Google Latitude: Warrant Needed
March 6, 2009
eWeek’s “Google Promises Memory Loss for Latitude” here asserted that Google will respond to concerns about privacy with its Latitude service. Latitude, as you may know, shows your “friends” where you are in almost real time. Google’s service, like Loopt, will require a warrant before providing location based data to law enforcement agency. That is good news because it means that Google will cooperate when appropriate documents are in place. Law enforcement officials are overwhelmed, understaffed, and asked to do more with fewer resources. The hassle that some online services make when legitimate requests for information are thwarted does not, in my opinion, do much more than clog an already overburdened system. This addled goose is perfectly okay with rapid innovation in geospatial services. The addled goose is quite happy that a warrant will provide data that can be used by law enforcement.
Stephen Arnold, March 6, 2009
Twitter: For the Poor, the Downtrodden
March 4, 2009
If this post is accurate, Twitter is “the poor” person’s email. I read this and thought of the Statue of Liberty. Not sure why. Twitter may be like the arrival from another land who showed up, worked hard, and defined a category of search; specifically, real time search. The story “Google CEO: Twitter A ‘Poor Man’s Email System’ by Dan Frommer strikes me as accurate an eerily authentic. For me the key segment of the article was:
I think the innovation is great. In Google’s case, we have a very successful instant messaging product, and that’s what most people end up using.
If Mr. Frommer had not labeled this as a statement attribute to chief Googler Eric Schmidt, I would have hooked the statement to a Microsoft executive. Several comments:
- I don’t use Twitter but I use http://search.twitter.com. It is useful and it beats Google to the news punch on certain topics by minutes and many times by hours.
- The demographic of Twitter users strikes me as similar to what Google’s user base was prior to the consumerization of search after the Google IPO. In short, Twitter has to be viewed as an important service, and it is an important service attracting high profile people who talk about the Twitter service.
- The assumption that Twitter users will switch to Google’s system is possible, but I think Twitter has some decent legs. Is Twitter perfect? Nope. Is it important? Yep.
Google is starting to sound like Microsoft. Google, like IBM and Microsoft before it, is showing that it has lost its ability to think and act with the agility it possessed just a few short years ago. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, March 4, 2009
Beyond Keyword Search
March 4, 2009
An interesting tie up between LinkedIn and Twitter caught my attention. The story appeared in Search Engine Journal. Dev Basu’s “LinkedIn Teams Up with Twitter through Company Buzz” reported here that the networking service LinkedIn and the micro blogging service Twitter have teamed to offer an enterprise service. Mr. Basu wrote:
Every second thousands of people are sending out messages about topics and companies through twitter. Company Buzz lets you tap into this information flow to find relevant trends and comments about your company. Install the application and instantly see what people are saying.
This is an interesting development. Confusion about the meaning of the term “search” is commonplace. In a telephone conversation yesterday, two people on the conference call used the word “search” to describe what their organization needed. I asked each to define their understanding of the word “search”. One said, “We need to find specific data in our research reports. Not the whole document. Just the pertinent chunk.” The other said, “We need to know who knows what about a specific topic.”
The word “search” is used without much thought given to what different people mean when they throw the buzzword around.
This deal between LinkedIn and Twitter comes close to what quite a few people in the last couple of months have been describing as “search”. Key word retrieval has a place, but users want more. Will LinkedIn and Twitter dominate this market space? Hard to say. I think the deal is one to watch.
Stephen Arnold, March 4, 2009
Googlers on Twitter
March 3, 2009
The voices (approved and vetted) on Twitter appeared in “The Ultimate List of Google and Google Employees on Twitter” here. I scanned the list and was delighted to see that Michael Wyszomierski, search quality team, chose the Twitter name wysz. If the list is useful to you, post a comment to this blog explaining what you have done with these names. Headhunt? Follow? Not out their comments?
Stephen Arnold, March 3, 2009
Google: Win One, Lose One
March 3, 2009
Mixed day for the GOOG. The Obama White House shifted the president’s Saturday “radio” address to Akamai.com from YouTube.com. The Register’s take is here. The reason? Privacy concerns. My sources suggest that there were little voices whispering about Google, and these voices were heard. “Little voices” in Washington, DC influence quite a lot of politics.
On the bright side, TGDaily reported that “Google Rules Mobile Search.” You can read the story here. The data come from Net Applications, even though the url is for Hitslink.com. The key data which we don’t know much about were:
In February [209], Google handled 97.5% of all searches conducted via mobile devices. Yahoo handled just 2.03% of all mobile searches, followed by Ask (0.21%) and MSN, AltaVista and AOL, each with miniscule numbers.
AltaVista. Now that’s a surprise to me.
Christian Zibreg suggested that Microsoft’s deal with Verizon might have an impact on Google’s market share. I have heard this line of reasoning before. Let the data do the talking. Google has been quite successful in search, and there is little information that suggests it will muff the bunny in mobile search at this time. But, who knows?
Stephen Arnold, March 3, 2009
Google a Twittering
March 1, 2009
On March 1, 2009, another story about a possible tie up between Google and Twitter surfaced. The source? Jennifer Bosavage and CRNCanada. You can read the story “Wedding bells for Google and Twitter?” here. For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
Could Google be eyeing Twitter as an acquisition? That possibility’s got the blogosphere all “a-twitter,” pardon the pun. Earlier this week, Google activated its Twitter account and all Tweets broke loose. As of Friday morning, Google had more than 26,000 followers. The speculation is that, in a move similar to its purchase of YouTube, Google is interested in buying Twitter.
Google has been somewhat clumsy in the real time news space. Maybe Ms. Bosavage and CRNCanada have an inside track on this alleged tie up.
Stephen Arnold, March 2,, 2009
ChaCha Boogies Past Google SMS
February 26, 2009
Forbes Magazine makes a big deal of data that assert ChaCha.com is the “fastest growing SMS search provider.” The story seems to be a news release on the Forbes Web site. No matter. You can read the item here. The firm generating the data is the Nielsen Company. The quote in the write up is alleged to be that of David Gill, Director of Mobile Media. He opined:
ChaCha is a company to watch within the SMS space. When we look at the leading SMS brands today, we’re not surprised to see Twitter and Facebook in the top 10, but the rapid growth of ChaCha in just one year is impressive. Certainly the trended data shows them headed to the front of the pack for SMS search.
I believe this. Google is not pulling its cart too quickly in the mobile messaging space. I would point out that the outfit to watch in SMS mobile search or whatever the sector is may not be ChaCha.com. What’s Twitter’s footprint? When I think of real time search, I think Twitter first. Run queries on both systems. Let me know which is more useful in your view.
Stephen Arnold, February 26, 2009
Twitter Security: An Oxymoron
February 24, 2009
PCWorld’s Joan Goodchild wrote an interesting article about Twitter’s security issues here. She identifies three potential areas of concern. First, a url shortener can send a hapless user to an unknown and potentially harmful location. Second, she identifies a lack of email authentication. And, third, my favorite: Twitter can be useful those who want to “follow” a person. The addled goose is confident that these three issues do not exhaust the security vulnerabilities. The goose does not directly Twitter, send tweets, or fiddle with Twitter ecosystem tools. Those who follow the goose often want to cook it. Could Twitter users get their geese cooked?
Stephen Arnold, February 24, 2009
Twitter and Search
February 18, 2009
I read Peter Hershberg’s “Does Twitter Represent the Future of Search? Or Is It the Other Way Around?” here. The article begins with a reference to search engine optimization guru Dan Sullivan and then races forward with this argument:
people are increasingly turning to Twitter — rather than Google and Yahoo — when looking for information on breaking news. This is a trend we highlighted in our 2009 predictions post at the end of last year. For proof of Twitter’s real-time search capabilities all you need to do is look back at last week’s plane crash in the Hudson to see where the news initially broke. People were talking about the event for several minutes on Twitter before the first mentions of it on Google News or any major media site, for that matter.
For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
My personal view is that Google and Yahoo haven’t come up with Twitter solutions simply because they did not initially understand what Twitter represents from a search perspective. Twitter themselves may have failed to grasp this initially, before Summize came into the mix. It’s unlikely that either Google or Yahoo saw Twitter’s potential as a search engine. So, it’s only now that they’re probably starting to put adequate resources behind developing a strategy in this area, though I have to believe that it’s become a very high priority, particularly for Google. That’s where this issue gets really interesting – particularly for someone like me who views social media through the lens of search.
The wrap up made a good point:
To this point, the “Twitterverse” has pretty much been living in a bubble – one where all updates are made and consumed within Twitter and its associated applications alone and where some believe that having 10,000 followers means that you are an authoritative or influential figure. While I believe that is, in fact, the case for some (and I won’t diminish the value in having a large following), the volume of traffic some individual Twitter updates will receive from organic search will dwarf what they are typically able to generate from Twitter alone. It also means that Twitter accounts with fewer followers – but with something important and to say on a given topic – will start to see some increased attention as well. Much like many of the early bloggers did. And when that happens, the whole question of influence and authority will once again be turned on its head.
As I thought about this good write up, I formulated several questions:
- Will Google’s play be to provide a dataspace in which Twitter comments and other social data are organized, indexed and made useful?
- In a Twitterspace, will new types of queries become essential; for example, provenance and confidence?
- Will Google, like Microsoft, be unable to react to the opportunity of real time search and spend time and money trying to catch up with a train that has left the station?
I have no answers. Twitter is making real time search an important tool for users who have no need for the dinosaur caves of archived data that Google continues to build.
Stephen Arnold, February 18, 2009
Yahoo and Its New Mobile Service
February 18, 2009
Yahoo News posted “Yahoo Mobile Aims to Channel Your Inner iPhone” here. Yahoo access on my various mobile devices seemed to require quite a bit of menu shuffling. I also found the interface’s refusal to remember my log in name somewhat idiosyncratic. But the system worked. The new service as described in the news story seemed to me to be a giant step forward. The news release said:
Yahoo Mobile will be released in three versions — one for the mobile Web, one for the iPhone, and one for other smartphones… Yahoo’s onePlace is also available in all three editions. The service lets a user access and manage, from a single location, favorite content such as news topics and sources, RSS feeds, sports scores, weather conditions, stock quotes, blogs, movie theaters, or horoscopes… In the smartphone version, users can also use oneSearch’s voice-search feature simply by talking. It also offers maps; an integrated mini-version of the popular mobile Web browser Opera; and widgets, which are small applications that provide various services that can be mixed and matched.
I fired up my smartphone and navigated to Yahoo, following the same steps I had used prior to my test on February 17, 2009, at 5 pm Eastern. Instead of a new Yahoo service or the old Yahoo service, here’s what I saw:
Sigh. I understand that new Yahoo is not available, but what about old Yahoo?
Stephen Arnold, February 18, 2009
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