TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Keegy: Geo-relevance rankings

Keegy has an interesting concept: Its a website that serves up “relevant” news by correlating what other people from your same geographic region clicked. Localization is a good buzzword to be touting at the moment - Keegy’s execution seems to be confused on a number of levels.

1. Geography? Arguably, when it comes to web browsing, geographic location is a poor basis for relevance correlation to begin with. Clickstream behaviour is motivated by interests, which in internet land are loosely if at all correlated with location. i.e.: A gamer living in Winnipeg is more interested in international “gaming” news, not news that other people from Winnipeg may have enjoyed. It seems to me that location should be one spectrum of correlation - not the only one.

2. Transparency - Its unclear how Keegy relates my location to the content it serves up. At what level does the relevancy calculation take place? Province? City? Country? Can I change it? Given that there doesn’t appear to be a way to get an un-modified view of the site, I need to know “how” my world view is being generated.

3. Ranking - imagine if the Digg homepage didn’t tell you the number of diggs any given story had gotten. Would you find the page more or less trustworthy as a news source? Just how relevant are results are on Keegy is currently a mystery - i.e.: how much clickstream data is the page that Keegy served up based on? What I want is a “digg equivalent” score for each story that clarifies its ranking: “Viewed by 28 Winnipegers, 76 Manitobas, and 891 Canadians” would be a nice summary.

The Keegy press release helpfully offers this non-explanation:

“In a personalized news service users interact with the site and their activity anonymously generates statistics for each city/country. Using this information, an artificial intelligence algorithm ranks the posts for relevance according to a visitor’s location and the stories and home pages are edited automatically every minute.” [from Press Release]

4. Don’t Confuse Yourself with a Search Engine: For some reason, Keegy creates and maintains its own index of content blogs, fundamentally limiting the depth and breadth of Keegy-served content to its own crawl. Why not tie Keegy in with a browser extension and let users roam the net? I imagine that would create a much more valuable and interesting clickstream, and keeping only reasonably correlated data (across a given geographic user body) would eliminate “outlier” content.

In a nutshell, Keegy seems like a half-implemented slice of a larger project. Err, fortunately Keegy is “…closing seed capital stage on November 21th. and starting their first round of investment next October.” [from Press Release] Well, good luck to you. In a crowded market of social discovery services, I don’t think Keegy has the spark to go big.

aggregator, digg, keegy, news, social stumbleupon

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Me.dium is Ma.rginal

I just read about technically impressive social browsing app Me.dium taking a boatload of funding, courtesy of R/WW. R/WW’s Alex Iskold takes the position that Me.dium is filling the fourth corner in his scope vs. speed/size chart - i.e.: that there are usage scenarios for collabortive browing in both productivity and casual discovery.

From what I understand of Me.dium (I’ll be honest here - I’ve gotten most of my knowledge of it from the RW/W postings), using the app would be akin to doing all of your reading at the bookstore: I’d be in the science fiction section reading whatever, and everyone else in the section would be able to see what I was reading and vice versa - a cluster of people around a particular book could drive me to check it out, or others could look at the pile of read books beside my seat and “discover” new reading.

That’s cool, and there are definite applications - trip planning is one of Alex’s examples which I’ve experienced first-hand, collaboratively browsing the travel section with my wife. Generally speaking, however, my inner-curmudgeon makes me think that I’d prefer to do the vast majority of my browsing at home, interacting on my own terms (Blog comments, etc.) - i.e.: I spend very little time reading at the bookstore trying to meet people.

Me.dium has niche appeal, but the marginal benefit of using it, relative to more-focused social networking (Facebook) or discovery (stumbleupon, cluztr) tools is compartively low from where I’m sitting. Perhaps I need to spend more (any) time in Me.dium - I’ll add it to the queue.

Other Coverage

1. R/WW’s orignal me.dium post, with privacy concerns.
2. alarm:clock points out the interest Elon Musk family connection.
3. Rex Dixon sums up my feelings better than I did.
4. Feld thoughts is bullish, looking at me.dium as one facet of the next stage of internet evolution.
5. Venture Beat sees me.dium as a big source of value to advertisers.

browsing, cluztr, firefox, me.dium social

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Facebook Acquisition - Round X; I bet Google

I call Google FTW. The internets are all atwitter that facebook is on the block again - the Guardian says Yahoo is at it again; Battelle speculates that GOOG might snipe it like they did with DoubleClick.

Personally, I’ve thought Google is the more likely candidate for a while. Despite their occaisonal dropped balls on acquisitions (dodgeball), Google is about two things: platform and volume, which feed off each other and together are monetizeable. Advertising? Google built the platform. Search? Same. Video? Yup. Any area of online tech that you look into, Google has a major foundational play under way - if not a platform in a traditional sense, then a product option that has so much market power that it is the defacto platform or standard in its space.

Except social networking. Orkut, however you slice it, is an abject failure. Facebook would fill that gap, and the Facebook platform philosophy works nicely with Google. Google and Facebook could exchange hooks, interfaces, and API’s very quickly and create integrated products that deliver real value FAST.

Final note - I remember comments from GOOG’s CEO from a few weeks ago to the effect that Google wants to be able to tell you what you should be doing for the weekend. THAT’S A SOCIAL FEATURE.

So - when all is said and done, I call Google for the buy, Yahoo for the runner up. The only thing to derail this would be the SEC.

billions, dodgeball, facebook, GOOG, google, microsoft, orkut, sec, social, socialnetworking, weekend, yahoo YHOO

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Yuuguu - lightweight desktop screensharing and collaboration

Yuuguu is a simple, fast, Java-based desktop application that picks up where IM leaves off, offering not only messaging, but collaboration in the form of remote control features and screensharing (think VNC). Of particular note is the fact that Yuuguu’s java code-base allows for cross platform screensharing and remote controlling - PC/Mac and vice versa.

On starting Yuuguu, the first thing you’ll want to do is add a contact / friend, which is a simple process. Enter their email address, and if they’re not a Yuuguu member already, you’ll have the option to invite them to join.

Once you’ve got contacts in Yuuguu, you can view their presence status, create multi-person IM chat sessions, remotely share and control each other’s desktops, and initiate voice conference-calling. The last is the current basis for Yuuguu’s revenue model - voice calling is a paid service that - somehow or other - is coordinated with your local phone service provider. I didn’t get a chance to try this out - I’m not even sure if it would work in Canada, how account details are figured, etc.

Of all the features, the standout is the screensharing. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to try this either, but a lightweight, user-friendly version of WinVNC or the soon-to-be-dead NetMeeting would be super appreciated. I can imagine using it regularly to aid scattered family members in need of technical assistance, and I’m also curious about the possibility of using it to connect home and work PC’s, taking on GoToMyPC.

Suggestions

1. Address Book Parsing: Do it Facebook-style - give users the option to have Yuuguu dig through their webmail or desktop Outlook/Thunderbird address books. Connect them automatically to people in their address books who are already Yuuguu members, and provide the option to send out invites to those who aren’t. If executed respectfully, this would be a great tool for users and a great viral growth vector for Yuuguu.
2. Streamline signup: desktop apps in particular demand instant gratification - I want to open it and use it. Yuuguu signup through the app still requires you to wait for a confirmation email that includes your random-looking password - an extra step that comes between me and the functionality. Why not just let me pick my own password?
3. Clarify Usage Scenarios: Is Yuuguu targeted at tweens, or business users? The functionality straddles both, and the stated inspiration is business; but site branding elements and application UI speak to youth more than businesses. Separately branded versions of the application for each target segment might speed adoption in both.

Summary

Yuuguu is a solid application: light, useable, and well-featured. Add in some easy networking features, and consider clarifying the brand positioning, and its bound to garner a following. I’m personally looking forward to trying it out among family.

Other Coverage

1. The Kudos Factor relates that YuuGuu is Japanese for “fusion,” and won a Big Chip award (though I find the judge’s comment that “YuuGuu couldn’t be more Web 2.0 if it tried” funny given that YuuGuu is a desktop app, not even on the web).
2. Digital Inspiration points out the importance of Yuuguu’s cross-platform capability: apparently its the only tool to bridge OSX and Windows.

collaboration, gotomypc, realtime, sharing, social, vnc, winvnc yuuguu

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FireAnt.tv - Confusion

I had hoped to post a full review of FireAnt - the social / vlog player and community, but I’ve been stymied by a buggy and confusing website.

As I understand it, FireAnt consists of a downloaded desktop client, and a social hub website. I couldn’t test the client as I couldn’t find it to download, and problems with the website began in registration, where it ran into PHP missing parameter errors. The prominent appeals to try “FireAnt Beta v2″ dead-end with a send-your-email-address-into-the-void form, and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to download “v1″ client or anything else.

In the end, what I was left with was a website of videos organized by content channels, played within the site with QuickTime, and including post-roll advertisements. You can rate and tag videos, and add them to your “playlist” - a feature which doesn’t seem to do anything without the desktop application. Tagging and well-thought out content categories make it easy to find good video, and the notion of the website and desktop client staying in sync (i.e.: building your playlist) is appealing if un-testable at the moment.

The social opportunities on the site itself have been missed, or at least unrealized - on the website there are no comments, no “who else liked this video,” no “other people who liked this also enjoyed,” or any functionality beyond a basic web-media player. Clicking the “People” tab takes you to a search form only; the one trial search I did yeilded a person who’s playlist consisted of pr0n - something to do with a “mexicum threesome,” which I decided not to watch. Perhaps the desktop client more fully realizes the social potential here, or perhaps the website is awaiting a future release to do so.

So - I was pretty disappointed. When I originally stumbled across FireAnt, I’d hoped to have discovered a JOOST in sheep’s clothing - especially after reading TechCrunch’s coverage (FireAnt Just Rocks). With the site offering user-created content channels and touting the fact that…

FireAnt has 19,835 channels and 1,110,256 episodes, and adding more each day!

…it seems like the issues at hand are (a) getting the desktop client back on the site, and (b) buidling out the social infrastructure on the site itself.

I hope their upcoming Beta release has some great features.

blogging, fireant, joost, mexicum, social, threesome vlogs

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Rolling Stone Social Network: Born to gather moss

Om lets us know that Rolling Stone Magazine is creating a social network. So - a sixties brand with little relevance to the social-networking MySpace & FaceBook generation is attempting to gloss a layer of hipness over their decaying empire: I don’t see much good coming from this.

Rolling Stone has two options:

1. CURRENT PLAN = BAD IDEA: Increase brand penetration in their traditional target demographic: the 30+ aging hipsters crowd is where Rolling Stone finds its readership. By launching their own social network, they are taking on the challenge of converting this demographic - which has largely ignored the phenomenon - into social networkers. Whatever gains they expect to get in brand awareness, online presence, or physical circulation will be challenging to come by in a conceptually hostile market segment.
2. Increase brand penetration in new demographics: If Rolling Stone really wants to expand into the burgeoning, music-obsessed youth/college market, they should go where they go: FaceBook and MySpace. Create a co-branded special content area and/or group membership features around the Rolling Stone brand and content.

This whole thing looks like CEO “Gotta Have It” effect, sold up by hyperbolic consultants. Time for Rolling Stone to pause and re-think.

facebook, gigaom, myspace, rolling stone, rollingstone, social social networking

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How to Make Cluztr the Next Big Thing in Four Easy Steps

Yesterday, Mashable pointed me to Cluztr - a new “social” browsing site that, through a browser add-on, tracks your and surfaces your clickstream. Cluztr incorporates elements of Digg, Del.icio.us, and MyBlogLog into what is effectively an in-the-cloud, social browser history. Cluztr uses this social history to introduce you to others in style of MyBlogLog.

Business Model & Privacy

The first thought I had was that whatever business model Cluztr has must revolve around selling the clickstream data they collect. Which it does:

We may provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, browser type, operating system, Internet, domain, demographic and profile data, traffic patterns, and related site information to reputable third parties, but these statistics will not include personally identifying information. [Privacy Statement]

Cluztr’s privacy policy also describes a retrograde-sounding “opt-out” spamming policy, whereby Cluztr will use your clickstream data to target you for advertising until you email them to opt-out:

We may use personal data to let you know about products and services that may be of particular interest to you. We may also want to provide you with related information from third parties that we think may be of interest to you. If you would rather not receive this information, please send an e-mail to: info@cluztr.com. [Privacy Statement]

Hmmmmm. So, Cluztr is in fact a market research house and advertising engine of the sort that regularly raises such hue-and-cry, when - for instance - someone finds out the DoubleClick uses cookies to track your clickstream across the internet.

And that’s OK - you’re trading your clickstream data for the value proposition of online history and social browsing, and by downloading and installing the Cluztr add in, you’re explicitly accepting this (compared to DoubleClick’s cookie tracking that took place unknown to most). Additionally, Cluztr does promise to aggregate/anonymize data, offers the (cumbersome) opt-out option, and allows you to identify sites in your history as “private” - though apparently you cannot set your entire clickstream to private.

Spam and Gaming

Cluztr has a great feature that creates a Digg-like popularity list of what sites are “hot” at any given moment. Unfortunately, this list is game-able. See the blurred out ones above? Those are pr0n sites - “sex latin chick gets ——” is not the sort of internet gold that I want to stumble across.

How to Make Cluztr the Next Big Thing

Cluztr has a great peice of infrastructure, and a social/viral model to potentially take it big. A few tweaks to the business model and site functionality could make it a very useful tool - and drive adoption.

1. Get a new name: “Cluztr” is awkward and goofy sounding. I’m sorry, but it is. The equation worked for Flickr as novelty propelled awareness, but that easy brand-equity has gone away. Additionally, Cluztr doesn’t really speak to what the site does, it looks awkward, and its more difficult to describe the spelling of than Flickr.
2. Ditch the Vocabulary: This is an addendum to the first point. Cluztr refers to popular sites as “cluztrs” - presumably because users are “clustering” around them. Jeff Nolan summed up the folly of creating your own lexicon when I called out Teqlo for using “Teqlets” instead of widgets:
   

   Every startup wants to develop their own vocabulary and at some point they realize what a stupid idea that is. We figured that out about 2 months ago…

3. Flip your Advertising to Opt-In: Credibility will drive adoption, and going the opt-in route as opposed to the current negative-enrollment (you’re signed up unless you do something) model will drive credibility. This isn’t Columbia House (the king of negative enrollment sales) - this is the brave new fronteir. Kick it up knotch.
4. Automated Categorization & Filtering: Yeah, its going to be a bitch to do, but it needs doing. GMail, Google Reader, and Porn shouldn’t be in the top “cluztrs,” or listed anywhere on the site for that matter. Neither should fully parameterized domains with people’s user id strings and hashed authentication tokens. This could be done with machine intelligence if Cluztr took the time to build the database that would feed it, or could be done with community filtering via a “flagging” system.

Summary

Though this profile may sound pessimistic, I do think the idea has legs. With a filtering system and a few tweaks, Cluztr has the potential to bring together the best of del.icio.us, Digg, and MyBlogLog in a simple to use fashion with a viral model that drives membership - real value can be delivered to Cluztr users, and Cluztr advertising/research clients alike. That’s compelling.

browsing, cluztr, delicious, digg, mashable, mybloglog social

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