Google just wants to be cool

The other day I was talking to someone who was surprised that Mozilla (innocent, grassroots, stick it to the man with Firefox, Mozilla) make about $2 a user a year from users because they have Google as their preferred search engine.

It's interesting how brands can insulate themselves from the perception that they are in it for the money.

It's also interesting that Google creates these distribution deals (such as the one with Mozilla) by monetizing users through their ad services and sharing that revenue with their partners.

But it has also occurred to me that Google could take this one step further. You see... they continue to release attention grabbing applications in a seemingly random fashion leaving analysts confused as to their 'master plan'.

There have been many interesting articles written on the subject going into some depth about how all the Google beta’s fit together but I think their master plan is much simpler than anyone could imagine. If nothing else - all Google has to do to remain profitable and successful is... 'be cool'.

Google just have to continue to create interesting, buzz generating, high traffic applications that don't necessarily have any sort of sustainability in terms of form or function. They use their ‘cool’ to make the initial announcement (or just sit back waiting for the many Google watchers to discover it) and the initial flurry of attention generates traffic, traffic generates ad impressions and ad impressions generate clicks. Clicks... generate revenue. All the while they keep Microsoft on the back foot trying to guess their next move.

Their next move is to remain cool.

Watching the conversation unfold

It's interesting when you're starting a new project that has strong ties to the web, how you can use tools to keep track of conversations about your product/project.

You get to monitor people's perceptions of what you're doing (both good and bad) and watch the conversation grow in volume.

For any startups out there I'm sure you know as well as I do how addictive the process can be.

There have been many conversations about Touchstone on blogs etc, but just recently the conversation has shifted to forums which seems to me like a graduation.

Personal Relevancy

Fred Wilson from AVC has recently posted an article about 'Is Meta Better'. The question is do services that aggregate group interest to calculate 'the front page' of content (e.g. TechMeme, Digg etc) constitute a better way of consuming news and managing attention.

The answer for me is a resounding ‘not by itself’. While TechMeme, Digg and others have their place in the eco-system (to discover things you might not have known before or to measure where the buzz is) the real attention killer app is something I am starting to call 'Personal Relevancy'.

Personal Relevancy is about letting you choose the sources you subscribe to and then applying a filter to the incoming items so that the most important items rise to the top of the pack.

This can be done by analysing and modelling a single user's behaviours and interests as apposed to aggregating a broad community’s behaviours and interests.

This is the long tail of relevancy and attention - it is not about the top 10, its about the next 100,000. It is not what 100,000 people find interesting, it's about what YOU find interesting.

Via Attention Trust

Update:

Ed Batista has posted about my post about his post (thanks Ed!) and highlighted a lack of thoroughness above (thanks Ed hah!).

The wrinkle I'd add is that it's all contextual: Sometimes we're going to be interested in items from our personal Long Tail, sometimes we're going to be interested in items on the global Top 10 list, and sometimes we're going to interested in items derived from some sub-community in between--friends and family, co-workers, teammates, etc. We should ultimately be able to mix and match the sources powering our discovery and recommendation systems to suit our needs at the moment. But Chris is right to note that it all starts with what's personally relevant and builds from there.

He is 100% correct. Both that I had missed some key aspects of personal relevancy and the specific aspects he listed.

At Touchstone we are actually planning to include all these factors in the calculation of an item's personal relevancy. We call this algorithm I-AM (Intuitive Attention Management). I-AM has evolved a lot since we originally announced it to truly embody it's descriptive paragraph:

"I-AM" who I know.
"I-AM" what I read.
"I-AM" where I am.
"I-AM" how I work.
"I-AM" me.

I-AM is all about measuring your personal behaviour, the behaviour of who you know, the collective interests of the broader community, the situation you are actually in, the device you're on and how busy you are to determine personal relevancy at any given time.

Horizontal Verticals

Something has been bugging me recently and I thought I would post about it. It's a little off-topic but this is my soapbox :)

What is with the sudden rash of verticals that are so niche that they make no sense? What Do I mean?

I mean ZoomBlast which is like Digg except for video.

Or Gnoos which is like Technorati except for aussie bloggers.

Don't get me wrong - I live in Australia and I think that locals like Ben Barron are rare and it's great to find people in this country that are even aware of the latest trends much less engaged in them, but there are broad (or horizontal?) verticals and then there are hobby verticals. And as far as I am concerned, hobby verticals are really not worth my time.

Video publishing is a broad vertical. Video publishing about flowers is not. That's a hobby. Is anyone under any illusion that Digg and TechMeme are not in the process of branching out to other verticals which will leverage their existing brand and traffic into more specific niches (in fact they are - It's been reported recently).

So what is the point of building a vertical that is so specific that it only covers a sub-set of a much more successful venture somewhere else?

And before you say 'specialization - doing things that the others can't do because of their lack of focus' consider that while that is true of broad verticals (like publishing video), it isn't true of hobby verticals.

To turn Technorati into an Aussie blog tracker all they need to do is add a combo box for 'location'.

I must also stress here I am not talking about niche content (e.g. highly specific blogs etc which are the key to democratic/citizen journalism) but rather about companies that are setting up infrastructure and platforms that enable content creation/interaction.

If you want to compete with Digg then compete - but there is no point creating a site that does what Digg already does (track popular stuff) just because yours happens to track popular VIDEO stuff.

Why I love Scoble

Yes we all know Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft (well if you didn't then you live under a rock).

This post isn't really a comment on his leaving though, so much as why he matters at all.

He matters because he changed the face of Microsoft from the inside out. He spoke in a natural and neutral voice while having the inside scoop on the company's activities. He has an infectious laugh that disarms his subjects and shows his enthusiasm for the subject matter. His brutal honesty about the deficiencies of the company he works for and honest credit to their competitors is refreshing and only serves to make us believe (and rightly so) that his opinions are honest and heartfelt.

What does all that mean? He calls it how it is. And in a world where the media is spinning lies and failing to provide historic context to the news, Scoble exemplifies the most important aspect of the blog-o-sphere. Real stories told by real people who are living the news.

The most recent example was a post where he called out his new employer on their deficiencies and linked to their competitor! And he hasn't even started working there yet! With the level of traffic his blog is getting right now, I imagine their traffic went through the roof.

Well done Robert - I will be following your work no matter where you choose to blog from.

Tuning Out the Noise

We have said many times that Touchstone is not an RSS Reader.

Just to quickly recap this is because Touchstone gives you alerts and updates in a heads-up-display - a format that you can track while you work on other things (as opposed to a RSS readers that you can use to focus on and consume large amounts of news).

It is designed to be used as a companion - not just for RSS, but any data source that you want to track.

But we also say something else about Touchstone - that it will live or die not by the items it displays - but rather by the items that it suppresses. Touchstone is not just an alerts platform - it is also an Attention Manager.

What does this mean? It means that just because one of the sources you subscribe to has new information doesn't mean you care about that information - or care enough to have your concentration (or 'attention') interrupted.

So in many ways Touchstone's Attention Management features make it less about being alerted than actually tuning out the interruptions in your life.

Maybe if you think about it that way, Touchstone is less about showing you information than it is about hiding information you don't actually care about while you work - so that you can focus on what really matters.

Ingredients for Web 2.0 Success

This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in the Web 2.0 world. A must watch for all you Web 2.0 wannabees out there. Thanks to Marjolein for pointing it out for me.

It reminds me of an email I sent to someone recently who was saying that Touchstone wasn't cool because it wasn't web based...

It seems like the conventional wisdom at the moment is that the web is the new operating system and that everything should move there. It’s a bit like network television these days (this whole web 2.0 thing). Everyone discovered that social photos worked so everything else is variations on that theme. A bit like cop shows on TV.

That’s fine – at some point a few category killers will come out on top - but while everyone is scrambling to be ‘the one’ they forget that there are other parts to the puzzle.

As Microsoft puts it with their new RSS platform, there is “browse, search, subscribe” – but what about “consume”. In our case consume without having to maximize an application (like a feed reader or web browser) – updates without breaking workflow. The more important the update the more ‘disruptive’ the presentation (something else you can’t do in the browser sandbox).

And what about data sources that are on the local machine inaccessible to web-apps in real time (like network statistics for sys admins, download progress for the bittorrent generation and real-time game information from massive multiplayers)

Just think – there was Email and IRC – why on earth would someone want to combine the two? That’s what ICQ did when it invented the Instant Messaging category. Think of Touchstone as Instant Messaging for content and updates.

The part of the puzzle we’re focusing on has an opportunity to add value to the whole eco-system. The web as an operating system? No problems! – now all the OS needs is a centralized alert and updates platform that can reach out and touch the user on their own terms.

Oh and also - we have posted some great testimonials from Fake Industry Leaders on our wiki - Feel free to add your own ;)

Outlook 2007 Spam Filtering is too good

Recently I have upgraded to the beta of Office 2007. It's a great suite of products.

But something is really bugging me about the new Outlook. It's spam detection is way too good.

How can something be too good?

Well... I am used to receiving a bunch of spam each day. Some of it goes into spam, and some of it ends up in my inbox and I have to delete it manually. But in both cases it used to appear in my inbox for a few seconds and then get re-filed into the spam folder.

Now, with the new Outlook, I get almost NO email in my inbox that is spam, and it is routed to the Junk folder without appearing in my main mailbox for a few seconds.

This is stressing me out because I feel like, even though I have '20 new emails' I get nothing new in my mailbox! I don't even get a sense of whether or not the mail being junked is important or not.

I am so used to expecting spam, that it makes me uncomfortable that I can't see it. It's as if the spam was part of the experience and it somehow assured me that my pop accounts were working.

I find myself constantly checking the spam folder just to reassure myself that email is actually coming in.

Am I crazy?

Thank heavens for RSS.

Policy of Diminishing Attention Consumption

For the longest time I have used a sentence over and over that I thought best sumed up our attention management and heads-up-display philosophy. That sentence is:

"The more important the update, the more disruptive the presentation".

I don't know how elegant or informative the sentence is, but I found a diagram that explains it perfectly. And you know what they say - a picture paints a thousand words (and a word paints a thousand pictures).

So in the spirit of painting pictures and words - I have reproduced the diagram with permission from the original author (thought leader Kevin Lynch no less!).

So here it is:

Power back in your hands

There is an old post on Scobleizer about the future of web businesses. He mentions that Attention is the next big thing for web-apps because they can start to learn what you care about and monetize it by delivering better content and advertising.

E.g. If the site you visit can work out you like coffee, and will be traveling to a new city next week - it might give you an ad for the starbucks down the road from your hotel.

What he describes could be considered scary to some because the big bad company knows all about your habits.

Maybe... but Amazon.com has been doing it for years.

As I've said before - I'd like to see a tool that could capture that information about you in a way that bridged the gap between all sites and put the power back in your hands. A tool that took what it learned and delivered information to you as you worked instead of only when you were on the right website. A tool that you owned and controlled and could turn off whenever you felt like it. A tool who's job was not to sell you advertising, but rather to help you filter the signal from the noise so you could concentrate on what's important to YOU.

If only such a tool was being developed...

Attention, Scarcity and Demand

Reading the article 'Information Abundance, Attention Scarcity' I was struck by an interesting idea. The article almost makes it, but I think it bares clarifying and repeating...

The article mentions Fred Wilson's assertion of Abundance that states (and I paraphrase):

"In the old world, product scarcity (along with demand) created value. In the digital world it is actually abundance which creates value (network effects and social software)."

However I would go one step further and say...

If scarcity creates value then the balance of power has shifted.

In the old world products were scarce - this meant that companies who provided product could profit from the demand.

In the digital world, where abundance is key (creating a digital copy costs next to nothing) it is a customer's attention that has become scarce. This means that the customer now holds the value - not the company.

This is an interesting paradigm shift. Something that Seth Goldstein's Root.net and others are trying to capitalize on.

10,715 - The Attention Deficit Problem

Recently there was a meme that went around the blog-o-sphere that involved the number 53,651. That's the number of TechCrunch subscribers (at that time) and the perceived size of the early adopter web 2.0 community.

I'd like to start a new number related meme (Although I don't quite have the same pull as TechCrunch maybe? hah).

10,715.

That's how many unread feed items I have right now in FeedDemon. I have to go through all these items, read/skim them and mark the feeds as read. But the problem is when I get to the end, I will just have to start again. I think Ten Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifteen should represent the exact number of the Attention Deficit Problem.

Feeds are not email - and trying to keep track of them like email is just becoming unmanageable.