@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Today I released an updated version of what my hopes are for the future of the Web and how online communities can EVOLVE OUR VALUE SYSTEMS wrt climate change and convert that into…..ACTION:

Btw, I love slideshare, was one of its early adopters and I think the team really have good savvy. Now, this isn’t because they sent me this notification to say that the above presentation is “HOT ON FACEBOOK”:

It’s simply because in terms of USER EXPERIENCE, the quality of content and the navigation, the site really works.

Onto why I updated the presentation from over 3 years ago………..

Well, the idea of harnessing the Net to accelerate collective intelligence, increase global consciousness, do good and foster democratic communities to realize objectives is not something I’m doing because it’s the “latest thing”. Way back in Web 1.0 I proposed e-Intelligence at the big bank precisely with those objectives and it managed to fulfill those objectives fairly well.

This month by random chance and what appears to be synchronicity I’ve been asked to contribute to a documentary on global consciousness and the Internet. The other contributors are all highly regarded in their specialist fields and I feel really lucky to be asked to provide the Everyperson in the Street view.

If I’m going to have my Warholian 15 minutes, then I’m going to talk about what the online community can really DO about climate change and ethical consumption, far over and above simply being able to blog, IM and group discuss about it online.

I WANT US TO ACTUALLY COLLABORATE TO BUILD BUSINESS CASES + CODE APPS WHICH WILL GET INVESTOR SIGN-OFF, HAVE A REALISTIC IMPLEMENTATION PATH and break the inertia of…….more talk, more text and more time wasted.

GOOGLE PROJECT 10TH TO 100TH COMPETITION: GREENSPOT

I made several realizations when I watched this video with Vint Cerf this month:

(1.) Just because icebergs worked for Al Gore in his presentations, does not mean we should spend another 5 years putting icebergs into our PPTs because ICEBERGS CAN’T CODE or sense-make solutions!

They also can’t produce incentive models that would make green living attractive and worth the opportunity costs of not doing so.

(2.) Icebergs are made from water, aka H20. LIFE and our species’ state of consciousness is actually……CARBON-based, so the sooner the non-scientists start thinking about organic ways to stop climate change, the more likely we’ll actually decrease the rates of change!

(3.) Iceberg analogies are relevant and prescient only in two scenarios:

* a CEO is being so myopic and stubborn he’s going to steer his company and staff into the corporate equivalent of one; or

* a person is as glacial and unwelcoming as one.

As for Vint Cerf’s comments about how great it would be if there was a way consumers could find out what the carbon footprint of a product is, end-to-end, to help them make their consumption decisions I’d say:

I HOPE SOMEONE FLAGS VINT CERF @ GOOGLE ABOUT THIS BLOG!!!

That Google Tech Talk happened in Nov 2008. I didn’t become aware of its content until this month. In Oct 2008, this is what my friends and I wrote in the GREENspot proposal:

GREENspot is a GoogleMaps overlay, developed for the Android phone, which will enable customers to plant a tree (leveraging Marker Manager) at the geocode location of their local green retail stores. The application will also automatically calculate the distance and carbon footprint between wherever the user currently is on the GPS grid and where the store is, offering them the most energy efficient route(s) and suggestions on how to carbon offset this journey.

Users will also be able to tag the location with the names of specific products that consumers can buy in the store, its price, its manufacturer’s brand name, its carbon footprint from manufacturing to retail PoS (including packaging, if available) and a Green Credibility mark out of 10 for the store. The higher the score, the more leaves there will be on their tree marker.

All tags will be searchable via Google’s core business verticals.

At the second stage of product development, in collaboration with third party agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Online Green Awards organization, a quality control system can also be developed to provide users with a standard metric (or kitemark) — akin to food product labels — that more clearly helps them to compare and contrast retailers’ green promises and their actual delivery. This metric will complement ordinary users’ own recommendations.

Both stages will lead naturally to the third-stage development of a mobile social network for green consumers, activities and activism.

In terms of the technical features of GREENspot it will combine Python, Adobe’s upcoming CS4 and Ruby-Ajax. Leveraging Android phone’s contact manager, users will also be able to Bluetooth synch their entries and recommendations to the GREENspot overlay. The system automatically updates each friend’s score-based recommendation.

See? Not an iceberg in sight and this is an implementable solution for Google. It will help differentiate their Android OS and its a win for consumers. Everyone benefits and we’ve converted awareness into actual consumption choice.

NOW PLEASE………………LET’S STOP TALKING ABOUT ICEBERGS AND START BUILDING CASES + APPS THAT WILL GET CORPORATE BUY-IN AND BE OF REAL TANGIBLE USE TO CONSUMERS.

Also, it’s the CARBON in our DNA that effects reactions and changes so if we really want to tackle global consciousness……….No more conversations around icebergs and H20. The challenge is:

HOW TO WE GET THE CARBON, CHEMISTRY, CODING AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS TO COMPLEMENT?

Er………probably not. I’ll present the case from a 360-2020 perspective on Google’s search strategy as well as other channels and products which support this core business.

Firstly, I’d recommend that readers go to Google’s site and read through their recent earnings reports carefully and also refer to my post on GOOG’s Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC).

* http://investor.google.com/

Next, please watch this Google Tech Talk with VINT CERF on “Shifting to a Global Consciousness” and then compare whether MS or Yahoo! have imagined or associated with the global consciousness or global brain concept much.

Answer: lots of great innovation from MS Labs wrt haptic interfaces and connective communications but little on global consciousness. Ditto Yahoo! whose BOSS semantic API is interesting, but again not about the Global Brain.

Now take into account Google’s commitment to global consciousness aka the Global Brain on 2 core platforms:

(1.) Google Knol

(2.) Google groups

Then add in what it’s doing in the renewable technologies space (facilitation and investment).

As for the core business, please consider also these key search strategies from Google:

* video search, leveraging from YouTube

* social search with the imminent Google Wave

* semantic search in the upcoming Google Squared

* mobile search on multiple devices (Google is currently responsible for almost 98 percent of mobile search)

That’s a matrix comprising horizontal and vertical leverage synching search capabilities, btw.

Incidentally, I’ve watched the media reports on the likely effect of the MS+Yahoo tie-up on Google’s share of the share market and heard all sorts of mistakes from the journalists and analysts providing commentary. Importantly, none of them mentioned the key search strategies I list above, which SO obviously point to Google keeping apace and ahead of its competitors in the search space!

On the BBC, one Internet analyst said that the combined MS+Yahoo share will be 25 percent whilst Google’s is 75 percent. “Okay…………….,” says Twain who immediately thinks the analyst’s made a mistake so goes and does her own analysis and discovers……

According to comScore, Google’s share of US search market was 65 percent in June 2009 whilst MS+Yahoo combined was 28 percent. According to Hitwise UK for the month ending 27 June 2009, Google was responsible for almost 91 percent of search traffic in the UK whilst 5.3 percent was atrributable to Bing+Yahoo combined.

This is an example of how it’s important to do our own analysis, cross-verify what the media presents us as “facts” and independently connect the dots and make sense of what we’re presented with. This is true when we watch major news channels as much as when we due diligence a balance sheet or when we work on complex transactions. Attention to detail, interconnecting silo information and cross-verification is a form of risk management which prevents corporate busts and global financial crisis.

Cause + effect, as I noted previously.

In any case, more information on the MS+Yahoo search sharing deal is available here:

* http://searchengineland.com/its-finally-official-microsoft-yahoo-make-a-deal-yahoo-gives-up-on-search-23197

* http://searchengineland.com/live-blogging-the-microsoft-yahoo-search-press-conference-23202

* http://choicevalueinnovation.com

* http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/eventdetail.cfm

* http://www.microsoft.com/msft