Does Audience Size Matter in Digital Media?
December 27, 2010
“CBS Audience Five Times Bigger Than Facebook” reports that despite the social network’s internet dominance, that plain old ordinary television still has a much wider viewership. My favorite snippet from the article: “If Facebook was measured as a TV network, it would be comparable in size to PBS. PBS? Yes.”
But don’t relegate FB to the margins just yet. PBS, and CBS, and even ABC and HBO do not have the targeting that social networking does. Television ads are still passive, business to customer one-way interactions that DVRs have started to make obsolete. Even product placement within shows is still throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks. Facebook, on the other hand, is built around targeted ads and interactions that pull rather than push. Facebook is hipper, sleeker, and infinitely more personalized than television. Five times bigger, sure. Five times more successful? No way.
Alice Wasielewski, December 27, 2010
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Facebook and Its New Trend Report for 2010
December 24, 2010
Short honk: At this time of year, trends appear in many articles. Poobahs, pundits, and pontificators relish the opportunity to identify the Top 10, 100 Biggest, and 500 Products. My recollection of making these lists is that some are generated by running a query against logs or other data sources. Others are just made up by a group having lunch together. Either way, the lists are quite popular and some companies just keep a permanent list of “top” somethings alive year round.
The Facebook Memology 2010 report is different. Since I don’t use Facebook myself, I enjoy reading about what’s popular in the social, member-centric walled garden that appears to be the principal conceptual hook for Facebook and its users.
The workings of Facebook users is as hard for me to figure as my deducing the purpose of the Antikythera mechanism.
You can see the Facebook Memology 2010 report at this link. What I found fascinating about the list of top items was that some of them made absolutely zero sense to me. This addled goose had absolutely no idea what “HMU” references. The write up explains that the HMU acronym means “hit me up.” Okay. The article explains that the number nine trend “airplanes” is from a popular tune from a group called B.o.B.
With more than 650 million people as members, Facebook is an important online destination and service. The look into the “minds” and “needs” of Facebook users is like my trying to figure out how the rusted Antikythera operated. If Facebook creates a search engine based on Web sites cited by Facebook users, the index will be an interesting one for me to use.
Stephen E Arnold, December 24, 2010
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Two Interesting Signs for Google in 2011
December 20, 2010
I am perched in an airport ready to head south. Way south for some work and relaxation. In the secure area of the terminal, I noted two news stories that the poobahs see as unrelated events. Some pundits may sense these events which I shall document are connected but “real” journalists often leave dots as Donne-like islands. I am enjoy connecting dots, a privilege for those over 65 and mostly unemployed and ignored like other senior citizens.
Dot one: “Mark Zuckerberg’s Beijing Adventure.” The story in Gawker points out that Facebook’s wizard is going to visit Baidu, the number one search system in China. My take: If these two outfits find common ground, the relationship will have some repercussions for the Google. A Facebook – Baidu chat is interesting to me.
Dot two: “Google TV Faces Delays as CES Turns into a No-Show for New Products.” This story makes clear that Google’s TV play is not ready for prime time. Great dot, and you can see one possible reason by reading the draft chapter for a monograph I am sitting on until the TV dust settles. Google needed technology from a company with pretty good tie ups in the media world. The deal did not happen, and it is one reason why other services are scoring lay ups and the Google is tossing in shots from the parking lot. Here’s the link and the info is offered as is in rough draft form. Google has made a series of significant investments in rich media and, well, the linked story provides some color on the “no show” angle.
How does a 66 year old connect these two. Straightedge, pencil and an infinitely Euclidean long line pointing to Trouble Lane in Orangeburg, SC, not a place many Googlers want to be in 2011. I don’t recall Orangeburg as a hot bed of social and rich media activity for Google. Maybe I am wrong? Heading out.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2010
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Yolink from TigerLogic
December 16, 2010
TigerLogic offers a number of data and content solutions. The company (originally named Blyth Holdings, then Omnis Technology, and then Raining Data) uses proprietary methods to normalize data. The company refers to its method as Pick Universal Data Model (Pick UDM). The Pick UDM is a component across the XDMS and MDMS product lines. The approach looks similar to those used by other XML-centric transformation and access methods.
The company’s newest product is a Facebook user’s solution to the problem of aggregating FB content in one display. PostPost, a real-time Facebook newspaper, described this way on the TigerLogic Web site:
PostPost enables users to quickly skim relevant passages of text shared by their Facebook friends and sort shared content by type. To access PostPost, users simply login using Facebook Connect, and in a matter of seconds, all shared links, pictures, videos, articles from their Facebook friends will populate the front page of their personal paper.
You can see a video and obtain more information at www.postpost.com.
We learned about the firm’s Yolink product this summer. Yolink extracts information from behind links and inside documents. On the Yolink Web site, you can see examples of outputs from the system. The content sources includes Craigslist, Google Patent Search, and Wikipedia.
Wikipedia included this comment sourced from CNet.com:
Yolink searches within the pages of your engine’s results to find your search terms in context. Go beyond the links. Search Web pages and discover information conventional search tools may have never revealed. In addition to mining content on a webpage, yolink will mine all of the links on that page for information relevant to your search. Yolink highlights information in the context of its original Web page and on the right side of your browser. Eliminating the need to bounce between multiple windows. Share your findings effortlessly by clicking on the save and share link. An email message containing your valuable information and the original Web page address is instantly created and ready to send, or save in folders for future use. Go beyond conventional search and find commands. Yolink allows you to search lengthy reference manuals, PDFs, legal documents, contracts, and news sites quickly and effortlessly. Yolink is especially helpful with a multi-word search, because it can extract all of the relevant content surrounding any of your search terms and display it all at once.”
Yolink is a unit of TigerLogic. The company develops software and solutions for creating and improving software applications. In addition to Yolink, the company offers XML Data Management Servers (XDMS), Multidimensional Database Management Systems (MDMS) and Rapid Application Development (RAD) software tools.
We think that the emergence of Facebook centric content aggregation tools is an interesting development. Search without navigating to a FB page is part of the “search without search” shift some vendors are advocating.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2010
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Facebook and Its Facebook Nation
December 14, 2010
I found the “World Map of Social Networks Shows Facebook’s Ever Increasing Dominance” startling. I am not a Facebook denizen. If you poke around, you can locate a Beyond Search Facebook page which a software robot maintains. But the map is an eye opener. I suppose this is what was behind Microsoft’s alleged buy out offer for Facebook a couple of years ago. There’s not much to say about a map, but there are several data tables and these are revelatory. Facebook is number one in a selected list of nine countries. Russia is Facebook resistant which is no big surprise. Google may want to get on its scooter to get in this Facebook game. If the data in the tables are accurate, LinkedIn might be a potential target for Google or Microsoft.
Stephen E Arnold, December 14, 2010
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GGF: An Acronym of Angst
December 4, 2010
Mr. Goose is back in the US of A. I got more hugs from TSA than I did from the legions of people at my various talks in Paris and London. What did I spy when I opened my RSS reader after a fun filled nine hour flight from CDG?
Groupon is playing hard to get. You can read the cornucopia of posts yourself. I found this one amusing: “It All Changes When the Founder Drives a Porsche.” Here’s a sample:
With Groupon, with the money problem solved, they can “go for it.” Basically, the motivation for a big exit is no longer motivated by “how much money can I get,” it is motived by “what is my legacy.” That simple shift makes their rejection of Google’s $6B offer not that surprising.
Yep, solved. For now.
My take on the deal was GGF. The first G is Groupon, of course. The hammer dial, people centric coupon outfit. The second G is Google. The company is running into some rapids, and it needs a home run. Heck, if the Math Club can’t come up with something that works, just throw billions at the problem. The method used to work really well for Microsoft.
The F is Facebook. Contemplate friends and members couponing their teenaged hearts out. So GGF may be a triad to watch.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2010
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People Search: Potentially a Big Problem for Google
December 3, 2010
I am not much on the social thing. Geese flock, just not in Facebook. Geese land in Harrod’s Creek. We eat some bugs, honk at friends, and then move on. In “Social Media’s Interaction With Content More Trustworthy Than Google Search”, there is a different way to tap into information. Despite the reference to a graphic comic book, the guts of the idea seems sound. Humans curate comment better than Google’s algorithms in certain situations. What! People better than the Math Club’s numerical recipes? Here’s a heretical passage:
So whether you categorize LIKES as ‘social links’ or ‘peoplelinks,’ the Open Graph appears to be gaining traction over Google’s old school SERPs (search engine result pages). Since LIKES can be tied back to a specific user, searchers of content can now determine whether a link is vetted by people they follow and trust. However since Google and Facebook are rivals, and ‘don’t play nice together,’ it would take a lot for Google to gain access to Facebook’s social graph data to incorporate into their ranking algorithm. According to Clay, he thinks that “we’re going to see that LIKES and referrals and recommendations (will cause) a general shift towards ‘quality’ of sites (not quantity),” and that Google’s methodology will lose out to Facebook.
Potential trouble for the Google:
- Different demographic may embrace Facebook. Control of a demographic is a big deal.
- Advertisers may want the details about a specific membership centric demographic
- Facebook has screwed up and kept on going. Google has screwed up and seems to have another major ship on the rocks. I refer not to Street View or its staff retention problems. I refer to Google TV.
The Facebook Google thing is similar to the North Korea – South Korea thing. Fighting cousins.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2010
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Facebook, the Pain of Change, and the Web
December 3, 2010
I have been thinking about the sky-is-falling message in Tim Berners-Lee analysis of Facebook. Widely reported, the “inventor of the Web” sees Facebook as a flea carrying bubonic evil in the fur of entrepreneurs. In short, Facebook represents a shift from the Wild Web Web to a walled garden with security cameras and listening devices.
You can get a breezy run down of the anti-change message in the current Scientific American essay.
I can visualize a scene around the campfire in what would become Kansas. The conversationalists don’t have Facebook pages but both work for an outfit paying them to ride a bunch of horses in serial like Christmas tree lights from one cow town to another.
Cowboy 1: What’cha think of that tel-ee-graph thing?
Cowboy 2: I think it’s-a goin’ to be less personal than us’ns takin’ the mail to folks we know.
Cowboy 1: Yep, I think it is the end of the mail delivery as we know it.
Cowboy 2: I would like to shoot the varmints that want to ruin a perfectly good way to communicate.
I think I could have heard a grousing clay tablet expert yammer about papyrus. The print dudes are struggling with twisted knickers over digital today.
What’s a-goin’ on today, partner?
First, the good old Web is already gone. Email is collateral damage. The mantra of Gordon Gekko has enchanted enough people to make information the equivalent of manipulated messages. So, the Web is dead and it is not coming back. Ever.
Second, the pace of change is accelerating. The reason is money, not what users need or think each needs. Greed is good and greed is transformative.
Third, walled gardens solve a lot of problems. Customers are chained to specific vendors. Captivity is what makes accountants happy. Captive customers behave in a predictable way and for budgeting purposes, that predictability is the chief good.
One can take different sides of the argument. That diversity is what passes for critical thinking today. Before grousing about Facebook, I think it is useful to look at the data. Facebook has stickiness, 650 million users, and a growing arsenal of features. Why go anywhere else?
Research has been changed. I like the word “devolve”. The Web is on a long hill with a street named decline. Remember the telephone and its early supporters’ idea that it would be used to disseminate important news. The phone today is the stuff that makes 12 years old have goose bumps. Change. Already accomplished.
Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2010
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What’s going on?
Facebook Flexes its Facial Muscles
November 27, 2010
“Facebook Comprises Nearly 25% of Page Views in the US” reports Read Write Web, a rather shocking figure. The article states: “According to Hitwise stats, for the week ending November 13, 24.27 percent of page views were to Facebook, almost four times the volume of the site ranked number two – YouTube, with “only” 6.93 percent of all page views. Even YouTube plus Google’s search combined only comprise around 12 percent of page views.” Of course, counting page views is not quite the same as counting unique visitors and mobile views weren’t counted at all. Still, this is one more piece of evidence that Facebook continues to dominate the web, with no end in sight.
Alice Wasielewski, November 27, 2010
Google Chapter and Face Book Metaphor
November 24, 2010
I read “For Google, Social Networking Is Just One Chapter of the Book.” I was confused. The article summarizes alleged comments by Google’s top bean counter, Patrick Pichette. I understand the soft shoe around “don’t be evil.” Google has managed to trigger legal push back on every continent. I understand the cheerleading about Android, which is not a Google grassroots development. A solid acquisition for sure. But Android has to deal with the fragmentation issue, various telecommunications companies with Bell head DNA, and the problem of the “app”. In my opinion, Android doesn’t yet have a killer app and Verizon has bumped Google Search for the somewhat disappointing Bing.com search service.
The baffler was “chapter.” I found this passage difficult to decode:
“The digital world is exploding and it has so many chapters — it has cloud computing, it has mobile, it does have social, it has searches, it has so many elements. (…) Yes, absolutely it will be part of our strategy, yes it will be embedded in many of our products. But at the same time remember it’s one chapter of an entire book,” said Google’s chief financial officer Patrick Pichette to Australian public television on Sunday.
Google is a search system with ads. Like a young novelists first book, Google harvested deep consideration of search. By chance, Hewlett Packard fumbled AltaVista.com and Google got a jump start from some former DEC engineers. Then the Google “don’t be evil” crowd sought artistic inspiration from GoTo.com/Overture.com which were part of Yahoo. The legal matter was made to go away, and Google became the “go to” company for search.
The company’s efforts outside of search have been met with mixed results. The big new thing is the social craziness, and Google has managed to flub its opportunities. First, there was Orkut, then Wave, and then Buzz. I heard that Google is not building a Facebook killer. I understand that. Facebook is different from Google, and Google is trotting out “chapter” metaphors.
Wrong. Facebook is a new book. Different author, different audience, and different utility—there is no chapter at Google’s wordsmithing operation for Facebook. The name “Facebook” is apt. Google does search and wrote that book. It was a best seller. New “book” and a new bestseller is here. Wrong metaphor. Google can do knock offs, but it did not write the Facebook. Hey, Google is the math club, not a poetry club like so many fawning mid tier consulting firms.
Google is not in the Face Book. Maybe Google is a chapter in the Digital Domesday Book?
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2010
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