Twine went public

Finally, Twine went out of beta.

To introduce this service, in Thinking Space I had written two pieces (first impression and second impression) of post that were synchronized with Twine's steps of going public. I am interested in this service because it is a representative Semantic Web application until now. After talking and debating Semantic Web for so many years, Twine is among the very few successful (or at least workable) real-world Semantic Web applications. Just by this mean, it deserves our special attention.

For readers who are still not familiar to Twine, Paul Miller had a fairly comprehensive discussion of the service at ZDNet that is worth of reading. Also, you may directly go for Twine.com to try the service by yourself. In this post, however, I continue my style of service analysis following the first impression and second impression.

The up side of the public version

1) from producing knowledge networks to producing interest networks

I vote this update of mind to be positive. Knowledge network is a great concept. Producing knowledge networks is probably the ultimate goal of Semantic Web. However, this intent is too broad to manage. How to project this broad concept of knowledge network onto a narrower and easier-to-manage alternative is a challenge. I am glad that Nova seems figuring out one---interest network.

Personal interest is a subset of personal knowledge. Moreover, personal interest is probably the most heavily cared portion of personal knowledge. By reducing knowledge network to interest network, it decreases the amount of potential information processing and narrows the size of the application domain. Hence it could significant improve the performance of the service if the service designers truly understand the meaning of this change.

2) emphasized personalization and privacy

Nova has emphasized that "What Twine will be doing will be to make excellent PERSONALIZED AND TOTALLY PERSONAL AND PRIVATE recommendations to users." Moreover, Nova mentioned that Twine would monetize its service through the coupling of recommendation and privacy protection. I agree to Nova. This is the right direction.

3) enthusiasm of the users

Nova reported that at present Twine users spend 12 minutes per session on average. This is a very encouraging number. It means that the service is sticky in some sense, or at least among the ones who really use the service it is sticky.

4) good quality of content

I use Twine regularly. Based on my experience, the quality of bookmarking service Twine currently performs is fairly good. When I search information inside a twine, the quality of searched results is satisfactory in general.

The down side of the public version

1) move towards 2.0 rather than to 3.0

I was said that Twine was likely a Web 2.5 application in its beta. Then I expected that Twine would gradually move towards 3.0 when it went public. However, my prediction is wrong. By inspecting this public version Twine, it is more similar to the other Web 2.0 applications than becoming a revolutionary new service. In the other words, Twine is moving towards 2.0 rather than to 3.0.

At the beginning we might instantly tell the difference between Twine and another standard Web 2.0 service. But now it has been very hard to tell why Twine is not another Web 2.0 application. By just adding a few semantic computation is not enough for Twine to claim Web 3.0.

Twine needs to hire some visionary service manager in contrast to (or in addition to) the experienced service manager it has now. By experienced Twine could only go for what is popular now. Only by visionary Twine might lead the trend into the future. Twine is losing innovation.

2) too low traffic flow in monthly visits

Based on the information provided by the CrunchBase, the number of Twine.com's monthly unique visitors at the past September is only about 50K. Be note that Thinking Space has monthly unique visitors in the same September more than 5K. In this month, the unique visitors at Thinking Space is close to 10K. But Thinking Space has no invested money at all, with respect to Twine.com has $13 million only in its series B round of fund raising. Isn't it a serious problem of Twine?



Referenced resources:

• Twine: the first impression (Thinking Space)
  
• Twine: the second impression (Thinking Space)
  
• Radar Networks opens Twine to the world with version 1.0 (by Paul Miller)
  
• Interest Networks (by Nova Spivack)
• Twine not launching a "Beacon like system" (by Nova Spivack)

Build new centrifugal momentum on the Web

Nicolas Carr shared a keen observation of a present trend on the Web---the centripetal force is currently driving the progress of the Web. An invisible force is pulling Web users away from the comparatively smaller Web sites and towards the bigger nodes sitting on the center of the Web. For instance, more Technorati blog search users now adopt Google blog search, and more users of Bloglines now switch to Google Reader. In short, the effect of Long Tail is decaying.

Nick's observation is illuminating. Innovation is the centrifugal force on the Web. Due to innovation, new Web sites can attract more users away from the large existing sites on the center of the Web. The more innovation the Web has, the stronger the centrifugal force is.

On the contrary, when the centripetal force starts to dominate, Web innovation is at its downturn. In particular, this time the downturn tells that the principles of Web 2.0 may no longer keep on generating the centrifugal momentum great enough to sustain the high-speed expansion of the Web. The Web evolution is entering a comparative contraction process (i.e., still expanding but in the low-speed mode).

Be note that this is the second time the Web enters a comparative contraction process. The last time was during the period of the dotcom bubble in which many small Web sites went out of business and the majority of Web users flowed back to the few major sites on the Web. After the dotcom bubble, however, the Web expansion re-accelerated in a new stage---Web 2.0.

Based on all the analysis, we should be confident to expect another new round of rapid Web expansion ahead despite of the present contraction. Now it is the time for us to build new centrifugal momentum on the Web.

Virtual economy calls for new institution

The financial crisis is an inevitable result of the conflict between the economic form and the economic institution.

A market is a fundamental institution relevant for economic growth. The crash of a market often synchronizes with the beginning of an economic crisis. By contrast, the recovery of the broken market shows the end of an economic crisis.

We are at present experiencing a severe economic crisis whose symptom is the crash of the financial market. At January 2008, George Soros predicted that this crisis would be the worst one since the World War 2. Until now every evidence, unfortunately, supports the claim.

Despite of the human nature of greed, the crisis happens due to the conflict between the virtual economy and the present economic institution that was designed to support the "real" economy.

A comparison may help us understand the conflict better.

Back to the ancient time in the agricultural society, the logic of keeping the stable development of society was to well feed the general public, especially the slaves. The fundamental of the feudal economic institution was to control the level of laborers' consumption to be low. Therefore the landlords could maximize the share of profit from labor work.

This old logic continued to the early time of the industrial society. The newly risen capitalists tried to grasp their greatest benefit by minimizing the wages of the workers. Such a policy suppressed the majority of people's power of spending. The consequence was the economic crisis of overproduction because the general public was lack of enough income to consume the rapidly increased amount of product.

The overproduction crisis forced people to restart with the principle of supply and demand balance to manage the economy. The capitalists realized that to maintain a stable and sustainable growth of economy they need to let their workers have more money. The more money the workers have, the more product they can consume, and thus eventually the more money the capitalists may gain. This new logic constitutes the fundamental of the modern economic institution. A significant consequence of this new logic was the invention and prevalence of credit.

Now we are standing at the door of another great transition. This time the economy is transformed from the "real" economy to the virtual economy.

In this crisis, many people complained the virtual economy and believe it was a poison. Indeed, however, the virtual economy is an inevitable consequence due to the growth of the capitalist economy. In this world, product and service are no longer restricted to be the traditional "real" and tangible ones such as car or in-store customer service. By contrast, now they include new components such as currency and Web services, which are virtual and intangible (explanation shortly later in this post). The percentage of these new components is increasing abruptly. The main body of the economy is shifting from the "real" domain to the virtual domain.

The price of a product/service in the "real" economy is based on the meantime supply and demand market requests. There is an important assumption behind the valuation of a "real" product/service: a "real" product/service has an equivalence to a certain amount of mass/energy. To produce the same quantity of product/service output, people would have to consume the equivalent amount of mass/energy. This hypothesis is crucial because it defines a baseline value for any "real" product/service. The existence of the baseline protects the integrity of valuation in the free market.

Things, however, become very different when entering the realm of virtual economy. No matter are they currency transaction or Web service consumption, virtual product/service mainly consumes information instead of mass/energy. Therefore, it generally does not exist an equivalence between a virtual world product/service and a certain amount of mass/energy. The previous hypothesis fails in the realm of virtual economy.

In the virtual economy, we may arbitrarily overvalue or underestimate the price of a virtual product/service if we perform the same economic institution as we have applied in the "real" economy. There is no bottom line to protect the integrity of the valuation. And this is the intrinsic reason behind this financial crisis.

On currency transaction, we may estimate the cost of risk high or low arbitrarily because there is no equivalence between risk and mass/energy. In similar, on Web service consumption we may value a service in any value because at any time an illegal copy of the service could make it be totally valueless according to the market institution in the "real" economy.

All the discussion discloses one thing: the present economic institution does not fit for the rising virtual economy. It is not that the virtual economy is wrong. It is the present economic institution that is out of date. In similar to that our ancestors had updated the old labor economic institution to the modern market economic institution, it is the time now for us to design a new economic institution that fit for the new virtual economy.

More private, more focused, survive the economic downturn

Today at ThinkerNet, Mike Moran had an interesting post about virtual worlds going private. It reminds me a few thoughts in my mind for quite a while: is the Web industry moving to a sector that is more private and more focused (in contrast to more public and more general)? Moreover, is it the way that IT companies may survive through this economic downturn?

What is the difference between Unisfair and Second Life? Or what is the difference between Yammer and Twitter? Private versus public, target-focused versus general-purpose.

During an economic upturn, free, public, and general-purpose services could be great in revenue generation. The model maximizes the door to allow as many users as possible. The service providers may then monetize the traffic flow in a decent way.

However, the former model could be dangerous in an economic downturn, such as at present.

By nature, we humans would like move closer to our family or close friends when a danger is coming. In an economic downturn, people become less interested in casual social activities. By contrast, they want to make their actions more focused and more private. Either may they get comfort from the relatives, or they may obtain serious help by communicating with particular groups of people. As the result, the small private and target-focused social sites might become more popular than their general-purpose and much larger competitors, even if they may ask for a small amount of subscription fee.

As a brief summary, World Wide Web and the Web industry are still new. There are so many new phenomena that need us to think and discover the new regulations. A crisis is indeed a terrible thing to waste.

Save the eleven troubled companies

Yesterday at CNet's Webware, Rafe Needleman posted 11 troubled companies in his mind. Nevertheless do I agree to his analysis in general, I want to share a few my own thoughts on the eleven ones. That is, what we/they need to do to save themselves out of this period of crisis. To make a little bit fun, I will list the companies in the reverse order as they are in Rafe's post.

MySpace

Unlike many of the other companies in the list, MySpace does generate quite a decent trunk of revenue until now. Therefore, Rafe primarily complained its momentum of growth into the future in contrast to the ability of money making at present.

My word on MySpace: do not be a portal!

MySpace is losing its momentum of growth because it is now a 2.0-age Yahoo. By trying to embed everything into itself, nearly nothing in MySpace is significant. New users of MySpace are likely to get lost (such as myself) because the site is a mess of everything.

There is a great metaphor for MySpace---a chicken rib. For anyone eats chicken he must know: a chicken rib is something that not tasty at all if you eat it, while it is a waste if you throw it away since there is still meat on it.

Cut the number of services and make the remained ones focused. This is the way to save MySpace.

Netvibes

The central idea of Web 2.0 is community. To construct a community, there must be a focused domain of interest. Then by providing irreplaceable commercial information for the people who are interested in the domain, it comes the model of revenue generation. This is the common paradigm of Web 2.0 business. Netvibes, however, misses the point from the beginning because building start pages does not construct a community.

My word on Netvibes: complementing instead of aggregating.

Netvibes is not a Web 2.0 site despite of its heavily Ajax-based implementation. In essence, Netvibes is a 2.0-like but indeed Web 1.0 site. It build 2.0-like Web-1.0 homepages. This intrinsic conflict inevitably leads to its failure on pursuing successful Web 2.0 business model.

Refocus the service from aggregating varied Web services to complementing varied Web services. This is the way to save Netvibes. If Netvibes may successfully make this transition, it would be one of the first adopters of Web 3.0. Otherwise, as Rafe predicted, Netvibes' end is foreseeable.

DailyMotion

Video sharing is cool, but to make it a successful business is another story. DailyMotion, in similar to all of its peers including YouTube, suffers this problem.

My word on DailyMotion: help video loaders to make money.

Just a hint for DailyMotion as well as to all the other video sharing Web-2.0 sites. Don't just think of making money by yourself. Greed is often the killer for setting up real successful business. Think of helping the video loaders to make money, and then you are going to make money.

Ask

In this age of Google, no other Google-like search engines have future. Ask, despite of its good quality (actually Ask.com is the most favorite search engine to my 7-year-old daughter, she is not a Google-fan yet), is not the only search engine suffering.

My word on Ask: merge with a social search site.

Either buy a new social search site and convert itself to it, or sell itself to a social search site, Ask must do one. Otherwise, I am wondering either why Ask.com is still not dead yet.

Skype

A bad transaction may destroy an innovation. Has anybody said it before? Anyway, I think at least on Skype we have seen it.

My word on Skype: well, it's not your problem.

It's eBay's problem.

Second Life

Maintaining the running of a virtual world must be a costly business.

My word on Second Life: deal with Facebook.

Why? I have shared the reason one year before.

Pandora

Copyright, it is a problem.

My word on Pandora: move to China.

It is not kidding. Though copyright is something we should protect, innovation is a more valuable thing we must protect. Please remember, the reason of copyright protection is to encourage innovation instead of protecting income for greedy people! Therefore, if copyright begins to kill innovation, we throw away copyright but embrace innovation. China will be a great place to incubating new-age innovations.

Zillow

Poor site, it is now a real estate winter.

My word on Zillow: develop new buyer side services.

The focus of the real estate market has changed. Now it is buyer's market instead of seller's market. Hence the seller-oriented advertisement model would not generate enough revenue to support the site as Rafe predicted. It is the time to call innovation.

Inventing and developing new buyer side services (and indeed there should be quite a few, in my mind I can think of several immediately) would save the site from this winter.

TripIt

Another site is going to suffer this economic downturn.

My word on TripIt: focus on local.

Economical crisis does not mean that people are less willing to travel. It only means they have less money to travel. Therefore, think of their likely budget and plan local travels for them within their affordable budget.

Again, this is the time calling for really innovation. Or, this is the time to demonstrate the power of human thinking.

Meebo

Unquestionably, Meebo is cool. But, as Rafe said, its service is too narrowly focused. Therefore, its sustainable growth is doubtful.

My word on Meebo: try the best to last through this crisis.

Meebo would be a successful business on the new Web after this crisis, if it survives.

Twitter

Finally, we come to a real hype. Twitter is great, but it is also troublesome on making money. Comparing to Kozmos, yes, Twitter is very likely to be the 2.0 stage Kozmos.

My word on Twitter: seeking collaboration with Imindi.

Imindi is the piece Twitter is missing, though actually Imindi has more potential than Twitter in long term. This collaboration can solve the main problem in the present Twitter as well as bringing Twitter a brilliant business model of success.

The Web is Expanding

Today's ThinkerNet has a post of mine on "a closer look at the expanding Web." It is a summary of my recent thoughts on how the Web is evolving.

In the post, I discussed four simultaneous trends of Web expansion---in the physical world, in the computational world, in the network communication world, and in the financial world. Based on the discussion, here is a few more thinking of the topic I want to share exclusively with the Thinking Space readers.

(1) Mobile computing could only be more and more popular in normal Web users' regular daily life. The data transmission rate through wireless network will increase tremendously in the near future. It represents a great opportunity on investing wireless communication. It might also mean that we are looking for a "healthy" bubble of wireless communication (as if the bubble of the optical network) so that eventually normal users could have cheap but also fast enough wireless connection everywhere.

(2) User-centered control gradually becomes an essential issue. In the physical world, we will have more variety of computational devices; in the virtual world of the Web, we will have many more choices of Web services. The merge of the two trends demand actually one common thing---enhanced user-centered control. The question is, however, how we may really approach this goal.

The only right solution in my mind is to turn the site/service-centric Web 2.0 structure back to the traditional user-centric Web structure we had experienced before Web 2.0, but certainly it would be at a higher level. It thus immediately means a brand new stage of the Web, i.e., Web 3.0. We need to build up a new form of online individual that matches the requirement of the new age. Human mind management services such as Imindi (or services like it) would be a critical component in this new identity formation process.

Coincidently, Trend Adams posted an article about randomness and user-centered control today. I would recommend that article to be a complementary reading to this post.

(3) Mind reading devices have great potential into the future. This research is still at its very early stage. By the trend of Web evolution, however, this type of devices seems inevitable in our future life.

(4) From the financial point of view, mind asset is in its process of formation. I have discussed this issue many times at Thinking Space.

In short, the Web is just becoming more and more exciting.

Fear and Leadership

Fear is reality when dealing with tough times, but how you manage it is the measure of effective leadership.

I learned it from today's Twitter. The statement was to advertise a new post at Harvard Business Publishing telling about managing your own fears.

Nevertheless is the post worth of reading, I particularly love this tweet more than the post. Yes, many of us have the feeling of fear at this tough time, even if one might be a CEO. But being fear should not lead to being panic. It is the time to look for hope out of the fear.

When a danger is coming, the cowards would see nothing but darkness. The true leaders, however, will see one opportunity after another chance. This is the real leadership is about.