Will Microsoft's launch of MSN Spaces set off a blog search acquisition spree?
(Note: Disclaimer due to an active relationship around this general space.) Ross Mayfield notes that MSN will be launching MSN Spaces (their blog authoring/hosting offering) sometime this week, with the comment: "Other blogging vendors will thank them for introducing their users to blogging, otherwise not that much will change." While I agree with him regarding the blog publishing platform (unless MSFT does an uncharacteristically good job with a 1.0 release), I'm not sure if the same can be said about MSNBlogBot, which (pure speculation here) might launch in conjunction with Spaces. Just as every portal needs an email and web search offering, so to will they need a blog/Feed search solution (heck, Icerocket already has one). And, while I don't expect PubSub, Feedster or Technorati to sell for a bubblicious $400MM ala Hotmail, none of them have taken so much funding that a quick flip is out of the question... and may be a better bet vs. partnering with the big dogs (while they busily build their own solutions). Update: Corrected typos, grammar. Apologies.
Scoble is planning to steal my content!
(Robert, don't rush for the unsubscribe button bud.) Well, there have certainly been some interesting developments over the past week while I was busy gorging on turkey and other tasty treats down in San Diego. One of the more interesting developments was Scoble's announcement that he intends to add the full text of posts he likes to his link blog. What's more interesting is that he's doing this with an ultimatum; essentially, if you don't like it, he won't read you any more (which also means he won't link to you). In short, you can read this as "give me your content or lose access to my distribution," which essentially makes this the same game that the Search Engine Cos are playing with Big Media (though the search engines are generally careful not to present the full text of a page other than via their 'cache' link). Now let's be clear. Compared to Google, Scoble represents a token amount of traffic to my site. While my Scobleometer Reading indicates that I say something he finds interesting once every 10 days or so (and I'm generally surprised by what he links to), I've never been quoted on his home page nor had a blog-to-blog conversation/debate as he often does with Dave Winer. But the real issue here (yes yes, there is a point) is that because Scoble reads me via a Feed, he probably doesn't realize that there's a copyright statement at the bottom of every page on my site (i.e., every blog post). He doesn't realize it because a) he's probably visited my site exactly once to subscribe to my blog, and b) because my Feed doesn't codify the permissions for use of my content. Now let's be clear. One of the overriding assumptions of blogging is that you want others to read and comment on your posts; I'm hardly about to sue Robert or Microsoft over this (although the latter is interesting, albeit likely futile, from a deep pockets perspective...). But I do have reasonable expectations over how he and others might use my content commercially, and certainly want attribution for my efforts. And so, my request of Scoble, Winer, Anker, Lessig and the other blog-powers-that-be is this: let's get this right in the next iteration of RSS, Atom et al. Let's have a way for people to explicitly indicate codified licensing/permissions in their Feeds, for both their posts and for any enclosures. This is key to efforts like JD Lassica & Marc Canter's ourmedia.org project, and will likely only increase in importance as more and more "professional" use of blogs occurs.
Disclosure: new blog-related consulting gig
Just a quick FYI... I am currently doing engaged in a focused, short-term consulting relationship with a company developing "blog related offerings" (apologies for being obtuse, but that's about all I can say at this point). This, coupled with the holidays, and the usual 23 hrs/day of Blogger.com downtime explains my recent lack of posts. Things should start to ramp up again shortly. As usual, I'll be sure to call out this relationship in any individual posts where I think you have reason to question my motives. ;) Update: For those who have emailed and others keeping score at home... I believe I can safely say I got this gig because of my blog.
A different perspective on Google's Ad Agency hunt
Andy Beal over at Search Engine Lowdown notes that Google is rumored to be looking for a relationship with an advertising agency. While Andy, Michael Bazeley and others rightly see this as a (potential) change in Google's marketing strategy (i.e., adding advertising to the mix vs. relying entirely on PR and word-of-mouth), I think there's (potentially) a bigger picture story here. To date, Google has primarily been seen as a competitor to Overture in the search-related advertising space (e.g., SEM, Contextual, Local, et al). However, with the Yahoo! acquisition of Overture, Yahoo! now has the opportunity to market additional advertising services (across all of Yahoo!'s properties) to Overture's base of 100K+ advertisers. Google doesn't have a comparable offering... but a strategic partnership with (or acquisition of) a respected advertising agency would give them the ability to co/cross-sell advertising services, influence spend allocation in a multi-channel marketing strategy, etc. Just as Overture and Google work hard to grow their $20/mth self-serve advertisers into $25k/mth "super diamond" accounts, the ability to provide a one-stop shop for advertising services is too tempting for either company to ignore indefinitely. Remember, in as much as both of these companies are focused on end-user lock-in through services like Google Desktop Search, both must also think about advertiser lock-in through differentiated advertiser service offerings.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm down in San Diego, catching up with friends and family, some of whom I haven't seen in 10 years. I hope you too are having a great holiday wherever you are! (I'll likely resume posting on Monday.)
Sand Hill Road, Google Local freshness and Security
I got a call last Friday from a potential client. Could we move our meeting to the offices of a Sand Hill Road VC that they were dropping in on. "Sure," I said, "what's the address?" "I'm not sure, just search for [XYZ_VCFirm],"... a polite way of saying (pardon my language), Fucking Google It. Right... easier for me to do a search than for someone to tell me where they were standing (ironic, but actually true in this case). And so, I banged the VC firm's name into my Google toolbar, instantly got a Google Local result, and headed out the door. Arriving at the address, I looked high and low for the VC firm, without luck. I spotted a property management office, and knew they'd help me. "Oh yeah, they moved recently," the lady at the desk told me. "Umm, how recently," I asked. "Oh, a couple of months ago," was the reply. Right. Months. Clearly the mistake was mine. I could have sought out the firm's web site and checked their address (which was correct). I also could have called the firm. But, when using an online directory, especially Google, I have certain expectations, namely: comprehensiveness, responsiveness and accuracy. That doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, does it?! So, my advice to Sukhinder Singh and the rest of the team over at Google Local (not that they asked) ; add the date your directory information was last updated on your Local search results so I know if I have to verify your information or if I can trust it... Tangetally, Friday was the first time I visited Sand Hill since I spent way too much time there drumming up funding for WishClick. Some things have changed, while others have remained the same. One thing that, surprisingly, hasn't changed, is the complete lack of security; I strolled into several offices, glancing at pitches that werein progress, etc, and was never challenged. Given the crazy things that have happened in the past, one would think that a street packed with millionares and billionares would have a visible security presence in addition to whatever behind-the-scenes security the employ.
The Blogosphere By the Numbers
Rob McGann, over at ClickZ, has a nice article entitled The Blogosphere By the Numbers, with some interesting metrics on blogging (Deeje, Susan, take note!). My key takeaways (and if you care about search, local search, p2p, social networking, etc, you ought to care about this too, IMO): - Demographics: According to a study by Perseus, over 50% of bloggers are 13-19 and another 40% are 20-29. This is interesting, as I'd say nearly all of the blogs I read are published by 30+... but perhaps that's because my blogging (and blog reading) is skewed towards professional vs. personal interests. - Activity: 275K posts a day (or ~11K an hour). Wow. - Size: 4MM blogs, up from 500K in June 2003, per Technorati (roughly 15K new blogs a day). 6.5MM blogs, per PubSub... big difference there... Perseus projects 10MM blogs by the end of 2004 Of course, what's missing from all of this is the number of 'Feed enabled' (RSS, RDF, Atom, etc) blogs, where Feeds are concentrated (i.e., how do they map to the aforementioned demographics) and how Feed growth is tracking with overall blog growth. While blogs are tremendously interesting... it's the Feeds that truly give this meme its power.
Inside AOL's restructuring
ContentNext has posted an internal AOL memo, which details the internal roles and responsibilities of key players in each of AOL's four divisions... a very useful guide if you (intend to) partner (or work) with AOL.
A misguided comparison: SEM vs. Rich Media Ads
Rich Media Is Rising Star of Online Ad: "A new report from eMarketer predicts that rich media will overtake search to become the dominant form of Web advertising by the end of the decade. " Ugh. Appearantly, those in our industry are still struggling to understand what SEM is... and isn't. So, here's an (incomplete, but useful) framework for thinking about advertising and its future. 1) Platform 2) Mechanism 3) Format The platform is where the advertisement is placed. Broad platforms include "electronic" and "print" (etc, etc). These can be refined to a fairly granular level, e.g., "print" could be divided into newspapers, magazines, directories, etc. The mechanism is the means by which the ad is targeted for display to a given user. Examples of mechanisms include "placed" (everyone sees it), "intent based" (i.e., search), "contextual", etc. The format describes the nature of the creative unit. Examples of format include "text listing", "banner", "rich media", etc. The mistake, then, that eMarketer is making (IMO) is in confusing the mechanism of Search Engine Marketing with the format of Rich Media Ads. To understand this, it's important to realize that SEM does not mean text listings, it only implies text listings (because that's what we've become accustomed to through the Overture model). Need an example? Look at Google AdSense (a contextual mechanism). It started with text listings (format), but now also supports banner ads (format). The same is true of SEM. Just because it uses text listings today, doesn't meant that it can't be used to return Rich Media ads in the future. And, if, as eMarketer predicts, Rich Media is what advertisers want, and what users will accept, you can bet that the Search mechanism will support it down the road. P.S. There are a number of reasons why SEM started with text listings... one of the biggest being that most any advertiser can string together a couple of sentences, whereas it takes more time/money/skill to design and build graphics, sound and video. When you're trying to scale to hundreds of thousands of customers (i.e., advertisers), you go with the lowest common denominator...
Appearantly it would be "simple" for Microsoft to build a bidded marketplace
In his article entitled MSN Renews With Overture -- for Now Kevin Newcomb, who I like and respect, makes a misguided leap of logic in saying: "The company has a few options for technology that accepts bids and bills advertisers. It could build a solution in-house, which would presumably be simple enough for its army of programmers." Let me give you a simple analogy to help you frame this (and future) analysis in this space: Here in my apartment, I have the necessary resources to, all on my own, bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies that would beat Chips Ahoy in a blind taste test. But, I'm not a competitive threat to Nabisco, because I lack the capability to cost/time-effectively produce (let alone distribute) the 100MMs of cookies it would take for them to notice me. Building, maintaining and extending a bidded marketplace (and all of the necessary supporting technology [which goes well beyond accepting bids and billing advertisers] and human processes) that scales to millions of advertisers and billions of queries is not a trivial undertaking.
Delta flight attendant fired for blog content, pictures
News.com reports that Delta has fired a non-union flight attendant ("Queen of the Sky") for the contents of her blog... namely, these 'racy' photos. This is becoming a rather disturbing trend.
Microsoft hedges, renews deal with Overture for paid listing marketplace through 2006!
Ahead of the recent launch of Microsoft's new search offering, I wrote: "...The real test for Microsoft will be their ability to create their own vibrant marketplace for paid listings (further breaking their ties to Yahoo)..." According to this joint press release from Overture and Microsoft, Microsoft isn't quite ready to join the big boys yet by offering its own bidded marketplace and ad serving capabilities, and instead has renewed its relationship with Overture through June 2006 (a one year extension). This is a big win for Yahoo (and Google), giving them another year to grow their advertiser base and ponder how they can maintain (or grow) their share of wallet when MSFT eventually gets its act together. (Yes, you and I are savvy enough to know that any advertiser worth his/her salt would buy from any and all marketplaces that provide positive ROI... but for whatever reason, there are still plenty of advertisers who don't "get it" and work with only one of the leading SEM marketplaces.)
Ignore - Feedster Blog Claim
TKG ILM 2004 PowerPoints Now Available
For those of you who weren't able to attend, the PowerPoint slides for the various presenters at The Kelsey Groups' Interactive Local Media 2004 conference are now available here. My recommendations for those with a few minutes on their hands: - James Larrison's (comScore Networks) preso. Lots of interesting data (much of which looks like a rehash from Web 2.0). - The Dollars and Sense of Local Search (from the perspective of financial analysts Paul Ginocchio, Richard Fetyko and Mark May) [Links will trigger a PPT downloads] - Mark Pincus of Tribe.net, doing his very best to explain "Web 2.0" concepts to an audience, that is largely still trying to digest concepts from 2000. [ PPT link, easier to read, as there are a bunch of wipes, etc]
A quick rant to the boys at SiliconBeat
There are so many things in life that can frustrate you if you allow them to, hence the common (and appropriate) advice to 'let go of the little things'. Then, there are the things that irk you so much for some subconcious reason that they just want to make you throw up your hands, scream and shake the bejesus out of your monitor. This is one of them for me. Over on the About page of SiliconBeat.com, in the description of Matt Marhsall's background, is a link to his news stories over at the SJ Merc. In parens after the link are the words (my emphasis) " subscription probably required to view them". Subscription, as I've written before, is generally understood to imply that a periodic payment is required to access/receive goods or services on a periodic basis (though admittedly, this is changing somewhat as the term has been co-opted w.r.t. Feeds and Aggregators). This is not the case with KRD properties, even for content that is greater than 7 days old (which are sold individually or on a tiered/bulk buy scheme). The right word here is "registration". If you guys don't get it right, you can't expect others (like Google News) to, which only hurts you in the end in the minds of end-users. Update: My monitor, though still cowering on the corner of my desk, let out a big sigh of relief when MichaelB's comment flashed on... its... umm... face. Yes, I've taken this as far as it's going to go (and far further than it needed to go).
Google's Orkut launches Op-Ed's in hopes of finding a purpose
Orkut, the social-networking site that is still only loosely 'affiliated with Google' (perhaps because of lawsuits, or its rediculously slow performance...) announced in an email to members today that it was launching a new 'Media tab' where members could rant about things they are passionate about: "When you land at media.orkut.com, you'll venture into the realm of love and politics and beyond. Here's a quick lay of this new land: the "Porch" offers a variety of columns ranging from the hot and humorous to the thoughtful and thought-provoking, along with galleries of riveting photos from around the world. The "Lounge" and "Studio" will contain archives of all the collected orkut media material (on the off-chance that you miss a week), along with tidbits about contributing writers and photographers. orkut media can be viewed by anyone surfing the Web. And it's open for you, the orkut member, to submit your own work. Got something to say? A perspective that you think needs to be heard? Go ahead and send us a column, write us a letter, or forward a photo." Feed syndication? Nope, at least not yet... which makes this smell all the more like a desperate plea for a real purpose for the service (i.e., a reason to go to the site on a regular basis)... For my money, Tribe.net's more topic-focused "Tribes" (with RSS feeds, naturally) are a much more compelling experience. Update: Typos corrected
SBC, Microsoft in $400MM VOD/VOI Deal
As this Reuters article points out, Microsoft and SBC announced today that SBC will pay MSFT $400MM over 10 years to provide "video services over high speed Internet connections". Services will include "customized channel lineups, video on demand, digital video recording, interactive program guides and copy protection." While this is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions MSFT has invested in cable companies and video service R&D over the past several years, it closely follows the recent rollout of MSFT-powered PVR (i.e., DVR) functionality by Comcast. Speaking of which, the Comcast/MSFT PVR rollout is leading some geeks (i.e., influencers/early adopters), such as Robert Scoble and Jeff Sandquist, to abandon their Tivo's. Others are trashing their Tivo's because they company continues to sell them out. In their latest misfire, the company is now going to display banner and pop-up ads when you fast forward through commercials (defeating the whole purpose of skipping advertisements to begin with)! I hope Netflix, one of my favorite companies (despite my rantings that may appear to the contrary) is looking for deals beyond Tivo; their future depends on it.
Overture RSS Ads Out In The Open
John Battelle breaks the news; as promised only a month ago, Overture is now testing its P4P ads in Feeds, through a relationship-of-convenience (or, perhaps something more?...) with FeedBurner. As I noted earlier tonight, this continues to raise the question in my mind about the long-term viability of start-ups in this space (no matter how much I want to root them on!) . Or, perhaps I'm being naive... and should be out there myself, building something to flip... ;)
Feedster's Angel(s) Partially Revealed
For those of you who, like me, are following the funding of RSS companies ( and the reasons behind said funding), this might be of interest to you... A Business Wire press release announces that New York Angels is only of the angel investors behind Feedster. Unfortunately, neither the size of the investment nor a list of other angels participating in the round is provided (not surprising, as being stealthy is all the rage again). Still, it's important to understand how 'smart' the money is going into these companies, as their ability to stand alone in the wake of the Search Giants waking up and taking RSS seriously is an open question (at least in my mind). So what do you think? Do you see Feedster, Technorati, PubSub, Bloglines, Pheedo, TypePad, Feedburner et al around 3-5 years from now? Or will their foundation in open standards (RDF/XML/RSS, etc) lead to quick commoditization (or, perhaps, "cheap" acquisition) by Yahoo, Google and Microsoft?
Thoughts on Beattie's Mobile Web
Russell Beattie (who I had the pleasure to meet at VendorCon, after BloggerCon III) has a very interesting post tonight entitled "The Mobile Web", in which he ponders (and envisions) 'how much' of the current Web will be available via mobile devices (cell phones in particular) and what technology standards will make it happen... Here's my current take on things... 1) Users will/do want to access what we currently call "web content and functionality" anytime and anywhere 2) Device/platform independent content formatting (i.e., XML) and functionality implementations (i.e., Web Services) will truly divorce the presentation layer from logic and storage layers, enabling an 'optimized' experience on any given platform 3) Input/Output (I/O) functions will be separated (physically) from storage/computation/connectivity/locality functions. 4) I/O devices will project an interface several factors (to several orders of magnitude) larger than their physical size. A hypothetical future scenario: A) You (always) carry a small/lightweight device that is capable of persistently storing/retrieving data, conducting computations, locating itself in the physical universe (e.g., GPS) and connecting with other devices and local/global networks (e.g., WiFi, CDMA, BlueTooth, etc). For the sake of this scenario, we'll call it your CORE. B) You carry one or more specialized, componetized I/O peripherals (depending on your needs, to #3 above) that leverage the CORE. For example the same earbuds that playback your music (i.e., iPod) also playback your friend's voice (i.e., cell phone). And, the same display that renders your applications (PDA), also renders your current call information (cell phone), movie (portable DVD player), photos (digital camera and/or iPod Photo). Etc. C) Providing further leverage, your portable I/O devices are more virtual than physical (to #4, above). For example, how about a 3D display thin-air display (IO2 Technologies) and an IR Keyboard (Canesta Infrared Keyboard). Providing even greater leverage, you may choose to use publicly provided I/O peripherals (e.g., a display and keyboard embedded in your airplane seat) with your CORE. Yes, a fully functional, open and extensible solution like this is a ways off (sigh)... but it is a much more compelling future (IMO) than going long on solving for two square-inch displays. And slowly but surely, pieces are indeed falling into place!
Privacy when conversing with Bloggers
I've been having some interesting email conversations with tech industry execs (some of whom are also fellow Bloggers), and have noticed an interesting trend... more and more of them are including privacy notes in their emails to ensure that the content of those emails doesn't make it out to the blogosphere. The first exec uses a fairly standard template: "This email and any attachments thereto may contain private, confidential, and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review, copying, or distribution of this email (or any attachments thereto) by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copies of this email and any attachments thereto." The second is more blog specific: "This email is: [ ] bloggable [ ] ask first [ x ] private" Having had some private thoughts (along with my friggin email address) posted to the blog of a very close friend in the past, I can understand the concern here. In fact, I find myself reassuring people I talk with in person (who are concerned about privacy and don't have an NDA handy) that I won't blog about what we're talking about that day, if that's there wish... Of course, a verbal promise made 1v1 (with no witnesses and no paper documentation) is of dubious legal value; rather, it is my personal/professional integrity that matters (an interesting 'throwback' to the days when a handshake actually meant something between new/casual acquaintances). My questions for you are... - Are you too seeing this trend, and if so, how are you handling it? - Is a verbal promise not to disclose sufficient for you? - Should we start dragging a tablet PC and digital NDA to our meetings with friends (I'm sure Scoble would love that )?
- If we're busy making changes to our email infrastructure (e.g., Yahoo's announcement about DomainKeys today) , should we codify the 'disclosability' of its contents as well (making it all the easier to search against)?
Gannett dates, weds eHarmony
SocalTech reports that Gannett has hooked-up eHarmony; all Gannett properties, including "USA TODAY", will feature eHarmony's personals. Some quick thoughts here: 1) Expect Knight Ridder and Tribune to follow suit. Newspaper's are (surprise) late to the game in the dating space and are replacing existing dysfunctional partnerships, instead of building their own service. 2) eHarmony (despite repositioning by its competitors) still enjoys a competitive advantage with substantially better conversion and retention rates than its competitors, allowing it to pay substantially more to partners who drive sign-ups. This creates a virtuous cycle, enabling eHarmony to grab more and more market share from its competitors over time. 3) eHarmony's unique brand position (as a 'marrying' vs. 'dating' site) is both sustainable (near term) and extensible (near/medium-term). I expect to see eHarmony move forward and/or backward in the dating<->marrying<->married<->divorced "mating lifecycle" through extensions to their existing service and/or the introduction of new services. 4) As I and plenty of others have noted before, these services will eventually bifurcate as persistent online profiles become (more) common place; "introductions/meeting" will be fully commoditized... "matching" (and ancillary services) will be the source of value creation.
Social Networking meets File Sharing at Wirehog
Topix.net's Social Software feed captures an article from The Harvard Crimson Online about Wirehog (note: LOVE the name), a new file-sharing solution integrated with TheFaceBook (a social networking site for the college set). While there are tons of social networking sites and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, this is the first combo of the two 'technologies' that I'm aware of (please let me know if you know of others). Given the natural fit between the two technologies (hint: especially from a marketing perspective), I think it's safe to assume we'll see a plethora of similar offerings.
AOL to take RSS mobile
Deeje Cooley of RSS News points to a PaidContent.org post about AOL building a mobile RSS Newsreader. Search Google for ' Mobile RSS' and you'll find plenty of folks are, no surprise, ahead of AOL on this front... But the bigger picture thought here remains... what if there was a universal, ubiquitous framework, that ran on any platform (from your computer, to cell phone, to TV and beyond) for programmatic receipt (and eventually, manipulation) of any type of content (text, sound, video, binary, etc)? What would that mean for your business, your business partners and your customers? If you're not already thinking about this... start now.
MSN Search's Blog
Here's MSN's new Search Blog. RSS feed here. Quite a select 'Sites We Read' list; they might want to try Feedster, Bloglines or PubSub to broaden their perspective a bit. ;) Subscribed.
Correcting the BloggerCon record on 'The Incident'
Roland Tanglao, who I really wanted to meet, but missed, at BloggerCon III, writes a bit about the SNAFU between Dave Winer and a couple of the Vendors at BloggerCon (I hinted at this before), stating: "My take on the vendor pseudo controversy. Bob was speaking in "developer" talk and Dave in the heat of the moment shut him down by saying it was "vendor" talk when he meant developer talk. And at this and all future BloggerCons both developer and vendor talk are not allowed for good reasons. Still, it would be nice to have an extra "developer partying with user"s day and I would have loved to have gone to the after BC martini/vendor back backchannel con but instead I went back to Sunnyvale to spend some time with Barb and Simon (it's always awesome to see our smiling son at the end of the day). " So, here's how I remember it (I don't have the luxury of an MP3 replay...), with all appropriate caveats... - David Sifry stood up and introduced himself: "I'm David Sifry, with Technorati, [two seconds of blah blah], with Technorati, you can..." - Dave interrupted him there, rightly, because he was about to pitch a Technorati, vs. industry solution to the users - Bob Wyman, from PubSub, stood up and introduced himself: "I'm Bob Wyman from PubSub..." - Dave interrupted him, and jumped on him , even though Bob hadn't done what David did... he'd only been doing what all of us had been doing all day: Declaring our name and affiliation before saying our bit Because of this, all vendors were silenced (counter to the audience's wishes) for the rest of the show. Developer chat was allowed, provided it came from the inside; normal "users" don't scream out "attention.xml" in answer to a discussion topic... right? It's not as though I begrudge Dave Winer for this; he did a great job putting on an interesting show where I met some amazing people and caught up with some I haven't seen in a while. And, I chose to participate in a different way. Dave should just publicly apologize to Bob and move on. No harm, no foul, the industry's young, let's be purple states, not red or blue.
eBay's Next Chapter: The Pricing Authority
Today, eBay announced the availability of Pulse, a tool that aggregates bids to provide up-to-the-minute (and historical) values for goods (and some services). Yes, that's right... eBay, who, unlike your local newspaper, has transactions that clear (i.e., you know that the item was sold and how much it was sold for), knows the fair market price, globally, of millions of different goods... and they've just opened it up for mining! Many implications: 1) We've seen the high-water mark for The Kelley Blue Book's value (and similar companies). Through Pulse, eBay Motors can be mined to provide near real-time and historical pricing information, on any make or model, in a narrow geographic region (i.e., local search), with car photos documenting the condition of the car, etc. Nice. 2) Data availability will impact marketplace participant behavior, likely resulting in Meta-marketplaces, 'day-sellers' and increased competition. For example, much as NexTag.com built a meta-marketplace by arbitraging SEM marketplaces (Google, Overture, etc) until finally finding a profitable niche in home mortgages, the ability to monitor demand on eBay for a particular good or service may result in speculative and opportunistic seller behavior, resulting in more (and more immediate) competition in eBay's marketplace. Interestingly, just as with Overture/Google, tools that make the marketplace more efficient, as described above, may have a negative short-term impact on revenue (as anything that decreases the avg selling price of an item on eBay would), but will likely result in significantly greater long-term impact as the increased transparency leads to greater trust, allowing more transactions to move online. 3) eBay continues to ensure its Web 2.0 relevance by extending its existing services 1: Classified Listings and Transaction clearing (core marketplace), 2: Payments (via PayPal), and 3: Reputation (core marketplace), by adding its first data product service, Pricing. Hey John Battelle, need aggregate pricing information for your Transparent (Shopping) Society? Here it is. (I'll write more about John's joint later...)
Microsoft Search 1.0 Due Tomorrow: Prepare to be underwhelmed
Microsoft Search 1.0 will be available publicly tomorrow, and I for one expect to be generally underwhelmed. That's a fairly bold prediction, I suppose, especially given that I'm not one of the rarified few who got an early look at the beta versions of their new search technology. But I have a few reasons for my thoughts: 1) Microsoft Search doesn't need to be better than Google or Yahoo! search to win user market share, because Microsoft's first goal is simply to retain their existing search traffic, while depriving a competitor (Yahoo!) of said search traffic. 2) Microsoft need only show the press and analysts that it's search is comparable to the current state of the art (with perhaps a few small 'sizzle features' showing minor innovation) to get the story they want. 3) Microsoft almost always plays for parity in its 1.0 releases; it's with its 3.0 releases that it attempts to leapfrog the competition. The question here, at least in my mind, is not if this holds true, but how long the cycles are between each iteration of their product roadmap. Time is of the essence, as even though the SEM growth rate (in raw percentages) is slowing, every day of delay results in more entrenched behavior and more R&D dollars to tip the balance. The real test for Microsoft will be their ability to create their own vibrant marketplace for paid listings (further breaking their ties to Yahoo). Unlike its competitors, MSFT has the resources to go really big to acquire small advertisers (large ones who understand ROI are a given in any marketplace that has search volume); perhaps we'll finally see them buy Intuit, another Local Search sleeper. Update: Typos...
Where's the big audience for premium services for LinkedIn et al?
After a little over a year of playing with the current crop of "social networking" sites (boy is it ever time to give that label a rest), LinkedIn is the only one I still use (and the only one that I that I add contacts to) on any regular basis. Why? Mostly because of the audience it attracts, and its narrow focus on providing me with simple (but sufficient) functionality to find and make contact with people I'm looking for. (In that sense, LinkedIn is one of the "truest" social networking sites, vs. say a classified site with social networking underpinnings [ Tribe.net], or a dating site backed by social networking [ Friendster].) But would I pay for it? I don't think so, and I suspect, as News.com's article points out, the percentage of people who would is pretty small. And who is that small percentage? Why, people who are making money because of LinkedIn (surprise!). So my question to Reid Hoffman and team over at LinkedIn is, how do you create a more vibrant marketplace that extends further into the tail of your customer base? What services can you offer people like me, who don't make a living directly off of people (e.g., recruiting), but because of people. My goodness, this is starting to sound like the BloggerCon monetization discussion again!
Google starts certification program for SEMs
Stefanie Olsen over at News.com writes about Google's new "Google Advertising Progressionals" program, aimed at providing better support to agencies representing major accounts. While not highlighted in her article, a one sentence statement points out the first move I'm aware of to "officially sanction" SEMs. According to Ms. Olsen: "They also can train and take an annual proficiency exam to become a certified "professional" and to display a related logo." If true, this is a significant move by Google to grow the SEM market by establishing a trust mechanism... something the now self-imploding SEMPO trade organization failed to take on. It'll be interesting to see if Dan Boberg over at Overture moves more aggressively on the branding/certification side, and if this finally results in the official release of the advertiser Web Services platform they've been selectively licensing for the past year or so. Update: Kevin Newcomb (who I was pleased to meet at TKG ILM 2004) has a solid article over at ClickZ with more details on certification requirements, etc.
Kanoodle, Pheedo partner for ads in feeds
In my last post, I mentioned this morning's deal between Kanoodle and Six Part to allow TypePad users to add ads to their hosted blog posts, noting that no mention was made of support for feeds. It's worth noting that, yesterday, Kanoodle announced a deal with Pheedo, whereby Pheedo customers will be able to insert Kanoodle contextual ads into their feeds automatically. ( Topix.net, PaidContent.org and Lockergnome are early customers.) What's more interesting to me, frankly, is that the Pheedo announcement mentions operating metrics reporting on feed usage, something (obvious) I identified 7 months ago as a critical puzzle piece. More thoughts on this later today.
VendorCon at BloggerCon 3
So, it's three days later, and I still haven't written much about my first BloggerCon experience... and I think I'm going to hold off on commenting on the conference itself for a bit longer yet... However, I will relay a related story... I was delighted to get an invite from Eleanor Kruszewski ("Elle") and Mike Rowehl to attend BackchannelCon, a bit of an 'after-party' for BloggerCon hosted over at Mike and Elle's place. Based on a brief conversation we had with Elle over lunch at BloggerCon, Dan Gould and I took it upon ourselves (being very presumptuous, I might add -- thankfully Mike and Elle are cool and forgiving people) to invite the "Vendors" to BackchannelCon so that we "users" could talk with them. The result was VendorCon (or SuperMiniVendorCon as Scott from Feedster refered to it). How was the impromptu, unpromoted conference? Fantastic. Scott Johnson from Feedster, Mark Fletcher from Bloglines, and Bill Flitter from Pheedo were all given an opportunity to make brief pitches and answer questions (including helping 'users' solve problems far beyond the scope of the services the aforementioned individuals represented). JD Lassica pitched ourmedia.org, and received a warm reception. (Other vendors were invited, but didn't show: in all fairness, there was only a small window between the end of the conference and previously scheduled dinners.) Users and Developers/Vendors create a virtuous cycle when they interact (communicate) with each other, resulting in greater satisfaction for both parties. Rather than creating ground-rules to prevent this very natural behavior, I hope Dave Winer and crew will use their energy to facilitate it (in a properly structured manner, of course) at future events.
Kanoodle, Six Apart partner for blog ads
Jessica Schweitzer of Hill & Knowlton shipped me a press release this morning noting that TypePad (made by Six Apart) subscribers will be able to 'easily' add Kanoodle contextual ads to their blog pages. (As I've previously noted, I'm amazed at how hard Google makes it for Blogger.com users to add AdSense ads and a Google search box to Blogger blogs; this should be a checkbox option, no HTML editing required.) Of course, my follow-up email to Jessica was, "What about feeds?" No answer yet... Unlike Dave Winer and Doc Searl's stance at BloggerCon 3 this weekend, I see nothing wrong with trying to make money off of your blog content; more power to you. I do, however, agree with them in that, for most of us, you are more likely to make money because of your blog than with your blog. Still, if you can at least cover your costs (as Winer admits he does through ads), this is worth a look. If you're a TypePad customer (Deeje?), I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Ad:Tech Blogging Panel - Now blogs are a medium?!
Jeff Jarvis, over at BuzzMachine, is doing a great job blogging the Ad:Tech conference ( thank you Jeff!). One of the comments he records from Nick Denton in his coverage of the Blogging Panel surprised me: "...Someone at Salon asks what's different about this: It's just another medium. Nick says yes. I keep adding that one thing is different: It's a conversation..." So I do agree with Jeff here; what's unique about blogging is the group behavior amongst loosely coupled participants (which manifests as conversations, meet-ups and other generally 'communal' behavioral patterns). No problems there. But, to call blogging a new medium? I don't think so. A new mechanism for using the existing Internet medium? Yes. Goodness knows I'm all for blogging, meta-data publishing, micro-content and whatever else we want to label this stuff. But blogging is an activity done on an existing medium, not a new medium unto itself.
Technology, Youth Ascendant at Knight Ridder
(Full disclosure: I have a whopping $2K in KR stock left from my time there... so if you think that might influence my opinion, you've been warned up front!)Knight Ridder announces that Hilary Schneider (43), will move from her role as President of KR's online division (Knight Ridder Digital - KRD) to co-VP of the Newspaper division (at Corporate). This is great news for Knight Ridder (and perhaps, for the entire Newspaper industry). My time with Hilary showed her to be an insightful, analytical and polished leader (with a loyal following). Her youth and energy alone should prove valuable to KR in her new role... but it is her willingness to use (if not embrace) technology that is most critical; it's a great sign that the VP of Technology will joint report to her and CEO Tony Ridder. The gossipy side of me wonders who will fill her role over at KRD. My bet would be heir-appearant Anna Zornosa, but Tracy Martin and others might make a run at it as well. Either way, KRD will be a different place a few months from now. Tip of the hat to M.B. for the heads-up.
TKG ILM: A Shout Back to Judith Meskill
I had the pleasure to meet a number of great folks at this year's Kelsey Group ILM 2004 conference, including Judith Meskill. Judith was recently named Editorial Director over at Weblogs, Inc., which looks like a big win for everyone. As part of her new charter, Judith is out looking for bloggers to join forces with Weblogs, Inc., as they push toward 100 blogs by the end of 2004 and 300 by 2005. A very intriguing opportunity, indeed! In her shout out to me, Judith mentions social mobile local search. Hey Judith, I wrote a little something about that recently, and in short, I agree -- it'll happen (eventually), and it'll be good. In the same post, Judith also mentions that Pamela Parker (who I really wanted to meet at TKG's ILM, but didn't) predicts that user generated content and social networking will play a significant roll in the development of local search. As you can probably guess from Michael Bazeley's article over at SiliconBeat.com, I agree!
10x10: Information Visualization for News.. Ideas abound..
In his post entitled 10x10 View of the News, Micro Persuasion author Steve Rubel points out a very cool new web site built on top of RSS feeds of International news sources, named 10x10. Rather than integrating it with Google News, I'd say build it on top of a Feedster.com-like service. Not only could 10x10 do what they're doing with thousands of big media news sources (ala Rubel’s comments about integrating with Google News), they could also analyze sentiment (in a local search friendly way!) by analyzing blog meta data. It's a shame that the Newspaper industry doesn't culturally embrace the very medium that will define its future. If they did, they'd have some R&D propeller heads (and biz folks) working on this kind of stuff.
SBC, BellSouth buy YellowPages.com, setting off groans
After the news got whispered around The Kelsey Group Interactive Local Media 2004 conference all day Wednesday, the SBC and BellSouth decided to announce the formation of a joint venture and the JV's acquisition of YellowPages.com on Thurs. cvs. Fri. Terms weren't disclosed, but the whisper numbers put the price at somewhere around $105MM. Reaction to the acquisition was mixed, at best. Why? Those familiar with the company told me that YellowPages.com's technology platform is... "under developed" (my phrasing for much more colorful descriptions.) Further, while you and I would probably be thrilled to have 50MM monthly searches, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the traffic that Yahoo & Google have. The one strength that everyone pointed to was the unaided recall of the YellowPages.com domain name (some particularly snarky folks went so far as to call this the first $100MM+ URL buy, dwarfing Idealab's Business.com buy). How much of that is really recall, is, at least in my mind, questionable (in all fairness, I have not seen the company's research). Frankly, most any site whose name is what the site offers, and is familiar culturally, should have great "recall". For example, if I polled 1000 people, I'd bet that even though many had never gone to News.com, the URL would have strong recall, because, well, it's pretty obvious what's going on at the site (compared to say, Clusty.com) and it's a familiar word/concept/object culturally... On a different front… Despite dodging my question on the topic, I suspect that once the SEC blesses the JV/acquisition (and the newly formed org gets its operational feet under it), we'll see other RBOCs/CLECs invited to participate as licensees or equity partners. This would be the right move in my opinion; much like the newspaper industry should be doing, the YP industry must work together to build a destination site with a (inter-) national footprint and a critical mass of users and advertisers. Additional thoughts: - This venture will fail if SBC and BellSouth are too hands on with the new JV. Simply stated, a different culture, focused on technology innovation (in service of business results, of course) must be adopted if the JV has any hope of keeping up with the rapid pace of change happening in the search (and broader internet) industry. - This venture will fail if the JV focuses solely on branding as a means of getting YellowPages.com into the minds of consumers (searchers). The JV must be bankrolled to arbitrage the search results on Yahoo and Google to acquire leads on behalf of the YP's advertisers (in a self funding model). - As mentioned above, the JV will fail if additional partners are not added; a comprehensive universe of listings (across whatever is local to any user in most any reasonable use case, including nationals traveling abroad) is mandatory to be competitive from an end user perspective (and of course, is synergistic from an ad sales perspective). On the whole, I'm delighted to see the YP industry moving (even if it took a year to do the deal...) into the future; this should be yet another wake-up call for Newspapers. But, for all the reasons pointed out above, this is very much a baby step… With Google throwing off $1.4B+/yr and cheap stock for acquisitions (let alone what MSFT and YHOO are spending), the YP players had better be prepared to move more quickly, and open their wallets wider. Hmm... Perhaps they could combine forces with the Newspaper industry (ala CitySearch and Topix)? Yeah yeah, crazy talk.
The Kelsey Group ILM 2004, Take 2
Well folks, I apologize. Just as soon as I had finally settled into The Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media 2004 conference and /paid/ for my WiFi access (idea: this would be a great sponsorship opportunity for next year's conference), Blogger.com crapped out (again) and started serving 'Internetal Error 500' messages instead of letting me post. Sigh. So, instead of emulating Jeremy Zawodny's excellent real-time coverage of Web 2.0, I'll resume my more typical pattern of being a (sometimes fast) follower (coupled with, hopefully, some insightful comments). Several posts through the rest of the evening (and potentially into the weekend as I'll be at BloggerCon all of tomorrow... can't wait!).
Slow blogging ending as Kelsey conf approaches
Just a quick apology for the lack of posts the past few days. Wednesday and Thursday, I'll be at Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media (i.e., Local Search & Directory) conference; my intent is to blog it as real time as their infrastructure permits!
DoubleClick For Sale; SEM to blame?
Mike over at TechDirt notes that Doubleclick has put itself up for sale. Interesting news, given that FastClick announced a $75MM round today. It's also a bit surprising, given that the company recently acquired Performics (which included buying Tribune Interactive's stake), an SEO/SEM group, and has confirmed that they have other SEM tools in development for release in 2005.
Fastclick Raises $75M
SocalTech.com announces that Fastclick raised $75M in their latest round (noteworthy due alone to its size these days, but especially interesting given that the company was bootstrapped w/o VC dollars and is thought to already be profitable). Congrats to John Ellis and Darren Davis, two Overture friends who landed over at FastClick. Perhaps lightning will strike twice for them.
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