Jellyfish Interview: Shopping Search to Disrupt Paid Search as We Know it?
Jellyfish. The to-be released shopping search engine appeared on my radar through my reading and participation in Ed Batista's attention economy conversations. (Ed is awesome, and considerately responds to even my most jackass commentary ;)

Ed actually pointed me to a particular post by Mark McGuire, a Jellyfish founder, about his attention economy-related business application. This post is an excellent resource in itself for better understanding the concept (a concept I'm still in the process of destroying in the interest of using the parts I can't figure out how to break ;)

Brian Smith has an excellent Comparison Engines Jellyfish post too, which I read closely and used to develop my questions for McGuire.

McGuire agreed to answer my questions, but before we get into the interview I'm going to deliver the interview highlights for my click-and-run readers and illustrate what I think PR (and DIY) folks can learn from McGuire's participation marketing efforts.

My Interview Highlights:
"The problem with current [paid search] advertising is that the consumer is cut off from this value; they don’t directly benefit as their attention is sold off at higher and higher rates. In an attention economy, where consumers seek intermediaries that maximize the return on their attention, this will not be acceptable."

Will the Jellyfish model be anything more than paying searchers a little cash for every purchase they end up making with advertisers?

I think it will be, but McGuire remains occluded regarding the model's specifics.

"We have significant plans for community at Jellyfish. You won’t see this in our beta launch, but we think our underlying model creates some really interesting ways to evolve Web 2.0."

I'm excited to watch this emerge, and excited to have the correspondence I do with McGuire at this point because I believe he'll listen if I have good ideas for him :)

McGuire's PR/Marketing Lessons for Tech Startups
1) be a strong thinker and eloquent writer.
2) build buzz by commenting on the right blogs and engaging the right people in your industry with personal emails
3) build suspense by flogging the fact that your model will disrupt the existing model but don't say how ;)

Challenge for Mike Manuel of Media Guerrilla: read this article + check out what Mark McGuire's been doing for himself thus far (his industry participation thus far... ping me or him for more details). If he hired you what could you do for him that he's not already doing for himself?

What would you add or do differently?

What does his strong DIY execution (in my opinion) mean about the value of PR in the new media era?

Why was I - and Ed Batista and Brian Smith - inspired to write about his project?

Without further ado I give you my first interview with Mark McGuire of Jellyfish:

>> what in your professional background best prepared you for your current challenges at Jellyfish?
Before starting Jellyfish, Brian Wiegand and I co-founded NameProtect.com, a vertical search company that helps large brand holders protect themselves online from a range of risks (phishing, counterfeit sales, domain abuse, traffic diversion, affiliate compliance, etc.)

My experience helping to grow NameProtect from a concept to a profitable company has been invaluable from an execution standpoint and it gave me a helpful background in online marketing and lead generation as well.

>>what has been easier than you thought it would be thus far?
Nothing is easy in a start up. Brian and I are really lucky to have a fantastic team that believes as much as we do that online advertising has to do more for the end consumer.

>>what has been harder?
Building a new search engine obviously has its challenges. It isn’t something you can do overnight.

And actually, one of the hardest things thus far was finding a good brand. Have you tried to register a domain name lately?

>>define advertising in an attention economy
Lots of people ask what the value of attention is, and one answer is to look to advertising. Media (from television/radio/newspapers to the Internet) has been putting a price on your attention for a long time and selling it as advertising.

The really interesting thing about the Internet in general, and search in particular, is the way attention can be captured, measured and sold to the highest bidder.

Goto.com really pioneered an attention marketplace with their PPC advertising auction that Google has taken into the mainstream (John Battelle has referred to this as a NASDAQ-like market).

The problem with current advertising is that the consumer is cut off from this value; they don’t directly benefit as their attention is sold off at higher and higher rates. In an attention economy, where consumers seek intermediaries that maximize the return on their attention, this will not be acceptable.

So I think advertising gives us a starting point, but it needs to evolve to keep up with a world where consumers understand their attention has value, and they control where they give their attention.

>>define "attention" as it relates to Jellyfish
Our mission at Jellyfish is to provide consumers with an easy way to obtain maximum benefit from the most valuable form of attention they provide online: their buying attention.

We plan to allow the existing advertising system to set a value on buying attention, but we have come up with a new kind of search marketplace where that value will be more equitable allocated among the advertiser, us, and the end consumer.

Our goal is to use advertising to create a new form of attention currency.

>> define Jellyfish - is it a comparison shopping engine?
Jellyfish leverages elements of the current CSE’s, but we have evolved the underlying paid search advertising model to create a new value proposition for online consumers.

We like to call it the Internet’s first buying engine because we significantly change the buying equation for consumers.

>> why the model secrecy when, as you've said yourself, the core of your offering is transparency? Afterall - if your model works it probably won't take much time to copy, right? So why keep a lid on the offering itself when in actuallity it won't be the model that makes you successful but the manner in which you execute?

We are a start up company with what we think is a great new business model. We want to give ourselves every first mover advantage there is, and waiting until launch to provide the details of the model is certainly one advantage.
We also like patent lawyers. :-)

>> who could transparency (in your emerging model) hurt? A Jellyfish has stingers afterall ;)
The existing search intermediaries that connect buyers and sellers are keeping too much of the value being created.

We hope to change the way people think about buying online, which will have implications for these intermediaries.

>> what role does search play in Jellyfish?
We are a search engine that is optimized to connect buyers and sellers in an efficient and equitable manner.
Consumers will use us like they would any other search engine, but our model will provide them with a new value proposition tied to the value of their attention.

>> what role does social data play in Jellyfish?
We have significant plans for community at Jellyfish.

You won’t see this in our beta launch, but we think our underlying model creates some really interesting ways to evolve Web 2.0.

>> how can users ever really trust what the advertisers say? In other words, how can you enforce transparency on your advertisers? ...how do you make transparency pay them?
The consumer is our focus. In reality, our model will make advertising transparent. From the consumer perspective we get rid of advertising and substitute it with additional value for them.

If you are sick of advertising and think search engines make too much money, you should love Jellyfish.

>> how many people on your dev team?
We don’t disclose employee numbers.

>> how are you funded right now?
Combination of seed and self-funding at present.

The remaining question of course: so what is this frikking model going to look like? How can Jellyfish help shoppers gain the true value of their attention? Could this model be disruptive beyond the web?

And... well, I have to admit that I wonder if he's pulling a Barnum and Bailey on me and hyping up a program where searchers "get paid" to search. Given the quality of the thought on his blog though I think it will be something far more sophisticated than that.

McGuire actually offered to tell me about the model but I declined - I knew if he told me I'd end up over protecting him and under-discussing. That's why I kept on him about answering my questions in his words - I figured that would give you a stronger idea of the outlines of the concept he's running with before he launches.

I want to point out to my PR readers out there that it's a testament to the quality of his participation efforts thus far that he could - through hints and innuendo regarding his business model - win himself some strong niche attention from industry experts like Ed Batista, Brian Smith and Garrett M-F-ing French ;)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |