Isaac Mao

“You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.— Doug Floyd”（如果每个人都唱同一个音调，那你就别想当得到和谐），没有多样性，哪里来的和谐？

James Crabtreee在”Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy“中写到：“…他们看到了问题，但是答案是错误的…”

路透社已经在其非洲网站的主要部分显示来自各个国家网志空间的声音，信息的来源是“全球之声在线”(GVO)中的Blog内容。作为GVO的顾问，我想这是一个里程碑一样的变化。显然，两股力量（或者说形态）已经在“专业余”的推动中形成了连续性。从形态上，新闻空间终于变成了“专业-专业余-业余”这样的频谱（Spectrum ）。就此，新闻空间开始完整化。当然这还是YY的完整，毕竟在不同的地区还有不同程度上的差异，这个频谱实际上还不是一个理想的分布，尤其对那些“黑洞”地区。但是，毕竟已经开始…

草根媒体(Grassroots Media)能够在短短的几年时间自发形成并和国际专业传媒接驳起来，虽然在意料的大趋势之中（至今很多人不敢相信），还是超乎人们想象的速度，如同春天早到，花期提前一样让人们又惊又喜。与此相伴，会有越来越多的公民社会乃至商业机会。草根媒体比专业媒体更细微、更可信（Authentic，这又是一个争论的话题），更有实时性；当然比极权媒体（宣传媒体）更人性和社会性。在人们对信息疲劳、过载和麻痹的今天，无疑提供了社会重构的可能性。

路透社、BBC已经主动选择了变革，其他呢？

所有订阅IsaacMao.com的朋友们，祝你们新年大丰收！

credit: Gooodder

It’s already over one year that we heard the big news about Skype was acquired by eBay. However today, I’m afraid that few people is still excited on the merge. Many people,like Laura Martin, an analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics, says “It’s still unclear how it(Skype) benefits the core eBay platform. And monetization has been slower to occur than we had hoped”.

Not only the monetization, but also the basic idea. The problem can be reflected to a too simple thinking on the subjective synergization and eBay. At least eBay guys believe on the intuitive concept that buyer and sellers of Skype would pick up their headset to talk to each other for free. It’s called “Skype Me!” model. But why “Skype Me!” doesn’t work on eBay today?  The answer is also very simple, any transactions are based on informative context.  The context may include the people behind, the comments to the goods by other users, the bidding situation, as well voices and pricing information, etc. Before finding the right people to call, people will spend more time on exploring the right stuffs for them. The time space is real magic niche for eBay/Skype synergization.

What’s the magic could be? It is from RSS.  Currently, eBay doesn’t take full advantage of RSS to benefit all users. The API of eBay has shown its potential on openness. Also eBay has a strong back-end computing power as a leading e-commerce platform(or a software company as eBay’s CEO ever said). RSS is supported by eBay platform as a default for search result. There are mashup applications like RSSAuction.com adds category-based and advanced search feeds.  However, eBay doesn’t provide any transaction tracking feeds for end users. Maybe its for security consideration, but it’s really necessary to boost transactions. If people involves in any deals, they would like to follow the deal and check back continuously. So RSS can be useful here. People will be more productive to make their deals, at least from timing perspective. It can be made safe with embeded token, so security issue is not an excuse to eBay. eBay should open up personalized feeds as an enabling service firstly.

But its just half done targeting the whole problem. Skype is a natural born killer of P2P application platform that with huge computing potentials too. Skype is used to be regarded as the VOIP application. Most of the users don’t know it’s one of the best instant messenger client. It’s much better than other IMs on chatting experience especially for its group chatting and relayed message functions.  In the earthquake period last year, many eastern Asian countries were highly impacted by disabled Internet access. The big sufferers were those centralized IMs, like MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, etc. However, many Skype users were happy to see they can keep regular Skype chatting with less impact.  Skype grabbed a lot of users from this accident that the company may not realize. The problem to Skype is they were always reluctant to open its protocol and reduced the interest in developing community.

Anothr.com, a Skype-based RSS subscription service emerged since Oct. 2006, seems a great combination of Skype and eBay feeds. The neat no-software-installation service soon gathered a lot of global users, especially those geeks. It transfers Skype into an instant information delivery platform. Based on eBay’s current RSS feed, Anothr can help end users to track their search result on some specific items or product models. Also if eBay would like to do more on feeds, the Skype-based RSS notifier can help track your personalized transactions easily. If such service integrates eBay authentication system, RSS pushing engine with more secure and stable design.

A Skype-based RSS alert tool can deliver instant notification from eBay platform to end users with either goods or personal transaction information. The more people pays attentions on their interested items, the more opportunities they will make deal. Instant Transaction Message(ITM) shows its potential here. With RSS the glue, eBay and Skype can really integrate to become a loosely coupled partner to generate biggest value to end users. Skype, if realizes the potential of ITM, can set “chat” as default option if people click their contact names. At least, it’s more polite for people to check status before dialing.

ITM is not just applicable to eBay/Skype one case, instead it uncovers the curtain of next generation of e-commerce. A new wave of technology that we call it “Microformats” is emerging. Microformats will cover any structured data formats we may deal with everyday. Google Base, a potential competitor to eBay, is trying to simplify the publishing of transaction information online to enable p2p commerce. At the same time, Web 2.0 revolution is disrupting eBay’s advantages on Internet commerce from another angle. It’s now the best time for eBay to response, or they may have to face tougher situation to fight in more frontiers. Skype is the key, but depends on how to use it.

References:
EBay Pressured to Move on Skype

“Anothr Me” is a beta released service by Anothr.com. It is designed to improve the experience to support Anothr.com‘s IM-based RSS subscriptions in a web interface. It did good job when I tested in my Skype to manage all my RSS alerts. I tried it with Yahoo’s new “pipes” service and other kinds of feeds, either private feeds or public customized feeds. When I made changes to my feeds list in web interface. It will immediately behaved in my Skype bot.

Also “Anothr Me” seems towarding to a social feeds service with tagging capability and sharing function. I think they will soon make their “hot feeds” section socialized like del.icio.us for web link. I’m looking forward to it’s more improvements on this part. Things will become more interesting to see how the “Micropipeline” world built up in our age.

Now it’s easier to subscribe to this blog in seconds to your Skype: click here.

Dear Larry and Sergey,

I’m writing you the short letter on behalf of many Internet users in China to have some suggestions to resolve the current dilemma for Google in China,  from both business and social perspectives.

During the National Day holiday week in 2002, when Google.com was blocked in China for the first time, Chinese Google users made an online protest spontaneously. They appealed to free the purer search engine wave by wave. Its seemed its also the first time grassroots power was demonstrated in China on Internet.  You can imagine how eager they are to have a complete Internet instead of a shrunken one. At last, people won, Google backed.  However, after 4 years, we started to question whether we should continue to support Google. Many users here were disappointed when they found Google.cn filtered many keywords. The compromise remarks by you in Davos made us more frustrated. Seems you are adopting self-censorship which hurts those loyal users a lot which also devalue your motto of “non-evil”.

Google is ever regarded not only a leading Internet business, but a hope for many people around the world to open their thinking.  Many bloggers in China still believes that in their everyday writings.  We guess you were misled by incomplete information on how censorship is good to Chinese people. The fact is Google in the 130M-Internet-Users country is losing loyal users with loosing your principles. We understand its tough to anyone to make decisions. But it high time to change it back to the right track.  Here we would like to propose 3 ideas to Google for its China strategy in a long term run, to survive, and live better:

1. Set up a 1B US$ corporate venture fund to invest in China’s Internet pioneer sites and cutting edge companies.  The venture fund can be managed by experienced fund managers and industry gurus who really understand the value of Google, as well market potential of China. In my estimation, a venture fund with such a size can invest over 100 deals totally cover 60% of Internet traffic in China.  With venture fund strategy, Google can play its manageable chaotic game in a capital way.

2. Develop anti-censorship tools and service for global Internet users. In China as well some other coutries, censorship is still  a tradition in culture. We are accustomed to control or to be controlled(It’s true!). But it’s too far from modern humanity and universal value. It won’t target China only, instead its a global issue to be solved. So it won’t cause Google’s operation in China into trouble.  The budget to complete the mission will be not more than several millions dollars.

3. Increase the incentive to Chinese Google Adsense users. This can dramatically encourage more Internet users to participate Google’s business ecosystem.  It’s a pure business strategy to increase loyalty as same important to Google’s products in China. Anyway the tactic should be deployed with better localized customer service to respect to individual users and protect their less to hundred-dollar income.

Google is not alone. There are still several millions Google fans in China, especially those bloggers who are more real time intelligent to outside world.  If Google do good as they did in early days. There will be more supporters for sure. Google is not playing a game of itself. You may  under-estimate that before with limited information sources. People here are looking forward  that you can pick the three suggestions(or partly) as China strategy in the coming years which can keep Google’s “non-evil” motto alive in people’s mind. It will also benefit to Google’s business in China. It will be also benefit to the whole Internet neutrality in China. All the Internet users will appreciate that eventually.

All of all, the pure the better; the more compromise, the worse.

Best Regards

Isaac Mao

2007/2