Some of the most successful web sites today are social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. These are not only popular web sites; they are also remarkably effective people search tools. For example, I can use LinkedIn to find the 163 people in my network who mention "information retrieval" in their profiles and live within 50 miles of my ZIP code (I can't promise you'll see the same results!).
A couple of observations about social networking sites (I'll focus on LinkedIn) are in order.
First, this functionality is a very big deal, and it's something Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have not managed to provide, even though their own technology is largely built on a social network--citation ranking.
Second, the "secret sauce" for sites like LinkedIn is hardly their technology (a search engine built on Lucene and a good implementation of breadth-first search), but rather the way they have incented users to be active participants, in everything from virally marketing the site to their peers to inputting high-quality semi-structured profiles that make the site useful. In other words, active users ensure both the quantity and quality of information on the site.
Many people have noted the network effect that drove the run-away success of Microsoft Office and eBay. But I think that social networking sites are taking this idea further, because users not only flock to the crowds, but become personally invested not only in the success of the site generally, but especially in the quality and accuracy of their personal information.
Enterprises need to learn from these consumer-oriented success stories. Some have already. For example, a couple of years ago, IBM established a Professional Marketplace, powered by Endeca, to maintain a skills and availability inventory of IBM employees. This effort was a run-away success, saving IBM $500M in its first year. But there's more: IBM employees have reacted to the success of the system by being more active in maintaining their own profiles. I spent the day with folks at the ACM, and their seeing great uptake in their author profile pages.
I've argued before that there's no free lunch when it comes to enterprise search and information access. The good news, however, is that, if you create the right incentives, you can get other folks to happily pay for lunch.
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Privacy through Difficulty
I had lunch today with Harr Chen, a graduate student at MIT, and we were talking about the consequences of information efficiency for privacy.
A nice example is the company pages on LinkedIn. No company, to my knowledge, publishes statistics on:
Arguably, information like this was never truly private, but was simply so difficult to aggregate that nobody bothered. As Harr aptly put it, they practiced "privacy through difficulty"--a privacy analog to security through obscurity.
Some people are terrified by the increasing efficiency of the information market and look for legal remedies as a last ditch attempt to protect their privacy. I am inclined towards the other extreme (see my previous post on privacy and information theory): let's assume that information flow is efficient and confront the consequences honestly. Then we can have an informed conversation about information privacy.
A nice example is the company pages on LinkedIn. No company, to my knowledge, publishes statistics on:
- the schools their employees attended.
- the companies where their employees previously worked.
- the companies where their ex-employees work next.
Arguably, information like this was never truly private, but was simply so difficult to aggregate that nobody bothered. As Harr aptly put it, they practiced "privacy through difficulty"--a privacy analog to security through obscurity.
Some people are terrified by the increasing efficiency of the information market and look for legal remedies as a last ditch attempt to protect their privacy. I am inclined towards the other extreme (see my previous post on privacy and information theory): let's assume that information flow is efficient and confront the consequences honestly. Then we can have an informed conversation about information privacy.
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Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2008
Incentives for Active Users
Some of the most successful web sites today are social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. These are not only popular web sites; they are also remarkably effective people search tools. For example, I can use LinkedIn to find the 163 people in my network who mention "information retrieval" in their profiles and live within 50 miles of my ZIP code (I can't promise you'll see the same results!).
A couple of observations about social networking sites (I'll focus on LinkedIn) are in order.
First, this functionality is a very big deal, and it's something Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have not managed to provide, even though their own technology is largely built on a social network--citation ranking.
Second, the "secret sauce" for sites like LinkedIn is hardly their technology (a search engine built on Lucene and a good implementation of breadth-first search), but rather the way they have incented users to be active participants, in everything from virally marketing the site to their peers to inputting high-quality semi-structured profiles that make the site useful. In other words, active users ensure both the quantity and quality of information on the site.
Many people have noted the network effect that drove the run-away success of Microsoft Office and eBay. But I think that social networking sites are taking this idea further, because users not only flock to the crowds, but become personally invested not only in the success of the site generally, but especially in the quality and accuracy of their personal information.
Enterprises need to learn from these consumer-oriented success stories. Some have already. For example, a couple of years ago, IBM established a Professional Marketplace, powered by Endeca, to maintain a skills and availability inventory of IBM employees. This effort was a run-away success, saving IBM $500M in its first year. But there's more: IBM employees have reacted to the success of the system by being more active in maintaining their own profiles. I spent the day with folks at the ACM, and their seeing great uptake in their author profile pages.
I've argued before that there's no free lunch when it comes to enterprise search and information access. The good news, however, is that, if you create the right incentives, you can get other folks to happily pay for lunch.
A couple of observations about social networking sites (I'll focus on LinkedIn) are in order.
First, this functionality is a very big deal, and it's something Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have not managed to provide, even though their own technology is largely built on a social network--citation ranking.
Second, the "secret sauce" for sites like LinkedIn is hardly their technology (a search engine built on Lucene and a good implementation of breadth-first search), but rather the way they have incented users to be active participants, in everything from virally marketing the site to their peers to inputting high-quality semi-structured profiles that make the site useful. In other words, active users ensure both the quantity and quality of information on the site.
Many people have noted the network effect that drove the run-away success of Microsoft Office and eBay. But I think that social networking sites are taking this idea further, because users not only flock to the crowds, but become personally invested not only in the success of the site generally, but especially in the quality and accuracy of their personal information.
Enterprises need to learn from these consumer-oriented success stories. Some have already. For example, a couple of years ago, IBM established a Professional Marketplace, powered by Endeca, to maintain a skills and availability inventory of IBM employees. This effort was a run-away success, saving IBM $500M in its first year. But there's more: IBM employees have reacted to the success of the system by being more active in maintaining their own profiles. I spent the day with folks at the ACM, and their seeing great uptake in their author profile pages.
I've argued before that there's no free lunch when it comes to enterprise search and information access. The good news, however, is that, if you create the right incentives, you can get other folks to happily pay for lunch.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Privacy through Difficulty
I had lunch today with Harr Chen, a graduate student at MIT, and we were talking about the consequences of information efficiency for privacy.
A nice example is the company pages on LinkedIn. No company, to my knowledge, publishes statistics on:
Arguably, information like this was never truly private, but was simply so difficult to aggregate that nobody bothered. As Harr aptly put it, they practiced "privacy through difficulty"--a privacy analog to security through obscurity.
Some people are terrified by the increasing efficiency of the information market and look for legal remedies as a last ditch attempt to protect their privacy. I am inclined towards the other extreme (see my previous post on privacy and information theory): let's assume that information flow is efficient and confront the consequences honestly. Then we can have an informed conversation about information privacy.
A nice example is the company pages on LinkedIn. No company, to my knowledge, publishes statistics on:
- the schools their employees attended.
- the companies where their employees previously worked.
- the companies where their ex-employees work next.
Arguably, information like this was never truly private, but was simply so difficult to aggregate that nobody bothered. As Harr aptly put it, they practiced "privacy through difficulty"--a privacy analog to security through obscurity.
Some people are terrified by the increasing efficiency of the information market and look for legal remedies as a last ditch attempt to protect their privacy. I am inclined towards the other extreme (see my previous post on privacy and information theory): let's assume that information flow is efficient and confront the consequences honestly. Then we can have an informed conversation about information privacy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LinkedIn. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2008
Incentives for Active Users
Some of the most successful web sites today are social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. These are not only popular web sites; they are also remarkably effective people search tools. For example, I can use LinkedIn to find the 163 people in my network who mention "information retrieval" in their profiles and live within 50 miles of my ZIP code (I can't promise you'll see the same results!).
A couple of observations about social networking sites (I'll focus on LinkedIn) are in order.
First, this functionality is a very big deal, and it's something Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have not managed to provide, even though their own technology is largely built on a social network--citation ranking.
Second, the "secret sauce" for sites like LinkedIn is hardly their technology (a search engine built on Lucene and a good implementation of breadth-first search), but rather the way they have incented users to be active participants, in everything from virally marketing the site to their peers to inputting high-quality semi-structured profiles that make the site useful. In other words, active users ensure both the quantity and quality of information on the site.
Many people have noted the network effect that drove the run-away success of Microsoft Office and eBay. But I think that social networking sites are taking this idea further, because users not only flock to the crowds, but become personally invested not only in the success of the site generally, but especially in the quality and accuracy of their personal information.
Enterprises need to learn from these consumer-oriented success stories. Some have already. For example, a couple of years ago, IBM established a Professional Marketplace, powered by Endeca, to maintain a skills and availability inventory of IBM employees. This effort was a run-away success, saving IBM $500M in its first year. But there's more: IBM employees have reacted to the success of the system by being more active in maintaining their own profiles. I spent the day with folks at the ACM, and their seeing great uptake in their author profile pages.
I've argued before that there's no free lunch when it comes to enterprise search and information access. The good news, however, is that, if you create the right incentives, you can get other folks to happily pay for lunch.
A couple of observations about social networking sites (I'll focus on LinkedIn) are in order.
First, this functionality is a very big deal, and it's something Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have not managed to provide, even though their own technology is largely built on a social network--citation ranking.
Second, the "secret sauce" for sites like LinkedIn is hardly their technology (a search engine built on Lucene and a good implementation of breadth-first search), but rather the way they have incented users to be active participants, in everything from virally marketing the site to their peers to inputting high-quality semi-structured profiles that make the site useful. In other words, active users ensure both the quantity and quality of information on the site.
Many people have noted the network effect that drove the run-away success of Microsoft Office and eBay. But I think that social networking sites are taking this idea further, because users not only flock to the crowds, but become personally invested not only in the success of the site generally, but especially in the quality and accuracy of their personal information.
Enterprises need to learn from these consumer-oriented success stories. Some have already. For example, a couple of years ago, IBM established a Professional Marketplace, powered by Endeca, to maintain a skills and availability inventory of IBM employees. This effort was a run-away success, saving IBM $500M in its first year. But there's more: IBM employees have reacted to the success of the system by being more active in maintaining their own profiles. I spent the day with folks at the ACM, and their seeing great uptake in their author profile pages.
I've argued before that there's no free lunch when it comes to enterprise search and information access. The good news, however, is that, if you create the right incentives, you can get other folks to happily pay for lunch.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Privacy through Difficulty
I had lunch today with Harr Chen, a graduate student at MIT, and we were talking about the consequences of information efficiency for privacy.
A nice example is the company pages on LinkedIn. No company, to my knowledge, publishes statistics on:
Arguably, information like this was never truly private, but was simply so difficult to aggregate that nobody bothered. As Harr aptly put it, they practiced "privacy through difficulty"--a privacy analog to security through obscurity.
Some people are terrified by the increasing efficiency of the information market and look for legal remedies as a last ditch attempt to protect their privacy. I am inclined towards the other extreme (see my previous post on privacy and information theory): let's assume that information flow is efficient and confront the consequences honestly. Then we can have an informed conversation about information privacy.
A nice example is the company pages on LinkedIn. No company, to my knowledge, publishes statistics on:
- the schools their employees attended.
- the companies where their employees previously worked.
- the companies where their ex-employees work next.
Arguably, information like this was never truly private, but was simply so difficult to aggregate that nobody bothered. As Harr aptly put it, they practiced "privacy through difficulty"--a privacy analog to security through obscurity.
Some people are terrified by the increasing efficiency of the information market and look for legal remedies as a last ditch attempt to protect their privacy. I am inclined towards the other extreme (see my previous post on privacy and information theory): let's assume that information flow is efficient and confront the consequences honestly. Then we can have an informed conversation about information privacy.
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