Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

Amazon has a press release out with some interesting numbers for 2007, for those interested in them. It’s already been going around the web, but here are some I really like and a few further links at the end. (Data seems to include .com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .co.jp, .ca)

1. Busiest Day December 10th: 5.4 million items ordered, 62,5 per second!
2. On peek day their fulfillment network shipped 3.9 million units!
3. COMMENT: Kind of means that the average person buys something like 2 items per order right? Roughly. Interesting.
4. They shipped something to Borrow, Alaska

Following are some amazon.com numbers (with hotsellers being nov 15th until dec 19th):

1. When in stock, Wiis sold at 17/sec … but they are rarely in stock I think
2. In video games top seller was the Wii!
3. In DVDs Harry Potter and “Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series” among others
4. In consumer electronics Garmin GPS, Canon Powershop and Samsung LCDs
5. In PCs MacBook, Nokia Internet Tablet! (two shares I hold and items I have ;))

Gizmodo has a further list with mosted wished for and the like. Very nice.

I see this again and again, most recently in this post about Google Reader. There VentureBeat argues that Google should use OpenSocial to find out who my friends are and hence who can read my shared items. While a nice idea, this is totally not what OpenSocial is, at least not in its first incarnation. This was confirmed to my on le web 3 this year.

The thing is that OpenSocial is only about allowing your to write an app/widget and have it run anywhere, more or less. You will have one hock inside Ning, LinkedIn, and whoever else is a member to get the friends of the current user and then do stuff with it. I am not even sure if you can get the friends but if you do you will get the friends of the currently logged in user in the system you are on. It’s not like you can export your social graph and find your friends on LinkedIn for use inside Google Reader. That is not the point of this first verison. It is just there to give a bigger possible install base for your applications.

With that said, further going through my “still to read and possibly write about” items

Congrats to the team over at Kyte.tv, they are developing a really nice system. I am especially thinking about the mobile part here. The app is really nice and allows me to easily send videos and pictures from my phone. I’d really like the system to allow for posting of single videos directly to my blog, because that is really what I want, but at the moment you just have a channel which is a bit of a pain. I don’t want a channel. But I do expect them doing a lot with the $15 million, especially on the mobile front. At least I hope that they do not spend it all on support people. Ever notice that whenever you post something a nice girl (most of the time) comes into your chat saying what a cool video it is? Interestingly enough these girls (if they are girls) know very well how the entire Kyte.tv system works. Interesting strategy to stress the interaction part. Here is one quote from my last video: “but i think the main feature of kye is the interactivity”. Now is that is not scripted

One competition they just got though is from Qik, see my Profile here. Robert Scoble recently blogged about them and is posting videos like crazy. When you do a live feed on your Kyte.tv Nokia app you just send pictures, on Qik you send a video, live, from your mobile phone. Kick ass! The vision of everybody being press gets further and further! I am lovin’ it.

Need to play a bit more with both system and looking forward to Kyte.tv doing full streaming and allowing me to automatically post to my blog, if Seesmic does not get their first

Jason Calcanis must be happy. Google just validated his entire business model with this post. What Jason talked about at le web 3 is that we need to work together to get the spam out of the internet and work together to do that. It is obviously directly linked with his editor driven search engine Mahalo, but still a valid point. Now
his entire business model was kind of validated by Google moving into the exact same space, getting people to write special pages about a certain subject. The important thing behind it is that the author of the page is personally identifiable, meaning that that person will have a hard time spamming. It will be interesting to see what the reaction of Jason will be to this.

John Battelle posted a great list of questions posed to Google by Rep. Joe Barton in relation to the Google DoubleClick buy. By now, people are speculating if Microsoft didn’t help with these questions, especially because they are really questions all of us would like an answer to. Here are just some of the questions:

4. Please explain how Google uses the information or data described in Question 1(a) - (1), or any additional data, to drive or target advertisements to individual users’ computers.

Those 1(a) to (1) include stuff like your web history, picasa usage, desktop search, …

5. In particular, please explain whether Google Maps directs advertisements to IP addresses based on that user’s Google Maps search query history.

So if you search for San Francisco, do they presume your IP is from there?

10. Please explain whether Google posts a link to its privacy policy on the home page or search results page of www.google.com and, if not, explain why not.

In short: why not?

11. In Google’s privacy policy, “personal information” is defined as “information that you provide to us which personally identifies you, such as your name, email address, or billing information, or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information by Google.”

a. Please describe how Google interprets “reasonably linked.”
b. Please explain in what circumstances Google links information
such that an individual can be identified.
c. Please explain whether Google considers an IP address to be “personal information.”
d. Please explain whether technology exists to personally identify or determine the personal characteristics, including, but not limited to, name, email address, physical address or location, age, gender, or ethnicity of an Internet user based on that user’s IP address.
e. Please explain whether Google is capable of identifying or determining personal characteristics, including, but not limited to, name, email address, physical address or location, age, gender, or ethnicity of an Internet user based on that user’s IP address.

Hard questions these are, especially because Google will probably not want to give that answer

a. If Google does not intend to merge or combine the data Google retains with the information or data retained or collected by DoubleClick, please describe the efficiencies of the Google-DoubleClick merger. b. If Google does not intend to merge or combine the data Google retains with the information or data retained or collected by DoubleClick, please explain how the information will be segregated.

ohoh

24. The House passed the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass (SPY ACT) in the current and prior two Congresses. The SPY ACT, H.R. 964, sponsored by Representatives Mary Bono and Adolphus Towns, mandates an opt-in privacy regime by prohibiting the collection of personal information from a computer without a user’s notice and consent prior to the execution of any information collection program. H.R. 964 also demands that a user be able to easily remove or disable the information collection program. Please explain whether Google’s applications are subject to H.R. 964’s consent requirements. If the answer is no, please explain why these programs, which collect personal information, are not subject to the consent regime established by H.R. 964.

boy oh boy