15th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

The world wide web celebrated its 15th anniversary yesterday, April 30. It was back on this day in 1993 that the web was put in the public domain by CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire or European Council for Nuclear Research). In doing so, CERN renounced IP rights to the web but no one else could claim them either.

The world wide web was created by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN in 1989. The initial project was dubbed ENQUIRE (referring to Enquire Within Upon Everything, a book Berners-Lee recalled from his childhood). The world's first web site, http://info.cern.ch, went live in 1991. The content is clearly different today. A copy of the original first webpage created by Berners-Lee can be found here. The basic structure for the internet known as the ARPANet and DARPANet had been around since the 1960's and 70's and was created by DARPA.


CERN Declaration (Source: BBC)

Related post: Web's Inventor Says Web In Infancy

Lycos Up For Sale

Remember Lycos, the independent European portal? The company has put itself up for sale stating "In light of the current consolidation of this industry sector...a strategic review to evaluate its options, which may include, inter alia, a change or replacement of the main shareholders." The last time the site saw heavy traffic was around the time Tom Cruise appeared on Oprah. Ironically he is set to return to Oprah this week and maybe it will stir up more interest in Lycos if there is a jump in traffic. I contacted Mr. Cruise to find out if he had an interest in Lycos, however, he was not available for comment. Lycos main shareholders include German entertainment conglomerate Bertelsmann AG which owns 20% of the company and Spain's Telefonica which owns 32%. The company also reported its Q108 revenues today, and had EUR 16.2 million revenues, which decreased compared to Q107 which has revenues of EUR 20.0 million.

Web Pages : Size Matters!

A recent analysis indicates that the size of the average web page has tripled since 2003, up from 94k to 312k (!). Also, the number of objects on the page has doubled to a whopping 50 objects per page.

Details of this excellent analyis that combined website data from two studies are at WebsiteOptimization.com, where they conclude with some advice for designers:

Within the last five years, the size of the average web page has more than tripled, and the number of external objects has nearly doubled. While broadband users have experienced faster load times, dial-up users have been left behind. With the average web page sporting more than 50 external objects, object overhead now dominates most web page delays. Minimizing HTTP requests by using CSS sprites, combining JavaScript or CSS files, reducing the number of EOs, and converting graphic effects to CSS while still retaining attractiveness, has become the most important skill set for web performance optimizers.

It's easy to see how wider use of broadband and high speed internal networks have combined with a lot of misunderstanding to create corporate and small business websites that are often bloated with questionable graphics, pictures, and design elements. Although a shift is underway, search optimizers are generally much lower on the corporate food chain than, say, a brand manager who will be reluctant to sacrifice powerful design components for a faster page loading time.

Complicating these matters is the fact that many consultants and even internet IT departments generally create web redesign presentations for high speed or internal networked environments that are many times faster than normal user interaction. Dial up is still a common method of connection in the USA yet few websites are well optimized for low bandwidth - arguably losing thousands of potential sales as customers leave in frustration with slow page loads.

Recommendation? Take some lessons from Craigslist and start with the most spartan, efficient, optimized environment you can imagine and then add design elements only if they are essential to your online functionality. Are customers basing decisions based on the *look* of your website? In some cases yes, but in general I'd suggest customers will prefer a fast and functional site to a pretty one, and sites that err on the side of function rather than form will see higher conversion and interaction levels.

Just the Facts Please - Online Seminar Limitations

Online Seminars, webcasts, and podcasts have really exploded on the tech scene over the last year or so, but I remain skeptical about the potential of these to change things very much. An "old style" online information gathering approach still works very well. Generally it takes only a few online minutes to search, find, and quickly scan a topic you need to understand better or learn about for the first time. If you need to become an expert in a topic I'd suggest it is better to surf a lot of sites and participate in blogs and forums rather than spend the same amount of time watching a webcast, though of course there are exceptions to this. Unfortunately it is hard to know which of the millions of videos on millions of topics are great vs. a waste of your time. Sorting the wheat from the chaff - at least for me - is much easier if I'm scanning search engine listings, text snippets, and websites rather than listening to podcasts or video clips.

Webcasting and Podcasts in some way bridge the human gap we have with simple surfing where you have a very limited connection to the purveyor of the information you need. Yet thanks to blogging and forums you are able to to get direct feedback from experts by simply commenting or participating in those formats, which to my way of thinking have the huge advantage of allowing you to jump in and out and quickly scan for the good stuff without enduring a lot of information that is not relevant to you.

Certainly a podcast would be a better choice for some specific types of learning - languages for example - where audio and repetition are key parts of the learning experience. Also obviously there are times when the online picture can "paint a thousand words" and thus may trump any amount of text reading. Real time breaking news could benefit from webcasting, especially if pictures are a key part of the story. However I think these exceptions are relatively few. In most cases your best information bet, in terms of return on your valuable time, is the same as it has been for some time - good old Web 1.0 search, surf, and find.

Skype Offers Unlimited Long Distance Calling

Skype, the popular VoIP service for making free phone calls over the internet, IM chatting, and video calls has announced that it will now be offering unlimited calling to over a third of the world’s population. The company is offering a calling subscription with a single, monthly flat rate for international calling to landline numbers in 34 countries. That's probably why my Skype was on the blitz today...it was probably jammed with people using the service.

There're apparently no long term contracts, one flat monthly fee, no hidden costs, you can make calls 24/7, and it's available for calls to 34 countries. Subscriptions can be purchased at skype.com/go/subscriptions. Skype was originally launched in August 2003 and later acquired by eBay in Oct. 2005. There are currently about 309 million users on the freely downloadable Skype software.

Important News Will Not Find You

If the news is important, will it find you?

Two normally insightful web watchers - Matt Ingram who writes for the Toronto Globe and Mail and his own techology blog, and Mark Cuban who writes for the heck of it after making a billion or so during web bubble number one - suggest that the news will find them.

They are wrong, and this line of thought is both foolish and dangerous.

The notion is that in our globally networked and highly interconnected 24/7 information environment important items won't just drop off of the radar - rather these "need to know" news items will find their way to a reasonably alert person via emailings from friends, twitters or Facebook contacts, blog aggregation, or other methods. Matt and Mark think that just because they have broadband to the house and they've got some good social networking going on they are protected from ignorance. But they are not.

As much as we should appreciate the power the internet brings to the information table, it is imperative now more than ever that we identify the limits of that power. It would take a novel to illustrate all the examples of how our new information environment can distort and misdirect our short attention spans to the wrong stuff, but the ADD version of the story is that while the internet does a good job of helping us find specific information once we take the time to research a topic, the internet also leads to some very undesirable conditions with respect to news:

One challenge is the echo chamber effect. Aggregation sites like Google News, Technorati and TechMeme use various algorithms to determine how much "buzz" a news story has. This in turn lifts the most relevant sites on the topic to the top of the heap, which in turn creates stories based on that initial buzz. This feedback loop tends to create an over-examination of the buzz topic and ignore deeper, more complex issues that are hard to write about.

Another far more important challenge is our human and social tendency to interact with trivial but interesting news rather than heavy, important news. You can only view so much material per day, and if your social network is buzzing about the latest gadget or latest scandal you are more likely to encounter that news than an item about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, or the fact that expanding malaria programs and advances in oral rehydration therapy in the third world could save several thousand children per day. The latter are significant and changing items that only rarely make the news cut.

Our interest in the trivial over the substantive creates a commercial challenge as well. Most online news now has a very strong commercial component and people are more likely to bring pageviews to Britney Spears head shaving incident than a report on the effectiveness of famine relief programs in Africa. I'm not blaming the internet for our ignorance, but I'm not going to credit it with bringing us much enlightenment either.

My point is that simply having our new and massive information gathering capability by no means guarantees we'll have the wisdom to pay attention to what really matters.

The internet has not let us off the hook by any means.

Important news will not find you.

Google To Shareholders: See No Evil

Shareholders in Google will be voting on two controversial provisions about how to govern Google affairs.

The first concerns internet censorship such as that practiced by China and several other countries where much of the online content is monitored, some content is prohibited, and internet archiving is used for political persecution of dissidents.

This proposed set of censorship rules would direct Google to take very aggressive measures to fight censorship. Specifically the vote is whether to implement these policies at Google:

1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.
2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.
3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures.
4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.
5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.
6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available

The second proposal would amend the bylaws to establish a Human Rights committee:

The proposed Bylaw would establish a Board Committee on Human Rights which would review and make policy recommendations regarding human rights issues raised by the company’s activities and policies.

Google's proxy outlines each of them in more detail, and Google has recommended a "no" vote on both.

In the case of the internet censorship provisions Google will argue that they would make it more difficult to conduct business in some countries, especially if other players like Yahoo and Microsoft are unbound by such restrictions. However a careful read of the rules above does not suggest that they would seriously interfere with Google's business practices.

Arguably much more outrageous, however, is the decision not to establish a human rights committee at Google. This provision is worded in such as way that it is hard to imagine how it would inhibit Google business or open them to liabilities beyond current levels of exposure.

More importantly, as *the* world's key player in the internet space Google has an obligation to uphold human rights whenever possible and to be extremely proactive in fostering human rights with respect to internet activity.

This is a sad day for Google and the recommendation is a death blow to their now transparently specious "Do No Evil" mantra. Google has an obligation to promote human rights within the reasonable confines of their business structure and goals. In this obligation, they have now dramatically failed.

Yahoo to Microsoft - We Are Worth $40 Per Share

Yahoo initially spurned Microsoftś offer of $31 per share arguing that it was far too little and that a merger was not in the interest of Yahoo shareholders. Jerry Yang, in a letter to shareholders about a month ago, vaguely outlined his vision of a Yahoo that would improve in the coming years. The Yahoo improvement plan has now been articulated in much greater detail along with assumptions about new revenue coming from advertising and expansion of Yahoo properties. Lots of new revenue claims Yahoo. Leading tech market watcher Henry Blodget provides an excellent financial breakdown here. Henry is skeptical of the assumptions but agrees that if they are accurate then Yahoo is indeed worth $40-50 per share.

I see this move as something of a Hail Mary pass to stave off a merger, with the added bonus of trying to justify another few dollars increase on the bid from Microsoft before what now appears to be a very likely takeover of Yahoo. Shareholder discontent is high enough that Microsoft need not do much to win a proxy fight with the existing Yahoo board.

Disclosure: Long on YHOO

ValueClick slapped with $2.9 million spam fine

ValueClick has agreed to settle a lawsuit regarding deceptive advertising practices surrounding their extensive online offers for free products. The $2.9 million settlement will be the largest online ¨spam" settlement to date.

CNET Reports

Craigslist wins discrimination lawsuit

An Illinois Court ruled yesterday in favor of Craigslist in a suit that contended that Craiglist was liable for the content of some of the real estate listings on Craigslist. The plaintiff maintained that Craigslist's failure to police the listings violated the Fair Housing Act because they included notes such as "no minorities" or "no children".

The Judge maintained that Craigslist was not obligated to police these listings, citing other decisions that have protected information intermediaries from being held liable for the content of posts to their sites or forums.

Here is the Illinois Court ruling in CHICAGO LAWYERS’ COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
UNDER LAW, INC., v Craigslist, Inc.

Yang to Yahoos - Keep The Faith?!

Henry Blodget over at Silicon Alley Insider has a good summary of Jerry Yang’s Yahoo note to the troops articulating the reasons for the rejection of Microsoft’s offer and the company’s future plans. He gives Yang an A- but I'm not sure this is the kind of rallying cry these guys need right now.

I’m wondering if Yahoo's big failure happened many years ago when many lines of separation were drawn between technologists and most of the company management. I assume there were official lines drawn, but I’m talking more in terms of cultural differences.

For some contrarian investors bullishness about Yahoo rested on the assumption that the technologists would eventually have their day at Yahoo. The idea was that Yahoo has already created many great tools necessary to keep Yahoo competitive and interface with the broader developer community. Yahoo in theory could quickly bring far more awareness and use of Yahoo tools, effectively widening their footprint over the internet landscape. The Yahoo bulls also suggested that monetizing of traffic would improve, giving Yahoo a huge boost in profits given that historically Yahoo makes less than half as much as Google does per search.

What I'd like to know from Jerry is the plan for rapid technological empowerment at Yahoo. The kind of empowerment that keeps people working until the wee hours on projects that excite them and show great potential for company profits. ie the kind of empowerment Google's done with their folks.

It will take a LOT more than peppy emails and a combative stance to save Yahoo. The buzz from insiders and recent defections from Yahoo suggest that even internally Yahoos are more bullish about Google than they are about own company.

So, if we assume Yahoo has got to change course in a big way would Microsoft or News Corp be the best fit? From Yahoo’s perspective it appears they would jump on any deal where News Corp was willing to pony up as much as Microsoft. In many ways this seems like a more likely winning combination than Microsoft and Yahoo which would have a lot of initial, and perhaps long term, contentiousness.

Fox Interactive is run brilliantly, and applying these management principles to Yahoo could do a world of good to the bottom line of the combined company. Yet it will be difficult for News Corp to make the case that Microsoft isn't offering enough for Yahoo, especially when Microsoft ups the offer to about $35 per share as many think they will do soon. This would be a premium of almost 100% on Yahoo's pre-merger-news price of about $18 per share. Although the Yahoo board may stand firm and reject the offers, Microsoft is probably going to make an offer that Yahoo shareholders can't refuse.

Long on Yahoo

Google to Yahoo - Beware the Microsoft Poison!

Google is concerned that Microsoft could poison Yahoo with an aquisition, making the combined company less open, a state of affairs Google feels is key to the internet environment and was key to the sucess of Yahoo and Google.

It is easy to be sympathetic to the idea of openness and transparency as core values, but I would suggest that Google has more than enough internet opacity in their search ranking practices to make me skeptical of all their whining about how Microsoft won't play fair if they get a foothold in the search game.

It is true that Google has been more open than most companies, but they are still far less responsive to ranking problems and search issues than they should be. To the extent MS + Yahoo brings more competition to the space it might help Google see the light and practice more of what they preach about transparency. (A quick example of the lack of transparency - Google does not share with publishers the advertising revenue share for a publisher's own website. This would be a totally unacceptable practice offline but reflects the huge control Google now exerts over internet content and search monetization.

Meanwhile, Henry Blodget has some great advice for Yang and Balmer, but it’s clear to me that neither party will view things this broadly. I think there is only small difference in the IT worldview of management at Yahoo and Google, but a world of difference with Microsoft.

The contest for Yahoo is a fascinating situation because up until now Google has been very happy to watch Yahoo whither on the search vine. Now Google needs to consider a powerful partnership as a defensive attack on the Microsoft search potential after an aquisition.

Disclosure: Yahoo Shareholder : )

Internet Tops As Source of Information

In the U.S., more and more people are turning to the internet to find information and resources. In a study conducted by the Pew Internet Group, they found that people are consulting the internet more than experts or family members on common problems such as illness, finances, taxes, and careers. 58% of those surveyed said they used the internet (at home, work, a public library or some other place) to get help.

• 58% of those who had recently experienced one of those problems said they used the internet (at home, work, a public library or some other place) to get help.
• 53% said they turned to professionals such as doctors, lawyers or financial experts.
• 45% said they sought out friends and family members for advice and help.
• 36% said they consulted newspapers and magazines.
• 34% said they directly contacted a government office or agency.
• 16% said they consulted television and radio.
• 13% said they went to the public library.

Copyright or Copywrong?

There is a lot of blog buzz right now about photographer Lane Hartwell's YouTube takedown of the clever Web 2.0 spoof video. Daya referenced that video here on the WebGuild blog a week or so back. Matt Ingram has a very thoughtful post about this suggesting Lane is wrong to bring the suit, and has no legal case anyway.

CORRECTION: There is NO lawsuit here, and the blogs have overreacted! Here is Lane's take:
http://fetching.net/2007/12/there-is-no-lawsuit-against-the-richter-scales/

I agree but remain torn about the broader issues here. My guess is that Lane's concerns about using her pictures really were blown off by guys who have little concern for copyright, and this cavalier attitude is one of the reasons it is hard to make good progress in this area.

My personal view on copyright is that we should experiment with much more liberal laws about fair use, but it rings hollow to me when many online folks simply pretend that commercial use is fair use and either ignore the law or treat content producers as suckers in the process of pushing information online.

The compromise? Let's have a lot more respect for people who create content and be sure to give appropriate credit, but whenever possible let's fling open the door to the widespread dissemination of information and ideas.

In-Flight Email Now Available

Fasten your seatbelts. Passengers aboard JetBlue can now expect to get in-flight email service. Starting next week, JetBlue will be the first US airline to provide in-flight internet access. It will begin offering free email access on one of its airplanes - the BetaBlue, which is equipped with wireless Internet antennae in the ceiling and a computer server that relays signals to mobile telephone towers on the ground. Passengers will be able to connect to Yahoo Mail and instant messaging services via wireless internet connections on laptops or with wi-fi enabled BlackBerry handheld devices. Fees are currently undisclosed.

Rival airlines American, Virgin America, and Alaska Air are said to be working on giving passengers online connectivity beginning next year. American and Virgin are reportedly working on allowing passengers to access e-mail, the internet, or office networks using laptops, iPhones, BlackBerrys and other portable gadgets with Wi-Fi connectivity.

A Comparison of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft's Indexes

[Update – October 5, 2007] Five days after posting this article (in French), 118 pages of the site are indexed on Google, which wins across the board for exhaustiveness, relevance and speed. Without contest!

Yahoo! and Microsoft are still at the same point…and the others are worse: it’s unknown on Ask, and Exalead shows a thumbnail of a parking service for my site, which was parked over a year ago. Hello, relevance (it’s l'exception française)!

INTRODUCTION
A few days ago I uploaded XBRL.name, a glossary in 7 languages on IFRS terminology.

For one, I was surprised to see that the domain name, which has existed on the site Studio92.net for over two years, had retained the PR4 of the page it was on, but that wouldn’t last!
At the same time, you can imagine how avidly I’m on the lookout to see when my site will be indexed in the search engines. I check every day on GYM. The results are edifying! Here is the status as of October 1, after the site was uploaded on September 23, in other words in eight days.

I should specify that it’s not completed; only 1/7 of the site is finished, a little less than 200 pages out of approximately 1400 expected when the site is complete.

Finally, this post has no pretension to being more than it is: the simple tracking of a week of the indexing of a new site. Nothing scientific here, just a personal experience. [Top]

INDEX SIZE
It goes without saying that each of the three index generously exceeds 20 billion web pages!!! If you’re nostalgic, click here...

The engines don’t communicate much on the topic, except Microsoft, which makes a point to let you know it has caught up, quadrupling the size of its index from 5 billion to 20 billion pages. OK!

However, Yahoo! was already declaring more than 19 billion pages in… August 2005 (despite Jean Véronis’s questioning) and Google, 24 billion pages three months later (see here, end of page 5)!

So while I partially agree with Eric Enge when he states that At some level, the exact index size is not a big issue, unless, your index is simply too small, I agree less with his idea that increased index size is related to increased relevance (In short, Microsoft needed to make a move of this type to improve their relevance).

Relevance is not necessarily dependent on coverage (What's at issue is coverage... and if you don't have the related sites in the index, you can't return the right result), since the engine may very well have the relevant site in its index and still keep quiet (not list a result).

And of course, Microsoft presented a demo to illustrate its point of view, specifically on "shelli segal" and the site of a corresponding designer, which appears first on Live Search but makes the grave error of being absent in Google’s index!

Might one suspect Microsoft of cooking up an ad hoc search just to justify its relevance, relevance, relevance?

A good way to find out is to test it with xbrl.name, where the three search engines are on equal footing against it, since it was uploaded eight days ago without being intentionally presented for indexing; I just put the link on my blog and on several other sites. [Top]

GOOGLE INDEX
Until yesterday, Google returned 190 results total and gave the following excerpt for the site:

My SPIP site. Search. Home page. My SPIP site. Follow-up of the site's activity RSS 2.0 Site Map Private area SPIP template.

That is, it had saved the SPIP installation I tested, before opting for a site in HTML.

But today – sigh of relief – Google returns 300 results and finally sees the new version of the site: Conclusion: Google took note of the site in 8 days, although the content of the glossary does not yet seem to be indexed. [Top]

YAHOO!'S INDEX
Yahoo! returns 30 results and the following excerpt:

This is the placeholder for domain xbrl.name. If you see this page after uploading site content ... This page has been automatically generated by Plesk.

Plus one page correctly indexed. What about the 200-some others?

So Yahoo! presents a tenth as many results as Google and just one page indexed. [Top]

MICROSOFT'S INDEX
Just one result! Period. Same excerpt as Yahoo.

Then that last line that kills me: “Are you satisfied with Live Search? Tell us."

What to say? That in light of what preceded it, Microsoft definitely deserves its third place. Dead last!

The ranking is confirmed by my blog’s visit stats, as you can see in the table below:

Search engines were the source of 2,826 visits on Adscriptor during September and represented 41.21% of total visits (188 visitors and 242 pages viewed per day, with an average time on site of 1'35'' per visit) (not everyone’s named Otto, fortunately for him ;-).

With 2,575 referring links, Google alone represents >91% of these visits, versus 5.4% from Yahoo! and three times less than Yahoo! for Microsoft. Google is overwhelming superior. Why?

Clearly, if Google weren’t there, I would have a presence on the Internet…with zero visibility on search engines! [Top]

INDEX CACHING AND REFRESHING
In addition to size and relevance, one last aspect related to engine indices concerns their refreshing frequency, with a cache cycle that has shortened considerably recently for Google (I don’t use Yahoo! or Microsoft enough to say about them). Before, it seemed like the cache stayed around for a while and you could retrieve information several weeks later; now, it’s only a matter of days. For example, I was previously able to retrieve practically all of Alexis Debat’s fake interviews, but as the days go on, fewer and fewer can be found. [Top]

CONCLUSION
Concerning the performance Microsoft claims, Eric Enge is right when he says:

Ultimately, the point is, you can't return the right result if the site you should be returning for a given search is not in your index.

That’s clear. But it’s even worse to have the site in your index and not understand that the “right” site is precisely that one! [Top]

P.S. Well, it seems that Yahoo! and Microsoft are not giving up. They must have read my post overnight!

I tried Yahoo! Search again (it was recently improved, other details here); the tool still offers no suggestions:

but it has finally correctly indexed the home page. Everything else was the same: 31 results total and only 2 of the site’s pages.

On Live Search, too, the indexing is now correct for 2 of the site’s pages, which are the only results offered.

Meanwhile, Google has gone from 17 to 47 pages indexed: now several lengths ahead of the competition.

That said, given the number of web pages on the Internet (???), it’s pretty remarkable to see a new site indexed in eight days on GYM. And it makes sense why the next steps in searching in 2010 will be:

1. search engine verticalization
2. personalization of results
3. universal search

Not to mention local search... [Top]

Berners-Lee calls for more WWW research

Tim Berners-Lee, the closest thing we have to an “inventor” of the web as we know it today, is calling for more integrated, broad studies of the internet rather than the mostly piecemeal academic work being done now.

He’s absolutely right of course. The internet is arguably the most profound change in human communication in history, and it’s just getting started. As social networking explodes into the dominant socializing mechanism for humans we are experiencing many new opportunities and many challenges, especially as the online environments create new relationships between people, generations, and cultures.

Universities would be well advised to heed this call from Berners-Lee and offer more “web centric” courses and degrees. More importantly academics should be spending a lot more time studying the complex, changing structure of the web. The technical aspects of the internet are fairly well studied in commercial circles. The sociological side is poorly and rarely studied in academia while the commercial sector is still struggling to understand the implications of the massive shift of human activity online.

Internet TV Site Shuts Down Aftering Blowing US$80M

Brightcove, the much touted internet TV company headed by Jeremy Allaire is shutting down. Users were informed via email that Brightcove.TV will no longer be accepting direct consumer uploads after December 17, 2007. The company had BIG dreams of becoming the next YouTube and competing with YouTube. The company had raised US$80 million.

Here are some important pointers for entrepreneurs, partners, and investors alike:

1) Web start-ups should embrace openness. Successful web companies disrupt and bring efficiency to a market. To do so you have to become immune to the rules and limitations of the old market being disrupted. Brightcove was busy trying to compete with YouTube while working with old timers like Viacom. Therein lies the problem. Viacoms' business model comprises of a) restricting broadcast b) litigation (they have a big legal department including the CEO). For this to work you have to impose rules and restrictions and then litigate those breaking the rules and restrictions. So how could Brightcove disrupt a market, when every move they made was violating a rule set by a partner they were working with eg. Viacom.

2) Web 2.0 is demonstrating that nimble, smart entrepreneurs succeed time after time. Brightcove raised US$80 million! Where did it go? They certainly have a full management team, that is probably drawing super fat salaries, yet they have no product. At least a product that the marketplace wants. Smart investors fund agile teams that are disrupting a market using little capital.

3) Understand the web ecosystem - there are lots of people who don't understand the web including investors like Mayfield and Redpoint. Jeremy Allaire (co-founder of Allaire/ Macromedia) is not the first so called top gun that investors poured money on due to prior success and ended up losing it all. Terry Semel is a classic example of someone that never understood the web. To succeed on the web you have to have a narrow focus. Take money only from people who understand the web. Bring people on that understand the space. Just because someone was successful in the something else does not mean they can help you prevail on the web.

Online Privacy? Forget about it!

Donald Kerr is the Deputy Director of the USA Deptartment of Intelligence. He recently suggested:

Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that. … Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety,”

Some time ago I noted that online privacy is now an oxymoron. Regardless of whether one feels privacy should protected online, it won't be and in some ways it simply can't be protected to the degree to which we have become accustomed in our offline information transactions.

We do not know, and in many cases cannot know, where many of our pictures and data and writing and comments and email are stored. We don’t know who misquotes us, scrapes our content, has our credit card data and medical records, reads our email, or even know if we own what we write (many reviews sites will claim they own *your* reviews).

But don't despair. This loss of privacy is actually not as big a deal as one might think. This is the brave new world of onliners and the benefits of the information explosion easily and dramatically trump the handful of privacy pitfalls. If this were not the case we’d have seen a lot more trouble by now. Also, if we slap extensive restrictions on a futile effort to make sure privacy is kept in the robust fashion we've come to expect offline it could slow innovation and exchanges that, on balance, make the web a fun place to be.

CNN Reports

Google's New SearchMash Site

Google has launched a new non-Google branded site called SearchMash which is designed to serve as an experimental testing ground for user interface ideas without the Google brand skewing the objectivity of the results.

Here are 14 observations on SearchMash:
1. The character count on the SearchMash homepage is even less than the Google.com classic homepage.
2. With SearchMash, there is no search button but there are instructions to 'hit enter to get results' but those directions disappear on the search results page. I always hit 'enter' myself versus clicking the "Google Search" button and I never click "I'm Feeling Lucky". I wonder how many people actually do.
3.The SERP page on SearchMash has a frame for the header which houses the search text field so it doesn't scroll with the page.
4. On SearchMash, you can only search web pages by default whereas Google shows you the options to search for images, videos, news, maps, blogs, etc. but SearchMash automatically gives you results for web, images, blogs, videos, and wikipedia oddly enough.
5. My search for 'flowers' on SearchMash yielded about half the number of results (14,200,000) than on Google (22,600,000). There is no time of how long it took to generate the results, the number of results showing on the page, or definitions.
6. The search results are on the left, and the images, blogs, videos, and wikipedia results are in the right rail along with a feedback survey which doesn't take you off the page. It doesn't seem to save your feedback results on the page if you navigate away to another site and then come back or do another type of search like image/blog/video/wikipedia and and go back to web search.
7. There is no pagination. There are ten results by default, designated by a "..." divider (not sure that's necessary) and when you click a link for 'more web results' or hit the space bar, the page expands downward until, in this case, I hit 100 results (so not sure what happened to my 14,300,000 results) versus paging to more pages as on Google.
8. The results are numbered which is also different from its Google counterpart.
9. The color palette is the same kind of blue and white just a softer blue and no yellow designated 'Sponsored Links' section and no heavy demarcation of section areas. So, if there are any paid links, they are not called out in anyway.
10. The font size is smaller by default (12px), all the text is the same size, the blue is a little brighter and there is no underlining by default for links (not even on mouseover but opting instead for background highlighting).
11. You can click to see images or blogs or video results which then loads in the left channel and web results moves to the top right column and whichever type of result you've clicked on doesn't show up on the right.
12. You can click on 'hide details' in the title bar to collapse the display of web or images results, allowing more results to fit in view.
13. Searches seem ranked the same as on Google.
14. From your SERP, you can also search within a site. So, my search yielded 1800flowers.com as a result, which I could click on to navigate to or search their site for 'flowers'. Cool! It will be interesting to see how this evolves.