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Mahalo’s launched a closed DMOZ

Warning: this is a lousy post. I’m exhausted after consecutive 14 hour days at the office.

Back when the Internet was new and fresh, Yahoo changed the world with its human powered search index. Time marched on, Yahoo went algorithmic, and the human-index torch was taken up by DMOZ: The Open Directory Project. DMOZ was, and continues to be, a human categorized index of websites: anyone can an editor, and DMOZ claims 4,830,584 sites indexed by 75,151 editors.

Of course, DMOZ has fallen on hard times. Originally sponsored by Netscape, AOL and Netscape still claim ownership and do little to throw attention its way. So, the DMOZ human-indexed directory of the web languishes in obscurity while projects like Mahalo by and large re-invent the wheel.

Its weird. Some minor functionality tweaks, and DMOZ - categorizing the internet since 1998 - could have been Wikipedia. A little SEO applied to the DMOZ site templates and it could be huge again. Why are AOL and Netscape sitting on a historical gold-mine of data and a once-viable user community and doing nothing with it?

Let’s get back to Mahalo and re-inventing the wheel. TC has a good summary, and there’s the Calacanis post and press release too. In a nutshell: Mahalo offers human indexed search results to top queries, building a growing library of indexed-queries over time, falling back to Google results when no human indexed results are present.

My Random thoughts…

1. So - essentially, they’re rebuilding DMOZ - associating websites with keywords manually - but doing so in a closed, system dependent on the preferences and goodwill of the editors.
2. Do you want your results selected by an individual? Personally, I’m more comfortable with a community (DMOZ), and most comfortable with an algorithm (Google!) that is at least impartial, if not as always perfect.
3. Does the human index solve the problem of poorly constructed queries?
4. So… what does Mahalo do better or different? What sets is apart from the always in the margins ChaCha? Hasn’t About.com been doing this for years too?
5. Personally, I think DMOZ has been long under-utilized by both the searching public, and companies that could tap its open database of indexed links.

Prognostication

Mahalo will get a small dedicated following and grow very slowly before topping out a marginal but respectable market share of a few percent. Its not enough of anything new to have a big impact. Its not “better enough” than anything out there to have a major impact. The main thing that will kickstart its popularity will be the savvy marketing of Calacanis. Expect it to fade to obscurity quickly when Calacanis leaves.

More Coverage

1. CenterNetworks has a great roundup of some of the issues around Mahalo. Is this just a big link farm SEO play?
2. Rex Dixon agrees with Allen.
3. Redeye VC compares Mahalo to ancient pre-bubble1.0 human index Magellan.
4. Webware relates Mahalo’s strategy to target the short tail.

aol, calacanis, dmoz, google, mahalo, netcape, opendirectory, search wikipedia

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Interesting: Google’s Animated Homepage

MSaleem of Pronet Advertising points Diggers to Google.co.kr - Google’s *animated* Korean homepage, originally nabbed by Greg at SEL.

Check out the rollovers! Will the wonders never cease? Has Google identified a legitimate cultural design vector, or is Korea just a convenient, innocuous place for experimentation outside of Google’s core market?

google korea

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I’m aghast at Palm

Foleo arrghhhhhhhh. I can’t help but be curmudgeonly when this sort of craziness is what’s making the news.

1. Looks too big to be pocketable.
2. Overlaps with laptop usage scenarios.
3. NO CONNECTIVITY - what are they thinking? Requires a phone = mostly expensive, slow connections.WiFi/Bluetooth/Cellpairing - that’s better.
4. Another layer of synchronization: Desktop syncs to smartphone. Smartphone syncs to Foleo. Does Foleo also sync to desktop? This cannot play out nicely.
5. Overlaps with UMPC but with 1/100th the functionality.
6. EXPENSIVE: $500 for an adjunct screen and keyboard for your smartphone.
7. Overlap with web email and document editing tools.
8. A nice big screen that can’t play movies. AWESOME.

BOTTOM LINE: There’s a vanishingly small niche of people that would find this compelling and affordable. Lame, lame, lame.

PROGNOSTICATION: Palm to struggle, cheap acquisition bait for also-lame Motorola.

BLOGOSPHERE GESTALT: Gizmodo, Business2, Webware, and others agree: this is disappointing and ill-conceived.

foleo, folio, motorola, palm, treo treocentral

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I’m becoming a curmudgeon

…and its because of stories like the acquisition of Last.fm by CBS. There was a time when companies either adapted, or went out of business: it was a good thing, like the process of ecological succession that keeps forests healthy - old businesses made way for new, the rotting remains of their business models providing intellectual nutrients for their replacements.

Now, it seems like old giants are content to buy relevance instead of re-inventing themselves. The game changed under them with the introduction of the internet: no matter, they’ll just spend their way into the new game.

The problem I see is one of memetic infection. Old companies with deep pockets impose old ideas and business models on new industries. Is Last.fm more likely to cave to things like the Copyright Royalty Board as a part of CBS? Yes. Does wrapping new ideas in a layer of old money ultimately stifle innovation? Yes. Sorry, Sam - even if CBS keeps their hands off, that’s not the same as being independent.

Hear2.0 is convinced that the move heralds the future of personalized radio. Jarrett House agress. I’m not sold: As Praized Blog notes, CBS is claiming that Last.fm will maintain its independence, and it was bought for its community not its technology or data. Plus: I don’t have faith in CBS’s ability to execute.

Nick O’Neill at the Webpreneur wonders why a record label didn’t snap up last.fm. IMHO, its because record labels are afraid of promoting music online where P2P downloads are a click away. Plus, would a label pay to buy a service that promotes music from other labels too?

Personally, I wonder why Last.fm wasn’t nabbed by either Google, or Experian.

cbs, experian, google, last.fm, lastfm pandora

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A Suggestion for TechMeme: Split into bigbusiness & grassroots by indexing stock price

I love Techmeme, visit it all the time. But more and more, it seems to be getting stormed by “big” stories from Google or Microsoft, leaving the other happenings of the Tech Blogosphere hanging off the bottom, unnoticed.

So - I have a proposal for Gabe: map story keywords to stock prices. If the dominant keyword in a story (i.e.: Google = GOOG) is publically traded and has a stock price over a certain threshold ($100? $50?), the story and all “discussion” and “related” stories go into BlueChipMeme or BigMeme or something.

That would be a nice, opinion agnostic way of separating out big business vs. grassroots/startups. Dell, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc. would be chronicled on one site; startups, opinions, and blogosphere happenings on another.

Plus: its a cool mashup!

EDIT: Another option - keep all stories in the same site, but offer a stock price threshold slider at the top of the page to let readers tailor the stories being displayed to their preferences.

gaberiviera, memeorandum, stock prices, stocks techmeme

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Motorola Take Note: Apple shows how to do a brand launch

Rumours are swirling about iPhone 2.0 already.

Note to Motorola: When you launch what will be a high profile product, have your follow-up in the wings and ready to go for 6 months after the initial launch to keep brand momentum on your side. Don’t launch something and then leave it to die in the marketplace for 2 years like you did with the RAZR.

apple, engadget, gizmodo, motorola, quanta razr

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Any-Port Wireless Web for your docked yacht

Here’s a business model I love: pick a beautiful location, provide wireless internet access for a premium. Any-Port is on it, serving the yachting community of the Mediterranean and Carribean:

This popular anchorage spot [Villefranche-Sur-Mer in Southern France] for everything from private yachts to cruise ships is an ideal spot for a picnic lunch or a bit of snorkeling in the clear azure waters. Any-Port clients can now access the company’s guaranteed broadband service throughout the bay and port, further consolidating their position as the leading provider of wireless broadband services to the international yachting industry in ports and anchorages around the Mediterranean and Caribbean. (from Press Release)

I wonder if they’re making money at it? Oddly enough, they’re not using WiFi, its a proprietary signal/antenna system requiring a hardware installation. I would have though it would be more effective just to pepper the docking area and surrounding beaches with cheap, off-the-shelf WiFi routers and extenders, but Any-Port does claim a multi-kilometer range.

anyport, france, wifi, wireless, yachting yachts

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JamJunky - Song Writing and Independent Music Sharing Gone Social

Friend of TechFold James Thomas today launched his latest project: JamJunky - a tool & community for songwriters. Allen at CenterNetworks beat me to the punch, with JamJunky coverage here. JamJunky provides a means to organize your work (lyrics, tab, mp3’s), and a forum to solicit feedback - from a select group, or the whole community.

The Community Side: Browse music & artists.

Anyone can browse public songs & artists, play or download MP3’s (great in-browser player, btw), and leave comments. You can list songs by Genre (which loads with a nice AJAX implementation), and order them by title, artist, or popularity (listens).

Once you find a song, you’re taken to its page:

Each song page includes the aforementioned in-browser player/downloader, as well as a comment form, lyrics & chords, other song info you may have entered (key, tempo, etc.), and licensing options.

Its deliciously fast and easy to play a song and comment on it.

The Tool: Add your own music.

Adding a song is a simple process which allows you to add as much or as little info as you please. The most standout part of the process is the Lyrics and Chords section: if you choose to enter both (as opposed to just lyrics), you’re presented with a blue and white tab sheet which actually makes entering chords and their corresponding words very easy to do.

This is a key point: JamJunky is designed with the user in mind - i.e.: someone at home with a guitar, working out a song - not a virtuoso orchestral conductor building a symphony. Have you ever used PowerTab? Great features, but way too intense an application for the casual songwriter - IMHO, JamJunky has found a great balance point.

A final note on the tool side: JamJunky has awesome “ownership controls.” CC licesning options, download control, share scope (friends? everyone?), etc: it all adds up to a tool that is very musician-friendly, offering different ways to balance openness with property protection.

Suggestions

JamJunky is days old, so I’m sure some of these are being worked on, but I’ll throw them out there anyway.

1. Facebook-style “Activity” feed: Adding individual RSS feeds for songs or artists would be good, but potentially overwhelming if you wanted to follow a bunch of contemporaries. A network activity tracker that aggregated activity for everyone you followed into a single summary page and RSS feed would do the job.
2. Group options: People love to be a part of things. Build out an infrastructure to enable user-managed groups, and see what pops up. “Chicago Blues Guitarists,” for example, would be a great way for musicians with common interests to meet their contemporaries and set up in-person jam sessions.
3. Printable tab: Let me output those chords & lyrics and a nice jam session-friendly format and I’ll be really pumped.

That’s it in a nutshell - JamJunky is a great tool targeted at a great niche, which has been under-served by online applications to date. It has a great launch feature set, and I have no doubt that there are more great ideas in the pipeline.

Congrats, Jimmy!

artists, creativecommons, guitar, guitartab, jamjunky, music, musicians, songs, songwriting tab

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When AdSense Fails

For all Google’s algorithmic awesomeness, the AdSense crawler still has the incredible ability to suck at keyword analysis. Take, for example, the awesomely popular Desktop Tower Defence game. Check out the AdSense placements:

Yes, that’s an ad for some type of antenna tower, because the page says “Tower” on it in a number of places.

Meanwhile, the perfectly serviceable meta keyword and content tags tell the real story:

<meta name=”description” content=”A flash version of Warcraft III TD”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”warcraft, flash, game”>

So - Goolge is missing some killer targeted inventory, and HandDrawnGames is missing revenue. Is there no opportunity to create a better connection between content and ad placement here?

1. Meta Tags: I understand that meta tags are easily abused and Google by-and-large disregards them. What about algorithmically assessing the credibility of meta tags on a site by site basis on the criteria of URL age, history, and traffic pattern?
2. Webmaster Tools & AdSense: Again why not let webmasters categorize their sites in Google’s Webmaster Tools, allowing superior placement? Again, a credibility algorithm could reduce the impact from link farms, etc.
3. Tie into DMOZ: Ok, DMOZ is dead in the water. But perhaps its time to resurrect it, and make use of it as a categorization engine for AdSense. Crank up the community profile of DMOZ again, and surface its “category lookup” as a free API, of which AdSense would be the biggest but not only customer.
4. Del.icio.us: Ok, the Yahoo ownership might make this sticky for Google, but Del.icio.us URL tag history would be a great way to categorize sites for AdSense inventory purposes. Sure del.icio.us can be gamed, but so can anything, and community self-policing tends to dampen gamed popularity spikes. Perhaps Yahoo should be using this as a source of competitive advantage in Panama?

Are people at the search engines thinking of these sort of things? I would have thought Google would be all over this, given that relevance was what made AdSense king in the first place.

adsense, del.icio.us, delicious, desktoptowerdefence, dmoz, dtd, google, meta, metatages, panama, tags, warcraft yahoo

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Engagement - 4 tips for Startups & Established players: using digg, del.icio.us, technorati, and google to build your community

Companies on the web (speaking in terms of 2.0 startups here) can be sorted into two categories - those that actively engage their communities, and those that don’t.

I base that on my first 2 month’s experience blogging here. Some reviews have been actively commented on over time by the company reviewed - take a look at the Collanos post, for instance: the Collanos folks are all over it with opinions, other ways of looking at things, feature updates, and so on. Same thing with Teqlo - lots of conversation flowed from that post.

Most reviews, however, haven’t gotten any attention from the firm in question. SuTree? TxtVox? Meshly? Hellooooo…?

There’s a number of ways that engaging Bloggers with comments or trackbacks is valuable for web companies (or any, for that matter) new or old:

1. Establishing a relationship often turns critics into advocates.
2. Share your side of the story: supplement, complement, and correct.
3. Gather feedback.
4. Gain eyeballs - posts with good discussion get more readers.
5. Build brand equity - your company looks better if its approachable and engaged.

Anyway, the benefits of Naked Conversations have been endlessly hashed out elsewhere.

So - how to go about realizing these benefits? Doing so does not have to be arduous or time consuming, nor do you necessarily need to rush out and hire a community manager. There’s 4 simple, fast ways to identify, track, and stay on top of conversations about your company:

1. Technorati: Subscribe to your tag. Enter this in your browser: http://technorati.com/posts/tag/YourCompanyNameHere. For example, here’s the Collanos page. Then, subscribe to it (there’s a nice RSS link right there). Now, you’re instantly updated in your feed reader whenever someone out there properly tags a post about you. For thoroughness, be sure to subscribe to feeds for all variations and misspellings of your name.
2. Google: bookmark searches for all common variations of your company’s name, as well as things like “YouCompanyName Review.” Try searching for “SuTree Review,” for instance. My SuTree post is on the first page.
3. Did you know you can subscribe to Digg search results? Well, you can. And you should. Digg weilds undue influence - you should be commenting on posts about your company, and ready to throw out a “Welcome Diggers!” message onto your site if a post goes front page (you should have a page ready to go, designed to convert notoriously shallow-browsing digg readers into members). Here’s the digg search for SuTree - the subscribe icon is innocuous, but there.
4. Del.icio.us: You should be following what’s getting bookmarked about you - your company, reviews, and so on. Read the user notes - those capsule summaries provide a good window into how your brand is perceived online. Finding yourself on del.icio.us can be cumbersome, as del.icio.us uses their own id strings for URLs. Here’s SuTree for example: http://del.icio.us/url/76ff772c19d0c546a3b70fc4e24b6080. Click that link though, and you’ll see a URL search box: enter yours there. And, if you scan all the way to the bottom, there’s an RSS feed for it too.

So there you go: adding RSS feeds to your reader from Technorati, Del.icio.us, and Digg, and bookmarking a few Google searches will keep you generally up to speed with what’s being said about your company. Following those feeds is a matter of minutes in your feed reader. Now, the onus is on you to act on that: get out there and comment - engage your community and enjoy the rewards.

EDIT: Guy Kawasaki posted an article today about DIY PR by Glen Kelmann. The 4 tips above would be good tools for someone going the DIY and engaging customers and stakeholders directly.

blogging, community, delicious, digg, feeds, google, howto, reputation, rss, startups, technorati tips

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