Best foot Sideward

It's a noisy world

Photo credit - Binkiexxx

There is way too much information in this world. This is good in a way. It means we as a human race are constantly thinking, debating, inventing and documenting. It also means that finding the right information to consume at the right time by the right person is difficult. The curve of good/useful information grows significantly slower than the curve of all information. This means the problem of finding the right information to consume at the right time by the right person is only going to get worse as time progresses. This leads to an inevitability –

Information has become and will increasingly be a commodity. But the information aggregator has become and will increasingly be invaluable.

Think about it. Here are some examples,

You may write all the blog posts you want and can. But you’re at the mercy of Google to surface it to potential searchers.

You can create all the niche art/music you want and can. But you’re at the mercy of Amazon to surface it to potential searchers.

You may tweet all you want and can. But you’re at the mercy of Twitter search to surface it to potential followers.

Here are the ways we consume information online,

Search (pull) - Google search and Amazon search. Include paid listings. Google is an aggregator.

Stay informed through request (push) - RSS, Twitter & Facebook feeds, IM status updates. Google Reader, Tweetdeck etc. are aggregators. Magazines you subscribe to. AllTop for example is an aggregator. Radio stations you create/subscribe to. Pandora and Rhapsody are aggregators. Mailing lists you opted into.

Recommendations (pull) - Sites like Digg where you get recommendations from a community. Digg is an aggregator. Amazon’s recommendation engine and product reviews. Amazon is an aggregator. Techmeme and blog recommendations. Techmeme is an aggregator. YouTube's recommended videos. YouTube is an aggregator.

Stay informed (push) - Email and other “inbox” solutions where you don’t control what information arrives. Gmail is an aggregator. It helps you manage your email and spam. Your snail mail address.

Advertised to (push) - Contextual & display advertising. Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter are aggregators.

OK, so information can get commoditized. What you tweet could be tweeted by someone else. There could be a 1000 good marketing related blogs. Your country music album would be one of thousands enjoyed by people. Your product review will be one of hundreds on Amazon. OK, so information does get commoditized :). Will information aggregators get commoditized?

No. Not if you intentionally create network effects! Aggregators will not get commoditized if there’s possibility of a network effect.

Google and Gmail have already successfully created network effects for search, advertising and IM. Amazon has done so for niche products and product reviews. Digg has done so for link recommendations. YouTube has done so for user uploaded videos. These products have become the first choice for their respective categories due to network effects.

Now, is there a repeatable formula for network effects? Sure there are. Here is one. What do you think?

1. Look at the information you are aggregating.
   
2. Find one operation on that information that will be useful to both the operating user and the world.
   
3. Enable that operation on your aggregator. 
4. Enable the operator to identify themselves using a identity solution
   
5. There you have a network effect!

Example: Take Google News. How do you make a network effect? Enable readers to mark news stories as interesting. Make the system inform the reader of updates to the story they marked (the marking reader gets value). Enable other readers to see how many readers have marked any given link. Enable a Gmail reader to see their Gmail friends who have marked a given news link. This helps readers pick what they want to read. This induces a network effect!

Facebook feature request

Facebook has successfully made conversation a feature as opposed to a destination. Let me explain. Earlier, one could write on a friend's wall to kick off a conversation. The wall was the destination for conversation. Then came the fun wall, super wall etc. Now, Facebook has made everything (almost everything) conversation ready media. Your photos, videos, links, notes, status updates are all commentable. Every "media" (in a loose sense) in Facebook is commentable. This is exactly the promise of social media.

Now, here's the feature request. Make all comments taggable. Notice in the image above, I have commented referring to Kevin Rose. Now, if only I could tag that text with the Facebook profile for Kevin, multiple things become possible. Readers of this comment are able to find who Kevin is. Kevin can be notified that he has been tagged in a comment. And he may find it appropriate to join in on the conversation. It also helps Kevin keep track of his reputation within the social network. Just thinking out loud. What do you think?

Note that Twitter already does this by using the @(username) paradigm.

Global warming, HIV epidemic, Credit crunch - Can mankind ever prevent a crisis?

If an asteroid were hurtling toward the earth, what will it take to successfully respond to it? We must find out ahead of time about the asteroid. We must convince the right people that it is indeed on collision course to Earth. Our world leaders must craft an appropriate plan. We must then execute the plan to perfection because we don't get a second chance. Can this sequence happen? Sure, it can. We have equipment sophisticated enough to peer far into outer space. And extinction of humanity is reason enough for us to unite in responding to it. Now, if only all crises were to be this easy! Consider these,

What if the asteroid were to have a 40% chance of hitting Earth? How does that change our response?

What if the only way to destroy the asteroid is a nuclear missile which will also result in radioactive fallout on the side of the Earth facing the asteroid at the time of impact?

What if the asteroid is small enough to not destroy the entire planet and is estimated to hit South America? And the continent needs to be evacuated before hand.

Clearly, even a mankind unifying crisis can have way too many variables to quickly result into inaction.

Take global warming for example.Interesting links on this topic first (Oceans absorbing more CO2, 3 km squared wind mills can run US cars, What's the worst that could happen?). Here are some statistics,

• Since the mid 1970s, the average surface temperature has warmed about 1°F.
• The Earth’s surface is currently warming at a rate of about 0.32ºF/decade or 3.2°F/century.
• The eight warmest years on record (since 1850) have all occurred since 1998, with the warmest year being 2005.

Per this data, clearly there isn't yet a call to action. No one cares. No one believes there will be a noticeable change during their lifetime. But at the same time burning fossil fuels powers our cars, gets us from place A to place B, runs our trains and businesses. Clearly, we trade off a much higher impact future problem for fixing closer and currently more impacting problems (such as driving cars from point A to B, building tanks and missiles, running huge data centers most of which index porn anyway etc.). Now hold on to this thought (I'll bring this up later).

Why do we do this? Is this the tragedy of the commons at work?

If I don't drive a car to work everyday, someone else will, right? If I get one car off the highway, it shouldn't matter, right? If I don't vote in the presidential election, nothing should turn out different, right? After all how many elections were decided with a 1 vote margin? If my country were to heavily tax oil usage for manufacturing (in order to take greener alternatives), we will be left behind by newly industrialized nations, right?

Now consider for one second, that the world had exactly 4 people (and substantially scale up the impact each of our actions has on the environment for arguments sake). How will they react? Getting one car off the roads will be 25% lower carbon emission. Huge, huge improvement! Getting one car off the roads is noticed by 75% of the population and you feel great! Hold on to this thought (I'll bring this up later).

Take the HIV epidemic as a second example. I won't go into the credit crisis as we all know what happened there. Why is HIV an epidemic, while other serious viruses like small pox, Ebola have been kept under control? At least 2 reasons why. Firstly, HIV takes a long time to take effect on an infected person. Secondly, the act of infection has no visible impact. Draw a parallel with global warming? Effect of our action takes a long time to manifest as symptoms. And each individual action causes no visible impact. Mankind cares greatly about a deadly disease like small pox that makes hideous boils and kills you in a little time. Not so much about HIV.

Where is all this chatter going? It's how our collective mind seems to operate.

We are faced everyday by a variation of the innovator's dilemma. Do we forego that quick car ride from home to office in order that we save the Earth in the long run? Or will that quick car ride give us much more value at present and we just go do it.

We succumb to the tragedy of the commons everyday. Will we not fire up that grill assuming that my neighbors will at some time stop doing so as well? Or do we just fire it up anyway, because we know Mr. Smith next door will do so anyway. This problem is even worse when you have 6 billion Mr. Smith's potentially wanting to fire up the grill.

We don't see a real threat until we start seeing symptoms. That fisherman will need to see his catch decrease every year. That beach house owner needs to see high tide creep closer and closer. And as long as these changes take incredibly long to happen, but at the same time leaving irreversible damage on the way, will we ever see? Similarly, the good fisherman who drives a Prius must be able to see how much longer his catch will sustain.

Leave you thinking with an idea. What if we created a web application for people to log their public transport commuting hours and other such environmentally good actions. And translate that into a bold statement "Earth's life span increased by 2 hours thanks to last week's commuting". Or "2 more dolphin babies able to live an entire lifetime due to decreases in use of charcoal". Now, how this can be done is a good problem to be solved. But it begins to help all three of the above issues.

Managing Simplicity

"Managing Complexity" is discussed a lot. There's complexity in user interfaces, engineering architecture, business process, organizational structure, business models, professional relationships, personal relationships etc. We get lost in the complexity if we don't manage it well.

In the last decade or so, there has been a definite trend toward simplicity. There has been a movement to manage complexity through simplicity. Take these examples

1. One big button iPhone
2. Simple subscription model for unlimited song downloads through the Zune pass.
3. Google home page with one text box and a Search button
4. Micro blogging through Twitter

Clearly these concepts are simple, easy to understand and use. But how simple is simple enough without being insufficient? (On a related note, this is an interesting article about Win7). There is a need is to be Managing Simplicity^TM.What does managing simplicity mean?

Consider these questions for simplicity of user interfaces,

1. What does simple mean? Is it number or clicks to a target (or) the time taken to accomplish something (or) is it a deeper concept?
2. Which customer segment should your product be designed to be simple for? Will this segment pay for your product?
3. Will a competitor be able to provide an enhanced service through a slightly more cluttered user interface and beat you? (Consider www.google.com vs. www.searchme.com)
4. Is the right approach to break a product into sub products when they don't truly fit together? Drawing an analogy with a software best practice to break functions/methods into sub functions/methods whenever possible.

Consider these questions for simplicity of API interfaces,

1. Do developers need simplicity in API? If so what does it mean?
2. If the API is more powerful than in-house UI, will your satellite applications be more useful than your own product (think Twitter applications vs. Twitter itself). If so what is the platform business model?
3. If you want products built on your API to also be usable/simple as your own user interface, how does this get built into your API? Or does it need to get built into the review process? Or will it simply be selection of the fittest.

Consider these questions for simplicity of hardware interfaces,

1. How important is simplicity in hardware? (Consider the one button iPhone vs. the several buttons Blackberry)
2. If you have an application ecosystem as well, how does hardware simplicity affect power of applications to be built on it (Consider that the one button iPhone doesn't work well with some applications)
3. If the hardware interface is too simple, is there an overload of combinations to be remembered? (think XXY, XXXX, YYXY in Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox 360 controller)

OK, I've just got questions for this post. More thoughts on Managing Simplicity^TM later. I'm trying to keep my posts small and build upon. Comment away!

PS: I took the liberty to add a trademark to Managing Simplicity because a web search on 3 major search engines returned nothing substantial. I'm beginning to doubt that's not how it works :)

Consume, Communicate, Comment, Convey, Create, Collaborate?

Web applications such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Digg, Twitter etc. clearly thrive on user generated content. Let's sidestep the issue of actually monetizing these for this post. And look instead at what drives the ecosystem. There appear to be 5 Cs in motion. Consume, Communicate, Comment, Convey, Create. And these are actions users take in these applications in increasing order of difficulty/time consumption. I believe there is one C missing (if you haven't gotten a hint from the title) and that is to Collaborate.

Most users obviously consume information. At least one web search a day of mine goes into Wikipedia. I read and exit the website. On Facebook, I consume my friends' pictures, status updates, whereabouts etc. This is the easiest at the same time the most valuable per time spent.

Quite a few users communicate on these sites. We write on friends walls, we send each other messages and we setup event pages. In Twitter, we communicate our state at the moment. This is one where the fruit of the action is not realized until/unless someone reads our communication and/or takes action. Communication is a basic need of a social being and thereby is a common action.

Commenting takes time, takes thought and takes courage. I'll get to why it takes courage in just a second. We comment on friend's status updates, posted items, photos. We comment on Flickr photos. We comment on blog posts. Commenting takes time and takes thought. To comment usually means to have consumed, understood and created opinion. And to state one's opinion publicly takes courage.

One way of defining Conveying in this context - To take information from one point and paraphrase (or not) into a different context. We post news article links/video links/opinion links on Facebook. We Digg links we like, thereby conveying information to a different audience. Conveying happens after consumption, but requires the almost extraordinary step of wanting to share. Now, there can be several reasons to share (excitement, breaking news, altruism, known external interest, attention wanting, spamming prone). But the prerequisite is to have consumed information outside the medium we are posting in. And this takes a lot of effort and time.

Creating is no doubt the most difficult, time consuming of these all. We create notes on Facebook. Developers creat applications for Facebook. Developers create Twitter apps. Wikipedia contributors create/edit articles for free. Wikipedia moderators keep the noise out. Creation is several levels more difficult than even conveying as it requires original thought (in most cases) and the creative ability to put it in a consumable form. Also, by creating a user displays extraordinary courage and conviction in their work and is open to criticism.

I believe there is a 6th C that is yet untapped in all of these. That is to collaborate. Wikipedia taps it to a certain extent as users can edit others posts. But think of the possibilities here! Think of Facebook users coming together to collaborate on a thesis/invention. Think of Twitter users coming together to collaborate on raising money for the poor. Imagine if in Digg, I could customize my news stories to only include Diggs from certain clans of users who form through an overlaid social network. Imagine Orkut users in a certain neighborhood coming together to setup a neighborhood watch. All of these are not impossible. But they need a collaboration engine to be created that has incentives for such activities to take place. An analogy - Wikipedia created an engine to let creation and moderation be a breeze. Facebook created an engine to let online application development and usage a breeze. Now, can we create an engine that makes instant, productive (1+1 > 2) and results driven collaboration possible?

'Free' is the web

I came across a very interesting video on Chris Anderson talking about the long tail and the Freemium business model. He also speaks about the importance of privacy going down as people are jumping onto Web 2.0 to have their little celebrity niches. Like this blog for example. He mentions a business model that is presently successful - the western world creates designs and the developing world does the work for less. Charlie counters him by asking - what if the developing world catches up on design skills? Born in a developing country, I know that while education in science and engineering is great, there is little to no emphasis on business and entrepreneurship. This is  just a matter of time to change (let me know if you have current examples) and leads me to wonder if the direction of outsourcing will change then! Anyway check out the video.