It is Not the Critic Who Counts...

ChaCha recently announced that we closed an additional $10 million in funding and we also started a pilot of a new service that will be launching nationally in January (we are in stealth mode on that now but expect details in early January time frame - hint: What if you could ask anything in natural language and get the answer anywhere at anytime?).

A behavior pattern I find intriguing is that of the naysayers and detractors, who really don't understand our business, coming up with all their many profound reasons that ChaCha is doomed each time we announce another positive milestone has been completed. As I see those who muse wittily (at least they try to be witty) about ChaCha's shortcomings, I can't help but wonder why anyone would feel compelled to be so negative. Then, after wondering for about two minutes, I realize that it is only natural for those who aren't truly informed of where we are headed to misunderstand our business. Additionally, the mere potential of ChaCha and the attention and involvement we have gained from visionaries such as Jeff Bezos and Morton Meyerson can prompt people to feel threatened by the possibility that we could actually become a disruptive force that gains massive global traction. In the latter case, the motives of those who are intent upon knocking ChaCha and others seem to be generated by a possible combination of envy and a conflicted circumstance where, say, you are good buddies with someone who perceives their business to be competitive with ChaCha (even though it really isn't). But what's the point in guessing why the mad bloggers and negativity generators are so darn mad? Well there probably is no point so I will not make any further attempts.

In any event, the amount of weight I place on the brilliant assessments by the usual critics is minimal due to the many cases where the critiques in question are, well... bad critiques that are poorly written as they are void of substance, depth, or any true current basis to support their claims directly (For example, how can you keep pointing to an example from a year ago where a user purposely created a bad experience because the negativity propagator induced that user to go purposely game the system? Just a thought, but perhaps your efforts could be more productively applied in a different pattern). The following random items are worthy of consideration as we consider the relative weight that should be placed on those who just love to criticize...

1) AMAZON DOT BOMB - In early 2001 many brilliant prognosticators of the blogosphere were trumpeting the almost certain demise of Amazon.com. Yeah, they had just terminated more than 1,000 employees so there was some cause for concern. But the main point is that this disruptive retail giant is now trading at record levels and it is clear that Jeff Bezos had a great plan and strategy in place for unleashing a disruptive force on the retail world unlike anything shopping has ever seen. The first time I met Jeff was actually at a Retail Systems conference in Chicago circa 2003 when Amazon had recovered and he actually put the "Amazon dot bomb" headline on the screen during his presentation and commented that his "mom did not care much for this headline". Jeff now has several billion reasons he can point to that prove he was right and the critics were, well... pontificating to get people to read their negative propaganda without any true basis for pumping so much negativity out there about Jeff and Amazon in general. I tend to side heavily with the innovator over the naysayer - and, of course, the innovator tends to create much more value.

2) Theodore Roosevelt - So you are thinking "What!? Why in the world are you thinking about Teddy Roosevelt at a time like this, Brad?" Well, this ties back to the heading of this post. It's Not the Critic Who Counts. Which is an excerpt from one of the more powerful quotes out there when considered in the context of modern media and the negativity that eminates from many (often quite popular) journalists and bloggers. The quote in its entirety is:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

I welcome all feedback that is constructive coming from those who actually take their time to truly understand a new, startup business that dares to try something different that can truly transform the way people live everyday. However, my patience and respect for those who find it appropriate to knock startups without any solid, relevant, current data to support their claims is negligible. Especially when the person doling out the criticism is someone who is or has been an entrepreneur. As a graduate of Indiana University during the Bob Knight era, I heard a few good quotes for the critics that I won't mention here but those of you who are sports fans know what I am referring to...

Now you know my view - What are your views on the "brilliant" bashers out there?

Google Announces (are you ready?) GPhone is a Media Fabrication

Aided by creative media types, Google has officially claimed the post (from itself - although Apple is a close second) of the most amazing hype generator in the history of the world. For months, everyone from Wall Street professionals to kindergartners have been anticipating Google's answer to the iPhone - what the media has reffered to as the almighty GPhone.

Finally, on November 6, 2007 the big announcement was here. Like kids on Christmas we all ran to open our news feeds to see the bright, shiny phone of our dreams. Anticipation was building as we scrolled through the various headlines to find what we had all been waiting for...

And there it was - "Google has officially announced that is is launching (drum roll please)............

AN OPEN SOURCE PROJECT!"

So now it is known. Google's much-anticipated GPhone is actually an open source operating system project meant to make it much easier for Google (and other developers) to get all of its applications that work on the web to work on phones. If that doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will.

The SDK (software developer's kit) will be available to developers on November 12, 2007 so that corporations and coding cowboys alike can start writing applications that will run on Android.

Here is a fun little video of the primary engineers behind Android talking about the project.

To the average consumer (to the extend an average consumer was paying attention), this announcement is probably a bit underwhelming - like expecting a go-cart for Christmas and getting an engine kit under the tree and hoping with a lot of work you can drive around by the second half of 2008 instead.

The reality is that this announcement is big and it will definitely change the playing field in the mobile industry. Carriers have long maintained a walled garden where they have control over exactly what does and does not work on their devices. The operating systems and the applications written for them are proprietary so if a software developer wants to write an application for a phone that could be easily downloaded and used by consumers the task is nearly impossible.

Theoretically, an open operating system based on accepted standards could be embraced by carriers so that all developers could write software applications that could be downloaded by all interested cell phone users. This would create a vast new array of opportunities for innovation and would absolutely result in consumers receiving more value over time. In the absence of an open standard, innovation is slowed and progress is stifled.

In reality, Google's project is far from an immediate panacea for the lack of openness and standards in the mobile market. AT&T and Verizon have not signed on as supporters of this project which means that 52% of the mobile market is either doing something different altogether or taking a wait and see approach.

There is no way to predict exactly how this will shake out but I will make the prediction that a hardware device labeled a "GPhone" produced by Google will not be released anytime soon. Such a move would be disruptive to the Open Handset Alliance's charter to get all carriers, handset manufacturers, and software developers to adopt the standard.

In Japan, PC Dying and Gadgets Thriving

"More than 50% of Japanese send email and browse the Internet on their mobile phones."

It seems the days of the masses voyaging in a sheep-like herd to the PC store (or Dell.com) every time a new processor with ever more power is advertised by Intel may be coming to an end. This article offers some recent evidence in Japan of a trend toward utilizing hand held devices rather than PC's to fulfill one's computing requirements. It also indicates that gaming is done on gaming consoles such as the PS3, XBox360, and Wii rather than on gaming PC's.

From a search perspective, I believe this trend has major implications. On mobile devices users do not have the luxury of typing queries and receiving millions (or billions) of potential results. So Google, Yahoo, and the usual search suspects are coming out with their new algorithmic "mobile search" offerings. The problem is that on the mobile phone people want THE ANSWER. They don't want a bunch of links - or even one link.

So I suggest watching this trend - as mobile devices increasingly surpass PC's in popularity for performing everyday information access, the search battle will shift from the desktop to the pocket...

What Motivates Wikipedians?

Blaise Cronin recently met with my co-founder at ChaCha, Scott Jones to discuss the advancements we are making in online knowledge sharing. During the discussion, Blaise shared an article written by Oded Nov in the November issue of Communications of the ACM entitled "What Motivates Wikipedians?"

This was of particular interest to me given the great deal of work and research we have done at ChaCha building a scalable online workforce of knowledgeable people who are motivated to help others. The article is focused entirely on the motivations and corresponding contribution levels among those who write and edit articles on Wikipedia.

One extremely important factor that is not addressed at all in the findings is that of the credibility and accuracy of information that is delivered. Wikipedia has been banned in at least one case as a credible source for definitive information which indicates that the investigation into what motivates those who provide user-generated content lacks sufficient depth. To make this data truly meaningful it seems that one must also look into what motivates those who provide accurate contributions to user-generated content projects. For now, let's just focus on the analysis in Oded's article as it is interesting and useful.

Oded asserts that user-generated content is simply another form of volunteering. And, as such, the factors underpinning volunteering activity can help explain why people contribute to Wikipedia. Those factors are fun, ideology, values, understanding, enhancement, protective, career, and social. In looking at the correlation between these factors and user contribution levels, the following key observations were made:

• Fun ("Writing and editing in Wikipedia is fun") proved to have the strongest correlation between the level of motivation and the level of contribution.
• Although survey respondents listed ideology ("I think information should be free") as an important motivator, there was a negative correlation between level of contribution and ideology as a motivator. Oded postulates that the best reason for this is "talk is cheap". In other words, people say they care about ideology but in reality it is not much of a motivator after all.
• The older people are, the more they are motivated by enhancement ("Writing/editing in Wikipedia makes me feel needed"), fun, and protective ("By writing/editing in Wikipedia I feel less lonely") factors.

Given the explosion of user-generated content and the legions of people who provide their knowledge free of charge, it is clear that this powerful trend is here to stay. Oded's initial article on this topic is a useful starting point and much deeper research and exploration into the motivation, contribution, and accuracy levels will be needed before a comprehensive view on this topic can be presented.

In addition to the credibility and accuracy questions I raise above, I also wonder in which cases the content is merely shared for entertainment purposes vs. a true desire to share knowledge or answer important questions.

What do you think? Send me comments to let me know.

Google Announces OpenSocial - Reaction to Microsoft-Facebook Deal?

With the dust from the recent Microsoft-Facebook deal still settling, Google made an important announcement today about their OpenSocial initiative which is intended to put Google between popular social networks and the applications that are being developed for social network users. It is amazing to see how quickly Google has shifted (in the court of public opinion) from a fun, fast-growing upstart to a massive enterprise that is battling Microsoft for complete world domination. I would expect to see Microsoft and Facebook launching their own strategy to control the API's used to write applications for social networks and, much like the age-old .Net vs. J2EE saga, a new duel will be underway aimed at establishing control of how applications are written. This is already taking place in the mobile world where Google is expected to announce several alliances with wireless carriers to begin supplying phones powered by a Linux-based mobile operating system created by Google. Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 will be going head-to-head with Google's new OS. Following are key excerpts ReadWriteWeb published from the announcement that MySpace is a charter member of the OpenSocial API initiative:

“Our partnership with Google allows developers to gain massive distribution without unnecessary specialized development for every platform,” said Chris DeWolfe, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of MySpace. “This is about helping the start-up spend more time building a great product rather than rebuilding it for every social network. We’re pleased to collaborate with Google to establish a landmark standard for social applications.”

As a founding member of OpenSocial, MySpace will provide critical user mass and platform guidance. The OpenSocial standards are designed to evolve through contribution from the open source community and as new features are developed by various partners. Global members of the OpenSocial community include Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

“As the most trafficked website in the country and the most popular social network in the world, MySpace is one of the leading forces in the global social Web,” said Dr. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Executive Officer of Google. “We’re thrilled to grow our strategic relationship with MySpace by joining forces on this important initiative.”

Here is a screenshot of Flixster integrated within MySpace (click for full-size image):

Robert Scoble video interview with Chris DeWolfe and Eric Schmidt: