The real meaning of Cuil will not be found in the size of it’s index (really guys, there is a threshold above which size will work against you…). Also, though important in the end, the quality of the results and the looks of the interface aren’t nearly as interesting as the current buzz would make us believe.

What is interesting is the fundamentally different approach towards ‘Search’ that Cuil claims to be taking.

Reading their FAQ some words grabbed my mind:
“explore fully the subject of your search”
“Our aim is to give you a wider range of more detailed results and the opportunity to explore more fully the different ideas behind your search.”
“We think that if you are interested in content rather than popularity, you’ll find our approach more useful.”

As some of you may know i´m a bit worried about the converging mental models in our minds because of Google´s dominance. This convergence has a lot to do with the way Google organizes it´s results. There is a huge risk of promoting non obvious self-fulfilling prohesies because of Google’s ranking and presentation of results.

Cuil seems to be taking a different approach, recognizing the absence of a universal thruth and helping us determine what is relevant to us given our personal context at this point in time. They do so by providing the tools to explore the information (content) that is relevant to the current query, not just presenting popular answers.

The purpose of Cuil would be to broaden our perspective on issues that matter.

Given the importance of Search in todays society i would prefer an approach like this to one that is narrowing down our view of the world.

The statistics and thumbnail functionality they offer should be enough to get some share in the url-shortener space, espcially if they can realise >99.99% uptime, and cache all the temporary content that is being linked to in hasty online conversations.

But the real purpose of a service like Bit.ly would be to expose your influence.

They gather data on people ’s usage of links in todays online conversations (microblogs in particular). Their analysis of the data they acquire is of real meaning to application developers and marketeers: developers can build smart information harvesting and filtering applications, marketeers get the chance to see who are the real ‘influencers’ (who’s words are driving traffic to what sites on what topics).

There’s some interesting business.

It will be interesting to see if they can get some market share.

The name springs from a shower in a hotel room in San Diego. Between the sessions and evening drinks at the O’Reilly E-Tech conference i felt like wasting some water. While showering the television screamed “…this must be the watercooler topic of tomorrow!”. Well there you go.

WaterCooler Topics functions as a holding company for the startup i’m currenlty working on. Next to that i will work as a contractor to make sure the tapwater will continue to fuel the cooler.

I’m happy to mention my interim job as CTO at ilocal as a first assignment. ilocal is the runner-up in the Dutch local search market and i’m eager to help them take their search technology to the next level.

More on local search and the startup soon.

New media consumption is characterised by attention sparsity; we consume fragmented micromedia from different sources, continuously facing the fear of missing out on that what’s potentially relevant to us. Much of the content out there has no value to us simply because it’s exposure to us isn’t guided by personal relevance but some marketing budget or universal search algorithm. Next to that even if we know what content is really relevant to consume, we’re having trouble actually getting it. Find, download, consume…reconstruct and distribute.

Tribler creates value by enabling you to consume the content that is relevant to _your_ life. Personal context driven content discovery. It does so by combining next generation P2P technology with social mechanisms, thereby implicitly transforming media content into social objects that strengthen the social relations in our network; creating social value.

Now there’s some purpose…

Given the business of online publishers a platform like Tribler will be of much value to the future they’re heading for. Publishers sell consumer attention to advertisers. Traditional (online) media buys attention by creating expensive content and protecting proprietary distribution channels. New media companies recon the value of peer production at the edge and the value of a platform that enables the end user to distribute and consume what’s relevant. By measuring these new media consumption patterns and translating the figures into advertising opportunities new media creates new value for both the advertising and (co)creative industries. The Tribler project already gives us a sneak preview.

More posts to come for sure.

“What do you really want?”

Well, here’s what i want (except for Obama for president of course), really.

The next years i want to find myself having lots of fun building businesses around internet applications that really enhance the quality of life of their users.

“In what way?”

There is a lot to say about the thoughts that have been entertaining my mind lately (and i hope to share lots of them on this blog, for you to demolish), but it basically comes down to two things: relieve people from the Paradox of Choice that western society has put us up with, and help people get in touch with their soulmates. The two aren’t completely unrelated as we will see.

“Why internet?”

Well, that’s all i know anything about, actually. Oh and of course because the IP in TCP/IP are the two letters the next revolutions will be based upon.

“Blahblahblah…what’s starting up?”

A first start is to relieve people from the Paradox of Choice.
Without the tools that transform fragmented data into information that is necessary for making crucial decisions in our daily lives we would be lost in a sea of bits. I want to enable people to make better decisions based on information the startup provides by aggregating fragmented data from different platforms. The right information enables people to have confidence in, and peace with, the decisions they make.
This information is exposed either through websites (”Search verticals”, B2C) or datafeeds (B2B).

It’s time for the Next thing.

I’ve always thought and stated that the internet is a terrific enabler for individual freedom in professional life. A theme which will definately recur in later posts here. Today i start to walk the walk.

Goodbye ilse, welcome entrepeneurism!

Although i decided to use english as the primary language for this blog, Dutch stuff will happen. I’ll share (part of) my goodbye email sent to my current colleges. Yes, it’s been 7 years in the internet era…

Bye bye, love.

mijn ambities trekken me verder,
daar waar we niet meer samen kunnen gaan.

7 jaar hebben we elkaars leven gevoed,
met de passie om van waarde te zijn, en waarde te creëren.

we hebben veel lol gehad,
zelfs in de mindere tijden.
waardevolle herinneringen blijven ons bij.

Geloof in eigen kracht is wat we delen,
en het is juist die kracht die ons nu scheidt.
we moeten afscheid nemen,
dag ilse, dag.