idea.analytics

Idea Analytics

While the title says it all, I am still wondering if this threshold can be really reached by a single Facebook app.

Another question that I'd be asking is: if this information is not available, are you still wondering why VC funding is showing less activity lately?

Implementation

Blogs like allfacebook and TechCrunch are analyzing this topic extensively and shortly put:

Details

There is one thing (well, except the $1mil. whose undeniably an eye-catcher) that caught my eyes on this discussion. The fact that some people are still believing that web2.0 is not about monetization and so they avoid providing details. The web2.0 continues to thought as all about hype and the details of monetization are almost always left aside. Meanwhile, statistics are showing that there are fewer and fewer VC fundings. Are you still wondering why?

Idea

It was interesting to read and so I've jotted it down the future of bloggers in Romania and abroad (article in Romanian).

Romana

Foarte interesant ca bloggerii romani au aceleasi tendinte ca cei de afara: Viitorul Bloggurilor: La Noi si La Ei.

Idea

I've published an new blog post (in Romanian) about the quality of links giving the quality of web.

Romana

Tocmai am publicat un nou post despre calitatea linkurilor care rezulta in calitatea web-ului.

Seeing this application left me speechless.

Idea Analytics

It is not much I can tell about it other than data visualization on steroids. Watch and enjoy:

Now, I am pretty sure you would like to play with it yourself, so here it goes: Tag Galaxy by Stan Schroeder.

I have published this video also on my Romanian blog koolapp: web-ul viitorului. web de calitate (Koolapp: web for the future. quality web) as an exemplification of smart or just nice data visualization models.

We are discovering new information sources every day and in our attempt to keep up with the news we are trying to cover everything. Sooner or later, we are realizing that it is just way too much.

Idea Analytics

We were visiting tones of sites to fetch our news and then we've got the RSS feeds. We were reading tones of feeds and then we've got feed aggregators. We were using different IM protocols and clients and then we've got Meebo. We have been using various emails and then we've got GMail. We have joined social networks and started to microblog and then we've got FriendFeed.

So far we have solved one side of the content flood problem: aggregation. But this is definitely not the end of the game. The next step will be indexing all this information and the search giant is not yet doing much in this direction. And finally we will need smart AI-based content filtering.

Implementation

FilterMyRss is a simple feed filter that uses keywords to identify only the posts that may be interesting.

Matoumba uses a Digg-like approach for learning from your behavior. By voting up or down the stories in your feeds, you teach Matoumba what are your fields of interests and prefered feeds and in time Matoumba will be able to tell you which information should be important to you within all the feeds you suscribed to, or even within the feeds from users who share the same interests as you.

Details

The approach taken by FilterMyRss is simple and resembles the way we are using search engines. Probably its best use is for tracking the apparition of the terms of interest on various I can think of how marketers can be using it while searching for feedback about their products.

On the other side Matoumba seems to have learned from others (Digg, Reddit, etc.) and is using a smarted approach that aligns with the current social media filtering approaches.

In a time where rich media is used everywhere, Loic Le Meur's idea of creating video comments is starting to get a lot of traction.

Idea

Replace traditional text based comments with video.

Implementation

I have been talking about Seesmic, a company whose founder is Loic Le Meur, in a post where I was remarking that more and more content is produced in video format. Loic's bet is that the traditional text comments can be replaced by short videos where the person replying is expressing his thoughts on camera. Seesmic currently provides a WordPress plugin and plans on distributing plugins for more blogging systems.

One of the first sites that added this feature was TechCrunch, but at that moment I have thought that this decision was based on the fact that Mike Arrington has invested in Seesmic.

However, as crazy as this idea seemed originally, people like Jason Calacanis and Alexis Bonte are starting to praise it.

Alexis uses the "100%, 40%, 10% rule" to explain why video comments, even if sometimes difficult to produce, are are a good idea.

Details

While I do love rich media content (just check my site InfoQ.com where we've been using rich media for quite a while) and find it refreshing, I am still concerned by a couple of aspects of video content for which we are lacking some important tools:

Idea Analytics

Should Microsoft and Yahoo stop fighting for the search market and just leave it in Google's hands?

Microsoft is dropping the Live Book Search, but launches Live Search Cashback. Where does Microsoft want to be positioned in the search market?

Details

This whole discussion started when Tim O'Reilly has published in a blog post the following advice:

In reply, Mike Arrington is raising quite a few good points

Not far ago, I was also expressing my concerns related to video content search, even if there are quite a few contenders on this market.

In the following comments and new Tim's post, both have finally agreed that Tim's original advise was not about leaving Google approach to search unchallenged, but rather something that sounds more like Seth Godin's Purple Cow: instead of playing the catch up role, Microsoft and Yahoo should be investing their money and energy into researching something new, worthy and remarkable.

I also think that Tim O'Reilly opinions were triggered by the Microsoft's attempts to monetize search through the introduction of Microsoft Live Search Cashback, a new service on which the opinions are quite disputed right now.

However, there are signs that Microsoft is starting to look differently at the search market, as it has currently dropped the Live Search Books project (which was a reaction to Google's Book Search).

Problem

What is wrong with Twitter's current architecture? How would you fix it? What parts must be scaled out and how?

Alex Payne, one of the Twitter core developers, has finally blogged on this topic and described the real problem:

A good explanation of the problems was published on TechCrunch:

Idea

Many ideas have been published on what and how to fix it.

Russel Beattie was talking about a decentralized implementation in the form of Jabber bot in his posts Decentralized Twitter thoughts and has even created a demo Peep - an Open Twitter Server.

Eran Hammer-Lahav who created Nouncer, a developer platform for building microblogs, explains in Scaling a Microblogging Service - Part I his experience on dealing with such architectures.

Implementation

This is a 'discussion' I've caught last night:

Currently there are a few alternative similar systems, like Pownce or Jaiku, but considering that the feature set and the traffic and the additional environment is not the same, it is difficult to say if they were able to address all the problems Twitter is facing.

Details

The above mentioned alternatives and most of the suggested solutions have been discussed over and over again. Alex Payne is assuring the Twitter users that:

If you have ideas you'd like to share you can reach me on Twitter. Or you can try applying your ideas by working on Twitter.