Winning by Sharing

Zemanta: A digital biographer's dream?

After attending the Next Web 2008 event, I've had a chance to use Zemanta.  It's essentially a blog writing assistant delivered as FireFox plugin.  It analyses the text of your post using proprietary natural language algorithms and then provides selections of images, links (articles, wiki references) and tags to use in your post. 

The algorithms attempt to accurately match these references to the text of the post, in a highly relevant way.  I met the principals in London a few weeks ago, and again at the NextWeb conference.  It's actually quite useful, mainly by reducing the time to add tags and copy/paste links. 

The software works by parsing around 900 'A' list blog feeds and 300 news and information sources but hasn't quite got the breadth of content to support more specialist subjects.  My guess is that more sources will be added over time and the algorithms will become more semantically sound.  But even now this is a useful tool particularly for new bloggers and even digital biographers.   David Pretherick is an emerging class of writer/service provider that manages his clients' online profiles in a number of different ways, and he does it rather well.  For example, optimising LinkedIn profiles by making them easier to read, ensuring consistency and accurate provenance across other platform profiles, teaching people how to use and exploit the information and connections in social networks.  So I wonder if Zemanta could be his dream tool for enriching clients' online presence?  Zemanta currently supports the three major blogging platforms, WordPress, Typepad, and Blogger. 

Custom versions can be created for other platforms via an API and so even smaller  communities would find this tool useful for their members.  It is at this time completely free.

The business model is a little unclear (maybe like SnapShots with ads?).  But hey, critical mass first, and work out the angles later!

Pick 'n' Mix Business: Heads in the clouds?

This article was first published in 2004 and inspired by Graeme Burnett's original paper (XML & the Role of Web Services, 1999).  Article starts with;

Imagine being able to build an entire business by walking into a store and buying the pieces you need, in the same way you would if you were building, in a do-it-yourself fashion, a new kitchen, bathroom or garage.  The common components of these businesses would be functions like open an account, create a bill, process a credit card payment, lookup credit rating and auction this item on eBay.  Like the DIY construction industry,  the implications of  the 'end user' supplying itself are far reaching.

In 2008 at least two ventures have launched that prove the veracity of the predictions here.  Rollbase offers "a growing library of web-based business applications that can be installed into your Rollbase account with a single click."  Coghead lets you easily build your own applications and then lets you share them with anyone, any time, any place.  And of course Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is about control of the Cloudsphere - a 'place' where all these applications will reside.

The web services paradigm is for those who belong to upstarts, who don't have anything to lose, and the risk-takers among big companies, who are willing to bet more heavily on the future than they do on the past.

Do you wanna be starting something?

In early 2001, British Telecom (BT), announced a software deal with a web services software vendor called Bowstreet, who were recently acquired by IBM.  The purchase was made to create a European wide portal for the publication and distribution of web services.  Incredibly insightful but the initiative eventually faded.  Not long after I wrote a paper for BT on the 'anatomy' of a what is basically a web services broker.  It's based on some earlier work I did with Anna Pollock, when we devised what a web services provider could look like in  travel, by first creating a more generic model based on this diagram.

It's key features are;

• A directory of web services, community maintained by applying Wiki or ODP style usage protocols
• A supply side (institutions and independent developers) and demand side (end users and applications) presence
• An ontology (an explicit representation of shared knowledge) to make it easy to search and discover web services
• Core services that enable a provider to publish and/or host a web service and consumers to aggregate, syndicate and pay for services, together with a range of trusted services (encryption, billing, reputation metrics, etc)
• Facilities to enable fine grained services (e.g. post code lookup, price a bond) to be consumed by systems and applications, and coarse grained services (e.g. calendar widget, search widget) to be consumed by end users (web site, blog)
• Payment and revenue share services for providers and consumers (pre-pay & post-pay) that enable transactions between parties that are previously unknown to each other
• Community services that enable conversations between parties that are previously unknown to each other

Some friends at BT have been telling me about the resurgence of interest in this business model, the best example of which is StrikeIron, evidenced by BT's collaboration with Microsoft & TopCoder.  They've been running software development competitions for independent providers where winners are provided with access to BT & Microsoft's customer base.  Competitions are managed on behalf of companies such as Google and AOL (not unlike the Innocentive model in the pharma space).  Interestingly, 45% of the individuals who enter are from India and 96%-98% of the winners are from China or Eastern Europe!  There's an excellent article at Business Week covering the BT/Microsoft collaboration.

So what next? Getting the community dimension right cannot be overstated and continues to be a weakness for BT, although less so now for Microsoft.   It's latest offering BT Workspace is too little, too late and misses the point completely, which is to put customers in touch with each other (enable conversations between parties that are previously unknown to each other).  Without this BT will be unable to create liquidity in their fledgling marketplace where they already face stiff competition from Sourceforge (who have announced the imminent delivery of a marketplace) and others with existing critical mass (e.g. Xmethods).

BT, if you really wanna be starting something you need to see yourself as a market maker in the web services publishing business, bring some of your own assets 'out to play' and understand how to operate an online network, or face being just a tin and wires platform player.

Pick 'n' Mix Business

Inspired by Graeme Burnett

Imagine…

being able to build an entire business by walking into a store and buying the pieces you need, in the same way you would if you were building, in a do-it-yourself fashion, a new kitchen, bathroom or garage.  The common components of these businesses would be functions like open an account, create a bill, process a credit card payment, lookup credit rating and auction this item on eBay.  Like the DIY construction industry,  the implications of  the 'end user' supplying itself are far reaching.

"Successful businesses need to supply computing solutions that can respond very quickly to market changes. Timescales for change will be impossible to meet using traditional code development, testing and deployment techniques. Instead, business functionality will be created dynamically by combining services from different sources and re-branding them to exhibit a company’s identity." Graeme Burnett.

Enter the role of web services.  Web Services are not just sources of information or handy routines, but plug points that are key interfaces and relationships that will enable a business to reconfigure itself.  Think plug and play business not plug and play software.

For two years, Samsonite has been auctioning its distressed inventory on eBay in a completely automated fashion.  Samsonite took four weeks to create a web service that linked its internal product catalogue to web services exposed by eBay's platform. The impact on its balance sheet was immediate and sustained.  Samsonite's web services are now consumed by other online auction sites, providing the company with multiple points of distribution.

In July 2004, Amazon announced the launch of  Amazon Web Services 4.0.  These allow other businesses to embed Amazon's functionality into their web sites.  Amazon's CTO said "If more of the information and processes that businesses (already) have were exposed via web services so developers could integrate them, people would do incredible things".  The most valuable web service on earth will be Amazon's One Click™ technology, white labelled and re-used by millions of other web sites for the sale & purchase of goods.  Every time another business invokes this service, it will pay Amazon a few cents.  Amazon will make more money from One Click™ than it will from the sale of books, videos and DVDs combined.

Distribution is key

But where are these software pick 'n' mix stores?  They are beginning to emerge.  Grand Central, SalCentral and ComponentSource are getting there but do not go far enough.  There is a need for web services intermediaries, intermediaries that can bring together consumers and providers of web services and build a critical mass of participants.  These intermediaries will provide a trusted environment for the publication and subscription, secure delivery, metering and payment of services.  They will enable transactions between parties that are previously unknown to each other. Intermediaries will eventually apply  debt style reputation ratings (e.g Standard & Poor) to these services, effectively shifting the value of an enterprise's web services from a dark corner of the IT department to the corporate balance sheet.  Intermediaries will also enable independent programmers with good ideas to become wealthy individuals.  Eventually web services will take on the characteristics of bonds and will be traded on open markets.  "Companies will finally be able to focus on delivering services relating to their main business, rather than code production. This will allow them to respond quickly to opportunities provided by new niche markets, thereby opening up new revenue streams". Graeme Burnett.

 Child's play

Extending the DIY analogy to Lego blocks, successful businesses will be those that can create the most innovative, attractive, and useful shapes.  Business models can be tested on the fly and new partners can be switched on in hours.  This will have quite profound human resource implications for enterprises.  People with the imagination and curiosity of children will be far more valuable than a Java architect or a .Net developer, and they will spend more of their time in conversation with the market - managing relationships and sourcing services.   In California, some VCs are already adjusting their business models for start up funding requirements measured in six figures rather than  seven or eight figures.

The web services paradigm is for those who belong to upstarts, who don't have anything to lose, and the risk-takers among big companies, who are willing to bet more heavily on the future than they do on the past.

Since this was published...

This article was first conceived in 2004 and inspired by Graeme Burnett's original paper (XML & the Role of Web Services, 1999).  In 2008 at least two ventures have launched that prove the veracity of the predictions here.  Rollbase offers "a growing library of web-based business applications that can be installed into your Rollbase account with a single click."  Coghead lets you easily build your own applications and then lets you share them with anyone, any time, any place.