Big Data/BI/BA

An a-ha moment came as I listened to Christmas music and looked for ways to free storage space on my Mac that is constantly running out of storage.

iTunes allows users to look at their song catalog by simple criteria such as:

• name of the track
• length of the track
• album name

With the visualization of this information via iTunes, this vast pool of mp3 "data" suddenly showed a pattern and overlap in data. How? I have two albums performed by the Canadian Brass albums. For kicks (well, not really, I was trying to find a way to put an album cover) I sorted first by artist. Once I have that, I sorted by track. The two albums (luckily) uses generic name for their songs, so the songs are labeled "Track 01", "Track 02", and so forth.

If I sorted by track, I can see "Track 11" twice, one from each of the two albums. I noticed that they have the same size, and soon, I realized that these two albums are the same. Deleting one album will save me about 50M.

iTunes - visually sort through piles of "unstructured" data to find overlap (waste!)

So now I am starting to realize the field of:

• Business Intelligence (BI) : what is happening - Wendy's is gaining business
• Business Analytics (BA) : why is this happening - Wendy is shifting to healthier chicken
• HP ex-CEO spends $12B on Autonomy

 My guess is that "big data" will require

• collection of data from
• social media & networks : what does Joe like, who influences him, what does he like
• business : Jane responds well to coupons, dislikes emails with updates without discount
• browsing : what is Ken researching, what time does he spend most looking at
• some way to index the data, put structure, but simultaneously not hardwire structure such that it implies relationship
• put into a database (relational, etc)
• Oracle
• IBM DB2 / Informix
• SAP/Sybase
• Microsoft SQL
• storing it
• large disk arrays (RAID)
• caching localized flash storage
• allowing access to it
• cloud application 
• cloud storage infrastructure - accessed by cloud app and non-cloud app
• software to create structure from the data
• software to analyze data to infer patterns, correlation, causality

Thought Leadership - So What?

Producers want to be seen as a "thought leader".
Consumers want to follow thought leaders.
Why?

Thought leaders create.
They can see into the future.
Some even create the future.
Remove roadblocks before they become one.
They instill trust.

Call to action : Experience the difference!

Viral Marketing - Gone Bad

Alec Baldwin's tiff with America Airlines for refusing to stop playing with "Words W Friends" has caused a sudden interest in this Zynga game. Unfortunately, the Kindle Fire version of it has very poor reviews, missing the opportunity to capitalized on this free PR. Although it has an average rating of 3/5 stars, the details are not good: 21 five stars and 15 one star ratings - mostly to I guess a business model decision to offer a Facebook ad version only without the option to pay for it to stop the ads.

Google AdWords - Day 3

Wow - gaining some traction with 300+  impressions from the ad.
But 0 click through though...

Google AdWords - Day 2

187 impressions from the ad.
 0 click through.

1 impression on the weebly site directly. From San Jose. Hope that it wasn't me.

Ranking on most of the keywords is 5 (1 is the best - ad will be very visible on the top).

Should I enable ads in Google Display Network in addition to the current Search?
Ok, enabled Google Display Network for ALL (it was selective earlier).

Google AdWords - Day 1

The Google AdWords campaign has started today (Nov 20)!


The ad says:

  Ariel Dance Productions
  Lose Weight,Feel Great,Meet People
  Buy 4, Get 4 Free Sunday Special
  arieldanceproductions.weebly.com

Google Analytics has also been enabled on arieldanceproductions.weebly.com.

Let' see what we get!

Tracking Web Movement

You have a website that sells widgets. You want to measure its effectiveness. Several metrics can be used to do so, including:


1. Impressions : How many eyeballs looked at your site, measured in Cost Per iMpression (CPM)

2. Click Through Rate (CTR) measures how many people actually clicked on a link

3. Conversion Rate measures how many eventually buy.

Several software providers can automate this. Adobe SiteCatalyst (acquired from Omniture) provides this software via SaaS (yet another acronym - Software as as Service - so no software needs to be installed).  So if no software is installed, how does this work? All the

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Searching via Google displays results in two areas of your web browser: 1. the sponsored section on the top and right 2. the organic section in the middle.

Webcrawlers are programs that run on the internet, looking for new websites. If one is found, it is indexed and cached into the webcrawler.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) influences ranking in the sponsored section.
SEO influences ranking  in the organic section.

How do you improve your ranking in the organic section?

1. Register your website (URL) with search engine
2. Use key words in the website description
3. Use key words in the website meta tag and page title
4. Create as many outbound (have a link on you website that points to other websites) & inbound (other websites linking to you) links as possible

Usage of Web Changes

From its infancy as a means for scientists to share information, the vast Internet network and its customer facing Web Browser application has morphed through the decades.

1990's : use the Web Browser to browse 
   We looked up information if the URL is given.
   Moasic, Netscape, Internet Explorer

2000's : use the Web Browser to search 
  First there were the portals such as Yahoo & AOL that provided news and search
  Then came the pure search Google, successful because it webcrawled and cached the internet,
  provide relevant search results by the number of links pointing to a website (?)

2010's : use the Web Browser to discover :  see what your friends and others think
   Maybe another name for this is Web 2.0, where users dominate content creation.
   Blog, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter

Montenize Search

Google makes money by:

1. AdWord : businesses can buy (through bidding & other Google heuristics) search terms so that your website pops up on the sponsored/ad section of a Google search. Businesses whose links are clicked on are charged by Cost Per Click (CPC).

side note : Google displays search results in two distinct areas : 1. "organic" or "non-paid" search results and 2. "ad" or "sponsored" search results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of bumping your website to be on  top of the organic search results through giving as much information to your site. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves bidding heuristics to ensure that your website is at the top of the "sponsored" search section.

2. AdSense : Allow advertising from other businesses on your content rich site. For example, if you are an expert on airplanes, you can allow Google AdSense to place ads from a local RC shop. Revenue is collected via Cost Per iMpression (CPM), not click.

OpenTable - Business Model

When I dine, I try to reserve through OpenTable because OpenTable gives diners points through its loyalty rewards.  But how does OpenTable make money?

Revenue Sources:
   1. OpenTable charges the restaurant a Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP - a software platform and proprietary hardware) a setup and training fee (5 % of revenue)
   2. OpenTable charges the restaurant a monthly subscription fee (54% of revenue)
   3. OpenTable receives a fee from the restaurant for "guests-seated" (41% of revenue)

What Do They Provide:
   1. increase the restaurants presence via
   2. email marketing
   3. web & mobile presence for restaurants
   4. online reservation for diners (don't need to go through the restaurant phone and when closed)

Income Statement (Dec 31, 2010)

 Revenue   : $98.9M
COG        : $40.1M
--------------------
Gross        : $58.8M

SGA, RD : $40.9M 

--------------------
Op Inc      :  $17.9M

 Int, Tax    :   $4.1M

--------------------
Net Inc : $14.1M

Web 2.0 Mash-Ups

What is a mash-up? It is taking separate application and/or data and combining them to yield a more insightful view of the world.

For example, if we combined Google map with local police report, we can create a crime-map. This is going to be visually a lot more easier to absorb and insightful.

But this works only if Google maps and the local police provides an "API" to their map and data.

Three Years from Now - in 2014

Today is April 19, 2011. I predict that the following will happen if nothing is done to stop it.


1. Radio (as we know it) will disappear
- Wi-Fi everywhere through WiMax or 4G/5G, which will
- allow "always connected" device, including in vehicle, that means
- internet radio replace terrestrial radio, satellite radio, and maybe even mp3 players, because
- internet radio programming can be targeted to segments


2. Retails stores will disappear, replaced by specialty stores such as Apple, Microsoft, and Sony to peddle their own products. BestBuy will shrink or disappear because most of their high volume and/or high grossing products can be bought online

3. Amazon will shrink greatly because the state (?) government will start to charge sales tax on internet transactions

4. Fast food stores will allocate 20% of their space for localized tastes. A Burger King in health conscious Palo Alto will have organic salads.


5. Homes might have small factories to create simple devices based on plastics/polymer/silicon.