Apple Gets Into (App) Search

It took longer than I thought it would, but it’s finally happened. Apple’s admitted that it needs real search to bring it’s tangled app universe to heel, and purchased Chomp, a leading third-party app review and search service.

Nearly two years ago I wrote this piece:  Apple Won’t Build a (Web) Search Engine. From it:

…but it will build the equivalent of an app search engine. It’s crazy not to. In fact, it has to. It already has app discovery via the iTunes store, but it’s terrible, with no signal that gives reliable results based on accrued intent.

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WTF’s With the Silence, Battelle?

As you grow older, you learn a few things. One of them is to actually take the time you’ve alloted for vacation. So while the whole Google/Microsoft/Apple privacy who-haa is going down this week, as are any number of other noteworthy news stories, I’m going to stay on the sidelines and focus on skiing with my family. Back at it, to the extent I can be at it while attending TED, next week.

There’s much to be said, for sure. But time only makes the saying of it that much better, I believe.

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A Sad State of Internet Affairs: The Journal on Google, Apple, and “Privacy”

The news alert from the Wall St. Journal hit my phone about an hour ago, pulling me away from tasting “Texas Bourbon” in San Antonio to sit down and grok this headline: Google’s iPhone Tracking.

Now, the headline certainly is attention-grabbing, but the news alert email had a more sinister headline: “Google Circumvented Web-Privacy Safeguards.”

Wow! What’s going on here?

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San Francisco In The Spring: Come To Signal

Over at the FM blog, I just posted the draft agenda for the first of five conferences I’ll be chairing as part of my day job at Federated Media. Signal San Francisco is a one-day event (March 21) focused on the theme of  integrating digital marketing across large platforms (what I’ve called “dependent web” properties) and the Independent Web. The two are deeply connected, as I’ve written here. As we explore that “interdependency,” we’ll also be talking about some of the most heated topics in media today: the role of mobile, the rise of brand-driven content, the impact of real-time bidded exchanges, and more.

Signal builds on the format I spent almost a decade crafting at the Web 2 Summit – the “high order bit,” or short, impactful presentation, as well as case studies and deeper-dive one-on-one interviews with industry leaders. Those include Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, Adam Bain, President of Revenue at Twitter, Neal Mohan, who leads Google’s ad products, and Ross Levinsohn, who runs Yahoo! Americas, among others.

Others represented include Instagram, AKQA, Babycenter, Intel, Tumblr, WordPress, ShareThis, Facebook, and many more. I hope you’ll consider registering (the earlybird expires next week), and joining me for what’s certain to be a great conversation.

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The Ecstasy of Telegraphy

My research manager turned up this gem in the course of answering a question I had about the popular response to the introduction of the telegraph in the US (a moment that informs the working title of my next book). What I find fascinating is how the invention incited an innate religious response (this editorial from a local Albany, NY newspaper is in no way unique). The logic goes something like this: Mankind has invented something that pushes the boundaries of our comprehension – we are now doing something that once was understood to be the provenance only of God. Therefore, we must remind ourselves that this invention, while seeming to contradict the supreme powers of God, in fact only reinforces His position in our world. 

The logic may feel a bit tortured, but it’s consistent with a point I make every time I explain one of the core ideas of the book – that in the 200 years between the introduction of the telegraph (early 1840s) and when my children have kids of their own (roughly 30 years from now, or  early 2040s), mankind will have completed something of a pivot when it comes to our shared understanding of the relationship between technology and God. When Morse couldn’t decide what the first telegraph message should be, he settled on a Biblical quote quite consistent with the Albany Atlas and Argus’ editorial: What Hath God Wrought? The telegraph was such a massive shift in the possible, it was best to ascribe its power to God. Humans can’t handle this power.*

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China Hacking: Here We Go

(image) Waaaay back in January of this year, in my annual predictions, I offered a conjecture that seemed pretty orthogonal to my usual focus:

“China will be caught spying on US corporations, especially tech and commodity companies. Somewhat oddly, no one will (seem to) care.”

Well, I just got this WSJ news alert, which reports:

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Nearly 90% of the World Uses Mobile Phones

In the normal course of research for the book, I wondered how quickly mobile phone use got to the 1 billion mark. I figured we’re well past that number now, but I had no idea how far past it we’ve blown.Like, six times past it. We hit 1 billion in the year 2000, and never looked back.

According to the ITU, nearly 90% of people in the world use mobile phones. Holy. Cow. By comparison, just 35% of us are using the Internet. That is going to change, and fast. Everyone needs a new phone after some period of time. And the next one they get is going to be connected. Just some Monday afternoon Powerpoint fodder for you all. Now back to work.

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Is Our Republic Lost?

Over the weekend I finished Larry Lessig’s most recent (and ambitious) book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It. Amongst those of us who considered Lessig our foremost voice on issues of Internet policy, his abrupt pivot to focus on government corruption was both disorienting and disheartening: here was our best Internet thinker, now tilting at government windmills. I mean, fix government? Take the money out of politics? Better to treat all that as damage, and route around it, right? Isn’t that what the Internet is supposed to be all about?

Well, maybe. But after the wake up call that was PIPA/SOPA, it’s become clear why Lessig decided to stop focusing on battles he felt he couldn’t win (reforming copyright law, for example), and instead aim his intellect at the root causes of why those battles were fruitless. As he writes in his preface:

I was driven to this shift when I became convinced that the questions I was addressing in the fields of copyright and Internet policy depended upon resolving the policy questions – the corruption – that I address (in Republic Lost).

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Thinking Out Loud About Voice Search: What’s the Business Model?

(image) I don’t have Siri yet – I’m still using my “old” iPhone 4. But I do have my hands on a new (unboxed) Nexus, which has Google Voice Actions on it, and I’m sure at some point I’ll get a iPhone 4GS. So this post isn’t written from experience as much as it’s pure speculation, or as I like to call it, Thinking Out Loud.

But driving into work yesterday I realized how useful voice search is going to be to me, once I’ve got it installed. Stuck in traffic, I tried searching for alternate routes, and it struck me how much easier it’d be to just say “give me alternate routes.” That got me thinking about all manner of things – many of which are now possible – “Text my wife I’ll be late,” “Email my assistant and ask her to print the files for my 11 am meeting,” “Find me a good liquor store within a mile of here,” (I’ve actually done that one using Siri on my way to a friend’s house last weekend).

I’ve written about this before, of course (see Texting Is Stupid, for one example from over three years ago), and I predicted in 2011 that voice was going to be a game changer. It clearly is, but now my question is this: What’s the business model?

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Yahoo Visualizes Its Content CORE

Yahoo has always been proud of the algorithms that drive its choice of personalized content, but it’s hard to grok exactly what they do behind the scenes to make the magic happen. Today the company released a visualization of its “C.O.R.E.” (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) technology, and the result is pretty cool. From a release sent to me by Yahoo:

 

  • C.O.R.E. (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine) is a suite of technologies developed by Yahoo! Labs to surface the stories most interesting to you, based on your reading behavior over time.
  • Every hour C.O.R.E. processes 1.2 terrabytes of data in order to learn how a user’s behaviors and interests influence the likelihood of clicking on a specific article. And, every day, C.O.R.E. personalizes 2.2 billion pieces of content for Yahoo! users.
  • Since optimizing with C.O.R.E., Yahoo!’s Homepage click-through rate has increased 300%.
  • Yahoo!’s personalization approach is a clever mix of scientific algorithms and human judgment, as editors have control to override C.O.R.E. at any time, to ensure certain stories are seen.
  • Initially developed within Yahoo! Labs, C.O.R.E. has become a vital tool used throughout the day by editors across the company to bring our users personalized news, first.

The visualization lets you see stories through filters of gender, age, and interest. The image above, for example, shows a male in may age range interested in business and finance. Well worth playing around with, and a very good example of what I call “dependent web” content.

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