Delver Scooped Up by Sears Holdings
March 10, 2009
The Chicago Tribune, a dead tree outfit, reported on March 10, 2009, “Sears Holdings Corp. Acquires Delver.com, an Israel-Based Social Search Engine Company”. You can read the story here. There’s a bit of financial tap dancing around the deal. It comes after Google emphasized that it wasn’t interested in grabbing Twitter, one of the hot social search services in the US. What’s Sears’s (the once dominant retail operation) know about social search that Google doesn’t? My hunch is that if Google goes slowly, it might be wise to step back and assess social search if the buyer is not a tech savvy outfit like the GOOG. Who knows? Maybe Sears’s executives know something Google doesn’t? Delver is here. Statsaholic charts comparing Delver and Twitter are here.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Dead Tree Publishers Try Reforestation
March 10, 2009
PaidContent.org published a round up of several traditional publishers’ plans to generate revenue from digital content. You can read “@FT Digital Media: Newspapers’ Digital Biz Models: Guardian, FT, Bloomberg” here. The article provides snapshots of the angles of attack on the revenue problem. I don’t want to spoil your fun as you work your way through the case histories that have, after years of effort, generated modest life-saving cash. Bloomberg faces several challenges even though it figured out how to get money from the Wall Street crowd. The other two outfits are paddling furiously as ad revenues sink. My take is that the old B school essay about buggy whips is probably a useful read for these publishers.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Amazon Out Googles Google… Again
March 10, 2009
This is like watching reruns of Batman. Every week (well, maybe not that often), Amazon announces another cloud service or technology breakthrough. On a shoestring, compared to Google’s and Microsoft’s R&D and infrastructure budget, Amazon continues to out maneuver these arch rivals.
The most recent example I saw was this story “How Amazon Builds the World’s Most Scalable Storage” by Robin Harris. The wonderful thing about this type of publicity is that only readers privy to the story secrets of Google, Microsoft, and others know whether the assertion is accurate or a bit of flexible reality. Please, read the story here and make up your own mind.
I am less interested in the technology Amazon used to get an indulgence from the sins of its storage past and more interested in the way in which Google looks a bit slow. Don’t get me wrong. My research suggests that Google has a more sophisticated data storage and data management system than Amazon. I have read enough Google open source technical papers to know that Google has some next generation storage and dataspace technology moving from the lab to user. Technology is not the issue. Public relations and marketing are.
For me the most interesting comment in Mr. Harris’ article was: “Amazon Web Services will dwarf their products business within a decade.” Wow. This means that Amazon’s present revenue and its growth projections will be a small part of a far larger revenue stream. I can relax my mental turnbuckles and read into this bold assertion that Amazon will be the big cumulus in the cloud computing sky.
Say this type of big idea enough times and it is possible a self fulfilling prophecy could take place. Will Google respond? Will Microsoft? I don’t think either company will do much, which concedes the assertion to Amazon. That’s how one might create an impression of technical superiority without providing fungible evidence.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Link Champ: YouTube.com
March 10, 2009
TechCrunch ran an interesting list of the Web logs which are link magnets. You can find the story “The 50 Media Sites Bloggers Link To The Most” here. The number one site? YouTube.com. My take on this is that the other 49 sites may want to recognize that text is not the top dog in the link world. Good news or bad news? If I were one of the traditional media companies looking at YouTube’s exhaust pipe, I would rethink how I present content before it is too late. One the other hand, it may already be too late and YouTube.com is defining the future of information for the under 24 demographic. Now we need a break through in video search.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Microsoft and Search Anxiety Disorder
March 10, 2009
In an article titled “OK. We Get it. Microsoft Wants a Search Deal with Yahoo” here, I noticed a slight shift in Microsoft’s impact on the author, Sam Diaz. For me the most interesting item in the write up was the lead paragraph; to wit:
Is it just me or does it feel like Microsoft is starting to sound – quite frankly – a bit desperate for a search deal with Yahoo?
Microsoft has been plugging away with Web search for years. Microsoft has bought companies like Fast Search & Transfer and Powerset. Microsoft has funded innovative search development. MIcrosoft has marketed its heart out. To what end? Google not only dominates in Web search, Google delights in making modest moves, content to sit back and watch the $65 billion giant in Redmond respond with bold, expensive, and so far ineffectual moves.
Professional journalists and consultants have largely avoided the direct, trenchant analyses that I offer in my seminars and addled goose postings. “Desperate” is a strong word. In my opinion, the word is not spot on. Google may be moving to the end game in Web search, poised to unleash its programmable search engine on a broader scale and then make available its even more interesting dataspace technology.
Is the coverage of Microsoft about to change?
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Dinosaur Conference Starved with Limited Quarry
March 10, 2009
A short item to underscore the sad state of the dinosaur conference. I have been a critic of the traditional trade. These “networking events” — a new phrase much loved by organizers — cost attendees and exhibitors a lot of money. The programs are usually info mercials and not particularly compelling info mercials at that. The brontosaurus of European tech conferences is or maybe was Cebit Macworld reports that this yea’s edition experienced a downturn in attendance. You can read “Cebit Sees Big Drop in Visitor Numbers” here. In a nicely crafted understatement, Macworld said:
The drop comes as little surprise considering the current state of the global economy. Many companies have cut back or eliminated travel budgets and Cebit itself saw around 1,000 mostly Asian exhibitors cancel during the last three months of 2008 after economic problems hit.
That was a news flash. Economic troubles are not exactly invisible. I am not sure what conference organizers are going to invent to address the nuclear winter that may be approaching for the old fashioned trade show. Some pundits skip conferences, leaving them to the sales professionals. Information is often available more quickly and in more easily analyzed form via Web logs and even Twitter or live blog posts from those attending. Maybe boutique or niche conferences are the way forward. I don’t know. I rely on my trusty Internet connection to find wheat and chaff in the grist mill.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
Twitter Bashing Not
March 10, 2009
Network World’s “To Tweet or Not to Tweet, That’s Not an Option” is an interesting write up about Twitter here. Twitter is a micro blogging service much loved by the mobile phone crowd under the age of 24. Most oldsters in heart and mind don’t understand why anyone would want to know that someone is eating breakfast. I suppose an Athenian would express similar surprise after listening to a chunk of Iliad and then having a colleague point out the wonders of the haiku. The article includes a link to a video with tips for social networking. This is another one of those info pellets designed to eliminate the need for a person who in theory knows something to write a sentence or two. For me, the most interesting comment in the semi clever article was:
Even if my explanations so far aren’t enough to persuade you to put some serious effort into “getting” Twitter” just consider that according to a blog entry on Compete.com in February this year Twitter ranks as the third largest social network with 6 million users and 55 million monthly visitors (it is only beaten by Facebook and MySpace, No. 1 and No. 2 respectively).
A good snip for my Twitter file and maybe yours too. Hey, with a url that would be a Tweet.
Stephen Arnold, March 10, 2009
More Search Pricing Thoughts
March 9, 2009
I track the floor license fees for a number of search and content processing products. A “floor” price is one below which the vendor will not sell his / her product. A freeware author sets a floor price of zero. Any revenue that accrues must come from donations, services, or maybe a custom programming job. The big enterprise search vendors face brutal development and marketing costs. Not surprisingly an organization finds that spending one million dollars in the first 12 months of a search system’s deployment is not unusual. I have been involved in projects where the price tag soars millions above the $1 million floor. A ceiling price, on the other hand, is the price above which a vendor will not go. In search, like other complex enterprise systems, the “total” costs (directs, indirects, capital and infrastructure costs, interest, and an “opportunity” cost for delays and downtime) are not calculated. In actual practice, the ceiling price for search does not exist. I conducted an analysis of Google’s pricing for its appliances, and I found some interesting points. Those are not the subject of this post, but let me know if you want to buy my report on this subject.
When I was completing Beyond Search for the Gilbane Group last year, I spoke with a vendor in the UK who told me, “We don’t have a price.” I objected because I can calculate a “price” by dividing revenues by the number of active clients. The company insisted, “We don’t have a price.”
I had a brief conversation with a company last week that asserted that its new search procurement was “fully funded”. I don’t think the speaker knew the potential for cost issues that lurk within search and content processing applications. Articles like this one “Microsoft Promises to Slash Cost of High-End Search” here signal to me an impending search price war.
What happens if the search software is free, a question of growing importance with open source software getting increased attention?
- Free does not mean no cost
- Changing pricing rules willy nilly can turn off prospects and partners
- Pitching a mission critical and complex product as having little or no cost can starve other vendors of sales.
Microsoft’s approach to Fast ESP may e a greater market factor than I first thought.
Stephen Arnold, March 9, 2009
Wolfram Bids for Dominance in the Search Pack
March 9, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to this news story: “Wolfram Alpha: Next Major Search Breakthrough?” here. The system, according to Dan Farber, is called Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. The name alone puts to rest any consultant baloney about simplicity and stability in search. Stephen Wolfram is the author of Mathematica, the gold standard in equation crunching. He has whipped out a couple of two pound books that will give most liberal arts grads a migraine. A New Kind of Science has 1,200 pages and lots of equations. Yummy. More detail than a William Carlos Williams’ poem too.
The new system becomes available in May 2009. Not surprisingly, Dr. Wolfram uses lots of math to make the computational knowledge engine sit up and roll over. I don’t have any information in my files about Alpha. You can get the facts from Mr. Farber’s write up.
One item that caught my attention was:
Google would like to own it [Alpha].
With Twitter deemed an also ran by the GOOG, maybe Dr. Wolfram’s math will catch the company’s eye. More information as I find it.
Stephen Arnold, March 9, 2009
Searching Twitter
March 9, 2009
At dinner on Saturday night, the conversation turned to Twitter. One of the guests asks, “Why would I want to use Twitter?” Another asked, “What’s it good for?” I listened. I will forward to each person in the dinner party Chris Allison’s “Welcome to the Hive Mind: Learn How to Search Twitter” here. Mr. Allison does a good job of documenting Twitter’s real time search system. If you too are baffled by Twitter, read the article and give Twitter a whirl. Join the growing number of intelligence and law enforcement and business intelligence professionals who are also learning about real time search. Note: most of the information in a Tweet is inconsequential. Aggregated, the micro blog posts are useful.
Stephen Arnold, March 9, 2009
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