The Value Of Twitter As Compared To Google

from the it's-growing dept

I recognize that it's becoming fashionable among many to bash Twitter, but for those who have learned how to use Twitter well (as opposed to many who use it poorly), the value of it is quite impressive. I now spend a lot more time using Twitter to find news than I do my feed reader -- and that's amazing to me. However, I think Mark Cuban actually has made the strongest point, noting that in many ways, Twitter is becoming more useful than Google. This isn't to say that Twitter is "killing" Google (x killing y stories are lame), but that many people are finding information via Twitter now, where they used to find it via Google.

Cuban gives an example of trying to buy a car, where there may be a lot of value in being able to message a guru on the type of car he wants to buy via Twitter (or, better yet, finding a few of them). I know I've found Twitter to be useful in this manner. A few months ago, I was looking for a new backpack for my computer -- and I had very specific requirements (such as the ability to carry both a laptop and a netbook at times comfortably). It was quite difficult to come up with a Google query that made sense for such a thing, but I could ask it easily in 140 characters and plenty of people could easily understand it, and then provide thoughts and recommendations. It comes back to two points:

• Having real humans respond to a query works well for more specific queries that simply aren't well automated.
• Perhaps much more importantly, real people can better offer recommendations or explanations than an automated query on Google, which simply seeks to find data or answers.

Basically, what Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online: via conversation, rather than via data dump. Each has it's place, but the reason many of us find Twitter so compelling is that it's opening up tremendous new possibilities to enable useful information flow that simply wasn't possible before.

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What Would Yelp Be Without The Negativity? Recommendations Instead Of Reviews

from the nothing-nice-to-say dept

SF Weekly's 4,333 word exposition about Yelp delves into many of the recent foibles of the not-yet-profitable community site. Since its inception in 2004, Yelp has played a key part in imbuing every-day consumers with the powers of professional critics. Now, with consumer reviews posted and shared online, instead of disappearing into the black hole of the customer feedback box, businesses shudder with fear at the potential of a bad review on Yelp. Sure, any business that regularly provides bad service would eventually succumb to the collective ire of community displeasure, but anecdotally, Yelp seems to amplify this effect. Although consumer reviews have been around for ages on sites like Amazon and CNET, Yelp's focus on local businesses expose a vulnerability not really seen in, say, the consumer electronics or book industry. An evening's dining choice is relatively fickle compared to a decision to buy a plasma tv, and one can see how that decision could be easily derailed by one strategically placed negative review. That said, as consumers become more savvy to sites like Yelp, their tolerance for a bad review or two should hopefully build. Or, as seen in the recent case of a San Francisco pizzera, businesses could learn to embrace their bad reviews.

Here's a thought. Whenever I visit a new city, I ask my friends for their recommendations, not reviews, of restaurants in the area. While it might be amusing to hear them rant about how awful such-and-such place was, ranting really does little good when trying to pick a place to eat out of the vast array of options that a typical city has to offer. Instead, maybe it's time for Yelp to put on the rose-colored glasses and offer an alternative view of the world: one where only recommendations exist. This is the approach taken by eats.it, a restaurant recommendation site that currently only serves San Diego. With no bad reviews to complain about, the complaint that a merchant doesn't get enough recommendations sounds much more like sour grapes. Furthermore, advertising on a page that features only recommendations of their establishment is a much more palatable proposition. Is the consumer less served by this rosy-eyed view of the world? Perhaps, but it would not be hard to see which establishments received less recommendations than others. Maybe mothers everywhere knew the answer all along when they advised: "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all."

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Ocean Tomo Patents Being Used To Shake Down Companies That Have Online Recommendations

from the ebay-for-patent-trolls dept

Ocean Tomo is a company that's been around for a few years, trying to establish itself as the auction house for patents. I've already made clear how troubling I believe its business model to be, but the company always tries to put a friendly face on it, claiming that it's not about aiding so-called "patent trolls" but actually reducing the problem of patent trolling. However, that (of course) isn't what's actually happening. A patent on personal recommendation systems ("if you bought x, you'll like y") was bought via Ocean Tomo by what seems likely to be a bunch of lawyers under the company name Quito (though, it's not entirely clear who's involved) and is now being used in a lawsuit against thirteen big internet companies that employ any type of rating system. The companies being sued are: Netflix, Amazon, Yahoo, RealNetworks, last.fm, Pandora Media, Slacker Inc., Veoh, Hulu, NBC Universal, CBS, News Corp., and Strands.

As you look through that list, you'll recognize that some have done significantly innovative work in taking the concept of an online recommendation system and actually making it useful. The simple idea of doing recommendations is pretty straightforward. Making it work well? Not so much. Hell, that's why Netflix is offering $1 million to anyone who can improve their recommendation engine by just 10%. The basic ideas expressed in the patent are not where the value in these recommendation systems lies. It's in the actual effort of figuring out how to make them work better. This patent has nothing to do with the actual success of a recommendation system, but the holders of it may now get a pay day just for holding the patent, thanks to Ocean Tomo's auctions. And, of course, this means that all of those companies that were actually innovating will, at the very least, now need to spend legal dollars defending against this massive innovation blocker.

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The Long Tail Is Only As Good As The Recommendation System

from the that's-how-it's-supposed-to-work dept

It's been amusing to watch folks like Andrew Orlowski continue to misinterpret Chris Anderson's slight admission that things in "the long tail" aren't exactly they way he'd predicted them to be. Of course, Orlowski entirely misses the point by assuming incorrectly (as many others have done) that the discussion of the long tail meant the death of "the blockbuster." That's not at all true. The idea of the long tail was that it both enabled more content to be produced by opening up more shelf space and then made it easier to find that content.

But, the fact remains that the finding of that content is entirely dependent on the filtering and recommendation systems, which is highlighted in the recent NY Times piece by Clive Thompson about attempts to improve Netflix's recommendation engine (and, yes, this is the second post I've written on that article, but this is discussing an entirely different issue than the first, so it seemed worthwhile). In the article, Thompson notes:

Cinematch has, in fact, become a video-store roboclerk: its suggestions now drive a surprising 60 percent of Netflix’s rentals. It also often steers a customer’s attention away from big-grossing hits toward smaller, independent movies. Traditional video stores depend on hits; just-out-of-the-theaters blockbusters account for 80 percent of what they rent. At Netflix, by contrast, 70 percent of what it sends out is from the backlist — older movies or small, independent ones. A good recommendation system, in other words, does not merely help people find new stuff. As Netflix has discovered, it also spurs them to consume more stuff.

Basically, that entire paragraph explains the issue. A good recommendation system does two things: it gets people to consumer more -- and it introduces them to stuff they might not have heard about otherwise. But, that second part is not necessarily the same as the first part. Many people assumed, incorrectly, that the greatness of such "long tail filters" was that it would drive people to consumer more down the tail -- but as Netflix is seeing, the good recommendation engine drives people to consume more content in both the head and the tail.

And, when you think about it, that makes an awful lot of sense. Popular stuff often is popular for a reason. While some may disagree, things are often popular because they really do appeal to a lot of people, so it should be no surprise that a good recommendation system would increase consumption in the head: it's accurately noting that an awful lot of people will like that content. But that doesn't exclude promoting some of the content from the tail. Since the recommendation system is driving more consumption overall, it's "lifting all boats" as they say, even if (as is likely) it lifts the boats in the head more than in the tail. In the past, that content in the tail wouldn't get any business at all, but these days it can at least make some money, if not a huge amount.

So, no the concept of the long tail is hardly dead or even in trouble (or, as Orlowski notes, downgraded). Instead, it's just being understood better.

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NY Indie Record Shop Continues To Reinvent Itself Online

from the other-music-indeed dept

A little over a year ago, we wrote about the plans by the popular indie record shop in NYC, Other Music, and how it planned to adapt to the changing marketplace for music buying. The store recognized that it couldn't sit still and wait to be consumed like its former neighbor down the street, Tower Records. So it set up its own online download store, with DRM-free tracks for sale from indie acts. However, the real key to its business was in recognizing what the real benefit of a good indie record store has always been: the knowledge and recommendations from the staff (and having been to the Other Music physical store years back, I can attest to their knowledge and recommendations). Business Week has now checked in with the store's owners, who note that the new venture is still very much in its nascent stages, but that they're quite optimistic about where things are headed. "I feel like there's a lot of opportunity if you're willing to shake up your way of thinking, and approach things in different ways and experiment and take chances." Contrast this to what you heard from execs at Tower Records as it failed, or from the record label bosses who refuse to change.

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Sometimes You Wonder If The Recording Industry Is Purposely Destroying Itself

from the no-more-pandora-in-the-UK dept

Back in May, we noted that the recording industry, in a shooting-itself-in-the-foot method, was demanding that music discovery site Pandora block all non-US listeners, over an argument concerning the exact licensing terms of the music that Pandora streams. The recording industry has been demanding that Pandora sign separate licensing agreements in every country, or it must block them. Now, for anyone who has actually used Pandora, it takes all of about three seconds to recognize that it's the type of service that should be the recording industry's best friend. You put in songs, musicians or even styles of music that you like, and Pandora finds you new music that it plays in a stream, like a personalized radio station. Pandora makes it incredibly easy to both discover and buy new music. If I worked for a record label, I'd be running around the world heavily promoting Pandora, and working with it to promote new artists. Yet, instead, in true RIAA fashion, it's demanding a tithe instead. While Pandora has been blocked in many countries since back in July, it kept going in the UK, believing that it would work out a reasonable solution there. Apparently not. As countless UK-based Pandora fans have been submitting over and over again, Pandora is now shutting off access to UK listeners. What does this accomplish? As far as I can tell, all it does is take away a wonderful music discovery service that helped push people to actually buy music. Only in the minds of recording industry execs would a company doing free advertising for you be seen as something that needs to be shut down.

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