Information 2009: Challenges and Trends
December 4, 2008
Before I was once again sent back to Kentucky by President Bush’s appointees, I recall sitting in a meeting when an administration official said, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” When we think about search, content processing, assisted navigation, and text mining, that catchphrase rings true.
Successes
But we are learning how to deliver some notable successes. Let me begin by highlighting several.
Paginas Amarillas is the leading online business directory in Columbia. The company has built a new systems using technology from a search and content processing company called Intelligenx. Similar success stories and be identified for Autonomy, Coveo, Exalead, and ISYS Search Software. Exalead has deployed a successful logistics information system which has made customers’ and employees’ information lives easier. According to my sources, the company’s chief financial officer is pleased as well because certain time consuming tasks have been accelerated which reduces operating costs. Autonomy has enjoyed similar success at the US Department of Energy.
Newcomers such as Attivio and Perfect Search also have satisfied customers. Open source companies can also point to notable successes; for example, Lemur Consulting’s use of Flax for a popular UK home furnishing Web site. In Web search, how many of you use Google? I can conclude that most of you are reasonably satisfied with ad-supported Web search.
Progress Evident
These companies underscore the progress that has been made in search and content processing. But there are some significant challenges. Let me mention several which trouble me.
These range from legal inquiries into financial improprieties at Fast Search & Transfer, now part of Microsoft to open Web squabbles about the financial stability of a Danish company which owns Mondosoft, Ontolica, and Speed of Mind. Other companies have shut their doors; for example, Alexa Web search, Delphes, and Lycos Europe. Some firms such as one vendor in Los Angeles has had to slash its staff to three employees and take steps to sell the firm’s intellectual property which rightly concerns some of the company’s clients.
User Concerns
Another warning may be found in the results from surveys such as the one I conducted for a US government agency in 2007 that found dissatisfaction with existing search systems in the 65 percent range. AIIM, a US trade group, 
reported slightly lower levels of dissatisfaction. Jane McConnell’s recently released study in Paris reports data in line with my findings. We need to be mindful that user expectations are changing in two different ways.
First, most people today know how to search with Google and get useful information most of the time. The fact that Google is search for upwards of 65 percent of North American users and almost 75 percent of European Union users means that Google is the search system by which users measure other types of information access. Google’s influence has been essentially unchecked by meaningful competition for 10 years. In my Web log, I have invested some time in describing Microsoft’s cloud computing initiatives from 1999 to the present day.
For me and maybe many of you, Google has become an environmental factor, and it is disrupting, possibly warping, many information spaces, including search, content processing, data management, applications like word processing, mapping, and others.
Microsoft is working to counter Google, and its strategy is a combination of software and low adoption costs. I believe that Microsoft’s SharePoint has become the dominant content management, collaboration, and search platform with 100 million licenses in organizations. SharePoint, however, is not well understood as technically complex and a work in progress. Anyone who asserts that SharePoint is simple or easy is misrepresenting the system. Here’s a diagram from a Microsoft Certified Gold vendor in New Zealand. Simple this is not.
FastForward Search Blog on the Future of Blogs
December 3, 2008
I find sponsored Web logs fascinating. These quasi-promotional information services can be informative and quirky. Years ago, the Fast Search & Transfer company fired up the FastForward Web log to provided me and thousands of others with snippets of information about the Fast ESP user group conference. I asked about the user group focus a while back and learned that the Fast Forward Web log was reaching beyond that narrow focus.
That extension is quite evident. In fact, I recently read two posts here about the future of Web logs. One article was “The Uncertain Future of Blogging” by Jevon MacDonald; the other, “In 2010 What Will Replace Newspapers and Network TV?” I found the information in both interesting, in Mr. MacDonald’s piece, the data about media found their way into my statistics file. Then I began to reflect on a sponsored Web log’s role in the future of media. Here’s my chain of reasoning:
- A company Web log morphs into a community Web log and the company that started the Web log is acquired by Microsoft. I have little doubt about the potential financial support for the Web log will be available no matter what happens in the wide world of blogging in the months ahead.
- The future of media appears to be pretty grim with big companies embracing Web logs. Furthermore, the tools of blogging will now become powerful instruments in the hands of trained media professionals. If print newspapers can’t fly, the pilots will get a new airplane. That airplane may be blogging.
- Web log writers today have to innovate and shake blogging out of its doldrums. Big changes are coming fast.
I have over simplified the arguments in these two posts, so you must read the original write ups. What troubles me is that I expect to read about search and content processing, not about the problems of newspapers and other media companies. I want to know about the method Microsoft Fast used to get a government installation in a Scandinavian company up and running to make its spotlight function work well. I want to know how Microsoft Fast will handle voice to text in media files? I want to know how Microsoft Fast will integrate with Dynamics’ information stores held in SQL Server tables? I to know the status of the Microsoft Fast investigation underway in Norway and how to explain the issue to a contract officer who asks me for my view on the subject?
My opinion is that these search-centric topics are now out of bounds or out of information gas. I also think that the Web log is now a philosophical sounding board with a touch of consultant flummery added for color. To some search is less exciting than thinking about the future of Web logs when more newspapers bite the dust. Not to me. I want to read about ESP.
I would be eager to read FastForward if it returned to its roots and presented more substantive information about Microsoft Fast search, content processing, and information technology. I may be too limited in my thinking but a Web log anchored in Fast ESP should address topics germane to the software. But I’m an addled goose, easily confused by buzzwords like Enterprise 2.0 and analyses of the death of old media. What do you think? Should I re evaluate the FastForward blog?
Stephen Arnold, December 3, 2008
New Overflight Features
December 2, 2008
ArnoldIT.com has added two new features to its public Overflight service. Overflight provides a round up of news stories on more than 70 Google Web logs.
Exalead, developers of the CloudView information access system, indexes the Google Web logs. You can access the service from the Overflight splash page here or navigate to this vertical content collection here. Among the features of this index are:
- A thumbnail view of the Web page in a relevance ranked results list
- Full text searching of the entire corpus of Google’s Web logs. This means that you can identify a topic such as “semantics” and locate every reference to the subject. Given the recent suggestion that Google is not interested in semantics, you will find that when you run a query for “semantics”, Google’s Web logs make it clear that semantics are an important subject at Google.
- You can access content with a date filter. With this feature you can segment a results list by time.
- If a query matches documents in languages other than English, you can select the documents by language. The query “pdf” returns hits in English, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Korean.
A happy quack to the Exalead technical team. Use the comments section of this Web log to share your ideas with us.
The highest traffic on Overflight is flowing to the Google Ads Web logs here. We have added a continuously updated stream to this selection of Google Web logs. The “river” makes it easy to watch for important new developments in Google advertising services. You can try it here.
Watch for other developments on the public Overflight site. If your firm would like to create this type of information service for your Intranet, Web log, or competitive intelligence program, write us at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Stephen Arnold, December 1, 2008
Social Media and a Search Postscript
December 2, 2008
A happy quack to my one Canadian reader who sent me a link to “Most Businesses Don’t Have a Handle on Social Media Marketing”. You can find this story by Nestor Arellano here. The article appeared in ITBusiness, a Canadian Web site. Mr. Arellano summarizes the results of a survey by the Marketing Executives Networking Group in the US. The study revealed that executives realize social media is important, but at the time of the survey about 60 percent those surveyed in the sample allocate significant money to the this type of marketing. For me the most interesting comment in the article was:
For instance, 33.1 per cent of them said they were never able to determine ROI, while an additional 25.6 per cent said they “hardly ever” knew if their social media efforts were worthwhile. In addition, only 26.3 per cent thought social media marketing was more effective than using other online media tools for marketing, such as search advertising or display ads.
Mr. Arellano also notes that more than half of the IT staff and senior executives are not too keen about the use of social media for marketing. The concern is that employees will waste time fiddling with the applications. Social tools are likely to enter organizations the way personal computers did in the early 19080s; that is, some employees will just use these systems under the radar of management. One of the applications that may have applicability is a social wiki. Employees and possibly customers can contribute information.
After reading Mr. Arellano’s write up, I remain balanced on the fence with regard to social media in organizations. Employees are often spurred by their advisors and blue chip consultants to use social tools to improve operations, reduce costs, or whatever other benefit attributed to these systems. The issues that disconcert me are:
- Liability. Most consultants and employees are not the targets of legal action. As a result, their desires are not tempered by the liabilities certain information systems create the moment the systems become available. Consultants will weasel word their way around responsibility, and the employees often change roles or even jobs, leaving the “problem” to their successors.
- Finding what’s in these systems. Most employees and consultants deal with the surface or one aspect of a system. However, when someone asks, “Who gave the customer this information about this product?” someone has to hunt for the answer. My team has had this thankless task, and it is neither easy nor cheap to pull together the information from and within a social media system. We love this type of job, but it is expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, what’s “in” these systems can be quite interesting.
- Controlling costs. It is easy to fire up a wiki. It can be expensive to put in place a reliable mechanism to manage the wiki, keep the content fresh, and expand the system so it does not die on the vine. Like newsgroups, participation is often sporadic and brief. Social systems have to be marketed and managed. If ignored, these systems become a cost sinkhole when a problem surfaces. There is neither staff nor time to figure out what happened and then to fix the problem.
There are legitimate uses of messaging systems within organizations and for customers. The approach with which I am most comfortable is one that includes planning, budgeting, controlled testing, focused deployment, assessment, and then next steps, if any. Creating a customer-employee wiki and stepping back to see what happens is too risky for my taste. Companies have learned the importance of managing user groups. Now most organizations with active customer involvement try to schedule “summits” or some other type of organized activity over which the company exercises control. A user group can turn into a snake pit left to its own devices. An unmanaged wiki may have the same characteristics.
The problem of capturing the information, indexing it, and making it searchable is not intractable. Exalead has a social search capability, for example. But some effort is required before the system is deployed. Otherwise, the cost of playing catch up may erode the financial payoff of the system itself.
We have investigated a number of start ups in the last year. We’ve found that when the organization bakes in social media, the problems of shoe horning a social media system into an established organization are minimized. Consultants and some bureaucrats assume that the new functions can be layered on to the existing infrastructures and business methods. In our experience, the assumption may be incorrect. Furthermore, organizations engineered to use Internet centric applications as part of their basic business methods have a cost advantage. There is not much information about this aspect of social media available to us at this time. We also have a working hypothesis that start ups with social media baked in may have a competitive advantage over established operations that are taking the add on approach to social media.
Stephen Arnold, December 2, 2008
Ad Networks
November 30, 2008
The Overflight technology here sparked some inquiries from companies in the ad network business. I never pay much attention to online advertising. My view is that if a Web site offers content, the Web indexing systems will find you. A good example is the Overflight service announced on November 17, 2008. On November 18, the site was not in the Google index. By November 20, 2008, the Overflight site ranked sixth in the results list for the word Overflight. As I write this before getting on a flight to Europe, the Overflight sight ranking in the results list for the query “overflight” is number two. No metatag spamming, no SEO baloney, no nothing. We index content and provide what seems to me to be a useful service. We are now adding some other features to the public facing Web site. The most interesting will be the use of the Exalead CloudView technology. This is a joint effort between my technically challenged goslings and the French wizards at Exalead. Watch for the announcement shortly. The service is in final testing and looks quite good so far.
But the ad network calls to me put me in unfamiliar territory. I have researched Google’s AdSense, which makes use of the Oingo (Applied Semantics) technology plus many Google inventions, enhancements, and tweaks. My focus on AdSense and its sister AdWords created for me a volcanic island of information. I thought that Google * was * online advertising.
The yellow box marks the Overflight result on November 29, 2008.
After a bit of research Google is not the only game in town. Sure, there are the Microsoft and Yahoo services that I know by name. A bit of sleuthing turned up a large number of outfits who are in the business of selling ads to companies wanting to reach online users. One of them is the AutoChannel.com, a company with which I have been associated for years. Because of the volume of traffic, the Auto Channel gets, I saw its name as a place where companies wanting to reach auto enthusiasts could advertise. You can learn more about this directly from the company. Just navigate here for the media kit.
I located on the Web logs at ZDNet here a useful list here of what the company calls “Top 50 US Ad Carriers in October 2008.” The usual suspects appear on this list, but there were many firms whose names I did not recognize. I clicked on about a dozen of the top ranked firms and learned that each provides a wide range of services both the high traffic Web sites looking to generate revenue and to advertisers who want to place messages on sites germane to their core markets. I can’t reproduce this list, but I think I can give you a flavor of the diversity of firms in this sector. Here are three companies I found interesting, but your taste is likely to be different from this goose’s:
Search: Fast and Loose
November 29, 2008
Two news items do not make a trend, but two news items cause me to question what other shenanigans are afoot. The first item concerns British Telecom. The story “BT in Trouble over Secret Behavioral Ad Tests” appeared in WebProNews on November 28, 2008, here. BT seems to be involved in a legal matter related to using Phorm to sniff out data from unsuspecting customers. Gee, I wonder if other telecommunications companies have done things without their customers’ knowledge? Nah, probably not. The second item concerns online advertising. Ars Techica’s “Baidu Caught in Search Ad Scandal, Vows to Overhaul System” here does a good job of explaining some hitches in its relevance ranking. Ars Technica does a good job of explaining the alleged fraud. Baidu has been the target of criticism and litigation despite legal action from the recording industry. Perhaps these are outliers? My thought is that BT and Baidu might be harbingers?
Stephen Arnold, November 29, 2008
Alexa Search: The Gone-Goose Flock Grows
November 29, 2008
I had heard rumblings about Alexa for a while. Early in 2008, I had to gather information about Alexa’s infrastructure. I uncovered some information that did not add up. Great words about the future of Alexa, but the performance was spotty. Amazon–owner of Alexa–is making some changes, if the news reports are accurate. The world’s smartest man may be, in the words of TechFlash, Seattle’s Technology News Source, “pulling the plug”. You can read the story here. “Amazon Pulling Plug on Alexa Web Search” said on November 27, 2008, said, “The reason for the closure: very few people were using it.” The Bezos word for this was “deprecated.” I thought “deprecate” meant “to pray for deliverance from”. Don’t believe me? Click here and look at definition number four. So, the Search Engine Death Watch list grows again. For more information about Alexa, click here. What’s next for Amazon? My thought is that in the present economic climate, Amazon will have to crank the revenue dials for its we’re-better-than-Google cloud computing play. I think the cost of the cloud initiative at Amazon may be rolling in from the Sea of Red Ink. I hope the weather system goes around Amazon, but if it hits, wow, the costs will be high.
Stephen Arnold, November 29, 2008
Google: ZDNet and Two Views of Usage Data
November 29, 2008
This item is not really about Google. I think I found it interesting that ZDNet UK wrote a story here with the headline “Yahoo, Microsoft Outperform US Search Growth” and ZDNet US wrote a story here with this headline “Microsoft Still Fighting a Losing Battle against Google”. I detected a certain joy in the UK story. The GOOG is not growing so quickly. The fact that hapless AOL is giving up share in a lousy economic climate to other Web search outfits is not too surprising. The US ZDNet analyst, Garett Rogers, reproduces a chart and suggests that Google is still growing, just not as quickly. I think data from outfits like Comscore and others are only somewhat helpful. Based on the resources to which I have access, I peg Google’s share of the Web search market in the 75 percent range with its share in certain countries in Europe nosing into the 90 percent range. The big point for me is that most people, including trained analysts, have a reluctance to accept three facts:
- Google’s share of the search market is dominant and it is unlikely that short of the Google triumvirate having a shoot out in the Google cafeteria, not much is going to change in the foreseeable future
- Microsoft and Yahoo are not making significant headway because users are not running queries on these systems. The problem is not Google; the problem is the user.
- The data from consultants who make a horse race out of sampled data output stuff that does not make the conclusion easy to understand.
In Web search, the GOOG is number one, and unless Yahoo and Microsoft figure out how to leapfrog Googzilla, the gap is likely to remain quite wide. Clicks mean money. Paying money for traffic won’t do the job. Yahoo, bless its purple heart, has one heck of a mess to sort out. Selling the Kelkoo search system that worked while keeping one that doesn’t work very well is one sign that the company is drifting. Yahoo lost money on the deal and kept the less effective system.
Stephen Arnold, November 29,, 2008
Knowledge Plaza
November 28, 2008
Whatever, a Belgian enterprise solutions start-up, just rolled out Knowledge Plaza Platform as a Service for search and multi-user companywide knowledge management combined into one shareable, customized interface. The idea is to tap all user data and experience. In theory, no knowledge is lost, and users can learn from others in an interactive environment. See features detailed here, and note the Expert as Search Engine (EaSE), which searches user bookmarks in both the plaza and online so that one employee can search other user assets. There’s also a wiki setup and browser and e-mail integration.
Check it out at http://www.knowledgeplaza.be. They’re scheduling demos now. The product appears to be in the same category as Yakabox, which we talked about here. As I get more information, I will pass it along.
Stephen Arnold, November 28, 2008.
Bebo Says Google a Nightmare
November 28, 2008
This story is getting pretty tough to locate online. I found a version at Mad.co.uk, and you can try to access “Bebo’s Burns Labels Google a Nightmare to Deal with” here. The story is hooked to Kate Burns, a person who was according to the story by Suzanne Bearne was “Google’s first employee in the UK.” Apparently the comments were made at a public forum in the UK. The article reports that another speaker described Google as a “parasite”. The most interesting comment in the article, in my opinion, was this chunk of prose:
Kelvin Mackenzie, chairman of Myvideorights.com and former editor of The Sun, said, YouTube is a fantastic idea but the piracy issues involved with the company are “a disgrace for smaller companies.”
My pal Cyrus, the world’s smartest person in his mind, often accuses me of Photoshopping Google information. Here is the screen shot I made of the Mad Web page. Sorry about the resolution Cyrus, but that’s the way WordPress handles images.
Source: http://www.mad.co.uk
I have several thoughts in my addled goose brain which I intend to capture:
- A former employee had to learn how to deal with Google. This suggests that Google is changing, so that former Googlers may not be able to provide the “inside Google” knowledge that many organizations want
- The word “nightmare” is quite colorful and its suggests that my mental image of Googzilla which I débuted in early 2005 is works for me. Your mental image of Google may differ from mine, of course.
- The combination of Google’s culture and the YouTube.com service seem to be an explosive combination for some non-Googley types. However, I bet their children are hooked on YouTube.com and mom and dad won’t admit that from a demographic point of view, Google may be rooted for the long haul.
One final thought: this story is getting hard to find. Yahoo 404s. NewsNow.co.uk reports zero hits. No reference in AllTheWeb.com news. But I found the story using the query “bebo burns” on Google News at 10 44 am Eastern on November 27, 2008.
That’s interesting to me. Now I want to run the query “google nightmare.”
Stephen Arnold, November 28, 2008
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