Category: Uncategorized

What is Google Base? It appears to be a dead-easy online database creation capability within Google that popped its head up today, briefly, and then just as quickly went away. (As of this writing, the site is giving us “Forbidden: Error 403” messages).

Here’s what one snapshot of the text from the site (source: http://telendro.com.es/imagenes/base.gif)

“Google Base is Google’s database into which you can add all types of content. We’ll host your content and make it searchable online for free. Examples of items you can find in Google Base:

• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures

You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.”

More thoughts and analysis on Google Base, and Google’s response to the rumor, after the jump. (Would that be a “base jump?”)

Start with MySpace, the social networking site acquired by News Corp earlier this year for $580million. Similar to Tribe, LinkedIn and the like, MySpace allows its members to create links to each other.

Add one bored teen (“samy”) with scripting skills, who has the epiphany that “popularity begets popularity.” Samy not only comes up with a hack that allows him to automatically add himself as a “friend” to anyone who views his profile, but takes the notion one step further so that it goes viral…anyone connected to anyone connected to him becomes connected as well.

You can see where this is going. An excerpt from samy’s log of the incident:

10/04, 12:34 pm: You have 73 friends.

I decided to release my little popularity program. I’m going to be famous…among my friends.

1 hour later, 1:30 am: You have 73 friends and 1 friend request.
One of my friends’ girlfriend looks at my profile…I approve her inadvertent friend request and go to bed grinning.

7 hours later, 8:35 am: You have 74 friends and 221 friend requests.
Woah. I did not expect this much. I’m surprised it even worked.

1 hour later, 9:30 am: You have 74 friends and 480 friend requests.
Oh wait, it’s exponential, isn’t it. [ed. – yes, samy, it is.]

1 hour later, 10:30 am: You have 518 friends and 561 friend requests.
Oh crap…

3 hours later, 1:30 pm: You have 2,503 friends and 6,373 friend requests.
I’m canceling my account…

5 hours later, 6:20 pm
I timidly go to my profile to view the friend requests. 2,503 friends. 917,084 friend requests.

Here’s the whole thing.

The Stanford Center for Longevity, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, the MIT Club of Northern California and SmartSilvers Alliance present:

LifeWear: Can Mobile Systems Enrich Your Social and Healthcare Interactions?

Speaker:
Dr Alex (Sandy) Pentland, MIT Media Lab

Panelists:

• Terry Winograd, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
• Dana Mead, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers

Moderator:
Susan Walker, SmartSilvers Alliance

Date: Thursday, 11/03/2005

Time: 6:00pm

Venue: Peter Wallenberg Theater – Stanford University Campus

Location: http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/top/location.html

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What happens when a forward-thinking technology…

“I have been developing wearable information aids…essentially
augmented mobile telephones…that passively map and monitor your
personal rhythms and social interactions.” – Sandy Pentland (MIT Media
Lab), September, 2005

Meets the Boomer Market? …

“On Jan. 1, 2006, the first of an estimated 77 million baby boomers,
those Americans born from 1946 to 1964, will celebrate their 60th
birthday. Through its sheer size — and, some would say,
self-indulgence — the generation has given rise, or given teeth, to a
host of fashions and institutions that are now central to popular
culture: rock ‘n’ roll, working moms, Earth Day, sport-utility vehicles,
Botox, Viagra and Starbucks.” – The Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2005

Visionary thinker Dr. Sandy Pentland’s group at MIT is developing
LifeWear, systems that create “quality of life” maps by monitoring
social networks to proactively enhance our personal and social lives.
Using enhanced mobile phone technology, devices can measure the common
sense signals that we use to assess each other, such as tone of voice,
body language, and patterns of interaction. Learn how this family of
emerging technologies could enhance our ability to manage communications
and interactions with family, health assessment, care giving, social and
work situations.

Join us as we explore in a panel discussion the implications of LifeWear
and other innovative technologies with potential to start a revolution
in the experience of aging.

(disclosure: Cerado is a contributing member of the SmartSilvers Alliance)

Laurence Haughton’s well-organized new book It’s Not What You Say…It’s What You Do communicates a series of tactics of how to actually get.things.done at an organizational level. It covers everything you need to know for improving your personal accountability and is pretty much a perfect book. The content is clear, the book layout design is well laid-out, there is a good use of graphs and images to get their point across, and Haughton articulates his points well. The four broad building blocks are given which, in concert, Haughton contends will result in what he calls “follow-through.” These are:

• Clear direction
• The right people
• Buy-in
• Individual initiative

Ultimately, this is a book about personal accountability. What is accountability? Stating, unambiguously, what you or your business is committing to do (in truthful, measurable terms), and meeting those commitments. It sounds simple. When done right, it IS simple. But if that’s the case, why are so many businesses so screwed up, and why are so many customers ready to defect? Haughton contends it’s because organizations don’t follow through, and gives his thoughts on how to get an organization to meet its commitments by way of the the four building blocks outlined above.

On the “clear direction” front, Haughton contends that many managers are faced with a double-whammy. The executives to which they are reporting have not given them clear direction. This can be because (p. 13, PP):

1. The executive is overwhelmed
2. The executive is himself or herself trying to avoid accountability, because his or her boss was not clear with them

As a result, businesspeople end up in an ever-increasing game of CYA, and by the time a thought gets to the customer it is so ambiguous and caveated-to-death that the customer no longer knows what to actually expect.

After the direction is set, however, the organization actually needs to make things happen, which requires both people and systems. The key point in this section is the identification of the individuals who will be committed to the follow-through. This is a non-trivial task…it sometimes seems there are a lot more talkers than do-ers on the planet. How to tell which is which?

“Ask about what they did, not what they think.” (p. 69, OCI)

(By the by, about fifteen years ago, there was a discipline entitled “Critical Behavior Interviewing” that emphasized this very same point.) Why is this distinction so important? Because following this line of conversation may be one of the best screens available for finding people who actually get things done, as opposed to just talking a good game.

With enough practice, and enough polish, and enough pizazz, nearly anyone can spin a yarn in an interview-type situation to paint the picture he or she desires. But instead of asking about “what do you think you would do in this situation,” Haughton suggests focusing the conversation on what the person actually did in a similar situation in the past. What was the situation? What did you do? How did you feel about it? What was a situation that arose during the execution that you didn’t expect? What did you do when you found out you didn’t have as much time, resource, or budget as you expected?

Questioning along this line focuses on the reality, not the yarn.

The third section of the book, while peppered with a handful of good thoughts on how to motivate the individuals on the front line who actually make things happen, unfortunately succumbed to that unfortunate bane of business, acronymus rampantosis. Examples:

“The single, most powerful piece of advice for overcoming the law of inertia and thereby improving your organization’s follow through can be summed up in four words ‘outmaneuver the CAVE people.'” (p. 107, YAA)

“HOT teams are where work is fun and, when the day ends, you can’t wait for tomorrow. HOT teams are where everyone gets a lot done in less time…hard work doesn’t feel nearly as draining on a HOT team as it does elsewhere…If there’s a rift, a HOT team discusses it as adults…HOT teams have a way of getting everyone in even the most diverse groups to their their level best to follow through.” (p. 139, YAA)

“He laid out a strategy that was specific, measurable, accountable, realistic and time-bound (SMART).” (p. 109, YAA)

In other words, after building up such a good head of steam, this section of the book, unfortunately, resulted in a few moments of gratuitous eye-rolling. Enough with the buzzwords already!

Redemption came in the final section, however, which is all about looking at things through the eyes of the customer (go Laurence!) and emphasizing and re-emphasizing the need for shared purpose and mutual respect between executives, managers, line employees and the customers they are committing to serve. Haughton finishes strong, with a conclusion that is a must-read; it’s a strong distillation of the book’s key concepts intertwined with a number of vignettes that illustrate his points with real-world examples.

The very last paragraph of the book is telling:

“Commitment means never asking the other side ‘to understand.’ All managers must be willing to expose themselves and say ‘The robustness and stamina of the follow-through is my responsibility. All our promises have my name on them.”

True to its message, the book is exceedlingly well organized and, if one desired, one easily would be able to recreate the outline that was likely used to structure the writing. Another interesting aspect was the breadth and number of interviews with managers, the individuals who actually need to do things, that were interspersed throughout the book. Haughton did not spend time focusing on the smoke-blowing “big thinkers” who talk about their most recent trip to the ethereal plane without regard for the actual implementation, instead choosing to share the words from individuals who are actually getting things done.

While not earth-shattering, ultimately this is a sound, pragmatic book, and a helpful reminder of the things we should all be doing.

Related:
Book Review #1: All Marketers Are Liars

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Legend

PP: Pure Pragmatism

OCI: Of Crtical Import

YAA: Yet Another Acronym

The folks over at SearchCRM are tallying votes in the categories of “Best CRM Blog” and “Best Business Intelligence Blog.” Voting criteria are based on:

• Personality: Does the blog’s tone or “personality” appeal to you? Do you feel its commentary has just the right balance between friendly, critical and professional?
• Usefulness: Simply put, do you find this blog useful? Does it provide you with good resources and is it truly thought-provoking?
• Content: Does this blog provide relevant content on the most current trends and issues in the CRM market? Do you learn something new every time you visit? Does the author have a clear and compelling focus?
• Do you revisit?: Does this blog keep you coming back for more? Do you find yourself eager to check it for the latest updates? Do you engage with the author when you agree or disagree?

Interesting in weighing in? Vote here.

“[It was] kind of like Nixon in ’68. Or an REO Speedwagon reunion tour. Gives you a bit of an uneasy feeling….People who had been taking cover in bunkers for five years showed up. Hey, there’s Joe Kraus! He co-founded Internet search company Excite — since defunct — in the 1990s and is back with a new company called JotSpot. Hey, there’s onetime analyst Henry Blodgett! He was banned from Wall Street for hyping Web stocks and now writes a blog.

Everyone half-expected the Pets.com sock puppet to wander through, checking e-mail on its BlackBerry.”

Kevin Maney puts together his thoughts on the Web 2.0 conference that was here in San Francisco last week. Heh.

(Suggestion: Engage Coffee/Monitor Splash Shield&reg before clicking on the above link… )

tag: web20, web2.0

The heavy travel schedule over the past few weeks has actually had an upside…finally made it through the stack of books that have been holding down the nightstand. They were:

All Marketers Are Liars, by Seth Godin
• It’s Not What You Say…It’s What You Do, by Laurence Haughton
• The Culting of Brands, by Douglas Atkin

Many thoughts on many dog-eared pages to pull together…will post them over the course of the next few days…

(from http://www.savagechickens.com)

eBay is acquiring Skype for approximately USD$2.6B, ($2.1B Euros), say both companies. From the press release:

“eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY; www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen eBay’s global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company. eBay is already such a popular company, with many people looking for the best vouchers and deals they can get to keep purchasing from the website (find out here). By making this business deal, sales can only go up. The deal also represents a major opportunity for Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer people worldwide new ways to communicate in a global online era. Skype, eBay and PayPal will create an unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world.” Ecommerce has enormous potential which has been strengthened by people preferring to make purchases using their mobile devices. If you click here, you can learn all about the fascinating world of ecommerce.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and anticipates $60 million in revenues in 2005.

Four reasons why eBay says they are doing this (items in quotes after the emphasis are from their release):

Increase the velocity of transactions – “Buyers will gain an easy way to talk to sellers quickly and get the information they need to buy, and sellers can more easily build relationships with customers and close sales. As a result, Skype can increase the velocity of trade on eBay, especially in categories that require more involved communications such as used cars, business and industrial equipment, and high-end collectibles.”

Pay-per-call fees – “For example, in addition to eBay’s current transaction-based fees, ecommerce communications could be monetized on a pay-per-call basis through Skype. Pay-per-call communications opens up new categories of ecommerce, especially for those sectors that depend on a lead-generation model such as personal and business services, travel, new cars, and real estate.”

PayPal and Skype integration – “PayPal and Skype also make a powerful combination. For example, a PayPal wallet associated with each Skype account could make it much easier for users to pay for Skype fee-based services, adding to the number of PayPal accounts and increasing payment volume.”

Introduce emerging markets to eBay – “Skype can help expand the eBay and PayPal global footprint by providing buyers and sellers in emerging ecommerce markets, such as China, India, and Russia, with a more personal way to communicate online. And consumers in markets where eBay currently has a limited presence, such as Japan and Scandinavia, can learn about eBay and PayPal through Skype.” This might be a game changer for eBay in the race to be the most popular ecommerce platform. Currently there are many ways in which merchants can take their products online, from creating their own websites on WordPress and Squarespace, to using existing platforms like Zazzle and Etsy. They all have their benefits, such as the squarespace plugins, but will eBay’s collaboration with Skype push them to the forefront?

From my perspective, there are three really interesting implications of this:

It’s an opportunity to extend eBay communities to the desktop – The buddy list, collaboration, instant messaging, and communication features of Skype allow customers to create communities of interest, especially around the various areas highlighted in eBay Groups. Integration of eBay Groups with Skype makes these communities much easier to join, and greatly increases the possibility of interactions between the group members (all of which eBay can monetize).

A highly strategic move into emerging markets – For geographies that are rapdily moving up the Skype adoption curve, providing an easy means to drop right into a commerce environment via Skype gives eBay an opportunity for a huge presence, especially for peer-to-peer transactions.

Integration of PayPal into the Skype interface – There is a fantastic opportunity here for eBay. With Skype, they have the opportunity to control both the “first mile” and “last mile” of a communication that supports a transaction. Here’s the use case: You call the local pizza joint from Skype. (I do this already.) If the pizza joint is already on Skype, the path is easy…they say how much the pizza will be, I click the “PAY” button in my Skype interface that initiates a payment via PayPal, and I go pick up my pie. Even in the case where the pizza joint doesn’t use Skype, if they have an email address, the same mechanism could be used. No more fumbling for your wallet. It’s easy. It’s right there. It’s a click.

Now it’s time to see how the numbers pan out, and if eBay can execute on these opportunities…

tags: skype, ebay, paypal