Tag archives: daylife

A market for truth?

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Monday, 3 November 2008

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The real or the fake news? Or the fake news mascerading as the real? I had been curious about the news business until I spent time with people like Upendra and Jeff Jarvis almost 2 years ago trying to understand how we might look at the various aspects of news coverage – “perspectives” was a word we used alot. Then I became a lot more interested. Or maybe the better word is conscious. 

In some cases, its clear there are perspectives or lots of room for interpretation. But who decides what is important? Or what is true? The Economist takes a look at media bias from the market perspective arguing that it is in fact just healthy competition. The gist is the Rupert should not be to blame for the views on Fox. He is in fact just great businessman for giving people what they want – not truth, but confirmation of their biases and beliefs. The reward? A great business – a large audience which begets subscribers and advertisers. 

So at what point does journalism cease to exist? If I am a lawyer and I give my clients what they want or an accountant for that matter, at what point do the wants of legal and tax dodges run up against ethics? I dont know, but I am pretty sure Fox News cant really be called news anymore – entertainment yes, bias amplification yes, reassurance to the right yes. But news? I dont know – the Daily show probably has more news. 

Each time I look at the way Daylife evolves, I am struck by the contrast of sources and perspectives on each topic. Looking at Obama coverage, for example, is particularly interesing, running through a broad range of perspectives and bumping up against the non-news at the edges. Perspectives are still a good idea, even if we dont agree on “the truth”. And as things progress rather than merely talking about deviations from the truth, we can actually measure it, as Daylife is beginning to show with their analysis of what sources and journalists tend to cover particular subjects. 

Maybe once you can tell what the bias is, it matter much less what it is, just that the truth lies somewhere in the continuum of perspectives. At least its out there.

Oh yes. I’m still waiting for the truthiness API call in the DayPI.

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Cant wait until November elections? Here are 2 other votes

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Friday, 1 August 2008

ZocDoc – Forbes with give them $100k to build their business, if they win the vote.

Daylife - is voting on the best new news applications using the DayPI.

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Daylife is steadily winning fans with a new way to explore news

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Tuesday, 8 July 2008

Being excited about charts, is not for everyone. But this deserves a mention. Maybe Upe will share the secret of their success, but they have achieved enviable, steady climb in usage for what was meant to be a technology showcase! As Upe points out, they didn’t do any marketing! One thing is certain, Upe somehow saw this many years ago and has been relentlessly making this into reality, along with a very talented team.

News consumption is a strange thing, as newspapers are finding out. Its one of the most popular online habits. As with all habits, it can change and as more activities move online, they are fundamentally changed through search and community participation. Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine provides the blow by blow and a view into the future news architecture.

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Analyzing Your Relationships

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Wednesday, 4 June 2008

How we interact with others, is increasingly under the microscope. In 1996 when I set out to write a thesis, I spent some time looking at IBM research which was analyzing e-mail communications. Who was talking with whom, to try understand various dynamics of communications in the enterprise. It looked interesting then and a few companies seemed to appear and disappear around this theme.

At the core of Google’s success, was the understanding of how to interpret the excellent work which people do when creating links between content. If you havent seen it, best to check out “Anatomy of a … Search Engine”.

Today, in addition to the links, we are generating enormous amounts of data as a byproduct of our communications. And companies are emerging to attempt to make sense of it. Where existing analytics focuses and WHAT people are doing on a site, the new tools enable us to understand WHO people are interacting with. And this has some interesting implications. Following are a few examples:

Daylife – keeps making news analysis more interesting. And recently unveiled some demonstrations of just how useful their analysis can be in the form of “social graphs” and other interesting analysis tools. My favorite is quite simple – for a given phrase or topic, figure out which news organizations or journalists are providing coverage. PR 2.0? We like. Some examples for: social graph, obama, mccain, wii fit.

Pluribo – is being very secretive of late. However, they have already demonstrated some of their potential to understand and interpret user opinions. Part of the process involves identifying more influential and reliable contributors. And so we expect, that part of this will show up in the form of affinities between contributors and categories, between contributors and one another, etc. Sorry they are back in stealth mode, so no examples.

SocialAmp – is providing a new view into interactions on social networks. They have created a rating systems to indicate how “influential” users are, for example. While most of the talk seems to be around advertising, some recognize the inherent value of conversations. It looks like Social Amp may be arriving at a Page Rank equivalent for social networks. Much like in the real world, people need cues as they work the room – Social Amp may have one social networks.

Flickr - Interestingness seems like something which might come out of a Monty Python piece, but it more than just clever naming. Flickr doesnt go into much detail about how this works, but there are plenty of speculators who build on their hints. The end result is that without knowing anything about the photos, Flickr is able to identify the most interesting ones by studying interaction.

While some focus on the loss of privacy, I think it is fascinating to think about how much we are able to learn from simply observing the byproducts of communications. Hopefully its good for business, but more importantly, perhaps we’ll understand one another a little better.

Disclosure: we are investors in both Daylife and Pluribo.

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