evans ink

I was pleased and excited to see this week’s launch of Public Earth’s website.  Not just because it’s the home of a small cadre of friends that I knew would build something very interesting, but because I believe in the fundamental premise underlying Public Earth.

The Twitter synopsis of Public Earth sums it up nicely.

We’re the Wiki For Places, dedicated to delivering interesting, unique, and up-to-date place information in a personalized way.

after world domination

The scale of product investment and advancement commitment from Google and Microsoft in mapping these past five years has been truly impressive.  These brands deservedly unseated MapQuest’s sleepy position by moving the ball forward on user experience, on multi-dimensional content, and on developer tools.

Fact is though, we’re still at the utilitarian consumption stage in geo-experience, and the very thing that creates their current world domination could well be what weighs down their forward progress.  The “Anchor Tenants” of the consumer geo universe, perhaps. [for fun: Google = Walmart, MapQuest = Kmart, and Microsoft so wants to be Target].

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Many people are aware that a few months ago I migrated from my full-time role in Local Matters, and began working on the “next new thing”.

I guess I’ve reached that inevitable point of self-admission to being a serial entrepreneur, forced to work on things that get stuck in my head, and get me out of bed @ 4am.   I. just. can’t. seem. to. help. myself.

I have great memories from the last few years taking a business from concept through multiple cycles of growth. I’d be lying to not say I am also disappointed by some of the choices I led us through along the way.  And, like many (most?) companies do in the face of the dramatic shifts in market structures and valuations of 2008-09, we had to triage through a reinvention phase.  Thanks to an amazing team (employees, board members, clients and investors), this has advanced very well; I am very impressed with the clarity that the company now has going forward.  I sat at the last Board meeting witnessing a business that has matured and evolved very well under the new leadership team in 2009.  It’s a first class business with a bright future, powering the strategic progression of Yellow Pages businesses, globally.   I only hope the industry lets it unleash the potential underlying the impressive technology and team.

I’ve now confidently moved on to what I know I LOVE to do - creating a new business.  My passion is for opportunities that lie JUST ahead of the horizon.  I love to work in market spaces where the structures of consumer-to-business interaction are inefficient and capable of being dramatically overhauled with online and mobile models.

So, my next target:  Direct Marketing.

I’ll be announcing my newco when it’s more ready for public consumption.  I was initially intrigued with the idea of blogging my way through the experiences and challenges associated with start-ups, but I’m not going to do that.  There are enough quality entrepreneurs out there doing that, and adding more of the same just feels kind of pointless.

Perhaps I’ll return to my blog in the coming weeks, as I ruminate over the new space I’ll be occupying, we’ll see how things progress.   For those looking to stay connected, I’d suggest you follow me on Twitter;  140 character micro-blogging just seems to fit with where my life is at right now.

It feels like everywhere I turn there is yet another media company paying writers to crank out search engine friendly content, in thinly veiled attempts to please the google bots.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years looking into the content gaps in converting local to an informed and useful shopping experience. The quest for deeper local content is on the order of a holy grail epic challenge.

The standard by which most publishers currently seem to be approaching their content strategy is “whatever the google bot rewards”.

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For those of you who thought there was no business model behind twitter…

beware, clicking on the link will take you to an infomercial!

Spam “validation” aside, this AdWeek article by provides an interesting discussion on how the ecosystem of Twitter is working to uncover and build business models from the platform.

Kudos to the Denver Post for having the gonads to ask consumers about the value proposition of micro payments. This kind of transparency is refreshing.

While consumer research like this can’t be relied on for detailed forecasting, the sentiment is overwhelming.  Sorry, newspapers, this math don’t hunt!

You’ll just have to innovate like the rest of us.

On Thursday, Twitter launched it’s search box universally throughout the twitter service.  Quoting from the Twitter Blog announcement.

With this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now. (emphasis added)

Twitter, the business, is making important intentions known.  Search is core to their evolving model.  It’s rapidly stepping up from the original founder’s concept of people updating each other with status messages into a role as a dominating force in the evolution of the live web.

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Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself - to not take the opportunity to badly mix a metaphor with the “pig + bird” mashup would just be out of character!

The hot news of late has been along two intersecting themes - the staggering (dare we say) viral growth of Twitter, and the impact of this exploding conversation machine on the popular news topic of  Swine Flu.

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We’ve all done it, we’ve googled our name.  And, in the process, we’ve found all the other Perry Evans’ of the world.  There’s Perry Evans in Hollywood, Perry Evans the gospel singer (my favorite alter ego) and Perry Evans the family practice physician in Cleveland, and so on.  This practice has even been the subject of an indie documentary film named, appropriately “Google Me“.  Problem is, all name matches are “correct search answers”, but the consumer isn’t well served for meaningful people search on today’s Google.

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Denver, CO April 14, 2009 - A spokesperson for the US airline industry today announced that the Inter-airline Technology Standards Committee has paved the way for solving a congestion problem that has plagued the industry for decades.  “Consumer frustration over the inflight contention for open restrooms has been mounting.” Our Restroom Contention Task Force met with our Social Technology Platform team, and eureka!,  we discovered the perfect solution, building on our new WIFI plans - Twitter!” stated Sally De Bain, industry spokesperson.

“We envision connecting bathroom sensors to Twitter - passengers simply follow the #flightnumber to be alerted when a restroom is available.  “We’re still discussing whether to trigger the alert when the door is open, when the toilet flushes or when the sink is activated.  Before launching the beta trial, we need to determine how we support premium flier models (code named “Royal Flush”), such that alerts from toilet flushes go to frequent fliers, ahead of door alerts for  economy passengers.”

heh - hey, it could happen!

The industry buzz is rapidly forming with the possibilities for Twitter to be the real time alert engine for just about anything and everything that changes state.

If you haven’t seen the marquis local small business example it’s worth a quick read.  Bakertweet profiles a London-based bakery that worked with their creative agency (located across the street) to apply Twitter to alert followers as fresh baked goods come out of the oven.

My point with the tongue-in-cheek airlines example is to point out two emerging realities of the rapidly morphing Twitter ecosystem:

1. Twitter has a meaningful shot at become the “alert engine” for a plethora of trigger events - theoretically, whenever you have a group of people who have an interest in immediate knowledge of an event, and
2. The signal-to-noise problem potential gets staggering.

I don’t have time now to really dissect the latter, but it’s near and dear to where my head/passion is these days.  Filtering and tagging of streams of conversations and alerts is a VERY BIG THING.  Both in terms of scale of problem and potential of opportunity.

In the meantime, I’d point you to a thought provoking post by Twine CEO Nova Spivack, and the ensuing debate stimulated in the comments. Clay Shirky’s astute comment also rings very true: “the problem isn’t information overload, it’s filter failure“.

Twine Blog Post: Can Twitter Survive What is About to Happen to It?

So, fasten your seat belt, there’s some potential for turbulence in Twitter’s open blue skies!

I’m not sure if John Battelle started the momentum with his “Twitter=YouTube” prognostication, but that catchphrase now sits alongside dozens of high profile blog posts hailing the arrival of the new 2.0 messiah, suggesting even a fundamental threat to Google.  So, is this just more valley wagging or something more?

twitter: much (much) more than “what am I doing now”

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It’s too easy to be dismissive of Twitter as simply an extraction of the “status update” that became the backbone of social interaction at Facebook. While the concept originated with this, it has rapidly evolved into THE place where an increasing flock of consumers AND publishers post real-time information (over 6 million users, currently).  More importantly, it’s the place where consumers congregate to consume and converse around this eclectic treasure trove of real-time information. It’s a noisy, disorganized commons, yet it feels very much the place to be.

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