Thoughts on developing a mobile app integrated with a cloud-based intelligent analytic system (wireless sensor data+equipment data+user data+?) for optimal asset management, leasing and resale

Developing this app is basically a matter of understanding the asset owner's use case ... as a general rule, optimizing return on investment in major capital assets is basically a matter of always having that asset performing at its highest and best use ... if we look at the following list, we can see that optimizing return on investment is a matter of keeping the asset occupied by tasks toward the top of the list.

• performing the principal task that its owner purchased it for at peak throughput or optimal performance
• performing the principal task that its owner purchased it for at sub-optimal, non-quantitatively managed performance
• leased / rented to a qualified lessor / renter who needs it for its principal task, but a smaller project 
• being evaluated by a future buyer of the asset
• undergoing routine preventative maintenance 
• being set-up or changed over for the next production task
• undergoing corrective maintenance (e.g. replacement of sickle sections or wear parts)
• setting idle, in storage, in a controlled situation that preserves the asset's condition
• being transported or moved to its next highest / best use ... hopefully, without being damaged in-route
• under major repair or overhaul; being refurbished or brought into condition for higher/better use

A significant thing to consider, of course, is whether leasing or renting the asset to qualified lessors / renters is worth the hassle ... it probably isn't, unless the owner already has some form of established processes or a system for doing this UNLESS this particular app would actually facilitate the owner's ability to lease or rent spare capacity.  

Another thing to consider is how the asset owner wishes to sell the asset ... through eBay, through Ritchie Bros, through a preferred auctioneer, through a broker-dealer on commission, through a classified advertisment, to a lessor/renter on a lease-to/rent-to-buy arrangement, through another means ... the app should accommodate different sales strategies.

Another consideration is what kind of user, sensor, engineering and other data are necessary to support the asset owner's need to quantitatively optimize the asset's performance ... for example, quoted speeds and feeds from a machinist's handbook are always conservative -- with different tools, different materials, cutting fluids, etc it is generally possible to do significantly better than the quoted speeds and feeds to optimize throughput on a machine tool ... there is no need to take stupid risks, but being lazy and just playing it safe or sticking well within the factors of safety almost always entails giving away a significant portion of theoretical production capacity ... a typical factor of safety is 2X -- or potentially a sacrifice of 50% of throughput! ... the same thing applies to almost every kind of machinery and equipment, i.e. past production data [with sufficient data from comprehensive condition monitoring systems] from similar conditions allows one to safely push the envelope in an evolutionary fashion to find the optimal production performance frontier.   Obviously, an asset owner will not want to frequently push things until they break -- but if that owner NEVER pushes anything until it breaks, we know that the asset was never used at its actual capacity ... the ability to drive optimization by sensing the effects on the machine from pushing the machine [up to, and just a wee bit past its limits] are is why intelligent, predictive systems based on networks of condition monitoring sensors are potentially so valuable.  

Toward a Theory of Social Commerce

The world of marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the previous 100 years.  The change boils down to increasing importance of REPUTATION, more intelligent recommendation engines, more responsive feedback in relationships, increased collaboration with less travel and waste, radically more frugal R&D and product launch... the big driver in all of this is that customer is no longer a passive couch-potato, no longer patiently waiting for products to come out.  Prosumers and early adopters matter more.  The conversations matter more because they happens online, they persist and are searchable AND lurkers who don't even know about the conversation will [at some point in the future, search for information and] pay attention.  Markets truly are a conversation; everyone listens.  As big as it is already, social commerce is going to be an even much bigger thing ... social commerce doesn't necessarily mean that people will socialize and then buy more junk [although some will still make foolish, herd-driven purchases]; mostly, it means that people and businesses will become MORE conscientious about their purchases, what their purchases say about them, their history of purchases and how they take care of those purchases.

More Mindful Consumption

Some might worry that it might kick off a wave of stupid consumer "joke-purchases" like a bunch of college drunks on buying spree ... of course, foolish purchases will always happen, but in general, product design will largely become more sustainable -- with reusability, upgradability and recyclability being ubiquitous, expected, taken for granted ... disposable junk that's not intended to last past warranty will stick out like shoddy, low-quality merchandise that we used to tolerate, but now find unacceptable  ... commerce will HAVE to be more mindful because more minds are involved, reputations are involved ... how you select and take care of your stuff will matter more; it will be typical for people to buy things and re-sell them. (see "Re-selling, Recommending, Refurbishing").

Finding treasures, curating and creating content through interaction

The future will be more radically interactive.  The availability and affordability of cloud-based information systems and radically-scalable computing power to propel increasing competition in search engines, the continuing quest for better recommendation engines and even ways to harness computing power create independent film or music. These technologies will continue to improve as more developers interact with other develops to newer, braver technologies that rely upon harnessing the power of social community interactions, systems of smart sensors and Big Data.   People who think about the internet as an extension of their life [rather than some place to post content to] such generation Z are already interested in "curating" purchases that can be prospected, found, tried, shared, discussed, debated ... the result is that hype without value will not really work any more when even better search and recommendation engines already provide the opportunities for more people to discover information about a product or company's reputation with a few seconds of "online prospecting."

Sharing, Borrowing, Leasing, Renting

If people have great stuff (e.g. a neighbor with a Bobcat, good tools), there will be people who want to borrow or rent it.  This will become acceptable IF reputations for being a mindful, careful user are tracked ... in other words, people will purchase assets (e.g. tools, equipment) that they may consider lending to a small circle of  borrowers or leasors who can treat those assets with respect.

Asset Optimization, Re-Selling, Refurbishing

Design for sustainability, durability and reuse will matter more.  How you take care of your stuff will matter ... this will be especially true for businesses and contractors that use tools.   People who buy equipment will expect to see that it has been cared for, i.e. they will want to look a the data from the machine's condition monitoring system.  The condition monitoring and tracking systems will also make it possible for companies to lease or rent equipment and charge based upon the time AND conditions of usage [in the same way that cloud service providers like Amazon AWS charge for data storage, data transfer and computation cycles].   People will continue buy high quality durable things that can be repaired/refurbished/upgraded ... use them and then sell them eBay-style -- this activity will not decline -- in fact, it will increase ... good stuff that can be resold will earn value for its brand; the junk that must be recycled, given to GoodWill or [worse] disposed of will be treated as junk when it is new ... re-gifting [of valuable items] will out in the open, but in a world of increased transparency everything will be just a bit more honest.  Transparency means that there is a cost for not behaving as you know you should behave.

Add Value Through Ownership

Celebrities and knowledgeable collectors [of art, antiques and similar items] will add value to merchandise through their ownership ... like Roy Roger's old boots! sold in an auction of the celebrity's "toys" -- as this example illustrates, this has always been possible for major celebrities (e.g. an aging football player who sells his jerseys or Heisman Trophy to raise cash), now it be possible for minor celebrities, like amateur athletes (e.g. who might sell shoes, jerseys, autographed balls from special games), semi-professional musicians (e.g. autographed guitars from big shows), other artists and authors (e.g. Etsy-esque, craftsy items, notes/sketches/papers)

Short URLs for tracking clinks, analytics

URL shortening is one of those ideas that is finally beginning to come of age.  It isn't just for getting a longer post to fit into a tweet or mobile SMS txt or other places where a short URL just makes things work smoother (e.g. broken link in a wrapped, long URL in an email) and look professional and associated with your brand, i.e. short URLs are the modern equivalent of 1-800-MyBrand.   Another couple reasons why short URLs matter for marketing/advertisements can be found in the following blog posting  http://www.clixmarketing.com/blog/2010/09/21/warning-variable-adwords-line-lengths-can-render-ads-meaningless/ ... Use a Short URL in your Google ads!!!

URL shortening is not exactly new -- TinyURL.com or bit.ly, for example,are older, more familiar URL shorteners that you probably recognize.  Many of the early businesses that were created as free services to make posting long URLs easier for anyone were driven out of business by spammers -- obviously, the ones who are still in that business aggressively defend against spammers.

What is beginning to be more widely recognized is the value of using branded, custom shortened URLs (e.g. NYT.ms for NY Times) as a key part of a marketing campaign to establish and build a brand.   The REALLY BIG use for shortened URLs is all about tracking clicks as the content of those shortened URLs gets spread across the web.  You will want to check into several different services:

• bit.ly PRO ... still in BETA, but launched December, 2009; now arguably the benchmark for branded, custom URL tracking [this does not mean there are not others that might not be trying harder ...]; it is worth checking out the bit.ly API and even the bit.ly hackabit
• awe.sm A custom URL shortener with API. detailed analytics, uptime guarantee and SLAs. 
• Peashoot allows you to manage social media campaigns with your own short URLs.
• Tinyarro.ws  use a custom domain with Tinyarro.ws' tiny links service  The tinyarro service uses the ➡.ws domain; you should also be able to use Internationalized Domain Names(IDNs).  IDNs can contain one or more characters from non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic, Chinese, Korean or Japanese, an advantage in setting up an online presence in a non-English speaking market.
• Google Short Links  ... beyond goo.gl, Google also offers a URL shortener as part of Google Apps for a domain that you might host on Google Apps ... for example go.1bd.bz/blog or go.1bd.bz/Facebook ... hopefully, the shortened 1bd.bz domain is somewhat memorable, reminding people to go to "#1 bid biz"  or the #1 auction service for businesses ... it could also be used for other shortened URLs a.1bd.bz, i.1bd.bz or q.1bd.bz
• YOURLS is a small set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run your own URL shortening service (a la TinyURL). You can make it private or public, you can pick custom keyword URLs, it comes with its own API. 
• Argyle Social is a software-as-a-service platform that helps marketers link social media efforts to business outcomes; part of its service includes branded, custom short URLs
• cli.gs was one of the earlier, more broadly used URL shorteners that now has added analytics, social media monitoring and geotargeting; cli.gs was written in PHP hosted on Amazon's EC2 and SimpleDB, demonstrating the scalability of this sort of tool. Although cli.gs had tens of thousands of registered user accounts, and did tens of millions of forwards a month, but it was a one-man show and produced no revenue, making it impossible to turn cli.gs into more than a one man show and was shut down on 10/9/2009 -- it was acquired by Mister Wong on 12/1/2009
• Finally, you will definitely want to take a look at BudURL Pro and the BudURL Pro API.

There are other URL shorteners services out there that are especially worth looking into if you are interested in marketing and analytics ...but if you want to grow your audience, generate leads and understand your customers better, you really should be looking into developing a strategy for your own brand's custom short URL service.

Building Web Reputation Or Content-Filtering Systems

Perhaps you looking into are building a social media site with user-generated content (UGC) to generate leads and drive revenue, if so you may also be looking into how you might build web reputation or content-filtering system [if only from a technical/web development standpoint].  After all, in order to really enable social commerce (to build upon what Blippy.com or Yelp.com or ePinions.com have done)  it is necessary to deepen the level of interaction among users, to make it possible to go beyond a circle of friends, to refer to reputable users for recommendations ... not all users opinions are equal; also, the value of users recommendation may vary with the subject material.

If you are serious about adding a reptuation dimension to your site, you really should look into the work of Eric Goldman [a lawyer w/ePinions.com] who has been a solid background in the research surrounding how reputation systems are regulated.  Eric's view  is that the word "reputation" is a complex and nuanced word AND, that treating both objects and people as having "reputations" does not work.  Eric's website and blogs are rich source of discussion of the deep academic literature on content filtering and user incentive systems far beyond beyond Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational's descriptions of human psychology and quirks.

I am one of those people who follows what Loic Le Meur and his crew are up to ... mostly this means that I follow the seesmic blog  ...which includes updates to Seesmic.com, the Seesmic plug-in marketplace, ping.fm, the ping developers group and  twhirl

Everyday it makes me think about the new "cultural geography" that is being built ... it's a geography that does not depend as much on roads or buildings ... it doesn't even depend upon one form of internet or wireless infrastructure or another [internet/wireless access is important to get there now; there will better ways in 25 or 50 years] ... the cultural geography is built around new communities that are being built -- these communities are not built on ports, on rivers on railroads or roadways ... these communities are getting built according to interests.  As with our physical cities and towns, many on the ones that were important early will fade; some will become much more popular and powerful, new ones will be built.  The big thing about the cultural geography is that physical geography does not matter nearly as much as it did ten years ago -- in another ten years, physical geography will matter less ... in 50 years, physical geography may not matter at all.

Another thing about the cultural geography, you get to pick which communities matter to you -- you can choose NONE, you can  build your own ... you can choose communities that are primarily populated by people from Russia or Brazil or China [who still think differently than you do ... although this is less true than it was 10, 25, 100 years ago and will continue to change].  Right the list of the worlds most important communities [to me] looks something like the following:

Twitter
Facebook
Facebook Pages
Google Buzz
MySpace
Ning
GTalk Status
AIM Status
LinkedIn
Tumblr
Identi.ca
Brightkite
FriendFeed
Plurk
Jaiku
Blogger
Plaxo Pulse
Bebo
WordPress.com
Custom URL
Delicious
Koornk
YouAre
Multiply
Yammer
Flickr
StatusNet
TypePad
StreetMavens
myYearbook
Posterous
Photobucket
Yahoo Profiles
Tagged
5Y4.me
5s4.me
BestSteakInTheUniverse.com
Bidm.at
Biermonger
BreakNeck Cider
Clichesaurus
CloudKernel
DOYNK.me
Drup.bz
FRJ.me
Finance Genome Project
Funnier.Be
GRN.AM
Inner Dufus
LIB.fm
NRG.ag
PR4.bz
PWR.fm
Pyrolytic Edge
SKTCH
SQL.ag
Seeds of Action
StopPD.us
THK.fm
TRZ.me
Venture Genome Project
YMD.me
frix.in
r8r.bz
recyclecamp

Planning marketing success -- stick with your budget, diversify your investments in order to learn, add your business vision -- then execute and measure, track performance, adjust and re-load

Sometimes it's tough to read the subtlies in the tea leaves -- at other times, the object lesson is drop dead obvious: consider the comparison between [comfy bricks and mortar] Barnes & Noble and [online visionary] Amazon in the last three years, i.e. the frugality and comparability of online commerce are things that are here to stay.  If you are not already part of the stampede, you should consider aggressively moving the majority of your marketing, lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment activities,.customer service and customer support activities online.  Beyond simply moving activities online, these services should move in the direction of being accessible from smartphones using apps and wireless internet, i.e. consider the object lesson provided by Apple/Google  [who've been more aggressive in wireless] vs Microsoft [who is dependent upon desktop customers].

Beyond making your business mobile-ready, you need to develop a strategy that allows you to USE and OPTIMIZE the management of your data [which does NOT mean hiding, protecting, refusing to share and just sitting on your data hoping that noboby else uses it].  This means moving assets the cloud, thinking about providing data APIs to developers and exploiting the technologies available now for BIG DATA.  Of course, the most robust strategy is always infrastructure independent, so it's best to evaluate cloud service providers with an eye toward retaining flexibility and control (i.e. don't be seduced by "private cloud" arguments; be ready to move if a better opportunity comes along).  If we want to look in more detail how to prepare to market online, do some studying and take your own "Web Marketing 101" set of classes ... the basic outline looks something like the bullet points in this blog posting, but you should do your own reading and, of course, look to the experts for more guidance.

Before you get too excited, go back and look at your MBA texts on marketing fundamentals again.  You'll hear about the new rules or PR and how marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the previous 100, the FUNDAMENTALS have NOT changed.  If you look at the fundamentals will make you focus on what gotten better with new web marketing alternatives, rather than being distracted by hype or extra features.  It will always be best to think like a customer; now it is particularly essential to think how your customers will be using web-based, mobile-based marketing -- there is no substitute for being familiar with how customers accesses the channel ... the pioneers have already started to settle this territory, you should try to learn lessons from their successes.  A web and online marketing should include various channels:

• an Web 2.0 website, content management framework with community forums or similarly active form of online presence ... make sure it's current, updated frequently ... keep it simple, spare and FAST [for impatient users, for mobile users, for users with old computers or slow connections] ... unless you are in some form of the "artistic" business, resist your "inner artist" ... be extremely wary of technology especially animations or similar gadgety things that require a long time to load and are the likely first point of failure -- do not imagine that you are building anticipation in your audience with some form of grand intro, save the drum rolls for live performances
• reinforce your web presence in ways that drive people to the site ... use a continuously updated blog (better yet a vlog since blogs are going by the wayside, especially without an accompanying vlog), daily RSS news feed, Twitter updates and updates to various communities through Ping.fm ... actively participate in a real, genuine, authentic way in social communities -- comment on postings, follow blogs, use the "Like" button WHEN YOU LIKE SOMETHING on Facebook, become familiar with tools and apps on the keys sites you use [beyond just Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning]
• try to incorporate a social commerce utility with special draws, promotions, reasons for people visit ... this can start with a simple web storefront with a shopping cart OR maybe an electronic online auction  ... the next phase is incorporates some form of collaborative/interactive activity such as online designer (e.g. CafePress custom t-shirts for events/special occasions) ... you will want to tie it in with "inside" special limited-time deals from either Twitter or your email campaign -- the important thing is to find a way to "interact" with your customers, provoke their interest ... finally, you will want to explore ways to involve them in discussion, perhaps with a user forum, perhaps support the storefront with online chat, seek product ratings or reactions from your customers, give them tool to "shop together" to communicate and sustain their relationships with their friends AND with you.
• public relations campaigns / community events / live auctions / "real world" entertainment ... you have to have a "real world" presence, you have to prove that you are GENUINE, you have find ways to help people enjoy life and have fun, find ways for them to make news [with you], to generate enjoyable, memorable activity OFFLINE ... the reason to LEAD volunteer efforts and PR campaigns in your communities [in campaigns that mesh with your expertise, business mission] is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care ... the REASON that companies like Goldman Sachs became as successful and as powerful as they are, is that their leadership recognized the importance of being entirely altruistic and providing helpful leadership in the short-term without charge, so that they could establish the good will and relationships necessary to capture long-term opportunities.  You must be careful, because if you act in a way that shows you aren't really interested in helping, but just doing the PR campaign for immediate returns (i.e. a way that shows you are greedy in the short-term), you will not get either the immediate returns or the long-term good will. 
• videos / photos / podcasts and other forms of multimedia data appropriate to your business ... a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth more IF THEY ARE DONE WELL -- save the shaky, unedited videos and out-of-focus, poorly composed images for your friends and family [to joke about your lack of skils] ... much of the content on YouTube or Flickr is substandard -- not all of it is, some of it is really well done by professionals -- before you embark on a multimedia campaign that embarrasses you, you really should look at a professional workflow for video and photo -- if you watch this video and maybe some of the others posted on Chase Jarvis's blog, I think you'll agree that Chase and his crew have a lot of fun AND they have a really solid workflow with a lot of elements that you can adapt
• search engine optimization with website analytics for understanding usage ... it is not only important for you to understand how search engines work and how to optimize your site (e.g. HTML tags, keywords, inbound links, sitemaps, SEO tools, vs. competitors, etc), it also important for you to understand how to get information from the data you pull from analytics tools.  You need to know how all of your visitors [including searching engine spiders/bots/scrapers] to your websites,  your social commerce tools, your blogs, your videos and every element in your web strategy navigate and use the things that you provide them ... if don't understand how to track performance, you're GUESSING about what your guessing about, i.e. you're screwed, you just don't know it yet.    
• Google AdWords/AdSense, similar online advertising, affiliate programs ... it's important to spend time understanding how these programs ... maybe more important than any of the other bullet points ... you should also understand how you are going to use a CRM tool like Salesforce, Zoho CRM, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics or Oracle OnDemand to convert leads from these ads into opportunities/proposals/closed sales.
• tracked opt-in email marketing  ... send ONLY to people who have opt-ed in ... NEVER,EVER do anything perceived as unsolicited spam ...NEVER,EVER, EVER do anything perceived as unsolicited spam ...  realize, also, that email is dying ... younger generation users already find email passe and do not use it ... tracked email might still work for an older audience -- but be very careful
• mobile apps, data APIs and other ways to share continuously updated data with developers of mobile and social community apps ...beyond just developing your own apps, look for ways to get developers involved in building tools that will make them successful (a la the communities of developers for Facebook apps, Twitter apps or Android phones) ... everything you do on this front will ensure your long-term web marketing success ... you will need to develop a different sort of metrics to measure your progress on this front, i.e. it is necessary to realize the strategic, long-term nature of this sort of effort ... you should also try to envision that what the population of 5 billion mobile web users will look like, try to envision where your segment of this market is going.

The bottom line in marketing is will always be about developing a budget and using a quantifiable, but diversified plan, measuring effectiveness, tracking performance and adjusting the plan.  Realize your plans will always be out-of-date artifacts and largely incorrect -- it is tempting to conclude that plans are useless, but the continual cyclical process of planning, doing, checking, acting, revising and repeating is vital and essential.  The plan is the script that you are working from ... but you will always be tracking, revising, improving the script.  Tracking performance, looking at the analytics, discerning patterns and measuring effectiveness of all of the elements in your entire mix of all marketing activities will allow to do two things: 1) executed in a more coordinated fashion, and 2) budget more wisely to target your investment in those activities with a clearly positive ROI.  Without measurements, analytics and tracking, you are completely guessing at where you should invest more heavily and which activities to eliminate -- a quantitative data-driven approach will not eliminate all uncertainty, but it should improve your ability to guess correctly when it is coupled with a qualitative approach.

Yext CLAIMS to Bring the Power of Internet Advertising to Every Local Business ... ok, but what about doing no evil ... is that what's next ... Yext?

Yext works to manage reputations ... using internet ads for local business ... and today launched Yext Rep, online real-time reputation management service for local businesses ...

I suppose I will be following Yext ... because I'm very interested in the reputation management industry ... I won't be the only one -- Yext is in one cutthroat industry; it's cutthroat because it reputation management / advertising / analytics is a really HUGE thing (after all, that's what Google's business is built on) ... I wonder when I see a company like Yext [one that aims right at Google's core business] if their starting objective was to develop an enterprise that Google [or maybe Microsoft] would acquire?  I am SUPER happy that someone is giving Google competition ... I  guess I'd like to know if the best startup exit strategy has become sometihing like, "Punch the big guy in the yard in the nose -- then hope that the big guy notices enough, so that he offers you a few million to own you?"

{NOTE:  Google grossly oversimplifies when they says that they just focus on one thing; they say that they "just do search."   Yeah, sort of.  Of course, just search is not what fuels the business ... their BUSINESS is based on their PageRank reputation mgmt algorithm which makes their search engine results worthy of ad revenue AND drives websites to provide better content.  Google's website Analytics helps content providers improve their content [an improve what the Google webcrawling spiders see] so that the content providers can earn money for themselves and Google through AdSense.  That's what "just doing search" means.}

What is notable to me is that Yext lacks the Google "do no evil" principle, which is perhaps understandable since, at first blush, the Google principle might sound overly idealistic -- EXCEPT both Google and Yext are messing around with peoples' reputations and the reputation of their content ... ethics matter more in terms of danger to your business ... well, we'll see how Yext does -- their three core principles are:

1. Measure and Monitor Numerical Details ...  measure everything.
2. Fanatically Focus on Customer ROI and Publisher Yield ... Yext knows that they are only as good as the amount of business they send to their customers and yield they deliver to their our partners.
3. There is no such thing as luck...continuous innovation, iteration, and perspiration.

For contrast, Google's ten core principles are worth reviewing ... again and again [since they aren't bad principles to adopt] ... I've cut-and-pasted them here from Google's page on corporate philosophy.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
   Since the beginning, we’ve focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line. Our homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting. And when we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so well you don't have to consider how they might have been designed differently.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
   We do search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we’ve been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service that already makes finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of people. Our dedication to improving search helps us apply what we've learned to new products, like Gmail and Google Maps. Our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help people access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.
3. Fast is better than slow.
   We know your time is valuable, so when you’re seeking an answer on the web you want it right away – and we aim to please. We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our homepage as quickly as possible. By shaving excess bits and bytes from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, we’ve broken our own speed records many times over, so that the average response time on a search result is a fraction of a second. We keep speed in mind with each new product we release, whether it’s a mobile application or Google Chrome, a browser designed to be fast enough for the modern web. And we continue to work on making it all go even faster.
4. Democracy on the web works.
   Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. We assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals and a variety of techniques, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, which analyzes which sites have been “voted” to be the best sources of information by other pages across the web. As the web gets bigger, this approach actually improves, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted. In the same vein, we are active in open source software development, where innovation takes place through the collective effort of many programmers.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
   The world is increasingly mobile: people want access to information wherever they are, whenever they need it. We’re pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions for mobile services that help people all over the globe to do any number of tasks on their phone, from checking email and calendar events to watching videos, not to mention the several different ways to access Google search on a phone. In addition, we’re hoping to fuel greater innovation for mobile users everywhere with Android, a free, open source mobile platform. Android brings the openness that shaped the Internet to the mobile world. Not only does Android benefit consumers, who have more choice and innovative new mobile experiences, but it opens up revenue opportunities for carriers, manufacturers and developers.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
   Google is a business. The revenue we generate is derived from offering search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on our site and on other sites across the web. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers worldwide use AdWords to promote their products; hundreds of thousands of publishers take advantage of our AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to their site content. To ensure that we’re ultimately serving all our users (whether they are advertisers or not), we have a set of guiding principles for our advertising programs and practices:
   • We don’t allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown. And we firmly believe that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find – so it's possible that certain searches won’t lead to any ads at all.
   • We believe that advertising can be effective without being flashy. We don't accept pop–up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested. We’ve found that text ads that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Any advertiser, whether small or large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium.
   • Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.
7. There’s always more information out there.
   Once we’d indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases into search, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search news archives, patents, academic journals, billions of images and millions of books. And our researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world's information to people seeking answers.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
   Our company was founded in California, but our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, and in every language. To that end, we have offices in dozens of countries, maintain more than 150 Internet domains, and serve more than half of our results to people living outside the United States. We offer Google's search interface in more than 110 languages, offer people the ability to restrict results to content written in their own language, and aim to provide the rest of our applications and products in as many languages and accessible formats as possible. Using our translation tools, people can discover content written on the other side of the world in languages they don't speak. With these tools and the help of volunteer translators, we have been able to greatly improve both the variety and quality of services we can offer in even the most far–flung corners of the globe.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
   Our founders built Google around the idea that work should be challenging, and the challenge should be fun. We believe that great, creative things are more likely to happen with the right company culture – and that doesn't just mean lava lamps and rubber balls. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to our overall success. We put great stock in our employees – energetic, passionate people from diverse backgrounds with creative approaches to work, play and life. Our atmosphere may be casual, but as new ideas emerge in a café line, at a team meeting or at the gym, they are traded, tested and put into practice with dizzying speed – and they may be the launch pad for a new project destined for worldwide use.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.
    We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint. We set ourselves goals we know we can’t reach yet, because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected. Through innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve upon them in unexpected ways. For example, when one of our engineers saw that search worked well for properly spelled words, he wondered about how it handled typos. That led him to create an intuitive and more helpful spell checker.
    Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, finding an answer on the web is our problem, not yours. We try to anticipate needs not yet articulated by our global audience, and meet them with products and services that set new standards. When we launched Gmail, it had more storage space than any email service available. In retrospect offering that seems obvious – but that’s because now we have new standards for email storage. Those are the kinds of changes we seek to make, and we’re always looking for new places where we can make a difference. Ultimately, our constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force behind everything we do.

The prototypically agile behavior of Google should be emulated...when we find someone more agile, we have to get faster...the fastest cheetah steals ideas to get faster.

A lot of us get attached to the wrong things -- we tell ourselves lies that we're making progress because we put one foot in front of the other and just keep trudging forward ... it's fine to be attached to an old comfortable pair of shoes; it's ok to get comfortable if it doesn't cost anyone money, doesn't slow anyone down, doesn't cause us to be inefficient, doesn't waste our lives while we could be doing something more meaningful ...but we flat out SQUANDER a lot of resources because we like being comfortable and doing the same old thing day after day a bit too much ... we run our farms, our manufacturing businesses, our marketing businesses, our professional careers pretty much the same way that we ran them last year ... it's safe ... it's comfortable ... we think we've gotten to be kind of good at it ... or worse, we run things pretty much the same way we did things five years ago ... or WORSE, it's still very much the same way that we did things ten years ago ... or UNACCEPTABLY PATHETIC, it doesn't look that much different from what we were doing to get by twenty-five or thirty years ago!!!  That kind of comfortable pulling against the same old weight would be fine if you were ox or the beast of burden and someone was going to take care of you [until it was necessary to butcher you]...you have a brain, you're the one who was given the responsibility to take care of things, so just pulling against the weight is not enough.

If you know me, then you know that my judgmental speechifying is aimed at ME ... not too long ago I started realizing recently that I was getting [mentally] old and fat and inflexible and attached to my old ways ... yeah, I know I should have known that, but I just wasn't paying attention ... so now I know that I need to do a better job of more constantly following the analytics tag in in the google code blog.  The thing about Google is that they are prototypically agile ... it's important to learn form them, they never, ever, ever stop innovating to improve their core business (search, AdWords for advertisers, AdSense for content creators, Analytics for web businesses).  The stuff just keeps coming ... and coming!  For example, just a few weeks ago since Google launched the Google Analytics Management API and listened to the feedback they recieved, as a result of that, since Python is one of their more popular languages, they’ve updated the Google Analytics Python Client Library to access all 5 feeds of the Management API ... so now it’s easier than ever to get your configuration data from the API ... but it will all get easier, faster, better ... but I'll  still keep getting older and fatter and someday, I wake up and discover something else I should have been doing ... that's how I know I'm still alive ... when I wake up and I don't feel a bit anxious for missing something, for not already being out there running, I'll know I'm already dead...

Web Metrics and Performance Marketing with Google™ Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool used by millions of Web site owners across the globe to track how visitors interact with their Web sites, where they arrive from, and which visitors drive the most revenue and sales leads. Google Analytics helps a website owner to evaluate and boost traffic and to turn page views into profits. Insights for traffic optimization and marketing activities can be found with other products in the Google ecosystem for the following::

Analysis and Optimization

• Urchin
• Website Optimizer
• Webmaster Tools
• Insights for Search

Advertising

• AdWords
• AdSense
• DoubleClick
• YouTube
• AdPlanner
• Search Based Keyword Tool

Commerce and Enterprise Search

• Custom Search Engine
• Checkout

If these tools are not sufficient, the Google Analytics Application Gallery also contains applications that extend Google Analytics to help analysts, marketers, IT teams, and executives get even more out of Google Analytics.

Web Traffic Is Important to Your Business

You should think about ways that you can make your website an integral part of your business -- it cannot be a separate activity that operates within its own silo ... for example, it shouldn't be just a dead online brochure or even only a listing of properties, events or news.

Why Measure?
When you have a very clear idea of what value your website brings to your business, it is useful to become familiar with the Google Analytics terrminology so that you can pick up the tools that you will use to identify growth opportunities, measure effciency improvements, and highlight things when they go wrong.

Web Analytics Can Provide Information
How or Where to Start
Web Analytics Can Guide Decisions
ROI of Web Analytics
Understanding Your Web Traffic
Where Web Analytics Fits In

Where to Get Help

• GoogleAnalytics Help
• ConversionUniversity.com
• GoogleAnalytics YouTube Channel
• GoogleAnalytics Blog

You may also want to investigate

• Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam
• Search Advertising Advanced Exam
• Display Advertising Advanced Exam
• Reporting & Analysis Advanced Exam

Related Programs

• Google Advertising Professionals
• Google AdSense
• Google Analytics
• Google for Advertisers
• Google Checkout
• Google Display Network
• Google Places
• Google TV Ads
• DoubleClick Digital Marketing
• Google Website Optimizer
• Other Business Solutions
• Google Site Search

Chapter 2. Available Methodologies and Their Accuracy
Section 2.1. Page Tags and Logfiles
Section 2.2. Cookies in Web Analytics
Section 2.3. Understanding Web Analytics Data Accuracy
Section 2.4. Improving the Accuracy of Web Analytics Data
Section 2.5. Privacy Considerations for the Web Analytics Industry

Chapter 3. Google Analytics Features, Benefits, and Limitations
Section 3.1. Key Features and Capabilities of Google Analytics
Section 3.2. How Google Analytics Works
Section 3.3. What Google Analytics Cannot Do
Section 3.4. Google Analytics and Privacy
Section 3.5. How Is Google Analytics Different?
Section 3.6. What Is Urchin?
Section 3.7. Summary

Part II: Using Google Analytics Reports
Chapter 4. Using the Google Analytics Interface
Section 4.1. Discoverability and Initial Report Access
Section 4.2. Navigating Your Way Around: Report Layout
Section 4.3. Summary

Chapter 5. Reports Explained
Section 5.1. The Dashboard Overview
Section 5.2. The Top Reports
Section 5.3. Understanding Page Value
Section 5.4. Understanding Data Sampling
Section 5.5. Summary

Part III: Implementing Google Analytics
Chapter 6. Getting Up and Running with Google Analytics
Section 6.1. Creating Your Google Analytics Account
Section 6.2. Tagging Your Pages
Section 6.3. Back Up: Keeping a Local Copy of Your Data
Section 6.4. Using Accounts and Profiles
Section 6.5. Agencies and Hosting Providers: Setting Up Client Accounts
Section 6.6. Getting AdWords Data: Linking to Your AdWords Account
Section 6.7. Getting AdSense Data: Linking to Your AdSense Account
Section 6.8. Common Pre-implementation Questions
Section 6.9. Summary

Chapter 7. Advanced Implementation
Section 7.1. _trackPageview(): the Google Analytics Workhorse
Section 7.2. Tracking E-commerce Transactions
Section 7.3. Campaign Tracking
Section 7.4. Event Tracking
Section 7.5. Customizing the GATC
Section 7.6. Summary

Chapter 8. Best-Practices Configuration Guide
Section 8.1. Initial Configuration
Section 8.2. Goal Conversions and Funnels
Section 8.3. Tracking Funnels for Which Every Step Has the Same URL
Section 8.4. Why Segmentation Is Important
Section 8.5. Choosing Advanced Segments versus Profile Filters
Section 8.6. Profile Segments: Segmenting Visitors Using Filters
Section 8.7. Report Segments: Segmenting Visitors Using Advanced Segments
Section 8.8. Summary

Chapter 9. Google Analytics Hacks
Section 9.1. Why Hack an Existing Product?
Section 9.2. Customizing the List of Recognized Search Engines
Section 9.3. Labeling Visitors, Sessions, and Pages
Section 9.4. Tracking Error Pages and Broken Links
Section 9.5. Tracking Referral URLs from Pay-Per-Click Networks
Section 9.6. Site Overlay: Differentiating Links to the Same Page
Section 9.7. Matching Specific Transactions to Specific Referral Data
Section 9.8. Tracking Links to Direct Downloads
Section 9.9. Changing the Referrer Credited for a Goal Conversion
Section 9.10. Roll-up Reporting
Section 9.11. Summary

Part IV: Using Visitor Data to Drive Website Improvement
Chapter 10. Focusing on Key Performance Indicators
Section 10.1. Setting Objectives and Key Results
Section 10.2. Selecting and Preparing KPIs
Section 10.3. Presenting Your KPIs
Section 10.4. KPI Examples by Job Role
Section 10.5. Summary

Chapter 11. Real-World Tasks
Section 11.1. Identifying and Optimizing Poorly Performing Pages
Section 11.2. Measuring the Success of Site Search
Section 11.3. Optimizing Your Search Engine Marketing
Section 11.4. Monetizing a Non-E-commerce Website
Section 11.5. Tracking Offline Marketing
Section 11.6. An Introduction to Google Website Optimizer
Section 11.7. Summary

Chapter 12. Integrating Google Analytics with Third-Party ApplicationsSection 12.1. Extracting Google Analytics Information
Section 12.2. Working with the Google Analytics Export API
Section 12.3. Call Tracking with Google Analytics
Section 12.4. Integrating Website Optimizer with Google Analytics
Section 12.5. Summary

Appendix A. Regular Expression OverviewSection A.1. Understanding the Fundamentals
Section A.2. Regex Examples

Appendix B. Useful ToolsSection B.1. Tools to Audit Your GATC Deployment
Section B.2. Firefox Add-ons
Section B.3. Desktop Helper Applications

Appendix C. Recommended Further ReadingSection C.1. Books on Web Analytics and Related Areas
Section C.2. Web Resources
Section C.3. Blog Roll for Web Analytics

The rise of globally synthesized collective intelligence

In the first chapter of Building Web Reputation Systems, Randy Farmer uses one of those priceless quotes from Yogi Berra;

“Nobody goes there anymore—it’s too crowded.”

We can guess what it means -- it's a funny turn of a phrase, but it makes sense, i.e. the place that Yogi was referring to had been so obvious to the masses that it was so popular, it had become overcrowded. When he said this, you can bet that Yogi and his friends [who weren't "nobodies" who followed crowds] had already moved on to the next big trendy thing ... when you're hip, you don't go where the crowds are.  In the 1950s reputations mattered more because they were still primarily changed by word of mouth -- television was still in its early days and there was nothing like the internet for increasing the speed of news and communication ... it was easier to be hip, cool, one step ahead of the crowd. Reputation still matters because it is information used to make a value judgment about an object or a person -- how that information is transferred from one person to another has changed dramatically, but many of the principles are the same.

Increasingly we rely upon instantaneously updated hyper-current news from things like Twitter along with globally synthesized collective intelligence to furnish with that reputation information -- we Google something, we check Yelp!, we have our different online sources ... if the decision is serious, we spend a fair amount of time looking -- but the tools we use have gotten a lot more powerful; we have also become more adept at using searching engines and determining the trustworthiness of difference sources.  For some time, we have been familiar with a vast array of reputation systems like FICO scores, Nielsen ratings, Google PageRank ...we might recognize that none of these are perfect, but we still use them to make inferences ... to sort wheat from chaff.

The problem of course, is that we can't control how people will use the reputation systems ... we can avoid doing something stupid like Fair Issac did in marketing FICO scores as a way to tell whether a job candidate is going to be a good employee ... but it is very tricky about how reputations are built ... that is why there is going to be an even bigger market for reputation defenders.

Web Services, Data APIs, Affiliate Programs

If you look at either Amazon Web Services Product Advertising API or go a step further and look at vary array of the AWS Products and Services offering you cannot help but be AMAZed by the depth of resources available to re-build your auction business into a 21st century web business ready to serve your customers better than ever.  Companies like Amazon have recognized that their business is not only dependent on their mastering the integration of information technology and logistics into their business, they also want their data and their systems to be the core building tools used by other companies that are also mastering the integration of information technology and logistics into their businesses.  Companies like Amazon want to be the hub that other companies rely upon.  

And yet, as much as Amazon offers, it is only the tip of the iceberg -- there are more than a few other companies, governmental entities and other organizations who are providing a range of resources starting with Data APIs out there -- a typical company [that isn't quite up to Amazon's speed yet, but is racing to get there] is eBay.  If you are serious about providing a range of accelerated marketing alternatives for your customers, you will want to explore eBay's offering:

• eBay Developers Program – tap into eBay’s marketplace with tools and services to meet the diverse needs of buyers and sellers on eBay
• eBay Market Data - get access to rich historical data about what is bought and sold on eBay, and who is purchasing it
• eBay Certified Program– get certified as a best-of-breed eBay Platform innovator who helps eBay users grow their businesses through services, including technology or data licensing services
• eBay Solutions Directory - a one-stop shop of hundreds of tools from eBay, service providers, and third party developers who have developed tools and services for use with the eBay.com website

Of course, many companies are not far along enough in the maturation of their information and marketing strategies to offer a range of web services [like Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, HP, Cisco, Dell, Force.com, and many others] ... many are not even far enough along to offer Data APIs yet -- but the population of companies engaged in affiliate marketing programs is large.  Of course, you may want to carefully consider whether or not the companies that are at this level are going to be good partners for you -- either as an advertiser on your webpages OR as a publisher of your ads on their pages -- perhaps the best way to take advantage of these programs is to search for an "affiliate" page on the website of solid partner companies that fit well with your business and look for a way to fit that company's affiliate program into your strategy.  If you are looking for additional affiliate programs to add, you might start with the Google Affiliate Network [since Google has the inside track on this because of the importance of search and the integration of AdWords and AdSense into Google's network] ... if that's not enough for you, check out some of the different programs at AffiliateScout.com, Commission Junction, AssociatePrograms.com, AffiliateGuide.com, AffiliateBot.com, Click2Sell, CX Digital Media, or search for even more ... it's safe to say that you'll probably never exhaust all of the different opportunities in set of affiliate programs.