August 2004 – Emergic

Feed Search vs Site Search

Jeremy Zawodny writes that “today’s leading search engines weren’t designed to work in a world with millions of feeds.

In the old web, most content never changes. The only exceptions seem to be traditional news outlets (CNN, New York Times, and so on). That means search engines can crawl most sites infrequently and nobody really notices. Missing the last few days worth of stuff isn’t that big a deal as long as you crawl those “news” sites regularly. Also, there’s no way to find out which pages have changed without crawling the whole site, and that’s quite expensive.

In the new world, feeds update frequently. Blogs start to look a like like “news” sites to search engine crawlers. But the updates are contained within the feed, so there’s no need to crawl every link on the site looking for the new stuff. In other words, the cost of staying current on site changes is much lower when feeds are available.

Once this feed stuff hits the tipping point (I think we’re close), things will get really, really interesting. Suddenly these feed sources will be the thing people care about. The model of “search and find” or “browse and read” will turn into “search, find, and subscribe” for a growing segment of Internet users and it will really change how they deal with information on the web.

Rich Skrenta calls it “The Daily Internet.”

The proliferation of incremental content sources, all pumping out new material on a regular basis, is what the mainstream Internet user will consume. It’s the difference between doing research or reading a magazine. At Topix.net we believe that editorial automation is necessary to manage this massive, growing content stream. Other startups like Feedster and Technorati are also focused on improving access to the incremental Internet. This is the future of audience on the net, as well as the next online advertising frontier.

John Battelle adds: “Content is king, search is the king’s phonebook (or index…). I certainly agree, but the two are entirely intertwingled. Google et al do well when content does well, otherwise, what is there to index? The big question, however, is whether Google wants to start playing in the content aggregation space – the new model of ‘search, find, subscribe’ that Jeremy discusses. Yahoo has already decided it does (and the buzz is that more is coming…). So has MSN and AOL. But at the end of the day, the tail is far too big on this beast, and no one place can own the conversation.”

Microsoft and Linux

Forbes has a story about Microsoft’s new tune on Linux:

Microsoft has finally met its match against software that is largely downloadable for free. Investors discount it into the stock price. In a private meeting with executives in May, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer griped that Microsoft’s profits have more than doubled in the past six years, but the stock, at $29, is right where it was back then.

“Linux creates a cloud of uncertainty over Microsoft. Every time Red Hat reports earnings, Microsoft seems to take a hit,” says Goldman Sachs software analyst Richard Sherlund.

The reality is a bit less dire. Microsoft’s revenue climbed 14% this year to $36.84 billion. What Linux is doing is taking away greater opportunities. Few companies running Windows are switching to Linux; most of the converts come from Unix systems supplied by Sun, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

But Linux is doing well in server software and threatens serious inroads into Microsoft’s desktop monopoly. In the next two years Linux server revenue will grow $2.2 billion, while Microsoft’s will grow $2.5 billion, according to research firm Gartner. Linux at some point could be good enough to run home PCs. It has just a 3% market share for desktop software, mostly in schools and overseas (that’s more than Apple’s). Linux vendor Novell is now rolling out Linux for its own employees’ PCs and has 18 customers signed up for trial runs.

Google Browser?

Jason Kottke writes:

Google is investing heavily in JavaScript-powered desktop-like web apps like Gmail and Blogger (the posting inferface is now WYSIWYG). Google could use their JavaScript expertise (in the form of Gmail ubercoder Chris Wetherell) to build Mozilla applications. Built-in blogging tools. Built-in Gmail tools. Built-in search tools. A search pane that watches what you’re browsing and suggests related pages and search queries or watches what you’re blogging and suggests related pages, news items, or emails you’ve written. Google Toolbar++.

A Google Browser is a no-brainer for them and they have to be thinking about it. It’s been obvious for awhile now that Google isn’t a search company, nor are they an advertising company, despite what the experts have to say. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I’m convinced they’re building an operating system (of sorts) from which they will dispense all sorts of applications and data (as well as allow other people/companies to do the same in this fashion). What we could see is the next generation of office suite. Not Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook of Microsoft’s Office or iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, iTunes, and Garageband of Apple’s iLife suite, but Google search, Gmail, Google Browser, Blogger, and perhaps even GIM.

Lenovo Group CEO Interview

Lenovo (formerly, Legend) is China’s largest PC company, with $3 billion in revenues. Excerpts from a Knowledge@Wharton interview with Lenovo chairman, Liu Chuanzhi:

Regarding the domestic market, we have seen that recently Legend’s market share has been declining. The main reason is that our strategy for the past three years was not so well set up. Three years ago, Legend’s market share was about 30%. In order to keep growing, the company decided to diversify into multiple sectors. I don’t think the top management team was well prepared for that. Their attention was distracted from the PC business, which is our core business.

In addition, the domestic market has been changing. Many small- and medium-sized companies have come up in the computer industry. Customers’ behavior has also changed. In the past, most of our orders were large orders that came from government institutions but now there are many orders from small companies and also from private individuals. We also have more foreign competitors that have come into the Chinese market. Their marketing and sales practices were more attuned to this changed customer behavior.

In view of these developments, this year Legend carried out a thorough and careful review of our plans in the past three years. We have decided to retreat from diversification and refocus on the PC business.

For those who are starting their careers and their own business at the startup stage, one word I would say to them is “perseverance.” They should know that everyone faces setbacks and failures — that this is part of everyone’s experience — and that they must stick to their goals and keep trying all the time.

For executives at large companies of Legend’s size, my advice is that they remember that in order to keep the company going over a long time, one success or one setback is not that important. The most important thing is to establish a solid management base. This needs three things. First, you have to find the right people and bring them to your team. Second, you have to decide the right strategy and plan. And third, you have to have strong execution power. With these three points a strong base can be established for the company.

Korean Broadband Miracle

WSJ has a commentary by Thomas Hazlett, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who formerly served as chief economist of the Federal Communications Commission:

78% of Korean households subscribe to broadband, the highest penetration rate in the world and well over twice that of the U.S. While broadband via standard cable modems and digital subscriber line (DSL) services are available for about $27 a month, households paying about $52 a month receive lightning fast 20 mbps VDSL service — connections sufficient to receive live high-definition TV. In short, the apartment dweller in Korea enjoys the same level of Internet service as the largest corporate customers in the U.S. All this in a country of 48 million which, in 1979, had just 240,000 phone subscribers.

Circle back to the government’s original goal: introducing local phone competition. It flopped, at least in the way regulators expected. While minutes of use on KT’s phone network declined by a stunning 12% last year, the primary reason is intermodal competition as consumers switch to mobile phones (with 36 million subscribers) and Internet substitutes. Given ubiquitous broadband, voice traffic is migrating to “Voice over Internet protocol” (VOIP) and e-mail.

Sang-Seung Yi, an economist at Seoul National University, explains that the “Korean broadband market succeeded because of fierce facilities-based competition among Hanaro, Thrunet and KT. This took place not because of ‘smart’ government regulation such as unbundling, but because of the absence of regulation.” Other factors feed the broadband miracle, of course. Koreans live in close proximity to one another, so the cost of building networks tends to be low. The Korean government has subsidized certain applications and invested public monies in broadband and wireless. And the fabled Korean demand for online gaming suggests a hunger for broadband applications.

Will India learn and do the right things?

TECH TALK: An American Journey: Road Warrior

I experienced Wi-Fi for the first time in my life on this trip. In India, there really arent too many hotpots thanks to our governments policy of controlling access to the spectrum for public use. (There are indications now that Wi-Fi may finally be delicenced.) I also bought a notebook which had in-built Wi-Fi support. [I bought the Fujitsu Lifebook S6000 for about $1800 from Frys in Palo Alto. I realised that I had grown addicted to the keyboard of the Fujitsu notebook I had bought more than four years ago. Given the writing that I do, the keyboard was one of the most essential features for me.]

So, armed with a new notebook, I could try out the Wi-Fi connectivity. I didnt have to worry much in California all the hotels that we stayed at had DSL in the rooms. Then, I reached New York. In my wisdom of picking one of the more reasonably priced Manhattan hotels, I picked one which (a) did not have DSL (b) did not have Wi-Fi (c) charged 40 cents a minute for outgoing hotels. I thought this breed of hotels had long vanished!

Luckily, I was in the US. I quick visit to a nearby Starbucks got me a free one day account via T-mobile. [As an alternative, Kinkos is also there for the ones who find themselves in a situation similar to mine.] The next day, I took full advantage of the Wi-Fi at Columbia University (where I had gone for a meeting) which blankets much of the neighbourhood. Sitting on the lawn where I spent many an afternoon 16 years ago brought back old memories.

Wi-Fi is definitely both productivity-enhancing and addicting. The ability to open up a notebook, get connected within seconds to a network (for free or for a fee), and check ones email and browse the Internet is cool! I can only imagine how life will be once WiMax blankets entire geographical areas. In India, of course, we have another interesting option: Reliance Infocomms service allows Internet access from most towns and cities for 40 paise (less than 1 cent) a minute.

On the phone front, I had my India cellphone (Orange account) with international roaming. I had finally gotten rid of my 40-month-old Motorola cellphone for a Nokia 6600. The triband feature worked just fine. Switch it on and it would automatically get a GSM network. (I had to manually select the frequency band in my old Motorola phone.) Of course, the roaming charges are killing this is one place where the cellcos still rip you off. I had an alternative which I did not take I could have bought a local GSM prepaid account (since I had given my India cell number to most of the people I was meeting). On my next trip, I think I will carry an extra cellphone which I can use with a local prepaid card for local calls. I am already looking forward to the next generation of cellphones which have Wi-Fi built-in.

In addition, I have one of those prepaid calling cards in the US which allow me to make calls for a few cents a minute in the US from any landline phone. This way, I dont have to pay the usurious charges of hotel phones.

Taken together, these are the basics that a road warrior needs: hotels with DSL/Wi-Fi access, Wi-Fi enabled notebook, GSM cellphone with triband support and international roaming, and a local calling card/prepaid account for in-country calls. As a backup, I also have a CompuServ dial-up Internet account and a GRIC account (but didnt have to use either of them on this trip). Being connected is critical thats the only way we could have ensured that we did as many meetings as we did!

Tomorrow: Travel Vignettes

Continue reading TECH TALK: An American Journey: Road Warrior

Wireless Grids

[via Slashdot] IEEE Internet Computing has a lengthy report: “Wireless grids, a new type of resource-sharing network, connect sensors, mobile phones, and other edge devices with each other and with wired grids. Ad hoc distributed resource sharing allows these devices to offer new resources and locations of use for grid computing. This article places wireless grids in context, explains their basic requirements, and provides an example implementation that uses a wireless grid for distributed audio recording. Finally, it introduces articles in this special issue on wireless grid architectures and applications.”

A summary by Roland Piquepaille.

Blogs and the Developing World

Exceprts from an interview with Ethan Zuckerman:

In free market journalism you’re allowed to print whatever stories your audience wants to read. And because you know your audience is more interested in Michael Jackson than Jesse Jackson, you’re going to run fewer stories on policy and more on the abuse of boys on Neverland Ranch. Unless you get some extremely strong current of countervailing opinion, your coverage tends to fall towards the lowest common denominator. That’s why the international news hole in domestic television coverage has shrunk to almost nothing in recent years. The assumption is that no one’s interested.

That’s why a blogging community that pays attention to the rest of the world is so important. If bloggers talk about what’s happening in Africa, say, that not only means that more people have access to information about what’s going on there, it also means that there’s a countervailing force which shows the editors at the New York Times that people are interested enough in these issues to read about them.

One of the kinds of bridges I’d like to build is between talk radio and blogging. For much of the world, talk radio shows are their blogs: you have something to say, you find a platform to say it on, lots of people can hear you say it and they respond to it. Encouraging people to blog in Ghana is all well and good, but at the moment, most of the interesting debate there is happening on talk radio.

What’s interesting about digital technology is not just that it lets you create tools and hand them out to large audiences, but that once you figure out how to use those tools you’re able to build new tools for your own local, specific purposes, but in ways that contribute to the rest of the world as well. It’s not just about getting computers into hospitals and schools. What it’s really about is ensuring that we have software developers all over the world who can help those doctors and teachers design the tools they need.

Telecom Disruption

WSJ writes about how cable, Internet and wireless are hurting the phone networks and threatening their business model:

The Bells have lost some 28 million local phone lines since the end of 2000 — a drop of more than 18%. This is the first time since the Great Depression that phone companies have seen their lines decline. The Bells are now losing 4% of their residential lines a year.

Cablevision Systems Corp. signed up 115,000 phone subscribers in just over seven months in its New York region. Cox Communications Inc., the Atlanta-based cable company, is already the 12th-largest phone company in the country, with 1.1 million Internet and traditional phone customers. Comcast Corp., the nation’s biggest cable company, plans to offer Internet phone service to 40 million homes by the end of next year. And Internet phone start-ups like Vonage Holdings Corp. and Skype Technologies SA are signing up thousands of customers.

Behind the telephone earthquake is a giant force in business history: Just a few years after the Internet investment bubble spectacularly burst, the Web is now maturing and irrevocably transforming commerce. Today phone calls — just like music, photos, and video — can be turned into digital information and delivered much like e-mail over the Internet.

Marketing Book

Brad Feld writes about a book entitled “Your Marketing Sucks.”

This book reinforced a lot of messages around using that thing that I refer to as demand creation to generate value in your business. I knew I’d at least enjoy the book (even if it wasn’t good) when the first chapter started out with the rule that “Marketing is not about spending money on such things as advertising, direct mail, and P.R. Those are just tools. Marketing is about growing your business – its revenues, profit, and valuation.” Ok – well – duh – but it’s often overlooked. When the author started the next chapter with “Most companies make salesmanship the last step in the marketing process. Most companies are wrong: Salesmanship should have come first” I was hooked – at least for the hour it took me to read the book.

While the book has all the flaws of today’s typical business book (author platitudes followed up by mediocre and often self-serving examples, desperate need of a better editor, and reader fatigue after about 150 pages), it’s still a worthwhile book for a CEO struggling with demand creation (I mean marketing).