“The problem isn’t that specialised companies lack the data they need, it’s that they don’t go and look for it, they don’t understand how to handle it.”
Google UK produced a short book called Think Quarterly to distribute to partners and advertisers, but it’s actually pretty interesting for a more general audience. Articles feature Hans Rosling, Hal Varian, and others. Also a hat tip to FlowingData in Simon Rogers’ list of sexy resources.
Baidu’s CEO Robin Li hinted that China’s largest search engine may be planning a lightweight mobile OS for smartphones and tablets. Hot on the heels of retreating Google, Baidu currently enjoys 75 percent of China’s web search revenue to Google’s 16 and may well be pressing in the OS domain as well. The OS concept will center on the search box — or Baidu Box — with the end goal seeing it become the sole interface on a mobile device. Mr. Li further stated his hope would be to see that interface up and running on the device within a second of boot up. While this OS will apparently be search-centric, its other features will focus on social media and other online content. Of course, this is a three to five year plan, so we can definitely expect hardware advances and system advances to help make this lofty dream into a reality.
The search wars have officially arrived! That’s right folks, Google’s ongoing quest to make its search results more impervious to spammers has become an infographic, which basically is a badge of honor for any tech bitchmeme.
Closet and not so closet SEO nerds can follow the above flowchart tracing Google’s storied path, from getting rejected by Excite@Home in favor of current Demand Media honcho’s iMail through the chutes and ladders of its algorithmic spam chase to the company’s most recent attempts to quell the rising influence of content farms like um, Demand Media.
“People trade links off topic in large reciprocal link farms.” –> “Google filters out sites that have a high ratio of reciprocal links.” And so on and so forth …
Most ominous part?
“Every change is a new opportunity! Some webmasters are already building business models around the exploiting of opportunities created by the latest algorithm change.”
A federal judge has ruled against Google’s $125 million proposal to settle with publishers and authors whose out-of-print books Google digitized without permission. The judge feels the settlement is too favorable towards Google. Rough. [NY Times via Engadget]More »
My nephew’s wife was frustrated. The “easy-to-use” site-builder software she was using to make the church camp website with was anything but. To make matters worse, their “free” hosting service came with a price—banner ads that randomly appeared on the site. And she found no help on the home front … unlike so many of the nephews out there that have built websites for their uncle’s business, mine was not one of them.
So in desperation, she turned to her Facebook friends to ask if anyone knew of a free and easy-to-use website builder—one without ads. A well-meaning friend replied:
That is so last decade. Why don’t you just make a Facebook fan page? It’s 2011; you gotta catch up with the times!
She even offered to set the page up for her.
Her thinking was reflected in a 2010 WIRED article entitled, The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet. The author makes the point that, the more we access the Internet using our smart phones, iPads, and gaming devices, the less we are using the Web or visiting websites. Is the rise of the app causing the decline the website? Welcome to Web 3.0.
You may or may not agree with the author, but here’s my point: Don’t assume the stuff you sell today will be the same stuff you sell tomorrow. When I quit my web business in early 2006, “social media marketing” was barely a blip on the radar. But if you believe the blogosphere, it’s now the Next Big Thing.
To paraphrase author Michael Gerber, the technical person (read, web designer / developer / SEO expert) looks inward at his skills and asks, “How can I sell this?” But the Entrepreneur looks out at the needs of the market and asks, “How can I fulfill this?” So let me rephrase my question. What will you do for a living when the Web as we know it is dead? What will you do when your skills no longer fit the needs of the market? Will you end up like the thousands of unemployed U.S. steel workers? Or like the ice harvesters of the 19th Century?
The Internet as we know it is going to be forever changed—if Facebook has their way, that is. In case you missed the memo, Facebook and Google are locked in a near-epic struggle over who will ultimately control the Internet and its content.
Another WIRED article describes “Facebook’s 4-Step Plan of Online Domination.” It starts with 200+ million Facebook members contributing billions of pieces of information, photos, and videos, resulting in a virtual “second Internet” … residing entirely on Facebook’s servers.
With all of this data, Facebook hopes it can get its members to access their content on their servers using Facebook search rather than Google. They’ve even made it possible for members to communicate and share with their friends without having to log in to Facebook, by allowing you to ‘like’ content on a network of “partner sites” or apps (adding even more content to Facebook’s servers). And to further their agenda to becoming the gateway people use to access the Internet, they’ve recently introduced Facebook email so people will think, “I’m already on Facebook anyway; I’ll just send Mom a message through Facebook rather than my email” (or Gmail).
Once they’ve accomplished this, they can sell targeted ads everywhere—not just on its own site, but across all of its partner sites and apps. If they’re successful, Google search and Google AdWords will be a thing of the past. If you think that’s too far-fetched, think about what Yahoo once was and what it is today.
Is Google nervous? You bet they are. And here’s why. When you search using Google, all they know about you is your IP address, so all Google can tell that website owner is: “The seven people who visited your website were from Ohio.”
But Facebook can say: “Here are the names of the people that ‘liked’ your content, how old they are, what college they went to, what music they listen to, what books they read, how many children they have, who their other friends are …” It’s a marketer’s dream! Think Google isn’t nervous? Think again.
The face of the Web and the Internet is changing. No-one, not the media, not even the experts of the day, foresaw the Internet coming into existence in its current form. And no one truly knows what it will ultimately become. Don’t assume the stuff you sell today will be the same stuff you sell tomorrow. So I ask again: “What will you do for a living when the Web is dead?”
