Marketer Links Open Source and Autonomy for Shock and SEO
August 25, 2010
I saw a link that someone sent me from a post on LinkedIn. I have a person pay attention to LinkedIn for me because I am not particularly social nor am I interested in looking for a “real” job. The write up pointed me to a blog post called “What Exactly is IDOL, Anyway?” The blog post is “real”; that is, part of the new positioning from the Silver Spring based content management information service called CMSWatch. You can read the original post “What Exactly is IDOL, Anyway?” and decide if my observations are on track or off track.
Interestingly, the write up cites an open source search vendor’s definition of Autonomy IDOL. I think the snippet is okay, but the snippet comes from a firm that is looking at commercial services in a particular way. There is nothing wrong with the viewpoint, but I think it is often useful to acknowledge that there are other angles from which to examine a technology or a company. For example, I think that a link to Lucid Imagination would have been helpful, but, hey, that’s my opinion. I am beavering away on the open source search conference, The Lucene Revolution, and I know how challenging it is to maintain a balance between the community-centric model and the commercial model. I have tried to create an endnote session that allows both commercial vendors and open source supporters an opportunity to discuss the market as open source becomes more of a force. On the panel are open source experts, the president of a commercial search vendor who used to run an open source company, and a UK-based open source vendor’s president. I hope to make the endnote an engaging, interactive discussion about this very issue: open source search and commercial search.
What caught my attention, however, is the consulting firm’s use of an open source vendor to help pitch a new, for-fee study about search and information access. This is a marketing technique that I wanted to document in my Web log.
Is the method clever?
On one hand, the notion of using an open source vendor to describe one of the best known, most widely used company’s products stopped me in my tracks. I don’t know too much about open source and I probably know even less about commercial companies, but I expected a description of Autonomy IDOL from [a] either Autonomy’s own Web site, [b] a person who has experience working with IDOL in one of Autonomy’s tens of thousands of installations, or [c] a competitor who has had to cope with Autonomy eyeball-to-eyeball.
On the other hand, this juxtaposition is sound search engine optimization type writing.
Here’s a passage that I found particularly interesting:
Now, there are plenty such cowboys around, and they’re perfectly happy with the software. But unfortunately, quite a few of Autonomy’s other customers weren’t quite prepared for it, and ended up unhappy with what they bought. Of course, it’s tempting to blame the vendor’s marketing and sales force for this; but that’s a bit like accusing a tiger of hunting deer. You can’t really blame them for trying.
With open source now gaining momentum, I find it amusing that a consultant is looping open source into a discussion of Autonomy. My hunch is that this type of blog post is a way to get traffic to a Web site and probably make sales of a study about a market sector that is no longer “about” search and information access.
Search has moved on. Information access has changed. The enterprise is a vastly different place from what it was when I wrote the first three editions of “The Enterprise Search Report.” The top five vendors have undergone considerable change. Convera is history. Fast Search & Transfer is a SharePoint component.
Most traditional search vendors struggle to get Web traffic. In my opinion, many consultants are concerned first about generating revenue for themselves and secondarily about helping organizations cope with the business issues tied to digital information. I learned the other day that one of the second tier consulting firms has pulled the plug on its somewhat crazy “map” of enterprise search vendors. This consultant’s efforts reminded me of a knock off of Boston Consulting Group’s work, but maybe I am just confused. Why did the second tier vendor’s map of enterprise search get nuked? The map did not make sense and did not yield what consulting firms need to keep the ship in shape.
My observations are:
- Hooking open source into commercial content processing is an important analytic task and one that warrants additional research and study. The world will no longer be one color. Think Joseph’s Technicolor dream coat.
- The sources of information for such a study are the companies’ own documentation, individuals with hands on experience using the companies’ systems, and observations from clients. Comments from competitors about another company’s products are interesting, but not the “meat and potatoes” which I seek. The “hands on” part is particularly important because technical expertise is needed, not the blathering of the azurini. Sponsored research is lucrative, but I wonder about its objectivity. Most “white papers” are printed on sheets of paper of different colors.
- Marketing presented as “real” information is fine. Weaponized information is something I know a bit about. If one wants to use information to put digital bullets into another company, no problem from me. But more than blanks are needed. Fluffy marketing and odd juxtapositions are digital misfires in my opinion, contributing to the confusion about search and content processing.
To wrap up, the economic pressure on publishing and search vendors is going to go up in the period between September 1, 2010, and March 31, 2011. In this period, I anticipate many interesting marketing methods, new products and services from the azurini, and even greater churn in the search sector. You may see the search world differently. My blog documents my point of view, and the blog is free unlike some of the work from second and third tier consulting firms.
Stephen E Arnold, August 25, 2010
Freebie. This means that no one paid me to write my thoughts into this blog. I am not even selling a report. Ads appear at the top of this blog above the masthead. I am working on a search conference for open source systems and at the same time I am working on a conference for commercial vendors. Works for me because the addled goose makes explicit what provides bread crumbs for the goslings. Irritating, right?
Web Traffic Metrics in a Muddle
August 24, 2010
I wrote about Vivisimo’s Web traffic spike. For that blog post, I relied on free data from Compete.com. If you have not looked at the service, point your browser thingy at www.compete.com. You can sign up for a free but restricted version of the service, or you can become a paying customer. For my blog post, I used the freebie service. Hey, the blog is free. You expect chopped liver?
After I wrote the story, I heard from a high output search vendor. The point of his somewhat urgent email was that the Compete.com data were wrong. This was a surprise? I know of one outfit that has the horsepower to count and analyze log data in a comprehensive manner. The rest of the outfits use different methods to cope with the ever increasing volumes of data that must be crunched for horizontal and small slice analyses. In short, most reports of traffic are subject to error. I have mentioned in my talks about the volume of traffic that flowed to a Danish insurance company from Google. The insurance company itself was unaware of its dependence on Google. Google probably did not care about the Danish insurance company. It was clear that the Web master at the Danish insurance company had not looked at the log data very carefully prior to my getting involved. So between reality and lousy metrics, most people don’t know much about the traffic and clicks on a Web site. Feel free to tell me I am incorrect, please. Just use the comments section of the blog. Don’t write me an email.
What caught my attention this morning (August 21, 2010) was a story from ClickZ called “New Comscore Methodology Reduces Search Market Share for Microsoft and Yahoo.” (How does this outfit spell its name? Comscore, comScore, something else?)There you have the guts of the problem. A change in methodology makes a winner into a loser, a loser into a bigger loser, and a bigger loser into a contributor to the swelling unemployment ranks in the US. Figure out these data.
What about the data themselves? Well, that’s part of the numerical recipe. If you reflect on your exciting moments in Statistics 101, you may recall that sample size has something to do with the confidence one can have in an output. The goose remembers this in a very simplified manner: Small sample, big error. Lousy sample, big error. Shortcuts anywhere, big error. Add up the errors and you get crappy outputs. But figuring this stuff out in real life is beyond the ken of most azurini, poobahs, and Web marketers.
As a result, the data from any Web traffic or click counting service are at best indicative of a trend. Here’s how I check traffic for my own sites and for those I track.
- Take a look at the log analytics. We use AWStats, baked in reports from our hosting company, and the Urchin (Google) analytics outputs. Do these agree? Nope. Not even close, but the trends are easily identified.
- Take a look at what Alexa reports. Hey, I know it skews toward Internet Explorer, but that’s okay. I am looking at what the system says, not calculating the speed of light.
- Take a look at Compete.com. I like the nifty little charts it spits out. The Urchin graphics are bit to HGTV for me and don’t show up well when I do a screen capture.
I then separate the bluebirds from the canaries. I toss out the high and the low and go with the stuff in the middle. Close enough for a free blog post. In fact, I have used this method when paying customers don’t want to pick up the bill for the fancy for fee services.
The bottom-line line is that I can trot out data that supports these assertions:
- Google and Microsoft are so far ahead in traffic that comparisons with other vendors of search and content processing traffic are meaningless. Are the data correct? Well, the revenues of these two outfits suggest that some correlation between traffic and money must exist. Microsoft is nosing toward $100 billion and Google toward $30 billion. Search vendors are not in this ball game with the sole exception of Autonomy which rings in with $1.0 billion in revenue.
- Most search vendors generate traffic in the 3,000 to 15,000 uniques per month. Even the bigger of the search vendors have a tough time breaking through the 15,000 ceiling. The reason? Search is sort of a footnote in the broader world of enterprise and Web functions. Lots of talk does not translate into traffic for search vendors on their Web sites.
- Some search vendors get so few clicks that the services report “insufficient data”. I am sorely tempted to present a list of search vendors whose Web sites get effectively only random clicks and robot traffic. But I don’t need any more defensive snarkiness from search executives. Hey, summer is almost over. Let me enjoy the last few, hazy, lazy days.
To wrap up, are Microsoft and Yahoo losing market share? Probably not. The key factor seems to be Facebook’s emergence as an alternative to Google-style searching. The mobile device “search experience” is a different animal entirely and I don’t think anyone has a firm grip on these data at this time. Google’s obsession with mobile devices is a strong signal that something is indeed happening. The numbers, at this time, are less reliable than the ones for traditional Web site traffic.
Maybe the Web is dead? Maybe search is dead? Maybe an asteroid will hit the earth before it melts? Whatever. Traffic reports are indicative, not definitive. Let’s face it. Search is a small niche and a successful vendor will produce modest uniques when compared to outfits like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2010
Freebie. 0.999999 confidence in this.
Search Marketers Are Ethical Paragons Compared to … Harvard?
August 24, 2010
Short honk: Now I know that the referenced article is not about search, content processing, and the bevy of BAs pitching their services. In fact, the azurini look like paragons of good behavior. In my freshman high school English class, there was a young woman who never did anything wrong. I think she became a nurse, nun, or missionary. Search marketers are closer to her approach to life than the person referenced in “Harvard Confirms Misconduct by Morality Researcher.” I don’t know if the write up is accurate, but it is delicious to contemplate behavior that makes search marketing look really good. Hey, scientific misconduct. Harvard. Snooty-tooty. Rah, rah, rah, quacks the goose.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2010
Freebie. I wish I had been paid to document this item. Hey, just pay me any time. I’m down with that.
Google: A Painful Question
August 21, 2010
Wow. In 2006, Google was at the top of its game. The company was unstoppable. Few people criticized the company. I did point out the weaknesses of the Google in my 2005 The Google Legacy, but not too many others saw much other than ad revenue in the Mountain View, California Math Club.
Push the fast forward arrow on your mental DVR or TiVo. Read “Kneale: Why Isn’t Google a $1,000 Stock by Now?” The goose confuses a snipe hunt with a snarky comment. You probably understand the difference. The $1,000 chase is the snipe hunt. The title is the snarky thing.
This headline four years ago would not express how analysts and pundits thought about Google. Today, not only is the headline possible, it’s asking a reasonable question. When BearStearns went down the drain overnight in April 2008, the target was $585 or something in that neighborhood. Today (August 19, 2010) GOOG is down another 14 points to $467. Geese usually possess feathers, not shares in publicly traded companies. But even for an addled goose, the difference between the 2008 target and today’s stock price is interesting.
Here’s what the CNBC story said:
The Dow, soaring off the lows of March 2009, still is down 26 percent from its high in October ’07; Google stubbornly remains 35 percent below the high it reached the same month. Do investors have it wrong—or is Google itself doing something wrong? My answer would be . . . yes. By sheer numbers a higher price should apply to the world’s dominant search engine on a global network that, in a few years, could link a trillion devices. In three years since hitting that high, Google has doubled revenue, almost doubled already-prodigious profits, more than doubled its cash on hand (to $30 billion!) and doubled its total assets. It’s not enough.
What’s this mean for search? My observations:
- Not much. Search is in a transitional condition, and I am not sure that Web search will fare much better than the command line style searching that dominated in the 1980s. Sure, it will be around, but it is for specialists, not the consumer user.
- New competition. I don’t think Google has been able to suppress innovation. In fact, Google caused competitors to find ways to go where Google was not a factor. The best example is the Facebook service. Sure, Facebook might tank, but right now, the Google looks more like an annoyed teenager than a world beater in my opinion.
- New business models. I have a hunch the freneticism of Googlers is directly related to a real need to find major new revenue streams. Online ads are still a good business but that pesky Facebook can deliver targeting. With Microsoft and Yahoo, I can be certain that Google will have to respond to whatever deals this unlikely team will concoct.
Forget these points. Focus on the headline. That say much about what’s happening. Google is not a $1,000 stock and, if the present trends continue, Google may have a tough time getting back its 2006 flash.
Stephen E Arnold, August 21, 2010
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A New Concept or Buzzy Jargon?
August 16, 2010
Is the internet changing again? Will the term “Web 2.0” be about as useful as vacuum tubes in a television soon? The job is all but done, one data manipulating company claims. Data governance experts, Collibra (http://www.collibra.com/), who help clients better transform data into usable information, brought up some interesting and head-scratching points about the future of data management in a recent Collibra Inside blog post, “Social Semantics, Hybrid Ontologies and the Tri-Sortal Internet.”(http://inside.collibra.com/?p=767) Providing slides from a recent conference about how we can “tackle the mass of (meta)data about communities (enterprises, business webs), people, and systems and the links in between,” the article went on to claim, “visual analysis of the linked data cloud reveals the same non-linear graph structure as found in social networks. Hence there is indeed a tri-sortal dynamics.” This is some heady stuff, but intriguing. The term “tri-sortal” is definitely one we’ll keep on file for the future. We may not use it, however.
Pat Roland, August 16, 2010
IBM and System Quality
August 6, 2010
I just read “Global CIO: IBM’s Bank Outage: Anatomy Of A Disaster“. Assume the inforamtion is spot on. The magnitude of the failure for IBM and its financial services customer underscores the complexity of large-scale systems. Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
According to ChannelNewsAsia.com’s coverage of the press conference, IBM regional general manager Cordelia Chung said that “the personnel directly involved with this incident have been removed from direct customer support activity and disciplined” and that “IBM has taken steps to enhance the training of all related personnel on the most current procedures.” And the BusinessTimes.com.sg article quoted Chung as saying, “We have also taken steps to review installations of the same storage system at other financial institutions in Singapore for whom we provide maintenance services.”
The problem, therefore, is one of those pesky humans. In the rush to replace people, organizations may lack the expertise to make software and deliver on the promises the azurini (that is, self appointed experts) and marketing mavens flippantly assert are “no problem.”
Well, problem. The notion that giant systems will work as advertised is one that needs scrutiny. In monoculture-centric methods, a single point of failure can have significant consequences.
The azurini and the mavens will write a nice case study but it seems to me more is needed. Talking about a problem is not the same as preventing a problem. So many experts are in a hurry today. Golf and fiddling with an iPad must be more important.
Little wonder that many search and content processing systems disappoint their users.
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 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.
Azurini Lock In Analysis Baffles the Goose
August 3, 2010
I know, I know. Consulting firms have to be “real” and “objective” and “mavenesque.” I accept that. But the write up “Burton Group: Avoid Office 2010 Lock-In, Stick with Office 2007” wowed me. Microsoft buys lots of consulting, research, and advice. As a result, those who want to get jobs with the Redmond fun lovers often find a way to put a honey colored light on almost any product, service, or initiative. How many raves did I read about Vista? How many times have I heard about the wonders of MSN, now Live something? How many times have I heard experts explain the impact of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, its search strategy, its social strategy, its cloud strategy, and other strategies. The addled goose sure does not generate $70 billion a year in revenue and Microsoft does. So, guess who is really smart? Time’s up. Microsoft.
But a consulting firm criticizing Microsoft albeit somewhat indirectly? That is amazing, and it means to me that maybe the fondness Microsoft once felt for Burton has faded. Maybe Burton no longer loves Microsoft? Maybe there are other forces in play? Who knows.
What is clear is that Burton suggests an organization that embraces Office 2010 may be a candidate for lock in. Lock in means that a vendor calls the shots, not the client. The only way to get free is to break out. In fact, that’s one of the appeals of open source software. An organization using open source software believes it has more freedom than when chained to a giant SharePoint installation, an even bigger Microsoft Exchange construct, and the 40 other servers that Microsoft has on offer.
My view is that Microsoft is not the only enterprise software vendor looking to get shelf space and then become a monoculture in a client organization. Does IBM seek to monopolize hardware, software, and services? In my experience, you better understand the way Big Blue operates before your local IBM vice president gets a temporary office down the hall from your company’s president. Same with the Google.
So what strikes me as interesting is not the lock in angle. That’s old news. The criticism of a big outfit like Microsoft has caught my attention. Is one of the azurini changing colors?
Stephen E Arnold, August 3, 2010
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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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