site is receiving more income that the company doesn't have to share with a writer. The site received 16.7 million pageviews in June. Only about 6 million pageviews of that traffic is attributable to writers currently being paid. So why is the company cutting the costs of staff pay, when it isn't forced to cut in writers for 10 million pageviews in the month?

One of my frustrations with many of the journalists covering the new media / tech space is their very cursory understanding of economics, which means that all sort of hype and cr*p gets picked up and reported on uncritically, so it is with a certain wry amusement I read this

The issue is that unlike print where yellowing copies of last weeks' newspapers are good only for fish and chip wrappers, Digital Media is persistent, ie that stuff written 10 years ago by people long gone is still garnering traffic, and as time goes by this rises - as shown in the diagram below:



So, in a CPM based Ad serving model, as time goes by the proportion of money a site earns from current output reduces, while the money earned from existing back-catalogue output increases - so that after a while by far the majority of its income is potentially coming from media already written. (There is a "half life" to old material, but if you model it you find say 5 years of Old stuff has a large presence at fairly low visit levels - you are essentially building a larger and larger "long tail" )

At this point a bit of game theory analysis does not go amiss - given that the historical content is lower cost to the owners, as they don't have to pay out the original writers (assuming all content rights belong to owners and there is staff turnover over time ) then the reliance on the existing writers diminishes. Those who pay the piper call the tune, but if you don't even have to pay the piper 'cos you've kept the tune.....

For writers to reduce this tyranny of persistence they either (i) need to keep the right to their own historical material (unlikely, as per page payments would reduce) or (ii) current writers must make contracts that take a share of historical traffic (harder and harder to do as reliance on them reduces). Otherwise its this way to Digital Sharecropping.....

There is a second impact of Ad based media paid by the page, which is that by definition "populist" stuff is better rewarded - so expect more sleb slavering and political polemics - and niche stuff is not, so for example balanced reporting on complex issues is a route to starving in the garret.

So anyway, next time all you online hacks wax lyrical about FreeConomics or that the New Media defines a New Economic Paradigm, take a look at your own pockets and note that same New Economics is thinning them out via some very Old Rules, that was well understood in that most deeply unfashionable of places, the Main Stream Media.

Oh, and you may want to look up a guy who sussed a lot of this about 150 years ago. Name of Marx......

(Update - another take on it here by Jason Calacanis - expands on the above thoughts quite nicely....)

Steve Rubel's comments on free-agents ruining the larger analysts' party:

Charlene Li, an influential Forrester analyst who tracks digital trends, blogged that she is leaving the research firm to go independent. Some believe that the growing ranks of free-agent analysts may spell trouble for traditional research firms.

The reality is that many of the tools that workers need to do their jobs are becoming free or low cost. This extends into verticals as well. For example the Google Ad Planner, which launched last week, theoretically could allow anyone to become a nomadic media planner.

Digital Nomads are growing in numbers and they will create ripples.

We resemble that remark - after backgrounds in consultancy and digital broadband media we set up Broadsight 3 years ago as a 21st century business - virtual, very light footprint on the ground - because we could! In 2005 you could already get, via the Web, access to the sort of data that a few years before required large in-house research departments and/or copious analysts reports. Four years ago being web workers was much harder, as many of the tools, from wifi, wifi PC's, software etc were unavailable. Now they are near ubiquitous. Thus, our "buy" side has seen a massive reduction in cost and increase in efficiency.

That same revolution expanded our sell side as well - via the company website, this blog, and other social networks we have a massively magnified reach compared to the % increase the Analytics companies have achieved. We happen to believe we know our sector as well, if not better than (m)any of them, and can afford to be more independent as well.

A typical Analysts report sells for $'000. We wrote one on Online Advertising last year because we were actually doing work in the space and thus felt we knew more than any analysts did, it sells for about 1/2 the price and we have sold a healthy number of them, but our costs are probably far lower so margins are probably comparable.

At the other end, the market for 4 pager briefings for $100 or so is probably also under severe threat when you can just put a few good bloggers in that field together. Because the data is now so much more readily available, its much simpler for a smart person who knows the industry well to spend a bit of quality time on the Web, Linked In and Excel and get the 80/20 of the Analysts job done.

Steve's point on recessions driving trends - especially where there is economic advantage - also resonated:

Recessions often accelerate social shifts that are already percolating under the surface. One of the key trends I have been watching is the growing number of Digital Nomads.

Its simple Coasian Economics - as transaction costs come down, the size of the firm required to deliver a service reduces. I've yet to see an analyst's report say that about their own industry though

PS I liked Steve's title so I sto.. I mean adapted it

YouTube users are the losers in the carve up between YouTube (Google) and Viacom. The NYT is one of many reporting the issue, but this says it well:

the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or could unexpectedly fall into the hands of third parties....

....Google’s lawyers asked their counterparts at Viacom to agree to allow Google to remove information from the data that could potentially be used to identify individuals.

The legal judgement is a red herring - this is the fundamental issue: there is no good reason for Google to collect the amount of user data it does, or retain it for as long as it does, in order to serve a YouTube video. By doing so it puts its own users at risk (not just from legal challenges but from all sorts of rogue behaviour), and thus if it is not yet Evil, it is far from being a Good Thing.

Read/Write Web hypothesises that email is in trouble over here:

Email is fundamentally great at substantial person-to-person communication. The following diagram illustrates why email is facing competition. It cannot effectively support broadcast (except for spam) and it's still poor at helping with tasks and projects.

Tools like Basecamp and Highrise from 37Signals are showing there's a way to better project management and CRM while leveraging information in emails. If the Twitter service stabilises it's likely to win over people permanently because of its simplicity and playfulness.

Social networks incorporate direct messaging and chats, making it easy for people to talk directly, bypassing email. These communications are easier than email; they're integrated into the flow and more accessible. To be fair, they're aimed for brief messages.

The increasing speed of our lives and global connectivity reduces the need for lengthy emails. If we're in touch more often, then we reveal less every time we talk. Shorter, more frequent exchanges are replacing the lengthier communication of the past.

There is a 2x2 matrix used to bolster the argument that appears to have no axes and in my view is wrong, and thus leads to the (in my opinion) incorrect conclusions above. To compare email with project management software is not comparing like with like, but the others are worth examining. Here is my matrix to (hopefully) explain things better:



Once we used email to do nearly all these roles, then along came the Web and took over the broadcasting role, IM took over 1-1 fast conversation, Wikis were better highly modifiable collaborative ware and latterly microblogs have started to do the low grade broadcast role.

These other approaches in the diagram are most effective at their outer corners - the main issue as I see it is that email can do most of the tasks that the other approaches do, but is not optimised for any one of them. Thus what we see as the "failure" is more the rolling back of a an early technology from places it was at best a "make do".

Also, because of its age it is more spammed than the later systems - as they become ubiquitous they too will attract spam, but most people don't realise that.

The problem all the other systems have is as they move off their outer corners they too start to look less useful than email in its home turf of the middle ground, and as they become more spammed they will feel the same frictions. Also, email browsers have not really had many "web 2.0" upgrades - no picture avatars etc - and I am sure these revamps will make it "feel" more modern. In fact it amuses me to note that as Twitter, IM etc add more manipulable functions they start looking more like email systems, and as blogs and broadcast websites become more interactive they start to look more like email groupware.

The other thing that is important about email, that is not yet hitting the headlines, is that the directory is yours and its private, whereas in many of these other systems, someone else owns the social network. This we believe will become a bigger and bigger issue as privacy abuse and spam through these more "social" media increases.

Update - nice graphic by Zoli Erdos looking at the various comms techs from the synch / asynch and functionality point of view - same conclusion.

For a variety of reasons* I was unable to attend 2gether08, but I have been able to be a Virtual Participant so far via a number of channels:

Firstly, the Mogulus Web TV feed - even when I can't watch it as I'm on other tasks, I can listen in. A switchable TV/ Radio service

Secondly, the Summize service taking feed from Twitter picking up the hashtag #2gether08

Thirdly. my personal backchannel - via Twitter, email, Skype - there are friends of mine there and we are batting comments back and forth.

What has been quite interesting is the experience of being able to not just consume the streamed media, but to comment and chat online to some of the people there in real time by using Twitter etc - it's been like passing a comment to the person sitting next to you.

This afternoon and tomorrow morning I have leaving ceremonies at my kids' school to attend, somehow I think that will be a major challenge to listen to 2gether08 live - not because of the technology, mind you - more the expectations in the situation. But of course, the media has persistence so I can time shift it.



* Work etc

Went to see Matt Biddulph and Matt Jones do a double act on Dopplr (Dopplgangers?) last night at the Design Museum. Dopplr has always interested me for 3 key reasons:

(i) Its a location based service - We've looked at these for clients (especially mobile clients) a number of times over the years, and by and large they have all underperformed hugely. Reason vary - lousy economics, intrusiveness, clunkiness. Thus its interesting to see how they are faring in this endeavour.

(ii) The social network they are building is for people who actually do want to meet - we have also done work on tracking services of various kinds, and again these have underperformed historically - ( I recall with wry amusement one focus group some years ago when parental enthusiasm for child tracking rapidly fell when it became apparent that any family adopting these would also have spouse tracking capability). Ditto, my experience of most SocNets is I don't mind friending some long-lost acquaintances, on the express understanding that I don't have to actually meet them.

(iii) Web 2.0 Design Disciplines - to me Dopplr are one of the poster children of the WebZen 2.0 design school, and its always interesting to get snippets of real life experience vs "the dogma"

Thus it is always interesting to study a company that is attempting both these service areas. Very interesting talk overall, some thoughts from the talk and chatting to the DopplMatts afterwards:

Is Dopplr a feature or a business? - Matt J noted that a few years ago it would undoubtedly have been a feature in someone else's portal, but the nature of the web now is that the whole web is an open portal in away, Dopplr is now a feature on this "metaportal" (my term). My take - I foresee the collation of these services with others such as Twitter to provide more vectors for the "social graph" to provide value.

On Scale and Scalability - the guys had made the point that Dopplr is aimed at the large scale - bouncing round the world - and not at the small scale (within cities etc) which they would hand off to others. My take - I get "getting what you do right" but if I were a funder and looking to scale it up over time, there must be a scale benefit from going small scale

Design of the Social Net - they have been very diligent with going from strong links out, and ensuring that unwanted links do not occur when exporting the Dopplr social graph outside. On this, Matt Jones pointed me to this slideset he had done earlier with Tom Coates which deals with the social net design thoughts - well worth a read.

Is Great Design more a UE thing or a Marketing thing? - answers have I none here, others have noted that great taste and Digerati acclaim historically is no guarantee of crossing the chasm ( Dopplr is like a software Apple, aesthetically beautiful ) but I also noted the guys talked about differentiation by getting many small details right - and that's the Japanese philosophy of Toyota et al

Great Design + Getting Little Things Right - is that the start of Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance

Incidentally, one topic that did come up over beer etc later on was the hardy perennial of "who owns my data" - ie why must Twitter, Dopplr, Flickr etc all have separate social graphs of their own. Prediction - big issue of 2009, along with how to program social nuance into social nets.