It’s the title of the upcoming Yellow Pages Association annual conference will be happening next week. Unfortunately, I’ll be in Europe all week and will have to miss it. It’s a good title, although it feels a tad early to be overtly self-congratulatory. But, hey, it’s in Vegas, after all…
I’ve been around “traditional media” transformation for over a dozen years, and the patterns are clearly forming. (more…)
The NY Times just wrote about a product I’ve begun watching, and provides a good overview of the product and concept. Twitter catapulted to stardom at the recent SXSW, triggering a torrent of usage growth from legions of teenagers, but - more interestingly - a rash of connected web 2.0 tools and sites.
from the twitter home page, twitter is…“A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM or right here on the web!”
Is your first reaction a resounding “huh?” Understandable. (more…)
If the StumbleUpon acquisition by eBay is true, it’s a fascinating move for eBay, and I’m kind of glad it’s not just become another notch on the product bedpost of Google. Not because I dislike Google – I truly love and umm, dis-love them. I am glad because I think the evolution of stumbling and discovery can and should flex itself outside the confines of a “search extension”.
It appears that Google, in part, didn’t push to the winner’s circle because they already have their interpretation of SU on the loading dock. There is an interesting behavior being observed in GigaOM and SearchBlog - suggesting that Google is creating or accelerating its own products is part to pressure companies they want into submissive m&a deals. How very Seattle-esque!
All that aside, I happen to be in the camp that believes that Google has a tremendous challenge in turning a truly fine piece of machinery into a lively conversationalist. (more…)
The rumor circling around the blogsphere – that StumbleUpon was being acquired by eBay - really caught my eye. I’ve been extolling the virtues of SU for a few months, and telling people to try it. For those who haven’t, Wikipedia explains:
StumbleUpon is a web browser plugin that allows its users to discover and rate webpages, photos, videos, and news articles. These webpages are typically presented when the user clicks the Stumble button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which new webpage to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. i.e. it is a recommendation system which uses peer and social networking principles. There is also one-click blogging built in as well. Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any webpage with a thumbs-up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles “channel-surfing. the web.”
Exploring SU was a bit of an epiphany for me. (more…)
Blogging from a (hard to find) quiet corner of the enormous web 2.0 expo show…
It’s a pretty staggering show, in terms of sheer mass - chatting with the O’Reilly team last night, I was told there are more than 10,000 registered users, and the main events gather more than 3,000 in a room. It’s a pretty impressive business success, especially if you were there during the humble beginnings of Tim’s 2.0 shows a couple of years ago.
Part of me still cringes at the feverish feel. Kind of funny, yet telling - in Tim’s opening remarks, he prompted the audience with a “do you think this is a bubble” leading question (apparently expecting a resounding “hell, no! Web 2.0″ frenzied chant), but got kind of an embarrassed mumble. Hmmm…
I spoke on a panel with Yahoo, Intuit, Local.com yesterday (more…)
I ran across this fascinating commentary from Tim O’Reilly, hidden inside an unrelated Wired interview. It deserves to be called out. It it Tim’s (always insightful) perspective, this time on Google’s intent behind the voice work.
“Why did Google, for example, recently decide to offer free 411 service? I haven’t talked to people at Google, but it’s pretty clear to me why. It’s because of speech recognition. It has nothing to do with 411 service, it has to do with getting a database of voices, so they don’t have to license speech technology from Nuance or someone else. They want their own data stream.”
That is a pretty intriguing viewpoint on motive. I do agree that the probable intent of Google is not to “be in the 411 business” - rather it is to begin the process of domination in voice navigation. This importance of this feels pretty darn far-reaching. The Google Voice Box, here we come.
UPDATED LINKS:
1. Tim posts on his own blog with more context. Worth reading for sure.
2. A Google patent watcher, with interesting insight into Google voice search patents (as picked up by Battelle)
Well, we’d all expect it to be variation on HAL, no doubt…
A pretty predictable move to those of us who live in the space, but it’s obviously noteworthy that the ‘plex has pushed their IVR experimentation out as a new beta service. As profiled in SearchEngineLand, Google joins the ranks of entrants as the industry increasingly recognizes that the vast majority of mobile inquiries for local information come via the entrenched information services channel of Directory Assistance.
While the business is most certainly ripe for innovation and commencing a process of re-invention via Free DA and mobile search, there are major challenges in the user experience and content navigation elements of these services. Nothing overly impressive from the get-go from the new service, from my cursory use. However, it’s foolhardy to under-estimate what the merry band in the Googleplex can do from a technology viewpoint.
Much to write ahead on this topic; I’m working on a “series of posts” to instigate the conversation around the connections between voice & internet in the increasingly mainstream mobile economy.
The growing pace of consumer participation on the Internet finally creates a backdrop from which you can see the concept of an “active local marketplace” evolve. Think Craigslist meets the live web, bolstered by a deep layer of search and interaction management intelligence.
Many years ago, back in the formative days of Jabber, we coined the phrase “conversational commerce” to represent the way active messaging could enhance the progression of local commerce. Small businesses are not about to wake up and suddenly publish their inventories (sorry, Intuit), calendars and work examples online.
Providing ways to qualify and organize your shopping choices, and then elegantly integrate conversations with local businesses felt like the foundation that was missing. Thus the term, conversational commerce.
I wanted to pass along some extended thinking we’ve done on the issue of consumer participation. We’ve devised a grid that we label the “Passion-Value Matrix”. This illustrates the reality that there are some things a user will naturally participate in, and some things they won’t - at least not easily. From a commercial viewpoint, the ad value dimension provides a critical overlay (examples are just there to illustrate the concept). (more…)