Content Matters

The One Thing Missing From the Apple Watch Launch

The Apple Watch launch event was a spectacle. Thousands of journalists and industry luminaries lined up for entry into the auditorium, giving it almost a red carpet feel (though without the silly "who are you wearing?" questions). Once inside, the crowd hung on every word, with even journalists applauding each new announcement (something I don't believe they teach at J-school). 

The crowd oohed and aahed at each new device - ooh a gold MacBook, a pretty aluminum Apple  Watch and, ultimately, the gold Edition Watch.

 

But for me, one thing was missing. Compelling User Stories. How were these Apple Watches going to solve real problems or drive new behaviors.

 

"That's unfair" was the retort of the fan boys and girls. "When the iPhone launched, no one knew what it would be used for" was a common refrain.

 

But that's not quite true. The iPhone promised a computer in your pocket, with full Internet access wherever you went. And it offered features we had become accustomed to in other devices - an iPod, a phone, a GPS (the camera came later).

 

"What about the iPad?" was another common refrain. Well, the iPad added some core functionality - a larger screen for surfing or reading, but not a lot more. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the iPad model is that it relies heavily on 3rd party app developers to drive innovative functionality. And, to be frank, as an early adopter, I haven't seen a lot of innovation from those developers. 

 

One of the first innovative products for the iPad was the News Corp tablet-based newspaper, The Daily. The Daily, leveraging all the capabilities of the iPad, held the promise for immersive, innovative advertising. But most of the ads were simply boring. It turns out that ad agencies were ill-equipped to create immersive experiences what they were good at were creating static display ads and video ads for television. So, that's mostly what we got in The Daily. 

 

Fast-forward nearly five years and we see that the big challenge for the iPad is that upgrade cycles are long. Since app developers are not pushing the limits of the hardware, the version you bought 3 years ago is still just fine for the primarily tasks of reading and browsing. My iPad 3 does everything I need. And my wife only recently upgraded from her first gen iPad, only because Apple wouldn't allow that version to upgrade to the latest version of iOS. The app ecosystem around the iPad remains largely focused on reading apps, along with more expansive views of phone apps (calendar, mail, social media). App developers have failed the test of driving new use cases that Apple had not imagined.

 

Which brings me back to the Apple Watch. In the demos, the greatest benefit that Apple shared was "YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR POCKET!!!"

 

OK. There's some value in that. If you get frequent notifications, you might find value in glancing at your wrist, rather than reaching into a pocket or purse. Then again, I shut off most notifications as I don't want constant interruptions for low priorities.  For high priority alerts I am fine reaching into my pocket.

 

It seems to me that Apple has not identified any really compelling use cases for wrist-based access. And the assumption that developers in the Apple ecosystem will identify those must-buy concepts seems a big risk to the model. I'm sure there will interesting uses. I think a voice recorder could be very practical, though I am glad there's no camera. But that alone is unlikely to drive adoption.

 

I've always felt that the wrist was not the most obvious place for a mobile device. The reason why Dick Tracy had a wristwatch phone was that, at the time, a watch was the only "device" most people carried (Maxwell Smart's shoe phone came later). No one at the time envisioned us all carrying a powerful computer in our pocket.

 

Wearables have the potential to impact the way that we work. I'm not sure that a wrist-based disruption device is the answer. Small screens have limited use cases, other than for quick alerts. I think there's more potential for an in-ear device ("smart earbuds") that can provide more useful information. And, perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised by innovative apps that emerge, but I'm a skeptic for now.

Can Klout Become a Verb?

OK, grammatically, that's not going to happen, but can Klout become the generic term to be used for measuring online influence, much in the way that Google has become a verb meaning to search.

Quantifying online influence, and, more specifically, social media influence, has become a hot area. There are a number of companies in the space, including Twitalyzer and Twitter Grader but the one that's getting the most attention right now is Klout.

Klout attempts to measure online influence using 35 attributes across both Facebook and Twitter. They generate an overall score, along with individual measurements for Reach and Amplification.

Klout has gained more, ummm, clout, recently. This widely linked to WSJ article, focused on how the Canadian government and cabinet minister Tony Clement, in particular, references his Klout score:

During the past two weeks, his Klout score — a measure of Twitter influence — has shot up 10 points to around 72, only a few points behind Sarah Palin.

And yesterday, Klout introduced a new feature, designed to integrate it into users' workflow. The Chrome browser extension for Klout automatically displays a user's klout score next to their name. It's particularly useful when looking at Twitter lists, where you may not know everyone on the list as well as you might those you follow directly.

Klout seems well-positioned to be the dominant player in measuring social influence. They were smart in keeping their brand generic, rather than a platform-specific name like Twitalyzer. Now, with the Chrome extension, they can begin to insert themselves into the every day workflow of users. And with a little luck it won't be too long before we hear people asking "did you check their Klout?" when doing research on someone.

You can install the Klout Chrome extension here (if you're using Chrome, of course). Or simply check your Klout score or follow Klout at @klout.

StockTwits Launches Desktop App

The public beta of StockTwits Desktop was released earlier today. In doing so, StockTwits has staked out some pretty interesting territory.

When StockTwits was initially launched last year, it was simply aggregating tweets by ticker symbol. During the past year, StockTwits has developed a robust community of more than 75,000 active traders, and wth the launch of StockTwits desktop, they've cut the umbilical cord to Twitter.

At first glance, the new StockTwits desktop resembles TweetDeck (no surprise, since StockTwits co-founder Howard Lindzon is a TweetDeck investor). But rather than simply a fancy Twitter client, StockTwits Desktop is an extensible desktop application that allows users to pull in Twitter feeds, RSS feeds and custom feeds of news, charts and more. When you post on StockTwits Desktop you can choose to tweet to both Twitter and the StockTwits desktop, or just to the desktop. There's also a channel to access StockTwits TV. StockTwits Desktop has support for Groups, though there are only a handful of groups right now.

StockTwits Desktop uses a tab interface to help you manage all the streams of information. Barry Ritholtz describes it as a “social Bloomberg” meets an iTunes Music Store for finance. There are numerous well-thought-out features, such as the ability to click a link and automatically launch a browser within a new tab of this Adobe Air app.

On initial release, StockTwits Desktop is a robust application, bringing together the best of community and RSS reading, but that's just the start. StockTwits Desktop has been designed to support permissioning for premium content streams. The StockTwits vision is for StockTwits Desktop to become an "unbundled Bloomberg" for active investors. While StockTwits Desktop is not going to push Bloomberg off institutional desktops, with the right content streams, an a-la-carte approach could be compelling for individual traders who are not in position to spend $1,500 per month for a Bloomberg.

In the coming years, I expect a number of providers to carve out vertical market niches around Twitter. StockTwits has taken bold steps with a foothold in the financial information space. And with the new StockTwits Desktop, it has given itself the flexibility to move beyond Twitter.

The StockTwits Desktop is available for download.

Five Thirty Eight Emerges as the Leading Aggregator of Poll Data

What brands do you think of when you think about political polls? For most people, the names Gallup, Mason-Dixon, Rasmussen, Pew and ,perhaps, Zogby come to mind. Smart analysts and political junkies are quickly adding the name Silver to that list.

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, a website that aggregates poll results and presents a consolidated view to users. But 538 goes beyond simple aggregation. The site analyzes the past results of each of the pollsters and scores them according to their bias. Every poll will have a bias - what Silver refers to as Pollster-Introduced Error (or PIE). PIE focuses on the errors introduced by the methodology of the pollster, as opposed to those purely a result of the statistical sample size.  Some lean a bit left and others a bit right. One key to understanding differences in poll results is to understand the bias
of each of the polls.

In developing their aggregated forecast, Five Thirty Eight assigns each poll a weighting based upon the pollster's historical track record, the sample size of the poll and the recency of the poll. They apply other statistical techniques to reduce the impact of outliers and refreshes polls that may be dated. Then, using all of this analysis, they run 10,000 simulations to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes.

So, how well does all that number crunching work? In the presidential race, Five Thirty Eight's final pre-election day projection was that Barack Obama would win 52.3% of the popular vote, while John McCain would take 46.2%. The final tally: Obama 52.6%, McCain 46.1%. The only state that 538 called incorrectly was Indiana, where they projected McCain to win a highly competitive race; Obama, in the end, won Indiana by nine-tenths of a percent (49.9 to 49.0%).

Where does Nate Silver get his insights into political polling? Is he a Gallup veteran? Has he been toiling behind the scenes at Congressional Quarterly? Hardly. Prior to launching FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver was a writer and analyst at Baseball Prospectus.com, which does similar statistical analysis to project likely statistics for baseball players. In other words, he's just a stats geek.

There are other poll aggregators on the web, such as pollster.com and realclearpolitics.com. But while each does a good job, over the past few months as I closely followed the presidential election as well as various Senate and House races, I found myself turning to FiveThirtyEight for trustworthy data and analysis. And I wasn't the only one. As we moved into November, FiveThirtyEight was among the top 2,000 visited sites according to Alexa. In addition to great data, FiveThirtyEight prides itself on its transparency and provides a detailed breakdown of the six-step process that serves as the basis of their methodology.

As content becomes commoditized, its increasingly difficult for aggregators to differentiate their offering. Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.com are a great example of how to add significant value to commodity data through analytics and a great user interface. FiveThirtyEight also exemplifies how new media builds on the efforts of the traditional media. The underlying data for their analyses comes from those traditional pollsters mentioned in the opening paragraph of this post.

As we move on from the 2008 elections it will be interesting to see what five thirty eight does to keep their site relevant. Or, perhaps Nate (and his colleague Sean) will move on to another venue. Perhaps they'll shift their statistical models to looking at the financial markets or into determining the potential future movement of energy costs. But in the meantime, 538 is not yet done with 2008. They are still analyzing the results of contested Senate races in Alaska, Minnesota and Georgia and have already begun to handicap the races for the 2010 open Senate seats.

UPDATE: The New York Times did a nice profile piece today on Nate Silver and 538.

SIIA Previews - Grading the Pitches

One of the sidebar conversations I had at the SIIA Previews Day was around the idea of having the audience vote for the best presentations.

While I don't know if that will come to fruition, I thought that I'd take a moment to share my votes.  The ten presentations spanned a wide range of business models and industries. 

I think that the two most compelling presentations were by Daphne Kwon of ExpoTV and Michael Breyer of Courtroom Connect. 

ExpoTV offers user-generated product review videos.  Its business model is based largely around lead generation and they have done a solid job building a strong community of enthusiasts. 

Courtroom Connect delivers real-time broadcasts of trials and hearings from more than 50 courthouses.  They are well-positioned to serve law firms, hedge funds and other markets by providing access to information that would not be accessible to most.

Another company which I gave consideration to was TutorVista.com, whose outsourced tutoring model is a game changer in the tutoring and test prep space.  Of all the presentations, I think TutorVista has the greatest opportunity to hit a home run.  However, as more of a platform/education company, I thought they were less relevant from a pure content/technology perspective.

Let's take a look a year from now to see how these three companies have grown. 

FriendFeed Aggregates Social Network Activity

In Facebook, all of the action happens in the feed and mini feed.  The mini feed shows a user their activity, while the feed provides a view of the activity of their friends.  However, not all online activity occurs within Facebook, so this view is, by definition, limiting.

A new entrant, FriendFeed, is making an effort to address this by delivering a comprehensive feed that encompasses multiple platforms.  With FriendFeed, your feed includes your Twitters, music you’ve  listened to on Last.fm, pictures you’ve posted to flickr, changes to your LinkedIn profile, videos  favorited on YouTube, updates to various Facebook apps and many more (23 services in all).

FriendFeed raises the question of whether there is a need for platforms like Facebook, or whether the  Internet itself is the platform.  In essence, it’s another part of the same argument in support of an open social graph and not for walled gardens.

FriendFeed, which is in early beta (by invitation only), is a startup from four Google alum, including Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, who built Google Maps.  This feed mashup is very compelling.  Of course, it’s only as useful as your network, so my friend feed is at http://friendfeed.com/graubart.  Feel free to friend me there or subscribe to my feed.

Mahalo: Search with a Human Twist

There’s little doubt that search has improved over the past ten years.  The jump from Alta Vista to Google in the late 90’s represented a seismic improvement.  Yet, in recent years, the rate of improvement has slowed and with spam sites, affiliate marketing and improved SEO, you could make a strong argument that the quality of search has declined.

Many are awaiting the semantic web as the next major shift in search.  But while semantic search holds promise, today its deployment remains limited to niche applications.  Having worked with semantic technologies for years, I believe that they are many years away impacting mainstream use.

Jason Calacanis has released an alpha version of Mahalo, a new search engine designed to bridge the gap.  Mahalo is a search engine that combines the best of search, user-generated content and old-fashioned editing.  To bootstrap Mahalo, the first 10,000 search terms are being hand-written by guides.  Mahalo result pages look more like a wiki than a Google search engine results page.  These landing pages are designed to help you navigate content, rather than just listing the pages that scored the highest.  Like wikipedia, search terms with multiple meanings are presented with options to help the user disambiguate the results.  Mahalo adds social software capabilities to the mix.  Users can comment on each page and Mahalo also offers a Digg-like “Top 7 bookmark” feature. 

Whether or not Mahalo ultimately succeeds, the human-assist model makes a lot of sense.  Tagging providers, like ClearForest, found much of their value came in combining human judgment with technology.

Using guides to build results pages is not a new concept; it was the basis of some of the earliest web search applications such as LookSmart.  The challenge of this model is to build the pages on a cost-effective basis.  Only time will tell if Mahalo can achieve that for the broad set of topics and search terms required for a general search engine.  But for content providers with strong presence in niche markets, the Mahalo model could be a compelling one.  While a general search engine will need to define results for hundreds of thousands of terms, within a vertical market, you may cover all the common searches with a fraction of that.  I have long argued that vertical search is a great fit for content companies, who typically understand niche markets and have editorial skills which can be used to gather and organize information.

Internet search, driven by semantic analysis may be the holy grail of information retrieval.  In the meantime, human-assisted search may provide a compelling user experience.

UPDATE: To accelerate Mahalo's expansion, Jason has created the Mahalo Greenhouse, which allows users to get paid for development of new terms.  Further details are available on Jason's blog.  SearchEngineLand adds their thoughts, including whether or not Mahalo is comparable to Seth Godin's Squidoo (along with Jason's compelling retort in the comments).

Farecast Brings Predictive Analytics to Air Travel

 Startup Farecast has announced the release of Fare Guard, a predictive analytics tool that allows consumers to hedge against airfare price changes.

Farecast was launched out of research by text-mining guru Oren Etzioni and students at the University of Washington.  The system is built on a data warehouse that stores flight pricing for flights on all airlines between more than 75 airports.  In total, they have collected more than 150 billion data points.

A user searches for flights and Farecast will provide it with its prediction for that fare (whether it's likely to go up or down by a specific amount) and a confidence score.  The application graphically displays a 90-day history for that fare, along with a recommendation of whether to buy or wait.

Now, Farecast has added a new feature, putting its money where its predictions are.  Farecast will allow users to purchase a "Fare Guard", a hedge for fares that it predicts to either drop or remain steady for the coming 7 days.  If the fares increase during that period and you book your flight at the higher rate, you can submit your Fare Guard for the difference in price.

Though heavily used in CRM to identify cross-selling opportunities (and, of course, in the intelligence community), predictive analytics still has yet to become a mainstream application.  Publishers and aggregators who capture transactional data may find predictive analytics and data mining capabilities can dramatically increase their value proposition.

Swivel: YouTube for Data

Swivel launched earlier this week, positioning itself as "YouTube for Data".
Swivel is an open site that allows users to post any type of data, then run various cross-tabulations and statistical analyses to be shared with the overall community.

Swivel makes it easy to instantly create charts and graphs that mash up disparate data series.  For example, here's one that was posted that shows the (inverse) correlation between wine consumption and crime in the U.S.  Is it statistically significant?  Probably not, but I'll pour myself an extra glass of zin at dinner tonight just in case.

Swivel has a community-oriented freemium business model.  You can upload any data that you'd like for free, as long as you make it accessible to other users.  They will soon launch a professional (paid) version where your data will be secure and private.  The data sets can be tagged, making it easier to find what you're looking for.  Users can also rate and make comments on the various charts created, so you can view the highest rated or most commented on graphs.

Will Swivel be the next YouTube?  Their audience is obviously more narrowly focused.  After all, anyone can enjoy watching a guy in a Santa suit fall off the garage roof onto his truck, but only data geeks will get kicks from mashing up time series data.  So, while I'd consider them more of a playground for stats junkies, the YouTube for Data comparison is probably better for their valuation (I'm sure VCs are getting inundated with business plans from companies calling themselves "YouTube for X").  As of now, they've only got about 1,150 data sets up there, but that number is sure to grow.

What's the impact for publishers?
Database and information publishers are great at showing the micro-level, but often ignore the macro-level data that can be compiled from their data.  If you're tracking revenues, budgets, number of employees, product prices, weather, exports or any other quantitative data, you can probably create some interesting analyses.  These cross-tabulations are great press release fodder; by giving your users access to the Swivel platform, they'll create their own unique content.  Many publisher's instincts will be to keep their data private so they control the analysis.  But the smart publishers will open their content up to the community and see the creative reports generated by users.

For more on Swivel, take a look at posts by TechCrunch and Open...

MyBlogLog Puts the Community in Blogging

MyBlogLog launched a set of analytics tools about a year ago to help bloggers track activity on their blog.  You may have noticed text such as "nth most popular outgoing link" pop up when you mouse over a link on Content Matters.  That's MyBlogLog at work.  It gives bloggers a better sense of what their readers are reading, where they're coming from and what external links they click on.

Last month, the team at MyBlogLog took that one large step further, adding a community aspect to blogs.  On the left pane of Content Matters, you'll see a new section, Content Matters Community, including photos and screen names of the five most recent visitors to the site.

Readers are encouraged to "join" the community for the blogs which they read.  These communities then can be used to generate recommendations for other communities to join (blogs to read).  Even cooler, MyBlogLog can automatically set you to "join" a community after you've visited that blog X times (default is 10).  In much the same way that last.fm can introduce you to music that you may like, MyBlogLog can introduce you to new blog content which is of interest to others in your community.

To learn more, take a moment to set up a free MyBlogLog account and join the Content Matters community.

What's the impact for publishers?
Trade magazine publishers and other content providers who dominate vertical markets should be looking for ways to create a community. There are many ways to increase user interaction; simply having your readers faces appear on your blog can be an easy, yet appealing piece of the community experience.  You might showcase community members elsewhere on your site, or even use them as a sounding board for editorial and features.

Eric Marcoullier, Todd Sampson and their team have created an interesting environment catering to the blog community.  Right now, it's fairly bare-bones, but it will be interesting to see where users take these communities.

In the meantime, I'd encourage you to sign up and begin to play.

Some of the notable blogs which have adopted MyBlogLog Communities already include:

Fred Wilson's A VC
Brad Feld's Feld Thoughts
Ben Barren's RSS'ing Down Under
Steve Rubel's MicroPersuasion
Valleywag
and hundreds more