Monetizing Info via Creating Content Ads
October 6, 2009
I found “One Riot Aims to Make Money from Twitter Search” quite interesting. If you are looking for a new slant on monetizing content, Rafe Needleman’s write up is a good place to start. The real time search vendor One Riot has developed a method for placing content objects adjacent search results. Instead of a Google ad, One Riot uses a semi-Google style design to present related content. The new twist: content providers pay One Riot for placement. For me the most interesting comment in the article was:
It’s a unique plan to monetize Twitter, but it’s a delicate balance. Essentially it’s an arbitrage model: Musk is asking publishers, who are paid by advertisers, to themselves pay for advertising on One Riot to get more traffic, thus increasing their revenue yield per page. There’s nothing fundamentally new about the concept (TV shows are advertised on TV all the time), but it’s a bit of a tightrope. (Disclosure: I have heard that CBS is a partner of One Riot, but Musk would not confirm this with me. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS. ) RiotWise ads will run on the One Riot.com site, but the real potential for this plan, according to Musk, lies in the integration of RiotWise into Twitter apps. Potential customers are Tweetdeck, Seesmic, etc. In two weeks, a new application programming interface will let developers embed RiotWise suggestions into search results. One Riot will share revenues with app developers for these paid links.
The content objects are tweets, but I see applications for other sources going forward. The challenge will be to monetize content at a low cost. If One Riot cracks that nut, the company could be caught in a windstorm of cash.
Stephen Arnold, October 6, 2009, No dough
Microsoft Gun Shy over Search
October 6, 2009
Microsoft has pumped big money into its own search research and development program. In addition, the company paid $1.23 billion for the Fast Search & Technology Enterprise Search Platform. The company bought Powerset, a semantic search system that used, in part, technology from Xerox PARC. The company cut a no-cash deal with Yahoo for search. Microsoft rolled out a new Web search system called Bing.com and backed it with a payback method for users. In short, Microsoft has done many things to hobble the Google.
When I read “Microsoft’s Ballmer Says Search Buys Unlikely“, I asked myself, “Is Microsoft taking the first tentative steps toward a truce with Google?” My view has been that Microsoft would have more revenue opportunities by figuring out how to surf on Google. Microsoft’s path, however, has been to chase Google in Web search and circle the wagons in other business sectors.
If buying companies won’t allow Microsoft to narrow the 80 percent share of the search market, I am not sure how Microsoft can do much in the Web search sector. With the new version of Fast ESP slow out of the starting blocks, I wonder if Google will have the window of opportunity it needs to chew into Microsoft’s enterprise monopolies.
For me, the most interesting point is that this statement came after Bing.com market share gains began to erode. But for me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
Ballmer also said Microsoft was freezing its research and development budget — the industry’s largest — at US$9.5-billion, partly in order to keep resources in reserve for the fight with Google.
Google’s R&D, based on my research data, continues apace.
Stephen Arnold, October 6, 2009, No dough
Google Really Advertises That It Sells Enterprise-Ready Systems
October 5, 2009
Short honk: Google is now advertising its products and services. Okay, I know it was tough to miss the full page ads I spotted in my traditional hard copy newspaper today. You can read a news story about this new initiative by the Google in “Google Goes Global with Apps”. I think this is an interesting step. I learned last week that in the United Kingdom some organizations have been able to telephone Google and speak with a sales person. I find this a dramatic change from the grousing of those who tried to contact Google and could not. My take is that Google may be taking a more professional approach to marketing and customer contact. After 11 years, that’s a needed change. However, Google has a long way to go before it can join the ranks of the enterprise software marketing masters. Oracle and Salesforce.com are as far ahead of the Google in selling as Google is ahead of other Web search vendors in search. Catching up will take time and be costly. In some markets, Google may not be able to close the gap with the Microsoft enterprise marketing machine in my opinion for years. It is tough to make up for 11 years of making the customers jump through hoops to get attention and support. The trick at Google is to get a real live engineer on a product team, not just the marketing or sales engineer. My hunch is that today’s marketing push focuses on reaching the public facing folks at Google. The wizards remain behind a barricade.
Stephen Arnold, October 20, 2009
I wish someone had paid me to offer this opinion.
Google Apple, Round 2
October 5, 2009
After some board room flip flopping, Google took some steps to make clear that Apple and Microsoft share one characteristic: Both are getting squeezed by Googzilla. First, Google hooked up with Sony, ostensibly for Google Books’s benefit. With Apple thinking about the severe limitations of the Amazon Kindle form factor, the Google Sony alliance is rich with potential. What about music and movies? Then Google amped the volume on its various mobile and telephony services. To make Apple wince, Google delicately revealed that Apple nixed Google’s telephony magic on the iPhone. Apple then snapped up a map vendor and Google promptly dropped some ads into its mapping app for mobile phones. Boom. Revenue machine kicks in.
These thoughts fluttered through my addled goose brain when I read John Poirier’s “Schmidt: Google-Apple Board Member Should Stay Put.” The point of the write up is that Google’s top Googler is offering advice to Apple regarding its board composition.
My reaction, “Why?” Mr. Schmidt’s offer of advice is interesting to me. I can visualize a most intriguing golf foursome.
Stephen Arnold, October 4, 2009
Books? Napsterized?
October 5, 2009
Short honk: I read the New York Times’s thought piece “Will Books Be Napsterized?” Interesting. From Harrod’s Creek, I am flapping away from this question. Music has a grip on the desirable demographic. Napster is important because it made clear the grip’s strength. Books are a different animal, appealing to a different demographic segment. Music is one thing; books are another. The likelihood of print becoming Napsterized seems to hinge on the demographic data. Book and magazine buyers are in my opinion heading for the sunset. Napsterization won’t work in the retirement home or the extended care facilities for another 30 or 40 years. I suppose that means I failed the Stross examination. My answer, “No.” Different medium. Different economics. Different markets.
Stephen Arnold, October 5, 2009
Search Delivers a Productivity Benefit
October 5, 2009
When I read “Enterprise Search Improves Productivity, Report Finds,” I was taken aback. Anyone who has a work that involves electronic information knows that work cannot begin unless one can find a letter, email, or other electronic object. Without search, there is little chance that much will get done in any organization. When a computer goes down, work stops.
The Aberdeen Group, an azure chip consulting firm, released a study that appears to “prove” that “Workers at companies that implement enterprise search effectively spend less time looking for the information they need to do their work.”
Okay.
I skimmed through the “data” that make it clear that search systems that work save time and money. For example, Mr. Claburn reported:
- 20 percent of the organizations in the sample of 118 firms using search reported “notable productivity games”. This begs the question of what “notable” means. Not defined to my satisfaction, however.
- 15 percent reduction in support costs. I think this suggests that tech support or internal staff support get fewer pleas for assistance in locating an item of information. Can’t be sure. No definition of “support”.
- When search results are relevant, users are more productive.
By far, the most interesting finding reported in the Information Week article was this statement:
According to White, more respondents said that Microsoft was the most important enterprise search vendor in their organizations — 27% chose Microsoft while 21% chose Google. Overall though, said White, usage of Microsoft and Google enterprise search products across survey respondents is almost equal, with 61% using Google and 59% using Microsoft.
Since I haven’t seen the original report, I can’t offer much in way of goosely commentary. I did wonder what the user satisfaction was. My own research revealed that user satisfaction, regardless of system, is not so hot.
Stephen Arnold, October 5, 2009
IBM and Its Deep Understanding of Google
October 5, 2009
In May 2008, I wrote “IBM and Google: Replay of IBM and Microsoft?” When I wrote that article I had learned that IBM had responded to an inquiry about IBM’s knowledge of Google’s next generation database system. IBM’s response was, in effect, “We have these Google guys right where we want them.” My view in May 2008 was then and is today that IBM does not have a very good idea of what Google’s technical thrust is. IBM points to its working with Google to foster better university instruction in programming distributed systems and other buddy buddy activities.
Imagine my delight when I read “IBM Undercuts Google with Discount E-Mail Service.” IBM has been in the email game for years. The company tried its hand at Internet services and ended up dumping the business on the “old” AT&T, which still offers a variant of that IBM service. And, as most professionals, know, IBM offers the wonderful Lotus Notes system, the Domino server, and quite remarkable collaboration features. The fact that dedicated engineers are required to keep the system up and running is a feature of the ancient technology that underpins these systems. Have you tried to recover a Lotus Notes mail store? Pretty exciting and definitely a reason to get pizza and Jolt cola at 3 am on a Sunday morning.
The Associated Press reported that IBM is back. I can’t quote from the AP story. The addled goose is unable to buy stale bread to feed the goslings, let alone compensate a legal eagle to protect the flock. Read the original story. For me the key points boils down to one sequence of word associations:
Discount. Price war. Desperation.
What’s this mean? Simple. Google is a growing force in the enterprise sector. IBM, in my opinion, may want to pay attention to its DB2 business, not Google’s email challenge. When DB2 gets clipped, IBM is going to have to boost its consultants’ billing rates to make up for the revenue loss. Google’s next generation data management system is coming and based on my research, Google will offer better performance and more features with its Googley business model.
Yep, IBM has those guys right where it wants them. Great phrase. I would flip it around. Google has IBM right where Google wants IBM – in the discount email business and ignoring the DB2 killer headed IBM’s way.
Stephen Arnold, October 5, 2009
A New Gartner Hobby Horse
October 5, 2009
I found “Gartner Humming the Proactive eDiscovery Tune with Five Step Process for Better Use of Enterprise Search in eDiscovery” notable for the length of the title and revelation that search and retrieval is important in eDiscovery. Yep. When preparing to work on a legal matter, search is pretty darned important. Finding a single email in several million does require some search and retrieval functionality even though attorneys really like to print out email, put them in three ring binders, and haul them around. The most interesting statement in the blog post about Gartner’s newest hobby horse was, in my opinion:
If you read my Blog with any consistency, you know that I believe that eDiscovery is part of a bigger issue called Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC). And, if addressed from a proactive standpoint with ESI archiving and leading edge enterprise search and analysis from forward thinking technology organizations such as Orcatec and ContentAnalyst, eDiscovery will eventually become a commodity process.
I found this statement more informative than the information than Gartner’s identifying the obvious.
Stephen Arnold, October 5, 2009
Google Enters the Second Season of Transparency
October 3, 2009
Maybe it is just my distorted view of the world but Google’s executives have been in communications overdrive. There have been exclusive interviews with Eric Schmidt; talks at conferences by Googlers; and even the product manager of Google Blogs on podcasts revealing the number of new pages of content on Blogger.com every 24 hours. The stream of technical papers rushes forward. Today I noted five Google patent applications. Yikes, the Google is a babbling fool.
Or, is it?
My view is a bit different from the Times of London, a newspaper that seemed quite proud of itself for running “Ask the Boss: Eric Schmidt, Chairman and Chief Executive of Google” on October 2, 2009. For me the important fact is that Eric Schmidt is making the rounds and other Googlers are turning up in unexpected places: This Week in Law!
Well, the Times of London does not think in the manner of the addled goose. Its story was a question and answer presentation of some email questions. Think filtered questions. For me, three points leapt from the weeds. I will paraphrase and quote snippets.
- Google’s future. Bigger, faster, probably less agile.
- Books. “This involves very close collaboration with the publishing industry, and we’ve partnered with over 30,000 publishers and dozens of libraries for the project.”
- Newspaper industry. “Embrace journalism as a two-way conversation.”
My take on this is that these answers are the game plan that will be run when questions arise in the numerous legal hassles in which Google finds itself embroiled.
When I read this Times of London article, I asked myself, “When will analysis of Google get below the bright surface?” After 11 years of describing Google as a Web search and ad company, I don’t think that deeper level of questioning will arrive quickly.
Stephen Arnold, October 3, 2009
Time to Be Time in Five Years
October 3, 2009
Let’s think a moment. In April 2008, BearStearns and then a lot of other banks disappeared. Before I left for work in the UK, 91 banks had failed in 2009. I have a list of companies that I don’t hear much about anymore; for instance, EZ2Find.com (French metasearch system), Siderean Software (semantic system), Grokker (content processing), and Oracle’s SES10g (the secure enterprise search system praised by Martin Butler and used by Boeing of 787 fame). Newspapers? I have lost count of the shut downs. Magazines? Some growth but I just see a thinning selection at the local airport newsstand and at my trinket shops. Ooops. I meant Barnes & Noble and Border’s. Both outfits have more games, notebooks, and cards than real books. Media, particularly mainstream media, is under some stress.
I read, therefore, with considerable interest Daily Finance’s “Time Warner CEO: Well Still Own Time Inc. in Five Years.” The person who made the statement is Jeffrey Bewkes. Daily Finance links to an Atlantic Monthly story and the Time chairman and CEO was apparently in the fortune telling business for a short time.
I don’t recall seeing Mr. Bewkes’s name on the list of big winners at either this year’s Kentucky Derby or any other gambling venue’s Hall of Fame. I don’t recall his being listed as the top stock picker in the Wall Street Journal’s round up last year. In fact, I don’t know much about Mr. Bewkes’s predictive expertise.
My hunch is that if – and this is a big if – could tell the future, he might be in another line of business; for instance, buying islands, building palatial homes, and sitting on the beach. Prediction can be a lucrative business. Maybe he has these possessions and is banned for life from the roulette wheels at casinos worldwide.
I doubt that, however.
The notion that a prediction made today in 2009 will be accurate in – what is it? – 2014 strikes me as pretty wild and crazy. BearStearns was not for sale but as I recall it sold over a weekend. Time Warner like other companies is going to have to find ways to reduce costs and increase revenues. That’s a difficult job. A failure such as losing control of traditional revenue streams can prove catastrophic.
My hunch is that Time in five years has a less than 50 –50 shot at owning Time Inc. Media companies are like snow on the side of a mountain in Chamonix. One perturbation and the snow rushes down. Wait. Maybe 40 – 60 now that I visualize an avalanche.
Stephen Arnold, October 3, 2009
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