MatthewVB

In 2005, Google put to the test the crowd v. the individual. Similar to our previous legal battle, this one looks at who brings the better answer to the question: a group of people with varying levels of knowledge on a topic, or a single person who’s an expert in the field. The answer: the crowd. The Wisdom of Crowds argues that it’s through the power of crowds that more accurate predictions and information can be ascertained.

Google verified this through an internal project called, Google Predictive Markets (GPM) – no link provided cause I can find one accessible to outsiders (not that I’m an insider…yet). I think the genius in this is the use of the 20% time to work on validating theories out in the world. Google is known for wanting to organize the world’s information. Now we’re taking that to the next level – predicting the world’s information. If we can get enough people together to focus on one thing and put thoughts towards it, we can pool that data and predict, with great accuracy, what will happen (almost noetic in nature). Perhaps that isn’t worded the best. Take a straw poll on tons of people on a given topic, and the majority is likely to give you a more accurate answer than the experts in the field.

I can’t believe: a) how cool this is, and 2) how i didn’t know this was going on in the GooglePlex. If we could do this on a larger scale (note: I was planning a website around a similar topic about 2 years ago) and get hundreds of thousands of people involved, this type of data would have such a profound impact on the way the world is run. If people started believing in things that were about to happen – there actions would start pushing that belief to come true (personal philosophy, backed by some research somewhere I’m sure). That could mean people could have more control in their lives and in the world around them – leaving bigger impacts and doing greater things.

I’ve said too much, but remember this: if Google can organize the information, they can predict it too. (If you don’t believe me, just watch your next search – they’re guessing what you’re searching for…and they’re probably almost right on target.)

For those wanting a little audio, check out BOL #1198 for a good discussion regarding prediction markets (including the Hollywood Stock Exchange) — you should listen to the whole thing as it’s a great podcast, but at about 33:30 is where it starts.

This quote is my favorite part about wearing a shirt from Woot!. While Woot! has taken the net by storm, Threadless was here first. Two great places to buy shirts – two different ways to buy them. Let’s skip the battle royal and jump right into what makes Threadless tick.

Threadless has one of the most innovative business models and communities to hit the net in quite some time. Get designers to design tshirts, have people vote on the best designs, then produce only those which the community loves. Why is this so great? You don’t waste resources on tshirts no one likes — all the designs are winners in the eyes of the community.

Woot!, my BFF, has a similar concept: they host what they call a Derby with a given theme to have designers design around. People vote, shirts, win, blah blah blah.

Why design and give these people free money when you can go to CafePress and do it yourself? Cash Money. Screw it – it’s battle royal time. Today: Shirt.Woot! takes on Threadless, site v. site, shirt v. shirt. Today, from the designer’s view on why to submit your design. Note: Shirt.Woot! has two agreements based on how exclusive the design rights are to Woot!

It’s all about how well your shirt sells. If you can bear through a contest, Threadless is a good up-front win. If you have the design that sells over time, Woot will win you the most. But, if your design is just pure genius, then Threadless is again the way to go because of their contests.

The million dollar question my dearest friends at Harrrrvard ask, would you take these shirts to department stores? Hell no. Quick win for the company (Threadless or Woot in this case), but long term destruction of the core business. The key behind both of these sites is one key thing: community. People love these sites and it’s the community that keeps it running and alive. People strive to win a Threadless contest and get their shirt produced. People on Woot! die to be the first to buy a deal that day and crave the cleverness of the designs. Last I checked, I really don’t feel the sense of community when I go shopping at Target, Macys, JCPennys, Kohls, etc. All nice places, don’t confuse that – but I go to get stuff and leave, not to hang out, see what else is there, comment on things so others can comment as well.

Could you imagine going to somewhere like Kohls and there would be a computer display by a rack of shirts, and people would post their comments on the shirt right there – you could comment and interact. Crazy!?! Note: I’m officially patenting this idea and concept and reserve all rights to it. If you’re a major (or minor) retail store, please contact me for the rights to this idea. This was posted was drafted on April 10, 2010. I throw in an interface wireframe as well as thoughts on the mobile app that goes with it.

I was also debating calling this post: “My parents are on Facebook and I’m in therapy,” but didn’t, obviously,…so I’ll just leave that as the intro.

Facebook v. LinkedIn. Personal v. Professional. Friday night pics v. Weekday resume. It all faces off here, today.

It’s no mystery that I’ve done extensive research on Facebook.  Facebook is where we spend our nights, and LinkedIn is where we spend our days. They aren’t competitors. So everyone who thinks this, STOP! Two different purposes and people won’t mix them. There are more pictures on Facebook than Flickr. There are more resumes on LinkedIn than career sites. Even Bill has a LinkedIn profile (though only 5 connections). Facebook has more people than the entire population of the USA.

So, how do they make money? Let’s discuss:

Not a bad quick shot at Facebook v. LinkedIn. I use both. One for personal, one for professional — so let’s keep it that way.

Wikis are an amazing thing. There’s no doubt in the view of the world, that Wikipedia is the best known wiki online – heck, it’s the first step for any research paper for anyone under 35 (I assume others are using libraries and other “research techniques). The Telegraph reported that Wikipedia has seen the plateau of growth and is in the mature stage of a business life-cycle. The challenge comes in getting content on to a site and building a community around it. (And kudos to Jimmy for keeping Wikipedia alive as a non-profit!)

Wikis are easy to use as a reader, but I think the challenge comes in setting them up and getting an active community involved in editing and publishing. Creating and editing a wiki is a language of its own. Wikis have built a new programming language that’s meant to be accessible to the masses — even more accessible than HTML. Click on any most Wikipedia page and you can edit away (unless Stephen Colbert got there first). Learning how to create links to pages that don’t exist – then build around it takes time and organization.

Many services are out there to help ease the adoption. Wikia, probably the largest collection, is a branch of Wikipedia. They have several thousand wikis from Harry Potter to World of Warcraft to Lost. Dozens have entered as well, like PBWiki (yah – it’s like a PB&J, but wiki-style — (now known as PBWorks)), WikiDot, and TWiki.

Wikis are cool, don’t get me wrong, but even as a web developer I find a learning curve with editing them. I have worked on setting up wikis before, and it takes time and planning. How are you going organize the site? What will the homepage feature and who will moderate that? (Not to mention moderation is a whole other topic — see Colbert article above for great example.)

For the record, I do try contribute to a few wikis (of which I won’t mention here as it’ll show my geekness). Wikis bring with them a few main things:

1. A community of people contributing towards common knowledge.
2. A way for anyone, regardless of who they are, to add, edit, and delete without discrimination (most times).
3. An organized, indexed, and searchable way to find content.
4. Things link, and link, and link. You can always dig deeper or go higher up. The variety of levels allow you to decide how much you want to know and control the level at which you consume data.

Like the title suggests – wikis rock. The more ways we can put data/content out there and have it be contributed to by those who know the better. (And please, if you’re making a wiki edit, submit comments on your change and always cite where possible.)

Now we’re flooded online with everyone wanting to use the word “buzz” and today, I’m blogging about BzzAgent, the online/offline word-of-mouth buzz building company. For the record, my favorite two online “buzz” are my friends at BOL and The Buzz Report.  Now back to BzzAgent.

I’ve been running my own blog for quite some time now, over 7 years. The question at hand here is the value of corporate blogging. BzzAgent ran Bzz.com for quite some time (it was an on-again off-again relationship, currently off-again) as their corporate blog. Major companies have blogs to say what’s going on: Microsoft’s Channel 9, Google, Dell, and even universities pushing blogs. What makes a blog successful for a company is better described by Joel Spolsky:

…an entrepreneur’s blog has to be about something bigger than his or her company and his or her product. [via]

BzzAgent can learn from this simple, yet complex concept. People don’t want to read a blog to just find out what’s going on in a company – they want  to get involved and have a personal connection. Joel provides a few great examples (same source):

If you’re opening a restaurant, don’t blog about your menu. Blog about great food. You’ll attract foodies who don’t care about your restaurant yet.

If you make superior, single-source chocolate, don’t write about that great trip you took to the Dominican Republic to source cocoa beans. That’s all about you. Instead, write the definitive article about making chocolate-covered strawberries.

Why do this? Because people will care more about these things and build associations with you – rather than your random rants/banter online. Ryan Bates provides free (and amazing) tutorials (Railscasts) on Ruby on Rails (a programming language). Ryan is providing useful information while setting himself up for success. I don’t care if Ryan goes out and gets a dog or travels to India – but if I have a question or need a great developer, I know that he’s there and I know he’s dedicated to his work.

The key to success is not easy – it takes time and devotion. Just writing this blogs eats a good hour weekly — finding great links, relevant info, citing sources, etc. Take the time, develop great content, and the people will come.

First of all, disclosure: I’ve worked for companies who’ve done business with both Brightcove and their competitors. There. You’re welcome FTC.

Let’s dive, for five minutes or less, into online TV. Tons of players who came to the table: Joost, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and let’s just throw in AOL Video for kicks. (I know there are a few more, but let’s face it, there aren’t.) Yup, you’ve heard of all those above…and how they died a slow and painful death (or are currently doing so). Brightcove (today’s focus), is no different.

Brightcove aims to be the YouTube of commercial video, the Hulu for things businesses want to show off, the College Humor of not-funny things. (clip links were selected for their quality.) Brightcove has a chance, don’t misunderstand my lack of support for them. They have some heavy hitters as clients, including the US Army.

What’s the future: a CDN network (that just happens to play videos on a site for the heck of it but no one will go there but they’ll put them up anyhow). This is how they need to monetize and promote themselves. They have an infrastructure that can support thousands of simultaneous hits on a video while giving the people behind it the stats and analytics to drive corporate minds into crazy goodness.

If I were at Brightcove – I’d upgrade the homepage and show off some of the features — maybe a video? (he says suggestively as if it would make perfect sense for a video platform site.) They are doing the classic push to get people on a free trial and show the cost – but the real money is going to come through the corporate accounts and large contracts. Jeremy Allaire (still CEO btw) should take some time to refocus on what the core of his business is. Now, I don’t have access to financial reports, but I have to imagine the heavy corporate hitters are the ones bankrolling the operations while the mom & pops hitting up the site for a monthly fee are just spending money for Brightcove.

That’s my take. There are way too many people out there playing the online video game for a small fish to do something spectacular unless it’s niche. Go niche, go corporate, or go home.

My good friends over at Read Write Web just posted a great article summarizing the Google v. China stand off. Check it out.

Kristen from my MBA class provides a bit of case insight on this issue as well.

Google is coming home, to your home (and mine). How? Two words: energy (and dark fiber – but more on that in minute). Okay, that’s a few words – but deserves to be said again, energy. First, in interest of full disclosure, Google owns me. My email, my profiles, my docs — half of my online life is tied up in Google or at least connected to Google; all of this by choice. Okay, back to energy.

Google made a big announcement with their jump into organizing personal energy consumption with Google.org’s (the non-profit end of Google) PowerMeter. It’s no mystery that Google has a strong interest in being green (the photo above is of their Mountain View campus – note all the solar panels on the buildings) and that Google is a large consumer of energy. It was also big news last month when Google was granted the rights to buy and sell energy from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It appears that Google is not only generating enough energy for their needs via their various green installations, but is ready to start making some money by selling excess energy back to local cities.

Take the localization aspects of this and tie it in with Google dumping their own ISP-like network out into cities, and we have ourselves a mini-utility being formed. Cities are vying to have Google come to their town: the city formally known as Topeka, Kansas is now Google, Kansas (just for March). Topeka Google, Kansas isn’t alone. Greenville, South Carolina has also jumped on board with the launch of We are Feeling Lucky, a website devoted to getting Google to come to Greenville and lay down some dark fiber there. (They even have social media and hashtags working for them.)

Other cities playing the game:

• Duluth, Minnesota – probably the coolest website out of the bunch
• Columbia, Missouri

So – where is Google going? To your city. Anytown, USA is now about to be Googletown, USA.

People have been trying to figure out how to turn my cell phone into my next credit card. I had the opportunity to read a write up by HBS on Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and their spin-off company, NTT DoCoMo. DoCoMo is focused on bringing mobile payments into reality via their partnership with FeliCa. FeliCa has the ‘chip’ technology while DoCoMo knows the phone market. Good partnership, but huge social hurdle to overcome.

Credit card companies were nervous to jump in to the RFID-type of cards. Speedway had a speedpass (not sure if they still do) that allowed customers to pay for gas with a key-token-type-device-thing. Chase has a “blink” technology that utilizes an RFID-like chip in the card so you can tap your card on equipped payment terminals and you don’t have to swipe. DoCoMo is looking to do something like Chase, but with a cell phone.

People are a nervous bunch and don’t like to change financial habits. Mint adoption was slow out of fears of giving a company access to all your financial information in efforts to help you better understand where your money is going. The biggest question facing DoCoMo is: what happens when X. X, in this case, is everything! My phone gets lost, or worse, is stolen. Someone starts walking around with a payment terminal and it taps my bag and steals my money. Am I going to need to still sign? What’s the point then if I do? I have no signature on the back of my phone. What’s my verification number for online orders? What? Can’t do online orders – so I still need a credit card then.

I’m all about advances in technology, but this is a big hurdle and needs to replace the credit card and needs to be secure. Oh, and unless you can get Apple to put it in their phones (or RIM), good luck! Cause you need major phone adoption in addition to major retailer adoption so I could actually pay for something with my phone.

Sell the technology – or license it out. Let someone else figure it out; then come back and do it ten times better.

Reed Hastings knew what he was doing when he started Netflix – and he’s still got it. Netflix was really the first-mover when it comes to making DVDs accessible and available within homes within 1 business day. Netflix can reach 90% of people within 1 day, and in the past months they’re reaching everyone via digital downloads/streaming. One of the challenges in the digital space has come from movie industries wanting people to still buy DVDs rather than just get them via Netflix. Working with Warner Bros, Netflix announced a partnership last month that they’ll stream movies for the first 28 days, and then ship DVDs; promoting people to buy the DVD instead of just renting it via Netflix. Brian Beckowski captures the thoughts of many with his words:

If there is one thing in my life that I would not trade, it is my Netflix subscription.

So, what’s the question to answer here? Not sure to be honest. Reed is doing great and my advice to him is – keep going. Keep pushing forward in the download options – reach out to more studios and get more videos available on demand. This is going to be a growing area as bandwidth and connectivity improves across the USA. Additionally, this allows Netflix to reach that 10% who aren’t able to get movies in 1 day with instant movies. Netflix being able to tap into the long tail should propel them forward with downloads that hit those non-top 10,000 videos. That will enable them to continue their reach into the random niche markets and build on their ability to leverage the market that gets neglected at BlockBuster or other movie stores.

I’d argue that Netflix business is in statistics and user recommendations. Their recommendation engine is the powerhouse that keeps them going and drives them forward. The announcement of the Netflix Prize made things even more exciting for customers, as recommendations will improve and the desire to rent even more movies will continue to grow.