John Bell: Blog
It's like Twitter on Ritalin
Passing Through: Less Than Free Software
Nov 18th
Image by Federico Fieni
I then asked my friend, “so why would they ever use the Google (non open source) license version.” (EDIT: One of the commenters below pointed out that all Android is open source, and the Google apps pack, including the GPS, is licensed on top. Doesn’t change the argument, but wanted the correct data included here.) Here was the big punch line – because Google will give you ad splits on search if you use that version! That’s right; Google will pay you to use their mobile OS. I like to call this the “less than free” business model. This is a remarkable card to play. Because of its dominance in search, Google has ad rates that blow away the competition. To compete at an equally “less than free” price point, Symbian or windows mobile would need to subsidize. Double ouch!!
From the “Google is the new Microsoft” department: Bill Gurley writes about Google’s bundling offer of free turn-by-turn navigation with their Android mobile OS, and how it’s a case of Google using their dominance as leverage to pay people to adopt their product. Hmm…where have I heard this before? Though the practice isn’t quite as new as Gurley makes it sound, the article is interesting because it goes into the relationships Google established and broke off as it’s Maps service developed. Again, there’s a familiar template: Buy data and expertise until you can ramp up your own service that competes with the people you were just partnered with at a level that ensures you will win.
I do have to wonder, though, if building critical data applications on a framework that is dependent upon advertising dollars is a good idea. Look at what has happened to journalism, a socially-critical industry that became tied to advertising money–the almost inevitable response to increased competition has been the development of outlets like Fox and MSNBC. Google’s less than free model may be tying people to their version of Android for the moment, but that will only last as long as it takes for somebody to figure out how to make more money using the true open source version of Android than they can get from Google’s kickbacks. When the competition inevitably increases, what happens then? Can Google continue to make money without coloring their data to make whatever constituents give them the most cash happy? With other mapping companies having been put out of business in the interim, it could well turn into another case of money-generated reality.
via Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model « abovethecrowd.com.
Creeping Inevitability: Search Engines Index Tweets
Oct 28th
Microsoft’s search engine Bing has struck a deal with Facebook and the hot micro-messaging service Twitter, a brash attempt to add real-time web updates to its search results in order to make Google look like a lumbering dinosaur.
While we’re still digesting the news of Bing adding Twitter to its search engine, Google has some news of their own: they’re about to do the same exact thing.
Searching Twitter traffic initially seems kind of odd. Then, after a bit of thought, it starts to sound a bit better. Finally, after a lot of reflection, it starts to venture into the realm of the bizarre. Here a quick summary of the stages of acceptance:
1 — Oddity: Why would you want to add Twitter traffic to a search engine? Twitter is all about quick thoughts between you and your ten thousand closest friends. Search engines are supposed to be good at answering questions, and most questions require more than 140 characters to answer completely. (I’ll blithely ignore the question of whether most people doing searches actually care about complete answers.) On first blush, it doesn’t seem like a great match.
2 — Sense: So why would Google and Microsoft be interested in indexing tweets, then? Assuming it’s more than just a PR chasing-buzzwords stunt (not necessarily a good assumption, but…) how would indexing tweets add value to the core of their search businesses? Well, if you treat tweets more as metadata than search data, it starts to make more sense. A good percentage of tweets contain links, and once you filter out spam you’re left with a lot of links that have been determined–by actual humans!–to be interesting. Machine intelligence is great, but humans are still better at figuring out which pages are worthwhile and which aren’t…this is the idea behind Mahalo and the like. If Google and Microsoft can mine that data to improve the quality of their hits, indexing tweets suddenly makes more sense.
3 — Nonsense: But if that’s the goal, why make the tweets themselves searchable? That’s going back to treating the tweets as actual data again, which seems questionable at best. If people start to see their tweets show up in search engines that will change the way Twitter is used. Right now it’s treated as an ephemeral medium; incorrectly in theory, since Twitter is already searchable, but given how well Twitter’s search engine works, it might actually be true. With stories popping up all over the place reminding people to be cautious about what they put on Facebook or MySpace, does Twitter really want to be included in the list of services to fear? I’m sure there are good reasons–probably money–for Twitter to get involved in this deal, but it’s not without risk.
via Bing Partners With Twitter and Facebook for Real-Time Search and BREAKING: Google Announces Search Deal With Twitter.
Passing Through: Portable Data in the Cloud
Oct 20th
[…] many web-based services make it difficult for you to export your data. Worse, they’ll charge you a fee for the privilege. Some offer APIs — a bonus if you’re technically astute, but a solution that leaves the average user short on options.
To prevent such headaches, Google recently launched the Data Liberation Front, an initiative within the company to ensure every one of its products has a clear, easy option for users to export their data in bulk and take their business elsewhere.
Very encouraging interview up on Webmonkey with Brian Fitzpatrick, a Google engineering manager who’s leading a team that’s making sure all the data you give to Google can actually be retrieved and ported to another service. (Ok, not all the data…I suspect things like discovering your AdSense will be curiously absent since Google probably doesn’t consider it your data. Though they do at least let you opt out now.) The ability to download all of your data is great, and I hope that other online services follow suit. Of course, there are leaks in the system (the interview mentions that metadata isn’t quite as easy to export as actual data) but it’s a start.
via Pack Up Your Data and Leave Whenever You Want It s the New Rule of the Cloud — Webmonkey.
Harebrained Ideas: Why Do We Need Phone Numbers…or DNS?
Sep 5th
Photo by Leo Reynolds
Hackaday has a stop-and-think article up suggesting that we don’t need phone numbers any more. The initial reaction is that it kind of makes sense–just like IP addresses, phone numbers are really just obscure combinations of numbers that humans aren’t all that great at remembering. That’s why DNS was invented, and the author’s idea is that phone numbers could use a similar DNS system (stop being redundant!) to replace numbers with something like phone://family.johndoe2155.voice/john_at_home.
But after that initial reaction the problems start to crop up. The obvious one is the lack of namespace. Googling John Bell reveals both historical figures and many, many people running around today sharing my name, including several in what could be considered my general field. Humans reuse names far too often to have any hope of keeping a DNS scheme unique, and there aren’t even trademarks to fall back on like there are in the business world. (The fairness of that is kind of questionable in any case.) So we’re left with what you see in his example: a human readable name with yet another random number stuck on the end of it. We’re back to the days of Pennsylvania 6–5000 again, which doesn’t seem a whole lot better than the digits-only system we have now.
Of course, the DNS system isn’t exactly immune from namespace problems. Technically, it falls back to IP, which is similar to the unique-and-forgettable-number system that runs our telephones (and speaking of forgettable, we won’t even discuss IP6). Given how difficult it’s becoming to find a domain that’s both intelligible and not taken, it seems like DNS has the same problem as the telephone URI suggestion, it just had a larger selection pool and smaller user base to start from. It seems like a better solution to both problems is necessary. Read the rest of this entry »
Creeping Inevitability: AdSense for Feeds
Sep 4th
Well, the creeping may have been done in the past since the news is pretty old at this point, but it scores high enough on the inevitability scale to make up for it. Google has a service that inserts their AdSense ads into RSS feeds. The program hasn’t exactly taken off, but then again, neither has RSS as a whole, depending on what you think RSS is really for.
RSS is supposed to be about syndication (hence the name). Historically, syndication models haven’t tried to send content direct from the author to the consumer, they just spread content to a number of different outlets that then sell the aggregation of that content (see also: newspapers). People have an idea that RSS is about direct-to-customer distribution, and that has been reinforced by all the newsreader programs that are out there and several years of hype. But it is even more powerful when it’s actually used for syndication: getting my content on another website is more useful to me than getting my content sent directly to the user. If my content is on another site then that is publicity that can draw in completely new audiences. Sending my content to the user is convenient for the user and potentially makes them ‘stickier’, but it also deprives my site of hits and can only reach one person at a time. To put it in MBA terms, RSS is far more powerful when it’s used in a business-to-business model than direct-sale.
I’m a little shaky on the idea of 3rd party ads being inserted in RSS because it isn’t most effective as a direct to the user technology and it makes my feed less attractive to other content providers. I know that, as a developer, if I wanted to use a feed on my site and saw it had ads in it the first thing I would do is filter them out (assuming I didn’t just drop the feed completely). I gain nothing by letting somebody else sell ad space on my site, and as a practical matter, none of my sites are intended to be commercial so ads would just look out of place. If the theory is that AdSense allows content producers to monetize RSS feeds it seems like the market just isn’t there to support it.
