“The perfect search engine,” said Google co-founder Larry Page, “would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” How to define ‘want’ in search? It is intent. Simply, Larry is stating that search engines must be capable of predicting intent. How can intent be best anticipated, and discovered through Search? Is it important to improve search services to address user intent better? Is there more than
“one way” to do so?

Intent:
Broder, a highly respected and knowledgeable IBM engineer in the scientific analysis community[1] states that user intent, in regards to Information Retrieval (IR) and specifically web search, classifies under three taxonomies, informational, transactional, navigational. Informational is defined as the intent to acquire some information assumed to be present on one or more web pages. (e.g. search terms “how do i bake
a cake” or “origin of the species”).

Web search terms signify intent, and trigger the results which search engines return, yet there is often a cross over when it comes to search terms and intent. This can be easily illustrated with the search term “cat food”, where one might assume that the search results providing locations and websites to purchase “cat food” may be relevant. Yet, the individual may actually be looking for a song by the title “cat food” or even the
process that “cat food” is made. Maybe the individual is looking for the web site www.friskies.com, or even a blog called www.ieatyourcatfood.com. The “cat food” example shows intent can be elusive as a butterfly.

Intent is not always fully exposed through a user’s choice of search words or phrases. The search engine can, in such a case, only try its best to provide relevance, with oftentimes very little information about the ‘perfect intent’ in the mind of the user. This means, for web search users, there will always be some plain luck often involved in receiving relevant search results, responsive to their intent.

Relevancy:
Is there more than one way search engines convert search terms into relevant results? Absolutely, and some of them are well defined in the book, “Google’s Page Rank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings” (2). This book goes in depth as to how a search engine determines what results to show a user. The methods are far reaching and the effects of each algorithm are even more astounding when we look at the various aesthetic display techniques used by various engines.

Effectively, each of the engines display their results in a variable manner as to respond to the desires of the user, attempting to reach a level of information retrieval that coincides with the original intent of the user. Alas, the reality is this task is impossible to do perfectly, because it is virtually impossible to build intuitive perfection into mathematic algorithms, as people do not always submit the best search terms to signify their intent. That being said, some search engines do predict intent very well, others less so.

Many search engines use arcane methods of predicting relevance. One of the most popular is the “democratic method”, which is a factual, almost second-nature of the web linking model. Tim Berens-Lee designed the hyperlink technology at CERN. Imagining the hypertext to link one document to another. “Democracy” comes in the form of links, in that, other publishers/webmasters who find your content valuable and relevant to a subject will link from their website to your website. Google uses this “democracy” model, and although it can be fooled or cheated to drive the display rank of a page higher in the organic results provided by their search engine, it generally works for the most part.

Although the mechanisms are a bit antiquated, the masses have accepted the democratic method as a standard which they are accustomed to seeing results delivered for informational web searches. Even the “democratic method”, though organic, must still function within the algorithm paradigm, that a users search intent can become more and more fuzzy the more vague their query terms. In theory, the more search terms generated in a search query, the user’s intent should become more clear, and for the most part the results more relevant.

As for adding more terms (what google expects the user to do) will provide fewer organic results from the search engine, thereby narrowing the users targets and options. The dilemma of intent, however, is still not served completely with only organic results, nor even with contextual advertising results on the top and side of the google search results pages.

Google’s, as with many search services, approach towards predicting intent and displaying results is to deliver results that can be monetized by the Google’s investment in indexing content into organic results which feature their respective ads on their websites. Obviously as challenging as it is to predict intent, no one style of search service result deliveries can or should satisfy everyone. Some people are fine with the organic result and contextual ad mix delivered by Google and other traditional search
engines.

However, the antiquated assumptive behavior of the traditional search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo, where they believe that interactive user choice and action is irrelevant, may not satisfy the contextual needs of everyone at any given moment. In effect, what fleeQ has built is a new way of delivering deeper and richer context and relevancy without giving up what most users already expect from their search experience. This is a much better method to use in determining intent than simply organic results as ranked links on a page, served up with ads on the side.

Taxonomies:
Back to Broder’s three search taxonomies: having discussed Informational, let us briefly define Transactional and Navigational. Transactional is the intent of the web user to perform some web-mediated activity. (e.g. search terms “buy running shoes seattle” or “download metallica album”), Navigational is an immediate intent is to reach a particular site. (e.g. search terms “msn.com” or “cnn website” or “Oregon State University”)How can we appease these unknown needs of the user?

To improve web user satisfaction with a search experience, the burden to satisfy web users is upon search service providers to contemplate that these three search taxonomies must be pro-actively available and receptive to meet intent, as intent of a web user may variably shift between any of the three at any moment. A search service should effectively deliver a blend of the informational and transactional taxonomy results in manner that encapsulates user intention via an easy to digest search result display model. To do this, requires a search engine display format to offer the best results possible to a user.

A search service should utilize the best boat to take the user on a fishing trip. Allow the search engine to fish their intent, through behavior, and then predict what type of fish they want to pick from the net. To provide this opportunity, our fleeQ search technology sought to improve how results are displayed by utilizing intelligent taxonomy synonyms, selecting the most appropriate search engine to request from, thereby better addressing the taxonomy dilemma to provide the most relevant results to a web user.

Selectively omitting search engines that are geared towards non taxonomy relevance, our fleeQ technology effectively pattern matches the results based upon consumer desire, past history if available, and allows the consumer choice to define the scope and relevancy of results through their actions. Thus allowing us to reflect the isolation of their intent through behavior analysis.

We have discussed informational and transactional taxonomy, but there is a third leg of Broder’s stool, the navigational aspect of how users interact with search. Albeit, many search engines provide navigational matches in the organic search results, it is not possible to truly deliver a navigational intent with out disrupting the users expected outcome. The navigational aspect of search has hereto been addressed by Google
through the “I’m feeling lucky” button found on the Google home page. Although it delivers a relevant and contextually appropriate destination URL based upon the Google search results algorithm, it is is lacks providing other results from the other taxonomies. It operates on only one Broder taxonomy leg as it navigates the browser to a URL page result only. You won’t see the Google search results page at all. FleeQ search, however displays the whole Broder stool, with results of three taxonomies simultaneously, a relevant navigational result, transactional and informational results and advertisements.

DISPLAY OF RESULTS:

FleeQ search delivers a taxonomy trifecta of results into a single action which integrates a non-pretentious “tabbed” and super imposed display approach to search result delivery. A user can interact with the various search tabs, based on their intent of wanting informational or transactional results, or with the page result displayed behind the search results, if they possibly they are looking for relevant navigational results. Furthermore, users can interact with contextual advertisement results incorporated into our display model, for possibly more transactional and informational results. Search engine services can never truly capture the illusive butterfly of user intent. fleeQ was designed to deliver, in a single action, a vehicle by which a search engine can deliver their true search intent.

What’s more, is that although the “democratic” method for displaying organic website link results is seemingly fair to publishers, and therefore assumed to be thereby most relevant by application of results to users, this process can be spoofed or cheated easily. This means that search results that could be available to users, from web publishers who lack either sophistication in the use of deceptive link-farm technology or
exposure and links from other websites necessary to rank higher in the organic results, will likely never appear as an “I’m feeling lucky” target URLs result for a Google web user.

It should not be seen as so radical a thought that both web users and web publishers should interface on the net in an egalitarian manner. A paradigm of the net should not forever remain vested in “Who is more important in web search, user or publisher? ” Why not both be held important? There is no actual justification for not empowering web
publishers (of varying scales) an opportunity for more egalitarian participation in search result display opportunities to web users. Status quo search delivery means that many perfectly relevant navigational or organic link results (for users) are not frequently delivered due to the lack of a level playing field for web publishers, inherent in the continuing operation of major search engine/s.

The fleeQ / adUup system is the first solution that comes close to truly actualizing and delivering a broader search result display solution in effort to raise the status quo of the display innovation stagnant search engines. The status quo is unsatisfactory for both user and web publisher, in that efforts of many publishers to produce and deliver quality content, products, and services goes unnoticed by the user who must rely on results being delivered to them by the status quo limitations of so-called “democratic” search engines.

adUup/fleeQ technology levels the search driven playing field, it is more egalitarian for both web user and publisher, in that it allows web-masters and publishers who have already traffic to participate in an opportunity for visibility before a greater potential of relevant web users. This is finally offered without the need publishers to purchase sponsored links so as to increase likelihood of exposure to relevant users. This is exposure issue is a critical concept to understand, publishers, who do not have much traffic, need it desperately, and having a mechanism by which they can get relevant contextual targeted traffic at no cost until now has been almost impossible.

Greater exposure opportunities to traffic is effectively what we deliver through our proprietary Ancillary Ad System. Like other search services, advertisements are a financially reality to operate adUup and fleeQ and therefore necessary, but not necessarily an evil. It is not inexpensive to deliver the search service, as the the cost of servers, and bandwidth is a market commodity, and not inexpensive. One of the unseen activities and costs of search services, is the creative minds behind the code. The best engineers needed to design search algorithms, for better and better targeting, is an extremely expensive payroll cost.

As an example of the value of algorithms, take a look at the value of a company, PowerSet. Launched in the first quarter of 2007, Powerset’s inventory is simply a set of algorithms and code on top of the wiki data, wiki data that is available freely to the entire world. Anyone can download the wiki data, because its open domain information. What the engineers at Powerset did do was to create some cool associate, contextual algorithm inventories, that sort and predict intent of the web user.

They did it pretty good, and recently, Microsoft bought them for over $100 million dollars. The “Power-soft” purchase most certainly exemplifies the enormous value of code, in and of itself, in “predicting intent” for search service providers. Powerset didn’t have any revenue, they didn’t have any traffic of any significance, the only thing they had was their algorithms. Access to the minds, the engineers that create algorithms is not inexpensive, as is continually proved in acquisitions, such as this one by Microsoft.

The industry gossip that Powerset code would be the Google Killer, ended up as a false hood. I do have to say that what they did do, albeit a small piece, they did well. They showed a new way of displaying results, and a different way of displaying them, that for me seemed pretty cool. But, in the end, PowerSet was a letdown for the fleeQ engineering team, who were looking and dreaming of the day a massive index farm (complete with spider and bots collecting the webpages of the world) would one day surface to put greater contextually and intelligence to the plethora of data that exists on the web.

As for how our advertising (which financially supports or search services) is managed for the best user experience, our search engine does one of two things: We locate a contextual advertiser who desires to advertise against that term, in which case we redirect the browser to that advertiser and display the xyz.com results atop the advertisers website inside of a SRW; OR In the case we do not locate an advertiser against the term, we send the advertiser back to the xyz.com website search page. Allowing the website to display results as if we were never even present.

Our Ancillary ad technology invention empowers adUup/fleeQ’s egalitarian search paradigm. Ancillary ad technology, (as defined in the patent written by myself, Dylan Rosario) is entitled, “Alternative method of retrieving and displaying requested URIs”. The new paradigm provides cohesive satisfaction of user search intent and addresses publisher desire for traffic/revenue via a unified search result delivery model. A model that can accommodate for the Broder’s search intent taxonomies in a single action.

A publisher who integrates our technology into their website enhances their opportunity for exposure to those web users who would have never otherwise found them in the democratic organic results at a mega search engine, nor via the “I’m feeling lucky” method of search engines, such as Google.

The way we deliver navigational traffic to a website is based upon our custom algorithm, it makes the event of searching by a user a traffic generating event. The process then delivers via the “I’m feeling lucky” model traffic to any arbitrary website that our search and targeting algorithms find contextual or relevant. In essence driving traffic to the publisher.

For instance, a participating publisher site at www.GYM.com earns an opportunity for his site to be delivered as the “I’m feeling lucky” Ancillary Ad, once his site generates three fleeQ user searches. In return, adUup locates a search event from one of our many other participating network publishers, and directs the delivery of an Ancillary ad on behalf of publisher www.GYM.com, as a viewable background page to a user searching with fleeQ in another site.

Search boxes featured on publisher sites create an opportunity to capture inbound related traffic and exposure to web users who otherwise would not have viewed their great message, product or service. Opportunity for this traffic is generated not only from other websites, but also the fleeQ.com search portal, and the fleeQ browser embedded toolbar and search boxes.

Publisher revenue opportunity (often siphoned away by status quo search engines) can now be captured through an egalitarian search delivery model that restores value opportunities to traffic otherwise lost. Although, web user search intent is illusive to capture some extents, fleeQ inherently provides traffic satisfaction for both the publisher, and navigational relevance delivery to a web user at the same time. The user gets great results from their query, and the publisher benefits further from his/her visitors.

If the publisher desires to not receive free traffic, and rather cash, we can direct that search to another publisher site and give the originating publisher in this case xyz.com credit towards receiving an Ancillary Ad from our network. Essentially, adUup utilizes the power of search as a force to drive revenues for publishers via a new paradigm. The ancillary ad. When you are at a site (e.g. xyz.com) and you search for either local (in-site) xyz.com results, or you desire web results (e.g. non-local as for example what you get from google) the publisher directs the search to our search redirector. We receive the search term directly from the xyz.com search form located throughout the website.

In the final analysis, adUup offers publishers options in regards to earning guaranteed revenue or traffic by offering web search from their website(s), has been enhanced via the fleeQ adUup technology. Furthermore by giving this new option to the publisher they do not interfere with the users search experience, because intention is taken into account more completely than that of any search engine today. This is something that no other ad network or search engine offers today. We are excited to be delivering a solution that truly “levels the playing field”.

Thanks for reading.

Dylan Rosario
adUup President

What is search intent? What are the taxonomies of search?

http://www.sigir.org/forum/F2002/broder.pdf

Read what this guy this is the primary purpose of a search engine ….
LOL…. way wrong! This is what a marketer thinks.

http://www.build-a-home-business-website.com/purpose-of-search-engines.html

A bit more along these lines…

http://jimjansen.blogspot.com/2008/06/user-intent-in-web-searching.html

What’s next? Search 2.0 and beyond….

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/search_20_what_is_next.php

1)[Broder, A. 2002. A Taxonomy of Web Search. SIGIR Forum 36, 2, 3-10.]
2)Google’s PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search
Engine Rankings (2) (Hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/Googles-PageRank-Beyond-Science-Rankings/dp/0691122024

INTENT AND SEARCH : HOW FLEEQ ADDRESSES THE CONSUMER / USER SEARCH EXPERIENCE

Open letter to the publishers of the world.

Introduction:
I would like to take you, if you are willing to journey with me, on a
‘transcendental’ journey. It may change the way you perceive yourself,
your brand, the Internet, and in the end, hopefully bring enlightenment
and pleasure for you. You may find this journey fundamentally changes your
business philosophies about the net, or you may choose to cling to what
you are familiar with, in how you interact with your web users. So be it.
That is your free will, your choice. But perhaps, you may decide to
reinvigorate your perceptions about what is possible on the net. You may
seize a new opportunity that I am about to explain. This journey may seem
long in words, but it is laid out to provide you a step by step path for
understanding. Let our journey, together, begin.

PATH OF NO RETURN:
the “old school” search box

When a typical web user has visited your site, browsed around, clicked on
a couple things, read a few articles, or purchased some items and finally
was completely done with their experience on your site, what did they do?
If they wanted to try going elsewhere on the net they may have clicked a
hyperlink and departed, clicked out through the bookmark in their browser,
or ’searched’ themselves away from your website through a search engine
box you embedded. Perhaps, you have one of those Google search boxes
integrated into your website that says “search the web” or “search this
site”. Whether or not your site has one, you’re probably very familiar
with these search boxes.

Examples would be search boxes from Google, which come in three different
flavors: a free search box, that sends the user directly to Google.com and
displays any arbitrary search results that the user searched for; an ad
sense box; or an integrated search box, which you pay for, that provides
custom search results that are displayed within your website. These search
results show matches (within your site) against any arbitrary search term
the user searched for. It also displays Web results from Google.com, and
it displays contextual ads located on that page.

You may have an ‘ad sense’(TM) search box which sends the user directly to
Google.com and displays any arbitrary search results the user searched
for, with one small twist, if the user clicks on ads located on that page,
Google promises to pay you a portion of the click revenue. Yes, many big
publishers with lots of traffic make a whole lot of money with ad
sense(TM) search. It’s free to sign up, and very simple to integrate into
your site.

If you are a small web publisher, you may see a bit of residual revenue by
offering a search box to your site visitor, unfortunately, Google does not
promise traffic back to your website in any way, shape or form. Those
ubiquitous “free” search boxes are designed from the get-go to make money
for the search engine. By design, they regularly drive traffic away from
your website to other publishers. There they go, away from your site! Will
they be back? Despite hemorrhaging away their traffic via search boxes,
millions of publishers still feature search results, or incorporate a
‘free’ search box. Publishers have settled for hope, that they might get
paid later (after a user click event).

FAITH:
Search engine relationships

You gotta have ‘faith’ when you embed a search engine box in your site.
Faith some link will be clicked. Millions of publishers cast their fate
and faith to the fickle wind of search engine clicks. They hope the search
engine delivers some fantastic contextual ad, next to the organic results,
and that the user will find the ad appears more relevant than the natural
organic results. If the user clicks one of these pay per click ad words,
the search originating publisher will get paid. Supposedly. How much? Who
knows? This unknown requires faith.

Especially in the case with Google, who unilaterally tracks the click from
the consumer. Only Google decides what constitutes a click in their
network, and only Google decides what’s to be paid for your traffic. You
have zero ability to question their figures and zero ability to calculate
what you think you should have really been earning. You just have to
accept it, have some faith.

Google is non-transparent about the percentage or “cut” millions of its
publisher partners receive. This fact is clearly defined in their ad
sense(TM) terms and conditions, you can read that here. <[Link to Google
terms and conditions ]> Yet, millions of web publishers believe Google is
gospel. Google has created a belief system, of sorts, of faithful
publisher servants.

A while back, I heard someone evangelize their belief as to Google’s
business model being fair to network partners,(that Google’s gives more
than it receives, paraphrasing their comment), the woman insisted, “Google
gives back some 70% of their gross revenue to their (90 million) network
publishers”. However, a reading of Google’s SEC filings on Edgar settles
this matter as myth. By their own admission, Google has described their
cost of revenue for traffic /clicks received from their network partners
at 30% of their total gross. This more adequately explains Google’s
enormous profits.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED:
trust, faith, doubt

A lack of transparency can often breed doubt in a business partnership.
When publishers have no choice but to operate on faith, they have no
choice but to accept their fate. For the time being 90 million publisher
partners keep Google’s technology running through websites of differing
scales, big and small. In the end, they may get a check or wire transfer
for some arbitrary amount, an amount that inherently is non-transparent in
how it was aggregated and determined by Google. Quoting Google terms with
its publishers: “global does not specify a percentage of revenue shared
with its publishers”. This kind of non-transparency cannot help but to
breed doubt with those on the receiving end.

In short, you must have faith in Google’s accuracy about the number of
clicks your users have generated in Google’s network. Google’s numbers are
final, non-auditable, and therefore basically unavailable to you. You must
accept them as the gospel truth. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but
don’t feel alone, if you are one of millions publishers in the Google
network swallowing that bitter pill. <(See emarketer stats)>.

Actually,(here’s a tip)the largest publishers do get a specified
percentage from Google. The rules Google applies to you, don’t apply to
them. Why, you might say, that’s not very democratic!! No, but Google is
not a democracy. Large chunks of clicks are more important to Google than
small crumbs of clicks. Of course, Google wants your clicks too, because
they want scale. Google figures that the little guys, the smaller
publishers are too small independently to do anything about the inequity.
Google maybe right, but only if publishers remain sheep-like, follow a
Google belief system, and look nowhere else for their daily bread, which
is web user traffic.

DOMINION:
the frightening meaning of power

Google has sought to control the advertising supported search marketplace
for many years. In 2007, Google made up 35% of all online ad spending by
advertisers. In March 2008, Google formally acquired DoubleClick.
DoubleClick made up 32% of all online ad spending by advertisers in 2007.
Now together, they exercise sovereign control of over 70% of all online ad
spending.

The DoubleClick acquisition elevated Google, in the opinion of some
industry analysts, to a monopolistic market position that is seemingly
irreversible. Many have complained, other companies have been investigated
as a monopolies with even less than a 70% market share, such as IBM
(1972-82), so why not Google? Likely, because more and more, global
business economies of scale, such as Google, are allowed to operate under
a global economic philosophy of laissez faire.

Laissez faire, is a French phrase literally meaning “Let do.”. It is
generally understood to be a doctrine that maintains “private initiative
and production are best allowed to be free of economic interventionism by
the state beyond what is necessary to maintain individual liberty, peace,
security, and property rights”.
In the case of Google’s purchase of Double Click, one would expect another
player such as Microsoft would have cried foul and gotten government
attention. But in the end, Microsoft has merely made a play for Yahoo so
it could itself gain a market advantage, and has actively been acquiring
numerous other business entities to compete more efficiently with Google
for online ad revenues.

Let’s think about online ad spending. Not only publishers are concerned
about Google’s dominion in this realm. What does this situation mean in
the marketplace for advertisers? Summed up, advertisers and web
publishers are singing from the same hymn book, Google’s. Competitive
choices in directing online traffic to their products and/or services have
been effectively extinguished. In order to get their advertising brand
message seen and heard, involvement with Google is a market reality
advertisers had to face, and will pay for, like it or not. At the end of
the day, 70% of all websites featuring any form of advertisements, now
include Google code on the page.

A NEW PATH:
freedom through technology

Are there alternatives, is there hope, you may ask? Yes there is.
Technology, at the same time both amazing and very scary, can disrupt
monopolistic strongholds that operate in markets, so yes there is hope,
and now there is an alternative. A pendulum can swing both ways. I’m
going to explain for you a new path, that is available to change the flow
of the karmic tide with a new technology that captures dollars away from
monopolistic-behaving search giants. This technology is capable of
driving traffic and revenues back your way, leveling the playing field
back to the small publisher, and puts your value back where it belongs,
under your control.

At adUup we have a totally different belief system than the big search
engines, we believe publishers who create net content, are equally as
important as web users who create net clicks. Publishers joining adUup
will experience transparency– in part because of our special partnership
with Omniture, which has been engaged to provide transparency in our
business with our publisher partners. The cloak of doubt is removed in
our model, a fair basis for a traffic and revenue partnership is restored
to the publisher, no more need to pray for a click. Read further, and I
will explain.

THE CROSSROADS:
choice makes all the difference

As a publisher or website owner you have had two choices, so far:

One, lock down your website from spiders and bots. Effectively cutting your
own traffic throat to protect your content and your value as a brand.
Thus, in the end prohibiting the search engine from copying your content,
you
effectively stop people from locating you organically via the search engines;
or, Second, allow the spiders and bots access to your property rights and
an opportunity to sell ads next to your work. We would assume publishers
and Webmasters desire traffic to their website, so it is not surprising
they choose the second choice; despite the inevitable outcome, the search
engines are very effectively luring consumers away through organic
listings.

If you are listed organically on a search engine and you do not purchase
SEM advertisements, odds are, you are not ranked very high. With only an
organic ranking, you are pitted against the advertisers. Your site links
and page content has become part of the organic search engines inventories
which they leverage for their gargantuan profits. In fact, Google and MSN
have entire organizations dedicated to teaching you how to make their
taking of your content easier and more valuable for them to do. Amazing!
<(See webmaster.google.com and Jane and robot.com)>

In this construct, the search engines want you to think your opportunity
to get exposure on bare or gimmick search results listings outweighs your
sacrifice of your property. Effectively, you allow them to take from you,
for a future traffic benefit they can’t and don’t guarantee. Big search
engines make billions of dollars from publisher websites and publisher
creativity. Logically, you should be objecting to other people profiting
from your work, right? However, unfortunately you have had limited venues
in which you can drive traffic organically to your website. As Google
says, you can always buy ad words.

However, search engine optimization, the art of ranking higher in search
results, is both a science and an art. Suffice to say, there are many
other ranking issues, beyond ad words, much deeper than we can discuss
here. So, you buy ad words, in hopes that when somebody searches, they
will click on your link and view your site. If you are buying ad words to
your own website (which has been indexed by the spiders) you are
effectively agreeing to allow them to charge you for the value of your own
relevant content enticing a user to visit.

“But, we need organic traffic to our websites!” say all the web masters
who don’t buy ad words. “After all, it is a free chance for traffic and
possible revenue for us. We can’t do without it.” So true, publishers
have had to, until now, accept Google as the sovereign source of organic
Web exposure for a chance to drive traffic to their sites. In light of
this, some publishers may even feel a sense of undeserved guilt for being
manipulated, or a sense of indebtedness to the search engines for the
“opportunity” of being indexed. Rationalizing, that although the search
engine spiders copied their content in the first place, the engines at
least give them an obscure chance, among millions of others, to be found
on the net. No matter how minute or unlikely the traffic opportunity is,
some publishers may even feel unduly grateful.

UNBURDEN YOURSELF:
Cast off the old, seize the moment

You no longer have to kneel down and continue to accept less from these
search engines! adUup & fleeQ offer an egalitarian, fairer alternative for
small publishers. Through technology, a platform that enables
transparency, and the effective capture of revenues and traffic, fleeQ
technology can and wants to give back to the publisher. This technology is
uniquely capable of disrupting the entrenched problem (inherent with
search engines) that is damaging small, independent, creative, and
resourceful webmasters and publishers of the world.

As a publisher, you are entitled to a share of the revenue when your
content and copyrighted material is copied by other parties to generate
revenue to themselves. You have always known in your heart you should be
entitled to be reimbursed for the use of your property. However, sharing
fairly (with publishers)the revenues generated from indexing and siphoning
websites was never part of the traditional big search engine business
model. It never will be.

Our technology was designed for a guaranteed benefit to publishers,
sharing fairly. We can guarantee you will be paid for your content. And if
payment is not what you seek, if rather it’s traffic you want, we can
guarantee that for you too. Joining the adUup network cost nothing, it’s
100% free. So, how do we make a promise you can bank on? It’s based upon a
patent pending technology. It is a methodology of changing how search
results are displayed.

Search results, represent a mathematical calculation and weight, put
against a specific URL (as per the algorithm of a search engine) and then
displayed in a specific orderly format within a web device. Our technology
performs that standard function, except that it takes a slightly different
spin. It utilizes modern asynchronous communication via APIs that are
publicly available to every webmaster and publisher in the world.

Google and the other search engines offer access to data they initially
reaped (without compensating publisher websites) via a number of arcane
APIs that fewer than 10% of all publishers have the technical knowledge of
utilizing. These APIs are a direct feed into the search engine’s index.
These feeds show organic search results from the search engine with no
advertisements.

In simple terms, our technology retrieves data from search engines (what
Google and the other search engines took from publishers)and converts it
into a display as search results over our partnering publisher websites.
Doing this, we enable publishers to either earn traffic, or generate cash
revenue.

Like Google is a publisher, as a publisher, you too are entitled to
display advertisements next to the content of your website. You may sell
those ad deliveries at any price you desire, and you can sell them through
whomever you desire. Advertisers are always willing pay to place a brand
or message next to your content if they believe a consumer will be
influenced to buy their product or service.

The intent of the advertiser, and the intent of the publisher have been
often times at odds, but there’s no reason it can’t be a win win.
Advertising has been called a necessary evil, however, without advertising
most websites would fail. Without advertising, Google would fail. A
primary aspect of our technology makes it possible for you as a webmaster
or publisher to leverage your own content value back from the search
engines, by integrating our fleeQ search technology into your site, as an
alternative to theirs.

VISITATIONS:
core user value

Our technology satisfies your desires as a publisher, while appeasing the
search intent of the web user. You can now restore back to yourself both
revenue and traffic (from search engines) in a totally unique and
effective manner. Yes, sounds too good to be true, but it’s in our code,
and our proprietary method. The power of algorithms and disruptive
technology can actually restore freedom to a marketplace.

The traffic we send to your website is based upon contextual searches on
other sites. You define your keywords and category when you sign up for
an account. With your permission, our servers then Index and spider your
site so as to get a better understanding of what you offer the web user.
>From this information, we keep only key words and concepts.

We do not copy, store, or save your content. We only look at your content
to gain it’s contextual relevance, build a profile, and then map it
against logical synonyms that represent the ideas of your site. This is a
bit different than the ‘word for word mapping’ that the other search
engines do.

Simply put, we evaluate, categorize your site, and analyze the key words
which best represent your service, products, and message. When a user
search originating from another website in our network occurs, we
calculate how closely your website matches their contextual search terms.
If you are a close match, and we have recorded your site as a
target-for-owed-traffic (which is based upon an exchange model of 3-1) we
will redirect that user to your website.

Over your site, we will display search results from multiple search
engines, that match the user’s search term organically. What this means to
you, is that you know you just received free traffic to your site that was
contextual, relevant, and targeted. The 3-1 ratio is simple to explain,
for every three people that you send to our network, we will send one
targeted relevant visitor back to you from another website. Simple. No
catch. Completely free.

To do this, we replace the old and antiquated search boxes that are
located throughout your website with our easy to use fleeQ search. Rather
than sending a search engine, such as Google, your user traffic (with your
fingers crossed in hopes that you will get paid if someone clicks) you can
now access our fleeQ technology and be guaranteed either traffic or
revenue back to your site.

THE GARDEN PATH:
user relevancy makes it beautiful

Relevancy matters to consumers. If you’re a consumer or user of
television, when it comes to marketer messages, you have no choice in the
relevancy matter. Your favorite show is periodically interrupted by
commercials (you may find wholly irrelevant to you) streamed directly to
your television set. Though this is passive consumption on the part of the
user, it is an aggressive method (captive audience) used for decades by
marketers. This is the paradigm in which most every television network
model is built upon. You want to watch a show? You must view the ads that
the television network pushes at you.

When TiVo offered a unique feature, allowing consumers to become viewers,
it was entirely disruptive to an instilled television paradigm. TiVo
technology allowed the viewer to delete the ads from a television
recording. Thus giving the consumer a choice in the matter. Holy Moly! The
TV industry blew up, they threw millions of dollars into a court battle,
and effectively had the technology outlawed. (See TiVo court reference).
The broadcast industry thus delivered the message to consumers “if you
want to view our content, you must consume our ads”. This marketing
paradigm impacts the consumer and publisher relationship online as well.

The online publisher recognizes that without advertisements, their ability
to deliver quality content is diminished. As in the case of television,
how else would creative artists, such as actors, makeup artists, and
directors get paid if ads were not an integral part of the television
programming? So it goes with online creatives. The case of TiVo and the
broadcast industry somewhat parallels the publisher and search engine
industry. As an online publisher your content is no less important to you,
than content of a broadcast network is to itself.

DESIRE:
user fulfillment

Our technology is designed to best benefit the web user as well, based
upon their intent. It all comes down to intent. When a consumer or user
intends to search the web, they expect to receive relevant search results
that match their query. They usually intend to click on either an organic
result or they intend to click on an advertiser who matches their desires.
Contextual algorithms make sense of intent and deliver relevancy in the
form of organic results and pay per click ads. Intent of the user is
paramount in our model. The method in which we employ traffic-driving
technologies takes this into account.

Let’s say, you are searching for “shoes”, the search engine deducts that
you are looking for a noun, an object, and possibly a product. From this
deduction, organic results are located (relevant against your search term)
based upon the search index algorithms that the engineers have designed
into the software. Some engines work this process through democratic
algorithms. But in the end, they all locate websites that match what you
are looking for, and make a best effort in displaying those.

Secondly, the search engine also locates in its list of advertisers, any
company that claims their products or services match your search term.
Thus, Nordstrom’s.com may possibly advertise against the search term
“shoes”.
If your intent as a user was to locate search results, products, or
services related issues, you may or may not find that Nordstrom’s.com is
relevant, but you won’t be offended or confused by the result. Typically,
you will see the ‘Nordstrom’ message or brand next to the organic matches
from Google in a designated ‘advertising display zone’ on their website
page, so as you will not be confused about the <<intent> > of the search
results in the ‘paper clip zone’ of the page.

Obviously, some websites are designed to sell, others are designed to
inform, so understanding the intent of the user must be considered
paramount in delivering site results. Since it was the consumer or user
who requested the search results, we must assume that they seek relevance.
Unfortunately, we cannot perfectly predict intent and desire with the
computer yet. So we must deliver search results in a fashion that best
meets the needs of the individual, allowing them an opportunity of
choosing for themselves which type of result is more important, organic
results (often consisting of informational and product websites)and/or
advertisements.

For the most part, we can assume that users who seek Web results just want
a relevant match against their desires, and for that, organic and pay per
click results can effectively solve their requirements. Given the fact
that the user is sometimes interested in browsing away from a publisher’s
website, we have designed a system that maximizes upon the assumed
desires/intents of both the consumer user and the publisher. Until now,
there has not been anything remotely close to a guaranteed revolving-exit
door bringing search traffic back to a web publisher, fulfilling their
most fundamental desire.

A HOLISTIC APPROACH:
intent and content

Ours is a new shift in search results display, it is a new paradigm in
traffic generation. It’s an expression of our business belief system. It
is a new way of looking at publisher content, and the value it should
command, in symbiotic relationship to the web user’s intent.

The status quo method of search engines is to deliver information via a
webpage on their site. They are programmed to display their search
results, and advertisements along the side or at the top of their page.
This method has been in practice for many years. How search results are
displayed has been dependent on search engine assumptions that users
intend only to click organic and pay per click search results. Our fleeQ
search engine service does not presume similarly, and therefore, displays
differently.

Form follows function. We believe that many consumers may also be
interested in a highly relevant website result available for immediate
viewing. We feel, given the opportunity to see a new and alternative
website that is contextual, relevant, and accurate to their search term,
why should consumers not be allowed such a viewing opportunity? Search
‘use beliefs’ are forever being argued, however, overriding them all, is
our simple belief that the consumer should have a choice in the matter.
Therefore, we deliver more substance to the user than the typical search
engines.

LIFTING THE VEIL:
Transparency is relevant

Our technology tracks the origin of a consumer search to the publisher’s
identifier, therefore, we ensure that publisher is compensated for this
traffic, generated through our fleeQ search tool, embedded in their site.
The publisher who directs this “revenue opportunity” (in the form of a
search) can transparently validate the actions of their users through our
platform. Our technology and search service tracks the revenue event
whether it be a click, the display of a banner, or the action of the user
to purchase from an advertiser’s website, via a third party. These records
and reports are freely available to the adUup publisher, unlike with
Google.

Creating transparency with a publisher is only part of our solution.
Publishers and webmasters have a variety of differing agendas. Their
motivation for an online presence generally falls into two categories.
One, being a profit desire, using marketing and technology to drive
revenue for a company. Yet, there are also others, who for many reasons
seek not money, but desire more recognition or exposure online. This
second desire is the more complex of the two.

Many want to share a message or seek to expose their business to those who
would otherwise never have found them with organic search results. How can
you deliver eyeballs to a message (in this case a website) that the
consumer did not anticipate seeing? How can you do this in a non-invasive
model, by capturing the moment of their intent to view something relevant,
the same as the search engine does when it delivers an advertisement
relevant to a search query.

SEEK AND THEY SHALL FIND:
finding meaning

Through adUup, those web users seeking relevancy in their lives (while on
the net) will have you there, willing and enabled to share your relevancy
via the fleeQ search process, over and over again. You will not have to
pay anything to the search engines. Utilizing our technology that
integrates search results from multiple search engines into your website,
when we direct a visitor to your site, you can effectively capture back
what is rightfully yours once again.

To learn more go to http://publisher.fleeQ.com

Dylan Rosario
adUup – Founder, Inventor, and President

A question in my mind in 2006 was, how do I assist smaller companies in marketing and branding online in the face of the dynamics of the internet? Looking around me I saw problems left and right. It was increasingly difficult (if not impossible) for a smaller company to achieve any level of recognition online, and even more difficult if you don’t have a creative angle, or some edgy message. The fact that most of those smaller companies were likely to be forever adrift in vast seas of online information seemed untenable.

Companies who cannot achieve some level of Internet /famedom/ must compete at a level often tilted unfairly in an opponent’s direction. You might wonder why I say ‘opponent’. It is because; online a company is in competition with every other company website out there. There are always a finite number of individuals (browsers) to go around on the web any given time, any given day and plenty of savvy, deep-pocketed competition for their attention.

Not every company can have a blockbuster website. For the hundreds of millions of websites, there are a select few who have ever achieved a phenomenal degree of marketing and/or branding success online. _Not all companies have the innovative or creative power to be able to capture a current wave of marketing ingenuity deployed by some smalltime producers and designers, regardless of excellent viral campaign techniques._

If we presume the average company (who does not have some kind of cool viral message or product) must use standard advertising, then we are facing a predicament in regards to marketing options. I realized that a significant condensation of the distribution channels for advertising was already in motion. Advertising options were and are becoming more and more consolidated by the day, as the major search portals and software publishers are snatching up the channels of distribution and merging. The reality is, powerful distribution channels are now operating more like a /digital cartel/, controlling huge portions of internet-user traffic through mega-search engines.

So, back to the 2006 question, how do I assist my customers (many smaller companies) in marketing and branding online, considering the stacked deck against their unique digital splash being heard at all?

Supporters of cartel economics like to claim that cartels protect weaker participating companies, and to an extent do away with limitations on trade resulting from high cost of entry across borders, distribute risks and profits fairly equitably, stabilize markets, reduce costs, and thereby protect consumers from wild marketplace fluctuations and chaos.

In the digital realm, cartel economies are actually a benefit to very few players across the board, and most especially an economic conundrum for the web-publishers/companies who have few choices of channels through which to market themselves broadly.

One could consider the current state of affairs on the Internet as a near monopolization of online advertising by very few organizations, who effectively function like many cartels. I have been working on the Internet for many years now and I have experienced in many variations and iterations of the technology. I’ve seen companies come and go, and watched online empires built. However, the ‘playing field’ on the Internet is no longer a level field at all.

The big search engines somehow have convinced the small web-publisher that they need them, that in order for the consumer to find them, the search engine must index a publisher’s site. I had to ask, is there another way?

The reality that search engines are capitalizing upon the hard work of everyone else is excused as a necessary evil of a new information medium. Mega-search engines take everyone’s content. They also take the web-publishers products, and they manipulate the web-publishers and their ‘wee-folk’ visitors. Essentially, web-publishers and the wee-folk serve unpaid, feeding the several-headed online-beast of the search engine & consolidated ad channel cartel, which keeps just getting fatter and fatter, and harder to move out of the way.

On one hand, this great beast operates like a kindly innkeeper, by endearing itself to everyone. It points the wee-folk towards village specialty-shops. But on the other hand (for the small publisher, webmaster, and/or business owner) the beast always entices the wee-folk already in the village, to leave, and points them onto other villages, with other small shops. The beast degrades the value of a small publisher/company brand by never promising to send the wee-folk back to the little village again. The beast in fact, supplies a map of a maze of little villages to the wee-folk, with so many road signs and detours along the way the wee-folk may be forever unable to find that lovely village again they once visited.

A magic sword that could smite the mighty beast as it lay in its lair seemed like a fairy tale for publishers and smaller companies. Would anyone ever be able to pull the sword from the stone and help the little village shopkeepers and the wee-folk both? I kept thinking, “Is it possible to slay the several-headed search-engine beast?”

In actuality, the search engines are nothing without the publishers who they index. It is not the search engine, but the publisher who the consumer is looking to reach. The search engines truly have no content, many of them have begun to collect information, but you will notice that not a single thing they offer is their original work. No video, notebooks, no articles, none of the things that search engines index are actually created by them.

Unfortunately, the consumer has rarely caught on to this. The mysticism and magic of the Internet, like slight of hand, has confounded many people. Think of the Great Wizard of Oz and how enamored the wee-folk of Oz were of his powers until Toto pulled back the curtain.

Some think that the whole web is some kind of big shopping mall and you can float from place to place with a simple click of the mouse, like Dorothy did with a click of her shoes. Don’t laugh, but some people even believe that the ‘online shopping mall’ goes by the name of the search engine. Without search engines, many individuals believe they would never find the information they are looking for. Lack of sophistication on the side consumers has made a few mega-search engines extremely wealthy.

I remember the time when there was nothing but a hyperlink. Search engines were programs that looked for pattern matches in files. The concept of indexing those files birthed the modern search engine. The advent of digital plagiarism, easy, passive and highly profitable for search engines, was accepted by publishers willing to take it, as long as somehow consumers might locate publishers and view their information content or buy their products and services. This seemed a small price to pay for traffic and for customers, and there was no viable alternative, no promise a visitor would ever return, or that new visitors would be guaranteed by the search engine, to be returned to Kansas, and back to publisher’s website. Dorothy had her ruby slippers as a promise, Merlin had the secret of the sword in the stone as a promise, and web-publishers have had nothing as a promise.

The wee-folk no longer need to know a brand but only the effect or outcome of what they desire; the search engine does the rest of the work. It pushes the individual far away from a branded source. The wee folk become sheep following a search engine shepherd. What it all comes down to, who gets the profit? Who deserves the profit? In the Internet world or real world, where information should be free, or should it?

Obviously there’s a cost of producing a newspaper, writing articles and creating content. In this case we see the conundrum of content publishers, how they value themselves, and how willing they are to pay for placement. A premium search engine placement is a calculated advertising risk; in hope that when the consumer searches on terms that the ad or link placement will be noticed. No guarantee, no promise.

The interesting thing is that most people don’t understand how a search engine really works, and if they did they would understand that it’s only a matter of time until the search engines no longer exist but for the time being it’s a necessary evil. A search engine is a tool not a destination, and should be thought of as such.

Any group of smart individuals with enough computers and a fat fiber optic pipe to the Web can create a search engine. Now imagine having a fiber-optic connection to your home and a desktop computer, with the equivalent processing power and storage space of all the search engines data farms. You essentially could do away with the search engine, given enough processing, disk space, and connectivity to the Web.

If we were to look at Moore’s Law, and correlate that to the processing power of a search engine data farm, we would realize that in less than 20 years everyone would have a computer just as powerful. Of course storage follows a similar trend, and now with dense wave division multiplexing the bandwidth is increasing. It is only a matter of time until the personal computer can index the entire web.

Some people may call this heresy, especially those that work for the big search engines. They want you to believe that being the consumer and publisher that we need them, but we must tithe the gods of search for without them we are nothing. Unfortunately, there are other ways of dating access to data and finding information. The anomaly of viral marketing, the power of brand recognition, and ingenuity of the traditional marketer cannot be overshadowed by any search engine forever.

So back to the question, how do I assist smaller companies in marketing and branding online in face of the cartels who promise them absolutely nothing? I decided to try to pull the sword from the stone and take aim at the beast cartel. I dreamed about it, breathed it, imagined it and then envisioned it. Based on my vision, I have built a technology known as fleeQ.

With the invention and application of this technology, I have pulled the sword from the stone. It is time to slay the beast. However, innovation can take its toll. Even with the most creative team, and greatest resources, many large organizations do fail. We have a plan. Getting beyond the simple and the mundane to develop and build an entirely new way of delivering advertisements online, we have found that publishers and advertisers both seek a new and or alternative method. We fulfill needs that have been waiting for solutions.

It is our task at adUup to deliver such solutions. The first embodiment of this has manifested in the form of fleeQ. An entirely new search advertising network based upon the principles of my patent “an alternative method for displaying requested URIs”. Many people who have heard, and watched this technology in application, have said this new methodology turns the Internet advertising system inside out and backwards.
Who says internet fairy tales can’t happen?

Here’s a question for you. What is really going on with the online marketing space? How did we get here? Where is it going?

• How does a marketer today compete against the growing cost of SEM marketing?
• What are the other options available to them today?
• Is there anything else out there other than Google and Yahoo?
• Why does television seem to think that they are the only ones capable of reaching millions of people in a single market?
• How does our company address these problems?

To begin with must understand the needs of the publisher and the desires of the advertiser. Each and every single client of our ad network is an integral part of what we call a search exchange. Many unique websites and publishers all working towards the same goal.

Essentially, each of these organizations can maximize their exposure by sharing their traffic with each other. It’s amazing how the Internet forgot why it was called the World Wide Web in the first place. The term World Wide Web is rooted in the concept that sites linked to each other in some context or another. If we were to link these websites together every website to every website there would be billions of hyperlinks on every single webpage. Of course that’s not possible so the search engine was born.

Now obviously somebody who’s in the arcane business of creating lithographic technology for microchips would not link to a website discussing the hypocrisy of Aristotle.

In reality a search engine is designed as a jumping point onto the World Wide Web were then you could link from site to site via embedded URLs on the page and find content that is pertinent to the subject matter in which you are researching. Many times the subject matter they be entertainment but in the end hyper linking was the critical component of the Web.

A hyperlink has all but disappeared on the Internet, still you may find some websites with a link or resource section where they list out websites of commonality or common interest but in the end people have now turned their eyes to the search engine to sort the mess out for them.

The search engines do a great job and the index everything that exists. With massive server farms in massive resources these monolithic business models bring together a disparate and often misunderstood environment that today we call the Web.

Many of the young people today or only experience with the Web has been when search engines existed. For those of us were around in the early days prior to Yahoo, Inktomi, Google, and a dozen other search engines, we remember the lengthy process of finding relevant information. Often times the information never existed in the first place and we had to revert to libraries.

The philosophy I am speaking of here is one of sharing. The Web was orginally about sharing about the propagation of knowledge. The fact that the Web is the ultimate library starts with the publisher and the creator of content. Content as many say is king, and without the publisher the search engines would have nothing to index or spider.

Now putting commercialism aside, and looking at the pure function of the Web as a tool to collect resources and information we can justify the existence of search engines. They do the functionality of indexing and sorting and searching so that way we don’t have to remember every single link in the world, nor keep billions of bookmarks.

As you may know the cost of entry to build a search engine is immense. Massive server farms thousands of computers, and hundreds of people are necessary to sort and decipher this information into contextual search terms which produce results.

Until the day that we all have the equivalent computing power of a Yahoo or Google in our laptop computer, we will use search engines. But as I said previously without the publishers that they index the search engines are really nothing but a bunch of computers in a server farm.

Our technology takes advantage of the many different search brands that exist. We aggregate across multiple engines bring together the ubiquitous search result, and presented in a way that levels the playing field amongst the search giants.

It true David versus Goliath story, ours is one of the symbiotic existence. Looking at the web as a means to collect information, the user becomes a target for advertisement. Advertisement is a necessity without it we would have none of our favorite television shows, we would not be able to read the news from around the world in printed publications, and favorite professional sports teams would be playing ball on the high school field.

Yes advertising is necessary, the cost of content hasn’t changed, but the cost of delivery has gone down. Television has had the best deal yet, put up a number of radio towers around the nation and you can milk them for decades. In the end the consumer has to buy their own television so the medium in which your television signals delivered cost you almost nothing. Of course the cost of production is expensive, but if you look at the revenue over time it completely negates the costs of setting up a studio and radio equipment. These models are driven by advertising, and in the end the subscriber base is so broad that the television stations can claim they penetrate the entire geographical market in which they broadcast.

Of course this model is harder for cable and satellite, which requires very specific registered pieces of equipment in order to deliver their media. This is easily auditable, and us you will see that the per channel revenues is lower than that of broadcast. Albeit that Comcast makes more money in a local market because they have more channels and charge a monthly subscription fee for access to their media, but unfortunately must charge less for the advertisements placed on their network.

This revenue generated from the 30 second ad spot, which generates millions of dollars a month per station per market for broadcast. It is a huge vast machine, very entrenched in the minds of the American people. The same people who are inundated on a daily basis by billboards, radio, mobile advertising, web advertising, newspaper advertising, magazines, and even ads on bathroom walls. The growth in the advertising market has pushed and pulled the consumer in dozens of directions, now each of them is fighting for the same ad dollar.

This brings me to web advertising; it is the strongest mechanism to deliver a marketing message. The technology allows us to target individuals in a geographic area, based on their behavioral patterns, psychographic profiling, and of course the standard demographic target group. With all of this available to it, the cost of delivering it across the Internet medium is so low, that we must add value by defining extensive target capability, of not only a selection technology which presents the ad, but also the relevance of the publisher’s site in which the ad is presented.

Obviously one would not advertise baby diapers and a yachting magazine, the same as one would not advertise feminine hygiene products on ESPN. So relevance is critical, and the Web can produce that by the boatload.

Search engines today assume that the consumer who is searching for a term will find advertisements relevant to their search. With almost any search term in the world today you can find an advertiser who is banking that you will be interested in some contextual or relevant manner to their product. It’s kind of funny, because big national packaged goods brands such as those coming from Procter & Gamble are not necessarily seeking relevance but brand awareness.

How do we bring brand awareness to the Web in a relevant manner? Does it have to be relevant? If it’s been good for these big national brands to advertise on TV with little or no relevance then why is it not good for them to advertise on the Internet with greater relevance and better targeting?

Technology works against itself here in this case, if technology of the Internet is the best delivery mechanism available for a brand message, then why does it get a smaller price point against television and newspaper? That is an easy one, lower cost of delivery. In order to serve 10,000 people online it may only cost three dollars, versus delivering 10,000 newspapers could cost nearly $2000. Scarcity of the media is becoming a moot point. Television shows are moving to the Internet printed publications are presented on webpages, the consumer has many routes to the same information traditionally delivered over these antiquated medias.

Just some food for thought. Next posting I will be discussing the concepts of why one would build a technology such as adUup and fleeQ. Why is this important to the Web as a whole? And who it benefits them the most. Thanks for reading.

I have been seeing the age old argument from all over the place lately.

Tech Start Ups: Business Men or Computer Scientists which are more important?

It seems to me there are many different arguments and I personally believe that you need both sides to hack it in the tech startup world. Two sides of the same coin.

Just a fact: If you want to do anything it requires resources, so having only hackers is no good for generating revenue, and having a sales heavy team with no understanding of how to create a quality product is shooting yourself in the foot.

All said, a Technical person can be a Business person also. I happen to be one of those. I started off a a programmer and inherited my business aptitude through trial and error. Of course i hire bean counters and CFO’s to crunch my companies revenue models out into pretty spreadsheets, but as Alyssa says it takes a special kind of individual that no orilley book nor Ivy College can teach you. I have several Ivy guys working for me and never attended any those schools myself. It takes Passion, courage, and guts.

It comes down to the Entrepreneur skills that cut the mustard. In the tech world it requires both biz and hack skillz.

As Napoleon Dynamite says ” Girls like guys with skills. Bowstaff skills, nunchuck skills, computer hacking skills…”

Truth says that tech businesses likes entrepreneur with the multiple qualities. If you can not drill down into the code to find a bug one minute, then walk into a VC presentation the next and close a funding round, well heaven help you.
I hope you have a great team who looks up to you like your the next messiah or something. Its tough out there and it takes a real Entrepreneur to challenge themselves. The competition is fierce and you do not have the luxury to claim in the tech startup industry that “I’m a biz guy and I leave the coding to the hackers” nor can you say “I write the best code in the world, and it is worth all the gold in Ft. Knox”. neither of these mind sets get you what you want in this industry.

Arrogance and denial will crush a company in 2 months flat. Competition is crazy, and your perfect little ideas can be nullified in days flat when companies like Google and Microsoft are willing to throw Billions to control the market place.

I have worked with thousands of companies in the space I will tell you, great ideas today are ghost town tomorrow, unless the leaders of the organization are the best of the best, and the top side of the tech start up company is equally balanced.

We startup entrepreneurs must learn that at a tech startup it requires vision, product genius, and technical chops to get the job done.

It is important to understand the threat of competition to a tech start up. As a Software Architect at heart, I can look at any (I mean any) business model online and decipher the software patterns used to build the application within minutes. I can put my 4 developers to the task of replicating the technology, while that is going on, I can put on my Marketers hat, and spin a better message, cold call sales pitch, and Power point in just a few hours. Put my sales team to work and we have just entered into a new tech start up venture.

You gotta understand, there are people out there like myself who can execute and copy a business model so fast you would be gasping for air. Many of these other people wouldn’t even bat an eye at stealing your concept and earning bigger cash and more traffic than you ever could. I personally have more honor and integrity than that. But you can never count on others having similar principals. I know this first hand having my business model ripped off by dozens of companies back in the pre-bubble days when ExitExchange had its business model copied and stolen by small, medium, and large companies alike.

Well, at least we were smart and filed for patents on our hard work, and now we will have our just rewards. 8 years later albeit, but those who steal will have the Karma come back around some day. There is no substitute for strong honest principals.

In my organization everyone on the dev team is involved in the product design, unfortunately, the biz team does not get involved in the code design (dev is a little out of their immediate scope). So in a tech start up, the important thing to do is to find the balance of the two that work for your individual biz model while keeping your competitive edge.

I personally happen to be the rare biz/tech combo that is deadly in this industry. I keep my skills honed sharp by coding daily and personally presenting and selling our service every week.

In the end knowing when you need help and when to delegate is critical. No entrepreneur is an island.

I look at my project statuses (both biz and dev) every day, so I know where I need help and where fall short on either side of the coin. And knowing is half the battle.
That my two cents. Heads or tails?

Ciao,

Dylan Rosario
adUup.com – Founder & President