Google co-founder Sergey Brin guest lectures at a computer science class at UC Berkeley. He may not be the most dynamic public speaker, but one of the most brilliant Internet minds has a lot to say.

Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business. The World Wide Web brings much of the world’s knowledge into the reach of nearly everyone with a computer and an internet connection. The availability of huge quantities of information at our fingertips is transforming government, business, and many other aspects of society. Topics include search advertising and auctions, search and privacy, search ranking, internationalization, anti-spam efforts, local search, peer-to-peer search, and search of blogs and online communities.

Wired editor in chief Chris Andersen included the following commentary about scale and “Freemium” open source business models when he posted this video on his blog. I don’t ordinarily quote other people’s blog posts in their entirety, but here is a profound exception.

In this talk at UC Berkeley, Google’s Sergey Brin confesses (at minute 1:27) that he thought Wikipedia couldn’t work. Most people wouldn’t contribute, he rightly assumed, and it would never reach critical mass.

He was in good company. In the classic “free rider” problem, you imagine an elementary school class with 20 students. If only two parents (10%) agree to volunteer to  help out as room parents and drive on field trips, the whole system breaks down: there aren’t enough helpers and the two parents get angry at the others for not joining in. And that’s exactly what Brin assumed would happen with Wikipedia.

But he was wrong, he says, because he–even he!–had underestimated the way scale can change the game. Sure, the experts say only 1% of Wikipedia’s users actually contribute to making it better. Indeed, if you do the math, it’s even worse than that: probably closer to 0.01% (today, Wikipedia has 75,000 active contributors out of 684 million visitors). But that 0.01% have created 10 million articles.

Most people don’t contribute, just as Brin had feared, but it doesn’t matter because the tiny fraction that do are a tiny fraction of an absolutely whopping number.

The lesson is that more is different. The Internet, by giving everybody access to a market of hundreds of millions of people, can work at participation rates that would be a disaster in the traditional world of non-zero marginal costs. YouTube works with just 0.1% of users uploading their own videos. Spammers can make a fortune with response rates of 0.00001%. (To give you some context, in my business of magazines, response rates of less than 2% on direct-mail subscription offers are considered a failure.)

This is the underlying logic of the Freemium business model, which uses the near-zero marginal cost of online distribution to reach the maximum possible audience, converting just a tiny fraction of them to paid users.

That’s impossible for traditional products, which usually have non-zero marginal costs. You can’t mail a brownie to everyone in the world on the hopes that a tiny fraction of them will come back for more. But on the Internet, it’s not only possible, it’s the smartest strategy.

That’s why Freemium is so new (it was waiting for a zero-cost distribution method), and so counterintuitive to many people. Freemium doesn’t work with the small numbers we’re used to in daily life. Getting 5% of 100 people to pay for your software is no business, and in the traditional world it takes expensive marketing to reach more people than that.  But getting 5% of 100,000 people to pay for your software is a very nice business indeed, and online it costs virtually nothing to reach that many potential customers.

This is the point that everyone seems to miss: Free is not a business–it’s zero-cost marketing for a business. And it works best at the largest scale: a small percentage of a big number is a big number.

Stuart Cohen, a software company CEO, argues that the freemium business model of open source software—give away the code, charge for the support—is broken because open source software is so good it doesn’t need much support. Putting aside whether that’s true or not, he defines “broken” as “not meeting investor expectations.” An alternative view is that investor expectations for open source software business are unrealistic, and the benefits are felt mostly in cost savings by the users, not revenues to the creators.

Imagine that: delivering on our promises so well that we can’t charge people to redo what we said we’d do in the first place. That doesn’t sound like a problem. It sounds like a solution to lots of entrenched problems.

For those new to the concept of Open Sourcing, here it is in a nutshell. In the early 1990s, upstart computer programmers discovered that the best way to solve common problems with the then-emerging Internet technology was to collaborate with others who shared an interest, but lacked the necessary time and resources to solve the problems on their own. “Open source” refers to their practice of allowing anyone, including potential competitors, to view and even improve upon source code – the underlying instructions that make computer software work – by making the code publicly available online, and permitting potential users to download the software for free. This radical departure from business-as-usual fueled the development of the World Wide Web, and its innovations empowered the information age in which we now live.

On the Internet platform it helped create, Open Source methodology has evolved beyond just programming practices to social networking, content creation, media production, political campaigning, publishing, and even commerce. The big idea animating my work these days: that open sourcing education reform might actually transform public education in America before this fall’s first graders graduate high school in 2020. See 20/20 Vision for Schools for more.

My recent article “Beyond the Noise” was syndicated last week at Relevant magazine’s Neue Ministry e-Journal and at Ed Gilbreath’s UrbanFaith.com. In October, it appeared in print in the Tri-State Voice, and online at Next Wave e-zine.

“They” say the internet empowers “Long Tail” distribution of ideas, products, and services. Actually, it interconnects lots of long tails. Glad to be among them.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the person who coined the term in 2004, describes the theory of the Long Tail like this: “As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.” He also blogs about it here. For a more technical description, see this. Andrew Jones offers a less technical explanation for the rest of us here.

If the connection between “Beyond the Noise,” Long Tails, and social change is unclear, I apologize for not having the time to complete my thought. I’ll just park it for now and hopefully return to it later, when I feel wagged by an even longer tail.

Cyrus (at 1 week) / Judah (at 1 week)

If the PictoBrowser doesn’t work in your browser, view all 24 Week 2 pics on Flickr here. Enjoy all Cyrus photo sets (four and growing) here.

Thanks to Food Network for another successful Thanksgiving Feast.  Top turkey tip for 2008: brining. For future reference:

Mix and match two brining recipes:

• Emeril’s Brined and Roasted Turkey
• Wolfgang Puck’s Brined Roast Turkey and Pan Gravy

Paula Deen’s Wayne’s Cranberry Sauce

Bobby Flay’s Country Bread and Sage Dressing

My name is William Poon. I’m a senior from Stuyvesant High School and co-president of Stuyvesant’s chapter of Seekers Christian Fellowship. I was not raised in a Christian home but luckily to loving parents. Since my birth, my parents have gotten divorced, I have moved four times, my mom has filed for bankruptcy while I was living with her, and hated God while all this was happening. But now these are the things I am thankful for.

God has used the suffering in my life to bring forth fruit. It is because of the divorce that my parents can talk more freely with each other now and are having a better relationship with each other. Both have gotten married and I now have 6 siblings, three half sisters, two step sisters, and one half brother, sometimes all a pain, but definitely always a blessing. It was the bankruptcy that led my mom to her salvation which brought me to church. I got saved several years later after fighting with my mom about church and God, and wanting to have nothing to go with Him in my life. I love my dad, who though is not saved, supports me in whatever I do. I thank God for my family who brought me up in this harsh world.

I’m thankful for my salvation, which has brought me into wonderful new families and relationships. My church has helped me to grow in my faith. I have found a second home away from home in Stuyvesant’s Seekers Christian Fellowship in which I have come to love and now lead. They have been my rock in helping me to stay in my faith at Stuyvesant. This year I have found new friends in the other Seekers that have helped me to truly realize and see that I’m not alone. There are other fellow Christians in this city who are in high school fighting the same battles I am.

I’m thankful for all of you people reading this, because you guys are the reason that I’m still here at Seekers and just simply a Christian.

I just wanted to break out and share myself with you this Thanksgiving and encourage you to spend some time with God everyday and give thanks.

Thanksgiving. Take a second and look at that word. When we say it, what usually comes to mind would be turkey, massive amounts of food, gaining some weight, family, and of course, Black Friday shopping at 12 AM.

But take a look again at the word. Sometimes we overlook the truly obvious things. It in itself is a noun that simply says, to be thankful for what we have been given, or to give thanks.

In Webster’s Dictionary under Thanksgiving, this is found:

Thanks”giv`ing\, n.

1. The act of rending thanks, or expressing gratitude for favors or mercies.

Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving. –1 Tim. iv. 4.

2. A public acknowledgment or celebration of divine goodness; also, a day set apart for religious services, specially to acknowledge the goodness of God, either in any remarkable deliverance from calamities or danger, or in the ordinary dispensation of his bounties.

Note: In the United States it is now customary for the President by proclamation to appoint annually a day (usually the last Thursday in November) of thanksgiving and praise to God for the mercies of the past year. This is an extension of the custom long prevailing in several States in which an annual Thanksgiving day has been appointed by proclamation of the governor.

If we look at Psalms 100, we see a Psalm which in its subtitle states: a psalm for giving thanks.

1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his [a] ;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

During these times, especially this year, we might think it hard to find a reason or cause for giving thanks. Many people have lost their homes, their jobs, and are barely getting by. The US economy is at its lowest in years, and we are still at war with terrorists.
God made us in his image with the ability to both complain and give thanks. Which one will we choose to do this Thanksgiving?

How can we Give Thanks to God this Day?

In Psalm 100, David tells us how.

In verse 1, he tells us to simply “SHOUT for joy to the LORD.” For our God is the creator of each and every single one of our lives, and in the bigger picture, the Universe itself. He is a God who is merciful and who does not forget the covenant He makes with His people. He does not forsake us, especially in our time of need.

In verse 2, we should “WORSHIP the LORD with gladness.” We should worship God with our lives and show how glad we are to have the Lord of all creation watching over us. Let us “COME before him with joyful songs.” Let’s break out into song and be joyful in what we have.

In verse 3, David tells us to “KNOW that the LORD is God.” We are His people and the sheep of his pasture. He will never let us stray so far that He cannot bring us back to Him.

In verse 4, we should “ENTER his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.” Let us be full of praise wherever we go this holiday and spread His love. “GIVE THANKS to him and PRAISE his name.” Let us give thanks this Thanksgiving for giving us breath, for our lives, for the clothes on our backs, and for our salvation.

In verse 5, David gives us the greatest reason of all to give thanks to our God. It is “For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” So let us gather and meditate today on how good and awesome our God is. Let us think about what He has done for us in our lives and how He will continue to be faithful to us for the rest of our lives.

I just wanted to share this with all of you and to tell you what I’m thankful for. And hopefully you will do the same and bless someone’s life this Holiday.

Thank you for reading this extra long letter.

God bless and Eat lots of Turkey guys :]

Giving Thanks,
William Poon

PS Don’t forget to thank God you aren’t a turkey XD

A psalm. For giving thanks.

1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.

3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.