My first startup -- the late, great MyTrafficNews, (now part of the NavTeq/Nokia/Traffic.com empire) -- had to do with, you guessed it, traffic.
I fancied myself an expert on traffic even before I started that company, and then quickly learned how little I knew. I thought it would be somewhat predictable, and some aspects of it are, but many are not. The main thing I learned, however, is that it is a very emotional issue. People really will add 20 minutes or more to a drive to avoid the chance of a slowdown that may add at most 10 minutes of slow driving.
Traffic is in the news some in these Dog Days because of what looks like a great new book, and of course a slew of interesting blog posts about the book, including this great one from the incomparable Ben Casnocha.
Left Turn
I won't go into my traffic theories, but I do want to tie in a couple of other memes: Traffic and the Google. I wrote recently about Google's new thing called Knol, reporting on the prediction that the big money in Knols would be for those who write about popular topics, say Obama and McCain. I predicted it would actually be in more stuff where there were quick bucks to be made.
I said I'd check back in six months, but it didn't take that long to prove my point.
If you do a Knol search for traffic, the results, as of August 12, are all about Internet Traffic, and how to get more people to visit a site. Most people, I think, asking about traffic are looking for information about the road-clogging stuff, not getting a bunch of clicks. But the Knol results don't have that because they have so many people clamoring to be an expert on getting "eyeballs on pages" (yewwww) that they are trying to be the Knol expert. In other words, they are trying to game the system for some easy money.
My new prediction: Google will figure this out soon enough, and you'll see the results improve, or the project will be killed.
One last thing: When I first wrote about Knol, I compared Google to the National Enquirer. I even put up a picture of some outrageous claims from last year about John Edwards. Then a candidate, Edwards denied it, but it sure seemed likely to me, which is why I posted it. Turns out the Enquirer did have the story right.
Does this prove that Google's Knol is a good idea? In a funny way, yes it does. It proves that sometimes it does actually make sense to pay for something rather than try to get it all for free. Checkbook journalism has it's drawbacks, but it got that story nine months before any of the more ethical journalists.
I'm not spending any of my money at the Supermarket to pay for it, though. No Dilbert.
