By Ginger
Google not only lets you search for content, but now they will help you create and publish it (minor note: they will make money off your content). Yesterday, Google rolled out Knol – a site they’ve been testing for about seven months that allows “experts” to contribute articles under a Creative Commons license.
Although many are calling Knol the Wikipedia Killer, there are some fundamental differences between the sites. 1 – Wikipedia functions through “Wisdom of the Crowds” while Knol relies on one “expert” to write on a topic. 2 – Changes made to a Knol article must first be approved by the author, making the usability similar to About.com. 3 – Knol pages will make money through Google AdSense, a program Wikipedia does not use.
Controversy has quickly arisen around whether or not content on Knol will get pushed to the forefront to promote the interests of its parent company. For the time being, Wikipedia is still the leader in content, with over 2.5 million articles submitted to the English version alone – all of which typically appear in the top Web search results on Google – but it will remain to be seen if Knol will take the lead.
The New York Times spoke to a Google spokesperson and reports: “We will treat Knol pages as we treat other Web pages,” said Cedric Dupont, a Google product manager. “If there is a Knol that is the first place in search results, it deserves that place.”
Is Google gaining too much power, dipping its toes in both the content creation and delivery pools? Are they just upset Wikipedia didn’t buy into AdSense? If we all trust one “expert’s” article on Google, aren’t we closing ourselves off to the power of collective intelligence? Would love to hear your thoughts.
In the meantime, you can learn more about Knol here on Wikipedia.com. (Irony at it’s finest)
July 24th, 2008
(DeWolfe Pictured Left)
By Kyle
If you ever have the opportunity to meet Chris DeWolfe, Founder and CEO of MySpace, in person; it’s likely you’ll come away from the meeting with the word charisma on the tip of your tongue. Watching DeWolfe work the patio Tuesday night at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH’s private dinner overlooking the Pacific, you could easily mistake him with a rock star.
In fact, watching DeWolfe get flocked too; I couldn’t help but think about what polar opposites he and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, are.
DeWolfe continued his rock star ways on Wednesday at Brainstorm: TECH by announcing a new music service that will launch on MySpace in September. In an interview with Fortune’s Adam Lashinksy, DeWolfe discussed the new service which will allow users to listen to free streaming music, purchase song downloads, ringtones and even concert tickets.
“MySpace will be the center of each artists’ universe,” noted DeWolfe.
DeWolfe was quick to discuss that music is already a huge part of the MySpace offering. He stated that 5 billion songs are being played every month and 65 percent of users have a music song or video embedded on their profiles.
When asked by audience members to discuss his thoughts on Facebook, DeWolfe used the further foray into music to describe the diferences between the two often-compared companies.
“Sure we have to look at all our competitors in the 25 countries that we are in. I think they are more of a uitility that makes it efficient to communicate back and forth. I think they’d agree with that assesment. We think we do the same thing but MySpace is more about self expression and letting the users create their own exeprience. This is why we are investing so heavily in music. Music and self expression are so intertwined.”
July 24th, 2008
By Kyle
John Huey, Editor-In-Chief of TIME Inc. just wrapped-up Fortune Brainstorm: TECH by chatting with Neil Young (yes that Neil Young). Here are some excerpts, from the first part of their chat on music quality:
John Huey: We have 25 minutes to vet this treasure trove, so we’ll try do our best. He just said to me before we came out here that you have to watch what you say because it will stick with you for 20 years. I often say that rust doesn’t sleep; which is the only way to edit and I think the two tie together nicely.
Neil hasn’t disappeared. He’s been around a lot lately with his movies and he also recently wrote a song with the subtle title “Let’s Impeach the President.” I ran across this anecdote about him that I thought you would find interesting.
I have a friend that works at West Point and each year they have a artist perform for the graduating cadets. They ask the performer if they would be wiling to wave their fee for the young men going into service for their country. The only person ever to wave his fee was Neil Young. Go figure a left wing, Canadian rock star was the only one to wave their fee. Neil was kind of embarrassed when I brought this up to him and said no one is supposed to know this.
OK, let’s talk about the industry that brought you here. In the area of music. No industry has been more disrupted by technology then music. You, unlike anyone else, have been working for 15 years on an alternative digital platform. You were upset with the quality of CD’s for sometime and your feeling is that it has gotten worse from there?
Neil Young:It went downhill from there. I loved the CD when it came out. It was great for music to go to that little disk and it was very convenient. But that same convenience has been taken advantage of. Apple especially, has taken that convenience to an extreme and ignored quality. Quality is not there. I’m trying to figure out a way. Especially a play in the PC Market. I think PC makers can overlook the area of quality music on PC’s. PC hardware should include software to listen to higher resolution music. So we are not stuck with the Apple or MP3 standard. A model for a company that provides hi-res song listening is something that I am certainly pursuing.
The problem with all of this is there is no way to play back music at the resolution that it was created at. It will only play back in CD quality. This sounds a lot better then MP3 but it is not hi-res. That is not what we are capable of. It seems like the ability to listen to hi-res music is one of the missing elements in consumer technology. Any designer of PC’s that I can talk to, I will be pushing for that.
I record now in a way that can be bumped in an even higher-res. I always record at the highest-res of digital I can. We are getting better and better at recording but the quality is not there in playback.
JH: Do they believe the consumer can be lead there?
NY:I’ve never heard the quality of music mentioned. That is what made music so great. If you bought music that you could see, it would be like watching the lowest-res movie. Because you can’t view it, you can’t see that it’s lower then what it could be. The content is important but at the expense of quality; that is too big of a price to pay. Especially for me and my peers that try to create music that will last forever.
JH: Have you discussed with Apple and Steve Jobs?
NY: I’ve discussed this with Michael Dell who is checking with his folks to see what they can do.
What do you think? Do you want higer-res music that sounds live? As we’ve learned this week at Brainstorm: Tech the industry is certainly open to your ideas. Including Michael Dell.
July 23rd, 2008
By Ben
The New York Times reports that the U.S. Postal Service is encouraging people and businesses to keep the environment in mind when mailing documents and packages. They’ve even trademarked the term environMAIList. How much is this green initiative just one last attempt to survive?
Twenty years ago almost everything came was delivered by a post office employee – from magazines, bills, letters, business documents, and of course, credit card advertisements. Today, it seems like we’re just stuck with the credit card advertisements.
Email and the internet have dramatically changed the way we receive mail and news. Newspapers are a whole other issue – but the amount of people having them delivered to their doorstop has completely changed as well. But what has happened over the past 20 years?
The days when you would send a friend a letter, postcard, or other kind of note to say hi are long gone. This week’s delay of correspondence has turned into email, IM, text messages, and social networks like Facebook. After all, why send a postcard in the mail when you can just post all of your vacation pictures on Facebook with captions underneath, and a nice message saying that you’re having a great time?
The content from magazines has all been put online, and bills/payments have all become automatic withdrawals or are done through online banking. Email has completely changed business as well, as anyone would be hard pressed to find someone who uses mail as a first, second, or even third option for business communication.
So how will this green effort help the U.S. Postal Service? Probably very little, if at all. The mail business isn’t falling behind because of the environment, but because technology, innovation, and the internet have dramatically changed the way we go about communicating.
July 23rd, 2008
By Kyle
Nicholas Negroponte took the stage with David Kirkpatrick at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH to address the crowd on where the One Laptop per Child project currently stands earlier this morning. Some excerpts below:
DK: Happy to have you on stage, along with your XO.
You have transformed a new way to get technology into the hands of kids across the world. However, you’ve often talked about goals that haven’t been achieved. How do you describe the state of OLPC?
NN: You need a certain amount of hype. Some of it was that. We had to change our targets as we began to see which countries really were going to put a full effort behind one laptop for every child in their country. Peru is going to do a million this year. If I was running a company that would be pretty good to go from $0-$200 million (if they were paying for each computer) in one market - in one year.
DK: Do you sometimes wish that you had made it a business and not a non-profit philanthropy effort?
NN:Never. What the non-profit does is create the mission for us. We don’t look at the developing world as a market, we look at it as a mission. When I go to each head of state they know that I am talking with them about a mission to transform education in their countries and not giving them a sales’ speech. It also allows us to attract the top talent that want to be part of a true mission, without even thinking about earning a salary.
DK: So the XO that you have with you does something different then the XO’s in the developing world right now?
NN:Yes, this is a dual-boot XO that runs both Windows and Linux (Negroponte boots in Windows for the crowd).
NN: We will kick-off a global “Give One, Get One” program within the next few months.
Disclosure: One Laptop per Child is a client of the Racepoint Group.
July 23rd, 2008
By Kyle
Had the opportunity to share a quick chat and drink with Richard Edelman, CEO & President of PR-giant Edelman and Keith Reinhard, former CEO of advertising giant DDB yesterday evening at Brainstorm: TECH.
The two industry giants were worth a good laugh as they playfully chuckled about stealing each other’s clients at the conference.
Richard was chatting me up on the reason to be global and why PR is a scalable industry. He still feels like there is a true advantage in being a massive global agency over a mid-size shop.
Keith on the other hand couldn’t stop talking about DDB’s latest project with McDonald’s in reviving the “Big Mac” jingle, with its new digital campaign. Richard and Keith both had to actually let me know what the jingle was in the first place as it orignated in 1974, 9 years before I was born.
To celebrate the Big Mac’s 40th Anniversary, DDB helped with a campaign that calls for U.S. consumers to write their own songs using the exact words of the jingle, and submit them to a contest on MySpace.com.
Not only is the campaign succeeding by engaging in brand dialogue with consumers, but it also garnered coverage in the New York Times - Results that both men can appreciate.
BTW: Richard told me he was going to have a blog post up this morning at 6 a.m. (As he is one of the featured live bloggers at Brainstorm: TECH). Where is it Richard? I have five up already.
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle
I took in the “How Net Content will be Monetized Round Table (Wedding Table) at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH this morning. Hosted by Fortune’sAdam Lashinsky the round table included Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony; Neil Ashe, President of CBS Interactive; Robert Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks and Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost.
Here are some of the excerpts from the round table:
Adam Lashinsky: Good morning, we are going to be talking about “Net Monetization.” This is not the format that we planned on doing for a breakfast round table (straight table facing the audience). We had so many people sign-up we decided we’d do something like a head table at a wedding with you being the guests. However, we’re not going to talk to you we are going to talk with you.
Robert Glaser, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
- 600 million in revue last year. 2/3 of monetization comes through consumer purchases. 1/3 is from net carriers.
- Our goal is to create a balance in revenue streams.
- You look at what Google does with only one revenue stream and may think we are taking the wrong route, but you have to diversify.
- Behavioral targeting is an major opportunity, but there doesn’t appear to be an Overture type idea out there that goes beyond search.
Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony:
- eHarmony was founded 8 years ago to be a series match making site. It was a crazy idea at the time because the industry was dominated by the photo-clicking approach.
- We recently released Harris Interactive numbers, which found that 236 people marry each day (on average) through eHarmony.
- This has allowed the business to become very successful and over 200 million in revenues last year.
- Lashinsky - ”My best friend met his wife through eHarmony. He’s a serious guy, so I guess he needed a serious relationship site.”
- 96 - 97 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions.
- Match.com and ourselves are really the biggest players in the space.
- We want to keep a “happy” churn rate - given our goal to match couples in serious long-term relationships (which leads to them leaving site). Usually takes a couple of months for that to happen.
- You can’t just create great content first and then say we’ll figure out how to monetize it later. I think people have this belief that good content will easily translate into ad revenue and that is just not the case when you are looking at scale.
Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost:
- Joost was created in October of last year and has slightly under 1 million unique visitors.
- We have a revenue share model that goes back to content owners.
- We’ve really been the first online video destination to use the 30-second in-spot ad that is seen on TV.
- Music has been really hard to monetize on our site because its hard to understand interests in music to target relevant ads at users.
President of CBS Interactive:
- Earlier this year I was the CEO of CNET Networks and now I am the President of CBS Interactive after the close of our sale to the CBS Corporation.
- We reach the 8th largest Internet network in the world.
- 80 percent of business is ad supported through sponsorships or advertisements.
- About 20 percent of our business is in major countries in Europe.
- We’ve found that you can’t out grow your category. The growth of advertising revenue has grown across the Internet but there is a cap in how it can grow within certain markets on the Internet.
- We’ve made mistakes along the way. We never could monetize Webshots. We could sell certain sponsorships but not for each individual page view.
Disclosure: eHarmony is a client of the Racepoint Group
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle
I was out socializing on the patio at Brainstorm: TECH last night when Michal Lev-Ram of Fortune snuck up on me to ask me what I had in my pocket. On a patio full of “top-executives” I obviously had the least cool technology in my jeans.
Somehow my broken Motorola Q (this happens once a month) and my (actually I borrowed/stole this from my colleague Stephen Russell) 1980’s tape recorder made it into the segment. Unfortunately, so did I. Clearly the lesson here is to not go on camera after a 6 hour flight with no sleep the night before.
Check out the video here.
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle
A few other notes from the first few hours at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, CA:
- You can go home again: Just ran into Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch in the lobby. Schonfeld was chatting it up with some of his former colleagues from Time Inc. He previously worked with the now defunct Business 2.0, which was under the Time Inc. umbrella.
- Sometimes you can’t leave home: Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, didn’t make the trip to Brainstorm: TECH after all. He was a last minute drop from the Thinking Globally panel. Kirkpatrick made a slight joke (not really) that he was home in the U.K. closing another major acquisition. The truth is, he is. Word is that WPP will win the bid for Taylor Nelson Sofres.
July 22nd, 2008
By Kyle
The second speaker / panel is underway at Brainstorm: TECH with a Q&A between David Kirkpatrick and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. A few quotes from Jeff that I picked up below:
- I love the fact that I can read one-handed (With the Kindle). As soon as you read with the Kindle for awhile it’s hard to go back to a regular book. It’s also a lot quieter to read with the kindle when you’re laying next to your spouse in bed.
- I believe that we are at the dawn of a new industry with the Kindle.
- We had a microwave oven that would beep every minute until I turned it off. I called it a self-important device.
July 22nd, 2008
Previous Posts
