Graeme Thickins on Tech

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: Yahoo (Page 1 of 4)

Marissa Mayer’s Minnesota Connections

July 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

MarissaMayerUnless you were totally off the grid in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area for the past few days, you surely know by now that Yahoo! has named former Google exec Marissa Mayer as its new CEO.
 
But what you may not know is that two of our fellow MInnesota techies have ties to her, going back years — they're both friends of mine, and both have been startup clients of my consulting business.

One is Lief Larson (right), founder of Workface Inc., a venture-backed firm doing cool LiefLarson things to humanize business on the web.
 The other is Joe Sriver, who in 2008 founded the highly successful mobile app development firm DoApp Inc. (where, in addition to serving as an advisor, I was interim VP of marketing for a time). 

Lief went all through school with Marissa in Wausau, Wisconsin, where both of them showed an early interest in programming. He gave me this reaction to the news: 

"Yahoo! is ripe for reinvention, and I think Marissa is just the woman for the job. The one piece of news that came as a bit of a surprise is that she's pregnant and will be taking maternity leave in October, just three months after taking the helm.  I look forward to seeing what the next several months will hold for Yahoo!"

Joe's connection to Marissa came later — he was hired by her in 2001 as Google employee #198. (She was Google employee #20, its first female engineer.)  Joe was Google's first UI designer and worked for Marissa for some years, directly involved in such early products as AdSense and AdWords.  Here's what Joe had to say when I asked for his reaction to Marissa's new role: 

JoeSriver

"I was surprised by the announcement, as it sounds many others were. A pleasant surprise, that is. I feel she's the best person in the Valley to bring Yahoo back — the best pick Yahoo could make. She has a great technical background, superb at driving products, and has a great marketing sense. She's not an outsider, she knows the space well…exactly what Yahoo needs at the top. She will create a buzz around Yahoo. The analysts will be watching her moves closely, but she's prepared."

Of course, the tech community is almost universally supportive of this decision by the Yahoo! board — why wouldn't they like the choice of a technology exec to lead the turnaround?  Anything but an exec from the screwed-up media industry, huh?

I'm with Lief and Joe — I think Marissa is bound to bring some mojo back to $YHOO!

 

Blogging Less, Twittering More…Plus YHOO & GOOG Are Up to Something

April 17, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed, my blog posts here are fewer and farther between these days, just because I’m so damn busy. (I’ll tell you why soon.) But thank god somebody invented microblogging(!), because it sure is easier and faster. I’m sure many of you have seen the accompanying cartoon strip. Twittertwittertwitter_2

But it’s true — Twitter has definitely allowed me, with my crazy schedule, to keep putting forth some of my observations and perspectives on the world around me. I’m grateful for that.

Latest case in point: I Twittered earlier today about how Yahoo’s already reporting positive results from its test with Google to outsource search to the latter. Well, it’s not really the company directly reporting that — rather, it’s the proverbial "people familiar with the matter," according to the WSJ. (But that would most likely be Yahoo or Google employees who asked the reporter not to identify them.)  A Citigroup Global Markets analyst even said this deal could increase Yahoo’s cash flow a whopping $1 billion per year.

Some would say this latest "leak" is all about Yahoo trying to get a better price per share from Microsoft. I don’t agree. Google has more to do than help Yahoo shareholders get another buck or two. I think Yahoo very seriously wants to avoid the Microsoft deal and is working overtime to find a better alternative.  And Google obviously has the incentive to help them do that. I don’t think the latest Yahoo move is just posturing at all. As the Journal says, the only other tie-up that seems to be possible right now is a deal with Time Warner’s AOL, wherein the latter would become a 20% owner of Yahoo. However, the matter of who will win Yahoo seems far from over to me yet. I like to think that News Corp. hasn’t really played its ultimate hand, for example. And, of course, being that they now own the WSJ, I don’t find it surprising that the writer of today’s article didn’t quote anyone on that possibility.

Headed to “Graphing Social Patterns” and ETech ’08

March 2, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Tomorrow morning early, I’m jumping on the 5 here in San Clemente and driving south an hour to downtown San Diego for O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference. I’m looking forward to a great two-day program. Gspwestlogo
Here’s the main page for the Facebook Group, which 200 people for far have joined saying they’re attending, and 81 more are "maybes." The event is being held in conjunction with O’Reilly’s ETech conference, which draws an even larger crowd. It also starts tomorrow (Monday, March 3), but it goes through Thursday. This will be about the third or fourth ETech I’ve atended, including the 2007 edition, for which I wrote this Conferenza review.  It’s a geekfest of the highest order, and I’ll be attending through end of day Wednesday. So, two days GSP and one day ETech, and the evening events are common for both conferences. If you’re attending either one, I look forward to meeting.

‘Defrag’ Conference: Brainstorming the Next Big Thing

October 28, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Next Sunday, I’m off to Denver for a really cool conference called Defrag. (Here’s the blog, which will tell you what’s really goin’ on.) I’m looking forward to it, because it’s different — a smaller, more intimate kind of event. The kind of event "where you send your brains for a workout," say the producers. Defregconf
There’ll be a couple hundred really smart people participating, many whose names you would know. Folks like Esther Dyson, Jerry Michalski, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Paul Kedrosky, Brad Feld, Jeff Clavier, Chris Shipley, Steve Larsen, and a couple of new players I’ve met in the semantic web movement, Nova Spivack and Alex Iskold. Denverhyatt
And that’s just a few I can remember — there are many more smart Internet minds who’ll be there.  We need this kind of event after Esther Dyson retired her great "PC Forum" conference after the 2006 edition. (I’m so glad I got to cover that one. It was soo timely, and everybody-who-was-anybody was there.)

Defrag is being held at the very cool, new Denver Hyatt. Here’s an invitation to all my friends here in the Minnesota technology community:  please join me at Defrag!  (At least two already are, and we’re flying out together.)  Denver’s not that far — and, hey, you guys need to get out of town once in a while! 🙂  I even have a special discount code that will get you $500 off.  But you have to act fast, since that expires soon: the code is "DefragMN"…and you can use it when you register right here.  I guarantee you, you won’t be sorry you attended this conference!  Check the agenda.

One of the three producers of Defrag is a guy I know named Eric Norlin, and I’m looking forward to meeting the other two. I met Eric back in ’99 through my work with Net Perceptions, and he’s become an even more plugged-in guy since then. He’s been in the digital identity business and has run other conferences, such as Digital ID World.  He lives in Florida now, but was in Colorado for many years, so has lots of contacts there. (He also was based in the Twin Cities for a couple of years, quite some time ago.)  Early on, Eric even worked with the NSA, so he’s just an interesting cat to say the least. It’ll be fun to see him again. Here’s how Eric and friends describe their newest creation:

Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the “aha” moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, social networking, collaboration and business intelligence …. it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.

The sponsors of Defrag are BEA, Yahoo, Me.dium, Newsgator, ThinkFree, Adaptive Blue, AOL, Dapper, HiveLive, Lijit, Near-Time, Siderean, Microsoft, ZDnet, ProQuo, and Collective Intellect.  For more on the sponsors, see this post on the Defrag blog: All the Cool Kids Are Doing It.

And here’s more insight into what this inaugural Defrag is all about, from another of Eric’s blog posts,  Inter-Twining at Defrag:

One of the earliest phrases that I hit upon to help describe Defrag was ‘networked knowledge’ … That idea — that knowledge is not simply a passive, managed asset, but an active agent in a system that is working for me — is the core of what we’re exploring.

I’m pumped!  Watch for my live blogging next week — Monday and Tuesday, November 5 and 6. Take a look at the agenda and tell me what you like. I especially like "Social Networking in the Enterprise." Cheers.

Widget Summit, Day 1: How Do We Measure ‘Em?

October 16, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Ian Kennedy, product manager for MyBlogLog at Yahoo, was a great moderator for this panel on how to do audience measurement of widgets. The writeup of this session tantalized us with talk of new “engagement metrics” — though little new was revealed, despite the moderator’s atempts to drag something out of the panelists. Widgetmeasurement1
We did learn, however, from Jeff Gillis, that Google will drop us a piece of news on us Tuesday via his analytics blog — he said 12 pm, and that would appear to mean noon, since nothing’s there yet.

Hooman Radfar, founder of Clearspring, kicked things off with a commercial about his widget platform and distribution service. He said more than 75 brands are now using it, and “thousands of developers.”  He also said his is the only company that provides real-time metrics. Clearspring’s original engine was built with RockYou, said Radfar, “which is the largest widget provider in the world.”  He said a new metric Clearspring has is “placement,” so you can track the sites where your widget is appearing. Looking forward, Radfar said his firm will be at Launchpad in November to introduce its new “open platform.”

Introduced next was Eyal Magen, founder of Gigya, who said his widget distribution network is used by 7 of the top 10 widget sites, and that it’s only a “30-minute integration.” He said what’s new from his firm are “Widget Usage Reports.” Widgetmeasurementpanel

Google Analytics’ Jeff Gillis followed with his hint-hint, wink-wink, that he’d have news on his blog on Tuesday. (He couldn’t have dropped the news on us on Monday? The team must be working all night….) He said we could sign up for the beta with a secret code, only for attendees. (Yeah right — ask me if you want it.)

Moderator Kennedy popped the big question at this point, “What do each of you have for measuring interactions within a widget?” Stunned silence. Gillis rambled about how Urchin Tracker measures “15 dimensions.”  But what about interaction within the widget, Kennedy repeated, “like tracking which specific buttons users are clicking on.”  No, Gillis said, they’re not able to do that.  Clearspring’s Radfar saw an entry here to say “we have ‘interaction analytics’ coming out.” No word of when. He said they “won’t be dependent on Flash.” He also admitted there are other things as well that aren’t being measured yet, including “viral spread and most popular,” among others.

Are there any best practices yet, asked Kennedy, regarding placement of a widget on a site?  After all, “there’s a whole science of where best placement is in other media” — certainly for print, to name one. Google’s Gillis said it’s too early, but eye-travel studies (the so-called heat map) show an “F” pattern, which would suggest left-side placement as best. Gigya’s Magen said something to suggest that top placement might be good. Clearspring’s Radfar commented to just “keep it simple….people have a tendency to cram a whole web site in a widget.”  He also stressed a key point: that advertisers expect different metrics than publishers. Gillis said it’s “user-specific metrics” that many want.

“Where will we be in a year?” asked moderator Kennedy. “Will we have a definition of ‘engagement metrics’?” Google’s Gillis: “The term can mean many different things to different web sites.” Radfar: “A big issue will be how are you going to collect data in a non-intrusive way?”  Moderator Ian Kennedy closed the panel with a take of his own: “People will want to measure direct revenue and indirect revenue.”  Ah, the elusive monetization.  More on that later.

UPDATE (10/16, 10:30 am Pacific):  This just in, as promised — the latest Google Analytics news.  Now I know why they held it till today….there’s an eMetrics event in Washington, DC, where they’re making this multi-part announcement.

 

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