Arbitrage

The Stuff Dreams are Made of...

In no particular order:

• Brad Fitzpatrick and David Recordon's Open Social Graph - with appropriate caveats provided by Dare

• Walpole Little Leaguer's Game Saving Catch (2 outs, bottom of the 6th, up by one run....)

When I was 12, I made that same catch 1000 times tumbling over the couch in the family room - unfortunately ESPN was not there to capture the highlights.

• Sardegna for 2 Weeks. Ci vediamo!

 

Pleased to Meet Me?

Attention Trust has popularized the idea that our online behavior (clicks, posts, comments) can be aggregated to paint an accurate picture of who we are. This idea has been picked up in the nascent Implicit Web meme that focuses on how our online footprints (click histories, etc.) can be run through algorithms to produce content recommendations and targeted content (and ads) that are tuned to align to our specific interests. The commentary surrounding Attention generally focuses on commercial applications versus privacy concerns. I'm predicting the  impact of sophisticated attention data analysis will be felt closer to home.

I've noted of some fun examples of Implicit Web technology, such as iConcertCal, in the past but the apps available today merely hint what is possible. An attention data parsing algorithm that can produce a precise identity profile could have a profound impact. If the Attention Trust formula:

How I Browse + What I Say + What I Read = Me

turns out to be true, then I may have some explaining to do - to myself.

If you asked me today, I'd say I browse, write, and read on the Internet to address some basic human concerns around career, education, networking, community, entertainment, etc. Admirable stuff. Trouble is, the computer that analyzes my attention data may come up with a different interpretation. Am I really interested in having my self-image subject to an objective analysis? Maybe I am, but it may take me a while to get to know and like the person who is revealed by my online behavior.

Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa wrote a haiku Robert Hass (former US Poet Laureate and a favorite teacher of mine at Berkeley) translates to:

Full moon;
my ramshackle hut
is what it is.

Issa came up with that sometime in the early 19th century. For the self-aware, the insights revealed by analysis of our own attention data may end up being a "full moon" that will force some  interesting re-calculations; pushing us closer to Issa-like levels of self-knowledge and, hopefully, self-acceptance.  All that and much more relevant advertising. Life in the Implicit Web will be grand, challenging in many ways, but grand.

Analog Flashback - Atari 2600

OK, not exactly an"analog" flashback under a strict definition, but with graphics like these, in relative terms, let's call it analog...

The Atari 2600 came out in 1977 at a cost of $199 - which in 2007 dollars comes to roughly $661. For comparison sake you can now buy a Nintendo Wii system for less than $400. Another example of the premium charged for high quality home entertainment in the late 70s.

 

Google News Comments

Google announced that they have implemented a moderated comment system for Google News that allows subjects of news items to add their perspective and have that view cited next to the story. The back and forth in Google News comments will be interesting, but a bit dizzying as well.

 

The 2004 book Softwar, which tells the Larry Ellison/Oracle story, employed a model where Larry was allowed to insert his personal observations as footnotes into the text. In Softwar, the narrative presented by the author, Economist editor Matthew Symonds, is often discounted or re-spun through Larry’s footnotes. This forces a higher level of engagement and attention from the reader who, in order to take meaning away from the book, must assess the veracity of Larry’s narrative in contrast to the story the author has cooked up. Larry’s footnotes and comments in Softwar provide more information, but the format requires more work on the part of the reader to parse through the different perspectives. 

The way reputation plays out in blog comments presents a similar challenge. Last week I described the story of Wellsphere and their CEO as told by Uncov and in user comments on Valleywag and Techcrunch. 5 commenters left responses to my post – which is curious since only 3 people regularly read this blog. The skirmish for control of the Wellsphere narrative in the comments section on my sparsely read blog reveals how closely Internet users monitor even the most obscure blogs for mentions of themselves or their companies and then use comments to pile on or contradict the points raised in the post.

The debate dynamics in play in comment sections are great for getting the full spectrum of opinion on a given post but they also create a real challenge for the time challenged reader who is looking to read a post and form a conclusion. With the innovation happening in the Comment Management space around products like Intense Debate and SezWho – more comprehensive visibility into comments and commenters is coming. Ideally these systems will make it easier to net out an opinion from controversial blog posts with many contradictory comments. Google News comments is sure to be a battleground for PR firms and spin masters – getting meaning from stories there will get more challenging.

Eric Norlin's Noise Cancelling Web

Eric Norlin, my friend and former colleague at Ping Identity, is on fire over at the Defrag blog. He recently posted a long list of technologies that he hasn't used:

TwitterJaikuMyBlogLogAblackberryAPS3Flickr99.9%ofthingsprofiledonTechCrunchiPhone(thoughI’dlike to)ALinux laptopDrupalMahaloMySpaceWorldofWarcraft

He also, not coincidently I believe, wrote a very insightful post this past week putting the Bubble 2.0 conversation into a broader economic context.

Eric's not plugged into the more frenzied incarnations of social media - he literally (and quite happily) lives on an island. We all benefit from his detachment. Go man go!

Yahoo SmartAds

Yahoo announced it's SmartAds advertising platform which will rely on behavioral targeting. The platform can leverage behavioral data collected across Yahoo properties to pump out ads that are likely to be more relevant. The example Techcrunch sites involves browsing for hybrids in Yahoo Autos and having San Francisco set as your default location in Yahoo Weather. Apply SmartAds and voila! - an ad for a hybrid dealer in SF appears. More and more identity data available combined with more and more sophisticated algorithms for gleaning G2 from the data. Easy trend to observe.