The latest from TechCrunch
- Future Simple Raises $1.1 Million To Further Simplify The Life Of SMBs
- Google's Wizard Of Oz Search Algorithm And The Threat Of Facebook Search
- WITN: Is It Racist To Say That Chinese Manufacturing Leads To Low Quality Goods — And Fraud? [TCTV]
| Future Simple Raises $1.1 Million To Further Simplify The Life Of SMBs | Top |
| For the past two years I’ve been holding onto the belief that Israeli entrepreneurs should devote particular focus on the opportunities available to products and services that cater to Small & Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs). Slowly but surely, more and more companies have indeed started targeting this space, the most notable being Kampyle , SohoOS , and Clarizen . Today, Chicago-based but Israeli-founded Future Simple is announcing a $1.1M round led OCA Ventures with participation by the I2A Fund , as well as angel investors. Founded in 2009 by Uzi Shmilovici, Future Simple has already launched two SMB products: PipeJump , a small business CRM, and QuoteBase , a project/job quote generator that is claiming thousands of users. The investment will be used to bolster the management team, market the current products, as well as develop additional ones. As an interesting side-note that proves yet again that startup entrepreneurship is (a wonderful) disease, Shmilovici was co-founder at Netcraft, an Israeli design firm that was acquired by a local portal last year. His co-founder at Netcraft, Joey Simhon, is today co-founder and CTO at Do@ , a stealth startup which Robert Scoble noted on Quora : “[the] first company since Siri that makes me think that search still can be greatly improved on mobile will launch a compelling new mobile search product.” CrunchBase Information Future Simple Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Google's Wizard Of Oz Search Algorithm And The Threat Of Facebook Search | Top |
| Google search is powered by algorithms. Computers slice and dice data looking for signals that a web page is more or less interesting than other web pages for a given query. PageRank is a big part of this, where Google looks at inbound links to a site as well as the text relevant to that link. But Google also uses lots of other signals to determine the relevance of a web page. They have to, because PageRank on its own is infinitely gameable. If no one ever tried to game search results PageRank would work just fine. Inbound links are simply votes for various web pages. If you take the authority of the site linking into account, it makes for really good search results. That’s why Google was so great in 1999, when there was less incentive to game search results, and less expertise by the people doing it. But today all that’s changed. There’s a feeling that Google’s algorithm is falling further and further behind the very motivated people and companies out there fighting that algorithm. It’s an arms race, and Google is losing that arms race. Today we saw yet another algorithm change by Google, designed to fight some of the more annoying internet polluters - content farms and scrapers . The arms race continues. No Humans Involved! What fascinated me most today was Google’s insistence that they are not directly using the block data they crowdsource from their Chrome extension in determining search relevance. It's worth noting that this update does not rely on the feedback we've received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, which we launched last week. But then they talk about how the algorithm is coming up with very similar decisions anyway: However, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits. The more I think about this, the more strange it seems to me. There’s a good explanation for not relying on that data – if they publicly said they did there would then be a huge incentive for SEOists to start to manipulate that block data, too. Forget linkfarms, just hire thousands of people on Mechanical turk to download the extension and block competitor’s sites. Another angle on the arms race. But I don’t think that’s why. Like the Wizard of Oz, Google hides behind their mighty and mysterious search algorithm. If good search was as easy as analyzing simple clicks of a mouse on a web page, all the magic could vaporize. And if you could somehow remove as much spam as possible from that data, and even slice it demographically, geographically and even personally for a given user, then things might really get sticky. Particularly if Google didn’t have access to any of that data. And Facebook did. One of the most interesting experiments going on in search right now is Blekko’s Facebook Like powered search engine . Search results and search relevance is determined by what your friends have “liked” on Facebook, a very deep store of data indeed. Facebook has more than half a billion users, and half of those log on every day. These people spend 700 billion minutes on the site and share 30 billion pieces of content. Links are being shared and people are clicking “like” to vote for that content. And it turns out that it all adds up to a pretty useful search engine experiment on Blekko. Imagine what Google could do with all that data and you start to understand why social is so darned important for them right now. Not to kill Facebook, but to try to neutralize the threat that the next great leap in search engine evolution doesn’t happen completely without them. A lot of the searches that Google is really bad at – commerce and travel, for example – can get really good really fast if you can look at deep data from friends about those very things. I don’t need pages and pages of results. Just a nice hotel in Paris that a friend vouches for. Or a movie I’ll enjoy. Or the right set of pots and pans. All that data is right there on Facebook. It may take Facebook a few years to really start to get interested in search. But there is so much advertising revenue in that business that they can’t ignore it forever. And that must scare Google more than just about anything else . | |
| WITN: Is It Racist To Say That Chinese Manufacturing Leads To Low Quality Goods — And Fraud? [TCTV] | Top |
| Earlier this week, CrunchGear’s John Biggs sparked controversy (within TechCrunch ranks at least) with a post entitled “ Alibaba And The Curse Of Chinese Manufacturing “. In the post Biggs wrote (amongst other things) that… “Many decry the sad state of American manufacturing but these [Chinese] companies still sell billions in janky garbage that washes up here in huge containers and is sold throughout our 50 great states and, more important, the rest of the developed and developing world.” Gosh. He added… “I was not surprised to hear that the CEO and those Alibaba employees were taking cash from criminal gangs to receive "gold ratings" on their products. This only makes sense. In an unfettered market, the unfettered will push their way to the top.” So that’s how John Biggs feels about Chinese manufacturing companies, particularly those who sell on Alibaba. As Biggs was keen to point out, he has visited China, so this isn’t just a protectionist rant from a xenophobic American. But here’s the thing: Sarah too has traveled to China. Quite a few times. In fact she just wrote a book (partly) about the country’s growing technology manufacturing industry. And on TechCrunch’s internal Yammer discussion platform she called Biggs out – even going so far as to accuse him of veering towards racism. Biggs responded that, if she disagreed so strongly, Sarah was welcome to write a rebuttal. Instead we decided to head to the TCTV studio. In this week’s Why Is This News, we discuss whether Biggs had a point or whether… well… watch the video and see. … Update: John Biggs has responded in the comments… “I wasn’t given the option of being on TCTV this time so I’ll rebut here. My line of thinking is this: Chinese manufacturers are forced BY OUR OWN DESIRE for a deal to make things as cheaply as possible. I don’t blame them. In a very many cases, a Chinese-made product can be well-made, environmentally friendly, and ISO-compliant. This is an absolute fact. HOWEVER, sites like Alibaba allow people with very little interest in those aspects of quality to find providers who are equally lax. The result is junk that gives China a bad name. THIS is my point, not that all Chinese manufacturing sucks. Sarah believes I’m playing into stereotypes but she and I both know using stereotypes are not how I argue. I find it delightful that the same people who call for blood when it comes to Foxconn’s practices will rail against me for slighting Alibaba, a site that connects sellers of junk with buyers of junk. A real manufacturer goes to China, makes relationships, and builds a product and I’ve met a few of those people. He or she doesn’t find a cheap tablet/laptop/whatever, rebadge it, and sell it as the latest thing. There is more to selling an object than swiping a credit card. Sarah focuses on business and people. She found it offensive that I called out a CEO. Fine. I’m sure he’s a charming guy with a house and kids. So am I. Howeever, I focus on technology, on physical things that clutter our homes and planet. I’ve seen to much garbage in various countries and places to defend the peddlers of this trash. Crap is made everywhere, to be sure, but surprisingly it is TOO EXPENSIVE TO MAKE CRAP OUTSIDE OF CHINA, which hinders the trade. Maybe Alibaba’s original mission was to make it easier for the next Ron Popeil to make is pocket fisherman. It isn’t anymore.” | |
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