Data-driven startups should know by now that out of the gate, transforming data into cold hard cash requires a lot more than just showing up with a great team and a great idea. A holodeck would be ideal, but until we live in the future, we found one useful analysis that breaks down steps to filling up your bank account with data - and our translation of his model for wider application.

Two years ago, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian was telling us that one of the sexiest (his term) future jobs was going to be related to statisticians wrangling data. No one disagreed, as stacks were piling up and a variety of needs were emerging, but what seemed to be missing were the connections between data and desire: crafting complex scaling into commodity, and connecting producers and consumers of data in harmonious, profitable and hopefully long-term relationships.

It's no surprise that in the time since Varian's opining (2008), we've seen oodles of small startups setting their sights to capitalize on Big Data. And now, we're learning from their failures. But Big Data doesn't need to be the place bright startups go to die. After a number of startup breakups with El Data Grande, Pete Warden came up with a tangible analysis of what the path is from stacks to riches. How To Turn Data Into Money is one way to approach a complex topic in a landscape of changing tools, and it's well worth a look. He describes the process of identifying how to make data turn a profit. Warden reinforces the notion that we're still in the early days of really knowing where the 'big wins' are with Big Data.

The overall issue is this: From the outlay, many startups are going to be sitting on a large bucket of data but won't be in a position to imediately know where the monetization sweet spot lies. As Warden suggests, they will have to go through a series of processes that enables them to zero in on how to provide the maximum amount of value by iterating in partnership with their customers/users.

Warden begins with suggesting the first step might be to summarize the data and provide simple graphs. This allows everyone, your customers and your own team, to really understand what the data might show.

As feedback is obtained from this initial process, key metrics and other indicators can be focused on in reports. This will begin to allow you to answer specific questions that will (hopefully) be of value to your customers.

It's no surprise that your customers, once identified, are going to be where you go for answers to their needs. Iterating your business in response to working with your customers - which is always valuable no matter what vertical you are in - will ultimately bring you to a point where you can provide business intelligence and actionable recommendations for your customers based on what they are already doing with the data.

Being able to point out specific trends, suggestions and points of friction (contextual to your data's domain) should be of great value and something your current and future customers will be willing to pay for.

Finally, Warden touches on how your shiny data should be presented - dashboards are commonplace, but clearly we're in very early days in this space. What's important to remember is that what's being built here is a combination of product and consultation. If you need an initial framework to begin tackling the problem Warden's post works as a great framework, but given that Big Data could be about anything, you will need to consider your domain space, the nature of the data and your own expertise to be able to know whether this will work for you.

What we do know is that this space is going to be competitive (and rapidly changing) and remaining nimble will ultimately be crucial to success or failure.

How To Turn Data Into Money (petewarden.typepad.com)
Image via the USGS Data Dictionary.

Until recently no one had taken it upon themselves to do concentrated, outsider examination of the News Feed - Top News versus Most Recent (both are filtered) - to see what's going on. Tom Weber staged a one-month experiment to unpack the algorithm, and came out with 10 of Facebook's secrets - and if you're crafty, a way to game the News Feed to ensure that you come up more often than others.

What Daily Beast's Weber wanted to know was why we see the News Feed selections we're presented with - specifically, how friends' clicks dictate which networks you're shown, if certain activities are rewarded with exposure (especially when they're seemingly unmerited), and how one can work their way into certain people's feeds. All from an individual user's standpoint.

They started with Phil Simonetti - a Facebook newbie who let Weber have full run of his activities - and over two dozen volunteers who agreed to sift through their news feeds and report back any and all findings relevant to the experiments. Their overall findings could be pretty valuable to anyone seeking content distribution, especially marketers. For those who use quality engagement as a priority, some of the findings won't be a surprise, such as:

(...) 7. Links Trump Status Updates. We're sure you consider all of your musings fascinating--but Facebook doesn't. At various points in our test, Phil switched between writing plain status updates and posting links to content elsewhere on the Web. Even before some of our friends began stalking Phil, for those who were seeing updates from him, links appeared more frequently than status updates--presumably because links are more effective at driving "user engagement," which translates into people spending more time on Facebook.

8. Photos and Videos Trump Links. Just as links proved more potent than status updates in making it past Facebook's filter, so did photos and videos Phil posted. Here, too, it is likely a matter of engagement. Think about times you've spotted a thumbnail-size photo from a friend in your feed and clicked to see it full-size. Facebook likes clicks, and photos deliver them.

9. The Power of Comments.(...)

Cracking the Facebook Code (thedailybeast.com)

Think you live in a startup hotspot? If you're reading this, you probably do - but you may not be visualizing just how hot (or not) your location is. For some entrepreneurs location is everything, while others might be intrigued to discover areas of activity in countries or cities they didn't expect.

Our Startups by Zip Codes post covered the United States, but a global overview is what we really want. To this effect, we were excited to see that data science blogger ?ukasz Kostka (Datalysed.com) made a nifty startup map using the CrunchBase API and CloudMade Maps. The map is merely an overview; companies without a physical address were omitted.

It would be interesting to factor in "homeless" startups, as that would add a layer of more competitive locations (which tend to be expensive locations). Until then, it's fascinating to peel open the map and poke around Africa to see who's doing what.

The Startup Map (datalysed.com)

Perhaps it's the usual mistrust people assign to corporate executives. Yet Jobs is no stranger to controversy around saying one thing - and then announcing another. As it turns out, two Stanford researchers have recently been studying the truthiness of CEOs and devised a formula for red-flagging deceptive CEO statements. Jobs seems to get a mixed score.

We can evaluate online debate about what Jobs says and what he means, and then what Apple does, until we're weary. Lucky for us, someone else has done this work on a much wider scale. Stanford University researchers Anastasia Zakolyukina and David Larcker set out to find a way to tell when CEO's are lying, and studied thousands of earnings calls for definitive patterns.

In How Can You Tell When A CEO Is Lying? the researchers present us with a few indicators:

• Lying executives tend to overuse words like "we" and "our team" when they talk about their company and avoid saying "I"
• Overuse of words that express positive emotion ('fantastic,' 'superb,' 'outstanding,' 'excellent')
• When the CEO does not answer the question directly; refers to others

This would be like asking a CEO if they plan to put video on the iPod, and getting an answer about what "people" think of watching video on an iPod. As an example of CEO misdirection, NPR has their own to compare with the researchers' "referral to others" point:

For instance, in 2002 NPR interviewed Computer Associates CEO Sanjay Kumar, who later went to prison for securities fraud, about his company's auditing practices.

Here's what he said: "There's no one out there today in the world of public companies who has the former chief accountant for the SEC running their audit committee. We do. There's no one out there who has the pre-eminent governance leader, professor [Jay] Lorsch, for example, running their governance committee. We do."

In other words, Kumar was asked, "Can your books be trusted?" And he replied by saying, "We hire the very best auditors." Larcker says that can be a big warning sign.

The researchers acknowledge their methodology is not foolproof. But others have applied their own methodology to Apple's CEO (specifically, his statements) and reached their own conclusions.

Today, cNet reaches back to 2003 to call Jobs an all-out liar:

• In 2003, in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the All Things D conference, Jobs said Apple wouldn't do well in the cell phone business. Flash forward a few years.
• During that same interview, he said Apple was not working on a tablet. "There are no plans to make a tablet," Jobs said. "It turns out people want keyboards.... We look at the tablet, and we think it is going to fail." Apparently, Apple filed a patent in 2004 for a tabletlike device. It may have been related to the iPhone, but to completely write off the tablet concept seems a tad suspect (of course, touch-screen technology has changed between 2004 and 2010).

This was along the lines of a February post where Brian Chen detailed Jobs' skills at verbal misdirection and broke down individual statements:

(...) Not Interested in the Cellphone Business In that same interview with Mossberg, Jobs said he didn't feel Apple would fare well in the cellphone business.

"I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out. We believe cellphones are going to carry this information. We didn't think we'd do well in the cellphone business. What we've done instead is we've written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cellphones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA."

Of course, in hindsight that quote served as a clue that Apple wasn't making a traditional cellphone, but rather a brand new device that fused the characteristics of an iPod, a PDA and a cellphone into one. The result was the iPhone. Still, a tricky statement nonetheless. (...)

In the above example, Jobs breaks one of the key indicators of the Stanford researchers' deception model by using an "I" statement, but then combines it with overuse of team language. This could all be nothing more than a case of seeing what someone says when they don't really want to answer your question. However, in the ongoing game of rumors and product announcements a company's relationship with its customers, media, and investors might be seen as an economy of confidence.

Do you think Jobs passes the researchers' truthiness test? If you're thinking that the only way we could know for sure is if there were a program to analyze CEO statements, the researchers are already a step ahead. Larcker and Zakolyukina have used their data to create a "speech detector" that issues red flags when signs of deception pop up. But until we get our hands on a CEO Lie Detector, we can read the results of their study in this .PDF.

Image from today's Live Blog: Apple's "Back to the Mac" Event (iLife, OS X Lion, New Macbook Air).

As Sullivan notes, it's quite different than the social search partnership Bing and Facebook rolled out last week. In Bing's new social search results, they only show users what's been shared by Facebook connections. Google, clearly flexing its search muscles, is looking to extend users' social search reach much further.

Earlier this month, Google tested Twitter integration with "friends" to news results, but the inclusion of multiple social networks is looking like a bold and significant change.

We saw that Google Social Search launched in Labs last October, so this development isn't coming as a complete shocker for everyone. But where they're going with it is interesting to observe. In Sullvan's post, he drills into what people are seeing when they follow the breadcrumb trail, providing a glimpse of what could be just the beginning of Google's move toward becoming a force in the social sphere: becoming a social utility.

Clicking on the "Shared by" links takes you to Google Realtime search, where you are shown all the people who are sharing that particular news story through services such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

In The Wake Of Bing & Facebook, Google Web Search Tests Getting More Social (searchengineland.com)

The takeaway? Don't toss the baby. It's your moneymaker.

Flowtown's chart argues that not only do loyal customers give businesses a competitive edge, but they can be pretty profitable (especially when you factor in the cost of new customers, which can be 6-7% higher than your existing base). It's a sentiment that's being felt all-around especially when companies like AmEx tell us they see entrepreneurs shoring up losses by engaging with, retaining, and reaping the rewards of mining existing customers.

Flowtown's findings seem to back this up. Click below to view the company's infographic full-size on the Flowtown site.

The Value of an Existing Customer (flowtown.com)

The results of 2010? Not in yet. But along with Leatherbound, we found a few really cool and unusual apps that might help you find your way out of a desperate situation or two. Or into one, depending on how you use them.

First, we have to find a place to work. Need a desk and a place to plug in? Desksnearme (The Rad Warlike Annex) is the app that generations of roving gangs of laptop-laden, desk-seeking keyboard monkeys have needed for years. The app detects your location, then brings up a variety of coworking spaces nearby.

Next, get it together. Splendid Bacon (Kiskonians Dancing in Lab Coats) is a simple, straightforward project management app that looks like a tasty way to layer your BLT. Telling us that most project management software is like hunting butterflies with a shotgun, SB offers an ultra-lean app they deem "for hackers" but looks so easy to use it might even be great for kids and homework.

Motivation Dashboard (The Cow Pilots) is a snap-easy way to create a custom dashboard for a variety of thing you want to keep an eye on: data visualization of everything from analytics and support requests in Get Satisfaction, down to Twitter hashtags.

A hot rival to Movitvation Dashboard, Statefulapp (The League of Evil Coders) has a polished look and an on-the-go style.

When you're done feeling all organized, it's obviously time for a beer. Perhaps you may also want to send one to your favorite Ruby dev as she recovers from fire ant attacks - for this, Pint.me (BeerMe, Something WItty) is a dreamy app for buying someone a beer anywhere, anytime. In a perfect world, anyway.

Keep track of all the delicious beers you drink with Beer Check-In (Indiana Coders). Or just drink a whole lot more to wash the creep factor off after checking out StudGuru (StudGuru), the app designed for guys who want to fool women into thinking they care about things they actually don't. We love to be tricked into thinking "You're Thoughtful & Romantic!" And nothing says you care like automated relationship maintenance.

See also: My Favorites From Rails Rumble 2010 (Zach Holman)

A close look at Twitter's Terms reveals that Twitter can do pretty much anything it wants with photos you publish via its service, and there isn't much you can do about it. Granted, third-party photo sharing services' (like TwitPic) various Terms are of equal concern. And people who use Twitter for "throwaway" photos won't care, but this revelation is a serious concern for professional photographers who legally can't sell "exclusive" rights to any image they publish through Twitter. That's because once it's on Twitter, it's no longer "exclusive."

CARL Book Beacon picked up the story and noted how this affects not just the pros, but anyone who might care what happens to their photos:

It's OK, we're librarians, we know no one actually reads words any more. Here're the juicy parts:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

OH WAIT. THEY GET TO USE MY STUFF FOR FREE? What if I don't want photographs of Aunt Edna's 80th birthday party used commercially? I mean, I was wearing a very ugly hat that day, and I had stains on my shirt.

But wait, there's more!
You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

THEY CAN SELL IT TO THIRD PARTIES, LIKE THE AP, AND I GET NO REMUNERATION, BUT TWITTER DOES? So, like, if I just so happen to be at a major event, snap some pictures as it unfolds, and Tweet them from my phone for my friends to see, they could end up being sold to CNN or the Associated Press, and SOMEONE makes money off of my good luck (or hard work) and it's not me?

Twitter can do WHAT with your photos? (via Techmeme)
Image via iconfinder.

Update: While debate rages about what it means for "Content on or through the Services" it's worth nothing that when Chrome launched in 2008 we pointed out a similar ToS issue in Does Google Have Rights to Everything You Send Through Chrome? As it happens, Google responded to the controversy by removing the section. Meanwhile, comparisons made to Flickr and YouTube ToS are notable in that users grant the site a non-exclusive, royalty-free license that agrees to allow the site to display their images without paying any money - a user controls the copyright/license to her photo or video unless she chooses to surrender it. (These are also - unlike Twitter - primary content hosting services.)

Editor's Note: Photography blogger Michael Zhang has posted a critique of this coverage and argued that the concerns raised here misplaced. His post is worth reading as well.

Dan Provost may have had minimal goals, but demand for The Glif from iPhone users turned his project pledge page into a swarming hotspot for pledge contributions from backers simply placing their own pre-orders. Glif's function is simple: increase the functionality of the iPhone as a camera by making it tripod-ready, and add a kickstand for hands-free use. With a snappy demo video and stellar product sample photos, Provost (and co) now have thousands of eager backers.

Glif Montage from Glif on Vimeo.

Thomas Gerhardt and Dan Provost are the designers behind The Glif. They wanted a tripod for what they call "the best camera" they've ever owned. Then they realized The Glif makes a nifty stand for all kinds of purposes. With the iPhone propped upright on any flat surface, FaceTime, video watching and enjoying a variety of apps can be a hands-free experience. It seems that the Android EVO's handy built-in kickstand is finally getting an iPhone rival.

Upon announcement, their Kickstarter page was slammed with $50K in just a few days. With the current rate of pre-orders, meeting their original funding goal times ten entirely through croudsourcing makes a nifty marriage between a great idea and Kickstarter's methodology of directly funding creatives. They only have 19 days to go, The Glif is $20, and they're offering international shipping for $8.

Photos from The Gilf.