Tim Howell’s Weblog

Avenue A | Razorfish has released their 2007 Digital Outlook report which “examines trends in the way consumers, publishers, and advertisers employ digital media to have a conversation with each other. In the 2007 edition, we examine issues such as how to measure the value of new media, and what’s on the minds of today’s “digital class” - the 18-to-24-year-olds who shape tomorrow’s consumer experience.”

There’s also an accompanying podcast. Very useful and nicely presented if this kind of information is of interest.

The Venice Project is the next venture from Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, serial entrepreneurs and founders of Kazaa and Skype. The Venice Project, as it’s known, is a venture for distributing TV and other types of video over the Web, with the intention of disrupting media in a similar way to how Skype disrupted the telco space.

More coverage is available at GigaOm, amongst others, but I’ve just received my beta invite and will be trying it out soon. Let me know if you want an invite when they become available.

With the relatively recent release of Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth, most of us were impressed by the way in which all this mapping information was made available to everyday users, using everyday technology. Like any new platform, though, the real challenge for Google and MSN is how to use this valuable data to drive usage of their other products and services, in particular advertising. Putting together these pieces of the puzzle isn’t terribly challenging, as proximity and location become additional inputs for finding what you want.

What is really interesting is how these providers are letting others add value to their data, as described here by Business 2.0. The list here isn’t at all exhaustive, but it’s another great example of how the web is connecting different applications and ideas, and how innovative companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and eBay are using their respective platforms to drive innovation. Sure, these companies benefit both directly and indirectly from this activity, however this type of thinking has to help us all, and may result in spin-off ideas and companies. Think about the Amazon affiliate program, and eBay’s storefronts.

Google is about to release spreadsheet application a web-based spreadsheeting application that allows users to work on, and collaborate within, online spreadsheet data. Importantly, it’s also supposed to allow both importing and exporting of XLS and CSV files.

As with the Google’s acquisition of Writely, an AJAX-based word processor, there will inevitably be commentary about the likelihood of Google competing with Microsoft and its Office suite. For many users, the capabilities offered by these applications will address many of their basic needs, particularly home users and SME users who only have rudimentary requirements.

The enterprise market is a different challenge, and these kinds of applications are unlikely to – immediately, at least – gain traction, as the capabilities of these tools will be limited when compared to the full Office suite, and users simply don’t have the time to reformat and tinker with documents to ensure they work with both types of product. Nor do these applications work effectively with each other as yet.

That said, Google doesn’t need to target this market just yet – using this product, combined with Writely (or whatever it will be called) and Gmail/Calendar create a suite suiting many users, the Google advertising model will drive further revenue, and the FUD it sends at an embattled Microsoft are all inevitable outcomes.

It will also be interesting to see how these applications evolve, with the online capabilities leading to potential collaboration and inter-product integration opportunities (e.g. embedding spreadsheet data within word processing documents and integrating these products with other Google platforms such as Gtalk).

UPDATED: Having received an invite, I’ve been able to try out Google Spreadsheets. Overall the application works reasonably well. There are a number of limitations, such as no filtering, no print capability (although you can export to HTML and print from there) and no graphing functions, but these may come as it is still an early and limited beta. There are still a few niggles, and the importing and exporting of data isn’t perfect, but for occasional users who need something for basic list management and calculations, it may do the job.

Some forms of data are finally becoming a commodity, although it sometimes takes a while for the data to be made available in New Zealand. Now Google has made available street level maps of New Zealand which is useful for a couple of reasons: it further commoditises this form of data in this country, and the supporting APIs – and mashup hype overseas – now become applicable for New Zealand.

Zoomin, a Wellington-based mapping startup which has a local lead in this area, has responded in the only way they could, by saying this is a positive move for the industry. For the moment the Zoomin community is a differentiator, however it will really need to build on this, and form additional partnerships, to maintain its momentum. Things may even get more competitive within the next 12 months as it’s likely MSN will also compete in this area locally.

Much has been written about Web 2.0, mashups and how there are a whole slew of opportunities made available using technologies that facilitate accessing and combining data from multiple sources.

No doubt there are new opportunities, but any entrepreneur needs to be wary about what influence they have over data for which they may become totally dependent. Typically, a third party - particularly an unknown one - will have virtually no influence over this data.

And not only may they become dependent on the availability of this data, but also its quality. If the data sources aren’t accurate, the integrity of the service suffers. And if more than one service is inaccurate, then the problem is compounded exponentially. Nicholas Carr recently discussed data accuracy and its importance in a recent posting.

The value of any of these services is ultimately derived from the raw data that is provided by the core services. Mashups, while innovative, should not get recognized for being anything more than what they are: aggregators and re-publishers of base data over which they have limited control. Any attention (or valuation) these companies receive surely must recognize these dependencies and risks, not to mention the likelihood of what they’re doing to be copied.

No doubt it’s an exciting area, but whether there’s a business model outside of advertising revenue remains to be seen.

With the release of version 1.0 of Google Desktop, the activity in this space has calmed in recent weeks, however a recent Washington Post round-up of desktop tools created a bit of a stir.

In the article, the writer stated: “These programs also shouldn’t exist: Their capabilities should be built into the operating system, something both Microsoft and Apple are working on.”

Several watchers agreed with the assessment, believing this is core functionality which should be part of the operating system. While I can see where they’re coming from, I also believe that regardless of what Microsoft or Apple, or whoever else, may do, there is always room for innovation.

While it’s inevitable improved search capabilities will appear, the existing desktop search companies will hopefully be able to add value around the fringes, by either incrementally improving the search capabilities, or presenting search results in different ways.

With the ever expanding web, and the significant growth of personal hard drives and corporate stores, there is significant opportunity to search, retrieve and present information in new ways. Afterall, we’re no longer going to be dealing with tens, or hundreds or thousands of documents – in the years to come we’ll be dealing in the millions, billions and trillions, if we’re not already there…

It’s an oldie but a goodie: “knowledge is power.” Google’s recent purchase of Urchin, a web analytics company, didn’t create much of a stir, but looking further down the track there are some definitive short- and long-term benefits for such a union.

They all relate to the usage of the web, and in the context of Google, being able to profile what web site visitors are doing, and then relating that back to the site’s web advertising dollars. This information can then be used to determine what marketing initiatives generate the most activity, and then which activities generate the most sales. For Google, most of what they do is about monetising their search technology thorugh the sale of contextual advertising, and the purchase of Urchin helps to justify AdWords AdSpend.

According to Reuters, earlier this week Google overtook eBay as the biggest Internet company in terms of stock market value after posting strong quarterly earnings. The share price surge resulted in an overall valuation of $56 billion, which was more than eBay’s $52 billion valuation at the time.

Whether this will continue to be the case over the long term is difficult to pick, but eBay has had its challenges recently; after not meeting its financial goals the share price got chopped by 20%, no doubt assisting Google’s valuation catch-up play.

The Business 2.0 blog even went so far as comparing the rise of Internet companies such as eBay with Metcalfe’s Law (where the utility of a network equals the square of the number of users), and wondering whether the fate of these companies would be predicated on the ongoing growth of Internet usage.

In the past couple of years, it appears that all of a sudden the promise of the web has started to be realised. I’ve always been a believer in “interconnectedness” and that there is huge opportunities for devices, web sites, organisations and just about everything with an IP address to be connected in some way shape or form. Convergence forms part of this, with the melding, for example, of phone and PDA functions in a PDA, or television delivered over IP. The web inevitably has a role to play, and it was exciting to read about A9’s “Yellow Pages” which extends Amazon’s A9 search engine with a pseudo Yellow Pages with images – you can effectively “walk down” streets and look at shop frontages for several large US cities.

What’s also interesting is how the service was technically achieved, as reported by Business 2.0: “In short, Manber and co. (urged on by Jeff Bezos, who Manber says was “very involved”) strapped GPS-enabled digital video camera-cum-terabyte server rigs to the top of a bunch of SUVs, then drove them around the commercial areas of major US metropolitan areas, recording what then became composite still pictures of entire cities, one address at a time. A9 took more than 20 million images of 14 million+ businesses across ten cities (more are coming soon), then created a local search application they call Block View.”