The Guidewire

I’m headed to the Semantic Technology conference in a couple of weeks, primed to mingle with the top minds in what is arguably the most exciting sector in technology right now. I’ll be participating in a panel, “Taking Semantic Technology to the Masses,” that tackles a key issue around the semantic Web. How do we take semantics to the next level? How do we extricate ourselves from the convoluted morass of geek-speak to make semantic technology understandable and appealing to consumers?

We’ll dig deeper into the issue at SemTech but I think the broad answer is very simple: remove “semantics” from the equation. I tackled this issue a few months ago, making the point that

…the ultimate solution will likely evolve quietly, organically, behind the scenes of a seemingly run-of-the-mill software app. We’ll raise our heads from our keyboards one day and find that the words we’re typing have taken on a life of their own.

I was reminded of these words recently when I spoke with Semantra, a Texas company that enables employees to conversationally interact with business software. Founded by semantics pioneer Marvin Elder, Semantra allows users, techie and non-techie alike, to easily pull needed information from complex relational databases within an organization. Semantra believes that, while the analytics tools designed for businesses do the job quite nicely, the only people in a company who really know how to use them are in IT. Read the rest of this entry »

Video analytics is not a term that strikes excitement in the hearts of social media fanatics. It’s far too enmeshed in advertising lingo like “impressions” and “views” to appeal to the average Web 2.0 fan. But few among us can deny that ads fuel our beloved social tech economy. Further, I doubt many would object if our favorite sites and brands could find a more integrated, targeted and relevant method of ad delivery. In order to do this effectively, companies must turn to sophisticated measurement tools that deliver a deep level of insight about user habits and behavior.

The subject got a bit of attention this week when BrewPR’s Brooke Hammerling called for industry-wide standards in video analytics in a post for Silicon Alley Insider. She argued that terms such as “views” are too open to interpretation and manipulation. One commenter, Greg Stuart, former CEO of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), parried back that the “view” term has been clearly defined - “at least as it’s defined for advertising” - by the IAB. The Washington Post weighed in on the topic yesterday, reiterating the lack of industry-wide standards. It’s also worth noting that advertisers are fickle bunch; they go where the results are. If there is no ability to measure results effectively, and no way to connect views with specific actions, then advertisers have no meaningful way to directly evaluate their online video ad spend. Thus, the huge opportunity in this space: not just for effective tools, but to define the terms of the competition.

We featured Visible Measures at DEMO 08, a company that interprets user behavior at significant intervals of viewing. As we said then, views - however you define them - are the easy part; understanding exactly how viewers interact with a video is a tougher nut to crack. With an average of 20-40 different events occurring during viewing, including rewinding, fast forwarding and the like, a rich field of user behavior would lie fallow without services like Visible Measures.

To evaluate effectively, you have to follow your users across all viewing platforms and mediums, which brings us to Divinity Metrics, a company whose product chases your video around the Web, delivering analytics on all occurrences of a video across the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »

I firmly believe you don’t find really great innovation by sitting at your desk and waiting for it to come to you. You’re not going to find it consistently by doing the Silicon Valley party circuit, either. You have to get out into the world and meet entrepeneurs where they live. And that’s just what we’re doing over the next several weeks as DEMO goes on the road.

We will be holding private meetings to evaluate potential demonstrators for our upcoming DEMOfall 08 conference. Meetings will be held in the following six cities:

• Seattle on Thursday, May 1st
• Boston on Tuesday, May 6th
• Providence on Wednesday, May 7th
• New York City on Thursday, May 8th
• Denver on Monday, May 12th
• Austin on Tuesday, May 13th

To request a meeting, please complete the Demonstrator application. Once we’ve had a chance to evaluate your application, we’ll be in touch with meeting locations and times.

During a few stops, we’ll be hosting drinks and conversation with DEMO veterans and newcomers alike. We invite you to attend and encourage you to bring along your closest colleagues and friends to experience the networking power and intelligent conversation surrounding the DEMO community. Space is very limited, so please click on the city link below for details and to RSVP:

• Seattle on May 1st
• Boston on May 6th
• Austin on May 13th

By the way, early bird registration is now open for DEMOfall 08 coming to San Diego on September 7-9, 2008. Registering now will save you $600.

Chris and I engaged in a lively discussion via Skype this morning regarding the merits of Rushmore Drive, a new search engine targeted to African-Americans. I heard about it from SheGeeks, who stated quite clearly how she feels about the service. Especially after hearing Rushmore Drive is under the same corporate umbrella as Ask.com, my immediate reaction was also one of dismissal and “what the hell are they thinking?” You may remember my own rant a couple of months ago about Ask’s development of a search engine targeted to suburban women in the Midwest. My point then - that the path to search success lies in broadening rather than narrowing your audience - holds true with Rushmore Drive. Assuming a group of people wants results from a limited pool denegrates the audience and simply doesn’t hold water.

Chris isn’t necessarily a fan of these sites either but she can’t help but put her experienced analyst hat on and deliver some opposing points. Her argument is that engines like Rushmore are serving a viable subset within a demographic that vehemently holds on to that demographic as their identity. There are enough of those subsets in any demographic to create a business; the question of how big that business is remains to be answered. She concluded by allowing that there are some issues she might turn to a women’s site over a general one, assuming they’ll have better information, i.e., health-related such as breast cancer, pregnancy, or menopause.

It’s easy to deliver emotional responses to such a model, as it’s inherently personal. That, after all, is the intended effect of the engines. Unable to differentiate algorithmically from the Google way of search, these companies are instead aiming to add a personal layer. If I can’t necessarily deliver a better search result to you, dear user, I’ll try appealing to your gut. Who are you and with whom do you identify? It’s a philosophical/psychological approach and it’s risky. To work effectively, the engine must excise some results and/or bring others to the fore. Who’s making that determination? Can one possibly write an algorithm to home in on female or African-American search results? I doubt it and I think that’s the point.

Technology should be blind to race, gender and creed. If you want to appeal to a demographic, create a destination site. Pack it to the hilt with what you think are appropriate links and material and let it be sourced by a general search engine. But the very nature of search is and should be egalitarian. Attempting to attract certain groups of people by rearranging their search results is, at best, touting a product for what it doesn’t do. And that to me, seems bad business.

What do you think?

Customer service. It’s a phrase that likely conjures up visions of… well, I’m not sure it conjures up anything for most people these days. It’s a dying philosophy in modern times, as we become more insular and removed from our communities. What’s the point of going the extra mile for someone when you’ll likely never come in contact with them again? Indeed, the only instances of excellent customer service that come to my mind are of stores and companies at which I’m a “regular.”

The concept is gaining more traction in blog circles lately, as companies attempt to leverage Web 2.0 technologies to better serve their customers. Sarah Perez recently focused on Twitter as a customer service tool on ReadWriteWeb and Cyndy Aleo-Carreira posted about some personal experiences, good and bad, with several companies. I myself have noticed a couple of new Twitter followers immediately following sign-ups in new betas recently. One amusing incident involved me tweeting “What the hell is Mergelab and what am I supposed to do with it?” only to receive a direct reply from the CEO 10 minutes later. Lesson: excising profanity will usually result in nicer-sounding tweets. Read the rest of this entry »

It was one of those moments of self-doubt, when you think, “Is it possible I’m not as smart as I think I am?”

Immersed in the Sunday New York Times this weekend, I read Matt Richtel’s piece with interest and, as is the custom these days, thoughts on how I’d like to blog about it. I thought it was of sufficient quality to give the reader pause as to how blogging fits into the greater picture of our everyday lives. No, I didn’t find it to be particularly groundbreaking or crack investigative reporting but not every article will be.

I expected ample comments from the blogging world but anticipated it would trend more towards another discussion of the treadmill on which we’ve put ourselves, how to keep pace, etc etc, ad infinitum. Instead, the reaction was swift and unanimous: Wimps! The insta-comments on FriendFeed told me precisely where this meme was headed: desperate, old-school media attacks successful new genre; alcoholic and/or divorced reporters are commonplace; sensationalist and crappy. The consensus seemed to be that plenty of professions carry high levels of stress and it all comes down to individual life management. So shut up, old media, and get with the new way of journalism. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been playing around in Persai’s beta for a while now and wasn’t initially sure what to make of it. It’s a content recommendation site, pure and simple, and I have so much other content flying at me that I didn’t see how the site could fit into my daily grind. But the algorithms behind it prove more intriguing as the days go by.

There’s no learning curve with Persai: enter terms you’re interested in and it returns articles on a regular basis. No social networks, no friend lists, no ratings. Just news. So simple, it’s almost jarring at first glance. Once the engine returns relevant articles, you have two choices - read or reject. Both actions help the engine learn, yes, but Persai’s creators - Matt Kent, Kyle Shank and Ted Dziuba - don’t want users to set out with the aim of teaching the engine. “Just use the thing,” they say in the company blog. So that’s precisely what I did. Among the several interests I set up - including emerging tech, election 2008, independent film and semantics - Persai hits closest to the mark for election ‘08 and semantics. I attribute the former to a large pool from which to draw and the latter to the specificity of the term. The independent film category has been the toughest for the engine to nail; for some reason, it keeps giving me articles about the Indian film industry. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I’ve never been in a beta quite like Persai before. Its creators don’t give interviews, there’s no whiz-bang design to pretty up the site, and I don’t think I’ve ever received an email from them, a la, “Here are our new features! Tell us how it’s going! Are you happy? Let us know if you’re not!” They’re not marketers, in other words. All that’s left to contend with is the technology and I find that profoundly interesting. Users are essentially thrown into the engine with little background or direction as to how to use it. I suspect this is what a beta looked like way back before it became a marketing term: wrestle with the tech for a bit and here’s a tiny Feedback link if you have suggestions.

Persai is in a profoundly tough space, considering the breadth and depth of companies playing in recommendation, machine learning, and news filtering. Its revenue model currently consists of contextual ads, which I’ve found to be quite close to the mark when filtered through their engine. In short, Persai has wormed its way into my daily grind, whether I wanted it there or not. I find articles that I’m not seeing anywhere else. The company is clearly smart about its algorithms. But how they push those out to the market, make them friendly for mass consumption and position themselves against weighter entities will be just as much, if not more, of a test.

WE INTERRUPT OUR NORMALLY MEASURED INDUSTRY ANALYSIS . . .

Good morning, all. How’s everyone out there in peaceful-happy-go-lucky-tech-land? Everyone good? Anyone received a death threat recently? Oh that’s right. We have! Well, I supposed it’s good to be noticed. What is that old saying? If you’re not pissing people off, you’re not doing things right? By that logic, we must be running a hell of a show.

I’m not entirely sure who whizzed in Mike Arrington’s Wheaties but someone at DEMO/Guidewire Group apparently did. From what I hear, we’re in good company; the list of people Arrington doesn’t like is approaching impressive proportions. If I have any advice for folks in the tech industry, entrepreneurs and media alike, it’s to watch your back. Friendly competition is obviously not in Mike’s vocabulary; either you succumb to his will or… DIE!

Calm down, Mike. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a dozen other, perhaps more important and insightful, posts I’d rather be writing today. But, alas, my friends at TechCrunch put a wall in my path today and I just can’t ignore it, despite counsel from perhaps wiser advisers to do just that.

You see, TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis announced their plans for what is now being called TechCrunch50. Reading the TC50 site was a deja vu experience. The concept, the “rules,” the agenda . . . all out of the DEMO playbook.

You might remember that TechCrunch announced its first startup launch event, what was then called TC20, while sitting in the second row at DEMO 07. At the time I believed, as I still do now, that entrepreneurs need a variety of venues and opportunities to address the market. If TC20, which becameTC40 presumably when the blog’s desire to attract more entrepreneurs outstripped its promise of super-exclusivity, can provide a platform and give wings to entrepreneurs, then good on ‘em. That can only benefit the tech ecosystem.

But, as I told VentureBeat’s Chris Morrison this afternoon, I’m baffled by TechCrunch’s decision to put its event literally on top of DEMOfall 08. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always known that Josh Kopelman is smart, but his April Fools’ prank, TheUnFunded.com, is brilliant.

Had he wanted to open a dialog on the deteriorating relationship between Venture Capitalist and Entrepreneurs he could not have found a better catalyst. While the site was intended as a joke, its coverage and commentary on TechCrunch speaks volumes about the way in which entrepreneurs and investors view one another.

In admitting to the gag, Josh acknowledges the growing divide:

The fact that so many smart people actually believed that such an outlandish site could be legitimate speaks volumes about the state of the relationship between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. . . . while I don’t want to read too much into a silly April Fool’s Day joke, I think it does shine a little light on the level of mistrust and ignorance within the VC/entrepreneur ecosystem.

If the commentary and controversy stirred by TheUnFunded.com is to be believed, entrepreneurs believe most VCs are a waste of skin and VCs believe most entrepreneurs are a waste of time.

Hyperbole to be sure. Still, the dialog does suggest that the co-dependent relationship between entrepreneur and investor is shrouded in misunderstanding and misrepresentation. As much as these firms position themselves as partners and catalysts for great ideas, VCs really aren’t in the business of building companies, except as a vehicle for making money. And there really are only one or two “next Googles” in any given fund life; most startups will be lucky to survive beyond their first 3 years and those that do will be luckier still to provide a respectable exit to their investors. Most of the vituperative commentary, I expect, comes from first-time fund-raisers who believe that because investors have money, they should invest it in their firms. And those who don’t are blindingly stupid for missing the golden opportunity which, frankly, may not be as golden as the next guy and certainly is not likely as golden as the entrepreneur believes.

While Josh intends to take down TheUnFunded at the end of the week, I’d love to see it stay, but as an open, transparent platform for an honest and constructive dialog between investors and entrepreneurs. Because if ever there were an industry that needed more transparency and a lot more trust, it’s this one.