Another great question (not to mention, answer) from the ‘cast with Seth:

“Does Yahoo! have a chance?”

Well, wait a second. Yahoo! makes millions and millions of dollars every day. They have more register users, I think, than just about any other site in the world. And, they deliver huge amounts of information on finance and everything else. Millions and millions of people have Yahoo! mail.

If someone wanted to hand me the keys to Yahoo!, I’d be happy to show up. They’re not doomed, by any stretch of the imagination.

The real question, I think, should be: what’s Yahoo!’s next Dip, and how do they get through it? Is Yahoo! on a dead end in which they’re going to keep cranking out money but not become a superstar in something new. Or, are there Dips that the people at Yahoo! could focus on and put their huge resources behind, and push through. Or, is it a better strategy for them to do forty things, and hope that one of them pops?

And, based on what I’ve said so far today … the way you win on the Internet and everywhere else is to find an area that people are going to choose to talk about, overwhelm it, push through the Dip and then erect a barrier behind you – what I call the Valley of Death – so it’s harder for the Microsofts and the Googles to catch up with you.

Today was an exceptional experience: we had the chance to really riff with Seth Godin for about an hour. I have to say, this was one of my favorite Waxxi ‘casts to date, simply because people seemed to have so much fun (moderator and guest included!).

We talked about working with Hugh, The Dips of Google, StumbleUpon, Squidoo, Yoyodyne, Oprah, Microsoft, Ask.com, Yahoo!, the book publishing industry, and much more. The ‘cast will be live shortly, and we’ll have some transcripts of the conversation here as well.

If you haven’t yet done so, take an evening or a few hours on a weekend day – and read The Dip (a New York Times bestseller, just this week). Then, buy five (or more) copies, and give them away to people you know. The message, and lessons, are relevant to just about everyone.

Thanks again to Seth, and to everyone who participated!

Seth’s blogging, books, and speeches have helped transform businesses and organizations by challenging people (CXOs, students, workers, leaders in government and academia, and so on) to think differently, and then do something about it — like going to the edges and being (truly) remarkable.

If you haven’t yet become addicted to reading it, his is one of the most highly regarded business blogs in the world. He’s the man behind Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus – and now, The Dip.

As the title states, The Dip is A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick). We’ll have more coverage on The Dip in future posts, but for now we’d recommend checking out the book’s blog.

On June 6, 2007 at 1:30pm ET, you’ll have the chance to talk to Seth directly (via phone) and/or ask him a question (via IM in the chat room). Here are the details:

WHAT: Waxxi ‘Cast with Seth Godin
WHEN: Wednesday, June 6, 2007, 1:30-2:30pm EDT

HOW: Register here. But hurry! As always, it’s free but spaces are limited.

Bonus read: Guy Kawasaki’s 10 Questions with Seth about The Dip.

Can you tell us more about Wikia?

Basically, Wikia is my new project. We are building thousands of Wiki communities in parallel. The way that we like to describe it is that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia, and Wikia is the rest of the library and the magazine racks. So, it’s a totally new organization completely separate from Wikipedia, and growing really quickly. [We’re] spending a lot of energy in trying to improve the software and make it easier to use, to try to push this whole free culture revolution out to the next wave of participants.

How will human powered search work?

So, the search project is one of the projects of Wikia, and basically what we’re looking at is everything is open source software – all free software. We want to publish all the algorithms; we want to bring some transparency into the search business.

There are a lot of people who are trying to do human powered search, or trying to do new algorithmic search, but I don’t know of anybody who’s really trying to make a radical commitment to being open and transparent in the sense of free software. So, that’s basically what our goal is.

How it’s actually going to work? Well, that’s yet to be determined. I mean, we’re still in the open design stages. It’s not the kind of thing where we labor for twelve months in stealth mode, then build it all out and announce it in a flurry. It’s a project to build a search engine, so anyone can participate and we’re discussing and debating how to go about it.

How do you plan to successfully compete with Google? A question via chat, from the incredibly participative Rick Myers:

Um…I have no idea! I mean, I think the real answer is, if you believe as I do: that quality search is becoming a commodity. So, if you take a look at the results from Yahoo!, look at the search results from Google, from Ask – they’re really quite similar in many respects, and that’s been increasingly so in the last couple of years. And then you look at some of the stuff that’s been going on in the open source world, around search engines. I think we’re in striking distance of having good quality search in a free software package.

If that’s true, then it’s really a matter of just having the servers and people that manage them, and then you can really compete. If that’s true, then competition is not about having the most money and the most rocket scientists. It’s about having open transparency: search results people can trust because they can understand how things are ranked and sorted.

So that’s basically the approach we’re taking. I don’t normally think much in terms of competition, I think more in terms of finding something cool and fun to do, and doing it.

It was interesting to see the level of interaction via IM vs. phone. This was the first Waxxi ‘cast where most all of the questions came in via chat or private IM vs. the phone (just two callers who ‘raised their hand’ to ask a quesion, one of whom we couldn’t hear because his headset’s mic was muted – woops!). Since most of the participants were true power-users/early adopters, IM is simply more natural a communications method than the phone.

We had a great showing of NYC’s ‘next generation of digital movers and shakers’ – otherwise known as nextNYers. One of them, David Evans of Civil Netizen, says of Waxxi:

If basic podcasting is like standing, then Waxxi’s interactive podcasts are like flying…

He also blogged about his experience yesterday:

The chat was moderated by Tracy Sheridan of Waxxi, who performed the job masterfully like a great conductor, bridging the worlds of phone callers, online chatters, studio guests, and staff into a fluid experience for both Jimmy and the guests. The event was reminscent of a good talk show where the host and guest interact with both a live studio audience as well as with phone in callers.
…

I’ve never felt so drawn in to an interactive online event like I was today. For an hour, I felt like I wasn’t even sitting at my desk, but rather as a part of a live studio audience. Suddenly, listening to TWiT on the train ride home just doesn’t sound as exciting as it used to…

Wow. We’re absolutely blushing! Thanks to David, to our guest Jimmy Wales, and each person who participated. We had a lot of fun. Till next time!

Well, we could’ve told you that.

Jimmy Wales came out, fully loaded, with some fighting words — or about as peaceful as fighting words can get:

The idea that Google has some edge because they’ve got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now.

He went on to describe Google and Yahoo! as “black boxes” that won’t reveal how they rank search results. And, that collaborative search technology could transform the structure of the Internet.

What this translates to is Wikia, the for-profit sister site to Wikipedia, will take great lessons from the non-profit’s core. Wikia Search, then, is a place where:

…users could work together to improve search engines, just as Wikipedia users had tweaked and rewritten articles on the sprawling encyclopedia.

Wikia as a whole hosts collaborative community publishing sites, and is supported by advertising. Examples of some of these communities include 24, the Muppet Wiki (one of Jimmy’s favorites), and the currently featured collaboration, Gears of War.

]]> http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/03/10/jimmy-wales-means-business-a-challenge-to-google-yahoo/feed/ 0 http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/02/14/the-waxxi-cast-with-cory-doctorow/ http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/02/14/the-waxxi-cast-with-cory-doctorow/#comments Wed, 14 Feb 2007 15:21:06 +0000 Tracy Sheridan http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/02/14/the-waxxi-cast-with-cory-doctorow/ We’d like to thank everyone that attended Monday’s interactive podcast with Cory Doctorow, including of course, Mr. Doctorow himself. Some joined by IM, some by phone, and many – both. As expected, it was a fascinating, reeling conversation. Someone once said of Cory, quite accurately, that he was the ultimate interviewee. Fire off a question and what you get back is clear, concise, and brilliant mindshare; an explosion of thought, passion and analysis.

We discussed topics from Disney to DRM, the world of science fiction to the world of the copyfight, Google Book Search, Wikipedia, his upbringing, and (much) more. We’ll post some of the conversation here, and of course the podcast will be available on Waxxi, shortly.

Interestingly, during the recording we experience a slight technical glitch. Suffice to say, it felt more like twelve or so podcasts worth of technical difficulties all rolled into 10 minutes’ time. But what happened in the end is actually the fun part of the story. A participant named Rich (calling from the UK) swiftly took over the conversation, asked Cory questions, and took some from the crowd – like he had done it 1,000 times before. The crowd went wild! They loved it. And, after listening to this great banter for a bit, I came back in when the timing was just right, and continued on. Now that’s participatory.

We’ve always said at Waxxi, the Floor is Yours. We believe the interviewer should take a back seat, and the people should drive the conversation.

Our gratitude again goes out to Cory, as well as a few others:

* the dedicated, hard working, fun loving Waxxi team, which includes our partners-in-design, Inflatble3

* the participants, who included bloggers, students, entrepreneurs, executives, journalists and a fantastic on-the-fly-moderator, Rich (you’re hired!)

(side note: thanks also to Trail, a UK-based band, for providing the music playing on hold, prior to the start of the ‘cast. MySpace link is here.)

]]> http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/02/14/the-waxxi-cast-with-cory-doctorow/feed/ 0 http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/02/03/the-future-of-search-human-powered/ http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/02/03/the-future-of-search-human-powered/#comments Sat, 03 Feb 2007 14:06:54 +0000 Tracy Sheridan http://waxxi.us/blog/2007/02/03/the-future-of-search-human-powered/ On Wednesday, I attended a talk by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (as part of the Free Culture @ NYU series I’ve been blogging about a bit).

It was historic, in that it was the first public talk he’s given on search. Why? Well, a little project that’s been occupying the bulk of his attention – Wikia Search – has become quite public after an interview with the New York Times, and its resulting article.

The thrust of Mr. Wales’ presentation surrounded his vision of Wika Search:

To build a free, democratic, transparent search engine.

After all,

Search is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the Internet, therefore of society as a whole.

He believes that search should be three things: transparent, participatory, and free.

Referring to the theory of open source, which at the time of its suggestion, was deemed impossible. “It won’t work!”, insisted leading technology companies like (surprise) Microsoft, Sun, IBM, SAP, and Oracle. Enter: redhat, php, Ubuntu, and more. Guess what? It does work. It works because:

It’s a virtuous (not a vicious) cycle.

More involvement –> fundamental improvement –> open code –> everyone can improve it. And so on.

Next comes open (free) content. “What?! That will never, ever work!”, said such establishments as the New York Times, Financial Times, etc. Enter, for one, Wikipedia. You know, one of the world’s most influential brands? ‘Nuff said.

Back to search, and Wikia. Wika was described, as a whole, as:

Every other kind of book, work, or community that people might build.

Think: library (Wikia) vs. encyclopedia (Wikipedia). Wikia Search relies on three fundamental principles:

1. Transparency: all algorithms are published, testable and researchable. [Open]

2. Participatory: bringing the best elements of Wikipedia and trust networks to the problems of search. This brings the power of human participation to the search process, and relies on the social structure: accountability. It, Mr. Wales believes, empowers people to contributre to something that is of very high quality. The community monitors itself, Wikipedia style. In other words, you have a stake in search. [Human-powered]

3. Free: to change the competitive landscape of search; to encourage global innovation; to disallow disambiguation. An example given was that of a serach for Paris Hilton. Search engines of the now – no matter how often you travel and, let’s say, search for and book a room at the Hilton Hotel in Paris, France – still offer up a slew of sites that link to the infamous “celebrity.” Search of the future (human powered, that is) will at the very least be able to as, ‘did you mean the hotel, or the celebrity?’ [Big idea]

Will Wikia Search be a viable threat to Google? You be the judge. (Or, the participant.)

[Originally blogged over here; thought it was repeating, here.]

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