Posted by: Heather Green on March 04
The Internet was all a-Twitter yesterday about some comments that Google’s Eric Schmidt made about Twitter. The takeaway from some observers was that Schmidt slagged Twitter by calling it a kind of “poor man’s email.” Then today in an AdAge story, Todd Chaffee, a new Twitter venture funder, seems to be claiming ground over Google.
From what we’ve heard from Google folks, the company seems very much aware of Twitter and the potential it represents as a combination of real-time search engine and social discovery tool. So that could put Schmidt’s comments in a different context. I agree with my colleague Rob Hof, who twittered (appropriately) yesterday that Schmidt’s remarks seemed to come from the perspective of a computer scientist, one who logically wonders at this point whether services like Twitter will develop into a feature or a full-blown company.
When I spoke with Chaffee late last week, he was excited about Twitter’s potential in search and as a standalone company. He pointed out the difference in the type of search you have with Twitter, where you can tap into the wisdom of millions of people and also get real-time news. Google, by comparison, dishes up more historical and static information, he said.
But in his opinion, you could get real power in the two working together somehow, though he didn’t know if they’ve discussed anything like that. “What would be best for everyone, Twitter, Google and the planet, is if Twitter was the real-time feed to Google. That would be the smartest thing to do, to have a partnership like that.”
Google bought Jaiku, the Finnish Twitter-like servece, but then they lost the game for some reason.
www.jaiku.com
My recently released "Twitter Search Results on Google" tool shows what such a partnership might look like: showing realtime Titter results above the normal Google web results.
Charlie Rose did an insightful interview with Marc Andreesen last week, who has one of the best high altitude views of the long term future of technology. This is the man who, at 22 co-authored Mosaic browser, which was used to create Netscape Navigator, and eventually Internet Explorer. He sees the recession creating a “tragic opportunity” that accelerates the migration of dying industries to the Internet like, radio, TV, DVD’s, music, newspapers, real estate, and banking. Every day the awesome power of the Internet to eat new industries grows, which is now populated by 1.5 billion users. His favorite game is the incredibly violent “Gears of War 2” which you should keep out of the hands of your teenagers. Venture capital start ups are not in as bad of shape as people say because they are usually funded with five years of cash flow, enough to get through a downturn. Google, YouTube, and Facebook were all developed during the last recession. The Internet is creating a far better educated and connected consumer than ever seen before. Twitter, where Andreesen is a director, is becoming a real time electronic nervous system for the planet. The same is happening with the world’s three billion video enabled cell phone users. He is also on the board of Facebook, with 175 million users, which is leaving at least a $1 billion a year in potential advertising revenues on the table. He is an angel investor in the social networking site LinkedIn, which now boasts 20 million resumes. All in all, it was a fascinating peak into the future. www.madhedgefundtrader.com
In Blogspotting Senior Writer Stephen Baker and Associate Editor Heather Green take a look at how cutting-edge technologies are changing business and society. Whether its blogs or wikis, data crunching or data targeting, technology’s advances are reshaping the world that we live in.