When Search News Isn’t News, It’s Disinformation
June 21, 2008
One of my short essays triggered a number of anonymous emails (the best kind), nasty phone calls (an interesting diversion for me) and Web log comments of varying clarity. The flash point item is here.
I have another project to complete, but this reaction to my short news item about Autonomy winning a search contract from a library in Lyon, France, kept nagging at me. As far as I can tell, Autonomy issued a news release about a renewed license agreement, not a new win.
I want to step back. I am not interested in Autonomy’s deal in Lyon. I am interested in the broader topic of what is new in enterprise search. In a conference call this afternoon, one of the people on the call asked me, “What did you learn from the 18 interviews in the Search Wizards Speak series?”
The answer I gave was, “There were only three of four innovations that struck me as new.”
Let’s consider my comment. I talked with 18 “search wizards” over a period of four months. I can identify only three or four new developments.”
I know that the companies for whom these wizards work have generated news releases. Some pump out publicity every two weeks. Others punch the PR button six or seven times a year. What are these companies announcing that I don’t consider news.
Here is my short list:
- New software versions. This is an item of interest, but it is not going to be picked up by Computerworld.
- Added features or functions. A popular innovation is “social”. The idea is fuzzy but seems to mean that a system user can add index tags or attach a note for any other person who accesses a document or report.
- Deal wins. The vendor lands a contract and issues a news release saying, “We won this big deal.” Shareholders and competitors have more interest in these than I do.
- New hires. This is legitimate news, but the enterprise search industry lacks a Wall Street Journal to gather the executive changes which light the marketing fires at Booz, Allen & Hamilton and McKinsey & Company. These firms write a new hire and say, “Congratulations. We can help you be successful.” Competitors and insurance sales people salivate over such announcements.
What happens when this type of news is diluted with multiple releases of the same information? What is the impact of pumped up version announcements which contain only bug fixes and a couple of add ons? What is the cumulative effect of repeated executive hiring announcements?
My thought is that enterprise search vendors are engaging in disinformation. I don’t think the consumers of the disinformation are potential purchasers, stakeholders, or employees of the company issuing the release.
Nope.
The folks who gobble up enterprise search information are the executives at other enterprise search companies. The search industry, which is under seige by customers and companies offering higher value solutions, is talking to itself.
I grew up in a small town. Information circulated quickly and was chock full of gossip, half truths, and insinuations. The intelligence was parochial; that is, the small town’s thought processes were honed for baloney processing.
When hard data from the “outside world” arrived, few knew how to interpret or put it in its approrpiate context. I think the enterprise search sector is close to becoming the equivallent of a dead end town on the edge of the prairie about 150 miles from a city with a million people.
Enterprise search vendors’ efforts to make sales, build buzz, differentiate themselves, and puff up their achievements are the equivalent of a digital peacock spreading its tail feathers. Other peacocks notices but no one else knows what the heck the squawks and flash mean.
Enterprise search is drifting close to disinformation. The marketing is filled with metaphors and homiletic assurances. The news is often not news; it is the peacock squawk and tail shaking. The licensees are wising up. Users of enterprise search systems are grousing. IT departments are unable to deal with some of the search systems because they are too complex. Options are now available.
What’s the fix? I don’t think there is a magic wand that can address disinformation. Customers will decide. Vendors may be too busy news releasing to one another to notice that the buyers have licensed enterprise applications with search baked in or settled for a plug-and-play solution. When the search vendors’ conversation lapses, their world may have changed without their noticing.
Stephen Arnold, June 21, 2008
Comments
3 Responses to “When Search News Isn’t News, It’s Disinformation”
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Stephen, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you could do more to help by reporting on your experiences with products. Often it seems that you (and, to be fair, most analysts and reporters) are repackaging press releases. So it’s no surprise that vendors put a lot of effort into press releases.
I realize that analysts have mixed feelings about the integrity of vendors, but I hope you realize that the distrust is mutual. Specifically, vendors suspect analysts of shilling for whoever pays them the most.
Everyone would benefit from a more trustworthy marketplace of information. But I don’t think that accusing vendors of disinformation advances the dialog. Instead, it might help if analysts offered more transparency into how they work with vendors, and thus put more pressure on vendors to compete on the merits rather than through battles of press releases or graft.
Hi, Daniel,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I wrote about an Autonomy news release about a project win. I thought it was important because Autonomy won a contract in France. Good stuff, I thought. I wrote a short post. Immediately I received aggressive feedback that the Lyon win for Autonomy was not a win. I patiently responded to those to called this news as not news to my attention. I then sat down and thought about the news I see from vendors in general. I also thought about the announcements in the 19 interviews I have done over the last four months. My objective assessment was that, in general, there is a great deal of news that is not really news. So, if news is not really news, what is it? I poked around in the dust bin of my vocabulary, found the word “disinformation”, and I used the term “disinformation” because it seemed a useful way to describe news that is not news. Writing something labeled a “news release” or “press release”, paying a company to distribute the release, and having stories appear in trade publications (not Web logs) that regurgitate the information in the release is not happenstance. The news release is intentional. I do not know what you would call type of information, but I thought the word “disinformation” was reasonably accurate. Until someone suggests a better word or I come across one, this news that is not news seems like disinformation to me. Maybe I am wrong, but maybe I am not 100 percent incorrect. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I am the type of 64 year old who asserts, “That is a duck.”
Stephen Arnold, June 22, 2008
Stephen, I’m not quite 64, but I’m old-school enough to think that technology companies should be compared on the merits of their technology, rather than the aggressiveness of their marketing departments. I agree that many marketing departments are aggressive, perhaps even to the point of putting out press releases that are misleading or outright dishonest.
In the case of Autonomy’s press release about Lyon, I had thought that the news was legit, but I’ll admit I didn’t verify it independently. What I thought was more important was whether the quality of the search technology and resulting user experience on the site were any good. Perhaps I’m hopelessly naive, but I’d think that would be the more important question on the minds of analysts and their readers.
So, while I accept your point that it’s incumbent on companies to provide real and valuable information, I think it take two. I’d like to see analysts and reporters taking the time to understand and report on the technology in depth. Otherwise, we’ll never get beyond the status quo of dueling press releases.