Lately, I’ve been working on the concept of “virtual resident experts.” I define the term like this:
People participating in an online group with identified and respected skills.
In the offline world, groups of friends manage to identify who the expert is within their groups on various topics. For example, you know who to turn to if you’re looking for a great restaurant recommendation, a trustworthy car repair shop, a great bottle of wine, home buying advice, fitness tips, or fashion advice.
However, when you first met your friends, you didn’t know which of them possessed specialized skills like those listed above. And you didn’t know which ones talked liked they knew something about a topic vs. those you truly knew what they were talking about. Over time, this sorts itself out in the real world through referrals and trial & error.
In the offline world, the one skill that you know your friends possess is the skill needed to do whatever they do for a career. They must be sufficiently competent at that to be employable, right?
Moving that same group of friends to the online world opens up new opportunities for sharing “resident expert” expertise. As your friends start building out their profiles online, you discover specialized skills your network of friends possess. It turns out that one tunes pianos as a hobby, another is a master gardener, another has been to Belize, and another is an expert on home brewing.
There are unidentified resident experts in your network.
Having relatively direct connections to people with expertise in areas that either interest you or fulfill a need makes the world smaller. Technology accelerates this process by allowing people to turn in their specialized skills and interests through their profiles or blogs.
Do today’s websites make this work? Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook certainly help, as well as personal blogs where this type of content may be revealed. However, I think the concept of “virtual resident experts” is still in its infancy online.
Many have criticized the iPhone for not having a development platform. Apple has said that AJAX is the development platform. Developers saythat’s a lame answer and want integrated apps. I think AJAX may actuallybe the future of mobile devices, but not on the current iteration of hardware. I mean any hardware from anyone, not just the iPhone. Whenever Imention this to my developer and AJAX friends they all look at me like I’mcrazy. I am nuts, but here are a few ways that AJAX or a technology likeit would really kick some major butt on a mobile platform. Below are somerandom thoughts on the subject, feel free to add your own thoughts or call mecrazy in the comments:
- Being able to develop once and deploy to not only iPhones everywhere butany mobile device that’s AJAX enabled would be very powerful.
- Support would become easy because there would only be one version of theapp out there.
- Theft would become easier to control since everyone needs to hit yourserver to authenticate.
- No mobile hardware is ready for this yet. It’s all too slow. Heck a 3GHz computer is barely able to deal with heavy AJAX apps,how is a 400MHz phone going to be able to do the same?
- The AJAX apps need to behave like an integrated app. It shouldn’tfeel like a web app. The browser status bars should all auto hideand make way for the AJAX application.
- There needs to be offline support such as Google Gears for any AJAX app. If I have no or slow bandwidth the mobile device should be able torun the app from cache.
- The device needs uber fast data connection at all times. WiFi is agood first step, HSDPA is a good second step, HSUPA would be a betterstep. EDGE is not on the map anywhere.
- There should be a mobile AJAX standard that all handsets follow. This would allow me to develop an app for an iPhone and have it workon a Windows Mobile, Symbian or Palm device. I won’t hold my breathon this one.
- The AJAX app needs to have hooks to the mobile device. The mobiledevice needs to know what a phone number is, address is, etc. and allow meto dial right from the app. There could be special code snippetsthat tell the device what a phone number is which would get around thedevice itself trying to interpret this. The benefit of tags is thatthe phone always knows what’s what.
- If AJAX is the premiere development platform for the iPhone then why arethere any integrated apps at all? Why not run everything as an AJAXapp (probably because the iPhone isn’t ready for this yet).
- An AJAX app needs to have a button or launcher item just like anintegrated app. n00b users who don’t know AJAX from soap should notbe able to tell the difference between the two apps, which means that eventhe way they launch should be the same.
I know a lot of people have discounted the technology all together, butthere’s potential behind the raw idea. We just need faster devices,more streamlined AJAX (it’s really heavy right now) and some method to keepthe client/server connection open while not drawing uber amounts of powerfrom the device. We’re probably several years off, but it can be done. Will it be done though? I sure think it would be a very cleanway of distributing applications.
I have mentioned GrandCentral.com from time to time but have realized that I rarely if ever actually use the service. For those not in the know, GrandCentral is a unified phone service that allows a user to combine all of their phone numbers into one. For example, dial my GrandCentral number at (612) 568-0852 and it will call blast my cell phone, home phone (if I had one) and desk phone all at the same time. If I change jobs I simply log in to my GrandCentral account and change the work phone number to my new desk. A single number for life, or so they claim.
Enter the grand problem with GrandCentral. They are completely focused on voice and have no SMS or faxing abilities. What I really used GrandCentralfor was visual voicemail and the ability to not give out my real cell phone number on my blog. I don’t have a home phone and only use my cell phone at work. I’m not the only one that does this either, most in the company Iwork for use their cell phone as their primary means of communication. Thevisual voicemail got replaced with the iPhone and now that it’s integrateddirectly into the device so cleanly, it’s hard to give up and move back toGrandCentral. Since I carry only one voice device with me that already hasvisual voicemail, what does GrandCentral have to offer anymore? A singlephone number that will never change? Maybe, maybe not.What GrandCentral is missing is the idea that a phone number is more than just voice. It’s my presence, it’s my text, it’s my fax, it’s my communications tools in whatever medium I so choose. Voice is only a part of the puzzle and it’s not nearly enough. Maybe voice was enough in 1997, but not in2007. How can I give out my “one number for life” if users can’t text me? How does that number help me when I need to sign a contract and the vendor still hasn’t figured out that the whole thing can be e-mailed and wants afax number? That one number hasn’t served me well over the last few months mostly because it doesn’t do what I need it to do: simplify and unify my communications.GrandCentral can still fix the problem, but so far they have been eerily silent on the issue. I have posted suggestions, asked in the chat room and even posted comments on their blog (still awaiting moderation) stating that voice simply isn’t enough. They may understand this, they may not, we won’t know since they just sit in silence. Of course now the problems are getting bigger. Visual voicemail was nice but it doesn’t work well on the iPhone. GrandCentral is falling behind and I fear will becomeyet another company that Google acquired into oblivion.
I’m one of those really strange people who hates the status quo. If I become comfortable with a system or product then it’s time to change it up, stop using it or find an alternative. There are always ways to tweak, modify and optimize everything in life and in my humble opinion that can only be done by consistent change. And that brings me to my RSS reader.I’ve become comfortable with Google Reader!Google Reader is great. I can whip through hundreds and hundreds of blog posts every day, find everything I’m looking for an still have time for dinner. Problem is that I’ve become so used to it that I’m bored with it now. It’s time to shake things up and try something new. I did that once before when I moved from Bloglines to Google Reader and I think it may be time to do it again.There’s only one problem: I have no idea which reader to use! After doing a bit of research it seems that Google Reader is actually one of the if not the best RSS reader platforms out there. This is a problem for someone who wants to change for no good reason.What should I do? What RSS reader should I start looking at? Should I move back to Bloglines, try NewsGator again or something completely different? It needs to be useful, sleek, sexy and fast. I figured I would ask the community on this one and see what everyone else has to say. Thoughts?Oh, and this is my first post using Pages ‘08. I used to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to write up posts, but it was time for a change.
Robert Scoble has published a series of videos explaining how he things sites like Mahalo, Techmeme, and Facebook have the potential to “Kick Google’s Butt in Four Years.”
His theory is that Google is too easily gamed by SEO (search engine optimizers) and sites that rely less on algorithms to rank content - Mahalo, for example, uses hand edited search results - will provide more relevant results to searchers.
He also sees an opportunity for tapping into the social gestures of trusted web users, such as how Techmeme sorts the tech news of the day based on the buzz among top tech bloggers.
He sees the social gestures - in the form of links - from top bloggers as a great way to sort search content.
Scoble raises some interesting points, but seems to fail to understand how Google and other search engines rank search results today.
Google, along with every other major search engine, are already looking at social gestures to sort search results. Link popularity has been a major factor in determining the trust of a given web page for as long as Google has existed. They quantify social gestures - in the form of links - to measure trust, or as they call it, PageRank.
Not all links are created equal. A link, for example, from a trusted source like Robert Scoble is worth more than a link from a brand new website since the new site has built up no trust of its own.
Another bone Scoble seems to pick with Google is their search results mix. By this, I mean what types of links one will see in the first page of search results for a given search. He seems to think that Google blindly serves ten results with no further analysis other than link popularity. That’s wrong.
A couple years ago, Google’s search results for retail searches were starting to degrade. The biggest problem was a lack of diversity in results, where the top-10 would be dominated by the same type of results. For example, a search for a Canon SD 800 IS Camera would bring back results from tons of comparison shopping sites, like Bizrate, Shopping.com, Pricegrabber, etc.
Checking that result today, I see results from Canon, Review sites, Retail sites, and blogs reviewing the camera. This was done without human editing by a Mahalo editor, and without relying on a handful of elite tech bloggers.
As far as I can tell, the thing that impresses Scoble most about Mahalo is the search refinement provided in search results for relatively generic terms. For example, a search for the term “HDTV” provides a diverse set of results, including links to popular manufacturers.
This seems to overlook the fact that other search engines attack search refinement as well. For example, Yahoo provides refinement suggestions below the search box:
I notice they don’t include “Manufacturers” as an option here, which leads me to believe that it’s not a particularly common refinement.
Ask.com goes further with their refinement suggestions:
As I think about it, it makes sense that “Reviews” and “Best” would be great refinements for the term “HDTV” since people are trying to figure out which ones to buy. How does a list of manufactures of HDTVs really help with this process? I just want to know which ones are best and why.
Google clearly has a good feel for what terms a person may use to refine a broad term like HDTV. Take a look at their suggestions offered in the Google search box on Firefox:
Okay, here’s the point on search refinement: If people often refine to the same term, why wouldn’t Google just promote results from the refined results page to the results page of the broader search term? Why not put more reviews on the main page if that’s what people prove to be REALLY looking or once they refine their results?
What’s to stop them from saying, “Billions of queries suggest that this is the type of results people are looking for when they conduct a product related search,” and roll out similar results formats for millions of product pages overnight?
Search refinements are another form of social gestures that can be used to improve relevancy, and nobody has access to more of those gestures than Google.
Bloglines has launched a vast improvement to their popular RSS reader in a beta format at beta.bloglines.com. Any Bloglines users are able to access the new beta at this time.
First impressions:
1. They’ve improved the colors. It’s less painful than the previous colors and better contrast for important features on the page like headlines.
2. “Mark as Read” through scrolling. This is a HUGE improvement, and is one of the main reasons I switched to Google Reader. If a folder contained, say, 50 unread items in the past, clicking on that folder would immediately open all 50 items and mark them all at read regardless of whether you saw even a headline. Now stories move from unread to read status as they pass off the screen.
3. Custom start page. Similar to other custom homepages like Google’s, you can stick your most important feeds right on the homepage so the most recent headlines from those feeds will be the first thing you see when logging in.
4. Dynamic feed organizing. Click and drag feeds between folders without having to switch over into an edit mode.
5. Three feed viewing options. View full feeds one at a time, multiple feeds within a folder in boxes of headlines, or in a 3-pane view where headlines run near the top of the page with stories below. Similar to an email inbox layout.
Overall, this looks like a great piece of work by Bloglines. They’ve caught up to Google Reader in some important areas, including a huge improvement to read status. And they’ve come out with a few new features of their own including the 3-pane viewing option.
Nice work, Bloglines.
Blogging can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses with interesting stories to tell. I believe this is especially true in businesses where building a personal relationship with propsects or showcasing one’s expertise has the potential to translate into sales.
A few industries where this has proven to be particularly effective include:
1. Real estate - builds personal relationships between agents and prospects. Rain City Guide and St. Paul Real Estate Blog are two examples.
2. Software - Microsoft has been able to build closer relationships between Microsoft’s software developers and the developers who user Microsoft products to build applications. I’ve seen less success with Microsoft using blogging to communicate with consumer end-users of products like operating systems and Office software.
3. Authors - Blogging has proven to be a great way to build an audience for a book, keep the conversation going with readers, and drive pre-sales of future books. Speaking engagements come out of this as well. Seth Godin and the guys behind Freakonomics stand out here.
I haven’t seen much success with direct to consumer companies that aren’t known for personal relationships. For example, while Wal-Mart interacts with millions and millions of people a day in their stores and on their website, it’s a rather impersonal relationship. People shop their stores based on price and the convenience of finding everything from Kleenex to tropical fish and guns under one roof.
Of course, this doesn’t stop companies like Wal-Mart from testing the waters with things like blogging or Facebook sponsorships. For the cost of trying things like this, they’d be stupid not to.
Jeremiah Owyang from PodTech.net has taken a look at this subject in recent posts on his blog including one where he compares his blog’s Facebook group audience with Wal-Mart’s:
I’m checking up on the group, and have noticed that the group size is very low, in fact only 934 members. The Web Strategy Group that I promote is at 1500 members in just a few weeks longer, and it’s certainly a much smaller ‘brand’ than Wal-Mart.
Personally, I don’t think Wal-Mart’s marketing success can be measured by its Facebook group membership. Neither can the web success of other large consumer serving companies like Mobil or Xcel Energy. These are companies that easily ignore Facebook’s existance.
Adding someone as a friend or joining a group on Facebook is an act close to an endorsement of that person or business. Wal-Mart, and companies like it are basically utilities in the eyes of typical Facebook users. You use them because you need them, not because you love them.
What Wal-Mart will probably learn from their Facebook experiment is that they’re not cool; just like friending your parents isn’t cool. However, it’s not bad to be not cool as long as you’re respected and deliver on promises. In the case of Wal-Mart, the promise they should be pushing is, “we have cheap crap for your dorm room, from school supplies to aquariums.”
On the blogging front, Wal-Mart should NOT open up to the world. Can you imagine purchasing people from Wal-Mart blogging?
“Hi, I’m the guy who demanded such low prices on [insert product here] that your town’s main company packed up and moved production to China. Now you know why your dad can’t help pay for college.”
Bad idea.
As we’ve seen, Wal-Mart’s PR firm has struggled with this in the past by going as far as creating fake blogs supposedly written by customers about how much they love parking their RVs in Wal-Mart’s lots. Just face the facts: if you have to fake it, it’s probably not a good fit.
In summary: Understanding your customer’s relationship with you - rather than your relationship with your customers - is key to successful marketing.
Jordan McCollum from Marketing Pilgrim breaks down the results of two recent online advertising studies that showed web visitors becoming more blind to online advertisements.
An eye-tracking study by usability guru, Jakob Nielsen included this image reinforcing how hard it is to get people to even notice ads:
McCollum’s conclusion based on the studies:
The bottom line: don’t go for the flashy and annoying ads—make them look like content. For your biggest ad purchases, work with webmasters to integrate your ads into their design—use their site’s colors and fonts, tinker with placement, etc. It just might pay off.
The studies appear to look at this from a publisher’s angle. If you’re getting paid on a per click basis, how do you make the ads stand out next to your site’s content in order to generate click revenue? There are some things that can be done to trick users, such as the tip McCollum provides above. However, that’s not an ideal solution.
An IDEAL solution is one where the viewers find the ads relevant and valuable. And two things are preventing this today:
1. Marginal ad targeting technology
2. Low-quality ads.
High quality ads are ads that build an emotional attachment between the viewer and the advertiser’s company, product, or service. They’re ads that intrigue (rather than annoy) a reader. They’re ads that are as interesting (or more interesting) than the content they’re served next to.
With this in mind, I’m blaming advertisers for not building better advertisements. They’re hurting their own return and the return of publishers serving marginal ads. It’s time to turn it up a notch with truly compelling online advertising that turns readers on.
This annoys me: I found a site with my favorite password on it.
This is a problem since the combination of letters and numbers is absolutely unique. The only way it would show up on the web is if I put it there or a site’s security was breached.
In this case, it looks like the latter since the Chinese site displaying it has a long list of terms that are clearly passwords ranging from things that are extremely obvious to rather complex terms.
One thing I noticed was that many passwords seem to be simple variations on what’s presumably the username. For example, a password like johndoe1 could probably be tied to a username “johndoe.” That’s still pretty vague, but it’s not nearly so vague when the password + 1 is a much less common name.
To me, this marks a good time to switch up passwords. Nothing that I’m aware of has been compromised, but why wait for that, eh?
In case you’re wondering, my new password will not be edkohler1.
A new type of comment spam popped up on Technology Evangelist today: scraping the post itself for comment content.
The comment below showed up on this post.
When I saw that comment in my comments feed, I thought, “That sounds strangely familiar.” It turns out that that’s because I WROTE THAT in the post.
