Feedster News Alerts are like Google News Alerts that cover blogs instead of mainstream news sources. Useful for checking blog or news coverage on very specific topics.
While news alerts services like these are useful, they have severe limitations. First, it's a pain to set up these services, providing lists of specific keywords that match your interests, then refining them if they return too many or too few results. Second, as anyone who's used these services knows, you rapidly become saturated by the unprioritized flood of news alerts e-mails coming into your inbox.
Combining all the e-mails and properly prioritizing the combined results would be a step in the right direction. At the extreme, when everything is easy and well prioritized, you may end up with something that looks a lot like the Daily Findory News.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Monday, May 10, 2004
Interview with Craig Silverstein from Google
Interesting interview with Craig Silverstein from Google. A brief discussion of personalization:
- Q: There are some personalisation tools emerging. Amazon's A9.com and MSN are using different techniques. Google's tool is a little bit more like, "Give us information, and we will help you out," and the others take the approach, "We will learn from you, and then we will help you out." Tell me why your approach is superior.
A: In the latter scenario, where first you learn, and then you help the visitor out, you have two places where the computer has to make intelligent judgments. I am not saying that is not an interesting or promising approach, but it does put more strain on the computer. When you tell it what your interests are, then the computer only has to be intelligent to use that information to try to help you out. They are both part of the same goal of trying to help people out with personal information -- it is just a matter of how you get there. We will be seeing more of this in the future.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Kill eBay, Vol. 2
An interesting article in the New York Times claims the biggest threat to eBay's growth may be from traditional retailers. Traditional retailers offer much better customer service, especially on returns.
- As eBay sells more new goods, the brand's lack of a money-back guarantee will become a hindrance. "History suggests that in order to remain competitive, retailers must match the offerings of others," Professor Koehn said. "EBay is unlikely to be an exception."
Friday, May 07, 2004
Bringing sense to web advertising
Google's $30-50B IPO valuation means investors are making strong assumptions about Google's future growth. Where will that growth come from?
At 40-50% of the worldwide search market, Google is close to saturating its core market. Any additional search market share will be fought tooth-and-nail by Yahoo and MSN. New products may offer some opportunity for traffic growth, but not on the scale required to support Google's lofty valuation.
But, Google doesn't need to drive traffic on its site to drive advertising revenue. Through the Google AdSense program, Google's ads are distributed across the web, already accounting for 22% of revenue in 2004. Google can grow revenue by helping other sites with advertising.
And other sites do need help. Despite evidence that big flash banner ads and popups cause long-term reductions in traffic, marketers seem addicted to them. Marketers ignore the long-term costs and optimize for short-term clickthrough rates. Sites like Salon have gone even further, requiring clickthrough on multipage full screen ads before being able to view content. Annoying is in.
But advertising doesn't have to be annoying. By targetting the right customers, marketers can get their message in front of people who are interested in that message. Google ads are remarkably successful with unobtrusive, text-only ads. How do they do it? The ads are targetted and optimized. Ads are matched to relevant searches and sites. Ads are optimized; ads that attract clickthroughs are shown more frequently and ads that don't appear to be working are quickly removed. Google ads are so well targetted and optimized that they're helpful, often yielding the exact product or information you were looking for with your search.
Google isn't the only one doing text-only ads. But their product has some unusual characteristics. Any site, no matter how small, can buy ads or sell advertising space using Google AdWords and Google AdSense. And Google's impressive infrastructure, in-house expertise, and substantial market share should allow them to produce higher quality targetting than the competition.
AdSense is the future growth channel for Google. As Google grows AdSense, it will change the face of web advertising. Welcome to the new world.
At 40-50% of the worldwide search market, Google is close to saturating its core market. Any additional search market share will be fought tooth-and-nail by Yahoo and MSN. New products may offer some opportunity for traffic growth, but not on the scale required to support Google's lofty valuation.
But, Google doesn't need to drive traffic on its site to drive advertising revenue. Through the Google AdSense program, Google's ads are distributed across the web, already accounting for 22% of revenue in 2004. Google can grow revenue by helping other sites with advertising.
And other sites do need help. Despite evidence that big flash banner ads and popups cause long-term reductions in traffic, marketers seem addicted to them. Marketers ignore the long-term costs and optimize for short-term clickthrough rates. Sites like Salon have gone even further, requiring clickthrough on multipage full screen ads before being able to view content. Annoying is in.
But advertising doesn't have to be annoying. By targetting the right customers, marketers can get their message in front of people who are interested in that message. Google ads are remarkably successful with unobtrusive, text-only ads. How do they do it? The ads are targetted and optimized. Ads are matched to relevant searches and sites. Ads are optimized; ads that attract clickthroughs are shown more frequently and ads that don't appear to be working are quickly removed. Google ads are so well targetted and optimized that they're helpful, often yielding the exact product or information you were looking for with your search.
Google isn't the only one doing text-only ads. But their product has some unusual characteristics. Any site, no matter how small, can buy ads or sell advertising space using Google AdWords and Google AdSense. And Google's impressive infrastructure, in-house expertise, and substantial market share should allow them to produce higher quality targetting than the competition.
AdSense is the future growth channel for Google. As Google grows AdSense, it will change the face of web advertising. Welcome to the new world.
Friday, April 30, 2004
Findory launches news by e-mail and RSS feeds
Findory News is doing a live beta test of daily e-mail delivery of Findory News and personalized RSS news feeds. Fun stuff.
Findory News by E-mail is like getting a personalized newspaper delivered to your front door daily, a newspaper with just the news you need to see.
With the personalized RSS feed, you can read Findory News on My Yahoo! or in any other RSS reader. Using services like FeedRoll or Jawfish, it's easy to post your personalized Findory News headlines on your blog or home page. Rather than put generic top headlines on your site, you can post a news feed that shows your readers your personalized headlines, the news that most interests you!
Findory News by E-mail is like getting a personalized newspaper delivered to your front door daily, a newspaper with just the news you need to see.
With the personalized RSS feed, you can read Findory News on My Yahoo! or in any other RSS reader. Using services like FeedRoll or Jawfish, it's easy to post your personalized Findory News headlines on your blog or home page. Rather than put generic top headlines on your site, you can post a news feed that shows your readers your personalized headlines, the news that most interests you!
Google Cluster Architecture
Another good paper describing Google's cluster in a fair amount of detail.
One fascinating part of the paper describes the "docservers" that provide the snippet of the search result that contains your keyword. These docservers require "access to an online, low-latency copy of the entire Web. in fact, because of replication ..., Google stores dozens of copies of the Web on its servers."
While the docservers probably only need to store text copies of the page (no images, flash, html, etc.) and can compress the data, it's still a staggeringly large amount of data. Google quite literally stores a copy of the entire web to implement their snippet feature.
One fascinating part of the paper describes the "docservers" that provide the snippet of the search result that contains your keyword. These docservers require "access to an online, low-latency copy of the entire Web. in fact, because of replication ..., Google stores dozens of copies of the Web on its servers."
While the docservers probably only need to store text copies of the page (no images, flash, html, etc.) and can compress the data, it's still a staggeringly large amount of data. Google quite literally stores a copy of the entire web to implement their snippet feature.
More on Google IPO
Of the many articles on Google's IPO today, Battelle's analysis is particularly insightful. The New York Times points out that the exact offering is e * $1B or $2,718,281,828. Definitely an unconventional company.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
A real personalized search from Google?
A Reuters article claims that, "Google is already working on a personalized search engine that learns what individuals like, find relevant or prefer to avoid." That's clearly not Google's current personalized prototype. Could they be building something more?
Latest Microsoft rant
Microsoft is truly remarkable sometimes. If you apply Service Pack 1 to WinXP (which you better do if you want to patch critical security holes), the patch includes a fix to a buffer overflow in zip folders. Turns out that fix introduces a new bug that causes any zip folders to fail to extract any file that contains a comma in the file name. This bug was discovered over a year ago and Microsoft still hasn't provided a fix. If your system is a current, patched version of WinXP, you have this bug on your machine.
Zip folders are commonly used for backups and data transfers. Hundreds of thousands of people must have been impacted by this bug, but it goes unrepaired. I discovered this bug when I restored some of my files from a zipped backup folder and later noticed several critical ones were missing.
It's truly remarkable that these kinds of problems go uncorrected by Microsoft. But an internal Microsoft memo sent to Bill Gates makes it clear why: "There is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system. It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times... It would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move."
Zip folders are commonly used for backups and data transfers. Hundreds of thousands of people must have been impacted by this bug, but it goes unrepaired. I discovered this bug when I restored some of my files from a zipped backup folder and later noticed several critical ones were missing.
It's truly remarkable that these kinds of problems go uncorrected by Microsoft. But an internal Microsoft memo sent to Bill Gates makes it clear why: "There is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system. It is this switching cost that has given customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO, our lack of a sexy version at times... It would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move."
Craigslist: More with less
John Battelle has posted an interesting chart that shows that Craigslist is now in the top 25 for web traffic, all with only 14 employees. Impressive.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Media frenzy on Google IPO
964 news articles speculating on Google's IPO and counting. Isn't this a bit much?
Update: Google has announced their IPO. Interesting that they're using a non-traditional auction designed to allow the general public access to the IPO shares. This method should be better for almost everyone by generating a real market in the IPO shares instead of the more traditional technique of allocating the IPO shares to insiders.
Update: Excellent quote from Lawrence Ausubel from U of Maryland on the Google IPO dutch auction (from a NYT article).
Update: Google has announced their IPO. Interesting that they're using a non-traditional auction designed to allow the general public access to the IPO shares. This method should be better for almost everyone by generating a real market in the IPO shares instead of the more traditional technique of allocating the IPO shares to insiders.
Update: Excellent quote from Lawrence Ausubel from U of Maryland on the Google IPO dutch auction (from a NYT article).
- You should be relatively indifferent about winning or losing the I.P.O. auction, because if Google does what you expect and selects the I.P.O. price to be the true clearing price, you will have the option to buy at essentially the same price the next day.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Personalized search results from Google Alert
Google Alert is now offering "personalized search results":
No idea how well it works, but it's an interesting development. Since Google is now offering Web Alerts itself, Google Alert does need some way to differentiate itself if it wants to survive.
- SightPoint Personalized Search Results
SightPoint automatically learns which search results are most relevant to you. Your new search results are rated based on results you have clicked on in the past. These relevance ratings, out of five stars, become more accurate over time.
No idea how well it works, but it's an interesting development. Since Google is now offering Web Alerts itself, Google Alert does need some way to differentiate itself if it wants to survive.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Kill Google, Vol. 1
It was easy to speculate on how to kill eBay since I have no love for that company. But I do love Google. This blog has been a Google Love Fest ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]). But even that which we love must die eventually. So the time has come to ask, what could kill Google?
Despite claims that Google is a monopoly, in fact it has less than 40% of the search market, nearly tied with MSN and Yahoo. While there is some evidence that customers are loyal to search engines, switching costs in this business are trivially low. To maintain or grow market share, Google's product needs to be superior to the other offerings in the marketplace. Google needs to innovate, creating a moving target for Yahoo and MSN and keeping ahead of the the hordes of startups nipping at Google's heels. Unlike Google, MSN and Yahoo do not have to innovate to win. They can simply duplicate Google's current product, then use their considerable marketing power to pull customers away from Google. If Google slows down, Microsoft will turn them into another Netscape.
The first threat to Google is internal. Google needs to maintain a culture that produces and delivers innovative new products. So far, Google has done this by hiring some of the brightest and most creative researchers in the world. But, as Google grows, having incredible people isn't enough. Communication becomes difficult in a large organization. Accountability drops, free riding increases. Great prototypes are developed, but never get out the door. People don't know who to contact and how to get things done. Google is well known for having nearly no management -- the controlled chaos of a research lab -- but, unless Google can adjust its organizational structure to its new size, the firm may find its innovation crushed under its own growth.
The second threat to Google is external. Google thrives on innovation, but another's innovation may out-Google Google. Clustering search engines such as Vivisimo may be one threat, but the technique hasn't proved extremely compelling yet. Many are working on question answering systems (e.g. Start from MIT), but Google, with some of the world experts in natural language processing, is well prepared to compete here. Personalization may be one area where Google has been slow to compete. Google Labs has a prototype of personalized search, but it's been widely criticized as ineffective, most likely because of the technique used. A9 is rumored to be developing personalized search. Yahoo's CEO has said that they intend to focus their innovation on personalization. And, while Microsoft has no offering in personalized search, it is taking some steps toward personalized news.
I love Google and would hate to see it fall. But change comes rapidly in internet technology. AltaVista also seemed invincible at its height, as did those before it, yet these companies faded as new techniques eclipsed the old. Google is not invincible. It too can die.
Despite claims that Google is a monopoly, in fact it has less than 40% of the search market, nearly tied with MSN and Yahoo. While there is some evidence that customers are loyal to search engines, switching costs in this business are trivially low. To maintain or grow market share, Google's product needs to be superior to the other offerings in the marketplace. Google needs to innovate, creating a moving target for Yahoo and MSN and keeping ahead of the the hordes of startups nipping at Google's heels. Unlike Google, MSN and Yahoo do not have to innovate to win. They can simply duplicate Google's current product, then use their considerable marketing power to pull customers away from Google. If Google slows down, Microsoft will turn them into another Netscape.
The first threat to Google is internal. Google needs to maintain a culture that produces and delivers innovative new products. So far, Google has done this by hiring some of the brightest and most creative researchers in the world. But, as Google grows, having incredible people isn't enough. Communication becomes difficult in a large organization. Accountability drops, free riding increases. Great prototypes are developed, but never get out the door. People don't know who to contact and how to get things done. Google is well known for having nearly no management -- the controlled chaos of a research lab -- but, unless Google can adjust its organizational structure to its new size, the firm may find its innovation crushed under its own growth.
The second threat to Google is external. Google thrives on innovation, but another's innovation may out-Google Google. Clustering search engines such as Vivisimo may be one threat, but the technique hasn't proved extremely compelling yet. Many are working on question answering systems (e.g. Start from MIT), but Google, with some of the world experts in natural language processing, is well prepared to compete here. Personalization may be one area where Google has been slow to compete. Google Labs has a prototype of personalized search, but it's been widely criticized as ineffective, most likely because of the technique used. A9 is rumored to be developing personalized search. Yahoo's CEO has said that they intend to focus their innovation on personalization. And, while Microsoft has no offering in personalized search, it is taking some steps toward personalized news.
I love Google and would hate to see it fall. But change comes rapidly in internet technology. AltaVista also seemed invincible at its height, as did those before it, yet these companies faded as new techniques eclipsed the old. Google is not invincible. It too can die.
Google research papers
I've posted a few ([1] [2] [3]) papers from researchers now at Google. It's worth noting that Google has a list of some of the papers by researchers at Google, though it's somewhat out of date.
The IR section is particularly interesting, with papers on Craig Silverstein's Scatter-Gather clustering, one of several techniques for finding similar or related web pages, and even an attempt at a personalized newspaper (though it's more customization than personalization, more like My Yahoo than Findory News).
The IR section is particularly interesting, with papers on Craig Silverstein's Scatter-Gather clustering, one of several techniques for finding similar or related web pages, and even an attempt at a personalized newspaper (though it's more customization than personalization, more like My Yahoo than Findory News).
Friday, April 23, 2004
Diebold disaster
The controversy with electronic voting heats up. A California panel has recommend decertifying Diebold and investigating civil and criminal charges against the firm. Update: A compromise has been reached.
Ethanol from waste
More progress in getting energy from waste, this time waste straw, wood, and paper into ethanol. Interesting since current ethanol production from corn uses about as much energy (in growing and processing the corn) as it outputs, so using waste material is an attractive alternative.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Kill eBay, Vol. 1
eBay has announced another good quarter. Is this flea market turned shopping superstore really invincible?
Those who argue that a natural monopoly exists in online auctions claim that the auction site with the most users always is better. Buyers want selection from a large number of sellers and competition between sellers to drive down prices. Sellers want a large number of buyers to get the best price and drive high sales.
Others have argued that any site that has a critical mass of buyers and sellers is competitive. Growing the user base hits a point of diminishing returns. Sufficient sales volumes are sufficient sales volumes. The bar is much lower with this model. You don't have to be bigger than eBay, you just need critical mass.
Whether you believe the natural monopoly, bigger-is-always-better theory or the critical mass theory, there is a way to attack eBay. It is not necessary to be the biggest auction site overall. When a buyer is looking for a used copy of a Harry Potter DVD, all that matters is the number of sellers of the Harry Potter DVD. A competing auction site could focus on a particular category, perhaps computer hardware, CDs, or DVDs, and build scale in this category. Acquire more buyers and sellers in this niche, dominate the category, then move on to the next, chipping away eBay piece by piece. Selling liquidation merchandise might be one way to bootstrap, attracting buyers to a relatively low volume site with low prices.
Amazon.com Auctions failed because it arrogantly attempted to attack eBay head on. Had Amazon focused on dominating specific categories such as books, music, and video, we might be looking at a very different situation today.
Those who argue that a natural monopoly exists in online auctions claim that the auction site with the most users always is better. Buyers want selection from a large number of sellers and competition between sellers to drive down prices. Sellers want a large number of buyers to get the best price and drive high sales.
Others have argued that any site that has a critical mass of buyers and sellers is competitive. Growing the user base hits a point of diminishing returns. Sufficient sales volumes are sufficient sales volumes. The bar is much lower with this model. You don't have to be bigger than eBay, you just need critical mass.
Whether you believe the natural monopoly, bigger-is-always-better theory or the critical mass theory, there is a way to attack eBay. It is not necessary to be the biggest auction site overall. When a buyer is looking for a used copy of a Harry Potter DVD, all that matters is the number of sellers of the Harry Potter DVD. A competing auction site could focus on a particular category, perhaps computer hardware, CDs, or DVDs, and build scale in this category. Acquire more buyers and sellers in this niche, dominate the category, then move on to the next, chipping away eBay piece by piece. Selling liquidation merchandise might be one way to bootstrap, attracting buyers to a relatively low volume site with low prices.
Amazon.com Auctions failed because it arrogantly attempted to attack eBay head on. Had Amazon focused on dominating specific categories such as books, music, and video, we might be looking at a very different situation today.
What is GMail?
Most discussions talk about GMail as just another web-based free e-mail address that happens to have 1G of storage. But that isn't it at all.
GMail asks and answers the question, "What e-mail client would you build if you never had to delete any of your old e-mail?" GMail is designed to organize your information for easy access later. Messages are threaded, part of a conversation on a topic. Searching your mail is emphasized. And, because it's web-based, you can access you mail and any information in your mail from any computer. The 1G of storage is just a means to the end.
GMail asks and answers the question, "What e-mail client would you build if you never had to delete any of your old e-mail?" GMail is designed to organize your information for easy access later. Messages are threaded, part of a conversation on a topic. Searching your mail is emphasized. And, because it's web-based, you can access you mail and any information in your mail from any computer. The 1G of storage is just a means to the end.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Spurl.net web site recommendations
Spurl.net is one of the more interesting web page recommendation systems I've seen. Some of the novel features: No download required. No login required. Doesn't require rating tens of sites before seeing recommendations.
Using it is quite easy. Just drag-and-drop the Javascript bookmark icon into the bookmark bar of your browser. Go to a few of your favorite web sites and click the "Spurl!" bookmark link on each of them. Then, go back to spurl.net to see your web site recommendations.
The user base appears to be very small right now. The site appears to try to generate related sites even when only a couple users have seen a site, so the quality is sometimes laughably bad, but the quality is higher on more popular URLs. It'll be interesting to watch this site as the user base grows.
Using it is quite easy. Just drag-and-drop the Javascript bookmark icon into the bookmark bar of your browser. Go to a few of your favorite web sites and click the "Spurl!" bookmark link on each of them. Then, go back to spurl.net to see your web site recommendations.
The user base appears to be very small right now. The site appears to try to generate related sites even when only a couple users have seen a site, so the quality is sometimes laughably bad, but the quality is higher on more popular URLs. It'll be interesting to watch this site as the user base grows.
The Future of Google Directory
One of the changes in Google's recent redesign was removing Google Directory from the front page. Google Directory is based on DMOZ ODP, but Google has been very slow to update their data over the last couple years. Despite rumors that Google was going to abandon ODP, it appears they're sticking with it for now.
DMOZ and Yahoo both use human editors, a solution that has obvious scalability problems. With Google's deemphasis of DMOZ, one might guess that they're working on their own automated classification of web pages, especially given their in-house expertise in this area. Topix.net has taken a similar approach and done an excellent job automating the categorization of news.
DMOZ and Yahoo both use human editors, a solution that has obvious scalability problems. With Google's deemphasis of DMOZ, one might guess that they're working on their own automated classification of web pages, especially given their in-house expertise in this area. Topix.net has taken a similar approach and done an excellent job automating the categorization of news.
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