TechnoCloud

A recent post seems to have struck a chord with Google with ‘Lies, damn lies and social networking statistics‘ currently among the top few positions on Google in a number of markets for the search term social networking statistics.

As an update, Wired claimed in March 2008 that MySpace had an average growth rate of 513%, moving from 20m users (2005) to 225m (2008), with Facebook’s equivalent figure 550%.

For me though, the interesting question is less the size of the overall market - we already know it’s big - but the next challenge of monetising those audiences. It’s somewhat ironic that in a sector where there is such richness of personal data, that ad targeting remains in its infancy and the low value network ad dominates.

So why is that and what’s holding back the full potential of the social networking ad market? Let’s summarise some of the key reasons:

• Concerns from advertisers about associating themselves with the uncertainties of user generated content.
• The shear size of the inventory available.
• Lack of relevancy of ads. It’s partly a technical challenge, but rightly, there are legal and privacy issues with processing user data as Facebook Beacon found out to their cost in having to scale back their ambitions.
• Mindset - are those surfing social networks in the right mindset to respond to advertising? Google Adsense works because it’s contextual and the better ads help task-orientated users solve a problem.
• Lack of innovative creative tailored to those environments.
• Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

These challenges can be at least partially addressed through ad targeting technology, informed consent from users and better data about what users respond to and what they don’t. Also the emergence of niche social networks offers more potential to provide advertisers with a targeted audience focused on a particular activity and in theory more receptive to relevant ads within that niche.

Get close to solving these problems and the really interesting statistics will be the financial ones…

So, Gears (formerly known as Google Gears) is a year old. I trialed using this offline-enabling application as a way to keep up with my Google Reader RSS feeds when on the move without web access and as backup for on some of the flakier days for internet access.

I used it for the first month, but what prevented me from keeping it up was the lack of integration with other products. Despite the plethora of social bookmarking services and Google Reader’s sharing functionality, I still use delicious. I’m so used to its design and functionality that although other pretenders may come along with more functionality, it acts as a hard drive extension for my brain!

The problem was that I’d read a post of interest, but wasn’t able to bookmark it to delicious as that is not offline-enabled. The result was an awkward process of keeping the post unread and going back to bookmark later when web access was restored.

Now that Gears is focused on spreading its open source technology to other services hopefully that will change and I may start using it again. For now, though Gears remains ‘offline’…

Update: delicious offline access may indeed be coming through Yahoo’s BrowserPlus branded as desktop capability for web applications…

Over the last few months, there has been increasing levels of buzz around user interface. From Microsoft’s Surface to the wii and iPhone, the trend is clear - the humble mouse and keyboard/keypad’s dominance are likely to fade as more intuitive and ultimately ‘human’ forms of interaction emerge into the mainstream through touch, motion and voice.

Therefore, it was particularly interesting to get a sneak preview of the next version of Windows which included many of the user interface innovations shown in the Microsoft Surface. Indeed, given the success of the iPhone, how long until we see this functionality coming to Macs?

Below is an early demo of the new Windows 7 OS in action:

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Although TechnoCloud doesn’t normally carry advertising, I’m going to make an exception to test out a new service, Pubmatic, for consideration on some higher profile sites. The service claims to optimise between ad networks you are a member of as well as ad colour to calculate the highest return.

I’ve selected a small ad unit in the sidebar in a prominent enough place to notice, but small enough hopefully not to be too obtrusive.

I’m signed up with Google Adsense to get underway, but will try to add another ad network or two to make it a more effective test. Update: AdBrite now also included.

So far, so good. It’s working and is showing some particularly garish colours which I certainly wouldn’t have chosen as part of my design, but do at least stand out.

As payback for seeing the ads, I’ll update you with the results.

Buried in a post on search quality on the Google blog was an interesting titbit:

we now offer an early form of face recognition on advanced search

Frustratingly that was all there was - it would be interesting to hear if this is technology they had developed themselves or if they are using a third party such as Viewdle, Like.com or even Blinkx, each of whom are innovating in this area.

Visual search is one of the great challenges in unlocking the potential metadata hidden in images and video. Alt text, image name and descriptions only take you so far in understanding a video or image’s content. They may do a good job of describing the overall content, e.g. visit to Paris, but struggle to explain either specific components of the static image (Eiffel Tower in background) or content variations within a longer piece of video (Notre Dame 30 seconds in).

Facial recognition technologies are nothing new in themselves and have been in use in airports for years, but getting them right in visual search is and remains an elusive, yet valuable prize.

Deep in TechnoCloud Towers is a room which I use to showcase consumer technology. This allows colleagues to familiarise themselves with the home entertainment gadgets that their budget or interests wouldn’t normally bring them into contact with.

There’s no doubt which two gadgets excite the most interest - the Apple TV and the Wii.

For all its limitations, Apple TV has a wonderfully intuitive user interface that people ‘get’ first time round. Simple, elegant and no manual required, it’s in theory a good mass market proposition, even though it’s shown few signs of breaking into the mass market…

The wii impresses in a different way. It’s always interesting to see the energy levels rise as soon as you show the motion sensor controller. It brings out the kid in almost everyone as they at first shyly and then with abandon launch themselves into Wii Sports, after a basic explanation of the principles behind the controller.

As the iPhone and potentially the Microsoft Surface are likewise showing, user interface design on consumer technology devices remains in its early phases as more intuitive and satisfying ways emerge to issue commands. That TV remote is already starting to feel pretty dated…