^^^On Beyond Search: Beyond Google
 

Jeff Ganek, Chairman & CEO, NeuStar
Jeff Katz, Chairman, President & CEO, Orbitz
Tim Koogle, Board Member, Friendster and Plaxo
Langley Steinart, Chairman & Co-founder, TripAdvisor
 

What kinds of search lie beyond "plain old search"? It looks so simple, but behind the scenes are increasingly complex algorithms and data structures... and increasingly complex business models and legal structures. New kinds of search are using everything from deep and detailed knowledge of geography, to links between people as well as links between sites. Now these tools are exploring business models: Is the value proposition finding something for a human, or is it enabling some kind of a transaction? How do we search – and find – differently according to the kind of thing we're looking for?

Tim on the search challenge (with friendster in mind): How do you create an index and make it intuitive to use that index. All you know is past habits and where you currently are...

---

http://online.wsj.com/barrons/article/0,,SB108034639134766783,00.html?mod=b_this_weeks_magazine_tech_week

Plaxo Blasted at Tech Forum

IT WAS OLD HOME WEEK for some wonderboys of the go-go Internet craze at the PC Forum conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., last week. Among the attendees were Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com's CEO; Pierre Omidyar, eBay's chairman, and Tim Koogle, the former chief executive of Yahoo! But not everyone had a good time at the annual thinkfest, run by Esther Dyson, chairwoman of EDventure Holdings, publisher of the Release 1.0 technology newsletter.

Prime example: Koogle was sitting on a panel about the evolution of searching on the Internet when the crowd got ugly and turned on him. Koogle, who also worked at Motorola and sits on the boards of about a half-dozen start-ups, is a director of Friendster, the social-networking phenomenon, and a director of Plaxo, a service that updates e-mail address books. And it was his affiliation with Plaxo that put him on the hot seat.

If you haven't been "Plaxoed" yet, here's how it works: Users of Plaxo's free service can download the company's software to their computers, which copies the persons' contact database and stores it on Plaxo's servers. A user can ask Plaxo to send out a blast e-mail to everyone in his address book and ask them to update their information. But when the person who receives the message responds, he or she is directly connected to Plaxo's Website, which secretly leaves a software probe on the recipient's computer. The controversial company has many technophiles worked into a lather over a number of issues, including privacy, intrusion and trust.

During the question-and-answer period following the panel discussion, a number of conferees attacked Koogle as though he were the second coming of Bill Gates. One man referred to the company's service as unsolicited spam. Others griped that it was simply creepy. Lastly, and perhaps the biggest concern, is the issue of what happens to all of that data if Plaxo is someday acquired?

For now, Plaxo executives -- who include Napster co-founder Sean Parker -- insist that privacy is Job One, and that if the company were sold, users would be able to retrieve and erase their data from Plaxo's computers before the acquisition was completed. Koogle, who appeared taken aback by the verbal onslaught, said not to worry -- even if Plaxo were to get snapped up. "If a lot of the company's value proposition relies on that trust, the acquiring company will respect that trust," he argued.

Most folks in the audience weren't born yesterday; they're sophisticated users of technology and the Web. And they surely remember that a similar argument was made regarding credit-card information and other data submitted to e-commerce outfits during the bubble years. However, once the Internet market began to crater, dot-com users found that their personal information was being bought and sold as, in turn, companies were bought and sold, or they folded.

The audience also wanted to know if the free service had a business model yet. To which Koogle responded: not really. The private company is experimenting with two different approaches, one aimed at consumers and another pointed at corporate users, he said. That didn't instill a lot of confidence among the skeptics.

...

See Also: Weblogs from PC Forum

Index of PC Forum related Articles and Press Releases:

During and After the event
*Ebay founder will invest in social change

• A Bid for More Accountable Non-profits, BusinessWeek
• PC Forum Focuses on the Future, PC Magazine
• Techies Once Again Excited, USAToday
• Google to Meld Social into Search
• Internet Behaviour Examined
*"Pinpointing Locations/Interpreting Search, CNET" <http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39149984,00.htm>
• Web behaviour shows suprising disconnects
• Glaser in i-Pod Format Plea
• Glaser Wants i-Pod Open, CNET
• Esther's column in the NY Times on Users Make Content Their Own

Before the event

• CNET Acquires ED Venture Holdings
• Technorati Launches New Site
• Google News Search for PC Forum
• Counterpane Founder and CTO to Present at PC Forum 2004
• Participate Systems Announces Significant Momentum and Product Updates
• Choose your dinner table

^^^Content: How Users Make it Their Own
 

(moderated by Hank Barry, Partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners)
Lisa Gansky, Chairman & President, Ofoto, and GM, Digital Imaging Services, Eastman Kodak
Rob Glaser, Chairman & CEO, RealNetworks
Shane Robison, Executive VP & Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, Hewlett-Packard
 

Just as CIOs have problems vendors can't solve, so do consumers take vendors' content only as a starting point for the experiences they create for themselves. How will users interact with content? They are no longer passive consumers, but active participants in downloading, sharing, sampling.... Music leads the way in so many contexts: business models, software design, deployment of devices, user empowerment.... What can we learn from the music business, analytically? How will the role of the publisher (or film or TV studio) change as distribution mechanisms and business models change?

^^^^Articles

Esther's column in the NY Times
^^^^Commentary

Ross Mayfield:

One question said that this has been a revolution just about to happen for 9 years and people need something based on their TV. Bah. Serveral things new here:

• Critical mass of people writing on the net, using the internet for social means, broadband
• Panel didn't address it, but NetGens have fundamentally different views of content as context
• Lower costs of production and distribution

Point being that the barrier isn't the lack of a nifty media server in the home, its industries failing to address change

Scott Rosenberg:

Rob Glaser of Real Networks, Lisa Gansky of Ofoto and Shane Robison of HP are talking about "user-generated content" here at PC Forum, in a panel moderated by Hank Barry of Napster fame. There's lots of talk about monetizing content and tools and rights (including some slaps at Steve Jobs for keeping ITunes and the IPod a closed system), but I think they're all missing the point. Newsweek's Steven Levy asked, "Are we going to enter a renaissance of alternatives to the media with homegrown stuff, or is it going to be more of an 'American Idol' kind of thing?" He didn't get much of an answer.

Glaser talked about a "shortage of narrative storytelling skills" and a "dearth of creative talent" when it comes to users creating longer-form video content. Technically, perhaps he's right. But so what? "User-generated content" isn't about creating some sort of big farm team for the pros. The long-term value of "user-generated content" isn't in the businesses -- not necessarily those on this panel --that no doubt will figure out how ways to generate revenue from it. The value is to individuals, and society, in the sheer number of previously silent voices that will sound, in the previously unheard stories that will be told, to whatever size audience. We're slowly but steadily increasing the breadth of human experience and expression that is recorded and available to others. Next to that sort of social good, somehow the implementation details of different business models seem trivial.

(These issues have been hashed out for years at the Digital Storytelling Festival.)

Jerry Michalski:

Wow, it sure looks like the wrong people were on this panel. Where was any voice for ordinary people using the medium to change the world, independent of capital-C "Content"? A Jay Rosen, perhaps? I agree with Scott. This isn't about the business of "user-generated content."

^^^^Session Notes
Hank Barry
*44% of users have generated online content
*Camera Phones -- stat???
*CD Baby 57k CDs
*Magnatune
*Mash-ups
*Grey Tuesday
*Nelly's Work it and AC/DC Back in Black KIIS-FM
*Radio picking up P2P
*Bush in 30 seconds - 1k films
*Resistance to deeply asymetrical bandwidth plans

Shane Robison
-Author management distribution and consumption
-Authoring and access, studies show that most users are going to have an incredible amount of data, a TB or more. Lots of variation of authoring.
-Business model around gaining access and leveraging infrastructure supports user options

Rob Glaser
-User generated content needsto differentiate around media types. Photos have gotten so easy whereas creation of music requires skills. Film too, but relatively its minimal, which then shifts value to the packaging side. People want to play a role in packaging and having a social dynamic (creating radio stations, sharing playlists).
-raphsody: in the first phase open hosting environments for posting music, but mainstream consumers never caught on. now an environment where there is a pathh in 48m unique songs listened to, 95% of listens are repeats.

Lisa Gansky
Ofoto launched in december 1999, 12.5M members, 1B images, 1/3 printed. most active customers are also printing at home - photo active households, share a lot. Female skewed demographics.

• Eastman first to figure marketing to women. Have time and role in the family. Has been the target for consumer photography. Soccer moms and 25-45 sharers
• Digital made men the keepers of the hard drive for a little time (still an issue)
• Kodak Mobile - capture, network and billing relationship. $2.99 per month.
• Packaging habits: eastman, emulated digital with ofoto (babys pets and sunsets). Mobile creates a new concept of streaming intimacy. Can take a pic and have it instantly shared.

Is there a market place for digital objects?

Rob Glaser: Combinations hold promise
Lisa: Being an author vs. curator. Provoking and engaging people. Community. The right to curate and the right to share.

Doc's Great Weird Ideas

Rob Glaser: Steve Jobs has only licensed the fair play license to himself, iTunes is the only way to put tunes on the iPod. Needs to be a cross fertilization and cross content. I buy an iPod and I can only shop at one store? What is this, the Soviet Union?

Steven Levy: when to going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Is this an american idol or small community sharing?

Rob: Not mutually exclusive. Cases like Dean where the mainstream media will miss it.

Camera phone art show: http://www.sentonline.com/

Lisa: storytelling and mixing media

Shane: Audio and digital stills as a primary mix

Lisa: Need a mental shift by content providers.

Rob: Market moves faster than the regulatory process, but for Microsoft the EU may constrain (Hank doesn't think so)

Public Mind: Here's some user-generated content, a new request to open up iTunes

^^PC Forum 2004 Blog
Click on the above link to post to the blog yourself

^^^2004 Directory

• Esther Dyson
• Ross Mayfield
• Bret Fausett
• Scott Heiferman
• Cory Doctorow
• Edward Vielmetti - following along from home
• Scott Rosenberg
• David Sifry
• Brian Dear
• David Weinberger
• John Patrick - day 1, 2 and 3

^^^2003 Directory

Greg Elin - DuhBlog

Dan Gillmor

Kevin Lynch

Jeremy Allaire

Ross Mayfield

Meg Hourihan

Cory Doctorow

Dan Bricklin - photography http://www.bricklin.com/ALBUMS/pcforum2003/

Scott Heiferman

PC Forum Fotolog

John Patrick

Jamie Lewis http://www.burtongroup.com/weblogs/jamielewis/

Sara Wedeman

^^^Sound off on this issue

so what do you think?

^^^Papers

• Globalization of IT Services and White Collar Jobs: The Next Wave of Productivity Growth, Catherine L. Mann, a controversial policy paper that argues that overseas low cost production of software components will enable a new wave of growth, just as commoditization of hardware components did in the 1990s.

• Capturing the Real Value of Offshoring in Asia by John Hagel http://www.johnhagel.com, a working paper arguing that most companies significantly misunderstand the real value of offshoring. Maintains that offshoring should be viewed as an offensive competitive weapon, rather than simply as a defensive, cost-reduction measure. Companies that recognize this will not only restructure their own operations but increasingly will restructure entire industries as well.

• The Outsourcing Bogeyman, According to the election-year bluster of politicians and pundits, the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries has become a problem of epic proportion. Fortunately, this alarmism is misguided. Outsourcing actually brings far more benefits than costs, both now and in the long run. If its critics succeed in provoking a new wave of American protectionism, the consequences will be disastrous -- for the U.S. economy and for the American workers they claim to defend. Daniel W. Drezner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Sanctions Paradox." He keeps a weblog at http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog

^^^Articles

• "Job Losses and Trade" -- Cato Institute Paper

http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-019es.html

• Now is time to face facts, make needed investment, Dan Gillmor, Mercury News, 3/14/03
• U.S. Tax Code Provisions Encourage Offshore Jobs, WSJ, 3/12/04, excerpt:

The tax code is written in a way that allows companies not to pay the full 35% U.S. corporate tax rate on foreign income when that money remains invested overseas.

Backing up a step, here's how it works before the loophole: A company earns $100 million abroad in Lowtaxistan where the corporate tax rate is 20%. The foreign subsidiary pays that
money to the U.S. parent. The parent then pays $35 million to the U.S. government and takes a credit for the 20% (or $20 million) payment to the Lowtaxistan government. So the net to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is $15 million.

But here's how it works with the loophole: The U.S. subsidiary simply keeps the money offshore and certifies to its accountants that the money is invested overseas. It never remits the money to the parent and so never pays the $15 million extra to Uncle Sam.

Do the math yourself. Which is better?

a) A factory in Lowell, Mass., that will generate $100 million in pre-tax profit that nets $65 million, or

b) A factory in Lowtaxistan that will generate $100 million in pretax profit that nets $80 million.

All things being equal, most people would pick "b." (And they aren't equal because Lowtaxistan has 750 gazillion people who will work for two gonzolees a day -- and the gonzolee is fixed to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 8.65.)

These are called "unrepatriated earnings" and they are increasingly commonplace. Just go into Free Edgar http://www.freeedgar.com4 or some other SEC search engine (I like 10K Wizard5) and plug in the term "unremitted earnings" or "undistributed earnings" and search 10-K forms to see how many annual statements come up.

^^^Blog Posts

• India and Offshoring, notes from another conference, Ross Mayfield, 2/2/04

• Drucker on India and China, Ross Mayfield, 1/6/04

• Off-shoring Manifesto/Rant: Eighteen Hard Truths about Inevitabilities, Pitfalls, and Matchless Opportunities, some observations from Tom Peters

• Offshoring, this thread from Joel on Software is packed with great view points - many from Indian and Russian programmers on the other side of the outsourcing equation.

• The Secret of Our Sauce, Thomas Friedman in the New York Times talks about America's secret sauce. Quote: Our competitors know the secret of our sauce. But do we?

Stewart Brand, President, The Long Now Foundation
Pierre Omidyar, Chairman & Founder, eBay and The Omidyar Foundation
 

There's more to investing than financial returns. Many of the world's current problems require a long-term focus, but they also require entrepreneurial zeal and creativity. How can we bring strategy and discipline to long-term thinking so that idealism doesn't founder on the shoals of well-meaning generosity? What are governance issues for nonprofits?

• Stewart Brand
• Business Week Article: A Bid for More Accountable Nonprofits

^^^Identity Federation for Social Networks and Online
Andre Durand, Ping Identity
Eric Norlin, Ping Identity
*Doc Searls, Linux Journal

Federated Identity is based upon the idea that distributed digital identity pieces can be linked in such a way as to create more functional utility and value. Likewise, Social Networking links a distributed system of social pieces. Do these two realms converge? Does RSS play a role?

^^^Notes

David Weinberger, link:

Andre Durand of PingID says that there are three tiers of ID:

Tier 1: Personal identity: Me. Myself. Possibly I.
Tier 2: Corporate identity: An ID issued to let me into their space
Tier 3: My marketing identity: The buckets companies sort us into for marketing purposes, e.g., a Platinum Frequent Flyer.

We have lots of IDs. "Identity inflation." Most of our identities are T2. Andre himself has over 100 identities. He's given up on keeping track. The trajectory isn't sustainable. Already we generally only have a few passwords. The idea behind federation is that identity in one domain should be transferable across domains. E.g., if I have an account at Company A and click through to Company B, my identity automatically gets transferred, with permission. I could have one place for my address book, I could make it my address authority and it would transfer data to other domains and apps.

There are three protocols: SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), Liberty Alliance, WS Federation (IBM and Microsoft).

Nikolaj Nyholm has a problem with federation. People here are thinking about a perfectly engineered, IT world. Federation is part of the equation but not the way it looks today. The way it stands, if federation were in place, if you put a new SMTP on the Net, it wouldn't be able to send email to anyone.

Dick (Panelist): The web of trust won't extend very far. It'll work if it's United talking to Hertz, but not more widely...

Eric Norlin: Liberty Alliance sits between authentication servers.

Dave Sifry: It's software we run on our sites that says that we trust, say, LinkedIn, etc. From a business perspective, it means that there's some subset of these companies that agree to trust one another's authentication systems and will use the same middleware to accomplish this.

Andre: Why can't I use the protocols to link to my social connections? We should be talking about this.

Nikolaj: I have no sense of "home" in the Liberty Alliance...

Ted: Nikolaj is right. The nerve Microsoft hit with Passport was: Who's going to control my ID?

Andre: Here's one possible outcome of federation. In large enterprises, they have created ways to handle the redundant ID's in multiple directories. They create a virtual directory. Now, if you add up all the account info with all the companies you interact with, that's your useful digital ID today. Suppose I had a dashboard running on my PC, like the enterprise's virtual directory. It's likely a p2p client will exist on my PC or cellphone that gives me control. I don't have to move all the information onto my own computer.

Doc (moderator): Do the protocols for enabling that exist today?

Andrew: Yes, I think they do. I'm describing an application layer on top of the protocols.

Steve Pelletier (Sun): The consumer vision is great, although it's early. But the world is full of ID systems that will never merge. You need something that enables all those identity repositories to be integrated if only for business reasons. And you need protocols to extend this to customers. That's what federation does: cross repositories and cross schemas.

Doc: I hate the word "consumer." I'm a customer.

AOL guy: Before we can do federated ID for social networks, the social networks have to figure out what their business model is.

Isabel Walcott (The Research Board): We've discussed ID federation with F100 companies. The way I see it, this is about access control. Companies haven't figured it out. If social networks could solve this problem, it could go into the corporations. There is no "god" at these big companies saying who can have access to this or that part of the DB. It happens on a peer-to-peer basis: Someone's boss says which field or part of the DB you have access to. How do you manage access control at the object level? It has to be in some sort of p2p fashion.

Someone: There are legacy solutions that won't be displaced. You have to layer on top of them, like PingID.

Jeremy: It's not just the pain of sign-on. It's also the pain of registering for a new service. A few cases: Company B allows customers of Company A to become registered customers, dynamically, moving my profile. The social networks could be a home base for relevant attributes about me. A federation of those in which my attributes could be relied upon by other online services would be appealing to me. I.e., I can dynamically become a cars.com user using my social network ID and profile. You could do that now with the existing standards.

Nikolaj: Today we have an ID where we can reach other: email. But it has no other attributes. You can't authenticate itself. Or, your credit card uniquely identifies you. You can even use it to exchange info through a proxy like PayPal. And that's what we're looking for.

Someone: Do we have a schema for the info that we think is useful? No, we don't. The metadata around my demographics and psychographics. Will people create a common tool across social networks so I have a single user experience?

Andre: Jeremy's comment may have uncovered a business model. If the social networks glommed onto these protocols and built a service for users that allowed them to store the info...

Brian Dear: How about FOAF?

Nikolaj: There's no layer of authentication.

Jeremy: It's an attribute.

Someone: We may not want to connect social networks. E.g., one's for business and the other is personal.

Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn: I'd only do federation if I had a business case justifying it.

^^^Conversation
My $0.02:
Federated identity allows cooperating organizations to share a subset of the identity information concerning a given individual to improve a set of business processes. So a consulting firm may participate in a federated identity scheme with a major client to allow the consultants appropriate levels of access to some of the client's systems without having to explicitly provision each consultant. A workflow could handle it. OR (the more common example) a travel agency participates in a federated identity environment with airlines, car rental agencies, hotels, etc. to mininmize the amount of data concerning vacationeers that has to be explicitly passed around.
Note that it's not a complete sharing; the client company doesn't get access to the consultant's benefits package, Hertz doesn't see my AAdvantage account balance.
Now social networking allows cooperating individuals to establish trust relationships among selected peers within the network. The first difference is that in federated identity the objects being partially shared are subsets of identity information required for explicit business processes, and the subjects doing the sharing are entities requiring cooperation regarding their individual and collective treatment of that individual. In the social network, the objects being shared are elements of the individual's persona in an unstructured and ad hoc fashion, and the subjects doing the sharing are the individuals. The largest distinction is whether there is a preexisting structure of rules and prcesses: yes for federated identity, no for social networking (as far as I can see).
To the extend that I understand RSS it facilitates aggregation of time-varying content. So in a social network it migh tbe useful to thread togehter the evolution of an individual's persona/ae; but in a federated identity context there are already (or there better be!) some well-structured rules to provision the individual's identity within the partnering companies.
Or so it seems to me ...
Bill Malik

Harry Max: I would add that once you can assign a 'probability of identity' based on such a federated model, not only can you set up an RSS-enabled triggered alerts and notification system for businesses and consumers, but it becomes feasible to offer 'digital persona insurance' to fight identiy theft. Think of it as LoJack for your digital personas. I'd buy that. The consumer and business extensions for a persona manager with federated identity behind it could be truly amazing...and profitable.

eric norlin: saw an email flying around about hooking up conversations between LinkedIn, Tribe, Spoke, Meetup, and SourceID (my company's federated identity open source project)....i'd invite all of those interested parties to be at the panel to make your voices heard ;-)

Simon Grice: not there in person this year :( - but in spirit and here. If someone is blogging this roundtable as it happens - let me know. Midentity is moving towards this space as some of you know.

I like Andre's take at http://www.andredurand.com/ - I agree totally with your take on this.

for research on this, see http://cebiz.org/research/clickstream/index.html

Moore vs. Simon -- when information is abundant, attention is scarce

Behavioural economist point of view

Defaults

• users like to be able to make choices but they dont want to have to make choices
• result is defaults make a difference: 40% don't contribute to their 401k bceause the default is 0, changing default to 3% makes non contribution 5%; Opt-in/out for organ donation, people don't want to think about it, highest is 27% in opt-in, highest for opt-in is 87%. Opt-in for privacy 48, opt out 96%, "do not" changes response rate by double.

Search

• People are loyal
• Lock in is a customer phenomena, customers who learn how to use Amazon buy more
• Convenience law
**Average book customer looked at 1.1 stores, travel 1.4 **Power law distribution in time per visit vs. repeat visits to amazon

*Page background matters
**Different backgrounds and they let them go shopping (Clouds induce comfort) and can h

Pricing
*Value to customers is relative

• They look for analogies
• Is this an improvement in quality? Cost?
• Loss aversion: Losses hurt more gthan gains help

*Payment partitioning $15+$5 < $20
**Integrate Payments

• Decouple payments - keep the pain seperate from the pleasure of consumption. Customers don't pay for Google. TV ads are attention consumers.
• Mental accounts

Defaults are the most important decision Minimize search, stickiness is a bad thing, designing payment needs to minimize psychological cost.

Goods have different consumption than services which is consumption over time. A relationship there. Want to link consumption with payment and can move it further away. Bundling can be effective because it decouples price from payment. Can't bundle in shipping because people have a mental account of shipping costs.

Raymie Stata: Microsoft can integrate and decouple costs better than anyone - another reason why they are so tough to compete against.

Raymie Stata: I also raised a concern about the political implications of the point on defaults. Without compromising user choice, the selection of defaults has a very powerful impact on the "social good." Given this, to what extent should Gov't become involved in selecting defaults. Regarding organ donations, it's obvious. But what about 401(k) donations? What about default security settings? On the one hand, the uniformity (and social-good-maximization) of a Gov't-imposed default can be a good thing; on the other hand, Gov't can run amok (and also make quite non-optimal decisions). By what principle do we decide where Gov't should and should not get involved? (Unfortunately, I failed to frame my question well, plus it's a very complicated issue, so it wasn't really answered directly.)

Eric Johnson Let me answer on the WIKI... The right defaults IS a complicated issue, but let me suggest two factors, then a better solution... (1) We need to look at what most pepole would do if they made a choice. Defaults, all else being equal, should be set to match the tastes of individuals (2) But are the costs of being 'misclassified' equal? We now misclassify, in the US potential donors as non-donors, the alterntive would be possibly classifying non-donors as donors...

The best solution is to not to make universal defaults, but rather customize them making by best guess. Anyone interested in this, drop me a note at ejj3@columbia.edu and I'll send you a recent paper.

Microsoft person: Subscription models?

Subscriptions make risk of use go to the consumer. Opting out of payment systems once they are in doesn't happen often. Micropayments is aversive. A combination annuity plus taking heavy users is appealing.

^^^The Accountable Net: How to improve the neighborhood
Lori Fena, Aspen Institute, Accountable Net Project
Tara Lemmey, Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age

See also: Accountable Net Initiative and yesterday's panel Accountable Net

^^^On Beyond POEM (plain old e-mail): Attention Management
 

Irene Greif, IBM Fellow & Department Group Manager, Collborative User Experience, IBM
Scott Kurnit, Board Member, Dotomi and Goodmail
*Raymie Stata, CTO & Co-founder, Stata Labs
 

Delivering mail is only part of the problem. How can we communicate effectively in a world where everyone's attention is being fought over, where spam proliferates not just in e-mail but in blog comments, search results and the like? What kind of applications can the mail infrastructure support? And what kind of messaging can non-mail infrastructure support? New delivery services need to handle the challenges of reliability, integrity and relevance. And they need to help the user by making it easier to follow up, collaborate and respond appropriately.

^^^^Commentary
*Spam is not only killing email, it killed this panel
*Shouldn't we be helping people get out of their Inbox?
*People are pulling tasks out of email via wikis, RSS, IM

Irene
*Email is stressful, but necessary for getting ahold of people
*Socialtext having email notifications that can be throttled
*Folders can be piles
*How to put notifications in the periphery
*Got back to old email as addressbook
*Properies of email need include some aspects of collaboration space, to cut across media types, give awareness of who is available and complement the clutter of the inbox

Raymie:
*Email as an activity management console? You either change the name or the product but don't do both at once. They are building more than just an email client.
*News, RSS, Standing searches like feedster -- letting people prioritize

• Danger of real time, bringing a sense of goals, priorities to actually let people do work
• Search and unstructured information, instead of AI attempting to structure
• Manage the past, present and future
• Manage the past with search, the present with triage between spam, lists and real mail
• Manage the future by tying in goals and feedback to triage

Scott:
-Ads as attention mangement? Ads you see are the ones you want to see. ugh
-First class email (whitelist and handshake-negotiation)

Raymie:
*Email and Folder metaphor many be getting in the way, but people understand them and want to change slowly

Irene (a big believer in email)

• Reinvent a little of email will include and activity explorer for their activity threads as a metaphor