Web3Beat

New Year's Resolutions 2: there is no metadata!

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:46:07 -0500

I just came across an amazingly brilliant post by Glenn McDonald at ITA software (it's been written a while ago, last summer, but just read it entirely now). Do me a favor and read it entirely here: Never Mind the Semantic Web (or, 13 Reasons Not to Let a Computer Scientist Choose a Name (or a Problem)).

I must say, I truly wish for 2009 (yes, I am a bit aggressive in expectations) that we finally get some sense into our community and spend some time working on the positioning of the semantic web/web3.0, or however else you'd like to call it (this in itself a semantic problem, sadly). Glenn has 13 reasons, and hence 13 great points that point us in the wrong direction we've taken. I am going to analyze and ad lib on them in the next posts one by one, because I think this is the juice that we've been missing all along.

For right now, I will pick his 11th point:

" 11. "Metadata". There is no such thing as "metadata". Everything is relative. Everything is data. Every bit of data is meta to everything else, and thus to nothing. It doesn't matter whether the map "is" the terrain, it just matters that you know you're talking about maps when you're talking about maps. (And it usually doesn't matter if the computer knows the difference, regardless...) "

This is brilliant. By obsessive-compulsively talking about metadata as core to the semantic web, we made it sound like an Aristotelian/Platonic concept of "substance", or "essence", as if metadata is an onion's "core", so that when we want to discover/generate metadata, all we have to do is go to metadata's outlets and just get it from there. This very absolutist data modeling philosophy assumes there is a consistent and stable metadata core. The problem is that the onion of data generated on the Internet has no core: it's layers and layers of data. As Glenn eloquently puts it, there is no metadata, or rather, every data is a metadata to another, depending on what you want to build, generate, etc.

Funny how upholders of semantic orthodoxism (there is only one right semantic way, right? as they say) simply created a semantic problem.

What do you think?

Web 3.0 Event East 2009 dates are in! Plus, Web 3.0 2008 speaker presentations are online

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:35:39 -0500

I am happy to announce the dates for the next Web 3.0 Conference & Expo, as we just settled on dates and location for the East conference. As I said in an earlier post, this will be a twice a year event, with the earlier one on the East Coast, and the later, in the Fall, on the West Coast.

In the next few weeks, we will revamp the Web 3 Event Site, the idea being to grow and maintain a stable community. What we're hoping to achieve is to provide an open forum and springboard for mainstreaming Web 3.0. The next one will be on May 19-20, 2009, in New York City, at the New Yorker Hotel. I am hoping this one will be bigger, better, stronger, wider. Wider and more open means no matter what political flavor you're in (whether you believe "web 3.0" is better or not than "semantic web", "contextual web", or what have you, or if you care at all), you're more than welcome to join us in co-creating the next generation web. Content will be updated frequently on the new site (with video interviews of key personalities, articles, relevant syndicated posts from across the web, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter communities, and much more). My personal goal is to help create more than a conference, a "movement" (more on this, and positioning statements in the next few weeks).

Until then, I am glad to announce that speaker presentations are available online now for download, HERE. Keep in mind that not all participants did have a Power Point, as this depended on the session. At our last conference, some sessions were richer by simply having them organized as roundtables for open debate. I hope this is useful. I would also be glad (and will open a forum for your idea submissions in the next few weeks) if you'd like to let me know what are YOU interested in having as YOUR relevant content at our next show. Feel free to email, or post comments here.

Happy Holidays to everyone, and I would like to see you at our next conference!

First cool visualization of the Web 3.0 paradigm for non-dry, technical audiences

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:49:26 -0500

Just stumbled across a very cool visualization of the Web 3.0 or semantic web concept in action, in a very non-dry, non-technical way, here Web 3.0 in action, from ReadWriteWeb. Play the associated YouTube video to experience it. As I said before, what the Web 3.0 community needs, is non-substantive work, in a major way: that is to say, we certainly need the machine learning, ontologists, data modelers, etc. folks to keep working on it, but essentially, most of the technologies needed are already here; they're just not positioned well, or the concept is seen as too geeky and dry as manifested in the rhetoric of the current community members.

What we do need is what I call non-core-to-the-technology (but oh so substantive) pieces to be taken much better care of: product management, marketing, User Interface design, Business Development, pretty much all the "other" functions that would make the 3.0 a reality of scale. As several bloggers mentioned, we have been "sucking" for a while at product marketing (some of our own community activists are even antagonizing it, as it it doesn't matter), and User Interfaces. We lack good produt management and marketing: it's true, the best products need not have billion dollar marketing because "it sells itself", but the 3.0 problem is that we don't have a product yet that sells itself (other than to a bunch of selected, but nonetheless limited number of people). The other thing we lack is good UI which organically, emotionally, shows (rather than explains rationally) the 3.0 benefits. And I think the iPhone app by the two DERI researchers linked above is a great example of UI, and how Web 3.0 acn be shown with great simplicity, relevance, and immediacy without the need to use tons of technical language by well-academized labcoat designers.

What do you think?

Startups on a dime

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:16:15 -0500

Lots of people ask themselves how are we going to build successful startups today, "in this economy", with VC money not going out as often, with Internet titans (see Yahoo layoffs live Twitter-cast here: Yahoo layoffs live), but also many many startups joining the dead pool, or ready to die soon).

So, what's an entrepreneur to do? (Whether Internet or not, whether 3.0 or not). Here's some advice:

1. Cut overhead - no more chocolate, move your headquarters to grandma's basement, etc.

2. Hire right - not quantity, but quality; hire passionate, smart, capable people and empower them. Invest in them financially, organizationally (since social networks are the new big thing now, why not use a post-bureaucratic organizational structure for a change?), and don't burden them with Taylorist type org charts: for instance, location isn't important (virtual startup, anyone?), finance (look at Yahoo who just cut their entire Finance US operations, and moved it all to India), sales (product is the new sales; if your product is good, and makes sense, you don't need Sales), that hot admin, etc.

3. Co-create by focusing on your core competency (and they better not be more than one), on which you can retain ownership of IP, etc. while partnering with like-minded startups (who might be more open to do unto you what you want to do unto them) to cover your other areas. In other words, build ecosystems. You can't do it all by yourself, so why not focusing on what's important to your core of your product (to complete exhaustion), and let your friends help you with the rest?

4. How about innovation networks? Buy and read Wikinomics if you haven't already, or re-read it while taking notes of what changes can you make in your org, process, management to make it nimbler and take advantage of the co-opetition networks?

5. Build most product and market you can BEFORE you go ask for money.

6. Last, but the most important of all, really: make sure your product makes sense (business, marketing, consumer, partner, client/advertiser, etc.) sense. If it doesn't but is just a "cool" idea of yours, drop it. Pick something else up.

I say it's still possible, and now is probably the best (by being the worst market conditions) situation to demonstrate your leadership of yourself, and your product. And I beg you: stop selling vaporware.

Any thoughts?

New Year's Resolution 1: Let the Vaporware Economy Die!

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 20:42:43 -0500

We are all scared of the next year. Lots of tech, business, financial pundits, experts, forecasters, the government, etc. say 2009 will be worse than 2008, so it will be a bumpy road. Being in the bowels of the corporate America day after day, I see faces turn paler and paler; I see "in these economic conditions, you should [...]" -type phrases added to the standard PPT's (while nothing else is yet different in behavior) (see my previous post about this). I have been dissatisfied for a while with the state of affairs in executive decisions in corporate America, no matter the industry: too often I've seen rampant "Veruca Salt" behavior ("but daddy, I want it, I want it, now" - for an excellent post about this metaphor, see my friend Hank Williams' post at The Veruca Salt Economy). Surely, there are a few good people, a few good companies, but overall, I've seen ass backwards decisions, of the "I want it, I want it now daddy", unfounded on sound research, strategy, simply banking on group-think around one to three senior executives that 'wanted it" no matter what: no matter if research or data said otherwise, simply because it "seemed like a good idea at the time". This has been the mode d'emploi in corporate America for a while 9the Enrons, Worldcom's, AIGs, automakers, banks are just the tips of the iceberg that showed their ugly faces in public media). But I believe the problem runs deeper, much much deeper.

Maybe I tend to see things much too connected (we're in the graph era, right?), but I see the Veruca Salt economy (or what I call the "vaporware economy") part of the same root causes with the long lasting overbloating of the US GDP on the side of consumption, and not production; mortgage and debt crisis; overbloating Internet tech 2.0 startups (with unseasoned CEOs barely out of the school desks but receiving insane amounts of investments). This has been an era (and a mentality) of immense pressure to "grow, grow, grow" no matter the implications, or its sources. An era in which the pressure to grow and consume has been so great, that the middle managers (you know, the ones that typically get ideas on the ground, and work towards making it happen) have been squeezed into submission by their executives to get vaporware ideas implemented (I am not talking about any particular industry, I see this whatever the industry is). These are the ideas that have done no research or planning regarding risk, or mapped them to any decent insight into whether there is in fact a demand for the Veruca Salt ideas and projects, etc. etc.

And then the 4th quarter of 2008 came, with the crashes and the bailouts. When I was little, my dad used to drive (pretty fast) on the highway, and I used to open the backseat window and stick my head out. It was a funny feeling: scary, but refreshing; powerful, but invigorating; seemed to change everything (my heart rate was on the rise, my eyes were getting watery, etc.). In a way, I feel the same now (and probably more so in 2009): there will be lots of shakedowns in management, companies will fail, some will succeed, a lot won't. There will be more pressure to go back to the earlier roots of a more conservative growth, a more calculated risk, more research, planning, in other words, less Veruca, more realism. One great article on the management effects of this I read was Dave Morgan's The Right Leaders for the Right Time at Mediapost. And in a way, while still being scared, I am also happy: I can smell the dark clouds right before the storm. I can sense that this economic crisis will make millionaires (don't they say that millionaires are made in a recession?), will get us back to where we needed to be in the first place, in a strong, but refreshing way. Like Dave said: it's easy to be a succesful CEO when the entire economy is running at double digit growth, but the true value of leadership is seen in times of distress.

It seems this is the perfect timing for a drastic and fundamental change in the way we (should) do business. And I don't think it could have been done were it not for this crisis. And so my first New Year's resolution is: I hope that this crisis will bring the Veruca Salt economy, and vaporware ideas, down udner the ground for a long time. Because they weren't right in the first place, but the only reason they got unnoticed was because who's counting when the overall growth is at double digits and the push is for even more? Who would care that a few crazy ideas not backed by any realism would fail? Well, I think it's time to reevaluate how we do business and be more serious about it. What do you think?

More (or less) cowbell "in this economic conditions" ?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:13:17 -0500

Remember Christopher Walken's SNL skit from 2000 where he demands "I gotta have more cowbell"? I can't imagine a better metaphor for what I have been (and continue to be) exposed to lately, after the Economic Crisis of 2008. What I've noticed is that technology companies, marketing agencies, vendors in general, sellers of products of services have continued to do what they've been doing for the past 50 years, but with the "in these economic conditions" prefix attached to their PPT decks, SOWs, new startup pitches, pretty much everything, really.

What's happening is that despite years of research stating that consumer and investor confidence, spending, etc. are to contract in "these economic conditions", I am getting nauseated by unlimited (and quite desperate if not funny) attempts by executives to attach the phrase with hopes of more success. As if four words would change an outcome better than a well thought out product, business idea, or proposal in general. This is the sad state of selling at its best. I have seen: "in these economic conditions [...] you should buy ....." and the list goes on and on: luxury items, travel vacations, invest in more startups.

Some of these things make sense, for instance "more performance marketing, less branding/awareness ad buys"; or, "more optimization, less discretionary spending". In other words, more band for less buck. And that makes sense "in these economic conditions". Also, "more entertainment light fare, more escapism", which also has been historically shown to increase "in these economic conditions". Why am I bringing this up?

Because I believe the era of shove-product-and-see-if-it-sticks is over. At least I hope so. This has a specific meaning for Internet startups and companies in general as they reach out to investors. It means no more spit-and-patch product, more careful consideration of what is truly needed, and also what makes economic sense. It means more optimization, which in turn means more analytics, machine learning work. Well, that doesn't make any sense, you say! Well, I think it does, because only with an analytics mindset (and of course, technologies) you can tighten the belt while continuing to provide value. And quite frankly this doesn't scare me, it makes me happy. It means what has value will continue to thrive, but with tighter operational controls. See recent news of Google tightening up their budget, Yahoo getting a little sick operationally, I can't even mention AOL.

This means: not bigger, faster, better, but smaller (leaner), faster, better. It also means less starting projects with our own egotistical dreams in mind (regardless of their meeting in the middle with market and consumer demand), and more rationalism. Social networks beware: bring new models of monetization of the social element of the web faster! (In fact as I will post tomorrow, there are small signs of that with Facebook's release and particularly positioning of Facebook Connect).

I would like to do a poll on this topic: shall we have more, or less cowbell? Send me your worst cases of pitches following "in these economic conditions" that you've seen, and we'll do a showcase here. My advice: if you have a sound product and business model and you've spent some decent time thinking through it (and doing research and having data to support it), do not worry - stay put, work, and fruits will show; you are allowed to use "in these economic conditions". If you don't, worry big time!

How the Social Networks are increasing Big Brother behavior

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:14:18 -0500

A week ago, I was doing some Internet research on social network monetization, looking for companies, research attempting to build business cases from different perspectives. In particular I was looking for companies that are doing something different than using social networks as umbrella terms to still talk about CPM, etc. etc. in the era of dying traditional advertising. And I found an interesting one, Xtract Ltd.. I then proceeded to download their Case Studies, and of course, I had to fill in personal information (name, address, email, etc.) in order to get to them.

Interesting indeed. But what was even more interesting from my point of view was this: today, I was randomly checking who checked me out on LinkedIn, and guess what: a VP at Xtract did, just recently. Coincidence? I don't think so. In fact it's not that difficult to pull my name and/or email address and do a Google search on me (where one of my top links is indeed my LinkedIn profile), or even just go directly to LinkedIn. I must confess that I am feeling a bit annoyed, because even though I know this information if public, the sales rats are rounding their corners even as I do a candid research online. Then, guess what, I am sure one of the next weeks I will get a phone call at my office with a sales spiel very "personalized" and using perhaps terms that the LinkedIn researcher must've found from my LinkedIn profile (e.g., interests, etc. etc.). And if they check out my blog they will even get more info, supposedly helping them to close a deal much better.

Well "my friends", this is in fact annoying, and it just shows us how important is for the consumer/user to retain contrl of her own information. So when I was talking in recent posts about "personal web", "personal API:, and intelligent services and apps that "know what you want", I certainly did not mean snoopy, Big Brother-ish ones. Of course these will also show up, but the important thing here is those that dream of the next generation personalized services to put at their core, a very strong and flexible/granular user privacy framework. In other words, how do we retain our internet trail, and own it ourselves? Remember when I was proposing that one way to do that is to decouple the channels that our trail happens to be hosted on, from the data that we should own? Yes, that is one, but the other is a very big public scandal (10-fold bigger than the AOL search debacle from a few years ago) that will wake up the consumer data ownership revolution.

Thoughts? Have you also been annoyed by snoopy, useless sales rats using social networks to "personalize" their spiels?

Future of the Web is Personal, not Social; now eat this!

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:22:56 -0500

Just read Doc Searls' post on VRM is personal. You know what? He's right! I hear so much "social, social" this, social that, etc. etc. that I am about to regurgitate it all. I hope I'm not going to walk you into a philosophical (individualist v. collectivist cultures a la Hofstede) debate because it's not my intention, but: I believe the future of the web is individual (with the social component still being subsumed under "individual" because if I enjoy sociality, it's ME that enjoys and therefore allows it, not the other way around). I don't believe in social per se, just as much as I don't believe in individual per se. I guess you can call me a true relativist or practical guy, in that I don't really believe in any regimenting new golden rules. If I let my friends (and invite them to my thousand LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. accounts) is because I am the one in control of who am I exposing my sociality to, with whom, and when. I sometimes feel like being social, I sometimes don't.

And another point where Doc makes complete sense: all the conversation and Power Point decks I hear around "social network marketing" from agencies is still about "owning" the user/customer/consumer albeit in a different channel, with different methods. But the mindset is the same. So to me keeping the "social" rhetoric ongoing is a fad. Unless of course we come up with a truly consumer-friendly model that also happens to make money for the biz without "owning" the social consumer.

This is why I believe the next web will be personal, not social (but pray include "social" in the "personal" denotation). At least that's until someone comes up with a better explanation of "social" than the standard PPT as seen on projectors. I almost feel like the "Che" of data, lol.

I Have A Dream: My Personal API is almost here! (Part 2)

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:01:21 -0500

(Almost) as soon as I hit the "Submit" button on my last post, I see this post from RWW on a new startup (but really built on online storage company Mozy and an acquired personal information aggregator startup, into a new service called Decho. This makes my dream a lot closer, because it provides the backbone infrastructure for app developers (of which I am one) to build on top of this infrastructure and bring the dream closer. The key factor here, as one commenter posted is the UI, but I also think that user-driven control of their own data is key: it must be really user-driven, very granular (share my gizmo interests/profile with Jack, but not with Jill, tc. and ONLY when I am in a browsing-gizmos sites mode, versus a business mode. And while you're at it, also don't share that data with Walmart for Black Friday, but only with my local gizmo retailer company - I had to give an extreme example, lol). Now Decho is not quite there because it takes a lot more than user-owned digital data, e.g. online behavioral data. The crux is to build an ecosystem that convinces the BIG Data Owners (those that have a LOT of your data but that don't necessarily use it for anything else than to enrich/optimize on their own core business proposition) that there is more value in data itself beyond using it for operational purposes.

For instance: the Walmarts of the world own a TON of data, BUT: they're not optimizing it per se (other than building CRM systems to improve their own sales goals via marketing, promotions, etc.). If/when they will realize that just owning that data (but then sharing its control with the consumer) - thus extending their core value prop to a more platform-y, data network secondary business, that will bring the dream closer.

But of course, this must start somewhere and Decho seems to be on the right track here. Thoughts? More to come tomorrow.

I Have A Dream: Where is my personal API? (Part 1)

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:35:45 -0500

The words bubbling in the mouths of every tech, (digital) marketing person nowadays are: API, Web 2.0, social web, social networks, etc. etc. And on, and on on it goes. And frankly I am sick of it! Why? Because with a few exceptions, nobody figured it out yet; no wonder Facebook and other social and 2.0 companies are not yet making money. At the Web 3.0 Conference & Expo a couple of months ago in Santa Clara, I wanted to provide an open forum to exploring the new business models of the future of the web. The conference was a success in my opinion, and we are now planning for the next instantiation, stronger, better, bigger, more encompassing, in New York in the Spring (date tentatively set). But as it turned out, a lot of the focus of presenting companies was (still) around advertising and targeting as moentization approach to the next web. The truth is, I really believe that's only one, and perhaps not even the most important one. Let me explain.

Certainly advertising has potential as monetization tactic of 3.0, but that's only because it's "tried and true", and it's the way we have been used to sell VC's in the Internet startups we are dreaming. What I wanted to achieve (and will do so even more strongly at the next event) is to force people to think other ways of monetizing the next Internet. Since it's all about data, we tend to reduce the conversations around using data (on the backend) to come up with smarter, more relevant ways to target and advertise to people. That may be fine, but I really am dreaming of monetizing data itself, not just the ads that may come out of processing this data.

This is a little more complicated than advertising, and perhaps closer to the business models of data services companies such as Acxiom, Experian, etc. (albeit they are doing it behind the backs of consumers). What I want is what I call the "Dan Grigorovici API". I want to own my data and I want someone to intermediate publishing my own personal API (a personal Mashery if you will, or maybe GoDaddy can add a premium service like that - here, I am giving away ideas for free). With this, I then want to allow only certain services (other my friends' APIs, maybe Walmart's API only when they have a sale for an item I wanted for so long, but only if it's less than $20, etc. etc.), and I want to control it. In other words, I am sick of what i call "the car dealer marketing" (you know what I mean), and I want me to do the dealing. Of course, this may become a little complicated when I have a day job, kids, and other things to take care of, but then (or for consumers who don't feel like being so active), another company/provider can do it all for me on my behalf. For this type of service, I am willing to share my most private data. Why? Well let's put it this way: instead of wasting my data in millions of places that I have no clue about, I'd rather share with one central hub (who needs my permission to share/sell it to an Acxiom or such), and if/when something goes wrong, I don't need to dig through tons of channels to trace back where my data has moved from a network to another; I can just go to this one provider and scream at one, not at many (most of which are invisible to me).

A few days ago I was talking to a friend of mine, a developer, sharing the same idea and even though we have the technology available to implement this now, the biggest barriers are more on the business side (as usual, actually):

1. Users (with a few exceptions) are unaware of the value of their own data. They have no clue what invaluable an asset this is;

2. Even though we are well on the way to decoupling data from the technologies/environments that helps create them, for the most part, they are still pretty stuck to each other (including Facebook, mind you).

3. (the scariest of them all) It seems like a sisyphean work to change an entire way of doing business (from our pretty standard advertising, no matter how "relevant", to this one I am talking about). I firmly believe that we, as consumers, should start a silent revolution, maybe beginning as the "no TV Day", with a "no data trail day" - a day every year where consumers refuse to give away data to all service providers we are constantly transacting with.

How does this relate to monetization and new business models? It does, because if I am in control of my own API, the balance of power changes from the "car dealer economy" to me and my trusted intermediaries. And then not only I can charge for sharing my data, but I can even pay for these type of value-added services. And in this vision, I probably won't need a smidgeon of ad banners at all, because what's the purpose? This is inherently data-monetizing.

I am really obsessed with this dream I have (and there are a few startups I know, including my own project, plus Project VRM) that have been slowly working on something like this. I will post more in the next days about this, but would like to hear your dreams and what you think about this.

My final point is: no matter how many agencies, advertisers (GM opening a Saturn owners social network, and other crap like that), technopundits, and other sad guys keep mumbling "social web", 2.0, blah blah blah simply because it's fashionable, we are STILL monetizing not data, but pages (hence this is why Facebook is still not making money). I am pretty sure platform companies such as Facebook (and pretty positively Google) know the value of their assets is not in pages they own, but in data users generate on their pages. But I believe the reason why their CPM is so low and are not making money and they're promising a way to monetize the social web in a different way is not because they're slow or stupid. It is simply because it's very hard to turn an entire macro-level business on its head (it's the network effect, stupid, so they're waiting for the first startup to be minimally succesful with this, then they will eat it alive and scale it large), and also because the entire advertiser-agency community it stuck on stupid (especially media planning folks, I gotta say).

So, let's start the silent "no data for free day" revolution and until we get there, here's some food for thought: The Personal Platform, by Doc Searls. This is what I am talking about. But let's rush a little, I want to see the fruits of my dream in my own lifetime. Where's my Dan Grigorovici API?

The expected utility function of open data

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:40:57 -0500

I went over an earlier post and realized my message probably was hard to understand because of the poor english in it (apologies, it was late when I posted it, and did it from a stream of consciousness). I would like to re-open this conversation because I believe this is the nut we need to crack to monetize data, and not pages. I will repost the original (but cleaner) posts, with additional explanations of my thinking:

There is a fundamental conflict between user needs (e.g., I want all my data to be mine, portable and across all data providers/sources/sites, etc.) and data owners (big Internet companies, sites, networks, Walmarts, Amazon's, your grocery store, your medical insurance, anyone holding, processing, doing something to the data you leave behind in your behavioral trail of interacting with them). The data owners must be convinced (in a granular fashion, by answering every parameter in the "expected utility function" equation) of the necessity for them to open up their data. Some of the parameters in this equation that needs addressed are: size of payout to data owners of opening up their data to developers/users; probability of occurence (of this payout, which is essentially the needed business models of Web 3.0 app providers); risk aversion (check the panel Business Risks of Web3.0: What Risks? at Web 3.0 Conference & Expo); we also need to account for differential utility of the same payout to different companies/verticals with different assets and/or needs.Dan Grigorovici, Web3Beat:, Oct 2008

Now, I don't think we've done a big deal of work on this so what we need to do now is to frame our value prop to Big Data Owners from this perspective, by answering these basic questions. If we can't, we won't get the data because the owners will not feel incentivized to do so. And quite frankly, very few of them do. What I mean when I often say "monetize data, not pages" is really that the new business models of Web 3.0 are not as much about advertising (or at least not the current shape of advertising/marketing): it's more about viewing data as an asset on its own, not so much for ad targeting but rather relationship (true social, consumer-driven relationship) building. It's what relationship marketing was supposed to be, before we started to use theocratic concepts such as "own", "manage", "acquire", "retain" customers, as if we ever had so much power on them (wake up: we never really had, outside of our CRM-ish PPT dreams).

Food for thought 1: a cool 3.0 product idea

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:16:03 -0500

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and he came up with this idea:

"I live on a block at one end of which there is a Duane Reade, and at the other a CVS. There are some items that are on sale/cheaper at one, and others cheaper at the other. Why can't someone build a smart consumer-driven shopping agent that given a shopping list will tell me at any point, which items to buy from which store?"

Kind of like a smart consumer shopping optimization engine, right? I thought the idea was brilliant in that it exposes directly the fact that the success of this is NOT a technology issue, but a business and product marketing issue. Here's why: while I think this is very doable technologically (biz dev with Duane Reade and CVS to access their inventory and/or promotion offer API's - if they exist, if not, create it/scrape the site, etc., etc.), the business value prop for them is painful and hits right at the core of the substantive dichotomy between consumer needs and data owner needs that I mentioned in an earlier post; while I want to have this capability as a consumer, the incentive for the data owner (CVS, Duane Reade) is yet unclear for why they should open up their data. This has to do with the mentality of "opaque" branding/selling/marketing, as opposed to "transparent". There are two issues here, and I would like to hear your opinions/answers on these (please consider i am the Chief Data Officer at CVS):

1. Why would I want to provide this service to the consumer, and open up my offer data? Since I plan my promotional efforts in part based on what Duane Reade offers, to get more in store foot traffic, why would I risk them knowing my every move?

2. How do I make this process more efficient, given that my promotional offers change on a daily basis as function of manufacturer/CPG deals, market demand, competitor (Duane Reade) promotion counter-offers, holiday retail, location, etc., etc.? In other words, how do you see this service being intelligent but also dynamic enough to pull of these data points considering that this process is mostly manual today?

Any takers? By the way, this is the first in a series of "wild and crazy" posts that will actively seek reader comments in solving a concrete idea.

A Big Deal: New York Times opens up their data

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:43:22 -0500

A few weeks ago, New York Times has opened up a series of API's (the Campaign Finance, Community, MovieReviews, and TimesTags APIs). This is a very big deal for me, as it shows further proof (as I said several times in previous posts) that having data is not as useful as doing something with it (in terms of processing it). From this respect, I've always viewed New York Times (or any other Big Media companies) and their content as perfect example of Big Data Owners. From this perspective, any company that collects user/consumer behavior data as BYPRODUCT of a direct-to-user value proposition should seriously consider monetizing their data by opening it up, and allowing developers to mesh it with other data, to provide users/consumers with valuable services. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Your local grocery store, Walmart (both your local physical store and walmart.com), your credit card issuer, media content companies (New York Times is an example of this, obviously), your phone company, etc. etc. are examples of companies who built their value proposition and core business model NOT on data, but on retail, consumer credit, content production, communication (in the order I mentioned these companies above). By virtue, and in the process of delivering their market value, they have collected lots of data for purposes of operational efficiency, etc. etc. So their data is NOT their core business but a byproduct. The Web 2.0 world has opened up possibilities for these companies to consider data they own as assets in and of themselves. I seriously think that moving forward, the next generation business and monetization models are data-driven on a virtual network level, in this way:

1. Data owners open up their data (New York Times is a great example of yet another company, aside from Yahoo, etc. etc., that gets it);

2. By virtue of data APIs, developers are able to deliver applications to users that integrate this data with others, in novel and interesting ways;

3. Data owners then monetize this data as asset (in other words, this is not simply monetization=advertising/targeting), but monetizing as knowledge access. E.g.: in the grand scheme of things, no matter how big your site is (whether content or advertiser/brand site), most of the time consumers spend OUTSIDE your site. On the other hand, and because of this, your knowledge of your consumer is substantively limited to the data you own (plus some third party appends). But you will never know how valuable a consumer is (and be able to deliver valuable services to her) by understanding (with her permission) what their interests are OUTSIDE/BEFORE/AFTER they land on your site (which most often is short, very goal-oriented behavior in nature). So, you DO need other people's data.

This means that data should be monetized in and of itself as asset. This is the platformization/network-ization of everything, really. And this is a good thing. New York Times is one of the most recent examples of "old" media/content companies that gets it. I also discussed with various (but not so many) advertisers/data owners from various verticals that have shown interest in this topic, and I think this is great!

But I think, once more, that we as developers and technologists must leverage this growing demand and be able to explain how this works, and why they should do it, and even design the next generation data monetization models. I am interested in your thoughts on this, especially since I have been working on this and think I have a pretty decent idea of how to do it.

Finally, someone that gets it: Yahoo Bigtime Open(ing) + Facebook: read and weep

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:36 -0500

Yahoo has released Y! OS 1.0 platform! I've tried to play lately with Facebook's API and FQL, for purposes of developing smart applications with non-PII user data, in the spirit of Web 3.0: a big pain in the ass! Facebook's data is not that open at all. It's a silo in disguise. You basically cannot process (therefore store either, because if you are trying to run an algorithmic process on the user data without actually taking the data out, you can't) data in order to, for instance, develop a recommendation system that recommends your friends, or objects of interest between common sets of friends (from school versus work, etc.). This, apparently in the name of user privacy. Truth is that my deep desire as a user is to take my data with me wherever I may be; and mind you, this doesn't mean that I am "stealing" Facebook's traffic, because I can devise my product to send traffic to Facebook. But nooooooo! That just tells you how hypocritical Facebook is: its concept is revolutionary in its understanding of content as object-oriented, but its monetization is soooooo 1.0: pages, pages and more pages (of eyeball traffic). Of course, I believe I have an idea or three about how to monetize Web 3.0 in terms of "monetizing data", not pages, but when I hear of Facebook and others "opening up" their data, I laugh: first off, it's not that open, second of all, so what! They're still monetizing it old school, with R/F eyeballs (with a fairly low CPM if you ask me).

But now, after I heard about it through Y!DN and at the Web 3.0 Conference early this month in Santa Clara, Yahoo seems to have gotten it a lot better, as the TechCrunch article tells you: first off, the application platform allows developers to access your and your friends' activity stream both on Yahoo and elsewhere on the web; then, address book portability. These features soon to me very promising in developing the type of smart applications I am salivating for: automatically sort email based on importance of friends (or perhaps even by work friends versus beer friends, etc.); create "personas" that one can associate with their own activity streams on the web/Yahoo, and associate them (or even perhaps share with) similar friends.

NOW we're talking. I think Yahoo! is particularly motivated to be more aggressive about this and open up into a platform, then others (it's the "we try harder" strategy since Y! hasn't done well lately). For whatever reason, this pushes the boundaries of what's open, and gets closer to my dream (of taking my data, meshing it into others, and develop smart apps that I can carry with me). The only thing that's left is figuring out how to make money on this, in a different way than through the good old eyeball marketing. Truth be told, Yahoo! may also be closer than Facebook at least, particularly given the fact that since Facebook is not that open, the only thing I am left to do with the latter is read/look at pages and pages and pages (read, not read/write).

So Yahoo! this is great, I will start playing with Y!OS (I can hardly wait), but my question is: how are you monetizing this in a way that's more about data and people than pages and eyeballs? Let me know when you figure it out :-)

A Response to Anti-Web 3.0 proponents, and an explanation why Web 3.0 is better than others

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:19:00 -0500

Mike Bergman has responded to my rather visceral reaction to his visceral reaction ("squash the "web 3.0" cockroach" - see my original post here: Web 3.0, (semantic) advertising, and why Semantic Web can't get their %&$^ together. This is my response to him, and a clarification for my position pro-"web 3.0".

Mike, thanks for your thoughtful response. I do not intend to start a flame war at all, I reacted a bit viscerally to a visceral reaction as well. We shall agree to disagree of course. I found your response organized, and a viewpoint backed by arguments. Where I come in disagreement is not on the semantic domain (e.g., to your point re "web 3.0" is meaningless), but rather on the pragmatic one (I am hereby referring to the classical syntactic/semantic/pragmatic triad, and specifically Wittgenstein's idea of "language games" - see the theory here. In it, the idea is that the meaning of a word, therefore of a semantic process moniker as well, presupposes the ability to use it). I sense in your position a rather religious/aristotelic/absolutist view of the "meaning" of a concept, etc. I believe this meaning (certainly of both "semantic web" and "web 3.0", "structured web", or "linked data" altogether) is easier understood by enterprise clients, as you rightfully mention. But no one else, certainly not consumers. Therefore, it is not better (pragmatically speaking) than "web 3.0", because of its rather limited ability to use it in language by a limited section of the audience.

The advantage of "web 3.0" is purely pragmatic, and not semantic (not any different than "web 2.0" with which I am sure you also disagree with its usage); the term has been established via public debate and contribution to its denotation, and is now accepted and well understood. Yes, not so much yet about "web 3.0", but the idea, and my goal has been to offer a much better PRAGMATIC term to the community and audience at large, void in the beginning, but with the advantage of; not being loaded with technicalities (not needing the presence of ONLY certain W3C standards but not others, in a very autocratic way); showing continuation of a process from 2.0, and thereby linking it in the mind of the public with a moniker that has been already accepted (a decent starting point). I am neither scared of public debate, not against it - in fact the reality of our debate works to better define whichever term will be ultimately adopted, and made successful to a larger scale adoption of semantic technologies, processes, etc. At this time, I think all terms you mention are doing us a disfavor: too technical, not easy to be understood by non-enterprise clients (and this is what we need the most today, the consumer imagination, because we already have better success on the enterprise side than we have at a larger scale). Yes, they may be more "meaningful", but I don't think that's necessarily the point: I can give a ton of examples of concepts that are very clean semantically, but that never lead to/supported a larger adoption by the general public. I think this is the case with the terms you have been proposing.

Quite frankly, it is my belief that the terms you propose have not been adopted by more than a few smaller communities within the technology community itself, so those are not settled either.

Bottom line: we have been debating on two different "worlds" and philosophies: I don't believe in absolutist/aristotelian/platonic ideas of "meaning" of a term as set in stone by an authority, but I rather believe meanings are co-created in the praxis of language use by people/participants to a democratic exchange of ideas. I also don't think any of the terms currently proposed do us any favor, for two reasons: 1. they are too technical for larger adoption (albeit with tighter denotation); 2. they are overloaded with negative connotations, and have limited scalability.

Lastly, I also do not think that just because "web 3.0" is meaningless, it will never be meaningful (if you consider my pragmatic approach to it): it just means that the public debate has not settled on it yet, as you rightfully agree with. Truth be told, if there is no "higher" authority to shine on us the right meanings of our concepts but ourselves in the practice of language, then any and every concept/term has been meaningless at some point, acquiring meaning in the process of its use.

Yes, I agree terminology adoption is a function of both providers and consumers and has been largely given by providers. I also agree with your comment that "Consumers vote with their attention and their wallets". But I believe consumers have not voted either with their attention, or with their wallets so far, which leads me to believe that they don't care about "structured web", "linked data", etc. Why? For reasons explained above, but also because they shouldn't: technology should in fact be transparent to them, as long as a fundamental need of theirs is fulfilled better with this technology than with another, that is what counts. Not the technology itself.