Good Move, Yahoo: APIs for Search

Yahoo tonight announced the Yahoo Search Developer's Network (no link up yet). In short, this is a program to allow developers to build upon the Yahoo Search and Overture platforms (Overture will be rebranded Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions - I was wondering when the Overture name was going to be phased out). This is big Web 2.0/Web as Platform news, and I can't wait to see what comes of it. From the release:

The Yahoo Search Developer Network features Yahoo! Search APIs which span Web search verticals, search engine marketing and direct advertising products including:

• Web search – leveraging Yahoo! Search Technology
• Image search – the largest image search index on the Web with more than 1.5 billion images
• Video search – providing users with one-click access to any video
• News search – with more than 7,000 news sources
• Local search – the most popular destination online for local information
• Spelling correction – advanced search query spelling correction technology
• Related searches – advanced search query recommendation technology
• Overture – access to its search engine marketing API program

Most APIs provide the developers with access to 5,000 queries per day per API, exceeding current competitive search API offerings.

That last part is a dig at Google, which limits its APIs to 1000 queries, hence there has been no real commercial development on top of the Google search platform. But will 5000 be enough? Not for really scaled innovations. Let's hope they figure out the model to allow for more....full release in extended entry.

Cnet coverage.

YAHOO! INTRODUCES YAHOO! SEARCH DEVELOPER NETWORK 

New Service to Provide Developers with Comprehensive Web Service APIs For 
Yahoo! Search and Overture Services

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – (March 1, 2005) Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) a leading global Internet company, today announced the launch of the Yahoo! Search Developer Network (http://developer.yahoo.com) a new, one-stop resource that provides developers with access to Web service application programming interfaces (APIs) to Yahoo! Search products and Overture’s (which will be re-branded Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions) long standing API programs. Additionally, the Yahoo! Search Developer Network provides application developers with sample code and tools to share ideas and expertise, as well as the ability to showcase applications written and distributed by developers.

“We have worked closely with the development community to create a new program designed to stimulate open discussion, experimentation and development of new search applications,” said Dr. David Ku, director of engineering, Yahoo! Search. “We believe that it is critical to provide the development community with both the search APIs and interactive resources to help foster the discovery of innovative applications leveraging Yahoo! Search Technology.”

The Yahoo Search Developer Network features Yahoo! Search APIs which span Web search verticals, search engine marketing and direct advertising products including:

• Web search – leveraging Yahoo! Search Technology
• Image search – the largest image search index on the Web with more than 1.5 billion images
• Video search – providing users with one-click access to any video
• News search – with more than 7,000 news sources
• Local search – the most popular destination online for local information
• Spelling correction – advanced search query spelling correction technology
• Related searches – advanced search query recommendation technology
• Overture – access to its search engine marketing API program

In addition to providing the APIs, the Yahoo! Search Developer Network also enables developers to share knowledge through an interactive online community that features: mailing lists and discussion groups dedicated to each API, an application showcase, a weblog, and a “wiki” that provides developers with the ability to ask questions, share ideas and provide feedback on how best to utilize the APIs.

- more -

“Yahoo! has a rich legacy in creating consumer applications and we are excited that they are opening up their search platform, to allow the development community to innovate and build upon their technology,” said Rael Dornfest, CTO, O'Reilly Media, Inc. “We look forward to seeing what independent developers will design for the next generation of consumer and business applications.”

APIs enable developers and webmasters to easily create search-enabled applications that leverage Yahoo! Search Technology. To help developers get started quickly, the Yahoo Search Developer Network provides sample code for the most popular Web application development languages including Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python and PHP. Most APIs provide the developers with access to 5,000 queries per day per API, exceeding current competitive search API offerings.

In addition to providing web search services, the Yahoo Search Developer Network provides public access to the API that Overture has provided to its partners since 2001. The program allows search engine marketers, direct advertisers and other third party developers to build applications that interact directly with Overture’s products and tools to manage and analyze search marketing campaigns.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Yahoo! provides online products and services essential to consumers’ lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users around the world. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.

###

Media Contacts:
Yahoo! Search
Stephanie Ichinose
408-349-6877
siwamasa@yahoo-inc.com

Fleishman Hillard for Yahoo!
Cynthia Schott
415-318-4143
schottc@fleishman.com

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Bill Gross Pushes the Envelope Again

Snap has news today - it's launching a Cost-Per-Action advertising platform. With Goto/Overture he launched CPC, now he is pushing cost per action - advertisers only pay when specific actions occur due to their advertising. Interesting!

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:47 PM
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Waxy Scoops Yahoo's LongTail Ads

Check out Andy's scoop: he thinks Yahoo/Overture is about to launch an AdSense like play. Makes sense, given the RSS ads they are testing now...

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:34 PM
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Blinkx Cuts Deal with Movielink

You know how I am always on about search and video - how I think search naturally will become the interface to buying content. Another paving stone has been laid in that road with the news that Blinkx and Movielink are hooking up. From the LA Times article (reg req'd):

The two companies plan to announce today that Movielink, a downloading service owned by five major studios, will make its pictures available through the Blinkx search engine.

No money is changing hands in the deal, executives with the companies said. Movielink will get additional exposure, and Blinkx will get access to movies that other search engines lack.

Blinkx uses speech-recognition and other technologies to make a searchable index of trailers for the movie service's nearly 1,000 titles. The company hopes to expand the index to include dialogue from the movies themselves — so that, one day, users who type "I'll be back" will find "The Terminator" and be able to download it for a $3.99 rental.

Blinkx release.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:26 AM
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Quick Hits

Kanoodle is launching an RSS ad feed system. This is similar to what Overture/Yahoo is testing with Feedburner. Cnet coverage.

Speaking of Cnet, interesting piece on how US broadband policy is deeply borked - an interview with Michael Copps, on of two democrats on the FCC.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:18 AM
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Safa: Search Valuation Concerns Overblown

In his latest Silk Road (not online yet, I got it via email) Piper analyst Safa Rashtchy writes:

"Continued weakness in Internet stocks this year, which set up the perfect background for an exaggerated reaction last week on search pricing, reminds us of a similar pattern that developed in Q2 of 2004. Just like now, many funds were selling Internet stocks then, based on perceived weakness in search....We believe, just like then, that the current perceived concern on weakness in search pricing is entirely misguided."

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:18 AM
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Weber's New West

Nearly two years ago I traveled to Montana to see Jonathan Weber, a good friend and partner in the Industry Standard. Weber had set down roots in Missoula after teaching there one semester - he was planning to come back, but he met a girl, bought a house on a river, and by the time I saw him, he was settled in. Weber wanted my take on a new idea he was turning over in his mind - the creation of a regional magazine covering the Rocky Mountain area in which he now resided. I told him I was skeptical - regional print magazines are a tough road - but agreed that the basic premise of a new western ethos certainly seemed to be forming, driven by both local forces and the influx of educated outsiders drawn to the region's beauty and promise - folks like Weber, in fact.

Well, I am tickled to see the fruit of Jonathan's labor, just announced: New West. (Yes, Weber did call my teaching partner Clay Felker, who started another "New West" in California nearly 20 years ago, for his blessing). But this is not a print magazine- that is coming later. Instead Jonathan is building a full bore second generation blogging network covering the Rocky Mountains - Idaho, Montana, portions of Colorado, Utah and eastern Washington. As one might expect with Jonathan, the site is full of excellent reporting and strong voices. It includes elements of citizen journalism as well as strong long form. I think it's really going places. Congratulations, Jonathan!

From the About page:

New West is a network of online communities devoted to the culture, economy, politics, environment and overall atmosphere of the Rocky Mountain West. In a time of dramatic change, New West aims to serve as a nexus of dialogue and a smart guide to the news and issues that are affecting one of the greatest places on Earth. We aim to foster a bond among communities that may be distant in geography or occupation, but share common interests and hopes for the region as it wrestles with growth and change. We stand for forward thinking about the big picture and believe that citizen engagement will be instrumental in the development of the region.

Full coverage at the Denver Post.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:59 AM
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Deeply Dumb, MSN

Joho and MSFT's own Scoble rip MSN for a "viral" marketing campaign that includes phony blogs extolling MSN Search from deeply, deeply contrived "hip" characters. It's lame corporate marketing at its worst. Dooohhh!

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:34 PM
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More on Google AutoLinks

Cory posts a great riff as to why Google's AutoLink is a good thing. Scoble counters that it is not.

I see both points of view here, but as I've said before, I fall more toward Cory's line of thinking. Regardless, what I would love to to see is Google openly and transparently joining, listening, defending, and iterating based on this conversation. Be part of the dialog, Google! Why not?

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:15 PM
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Search Bees

Tom Evslin suggests we start Search Bees (like Spelling Bees but for finding stuff). I can't agree more. Great idea. I'm teaching search to my son's third grade class this week. Cool!

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:41 PM
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Googler Says: Google's Corporate Blog Is Lame

OK the "lame" was my addition. But it sure is nice to see some constructive criticism from a real live Googler. Massless is the site of Chris Wetherell, a UI jockey at Google. This was posted over a week ago, but I'm just catching up on some of my reading.

The Google Blog hasn't caught up yet. It's a surprising mis-representation - the culture we work in is fast, decisive, and colloquial but the blog voice is stiff. It's your not-so-cool uncle unbuttoning his shirt, listening to The Postal Service (but only the single of Such Great Heights) and proclaiming that Yeah, I totally dig your stuff you kids, this hip-hop speaks to me too. Um. Dogg. *flashes hang ten sign*.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:32 PM
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Odeo

Evan Williams, late of Google and Blogger, is at it again, with a podcasting service called Odeo.

Here's the blog about the service, and his own post on the story behind Odeo. And here's the NYT coverage (reg required).

From that:

The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web's next big thing.

That step is planned by Odeo, a five-person start-up that is based in a walk-up apartment in this city's Mission District and was co-founded by a Google alumnus. The company plans to introduce a Web-based system that is aimed at making a business of podcasting - the process of creating, finding, organizing and listening to digital audio files that range from living-room ramblings to BBC newscasts.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:19 PM
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The Week That Was

Take a week off, a lot of things happen. Here's a round up of the news that was.

Lots of folks arguing that Google's new version of its toolbar (covered here) is an unwarranted intrusion on the rights of site owners and/or users. Dan Gillmor covers it here, SEW here. Myself, I think it's just another feature, and if you don't want it, don't use it. I like the idea of control, and agree that ideally a toolbar user could toggle it on or off. But in the end, if it's useful, it'll take. If it isn't, it won't.

In lighter news, Lycos announced a dating search application. Can't find a date? Use a search engine.

JupiterMedia restates the obvious, with gusto, in a new report about vertical search: "JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation (Nasdaq: JUPM), today projected in its newly released report, "Vertical Search: Early Marketers Will Reap Rewards of Low Pricing," that the search industry will develop in much the same way historical media markets before it have, with the broad-based search engines spawning a raft of vertical search engines dedicated to specific categories. "

Google announced a new movie showtimes search feature.

AOL announced a new local search solution. This feature is for both AOL and web users, and points a major trend for AOL toward embracing the open web, as I have written in the past.

Remember job scraping search engine Indeed.com? It's got competition: Workzoo.com.

And lastly, it was not a great week for net stocks, search in particular. GOOG went down on some analyst skepticism, as did Yahoo.

I had a great time down in LA with my kids, and even got some business done to boot - LA is very much in the search/media/technology nexus. More on that as I dig out.

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:05 AM
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Heilemann on Google

This is a great read. I didn't know it was out, but just found it. More after I've grokked it. John is a good friend and a great writer/reporter.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:45 PM
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Vimeo: Flickr for Video

Via Searchviews: I'm going to guess that Flickr wants to be the Flickr for video, but for now, there's Vimeo...

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:37 AM
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Vacay

It's Winter Break, and that means time to pack the kids into our car and head on down the road. Posting will be light...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:31 AM
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About The New York Times: Deep Into Web 2.0 Now

A reasonable initial response to the news that The New York Times company purchased About.com for $410 million is shock - after all, that's a lot of money for a $40 million revenue business that was pretty much left for dead not four years ago. Ten times revenue? 30 times EBITDA? The bubble is back, right?

Well, not exactly. First of all, The Times did not overpay by recent standards - the company was in the bidding for Marketwatch (Dow Jones won), and if I recall correctly that company went for 60 times EBITDA. And currently, most internet companies are trading at well above thirty times EBITDA.

So one could argue that the Times got a deal, but in the end, that's not the interesting part of the news. What's interesting is why the Times wanted About in the first place, and the role search - and the long tail - plays in the deal.

In the past few years, About.com has remade itself through paid search - the site was massively optimized to rank well in search engines, Google in particular. The reason was pretty simple - About's revenue is driven by AdSense, and the more optimized it was, the better the clickthrough. I have seen research reports comparing major search sites to About, and the result is pretty stunning - on average, 10-15% of clicks on search sites are paid. But on About, it's over 20%. That's a pretty big difference.

Many point out that much of About's audience are one time visitors who find the site through search, and that's true. But informed sources tell me that in fact, that's true for nearly every well optimized site, and About's search-derived traffic actually converts to regular readership at a higher rate than even the Times. If that's true, that's a good sign for the deal.

The Times saw About as an opportunity to get into the search game, certainly - lord knows news is not a very profitable business when it comes to paid search. But there's more. About provides the Times a platform to explore microcontent without having to - necessarily - extend the Times' brand to everything. And as I've told anyone who will listen to me, I think microcontent is key to winning in the Web 2.0 publishing world. When publishing folks from mainstream newspapers tell me that blogging is far too small to possibly impact their businesses, I often ask this question: Would you rather have scores of microsites with a combined revenue of $15 million, profits of $3-5 million, and a double digit growth rate, or a newspaper group with revenues of $50 million, profits of $5 million, but declining growth?

The Times actually has a profitable and growing newspaper group, and it's much bigger than an average publisher, but my point is this: the opportunity in publishing is clearly moving down the tail, and if you want to win, you need to play down the tail as well. About.com allows the Times to do just that. About is based on Six Apart's MT, for one, so if they want to extend the Times own brand into blogging, they're already halfway there.

Plus, it's no secret that the content over at About is rather uneven - some of it is downright awful. On the other hand, some of it is the best in its field. With Martin Nisenholtz* (CEO of NYTD and now SVP at the Times) and the Times at the helm, one can imagine it will only get better, which is a very good thing for advertising revenues, as well as readers.

Not to mention the fact that About allows the Times to offer its own, non-search advertisers more opportunities to play down the tail - Now the Times can sell a national auto advertiser like GM both the main Times site, as well as About's auto enthusiast sites. Would GM make a small About buy without a Times' relationship? Possibly, but unlikely.

Also, owning the free About.com may well give the Times some air cover should it decide to cordon off portions of its main site to subscribers - a move that has been speculated upon by many in recent months.

Lastly, About has a large audience base, and the Times (now the 12th site when combined with About) can market to that audience in new ways - including cross selling the Times itself, which still represents the lion's share of the company's revenues.

At the end of the day, I think this is a good move for the Times. They've cast their lot down the tail and with the search economy. As Martin told me when I pinged him after the deal: "We're deep into Web 2.0 now."

And the move is good for those of us who think blogging, and microcontent in general, is a good thing. As Rexblog put it, the Times gave us all comps to work with as we start to think of our own sites as business. By Rex's calculations, the Times paid $18.64 a visitor and $820K a blog (if you view About's microsites as blogs). Not bad!

More coverage:

Paid Content
Fred
NYT coverage

*(Full disclosure - I did a short consulting gig with Martin's group last Fall, we did not discuss About or corporate M&A.)

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:42 AM
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NYT Buys About.Com

I will have more to say on this later, but for now, here's the Chicago Trib's take.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:31 AM
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PeopleRank

Gary Price finds a new paper out of Stanford which proposes PeopleRank - a system for aiding annotation of pictures of people.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:36 PM
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Google Hits Oregon Trail

Gary Stein notes that Google is buying up some land in Oregon for a technology center, and also notes that Yahoo is moving its media division to Santa Monica, a fact I knew, but neglected to mention here before....Yahoo's moves into media are starting to look very interesting, I hope to speak to Lloyd Braun shortly about it all.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:18 PM
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More Mark Jen

Can't get enough about the fellow who lost his gig at Google due to his blog postings? Gelf has more. What's Gelf? As much as there is, is here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:53 PM
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Yellow Pages, Yahoo Local, and Channel Conflict

As I mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to dine with Lincoln Milstein and Peter Negulescu last night. Peter, or Petey as I like to call him, is an old friend who started with IBM and ran through all sorts of interesting companies, including Excite, before landing at the helm of SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle's digital arm), which got him just in the nick of time, to my mind. Lincoln was the number two guy at the New York Times Digital before jumping over to Hearst earlier this year.

The conversation wandered happily all over the place, but an interesting tangent focused on local search and its impact on the Yellow Pages. Given that Hearst runs a bunch of newspapers, including the Chronicle, and that the Chronicle has scores of ad sales reps and a strong brand in its local region (I know, "strong" is an arguable term, but let's leave that one aside for now), I asked Petey why SFGate isn't an aggressive player in the local online advertising market. While I can assure you Peter has very interesting plans in the content space, he chided me for my ignorance regarding the 800-pound gorilla of local markets - the Yellow Pages. "They have like 6-700 local sales people in every major region," he told me. "They visit every merchant in town." In other words, the Chronicle can never compete.

I then asked their opinion of an idea I have been turning over in my mind for some time - that of Yahoo becoming the new Yellow Pages. Stay with me here, it might take a while for me to explain. My idea is this: Given that Yahoo Local is a very well received service, and given that it basically builds a web page on the fly which describes a local merchant's offerings, and given that that local merchant can upload basic content to Yahoo Local about his or her business for free, why isn't Yahoo aggressively courting local merchants with, in essence, the equivalent of online Yellow Pages ads? Turns out, Yahoo *has* launched a rudimentary "premium" listings product (I covered it here), and I can imagine the day when that service becomes a real force in the local listings market, one that could eventually unseat the Yellow Pages, if Yahoo plays its cards right.

In my first post on this subject, I wrote:

... it became increasingly clear to me that were I a small business owner, I'd want the ability to edit my listing so I could make my business look more appealing. In fact, if Yahoo Local were sending me leads, I'd very much want to be able to buy my way into a better listing - perhaps post stellar reviews of my establishment, snappy come ons, the like.

The more I think about this, the more I think it will happen. If I run a small deck construction company, and I notice that Yahoo Local is sending me leads, I really am motivated to have that first page have all sorts of things on it that are not there now - a picture of a beautiful deck, testimonials from happy customers, etc. And I want the ability to update that site as often as a like - unlike the Yellow Pages, which updates once a year. (Verizon does allow for these kinds of updates already on its site.)

So with all this in mind, I spoke to Paul Levine, who runs Yahoo Local. And I learned a lot. My first question was basically the same as the title of my first post: With services like Yahoo Local, who needs the Yellow Pages anymore?

That's when my education continued. Turns out, Yahoo has a significant relationship with the sales forces of three major Yellow Pages publishers: SBC, Verizon (for Canada), and BellSouth. That's more than 5000 local sales reps who carry Yahoo Yellow Pages (*not* Local, interestingly) in their bag, right alongside their own print and online listings. That relationship is "very productive" for Yahoo, Levine noted, and he took pains to make sure I understood he does not subscribe to my nascent "Yahoo is undermining the Yellow Pages" riff.

However, the fact that this sales relationship exists only convinces me further that in the end, change it is a coming to this space. Yahoo has a history of working with partners until such time that the partnership is superseded by Yahoo's own business needs - just ask former partners Overture and Google about that trend. And Levine did acknowledge that the grassroots demand from merchants who want to work directly with Yahoo to update and add value to their listings was "exceeding expectations." As Yahoo develops this market, I expect they will also develop a very sophisticated internal sales force to manage their merchant relationships, one that probably can do the job currently being executed by those 5000 Yellow Pages reps in a far more productive and efficient manner.

Will online replace the Yellow Pages? Ask anyone under 35 that question - to most of them, the Yellow Pages represent an unwieldy doorstop, an irritating drag on the recycling bin. Most of the growth is online, and the Yellow Pages industry certainly knows that.

The fact is this: it's always less than ideal to depend on a third party to carry your products in their sales bag. And as online becomes the key driver of local sales leads, expect Yahoo, in particular, to become a very aggressive player in the space. For now, Yahoo and the Yellow Pages are happily co-existing. But when Yahoo's base of local merchant relationships hits a tipping point, expect them to become significant competitors.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:23 AM
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News: Google Launches New Toolbar, Musings on Meaning of Beta

Spoke with Google product chief Marissa Mayer yesterday, who told me that Google is launching its third rev of its toolbar today. It's Windows only, and it's a beta: Google is not planning to auto-update current toolbar users until the bugs are worked out.

I asked Marissa what the deal was with all the beta stuff at Google. More than 75% of their offerings are in beta, some have been there more than a year. She responded that Google was getting close to lifting beta from on a number of key products - Froogle and News were two she mentioned. But that beta means different things at Google. For client software like Desktop or Toolbar, beta is used more strictly, as in, this software ain't ready for primetime, and we want some feedback to be sure it doesn't bork your machine, and we intend to fix bugs and get it into general release as soon as possible.

For web apps, beta means something quite different. "We have a list of features we'd like to see in a product," Mayer told me. Once that list is complete, the beta tag is taken off, even if the product is quite robust without them. As an example, she mentioned Froogle, which was launched without a "sort by price" feature. The product was simply not complete. When Mayer and Google feels it is complete, the beta tag will disappear.

So, Toolbar, as a client side piece of software, is in beta in the more strict sense of the term. It'll be out of beta relatively quickly, Mayer told me. The new release has three main new features:

1. SpellChecker. This feature moves Google's "Did you mean" concept from search results to the toolbar. For any web form (ie Hotmail, or any web-based input) you can now get spell checking courtesy Google's algorithms. Cool.

2. AutoLink.The Toolbar will not automatically make US addresses appearing on web pages into URLs which are linked to Google Maps. Again, cool.

3. WordTranslator. This nifty feature translates any English word on a page into any of 8 other languages. Mayer said this would be a sought after feature for international users who use English as a second language.

I've often thought about Google's Toolbar, and I've heard through reasonably well connected sources that the company is not pleased with the scope of its Toolbar downloads. This release should certainly increase Google's user base. I asked Mayer how many folks are currently using Google's Toolbar, and she said - true to Google's stated policy of numeric vagueness - "in the millions."

My guess is that means "in the low millions," and that Google would very much like it to mean "in the high millions." (This brings up the marketing issue, which I wrote about here.) In any case, this toolbar release points to something of a new trend for Google, that of surfacing its inherent search features - spell checker, word translation, maps - into more visible and user friendly formats. Expect to see more of this going forward.

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Yahoo Search Geek Interviewed

Over on Yahoo's Search Blog. Reiner Kraft is one serious search geek - more than 100 patents filed, apparently. From the interview:

Q: Aren't you also finishing up your thesis?

A: Yes, it's about domain specific search and is based on what I call iterative filtering meta search. The idea is to leverage the search engine infrastructures to create a filtering mechanism that automatically helps you get documents for a specialized information need. For instance, we built a buying guide finder that helps you to find just buying guides.

Q: If I hadn't checked out your website , I'd think that everything you do revolves around relevancy and search! A lot of people at Yahoo! don't know that you were part of a German band and that you've composed over 30 rock songs. How do define yourself first; composer or inventor?

A: (laughs) I just like to think about new ideas. So to me, it's all the same thing. You create some music piece or you create some ideas or some algorithms to do something. It doesn't have to be specific to search but ideas related to web technologies in a broad sense.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:56 AM
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Firefox, MSFT

Firefox hitting 25 million downloads is getting lots of notice, but this is my favorite, from Scoble, Microsoft's leading blogger, who posted something of a pained congratulations note:

"In just a few months your app has become one of the most used Windows applications in the world. My hat's off to you!"

Note the use of "Windows application." Winning by moving the goalposts, is what I think that's called.

PS - You've probably heard, but Gates and MSFT are now promising a new rev of IE by Summer.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:35 AM
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Is Yahoo In the Content Biz?

Yes. At least, it is getting into the business, cautiously at first, with partnerships like this one, with Showtime. Watch this space. It is going to get interesting.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:28 AM
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Search and Immortality

I've riffed on it before. At a New Orleans based exhibition, an artist has taken it one step further. Wired reports.

Sullivan said he wanted to create an urn that was visually interesting, allowed some user interactivity and referenced the physical body. He decided that his remains will be integrated into a computer processor. A virtual agent running on the computer that contains his ashes will scour the web for mentions of his name. As the mentions increase, an on-screen image of Sullivan will morph into an image of his younger self. But if the mentions decline, Sullivan's image will age, deteriorate and eventually fade away.

In the gallery, a prototype Ego Machine is presented on a computer display. Sullivan realized that since this is a project in perpetuity its results might be imperceptible during a brief visit to the gallery. To make it more interesting for viewers, Sullivan decided to allow people to consciously feed or starve his ego, either at the gallery or online.

(thanks, Philipp)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:22 AM
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The G-Bay Economy

Reading Bizweek (yup, the print edition) earlier this week, I noticed this article, titled "Keywords for Ad Buyers: Pay Up." (BTW, it's entirely too hard to find this stuff on B'Week's site, but that's another issue.) In the article, Ben Elgin notes Google's extraordinary earnings, then adds that Google has the enviable position of pricing power:

What accounted for the outsize profits? The high prices Google charges for search keywords, for one. Industrywide, they were up an average of 43.7% last year, according to search marketing firm iProspect.com Inc. And the most sought-after words have become far more dear: ``background check'' rose 258% in a year. On the day of the earnings announcement, Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt told analysts: ``There does not seem to be price resistance'' from advertisers.

But the pricing power cuts two ways. Elgin goes on to give eBay as an example, quoting CEO Meg Whitman:

``It's incumbent upon us...to figure out how to moderate these quite significant increases in media costs,'' eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman declared in January following disappointing fourth-quarter results, when rising search marketing costs helped pinch profit margins.

If I am reading this right, it seems that eBay, which got hammered after its last earnings for not living up to its reputation as a growth machine, is blaming Google for increasing its cost of goods sold. Now that's interesting. Recall Paul Ford's wonderful essay on how Google out-eBay's eBay (not to mention the Epic piece about "googlezon").

This is a trend to watch. (And thanks to Lincoln Milstein, head of Hearst's digital media efforts, and Peter Negulescu, head of SFGate, for heping me put two and two together at dinner last night!)

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:29 AM
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GOOG Surprises Em Again

It was no black monday - the stock went up yesterday (WashPost), despite heavy trading, and is making a run today as well.

From the WP piece:

"There is so much demand for this stock it is amazing," said Tom Taulli, co-founder of Currentofferings.com, which tracks initial public offerings. "It doesn't seem to let up."

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:03 AM
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Sell Side (Or PDA) Gets a Boost

The meme is accelerating, as Ross Mayfield put it in an email to me today. He pointed me to this piece by Dave Morgan, Tacoda's CEO, in ClickZ, and this presentation (note: PDF download) which Dave also created. Cool! Excerpts:

Advertisers just want results. Going forward, they'll be happy to open up their advertisements to distribute them to any publisher who wants them, so long as the publisher delivers to the right audience under the right environmental controls and is willing to be paid on a performance-only basis. This clearly takes PPC advertising to the next level and changes the tradition media selling equation.

...Media owners of all types have long lamented ad brokers and marketing service companies buy their media, optimize it, then don't share the margins. Print publishers and TV stations can't do anything about it, but Web publishers can. Sell-side advertising would greatly complement CPM-based brand advertising and could become a significant revenue channel.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:53 PM
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Make Launches

Congrats to the O'Reilly team and to Mark, the editor and my partner over at Boing Boing, on the launch of Make, a magazine/book hybrid that I think has great potential (my shorthand for it is "Popular Mechanics for the digital age.") I was involved in conceptualizing the project early in its life, and I am so pleased to see it out in the world! Full release in extended entry.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 14, 2005

Contact:
Dawn Mann
dawn@oreilly.com
707-827-7088

O'Reilly Launches MAKE Magazine for Tech Do-It-Yourselfers
Magazine and Companion Web Site (makezine.com) Reveal How to Make
Practical, Fun, and Wildly Creative Projects

"To be thrown upon one's own resources,
is to be cast into the very lap of fortune."
--Benjamin Franklin

Sebastopol, CA--The urge to make things is primal and unstoppable. In
service of that universal urge, humans grab the tools and materials at
hand--while a previous generation picked up a saw and bullnose rabbet
plane, today's makers are likely to reach for a soldering iron and Cat 5
cable. MAKE, a new magazine from O'Reilly Media, celebrates and inspires
those who are driven to make cool and unusual things with technology, for
the pure fun of it.

The premiere issue of MAKE features 192 pages of do-it-yourself projects,
including illustrated step-by-step instructions on how to:

-make a $10,000 Steadicam for the price of a movie ticket and popcorn
-build a single network cable that can replace the five most commonly used
cables
-fashion a magstripe reader and find out what hidden information is being
stored on your credit card's magnetic stripe

Available today on Amazon.com and on makezine.com--and at newsstands and
bookstores nationwide in mid-March--MAKE is published quarterly. Single
copies are $14.99 and a yearly subscription is $34.95.

"Today's tinkerers set out to make technology work for them, and they
enjoy the process as much as the result," said MAKE publisher Dale
Dougherty. "They'll spend hours in the garage on a project, and come away
with something practical or just plain fun to share with their friends and
family. MAKE is the first magazine for this new breed of
do-it-yourselfers."

The MAKE editorial staff is led by Editor-in-Chief Mark Frauenfelder, who
has written for publications including "The New York Times," "LA Weekly,"
"Wired," and "Playboy." Frauenfelder is also author and illustrator of
three books: "The Happy Mutant Handbook," "Mad Professor," and "The
World's Worst..."

Associate Editor Phil Torrone, a well-known hacker who writes regularly
for "Popular Science" and Engadget, is producing the magazine's companion
web site, makezine.com. Torrone is contributing a blog, podcast interviews
with notable makers, and projects in addition to those in the print
magazine. The site is built to serve the maker community, with forums and
a section where people can post their own projects, complete with
instructions, advice, and photographs.

MAKE
ISBN: 0596009224
Yearly subscription (4 volumes) $34.95; Single copies $14.99, $21.99 CA
Order: 866-289-8847 (US and Canada),
818-487-2037 (all other countries), 5am-5pm PST
www.makezine.com

Founded in 1978 and based in Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly Media is the premier
information source for leading-edge computer technologies. The company's
books, conferences, and web sites bring to light the knowledge of
technology innovators. O'Reilly books, known for the animals on their
covers, occupy a treasured place on the shelves of the developers building
the next generation of software. O'Reilly conferences and summits bring
alpha geeks and forward-thinking business leaders together to shape the
revolutionary ideas that spark new industries. From the Internet to XML,
open source, .NET, Java, and web services, O'Reilly puts technologies on
the map. www.oreilly.com

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:49 AM
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The Search Branding Wars