Privacy Anxieties And The Web Of Intent

GigaOm: The Web Of Intent Is Coming (Sooner Than You Think): more robust content filtering tools and the Web of Intent will arrive sooner than you think, based on the implicit messages in users’ actions..... The Web of Intent will be largely driven by consumers’ actions and interests..... They will be able to quickly transform their content operations beyond articles and blog posts into data and interest-centric publishing structures that allow consumers to follow topics and ongoing stories of interest. ..... a Web of Intent rich in data and profiling based on their audiences’ interests. ...... will offer newer and more robust targeting opportunities and will ultimately provide publishers new opportunities for monetization beyond pure advertising ..... make their sites more “intent-friendly”

This intent talk is at the other end of the privacy spectrum. You do want the site to know who you are, what your interests are, what you want, so the site can better serve you.

We want privacy, but we also want the web of intent, and I don't see a clash there. Just like it is possible to be for economic growth and for the environment at the same time.

Privacy is a value, but it is also a technological challenge. The web of intent is a major technological challenge. Now all websites pretty much have blogs, and Facebook and Twitter presences. The web of intent will similarly permeate.

We will get to keep our cake and eat it too, for the most part. There are always some standard deviations.

Privacy, Digital Literacy, Technology, Social Values

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Web of Intent is Coming (Sooner Than You Think) (gigaom.com)
• Expectation of Privacy (uptownuncorked.com)
• Musing about a new kind of literacy (confusedofcalcutta.com)
• What's New in Consumer Web - September 6, 2010 (socialtimes.com)
• Beware, Your Social Media Privacy Is In These Hands (humanrights.change.org)
• Video Mocks Google's Privacy Practices (Juliana Gruenwald/Tech Daily Dose) (techmeme.com)
• Trailmeme and the Web of Intent (gigaom.com)
• It's Not Just About Privacy, Millennials Want Trust (itsjosipnotjoseph.com)
• Facebook Privacy: What You Need to Know (verticalmeasures.com)
• Trailmeme and the Web of Intent [Voices] (voices.allthingsd.com)
• Google Streamlines Its Privacy Policy. Should Facebook Be Next? (techcrunch.com)
• Brands need to understand users' privacy concerns (connect.icrossing.co.uk)
• In Social Media, Privacy Now Has To Be Part of the Sales Pitch (blogs.forbes.com)
• Foursquare Privacy Hole Leaks Nearly a Million Check-Ins [Privacy] (gizmodo.com)
• Privacy, Digital Literacy, Technology, Social Values (technbiz.blogspot.com)

Apple, Google, Music

Image via Wikipedia

Reuters: Apple And Google To Clash In Music Space By Christmas: The music industry hopes to benefit from a battle for control of the mobile phone and computer desktop between Apple and Google as both technology giants go head-to-head in a wide range of media and consumer technology areas including online TV and movies, mobile phones, software and even advertising. ...... iTunes Music Store, which accounts for 70 percent of all U.S. digital music sales..... Sales of Android-based phones have rocketed in recent months to 200,000 a day ..... Music executives have long believed having other competing powerful digital music retailers could help expand the market...... Labels have been hoping that the introduction of new cloud-based music services from Apple and Google would be a major boost for winning over consumers who want to be able to access their music libraries, discover new songs and make impulse purchases wherever they have Internet access.

Competition is a good thing. What is remarkable about the Google-Apple rivalry is the two are similar sized companies that are very loved by very many people, and by now they are competing in so many different ares. That is a good thing.

The iPhone met Android. Now I guess it is iTunes' turn to see some competition. What would Google's music service be like? All the music you can consume for a basic monthly fee is my first guess, music that you can transport from device to device using your Google account.

Android phones are doing very well and are about to take over the iPhone in terms of very many numbers. They are selling as many phone as the iPhone by now. This diversity is a good thing.

The real clincher would be if these guys did to movies what they are doing to music. The movie business is so stuck. It's not even funny. It asks to be unhinged.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Apple and Google to clash in music space by Christmas (financialpost.com)
• Google challenges Apple's assertion that they fudge their Android activation numbers (geek.com)
• Factbox: Apple TV versus Google TV (reuters.com)
• Google TV v Apple TV, Ping, FaceTime (themoderatevoice.com)
• Apple Over Google (bombtune.com)
• Google: Hey Apple, Our Android Sales Numbers Don't Include Upgrades (intomobile.com)
• Google and Apple eat each others spelling corrections (malcolmcoles.co.uk)
• Google Music has yet to sign any labels for deals (electronista.com)
• Google's music entreaties falls favorably on record companies' ears (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Google rebuffs Apple's claims of exaggerated Android numbers (electronista.com)

Google's Advertising Business

Image via Wikipedia

Job Search
Google New York
Has Google Been Able To Scale Well?

Google's advertising business was an after thought for Google. It was not hatched by the two founders and it was at first doubted by the CEO. But Google mints close to 98% of its money from that advertising business. Google invented a new ad platform and has never looked back since. That revenue stream has allowed it to go for a once in a decade IPO, has allowed it to engage in big and bold experiments. That revenue stream has been Google's lifeblood. That ad platform is as simple as search, or at least simple looking.

Google experimented in the traditional online search ad space and found a fit, a great fit. More recently it has experimented with radio and TV with mixed results. Its most recent push been into mobile. It has worked hard on its mobile OS - Android - so as not to charge for that OS, but to serve even more ads on mobile phones. I am a huge fan of ad supported services. It is more egalitarian than charging. Imagine if Google were to charge a few cents per search. You can't.

Google is a big company that retains the spirit of a startup. It looks hungrily at new spaces. It has laid down most of the groundwork for mobile. Right now it is looking squarely at audio and video for the web medium. It is no revelation that it will look to populate those spaces with its lucrative ads. It is not at all a given that it will succeed as wildly and totally as it has in the traditional web space, but there are few people who doubt it will keep iterating until it finds a good fit.

The benefit for the consumer? Services they traditionally paid for will go free. What's there to complain?

Advertising by Google
Google's risky advertising business| ZDNet May 2007
Google Is an Advertising Company August 2005 For all the speculation that Google’s goal is a “web OS” that supplants Windows as the lowest-common denominator platform for getting on the Internet, and for all the talk that Microsoft (and, in particular, Bill Gates) sees Google as a serious threat to their monopoly-powered golden-egg-laying geese, I just don’t see how Google is building a platform for developers that even vaguely competes with Windows. ....... “Follow the money” is as good a way as any to define a company: the point of business is to profit. This is why Apple is not, and has never been, a software company: their profits come from hardware sales — computers, and, now, iPods. Microsoft is a software company: their profits — billions of dollars every quarter — come almost solely from software. ..... Judged by their profits, Google is an advertising company. They don’t profit from search, they don’t profit from software. They profit by selling ads. ..... Google’s software is just an excuse to show ads. Google’s search results and apps like Gmail serve the same purpose as the editorial content in magazines and newspaper.
Updated: Android's Secret Sauce? Google's Advertising Rev-Share Deals With Carriers March 2010 it is sharing advertising revenues with carrier and handset partners, but clarified that it is limited to search and does not extend to other applications, like YouTube or Maps ..... this is good news for carriers, which have been looking for new revenue sources that could help pay for the next generation of networks that will cost billions. ..... mobile advertising is set to take off. Google has agreed to pay $750 million for the mobile ad network AdMob. ...... give away the operating system and make money on advertising ....... Kyocera, which hasn’t made a smartphone in six years, came out of retirement to make its first Android device, a low-end phone that could easily be free with carrier subsidies. ... Google could ship roughly 22 million phones this year.
AdWords - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD$21 billion in 2008 ...... The original idea was invented by Bill Gross from Idealab who, in turn, borrowed it from yellow pages.
Google AdWords: A Brief History Of Online Advertising Innovation Google’s search advertising model ...... was iterated, and many of the key concepts were borrowed ..... a few key market-defying decisions, and one stunning insight, made it all work ...... Advertising first appeared on Google.com in January 2000 ..... text ads were sold by a sales rep on a CPM basis. (Yes, that’s right, there was no pay-per-click, no self-serve, no bidding.) ...... based on its initial lack of success with advertising, Google had planned to give its inventory over to DoubleClick, the largest banner ad business of the time....... then the bubble burst in Spring 2000, and the online ad banner market crashed....... Google introduced a self-serve model for buying text ads — they got the idea from GoTo.com ..... October 2000, Google introduced AdWords ... “Have a credit card and 5 minutes? Get your ad on Google today.” ...... In 2001, Google’s ad revenue was on pace to hit $85 million, but was outpaced by Overture (the renamed GoTo), which earned $288 million in ad revenue selling pay-per-click ads on an auction basis....... February 2002, Google introduced a new version of AdWords ....... introduced a breathtaking innovation. ...... introduced clickthrough rate, as a measure of the ad’s relevance, into the ranking algorithm. So if an ad with a lower bid per click got clicked more often, it would rank higher....... a lower bid ad with more clicks generated more revenue than a higher bid ad with fewer clicks....... Google had two moments of pure brilliance. ....first was PageRank.... second was introducing relevance into the pay-per-click auction model...... Google didn’t invent search or auction-based pay-per-click advertising — their innovation was perfecting it...... Nobody at the time thought there was anything wrong with Overture’s model — it was making lots of money...... Nobody at the time thought search was a business

Google Predicts Mobile Ad Surge as AdMob Deal Closes , giving the search giant pole position in the emerging wireless advertising space..... the FTC commissioners unanimously voted to close the investigation. ...... its innovation in new ad formats, such as units placed within third-party applications. .... search remains the order of the day for mobile marketers. ..... In the past two years, Google has seen a more than fivefold increase in its mobile search queries, and it's only picking up steam ..... Innovations such as the click-to-call feature found in many mobile search ads make the format more compelling for users, who often use their smartphones to search for local businesses while on the go. ...... as smartphones take on more of the functions of notebooks and desktops ...... mobile ad revenues will eventually eclipse ad sales from the traditional Web on the company's balance sheet.
How Much Is Google Worth to N.Y.? Company Says $6 Billion New York the second-biggest state for Google-driven economic activity, trailing only California, where the company estimates it generated $14 billion in 2009. .... “for every dollar [spent] on Google advertising, an advertiser earns back $2.” ..... the clicks on free searches for businesses in the state, which Google computes are 70% as valuable as clicks on paid search ads. .... the evolution of the “I Love New York” tourism campaign. Five years ago, he said, the state’s effort to lure tourists relied primarily on a toll-free number and brochures. ..... Since adopting AdWords as the cornerstone of its digital presence, the tourism campaign netted 17% of its online traffic through the Google program last year. Davidson credited some $50 million in additional tourism revenue to Google.
Google says it helps generate $54 billion for businesses and nonprofits‎ Google is emphasizing its role in creating jobs and economic development to counter a growing perception on Capitol Hill that it abuses its dominant position in online advertising. ...... "Google is rolling out a marketing campaign to get people to look at them in a more balanced and positive way so they don't get pounded by politicians." .... businesses get five clicks on their search results for every one click on their ads. Based on that, the company calculates that businesses get $8 in profit for every $1 they spend on AdWords.
Google Says It Generates $54 Billion for U.S. Economy The Internet’s share of overall advertising spending is forecast to rise to 17 percent in 2012 from 13 percent last year

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google and Its Value to the US Economy (arnoldit.com)
• Google finally completes acquisition of AdMob (v3.co.uk)
• Google AdSense and Transparency (revenews.com)
• The 1000 Most Visited Sites On The Web: Plan Your Online Display Advertising (adbean.net)
• Is Google TV Ready for Prime Time? (Fool TV) (fool.com)
• Google Lists Top 1,000 Sites On The Web & Then Lets You Advertise On Them (Barry Schwartz/Search Engine Land) (techmeme.com)
• Google's Internet advertising network attracts more than 1.5 million US marketers, websites (taragana.com)
• Google's AdSense Splits No Longer a 'Secret' (marketingpilgrim.com)
• What We're Reading: Googling Yourself (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Search No More: Google's a Value Stock (wallstreetpit.com)
• Google touts its benefits for advertisers, economy (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Google Adsense Revenue Share - Adsense for content (68 percent) (techblissonline.com)
• Will Facebook Be Tomorrow's Google, and Google Tomorrow's Microsoft? (techcrunch.com)
• OMG Is Google Stock A Buy! -- Citi's Mahaney (GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
• Google's Grants -- Free Advertising with Google's AdWords (non-profit-marketing.suite101.com)
• Twitter Ads Test Billion-Dollar Valuation (wired.com)
• Google Trading Systems (broadstuff.com)
• What We're Going To Do With Mobile Now That We Own AdMob (businessinsider.com)
• Google, the whale to be harpooned (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: Screw Mobile, The Real Ad Growth Explosion Is Still Going To Be In Search (GOOG, AAPL) (businessinsider.com)

My Favorite Super Bowl Ad

Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising

Image via CrunchBase

Michael Arrington going after Anu Shukla a few months back would be like Michael Arrington saying Google is an evil company because click fraud happens, link farms happen. Click fraud happens despite Google's best efforts. Crime happens in New York City despite Michael Bloomberg's best efforts. "The safest big city in America just became safer."

First Anu has to work within the FTC guidelines and she does, or she would not be in business very long. Then there are the Facebook guidelines, and Facebook has chosen to have higher standards than the FTC because they don't want to compromise the user experience in any form or fashion. And if Anu did not follow those Facebook guidelines, some of the games Anu is involved with will no longer be on the Facebook platform. But they continue to be. That is to say they follow the Facebook guidelines. And Anu's company Offerpal Media has strict guidelines of its own. Because they know not compromising the user experience is good for their bottom line. And Anu's company allows its vendors to kick out individual advertisers from their platforms without having to explain why. You don't have to be a fraudulent advertiser to get kicked out. If a particular game does not like you, you are no longer welcome on their platform.

Despite these half dozen layers of policing, some slimey stuff does end up happening. And that can be talked about. That has to be talked about, sure. But to make that slimey stuff the center of the focus is to miss the fundamental point, which is that Anu has done nothing less than found the new frontier in advertising.

Image via CrunchBase

Yahoo used to do banner ads. Then Google came along and said no to that. They said, we don't want to have any ads on our main page, and we want to offer contextual text advertising. At some level that was like going from color movies to black and white, from colorful ads to text ads. But Google had hit the new frontier in advertising at the time. Zuckerberg said search contexts are less relevant than the social graph. And that was the new frontier all over again. Anu has come along and said, wait a minute. Banner or text, context or social graph, you are missing the point. The real action is that people are interacting. That is what gaming is about. The ads and the money transactions have to be part of that gaming experience, not a banner apart. Now that is fundamental insight. That is a paradigm shift.

More than 160 million people and counting play Farmville. Of those less than 100,000 file complaints. Most of those complaints are people saying I paid real cash for virtual coins, and I did not get my coins. Farmville takes care of all those complaints. Usually it gives players more coins than they paid for but say did not get.

Michael Arrington wrote 22 posts on TechCrunch about those 100,000 people. I look forward to seeing 35,200 posts on TechCrunch about the rest of the "scamville" users.

I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

Related articles by Zemanta

• ScamVille: New Offerpal CEO Admits Mistakes, Makes Bold Promises (techcrunch.com)
• MySpace changes terms of use to combat app scams (news.cnet.com)
• Offerpal Media sets standards to lock out scam offers (venturebeat.com)
• Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell (techcrunch.com)
• Facebook: We're going after scammy ads, too (news.cnet.com)
• Class-action lawsuits could hit Facebook, MySpace, others on scam offers (venturebeat.com)
• Facebook restates its zero tolerance for scam offers and ads (venturebeat.com)
• New York marks fewest murders ever (cnn.com)

PayCheckr: Bringing Money Into Blogging?

Allan showed up in the comments section of my blog post New York Times, Don't Die, Live. I replied. Then we switched to email. Now we are scheduled for a three way chat session tomorrow morning, him, me and someone from his team.

http://www.PayCheckr.com

Right now I don't have a solid grasp as to the vision of this particular team, or how well they are going to execute, but the idea itself is a trailblazer. It is about time something like this got done.

Some questions that have popped up in my mind:

1. Who turns a blog into a password protected blog? Would that be a separate service?
2. Who will go seek the advertisers? If readers opt to pay for 99 cents or less through viewing ads, who makes sure to get those advertisers?
   
3. Can you get all the credit card options and still get paid only through PayPal as a blogger?
4. What would be PayCheckr's cut? A percentage? What percentage?
   

Just like Disqus takes care of everything to do with your blog's comments sections and Zemanta takes care of all your links, tags and images, PayCheckr should attempt to take care of all details to do with monetizing your no-longer-free blog. It could grow fast.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Some Bloggers Welcome FTC Scrutiny for Paid Reviews (pbs.org)
• Printed blog publication fails; world dies of shock (arstechnica.com)
• Michelle Haimoff: The World of Free and The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com)
• Bits: Blogs-on-Paper Idea Runs Out of Steam (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Introducing CancelAds - the Road to a Fair Web (profy.com)
• The inevitable? New York Times floats $5 per month access (inquisitr.com)
• Would You Pay To Read NYTimes.com? (mediabistro.com)
• Democrats Retake Control of New York State Senate (politicalwire.com)
• Google Chrome OS: A Scramble to Say Nothing (gigaom.com)

Netizen: The First Blog To Place The PayCheckr Button
The PayCheckr Promise
PayCheckr Potential
PayCheckr: Bringing Money Into Blogging?

Where Have You Placed Your Ads?

Image via Wikipedia

Until yesterday my ads were in the white zone, at the very bottom, and on the side bar in the middle. I had this if-you-build-it-they-will-come attitude. Once I start getting enough page hits, revenue will follow, that was my attitude. But the point is, ad placement works at all page hits levels.

I moved my ads to the orange zone only yesterday evening, and already my earnings have gone up by a factor of four, and I am only half way through the day.

I made two major changes on my three primary blogs yesterday.

• Barackface
• Nepal
• Netizen
  

For now Nepal and Barackface have the most blog posts, but now my primary blog is Netizen.

1. I used to have only one blog post per page. Now I have three blog posts per page.
   
2. Now I have ads at the bottom of each blog post. That also ends up being ads at the top of two blog posts. So I have one in the orange zone, and two in the red zone now. And that has made a huge difference.

A less cluttered side bar also makes a blog more user friendly. And the footer now only has a search engine. That makes the blogs look cleaner.

And all this was very easy to do. For those of you familiar with the Blogger dashboard, click on "Layout." Then click on "Page Elements." Go to the box called "Blog Posts." Click on "Edit." There you can decide you want three posts per page and that you want to "Show Ads Between Posts." Google only allows for three ads per page, so three posts per page is a good number.



Because I now have three posts per page, now I don't feel the pressure to write particularly long posts. And so yesterday I had the busiest day ever at Netizen measured by the number of posts. So ad placement is not the only reason the earnings today are so much higher.

And yesterday I wrote my first blog post advertisement: Advanced Global Materials. Google makes money from ads, so can I. It is a problem only if all your posts at your blog are blog post ads. But as long as you maintain a healthy ratio between your regular posts, and your ad posts, and you clearly state at the bottom of a post that it is an ad, I think you are okay. (Sites That Pay You To Blog)

Like Deng Xiaoping said, to make money is a good thing.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Interlink Your Old Blog Posts [Day 8 31DBBB] (problogger.net)
• Monitor your 'Search Engine Ranking' with AuthorityLabs (techpluto.com)
• Write a Link Post [Day 7 31DBBB] (problogger.net)
• New Digg Search Launches (techcrunch.com)
• StumbleUpon Brings Serendipity Back to The Web (ventureblog.com)
• AdSense Optimization Tips (yieldbuild.com)
• 7 Reasons not to have Empty Ad Spots on your Blog (problogger.net)
• 5 Ways to Make an Empty Ad Slot on Your Blog Work For You (problogger.net)
• The Future of Online Ads is Unavoidable (mashable.com)
• I Don't Care If You Are On Facebook and Twitter (kylelacy.com)
• How To Connect Emotionally with Your Readers (johnchow.com)

Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived

The November NY Tech MeetUp had shifted to a new location. This place was fancy. This was Diller country. There was this huge screen. The demos could be seen on three screens within that huge screen.

There was this other huge screen when you first stepped in. Looks like the building hosts a few different companies. Or are they all owned by Diller? The first display was for Match.com. There was this huge globe that showed where all its page hits were coming from.



Page hits are all the rage all over again, but this time that is less fluffy because ad models are tied to page hits. If nothing else, you can always add Google ads to your page.

I think one thing that goes kind of unnoticed is how good Scott is in doing presentations himself. He is comfortable, succint, funny. He is a non techie in the tech field. He brings a lot of the soft skills to the table. And the dude is now even rich after his share of hits and misses in the roaring 90s.

Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds

Of all the social events I go to in town, the NY Tech MeetUp stands out. There is nothing else like it. And now this things just went to a whole new level.

Perceptive Pixel
Sleep.FM
Vimeo
Tumblr
Drop.io
Facebook
Google
Microsoft

These were the companies that made presentations. Perceptive had multi touch display technology. From the mouse to the hand, quite a leap. Vimeo had high def video stuff. Cool. I asked a question to the Drop.io guys. "The .io in your name, what country is that?" That was my way of telling Adam I was there. We had arranged to meet after the MeetUp. We are cooking something together. We walked to Union Square talking it up. It was good talk. He had one big surprise for me. Or perhaps more than one. The day ended on a happy note. I walked over to Times Square and ordered three slices at the 99 cent pizza store. That is one great business model. You make money on volume.

The Microsoft presentation told me the PC era will not end. PCs will stick around. You are looking at an ecosytem. There is room for more than one organism.

Silicon Alley Insider

NY Tech Meetup: Startups Meet Giants
Facebook Ads: The Devil's In The Details
Facebook's Social Ads: Field Notes
Welcome To The Googleconomy Nine years ago, Google was two guys in a dorm room. Now it's a $17 billion global behemoth with a $225 billion market cap. ....... Bigger than Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and Citigroup ..... 70-times the size of the New York Times ..... Apparent operating profit margin of 50% (on net revenue) ..... Annual revenue per employee of $1.1 million ...... Google's market share is 50% in the U.S. and 90% in France ...... Google Then: $85 Now: $730
Facebook Ad Platform: Revealed!
Sorry, Google (GOOG) Not First $1 Trillion Company

TechCrunch

Liveblogging Facebook Advertising Announcement (Social Ads + Beacon + Insights) Facebook is getting into the advertising business in a big way. ...... three things: Social Ads (ads targeted based on member profile data and spread virally), Beacon (a way for Facebook members to declare themselves fans of a brand on other sites and send those endorsements to their feeds), and Insight (marketing data that goes deep into social demographics and pyschographics which Facebook will provide to advertisers in an aggregated, anonymous way). These three things together make up Facebook Ads. ........ "the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today. As marketers pushing our information out is no longer enough. We are announcing anew advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people. 3 pieces: build pages for advertisers, a new kind of ad system to spread the messages virally, and gain insights." ........ "Where Facebook really excels is in helping you keep up with all of your connections at the same time. It is making the cost of communication so low ........ "More than 80 applications have more than one millions users." ...... "Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won't be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections. ....... A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising. ...... "Have already passed 50 million users, doubling once every 6 months. only active users who have used facebook last 30 days. More than 25 million people are using Facebook every single day. Each person is viewing more than 40 pages a day, more than 65 billion page views a month."