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Why News Aggregators and Google Alerts Just Don’t Cut it for Enterprise Customer Intelligence

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There is a world of difference between news aggregators like Google News, Moreover and Meltwater and a true customer intelligence system like FirstRain. All have the ability to deliver some news from the Web but the similarity ends there. Keyword-based news is OK if you want a simple cut of everything, but they are absolutely insufficient if you want your enterprise sales team to drive revenue by deeply understanding their customer’s business.

An enterprise customer intelligence system like FirstRain:

1. Uses semantic analysis to categorize all content (Web, social media, etc.) to a high degree of specificity—well beyond the specificity possible with keywords. For example: Using analytics, FirstRain can track and filter on topics as specific as “Diabetic Nephropathy”, “Enterprise Telecom Services Market” and “Solar Energy Farms Capacity Expansion”, which means the sales team will receive customer intelligence with a much higher degree of relevance than any other solution.

2. Searches the global Web, identifying and extracting only business-focused content (including news, press releases, company Web sites, government filings, industry sources, blogs and much more), while filtering out the consumer, entertainment and other noisy content routinely delivered by Google Alerts and news aggregators. This filtering has many layers to it—at the source, content and model levels—to ensure that only high quality business content makes it through to the end user.

3. Prioritizes all content using multi-factoral algorithms that push the most significant intelligence to the top (based on the user’s own workflow at the time), then de-duplicating it so you only see each important development once, all greatly improving the relevancy of the intelligence each user sees. This saves time and money for enterprise sales and customer marketing teams, eliminating the hours spent combing through search results (and often still missing key developments), and reducing it to seconds reviewing only the most important developments impacting their customers and their customers’ business

4. Delivers this highly personalized content wherever and however the team needs it: on their iPad, iPhone, Android device, directly into the social enterprise portal or CRM, or simply via a daily email intelligence brief. FirstRain’s apps allow the sales and marketing team to collaborate using this powerful customer intelligence database quickly and easily from any device, at any time, all integrated into their own daily workflow.

The patented technology that goes into the creation of this enterprise customer intelligence system is the result of years of algorithm development, customer collaboration and fine tuning—and it’s why most vendors of basic Web content can’t match it. But it’s these differentiators that are helping FirstRain deliver our users the kind of customer intelligence that actually grows and renews revenue in their businesses.

Can Google Lose its Labs Without Losing The Values That Helped them Succeed?

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I had hoped that my second blog post for FirstRain wouldn’t, once again, be about Google (you’d think that we’d all be sick of hearing about Google 24×7? And we may be, but sick in that ‘I-still-must-tune-in-and-see-what-is-happening-kind of way’ …). Still, I found myself captivated by their announcement this summer that they would phase out a major program called Google Labs by the end of September. And as we’re now approaching that shutdown date, it’s gotten me thinking again about this interesting decision.

For the most part, I’ve always been quite impressed by Google.  I am a long term Gmail user (Gmail has its own Labs, as does Google Maps) and I am still a firm advocate that Google+ will eventually be big (especially after seeing all the complaints of Facebook’s new design on my Facebook newsfeed the past two weeks). Google has launched so many winning products over the years that I was shocked to hear that such a successful and interesting part of Google was to be phased out.

For those unfamiliar with Google Labs, it was a playground for users who are interested in trying Google prototypes and providing feedback directly to Google Engineers. It allowed the public to freely experiment with pre-released Android apps, Google Maps experiments, Google Search betas and much more. Although, not all of these prototypes prove to be effective, it is still a nice way to get the public involved in ‘designing’ and evaluating some of Google’s most popular ideas.

So exactly why has Google decided to pull the plug on this program, when it seemed so many people (albeit, adventurous tech people) were benefiting from it? According to Bill Coughran, Google’s Senior VP for Research and Systems Infrastructure, Google is now beginning to prioritize their product efforts more strictly. And although some of their biggest products had started in Google Labs, they’re now focusing much more of their efforts into dominating the products already in progress, such as Google+. Google has decided that ultimately there are too many ‘small’ projects and they want to channel the company’s focus on the larger and, *cough*, more lucrative options.  By simplifying and focusing Google’s product line, Coughran said, more “extraordinary opportunities are ahead”.

The Google Labs decision is more than just phasing out a neat program, however. The last few years were spent testing potential golden projects. And they did this successfully. Google beat out competitors like AOL and Yahoo in numerous departments such as search, smartphones and Email (does anyone use AOL for email anymore?). And Google Labs has significantly helped develop some of these platforms. But the need is no longer necessary as the trial period is officially over.  What’s interesting is what a signpost this is for where Google is in their lifecycle as a company. Instead of the fun, pioneering tech startup playing in many sandboxes, looking for ideas and doing no evil, they’ve now evolved into a focused and mature company that—for the most part—knows its market, where the money is, and is coalescing around key products like Search, Gmail and Google+.

Now that the deadline is upon us, I was curious to check out the status of Google Labs, especially since I haven’t come across much recent news about the Google Labs termination. If you go to GoogeLabs.com, they inform users directly (no sugarcoating) that the Google Lab’s program is being phased out.  Also, it is obvious that many of the experiments have been visibly shut down.

Not all of Google Labs’ programs will completely disappear. Google claims that they will be integrating some of their better prototypes into many of their already existing experiments but the actual “Labs” name will be retired. The real question for Google now, is how they can retain the spirit of Google labs—that open sense of valued community feedback in a beat environment, now that their flagship vehicle for those values has been lost.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying, Part 1: Algorithms Make Us More Human

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An interesting commentary this week by BBC News’ Jane Wakefield commenting on the increasing influence of algorithms in our daily life has gotten a fair amount of play. And indeed, it’s a useful and thought-provoking piece, if for no other reason that we probably can’t emphasize enough the emerging importance that algorithms are now playing in our economy, society and daily lives.

But where Wakefield’s article falls short is in its vaguely menacing tone, patching together random examples of algorithms at use and the trial and error process of putting them to work effectively—all while implying that the extensive use of these algorithms will lead us to some unfortunate yet unspecified problem (my favorite part was her concern over an algorithm being used to determine a potential movie’s marketability in advance of making the movie—because Hollywood movie producers never made such cynical greenlight decisions before they were corrupted by algorithms …). And even more unfortunate, she completely fails to acknowledge the truly amazing things we can now accomplish because of our ability to employ algorithms.

For every example of an algorithm that has wreaked havoc due to the unforeseen effects of it’s implementation, there have got to be at least 100 examples of the application of algorithms that are making our world tick more effectively every day, like the encryptions needed for secure daily electronic transactions, the design of advanced composite materials and improved aerodynamics for more fuel-efficient cars, optimized telecommunications routing, the analysis of disease genetics, molecular drug design, trip, traffic and shipment routing, computer game design, even the algorithm that apportions the number of U.S. Representatives based on census data.

In other words, smart people writing creative algorithms are the guts and magic that glue together much of the wonder and advancement in our modern life. And while it’s relatively easy to find and get freaked out by isolated examples of algorithms gone haywire, it’s also just as easy to overlook the vast numbers of unseen algorithms powering our world.

And yet, Wakefield somehow makes this seem like a sinister conspiracy, as if algorithms were secretly sentient beings slowly insinuating themselves into our lives in anticipation of the day they rise up and throw down their human overlords. Instead, algorithms are the application of great math in modern technology to help solve problems we wouldn’t otherwise be able to solve. When an algorithm goes wrong in some unanticipated way, it might be amusing, it might be quite serious (e.g. the Flash Crash), but it’s not really a signifier of anything more significant than a program with a bug. Of course, the higher the stakes (e.g., algorithmic trading systems that interact with one another and can move the market as a whole) the more important it is that we’re thoroughly testing and deeply thinking through the algorithms we implement. No systems, human or technological, ever operate without error, and there’s probably a strong argument that our algorithmically based systems operate with many fewer errors than human-controlled systems do.

The challenge, however, is that as humans we’re much more tolerant of human-based errors than we ever are of machine-based ones, even if those machines make far fewer errors. For example, take Google’s driverless car project. These prototypes are now out and running with astounding levels safety and accuracy. And indeed, this is actually the point of the program itself, to avoid the huge number of human-caused auto deaths and save millions of lives every year (this is the number one cause of death of young people) by relying on machines who can react and make these types of decisions much more quickly and accurately than any human. But just one human death by a failure of one algorithm in one car could kill the whole program. Is this logical if the program is saving many more net lives per year? No, but the illusion of human control and superiority is a powerful one.

In reality, however, where we get the most benefit is not from either human or algorithmic control—it’s in the combination of the two. It’s humans figuring out how and when and where and what algorithms to apply in new and creative ways to better our lives. It’s humans acting as a backstop to ensure algorithms are doing their jobs accurately, and catching the instances that require a lifetime of human experience, context and subtlety to truly understand. It’s why there will always be stock trades made by humans as well as machines. In fact, we employ these algorithmic backstops everyday at FirstRain. For example, we have incredibly sophisticated text analytics algorithms that analyze the Business Web content we find, look for a category in our taxonomy to apply to a given article, and if it doesn’t find one sufficiently descriptive, then suggests a new category to create. On the whole, this works incredibly well, and it’s why our taxonomy is so unbelievably granular. But even still, we need to have a team in place that reviews these algorithmic suggestions and can do a human sanity check, lest a “#CharlieSheen” occasionally slips in unnoticed.

Algorithms are tools, and in the end, it’s the use of tools that make us fundamentally human. This is probably why I’m not overly worried about the implications of humans now using the Web to supplement our memories. From the beginning of time, our bodies have evolved along with the technologies we’ve developed to survive and thrive. I’m sure there was handwringing about the loss of body hair as we began to wear clothes, and doomsday projections as our jaw muscles shrank thanks to our use of fire to cook meat. We’re the animals that use tools more than any other, and those tools change us the more we use them. And so as we employ these newest tools, these algorithms, into our daily life in a million new and groundbreaking ways, let’s be sure we’re thoughtful about those implementations, and creative, and far-sighted, and humble, and maybe even a little grateful.

[Stay tuned for Part 2 next week, by my colleague David Cooke, on the big implications of algorithms in enabling ‘just-in-time’ content delivery]

Google Just Took the Alien onto Their Ship

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Yesterday’s news about Google buying Motorola Mobility has set the twittersphere on fire – and generated humor at the same time. Case in point this morning’s tweet from nikcub “If you are a motorola employee and do not want to lose your job, I suggest you show up to work dressed as a patent”

This tweet speaks to the core question about what Google’s acquisition really means. Google paid a 60% premium for a hardware business, purportedly to get access to their patent portfolio. Anyone who lives in the IP licensing and litigation world (as I do as a board member of Rambus), especially in the US software patent world (as I do as CEO of FirstRain) knows that the US patent system is pretty badly broken and it is very hard and extremely expensive to defend and protect your inventions from the idea thieves.

Google was feeling extreme IP licensing pressure from Apple – even going so far as to accuse Apple and Microsoft of a “hostile, organized campaign” against Android – and buying up their own defensive patents was the only way to go. They are just too young a company, and too newly into the mobile phone world to build up enough of an arsenal to defend themselves in court – and Motorola Mobility has 17,000 patents.

Google may simply not have had any other choice than to buy the patent portfolio to fight with – and so they brought the alien onto their ship.

They paid $12.5B for a hardware business and that is so very different than a software business. A hardware business takes a very different kind of DNA. It takes discipline, cost management and high precision supply chain management. It takes strong controls of inventory turns and the cash conversion cycle. All things Google is not known for.

Larry Page has stated that Android will stay open and free, and the cell phone companies, for now, are supporting Google’s move, but for how long? How long until Google realizes that to get a return on their $12.5B (which is a big purchase even for Google) they need to develop a deep integration of OS and phone to compete with Apple and Microsoft? How long until Larry’s promise that “Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers” leads to a move to give Google a product advantage over HTC and Samsung, causing them to develop their own operating systems as Samsung is now doing with Bada?

Remember Google’s snafu with the Nexus phone, when they demonstrated very publicly how little they understood the business of selling hardware products (especially to consumers). While I am sure the Google management team has thought about all the possible outcomes I wonder if arrogance and the lack of hardware DNA will lead them into the world of unforseen consequences?

How long will it be until Google either a) creates a proprietary version of Android for their own phones – while protesting vociferously that they will take care of their Android partners or b) shut down the phone business, ending thousands of engineering and production jobs while creating more work for IP litigators? (and those jobs were going to be on the chopping block anyway with the decline of Motorola’s market share).

Like the crew of the Nostromo who allowed their crewmate Kane back onto their ship to save him from the alien attached to his face, only to find it killed all the crew except Ripley, who then blew up the ship, has Google taken on an alien business that can eat into it’s market position and profitability. Will they, in the end, chose option (b) and blast it out of their ship?

The Battle of Social Media Platforms

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Over the past few weeks the blogosphere has been buzzing with predictions on the impact of Google+ in the business world, adding to the growing focus on the benefits of social media for business. Currently, most businesses use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as tools to promote their brands and many are now asking whether Google+ will become the next big player in the world of social media marketing. It’s kind of overwhelming to think about adding yet another social media tool to one’s marketing arsenal when we’re still discovering how to use the ones we already have.  And yes, it may be too early to start casting Justin Timberlake for a Google+ movie, but I think it’s a safe bet that—sooner or later—this platform is going to be BIG.  The days where people say “Facebook me” may be coming to an end sooner than you may think, to be replaced by people asking you to join their “circle.”

For the rock-dwellers this last month, Google+ is the newest social network on the scene.  Introduced by Google in late June, it combines the ideas of Twitter, Facebook and Skype into one jumbo social media sandwich. Already, Google+ has reported 25 million users during the last month. Of course, this number is small in comparison to the hundreds of millions of users on Facebook or Twitter, but the trend is significant.  So what exactly is making Google+ gain traction so quickly? There have been plenty of other social networks (including platforms launched by Google, remember Google Buzz or Google Wave? No? me either) that haven’t even come close to attracting as many users as Google+. Intrigued and curious to see what this fuss was all about, I searched around and asked a co-worker to send me an invite to their Google+ circle.

And guess what? It turns out that Google+ seems to live up to its hype.  Not only does it remind me of the social platforms I already use, but it has removed the kinks that I couldn’t stand and made the platform simpler, better and overall, more fun.  For example, Facebook is known for having mega problems within their privacy system. I find their privacy control settings confusing and almost impossible to understand, consequently I am not sure what information I am sharing with the public. Google+ on the other hand, had privacy and filter settings that I found relatively easy to use.  I enjoyed being able to see what a person sees when each one clicked on my profile.  I could also reduce the chance of a person seeing an embarrassing picture of me (note to my employer: there are no embarrassing pictures of me on the internet …) by restricting what information could be shared within specific circles.

Another major problem I have had with Facebook is the overwhelming amount of noise on the site.  Like most people, I am not interested in half the information other users are sharing with me. Google+ allowed me to filter information I read, received and shared. In many ways, it’s similar to the way FirstRain helps its users. FirstRain filters out the junk in the consumer Web for busy professionals the same way Google+ gets rid of the noise of social media. As a result, I didn’t feel as if I was wasting my time scrolling through unnecessary information such as what people ate for breakfast. Potentially, Google+ will enable me to establish a circle solely for business acquaintances and share information that only relates to my company.

There are other appealing features as well, such as their ability to microblog more than either the 140-character Twitter limit or the 400-character Facebook limit. Plus, by combining Google+ with Gmail & YouTube, you get an enormous social media powerhouse, allowing business professionals to access all aspects of social media at once, without having to change websites and without having to rely on multiple platforms.

Although, ultimately, the jury is still out on success and Google+ and what it means for Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, my advice to businesses is that it’s a good time now to become familiar with the Google+ interface and begin thinking about integrating Google+ into future marketing strategies. Business pages are currently prohibited from the site, because according to Google, they want to wait until they can implement it right.  And since it’s likely to be a few months before they’re ready, business marketers like us have been given the gift of time to formulate a Google+ game plan … and hopefully one that lives up to the all the excitement.

Should NYT Fear Flipboard? Publishers and The Diversity of Containers

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Let’s start with everyone’s favorite pastime in our current age of agile developed, game changing, paradigm shifts: remembering how things used to be.

In this case let’s remember those days of when most people consumed news via one medium: Newspapers. Newspapers, which have existed to serve various objectives (news reporting, editorializing, political agitation), all had three, seemingly inextricable attributes: the content (the news or opinion you created), the medium (content printed on paper and distributed to readers) and the container (or format, such as pamphlets, newsletters, tabloids or broadsheets). For any given publication, these three attributes were all of a piece. One couldn’t imagine extricating the news from the method of delivering it. Why produce news if you don’t have a way to get that news to people? And attempting to separate your content into multiple, simultaneous containers was unheard of.

But as broadcasting emerged as a new medium naturally suited to news distribution, people began looking to multiple mediums to suit their news consumption needs. And while some would only select one preferred medium for news consumption, most would leverage both mediums for various aspects of their day (e.g., reading the paper in the morning, hearing radio news in the car or during their workday, watching the evening TV news. Still, most producers of news content would specialize in just one medium and container (apart from an occasional marketing partnership, or vestigial business, e.g. CBS radio news) and only really competed with other content producers within their medium.

Fast-forwarding to today, a new medium has emerged (Internet) and become dominant, multiple consumption containers now exist, ranging from devices (PCs, smartphones, tablets) to programs within those devices (browsers, content-specific apps) to services within those programs within those devices (news Web sites, Twitter, social networks, aggregators). And as traditional content producers from print and broadcast mediums rush to find sustainable plays in the Internet medium, the traditional competitive landscape has exploded: The New York Times now competes with The Huffington Post who competes with Fox News Channel who competes with the Associated Press.

And in my opinion, this is a great development. In one sense, medium and container are fundamentally artificial. One should create great content that serves a need and provides value, and then offer it via whatever medium suits your target consumers best. But at the same time, this also implies how much the container does matter. Various containers help us consume the content we care about when we want it (on your smartphone during some down-time), where we want it (in our social network, where we may spend a substantial amount of our online time) and how we want it (through innovative readers like Flipboard, which allow you to consume your real-time news and social media feeds on a tablet in a magazine-like format). And just as importantly, these use-cases are usually not mutually exclusive.

And that’s what makes the latest discussion about the threat Flipboard represents to publishers so interesting. Although this analysis by Frederic Filloux is a good one, I think its problem is that it makes the same fundamental assumption that everyone seems to be making: that controlling the containers, as well as the content, is an attainable goal for a content brand.

Today, there are simply too many platforms, technologies, formats and use cases to expect anyone—much less a firm who’s specialty is content creation—to be able to own and control every outlet. To seriously expect to do so is naiveté at best, ignorance and hubris at worst. And worst of all, it seriously limits your ability to effectively execute on the thing you actually do best: create content that lots of people want and are willing to let you monetize in some way (monetization is actually the 4th fundamental attribute here that I haven’t yet mentioned, but as oceans of ink have already been spilled on the changing nature of content monetization, I’m going to steer around it while acknowledging that it’s a fundamentally related issue).

This doesn’t mean that content brands won’t be really effective at owning or creating certain containers. A content producer’s Web site is by definition their own space, and they’ll offer different ways to offer and monetize their content in that space (free, ad-supported, subscription, metering). And some will come up with a kick-ass smartphone or tablet app here and there. And for some users, just that one content site or app may be the only news source they use in their daily life. But for most of us (and here’s the point of that history lesson …) we’ll continue to want a variety of content sources, mediums and containers to fill different use cases within our lives.  As content sources that were once separated by differing mediums now compete with each other across mediums, they often seem to forget that they were always part of a content ecosystem in our lives.

Implying that content or news sources should have invented Flipboard misses the point because they not only would have been highly unlikely to do so (i.e., the Innovator’s Dilemma), but even if so, would have more likely to have been a costly distraction or outright failure to in the end. The NYT isn’t going to want to be pumped into Huff Po’s consumption tool, and WSJ won’t have any interest in ceding that space to MSNBC. Instead, Flipboard succeeds BECAUSE it’s not a content creator. It’s only about giving consumers a great consumption experience. And conversely, technology companies (are you hearing me @Google?) fall flat when they try to own content creation (anyone remember Microsoft’s attempts to become an original content creator in the late-90s?).

None of this is to say that content companies have to cede all control of their destinies. They have every right to try and set the terms of use around their content so as to maximize alignment with their own monetization(e.g. requiring links that drive traffic back to ad supported pages, or pay-walled/metered news sites), and to block access to their content to those containers they feel are at odds with their strategy. But to fume because *gasp* Flipboard or others may claim some ad dollars around links back to their content feels pretty short-sighted.

‘Interrelators’ like FirstRain also play an important role in this ecosystem. We’re creating real added value for thousands of business users around the globe by connecting them with original business content that, too often, they would not otherwise find—and then driving those users back to those content producers for monetization. And we’re doing it through multiple containers as well (Web, mobile apps, intranet widgets).

Overall, it’s an incredible playground in which we’re all now playing, and our content lives are much richer for it, as long as we can remember that it’s been the emerging diversity of containers—not the attempt by any one content creator to fully control their own distribution—that has made it all possible.

Apple vs. Google—Frienemies?

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Sometimes you have to wonder, are Google and Apple friends or enemies? They compete to move an industry left behind, forward. Is that really competition or is it a concentrated, coordinated effort to bump everyone else out?

Apple and Google are now in full competition for the digital newsstand. First Apple has a new subscription model – and yesterday Google introduced the “One Pass,” a similar payment system for digital content. With both of these competing services, will just one come out on top?  Both are a big deal to the publishers and while the initial changes are small the long-term effect is disruptive.

Apple has now made electronic magazine and newspaper subscriptions part of the iTunes app store. Their newsstand will be similar to the iBook store, in hopes of attracting people deeper into the digital world.  The newsstand is already selling the digital versions of various major magazines and newspapers, and Apple has readied changes in iTunes so that I (the end customer) am able to use the app store billing system, all on my one credit card.

Google’s “One Pass” does the same thing for Android devices and beyond (accessible via web browsers). They will implement the familiar “Google Checkout” online payment service to users who wish to pay for content. One Pass is in a race with Apple’s newsstand to compete for users who buy digital media through mobile devices. An additional perk that Google offers however is more flexibility in payment options. As long as the user is signed into their Google account, they can purchase publications from any other participating website (whereas Apple’s has to be through iTunes).

Clearly Google is building flexibility in as a differentiator to Apple.  Apple is putting in draconian control and a whopping 30% revenue share. Any news service currently offering an app with a subscription must now either offer the app within the Apple store, or allow Apple to offer the same app for the same price or less.

In contrast, Google is allowing purchase of subscriptions, articles, or even day passes at a much more competitive revenue split of 10%.

With Apple at 30% and Google at 10%, are they together trying to become a monopoly in the digital newsstand industry? Will it be worth it to publishers to accept this reduction in revenue just to associate with the “cool” Apple brand – or will they be compelled to access the explosive number of Apple device users?  Either way, whoever ends up dominating the digital newsstand, this will revolutionize the news industry.

If done right, these two “frienemies” will drive many more readers to the new digital era of media. And these new digital copies of magazines and newspapers will be anything but ordinary– they are a great outlet for a new generation of creativity of media creation. Can’t wait!

Here is a survey by Josh Gordon, comparing readers’ preferences on digital magazines, versus traditional websites.

Software is King and the source of growth in 2011 Silicon Valley

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Every recession, every major generation of the Valley, naysayers come out and say the good days are over – but Silicon Valley continues to reinvent itself.

The latest herald of doom is Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun. In a Business Insider interview Scott claims that Silicon Valley’s emerging sectors, like social networking and “green” technology, will not make up for jobs lost due to the software and computer industry consolidation. But with big names like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook planning for expansion, I wouldn’t be so quick to assume it’s all over.

Claiming that every new transition creates less job opportunity than before, Scott lacks confidence in the future potential of contemporary partnerships to flourish. But he’s wrong. Not only is it anticipated that social networking industries will more than make up for lost jobs, but we are likely to see unprecedented growth in the consolidation of software and hardware companies. The technology sector never fails to impress me with new innovation and change, and this “recession” is no exception.

Even Obama sees it (although maybe he is here fund raising at the same time). He says that our tech companies are the heirs to the industries that made the United States the worlds biggest economy. He is in the Bay Area today to discuss job creation and innovation around the Silicon Valley with executives like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and many more.

Maybe the irony is stinging. Facebook announced last week that it will in fact move its corporate headquarters to Sun’s old facility in Menlo Park (Sun having been swallowed by the Oracle whale). This is Facebook’s second move in the last two years and they have now leased a 1-million-square-foot campus. Google has announced a big addition as well, introducing a new campus in San Francisco to help alleviate long commutes. Google has also experienced a record 75,000 job applications over the last week, and they expect to grow more than 30,000 employees by 2012 (Dow Jones).

It is software technology that is driving this growth. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, claims that more than 300,000 Android devices are being activated everyday, requiring more engineers and sales people to keep up with the high demand. “This will be our biggest hiring year ever,” said Jordan Newman (a Google company spokesman). Note — FirstRain is currently hiring in California and India.

Growth Industries:

Sadly I think Nokia is trying to get back to growth by partnering with Microsoft for their phone OS but my personal opinion is they just killed what was once a great phone provider. Microsoft may gain – they are trying to make the new Windows Phone 7 a success – and they are hooking up with Nokia’s strong hardware but I doubt the combination will compete. But they are not the only ones focusing on Valley software innovation. Their old competitor, Sony Ericsson, is shifting resources from its headquarters in Sweden to Silicon Valley in order to keep up with the shifting increase from hardware to software demands in the mobile phone industry.


I think Scott is just plain wrong, or certainly colored by his predominantly hardware background. He believes that Silicon Valley is “not the best place in the world to start a company,” but the evidence in the software world is to the contrary. Maybe it’s just his personal preference, but as Senator Mark Warner of Virginia correctly claims, the Internet and social networking have been “one of the rare areas of growth in the U.S. economy” in a decade that didn’t spur much innovation.

As for “green” technology not being able to make up for lost jobs that is certainly true in the short term, as it typically takes a full generation for a new industry to take effect. However, the key to the Silicon Valley economy is now software innovation, and we’re excited to be a part of it.

The latest web search development: from intentions to insights

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John Batelle, one of the gurus of Search, wrote as early as 2004 that the secret of Google’s success was its understanding of the web as a database of intentions. He described the web as “a place holder for the intentions of humankind – a massive database of desires, needs, wants and likes that can be discovered, subpoenaed, archived, tracked and exploited to all sorts of ends.”

Fast-forward to the present and Batelle has observed that “web search as a pure signal has been attenuating of late – overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of data on the web, for one, and secondly by our own increasingly complicated expectations.” Batelle goes on to speculate, quite compellingly, on other new “little signals” such as who I know (Social Graph), what I am doing (Status Update), or where I am (the Check-in) that are emerging to make sense of the “Database of Intentions”. Bing and more recently Google have introduced contextual information to their searches as a way to make more sense of the web and better meet the expectations of users. Even so, Bing and Google are still operating in a web that represents a database of intentions – and the new intentions are social and status updates.

In the business world, people are interested in different signals and so require more sophisticated search capabilities than Bing or Google. I believe the compelling “little signal” in the business world is what has changed and it is generated by the detection of what I call events, which are patterns, connections and anomalies of interest to business decision-makers. What has changed about a business and it’s market is a powerful signal. When detected by sophisticated search capabilities, it can transform the web from a database of intentions to a database of actionable business insights.

Detecting the “what has changed” signal by finding, sorting and making sense of relevant events requires a new class of search technology called intelligent business search. Intelligent business search turns the unstructured, messy, duplicative and rich content available online into an analyzable data set of business ideas, relationships, facts and trends. It derives the implied business structures of companies, industries, management, markets and the relationships that connect them. And it applies trend and anomaly detection to discern what may be emerging, unusual or material.

Intelligent business search quickly returns relevant results that can create new insights and facilitate smart, fast business decision-making. It transforms the web into an incredibly valuable database of actionable insights. Tapping into that database has the potential to transform the way you sell, market, strategically plan and think about your business.

[Posted on the Huffington Post earlier today]

Search as an application is coming into fashion in the general case

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Google just entered the world of faceted search, following in Bing’s footsteps, and it’s a good move. John Battelle, wrote a strong piece on what they are doing “Google Steps Gingerly Toward Search As Application” and on why this is a necessary move for Google — to deliver search as an application rather than as purely simple keyword search. I couldn’t agree with him more.

It’s good that Google is taking this step for the consumer, and it’s a step professional search based applications have already taken – they just have to be a great deal higher productivity than consumer applications, because in the office time is money.

If you are a FirstRain user you know the benefits of this approach are to get you instantly to the businesses, ecosystem and analytics around your question to help you make a decision quickly. The wind power example Google used in it’s announcement is a good one to look at.

In the Google case here are the results you get:


The results include news and information from traditional media sources, nongovernmental organizations and online sources such as Wikipedia. The left-hand navigation offers the ability to refine results by time and by news, blogs, images, books and more. Related search terms such as solar power, hydropower and geothermal energy are also listed. It’s definitely a big improvement over early technologies.

But for a sales or marketing person what you need is fresh, business relevant results and navigation for the businesses in the industry and the ecosystem of companies engaged in the wind energy industry — wind power generation and distribution. Recent events, industry trends, people-related changes and management turnover are all detectable and attached to the search results. For example, users can identify planned commercial wind-turbine installations; track key components, parts and raw materials used in their construction; and identify suppliers poised to benefit from investments in wind power. Up-to-the minute reports can be delivered regularly via email or mobile phone so that users stay on top of new developments.

Here’s the contrasting screen shot – and in FirstRain you can navigate through management teams, competitors, hot topics and all the other elements of the ecosystem from here – which is what intelligent business search can give you.