Is Google+ a Threat to Facebook’s Business Demographic?
July 16, 2011
EWeek.com informs us that “Google+ Will Target Businesses, Facebook Audience.” It seems that Google intends to entice businesses as well as personal accounts into its Google+ Web. This may pose a problem for Facebook, who has long encouraged companies to set up pages on its site. Recently, that company has even introduced new tools aimed specifically at businesses.
Google discourages businesses from setting up shop in its initial Google+ project. However, it is working on something just for them:
We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year,’ Christian Oestlien, a group product manager at Google, wrote in a July 6 posting on his Google+ profile page. ‘The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses.
If that’s true, Facebook had better continue to step up its game. Our view at Beyond Search is rotated about 12 degrees.
First, we think that social media is useful. It is less about the Internet and more about communication. No problem, but communication has a history of industry-centric regulation. As social media follows the path worn by AT&T, there will be some interesting changes coming.
Second, the novelty of social media may follow the pattern of behaviors in other group discussions; that is, intense use followed by declining use and then popping in and out of groups “to find out what’s happening”. The data backing my assertion were collected in the early days of online groups, and I am watching for signals that suggest a similar pattern. My hunch is that there may be some usage shifts coming which will be as interesting as the regulatory net that will be woven around social media.
Third, control of content within social media systems will impart enormous power to those who have a superior capability within the social media system. For this reason, social media will morph into products and services which have a built in magnetic quality. A user may leave one group, only to reengage with a different group later. Fragmentation of attention will be a defining secondary characteristic. The primary characteristic is that fragmenting of attention will be just hat Dr. Algorithm ordered to punch the user’s purchase, vote, think buttons. The users won’t have much choice. Some won’t even care.
Net Net: Both Google and Facebook may be chasing demographics. Neither service may be the end of the line. What’s next is likely to be even more Googley and Facebooky.
Cynthia Murrell July 14, 2011
Vivisimo Assumes Leadership Position in Twitter Chat
July 15, 2011
I noted the write up “Customer Service Industry Luminaries Participate in Vivisimo’s Unique Twitter Chat Experience Vivisimo Twitter Chat #CXO is Named one of "The 12 Most Stimulating Twitter Chats". The CXO is a business publication. My recollection is that I wrote something for the company years ago. I lost track of the outfit after I shifted to the Enterprise Technology Management publication. (If you click the link today, you may see the addled goose himself. I wrote about Google, not Twitter Chat. I did not know what a Twitter Chat was.
The write up informed me that I was wrong about CXO, which means customer Experience Optimization and not the publication CXO. I also learned that Twitter Chat has been an ongoing activity since April 2011.
Here’s the passage I noted:
"We’ve grown to over 100 participants in just over 10 weeks and have had A-list participants join us because Vivisimo has established residency as the leader in customer experience," said Tracey Mustacchio, Vice President of Marketing at Vivisimo. "The #CXO Twitter chats are an interactive, convenient, and highly effective medium to collaborate and learn from peers how to improve their customer experience initiatives. Also, being named one of the 12 Most Stimulating Twitter Chats was an honor and will help to set us apart from our competitors." Previous session topics included: What is Customer Experience Optimization? Another Officer in the C-Suite: Chief Customer Officer [CCO] The Intersection Between Innovation and the Customer Experience Customer Experience for the Gen Y, Digital Native Trust in the Customer Experience "Who Comes First in Shaping #CustExp – Customers or Employees?" Social Media and the Customer Experience What’s the best way to make customer experience metrics actionable? Going Mobile with Customer Experience? Customer Data: from Overload to Insight Supply Chain or Customer Value Chain To join in on future Vivisimo #CXO Twitter chats, visit the following link every Monday at 12:00 pm ET: http://tweetchat.com/room/cxo. If you use an application like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop, create a search column for the term "#CXO" and follow the Vivisimo chat.
If you want more information, visit the Vivisimo Web site at www.vivisimo.com. Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publisher of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
SEP: Bitten by Search
July 15, 2011
“Search Engine Poisoning: One More Thing To Worry About,” declares Network Computing. Though Search Engine Poisoning (SEP) has been around for a while, it is now the primary online threat according to a report from security firm Blue Coat Systems.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, SEP works by creating links that masquerade as legitimate answers to search queries. Many of these queries are ones that workers commonly use in the course of their job, so the schemes affect enterprises as well as home users.
Network Computing’s Robert Mullins elaborates:
The way SEP works is that distributors of malware maintain large ‘link farms’ where they create malicious links that represent all sorts of things people would search for online. [Tom Clare of Blue Coat] gave the example of Keen Footwear, a brand of hiking shoes. If someone searches for that brand in a search engine, as many as half of the top 10 results could be links to malware. SEP is particularly devious in that it doesn’t actually have to infect the Web site of Keen Footwear but can still trick end users.
The malefactors’ job is made easier by URLs that are vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS). That vulnerability allows the injection of malicious code.
We continue to look with skepticism on the search engine optimization business. We think that Google wants SEO professionals to optimize their pages and then, if traffic falters, feel really good about herding the traffic thirsty Web masters toward Adwords.
Stephen E Arnold, July 14, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
X1 Professional Client Available on Amazon
July 15, 2011
Short honk: I wanted to document that X1 Technologies is selling its desktop search client on Amazon. You can check out the ad at http://goo.gl/mfvAk. According to the Amazon promotional copy:
- X1 searches all your resources as fast as you type-even if you have hundreds of thousands of emails, attachments, and files.
- Detailed search specifications-including Boolean, proximity, and keyword-help X1 return accurate results in record speed.
- X1’s unified interface delivers all your search results in their native formats, so you can fully preview over 500 file types even if you don’t have the application that created a file.
- Deep integration with popular mail clients like Outlook and Lotus Notes means you’ll never misplace an email or attachment again.
- iPhone and iPad applications allow you to instantly search your desktop and fetch emails, files and attachments from your desktop wherever an internet connection is available.
The product became available in April 2011. The product is ranked at bestseller number 60 in software.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publisher of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Search and Why No One Knows How to Find Stuff
July 15, 2011
I received a call early this morning from an addled prospect in a distant time zone. After the call, I grabbed by trusty iPad and took at look at the news scooped up by my Pulse and Flipbook apps. Why search when I can let an anonymous system “tell” me what I need to know. One of the “must know” things snagged my eye with this fetching headline: “My Top 10 Insights from 10 Years in Search”. After dismissing an annoying ad about something called “search marketing”, my expectations were at snail level. I was not disappointed.
Search, I learned, was not about findability, information retrieval, semantics, or text mining. I learned that search is about:
- Pumping content without regard for quality to the top of a brute force search result
- Not resting on one’s laurels when a content trick actually works and fools the Facebook-obsessed Google from delivering high precision and recall
- Being “great” at Excel.
There were seven other “learnings” which shined a very weak light on the topic of search as I understand the concept.
Search has been usurped—maybe the proper word is devalued—by search engine marketing. The idea is simple. Traffic means revenues. The world in which this addled goose paddles uses a different denotation and connotation. Search is about answering questions. Search NOT about polluting a relevance method, getting clicks, and making money. I make money because I find information, absorb it, and frame my own ideas, products, and services. Information is one type of high value input. Fiddle with the input and the output is probably flawed or misleading.
Search is difficult, and it is getting problematic. Those with access to log files know that the majority of users’ actions can be converted to quite tidy items of data. These items can be used to deliver exactly what the majority of people want a search system to be: An input system for that which is consciously or unconsciously needed by an individual user.
In my odd little goose pond, I run a query on a phrase like “confluent opportunity space.” I want to know who said it, where, when, and why. Answering that question is something that few search systems can do. My hunch is that an individual operating with the foundation upon which the “10 insights” are erected may use approaches that may not work for my context. Heck, maybe the approach won’t work at all.
What’s this say about “search”?
First, I don’t think most people know what search is. The failure to define the overused and much abused term is leading to confusion. I think people use the term and talk about systems and methods that are more fractured than than rocks in the Allegheny orogeny.
Second, heaven help the vendor of text mining if the word search slips into a conversation with an online marketer. The dust up in “When Worlds Collide” will look like two puppies pushing into a bowl of kibble.
Third, I am convinced that people are not interested in understand search. The entire sector is confused and increasingly indifferent to useful communication about information retrieval.
We are on the path to a super saturated world of advertising. Calling this search is downright amazing. I am delighted to be 66, indifferent to such linguistic jumping jacks, and an addled goose paddling in a rural backwater.
The consequences of this devaluation and distortion of a once useful word may have more to do with today’s crises in decision making, innovating, and revenue generating than meets the eye.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2011
Freebie by golly!
Protected: Updates for XSL in SharePoint
July 15, 2011
Google Revenue Surges
July 14, 2011
I read the Computerworld version of the Google revenue blow out. The story was “Update: Google Q2 Revenue Up 32% to $9B-Plus.”
Here’s the passage I noted:
Most of Google’s revenue — 97 percent — came from advertising, while the rest was generated by its emerging businesses, such as enterprise software and mobile.
Google is doing well as an online advertising system. Other attempts at revenue diversification are growing but not reducing Google’s dependence on ads.
Here’s a bonus quote to note:
"We’re only at 1 percent of what’s possible," Page said.
Here’s a factoid:
At the end of the second quarter, Google had $39.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and 28,768 full-time employees worldwide.
Fascinating and Googley.
Is Google a zero gravity, friction free, perpetual motion machine? I am a believer. What can possibly go wrong?
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2011
Sponsored? Nah.
Yahoo BOSS API V2 Here, V1 on Way Out
July 14, 2011
“Yahoo Search BOSS API V2 is Paid, V1 Gone in Two Weeks,” reports programmable web. Programmers who employ Yahoo! BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) have known the change to a paid service was coming since last October. The new version includes HTTPs support, SQL and YQL support, News Service enhancements, and documentation upgrades. The feature writer Romin Irani most appreciates, though, is daily usage limit specification:
Top of the list is the ability for developers to specify their daily usage limits. You can now specify a daily dollar limit for your service consumption and you can modify that as needed. This is especially important in a paid service since developers might not be prepared for an increased bill in case of a sudden spike in usage.
The fee structure was detailed back in February 2011 by Juan Carlos Perez in “Yahoo Sets Fees for BOSS Search Developer Program” at PCWorld:
The top-tier option, called Full Web, includes result links to general Web pages, images and news articles, and will cost US$0.80 per 1,000 queries, Yahoo said on Tuesday. A less expensive tier, Limited Web, will draw its results from a smaller index that isn’t refreshed as often as the one Full Web uses and costs $0.40 per 1,000 queries. Yahoo will also offer developers options for an image-only index ($0.30 per 1,000 queries) and for a news article-only index ($0.10 per 1,000 queries).
So, if you have apps that rely on BOSS V1, be sure to transition right away. I did a quick check of my list of sites using BOSS. Cluuz.com was alive and ticking. The others. Flatlined.
Cynthia Murrell July 13, 2011
Sponsored by ArticleOnePartners.com, your source for patent intelligence
Quote to Note: Xoogler on Management
July 14, 2011
Quote to note: The juicy item appeared in “Facebook Exec: Google Is Blocking My Book.” I saw a presentation about social circles and then I heard a pundit talk about “the rings of Saturn.” Good idea, but I sort of figured out the notion of hierarchical clustering a while ago. Tucked in the article, however, was a keeper for my “Quotes” folder. Here she be:
… I wasn’t being listened to when it came to executing that strategy. My peers listened intently, but persuading the leadership was a losing battle. Google values technology, not social science. I also moved because the culture had changed dramatically in the few years I was at Google. It became much more bureaucratic and political.
I find this interesting because it suggests that sharp employees are allegedly suffering from bureaucracy. I find the notion of controlled chaos spawning a bureaucracy fascinating. Oxymoron does not do the clash of concepts justice. I thought about the “listen” reference, but I won’t go there.
Stephen E Arnold, July 14, 2011
A freebie. No sponsor. Sigh.
Facebook Skype: Should Google Be Worried?
July 14, 2011
Nah, Google has legs. Actually it has the world’s premier online advertising platform. Google needs content and traffic. Anything that has traffic is going to light up Google’s radar. But worry? Not so much.
ITWire reports that “Ovum says Facebook+Skype is Google’s nightmare.” Really? Ovum is pretty quick on the trigger with a big prediction.
The azure chip firm insists that the Facebook deal with Skype must have Google worried. The article quotes Ovum’s Eden Zoller:
The Facebook/ Skype tie up brings together two of the most popular communications service providers online and the video chat feature should prove a hit with Facebook’s 750 million users. . . .A deepening Facebook, Microsoft and Skype alliance is on the cards and is a powerful prospect and one that will keep Google awake at night.
We think Ovum may be too quick to downgrade the GOOG. Its Google+ is generating buzz, especially since the company is hyping it by limiting initial invitations. As writer Alex Zaharov-Reutt notes, though, Google must be careful that such tantalization does not turn to food for resentment.
In our opinion, both Google and Facebook are perpetually vulnerable. In the fast paced world of online business, anything can happen at any time. We think the social revolution is ripe for change. Those MBA-ish exogenous forces are able to creep up and bite giants like Facebook and Google. The Skype function is a consumer service. Google will respond. We think there are larger forces at work that may make these high fliers come down a bit closer to earth.
Legal eagles come to mind.
Cynthia Murrell, July 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
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