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August 31, 2005

YAMNO and AOLMNO

I mentioned in my last post that Google is well positioned to be a big LMNO. I subscribe to Business 2.0, but the latest copy has been stuck at the bottom of my pile. Last night I read Om Malik’s Googlenet piece. Read it if you haven’t yet. It’s a great summarized version of what I was trying to say in my last post. (Om is a much more efficient writer than I. ;-) It was so interesting that I wish his editor had given him another page to go into more detail.

Basically, it solidified my conviction that Google can be the interface that enables users to find anything from any source through a network of other users via every communication protocol available. Owning the network makes perfect sense. It also made me think that Google really doesn’t have to buy Skype. It can build a viable competitor itself because they have so many assets that could be rolled into it that Skype lacks. So, disregard the bit about Google buying Skype in my last post. TellMe is the only company they really need to buy in that regard. Love that company.

I mentioned in my last post that as well positioned as Google may be, Yahoo and AOL are better positioned in a lot of ways. I am thinking about how valuable Yahoo’s assets are within the LMNO construct. If communication is evolving to include media that people create, borrow, augment and attach themselves to in order to represent themselves and all that content needs a transactional platform to enable that communication, then Yahoo and AOL have a lead over Google at the moment. The difference is Yahoo Messenger and AIM. AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft have the same opportunity available to them, but I like Yahoo and AOL because although MSN Messenger has more users than Yahoo Messenger, Microsoft is really still more of a software company. Yahoo and AOL are more media companies, so I give them an edge. I personally like Yahoo coming from 3rd place in the IM wars, because they have more to gain.

YAMNO (Yet Another Media Networking Operator)
Here is a simple way to look at Yahoo’s and AOL’s opportunity: Intelligent IM. There are two things needed to build Intelligent IM – a smart host and intelligent routing.

First, all IM clients should have a smart host built in. If you use AIM, create a buddy named SmarterChild and send it a message. It’s a bot that can tell you stuff like weather, movie listings and what time it is in other cities. It’s pretty useful, but if you were to plug in all of the media assets that AOL and Yahoo have, it would be unbelievably cool. Conversagent is a cool company that is sort of the IM equivalent of TellMe, but better in a lot of ways because the interface can offer more information faster.

Second, break the buddy links. Yes, you can search for people on IM, but it is kludgy and doesn’t utilize the primary interface which is the chat window itself. Also, it should be passive. Look at Wondir. Great idea, bad UI. "User-generated questions and answers" just doesn’t make sense as a website. But what if you could distribute those questions automatically to the people who are best qualified and who have opted in to answer them? You would type a question into your IM client, “What’s the best Thai restaurant in San Diego?” and it would be routed to a smart agent that would compare the content of the question and your profile to the profiles and preferences of all other users and send the message to several active users. They would see a message from the smart agent saying “a user wants to know ‘What’s the best Thai restaurant in San Diego?’” One or more (or none) of those people would quickly respond with, “Royal Thai downtown” or “Taste of Thai in Del Mar.” Because the smart agent is tied into the extensive Yahoo media network, it not only understands and indexes the content so that “Royal Thai” is a clickable link, but it also learns over time. You could also choose to make a connection to people: “Do you want UsernameBlah to be added to your buddy list?”

Now plug in all the vertical services that Yahoo has and it would be ULTRA cool. If the agent can answer the question directly, it does. Otherwise, it connects you to the right source. Use it to look for a date, a house, local news or some new music that suits your taste based on your profile and best of all get it from someone who has taste similar to yours.

The result is a true media networking tool. I would like to see the IM giants rev their products in this way instead of baking in VoIP clients, though even that makes sense because it is one more mode of communication. “Click here to dial this restaurant’s number to make a reservation” becomes a cool new feature.

BTW, this is exactly what our platform does and is a cornerstone of the LMNO concept. It is baked into Rabble and affects search results transparently to users, though the next version is when we turn on most of the other really cool functionality. We did this to increase relevance in a small form factor with short session lengths typical of the mobile space, but also because there is a bunch of information being created at the edge of the network that isn’t being captured and optimized. Nobody is really looking at communication this way, but it is clearly the future. We just happen to do it in a mobile environment because we're good at it and we think media networking is more valuable when your device is your remote control to the world around you. That is true of my smartphone, but not my laptop. We are integrating with a lot of companies along these lines. I’ll talk more about that in a future general update post after most of those deals are integrated.

Posted by Shawn Conahan at August 31, 2005 04:35 PM

Comments

Posted by: You dont get intercast at September 2, 2005 11:32 PM

Posted by: Shawn Conahan at September 3, 2005 09:12 AM

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