Netizen

Monday, September 06, 2010

Android Ascendancy

GigaOm: U.S. Mobile Web Usage A Win-Win for Google: Android has a 25 percent share of mobile usage, up from around 10 percent last November .... Apple’s iOS platform, which powers the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, currently stands at 56 percent, down from a peak of nearly 70 percent at the end of 2009 ..... Google comes out a winner both today and in the foreseeable future due to mobile search. The main source of Google revenue is indeed search, but the real growth is in searching for data away from the desktop...... Essentially, Google has benefitted from mobile search since the iPhone launched in 2007 with Google as the default search engine. But now the search giant is outselling other mobile platforms

It is only a matter of time before Android's share surpasses that of the Apple platform. Steve Jobs set out to make expensive cars. That is his thing. There are cheap cars, and there are expensive cars. Steve Jobs is the guy who makes expensive cars.

Apple's business model has worked for Apple. The company surpassed Microsoft's market value, did it not? That is not my definition of failure. But a company that never set to reach the masses will not reach the masses. No surprises there.

Wait until the Chrome OS netbooks hit the market.

Microsoft feels like a loser in the mobile space now. After the Chrome OS netbooks appear, it is going to get hit big time on the desktop as well.

This dog - Google - is going to hunt.

The Facebook Search Engine

Image via WikipediaNo surprise there. The whole idea behind the like button has been to take over the web. Mark Zuckerberg made it very clear in his speech at the F8 conference that that is what the like button was for. Just like Facebook should be your primary place online, the like button should tell you where to go instead of the links that the Google engine depends on. That was the hint.

GigaOm: Facebook Ramping Up The Social In Its Search Engine: The new feature is the latest step in rolling out the network’s social-search engine — which could become a competitive threat for Google and other traditional search companies, as more users turn to recommendations from their networks instead of those determined by algorithms.

What has been giving me headaches for months and months now is as to why Facebook will not make it possible for me to search my own wall, and that of my friends. If I could I might be able to use my Facebook wall as the repository of links I might want to visit later on. That would be a huge incentive for me to share more links on Facebook. That in turn would make Facebook searches even better.

GigaOm: Is Facebook's Social Search Engine A Google Killer?: one of the company’s goals was to use the resulting behavioral data to power a social search engine — one based on likes instead of links .... more than a million websites — including some highly trafficked sites such as The Huffington Post — have integrated its features, and 150 million of the network’s more than 400 million users “engage with Facebook” in some way through external sites every month. ...... Being able to search for recommendations from close to half a billion users could be very powerful..... since Facebook’s Open Graph protocol is theoretically an open standard, there is the potential for Google to use that to pull in the network’s results in the same way it uses Twitter’s API ...... gave the network a relatively puny 2.7 percent share of the U.S. search business, but still put it ahead of AOL.

The human part is when I press that like button, which I do all the time. (Hello Mark!) The machine part is what Facebook does after I have already pressed that like button. The human part was when someone placed that link. The machine part was Google making sense of the link. There are clear parallels.

All Facebook: BREAKING: Facebook Now Displaying All Liked News Articles In Search Results: based on two things: the number of likes and the number of friends who liked that object ..... shows how important Facebook’s Open Graph is to the future of the company. ..... the content displayed “is only available for articles shared by your direct friends (not globally to all users on Facebook).” Additionally, “This is not surfaced to you based solely on number of ‘Likes’ for the article.”

Links And Likes

Image by Mars Chen via FlickrMark Zuckerberg, the Facebook dude, wants likes to replace links. And I think that is a tall order. I don't think that is possible.

But that like button is so very key to the social web. There the like button will rule. If you are only trying to figure out what you and your social graph might be interested in, then who cares about the world wide web at large? Many people in Manhattan are familiar with only two blocks, the block they live on, and the block where they work. There the like button will rule.

But what Zuck is betting on is if half a billion going on one billion people will start pressing on that like button, and then it is no longer just the social web as seen by one person. It is at that point the web itself. How is pressing a like button all that different from linking to a page. Pressing a like button perhaps is more democratic. Facebook gives most people that homepage that they always wanted but they never had because, well, it was too complicated to create one. And the like button is what the link code used to be. The link code was simple enough, basic HTML was simple enough, but says who? You can always make it simpler.

One reason Twitter is not as big as Facebook is because Twitter is too complicated.

What in the world is a hash tag? What is RT? Think about it.

But the link is not going away. There are people like me who can't be contained in two or four blocks. The link code is here to stay. One just hopes search engines (Hello Google!) get better and better at making sense of those links, they get better at staying ahead of those who try to game the search engines.

GigaOm: Links: Not Just The Currency Of The Web, But The Soul: links are a tool for synthesis, “a way of drawing connections between things,” to bring coherence to the vast universe of information online. “The Web’s links don’t make it a vast wasteland or a murky shallows,” Rosenberg says, “they organize and enrich it.” ..... The whole idea behind Tim Berners-Lee’s invention was to enable sites to point to each other and create a “web” of context. .... To choose not to link is to abandon the medium’s most powerful tool — the thing that makes the Web a web.” Hear, hear.

Privacy Anxieties And The Web Of Intent

GigaOm: The Web Of Intent Is Coming (Sooner Than You Think): more robust content filtering tools and the Web of Intent will arrive sooner than you think, based on the implicit messages in users’ actions..... The Web of Intent will be largely driven by consumers’ actions and interests..... They will be able to quickly transform their content operations beyond articles and blog posts into data and interest-centric publishing structures that allow consumers to follow topics and ongoing stories of interest. ..... a Web of Intent rich in data and profiling based on their audiences’ interests. ...... will offer newer and more robust targeting opportunities and will ultimately provide publishers new opportunities for monetization beyond pure advertising ..... make their sites more “intent-friendly”

This intent talk is at the other end of the privacy spectrum. You do want the site to know who you are, what your interests are, what you want, so the site can better serve you.

We want privacy, but we also want the web of intent, and I don't see a clash there. Just like it is possible to be for economic growth and for the environment at the same time.

Privacy is a value, but it is also a technological challenge. The web of intent is a major technological challenge. Now all websites pretty much have blogs, and Facebook and Twitter presences. The web of intent will similarly permeate.

We will get to keep our cake and eat it too, for the most part. There are always some standard deviations.

Privacy, Digital Literacy, Technology, Social Values

A Huawei Smartphone: Ideos

New York Times: Bits: Chinese Company Aims Big With Android Smartphone: a “$150 smartphone that is similar to an iPhone user experience.” The company said it wanted to show that it could create a technologically advanced smartphone at a more affordable price.

It is ridiculous that an iPhone costs as much as a low end Dell laptop. This Chinese entry into the smartphone market reminds me of the $35 tablet to come out of India. ($35 PC)

The Ideos seems to have global ambitions. It runs on Android, predictably.

This is not really news. By now China has a track record. It was only a matter of time before some Chinese company entered the Android market.

It is the PC, Mac thing all over again. Android is PC and Android is poised to take over the iPhone in sheer volume.

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Monday, September 06, 2010

Android Ascendancy

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The Facebook Search Engine

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Links And Likes

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Privacy Anxieties And The Web Of Intent

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A Huawei Smartphone: Ideos

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