Face-Oogle or Goog-Book?
October 9, 2010
I found the information in this write up fascinating–“Facebook Stealing Google’s Staff.” And consider this factoid, which may or may not be spot on, “12.5 percent of Facebookers are ex-Googlers.” Why fiddle around with a personnel or human resources function? Those Googlers know that there may be a pot of gold in the Facebook parking lot. I found this take on the Xooglers different from my reaction:
All we know for sure is that the exodus to the social networking site represents less than one percent of Google’s estimated 22,000 staff, and Google can really afford to lose a few people here and there when it’s rolling in such vast sums on money.
My hunch is that the zest of the Google is waning. “Zest” in this case includes dough or the hope of dough, birds of a feather, and some of the ethos of the pre 2007 Google. Make up your own mind. Anyone care to speculate on what impact the Xooglers will have on Facebook’s marketing methods?
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2010
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Facebook Shuns Google, Not too Social
October 7, 2010
The questions surrounding Google and the release of a new social “Facebook Killer” network continues to keep the world buzzing. Google’s Vice President Marissa Mayer in Venture Beat’s “Google’s Mayer Criticizes Content “Locked” Inside Facebook” expresses her feelings about the social leader Facebook. In her question and answer segment the VP expresses concerns about Facebook. Mayer states “her concern about social networks, particularly Facebook, was the fact that so much of their content is hidden from Google and other search engines.” Google wants individuals conducting searches to have access to relevant non sensitive information on Facebook. Google does currently pull information from some social sites, but Facebook gives them access to very little information. With the popularity of Facebook it is clear, if granted access, the available content would add to the overall quality of Google’s search results. With the Facebook and Microsoft partnership still taking shape perhaps that means Google is the odd man out. Facebook is not behaving in what one might describe a “social” manner.
April Holmes, October 7, 2010
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Google TV: I Deplaned and
October 6, 2010
I had to hunt for information about the Google TV. My trusty sources about 6 pm Eastern touted Facebook’s announcement of a Facebook user now being able to download his/her information. I had to navigate to Google News and run a query for Logitech to find out about the $300 gizmo and its pricey accessories. I am not a TV goose, so the key point for me was that Facebook was the big news. Set aside the price difference between the $100 Apple TV Version 2.0 gizmo and the soon-to-ship Logitech device. For me the big news was that Facebook stole the headlines. That’s the take away from my post flight news check. Does that represent a one time twitch or is the focus on Facebook the new normal?
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2010
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Discovering Facebook Pages
September 30, 2010
Short honk: If you are a Facebook user, you may find the official Page Browser useful. The tool makes it easy to look at thumbnails and “discover” Facebook pages. Our thought was a StumbleUpon.com for Facebook. You view may be different. Point your browser at “Page Browser Officially Launched : A Perfect Way To Discover Interesting Facebook Pages.” The write up said:
Discovering Facebook Pages of your interests are very easy, just head towards Page Browser where you will find an array of thumbnails representing Facebook communities. If you feel something is of your interest, just hover over the thumbnail and a like button will pop up. Click it and you will get all news from that community incorporated in your News feed. If you want to know more about the community, just click the title under the thumbnail.
Why fiddle with a query when you can look at pictures? It is the 21st century way.
Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2010
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Facebook, Likes, and Search: Important Now?
September 29, 2010
“Facebook Likes Just Officially Became More Important to Search” calls attention to the “Like” function. The little button is turning up on quite a few Web sites. Part of its charm is that each button and the attendant clicks pump useful data into the maw of Facebook. Google may think Bing.com is its number one competitor, but I think the Xooglers at Facebook are a growing challenge. Nothing works like the scent of a big payoff and knowledge of what the Google can and cannot do refracted through the filter of “been there, done that” folks.
Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
The second one is in line with a feature the company was testing that we mentioned recently. “Consistent with how we treat other Open Graph object types, we’ve introduced the ability to see articles shared by your friends in the search typeahead,” says Facebook’s Namita Gupta. “For instance, if your friend clicks ‘Like’ on an article at a news site, the article will appear in your News Feed and can now also surface in the search typeahead.” The results, as AllFacebook described upon finding the feature being tested, showed content based on the number of likes and the number of friends who liked the particular object. “The search results have now become dramatically more relevant with the inclusion of recent news articles, something that previously wasn’t accessible via Facebook’s open graph search results,” AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neill had said. “Currently, the search results only appear within the drop down from Facebook’s search box, however I’d assume that this will eventually shift to Facebook’s search area, which has yet to undergo a significant overhaul.” Either way, there is clearly a direct connection between likes and search now. It’s essentially Facebook’s version of PageRank.
You will want to read the full Chris Crum write up. We want to offer three search-ilicious observations:
- The Facebook approach generated curated information, which is a good thing for most Facebook users. Who wants to be a Boolean query expert when “friends” provide the info?
- The advertising value of these tiny bits of data are quite interesting. Toss the Likes data in with the profile data and you have a direct marketer’s dream: digital direct marketing to a very tight demographic.
- Facebook is going to be able to offer an index of curated (member identified Web sites) and now curated content (member selected stories). Oh, oh. The world of the commercial database producer has just been put on wheels and trundled over to Facebook.
In short, hello, disruption. So it is not just Google who will feel some pressure. Like the good old days of 2006 for Google, other seemingly unrelated business sectors get the evil eye.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2010
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Facebook and Google: Philosophies Collide
September 27, 2010
I listened to the Thursday, Buzz Out Loud podcast. On the show the talent explained that a certain high profile blog (Techcrunch) wrote a story about a rumored Facebook phone. The high profile blog garnered a meeting with the founder of Facebook (Wizard Zuck or Mark Zuckerberg). In that discussion, if I heard correctly as I was peddling my exercise bike at 66 year old goose pace, Mr. Zuckerberg point out something along the lines that social functions could not be added on. The idea I took away was that Facebook is built for social functions. Google was built for search or some other function.
As I thought about this, the comment highlighted what I think of as a “platform” fight.
The idea has surfaced elsewhere. I have started to write about the i2-Palantir tussle. That seems to be about lots of different technical issues, but it is really a platform fight. i2 has been one of the leaders if not the leader in data fusion and analysis for law enforcement and intelligence applications for 20 years. Keep in mind that I have done some work for the i2 folks. The Palantir outfit—stuffed with $90 million in semi-worthless US bucks—is a comparative newcomer. These two outfits are struggling to keep or get, depending on one’s point of view—control of a very esoteric market niche. Most of the azurini and mid-tier consultants steer clear of this sector. The types of baloney generated by the azurinis’ spam plants can harm people, not just get procurement teams reassigned. The i2-Palantir issue interests me because it is a platform tussle.
I think Facebook and Google are in a platform war as well.
Now keep in mind that if you are a Googler, you see the world through Google goggles. If you are a Facebook fan, you see the world through the friend lens. I am in the middle, and here’s my take on Wizard Zuck’s alleged comment about “adding” social instead of building a social platform.
First, I think the shift from Google to Facebook as a go-to resource is an important change. The reason Facebook “works” for 500 million or more people is that the information (good, bad, right, wrong, made up, crazy, or indifferent) comes from humans. If you have some relationship with that human, the information exists within a relationship context. When I run a search on Google, I have to figure out for myself whether the information is right, wrong, made up, crazy, indifferent or an advertisement. I don’t get much human help to figure out what’s what. As a result, the Google algorithmic and “secret sauce” results strike me as somewhat less useful now that there are “contextual” results and what I call “friend cues.” Your mileage may vary, but these friend cues also exist in services like Twitter and its derivatives/applications like Tweetmeme.
Second, Google is definitely in Microsoft Word feature mode. I am impressed with some of Google’s new services such as its new authentication method, which I will write about in one of my October columns. I am not too impressed with other Google innovations such as “Instant”. The ration of Word type features to useful features seems to be tilting toward the Microsoft model. I don’t use Word because it is a program that tries to do everything well and ends up becoming a wild and crazy exercise in getting text on the screen. My goodness: green lines, red lines, auto bullets, disappearing images, weird table behavior. Give me Framemaker 7.2. Facebook is a complicated system, but the basics work reasonably well even though the firm’s immature approach to information reminds me of the last group of 20 somethings I spoke with in Slovenia several months ago. Google is now at risk of letting features get in the way of functional improvements. Facebook is in refinement mode. When it comes to social, Facebook is refining social actions. When it comes to social, Google is still trying to figure it out.
Third, Google is a platform built originally to deliver Web search results in the manner of AltaVista without Hewlett Packard in my opinion. Facebook is a platform built to let those who are young at heart find old and new pals. Google has morphed search into advertising and now faces the challenge of figuring out how to go beyond Orkut, which as I write this is struggling with some crazy virus or malware. Facebook is, according to a rumor I heard, working to provide search that uses the content within the Facebook ecosystem as the spider list. Curation versus search/advertising. Which platform is better to move search forward in the social space? Google is layering on a new approach to people and content and Facebook is simply indexing a subset of content. Curated content at that.
My view is that Facebook and Google are in a platform battle. Who will win? Wizard Zuck and Xooglers who know technically what Google errors to avoid in the Facebook social environment? Googlers who are trying to keep an 11 year old platform tuned for brute force Web indexing and on the fly ad matching run by smart algorithms?
Interesting platform battle. And a big one. This may not be a Socrates-hemlock type of tussle but it is a 21st century philosophical collision.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2010
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Facebook: Makes Noise without Trying
September 20, 2010
Americans like to post photos, update status messages, and scroll through news from friends on Facebook, more than any other activity when online. This is concluded from a comScore research revealed in the USAToday.com article, “Facebook Inches Past Google for Web Users’ Minutes.” Moreover, what startles us more is the fact stated that, “U.S. Web surfers are spending more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google.”
My view is that Google wants to make sure usage for its service sticks in the 50 to 60 percent range. At these levels, Google is not really a monopoly in my view.
But this Facebook surge probably rings a bell for Google, as well as Yahoo, both of which were well ahead of Facebook ,in terms of percentage of Web surfers who spent time on their sites. In just a matter of three years, Facebook’s share of U.S. surfers’ total minutes per month has risen from 2 percent to 9.9 percent, whereas Google lags behind at 9.6 percent, even after including its sites like YouTube, Gmail and others. This could well be a wakeup call for the giant Google, with a challenge to regain the top spot.
But the real story is that a post in a popular Web log and the follow up story “Anatomy Of A PR Spin (AKA How To Lie Like A Pro)” has escalated into a major media incident in the blogosphere. The idea that Facebook, a mere social network, would create a mobile device is little more than one of those Silicon Valley rumors. What is important is that a Silicon Valley rumor like Oracle wanting to buy a search vendor (how boring) becomes when Facebook is involved. Not boring. A huge issue.
That’s the story for me.
Facebook right now is one of the outfits with the power to disrupt. Forget the Facebook phone or whatever the rumor says the device is.
Facebook has arrived and it will be no easy task to put a damper on the Facebook noise. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, September 20, 2010
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Google and the Unexpected Consequences of a Hot Property
September 1, 2010
I don’t know much beyond what I have read in “Google Making Extraordinary Counteroffers To Stop Flow Of Employees To Facebook.” The idea is a good one if you are a Googler, want to ride a rocket with a chance to land at Planet IPO, and are of interest to the Xooglers at Facebook. Heck, who wouldn’t jump ship to get a shot at a big pay day? One doesn’t have to relocate or even worry about fitting into the company, which I have heard has a number of Xooglers on staff.
What is interesting is that for the first time in the history of Google, the Mountain View giant has a true competitive problem that is not going to be easy, cheap, or quick to resolve. The legal matters are less tricky than a hot company with a targeted ad pitch and an opportunity to create a curated index for search and retrieval. I think Google can match Facebook’s technology. In some ways, Google can outgun Facebook. However, Facebook—despite its flaws—is not yet public. Employees lucky enough to get options at Facebook could make some dough. With Facebook’s user base growing and its targeted ad angle, Facebook may be putting the heat on Google to pull a rabbit out of its hat.
The case example of Microsoft’s effort to catch Google in search is now becoming a case example of Google trying to catch Facebook. Google finds itself chasing a bunch of smart folks who are not yet public and who have a service that defies understanding by some people. Nevertheless, Facebook seems to be on a roll. The irony for me is that Microsoft has a stake in Facebook, which in my opinion makes Microsoft look pretty sharp in the social investment department.
The summer of 2010 has been a challenging one for Google. One hopes its management team and management processes are up to the challenge of its social neighbor.
Stephen E Arnold, September 1, 2010
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Update on Facebook Questions
August 18, 2010
It’s no secret that Google has been aiming to take a bite out of the social media world with programs like Buzz. However, social media kingpin Facebook is fighting back and possibly taking a bite out of Google’s search dominance. Digital Journal outlined this tactic in a recent article, “Facebook Launches Questions Feature.” The gist of the article is that Facebook will soon allow users to ask questions to the community and get answers. Anything from recipes, to historic facts and personal data are up for grabs. According to the piece, “Facebook Questions goes up against some strong players in the ask-a-question-get-an-answer field.” Namely, the king of answer providing: Google. This is going to be a fun war to watch, because Google is not used to losing and Facebook provides a unique spin on Q&A options that its competition can’t touch. Google seems to be a giant looking like the gorilla on top of the Empire State Building.
Pat Roland, August 18, 2010
Facebook Pages Become Customer Support Centers
August 17, 2010
Consumers are the driving force behind any successful business. Many companies are behind when it comes to their CRM (customer relationship management) and though they may have excellent products customers are unable to get the quality support they need and deserve. Issues with customer service can lead to customers jumping ship and taking their money elsewhere. Many businesses have Facebook pages aimed at consumers. Facebook is improving by “brining customer service software to businesses living inside the world’s biggest social network.” “Facebook Pages Become Customer Support Centers” provides a little insight on the new support system designed by Parature. Customers will be able to choose from several different options and find the answers they need quickly. Users will no longer be a victim of the dreaded phone tree Hades. A language processing vendor will become one of the first to use the new service. Time will tell if this customer service software is effective but sometimes talking to a real person is the best fix. We think this repurposing of Facebook has significant implications for the hapless customer support search sector.
April Holmes, August 17, 2010
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