Oblatoo & Google: a New Twist on Search and Charity

Posted on September 17, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

Well, some folks from my high school, Atlantic College in Wales, have developed an interesting concept. Oblatoo, a non-profit, uses Google search results and for every search you make one penny is pledged to a charity of your choice. Because of the Atlantic College connection, I had to select RNLI as my charity of choice.

I like it. Get GOOG search results–good. Help charity–good. What I don’t understand is the model behind the business. When I searched I saw no ads. I clicked no ads. Yet the pledge amount of charitable giving to RNLI went up by a penny. What’s going on? I’ll have to ask the team.

Update: revenue (as expected) comes from CPC ads. Unfortunately, it seems like they are now moving to 1c per search because the penny pledge didn’t cover the search revenue. As for why I would see some ads on google.com for a given search query but not see them on oblatoo.com for the same query, the answer is not clear but boils down to something with the GOOG AdSense algorithms.

The site has been in existence since January but only recently did they do the deal with Google. So far, their traffic has been minuscule and less than £1,000 has been raised. Personally, I cannot imagine many people remembering to go to this site instead of their favorite major search engine. Therefore, the best chance for Oblatoo is to find a way to insinuate itself into the search starting spot, either by driving a campaign for people to set it as their home page or as the default search engine in IE (this is easy to do in IE7) or Firefox. (I’m sorry Mac users, but Safari doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of charitable giving.) I’m surprised that Oblatoo hasn’t built search extensions already.

What Oblatoo is doing is similar to what many other non-profits such as Boston’s WBUR radio station are doing–finding ways to insert themselves into the e-commerce or advertising value chain. WBUR does it as an Amazon affiliate. I sometimes shop through them but more often than not I forget and go straight to Amazon.com or use the Amazon search in my browser.

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Coincidence?

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

Interesting how Microsoft is ramping up the conversations around the Zune rollout right after the Apple announcements of the new iPods, which came out yesterday…

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NBC streaming for free: what’s the angle?

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

The race to put TV on the internet continues with an announcement today from NBC that all of their new prime time shows will stream for free this fall. Each show will have a cast member, creator or producer “host a live blog immediately after the premiere episode,” according to the episode. Does this mean a live chat or several blog posts with comments enabled and responded to? One way or the other, it’s an interesting attempt to turn a streaming broadcast into a public event.

Surveys have shown that people are willing to watch ads in exchange for the ability to time-shift content. Most online consumption of TV happens within 24hrs of showing. Other studies (AOL) have shown that people are willing to pay to eliminate ads or have the freedom to experience video on other devices, e.g., phones. But watch TV with ads and w/o time-shifting online? I don’t get it. Most homes have several TVs and I don’t know how big a draw the cast or directors will be… I’m sure there will be exceptions but I’m skeptical.

Yet other studies have come up with different conclusions (Starcom).

Consumers prefer ad-free content but are willing to download ad-supported content. Although almost 70% of consumers would rather download ad-free content, nearly 1 in 5 would still download ad-supported content, and even more would download sponsored and brand-integrated content. Understandably, consumers expect to pay less for ad-supported material.

Source: Techcrunch

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Flash Apollo Demo

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

Well, it’s funny I wrote about Web vs. Desktop apps earlier today because a Flex Evangelist from Adobe (Ted Patrick) just demoed a cool Apollo app.

Apollo is the result of integrating a number of threads of work that have been many years in the making. First, there is the evolution of the Flash player away from being an app to becoming a rich experience platform. Flash recently turned 10. (Cool video of the celebration courtesy of Mike Chambers’s blog.) Five years into its life, following the Allaire/Macromedia merger, Flash started evolving away from being a just media player. Second, there is the deeper integration of Flash into the host OS. For example, you can install Flash apps on a computer and embed a browser inside Flash, blurring the line between Web and desktop software. Finally, there is Central, which ultimately should tie into Apollo.

I’m happy Adobe has finally gotten to this point. Back in 2001 I helped create Flex and wrote internal Macromedia whitepapers on deeper Flash/desktop integration. Flex took some time to fully figure out its model. The Flash/desktop integration was both difficult from a technical standpoint but also complex to buy into from a strategy standpoint. Central didn’t have much success initially, though the concept is strong. With all these things coming together in the near future, I expect to see compelling applications and a gradual erosion of the distinction between Web and desktop apps.

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Digg Labs

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

My econometics professor once told us “look hard enough and the data will eventually speak to you”. I guess this is what the guys at Digg are doing right now. Kevin Rose did a neat demo of Digg Labs.

I like their experimentation. It fits with some of the recent thinking I’ve been doing on social commerce & mass personalized customization of user experiences for an “E-Commerce 2.0” article I’m writing for Web 2.0 Journal. Think Digg Labs stuff + Amazon affiliates + ThisNext.

Posted in Web 2.0 | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Carson Workshops Summit – The Future of Web Apps

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

The lineup for today…

Day 1
  1. 08:00 – 10:00
    Breakfast Sponsored by Yahoo! More info.
  2. 09:00 – 09:45
    Registration
  3. 10:00 – 10:15
    Dick Hardt
    The emerging age of Who
  4. 10:15 – 11:00
    Kevin Rose
    The digg story: from one idea to nine million page views
  5. 11:00 – 11:45
    Tom Coates
    Tom discusses directions in social change on the web
  6. 12:00 – 12:45
    Five minutes of fame
    Purchase a spot to showcase your web app. Interested?
  7. 1:00 – 2:00
    Book signing by John Battelle Author of The Search. More info.
  8. 1:00 – 2:00
    Lunch
  9. 2:00 – 2:45
    Tantek Çelik
    Shows you best practice with Microformats
  10. 3:00 – 3:45
    Steve Olechowski
    10 things you didn’t know about RSS, from FeedBurner’s co-founder
  11. 3:45 – 4:00
    Gold sponsor slot
    Yahoo! ZoneTag demo
  12. 4:00- 4:45
    Carl Sjogreen
    How we built Google Calendar
  13. 5:00 – 5:45
    Mike Davidson
    User-driven content – is it working?

Source: Carson Workshops Summit – The Future of Web Apps

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Future of Web Apps & Thank God For Desktop Apps

Posted on September 13, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

Here I am hanging at the Palace of Arts Theater in SF at the Carson Workshops summit on the future of of web applications. The audience is filled with geeks and there are over a dozen 802.11g WAPs around yet the connectivitiy sucks. I’m online on a Verizon Wireless cell modem (no EVDO this close to the Golden Gate bridge), which is marginally better.

I’m blogging using JJ Allaire’s Windows Live Writer, which–as a desktop app–is having me worry less about these things.

The default distinction between “Web” and “desktop” apps is based on old assumptions. The former typically means something that runs in a browser and needs a server all the time. The latter typically means something that runs on the desktop and doesn’t use the Internet. These distinctions are now outdated. Most meaningful apps these days use the Internet. Yes, even MS Word does. So, the distinction really is about (a) implementation and (b) connectivity.

Just to re-iterate a point I’ve made times before, I strongly believe that apps should not need a network connection to deliver value to users unless absolutely necessary, e.g., an IM client (though you should be able to see your friends’ profiles w/o a connection, perhaps). From an implementation standpoint, AJAX & Flash will let you build great experiences that feel very rich yet run in a browser. At the same time, apps like Windows Live Writer provide a great experience outside the browser yet intimately rely on the Net for the core of what they do.

It’s interesting to see that the majority of the apps people will talk about today at the summit do require a net connection all the time…

Posted in Web 2.0 | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Not Web 2.0, Bubble 2.0

Posted on August 30, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

Just like in the Bubble 1.0 days, the mainstream press is starting to question some of what’s happening online these days. If I recall correctly, how it proceeds from here is as follows: more questions combined with more interest, exuberance, irrational exuberance, crash, 9/11… (Well, hopefully, we’ll never have to live through another thing like 9/11.) Then some suffer from resignation and withdrawal while others are already starting the next cycle. That’s the nature of the high-tech business.

At Polaris Venture Partners we are diversified to the point where we don’t over-invest in any one fad. For example, we kept up our investment pace straight through 2001-2003 and backed some great companies. It makes sense.

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Geotagging is a feature

Posted on August 30, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

Flickr’s native geotagging integration has re-kindled the debate on whether one can create sticky community sites around geotagging. That’s the wrong question to ask.

Geotagging is a feature. It hasn’t been hard to do technically for quite a while. Just look at the many ways to geotag Flickr. What has always been difficult to do (and that’s not unique for geotagging) is to gather the lat/long meta-data. If a business is paying, the difficulty has to do with managing local recruits. If it’s user-generated content, the challenge is motivating people to contribute the meta-data.

Hence, the right questions to ask are (a) what are the community scenarios that would motivate people to contribute lat/long data and (b) whether these are defensible over time.

The big sites have a clear advantage here because of scale and reach. Reach & the chance of exposure stroke people’s egos. Scale helps free-riders. It doesn’t take that many people on Flickr geotagging Kapalua Bay for people to get a sense of the place. In a smaller community, that’s harder to achieve. Free riders benefit especially when accessing a service over “narrow” channels such as mobile, where the ability to search/browse/interact is limited.

Therefore, smaller sites have to focus on aggregating unique content, ideally something that lends itself to richer interactivity than the stock content management, rating & sharing with friends of the big guys. By that measure, sites like Platial won’t cut it (what’s there for me beyond geotagging?) but NearHere might, if the interactivity element gets a boost.

Posted in Flickr, Mobile, startups, Web 2.0 | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Flickr Photos Geotagged at 50K/hour

Posted on August 29, 2006 by Simeon Simeonov

Flickr finally released its geotagging feature. It’s a simple drag’n’drop interface onto a Yahoo! map. 1.2M geotagged photos in 24 hours is about 50K/hour, which is an impressive rate even for a feature that was “pre-sold” for a while. There would have been more if non-US maps had better fidelity.

38 of the tags were mine–I uploaded a set of pictures from my high school–United World College of the Atlantic set in the picturesque Vale of Glamorgan in Wales.

Flickr getting on the geotagging bandwagon late but with huge momentum is an example of how difficult it is to create true value through technology in online communities. As a friend of mine, the founder of FunTrivia (a community site started in 1994) and NearHere (a geotagging community site started in 2005) Terry Ford, said to me tonight: “It’s a lot harder to get people these days.”

Link to Techcrunch » Blog Archive » 1.2 million Flickr Photos Geotagged in 24 Hours

Posted in Digital Media, Flickr | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments