I’ve been reading a small number of feed because I read people writing
essay and techcrunch This small number includes Apophenia & F.Stutzman (Unit Structures). Two voices and visions that nail what Social Networks are about. What online identity is !
The Financial Times just claimed Apophenia (Danah Boyd) The high priestess of internet friendship and also quotes Stutzman.
I’ve spent a lot of time working on and for wikipedia. We’ve worked with el rude on the hypotitical valuation of Wikipedia for several reasons:
It’s fun
It’s interesting (I’ll come back to that point)
It’s worth something when talking to VCs.
We came with a number that was quite astonishing, simply because we went further than a simple "ads valuation" (Google also bought power user and maybe star/ecosystem worker). I will not disclosed that number because we’ve done it for fun and because I love Wikipedia.
But I came accross a very interesting post from aVC (as always) starting with this question Why ads are so hated ? His point of view is that Ads are Usefull…. and ads are content when relevant. He is right, in a capitalist economy ads are content (look at the number of ads on youtube =46k ) and they are usefull because they are answers to problems and needs.
But that’s in a capitalistic environnment even if you intend to give the money to Charity as AVc does with is blog (30k$/year) and was hoping for Wikipedia to !
"I just don’t get that. Ads are content just like everything else. Good
ones that are relevant (and wikipedia being a search/keyword driven
site could target the ads so easily) and attractive are additive in my
opinion. But clearly not everyone feels that way."
Last week I gain several readers who spoke only English, so I created a special feed for them with my posts in English. I also had several exchanges with Equity Kicker and I planned a trip to london to meet VCs and entrepreneurs. So I’ve checked Techcrunch UK and realize that Stowe was not wrong on one point: it’s difficult to meet freely in France and to some extent in Europe (UK apart). So let me make my point in two parts.
David Hornick just wrote a post that turns the Long Tail into a new economy: Chris Anderson Strikes Again: The Economy of Abundance. several of the smartest VCs I am reading (actually 4 out of 9 VCs) are wondering directly or indirectly about abundance.
Last week, I wrote a post, after reading Equity Quicker, about a "Google size problem" that is not yet dealt with. I splited my argumentation in 4 parts. The first one was about Content and was, without using the term, describing an Economy of abundance.
"Content: Long Tail + Dematerialization = Pandora Box of Content = Content like water" = Abundance
I came across a very interesting article about Google and it’s a great second act to my post Venture with Wit. The journalist has asked several CEO of US Internet companies the following question : What Should Google Do Next? Answers are great:
"There’s so much work that needs to be done around search," Sifry said,
for real this time. If he were Google, he’d spend the next five years
working on "a Google of intention," driven by users’ real-time needs. CEO of Technorati
"I would get search working, because the results are cluttered with
commercial rubbish that ought really to be in the advertising zone. Try
doing a search in a category such as travel, for instance, for
Barcelona hotels. It’s useless."Nick Denton, publisher of the blog network company Gawker Media –> You should try givemebackmygoogle to have an idea why.
Greg Linden, who created the personalized news Web site Findory.com,
wrote in an e-mail that e-commerce — helping people find things they
want to buy — should be a key push. "Google should be the first stop for anyone wanting to buy anything online," CEO of findory
"One service that would give Google at least a decade of customer
loyalty: use the collective intelligence of its users to eradicate
spam," Henry Copeland, founder of the BlogAds network
Personaly, I would like to add these two : - Data Switzerland, from Battelle. The search as one brilliant point: Google is a database of intention and it raises Security question. You have to read his post. - Human computation. See my last post. It’s great and Human is still a pretty good machine.
It’s in english, it’s fast but it’s brilliant.
It’s EPIC / The Matrix.
ABSTRACT //Google TechTalks//
Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve.
TALK FROM
Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005.
Raising money is about finding VC (i.e Venture Capital) or BA (Business Angels). So lately, I’ve spent a lot of time searching for the right ones (VC/BA), the ones I will go after (I need to start somewhere). What I’m looking for is Affinity, something that does not fit in slide but which will team vision, cash and of course men.
So I’m looking for them using the web, tring to look at what they have done and if possible (but it becomes easier with personal billboard -i.e: blog/space-) what they said.
So I try to check regularly a bunch of blog or sites that display "venture free speech". Since my last visit (ten days ago), EquityKicker (a VC blog) has published three posts i simply loved :
Mr Brisbourne is a must read if you are a web-entrepreneur. Here’s what he says :
One night, I had a dream…. an EPIC one. Expression was everything…. it was me, virtually.
No avatar, just a an ubiquitous e-me…. with friends crusin’ an earth blue as an orange.
Could have called it Identity 2.0 but I am rather binary and we’re on the way, still nesting our identities.
So I breathe and believe.
It’s been two years since we start thinking about U.[lik] and we are know ready to be part of the identity puzzle. With our main extra feature : recommendation with affinity; so it will not be just popularity rulin’ but attention.
I think lonelygirl15 is an arty vision of this. She has a Magritte touch that made her a brilliant shell… explaining the Interest, a Hall of fame that went to shame with the hoax revelation…. Affinity with a virtual identity (0.2 of course) is high… social is mainly a mirror. Here is a tribute…. from a white page to a full avatar.
I’ve been reading a small number of feed because I read people writing
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