Archive for October 2009

At some companies, Halloween is just another day.  The guy in the corner cube might wear a t-shirt with a pumpkin on it, the  lady on the other side of the office puts out a bowl of Fun Size chocolate bars, and that’s about it.

At Kosmix, we take our Halloween seriously.   Here are a few pics from today’s costume competition:

About a month ago I posted (here) my thoughts about how Wikipedia can improve the Semantic Web. My take is that Wikipedia can provide a global and ever improving vocabulary bloggers and other content creators to provide richer context around what they write.

Several people contacted me after reading the post to ask about the best way to annotate their content, and to find out what else I think Wikipedia needs to do to make iteasier to create Semantic Web pages. The big question seemed to be:  What context can bloggers add so that search engines and others understand their posts?

I’ll use a simple scenario to illustrate my answer to this question.  Let’s say I am about to write a blog post on the healthcare debate. Obviously, I want to tell them I am talking mainly about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_US_healthcare_debate. And within that context I want to discuss thehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Democratic_Party and the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Republican_Party. As you can see, Wikipedia provides me with a clear vocabulary to uniquely identify the different “Entities” that I want to talk about in my post. There is a unique URL to every entity. This will not work for entities that are not popular enough to have Wikipedia pages, but it is a good start. It is also only a small step over “Tagging”, a common way to annotate today.

Next, as I talk about different entities, I may want to explicitly state the connections I am making. For example, I’ll mention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama and want to add the fact that I am commenting on her impact as the “Wife” of the President in their personal relationship, and not as the First Lady. Wikipedia does give us a lot of information on how different entities are related to each other. However, the vocabulary is far less organized and many of these relationships do not have unique names. Some of the fact boxes at the bottom of Wikipedia pages called “Templates”, like the one at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:United_States_topics, are even less structured and uniform. Wikipedia needs to evolve to a more structured hierarchy and schema for relationships. Without it, it will remain hard for content creators to add more rich information and make new relationships evident.

Lastly, I may want to annotate with information on what kind of content it is. Am I talking about some great “Videos” or “Documentaries”? Am I writing with a “Liberal” view? Am I discussing some recent “News”? Is this a “Review” of the administrations efforts? The last forte in Semantic Web is specifying the kind of content I am creating, instead of the topics of my content. Obviously, Wikipedia does not have the vocabulary that allows me to specify this and I must look elsewhere.

In the end, we have to take baby steps in our goal for rich semantic annotation of Web content. Automated tools are already attempting to do this for content that has already been created. Will the automated methods improve fast enough that there will never be a need for content creators to annotate? Or will having a vocabulary and an easy method of annotation give enough advantage to the content creators that we will see widespread adoption? My guess is that the answer lies somewhere in between.

More accurate annotation already allows better cross linking and makes it easier for users to find your content, both from search engines and other sources. It also allows innovative startups to use your content in rich ways and drive traffic to you. At the same time automated annotation techniques are improving. In the end a “Semi-Automated” solution that allows you to influence how your content is annotated and, with improving technology, reduces the effort it takes will be the winner.

OK, I admit it:  When first I saw the title of Sean Parker’s session at Web 2.0 today, I immediately thought HARDWARE.  After all,  “The Rise of the Network Company” initially seemed to suggest IT infrastructure, switches and routers,  and all the geekiness that lurks inside those stuffy data centers.

But this is Web 2.0–and Parker is the guy who co-founded Napster and Facebook before his 28th birthday.

Parker’s definition of a network company isn’t Cisco.  It’s Twitter, Apple, eBay, Facebook, and other organizations that understand the value of networking people.

Parker began his 10 minute talk with the assertion that Google won’t determine the future of the world, because collecting data is less important than connecting people.  He cited Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the numbers of connected users in the system.   By this measure, a network company is only as good as the number of connections it facilitates.  Sound familiar, Facebook addicts?

While the first phase of the Internet was all about data–compiling it, searching it, organizing it, and analyzing it–Parker argues that the next phase is about building connections between people and things.

In the course of his discussion, Parker called out eBay, AOL and Craigslist as examples of his belief that groundswell makes big network companies even bigger, until they dominate the market completely.  And the best products don’t always win.  As the larger players drive out competition, organizations get too comfortable and stop taking risks.  Though Parker didn’t explicitly say what this dynamic means for innovation, his message was clear that a lack of competition doesn’t exactly foster excellence.

Parker’s real point today was that the new economic value on the Web isn’t Search–it’s establishing connections.  Here at Kosmix, we take a similar view that connecting ideas and putting things in context is inherently valuable.  We give people an easier, more visual way to explore topical information on the Web, and we also help you understand how different people, places and things relate to each other.  Our acquisition of Cruxlux this week gives some indication about the role connectedness will play in our overall Kosmix roadmap.

As Parker concluded his comments today, I suddenly found the words of British novelist E.M. Forster ringing in my ears.  “Only connect!,” he wrote in Howard’s End nearly 100 years ago.  “Live in fragments no longer.”

Big news around Kosmix HQ today:  we’ve just acquired Cruxlux.

Cruxlux is an awesome startup that specializes in determining the relationships between people, places or things.  TechCrunch equates Cruxlux with the party game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’, and that’s an apt comparison.  Cruxlux lets you chart each connection that links one person or thing to another.  How, for example, is Bono connected to Larry Ellison?  Cruxlux tells us that 1) Bono has collaborated with Bob Dylan; 2) Bob Dylan used to go out with Joan Baez; 3) Joan Baez lives in Woodside, California; and 4) Larry Ellison is Joan’s neighbor in Woodside.  Pretty cool, eh?

While we could spend hours playing the Kevin Bacon game with Cruxlux (and we have!), the real value of the Cruxlux technology  for Kosmix is the advanced algorithms it uses to understand relationships.  The Cruxlux team and technology fits perfectly with the work we’ve been doing in our “Related in the Kosmos” section on each topic page, and we expect to integrate Cruxlux tightly into Kosmix.  Watch this space.

This is the first acquisition for Kosmix, and we’re excited to have the Cruxlux team on board!

We had a GREAT time at SF New Tech last night–thanks to Myles and the crew for hosting such an awesome evening.

The club was packed with more than 200 movers and shakers in the local startup community, as well as a few VCs and journalists–including the New York Times’ Brad Stone, who had some hard-hitting questions for us about the future of media and the role sites like MeeHive play in a well-informed society.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out some of the other startups who presented last night, several of them are definately worth a look.   One of our favorites was Famililink, which has created a site that makes it easier for elderly people and those who aren’t technically inclined to keep in touch with family email messages, videos, pictures and calendars.  One person in the audience suggested that they should also integrate MeeHive into their offering, to add personal news to the mix.  (And, no, we didn’t plant someone to say that.)

We finished the night with a Kosmix Lucky Twit giveaway.  In the true spirit of “Wheel of Fortune,” some folks in the audience even chanted, “No whammy! No Whammy! No Whammy!”  when we’d spin the tweets to pick a winner.  Congrats to the lucky tweeter who went home with the FlipCam–enjoy!

Jennifer Simpson took some terrific photos of the event–check them out here.    Here’s a sample of some of her cool pics:

Our very own Saumil Mehta and Tracy Lou will be on the big stage at SF New Tech this evening, sharing a live demo of MeeHive.

We’ll have five minutes to give a quick overview of the site, show how you can use MeeHive to track news about all your interests and share articles with friends through Facebook and Twitter, and give a quick plug for our newest iPhone app, MeeTV.  Saumil, how fast can you talk??

It’s going to be a great night–tacos, beer, and cool presentations from other startups like Bodukai, ZoomPool and Famililink.  We’re also planning to use Lucky Twit to give away an awesome Flip video camera, so be sure to tweet from the event using the hashtag #sfnewtech.

Here are the event details and the link to buy tickets.  Come on out–we’d love to see you!

When:
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 from 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM (PT)

Where:
Mighty
119 Utah Street
(Cross street is 15th. Look for the big black doors!)

Tickets now on sale at http://october14sfnewtech.eventbrite.com