Has Demand Media Been Nipped By Googzilla?
August 13, 2010
PEHub.com ran an interesting story, “What Happened to Demand Media’s Traffic?” The focus of the story is a nifty chart designed to catch the attention of the search engine optimization crowd. After a long run up, Demand Media’s traffic fell. According to the write up, “The massive drop off occurred a few days prior to the [Demand Media] IPO filing.”
The PEHub.com story speculates that Google is planning a content play itself. Hardly news here in the goose pond. We wrote Google: The Digital Gutenberg and made that case last year. But news has little to do with research, so the PEHub.com story with references to Google patents is as fresh as a spring blossom.
Our view is slightly different. What did you expect from the addled goose? Chopped liver. (Oh, that is a faux pas related to foie gras.)
- Google is chasing money and really is intent on generating revenues. Demand Media type content produces clicks and the Google is keenly interested in this aspect of certain Web plays; that is, clicks equal money.
- The Demand Media content is different from a Jeffrey A. Dean Google technical paper. Ergo: Google has some tricks up its lab jacket to become a player in the content stream for which Demand Media has become known.
- The shift makes clear the power of traffic reports.
Exciting for sure. I think the traffic drop is a coincidence. The Google has its mind on Korean bar-b-q.
Stephen E Arnold, August 13, 2010
Quote to Note: Murdoch on Paywall
August 12, 2010
Quote to note: The memorable passage comes from “iPad ‘Perfect Platform’ for News, Murdoch Says.” Here’s the segment:
Murdoch added that subscriber levels for The Times website has also been very positive: “It’s going to be a success. Subscriber levels are strong. We are witnessing the start of a new business model for the internet. The argument that information wants to be free is only said by those who want it for free.”
Paywalls are not new. SDC had them 40 years ago. Paywalls are great for must have content and for defensive plays. Paywalls allows publishers to keep existing subscribers. Paywalls are wonderful filters. Traffic drops are significant, maybe 90 percent or more.
Poison antidote data is a must have information resource. News, for me, not so much.
Stephen E Arnold, August 12, 2010
Forbes Gets Classier
August 10, 2010
Short honk: Point your browser thing at “I Guess Forbes Figured Out a Way to Fight Back.” A business publication that once gave McGraw Hill fits has found a way to cope with the Web, according to Rexblog. The key passage for me was:
I noticed the cluttered design, page-view-inflating gimmicks and numerous other user-hating approaches of Forbes.com seem to be undergoing a transformation into something that might work when their competitors throw up pay walls.
Nah, won’t work. Too late. I did enjoy watching Steve’s dad Malcolm wheel his Harley into an uptown joint and hang with the dentists, accountants, and bankers who wanted to be “bad” in a Fifth Avenue manner.
Stephen E Arnold, August 10, 2010
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Arnold For Fee Columns for August
August 9, 2010
Here’s the run down for my for fee August 2010 columns. These will appear over the next four to 12 weeks. Each for-fee publication has a different editorial cycle.
- Information Today, “Question-Centric Queries: Can Socrates Save Search?” The focus is on Ask.com and question-and-answer interfaces.
- Information World Review, “SAP Follows IBM to Open Source: A Phase Change?”. SAP seems to be playing the open source card. Will this be the magic SAP needs to grow in 2011? Read IWR to find out my take.
- KMWorld, “Google’s MapReduce, Chubby, and the Hadoop the Loop.” The topic is Hadoop and the risk Google has taken with its open source tactics.
- Smart Business Network, “Inbound Marketing: Will Bytes Adds Zest to Traditional Marketing?” The article explains the difference between traditional marketing (what I call outbound marketing) and inbound marketing (which is the use of social network methods) to generate leads. The story will appear in SBN’s dozen print publications.
The full text of these articles is available directly from the publisher. Every five or six years, I gather up out-of-date columns and put them on ArnoldIT.com. Best bet to get these write ups, then, is to contact the publisher who buys the copyright from me.
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2010
Freebie but I get paid to write these for fee thingies.
Tuenti: Survivor or Sushi?
August 7, 2010
In the fluid social media world the competition is get fierce. As some companies continue to grow and gain more members others fall behind and unable to catch up are forced to undergo major changes.
Tuenti, which is also known as the Spanish Facebook has enjoyed a successful rise. It is an invitation only based social network that provides consumers with many different options. The telecommunications group Telefonica had attempted to get its social media network off the ground has brokered a deal to buy Tuenti. Telefonica wants to become a household name in the social world so with the help of Tuenti hopes to become a household name.
The UK’s social giant, Bebo, was supposed to be a premier social networking. Bebo started out at the top and gained a loyal group of followers. However after losing many of its members to more popular social sites, and with new ownership, it now faces a long road back to the top.
Social networks are now becoming search and content publishing ecosystems. Can Tuenti bring luster to European social networking? Will Tuenti be a survivor or sushi? Pass the wasabi, please.
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2010
Leak or Plant: The New Ecology of Information
August 6, 2010
Where is the line between freedom of online speech and national security? One Web site is testing this border and creating quite a storm. The Washington Post recently ran a scathing editorial, “WikiLeaks Must be Stopped,” discussing the legality of the aforementioned WikiLeaks (www.wikileaks.org), which claims to have leaked over 70,000 classified documents. The article pulls no punches, beginning with: “Let’s be clear: WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise.” The article basically calls the site terroristic, though it is not affiliated with terror organizations. The Post actually encourages the United States to use military force, if necessary, to close down the site. Now, there’s no question this is a concerning site, but the internet is a place where voices can be heard, maybe the government should work harder on preventing leaks instead of crushing Web sites.
Beyond Search has some different thoughts. First, much of the information is recycled from open sources. Convenient. Second, is the information disinformation? The “value” of the content may not be the information itself but the notional impact of having these data floating around. Who loses? Who wins? Is this a new form of publishing?
Pat Roland, August 6, 2010
Paid Content Portal Partiers
August 4, 2010
News Corp. is rumored to be signing up UK publishers for its for-fee content portal. The New York Times has the same idea. According to “NYT Begins Marketing Mobile Content Platform to Other Publications” reveals that the Gray Lady is gunning for the burgeoning smart phone and netbook segments. The story reported these early licensees:
In addition to the AH Belo papers, which include The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal and The Press-Enterprise, several NYTCo-owned dailies, namely the International Herald Tribune, The Gainesville Sun and The Lakeland Ledger, will also participate in the product launch.
These strike us as an insiders’ club, but, heck, what do we know in Harrod’s Creek? Well, we did read “Reminder to Publishers: Steve Jobs Hates the New York Times iPad App.” The article reminded the goose that publishers are struggling in their area of core competency. Software seems to be a discipline that requires somewhat different skills. Mr. Jobs’s viewpoint strikes the addled goose as on the money.
The Beyond Search view is that keeping Mr. Jobs happy is a good idea.
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2010
Ah, Now We Are Really Beyond Search
August 4, 2010
I love it when Fortune Magazine makes a brilliant business breakthrough. I don’t mean record setting revenues or surging subscriptions. Nope. I refer to Fortune’s article “Google: The Search Party Is Over.” The London newspapers have been nibbling on this dog bone for a year or so. The entire publishing industry has been howling in their kennels when it realized that Google was sucking money from ads and providing a road map for other tech-savvy entrepreneurs to exploit the traditional information industry. In my “domains collide” essays and talks, I pointed out that upstarts like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google were pulling meta-plays, leaving those engrossed in checkers at the mercy of the 3-D chess players. The strategy for linear tactics allowed a number of multi-billion dollar outfits to poke their noses into a lousy financial climate. To make matters worse, the children of the “media establishment” were embracing the upstarts’ methods, not mommy and daddy’s.
What makes the Fortune article fascinating is that Fortune is now asserting that the miserable Googlers are going to face some tough sledding. The examples on offer range from Facebook (which is more like Google than most New Yorkers care to admit) to the New Age Apple. I mean black T shirts and blue jeans! Gasp. None of that in the Yacht Club on 44th, thank you.
Please, read the original. Get it on paper if you can. That will provide a gentle stroke to the money people at Time Warner. Who cares about that environmental, eco-thing. I used to work in Manhattan. Once you cross the river into New Jersey, who cares about the rest of the world, right?
Here’s a passage that caught my attention:
Amazingly, Google’s biggest and most promising opportunity to date, its successful Android operating platform for mobile phones, doesn’t produce much revenue or profit for Google — by design. The company in 2007 made the technology available to all comers in a bid to make the web more accessible on smartphones and in turn to encourage consumers to do more Google searches on their mobile devices. The strategy worked. Encouraged by this easy access to Android, handset makers began churning out multimedia phones, and the Android platform has been a consumer success: Google says some 160,000 new Android devices are activated each day, and device makers from Motorola (MOT) to HTC have all released popular phones on the Android platform. But Google doesn’t make gobs of money on those devices. (Google dabbled in phones but discontinued its Nexus One after only six months.) Apple, on the other hand, also stoked the smartphone market with its iOS, but with very different financial results: Last year the company posted an estimated $15 billion in iPhone sales, a benefit of making the hardware and the software.
There are four issues in this addled goose mind about the Fortune analysis:
First, Google has momentum. Just like Microsoft, complaining is not likely to stop the revenue flow. Sure the Web is “ever changing” – unlike the magazine business/ As a result, in course corrections are easier and the Google will make them. Will each adjustment be a home run? Nope. Will these modifications keep the company on track? In my opinion, yep.
Second, the problems Google faces plague its competitors and the many Xooglers in these companies. The legal hassles are just beginning, and I think that Google has been able to pull a Ronald Reagan. Some of its competitors won’t be so lucky. A single Microsoft-style anti-trust decision can trigger some interesting changes without much warning.
Third, the companies that are winning are increasingly monopolistic. A single problem within these constructs can have unexpected consequences. For example, as wonderful as Amazon and Apple are, both find themselves heading for a head on collision with regard to digital content. When monopolies collide, the impact will be quicker and more severe than when new methods of performing certain work intersect. In short, I see upheavals ahead. Big upheavals.
Finally, the problems at Google began in the pre-IPO period from 2002 to 2004. The Google got caught with its paw in the Yahoo-Overture-GoTo advertising method cookie jar. In 2006, Google was at its peak. The company could do no wrong. But after 2006, the company’s “culture” began to shift and the firm became careless. Betas were no longer tests; betas were outright mistakes. From the little known Web Accelerator tizzy to the spectacular Buzz flop, the caution signal was activated in late 2006. Hmmm. four years ago.
We’ve been beyond search for several years. In fact it is going on five years since I wrote in Searcher Magazine that search was dead. Slow reaction time works on Sixth Avenue. Doesn’t work in Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2010
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Taxodiary: At Last a Taxonomy News Service
August 3, 2010
I have tried to write about taxonomies, ontologies, and controlled term lists. I will be the first to admit that my approach has been to comment on the faux pundits, the so-called experts, and the azurini (self appointed experts in metatagging and indexing). The problem with the existing content flowing through the datasphere is that it is uninformed.
What makes commentary about tagging informed? Three attributes. First, I expect those who write about taxonomies to have built commercially-successful systems to manage terms lists and that those term lists are in wide use, conform to standards from ISO, ANSI, and similar outfits. Second, I expect those running the company to have broad experience in tagging for serious subjects, not the baloney that smacks of search engine optimization and snookering humans and algorithms with their alleged cleverness. Third, I expect the systems used to build taxonomies, manage classification schemes, and term lists to work; that is, a user can figure out how to get information out of a system relevant to his / her query.
Splash page for the Taxodiary news and information service.
How rare are these attributes?
Darned rare. When I worked on ABI/INFORM, Business Dateline, and the other database products, I relied on two people to guide my team and me. The first person is Betty Eddison, one of the leaders in indexing. May she rest in indexing heaven where SEO is confined to Hell. Betty was one of the founders of InMagic, a company on whose board I served for several years. Top notch. Care to argue? Get ready for a rumble, gentle reader.
The second person was Margie Hlava. Now Ms. Hlava, like Ms. Eddison, is one of the top guns in indexing. In fact, I would assert that she is on my yardstick either at the top or holds the top spot in this discipline. Please, keep in mind that her company Access Innovations and her partner Dr. Jay ven Eman are included in my reference to Ms. Hlava. How good is Ms. Hlava? Very good saith the goose.
Pundit Ignores Information Retrieval Reality
August 1, 2010
Short honk: I don’t have the energy to deal with “Cookie Madness”, an essay that appeared in the Buzz Machine. Maybe academics are afflicted with “a certain blindness” to use William James’s brilliant phrase? Maybe academics forget that most of the people using computers don’t know that their online activities can be tracked, including hover time, mouse movement, and cursor movement patterns?
More important is the penchant for publishers and reporters to embrace the roots of American journalism. The catch phrase for this approach to information fit nicely under the precept at the Courier Journal’s WHAS television unit as “If it bleeds, it leads.” Why? Money. Simple. Fear, controversy, and explosive allegations are the chemicals that feed the modern Venus Fly Trap of journalism. Nothing is more effective than creating an issue and then huffing with indignation about that issue. Quite an information ecosystem, right?
The Wall Street Journal is owned by a modern media mogul, presumably an owner of properties employing journalism school graduates, new media specialists, and even PhDs in social collaboration (whatever that means). When these rosy cheeked warriors arrive, those titanium tipped diggers will ferret out what sells.
The Wall Street Journal is focusing on fear and breathless explanations of how a computer system can track a user’s every online action. Hey, as long as it generates sales and gets the pundits’ panties in a bind, the Wall Street Journal’s story about tracking is doing its job. At least the journalists working on the story have jobs, for a while at least.
Sigh. Next Hyde Park moment coming up. Film at 11. Now this word.
Stephen E Arnold, August 1, 2010
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