Social Search, Too Personal?
May 2, 2010
Beware: every social search answers you provide could be monitored. The Otago Daily Times’ recent article, “How To Spy on Yourself,” clued readers into online phone book programs like Spokeo and PeekYou.com. These sites list everything from your name, birthday and family to hobbies, income and home address. The developers claim they do not pull data from social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, so where does it come from? Turns out they have algorithms that scour public questionnaires, like those favored by many social search programs, to collect data and give total strangers a shocking amount of personal data. Social searches are a great wayto connect and learn, but consider who might be monitoring your entries.
Patrick Roland, May 2, 2010
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Quote to Note: Open and Closed or Sort Of
May 1, 2010
Quote to note: This statement reported in the New York Times, paper edition, please, appeared in the story titled “Apple’s Chief Makes the Case Against Flash”, page B 4. A true keeper in my opinion.
Jeffrey Hammond, principal analyst with Forrester Research, which covers the technology industry, said both Apple and Adobe “are closed to some extent.”
“Some extent”. I wonder how the iPhone, iPad, and iTouch would define “some extent.” I wonder how those who want to fiddle with some of Adobe’s software would emend the “some extent”? I am delighted I am not longer in the consulting game, blue chip style. I don’t have to deal with these laser-like comments that illuminate complex issues. Back to the Derby festivities and the yellow green water in the goose pond. “Some extent”. Amazing.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2010
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Google Client Stumbles, Not the Google
May 1, 2010
The Los Angeles shift from on premises software to Google Apps has hit some choppy water. The story I read was “L.A. Stumbles In Deployment Of Google Apps.” Note that Google did not stumble. The client stumbled. Here’s the key passage in my opinion:
Santana [an LA administrative officer] explained, “Performance concerns focused on the slowness with which e-mails were sent, received, and accessed in the new system. Functionality concerns focused on features currently available in GroupWise that are unavailable, or significantly different, in Google’s system. Further, the Los Angeles Police Department indicated that several security issues have yet to be resolved, and that a pilot of its technical support staff must be successfully completed before it can be expanded to the rest of the LAPD.”
I wonder if the integrator is responsible for addressing these issues or will the client have to be Googley and figure it out.
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2010
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Yahoo Boss Advises Google in a Mom Way
May 1, 2010
The Google is not perfect. The company is about to take a major punch in the nose in the LaLa land of digital content. Google awakens each morning to more legal busy work, the now routine privacy security grousing, and the escalating howls of joy from Facebook users who look at charts like this one: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+google.com/.
Now, according to the BBC’s “Yahoo Chief Carol Bartz Sees Trouble for Google,” Ms. Bartz seems to veer into the type of advice my mother dispensed. I am sure that the actual interchange between the BBC and Ms. Bartz was not of the mom school of consulting, but I found this passage Proust like for me:
“Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search,” said Ms Bartz. “It is only half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do. “Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting.”
Well, maybe, maybe not? Yahoo and Google are quite different companies. In fact, Google is trying to diversify. The fascinating point is that Steve Ballmer quipped (working from memory here), “Google is a one trick pony.” His comment did not offer advice. It was then speculation which now seems to be a fact.
The question I wanted to see the BBC ask was, “Why, in your opinion, has Google been unable to generate significant new revenue streams?” Who needs advice? Not me.
I have some ideas about the handcuffs in which Google finds itself. I want to know what a major competitor perceives as the “Google disease”. After 11 years and modest diversification of its revenue, I think there may be some important learnings in the Google case.
I will keep my views out of this short news item. Mom is calling and wants me to pick up my room, take out the garbage, and mow the lawn. I hear myself saying, “Just a minute. I want to finish reading my homework.”
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2010
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Travel Search Report
May 1, 2010
With rumors of Google getting “interested” in travel as a content space, I noted this summary of a report from Epiphany Solutions. The information provides some detail about the sample’s travel search actions. From what I can tell, the sample is mostly focused on the UK market. Nevertheless, there are some useful data in “Thomas Cook and the Travel Sector.”
I noted that the company with the highest “organic visibility”, which I think means content, does not have the most magnetism. On the surface, the data caused me to ask myself, “Hmm. Maybe the efficacy of keyword advertising is losing some pull?”
Next, the companies with the most links were not automatically at the top of the league table. The question I posed my internal interlocutor was, “So maybe this link stuff is slipping?”
The information on the Web page is useful and I tucked it in my Google and Travel folder. A happy quack to the Epiphany folks. I wonder is this is a Jonathan Edwards’ style outfit? Insight in the glen and all that.
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2010
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