Microsoft and Facebook: More Pain for the Google
June 3, 2011
In the latest shot across the bow in the war between Microsoft and Google, Wired is reporting that “Bing Bumps Facebook Options to Outsocial Google.”
Now, “when you search Bing after associating your Bing account and Facebook accounts, you’ll see more faces of your friends.” “Microsoft, a minority shareholder in Facebook, is betting that data from Facebook will make its search superior to Google’s dominant search engine.”
ZDNet’s “Bing Adds More Facebook Features to Social Search” details five Facebook-related Bing updates, which include shared shopping lists and expanded Facebook profile searching. The write up asserts:
“Microsoft data shows that nearly half of people say seeing their friend’s Likes within search results could help them make better decisions.”
It’s interesting to consider all this information sharing in the context of crowd wisdom. In our opinion, the real point of these innovations is to keep Google looking at tail lights in the race to social content’s 24 hour hamburger joint.
Rita Safranek, June 3, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Censorship: The New “Like”
May 26, 2011
We find the machinations of US companies and China’s bureaucracy fascinating. Google stubbed its toe on the Great Wall. Yahoo found itself wading in the goo on the marge of the Bund. Has Facebook found a way to avoid missteps and tap into the money flow of one of the world’s largest economies?
“Durban Writes China’s Largest Search Engine about Web Censorship, Possible Facebook Deal,” declares a press release from the office of Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL). Regarding the rumored deal with Facebook. We learned:
Durbin expressed particular concern about recent reports that Baidu may enter into a partnership with Facebook to launch a social-networking site in China. Durbin has previously written to Facebook regarding his concern that the company does not have adequate safeguards in place to prevent repressive governments from monitoring activists who use Facebook. In his letter, Durbin asked Baidu whether it plans to partner with Facebook, and, if so, what steps the companies will take to protect human rights.
It’s interesting that a politician is weighing in on the matter. It remains to be seen whether he’ll get anywhere with his protestations.
It’s also interesting, to us at least, that in this instance Google is on the outside looking in. As if that rivalry needed more fodder!
We also want to note that, if the rumor is true, this is a potentially huge windfall for Facebook. Now that US politicians are voicing their views, will that put a stick in the Facebook bicycle spokes?
Cynthia Murrell May 26, 2011
Freebie
Holy *$@#, Facebook
May 25, 2011
Short honk: I am not a Facebookoid. I am neither surprised nor disappointed. Navigate to “47% of Facebook Walls Contain Profanity.” Here’s the factoid I found interesting:
Users are twice as likely to use profanity in a post on their Facebook Wall, versus a comment. Whereas friends are twice as likely to use profanity in a comment on a user’s Facebook Wall, versus a post.
What are friends for? Parse that.
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2011
Freebie, *$@# it
Google and Search
May 11, 2011
Over the last five days, I have been immersed in conversations about Google and its public Web search system. I am not able to disclose the people with whom I have spoken. However, I want to isolate the issues that surfaced and offer some observations about the role of traditional Web sites. I want to capture the thoughts that surfaced after I thought about what I learned in my face to face and telephone conversations. In fact, one of the participants in this conversation directed my attention to this post, “Google Panda=Disaster.” I don’t think the problem is Panda. I think a more fundamental change has taken place and Google’s methods are just out of sync with the post shift environment. But hope is not lost. At the end of this write up, I provide a way for you to learn about a different approach. Sales pitch? Sure but a gentle one.
Relevance versus Selling Advertising
The main thrust of the conversations was that Google’s Web search is degrading. I have not experienced this problem, but the three groups with whom I spoke have. Each had different data to show that Google’s method of handling their publicly accessible Web site has changed.
First, one vendor reported that traffic to the firm’s Web site had dropped from 2,000 uniques per month to 100. The Web site is informational. There is a widget that displays headlines from the firm’s Web log. The code is clean and the site is not complex.
Second, another vendor reported that content from the firm’s news page was appearing on competitors’ Web sites. More troubling, the content was appearing high in a Google results list. However, the creator of the content found that the stories from the originating Web site were buried deep in the Google results list. The point is that others were recycling original content and receiving a higher ranking than the source of the original content.
Traditional Web advertising depicted brilliantly by Ken Rockwell. See his work at http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/compacts/sd880/gallery-10.htm
Third, the third company found that its core business was no longer appearing in a Google results list for a query about the type of service the firm offered. However, the company was turning up in an unrelated or, at best, secondary results list.
I had no answer to the question each firm asked me, “What’s going on?”
Through various contacts, I pieced together a picture that suggests Google itself may not know what is happening. One source indicated that the core search team responsible for the PageRank output is doing its work much as it has for the last 12 years. Googlers responsible for selling advertising were not sure what changes were going on in the core search team’s algorithm tweaks. Not surprisingly, most people are scrutinizing search results, fiddling with metatags and other aspects of a Web site, and then checking to see what happened. The approach is time consuming and, in my opinion, very much like the person who plugs a token into a slot machine and hits the jack pot. There is great excitement at the payoff, but the process is not likely to work on the next go round.
Net net: I think there is a communications filter (intentional or unintentional) between the group at Google working to improve relevance and the sales professionals at Google who need to sell advertising. On one hand, this is probably healthy because many organizations put a wall between certain company functions. On the other hand, if Adwords and Adsense are linked to traffic and that traffic is highly variable, some advertisers may look to other alternatives. Facebook’s alleged 30 percent share of the banner advertising market may grow if the efficacy of Google’s advertising programs drops.
Facebook Remains a Threat to the Google
April 18, 2011
Does Facebook’s reach know no bounds? ABC’s Good Morning America reports, “Michigan Man Finds Kidney on Facebook.”
You may be familiar with the glacial pace of organ donation waiting lists. Patient Jeff Kurze of Warren, Michigan, achieved a way around that arduous process. His wife Roxy found a kidney through Facebook. Yep, just like the Egyptian dust up, the method relied upon Facebook. Even a Googler involved in some aspect of the Egyptian protest used the “F” word on a TV news program I watched. Google is search. Facebook is something else.
In the ABC article, I noted this passage:
After Jeff suffered a mini stroke last fall, doctors said it could take five years for him to climb the kidney waiting list and get the type O match he needed. That’s when a desperate Roxy took to Facebook. Wishing a kidney would fall out of the sky so my husband can stop suffering,’ Roxy Kurze, a 30-year-old web designer, wrote on her Facebook wall. ’So if anyone knows of a live donor with type O blood, PLEASE let me know.’
Facebook friend Ricky Cisco responded, and to make a long story short, the transfer was arranged. Fabulous human interest story, but the part that intrigues us at Beyond Search is this: as people turn to the Facebook community more and more to find everything from a book recommendation to an organ donation, how will Google and its ilk adapt? Will hooking a bonus to social innovation deliver a kidney to the faltering Google?
Cynthia Murrell April 18, 2011
Freebie
Android Less Open than Facebook?
April 15, 2011
I have been thinking about Google and openness since I learned that Facebook is “opening” its data centers. Suddenly Google looks a lot less open than Facebook.
ZDNet’s “Taking Back Android: Should Google Be Controlling the Ecosystem?” raises an interesting question. The article actually questions Google’s commitment to openness.
Google, the worlds search engine, can’t seem to stay out of the media spotlight these days. This time though, the controversy does not stem from the inadvertent disclosure of personal information. Now Google seems to be tightening grip on applications that utilize Android. According to Bloomberg, Google is no longer allowing Android to freely form partnerships or customize software without it’s approval. Kind of like the “big brother” approach to doing business.
This need for consent before creation is directly in opposition of Google’s pledge to the truly open mobile OS they claimed to support and is being compared to Apple, with it’s control of iOS. Though in all fairness, the Android ecosystem has become a tad unruly. Its multiple device makers and many carriers have caused a bit of chaos and confusion and in some cases compromised user experience. For Google it seems to be about quality over quantity which wouldn’t be so awful except that Google doesn’t actually sell a product, the telecoms companies sell the product, Google simply provides the platform.
This leaves us with a couple of questions. Just how much of a role and responsibility should Google be shouldering in all of this and why don’t telecoms create their own platforms? And Facebook’s open data center angle makes Google look less open and slightly clumsy, doesn’t it?
Leslie Radcliffe, April 15, 2011
Google and Its New Management Method: Pundits Throwing Punches
April 10, 2011
I read the modest flurry of quasi-MBA analyses triggered by “Larry Page’s First Blunder”. I liked the word “first” because it implies that Mr. Page and his co-founder have been management “perfect 10s” since 1998. I thought about pointing out that the present range of challenges Google faces is a consequence of earlier blunders.
But I wish to ignore that admittedly trivial point.
The Computerworld article focuses on the idea of linking a Googler’s annual hefty cash bonus to becoming or coding social apps, systems, solutions, etc. I don’t know about you, but I have a number of high powered technologists working on projects. None of these individuals is what I would describe at fraternity or sorority president material.
Last week, at lunch, Dr. Tyra Oldham, one of my colleagues, pointed out that the three nerds and myself constituted a small world of insiders which was pointedly anti-social. In fact, as I recall, she said, “You are in some weird alternate universe where normal people don’t go.” In addition to a PhD in operations, Dr. Oldham holds an MBA degree and is well qualified to comment on management-related behaviors.
Dr. Oldham pointed out to some of the ArnoldIT.com engineering team, “You are not social.” With considerable pride, the engineering team agreed. One asked, “How can one be an excellent engineer by being more social?’ Dr. Oldham shook her head. We think it meant that the three ArnoldIT.com engineers were in need of social remediation. Good luck with that.
That’s an important point to consider: expected behaviors regarding “social.”
I live in rural Kentucky, commune with large boxer dogs, and spend my time in front of my various computing devices. As I look around my office, I count on April 10, 2011, 14 multi-processor machines, an assortment of electronic components and gadgets, the two large dogs, and white boards covered with diagrams. I have a cleared space for my new Sandy Bridge machine which will arrive on Monday. (Hooray.) My office bookcases are stuffed with technical manuals, cables, and “stuff.” If you know where to look, you will see a container of IBM’s weird computer fasteners from the now retired NetFinity 5500. Ah, nostalgia! To me, my little world is plenty social, thank you.
The film “Revenge of the Nerds” does contain elements of truth that age and money cannot alter with alacrity.
Now if Dr. Tyra Oldham were correct, a financial incentive might get my attention for a while, but I think I would drift away from social innovation. Money is not what makes ArnoldIT.com and its Managing Director go. Social is, at this time, not that interesting to me because Facebook and other services have okay systems. Maybe there is something that might catch my attention? However, I have personal projects that are going to get my attention and my time. Weaponized information, for instance, is really quite promising here in Harrod’s Creek. Curious? Well, lots of people are and many are writing checks to understand the system, method, and technology. Social? Not so much for me and some of my team.
Now back to the Computerworld, here’s the passage that may echo through the online grape vine:
Facebook and Search
March 26, 2011
I found “Bing Windfall: Facebook Testing Web Search Box” quite suggestive. The idea is that Facebook is going to have (maybe) a search box. My view is that Facebook is a head to head competitor to Google and Microsoft in search but, once again, I learned that my view is different from others’ views. Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
No doubt Bing would pay a serious amount of money for access to the 500 million plus members’ search queries when using Facebook. It is this type of deal that would dramatically increase Bing’s market share of search. Between the addition of Questions to help let friends answer questions you may go to Google to find answer, this test box must be a serious shot across the Google bow.
I agree, but I think that the future of Facebook in search is to crawl the Web sites its members input. The Bing angle might be a lucrative temporary step. With lots of Xooglers at Facebook, search is going to be part of the woodwork. Darned interesting challenge for the Google as its management team starts to think about Ohio’s grousing about alleged Google activities.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2011
Freebie
Facebook, Semantic Search, and Bad News for the Key Word Crowd
March 16, 2011
You can wade through the baloney from the pundits, satraps, and poobahs. I will cut to the chase. Facebook can deliver a useful search service without too many cartwheels. There are three reasons. (If you want to complain, that’s what the comments section of the blog permits. Spare me personal email and LinkedIn comments.)
First, there are upwards of 500 million users who spend more time in Facebook doing Facebook things than I would have ever believed. I don’t do “social” but 500 million or more people see me as a dinosaur watching the snow flakes. Fine.
Second, the Facebook users stuff links in their posts, pages, wall crannies, and everywhere else in the Facebook universe they can. This bunch of urls is a selection filter that is of enormous value to Facebook users. Facebook gets real people stuffing in links without begging, paying, or advertising. The member-screened and identified links just arrive.
Third, indexing the content on the pages to which the links refer produces an index that is different from and for some types of content more useful to Facebook members than laundry lists, decision engine outputs, or faceted results from any other system. Yep, “any other”. That situation has not existed since the GOOG took the learnings of the key word crowd, bought Oingo, and racked up the world’s biggest online advertising and search engine optimization operation in the history of digital mankind.
Navigate to “New Facebook Patent: the Huge Implications of Curated Search” and learn Bnet’s view of a patent document. I am not as excited about the patent at the Bnet outfit, but it is interesting. If one assumes that the patent contributes to the three points I identified above, Facebook gets a boost.
But my view is that Facebook does not need much in the way of a boost from semantics or any other hot trend technology. Facebook is sitting on a search gold mine. When Facebook does release its index of member-provided sources, four things will take place over a period of “Internet” time.
- The Google faces a competitor able to index at lower cost. Google, remember, is a brute force operation. Facebook is letting the members do the heavy lifting. A lower cost index of Facebook-member-vetted content is going to be a threat. The threat may fizzle, but a threat it will be to the Google.
- Users within Facebook can do “search” where Facebook members prefer to be. This means that Facebook advertising offers some interesting opportunities not lost on the Xooglers who now work at Facebook and want a gigantic payday for themselves. Money can inspire certain types of innovation.
- Facebook is closed. The “member” thing is important to keep in mind. The benefits of stateful actions are many, and you don’t need me to explain why knowing who a customer is, who the customer’s friends are, and what the customer does is important. But make the customer a member and you get some real juice.
- Facebook competitors will have to find a way to deal with the 500 million members and fast. Facebook may not be focused on search, but whatever the company does will leverage the membership, not the whizzy technology.
Bottomline: Facebook has an opportunity in search whether it does laundry lists, facets, semantics, or any combination of methods. My question, “When will Facebook drop its other social shoe?”
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2011
Freebie unlike the ads big companies will want to slap into Facebook outputs for its members
Who Defriended Google?
February 24, 2011
Did Facebook defriend Google? Did Google defriend Facebook? With Xooglers making up about 20 percent of the Facebook staff, the questions are not innocuous. The fate of Google’s new social play may hang in the balance. What are friends for?
Meow.
There’s something catty about how Google has snubbed Facebook in the latest iteration of Google Social. The official blog post to announce the new improvements says not one word about Facebook, the elephant in the room. In “Analysis: Google Social Search Is All About Blocking Facebook/Twitter Search” Tom Foremski’s take is that this
“Google move is better understood as a blocking measure to stop people from asking their social network directly. “
Will it work? Let’s think about it.
Google Social has been around since 2009, but these latest improvements take results that were at the bottom of the screen and place them high up in the search results, as well as adding notes for links your connections have shared, and expanded the ways you can connect your accounts. Google, of course, always tries to act like it’s taking the high road when it comes to Facebook, stressing that Facebook is a closed system while Google is as open and free as the air we breathe. Personally, I think public data is overrated and I think many other people do too. Why else is there a huge backlash every time Facebook tries to sneak in more openness to its users’ profiles?
What happens when the big dogs set up a pack without a little dog? Answer: Bowling alone.
When I look at Google Social, I have to ask myself if people would choose this over Facebook. Facebook, of course, has momentum on its side since nearly everyone and his grandmother is on Facebook already and accessing it frequently. Another question is how can Google know whose opinion I actually care about when giving me search results?
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