Buysiders.com » onlineservices

Delivering an MBA via Facebook

IP — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:15:10 +0000

What took it so long? Now people can get an internationally-accredited MBA using the same platform they’re already so used to. The people behind this initiative claim that it didn’t take a lot of capex $$ to port their Moodle-based e-learning solution to an Facebook app. We’ve studied online education and while it is definitely not just about the underlying tech, going to Facebook can potentially help some schools leapfrog other schools’ sunk investments in proprietary technologies.

Musings on Google

IP — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:00:01 +0000

Three articles over a one-month period regarding Google. First, there was a “pessimistic” piece at Fortune magazine on July 29th with a decent, superficial review of the current state of e-marketing. Then the WSJ interviewed Eric Schmidt on August 14th, getting this controversial quote: “I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” (Mr. Schmidt) elaborates. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” Quite Orwellian, although he was probably thinking about actionable search results – stuff like a “BUY” button next to the cheapest air ticket when searching “cheap NY-Washington flights”. Given the level of scrutiny GOOG faces, it’s clear that he needs a PR person next to him ASAP. Anyway, the CEO piece motivated an NYT op-ed by William Gibson on August 31st with a great summary of what Google is or could become (inside).

From William “Neuromancer” Gibson:

“We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined (in spite of ample evidence) that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google.

Cyberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical world. Now cyberspace has everted. Turned itself inside out. Colonized the physical. Making Google a central and evolving structural unit not only of the architecture of cyberspace, but of the world.”

Netflix doing the right things at the right time

Gustavo Ballvé — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:26:54 +0000

Netflix is one of the most admirable cases around on corporate strategy AND execution. Their products are not exactly cutting edge, but their strategy, execution and specifically data use is out of this world. It shows how you can make billions out of simple things. That said, other than the data culture (a huge missed opportunity by Blockbuster in terms of the head start it could have had), they have to kill a lion a year to stay ahead. Investment-wise, we never got to the point where we felt we knew enough to invest in them – and don’t regret not doing it.

Google’s optional mistep

IP — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:58:55 +0000

The Wall Street Journal has a nice piece today on Google’s option repricing bonanza now that the stock is back to the US$ 500′s. Not a second too soon, not a bit exaggerated.

Netflix’s smart crowdsourcing initiative

IP — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:31:38 +0000

Two years ago, Netflix wanted to improve its movie recommendation system and decided on an experiment: let people have a go at it. The rules and official proposal are here, but the main idea was that if you could improve Netflix’s recommendations by 10%, you’d get a cool US$ 1mm. That contest ended on July 27th, 2009 with huge success – not just for the winners, but for other contestants as well who claim that the internal payoff of the learning efforts involved was already over the US$ 10mm figure. It’s a great example of crowdsourcing, and there are other examples of so-called “Open” business models (Innocentive jumps to mind).

But that’s not all that matters: is crowdsourcing then a substitute for companies’ R&D demands? Does it always work? How open do you really want to be? Some people are looking at it and saying “hold your horses”. That’s always a good advice in our book.

As for Netflix, they’re happy enough to have a Netflix Prize 2 on the works. Very smart: it keeps the ball rolling and takes advantage of the community they built. The press coverage doesn’t hurt, either.

But there’s more. We’d argue that the benefits of the Netflix Prize in terms of research in statistics/ data mining/ etc. in large data sets may be felt for years. It’s interesting to consider this in terms of efficiency gains for many different types of companies. It’s something companies all around the world should be paying attention to.

Here’s a video interview with Reed Hastings, Netflix’s CEO, at the time of the award.

Links:

Crowdsourcing page on Wikipedia

Jeff Howe’s classic article on Wired, his book and his blog

The teaser for Netflix Prize 2

Winning the Netflix Prize – NY Times, October 2008 (huge article with a video that apparently can’t be embedded here).