Recently I came across a startup, called FluidInfo, that is doing an interesting job. Creating a shared database!
At first one might think that this is just another fancy engineering artifact, however when he delves into the large horizons that the concept opens and the big opportunities behind, he will give it a second thought.
The concept is straight forward. The database is open for everyone to push/pull information and data into and from it. It is somehow similar to Wikipedia with some differences in few areas.
So what?
The question that follows is what will this concept, no matter how technically challenging it is, benefit the users or the industry as a whole.
To be able to reply to this question, we should first examine the problem for both users and enterprises. Let’s consider that a user is searching for a review about a certain product, such as electronic device or a car or anything else. His only tool for the moment is Google. He just enters his keywords and clicks search. Then he will have the daunting task to go through the search results dissecting them for meaningful reviews whether from experts or from the public.
Another alternative is to give Wikipedia a try. However, although Wikipedia is a respectful source of information it lacks real “quantifiers”. It can provide you with text and stories but it does not give you a concise assessment in form of a significant value. It is up to the user to draw the conclusion by himself.
FluidInfo thinks it has the solution. What it does is to create a database and open it for the public. The database is structured as objects containing tags. You can think of an object as a subject, and the tags as attributes that contain values and qualify these objects.
For example, consider an object called iPad. It might contain a tag called “satisfaction” where each user can add his own level of satisfaction. This way when someone searches for iPad satisfaction he won’t have to go through different websites to have an idea what is the general opinion of the public, all he can do is to query the iPad object for the “satisfaction” tag.
This is enormous! Think about the time that can be spared by immediately getting the results.
But that’s not all; it is much more promising than that. It might serve for endless type of analysis and the most important it allows the development of numerous types of applications especially decision-helper ones. Imagine that a company needs to take a decision based on some market data; this shared database is able to provide their application with enough figures allowing it to compute a valid assessment.
What’s the hurdle?
Having said that! It does not mean that this will be implemented the next day. To be successful, this type of shared database must appeal to the public just like Twitter did. The adoption of this idea by the public is essential and crucial, without it everything will go down the drain.
May be a good strategy for FluidInfo is to aggressively seek strategic alliances and partnerships with websites and application builders to leverage this concept and make it accessible to all internet users.
At first one might think that this is just another fancy engineering artifact, however when he delves into the large horizons that the concept opens and the big opportunities behind, he will give it a second thought.
The concept is straight forward. The database is open for everyone to push/pull information and data into and from it. It is somehow similar to Wikipedia with some differences in few areas.
So what?
The question that follows is what will this concept, no matter how technically challenging it is, benefit the users or the industry as a whole.
To be able to reply to this question, we should first examine the problem for both users and enterprises. Let’s consider that a user is searching for a review about a certain product, such as electronic device or a car or anything else. His only tool for the moment is Google. He just enters his keywords and clicks search. Then he will have the daunting task to go through the search results dissecting them for meaningful reviews whether from experts or from the public.
Another alternative is to give Wikipedia a try. However, although Wikipedia is a respectful source of information it lacks real “quantifiers”. It can provide you with text and stories but it does not give you a concise assessment in form of a significant value. It is up to the user to draw the conclusion by himself.
FluidInfo thinks it has the solution. What it does is to create a database and open it for the public. The database is structured as objects containing tags. You can think of an object as a subject, and the tags as attributes that contain values and qualify these objects.
For example, consider an object called iPad. It might contain a tag called “satisfaction” where each user can add his own level of satisfaction. This way when someone searches for iPad satisfaction he won’t have to go through different websites to have an idea what is the general opinion of the public, all he can do is to query the iPad object for the “satisfaction” tag.
This is enormous! Think about the time that can be spared by immediately getting the results.
But that’s not all; it is much more promising than that. It might serve for endless type of analysis and the most important it allows the development of numerous types of applications especially decision-helper ones. Imagine that a company needs to take a decision based on some market data; this shared database is able to provide their application with enough figures allowing it to compute a valid assessment.
What’s the hurdle?
Having said that! It does not mean that this will be implemented the next day. To be successful, this type of shared database must appeal to the public just like Twitter did. The adoption of this idea by the public is essential and crucial, without it everything will go down the drain.
May be a good strategy for FluidInfo is to aggressively seek strategic alliances and partnerships with websites and application builders to leverage this concept and make it accessible to all internet users.
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