ATEC 4340 - Business models
Jimmy Wales with Charlie Rose interview.
Watch and comment.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8513
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Mind the Gap: ATEC 4340 - Business models
Jimmy Wales with Charlie Rose interview.
Watch and comment.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8513
I really liked what Wales had to say concerning the need for internet companies to cater to the market and to their users. I agree with him that many companies tend to do what is best for the company, not what is best for the user, and that such companies will get hit because of it because people will not put up with a million advertisements for long, ESPECIALLY if there is an alternative out there that does the same with less hassle. This is something I've been irked with for a long time: if internet companies expect us to use their product, why don't they cater it to us rather than making it more and more annoying to use for anyone. Receiving more money will still hurt you if all of your users leave.
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Nice to see the face of the man behind Wikipedia. I look forward to seeing how he intends to topple the Google empire when it comes to the search engine.
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I found it interesting to hear the viewpoint of one of the founders of a major website. He mentions conversations he had with other big founders (such as Bill Gates), and demonstrates a healthy competitiveness with their web applications. I admire that he wants to create something greater than what already exists; even something as successful as Google.
His strive to surpass such successful websites seems to explain the growth of the internet. Developers, including the founders of the top web applications, are constantly trying to create an application that is better than what's already been made.
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Jimmy Wales states during the video clip that "The web is a global platform for people to share knowledge. That's what is so great about it." I find this statement to be very true, the web is a pool of information, endless in its knowledge. Jimmy Wales hopes to create the next Google, Wikia. Within the next two to three years the newest search engine, Wikia, will contain 66 languages and endless social contacts, much like Google. Rumor has it that Google is threatened by the idea of Wikia. Jimmy Wales says it shouldn't. I find all this information very interesting. I have not yet heard of Wikia or its future plans.
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I like how Jimmy Wales is taking this idea of collective intelligence that was so successful with wikipedia and spreading that to other areas of the Internet. However, I don't necessarily think this approach is guaranteed to work well all the time. Wikipedia was basically an encyclopedia...an avenue where collective intelligence would work well. I'm not quite sure how it would work for a search engine. Collective intelligence could potentially leave you with some terrible search results that aren't what you're looking for at all. Would collective intelligence really be better at finding what a user wants than a dedicated organization like google trained to do so? Open-source in general seems to be very succesful, but I still think there are occasional problems. ex. Firefox has yet to fix it's massive memory leak issue.
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I don't really have much else to say about the interview that hasn't already been said other than that I noticed that it was posted in 2007. This made me wondering how far along this project has come since then. So I went to wikia.com and checked it out. Maybe I don't completely understand it, or maybe it's just not finished but there really wasn't much to say about it. I tried to search for 3 generic topics and only one had articles or links to wikis. I think it has a way to go but it was pretty interesting anyhow.
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Jimmy Wales' appreciation of open source code and the sense of community within the Internet was most intriguing to me. When he started talking about Mozilla Firefox and the "geek"-developed plug-ins, add-ons, affiliated software [Open Office, he mentioned], and communal environment of improving upon the application, I nodded my head in agreement many times, as I love all the customization and helpful things you can add to an already commendable browser. By the way, add Ad Block Plus if you haven't already on Firefox...it's awesome.
Not only do these improvements reflect the possibilities for the future in web development and technical aspects in themselves, they also bring the programmers/artists of sorts to the forefront to show how the Internet can still be personal and welcoming.
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It is a noticeable point emphasized by Jimmy Wales that Google, About, Ask, etc. present similar search results proving that particular companies seem to dominate the search world. His concept of open source software seems to broaden the horizons of research on the internet. However, it also seems problematic in the same sense of any other wiki- how reliable is the source of this information?
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I found it very interesting that during the conversation, Wales mentioned that the possible beginning of the end for MySpace is their lack of control. They give their users a lot of freedom, but that comes at a certain price, i.e. ridiculous amounts of spam that MySpace is having trouble controlling. He then mentions that a lot of the success of Facebook is that they kept some control.
This model based on giving users a lot of freedom is one that Jimmy is trying to follow with his Wiki search engine project, so I'm curious to see just how much freedom he will give people given those opinions he expressed about MySpace and Facebook.
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I was intrigued by Wales' entire conversation, and felt myself nodding my head in agreement to pretty much everything he was saying about open source software. Look at Firefox, it recently passed IE 6.0 in terms of market share which is huge, and a big reason of that is because of the open source development that allows you to customize Firefox to your own liking.
Now in terms of making an entire open source search engine and expect it to topple the almighty Google...that's a rather lofty goal.
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Open source is a really great thing in computers, in a way it makes some things easier for the companies in that they don't need to do a ton of work, but it has the other side that you can't easily control what does then get developed. Ubuntu is interesting to watch because the community developments for Ubuntu all seem fairly focused on the OS and important compatibility things, not making a fart application like the iPhone. I'm more interested in what the really practical applications of social networking and open source are. There are definitely some things that those things are more suited for, and it's interesting to try to make them apply to other ideas.
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I agree with him when he said the firefox is the best. The idea of building a search engine better than google is cool, but I don't think people really do want a powerful search engine. I believe most of the users just want something to work and not hard to use. In the past, when the google first came out, People think it is better than yahoo is because less ads and more results. However, in these years, google have more and more ads and results that is not filter out the same stuff. People still use it. I believe the reason is that people just lazy of trying things but try to stick with something that works. In Taiwan, the search engine "kimo" have a big success when the internet just become popular. After yahoo bought the kimo, people still using yahoo. Even though the Taiwan Yahoo become "not that good" anymore, most of the people still didn't choose to use google. The future of internet should be more about a new thing and not a better version of an old thing. At least this is what I believe.
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The points they bring up on open source software and using advertisements to fund an internet corporation are interesting to me. Open source is, in my view, closer to how the businesses of today, online and offline, need to move towards in their look for improvement on production methods. Making a profitable business with just advertisements shows that older business models are not going to be able to survive very well in the newest coming generation.
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I thought it was pretty funny that this was hosted by Google video. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they're going to do with the search engine. I think that an open source engine will be a lot better than a profit driven search. It will probably take some time to bring it up to speed with Google and Yahoo search engines, but I think it has a lot of potential. I'm sure it will give other search engines a run for their money soon enough. Looking forward to it!
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I totally agree with Jimmy's statement that the monopolies certain developers have on software definitely serve to stifle innovation. Using open source greatly alleviates this, and I think it would be really interesting to know how things would be different in our world if open source had indeed prevailed from the beginning. There is no question that we would see more innovation and more than likely a smoother experience for the user as open source in essence throws software to the users for them to customize and fit to their needs (while also invariably allowing users to refine other users' modifications).
I also found it quite interesting what he had to say about advertisements and how viable the internet advertising business model can be. As he said in the video, so many times we find ourselves skeptical of internet ads and their effectiveness, but the model never fails to generate revenue.
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I liked hearing Jimmy Wales' ideas about the new search engine, along with his opinions of Facebook and MySpace. I liked how Facebook's creator didn't “sell out” despite being offered a lot of money, and the fact that he's young makes his resistance commendable. I very much agreed with Wales' opinion of MySpace, that it's full of spam and advertisements and “not doing what's right for the customer.” The most important idea to take from this video is the power of cooperation – Wikipedia is proof of that, and it continues to grow, as we see with Wikia.
Finally, I agree with Wales that Open Source is the way to go – I've been using Firefox for several years now and I've found it to be superior to IE. It's even a trendsetter. For example, Firefox was the browser that made “mainstream awareness of browser tabs,”* and now almost all browsers have them – browsers like IE.
* Internet told me this: http://www.webdevout.net/firefox-myths#tabs - I found it with my Firefox browser.
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I enjoyed watching the ideas presented about the new search engine, and also enjoyed hearing that the Facebook creator didn't get bought out even when he was offered a large sum of money.
I agree completely with Wale's opinions regarding Myspace because it really is a site filled with ads and spam, and it really doesn't help the customer at all.
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I found this interview to be particularly interesting, in part because of the original air date of the interview. It has been almost two years, and this is my first time hearing about the open source search engine idea. While it does seem interesting, it clearly has not quite taken off, and who knows if it really will or not.
I did like his other ideas for other wiki-like sites, though. There are a number of growing websites out there where users join forces to write a book, each user adding one line at a time, or even make a movie, with users filming one scene at a time.
This idea does seem to be growing, but, as he mentions, it's difficult to predict where it will lead and what will come as a result of more and more things becoming user-created.
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I really enjoy open source web designs and software. I think it is the direction we should be heading. If everyone out there would take advantage of it we could really see some good ideas start to progress.
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I like open source stuff. It's free and that's great. I don't know how you make money doing that though, and there's nothing wrong with people working to make legal money selling good products. I like the idea of having a choice between the two (free things and paying for things) like we have now.
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It's interesting to see someone take a concept like a search engine and basically turn it over to the people who use them the most so they can customize preferences to a whole new level and eventually start catering to specific audiences. I think, if this works as Wales hopes, we'll soon see a whole new level of networking from just the search engine itself, where users of a particular interest have these search engines that connect them all to each other and enable a greater sharing of ideas within their fields.
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I agree with his opinions about open source, many of the rapidly growing companies now days are utilizing the open source technology, so its cool to see his forsight into that.
I also found it very interesting that the creator of Facebook - a now multi-millionaire, is only 23 (probably 25 now?), that's crazy.
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I agree with Jimmy's opinions on Facebook and Myspace, and find it interesting that he notes these almost 2 years ago. The rest of his points seem to hit home as well, about Google, open source, and online marketing.
It's interesting to see how many wikis have popped up since, via the open source platform, but there hasn't been a wikia search that has outperformed Google, thats for sure. This is likely because Google hasn't stopped growing or expanding, either.
Like they say in the end, we'll see what's happening in 5 years...
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I like Jimmy's comments on how open source software/ content is on the rise and should be. His discussion about Firefox and its open platform API was interesting because he states that it is the reason why Firefox is the #1 browser. I will be interested in seeing progress on his search engine.
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This is an interesting video, and its nice to hear from the person behind wikipedia. I like his thoughts and analysis of Facebook and Myspace, the similarities and differences.
I'm looking forward to see how the search engine is turning out to be. Would it be better than google? After listening to this video, I think this man is capable of producing a better search engine.
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