If I were authoring any video content, especially if it had just a fraction of Chris’ popularity, it would be frustrating to see it free on the internet and making money for so many other sites. In particular, it would really smell things up to see a site, like Zango, whose general business practices I disagree with using “my” content. The problem starts with YouTube and the license granted to it when you submit content. By submitting videos to YouTube, Chris gets free bandwidth and views from their traffic base and he also grants YouTube many rights to the content and loses the ability to apply usage terms of his own to the content.

I see two content-related solutions that are simple only in their explanations: 1) YouTube needs to defend its “own” content on the behalf of the content owners, or 2) YouTube needs to apply a license, whether of Creative Commons or its own design, to videos on its network. Failing to do either of these will make YouTube more valuable to quality content producers like Chris and make YouTube a better distribution tool while muting some arguments for DRM protection of content.

Off topic for a bit: How can the content be safer without DRM? A license outlines the legal uses of content whether or not DRM is used. DRM only seeks to enforce the terms of a license. This is one of very few areas where I disagree with Google’s and the tech world’s “technology can solve all problems” attitude. Criminal law, after all, relies on the threat of punishment to stop crimes. Security cameras may make catching criminals and enforcing the law easier, but it’s by indirect methods and still relies on the legal process. Direct methods might use technology to stop a crime, but like so many cyberpunk sci-fi stories (for those who aren’t familiar with the genre, Minority Report is one that went mainstream) technology might also cause its own flavor of crime.

Back on Chris’ complaint, the usage of content originally submitted to YouTube isn’t defined or enforced. It enters a wide gray area that the law doesn’t have a strong grasp of right now. What isn’t a gray area though, and what will soon reduce Zango’s influence and profitability, is the removal of Zango pages from Google’s results. We already know how Matt Cutts and Google feel about 3rd party search results, like Zango’s, in Google results. Recent months have seen the Technorati traffic ride ended and a similar Squidoo traffic ride ended.

Hopefully the attention of Chris’ post means it won’t be long before Matt all but drops Zango from Google’s results. Personally, I’d like to see Zango blocked from the Google index entirely because of the malware-nature of their video player. Nonetheless, despite that even the slow-to-the-digital-age FTC agrees that Zango pushes malware Google is the biggest player in the video market and might see an antitrust lawsuit if they block Zango entirely.

Tags: Chris+Pirillo, pirillo, lockergnome, google, search, index, spam, zango, youtube, video

Where the Eggnetwork stands out from most existing ad networks is in the ad sales efforts that are already successful on VideoEgg’s partner sites. Just like Weblogs, Inc. made actual cash by grabbing a slice of corporate/agency media buys, VideoEgg stands to do the same thing. Agency planners base their buys and target CPM on how closely a site or network indexes to their target audience, and they will put in plenty of effort to find sites that index high and their competitors haven’t found yet if their clients are moving strongly online. The key for video advertising networks to succeed is not only to attract a certain volume of ads, but to also keep the CPM high enough that their portion of the revenue-share will more than pay the cost of bandwidth to display all those video ads.

I think the crux of Eggnetwork successfully building a profitable publisher network isn’t in the sales & volume efforts, after all they’re already way ahead of most video-only networks, but in signing up enough quality page views to keep the network growing profitably. That means either:

1. Finding narrow-audience sites with that haven’t already put their inventory in the hands of bigger players. This type of site self-targets and produces a high CPM as a result.

   For example: Facebook has signed their impressions over to Microsoft recently, thus Eggnetwork’s targeting of Facebook App publishers and their large number of page views.

2. Attracting a huge number of small sites and then accurately indexing their content so page/video views are targeted enough to warrant advertisers paying a CPM high enough to pay the bandwidth bill.

   For example: AdSense’s targeting produced high CPM for blogs that couldn’t get anything but low CPM ads from traditional networks who targeted based on category. That ability to index put them on top of the CPM heap for many sites.

If the Eggnetwork fails to do either, then odds are they’ll fade away when the VC dollars run out or VideoEgg will acquired cheaply by a much larger player. If they do manage at either of the above, they’ll be a sizable, premium network to be picked up at high value, like Right Media, or become a strong stand-alone network. As a stand-alone network, they will need to continue sales efforts as they’re, likely, joined by dozens of other networks in the years ahead.

Putting Eggnetwork aside, I think there is room for many non-public, online advertising networks. Few of them will be video-specific or ad-type specific (see Google expanding into CPM and video ad formats) but most that succeed will be able to target the web viewers closely. When this happens agencies will accomodate and deal with the many distinct publishers (online networks in this case) rather than isolating their buys to a single network or a few large publishers. As a result, online advertising will reach an equilibrium with the publisher space looking more like the current print newspaper & magazine market.

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These views, predictions, generalizations of agency processes, and everything on this site are my own. I work for a Publicis Groupe company, Team One and they have not reviewed, recommended, or approved this content.

Tags: eggnetwork, video, ad, advertising, online, ads, adsense, videoegg, network, sales, media, agency, planner

It got me thinking about this kind of evergreen content that keeps getting viewed day after day, week after week. What’s that worth? To me, to YouTube, to the band?

Let’s start with YouTube. Let’s say they do implement the 3 second pre-roll and let’s say they charge a $2 cpm for a three second pre-roll. Then my Bukowski video could earn YouTube about $15 per year. And I might get 60 percent of that, or close to $10/year.

I don’t agree that YouTube should implement pre-rolls and I think they already have a payment plan in the works for submitters, but why isn’t YouTube, or a competitor, licensing professional concert video from bands or their labels?

Not only would this provide the premium content that YouTube will need to compete with the coming wave of content from TV and film production companies, but would also help to assuage some of the feelings that YouTube’s business is heavily rooted in copyright abuse. Yes, it leaves “fans” out of the equation but at least the content would be high-quality, legal, and video cameras in the next seat wouldn’t impinge on concertgoers the way mobile phones do in elevators and restaurants.

…as for the fact that YouTube might need to add pre-roll ads to support this - they don’t. I don’t know where most people are buying their bandwidth (or if they’ve actually checked recent bandwidth prices), but recent calculations of YouTube’s costs are inflating bandwidth prices. Currently running just a few dedicated servers for a client gets bandwidth down to $0.18/GB. Even Akamai bandwidth is less than $0.50/GB for a company I’ve worked with that’s ranked around 10,000th on Alexa. I suspect Google is paying less than $0.10/GB for purchased bandwidth and less than $0.05/GB for bandwidth they’ve shifted to their own fiber.

A note was found saying that she was running away, but her car and wallet were also found left behind.
The police are involved because she’s a minor and was last seen with a 21-year old. The guy’s name is Josh Franks and he’s known to hand out at skate parks and visit shelters for food.

Of you see either of them (pictures and descriptions on this flyer, PDF) please call the local police and let them know the situation.

Update: If you do happen to see them don’t try to stop them, just take note of who they’re with and call the Grants Pass police at (541) 474-6370.

On one side of the “primary drivers of web 2.0″ coin stands ideals about the power of information on the internet, and on the flip-side is the ability to profit from a cooler, smarter way of finding or displaying information (and, isn’t that the foundation of search, whether it’s Google or “the people” making the decisions). In this case, both Kevin and Jason have plenty of opportunities to benefit from both sides of this coin. Nonetheless, Jason is a great promoter who has, effectively, copied Digg’s “cooler, smarter” methods and, it seems, isn’t above extending that controversy by offering to pay prolific users of Digg (and other, similar sites) - taking more of a profiteering stance (I do wonder how much this is driven by the demands of AOL … ). Kevin, I think, is proud of the original methods Digg uses to sort and display news info and a fan of letting users run the system - more of an power-to-the-people stance.

Rather than taking a side, I think the most important thing to note from their argument is in its context of competition between high-growth website founders. Consider that while web 1.0 companies didn’t didn’t have public faces and debates like this, many were built and succeeded or failed for very similar reasons to those behind this argument.

As a webophile, just sit back and watch these two - this isn’t the last play in the game. As an entrepreneur, instead of trying to beat a Google or MySpace, consider that as each generation of web sites grows a dedicated audience there are still new opportunities for small, innovative players to create new presentations and interfaces, and only rarely will someone be as bold as Calacanis, to risk losing those hard-earned audiences.

Tags: Digg, Netscape, Jason, Calacanis, Kevin, Rose, founders, web2.0, search, information, context, ideal, Google, MySpace

In early 2005 I discovered that an expired driver’s license is as good as having no license at all. After several mail delivery/theft problems in my apartment building I had somehow missed the renewal forms that are mailed several months prior to license expiration in California. Thankfully, the security screeners at LAX reminded me that I needed to renew my license … and in the process pulled me out of line for a more thorough security inspection. The extra inspection (more details below) was faster than waiting in the normal security line. Unfortunately shorter lines in the enhanced screening process are probably over now. Jim Harper accepted a challenge from John Gilmore, co-founder of the EFF, to fly without his ID and “having gotten through screening perhaps even faster than he would have if he’d shown ID.”

More on how I started requesting that TSA send me to the “extra screening” line:

Even with almost an hour to spare before my flight I was worried that the extra screening would keep me from making my plane. The security screener ushering me around and between the ropes assured me with a grin, “You’ll be better off this way.” Such an assurance, and that grin from someone wearing a TSA badge, didn’t reduce my worries at all.

Only one other traveller was enjoying the extra screening at the far end of the security check queues. Immediately two of the six TSA screeners working with or watching him stepped out to take my luggage and the tray with my phone, change, and keys in it. With that kind of attention all the checks and sweeps of my carry-on items and self were complete and I was on my way in just 4 minutes. That left me with about 15 minutes, waiting for my wife to complete the standard screening line, to consider how receptive the TSA screeners would be if I started requesting the additional screening in the future.

I’ve asked three time so far, none while travelling with my wife, and only once was I allowed into the “extra” screening line - during a very busy evening at Chicago’s ORD. Really I think the TSA screener checking IDs was just irritated that her coworkers running the extra security queue were just sitting around. And, she did me a favor to the tune of 30 minutes not spent sitting instead of waiting in line.

Tags: ID, license, airport, screening, TSA, screener, identity, theft, security, homeland, air, airline, flight, Wired, privacy, stolen, delays, waiting

First, the rigid mathematics of Google’s AdSense algorithm are typically smarter than the masses. Just like the house eventually wins in casino gambling, Google eventually beats other advertisers in revenue by not trying to outsmart itself and letting mathematics calculate the value of displaying an add based on historical factors including both the PPC bid and the CTR (click though rate). The AdSense algorithm is the whole reason Google makes so much more from simple text ads than traditional “inventory/campaign publishers” but is still affordable to small publishers who target a narrow market with it - it’s the action of that whole Long Tail thing Michael mentions every now and again. Video ads won’t be exempt from the AdSense algorithm either, so we may not see very many of them but the ones we do see will be out-earning any other ads for Google.

Second, Mike and Seamus are underestimating the creativity and ingenuity of Google’s advertising customers. Even at $44 per airing in a major metropolitan area a “real” TV commercial needs to show quite a few times before it gets captured and viralized like the Honda “cogs” ad did, plus how do you know that an ad will attract as much attention as your ad-guys want it to? I think Google’s PPC video ads will prove to be great ways to both introduce viral promotional videos into the market and to test the attention-grabbing power of an ad less-expensively than with broadcast media. Given Michael’s penchant for new media and that he is “look(ing) forward to the day that a show, ignored by the networks, first decides to launch itself on iTunes and go straight to consumers” I’m surprised he isn’t also rooting for an ingeious video ad to go viral without ever seeing the light of a TV broadcast.

Of course, Google’s huge troop of smart engineers and pool of cheap bandwidth is what allows them to expiriment with these click-to-call and video ads years before they’re likely to popular, instead of always being a market reactionary (yes, they didn’t do AdSense until their customers said so). I do have misgivings about why Google won’t allow AdSense publishers (the people showing the ads on their sites) with small- and medium-size sites to stop the video ads from showing, like they can already choose to stop image and Flash banner ads from showing. Since Google’s algorithm and data pool is usually smarter than the masses they need to respect the web sites of their customers, publishers in this case, and take advantage of their ingenuity instead of risking offending them.

Tags: Google, AdSense, AdWords, algorithm, math, maths, PPC, video, ad, ads, click+to+call, TechCrunch, Michael, Arrington, SpotRunner, smart, engineers, ingenious, statistics, probability

From my comment at claimID: I think I came down harder on claimID than I meant to in my prior comment about trust and claimID. Their concept and timing is great and should offer an improvement over the current methods of validating ID’s. As far as I can tell the market is currently monopolized by the closed-system of each of the credit reporting agencies. And they certainly aren’t interested in trust or relationships (or even security, it seems) at all. It’s best we take it out of the hands of those agencies and don’t depend on eBay or MySpace to open their systems either. ClaimID is a good start toward opening things up and giving contrl back to the users, even without a working system up. I just hope Terrell and his team at claimID make the system play nice with others - thus, my continued shouting about needing a protocol or open standard so that the “complex network” described by Terrell will stay up regardless of funding, bandwidth, or any commercial players (made apparent by how hard it is just to keep proprietary soap dispensers full).

Fred (comment at claimID blog), you’re completely right about Cote’s description of the identity management process. He’s got it right and the parties he mentions at OpenID, LID, and microID are already well into implementation. Indeed, all of those systems (after a quick glance) should work well - so long as the primary users are geeky enough to own their own URL’s/hosting accounts. However, once a service is offered to freely host ID URL’s those URL’s won’t confirm anything more than having a Hotmail address does now - and in my mailbox a Hotmail URL is more likely to be spam than someone I trust. That, of course, is why closed trust systems like eBay’s are shallow but still worth something. So, we either need to restrict digital identities to a subset of people willing and able to pay for the URL/priviledge or to build in some sort of feedback loop that adds a level of trust to each identifying domain - thus motivating those hosting ID URL’s for free to keep spam registrations low or face migration away from their untrusted systems.

Tags: digital, identity, trust, community, relationship, network, ID, online, IDcards, claimID, trustbacks, OpenID, LID, microID, protocol, eBay, feedback, system

• Blogging creates a network
• Blogs set you up as an expert in your field
• Blogs give you a leg up when you meet someone new

These primary points are accurate, but take little account of: a) most job-seekers don’t promote themselves well/professionally in their resumes (…won’t “personal” blogs end up even less professional?); and b) most employers aren’t actively seeking candidates on the “open” web. Nonetheless, Tom Raferty appears to be both bright and relatively professional based on my readings of his blog - but he’s still not getting any job offers from that exposure. To tell the truth, he would have been a great candidate for a position as a director of IT that I was just working with a client to help fill. If not for the fact that Tom lives in Ireland and the position is in Los Angeles, I still probably wouldn’t have contacted him because I neither had his feed on my reading list nor did I know he was looking for a job. Truth be told, my client and I didn’t put in enough time to search to blogosphere well.

Most jobs are filled with willing employees and aren’t worth spending that job’s entire annual salary just to find and entice “one” perfect candidate. Where should we have started anyway? Most good bloggers are intelligent and discuss a variety of topics, mkaing it even harder to narrow down the search to “the one”. The blogosphere is a big, messy community and even blogger profiles on Technorati (the first place I would have looked) are poor replacements for a resume sent in by an interested candidate. Had I even considered seeking bloggers for that recent employee search, cold-emailing bloggers to see if they’re interested in a certain job - without an accurate measure of the bloggers’ employment desires or location/relocation plans - would just be a waste of time for any job not paying in the top 2%. And, if a job is paying in the top 2% of all jobs out there - then it stands to reason that there are just two or three A-list bloggers who are worth making egregious offers to.

(Blogger/skill directory anyone?)

Update, 4/20/2006: It looks like someone is already working on a system that could be as extensible enough to provide a skills directory, and more, at ClaimID (found via Cloudalicious, from a search on tagging statistics). ClaimID is the first resource I’ve seen for aggregating and annotating information about someone (although without a way to verify the identities on ClaimID there’s still a question as to the authenticity of the data there). ClaimID should prove useful if people actually adopt it. Personally I think ClaimID and sites like it will just lead to “web tool” overload and prefer the idea of an open protocol for sending/receiving identity or trust info - so that everything can be integrated into whatever tools (Outlook, GMail, Wordpress, etc.) or web sites that I do choose to use.

Speaking of competitors to GDrive, remember Xdrive? They survived the 1999 explosion of bloated heads & web companies with a solid subscription product that also works as a simple collaboration tool for remote workers and info-driven consultants who are smart enough not to attach everything to an email (since 2000, I’ve worked with contractors in both groups who have pointed me to files in their Xdrives). …actually I think the Sharepoint collaboration tools in Microsoft’s Office Live would be a booming success if they have as much market penetration as I’ve seen with Xdrive.

Speaking of SharePoint, it’s a solid competitor to the unreleased GDrive itself. Microsoft isn’t in on the game yet, but there are plenty of hosted SharePoint services from 3rd party hosting companies. The Office Live system will also include SharePoint, plus the Office features and online applications should garner enough attention to get SharePoint the attention it’s been lacking for years.

GDrive isn’t without examples to support that a similar Google service would see good usage. The GMailFS is a program that allows access to the already free GMail’s 2+ GB of storage and it’s already popular with the geek-set (especially a few Linux users I know, who enjoy mocking how tedious I find my own SharePoint system). With the GMailFS program installed it’s possible to save files directly to the Gmail maibox almost as easily as saving them to a Windows ‘My Documents’ folder. However, Google must be well aware of the bandwidth problem mentioned by Garett Rogers’ sources though; I know someone who had their GMail account closed down for “abuse of the service” not long after he started using GMailFS.

It’s easy enough for a techie with a server, or ten, to host their own online WebDAV or SharePoint drive. What makes GMailFS so popular is that it’s hosted by a third party on reliable connections and servers - and it’s free. Should Google follow tradition and make GDrive free too then they’re bound to take a good chunk of the market - right up until they have to stop registrations because their servers and, this time, the pipes too are overloaded (ala, the Google Analytics service)

That “Killer” feature:
Truely roaming Windows user profiles. 90% of computer users are on Windows and every one of them that I know has or wants a laptop. As soon as someone gives them the ability to mirror, with limited features depending on connection speed, not only files but their user profile - checkmate to everyone who can’t follow quickly.

Tags: GDrive, Windows+Live, Office+Live, windows, user+profile, office, live, Google, Microsoft, XDrive, SharePoint, collaboration, user+profile, AJAX, GUI, AdSense, AdWords

With so little information on Origami available, 99% of what’s cluttering Memeorandum right now is just hype and neither Microsoft-generated buzz nor productive discussion. This is both Microsoft’s fault (like Scoble says, for not better managing their own bloggers and the info-flow) and the fault of some bloggers who turned the conversation from “What is Origami?” to “What would I do if I ran Microsoft?”.

Hopefully someone in Microsoft’s PR department will both read Naked Conversations, within in the next year or three, and realize what a great resource their own already-employed bloggers could be. Unfortunately, they’ll probably badly misinterpret the book and attempt to force their bloggers to either use pre-approved copy or have their posts screened before posting …sometimes I just I love “creatives” and how they do run their corners of the world.

Tags: Microsoft, Origami, Scoble, blogging, blog, blogger, naked+conversations, buzz, prototype, hype, PR

I disagree that there are market-cornering strategies and “brand value” behind the new acquisitions and products. The execution behind new products like Google Blog Search and Windows Live Ideas appears to be as much about throwing something new at the wall and seeing if it sticks as it is to complete the master plan of a team of MBA’s. Those business decisions may seem haphazard, but the truth is that the internet and GAMEY in particular are growing up to be more like brick-and-mortar suppliers and less like the razor-focused, genius-run companies they’re often cast as.

I see a close correlation between GAMEY’s recent behavior and the typical behavior of large consumer goods companies. Frequent test products, new brand launches, and acquisitions are typical of packaged consumer goods companies, like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever. Long-standing brands are still used to create a relationship with customers, but they’re extended with new versions, advertising, and a willingness to make false starts. Buyouts even acquire products that compete with existing in-house goods - often to gain production efficiencies (maybe traffic and server efficiencies for GAMEY) and products that appeal to different classes of customers. This comparison makes the reasons Yahoo bought out so many “Web 2.0″ startups, how Google can continue to add new products when current ones aren’t even monetized, and even why Amazon would build its own search engine and a music player & store to compete with the iPod & iTunes seem much less glamorous and a lot more buttoned down.

Digital identities consist of sets of claims made about the subject of the identity, where “claims” are pieces of information about the subject that the issuer asserts are valid. This parallels identities used in the real world. For example, the claims on a driver’s license might include the issuing state, the driver’s license number, name, address, sex, birth date, organ donor status, signature, and photograph, the types of vehicles the subject is eligible to drive, and restrictions on driving rights. The issuing state asserts that these claims are valid. The claims on a credit card might include the issuer’s identity, the subject’s name, the account number, the expiration date, the validation code, and a signature. The card issuer asserts that these claims are valid. The claims on a self-issued identity, where the identity provider and subject are one and the same entity, might include the subject’s name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address, or perhaps just the knowledge of a secret. For self-issued identities, the subject asserts that these claims are valid.

This is interesting because the idea behind TrustBacks is to build a detailed electronic identity and social system. InfoCards already authenticate an individual’s identity, one of the keys to showing a relationship is truthful and keeping the system spam-free. Then a TrustBack could be tied to an InfoCard identity making the trust portable and confirmable.

Tags: InfoCard, identity, trust, TrustBack, social, system, credentials, authenticate, individuals

I’m calling the extension of the trackback system a “TrustBack” and think it can be used to show credibility on and off the web - basically a set of credentials that’s generated from all interactions with people and not just by authorship. Trustbacks should work the same way that trackbacks currently do, but they will require some additional storage, provider, or invitation system to bring non-bloggers into the mix. Also, I should be able to maintain a skill profile for my trustbacks to better show the credibility of my skills and to avoid the “list of my friends” that seems to be the core of most current social networks (Myspace, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.).

Trustbacks should be listed on a single page about the author instead of being displayed on the single linked article like trackbacks. That should be easy enough for people running their own CMS (WordPress, TextPattern, MovableText) to handle already and a simple, free service for personalized search engines (Technorati, del.icio.us, etc.) or existing social networks to add. Unlike a trackback though, a trustback should be portable from place-to-place on the web, so either a notification system for trustback “senders” or an identity system will need to be created. This leaves even more user authentication/spam filtering to handle, but will nicely marginalize service providers who filter trustbacks from outside their own system. Since trustbacks are basically an identity and authentication system, with a big enough network, negative trust should push out anyone trying to fake a set of credentials.

A trustback invitation system wouldn’t be much different from the current invite systems used on social sites (like MySpace, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.) except that they should not require registration and should be pre-filled by the person sending them. An example would be that I take a friend’s dog out when he gets stuck in terrible LA traffic, then I can send them an invite to “trustback” me and fill out the basic info up-front (ie: name, date, city/place, and what I did). All my friend needs to do is to click on the link in the email they receive to approve or edit the trustback. My trustback service provider can invite them to join, but I won’t stay with that provider for long if they either force registrations or spam my friend later.

Based on the amount of extra traffic created by the constant background refreshes of Gmail, I’m not so sure the economics of viewing email on a hosted, AJAX-enabled platform are all that good. The high costs of WAN bandwidth, in the US, and securing/filtering that traffic properly, will make Gmail for Domains much more cosly than most companies will initially expect. Nonetheles, the adoption rate of Gmail for Domains probably won’t be slowed. Any reaction to speed or cost issues will likely be after-the-fact, with a near-complete lack of attention paid to security and bandwidth by most SMBs.

The launch of Microsoft’s Office Live and what looks to be a decent hosted-email, -SharePoint/storage, -CRM platform will provide a good amount of competition for Gmail for Domains. The interface may be too-complicated, but the added collaboration features and Office Live’s resemblance to the already familiar Outlook, Outlook Express, and HotMail should make it very competitive. Of course, Microsoft’s graphic-laden interface is bound to be even more bandwith-hungry than Gmail but, again, that will just sow user-unhappiness and not slow adoption.

Craigslist is adding a $10 fee to New York apartment listings posted by brokers, but not to those posted by private “individuals”, beginning on March 1st. By instituting the fee Craig and the small staff at Craiglist primarily hope to improve the quality of their online apartment listings - though they will probably rack up a fair amount of income in the process.

It should seem obvious, but the novel concept of providing an excellent service with minimal fees is turning the world of both print and online classifieds on its head. If anything is actually an example of web2.0 - that’s it.

Chester’s article discusses both the changes in FCC policies that allow carriers to discriminate against the type, source, and destination of traffic and political moves to profile internet traffic and stop the construction of community wi-fi networks - without speculating to deeply on the effects such carrier-control will have. It is far more informative and less alarmist than many similar posts since Om Malik’s original note Slow Lingering Death of Net Neutrality?.

I’m beginning to think that the answer to many of these policy- and lobbyist-driven fights isn’t in fighting the regulation, but in performing an end-run past it. A few small carriers participating in an open exchange for bandwidth and network traffic (just like the oil market or the CBOT commodities market) would efficiently price bandwidth and keep networks open. It would likely be more expensive for corporations than their current long-term network contracts - but it would also keep prices below the premium levels the carriers want and encourage competition from smaller networks. I just wonder if the new “manage yourself” FCC would ever allow such an exchange.

Same-day Update:

Business Week has also picked up the story today, in Is Verizon a Network Hog?. It’s probably worth a read just because it’s a conservative, commerce-friendly publication that’s lightly taking the side of Google and Amazon (though they may have been the only companies involved who offered quotes) - although the article presents very little new information and no editorial on the situation.

Good Morning Silicon Valley has no mention of network neutrality or premium services, but We thought you said spend the $200 billion on “dark fiber” details that $200 billion in tax breaks were given to telecom carriers to upgrade consumer, last-mile connections. The “reference” sites for the $200 billion figure seem awfully spammy to me and the 1996 Telecom Reform, Wikipedia article lacks details, so I’m unclear on the actual terms of those tax breaks. I do know that I’m still lacking connectivity greater than 1.5 mbps (as is everyone not in a Fios fiber or 20 mbps cable beta area) and that, if true, this point could carry a lot of weight against the telecom carriers lobbying for stricter control of traffic on their networks.

As for the technical aspects of why search and aggregation work best with less content and in smaller communities –

Recent research indicates that search has a reverse effect than is commonly assumed, because it encourages a higher volume of consumption:

in spite of the rich-get-richer dynamics implicitly contained in the use of link analysis to rank search hits, the net effect of search engines on traffic appears to produce an egalitarian effect, smearing out the traffic attraction of high-degree pages. Our empirical data clearly shows a sublinear scaling relation between referral traffic from search engines and page in-degree. This seems to be in agreement with the observation that search engines lead users to visiting about 20% more pages than surfing alone

I suspect that aggregators follow the same patterns and encourage even greater consumption than the input-required world of search terms. If you feel dumber it’s probably a result of the content itself and not the aggregator.

As for the mathematical aspects of aggregation and search, I agree with niblettes that the value of search and aggregators drops as the number of inputs (web pages) and community (user feedback) grows. Instead of following niblette’s suggested attractor model, I think the decreasing value of search and aggregation is due to the nonlinearity of content contributed a big community (like digg’s front page) which results in the creation of unstable bifurcations and the onset of chaos. Nonlinearity may work stylistically for Tarantino, but it’s hard to follow a newspaper if you can’t tell the difference between ads, classifieds, and articles (…also why anthropologists must devote so much time to what they do).

Tags: search, aggregator, content, aggregation, quality, Memeorandum, digg, search, quality, logic, Google

Despite all the talk about whether Web 2.0 is turning in to “Bubble 2.0″ there is no way to confirm it unless bubble prices start hitting the markets. Om’s Babble not Bubble 2.0* points out that startup costs, VC investments, and market exits are all low, a good sign that there isn’t a bubble. Regardless, even if VCs and M&As heat up and start throwing money around it still won’t be a bubble until the “regular Joe’s” start throwing cash into the pot so the big players can cash out.

I’ll stop this speculation of my own - and just wait to see if Traffic.com, the next guy, or the next guy go big.

Tags: web, bubble, 2.0, Traffic.com, IPO, OpenIPO, market, VC, speculation, AJAX, map

I suspect that both the Digg and Slashdot audiences are unlikely to have Alexa (formerly a spyware company) software or toolbar installed on their PCs, so the Alexa results for both sites are probably an order of magnitude closer to the traffic of “generic” sites like MSN and Yahoo than alexa shows them to be. Regardless, both Digg and Slashdot represent similar types of sites and both also offer a style of news and editorial that would be difficult to accomplish on the same scale in meatspace.

Truth be told - I think the real story is how many active users Digg, Slashdot have and how both sites handle those audiences. Most news sites that started in traditional media would be thrilled to have that many eyeballs just to flash banner ads to - while Digg and Slashdot have that many readers actively involved in their community and the concern is to keep delivering stories of value to their audience. There’s a lesson to be learned there, although very few websites will ever do more than just talk about it because it’s not just about making easy money on the web.

Also worth mentioning, several commenters on Kottke’s story think Slashdot might be able to bump its mainstream readership by changing its tone, article topics, and/or layout. The editors of Slashdot, however, are probably more likely to make fun of mainstream traffic than try to get their attention. Again, exactly why /. can cause the Slashdot effect and CNN.com is an also ran.

Tags: digg, slashdot, effect, traffic, influence, kottke, readers, audience, easy, money, /.

The phone companies envision a system whereby Internet companies would agree to pay a fee for their content to receive priority treatment as it moves across increasingly crowded networks. Those that don’t pay the fee would find their transactions with Internet users — for games, movies and software downloads, for example — moving across networks at the normal but comparatively slower pace. Consumers could benefit through faster access to content from companies that agree to pay the fees.

It’s absurd that the network carriers are making promises beyond what they have already failed to deliver on. Consumers already pay ISP subscription fees to get just 60-80% of the connection’s rated bandwidth, yet they still see sound-outs during VoIP calls. At the other end of the carriers’ networks, content providers do have quality of service (QoS) worries, but it isn’t the network carriers delivering solutions to help them. Despite all the service level agreements in the world - every major content provider is already connected to the internet via multiple carriers and uses content delivery network (CDN) providers, companies like Akamai, Digital Island, and Xcelera, to maintain their own QoS levels.

There isn’t a chance that trying to take a slice of the content delivery pie will be good business for the network and telecom carriers. It may bring in more revenue at first, but good business involves keeping your customers happy enough to want (and even demand) more product. The ISPs are having trouble doing that, but they get greedy as they watch Google and iTunes pull in cash by using their networks. If they want to be content providers, then the ISPs should get into the market and see just how competitive it is. Instead the carriers cut risk by adopting a “utility” business model with subscription services and ’stable and predictable future revenue’. Stable and predictable earnings are risk-free though and don’t deliver some upside to annual earnings for execs looking to get rich on stock options. Instead the carriers could start provisioning their networks to reduce the quality of their product - instead of making a better product the carriers will want to be “paid off” like mob intimidators.

Carriers and ISPs surely see good business as anything that juices the stock price, as evidenced by already poor service levels, but it’s likely to bite them in the tail soon enough. I have no doubts that big ISPs will use even worse service quality to drive both content providers and subscribers to pay more for “better service”. The proposal cited above may be carefully-worded but I imagine service quality will drop unless someone pays up. The door for new network providers is just opening wider and wider. Whether it’s Google turning on dark fiber, Intel building its own WiMax network, or a content provider starting direct delivery - the company that figures out “connection delivery” the same way that Google figured out “information delivery” stands to be a major competitor in a very short time.

Amd, while I like this plugin and most of the fancy interfaces on the web now, but I’m not an average user. The funny thing about user interfaces on the web is that they’re getting faster as more javascript (aka AJAX) features are added. Wonder how long it’s going to take to put web apps into the semi-unusable state that most desktop apps present to users - bet it happens before we hit two billion people online.

Google Print has implemented protection for copyright holders (and to protect themselves from copyright holders) so Steve’s technique doesn’t work well in most books. Not long after the idea of reading entire books by searching Google Print with terms like “and | but | of | a | on | or | the | from | I | you | it” came out - Google shows about two pages of results before informing you that “Your search is too general. Please try again with a more specific query.“. Google Print also requires users to be signed in to a Google account before viewing whole pages of books at all. Once someone is signed in Google tracks page-views on a per-book basis and restricts viewing to just 10-20 total pages in most books. Books with more pages available for viewing are typically presented with the permission of the copyright holder, as the notice “Provided by O’Reilly through the Google Books Partner Program” on pages of both Podcasting Hacks and Google Hacks indicates, or are copyright-free.

Example of restrictions in an un/semi-restricted book, Podcasting Hacks:
The book Podcasting Hacks, which Steve Rubel uses as an example, is unrestricted enough that O’Reilly has probably granted permission for it to be almost entirely available. Nevertheless, some content can not be accessed regardless of the search terms or method of viewing: try to access page #173 in Podcasting Hacks and let me know if you’re successful. I wasn’t able to view page #173 with Steve’s method, the list-of-all-pages method, or by any other search of page-specific terms.

Example of a restricted book with more typical restrictions, Google Hacks:
Using my own and two other Google accounts, I found that I can’t read more than 12 pages from Google Hacks before I see the message:

You have reached your viewing limit for this book (why?). You may continue browsing to view unrestricted or already viewed pages, or visit the About this Book page.

Additionally, page #7 is restricted altogether from viewing - and if I had more accounts to test with I’m sure I would find other restricted pages.

It’s likely that smart publishers, a group I think includes Tim O’Reilly, are finding a balance of promotion and sales by releasing slower/older content via Google Print. and, judging from the layers of page-count restrictions and even page-specific limitations, I suspect that Google Print is really becoming a tool for promoting publications, rather than a tool for reading printed content for free.

Well, if you also haven’t forgotten that Yahoo bought blo.gs in mid-June this year and that Yahoo promptly “broke” the ability to add new links to blo.gs favorites for almost 6 months - then the current del.icio.us one hour maintenance outage (or see image below) won’t strike you as surprising. Unless my internet connection is stuck in a hole and my DNS isn’t updating right, the current del.icio.us outage started around 6pm PST and is still going 6 hours later:

Is Yahoo doing maintenance, rebuilding these sites from scratch, or trying to completely devalue their new investments?

Update: Sometime in the past 6 hours (it’s 6am PST) del.icio.us has been brought back online. I haven’t noticed any obvious changes. Has anyone else? Maybe the greatly extended blo.gs outage is actually due to major architectural or security issues…

Search is the new distribution channel.
With the democratization of distribution created by the web no company can produce even a large fraction of available content, but it is still possible to index and search the majority of content. Thus, better search engines actually serve as improved distribution channels and, like all media channels before, the profits are in advertising. Google’s income is in the intelligence or their advertising engine (AdSense), but without an intelligent search engine there would not be enough traffic for AdSense to be more than another also-ran. With Yahoo, MSN, and others quickly eroding Google’s lead in search relevance there is a risk that Google’s traffic growth might slow or cease, reducing their revenue growth and related stock price.

Links built Google’s massive traffic.
Returning contextual search results is difficult because it’s relatively easy to create relevant-looking variables to feed to a relevancy-seeking program, like a search engine algorithm. It was the use of hyperlinks as a variable in search relevancy that allowed Google to return dramatically improved search results versus competitors. Links aren’t contained in the actual page being indexed, so they are harder to fake the way that page variables or content can be faked to skew the context of a page. Now, all major search engines are using hyperlinks in their algorithms and content providers & spammers alike focus on link-building to get listed in search engines. This results in a greatly decreased value of hyperlinks. Just like keywords, meta tags, and contextual language filters did before - links increasingly fail to build relevant context for search results or to differentiate one search engine from another. Without “better” search results Google may lose its key differentiator and its ability to grow search as its primary source of traffic and ad revenue.

Web usage data is the next indexing variable.
A pure search provider has no traffic data available to collect other than referrers and click data on its own results, there’s just nothing else to collect. Referrals just point out who the most popular sites on the web are and click throughs are largely based on the position or order of search results - it’s bad data to base the relevance of search results on. Broad web usage data, like the click-out and viewing-time data in the aforementioned Google Analytics, is the next variable that can be used to return relevant search results. That data is one step more removed from the control of website builders and one step closer to the uses of web surfers, making it even harder to than links to bend and create fake relevance with.

Does Google realize the value yet?
Google is an excellent position to collect a large amount of web usage data from their own web services, 3rd-party sites displaying ads, and sites using their Analytic service. Increasingly, their suite of products appears to be tuned toward gathering data and not just to drive traffic search traffic. I am convinced that Google has already realized the value of usage data in determining context. What I do not think Google understands yet is how to properly use the collected data to determine context.

How to discover the “TrafficRank” algorithm?
Trying to extract an algorithm from user click-out and viewing-time will be harder than it was to build PageRank. PageRank was built with only two variables (# links in and # links out) while the traffic data is statistical in nature - making curve-fitting and “inexact” statistics necessary. The missing data is also more complex; PageRank is normalized so missing links in from an index doen’t heavily skew it, but the nature of users not on Google’s websites does create a skew. I suspect that the web users Google does have data on are heavily skewed toward the technical and bandwidth-hungry elite, since many low-bandwidth and unskilled users start their web surfing from the default AOL or MSN home pages.

Have they already started building it?
Remember the furor over eval.google.com and Google’s use of human testers? The data built from that testing are likely to be very relevant when compared to real web usage data. I’m educated as an engineer and one of the things engineers loved most about university lab courses was the ease of getting “great” results. It’s easy to curve-fit and statistics are fungible when there’s only one side to the data. The best thing Google can do to test the traffic data will be to build a small, neutral dataset of user behavior, or several small datasets with know skews that can be cross referenced to the large traffic dataset. By using eval.google.com to mirror the link neigborhoods of a typical blog network and an AOL network the “skew” I suggested earlier could be measured - and eliminated.

…BTW, if anyone from any of the GAMY search engines is still reading (yeah, I’ve even bored myself by now), drop me an email “myname” @ gmail.com (my name is mikebijon). I did some studies a while back that cross referenced total area population and population density using the Poisson distribution (fun with statistics again…) that just might be relevant to what analyzing web usage might yield. I’d love to hear if that’s true.

In a recent article I wrote about Windows Mobile 5.0 I’ve criticized the new OS and ActiveSync heavily for their problems - maybe I just have unrealistic expectations of the biggest software company in the world… I’ve also been playing with the Windows Live services and am disappointed - maybe I just have unrealistic expectations of the biggest software company in the world…

Microsoft really needs to sell to the needs of their current software users before they embrace and extend to the entertainment markets. For another $20 a year I’d love to do away with ActiveSync on the desktop and connect the PDA to a Windows Live account - though it will probably take another 2 years even though ActiveSync 4 already speaks TCP/IP. In the meantime, Microsoft is trying to figure out how to deliver enough value in their pseudo-Google services to bring in viewers to click their ads - and failing to deliver versions of Windows Mobile with all the fuctionality many users want.

Maybe a trackback to Scoble will at least help someone at Microsoft realize that they can actually make some money from this services thing if they stay focused small features that will sell to current Microsoft users. Then, if Microsoft still wants in on “the media thing” just buy out Sling in two years, assuming Apple hasn’t already done it better.

and | but | of | a | on | or | the | from | I | you | it

There should be enough natural language that the pages gaps are less than 5 pages long - letting you “next page” through the gaps. I’ve already found one exception, Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Complexity. Anyone have suggestions to improve on my search string above?

Update: Just one day later, they didn’t take long… Google Print now places a limit on the number of pages you can view in any single book.

It’s not to say that Microsoft will enforce the schema documented in their new patent app or that the application will be approved or restricted in light of prior art. Nonetheless, I wonder if Big Brother’ish enforcement of licensing will really be more profitable for Microsoft. As a major software publisher trying to stay ahead of free, open source competitors I wouldn’t risk alienating customers by shutting down their systems. System shutdown is included in Microsoft’s real-time enforcement patent app:

The system receives digitized licenses associated with computer applications in a secure license store. The licenses are then monitored and compared with the actual use by users to determine compliance with licenses. If users employ an application in violation of licensing terms then corrective action can be taken such as providing warnings and/or shutting down or denying access to a licensed application.

With malware snooping on every 2nd PC and Google “anonymously” recording every page viewed, can anyone say they didn’t expect a major software vendor to enforce licensing over the internet? After all, even the auto companies are investigating ways to shut off your car when you stop paying the bills. Then again, a patent doesn’t mean anyone can actually pull it off. Odds are both Microsoft and an auto major will bungle their implementations and lock half their customers out of their cars AND computers…

Thanks to the IP news at dave’s district for catching recent Microsoft patent apps.

For anyone browsing for web controls, take a look at Andy’s MetaBuilders site and the 25+ free controls and his multi-view navigation bar. Even more impressive, all of them come with full source code and detailed help files.