Analyze three web services with similar traffic trend.

Finally I found three well-known web services with similar traffic trend – Mint, Zoho and Basecamp. These web services have launched almost same time (2007, peak season of new web2.0 services) with different target market and grown steadily in each market.

– Graph from Compete.com

From now on, I’m going to analyze some features. That is……

– How much money do they make monthly?
– When is the expected B.E.P of each service?
– When they can make ‘positive net income’ if they consider their early investment?
– What affects their graphs trend? And etc.

I’m really happy to find these three services combination because I can make real discussion about above feature with my friends.

(to be continued)

Finally, the Powerset.

Powerset, one of the ‘Alt Search Engine Service’ launched this week.

User image
I heard about this company last year when have worked for Web Search engine company – Rebi.

I don’t know whether Powerset will become great company or not since they have unveiled their true product just few days ago but I’m really happy to see their service. (Surely I’m not stock holder of Powerset and also not anti-google people.)

I can imagine about their great effort and endurance to make their idea as a ‘real thing’ for several years.

‘Make something as real one’ – how fascinate it is!

Use HTML in phpBB – Especially for YouTube

One of the most famous free community making tools – phpBB doesn’t allow HTML code after its version 3.0.
We can use HTML code after setting several options in phpBB’s Administrator Control Panel (= ACP) in version 2.xx but it have been totally disabled to use for security reasons.

So we have to make our own BBCode instead of using original HTML.

(See here : BBCode guide)

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How to make own YouTube BBCode?
1. Log-in as phpBB administrator
2. Administration Control Panel > Posting > BBCode > Add a new BBCode
3. BBCode Usage

4. HTML replacement

5. Help line

cf. Custom BBCodes
: Please be sure not to use parameter ‘{SIMPLETEXT}’ used there. phpBB 3.0 can’t understand that. Use ‘{TEXT}’ instead. I have suffered some problem with this. 🙂

Empas testing new music search service.

Empas acquired by SK Communications (the following, SK Coms) in June 2006.

SK Coms’ corporate parent is ‘SK Telecom (the following, SKT)’ which is no.1 mobile telecommunications operator in Korea.

With it great leading power in mobile business area and endless cash flow, SKT have acquired Cyworld 2003 and egloos in 2006 and made them business group under SK Coms.

Late 2006, many people were looking forward to seeing new services launched by SK Coms next year, because they already have juicy personal database and contents with its own web service Cyworld, Egloos.(As you know Cyworld have become the biggest community service ever in Korea since 2004.)

“Cyworld had database. Now it has search engine technology to use its database. Daum and Naver should be careful.”

This was common ideas among people in Web service business area.

But it was not that impressive. Search and news services make Cyworld have more rich contents but not that rich.

Many people disappointed. So did I.

I’m envious of Cyworld’s market position because of my personal interests in personalized service.

SK Coms scarcely show its real potentials with Empas.

I heard that some technical problem raying behind merging to service but anyway neo-Cyworld in 2007 was so disappointing.

Yesterday I found interesting an event in Cyworld(Empas) – Search music with your feeling.

User image
Actually Empas have launched BGM search with its open search concept in 2005 but not that successful. There was similar concept BGM search service Qbox slightly opened ‘earlier’ than Empas.

New featured music search this March have some different factors than that old one.

1. No missing BGM links.

Later Empas BGM search find some missing BGM links. Owner of Cyworld minihome usually change his or her BGM frequently but update of indexed information of Empas couldn’t follow that.

This time it seems that the search engine system successfully merged with Cyworld music database. There are no missing links in my search result.

2. Bring concept of ‘feelings’.

Cyworld have had ‘Today is..?’ feature in minihome. Users can express their feeling with certain icons.

This time ‘collaborative filtering’ used once again to find relationship between feeling and BGM. That algorithm already has been applied in music item shop to recommend BGM to users in Cyworld.

Since ‘feeling’ is really subjective thing, it’s not easy to make conclusion whether ‘search with feeling’ working precisely or not.

Conclusion

I think SK Coms has good tactics in there days.

There recent ‘Cyworld People’ and ‘music search with feeling’ services are well focused on their strengths – the people and personalized data.

Irrelevant to its success, I will watch carefully what’s going on this new music search service.

(Actually speaking I really love music.)

The next step of Rebi search.

Original Post : Chunk View

My former company Rebi Search has disclosed its meaningful result of search engine prototype – Chunk View.

Though I don’t know exactly about detailed research process after I left Rebi, I’m sure that this Chunk view promise people different web search result (= hope) with that of former search engines include Google.

The Chunk View may improve search engine with ‘colorful understanding’ about links and website.
– Just my guess 🙂

‘Web 3.0’ from RWW

Original Post : Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)

I want my personal Vogue, which covers articles about that Style, those Designers, and other emerging ones like them (Content).

More personalized web in the future? I totally agree with it.

회사와 철학

회사나 사업을 단순히 돈을 벌기 위한 수단으로 볼 것이 아니라 어떤 목적성을 가지고 존재하는 것이라 본다면.. 조직(=회사)에 우선되어야 할 것은 철학입니다.

가치관, 철학을 좀 쉽게 – 혹은 좁게 – 생각하면 마케팅에서 이야기 하는 value proposition이라고 할 수도 있겠네요.

사람도 가치관을 세운 다음에야 비로소 일관되게 어떤 일들을 추진해 나갈 수 있는 것처럼 조직도 그 존재 목적부터가 명확해야겠지요.

실제로 가치관과 철학이 명확한 회사가 돈도 잘 번다고 합니다.

구글은 ‘링크 = 돈’이라는 전략을 가지고 있습니다. 그래서 링크를 수집할 수 있는 모든 행동(=사업 영역 유지 및 확장)을 합니다. 지메일, google analytics 등도 모두 이런 링크를 최대한 많이 수집하기 위한 서비스들이지요. 이런 전략의 뒤에는 어떤 철학이 숨어 있을까요? 그들의 페이지랭크 알고리즘과 그에 관련된 논문들을 살펴보면, ‘정보가 많아 질수록 좋은 정보를 어떻게 찾느냐가 중요해지고 웹에서 좋은 정보는 많은 링크를 가지고 있다’ 정도로 그들의 철학을 요약해 볼 수 있을 것 같습니다.

그 외에도 많은 매력적인 회사들(특히나 강한 브랜드 파워를 가진 회사들)의 성공을 면밀히 살펴보면 이런 철학이 얼마나 중요한지 알 수 있습니다. 비단 기술 기업 뿐만이 아니라 이미지가 중요한 패션 브랜드들도요.

‘좋은 서비스를 만드는 좋은 회사는 좋은 철학을 가지고 있다’

아 물론 여기서 좋은 철학이란 ‘시장에서 잘 통하는’이라는 의미를 가지고 있습니다.

철학. 당신이 만드는 서비스의 – 혹은 회사의 – 철학은 무엇입니까?

그 철학은 사람들에게 어떤 가치를 줍니까?

당신은 그 철학을 구현하기 위해서 어떻게 일하고 있습니까?

창조적인 일을 하는 사람들은 한번쯤 생각해보아야 할 질문인 것 같습니다.

[Scrap]Can Google Be Beat? They Already Have Been in South Korea…

Original Post from Read/Write Web : Click here

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Can Google Be Beat? They Already Have Been in South Korea…Written by Richard MacManus / July 12, 2007 / 15 comments

The International Herald Tribune had a good article recently about the search market in South Korea

. It points out that local search company Naver.com

has more than 77 percent of all Web searches originating in South Korea, according to Internet market research company KoreanClick. This is largely due to user-generated content – specifically Naver’s “Knowledge iN” real-time question-and-answer platform, which gets “an average of 44,000 questions a day”. Second in the South Korean search market is another local product, Daum.net, with 10.8 percent share, followed by Yahoo’s Korean-language service with 4.4 percent. Google has only 1.7 percent of Korean Web searches.
The IHT has more info on Naver Knowledge iN:

“Naver has so far accumulated a user-generated database of 70 million entries. Typical queries include why North Korea is building a nuclear bomb, which digital music player is best, why people have hair whorls and what a high-school boy should do when he has a crush on a female teacher.
Lacking the full-time editorial oversight found on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, some Naver entries are of dubious veracity and attract vigorous rebuttals. But many respondents, keen to build and maintain an online reputation, do careful research to provide useful answers.”

Interestingly, this has some similarities with the approach of Viewpoints, the online reviews company profiled yesterday by our own Phil Butler. But what also struck me about Naver’s approach is that it is essentially what Yahoo is attempting to do, with its heavily-promoted Answers product. If you look at just about any Yahoo content site, you’ll see an Answers section displayed prominently.

Of course, the Q&A format hasn’t escaped Google’s attention either (nothing gets past Google). The Mountain View company is experimenting with Google Answers in Russia. Also, as SearchEngineLand noted, Google has tried making its UI more attractive in Korea in order to get more market share. If this kind of experimentation (Q&A, UI innovation) sounds familiar, it’s because it is precisely what our network blog AltSearchEngines talks about every day 🙂

Pic c/o SEL
Of course Q&A won’t be the answer for every market – Google is very entrenched as the number 1 search engine in the US and most other english language markets. But the South Korea example does show the benefits of a) localizing your product, and b) actively using and promoting ‘next generation’ search methods. Also don’t forget that as mobile phones begin to be used more in the US and similar markets, user-generated content and personalization will be used more by Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and other companies.
I do think this is Yahoo’s best chance of making ground on Google, because they are strong in both user-generated content and mobile. Although as yet Yahoo Answers is nowhere near as compelling a product as Naver is in Korea.

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Interesting & meaningful article.

‘But the South Korea example does show the benefits of a) localizing your product, and b) actively using and promoting ‘next generation’ search methods’