Sword Group and TEMIS Partner
April 2, 2013
TEMIS has already built its reputation as one of the leading providers of Semantic Content Enrichment for Enterprise as well as the SWORD Group and they recently announced a partnership. The Tag Line article “Sword Group Partners with TEMIS to Democratize the Semantic Enrichment in the Business” which was translated using Google talks about the new budding relationship. SWORD Group is now considered a certified “Gold Partner” and now uses the TEXIS Luxid platform.
“Luxid Content Enrichment Platform is a platform for robust semantic enrichment of content, which extracts the relevant business information contained in unstructured documents, and rich metadata. Revealing facets of business information assets, it helps to optimize the management and archiving, dissemination within portals, as well as analysis.”
SWORD Group is a consulting group and they focus on assisting their clients with managing information, analysis and classification. Their technology helps to extract, transform, enrich and also publish information and their Gold Partner collaboration with TEMIS they will be able to obtain a deep knowledge of Luxid and more importantly its uses. Philippe Le Calve, Chief Executive Officer SWORD France made the following statement.
“The signing of this partnership between Gold and TEMIS SWORD follows several years of working on our projects. Good value and robust in natural language processing, TEMIS is a natural ally essential to its strategy SWORD valuation information. Luxid ® platform is a key technology pillars that support the semantic solutions designed by SWORD.”
Luxid aims to be easily integrated into a variety of content management systems and can be connected to a number of different solutions including Microsoft SharePoint Solutions, EMC Documentum and MarkLogic. TEMIS definitely has worked its charm on SWORD looks like they got a good thing going.
April Holmes, April 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Thomson Reuters: The Pointy End of a Business Sector
March 28, 2013
Thomson Reuters has been a leader in professional publishing for many years. I lost track of the company after the management shake up which accompanied the departure of Michael Brown and some other top executives. Truth be told I was involved in work for the US government, and it was new, exciting, and relevant. My work for publishing companies trying to surf the digital revolution reminded me of my part time job air hammering slag at Keystone Steel & Wire Company.
I read “Data Don’t Add Up for Thomson Reuters.” (This online link can go dead or to a pay wall without warning, and I don’t have an easy way to update links in this free blog. So, there you go.) You can find the story in the printed version of the newspaper or online if you have a subscription. The printed version appears on page C-10, March 28, 2013 edition.
The main point is that Thomson Reuters has not been able to grow organically by selling more information to professionals or by buying promising companies and surfing on surging revenue streams. This is an important point, and I will return to it in a moment. The Wall Street Journal story said:
Shares of Thomson Reuters remain 13% below where they were when the deal closed in April 2008, partly reflecting difficulty integrating two large, international companies.
The article runs though other challenges which range from Bloomberg to Dow Jones, from ProQuest to LexisNexis. The article is short, so the list of challenges has been truncated to a handful of big names.
Do the professional publishing companies have access to talent on a par with Julius Caesar’s capabilities? In my opinion, without management of exceptional skill, professional publishing companies will be sucked through the rip in the fabric of credibility which Thomson Reuters’ pointed spear has created: Flat earnings, more wrenching cost cutting, and products which confuse customers and do not increase revenue and profits. Image from Wikipedia Vercingetorix write up.
But let’s set aside Thomson Reuters. I want to look at the Thomson Reuters’ situation as the pointy end of a spear. The idea is that Thomson Reuters has worked hard for 20 or 30 years to be the best managed, smartest, and most technologically adept company in the professional publishing sector. With hundreds of brands and almost total saturation of certain markets like trademark and patent information, legal information, and data for wheeler dealers—Thomson Reuters has been trying hard, very hard, to make the right moves. Is time running out?
Like the professional publishing sector which includes outfits as diverse as Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Ebsco Electronic Publishing, Elsevier, and Wolters Kluwers to name a few outfits with hundreds of millions in revenue. Each of these companies share some components:
- Information is “must have” as opposed nice to have
- Information is for-fee, not free
- Customer segments are not spending in the way the analysts predicted
- Deals have not delivered significant new revenue
- Management shifts replace executives with similar, snap in type people. Innovative and disruptive folks find themselves sitting alone at company meetings.
Searching a Priority? Also a Source of Fascinating Confusion?
February 18, 2013
The headline of a news release from Concept Searching caught my eye: Survey Results Indicate Enterprise Search is still the Number One Priority.
The subtitle puts the data in what I call the “marketing context.” Here is is:
Recent Concept Searching Survey Finds CIOs are Still Struggling with Search
The basic findings are revealed in this paragraph:
With the explosion of unstructured content, enterprise search has become inadequate for the knowledge worker but also renders relevant content inaccessible when applying it to collaboration and text analytics. Organizations are recognizing that search is not a stand-alone technology or application, but must be integrated with business processes and corporate objectives as a key infrastructure component. Regardless of the enterprise search solution, the delivery of meaningful results depends on the ability to effectively index and classify content, and to develop taxonomies to better manage the content. With the unabated growth of unstructured content and the introduction of diverse environments, such as on-premise, cloud, or hybrid, the need to access relevant information is falling far behind organizational needs. Content can exist in multiple repositories, and if not effectively managed increases organizational risk.
The sponsor of the study is Concept Searching, and a “white paper” providing more information is available from the company at www.conceptsearching.com.
Several observations:
- Search is a nebulous term. Many vendors are using the nomenclature of customer support, data analytics, eDiscovery, and Big Data. The reason, based on what little I know, is that search is not a hot term in some circles. See, for instance, the “comScore Releases the 2013 Digital Future in Focus Report.” The message there is that the digital landscape is rich and varies, in flux, and moving in unexpected directions.
- Open source plays are picking up steam. Based on my recent interview with Miles Kehoe and a forthcoming interview with Mark Bennett, both at LucidWorks, organizations are embracing open source solutions for a number of reasons. Could this be good news for open source solutions and less good news for vendors of walled garden systems which support “standards”? With the wave of consolidations and the HP Autonomy dust up, has cold water been tossed on the raging fires of information retrieval?
- Good, bad, or indifferent, Google has become the touchstone for many people when the word “search” is used. I saw a discussion on the LinkedIn search forum which presented the idea that appliances are back in vogue, specifically, the Google appliance. Simplicity may be gaining traction in markets confused or under cost pressure. Do licensees want complexity, multiple moving parts, and highly refined components or a solution that works?
- Companies in data management like MarkLogic are going back to their roots in publishing because the search push has not resulted in the revenue windfall some anticipated. Have the hopes for big paydays via enterprise search shifted to paydays for services firms and consultants?
Search, it seems, remains fascinating and confusing. Thank goodness I am old and content with my paper files and steam powered computer.
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2013
DataFacet Video
February 15, 2013
DataFacet’s stream of news slowed in late 2012. The outfit seems to be quiet; what’s going on over there? While we wait for their next move, check out the interesting video on the DataFacet Web site, which effectively introduces their product. It begins with a good explanation of “taxonomy,” which might be useful to bookmark in case you need to define the term for someone unfamiliar with the field. The video goes on to show someone using parts of the DataFacet system, which gives a much better idea of what it does than any text explanation could. It’s set to a catchy tune, too.
The product description surrounding the video specifies:
DataFacet provides a taxonomy based data model for your enterprise’s unstructured information along with a sophisticated, yet easy to use, set of tools for applying the data model to your content.
It’s an easy three step process:
- Choose your foundation taxonomies from the DataFacet library of over 500 topic domains
- Customize your taxonomy with DataFacet Taxonomy Manager
- Tag your content with DataFacet Taxonomy Server
DataFacet is already available for the following search and content environments:
- Microsoft SharePoint 2010
- Oracle WebCenter Content
- Apache Solr and Lucene
- MarkLogic Server
- Exalead CloudView
- Coveo Enterprise Search
- Autonomy IDOL
- Less than 1 week turnaround for most custom platform integrations.
DataFacet is actually a joint project, built by taxonomists from WAND and Applied Relevance. Based in Denver, Colorado, WAND has been developing structured multi-lingual vocabularies since 1998. Their taxonomies have been put to good use in online search systems, ad-matching engines, B2B directories, product searches, and within enterprise search engines.
Applied Relevance offers automated tagging to help organizations contextualize their unstructured data. They have designed their user interface using cross-platform JavaScript and HTML5, which gives their application the flexibility to run in a browser, be embedded in a Web page, or be hosted in an Adobe Air desktop application.
Cynthia Murrell, February 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Attivio vs Sinequa: Who Does What?
September 12, 2012
When I was assembling the Attivio company profile for IDC (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=236514), I noted a catchphrase conflict. I ran the query “unified information access” and got a hit on Wikipedia. The phrase seems to have been coined by Sue Feldman, an IDC expert in search. The phrase “unified information access” is also strongly linked to Attivio within a Google search results list. In our research for the IDC Attivio profile, Attivio had made extensive use of the phrase for several years.
What was interesting was that we noticed that Sinequa, a vendor of enterprise search technology, was using the same phrase. You can see Sinequa’s use of the phrase in the banner of the Sinequa Web site.
Other companies are using the phrase as well; for example, BA-Insight, Endeca, Exalead, MarkLogic, PerfectSearch, and Palantir.
What is the value of a phrase if a number of vendors use it to describe what their systems deliver? Does this create confusion? Can Attivio’s strong grip on the phrase be eroded? Like “search enabled applications,” a phrase can lose its meaning when a number of companies use it. The words “search,” “information,” “big data,” “taxonomy,” and “semantics” have become almost impossible to define. Marketers “assume” that the words are understood by the reader or listener. Are they?
Search and content processing vendors continue to “look alike.” Little wonder. Each company seems to be piggybacking on other wordsmiths’ positioning ideas. Unlike Apple Samsung, there is no physical product involved. The words, therefore, are probably more easily repurposed and shaped. Does this help one understand what a company’s products actually do?
My view is that search, analytics, and content processing vendors are repeating the marketing approach which helped make traditional enterprise search vendors into almost identical systems.
Are the systems identical? In my experience, the systems are quite different, but licensees do not know what difference is meaningful until the license deal has been signed and the license fee paid. Is differentiation no longer important? I thought a unique selling proposition was important, but with vendors recycling terminology, perhaps the USP is old school, and, therefore, irrelevant.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
Will New CEOs Knock Out Search Revenue Pains?
August 8, 2012
Two search vendors have recently announced shuffling in their top management positions. The first vendor – Perfect Search. The enterprise search technology vendor replaced its President and CEO of five years last May 2012. George Watanabe, co-founder and VP of Business Development and Investor Relations filled in the empty seat.
The second vendor – MarkLogic. Also in May 2012, “Gary Bloom Joins MarkLogic as Chief Executive Officer”:
“MarkLogic Corporation, the company powering mission-critical Big Data Applications around the world, today announced that Gary Bloom… has been named president and chief executive officer.
Gary brings an exceptional background that includes more than two decades of successful leadership in enterprise software. He was the CEO and president at eMeter, which provides smart grid management software for electric, gas, and water utilities… Prior to that, Gary was a consultant of TPG, a leading global private investment firm.”
Both Watanabe and Bloom have the potential to further pave the way for success of their respective companies, given their impressive technical background in enterprise applications. But both companies have joined the bandwagon and just lately added Big Data to their focus. We’re waiting to see if the move to change executives will tip the enterprise search and Big Data scales in their favor.
Lauren Llamanzares, August XX, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
XML Specialist Explains Google Book Settlement to Publishers
July 10, 2012
Advertising Profits recently reported on the results of a March webinar poll by the enterprise software company MarkLogic in the article “Mark Logic Delivers Educational Webinar on Google’s Settlement with the Publishing Industry.”
According to the article, attendees of the webinar (with record setting registrations) learned practical ways that organizations can exploit the landmark settlement between Google and book publishers as an extraordinary business opportunity in online publishing.
When highlighting the results from the webinar poll, the article states:
“When asked if their company’s content was in the appropriate format for Google Book Search to ingest/index, 68 percent of respondents said no or not sure. As for how the audience views Google Book Search, 51 percent of respondents saw it as an opportunity for their business and six percent deemed it a threat. 35 percent stated that Google Book Search was both and just eight percent replied neither.”
In addition to the webinar, MarkLogic has made resources available for continued education on the Google Book Search settlement on the company’s Web site.
The is certainly an interesting marketing angle to use XML professonals to explain the intricacies of the Google settlement with publishers.
Jasmine Ashton, July 10, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Big Outfits Buy Search Vendors: Does Chaos Commence?
May 25, 2012
I don’t want to mention any specifics in this write up. I have a for-fee Overflight on the subject. I do want to highlight some of the preliminary thoughts the goslings and I collected before creating our client-focused analysis. This write up was sparked by the recent news that the founder of Autonomy, which HP acquired for $10 billion, is seeking new opportunities after eight months immersed in the HP way. See “Hewlett-Packard Can’t Say It Wasn’t Warned about Autonomy.” This write up contained a remarkable statement, even when measured against the work of other “real” journalists:
Some will say this is a classic case of an entrepreneurial business being bought by a hulking, bureaucratic institution which failed to integrate it and failed to understand its culture. Others will say HP, desperate to do a deal, simply overpaid for a company that was going to struggle to maintain its sales and earnings momentum and was deluded about its abilities. Certainly warnings about the latter were there for HP to see before it handed over all that cash. Here’s what Marc Geall, a Deutsche Bank analyst who used to work at Autonomy, said in October 2010 about the business model: “…investment in the business has lagged revenues… [which] could affect customer satisfaction towards the product and the value it delivers.” He went on to warn that Autonomy’s service business was “too lean” and that it “risks falling short of standards demanded by customers”. All of which prompted Geall to question whether the company needed to change its business model – “traditionally, software companies have needed to change their business models at around $1bn in revenues”.
Yep, now the issues are easy to identify: the brutal cost of customer support, the yawning maw of research and development, the time and cost of customizing a system. The problem is that these issues have been identified. However, senior managers looking for the next big thing are extremely confident of their business and technical acumen. Search is a slam dunk. Heck, I can find what I want in Google. How tough can it be to find that purchase order? That confidence may work in business school, but it has not worked in the wild-and-crazy world of enterprise search and content processing.
Think back to the notable search acquisitions over the last few years. Here are some to jump start your memory:
- IBM in 2005 and 2006 purchases iPhrase (a MarkLogic precursor with semantic components) and Language Analysis Systems (a next generation content processing vendor)
- Microsoft which acquired Powerset and Fast Search & Transfer in the 2008 to 2009 period. Both vendors had next-generation systems with semantic, natural language processing, and other near-magical capabilities
- Oracle acquired TripleHop in 2005, focused on its less-and-less visible Secure Enterprise Search line up (SES10g and SES11g), then went on a buying spree to snap up InQuira (actually the company formed when two weaker players, Answerfriend Inc. and Electric Knowledge Inc., merged in 2002 or 2003, RightNow (which uses the Q-Go natural language processing system purchased in 2010 or 2011), and Endeca, an established search vendor with technology dating from the late 1990s)
- SAP snagged some search functions with its NetWeaver buy in 2004 which coexisted in a truce of sorts with the SAP TREX system. SAP bought Business Objects in 2007, the company inherited the Inxight Software, a text analytics vendor with assorted wizardry explained in buzzwords by marketing mavens.
So what have we learned from these buy outs by big companies? Here are the observations:
First, search and content processing does not behave the way other types of software learns to sit, come, and roll over. The MBAs, lawyers, and accountants issue commands like good organizational team players. The enterprise search and content processing crowd listens to the management edicts with bemusement. Everyone thinks search is a slam dunk. How tough can a utility function be? Well, let me remind you, gentle reader, search is pretty darned difficult. Unlike a cloud service for managing contacts, search is not one thing. Furthermore, those who have to use search are generally annoyed because systems have since 1970 failed to generate answers. Search outputs create more work. Usually the outputs are mostly wide of the mark. Big companies want to sell a software product or service that solves a problem like what is the back log for the Midwestern region or when did I last call Mr. Jones? The big companies don’t get this type of system when they buy, often for a premium, companies which purport to make content findable, smart, and accessible. So we have a situation in which a sales presentation whets the appetite of the big company executive who perceives himself or herself as an expert in search. Then when anticipation is at its peak, the sales person closes the deal. In the aftermath, the executives realize that search just does not follow the groove of an accounting system, a videoconferencing system, or a security system. Panic sets in, and you get crazy actions. IBM pretty much jettisoned its search systems and fell in love with open source Lucene / Solr. Good enough was a lot better than trying to figure out the mysteries of proprietary search and how to pay for the brutal research and development costs search requires.
Second, search is a moving target. I find that as recently as my meetings with sleek MBAs from six major financial firms, search was assumed to be a no brainer. Google has figured out search. Move on. When I asked the group how many considered themselves experts in search, everyone replied, “Yes.” I submit that none of these well-paid movers-and-shakers are very good at search and retrieval. Few of them have the time or patience for old fashioned research. Most get information from colleagues, via phone calls which include “I have a hard stop in five minutes”, and emails sent to people whom they have met at social functions or at conferences. Search is not looking up a phone number. Search is not slamming the name of a company into Google. Search is not wandering around midtown Manhattan with an iPhone displaying the location of a pizza joint. Search is whatever the user wishes to find, access, know, or learn at any point in time and in any context. Google is okay at some search functions. Other vendors are okay at others. The problem is that virtually all search and retrieval solutions are okay. People have been trying for about 50 years to deliver responses to queries that are what the user requires. Most systems dissatisfy more than half their users and have for 50 years. A big company buying a next generation search system wants these problems solved. The big company wants to close deals, get client access licenses, or cloud transactions for queries. But the big companies don’t get these things, so the MBAs, lawyers, and accountants are really confused. Confused people make crazy decisions. You get the idea.
Third, search does not mean search. Search technology includes figuring out which words to index in a document. Search does a miserable job of indexing videos unless the video audio track is converted to ASCII and then that ASCII is indexed. Even with this type of content processing system, search does not deliver a usable output. What a user gets is garbled snippets and maybe the opportunity to look at a video to figure out if the information is relevant. Search includes figuring out what a user wants before the user asks the question or even knows what the question is. One company is collecting millions in venture money to achieve this goal. Good luck on that. Search includes providing outputs that answer an employee’s specific question. Most systems provide a horseshoe type of result; that is, the search vendor wants points for getting close to the answer. Employees who have to click, scan, close, and repeat the process are not amused. The employee wants the Smith invoice from April, not increased risk of carpal tunnel problems. The poobahs who acquire search companies want none of these excuses. The poobahs want sales. What search acquisitions generate are increased costs, long sales cycles, and much friction. Marketers overstate and search systems routinely under deliver.
Who cares?
Another enterprise search train wreck. The engineer was either an MBA, an accountant, or a lawyer. No big deal. Just get another search train. How tough can it be to run a search system? Thanks to http://www.eccchistory.org/CCRailroads.htm
Well, the executives selling big companies a search and content processing just want the money. After years of backbreaking effort to generate revenues, the founders usually figure out that there are easier ways to earn a living. If the founders don’t bail out, they get a new job or become a guru at a venture capital firm.
The Courier Journal: A Louisville Death Rattle
May 13, 2012
In 1981, I joined the Courier Journal and Louisville Times. That was 31 years ago. I am not sure how I made the decision to leave the Washington, DC, area to journey to a city whose zip code and telephone area code were unknown to me. I am a 212, 202, and 301 type of person.
I recall meeting Barry Bingham Jr. He asked me what I did in my spare time. I was thunderstruck. My former employers—Halliburton Nuclear Utility Services and Booz, Allen & Hamilton—never asked me those questions. Those high powered, hard charging outfits wanted to know how much revenue I had generated and how much money I had saved the company, when the next meeting with the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy was, and how the Cleveland Design & Development man trip vehicle was rolling along. The personal stuff floored me.
I did not have an answer. As a Type A, Midwestern, over-achieving, no-brothers-and-no sisters worker bee, fun was not a big part of my personal repertoire.
I asked him, “Why?”
I recall to this day his answer, “I want our officers and employees to have time with their families, get involved in the community, and do great work without getting into that New York City thing.”
Interesting. The Courier Journal had a very good reputation. The newspaper was profitable, operated a wide range of businesses, printed the New York Times’s magazine for the Gray Lady, and operated a commercial database company. In fact, in 1980 the Courier Journal was one of the leaders in commercial online information, competing with a handful of other companies in the delivery of information via digital channels, not the dead-tree, ruin-the-environment, and dump-chemicals approach of most publishing companies.
In 1986, Gannet bought the Courier Journal. The commercial database unit was of zero interest to Gannet, so it and I were sold to Bell+Howell. After a short stint at a company entrenched in 16 mm motion film projectors, I headed back to New York City.
I retained my residence in Louisville, and I have watched the trajectory of the Courier Journal as it moved forward.
I have to be blunt. The Courier Journal is not the newspaper, the company, or the community force it was when I joined Mr. Bingham and a surprisingly diverse, bright, forward-looking team 31 years ago. The 1981 management approach of the Courier Journal was a culture shock to me. Think of the difference between Dick Cheney and Mr. Rogers. The 2012 approach saddens me.
This morning I read “Answering Your Questions on CJ Changes,” written by a person whom I do not know. The author of the article is Wesley Jackson, publisher of the Courier Journal. (I never liked the acronym CJ and still do not.)
The main point of the article is that the Courier Journal has to raise its prices. Last week, Mr. Jackson wrote a short article in the Courier Journal informing subscribers a letter would arrive explaining the new services that would be available. We received our letter on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. We called on Thursday, May 10, 2012, and cancelled our subscription. I am not sure how many other subscribers took this action, but a sufficient number of Courier Journal readers called to kill the phone system at the newspaper.
Mr. Jackson wrote this morning:
Unfortunately our Customer Service Center’s phone system had technical problems, and many of you had long wait times or could not get through to get your questions answered. That I know was frustrating.
I bet. I would love to see the data about the number of calls and the number of cancellations that the paper received when it announced the rate hike, a free iPad application for subscribers, and an email copy of the newspaper sent each day to paying customers.
The write up troubled me for several other reasons:
- Some of the word choices were of the touchy-feely school of communication. There are 19 “we’s”. The word “value” appears twice, there are seven categoricals: six all’s and one never; and the word “conversation” appears twice.
- There is at least one split infinitive “to personally apologize”
- An absolutely amazing promise expressed in this statement: “For those of you who would like to ask questions directly, please email me at publisher@courier-journal.com or send a letter to Publisher, Courier-Journal Media, 525 W. Broadway, Louisville, KY 40202. I promise you will each receive a response.”
“Promise,” “all,” and “never”—yep, I believe those assertions.
I would have included an image of Wesley Jackson but I had to pay for it. Not today, sorry.
My view is that I hear a death rattle from the Courier Journal. The reality of the newspaper is that it runs more and more syndicated content. The type of local coverage for which the paper was known when I joined in 1981 has decreased over the years. When I want news, I look at online services. What I have noticed is that what appears in the Courier Journal has been mentioned on Facebook, Twitter, or headline aggregation services two or three days before the information appears in either the Courier Journal’s hard copy edition or its online site, www.courier-journal.com.
Dave Kellogg, the former president of MarkLogic, used to chide me that I should not refer to major publishing operations and “dead tree publishers.” My view was and is that I am entitled to my opinion. Traditional publishing companies have failed to respond to new opportunities to disseminate and profit from information opportunities.
The list of mistakes include:
- Belief that an app will generate new revenue. Unfortunately apps are not automatic money machines. (Print-centric apps are not the go-to medium for many digital device users.)
- Assumptions about a person’s appetite for paying for “nice to have content.” (One pays for “must have” content, not “nice to have” content.)
- Failure to control costs. (Print margins continue to narrow as traditio0nal publishers try to regain the glory of the pre digital business models.)
- Firing staff who then go on to compete by generating content funded by a different business model. (This blog is an example. We do online advertising and inclusions and sell technical services. For some reason, this works for me thanks to my team which includes some former “real” journalists.)
- Assuming that new technology for printing color on newsprint equips an information technology department that it can handle other information technologies in an effective manner. (Skill in one technical area does not automatically transfer to another technical field.)
I can hear the labored breathing of a local newspaper struggling to stay alive. What do you hear?
Stephen E Arnold, May 13, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog, which is ArnoldIT
Hired Gun Stacey Wechsler Shoots Blanks, Frightens Goose
May 3, 2012
More desperation marketing.
I admit it. After the little health event, I have been slow on the trigger. But I kept firing real ammo. Even though I spent more time in the hospital than a Medicaid Integrity Contractor, we pushed closer to 8,000 posts in this blog since January 2008. I even submitted my January, February, March and April 2012 columns on schedule much to the annoyance of the medical wizards in rural Kentucky. I am not sure what I wrote, but, hey, at age 67 and stuffed with medical goodies, I had a tough time remembering what day it was.
Now that I am back at my desktop command center, I am wading through email. I have to say, “I get a great deal of spam.” Those with whom I work either buzz my mobile or send me a text message. The high value content in email forms a smaller and smaller percentage of the total bitage each day.
Imagine my surprise when I get email from public relations “experts” who address me by my first name, enjoin me to attend a Kentucky Derby event, and inform me of ever-so-cute Twitter handles. Right, I am going to follow a person who uses this type of desperation marketing method.
So what did I receive?
Style Icon Luxury Gifting Suite Presented by New Era…Featuring Luxury & Lifestyle Brands: New Era, Wonderful Pistachios, Connor Custom, Jewelers, The Teaologist, Infiniti , Koma Unwind, Amanda Burns Jewelry, Street Moda, Ceela Naturals Skincare, Marena Scientific Shapewear, Sharp Images Salon & Spa, Pureology Luxury Hair Care & Cardaroos. Beverages by Woodford Reserve & Given Liqueur with Signature “POM Juleps” by POM Wonderful **Benefitting: March of Dimes, Dress for Success Louisville, Cure Duchenne, & Blessings in a Backpack*
What does this message mean? And the asterisks. How is this irresponsible verbal barrage relevant to search and content processing?
Who sent this misdirected, “blank”? An outfit called Hired Gun, located in New York City. Yep, that explains it. New York ethos. I am just a hick in Kentucky. A spam magnet.
So I wrote Stacey Wechsler, owner of Hired Gun. I asked her to remove me from her spam list. I said, “Stop writing me.”
What happened?
She fired back more quickly than the Googler on Top Shot:.
Get over it. You were on a damn media list. Shoddy? Ok. Stacey Wechsler, Hired Gun Publicity
Yep, and and I thought the expletive was a deft touch. I really appreciate advice and a curse word. Just what a person recuperating from a life threatening illness needs to face the fine health care service in Harrod’s Creek.
Ms. Wechsler’s LinkedIn profile suggests she organized the Sundance Film Festival. Ah, nice gig. What did Robert Redford do? Chop liver? Ms. Wechsler asserts on Twitvid that she is:
A girl who loves sports, music, work & the people in my life.
I was disappointed that she provided so little information about her work for Playboy and her pledge mistress activities at St. John’s University.
Thin content, but I love the ampersand. A useful short cut. I am quite tired of the spam news releases young people send me.
Hey, “real” journalists, I don’t do news. I capture information which interests me. The blog is for me and free. I don’t write “real” journalists and I keep my PR experts at arm’s length.
Do the desperation marketers and PR mavens avoid me? “The Publicist Behind Snooki’s Success” has spammed sickly me right here in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. Obviously to the hired gun shooting wildly is more important than hitting a target. Ms. Wechsler has been guided in the “Fire, Aim, Ready” school of public relations. Dangerous?
Does Ms. Wechsler and her ilk expect me to process the baloney generated by unemployed middle school teachers, self appointed experts, failed webmasters, and “real” journalists who have lost their “real” jobs and are looking for some type of approbation. Don’t I point out that “real” journalists manage to Murdoch themselves?
My goodness, I made fun of AtomicPR’s clumsy efforts to explain that MarkLogic had morphed into an enterprise search vendor at an Autonomy or Endeca type level. Oh, please, PR mavens. Doesn’t MarkLogic offer an XML centric data management system?
The hired gun metaphor is less powerful than the AtomicPR metaphor. But I have to admit, having blanks shot near my one good ear has given me a headache. Pop. Pop. Pop. I find the gun metaphor threatening. Worth monitoring with Overflight.
Stephen E Arnold, May 3, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
