glue
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Great Scott! How Inventive Companies Like GetGlue Build For The Future
Yesterday we looked at the evolution of GetGlue, a service that allows you to "check in" to TV shows, movies, music, and more.
One of the striking things about GetGlue is how it has used cutting edge web technologies (recommendations, Semantic Web) to build a future-proof foundation. And how it has taken advantage of currently hot platforms (like iPhone and iPad), while also targeting future platforms (like Internet TV). In Part 2 of our interview with Alex Iskold, the founder and CEO of GetGlue, we find out how he's steered his company towards the future. We also find out what other trends Alex Iskold is tracking currently.
How GetGlue Taps Into Our Emotions
Sometimes a successful web product takes a while to find its niche. Occasionally it morphs into a different product altogether, along the way. Both things have happened to GetGlue, the service where users "check in" to watching TV shows, reading books, listening to music - indeed, to just about anything.
I caught up with GetGlue founder and CEO Alex Iskold to discuss the evolution of the product since its inception. It's changed from an under-used geeky Firefox browser add-on, to a mainstream service where hundreds of thousands of people check-in to Mad Men and other popular entertainment shows. How has GetGlue made this transition? One word, by getting emotional.
GetGlue.com: Distributed Networking & Recommendations Made Simple & Fun
Once just a browser add-on that allowed users to surf smarter across several verticals, AdaptiveBlue's Glue is now a site-centric product that acts as both a hub and a spoke of the social web.
Glue's synaptic web-esque technology is based on a user's browsing across common sites such as Amazon, Wikipedia and YouTube, and those visits and any interactions (comments, "likes," etc.) feeding back to automatically create a taste profile and a web of affinity with other users and recommendations of other items or content across about a dozen categories, including music, books and movies. So, can this be done without violating users' privacy or - worse yet - frustrating and boring them into attrition?
Glue Gets Stickier With Conversations and Recommendations
AdaptiveBlue, creators of the contextual social network Glue, announced today the immediate availability of an updated version of their semantic browser extension that adds several powerful new features. The updated Glue plugin adds connected conversations, smart recommendations and aggregated top activity lists across the web. These features, integrated discreetly into the overall Glue experience, will allow your friends to become even more involved in your activity and likes than before.
A Guide to The Contextual Web
It's the end of 2008 and everyone on the Web is hurting due to the economy. But we know that things will get better, because slow-downs eventually bury the old and give birth to new evolutionary ways of doing things.
One of these evolutions started quietly in 2008. We are witnessing the rise of a new kind of web: contextual. You might not have heard or thought about it much yet, but you are already using it today. Search remains the killer app on the web, but context is quickly become a viable contender. Why? Because context is what happens instead of search.
Yahoo Search To Offer Abstracts of Search Results, Determine Intent
Next year, Yahoo will introduce new technology to augment their Yahoo Search results: abstracts of key information alongside URLs. Instead of just offering a list of links, Yahoo's search results will include machine-extracted information that is relevant to the URL returned. Sound familiar? The technology is very much like SearchMonkey, except for one thing: this time the technology is being built in-house and not by independent third-party developers.
MBA and Web 2.0 Symbiosis
MBAs got top billing in my latest Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-Up - and there have been some interesting follow-ups. In the comments to yesterday's post, Bud Gibson pointed to "The High Octane Blogging Bootcamp" that his company is doing for MBA students at the University of Michigan, starting this Saturday. More details here. Interestingly, they're using products of ThePortNetwork, who sponsor my Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-Up. I hadn't known about that - it's a small world!
In regards to how MBA students are grokking Web 2.0, Bud made this observation:
"My experience with MBA students is that about 1-5% are really in it to get deeply into the underlying technology or theory. The rest you have to sell on business benefits."
That doesn't surprise me and I think you'll find the same ratio of Techies are deeply interested in business administration! :-) But it's all about bringing Web techies and business folk together, so that each has an appreciation of the other - and we can build partnerships. For MBA and business people, there are opportunities to launch businesses in the Web 2.0 'space'. Likewise for Web techies, we need people with business nous to get our ideas and products off the ground.
So I think Bud's program is a fantastic way to introduce business people to Web 2.0 technologies and I'll be watching with interest to see how it turns out.
Poweryogi (real name please?) also replied to my post - he's the MBA student who is thinking about launching a Web 2.0 venture. In a post today, he said he's a bit pessimistic about how MBAs can "make an impact" on Web 2.0. He wrote about a conversation he had with two other MBA students - "one a McKinsey-bound consultant, and the other a UBS-bound banker." When poweryogi steered the conversation towards Web2.0 and blogs, he noted that the banker "seemed disinterested" and the consultant wanted to know how blogs differed from IM.
I thought poweryogi's last comment was the most revealing: he noted that MBA students have "little time to experiment". That's entirely justified and actually I see no reason why MBA students should experiment. There has to be a business reason behind most things they do, so it's our job as technologists and Web people to show them where the business value is.
Bud Gibson posted a similar comment on poweryogi's blog: "...when you are on the cutting edge, you have a lot of selling to do". Exactly and in fact that's part of my job(s). Just recently I was complimented by someone in my day job on my "translation skills" - meaning from Geek to Business and vice versa! That's kind of what I do here on Read/Write Web too.
Poweryogi is one of those 1-5% MBA people I think, so hopefully he continues to explore Web 2.0 and helps explain the business value to his classmates. And who knows, maybe one day I'll be approaching him to lend me some venture capital ;-)
If had to use one word to explain how I see the relationship between Technologists and Businesspeople, it's symbiosis. We're two different species and each group has its own specialities. But together we can develop a relationship of mutual benefit.
ahhhh, what a nice way to end a post - with a biological metaphor!
Web 2.0 Weekly Wrap-up, 2-8 May 2005
This week: business folk getting interested in Web 2.0, Adam Curry podcasting from 2.0 perspective, cool Web 2.0 'mini-apps', wrap-up of the adverts in RSS debate, Bosworth's Web of Data.
From MBA to Master of Web 2.0?
I get accused of being too geeky sometimes on Read/Write Web (no argument there!). So I'm on the hunt for more business-related Web 2.0 stories. I do believe that Web 2.0 is starting to permeate into mainstream business culture - perhaps from the bottom up, i.e. from business schools. For example this MBA student is looking "to mesh the classroom teaching of proven theories with the rapidly evolving wild west of what's being referred to as Web 2.0." He or she (no real name provided, so I couldn't tell) goes on to say:
"I would like to explore areas that interest me, and are not really stuff that schools care to touch, such as the Long Tail, Corporate blogging vis-a-vis developing relationships with customers, printing-on-demand technologies, Wikis, etcetera while also trying to build a business from scratch."
That's encouraging to hear and I wish that MBA student the best of luck.
Of course the other way business folk can be introduced to Web 2.0 is to use the tools. For example Boris Mann recently talked about weblogs and wikis to a local MBA class.
Curry Podcasting: Implications for Web as Platform
News this week that Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. is launching a podcasting show, to be hosted by ex-MTV star Adam Curry. It'll be a four-hour weekday show, featuring a selection of amateur podcasts handpicked by Curry.
Although it could be argued this is more about broadcasting than podcasting, given Curry's background with MTV, I think this has huge implications for Web 2.0. It's a chance for enthusiastic podcasters to get their material heard by a much wider audience. Indeed it's not far-fetched to suggest that a small percentage of talented podcasters will bootstrap their way to their own professional radio/podcasting shows - perhaps even becoming stars.
I'm sure Curry will unearth some real podcasting gems, over time. Although I suggested he may be the Casey Kasem of Podcasting in my ionrss.com piece, it's probably fairer to say he could be the John Peel of Podcasting. Peel was a music-lover who discovered and recorded some amazing new bands, who probably wouldn't have made it but for Peel. There's an opportunity for Curry to do the same for Podcasters all over the Web.
Cool Web 2.0 Mini Apps and Services
I'm doing my best to avoid writing about The Big 3 Internet companies this week, so to extend that theme I thought I'd list out some neat new Web 2.0 things developed by individuals or small companies. Here are some I discovered this week:
- RSS Mix: a feed remixer
- Foundcity: "allows everyone in a city to map the
interesting things they discover throughout the day to a dynamic online map"
- Adactio: uses APIs to collect scattered
pieces of Web content into one place (see my review here)
- Backpack: amongst other things, transforms
emails into functional web pages. Got a lot of blog buzz this week, including from me.
- airWRX: a content-creation workspace
that runs from a USB flash drive
- hReview:
an open standard for reviews (see Phil Pearson's
implementation at the NZ Coffee Review site).
Feel free to email me (see my site's menu) if you have a new Web 2.0 app or service you want me to take a look at.
Ads in RSS Round-Up
I've been covering this issue on ION RSS. In terms of the Web as platform, I concluded that RSS is essentially equal to HTML as a publishing format. That is, RSS is a first-class citizen of Web publishing. People can and will put anything they want into an RSS feed, just as they do with webpages.
But, as always, each 'end-user' will decide for him or herself whether ads in feeds are acceptable. It's easy to unsubscribe from feeds and that's part of the beauty of Web 2.0 - users have control over their Web experience.
Techie Time: Bosworth's Web of Data
Adam Bosworth recently gave a speech to the MySQL Users Conference 2005. Bosworth is a former Microsoft web wizard, but nowadays he casts his RESTian spells as a Google employee. He's known for his evangelism of simplicity and 'sloppiness' in designing for the Web. For example, here's his view of RSS:
"Bosworth predicts that RSS 2.0 and Atom will be the lingua franca that will be used to consume all data from everywhere. These are simple formats that are sloppily extensible. Anyone who wants to can use these formats to consume content or to author content."
For a design and business-oriented take on the 'Web of Data' theme, check out Web 2.0 for Designers, the Digital Web Magazine article that Joshua Porter and I wrote. If you're geekily inclined, I also recommend you check out Bill de hÓra's and Dare Obasanjo's posts in response to Bosworth's speech. Also David Megginson has a very techie post on this theme.
Summary
That's a wrap for another week! Hey, I should make that my catch phrase... I hope you're still enjoying these posts and as always, I value any feedback. Feel free to email or leave a comment.
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