David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
With no fanfare Google quietly added Desktop to the right hand top side of the Google Home Page this week. This is interesting as Google rarely changes the configuration of this page. It therefore seems that Desktop is of strategic importance to Google.
I wonder when they are going to swap Images for Video on the front page? I’ve been expecting this for a while.
Today Ebay announced changes in fees for store listings.
They are having a town meeting at 4PM Pacific time on Thursday.
It will be interesting to see what people think about these changes. My first glance doesn’t generate an emotional response either way.
Yes, Terry Semel reported disappointing earnings yesterday, but I want to applaud one of his actions from yesterday. Mediapost reported that “Yahoo previously said it planned to roll out Panama in the third quarter, but Semel said during Tuesday’s quarterly earnings call that the company was delaying the rollout to prevent disruption in ad purchasing and management during the holiday ad season. “We think this is the right decision for ensuring the most successful commercial launch possible,” he said, adding that advertisers should prepare to start using it in 2007.”
What I’m cheering in found in this quote from Josh Stylman from Reprise: At the same time, the delay also doesn’t hurt search engine marketers, said Josh Stylman, managing partner at Reprise Media. “It’s a pretty intense platform change,” he said. “Frankly, we’d rather make sure that it gets released properly and in a stable environment, rather than rushing it out before it’s ready.”
Congratulations to Yahoo! for putting customers need for a stable advertising experience ahead of short term earnings potential using beta software that could be disruptive to customers.
Congrat’s to Kyle MacDonald on getting his house for the One Red Paper Clip via trades! It’s an inspiring story that shows the power of blogs for both fun and creation of value.
What is interesting about his blog is that frequently, the Google ads displayed on his page are good examples of ads not being placed or monitored well. For example, two days after Kyle was awarded a house in Kipling, Alberta, ads for books for author Rudyard Kipling were still appearing on the site. The keyword “Kipling” only should have been dropped from the campaign immediately. Then today, “Saskatchewan dating” appeared on the site. This ad should be geotargeted and I should not be viewing it while surfing the net in Chicago.
As I become more familar with Adwords, it becomes obvious that there are tools Google is offering for micro-targeting that are not being fully utilized.
It would be a shame if I would have to start blocking people on my Skype list that weren’t friends already, but today, I got my first unsolicited spam message in Skype…you see the message below…
[2:04:06 PM] 杨柳青 says: Nike shoes: we provide footwears such as NIKE\ADIDAS\REEBOK\PUMA/PRADA,etc. .we also sell all kinds of stock mobile telephone,mp3,mp4.
All our products are known for reasonable price with high quality.
Tel:008613959583863 联系人: Miss Zheng: http://www.shoescaps.com MSN:yjxpt@msn.com
E-MAIL: yjxpt@yahoo.com .cn
yjxpt@163.com
SKYPE: yjxpt73 ICQ:324-401-461
(Presentation summary – first public speech on topic observed by David Dalka at Barcamp Chicago)
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder launches campaigns.wikia.com
Put the demos back in democracy
“The ideal encyclopedia should be radical. It should stop being safe.”
Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.
How big is Wikipedia Globally?
>>1MM English
>>400,000 German
>>200,000 French, Polish, Japanese, Dutch
>>42 languages >> 10,000
>>98 languages> 1,000
How popular?
Top 20 web site (Alexa)
Broader reach than
NYT
LAT
WSJ
MSNBC.COM
Chicago Tribune
~5.0 Billion page views monthly
200 servers
Compared about.com (flat line) versus Wikipedia.
“Accuracy” Incident caused massive traffic increase
Basic Ideas:
Broadcast Media leads to broadcast politics
Soundbites (samples)
Stirring images
Participatory media
Leads to participatory politics
Graph of participation in elections (dropping)
Wikis for campaigns
-The Dean campaign showed the effectiveness of Internet organizing
-But all that people did was organize, not formulate policy or shape the arguments
-Dean fell apart because of other reasons
Wikis for campaigns
– Wikipedia works because it is organized around a few central principles: NPOV and WP:NT central among them
– Other wikis work when they have a central organizing concept
– A campaign wiki fits the requirements for a successful wiki
Open and Closed
– Wikis are general perceived as being wide open and in a sense of course they are
– But real world successful wikis always limit participation to people who can agree with the broad organizing principle
What will not Work
– Tight, top down hierarchical control will lead to a wiki that might as well be a static html campaign site, unable to respond quickly with the time
– Anarchy will lead to trolling and vandalism from the other side
Who controls?
– On the official campaign website? Then candidate can be blamed for any thing some might say so campaign would need top down control -> failure
– Completely outside the campaign
What will work?
Broad, welcoming, inviting participation
Question: How do you get past the Echo chamber?
“I think those things are changing. I really don’t know. Senate campaign in Utah is using Wiki.”
Practical Uses
– Organizing meetups – just like meetup.com except more fluid and flexible
– Authoring whitepapers on issues from the point of view of the community supporting the candidate (wikis drive people to the middle, away from extremism)
– Responding quickly with intelligent answers to developing events
Local meetups
– Local meetups planned for around the world
– First one is Chicago July 29
Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Delhi, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Amsterdam
Locations to be determined – critical requirements are convenience and beer
http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Local_Meetup_Schedule
Spread to world via blogs and WOM
Very interesting guy. He was a financial services guy just like me. I keep meeting more and more in this space. It rocks! Glad I got to hear him speak. Seems extremely motivated to change the world.
I just got a sneak peak of Metroproper (dead link removed) from founder Phil Tadros and Jason Pettus, a new Chicago-based web 2.0 interactive and social business network, voter based journalism and classifieds product that is launching this Saturday afternoon. This will roll out to other markets after a brief Chicago beta. There is a launch party with Motorola as event sponsor on Saturday evening at the Motorola Q store downtown.
So what makes Metroproper different?
– It combines elements of Craigslist, Linkedin, Myspace and Digg into a one stop shopping experience
– They have some unique, though as yet unproven, monetization ideas. It’s good to see someone actually thinking about this issue before launching a site. I have a few monetization ideas of my own for their platform actually…
– Though I didn’t get to surf it, the pages look very clean and hopefully it will surf as good as it looks.
The Metroproper login page
(dead link removed)
A screenshot of a Metroproper.com profile
(dead link removed)
Classifieds are a feature that figures prominently in the community.
(dead link removed)
While there is considerable competition in this space, there is certainly room for improvement. If unmet customer needs are satisfied with a world-class customer experience, the world may in fact beat a path to Metroproper’s door.
Speaking of beating a path to their door, you should do just that. Phil runs a coffee shop on the north side of the city called Dollop, it is located at 4181 North Claredon, the venture capital lines are open at 773.755.1955 – the wireless Internet is free, they are open late and Hoosier Mama Pies are quite tasty!