November, 2008

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20
Nov 08

Google kills Lively

…despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we’ve decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.

Google’s announcement doesn’t offer much detail about the reasons for the shutdown, noting only that Lively was an experiment, and that the time has come for Google to “focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.” Lively launched with a bang back in July with talk that it could become a Second Life killer. However limited support, poor uptake not helped by only being available to Windows users, and a general disinterest in the product has seen some speculating about its future for a while.

The world of Google – everything on which Google focuses its time and effort – is built on relevant data. With a small user based and no reason to analyze such little data the move seems logical. It could also be a business decision that sooner or later had to be made.

This is an important reminder that Google has a larger goal in mind.

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19
Nov 08

The Semantic Web

Yesterday i went to ROCS’08 to see “Web 2.0 – technology and applications”. Laurian Gridinoc had a very nice presentation on “Semantic Web” that raised my interest on the subject.

For those of you that never heard f this the Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.

At its core, the semantic web comprises a set of design principles, collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the semantic web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that are yet to be implemented or realized.

To get an idea of this watch the video below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGg8A2zfWKg&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

But all this seems a nice utopia. How can companies really benefit from this? The semantic Web puts data into semantic formats on the fly, and targets ads based on the meaning of data with a high degree of accuracy.

This is good news for the user – no more embarrassing keyword results, no more Viagra ads on sites about feminism, and an end to annoying cookies.

Do you agree that the Semantic Web will bring even more effective advertising to the Web?

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18
Nov 08

Google and the recesion

It’s interesting that Google is rolling out cool products like this for competing mobile devices like iPhone before their own, Android, but it does make sense. When you talk about getting rapid adoption, it doesn’t make sense to target less popular devices first, even when one happens to be your own.

You can find the free Google application in the iPhone App Store. Once you’ve either installed this application for the first time, or had it updated, you are ready to start searching with your voice. Launch the application, put it to your ear, then speak your search query to give this feature a try. I expect to see a similar feature for the G1 phone.

Where is Google going with all this? Before the recent downturn of the economy, people wondered if Google would be affected negatively by such an incident. It was a valid question, since Google’s revenue is almost entirely in the hands of companies advertising spend, and it’s easy to speculate about what would happen to those budgets.

It’s conceivable that Google will see less of an impact by these hard economic times compared to some, but I’ve got a feeling that they might even thrive if these hard times persist. As Mihai Dragan was saying companies will be looking for more efficient ways of advertising and you don’t have to look further than Google pay per click services for this. I also think Google will be seeing a higher than expected adoption rate for Google Apps.

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17
Nov 08

LinkedIn vs. Facebook

Not long ago LinkedIn unveiled its applications platform where outside developers can offer business-oriented software. Developers include Amazon, Box.net, Google, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit and WordPress. I wouldn’t call these applications exactly enterprise class, but they could be useful in the corporate environment.

The most interesting app is LinkedIn’s in-house developed Company Buzz. The application tracks what is said about your company and products on Twitter. It would be great to develop it more aggregating content form all over the big social networks and get an overview of what is beeing said.

This comes in a time of “economic crisis” and clearly differentiates LinkedIn from the games and other time wasting apps found elsewhere. By doing this it will take it’s “social” element a bit further maybe in the near future becoming also an intranet service for the companies of the new era.

On the “other side of town” rumor has it that Facebook may be about to roll out the ability for users to group their Facebook friends into categories such as “professional”, “family”, “close friends” etc., from which different levels of profile access could be applied. With this move Facebook is trying to step a bit closer in the professional networking scene. But can it get passed the iq tests and the trivia questions regarding tv shows?

LinkedIn launched a Facebook app to enable company job openings to be advertised through Facebook, but users have requested a much bigger integration. How long will it be until a new social network will apear combing the best feauters from what now is sepparated across the internet: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. Combing this with productivity tools such as google apps and a cool project management system as Basecamp they will shorely make history. But can users these days support another social netowrk?