blueKiwi Rides the Freemium Wave
It’s not that common to see a French company featured on Techcrunch. Especially when they are in the perimeter of Cap Digital.
After getting some funding, BlueKiwi is going east and will try to compete in the US market.
The people from Aardvark wrote a research paper titled Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine. It has just been accepted to WWW2010, the same conference where the classic Google paper Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine was published 12 years ago.
The paper seems to describe and categorize the behaviour of Aardvark’s users which is interesting in itself.
But more importantly, the paper gives a confirmation of something I had been thinking a lot when I worked as the Chief Legal Officer of Wikipedia, and during my PhD:analyzing the online behaviour of people is easier, and more efficient, than actually trying to understand what they say or what they write.
To put it another way, many scientists and entrepreneurs have been trying for years to foster the semantic analysis of what people do online. This means heavy AI investments, lots of errors, less humanity.
A good example of this approach would be to try to understand what kind of goods to sell to someone based on the analysis of the content of his blog posts. Good luck with that.
On the other hand, a few people have been able to create hugely successful projects that rely solely on human interaction: Wikipedia, Meetup, Aardvardk, etc.
And if understanding human content is complicated, recording human interaction is easy, especially online.
And once you get these interactions right… you can predict the next interactions. For example, when you ask a question about restaurants in Paris on aardvardk, they will transfer the question to a friend of a friend of yours… because they connect to your facebook account, and who is actually interested in restaurants… because he already answered such questions.
Simple. Just the way Google did by deciding to narrow search to web links when everybody was trying to recreate an artificial mind that would be able to “understand” the content of web pages.
Good luck with that.
Get the paper and some more analysis here:
It’s the first article where I see a link between the decline of the music industry, and the coming decline of Universities.
And once you got the point, it’s clear as magic.
The idea comes from Don Tapscott and is basic: Encyclopedias, newspapers, and record labels have a lot in common. They all are in the business of producing content.
Not convinced?
Here are a few numbers and facts:
Universities are losing their grip on higher learning as the Internet is, inexorably, becoming the dominant infrastructure for knowledge — both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people — and as a new generation of students requires a very different model of higher education. If students turn away from a traditional university education, this will erode the value of the credentials that universities award, along with the position of these institutions as centers of learning and research and as campuses where young people get a chance to “grow up.”
Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time! (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE
Amazon’s ebook pricing structure has crumbled. Hachette’s the third major publisher to push for the agency model, following MacMillan and HarperCollins: They’ll set the ebook prices (higher, natch) and the bookseller takes a cut. The $9.99 ebook? Poof.
The $9.99 Ebook Is Dead: Third Major Publisher Hachette Dumps on Amazon [Amazon]
For the past 5 years, I have been working on several very secretive projects. And I have always been amazed at their total lack of digital security understanding: sending unencrypted confidential emails via gmail (why bother after all - and why not allow anyone to come to their meetings), storing data on personal laptops, using instant messenging, archiving every godamn conversations, etc.
This will perhaps help people to realize that there are issues to be addressed… without being called a paranoid.
Jaw-dropping and life-changing details about Chinese attacks on Google emerge
Google Chrome tablet UI begins taking shape in Chromium nightly builds
I was certain that we would not have to wait for long before this kind of announcement… here it is: google tablet.
How will they call it? The chrompad? Sounds funny :-)
![“Young Hollywood” Is White, Thin [Film Schooled]
Hollywood is becoming more racist and sexist? The picture tells it all.](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kxaflu0MUK1qz9vs9o1_500.jpg)
“Young Hollywood” Is White, Thin [Film Schooled]
Hollywood is becoming more racist and sexist? The picture tells it all.
One of the two or three best inventors in the world… and an incredible presentation!
Mock-ups Show a Google Chrome OS Tablet
Everybody will make tablets in 2010. Some will be bigger than the iPad, some will be smaller. But it seems like it will be the trend to go.
Paid Holidays/Vacation Days in the U.S. Versus Other OECD Countries » Sociological Images
Most Americans are woefully ignorant of how pro-business U.S. policies are compared to the policies of like countries.
0 paid holidays vs 30 days in France or Finland…
The concept is incredible because it’s not about adding stuff to the reality… but about deleting things (i.e. walls) from it!
I love it !
Petit déjeuner avec Christian Estrosi “Favoriser la croissance de l’Industrie numérique”
J’aime bien l’image qui décrit assez bien l’état de l’industrie numérique aujourd’hui : des acteurs américains qui tirent leurs profits de la créativité et des investissements de fonds européens. D’où l’importance de ne pas oublier de soutenir l’innovation, en même temps qu’on déploie une infrastructure performante.
This is a very important topic. In the short term, the Publishing Industry is going to evolve extremely rapidly with enormous impact on authors, editors… and the public of course.
The first act of this evolution can probably be dated to the launch of the Kindle by Amazon : online ebooks on a small device, convenient, cheap and ubiquitous.
The second act just begun last week when Apple launched the iPad. The device looks nice, but its software is very limited. And there is no doubt that other manufacturers will propose better devices in the months to come (i.e. an Asus tablet with Jolicloud…)
But the battle will not be fought only between Amazon, Apple and the others manufacturers and distributors. It will rage between publishers and the public.
The move towards digital distribution of books and newspapers will have an obvious repercussion on prices and business models. But publishers will fight to maintain their prices, even online ; increase their profits ; keep their habits and business models unmodified.
An exemple of this new fight took place this week-end when MacMillan threatened Amazon to delete their books from the Kindle platform unless the price of digital books increased to the same level as their normal books : 15$ instead of 9$.
The next steps? The decrease of real-world sales, the mirage of DRM, the increase of piracy… and the size of personal libraries from 500 books to a 500 000…
Do not hesitate to get more information through the following links :
