Krishwords

Dave Winer’s post on the usage of the term Social Graph has set in a discussion around the blogosphere. I seriously don’t understand why this became an issue in the first place. From my scientific background, I have always understood that

Network = Network Graph = Graph

It is only an obvious next step to have the same usage when it comes to social networks. I have been using social network, social network graph and social graph to mean the same thing. At least, thatz what my mathematical background taught me. Since geeks are much closer to the scientific community (than, let us say, religious fanatics), I thought they are using it in the same way. I never realized that they are meaning different things till I read Dave’s post. Even a person with a naive understanding of the term network, as just a representation of a physical network, will define graph to be a diagrammatic representation of the physical network. Under such a scenario, using social graphs and social network to mean different things is plain naive. I am still struggling to understand why tech community needs a teacher with a stick (a.k.a. Dave Winer) to understand this.

Facebook opened itself as a platform for application developers 3+ months back. Many in tech media were too eager to call facebook as an open platform. I was not all that happy about the “openness” of facebook then and I wrote a post in June talking about a decentralized social networking platform. In fact, I mentioned about the walled garden nature of facebook to Robert Scoble in one of his Kyte sessions. He said he is not all that worried about putting data inside the walled garden. But I am happy to learn that he has changed his opinion now and he, along with Marc Canter, Joseph Smarr and Michael Arrington are promoting a bill of rights for users of social web. This is the right step in the right direction. Once users become aware of the need for openness in the social networks, amazing things can happen. I am pretty convinced that we will be seeing more and more social networks opening up their platforms. We are going to see application developers developing apps for all these social networks. Once the social networks open up their platforms, the users are going to see a need for openness in the apps. They will want the apps to work on all the platforms. They will want to move around their data from all apps across all social networking platforms. This will end up in an open ecosystem which will ultimately benefit the consumers and there will be no single company with a monopoly hold. This is what open source had managed to achieve in the traditional software world. Unfortunately, before open source could gain foothold, Microsoft has established its monopoly in the software world. Open source faced an uphill task, first convincing consumers about the need to have open source code and then fight back against the Microsoft monopoly. All these years of hard work by the open source community has increased the awareness among consumers about the need for open standards. This, in turn, is translating into calls for open data, open communication, etc. Open source has taught us about the advantages of having an open ecosystem and how it benefits the consumers. Even though it appears like an attempt by certain industry leaders to hijack the agenda, the bill of rights for users of social web is a good step in this direction. Even though there were calls around the tech blogosphere for such an open ecosystem for quite some time now, this bill of rights will definitely help accelerate the process of increasing the awareness among the consumers about the need to take their data and their friends with them (when they move to other networks). It is better to wake up early in the game, unlike what happened in the traditional software field. It is time for consumers to tell the social media sites about the direction they want to take. I think Marc Canter, Robert Scoble and others can play a major role in creating this awareness among the users. What do you think about this bill of rights? Are you worried about the portability of your data and friends?

Robert Scoble kicked off a discussion today with his prediction that Mahalo, Techmeme and Facebook will beat Google. In the videos, he seems to be pretty convinced that Mahalo can beat Google. I disagree with Robert’s take on this. I had a few back to back tweets with Robert on the topic. In one of the tweets he asked whether several Mahalos can get together to beat Google. In this post, I am going to disagree with the thesis that “Mahalo can beat Google”. I am using Mahalo here but it applies to any human powered search engine with Mahalo’s approach to search.

Before I offer my views on the topic, I want to make the following clear.

• I completely agree with Robert that SEMs (Search Engine Marketers) are a pain and we need better search results.
• If, by any chance, Robert had meant that Google should be beaten in the search game, I am in full agreement with it too. We need to stop Google’s possible search monopoly and there should be heavy competition to force Google to continue innovating.

Having said that, I want to categorically state that Mahalo, in its current form, can’t beat Google. The reasons are many. Some of them include

• Human powered search cannot scale like machine based search
• Human powered search has built in bias in the system
• Human powered search will definitely lack in freshness
• Human powered search doesn’t mean much in non text search world like Image Search, Video Search, Book Search, etc.
• Human powered search is a ridiculous thing when it comes to desktop search.

There are many other reasons where Mahalo and other similar search engines will fail. However, these are the few reasons that just popped out immediately after watching Scoble’s video. Let us dig a little deeper on these reasons.

Human powered search engine in the Mahalo mould cannot scale like an algorithm based search like Google. Even if we assume that Mahalo grows like how Robert expects in the next four years, with 100K “volunteers”, it still cannot cover all topics in the world, it still cannot cover all languages in the world, it still cannot cover all the specifics in a particular topic, it cannot cover all the variations of a particular query, etc.. It might cover a search query “HDTV” much better than Google. But I searched Mahalo with queries “Dent on HDTV” and “Scratch on HDTV”, an hour back. It returned back saying there are no matching results. Even though it offers better results for HDTV, it fails miserably when you get into specifics on HDTV. Imagine the variations in queries on HDTV from all over the world, “HDTV with a spot”, “HDTV with a broken edge”, “HDTV and Bestbuy problem”, “HDTV with loose switch”, “HDTV’s remote not working”, “I just peed on HDTV”, etc. There is no way Mahalo can scale to take care of such specifics on even a single topic, along with everything else. Comparatively, HDTV is an easy problem to solve. There are much more difficult problems in this world which Mahalo cannot solve or may not bother to solve. Let us say I make a web page about a topic HDTV that contains a sentence like “not gone triple ribbon belt mother cook with mould acumen”. If someone searches for HDTV, my page may show up after the first 50 pages of Google results and not at all on Mahalo. But if someone searches for the sentence I mentioned above with double quotes, it will show up in the Google results and there is almost zero chance that it will show up in Mahalo (unless if my content is a killer content except for that particular sentence I quoted above). Now imagine endless new queries. Ask.com CEO claimed that 60% of their searches are unique. Even Google seems to have claimed that 20-25% of their total queries were not made before. Mahalo cannot even attempt to solve the search engine needs of all the internet users in this world, even if it scales like what Scoble hopes. It is like trying to build a 200 storey building without involving any machines and just with one brick at a time. It is just not humanly possible. Scaling problems will ensure that any attempts to create a completely human powered search engine is a failure.

To highlight my arguments, I am adding the picture of the result I got in Mahalo when I queried “mod_security rules for SQL injection attack”. You can see how badly it failed for this query. The scaling of Mahalo in the next 4 years, which Robert describes, may answer this particular query well. But, there are billions of other queries which may throw up similar results even after four years.

Human powered search like Mahalo has inbuilt bias which is difficult to manage. Jason feels that this bias can be managed with stuff like transparency, ethics codes, hiring people well, firing bad people quickly, early warning systems, etc. He claims that they take a Neutral Point of View (NPOV) on stuff like abortion, 9/11 and George Bush. I agree with him that with stuff like transparency, ethics code, etc., you can take a NPOV on few things like the queries he has quoted. Bring in diversity of queries and the different points of view attached with it. Now bring scale these number of queries. There is no way you can maintain NPOV consistently on all the topics and various queries associated with these topics. Jason even suggested the idea of Mahalo Ombudsman and included Jeff Jarvis as one possible candidate, which he rejected immediately. Even if he makes it ombudsmen instead of ombudsman, the scaling problem will ensure that the bias will stay in the system. Add to this the issues like embargo. For example, the embargo on Iran might prevent Jason to hire guides from Iran and this may result in inferior Mahalo results as far as topics related to Iran are concerned. But, an algorithmic engine like Google can just crawl the websites in Iran and have better results on the topics related to Iran.

Human powered search engine like Mahalo cannot keep the content fresh. Google crawls the web more frequently to keep its contents fresh. Now, I think, we can even inform Google about how often it should update our websites and this helps Google to update its results with fresh contents. There is no way Mahalo can keep the content fresh on all topics and related to all queries. The scalability problem described above, will make sure that the Mahalo content is stale except for a smaller percentage of terms.

I think it is pretty obvious that human powered engines like Mahalo cannot do much in the areas like Image search, Video search, Book search, etc. Add to this, the search in other languages, reverse phone number look up, etc. I don’t even have to talk about how ridiculous it will be to consider human powered search when it comes to desktop search.

Robert ignores the longtail concept when he talks about human powered search engines replacing the algorithm based ones. The very concept of longtail came into existence due to the phenomenon called internet. Under such a scenario, betting the future of internet on something that uses the hits and ignores the longtail (remember his discussion on social fabric? He talks about bumping the results up based on the number of people who trust a particular person (Michael Arringtons and Robert Scobles of the world)). I do agree that Google uses pagerank which can, in some ways, be likened to the hits in the longtail concept. However, a well structured query in Google will also get results from the longtail of web pages whereas it will not be fetched in the social fabric approach of Mahalo. This is a very important point and I just hope I have put it forward clearly.

So what is the solution to the search engine problem? Is Mahalo doomed for failure? What about 100s of Mahalos? Well, I am not an expert in search engines to offer a solution to the problems, in the current day search engines. But I strongly believe that human based search engines like Mahalo cannot replace (or beat) algorithm based search engines like Google. My solution is still algorithmic based. My hunch feeling is that the future search engine will be a collection of vertical search engines which may use Robert Scoble’s trust concept to optimize the search results. As I told Robert in our twitter conversation, Mahalo can, at the very best, be a Google optimizer but not a Google beater. Vertical search engines, with Mahalos in the front for optimization, may offer the much needed solution to our search engine problems. Humans cannot replace machines in the search engine world. Mahalo may serve well for a niche market but it is not a Google beater. At best, it can be termed as a Google optimizer.

What is your take on Scoble’s thesis that Mahalo and other trust based human search engines will beat Google? Do you agree with him? If not, why do you think human search engines cannot beat Google? What do you think will be the Google killer?

PS: It is 2:15 AM. I will correct any mistakes in the morning.

I have 10 invites for Dopplr. If anyone wants an invite, feel free to contact me with your email address.

We are dreaming about decentralized social networks, where we can take our data and friends to wherever we go. Some of us are even wondering if Facebook and other social networks will take the necessary first step. But the venture capitalist Fred Wilson says that if people leave Facebook for its walled garden, it won’t make a dent on them. He also explains why

I wish it were so, but most of Facebook’s traditional users (like my two daughters) don’t care that their data is locked up in Facebook. I’ll show them my Facebook running in Netvibes when they wake up this morning and they’ll say “that’s nice dad but why would you want to do that?”.I don’t see a Facebook rebellion happening anytime soon. The Techcrunch 50,000 might leave when they realize that they can do most, if not everything, that they do in Facebook on the web on a platform they control. But that won’t make a dent in Facebook’s core audience.

In a way, Fred is right. Facebook’s core audience doesn’t care about walled gardens. They don’t care if they cannot take their data and friends to another network. Sounds familar? This is what happened when Microsoft was establishing their “monopoly” in the market. People didn’t care whether they were getting sucked into proprietary formats. People didn’t care about the vendor lock-in with Microsoft. Eventually, people did start caring about it. People wanted to take their documents and media files to use with other software and/or devices. Once a new technology matures, and the honeymoon period is over, people started worrying whether their friends and/or relatives, without a copy of Microsoft word, will be able to open the document they just sent to them. They started worrying about whether a video they produced will show properly on their friend’s computer or other media device. A realization, albeit a bit slowly, came, about the dangers of getting struck to a proprietary technology. The non-techcrunch Joes started realizing that their documents and media means nothing to folks without Microsoft applications. They started asking for open standards. Governments all over the world started implementing open standards and, in some cases, open source software. I expect a similar realization on the social networking scene too. We should not wait for the arrival of such a realization before we start building open standards based, vendor lock-in free, social networks. It is very important that there is an open standards based platform available when people start wanting to have open social networks. The future of social networking is going to be open because, sooner than later, people will realize that they want to live in a democracy rather than a monarchy or under a dictator.

Update: Wired has an article where they call for opening up of social networks.

Tags: socialnetworks, socialnetworks, open standards, openstandards, microformats, facebook

Remember my post on Decentraized Social Networks? Matt Hollingsworth points out correctly about the first step we need to do in the social networking scene.

Could we define a set of meta-actions that we apply to social networking and then create standards around these? Let’s start with “social presence” and define an open API with a set of primitives for how any app could update another one with “presence” information.

On a related news, Robert Scoble tells us that Plaxo is going to come up with new features on Monday. It appears that it will be a much open social network where you can export your data and take it with you (unlike Facebook). But, Scoble is not optimistic about Plaxo gaining traction because Facebook has already established itself as a cool player in this area. I agree with Scoble on his prediction that Plaxo will not gain traction at this point of time. But I am pretty certain that people will soon want to take their friends with them from one social network to another and also to interact with friends in other networks. As Matt says, it is time to first start defining an openAPI that can be utilized to update the user presence across various networks.

Tags: SocialNetworks, Open Standards, OpenAPI, Facebook, Plaxo

I still have Pownce invites available. If you are a geek and want an invite, leave your email address in the email field of the comment form below. It will not be visible to others and I will use it to send you the invites.

We are using Facebook indiscriminately adding friends and storing information. But, there are some legal issues we should know before we put our “life” on it. Do you know that your company could claim ownership to your Facebook profile?

According to Out-Law.com,

This is a scary scenario. You don’t want to invest all your time on your Facebook account only to get grabbed by your company (don’t they already do it with your work at the company?).

Andrew also points out to some of the non obvious issues in their terms and conditions, which you agree

• As with any company, their terms are subjected to change any time. So you don’t know what is in store in the future
• It seems Facebook is for personal use only. I seriously don’t understand why it is so
• You cannot use facebook for your company/organization. It is for single user only
• Disputes are arbitrated under Delaware law
• You are giving up copyright control of all your contents
• Like the Microsoft platform, the applications running on Facebook platform are not guaranteed to be safe
• Facebook owns any suggestion/complaint/ideas you submit to them
• Your privacy is not guaranteed

I strongly urge you to read these two articles before you invest your time in the Facebook. Some of the terms are typical of any website you sign up but few others are downright scary. It is vital that every Facebook user knows what is in store for them legally before they invest too much of their time inside Facebook.

Link thanks to Steve Reubal through Twitter and Chris Brogan of Grasshoppers

Tags: Facebook, Social Networks, Socialnetworking, Legal, Law

Jeremiah asks if facebook will replace your email. My quick answer is not really. It may replace email from your personal communication tools (already IM has replaced email in this category). We can’t expect facebook to replace your business email. Also facebook is a closed system. Only people who are members of facebook can befriend you and only those people in your friend’s list can send messages to you. Email is an open system where anyone can contact you if they know your email address (spammers, huh!!). If at all anything else is going to replace email, the new system should be an open system and also be platform independent. Facebook is not. I wouldn’t subscribe to the theory that facebook will soon replace email completely.

I had decided not to write posts on individual facebook apps because, already, there are many sites doing a good job in this area, including Rodney Rumford’s Facereviews.com. But I couldn’t pass an app I came across today. It is called Writeslab. This is a simple document collaboration app that could come very handy while collaborating with facebook friends. I already spoke about how Zoho could turn out to be a killer app on facebook. I am still convinced that it will eventually turn out to be a killer app, once they integrate with facebook more closely than it is now. In fact, the folks at Zoho have already promised to offer a closer integration with facebook and an ability to share with facebook friends. We may have to wait till the next release for it. However, Writeslab belongs to a lightweight document collaboration category. It offers a simple document editor with a minimal set of features. But it also offers a fine grained approach to document sharing. You can make it viewable by everyone or just your friends or you can just keep it as a private document. You also have similar choices when it comes to allowing friends to edit the documents. You can share/collaborate with just one friend or a group of friends or everyone. Unlike Zoho, this application offers only a document editor but its close integration inside the facebook and the kinda control it offers in the case of document sharing/collaboration, makes this app a very interesting one. In fact, I would even suggest that Zoho should take a lesson or two from Writeslab about the closer facebook integration and the finer controls on sharing. Check it out.