Yahoo!’s Smart Investment: The Hadoop Community
More than 250 people attended a Hadoop developer event at Yahoo! this week, demonstrating again the level of interest the company has in open-source big data initiatives. Yahoo! says it is the world’s biggest Hadoop supporter. We say that’s undoubtedly correct. Yahoo! supports community developer events throughout the world. In February it supported the first Hadoop! event in India. In June, it will host the Hadoop Summit. Sponsor Yahoo! is not always recognized for its cloud computing efforts but its deep commitment to Hadoop shows how the company views the ways that big data can be used to solve major technology issues such as spam. Hadoop, according to Wikipedia , “is a Java software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications under a free license. It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data.” The developer conference featured discussions from the Hadoop community, including a presentation about using it to fight spam lead and a discussion led by a lead engineer from Facebook. Vishwanath Ramarao is director of anti-spam engineering for Yahoo! Mail. According to the Yahoo! developer blog, Vish described the intricate cat-and-mouse games played with spammers, and how Yahoo! uses Hadoop to abstract away the complexity of large scale data analysis and provide deep insight into spammer campaigns. Yahoo! Mail antispam – Bay area Hadoop user group Johhn Sichi, lead engineer for Facebook’s data infrastructure team provided an overview of Facebook’s work using Hadoop to manage data that is growing 8x annually, In March, 2008 traffic volume hit 200 GB per day. By the end of last year, traffic bumped to 12 terabytes per day. Hadoop, Hbase and Hive- Bay area Hadoop User Group Companies like Yahoo! and Facebook use Hadoop to organize data and process it from multiple sources. For instance, Facebook might use it to organize how it deploys its ad network. Yahoo! may be on to the most powerful use for cloud computing or at least the most interesting. And it shows how the company is thinking about cloud computing and the ways it applies to its overall strategy. Discuss
Mozilla Contacts Releases Facebook-Integrated Version with New "Person URLs"
Mozilla Contacts , the experimental project from the organization behind the Firefox web browser, has released a new version of their Contacts add-on which introduces Facebook integration. Previously , Mozilla Contacts allowed you to import your various address books spread out across the web (think: multiple email accounts, Twitter friends, LinkedIn colleagues, Plaxo contacts, Mac OS X address book, etc.) into the web browser itself – in this case, obviously, Firefox. Once there, the combined address book information could be used in form autocompletion everywhere across the web and more. Now, an updated version of Mozilla Contacts (download link) introduces a number of new features, most notably integration with Facebook Contacts and something called a “person URL.” Sponsor Import Facebook Contacts into Firefox Mozilla Contacts’ ability to sync with your Facebook Contacts come via the brand-new Facebook Graph API (application programming interface), which allows the Firefox add-on to import all your Facebook friends into the web browser itself as it does with the other services supported. However, this integration is still a little iffy, warns Michael Hansson, an engineer in Mozilla Labs , on a blog post about the release. “You may need to Refresh your connection to Facebook on occasion to make it work properly,” he says. Person URLs Also new in Mozilla Contacts 0.3 is experimental support for “person:” URLs. This intriguing feature lets you look up anyone in your various contact lists or anyone on the web just by typing a URL in your address bar. After doing so, Firefox will combine the locally-stored information in the web browser with web-based information retrieved from the Internet to return a profile page about that person. You can try it now by typing person:mhanson@gmail.com or person:http://facebook.com/btaylor , for example, into your Firefox browser that has the updated Contacts add-on installed. Also New in 0.3 Other additions in version 0.3 include support for Yahoo! contacts, autocompletion of HTML5 input fields (with “email” and “tel”), enhanced search capabilities (including new discovery modules for Webfinger, HCard import, Google Social Graph, Facebook, Gravatar, Yelp, Amazon and Flickr), automatic combination of data discovered on sites that support standard automatic discovery mechanisms like HCard, RSS and ActivityStreams and finally, support for non-contact people in the AwesomeBar. Discuss
Got an Exit Strategy? Lessons From Foursquare and Yahoo
Last week when it was reported that Foursquare was considering a sale to Yahoo , there were a flurry of posts with analysis and advice on whether or not Foursquare founders should sell or not , and if they would be wise to sell to Yahoo or not . The debate about the future of Foursquare and questions about the potential profitability of location-based social networking aside, the buzz about Foursquare and Yahoo should serve as a reminder to startups about the importance of having an exit strategy. Sponsor Even if you have founded your dream company and can’t imagine doing anything else, having an exit strategy established will help you make good business decisions. Knowing how and when you plan to exit – whether it’s “soon” or “at retirement” – can help you shape the direction for your company’s growth. Furthermore, most outside investors will want to know your exit strategy plans so they can anticipate how and when they can realize a return on their investment. The most common exit strategies are: Initial Public Offering (IPO) Merger & Acquisition (M&A) Selling to another individual Liquidating and closing While the idea of an exit strategy might sound negative, crafting one can help you plan how to make the most out of a good situation, not simply escape a bad one. But as the comments on the TechCrunch post on the potential Foursquare sale indicate, there is little consensus on what constitutes “a good situation,” good timing, or a good exit strategy. Some may frown on all this emphasis placed on exit strategies, arguing that you’ll never build an empire by always having an eye out for the exit. But whether you want to quickly move on to pursue your next great startup idea or whether you stay with a business for the long-term, it is important to think about your next steps and to have a succession plan – for you and for your business. As bplans.com founder Tim Berry notes , “every entrepreneur eventually needs an exit.” . Discuss
Chinese E-Commerce Tops $38.5 Billion; What Comes Next?
Last September, China’s most successful consumer-to-consumer online marketplace, Taobao.com launched a massive online promotion. By offering exorbitantly low prices on a series of brand name consumer electronics by Lenovo, HP, Philips and others, the site attracted 1.8 billion visitors (non-unique) – the equivalent of every single person in China visiting the site at least once. With 145 million online shoppers expected by the end of 2010, e-commerce in China has come a long way since it began about a decade ago. What types of business models exist? Who’s shopping online and what are they buying? And where do we go from here? Sponsor Guest author Joel Backaler writes The China Observer , an award-winning blog focused on Chinese technology trends and consumer culture. His writing has appeared in and he has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal China Journal, BusinessWeek, and Seeking Alpha. Joel is a Mandarin-speaking former Fulbright Fellow who has worked and lived in Taipei, Beijing and Singapore with Frontier Strategy Group. Follow Joel on Twitter . How did it all begin? Jack Ma and his partners launched Chinese e-commerce in 1998 with Alibaba.com , a business-to-business online platform. Like the Web firms of Silicon Valley, Chinese firms felt the shockwaves of the Internet bubble bursting in early 2000 – but in China the Internet industry continued to grow. 2003 was a turning point for Chinese e-commerce with the release of Alipay, Alibaba’s version of PayPal, which provided a secure means for online payment. 2003 also marked the first entry of Western multinationals in the Chinese e-commerce market – first by Ebay taking a controlling stake in Eachnet, and then with Amazon subsequently doing the same with Joyo.com in 2004. Roles reversed in 2005 when Alibaba Group gained control over Yahoo!’s Chinese search platform. A period of explosive growth began in 2008 as China’s e-commerce market grew to 100 billion RMB, with 80 million online shoppers. Where are we today? In 2009, China’s e-commerce market totaled 263 billion RMB (approximately $38.5 billion) with growth equivalent to about 105% increase year-on-year. Currently, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) represents the largest segment of China’s e-commerce market; however, business-to-consumer (B2C) is increasingly growing in importance due to two trends. Traditional Retailer to Online Retailer : Traditional retailers are developing e-commerce platforms as additional channels to get consumers to buy their products. From brand name domestic retailers to state-owned enterprises, there is a major push to go online. It has even been reported that Wal-Mart is set to release its own e-commerce platform for the Chinese and Japanese markets . Individual Seller to Online Retailer : Due to the extreme success of particular sellers on existing C2C sites like Taobao.com, online shops that began with a single college student or a small family have been forced to seek out additional support to satisfy market demand. As a result, these one-time, single-person operations have been incorporating into formal enterprises stepping into the B2C space. What types of business models exist? China’s e-commerce platforms can be classified by the following three models: marketplace model, online retail model and traditional retail model. Marketplace Model : The marketplace model connects buyers and sellers, whether it is business-to-business or C2C. The company provides a platform to facilitate business between two parties but has no products of its own to offer. It maintains a searchable database of information for buyers and seller to connect, and a secure means to facilitate payment between both parties. Top B2B players : Alibaba.com, HC360.com, Myekoo.com Top C2C players : Taobao.com, Paipai.com, Eachnet.com Online Retail Model : The online retail model is where a company has no formal real-world storefront. It provides both products and a channel to sell directly to end customers. Top B2C Online Retailers : 360buy.com , Joyo.com, Dangdang.com Traditional Retail Model : The traditional retail model is similar to the online retail model; however, in addition to the online website the company also has real-world retail outlets. Top B2C Traditional Retailers : Gome (electronics), COFCO (state-owned: food and beverage), Lining (athletic apparel) Who’s shopping online and what are they buying? Shanghai-based iResearch estimates that by the end of 2010 there will be 145 million online shoppers in China. Online shoppers are relatively young – the majority are between the ages of 18 and 35. While this number is split roughly evenly, slightly more women shop than men. In the early days of Chinese e-commerce, products such as software and DVDs were the top purchases. Currently clothing, books and cosmetics are the top sellers. Additionally, as we have seen in the U.S. with sites like Etsy, companies that focus on niche markets are also sprouting up. For example, 21Cake.com is a popular made-to-order online cake company that sells custom-made cakes online and delivers to China’s major cities. Where do we go from here? China’s e-commerce market is yet to fully mature, but it is entering a period of high-speed growth. C2C sellers that are growing more successful will begin to establish more formal companies, leading to an increase in the number of companies in China’s B2C space. While many view the Internet as a sensitive area subject to regulation by the Chinese government, the government supports e-commerce due to its economic benefit and potential for job creation. One example is Xinjiang, a remote province in western China which recently experienced social unrest. Most websites and email there are blocked – but you can still access Alibaba.com and Taobao.com. Of China’s e-commerce companies, Alibaba Group will remain the company to watch in this space for many years to come. However, there is still a lot of room for niche operators to capitalize on the growth potential of China’s e-commerce market. Image by Kim2402 . Discuss
Your Inbox as Platform: Google Calendar More Closely Integrated With Gmail
Email may be old fashioned, but it’s still where we spend a lot of our time online. Today Google announced that its webmail service Gmail is becoming all the richer with the inclusion of support for sending Google Calendar invitations inside the email composition window. In addition to being able to insert invitations, you can also cross reference your calendar availability with the availability of anyone included in your email thread that you have given permission to see the Google Calendar. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s pretty neat and it demonstrates the potential for building cool new features on top of our email inboxes. Sponsor Mashups and platforms are all about cross referencing multiple sources of data or functionality, as in this case: email plus calendar. We wrote earlier this spring about a startup called Rapportive that cross references email and social media data about an email’s sender (see also competitor Etacts ), and earlier this month we discussed the incredible potential in Google’s announcement of a way to give developers secure access to the contents of your emails for analysis and the creation of innovative services. Yahoo has been calling this kind of approach Inbox 2.0 and has been working on it for more than two years. Here’s what we wrote in our November 2007 coverage of Yahoo’s vision – how do you think it’s worked out? ( Yahoo Says the Future Will Be Modeled on Facebook ) The social network of the future will be populated by the RSS feeds of the activities of your friends and your friends will be determined by email. The big players won’t put a major push into building a new social network. “It is much easier to extend an existing habit than to create a brand,” are the words Google’s Joe Krause. Your email account isn’t valuable because it’s got the email adresses of other people who could be solicited commercially – it’s valuable because it articulates who in the world is able to command your attention. It contains analyzable, direct communication between you and the people most important to you. [Yahoo's] Garlinghouse says that in the future email and IM will be prioritized depending on the importance to you of the people who send it to you. We’re not talking about the number of times people email you – we’re talking about the percentage of times you open those emails, the keywords used in them relative to your personal/work profile, there are metrics so crazy we can hardly imagine that are available for determining the importance of people in your life. In your email. Facebook’s people-search uses some similar math already. Various Ways Email Gets Innovated On Clearly there are all kinds of different levels of sophistication that can come with these sorts of developments. In fact, two plus years after Yahoo’s call to action, things still seem relatively elementary. Rapportive displays data uniquely well but Etacts displays more data. This new Google Calendar integration with Gmail offers some visibility into your and your contacts’ availability, but it doesn’t tell you what you’ve got scheduled at a given time. Etacts offers inferior invitation sending but has a whole set of reminder and follow up features that Gmail doesn’t offer natively. And Yahoo Mail more closely ties into Facebook than any other email, something millions of people are sure to enjoy. So while all the kids rant and rave about Twitter, Facebook, augmented reality, iPads and location based social networking, don’t let them deny: email can still be very exciting. Discuss