Emergic

Mobile as Tracker

Now, as more of the handsets are equipped to use the Global Positioning System, the satellite-based navigation network, we are on the verge of enjoying services made possible only when information is matched automatically to location. Maps on our phones will always know where we are. Our children cant go missing. Movie listings will always be for the closest theaters; restaurant suggestions, organized by proximity. We will even have the option of choosing free cellphone service if we agree to accept ads focused on nearby businesses.

None of this entails anything exotic. The technology has been ready for a while, but not the customers. Prospective benefits have seemed paltry when placed against privacy concerns. Who will have access to our location information present and past? Can carriers assure us that their systems are impervious to threats from stalkers and other malicious intruders or neglectful employees or from government snoops without search warrants? Contemplating worst-case scenarios, our hands holding these very mobile devices have been frozen, hesitant to turn the location beacon on. Are we finally ready to flip the switch?

Widgets for Marketing

WSJ writes:

Ms. Powell and many other marketers see sponsoring widgets as a promising route to consumers because they integrate advertising onto the Web page. It is a more-relevant approach than banner advertising, she says, and less annoying than video ads that take over the screen. Widgets are also one of the only ways marketers can get inside MySpace pages because the popular News Corp. social-networking site doesn’t sell advertising on individual members’ pages.

Most types of widgets also offer the marketers the chance to monitor eyeballs, because a user’s click on one of these live features can be counted as easily as a click on a banner ad.

“I don’t believe in banner advertising,” Ms. Powell says. “It’s important to create content that speaks to different audience segments where they are.”

Enterprise 2.0

Andrew McAfee writes:

I met yesterday with David Deal, Ray Velez, and Amy Vickers from Avenue A | Razorfish, a 1000 person, $190 million interactive services firm headquartered in Seattle. AARF helps clients with digital marketing and advertising, with their customer-facing websites, and also with their Intranets and Extranets.

What I found most interesting about the company was its own Intranet. To hear David, Ray, and Amy tell it, the company’s traditional static Intranet — the place where an employee would go to look up benefits information or peruse the latest press releases — still exists, but has been marginalized by a suite of Enterprise 2.0 tools.

Personal Recommendation Engines

Fortune writes:

Recommender systems like Whattorent.com are sprouting on the Web like mushrooms after a hard rain. Dozens of companies have unveiled recommenders recently to introduce consumers to Web sites, TV shows, other people – whatever they can think of.

The idea isn’t new, of course. In a time of impersonal big-box stores and self-checkout stations, independent shopkeepers compete by doing this sort of thing every day.

WSJ broke the story about an internal Yahoo memo: “An internal document by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo senior vice president, says Yahoo is spreading its resources too thinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread.”

NYTimes had more on Yahoo. Eric Jackson wrote an open letter to the Yahoo founders.

Forbes Fictional 15

A nice, somewhat-funny story from Forbes on the assumed riches of fictional people:

The rich may be different than you and me–but not nearly as different as the characters that comprise the Forbes Fictional 15, our annual listing of fiction’s very wealthiest. This year’s selection includes a duck, a wizard, a Nigerian prince and even a plumber. Aggregate (fictional) net worth? $111 billion.

The biggest change to this year’s list comes at the very top. For the first time in the Fictional 15’s history, Santa Claus has been unseated from the number-one spot, replaced by defense contractor Oliver ”Daddy” Warbucks.

Richie Rich is at No. 4 and Mr. Monopoly at No. 6.

StumbleUpon

Jeremy Wagstaff recommends StumbleUpon.com as a “more personal way to search the web.”

It happens through a service that allows users to recommend Web sites to others who then “stumble upon” them according to their interest. Think of StumbleUpon as a community of foodies passing suggestions to each other about which restaurant to visit. If I find a Web site — a restaurant in my analogy — that I like, I’ll make a note of it, tag it with a category or two (history, film, railways) and post it to my StumbleUpon collection of bookmarks so others can find it. When I’m browsing (going out for dinner) and I need some suggestions, I’ll click on a button marked ‘Stumble!’ in the special toolbar that StumbleUpon installs on my browser and be taken off to a page selected by another member of the community; the choice is random, but narrowed down by my interests. This is itself a useful guide, since I’m leveraging the shared interests of thousands of other people.

TECH TALK: Cyworld: India

Danah Boyd recently put forth a definition of a social networking site:

A “social network site” is a category of websites with profiles, semi-persistent public commentary on the profile, and a traversable publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profile.

To clarify:

1.Profile. A profile includes an identifiable handle (either the person’s name or nick), information about that person (e.g. age, sex, location, interests, etc.). Most profiles also include a photograph and information about last login. Profiles have unique URLs that can be visited directly.

2.Traversable, publicly articulated social network. Participants have the ability to list other profiles as “friends” or “contacts” or some equivalent. This generates a social network graph which may be directed (“attention network” type of social network where friendship does not have to be confirmed) or undirected (where the other person must accept friendship). This articulated social network is displayed on an individual’s profile for all other users to view. Each node contains a link to the profile of the other person so that individuals can traverse the network through friends of friends of friends….

3.Semi-persistent public comments. Participants can leave comments (or testimonials, guestbook messages, etc.) on others’ profiles for everyone to see. These comments are semi-persistent in that they are not ephemeral but they may disappear over some period of time or upon removal. These comments are typically reverse-chronological in display. Because of these comments, profiles are a combination of an individuals’ self-expression and what others say about that individual.

The definition is relevant in the Indian context. Social Networking sites in India are starting to happen. Google’s Orkut has the early advantage, but there are many others which have been launched or are in the pipeline. One factor that needs to be taken into account in India is that PC and Internet usage, though high in numbers, is not free and always available. Much of the Internet access happens from cybercafes for which users have to pay by the minute. This tends to limit the potential of social networking via a computer.

In India, I think mobiles will have to be the primary device for social networking because they are with us all the time. But mobiles too have their inherent limitations. Data networks are still quite expensive to use. Getting applications on phones is hard. SMS and voice are the only two universal interaction modes available on all phones. The challenge and opportunity lies in leveraging the mobile as a social networking platform keeping in mind the future. Phones are becoming multimedia computers, data networks will become more affordable, and the mobile internet will become much more of a reality. Japan and South Korea have demonstrated early successes in combining mobiles and social networking. India too can do the same in the next 12-18 months. In that context, we have to more to learn from a Cyworld than a MySpace or a Facebook. Keeping in mind Danah Boyd’s definition and translating it for India is what will create India’s Cyworld. The jigsaw puzzle is waiting to be solved.

Continue reading TECH TALK: Cyworld: India

Augmented Reality

Technology Review writes:

A Nokia research project could one day make it easier to navigate the real world by superimposing virtual information on an image of your surroundings. The new software, called Mobile Augmented Reality Applications (MARA), is designed to identify objects viewed on the screen of a camera phone.

The Nokia research team has demonstrated a prototype phone equipped with MARA software and the appropriate hardware: a global positioning system (GPS), an accelerometer, and a compass. The souped-up phone is able to identify restaurants, hotels, and landmarks and provide Web links and basic information about these objects on the phone’s screen. In addition, says David Murphy, an engineer at Nokia Research Center, in Helsinki, Finland, who works on the project, the system can also be used to find nearby friends who have phones with GPS and the appropriate software.

Buddy Stats

[via Thejo] Fred Stutzman writes:

I came across a Harris Interactive poll entitled Friendship in the Age of Social Networking Websites that contained an interesting statistic – the average number of friends teens keep on respective buddy lists.

The poll found that teen have an average of 52 friends on the IM buddy list, 38 friends entered in their cell phone – but they have 75 friends in SNS. The poll also found a 75% of teens use SNS.