There are rocket scientists, then there are rocket scientists - and then there's Barney Pell, long-time Silicon Valley startup maven and currently the Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Powerset. Barney is one of those rare people who has been a rocket scientist via both the NASA side of the term and the software industry side, an outlook that has helped him to assemble many teams through the years that have developed advanced search and language processing technologies. Powerset has unveiled its first effort recently at a new technology to provide rich content from semantic searches, an interesting look at how one can completely reshape the face of a content product via enhanced search technologies.

Using Wikidpedia as its primary target content, Powerset technology analyzes search phrases to come up with search results that match natural language phrases as well as keywords. This being a very early stage debut of technology some search targets work better than others and overall I'd have to say that it's a technology that seems to do best with people and things as opposed to concepts. For example, if you type in "Who is Bill Gates?" you get the screen similar to the top of the above screen grab, which includes a top deck of biographical information from the Freebase reference database followed by Powerset's sets of semantic analysis called "Factz" that focus on what the Wikipedia article says about this prominent figure. One of these sets, for example, tells us that Gates gave testimony, a speech, an address, a demo, a presentation and a deposition. You can click on any of these terms to get more details from the underlying article.

Below the initial bio and Factz information is a set of search results for the initial query, including the best-match article on Microsoft founder Bill Gates. This is in essence the straight Wikipedia article with links mapped over to Powerset's version of this content, along with a handy visual presentation of the article's outline on the right or another listing of key Factz organized within the article outline. I like some of the inferences that it's come up with in the Wikipedia definition of Content that I contributed a while back: "information provides value; experiences provide value; content provides value." True enough.

I like how Powerset prefixes organic search results with federated content, taking a best stab at results on very focused topics that enable people to obtain knowledge more quickly and effectively. The automatically generated Factz, though, suffer from the same problem that most semantic tools experience when they examine a very small data set: spotty inferences. For example, in the Factz about Bill Gates Powerset inferred that he founded Cher, an inference drawn from the fact that biographer Howard Johns was known for revealing the addresses of these and other celebrities. Hmm. Don't think that I'd put that info down on my "final Jepoardy" slate. I am also not so crazy about the organic search results, which tend to err on the side of word proximity. Again, with a relatively narrow data set such as Wikipedia it's not always easy to tune content analysis well to the capabilities of semantic text analysis in search engines.

The big picture for this early-days release of Powerset is that it is a great demonstration of how one particular source of content can be transformed through search and content federation technologies into an altogether different kind of publication. Oftentimes I talk these days about search technologies being similar to datafeed technologies, but in this instance it's important to recognize that search technologies are also end-publishing technologies in and of themselves that can aggregate, filter and organize content in altogether new ways that enhance the value of one or more core publications. Using free content from Wikipedia and Freebase the Powerset technology does a good job of demonstrating this concept simply, albeit with some early growing pains. Publishers wanting to stay in the forefront of content markets are turning in droves to content federation technologies as a solution to add value to existing product sets, so expect to hear more from technologies such as Powerset that help publishers to add value rapidly.

Labels: content federation, federated search, Freebase, powerset, search, Wikipedia

Certainly Google's announcement regarding its forthcoming Knol article writing service has caused quite a stir in and beyond Silicon Valley as The New York Times, Search Engine Land, Google Blogoscoped, GigaOM and many others try to have a go at scoping out Knol's significance.

In short, Knol will enable people to create encyclopedia-like articles on various topics which can be rated by their readers and have both in-article links to other sources on the Web and automatically generated links to related Knol content. Unlike Wikipedia, there's one author per article, but multiple authors can create articles on the same topic, creating a free-market effect as to who is the leading expert on the topic. Articles will be equipped with Google ads, revenues from which will be shared with the author.

This is quite different in many important aspects from Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia, which in addition to attributing authors only in the history trail on collaboratively edited articles also maintains an ad-free environment for their content. While there are more than passing similarities to Wikipedia in Knol's overall design, the system doesn't seem likely to yield similar results. Knol's emphasis on single authorship without editing means that any particular subject is going to gain popularity based on a particular person's outlook, which may be good one day and quite out of date the next.

So while Knol may help people to get a leg up on what leading experts think about a particular subject - and mind you, that might be great for consultants like us folks at Shore - it's at the mercy of the editing priorities of whomever is maintaining their articles. For fast-changing topics this means that it may take a little bit more work for a reader to figure out who's really at the top of their game on a particular topic - and who's off on holiday for a while. Wikipedia needs constant monitoring to keep powerful people and organizations from trying to add spin to their articles, but at least there's highly active editing of one reasonably definitive version of the facts on a given topic.

While the comparison to Wikipedia is inevitable I see this in many ways as much a play for a wider variety of reference portals. Certainly About.com's docent system has resulted in topic experts who have financial motivations to maintain reference topics well on a wide variety of subjects, and in many ways Knol seems to be aimed at providing more efficient ways for subject matter experts to compete with one another in ways that generate revenues more efficiently than About.com. Knol puts more of an onus on an individual author to keep their information up to date, as others could come up with fresher content first, providing a framework that will help them to focus on content while leaving usability, design and monetization concerns to other. As Google's OpenSocial initiative gains steam one can imagine a person's Knol pages as reference content that can travel with them throughout related social media sites.

This free-market approach to knowledge is intriguing but it highlights a major problem that Google faces. As more and more high-quality user-generated content comes online, many people are finding answers to their questions from leading experts in social media venues that are precluding the need to reference a search engine for answers. As it is, so many topic-oriented searches display Wikipedia articles as the definitive source that in some ways Google has become the default front end for Wikipedia lookups as much as an index of the Web in general, reducing overall ad engagement on Google search results pages - and, in time, fewer searches generated on Google. Fewer searches means less available inventory for Google ads - so keeping more people engaged in Google inventory of some kind becomes an increasingly important goal for Google. So as much as this is a very interesting and useful approach to knowledge development it's overshadowed by commercial considerations that may or may not result in knowledge that people really trust. Collaborative editing has its limits for generating quality reference content, but at some point one's own version of a topic needs to stand up to the challenge of other knowledgeable people.

There are many different ways that Knol could evolve out before it launches, but the key factor would seem to be to provide people with a way to aggregate knowledge effectively. As much as one individual's view of a topic can be useful collaborative editing offers the most certain way to gain insights that are going to provide people with the deepest insight into a given topic. There's still room in such a system to reward individuals - one can imagine a system like Wikinvest in which a collaborative neutral article could be supplemented by opinionated personal articles - but first and foremost one hopes that Google will see that the best system will be one that serves the truth before it serves the bottom line. Knol holds out great promise as a platform that can help individuals to create useful reference content, but it may wind up having to serve too many competing interests to gain much of an impact on the marketplace.

Labels: advertising, collaboration, Google, knol, reference, Social Media, Wikipedia

A reminder that I will be chairing a great panel this Wednesday, 5 December on how users acting as editors via social media platforms are creating excellent content and establishing the best practices that will be guiding user-guided publishing for years to come. We have a strong attendance list already as I am told by the SIIA, so sign up soon for in-person or online participation. Late-breaking news: Bruce Smith, Chief Strategic Officer at Answers.com, will be joining the panel to give insights as to how their contributors on WikiAnswers are creating excellent reference content. Join us at the McGraw-Hill building at noon on Wednesday for a great session with Wikipedia, Newsvine, Answers.com and Wikinvest!

Labels: brown bag, events, Newsvine, SIIA, Social Media, Wikianswers, wikinvest, Wikipedia

The investment research marketplace is one of the most intensively cultivated business information sectors, with major investment banks, buy-side fund managers, ratings companies, publishers, media companies and independent research firms all putting their finger in the pie to try to pull out the plum of valued insights and recommendations. With such a daunting field of players you have to give credit to Wikinvest for even thinking about trying something new.

Wikinvest enables contributors to build up profiles of companies similar to what one gets in a typical stock profile report, with a neutral "just the facts" default tab for each company complemented by tabs that give indications as to what the bullish and bearish sentiments are on the investment. While these reports leverage mostly bog-standard MediaWiki technology they are attractive and readable for most purposes. They also have a nifty graphing package similar to that used in Google Finance that contributors can use to create annotations that correlate market movement to events affecting the company's stock.

Wikinvest company reports are complemented by topical concept reports, which lay out the details of major trends and investment methodologies. Like company reports each concept report also includes an area in which "bulls" and "bears" can add their own take on the impact of sub-prime loans on markets. There are also nice features such as the ability to add user-specific bookmarks on each page's sidebar and the ability to type in partial company names or concepts instead of ticker codes into their type-ahead search box to get some meaningful content. Top contributors to Wikinvest get titles akin to Wall Street professional titles - "Senior Director" is the label for the top grade of Wikinvest contributors.

For a just-out-of-the-box tool Wikinvest is already populated with a fair amount of content - 100,000 contributions are claimed - but it's content coming mostly from young enthusiasts rather than from seasoned investment analysts. Don't let the "Senior Director" label fool you - look at the bios of these leading contributors and you'll find many folks who have not yet made it out of school. That said, when one thinks of all of the off-shore operations cranking out stock reports these days, this is perhaps not the worst thing in a world of 80/20-rule online content. The concepts reports - basically a topical financial encyclopedia - have potential and are generally pretty well-written but it needs far more reports, as well as support for basic industry terms such as "uptick rule" found in sites such as Investopedia or Wikipedia.

This is a very day-one effort at an investment-oriented Wiki, and for day one it seems to have done a lot of the right things. The 100,000 articles is about the scale of the original Wikipedia, so there's reason to think that it will attract quality contributions over time that will flesh out content in this market sector. The use of a neutral/bull/bear model to gather content is also useful, helping to channel opinions to places where they're useful and hopefully helping to avoid opinion turning into facts too often. It's a model for Wiki content collection that others should consider to address topics that draw a lot of segmented opinions. The ability to define new concept articles on the fly also allows Wikinvest to be a fresh and topical source of content that will draw people on a regular basis, giving the potential for building audience loyalty as a must-stop bookmark.

Will Wikinvest really fly? I think the real question is rather how does any sector-specific Wiki project manage to build authoritative content that will attract an audience and quality contributions. From this perspective I think that Wikinvest is a pretty good roadmap into how Wiki technology can be used to build communities of interest around professional-grade topics that can become a strong media source over time. I expect that Wikinvest will have relatively slow and steady growth over the next few months and then either be snatched up by a major portal (is the similarity to Google Finance charting a hint as to their exit strategy?) or outclassed by a startup with deeper pockets and more of an ability to attract higher-grade contributors. But then again, with a little more cash to accelerate content growth, Wikinvest could wind up being that better-financed startup themselves - and find themselves in a very interesting spot in the online content world.

Labels: Business Information, financial information, wikinvest, Wikipedia, Wikis

After yesterday's Neilsen/NetRatings decision to drop page views from their site rankings two studies remind us that online marketing is a very complex process in which search engines and social media play a key role. A take on Facebook's rise in the ratings, why WikiYou is probably another feature searching for a marketplace and Fair Use Day is celebrated at BoingBoing.

Labels: buyers, consumers, facebook, fair use, Research, shoreviews, video, Wikipedia

Our take on a brewing counter-offer for Dow Jones, thoughts on how Wikipedia's Current Events editing challenges news organizations to take a more objective view and ECNext's Manta uses social media concepts to update business profiles online.

Labels: Deals Partnerships and Sales, Dow Jones, ECNext, Manta, shoreviews, Social Media, video, Wikipedia

"Quality is as quality does" may not be a saying that came out of Forrest Gump's mouth but it's a simple formula that seems to be proving itself on the Web as traditional sources of quality content lose audience share to search engines and social media sites. At the same time, though, the ever-increasing popularity of social media sites does not always seem to be balanced by mature quality control. But don't mistake immature techniques with inadequate potential: the techniques used to generate social media are carving out a new path to content quality that's here to stay.

Click here to read the full News Analysis

Labels: Forbes, News Analysis, Quality, Wikianswers, Wikipedia