Author: Ajay Ohri

http://about.me/ajayohri

Advertising Feed back Loop: Facebook and Adwords

In Systems design a feedback loop is something that measures the difference between expected and actual output and adds it back to the system to enhance it’s performance

For a better more accurate definition see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback

Here is how Facebook measures the satisfaction whether I got for an ad on my page- note fraudelent or systematic cheaters would be eliminated by the law of averages.

It places a very small thumbs up or thumbs down on an ad on right hand corner.
‘
When I place a thumbs down on an ad ( note it shows only graphical ads)-it asks me why i didnt like the ad

Was it

1) Misleading
2) Offensive
3) Uninteresting
4) Irrelevant
5) Repetitive
6) Other- allows text mining of free form allowing subjective feedback.

However if I type say Business Intelligence on Google – I get the following

http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=business+intelligence&meta=&aq=0&oq=business+intell

Open Source Ad on Pentaho at prime spot just above the results. Makes me wonder how much open source will spend.

Search Results-
Wikepedia entry usually at the top ( but no ads there*)

Search Optimization means SAS Business Intelligence is now fifth from top- which is the first mention of a BI vendor there ( Note cost to SAS is zero as you can see below). In the remaining top 4, two are similar http://www.businessintelligence.com and http://www.businessintelligence.co.uk as the title page tag remains more important than sheer consumer behaviour to Pagerank.

Right Column Sponsored Links ( These guys spend more money than SAS to be on the sponsored links and still end up in a less favourable ad page than in top vendor on search results page)-

1 http://www.brgglobal.com
2 SAP.com/India
3 IBM.com/cognos
4 http://www.BusinessObjects-India.com
5 http://www.softsmith.com
6 http://www.syncfusion.com/BizIntell
7 http://www.intelligententerprise.com/

(Note from Ajay*- A senior IIM Alumnus CK Prahlad (the first batch in fact) – first expounded the concept of core competence-

Now-what is Google’s core competence.
I believe that Google should simply donate all its information on wikipedia, and offer Google Knol to it- rather than just wallow in sunk cost theory or expect an immediate return from this transaction. It will get lots of goodwill- and maybe the Google Wikipedia Knol will take off.

Similarly sell Orkut to Facebook and just take the advertising and search functions to be combined in a seperate spin off called Google Search before Microsoft forces the Europeans and Justice department to do so.

Or continue to moon the giant.)

I didnt like the Adwords ads or the order they were in. But there is no way in Adwords for me to give feedback to it. Facebook listens. Will Adwords listen.

For the past one week I have been fending off repeated denial of service attacks on Decisionstats.com

My email addresses are widely known thanks to my participation on technical forums and my willingness to reach out and make friends ( 8500+ on Linkedin alone).

While the attacks were particularly vicious including email accounts, server changes, ip addresses to deny certain geographies, poisoned RSS feed/scripts, and scripts in folders to re direct posts.

Thanks to the fine team supporting me and some friendly advice from bloggers at Google- the worst is over. I have not hesitated to bash Google at will over its big size and even added a few cartoons on them – (even now I think they should sell Orkut to Facebook and add Twitter to create a spinoff Google Social Media for an IPO and take that particularly search and advertising)

But Google Search and Gmail and Google Analytics and Particularly Youtube are free- and thanks to them knowledge has spread way around the world. Also working behind the scenes the Google team spends a huge amount fighting spam and all for free. Or a bit of advertising on a website.

Thanks a lot Google men, and here is a You Tube video ( which you may have seen many times before but still) that celebrates the one ness of a global online community ( despite the occasional sith attacks)

saP or saS or sasR or saaS

Some pending news and posts- It appears that the company SAP is moving closer to major acquisitions. This includes launching more and more applications that are analytical in nature as well coming together in an alliance with hardware major Teradata. Teradata off course is a very close partner to SAS Institute. So could SAP and SAS and or Terdata be moving closer to a major announcement on BI and BA merging.

The open source database movement with Hadoop is the one which can be the real game changer in the managed database industry and AsterData is the company to watch here.

However R with its modular extensions is a different paradigm in language developement and SAS no longer has the nimbleness or flexibity in creating such apps- at the same time it has lost a fair deal of credibility in the young academia (due to R) as well cost sensitive consumers (due to WPS)

The succession issue of Jim Goodnight continues to be the biggest problem for SAS Institute- Jim is not getting younger and his second line is not expected to be of the same class as the Sall/ Goodnight partnership. Of all the major companies in software, Jim Goodnight stood alone in remaining private and thus managed to escape distractions of share prices while building up the franchise. Surviving oil shocks, cold wars, three recessions Mr Goodnight has cared for his local community as well despite being active in SAS and fending off sustained attempts by open source languages.

. An automatic partner for Mr Goodnight should have been Google or even Google Labs with the Brin/Page duo being the top data miners ( commerically) of this generation as Sall/Goodnight were 30 years ago.

SAP may spend a lot of its cash but the supply chain paradigm is best served by SaaS and exemplified by Salesforce.com and Force.com developers.

As the ancient Chinese said- May you live in interesting times.

SPSS launches two more PASWs

Just got news from the Chicago school of analytics, or the company known as SPSS. they have decided to lauch two more PASW products and you can see this from the release itself.

SPSS Inc. and the value of Predictive Analytics.

This week we announced PASW Data Collection 5.6 feedback management and survey research software, and PASW Collaboration & Deployment Services 4, our integrated platform to share, manage, automate and integrate analytic assets directly into business processes.

PASW Data Collection 5.6 (formerly Dimensions)

* The use of surveys to capture “Voice of the Customer” across multiple touch-points is integral to bringing data about people’s attitudes into analytical decision-making to improve customer intimacy.
* PASW Data Collection 5.6 supports the entire survey lifecycle — from authoring to managing the data collection process to survey reporting and analysis — supporting global, multichannel research and feedback collection.
* New functionality includes data entry capabilities, an enhanced authoring interface suitable for the novice and the research professional, and new phone-based interviewing capabilities designed to shape the modern survey research call center. This release also further extends the enterprise readiness of the data collection platform with enhancements to performance and security.

You can read the press release at http://www.spss.com/press/template_view.cfm?PR_ID=1088

PASW Collaboration and Deployment Services 4 (formerly Predictive Enterprise Services)

* The platform automates analytical processes for greater consistency and control, and deploys results to business users, consumers or directly into operational systems to reduce customer churn, improve marketing campaigns or identify cases of fraud.
* PASW Collaboration and Deployment Services 4 provides the foundation to integrate analytics into key business processes, so the right decisions are made and the best actions are taken on a consistent, repeatable basis.
* New functionality includes enhanced collaboration capabilities that provide more options for publishing analytical results; enhancements to the Automation Service with additional integration options; and a Real-time Scoring Service to deploy analytical scores into existing applications.

You can read the full press release at http://www.spss.com/press/template_view.cfm?PR_ID=1087

Buddypress for Analytical Buddies??

Let us assume there are top 100 analysts in the world mostly using WordPress or Typepad or Blogger to make posts

Managing them is quite a challenge.

What is marketing ROI of analyst relationships for a Business Intelligence vendor- Curt Monash is the Aerosmith of Business Intelligence Analysts so he can tell it better.

How about a magical community where you just use their mostly Feedburner of Feedblitz RSS feeds to create a self automated community.

Serach Engine Optimization can be tricked by keeping that community website free from Google or Search Engines ( yes it can be done).

Use numerical etc as in Linkedin to spur rivalry by shifting their page positions up and down, or by clicking repeatedly on some posts to manipulate their views on blog posts.

What would SAS pay to have all SAS analysts in one webpage. or SPSS to have all SPSS analysts in one webpage.

Six months later suddenly open the website for search engines, and the RSS feed has downloaded all the posts of all the top 50 analysts of the world. Google advertsing wont matter because hey we have a mega vendor sponsor- while individual bloggers / analysts have no collective strength now as the community is too big.

So much blah blah-

What software would you use.

you can choose between

Ning.com ( but it mostly non Blog feeds based)

or Wordframe.com ( which interface and name sounds suspiciously like WordPress software)

Or you can choose a customized WordPress Solution called Buddy Press.

Here is the software-

BuddyPress

BuddyPress will transform an installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform.

BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact. Read More ?

Note this was just a generic case study for making a case for open source based community softwares. Resemblance to any thing is a matter of coincidence – except for Curt Monash of course.

Cost of Customized WordPress Software for communties is a big zero- it is free and open source and tjousands of plugins can be installed and maintained for it.

See an existing installation here

www.decisionstats.com/community

or at www.buddypress.org

Mergers and Acquisitions 2: Indian Offshoring

Some tricks that Indian offshoring companies adapt to boost up valuation just before recieving a dose of private equity or enter into negotiations are-

1) Build additional centers to make it look bigger

Make a small 50 member team size in East Europe, a 50 center team size in South America, a 50 member team size in China while 90 % of team stays in India. And claim we are present in one dozen countries so we have minimized location/ country instability risk.

2) Claim to invent the Indian Outsourcing sector when they first worked in 1990’s at McKinsey or Gecis or IBM.

Some companies claim to invent the KPO (knowledge processing) sector while some companies claim to invent the BPO sector.

The first apperance of the word Knowledge came from the back office McKinsey Knowledge center in 1990’s where almost all early recruits went and set up or joined other back offices- McKinsey continues to keep that centre as well as keep small teams in multiple outsourcing companies to gather information. It has the most secretive client relations and the best run alumni network in consulting companies.

recently McKinsey tried to aim for cloud computing by creating a market for private clouds rather than just clouds.

Who invented KPO or BPO or BTO? Even Wikipedia entries can be maipulated. Even Google SEO can be gamed by link farms

3) Becoming Bigger and Better pre infusion of funds

Increase staff size,

pay lower salaries,

lock attrition by bonds that prevent people from moving for two years ( yes it is not illegal in India)

Not pay overtime ( many companies keep detailed records to ensure minimum of 10 hours work from employees and spur unpaid overtime as this is not required by law for Indian outsourcing companies.

4) Create an industry wide database to keep private information on individuals thorugh the NASSCOM – the premier lobbying body for Indian ITES

Most of this is due to the rapid rise of Indian ITES as opposed to mature practises in Indian IT industry- even there it has been an occasional scandal like Satyam

Are you offshoring work to India? Do you know how many people are working how many hours to get that great job done? Do you wonder why only 1-2 senior members speak on a tele conference but junior team members dont.

Happy Outsourcing.

Jai Ho!