Daily Digest

Last night I came across this sweet web app called paper.ly that generates a newspaper of your Twitter feed daily. It comes with a pretty basic embed that displays a table of contents for your own personalized news paper that you can embed on your blog or website. The people I follow are mainly from the tech community in North America and the Toronto Twitter community. You'll find posts from the usual suspects like GigaOM, TechCrunch, Mashable, and Seth Godin. Also some local people like Alex Blom, Scott Stratten, Breanna Hughes and Joallore have appeared in my daily digest today. Anyway, if you are interested in seeing what the Twitter community I'm following is publishing on Twitter, feel free to bookmark this page.

@flipboard - my personal magazine

I haven't tried this yet, and I don't have an iPad still, however this video is just screaming at me to go buy an iPad just for this app. It's kind of like how Shazam and UrbanSpoon apps in the iPhone ads were the "kick over fence" for me.



I'm not all that interested about using it for Facebook, the use case that appeals to me the most is its Twitter integration. Twitter is a brilliant way to keep up on news in any field, on any topic, any event.



I'm not that interested in reading any individual's Twitter feed on the Flipboard. What I'm interested in is something like NewsMap however personalized like Flipboard. For this to work the way I think I'll find it useful, it needs to support Twitter lists, more than off my feed. Following 350 people is not easy, it stopped being easy at 25, and this is where TweetAgora came to the rescue. TweetAgora tackles this problem from one angle, identify the noise to amplify the signal. Its a very good angle. I tried a lot of Twitter clients for the iPhone and Mac, and honestly no other app tackles it as effectively as TweetAgora.

There is another angle, the angle that Flipboard could come at it, from what I have learned from Bretton MacLean it doesn't support that angle yet. When the characteristics of the noise are known, we can improve the signal to noise ratio, however if you don't know these characteristics, then you could reduce the actual signal. One of the great things about Twitter is that it opened my mind to all sorts of different topics that I didn't know I was interested in, I can miss them in my global feed, and I won't have them in my agoras because the characteristics are still unknown to me.

So here is the meat of this post. I'm thinking some sort of crazy mashup of Twitter lists, combined with Twitter lists of members on Twitter lists I follow. Ex. If I follow list A, and user 2 is on list A and they own list B, perhaps mashing up the content in list A and list B will bring to my attention new stuff for me to read when I look at the Flipboard magazine that contains list A. After all, the magazine's soul purpose is to show you something you didn't know, and kill time. : )

Anyway, congratulations to Mike McCue and the Flipboard team. All the best. I can't speak for the app itself, but the video is sick! Help me kill time more effectively.

On the rise of social eCommerce

Deborah Collier published her five predictions for social e-commerce in 2010:

1. Goodbye to the Middleman
2. The Year of the Deliver Company
3. Creative Sponsored Advertising
4. Mobile Commerce Revolution
5. Free Culture Frenzy

Her predictions can't be anymore bang on, if these become a reality of 2010, then we are well on our way to reaching that stage of "Social eCommerce" in the first half of this decade.

As it stands today, our eCommerce networks are all rather isolated and built up silos. We have the Amazons, the Ebays, the Facebooks and the iTunes and App Stores to name a few. Social eCommerce requires these imaginary walls surrounding these walled gardens to come down - and I do expect them to. The reason they will is because as much revenue these networks generate, there is still much more left on the table. We just need to reach out for it.

The elimination of the middle man is a big step. Online applications that have carved themselves a small niche of the market have risen. Not surprisingly these bleeding edge, creative and unique applications are not operated by large corporations, but by the John and Jane Does that have operated them out of their home office or even basements. In today's online world a business does not need to provide a whole lot of services and products to corner the market - in fact focusing on your niche and a small set of products and services guarantees that you will provide better results. Amazon allows me to sell my books to other people, I can sell my old computer on eBay, or my music on iTunes. There is no middle man involved. I would say the middle man is mostly eliminated at this stage.

Delivery is an interesting service, as it increases with the growth of C2C markets, because the middle man does not exist. We are yet to see a creative, bleeding edge and unique process for delivery. Its a harder problem to tackle, but definitely still possible. I don't expect this advancement to come from the national postal services. Its tragic, but these creative solutions come out of the basements and dorm rooms of the World. The big corporations are too sluggish and paralyzed to move with the speed required for this sort of advancement.

Creative, seamless and relevant advertisement is a personal interest of mine. The future of online ads in the social eCommerce phase would be heavily wired with the abundance of data on today's and tomorrow's social networks. We have some creative advertisement solutions today such as AdSense that would push ads based on the content on the page. That was last decade's technology, the 2010s need something new that is even more seamless, more integrated, and finally more relevant to me. The only way I can see these advertising engines outdoing themselves is by personalizing these ads. The data to drive such personalization is present, just locked away in these individual silos.

Mobile. Mobile. Mobile. The iPhone has revolutionized this arena. When I went to highschool, not all the kids had cell phone, a good chunk did, but not everybody. I didn't get my first cellphone until grade 10 I think. Similarly with university, at least the earlier years. Slowly the mobile population grew, but at that time it was fairly uncommon to see a smart phone within the hands of a twenty year old. Today that is different. Now we spend more time with our iPhones, Blackberrys, and other smart phones than we do on our laptops or computers. This is just another bundle of cash waiting for someone to reach out. Those who don't keep up with these trends will surely suffer. Generation Y is closing in to their 30s and 40s, these are the future customers and they will naturally surround those that provide such services.

The freemium model. Another prediction that is directly tied to Generation Y. Unlike the preceding generation, this generation expects to get basic features for free. This generation does not tolerate the service charges and system access fees. I don't expect these old fashioned models to remain much longer. Take the service charge I pay to CIBC, what do I get in return for it? Absolutely nothing. On the other hand, they get to invest my hard earned money, make money off it, and then have the nerve to charge me a service charge or fee to take it out? They ought to be paying me a service charge! That model will change. On the other hand, I would gladly pay a service charge to get premium features for my online banking, as well as mobile banking - and by premium I don't mean printing my paper statement on my screen. Rogers mobile has slowly started introducing such free features to their customers. This includes the "My Account" Rogers iPhone app to monitor my usage, free Rogers OnDemand Online and the ability to tag phone numbers with names on my online billing. Not rocket science, but its an excellent step forward. Stop thinking of the web as e-paper.

In a perfect world, the data I publish on Facebook, could generate sales on Amazon, that will provide recommendations from Ebay along with tunes to match the occasion from iTunes in an experience that is seamless wrapped with personalized ads from Google.

Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world, but these visions and ideas can' t be that far fetched. However, such ideas are a dime a dozen, what is important is how these ideas are executed, and not who is the first to execute them.

Why I use Twitter

I just read a post by Devin Coldewey about why he doesn't use Twitter. Of course everybody is entitled to their opinion on what they think about a product or service, hence this is my opinion on why Twitter has a place, adds value, and is as complete as a service really needs to be.

Until February/March of this year I think, I didn't use Twitter nor believe in why I would but I then decided to give it a fair try.

Why Tweets have value?

At first, 140 characters may seem too little space to express any single idea, but after using Twitter for a few months I came to realize I really don't need that much more space to express any single thought. Think of it as an elevator pitch. If I can't grab someone's attention in the first 140 characters what makes me think I can in 4 paragraphs?

Twitter in my opinion makes you a better writer and teaches you to express your ideas in the most efficient way possible.

When I scan my feed on my phone or at a computer I'm not really reading every word in the tweet. I quickly scan through and stop when a keyword catches my eye. With a blog I have more text to scan, plus how would I even find the blog post in the first place? And with the shear amount of content on the web, I appreciate the fact that I am harvesting what others found interesting. I might not be interested in everything they tweet, but I followed them for a reason - i.e. I found them more or less interested in the same topics I am.

Twitter is as complete as it needs to be

Sure, people want A+B+C, but nobody said Twitter has to be everything for everybody. Twitter does A really well and leave B and C for others to do just as good. I am a strong believe that if you can't get the basics right, then there is no point to attempt at providing B and C. And when you have the basics nailed, why ruin it by expanding scope? Twitter is not fundamental, but it is simple and gets the job done. I used to scan blogs I follow in the morning before heading to work, now I am exposed to a larger base of articles and tweets where I am able to quickly pick out what I am interested in reading at that point. The problem with following blogs is that most of the time you won't find something interesting on them every day, you will on Twitter.

Why Facebook status updates are nothing like Twitter feeds?

This will probably change after the recent acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook, but until it does Facebook status updates is very different and is used for different reasons. I would argue that Facebook in fact is pure vanity, I agree Twitter is too to some degree (i.e who has the more followers? who has the coolest background, who is a connector? whose got more RTs? etc.). I wouldn't scan Facebook updates on a daily basis, I would scan Twitter updates though. Twitter is kind of like a dynamic browser and social bookmarking tool. The similarity that I have seen between both is that people are using Facebook to share funny or interesting videos in my case. If I feel like watching a funny video, I would check what has been shared on Facebook.

Another major difference is that on Facebook your interests may not be aligned with your friends as much as they are with the people you follow on Twitter. For example, I got an iPhone a month ago and would like to know what applications people recommend I download. I can easily follow 20 people that talk about the iPhone and find out, how do I find such people on Facebook? and after I do I need to befriend them to be able to see their updates.

Twitter isn't supposed to replace anything, but it definitely adds a lot to certain people - and for me at least it replaced reading online news. Facebook's feed as this stage is nowhere near a competitor to Twitter. Their uses overlap in some areas but in my opinion are disjoint in most areas. Certain things are better shared on Facebook, ex. a picture of friends at your birthday party, other things are better shared on Twitter ex. a link to a specific topic that interests a fraction of your Facebook network, but much more on your Twitter network.

Twitter as a news aggregator

Twitter is a great aggregator, and works great aggregating news which explains why traditional media hopped on it. I didn't learn about Michael Jackson's death on Facebook, nor did I learn about it on CNN, I read it on Twitter. I confirmed it on CNN though and then on Facebook I saw friends' recollections of his greatest moments. On the Iran fiasco, I learned that through Twitter as well, unfortunately that weekend the media dropped the ball and I couldn't confirm any of it, but the fact that so many people were 'reporting' on it in real-time was enough to give it credibility.

Twitter became pure vanity

One thing that disappointed me about Twitter is how fast it got flooded with "experts" and "gurus", there is an expert on every imaginable topic on Twitter - obviously not all legit or credible sources of information. But I am guilty of this as well, I described myself as a "Google Maps Guru".

For me at least, I don't follow many people who just promote themselves i.e. the whole "I just ate an apple....yum" crowd - unless I know them in person or they usually share stuff that interests me. But this is the great thing about its simplicity, if I want to do some sort of social experiment about how often people post when eating an apple, Twitter would be my source for that info.

My daily dosage of tweets come from other Google maps developers, the different Google products teams, friends, legit SEO experts, news aggregators, the media and some miscellaneous people that I found interesting via RTs, FollowFridays or followers.

I agree, our attention is spread so thin these days, but because of that, if it weren't for Twitter's 140 characters could it have worked at all?

The Three Rules of Epidemics by Malcolm Gladwell

In his book "The Tipping Point - How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" Malcolm Gladwell explains how that idea, trend or social behavior crosses that specific threshold and explodes. That magic point in time is the "Tipping Point".

Malcolm's book is full of exciting and interesting examples on different trends in history and is a must read for anybody interested in social networks and how to spread their ideas like wildfire.

1 + 1 + 1 : The Three Rules of Epidemics

The Law of the Few

Any successful social epidemic "is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts". With regards to any social network; a great idea is not nearly enough - in fact the idea itself is not the only thing that matters when it comes to social epidemics. A great little experiment Malcolm mentions in the book to illustrate this concept is the following:

• Create a list of 40 people you know that you consider to be your circle of friends - without including family members and co-workers
• Now go through this list and backwards track any people that were responsible for that connection until you reach an individual that is ultimately responsible for that connection
• Repeat this process for all 40 on your list. What do you see

It took me some time to work through these steps for each person on my list - but the really interesting thing is after doing 10 or so people you will start to notice a pattern; there are names that are repeatedly showing up. You will then be blown out of your mind when you realize that there your social circle is really a social pyramid and that if you did not meet this one person your circle of friends today would have been completely different. This is the Law of the Few. Any epidemic - specifically a social one - depends on this law and without these special people your great idea will have a hard time reaching its tipping point.

Malcolm talks about three different types of special people; Connectors , Mavens and Salesmen.

The people at the top of your social pyramid are the Connectors you know, you pretty much owe who you know today to these people. What makes someone a Connector? Yes, you are right, they need to know a lot of people. This is not easy to accomplish though, sign up for an account on Twitter and see how much of a Connector you can be. Don't underestimate the effort it took someone on Twitter to reach 100K, 500K or even more than 1M followers. 

Quantity is not the only important thing about Connectors, who they are connected to is also important? Are they also Connectors? or are they other types of special people?

Who are the Mavens? and why are they important? Mavens collect information - they love to collect it, almost to a level of obsession. These are ones that know how to get the best deals and where to get them - more importantly they want to share this information. Although Mavens will know a lot of information, that is not what is really important for a social network; Mavens are responsible for starting a social epidemic. Consider this: who started the #fixreply trend on Twitter today/yesterday? or who started the #followfriday trend ? 

The last group are the Salesmen. Although Mavens are the data banks in a social network and are the ones that start epidemics, Mavens are not persuaders, but they can start epidemics and Connectors spread them, what do Salesmen do? When you don't believe what is being said about something, it's the Salesman that manages to convince you. From a social network point of view, Mavens are the Early Adopters and Innovators - the group of people at the far left of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The Connectors and Salesmen exist throughout the adoption cycle. Some connectors might adopt the new technology or social network by just hearing about it, others need some persuasion and that is where the Salesmen who have adopted your great idea come into play.

The Stickiness Factor

This is a straightforward rule and it is one of the basics of advertising and marketing. Whatever it is you are promoting, the ad needs to stick. This also applies to social networks. The initial hype of the launch will generate some buzz and traffic and the early adopters will start joining and try out your idea. Your work is not done here, you can't just leave it to the Tiki Gods. If your idea lacks Stickiness it will fail - and do so miserably. All this hard work down the drain. You need to find how to make your idea stick and be irresistible. The first impressions of the early adopters and Mavens is critical to the idea's success and allow for that first spark that may ignite the fire.

The Power of Context

Finally, the last rule for a successful social epidemic is context. A great and sticky idea along with the right mix of "special people" are still not enough to ignite this fire every social network entrepreneur dreams about. Context is the first and perhaps the most important rule.  "Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and place in which they occur" explains Gladwell. The slightest changes in this environment can cause the "tip", slow down the progress or even capsize it completely. Timing is also important, attempting to start an epidemic at the wrong time may completely fail. That is why the Flu is more common in the winter than the summer and why global pandemics are more common in the summer than in the winter. This is also the nature of the social web. Today information travels incredibly fast on the social web and the right information released at the right point in time can push us to take the action and adopt a new technology. Take me for example, I have been building Google Maps mashups and applications for almost two years now. When the iPhone launched in Canada in 2008, it was exciting news, but I was not overly excited by it. I still monitored iPhone news, but I did not feel any compelling reason to adopt that new technology. Slowly I heard about the App Store and slowly started seeing more and more ads about the App store. I started getting more excited about the iPhone but still not that excited. Note the effects of this change in the perceived environment i.e. the presence of the App store. Finally I hear about the new iPhone 3.0 OS and the new features it introduces such as built in maps support, push notification, and peer-to-peer communication. Less than a month later I have already purchased a mac mini, downloaded the iPhone development kit and started experimenting with it. So what happened here? My perception of the iPhone continuously changed from "Yet another phone" to "Ok a neat phone with impressive UI/UX" to "Wow tons of 3rd party apps" to "Oh man, this is the ultimate location based device" with the announcement of the 3.0 APIs.

So these three rules are very important, and you need all three for your social network idea or application to succeed. Think about it, would Twitter be this successful if it weren't for the Connectors, Mavens or Salesmen? would Facebook? What does Orkut lack that Facebook doesn't? Keep in mind the last rule - Context. Orkut is actually very popular in South America, more so than in North America. Or consider why the iPhone has not succeeded in China? or why Yahoo! is more popular than Google in China? Any product or service dependent on a viral marketing campaign needs to be aware of these 3 laws to succeed.

Malcolm Gladwell's book is a great, great, great read for anybody who is planning on launching the next idea. His style is easy to read, full of real world examples and he can quickly get the point across with his wit. I have also read his other book "Outliers" and already got the 3rd book "Blink" - and yes in a couple of months he has became one of my favorite authors.

Facebook Application: pul.se - truly personalized recommendation engines

With the rise of the social web, personalization has quickly become more and more important for the consumers as well as the providers. Personalization allows you to target specific types of content to specific types of people, hence increasing your chances of being able to sell your product or service. Its Marketing 101 - if you want to sell your product or service to anybody you need to speak their language first and relate to them by explaining how your product or service can solve problems specific to them. 

At the end it comes down to what will $1 invested in your service give me? Whether it is better customer support, better project management, faster processes, real time analytics, etc. Of course you can do this by having custom products and services but your margins are far better if you instead customize / personalize how you deliver the same products and services. This is a fact. Rolls Royce does not generate as much revenue as Nissan or Toyota. Yes there are problems today that require a 'Rolls Royce' and customized solution but a lot of people have common problems that do not need a 'Rolls Royce' solution - hence you don't see a Rolls Royce on every block. I think solutions that focus on these common problems have better profit margins and second are easier to sell and market than a customized solution.

I posted recently on the topic of content personalization and recommendation engines for eCommerce solutions. Today I came across pul.se which is also available as a Facebook application. I was not able to install it because it's a Facebook Application for Pages - not entirely sure what that means, but I guess my profile 'Page' does not count. 

Anyway from reading the application's profile after installing pul.se it will recommend stuff that is relevant to you. As a Facebook application,  pul.se could - and should - learn about your friends, your interests, your favorite books and movies, your friend's favorite books or movies, etc. and when the time comes it will recommend something to you based on this information. This is the smarter recommendation engine - something I see becoming the norm for recommendation engines across all eCommerce websites.  Remember the quote "Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are"?

There could be more services like this, but pul.se is definitely the first one I have seen so far. I am surprised it is not something Facebook owns themselves. Sooner or later we will see applications just like this but on the online stores themselves such as Amazon where their recommendation engines would become smarter by thinking social or ask the smarter recommendation engines that think social such as pul.se  for help. This is an important step for truly personalized recommendations that think outside of the box instead of being bounded by the information they have about you. 

Real time, social, microblogging and context aware searching

A couple of days ago Google's Eric Schmidt reportedly said that Google is looking into ways of intergrating microblogging within their search. 'Microblogging' is really code name for Twitter and this news is rather interesting after the rumors earlier this week about Apple, Microsoft and Google were eyeing Twitter - Twitter's co-founder Biz Stone was on the The View on Wednesday to announce that Twitter is not for sale.

What could real-time microblogging search do for Google?

From a user experience point of view, the current search does not really feel real-time mainly because the results don't update as they do on Twitter Search. Real-time search would also make the Google search engine more aware of the context of the search query and hence be able to deliver context-aware advertisements.

Yet micro-blogging introduces an interesting problem that Google would need to solve first. Conversations on twitter are threaded and posts can come down to a short

user2: @user1 yes its amazing

which means context is spread across all the conversation's threads. There are several applications online that give you access to a threaded view of Twitter - something that Twitter does not have but it should. Any real-time microblogging search needs to support threads to be able to deliver more relevant content. By nature search queries are really questions which works well because conversations usually start with questions or an opinion. When I search 'mac mini' on a real-time search I'm not very interested in Apple's Mac Mini product page, I am more interested in knowing what others are saying about it right now. So If my hypothetical Twitter post above was in response to:

user1: do you like your new mac mini?

searching for 'mac mini' should ideally be able to show that threaded conversation even though the words 'mac mini' are not present in user2's response.

Real time search and Search Engine Optimization

Not so long ago - when people read physical news papers instead of online news - if someone wanted to know what has happened in the past 24 hours they would buy a newspaper. The news paper is similar to real-time search, it will inform you of new events around you and in the world. Also not so long ago - when people went to the library to get access to newspaper archives instead of online archives - if someone wanted to learn about an event that happened 10 years ago they would visit the local library and pull out archived newspapers that mention that event. Although current search engines can index pages very quickly, it still feels like archived news - in fact search engine result pages are really archived news.

In a real time search engine pages need to be ranked a little differently that how they get ranked right now and hence SEO practices need to change to accommodate these changes. Because conversations on a microblog like Twitter are threaded user2's response 'yes its amazing' would not rank at all on a search for 'mac mini' although that response is probably what the user wanted to see i.e. mac mini reviews. Maybe another user responded:

user3: @user1 its great, i installed tweetie, evernote and am in love with front row

That too should show up on a real time search since it is showing different applications one can get on a Mac. Threaded conversations on microblogs should be looked at in the same manner comments are viewed at the bottom of a blog post - except these comments are not nicely grouped together with the original post on Twitter. 

This introduces new problems, since conversations can have nested threads:

user4: @user3 yup tweetie is the best Twitter application and front row is just too sexy

and then loops:

user4: @user1 I use my mini as a media server at home

Real time search is Social Search

Information is being added to the Internet today at a much faster rate than before the Social Networks age.  A lot of this content is being added by individuals all over the world on dozens of social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, Youtube, etc. In my opinion this content is the most useful to be presented in a real time search engine. Real time news can still be delivered through the participation of news organizations in social networks - as they do today. 

Real time search would also allow the search engines to deliver truly personalized content and targeted advertisements.  Google recently allowed users to create Google profiles and link it to your online identities across the many social networks. Search today is not aware of "where you are right now" so how can it truly direct you to where you want to go? Consider the Google search page as a map, and for Google to be able to deliver relevant answers to you, it needs to know your "location". I don't mean location as in a physical location with a latitude and longitude, I in fact mean context but for the sake of the argument I am using "location". So imagine the Google search page is a map and you are looking for "mac mini". Google goes out and gets you the most relevant results according to Google for that search term and plots it on the "map" i.e. the search engine results page. If your search term is broad, then your "map" will just contain "locations" all over the place - i.e. Google is unaware of your search context and depends on you to point it to the right context. With real time search and Google profiles, Google can make an educated guess about that context i.e. Google is able to tell what your current "location" is. Real time search on Google can now become a "GPS" and route you to the most relevant "locations" to you. By being able to search your threaded conversations on Twitter for example about the "mac mini" Google can customize the real time results page to contain content that you have discussed with others. Now my search for "mac mini" would produce results on "tweetie", "evernote", "front row", "media server" and "mac mini" - all keywords in the threaded conversation above. 

Now even the advertisements on that page can be personalized instead of the ones I see now including "mac mini store" and "mac sale". These ads are not relevant to me since I already have one - so there is absolutely no compelling reason for me to click these ads. But on the other hand if the advertisement showed "evernote sale 50% off pro account today only", first I would be blown away that AdSense showed that to me, and second I am more likely to click it because  I have the free version of Evernote.

Technorati Blogosphere Tag Chart

Just a few minutes after claiming my blog on Technorati I got introduced to their Blogosphere Chart widget which goes to show how useful this tool can be for not only researching your topics but keeping tabs on the top tags this week.

The chart below compares Personalization vs. Context vs. Social Media vs. Social Web

 

You can probably already tell what is on my mind, why is 'Personalization' not a popular tag? It almost looks like Context, Social Media, and Social Web are going hand in hand, yet in my honest opinion Context and Personalization are like peanut butter and jelly (I really don't like peanut butter though) Given your visitors' context a great website will deliver content specifically personalized for that user. 

Just a tiny observation on my end.

New Bloggers: Submit your content to the Social Web - the sooner the better

Over the weekend I created my Technorati Profile to help promote my blog, build links, network and aid in my research before posting. Basically these are the reasons why one should use Technorati - one of many similar tools.

About a month a go I started an experiment on this blog to generate more traffic with more focused and consistent content. The experiment started out with more technology focused content where I mainly write about the Social Web,  Marketing via the Social Web, and applications mainly ones that have to do with a map or mash-up or again the Social Web.

The experiment also included new branding and theme to disassociate myself from the old brand where I wrote about "Random Sh!t" which included many different topics including but not limited to Politics, Photoshop Cartoons, Software, and the Flight Simulator I worked on right after graduation in 2006. I still chose to keep these labels and content as a history and a reminder to remain focused on the new purpose of my blog. i.e. To Present My Thoughts on Technology and Web Applications. 

This blog started in 2006 just after I completed my Software Engineering and Management degree. Back then the topics were not as focused as they are today, and the traffic I am receiving via Twitter is outstanding compared to what this blog was used to.

So I decided to take this experiment a step further and claim my blog on Technorati in hopes to generate even more traffic. The OpenID method of claiming the blog did not work for me so I am using the other method of embedding the provided link on my blog. Instead of just posting the link somewhere on the page, I figured I might as well make a blog post of it and talk a little bit about Technorati. Of course since I have not claimed my blog yet on there I have yet to gain any knowledge on how to best promote your blog on Technorati - feel free to comment to share your experiences -

I will however post on this next week once I have experimented with this new tool. At the end of the road there is no harm done by acquiring another knife to carve myself a tiny piece of the steak one would refer to as the Social Web. 

Thinking Out Loud: Content Personalization - Context Aware Ads and the Social Web

In continuation from the first Thinking Out Loud post titled "Content Personalization - Tell Me Who Your Friends Are" the second - yet more important - use of this type of personalized content is targeted advertisement. Google has owned this area with their AdSense and AdWords products to deliver 'personalized' advertisements to you. Delivering ads based on content and context are very precise methods to target advertisements, but can it be done better? and where can the Social Web have a role?

I'm logged in to my GMail right now reading a message from Rogers regarding my TV cable service and guess what? All the ads on the right are about TV, whether it is watching it online for free, switching to another cable company or getting satellite TV. Those are very precise advertisements, but they are just guesses based on the text around it. If I just signed up for Rogers last week, odds are I am not looking to switch my provider today - what a waste of precious ad space. Is there a better way to target ads?

Here is another example that will better illustrate the business case for this type of advertisement. I just bought a Mac Mini this week and I just Googled "Mac Mini". Based on my  search criteria, the content present on the page and some complex weighting algorithm the ads Google will serve up will be related to purchasing a Mac Mini or a computer in general, but I already bought one  - again very precise but what a waste of ad space.

One might say "but Nael, your search term was vague, Google did the best it can". Unfortunately the average user does not know how to build a proper search engine query to reach to the results they are looking for with as a little searching as possible. The first thing that will come to mind is to search the product name, and then if that did not give them what they want they'll add another term and so on until eventually they will find what they need or they give up and try later.

Now imagine you can create a profile on these search engines that deliver these targeted advertisements, not just a profile with the usual information on it; i.e. name, location, picture, interests, etc. but one you can point to the different windows into your online identity; blog, Twitter, Picasa Web, and LinkedIn. Now the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

In this manner, advertisements can become even more personalized - not just by the search terms you provide - but by using the aggregate of all the content you freely publicize on the social web.

So what is very interesting is that it seems Google picked up the ball in this field by allowing you to create your own Google Profile like the one I just created. What is this for I wonder? It is not so hard to imagine that it can be used for the next generation of personalized advertisements, or it can also be Google's Facebook killer, either way we can agree on at least one thing, there is no better place to have such a profile page than on Google.

Thinking Out Loud: Content Personalization - Tell Me Who Your Friends Are

"Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are"

That saying cannot be more true today - especially with all the available social networks. How does Amazon make recommendations to its users? While they don't tell us everything they do, Amazon does reveal one part of it at least when you login:
"These recommendations are based on items you own and more"

I don't find recommendations based on items I own very interesting, I am more interested with the two words at the end - "and more". What other ways are there to provide recommendations?

User demographics have been the most popular way to do this for the longest time now, and with the rise of social networks I believe this is about to change. What is the problem with using demographics for recommendations?

The biggest problem I see is demographics and statistics go directly against personalization by definition. A decade ago that was probably as close as one can get to personalization, but today is this still true? Today, everybody - including the neighbour's cat - has a Facebook profile. All these social networks are sitting on a gold mine and they know it. Demographics are useful when the medium you are delivering the content through delivers content by the same demographics such as a TV. As a TV advertiser you need to know the demographics of the product you are advertising to know at what time of the day you can maximise your reach to that demographic. Unfortunately today's web does not work that way - imagine Facebook where on weekdays between 10am and noon you can only add and talk to stay at home moms? or between 4pm and 6pm its kids between the ages of 8 and 15, or between 8pm and 11pm its men between 30 and 40.

Today's social web is not divided by demographics, whether you are 15, 25, 35, 55, or 60 you can still get on Facebook and find content that interests you.

Consider the iTunes Genius feature that recommends songs? How does it do it? Obviously there is some complex algorithm that answers the question: "If user 1 purchased songs a,b and c, and many many many users purchased songs a , b and d, what is the probability that user 1 will like song d if song d is the same genre as songs a and c for user 1?" This is the bottom line of the majority of today's recommendation engines. Based on my experience as a customer it comes down to:

• What did I already buy? - or listen, or view, or read, or...
• What did others buy? - or listen, or view, or read, or...
• How big is the intersection between our product selections? and is it enough to conclude that I may like what they bought?
  

So is this personalization? Isn't this similar to how radio stations select songs?


For example, what I would like to see on Amazon is the recommendation engine would learn about me based on what I provide on the profile. By pointing Amazon to my Facebook, blog, twitter, linkedin, bit.ly bookmarks and more, Amazon would learn about what interests me based on my thoughts here, my rants on twitter and who I follow, my friends on Facebook, the events I attended and who from my friends went there, and so on.

Finally, if all this sounds like too much information to give away, although it is already publicly available, then you don't need to use it. Think about it how neat would it be if Amazon was able to learn through my twitter that I started learning CakePHP and sends me a special offer for 50% off a CakePHP book? or that I started using twitter 3 weeks ago which coincided with when I started posting more often on here and recommend a book about promoting my blog via social media?