Mark Evans

What’s the Big Deal About Jaiku?

For months, there’s been this subtle but persistent buzz about Jaiku, the microblogging service that Google acquired last October, and then took into stealth mode.

Having not used Jaiku before Google swooped in, I didn’t have a feel for what Jaiku did or how it was any different from Twitter or Pownce. But I was curious to see why there was so much interest in it.

Step one was getting an invitation, which happened a few days ago.

Step two was signing up, a process that involved getting a confirmation code sent to my Blackberry so I could enter it at Jaiku.com.

Step three was playing with Jaiku to get a feel for what it’s all about.

Conclusion: I’m not sure why anyone would think Jaiku is going to make life difficult for Twitter or, for that matter, Pownce.

From what I can tell, Jaiku is your basic microblogging service with a few nice twists (e.g. the ability to easy add feeds for blogs, music, photos and events. The wildcard may be Jaiku’s interesting mobile offering, which could fit into the gPhone or the Android platform.

Jaiku is very Twitter-like so it’s difficult to see why people would jump on the Jaiku bandwagon when there’s already an established player. Google could always encourage people to use Jaiku by integrating it with other Google services but if anyone was looking to be blown away by Jaiku, they’re probably going to be disappointed.

Before dismissing Jaiku, I want to give it the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps there are features in the pipeline that will make Jaiku more compelling. Maybe Jaiku will resonate as a mobile tool given its European (Finnish) roots. Until that happens, I’ll continue to Twitter and sometimes Pownce.

If you’re also on Jaiku, here’s my Jaiku profile.

For other views on Jaiku, check out WebWorkerDaily and The Inquisitr.

Technorati Tags: jaiku, Google , Twitter

Related Posts

• Google’s Blogger-Lite Acquisition
• A Chance for Pownce to Pounce?
• Too Little, Too Late for Pownce

Five Questions with…BackType Co-Founder Chris Golda

Once in awhile, you come across a startup that jumps out because it’s such an interesting concept.

BackType falls into this category. Dubbed the “Twitter of Comments”, BackType lets you follow people who leave comments on blogs, as well as search for comments about people, trends, companies, etc.

The reason it’s so intriguing is I’m trying to figure out which feature will resonate more with users. To me, search should be the “killer app” because it’s such a fertile opportunity that you could easily see many people use to gather information, entertainment, etc.

In the wake of BackType’s successful debut, I fired off five questions to co-founder Chris Golda about the company and his involvement - along with co-founder Michael Montano - with Y Combinator.

1. Can you talk about the origins of BackType? What opportunity did you see and/or problems you’re looking to solve?

Our last start-up, IPartee, wasn’t doing well so we decided to come up with something new and apply for Y Combinator. We spent a week thinking about problems we’d been experiencing and existing solutions, if any. The problem we had was that although we used Twitter, blogs, social networks, etc. to follow hundreds of insightful and interesting people, there was no way to follow their comments. A person might find something they read online very interesting, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll write a whole blog post about it – instead, they comment.

It’s interesting to see what people find worthy enough to comment on. In fact, what’s surprised us about BackType is that it’s a great tool for content discovery. Now I can find and read the blogs that people (that I’m interested in) comment on. In addition to searching comments by author, searching by topic has shown to be very valuable as well so we plan on doing a lot more with that. We see a lot of opportunity in comments; what you see on BackType.com is what we’ve started with.

2. Why do you think BackType will be embraced or resonate with blog writers/readers?

I think a lot of people experience the same problems or hold the same curiosity we do with respect to comments. Comments are often more interesting than the content they are written in response to, but they don’t receive nearly as much attention. We want to highlight some of those comments and comment authors for the thoughts, insights and perspective they share. Attributing comments to their authors and giving them a home where they can be discovered, followed and shared helps.

I think discussions have been fragmenting and moving to services like FriendFeed and Twitter because that’s where people can find, follow and share them. Also, through BackType and several things we’re working on, we want to help bloggers do great things with their blog’s comments and reward them if they have an active community of readers.

Technorati Tags: backtype, blogs, comments

More »

Related Posts

• Canadian Duo Unveils Comment Tool
• Talking to Disqus’ Daniel Ha
• Video Comments: Huh?

Rogers Spinning its iPhone Story

One of the most interesting things about how badly Rogers handled the introduction of the iPhone in Canada is how it was totally mauled from a public relations perspective.

While Rogers was assailed for its ridiculous data plans, the company essentially did nothing to respond. Only when the assault turned into a hailstorm did Rogers finally relent and offer a limited time 6GB plan for $30/month.

Clearly, Rogers has learned its lessons if a story in today’s Globe & Mail is any indication. Entitled “iPhone data usage underwhelms”, the story tells how Rogers has surprisingly discovered that 95% of iPhone users used less than 500MB of data during the first four weeks of usage.

While this may be a fact, it’s also a crafty PR spin because Rogers needs to sell the idea to consumers that since they may use less data than they expect, their data bills won’t be sky high.

This will make it easier for Rogers to kill its $30/6GB plan on Sept. 1. This plan will be replaced Oct. 1 by a $30 plan giving iPhone users 1GB of data. This is - surprise, surprise - significantly more than what 95% of iPhone users are using in data.

Now, that’s spin.

But - and here’s the big but - you’re paying $30 for one-sixth of the data now being offered by Rogers during its limited-time data offer.

If you don’t want the $30/1GB plan, Rogers has a $25 for 500MB plan.

It is also planning to cap data costs at $100/month to provide “the ultimate cost certainty”. Funny how they don’t call it an all-you-can-eat plan, probably because it would be three times more expensive than was AT&T offers in the U.S.

Looks like the Rogers PR machine has been hard at work.

Update: Alec Saunders has a post on how Rogers is charging Blackberry Enterprise customers significantly more than iPhone customers.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, wireless

Related Posts

• Rogers’ Blackberry Customers Should be Upset
• What’s Reasonable for the iPhone, Rogers?
• Rogers Unveils iPhone Pricing

It’s Going to a Wireless Bonanza…Maybe

Back in the heady days of the dot-com boom, Forrester was among the most notorious when it came to issuing bullish forecasts when it came to e-commerce.

It was a great marketing move by because it fed into the frenzy among start-ups, VCs and investors who believed e-commerce was going to destroy their bricks and mortar rivals.
Fast-forward 10 years and the wireless Web, and you have a new Forrester. In this case, it’s eMarketer leading the charge with forecasts that wireless revenue is going to explode over the next five years. Be it mobile entertainment, advertising or gaming , revenue is heading up, up and, baby, away!
Given my recalcitrance about how quickly the wireless world is going evolve from voice to data, you can understand my skepticism about eMarketer’s optimism. It’s like eMarketer sees the wireless market going from zero to 60 in no time at all, which is the same pit that Forrester fell into a decade ago.

It’s not to suggest that one day the entertainment, advertising and gaming markets aren’t going to be huge but I’ll be surprised if they grow as quickly as eMarketer suggests.

Why the negative attitude?

Well, I just don’t believe people are going to be using wireless devices as actively as people think. People will surf the Web, check e-mail and use location-based services but I just can’t see music, gaming and advertising becoming that huge that soon. eMarketer, for example, believes the wireless gaming market will grow from 155 million users to 500 million.

In any event, here’s some eMarketer charts for your viewing pleasure. If you’re among the bulls, I’d be interested in why.

More: In wireless news, Gizmodo is reporting that Apple is working on a tethering plan with AT&T for the iPhone.

Technorati Tags: emarketer, wireless

Related Posts

• Podcast Hype Alive & Well
• It’s Not a Wireless Wonderland Yet
• Why’s Everyone So Ga-Ga over Pod-vertising?

Canadian Duo Unveils Comment Tool

Within the blogosphere, comments are a strange animal.

Comments welcomed by blog writers, they’re often far more interesting and insightful as blog posts, and, of course, they’re a favorite tool of spammers.

The other reality is comments are seen as the ugly cousins to blog posts. Blog posts get top ranking as the stars of the blogosphere while comments play second fiddle, even though many people get as much from comments as the blog posts themselves. (Trackbacks used to be supporting stars but they’ve disappeared)

The question is how do you put the spotlight on comments so you can easily find commenters that you find insightful, funny, controversial, etc.?

The answer may be BackType, a Y Combinator startup created by two Toronto-natives, Chris Golda and Michael Montano. Touted as “Twitter for Comments” by TechCrunch, BackTrack is a tool where you can aggregate and search for comments.

For example, you can put together a list of the people whose comments you want to see, and then check out the blog post they commented on. Or you can search for comments by people, keywords, exact phrases and dates. See the results below for “iPhone” and “Rob Hyndman”.

To me, BackType seems like an interesting service but I haven’t played with it enough to determine if it will have mass appeal. And like its Y Combinator comment cousin, Disqus (and Twitter), it’s difficult to see a business model, although it may be a valuable tool for marketer who want to track social media conversations.

BackType could also be controversial among people who believe that comments are the property of blog owners, and they shouldn’t be scraped so BackTrack can build a business from other peoples’ work.

Nicole Simon has some thoughts about BackType, including her belief that BackTrack’s T&C protects its content more than the comments of the bloggers it’s aggregating. On the other side of the coin, Louis Gray likes BackTrack but not with the same enthusiasm as some other social media services he’s focused on.

For more on Chris Golda and Michael Montano, check out StartupNorth’s interview with them while they attended the mesh conference last May. Golda and Montano’s first startup was an invitation service called iPartee.

Technorati Tags: BackTrack, comments, YCombinator

Related Posts

• Five Questions with…BackType Co-Founder Chris Golda
• The Demise of the Comment
• Has Blogging Peaked?

TechCrunch Redesign A Sign of Things to Come

Big news! TechCrunch has gone through a pretty extensive redesign.

In post, Mark Hendrickson explained that:

“Our overarching goal was to clean things up, both on the surface and under the hood. TechCrunch had become bloated in many ways, with the homepage taking way too long to load and the scroll bar going on forever and ever.”

You heard it here first but what TechCrunch just completed is going to be emulated (copied?) by many of the leading blog sites that have evolved from one-man operations into blog machines/media publishers with a team of writers churning out so much content to point where there are so many posts, it’s nearly impossible to read them. In other words, they’re suffering from a bad case of blog bloat.

Mark my words, you’ll likely see GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, paidContent, Mashable, et al go through similar redesigns in the near future. It’s not just readability driving this exercise but economic pragmatism; the more page views they can encourage, the more real estate there is for advertisers.

Take a look at what TechCrunch is doing by providing excerpts from its new “home page” that provide readers with a taste before encouraging them to “Read Post”. It’s slightly less convenient for the reader but a brilliant move by TechCrunch.

For what it’s worth, this evolution from blog to online newspaper is something I suggested a few months ago. I’m surprised it hasn’t gained more traction already but you can bet your boots that “the redesign” will become a big trend over the next six months.

Here’s the old and the new TechCrunch:

Technorati Tags: blogs, techcrunch

Related Posts

• Time for the Blog Portal?
• Can Google Sell Anything?
• Fold.com: A Sign of Things to Come

What Does Mozilla Do With Its Dough?

I went to a Microsoft event last night, and one of the things we talked about during drinks afterwards was what Mozilla does with all of the money it makes from driving search traffic to Google. The little search box in the upper right-hand side of Firefox is Mozilla’s cash-cow because Google pays Mozilla a referral fee when people use it.

And we’re not talking nickels and dimes. In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation made a $47-million profit on revenue of $66.8-million. That’s a sweet profit margin of 70.3%. (Here’s Mozilla’s 2006 financial statement)

So, what does Mozilla do with all this cash given it’s a non-profit organization in which a major chunk of its development efforts are fueled by the open source community?

The upside for Web users is that Mozilla isn’t sitting on its pile of cash. Instead, it’s got a growing number of interesting and possibly disruptive projects happening. This includes a new one called Ubiquity, a Firefox extension that gives Web users the ability to easily create all kinds of mash-ups.

Who knows whether Ubiquity will become ubiquitous but with more cash than it can apparently spend, Mozilla is becoming the Web’s Mad Scientist, working away on all kinds of new, wonderful and whacky experiments.

For more, check out TechCrunch and VentureBeat. As well, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker wrote an extensive blog post last November that talks about Mozilla’s finances and strategic directions.

More: Here’s a video about Ubiquity from Mozilla’s Aza Raskin.

Even more: Microsoft released IE8 Beta 2 earlier today. After going to a presentation last night, my initial impression is that IE8 is playing catch-up to Firefox, even though IE still has about 70% of the browser market. The most obvious bow to Firefox is IE8’s introduction of add-ons.

Microsoft is also doing some interesting things with privacy, including a way to surf without leaving any tracks called InPrivate. I’m not sure InPrivate will resonate with users but it’s a nice feature if you want to wave the privacy flag.

Putting aside the new features, the more important development is Microsoft’s willingness to focus on innovation as a way to defuse Firefox’s momentum. This can only be a good thing for the Web, Web users and other browser makers if you believe in the idea that healthy competition is a positive thing.

And even more: Mozilla has extended its deal with Google for another three years. In 2006, Google accounted for $57-million, or 85%, of Mozilla’s revenue.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, mozilla

Related Posts

• When’s the Firefox IPO?
• The Mozilla/Firefox Cash Machine
• Mozilla Goes Corp.

Buzz About Data but Voice Still Rules

For all the talk about the iPhone, ringtones, the wireless Web and mobile e-mail, here’s the reality few people want to admit: the vast majority of wireless revenue comes from voice services because the vast majority of wireless subscribers mostly use their devices to talk.

Talking on your cell phone is no where near as sexy as using an iPhone or Blackberry but that’s the reality once you get beyond the hard-core business crowd and the geeks. Carriers are reluctant to admit as much because voice is a non-sexy, lower margin service compared with high-margin, sexy data services.

It’s not that often, for example, that you’ll hear ads from Verizon, AT&T, Rogers or Bell touting their crystal-clear sound quality when making a call. Instead, they’re trying to get you excited about being able to check your e-mail anywhere, anytime or surfing the Web so you can use Google at all hours of the day. It’s business, and the sweet profits are in data, not voice.

Still, the carriers are pounding away on consumers so they can justify the major investments they’ve made in 3G networks. Meanwhile, device makers such as Apple, Research in Motion, Nokia and Samsung are aggressively supporting the data “campaign” by making increasingly sleek and sexy smartphones.

Keep in mind, however, that buying one of these babies isn’t cheap after taking into account you either have to pay through the nose upfront or commit yourself to a long-term contract to reduce your upfront costs to something less than what your monthly mortgage payment might be.

I realize telling a device-loving, leading-edge audience that wireless data isn’t as sexy as cool as they think is probably going to encourage a lot of pushback. But that’s okay.

And it’s not to suggest that wireless data isn’t eventually going to be significantly more popular but right now, it’s not the imminent reality many techies believe.

Perhaps the most honest comment about the real wireless world appeared in a Canadian Press story that quoted IDC analyst Ramon Llamas.

“I look at a lot of Joe and Jane consumers on main street anywhere and a lot of them are pretty content with just a regular cellphone,” Llamas said. “It does what they need it to do and basically that is just to make a phone call.”

Next on this week’s wireless agenda is a hard look at the projections for mobile advertising and entertainment. Part one of this wireless series was yesterday’s look at “sublime” iPod Touch.

Update: BusinessWeek has an interesting story looking at how VoIP is going mobile. While the carriers will probably figure out a way to capitalize on this kind of data flowing over their networks, VoIP is something that likely scares them.

Technorati Tags: blackberry, iPhone, wireless

Related Posts

• Jumping on the Data Bandwagon
• Why is Wireless Service so Expensive?
• Warning: Carriers See 3G as Golden Goose

The iPod Touch is Sublime But…

After pining for an iPod Touch for months, I finally pulled the trigger recently - and now wonder why I waited so long.

In short, the Touch is sublime. It is a wonderfully designed and multi-functional product that probably doesn’t get the attention it deserves because of the obsession with the iPhone. Sure, it doesn’t have a phone or camera but Wi-Fi connectivity and ever-growing bounty of applications makes the Touch an interesting and useful device.

Since getting the Touch a couple of weeks ago, I’ve not only rediscovered my digital music collection but spent a lot of time on iTunes App Store downloading applications (mostly free ones) - everything from travel and food apps (Hotels.com, UrbanSpoon, BlackBook Guides and What the Locals Like) to utilities (Zenbe - a list-making app) and social media services (Wordpress, Twitterific). Using the iTunes store, you can customize the Touch or iPhone to meet your personal or professional interests.

As for why I decided to buy a Touch rather than an iPhone, it came down to economics. Buying the Touch meant a one-time cost while getting an iPhone from Rogers meant locking into a three-year contract that would have cost $1,080 just for data. It wasn’t something I could justify. CBC suggests the three-year contract is the second most expensive in the world.

While I don’t pine for always-on access to the Web, it would be nice if the Touch had a camera and the ability to use VoIP. You could easily see a company such as Belkin make a camera peripheral that would plug into the Touch’s input jack or the dock connector, while VoIP seems like a remote possibility so Apple doesn’t piss of the carriers. (Check out petitinvention what an iPod Touch camera would look like.)

As well, Kevin Purdy makes a strong case for the Touch vs. the iPhone with a post entitled “Forget the iPhone–The iPod Touch is Good Enough”.

Before signing off, this is the first in a series of posts this week about the wireless Web. My thesis is while the iPhone and other smartphones such as the Blackberry Bold are amazing devices, they are not going to have as much of an impact on the mobile economy than most people think.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch

Related Posts

• iPhone Touch Even Sexier Now
• Quick Apple Thoughts
• “Any Day Now”

Buying Quality vs. Buying Crap

Yesterday, I spent far more money than I could ever imagine on a new vacuum cleaner.

The purchase of a German-made Miele came after years of buying $100 at big-box stores that promised “Hurricane Suction” only to lose most of performance after a year or so. So while buying a Miele put a quick end to some recent penny-pinching, it seems to be a solid investment: a quality machine that will hopefully provide years of high performance.

In theory, this should be the goal for people looking to buy consumer electronics. In practice, however, consumers tend to be seduced by cost (the lower, the better) over quality. They buy a crappy product, use it for a short period of time, and then re-buy the same product. It’s a cycle that makes no sense other than being able to economically feed the need to buy something new.

Think about how many times you’ve considered two products, and picked the cheaper one, even though you rationally recognize the more expensive one is going to last longer and provide a better ROI. It’s doesn’t make sense.

Of course, consumer electronics makers are playing consumers for fools. They lure consumers with features most of us will never use while making products that aren’t designed or built to last. Even Maytag has sadly lost its status as a company that makes built-to-last products.

This model works as long as consumers are happy to accept low-cost, low quality products, while companies ferociously market features over quality. It’s a sad but harsh but sad reality.

More: Here’s an interesting article about how to squeeze more printed copies from low-cost printers. For people looking for a way to recycle gadgets, check out Gazelle.com, which will make you an offer on them based on condition and what packaging/accessories you have.

Even more: Jeremy Toeman has really good post looking at “14 Ways to Use Gadgets More Sustainably”. Lots of good words of advice, including “Don’t Need? Don’t Buy!”

Technorati Tags: maytag, miele

Related Posts

• The Disposable Economy Has to Change
• Out With the Old; In With the New!
• Why Consumer Love..and Pay More for Macs