Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: search (Page 2 of 2)

Krugle’s Hiring — Free House!

My friend Steve Larsen, formerly of the Twin Cities and now CEO of Krugle Inc. in Menlo Park (that’s the hot code-search startup I covered at Demo in February), just sent me a link to this cute post on his company’s blog. Hey, when you’re a startup competing for talent in the Valley, you have to be creative. (It also helps to have a crazy blogmeister like Chris Locke.)

Did I just say that tech hiring is getting competitive again? Yes, if you’re tuned in to today’s world of Web 2.0 technologies, you know what I’m talking about. And it has to be getting particularly intense in the Bay Area. The hiring page on Krugle’s web site is here. Okay, so there are other reasons to choose what company you want to work for besides a “free house.” This outfit has many. If you know someone who’s looking for a good gig, I really think they’ll thank you for this referral.

Eurekster: With Passive Collaboration, Who Needs Tagging?

One of the past firms that launched at PC Forum and was in attendance at this year’s event was Eurekster, a Web 2.0 search personalization company. This company debuted two years previous at the 2004 PC Forum. I sat down with CEO Steve Marder to get an update on what’s been happening lately with the company. Marder recounted how, in November 2005, his company introduced “Swickis,” which are community-powered search engines for personal and small-business websites. (Search + wicki = swicki.) He described that launch as a “self-service beta.” [Prior to PC Forum, I had actually taken Eureksterlogo advantage of that service and created a swicki for my own blog, which I set up and took live in about 15 minutes. You can see it at the right, complete with what’s called the “buzz cloud” within the widget itself.] In its announcement, Eurekster said publishers are invited to create their own swickis, free of charge, with the Eurekster SwickiBuilder here, and “can opt to share in the search-related advertising revenue, a feature that will be available soon.” Harder told me some 5000 blogs have signed up so far and set up a swicki.

Marder continued: “We operate on the ASP model. And it’s easy to integrate our look-and-feel into your site.” He said he and his co-founder, Grant Ryan, Ph.D., who is based in New Zealand, had previously cofounded another technology company, which was focused in enterprise search. That firm is SLI Systems, which Marder said is profitable, and both he and Ryan continue to serve on that firm’s board.

“Eurekster is all about the end user,” said Marder. “Our engine learns from your community. We enable personal networks.”

But, in addition to targeting “the rest of the Web,” as Marder put it, with the swicki concept (meaning the smaller sites), Eurekster also has an offering called SearchPublisher, which is an enterprise-level platform for delivering a highly customized, branded search feature on large web sites. Customers include such companies as Bolt, Gartner, Friendster, Hollywood.com, Community Connect, and Locker Gnome. Eurekster also announced, on the first of day of PC Forum, that Popular Science, the world’s largest science and technology magazine, had integrated Eurekster’s SearchPublisher community search platform into its website, PopSci.com. That site is a destination for readers interested in the latest developments in science and technology, including cars, electronics, communications, tools, space and aviation, among other topics.

“We allow passive collaboration, with no tagging. It’s the concept of ‘auto-tagging’,” said Marder. “Your users are communicating with you via search.” He said Eurekster gives the publisher control. “Small or large, they have community. We harness the collective intelligence of that community, while leveraging the expertise of the publisher.”

Eurekster is a privately held firm based in San Francisco and currently has 20 employees, with R&D based in New Zealand. It received angel backing in December 2004. What’s on tap for the company? Marder had this heads-up for me: “Monetization is coming next.”

PC Forum: What’s The Encore for Search?

The last panel on Tuesday morning was the best one of the conference, I thought. It seemed the panelists were the best prepared or had the most interesting things to say, which tends to evoke the best array of questions. If I had to vote for the best panelist, it would be Jeff Weiner of Yahoo, followed closely by Rich Barton of hotter-than-a.pngstol real-estate search site Zillow. But the other two, Omid Kordestani of Google and Ellen Siminoff of Efficient Frontier (and a member of the founding team at Yahoo) 031406searchpanel were quite good, too. Esther Dyson kicked things off by referring to some pundit’s remark that search was as good as it’s going to get. “I don’t agree,” said Jeff Weiner. “Search is the great democratizer,” and he says lots more good stuff is coming — “like voting on search results and other Web 2.0 stuff.” But he also made an excellent point: that for a company to really take advantage of search, it needs a smart webmaster (read: for SEO and SEM), or to “be wealthy enough to hire that out.” As an example of something new, Weiner also offered up “Yahoo Answers,” a service whereby anyone can ask a question and anyone can answer. It’s essentially a knowledge search service, he said, which had a December beta launch.

In an attempt to provoke some friendly discussion between the rivals, Esther asked, “Does it come down to algorithms like Google versus people like Yahoo?” No, said Weiner, “They’re not mutually exclusive.” Zillow’s Barton then put in a hard plug for MSN search (former Microsoftie that he is). He said it has more tools to help him with his searching. (He got no rise out of Google or Yahoo on that.) But the most interesting thing Barton had to offer up at this point in the discussion was an analogy to cosmology. “The experts believe only 4% of the universe is visible,” he said, “which is about the same percentage of knowledge you can get at with today’s search.” Finding that “dark matter and lighting it up” is where the opportunity lies. He said, “We found a ‘galaxy’ that’s really interesting” in Zillow. “We knew people were ga-ga about houses, but we didn’t know how much!” In just four-and-a-half weeks, millions have already visited the site, according to Barton. Esther commented on how people are finding new uses for it, too, which Barton admitted his team really hadn’t expected — such as using it in recruiting, as a reference-checking tool, and even for dating research. Yes, you may change your opinion of that loser in the bar when you see where he/she lives….

Where else is there room for improvement in search? Ellen Siminoff says local search is an area ripe for advances — “a long way to go there.” Yahoo’s Weiner talked about how untapped the universe of content is right now. “There are 750 trillion objects put there” (don’t ask me where he gets such a number), and “only 0.0058% of it is indexed today.” So, search startups, start your engines…

“What percent of searches are purposeful, such as work-related, versus just idle surfing?” asked Esther. “Virtually 100% of them,” said Weiner. “Filling idle time is a purpose in itself.” He also noted that search is “increasingly becoming more of a media model.” Siminoff noted that the search engines are not yet taking advantage of determining the real purpose of the search. “It’s been more about the commercial aspect, but only about half of searches today are monetizeable.”

In response to a question about metadata, Weiner make the comment that the word “meme” is popping up in regard to that these days. (See Wikipedia page defining “Meme”.) He said “Maybe we need a ‘Why’ button under a search ad that tells me why I’m getting this ad.” He also noted that, for tagging to work, the value received must exceed the effort put in to do the tagging. “But we need to work on that ‘meme’ word, to make it more user-friendly.”

Weiner went on to say that there’s “radical change on the web…people like to share and be an authority.” He noted that someone had referred recently to photo-sharing site Flickr (now part of Yahoo) as “a culture of generosity.” Which provoked an audience questioner to say: “People want to help other people. It isn’t about machines versus people. It’s all models.” Weiner agreed that different models are needed, including vertical search such as Zillow.

“What other opportunity?” Esther challenged the panelists. “There is lots of dark matter out there,” said Zillow’s Barton. “Healthcare immediately comes to mind.” And another two, said Yahoo’s Weiner, would be “legal search and opinion-based search.” What about better analyzing search results?asked an audience member. “We have Yahoo Buzz,” said Weiner, “and others have things that get at this.” Barton said Zillow even has a feature that’s like a stock chart, showing the value of a house over time. Not to be outdone, Weiner said Yahoo is working on a marketplace for ideas, in conjunction with O’Reilly Media.

“What about new user interfaces, new experiences?” asked an audience member. Barton said search engines have a problem: “They’re stuck in the box” (the search box). “UI designers at these companies are dying to get out of it,” but can’t afford to tick off users (or maybe don’t want to go first?). Another question was about “in-context” search, which is actually part of the basic technology of the Internet, according to the questioner, but hasn’t been fully exploited yet. “Why isn’t more known about it?” he asked. That didn’t really get an answer out of any of the panelists — which tends to make we wonder which of them could secretly be working on it(?). Finally, an audience question from Seth Goldstein of Root Markets: “Will Google or Yahoo allow users to take their search activity data with them?” (Meaning, let it be portable.) Both said yes, that it belongs to them. Hey, more power to the user!

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What I’m Looking Forward to at PC Forum

Well, I arrived in Southern California last night in preparation for the big event to kick off tomorrow in Carlsbad (North San Diego County). And I was just in time for a huge cold front and mega amounts of rain! They even had snow down to 1500 feet in the mountains. Not exactly what the San Diego tourism board had in mind! And here PC Forum just relocated from Scottsdale this year, too. Oh, well, no matter. I’d always rather be here, and by Monday things are due to improve. (Plus it’s raining bigtime in Scottsdale, too, from the same storm.)

Here’s a little rundown on the things I’m looking forward to with this trip:
1) Blogging for my readers about what the buzz is at this very highly regarded conference.
2) Learning about new technologies and business models.
3) Finding out who’s funding what.
4) Taking in a packed conference agenda, with some particularly good sessions being these, in my opinion:

• Esther Dyson’s interview of Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and now CEO of Omidyar Network, which is funding both for-profits and non-profits, but believes profitable enterprises and efficient markets are often the best way to achieve social good.
“Behavioral Targeting 2.0”: how four marketing and ad technology vendors, Compete, Grassroots, mSpoke, and Tacoda, are moving beyond spyware to get users actively involved in controlling their own data.
“New Business Models: Power to the Edges”: featuring the CEOs of Brightcove, Salesforce.com, Augmentum, and Microsoft’s SVP of technical strategy.
“Search: What Are You Gonna Do for an Encore?”: a look at what comes after search reaches its natural limits, including the two trends of personalization and verticalization, and featuring the CEO of Zillow, Google’s SVP of sales and bus dev, the CEO of Efficient Frontier, and Yahoo’s SVP of search.
• And the closing panel, “New Forms of Life”: how online community is actually changing life — wherein it’s heading toward no longer being “virtual,” but part of life, just like work and play. The panel includes the CEOs of LinkedIn and Facebook, along with a producer from Seriosity, a still-in-stealth company that’s out to apply gaming culture to work.

5) And, of course, meeting lots of interesting people — including interviewing some of the speakers and attendees. So far, I have Jeremy Allaire of Brightcove, Bill Day of WhenU, Michael Tanne of Wink, and Greg Pierson of iovation on my list. And I’m also hoping to chat with J.J. Allaire of Onfolio (just acquired by Microsoft)…Adam Bosworth of Google Health…Michael Arrington of edgeio…Steve Marder of Eurekster…Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn…somebody from the Omidyar Network…David Gilmour of Tacit Software’s pre-launch (and very cool sounding) Illumio startup…Bruce Francis of Salesforce.com…and others yet to be determined.

Stay tuned. I’ll be blogging live from PC Forum, and during breaks, etc, as I can. And please do email me if you have any suggestions relating to my coverage of PC Forum, questions you’d like me to ask, or whatever…

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The Takeaways of Demo 2006

Demoviewfromroom_1 Okay, here’s the 30th and last post in my “DEMO 2006” category (many also tagged in other categories, as listed on the right) since I began publishing pre-conference. So, who could have done more posts than this — maybe CNet? Then again, quantity isn’t everything… 🙂 But I was honored to be on a list with many of the great bloggers covering the event — especially since it was my first conference as a blogger (though not as a reporter, for which the number is probably 40 or more).

Just for the heck of it, I’m including a few photos of the surroundings at Demo, which I took with my cell phone cam — showing things I was too busy to do, like golf, pool, hot tub. But I didn’t care — didn’t have time to. [Besides, I had my beach time and a surf session in San Clemente the day before I got there.]

This post is essentially my recap on the themes or takeaways I got from this great happening….this blockbuster celebration of tech and entrepreneurship. Net-net: I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! Demohotelpool_1 It was non-stop buzz, business models, and blabbing about everything imaginable relating to today’s souped-up economy for technology startups (especially Internet-related ones)…a giant energy-drink slurpee lasting three days. And the people — wow! I know I met many who’ll be valuable contacts and friends for years to come. Plus I learned about some cool new services that’ll help me in my crazy, tech-challenged world…just as I know they’ll help you.

So here, as best as I can break down something this intensely information-packed, are the themes I got from DEMO 2006. (Note time didn’t allow me to post about every single one of the companies I mention here; but I’ve included links to all their sites if you wish to read more.)

User-generated content and sharing is exploding. To say that consumer-generated content is a major trend in this age of “new media” and social networking I don’t think will surprise you. If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you know it was the major theme of the conference. [And there would be a sub-theme you got out of reading those, too: revenue-sharing with content creators.] Demopool_1 Companies in point who presented at Demo that are taking advantage of this trend in various ways include: Vizrea, TagWorld, SmileBox, Zingee, LocaModa, Sharpcast, Tiny Pictures, GarageBand.com, Yahoo! Photos (of course), Multiverse Network, and Gravee….and I posted about every one of ’em.

Search goes wider, search goes deeper. Meaning more data types as relates the former, and, no surprise, going vertical for the latter. Presenting companies that fit into this theme included Krugle, Riya, AOL via its acquisition of Truveo (online sometime this spring), Nexidia, Gravee, BiggerBoat, Kaboodle, Raw Sugar, and Kosmix….several of which I posted about.

E-commerce can still get better and easier. As big as it is (one example: BestBuy.com, a site on whose launch team I served, is now selling more than a billion bucks a year), we’re hardly done with e-commerce improvements. And that notion is sure to be welcomed by today’s increasingly savvy, instant-gratification online buyers. Companies worth a look here include Transparansee, Pay By Touch, and PayWi (which lets you buy from your cell phone). I was also impressed with CNet Channel’s intelligent cross-sell technology. This is a tool for e-tailers that with save a huge amount of hassle, automating what’s been a very time-intensive and hit-or-miss process for online store managers.

Now that phone service is free or really cheap, what more can we do with it? Skype thundered into this space in a huge way — and thank God people now have a decent moniker they can attach to the concept instead of “VOIP”! And the category will only get huger, as we all know. Watch out for upstarts that are gonna ride this trend with more innovations — such as being able to make Skype calls from your cell phone: EQO Communications…and getting a whole rich set of features for your VOIP residential service: My People.

Small business needs big help with information technology. It’s a huge market, but what will appeal to them and how do you reach them? Two companies that are giving it a try are Interprise, which has a free online ERP/CRM solution for the little guys….and Sprout Systems, which is developing online solutions for companies with 10 employees or fewer, coming out of the chute first (now seeking Series A) with an email management system. [I wish both luck. Raise the big bucks, or get a deep-pocketed gorilla to buy you.]

P2P is not going away – and more apps are on the way. If you think peer-to-peer technology had its day, think again. Just because it got a bad name for a while doesn’t mean it won’t change the world. At least three of the presenting companies at Demo are using the technology to buiild their dream: Zingee, a flat-out content sharing play, as I posted about previously…Vsee, which is using the technology to improve desktop video conferencing…and Tiny Pictures, which says it has P2P technology to enable you to share your cell phone pix quickly and easily.

What DEMO 2006 was NOT about. The biggest thing was it wasn’t about gadgets, as the event was known to have been for so many years. Today, the technology world — whether it’s consumer or enterprise — is much more about services. Gadgets are only a means to enable a service, for the user to do something valuable he or she needs to get done. I sit here hard-pressed to name game-changing gadgets presented at the event…. Okay, there was MooBella, the customized, Linux-based ice cream vending machine, and Pleo, the new robotic toy from the inventor of Furby. Yeah, they were cool, but so what? I’m not in the food business or the toy business, and I don’t think most of you are either. The producers threw those in just for shock value and dramatic effect. [And, trust me, Demo’s producers know how to get publicity. They also know how to get buzz, which is why they had so had so many bloggers there. If you want to know what I mean, read this great new post from Guy Kawasaki on how to get buzz these days.] Two gadgets of note I just remembered were the iGuitar — very cool, but you gotta be a musician, which I’m not anymore (surfing took over)…though it’s a big market space ($3 billion) they’re playing in. And the Chili™ from ZinkKat was the other one. But don’t try to find a photo of the device on their web site — it hasn’t been updated since before DEMO! [Hello?] The Chili is the “first wearable cell phone/MP3 player/Podcast and web stream receiver, all on one,” says the company, which is aiming it (of course) at teenagers, for use in the home. [Too bad the voice interface, which is how you operate the thing, sounded so bad. Here’s a clue: no matter how cool your gadget looks, if the interface isn’t right, you have some…uh, work to do?]

And one more thing to take away from DEMO. We’re all learning a lot about blogging, folks. Me included. [And there’s nothing like throwing yourself into it headlong to learn from the inside.] Demosilhouette But I was fascinated by how blog-savvy so many of the companies are that launched at DEMO — and I learned a lot from them. They get the blogging model, the power of the blogging community. They spent just as much time talking up the bloggers as they did the traditional press. Blogging is even changing the model of how some tech companies launch — read: without traditional PR. My fellow blogger and conference reporter Shel Israel did a great post on this topic (just prior to Demo), and this is about the third time I’ve linked to it — it’s that major. Just another example of how the growing online community is changing the game. And Guy Kawasaki’s post, cited above, just adds to that message.

Hope you liked my DEMO coverage. Please drop me a line if you did — or better yet, post a comment.
Cheers…over and out.

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[Written at Bloomington, MN, on the coldest weekend
of the winter so far…ah, sweet memories of Phoenix.]

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