Powerset Opens The Gates To It’s First Product, Wikipedia Search
ADD A COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | 16 Views 
Powerset Inc. is a Palo Alto, Calif.-based search engine company that was started in late 2006. Barney Pell claimed that their search engine technology is highly capable of taking on Google’s search algorithms. Investors believed it so $42.5 million was plugged into Powerset. Investors include Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Carl Page, Sean Parker, and Eric Tilenius. Foundation Capital and The Founders Fund were involved in Powersets investment too. Yesterday, the search engine company released their first product built around Wikipedia.
The way that Powerset has designed search results is pretty good.
To search for Wikipedia articles, users can enter keywords, questions, and phrases. Powerset aggregates information across multiple sites and articles. While this is a good start, Powerset needs to be strategic about how to launch a full-scale competition against Google. Below is a video demo of the site.
Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.
Related Links:
Barney Pell’s Weblog
Powerset Blog
Powerset on Twitter
Google, The Third Company To Connect Data Portability This Week. Who’s Going To Be Connect Four?
ADD A COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | 59 Views 
“Social is in the air.”
-David Glazer, Director of Engineering, Google
Facebook and MySpace announced this past week that they are making profile data portable if a user chooses to. MySpace is calling this feature Data Portability and Facebook is calling it Facebook Connect. And now Google is launching the same feature, but calling it Friend Connect. About two dozen sites will have access to Google Connect initially, but expansion will happen in the coming weeks.
“You’ll be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web like Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, LinkedIn, orkut, Plaxo, and others. And quite simply, you’ll be able to do things together,” wrote Mussie Shore, Product Manager of Google on The Official Google Blog.
On May 28 and 29, Google is holding a two-day seminar to discuss the OpenSocial initiative. The event information is located at: http://code.google.com/events/io/.
Between Facebook, MySpace, and Google opening up this week, any guesses on who will be the fourth? Microsoft? Yahoo!? Second Life? My bet is on Yahoo!
Sphere: Related ContentMicrosoft Research Launches Worldwide Telescope Beta
ADD A COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 | 59 Views 
“The WorldWide Telescope is a powerful tool for science and education that makes it possible for everyone to explore the universe. By combining terabytes of incredible imagery and data with easy-to-use software for viewing and moving through all that information, the WorldWide Telescope opens the door to new ways to see and experience the wonders of space. Our hope is that it will inspire young people to explore astronomy and science, and help researchers in their quest to better understand the universe.”
-Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has announced that they have launched WorldWide Telescope today. This allows users to see the same imagery in the universe as scientists at NASA. The imagery is put together using Chandra X-Ray, the Observatory Center, Sloan Digital Sky Survey and other telescopes.
Users will be able to select a telescope that they want to look through. Users can also view planet locations from the past, present, and future. The foundation of WorldWide Telescope is based on the work of Jim Gray, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Microsoft. As a tribute to Gray, Microsoft is making WorldWide Telescope free.
Some of the other features includes zooming and panning as well as guided tours. Some of the features are similar to Google Sky.
Information Source:
[1] Microsoft PressPass: WorldWide Telescope Brings Space Exploration to Earth
Facebook Raises A $100 Million Equity-Free Loan For Server Power From TriplePoint Capital
ADD A COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Sunday, May 11th, 2008 | 136 Views 
“It will be used entirely for servers.”
-Facebook Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu (former CFO of YouTube and Yahoo! Treasurer)
In the last 7 months, Facebook has raised about $460 million. One hundred million of that amount was raised in the last couple of days for the company to scale their user-base by procuring additional servers. The $100 million will is a loan and equity will not be given away. TriplePoint Capital, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture capital firm is the ones who provided the loan.
“The last thing the entrepreneur wants to do is see those precious equity dollars flowing into equipment purchases,” stated TriplePoint’s CEO, Jim Labe. “It’s a very unproductive use of equity to plow it into fixed assets.”
Facebook has also recently started to remove the cap from the number of friends a user can have. The cap was set to 5,000 friends total before. As of right now, Facebook has about 550 employees but expects to have 700-800 by the end of the year.
Some of TriplePoint’s client list includes E-Loan, Hotmail, Inktomi, NVIDIA, Pogo.com, and Salesforce.com.
Information Source:
[1] BusinessWeek: Facebook: Friends with Money by Spencer E. Ante
Yahoo! Acquires The Rights To Inquisitor Safari Search Plugin
ADD A COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Sunday, May 11th, 2008 | 131 Views 
A couple of days ago, Yahoo! announced that they had acquired Inquisitor, a plugin for Apple Safari that is built around search. The Inquisitor plugin has auto-completion and shows a pull-down pane with search results that are generated as the user is typgin. Inquisitor recently released version 3 of their plugin.
The financial details were undisclosed. David Watanabe founded Inquisitor. Although Watanabe won’t be joining Yahoo!, he will be assisting the search engine company with extending the the plugin beyond its current interface.
“I look forward to assisting Yahoo! in refining and extending the Inquisitor user experience beyond where it is today,” stated Watanabe on the Inquisitor blog. “I truly believe that Inquisitor and its users can only benefit, both from Yahoo’s resources and attention, and from the product integration possibilities that would have been impossible to pursue on my own.”
Information Source:
[1] Webware: Yahoo acquisition to aid Apple searches
Facebook Would Rather Build Their Own Data Portability Feature (Facebook Connect) Than Join MySpace Data Availability
ADD A COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Saturday, May 10th, 2008 | 210 Views 
“Today we are announcing Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to ‘connect’ their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site,” stated Dave Morin, Facebook’s Senior Platform Manager. “This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook.”
The competition between Facebook Inc. and MySpace is intensifying. A couple of days ago, MySpace made it clear that they are creating a way to make user data portable with a few key partners. They even said that they’d be happy to work with Facebook if they want to join the project. The data portability project that MySpace is working on is called MySpace Data Availability. MySpace also signed on to work with Google on their OpenSocial initiative.
Did Facebook respond by saying that they are willing to work with MySpace? No. Instead, Facebook announced that they are making their user data portable through a project called Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect asks the user if they want to allow third party companies to access their information. For example, Connecting Digg with the Facebook Account will probably automatically connect your name and location to your Digg profile. If your Facebook friends are also on Digg, you can find them through the connectivity options.
Stay tuned to Pulse 2.0 for the official launch of Facebook Connect and MySpace Data Availability in few weeks.
Information Source:
[1] Associated Press: Facebook to let users carry profiles with them by Michael Liedtke
[2] TechCrunch: Facebook Responds To MySpace With Facebook Connect by Michael Arrington
Facebook Banning Sex Offenders
1 COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | 163 Views 
The first blog post I wrote on Pulse 2.0 was on September 16, 2006 and it was titled, Facebook Opening for Everyone. This article had to do with Facebook opening their user base to anyone with an e-mail account and not just exclusively for university students. An influx of pedophiles and sex offenders took advantage of MySpace and Friendster’s openness and now they would have access to Facebook users.
But not anymore…
Facebook is placing 40 more safeguards to protect their users from sexual predators. Sex offenders will be banned and contacting users under 18 will have limitations. There will be task forces in place that verifies user age and identities. Forty-nine states and Washington D.C. officials have agreed to partner with Facebook to ensure safety measures. Facebook has over 70 million users and already enacting these safeguards.
“Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset,” stated Chris Kelly, Facebook Chief Privacy Officer. “The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena.”
Companies offering services on the social network will have to comply with privacy and safety. Tobacco and alcohol ads will not show up for users too young to purchase those items. Inappropriate pictures will be removed. Warning messages will be sent if children send personal information to adults over the site. And lastly children will be monitored if it is discovered that they are masquerading as adults.
This was a smart move for Facebook. MySpace’s reputation is tainted for the cases involving pedophilia and murder. A few days ago, I posted a video of a Saturday Night Live skit parodying MySpace’s infested user-base of predators. MySpace should follow the same initiative as Facebook in this case.
Sphere: Related ContentMySpace To Make Profile Data Portable
ADD A COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | 133 Views 
“The walls around the garden are coming down.”
-MySpace CEO, Chris DeWolfe
MySpace has just allowed their user data to become more portable. While MySpace is the dominant social network, Facebook has been taking away a lot of it’s market-share. MySpace data will soon be able to be exported to Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter. MySpace is already well-established, but may feel that forcing users to pick one social network over the other may not bode well for the News Corp.-owned social network as Facebook is growing at a rapid pace.
“We, alongside our data availability launch partners, are pioneering a new way for the global community to integrate their social experiences Web-wide,” added DeWolfe.
MySpace profile owners spend hours customizing blog posts, music, videos, websites, and adding friends. MySpace will allow their users to transfer a lot of this data to partner websites.
“We believe that the more open and the more social the Internet becomes the better it is for MySpace. We are happy to work with Facebook if they want to join up with us on this project, as with any group that wants to work with us.”
Will Facebook join? Stay tuned.
Information Source:
[1] AFP: MySpace lets users take profile data outside site’s walls by Glenn Chapman
How Google Got Their Groove Back
1 COMMENT | Amit Chowdhry | Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 | 250 Views 
A few months ago, the hype of Google was overshadowed by the potential of a combined Yahoo! and Microsoft. This caused Google’s stock to plummet even though the company had a few powerful mainstream initiatives such as OpenSocial and Android. Google countered Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo! by offering an advertisement partnership to the search engine company founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang.
Yahoo! wanted more money from Microsoft, but that only caused the Windows-maker to walk away from the deal. Yahoo! is now leaning towards the Google partnership. Google stock was at $412 per share 2 months ago and now it’s back up to $579.
The awkwardness of the Google-Yahoo! partnership is that Google is willing to help Yahoo! earn more money. And when Yahoo! makes more money, they can build their own advertising platform to compete against Google. So why would Google help Yahoo! make more money?
“We are very excited to be participating in this test,” stated Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. “It’s nice to be working with Yahoo and we like them very much.”
In the summer of 2002 former Yahoo! CEO, Terry Semel made an offer to buy Google for $3 billion, but the company wanted at least $5 billion. Semel walked away from the deal and then Google went public and became worth over $100 billion.
It’s a funny world we live in where refusing to be acquired sometimes works out for the better. Perhaps Yahoo! refusing to be acquired will have some positive results despite shareholder disagreements.
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