Web 2.0 Conf Day 3
Session: Understanding User Behavior at Scale, Andy Edmonds
Andy was search quality analyst at MSFT, now at FreeIQ in Atlanta. Discussing some MSR research on predictive models for user’s search relevance judgment. Going into detail about how MSFT improved search relevance (and what we did right and wrong) since 2004 up till now. Interesting charts of temporal variance. Talks about different models and their uses. Now talking about how you can do this for your own sites, using Google Analytics, Clicktracks, or Omniture. Demonstrating eye tracking. (”Eye Gaze Simulator: Flash Emulation of the Visual Field”) Demonstrating use of heatmaps with AJAX – very interesting technique, does AJAX logging based on DOM. Andy’s professional blog.
Keynote: Joost Demo, 4 Winners from Ignite
“Happiness Engineering” – wow, science science science will make us all happy, join the cult! “4 hour work week” Check e-mail twice per day, max. Start ignoring your customers, and they go away, and you have less work. Hire the cheapest possible labor you can. “Open Source Hardware” says, K’Nex Guns, was more appropriate on Sunday. Cool session, kids sharing CAD models for rubber-band guns. Jeez, tripwire claymore mine. “Potenco” – we go to exotic places and do good deeds, and give presentations about good deeds. They have hand-pulled dynamo, contribute to $100 laptop. We enable people with no money or power (but lots of time) to connect to the international banking networks.
Keynote Panel: Enterprises and Web 2.0
Farber is playing the skeptical CIO.
Farber (to Ross of Socialtext): “Tell me in 60 seconds why I should care about Web 2.0, or I’ll kick you out” Ross: You have to care, or YOU will be kicked out. We can let your employees publish to intranet with no approval process. Because we know you hate to control information.
Farber (to Google enterprise guy): “We use Microsoft Office here, why should we care about you?” Goog guy: “Sorry for you that you use MSFT (pauses, waiting for audience to respond, huzzah, huzzah)” Farber: “Umm, don’t you use Excel at Google?” Google guy: fine, we do. We are #2 revenue source for Google (next to ads). (strange – IOW he is saying that Sharepoint revenues are bigger than Goog’s #2 revenue source).
Farber to Satish (Zimbra): same ? Satish: lower cost to manage, better collaboration. Ross: kids today do homework on MySpace and it’s called cheating; then they enter the workforce and it’s called collaboration. Goog guy: You need a new office suite. Same applications from 1992, but with word “collaboration” applied. Goog has such a suite. Farber: You pimp this stuff, but you’re a public company and you have to follow regulations. Do you guys even use it, and are you in compliance with regulations? Goog guy: YES, lots of employees use it. Goog employees who actually need to do real work with docs and spreadsheet use Microsoft. Farber: you keep trying to sell me your apps, yet say you don’t compete. What is your value prop. Goog guy: I actually use Office myself. No reason to ditch office. They are totally complimentary (huh, he just talked about how they’ve ripped and replaced office in some places at Goog – this is sounding eerily like Sun Micro back in the day pushing Java terminals at big enterprises).
Satish and Ross are talking about compat and coexistence being key. Online/offline also key. Satish: we launched offline version of our apps, encourages Google to do that one day too. Google guy: everyone here knows that people do mashups on Google maps, but now it is revolutionizing enterprises, who couldn’t do that before (huh, Goog has zero mapping share in enterprise, and enterprises have been doing it on VE/MapPoint since well before goog maps was made).
Keynote: Topix
Stats about local news and ads site. Local citizen journalism. Bloggers didn’t do local news, though they generate lots of content (apparently riff on primary sources). Gossip and controversy in local area is sticky and massively helpful for page views (no kidding?). Interesting presentation.
Keynote: Battelle and Weiner
Battelle is pointing out that Jerry Yang told him “we follow the tracks”, and build their own copies of content that are popular. He suddenly realizes that “Google might be doing the same thing with onebox!” Weiner stressing strategy for social content. Battelle: why the earnings ho-hum? Why is Google running circles around you? Weiner: We didn’t set your unrealistic expectations. You only were unrealistic in expectations because Panama is doing so hot. Battelle: compare and contrast Y! with Google. Weiner: We respect rights of publishers. We are more than just a search company. We partner with ABC, Fox, AOL, Microsoft. We’re #1 in a bunch of categories. Battelle: isn’t this just people negotiating to get leverage with Goog? Weiner: no.
Yahoo Answers: 90 million unique users, 250 million answers. Battelle: Doubleclick? Weiner: everyone wants to follow us into display ads. Battelle: would you like to criticize Microsoft and their declining search share now? Weiner: No. Enemy of my enemy is my friend. Battelle: are you going to merge with them? Weiner: not that I know of?
April 18th, 2007 at 8:55 am
My question: what’s your take on MS’s cry-wolf of the DoubleClick’s antitrust. (I understand you cannot criticize MS but please just give your take on it) And… what’s IOW?
April 18th, 2007 at 10:44 am
IOW means “in other words”. MSFT grew at a time when IBM was under antitrust scrutiny. Should MSFT have gotten a free pass, and claimed “how ironic that we are being accused of antitrust when IBM is the real monopolist?” Google has petitioned government to constrain MSFT, and simultaneously use their search market share to starve competitors like AOL maps and Yahoo maps. It is perfectly appropriate for all of these big giants to be vigilant and try to keep each other honest. Google shouldn’t get a free pass just because they say “do no evil”, or “other people are the BAD ones”. Seems like a really cheesy way to deflect attention.