Unless somehow you’ve managed to miss it, Robert Scoble posted 3 provoking videos about why he believes Social Graph Based Search will kill Google.
Personally, I believe Scoble is dead wrong. But I won’t get into why. Here’s why… What I found absolutely fascinating was not Scoble’s theory. It was the Scoble Discussion Effect. Here’s what I mean:
- The Videos Themselves: Scoble taped himself and the output is unarguably–amateurish. The angle is terrible and the articulation is clearly unrehearsed. Unless you know Scoble you could easily expect the videos to go Gonzo-porn at any given point.
BUT: No one cares! No one cared for the quality of the vids… Thousands of people watched based on the quality of the arguments!
- Conversation: When I watched the vids, the Kyte.tv real-time chat was on. Over 300 hundred people were watching while I was and dozens were chatting about Scoble’s arguments in real-time.
- Transparency: In his first follow-up post, Scoble shared the negative criticism. In my opinion this isn’t Scoble trying to be “noble”, rather this is Scoble doing what should be done. That is, commending the counter-arguments and letting them stir round 2-X of the debate.
Regardless of his Social Graph arguments, Scoble is a pioneer who is literally creating the new rules of conversation engagement. And for that he should be respected.
(But he’s still dead wrong about Social Graphs).
This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.
This Tuesday, Israel-based Dapper will launch the private beta of Facebook AppMaker, a new tool that the company claims will provide people with a dead simple way to create new Facebook applications.
At its core, Dapper allows users to create API’s called “Dapps” by selecting data from Websites, RSS/XML feeds, Google Gadgets, and more. Each “Dapp” is an XML which can be manipulated in any number of ways. The company released a tool to create Netvibes modules in late 2006.
Dapper’s Facebook AppMaker lets these Dapps be transformed into full-blown Facebook applications. This includes functionalities such as remote search and retrieval, remote login, and multi-page apps. A Facebook Developer account is a prerequisite to the AppMaker process itself.
The test app I created was an effortless process: I created a Dapp, entered it in the AppMaker wizard, entered the appropriate Facebook’s API/Secret keys, saved and installed. While creating a Dapp was not a sophisticated process on Dapper’s side, it certainly could be more intuitive. I found the Facebook side of the process to require a higher degree of technological aptitude.
Dapper is debuting the AppMaker with an Answers.com application that features three applets: Word of the Day, Today in History, and Do You Have the Answers? Another already available app is Go2Web20’s. Expect an additional application to be launched in the next couple of days with a “high-profile” media player.
Headed by Eran Shir (CEO) and Jon Aizen (CTO), Dapper employs a team of 15 and is in the midst of setting-up an office in San Francisco. In 2006, the company secured a $1.2M funding round from Accel Partners. The company first launched in August 2006 and we covered them as part of a roundup post along with Yahoo Pipes, Teqlo, Proto and OpenKapow in March 2007.
Sign-up for beta access by emailing techcrunch@dapper.net
Senior Hitech journalist Guy Grimland wrote about me in TheMarker!
Sometimes a simple and short blog post can pack a lot of punch. Here’s a case-in-point:
Ouriel Ohayon just wrote a really great post about startups and their competition. If you’re an entrepreneur you should go check it out.
BTW, if you’re based in Israel you should make a point of subscribing to Ouriel’s blog. Be warned though… He’ll push some Jazz on you :-)
Shel Israel one of the co-authors of Naked Conversations, got in touch with Facebook’s corporate communication department and confirmed the following astounding numbers:
- Over 150,000 registrants daily. That’s 1 million a week since January.
- 35 million users today. Of course that number will be off a million one week from today.
- Half user are outside college. That number was zero in Sept. 2006.
- 0ver 40 billion page views in May 2007
- Average visitor stays 20 minutes
- Most growth is among people over age 25.
- 47,000 Facebook groups.
- #1 photo sharing app on the web. 2.7 billion photos on site.
- More than 2000 applications. The Top 10 are: Top Friends, Video, Graffiti, MyQuestions, iLike, FreeGifts, X Me, Superpoke!, Fortune Cookie & Horoscopes. The smallest of these has over 4.5 million users.
Not a week has passed since Google announced it will be cease to sell videos and the company is announcing a move to sell music.
ReadWriteWeb and last100 are reporting that Google and Universal are partnering to sell DRM-free music. The partnership also includes online music retailer gBox.
Kontera which provides in-text contextual advertising has raised a large $10.3M Round B. Taking part in the the round were Round A investors Sequoia and Lehman Brothers, as well as new participant, Carmel Ventures.
This brings the funds Kontera raised in the last 12 months to a whopping $17M.
More coverage on TechCrunch.
When Amazon debuted S3 it changed the online storage business overnight. Today, online storage is reborn again.
Google has announced the availability of increased storage for Gmail and Picasa. Essentially this is the opening shot of what is expected to become a full-blown storage solution, ie. GDrive.
Is this important? You betcha! The significance of Amazon’s S3 was not only in its industry changing pricing, but also in its developer support. Nothing short of this can be expected of Google, especially when taking into consideration their forward thinking approach in providing developers API access to their products.
Then of course there’s Google’s infrastructure and huge datacenters. Not to mention Apps on a Domain…
Google isn’t calling the new offering a full-fledged storage solution, but there’s no way to mistake the direction.
BTW, the pricing is as follows:
- 6 GB ($20.00 per year)
- 25 GB ($75.00 per year)
- 100 GB ($250.00 per year)
- 250 GB ($500.00 per year)
More coverage:
Earlier this week Orli Yakuel posted a video Q&A with Eric Schmidt in which he defines Web 3.0 as:
“My prediction would be that Web 3.0 would ultimately be seen as applications that are pieced together [and that share] a number of characteristics: the applications are relatively small; the data is in the cloud; the applications can run on any device - PC or mobile phone; the applications are very fast and they’re very customizable; and furthermore the applications are distributed essentially virally, literally by social networks, by email. You won’t go to the store and purchase them. … That’s a very different application model than we’ve ever seen in computing … and likely to be very, very large. There’s low barriers to entry. The new generation of tools being announced today by Google and other companies make it relatively easy to do. [It] solves a lot of problems, and it works everywhere.”
I just came across a post on the SexyWidget blog that shares Nick Carr’s definition:
“Web 3.0 involves the disintegration of digital data and software into modular components that, through the use of simple tools, can be reintegrated into new applications or functions on the fly by either machines or people.”
I find Nick’s definition extremely insightful and very much on the money. It’s funny, we might find ourselves defining Web 3.0 before we are able to agree on 2.0’s definition. Vive le Web!
When I was a kid, my dad worked for legendary Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which back in the day was #2 to IBM. In the 80’s the computer business was about selling machines, and no one could outsell IBM.
Then in the 90’s, in one of the most important business plays in hi-tech industry history, IBM reinvented itself and became a services company. This was not an obvious move, but one that proved cynics and critics wrong alike.
This preface brings me to Amazon. Slowly but surely the Internet retailer has been rolling out Web Services. These are services that capitalize on Amazon’s advanced infrastructure–and it is advanced. It began with the Simple Storage Solution (S3), continued to Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and has now reached Flexible Payment Service (FPS).
In the two days since the service was announced a question has been recurring in my mind… Is Amazon the next IBM? Your thoughts are welcome…
Interesting coverage:
