Digital Divining Rods

BB points to a NYT story about how cell phones are turning into search driven life navigation devices. I wrote about this a while back, as a scenario....

And OhGizmo has more coverage.

And, BB points out that Google is a total prude.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:40 PM
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Reader Brian Writes...

http://battellemedia.com/archives/002684.php#comment_37822

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:38 PM
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V.3 Dugg

Sunday night, loyal diggers were online submitting sentimental screenshots of the 2.0 face. And when Digg was unavailable during the transition, one digger created a commemorative mirror of the down page (complete with rolling midi). On Monday, at 6 am (PST) Digg 3.0 went live with three new non-tech news categories, the addition of video (the first non-news container), and tighter tracking tabs on friends' digging activity.

The expansion into World & Business, Entertainment, Science and Video, is Digg's effort to attract a wider member base, though Technology will remain the default feed. Within hours, aside from a host of reviews, Digg users built hacks on version 3---one, for instance, returning the category bar back to the right-side of the screen. Here are a couple great synopses and reviews of the changes to peruse. Or you can listen to Kevin Rose present 3.0 himself---including more udpates to come.

The real revolution will come with a second push in July, when Digg introduces two new infosthetic features that visually display in detail what stories are getting relatively hot/cold, how many users say so, who says so, and if those diggers share common interests. Digg Incoming will allow users to scale vetting the +2000 incoming stories that come in daily (or rather make it possible for any one digger). New diggs will drop down like stacking blocks in realtime for each story, making quickly and easily comprehensible the relative popularity of hundreds of stories, lined up alongside each other, at a time. The other upcoming data visualization Rose calls "Digg spy on crack"---referring to the current Digg Spy, a running screen of realtime user activity (showing diggs, undiggs, comments, etc.). The new spy will display the dynamic bunching of user activity around popular stories like the movement of bees aggregating around burgeoning/wilting flowers.

In other Digg news:
- CNet just added a Digg button to all their pages, likely the first major, traditional media outlet to do so.
- Digg's taffic is rapidly approaching comparison to that of the New York Times.
- Rose made number 23 in Business 2.0 top '50 Who Matter Now' (alongside Wikipedia).

(via Melanie)

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:50 PM
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The Seventh Circle...

I am traveling. The day before the day the Fourth of July holiday starts. And Delta and the JFK security staff is severly understaffed. My. god. Why do we do this to ourselves? I look forward to the long weekend. Will post more then...

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:49 PM
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Net Neutrality loses vote

Yesterday, a Senate committee voted out the net neutrality amendment by a narrow tie missing the needed majority (11-11), while approving the larger bill. The protective amendment could reenter before the broad telecom bill arises for a floor vote, though it's not clear when that will happen. Despite the loss, the close vote is leading many neutrality activists to hope that the Republican opposition will face a challenge in the full Senate vote.
(via Melanie)

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:32 AM
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More On Google Checkout

ZDNet: It's "predatory"....

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:23 AM
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Google Not Buying MySpace Was Not A Strategic Blunder

Though it's very easy to cast it that way, and certainly is a strong argument, think about it this way - If Google bought MySpace, it'd all of a sudden be waist deep in the content creation/publishing business, a business it's been very wary of playing in. Now, I think Google is a media company, of course, but when they start owning sites that otherwise might be major AdSense partners, it's the equivalent of pooping where they eat. Sure, you own MySpace, and it's huge inventory, but you've just made the rest of your AdSense partners very, very nervous - all of a sudden you are not the neutral partner, you're the big ol' competitor in the content space. You're the head, and the tail feels like it's being wagged.

I think Google realized that buying MySpace could queer its AdSense business, and that's why they didn't do it. I was led to this line of thinking by a good pal in the industry with whom I was meeting yesterday, who for now must remain anonymous, but trust me, he's deep in this game.

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:00 AM
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Melanie's Round Up

Check this out
Google unveils its secure-cart Checkout program, integrated directly into search results. A little green shopping cart displays beside participating merchants; when selected, logged-in Google ID users will find the purchase process reduced to one page and returning users will find the data pre-populated (bells ring across the privacy vigilant web). Actually, in general it will be one page-- a speedier checkout being Google's major selling point--but it can be more.

AdWords advertisers will accumulate transaction fee discounts, even free usage, for increased sales. As an incentive to non-AdWords sellers, Google rates will be 2% + $.20 (in comparison to PayPal's 1.9% + $.30) commission. Asked whether Google is considering including in search results direct-checkout options for other secure online transaction companies, representatives said only that the company would consider anything that would improve user experience.

“We can do that.”
Rupert Murdoch claims Google passed up the chance to buy MySpace at half the price he paid, just before it metastasised into 8% of Google's search traffic. In the Verbatim of Wired's July cover story, Murdoch summaries his impression of Google's pass: "They thought, “It’s nothing special. We can do that.” Err... (via GigaOm)

Answering to Google
You can ask about Google, but in the end Google Answers answers to Google. In a string of playful submissions to Google Answers about the company itself, the tricksters are rooted out with a revealing final reply. Because Google Answers are written by non-employee researchers, the note says, they are not qualified to answer questions about the company. As SEW writes "Got that? Freelance researchers are apparently qualified to answer questions about any other company in the world, but when it comes to Google, special treatment is required. Incredible."

Google, v.
The Oxford English Dictionary--last bastion of standardized English--includes "Google" as verb in the latest draft for its next edition. The pending definition, noted by Resource Shelf:
intr. To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet.
trans. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:28 AM
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Farecast Now Open To All...

Farecast opened today. So the 400 some odd of you with private betas, I hope you got what you were looking for!

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:47 PM
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Melanie's Round Up

Google sells Baidu stock
Google disinvests from the Chinese search engine Baidu, of which it owned 2.6 percent stock (about $63m). Though Google bought the Baidu stock before it launched its own engine in China, according to Bloomberg, Baidu stock is still out-performing Google and the other dominant US engines in China. Baidu market share reached 27 percent this year. (Reuters piece)

GBuy expected tomorrow
GBuy--Google's premiere online payment system --- is expected for testing on June 28, or sometime this week. Searchblog's earlier post on GBuy. WSJ article (sub needed) sums it up: "Consumers who search for items like "shoes" or "strollers" on Google's search site will see text ads with a symbol or icon designating advertisers that accept GBuy payments. Shoppers normally would have clicked on an ad and been linked to that merchant's Web site. Now, while they will still be linked to the merchant's site, they will go through a different checkout process integrated with Google if they choose GBuy for their transaction. Details of the service could still change before Google's official GBuy announcement."

X1 desktop search now free
A pioneer desktop search, X1 Enterprise is now free to download, edging Google Desktop. X1 can index over 370 file formats. (X1 earlier on Searchblog, here.)

IM search
Windows Live Messenger plans to add an IM search client. It sounds not unlike the the Korozu Byoms mentioned earlier on Searchblog. (via Resource Shelf)

Web Brain
WebBrain is a visual, interactive search engine containing the DMOZ directory. "WebBrain incorporates over 2.5 million URLs, which are organized into more than 353,000 categories by 35,000 volunteer editors of the Netscape Open Directory Project." (via Infosthetics) (PC only)

Proctor & Gamble, leads in ads
According to the latest Leading National Advertiser Report, Proctor & Gamble became the largest advertiser in 2005, passing GM. Resource Shelf points out the full PDF shows company line-items for online ad spending.

Y! Groups search expands
Yahoo Groups added date/period, author, subject, and text advanced search options, says Resource Shelf.

Ingenio's 'pay-per-call' service
A new service for experts (from financial advisers to professors) that essentially schedules phone consultations on private numbers with clients based on preliminary vetting for time and prices (based on the expert's initial preferences). (CNet article)

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:39 PM
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Ah, The Greasy Feel of Newsprint on My Hands

I read the print editions of both the NYT and WSJ today. Why? Well, I am traveling, on a plane, and for a period of about 45 minutes I could not have my computer on. That was just enough time to pore through the papers, and I will admit, it was a mostly pleasant experience. Not that I plan to subscribe to them or anything, and I did have to hit the head to wash my hands before cracking open my laptop to write this missive.

A few interesting things in today's papers, beyond the exhaustive coverage of Buffet's gift to the Gates foundation (truly astonishing.) First, in the Journal. Two full page color advertisements (wish I could link to them) caught my eye. The first, on page B5 of the Journal's Marketplace section, was from Google. It was easy to tell it was a Google ad - it was mostly whitespace, with a number of colored spheres arranged randomly about the page. Each sphere, it turns out, was labeled with the name of a city where Google has a sales office. The ad implored qualified sales folks to contact Google. In other words, Google is hiring like crazy in sales, and apparently AdWords aren't enough to find candidates. (What, great sales people don't just type "sales jobs" into Google?!).

The next ad, at B9, was also Google related. In fact, it had a headline which blared "She Found Your Furniture Ad On Google." The ad featured a picture of a young girl playing with a doll house. It was an ad for MSN AdCenter, touting its demographic-driven approach, and how much more relevant MSN was over Google's AdSense (57% higher conversion rate, the ad claimed).

Apparently, while AdCenter is 57% better than AdSense, and AdSense is not good enough to entice the right sales folks to Google, neither product can live without a full page, color ad in the Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section. As I recall, those ads go for $64,000 to $120,000 a pop, depending on editions and discounts. Something to think about. I'm not claiming this proves that print is alive and well (it's certainly not dead, but parts of it are, well, pretty attenuated), but it does prove that enduring brands (the WSJ) and important and savvy audiences (those who read the Marketplace section of the Journal) have gotten a pretty clear endorsement from two of the very same giants who are supposedly threatening print's very business model.

(An aside... if you're a sales person who is thinking about jumping to a new job with an exciting new ad model, you could do far worse, of course, than working at Google (or MSN, for that matter). But, FM, my startup, is also hiring, here in SF, in New York, and even LA, should that be where you work. If you want to learn more, ping me or Chas. No point in promoting Google and MSFT's ads without tossing in one of my own....)

• Posted by John Battelle at 5:33 PM
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Cable Dreams

A lot of dreaming lately by folks whose baggage is clearly lost somewhere over 1994. Latest is Leo Hindrey, a major cable player in the mid 90s, who claims that the Yahoo and Google's of the world are temporary phenomena - and that soon all that will matter is distributors (the cable and telco guys, natch), and content (their pals at Disney, of course). Yahoo and Google, et al, will fold because they don't own rights to content packages like movies, and they don't control distribution, like cable companies and telcos.

This guy is deeply, hilariously wrong. TechDirt points out the first reason - he's missing that folks don't go online for content alone, in fact, they go online to communicate, converse, and to declare who they are in the world. Sure, they also expect content to be there, but increasingly, it ain't Time Warner's or Disney's, it's YouTube or blogs. And if the Disney's of the world want to succeed on the Web, they best learn from the habits of the web natives, and not shove mid 1990s media models down their throats.

But Hindrey is also missing that the business model of controlling proprietary content due to massive capital outlays and control of distribution channels is, well, no longer the only game in town. There's a new distribution sheriff in town, and his name is search. His deputy is the open Internet. Get used to it. It's not going to go away.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:05 AM
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Test the Jelly

Jellyfish.com launched its beta today. The model is to get advertisers to bid directly for the attention of the customer by paying them...eliminating the middleman.

Infoweek coverage.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:06 PM
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Ask Filtering

Some buzz around the web regarding Ask's filtering of terms like "pedophilia", which returns no results, instead informing you "This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service."

Such a response certainly gives me pause (why can't I research any topic I want, even if it's unsavory?), so I asked CEO Jim Lanzone about it, and he assured me it was an overzealous adult content filtering problem, and it will be resolved this week. It does raise the issue, however, of what is being filtered, and how, and how much we know about it. That merits more discussion.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:21 AM
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Updated: Odd - Why Is Google Not Returning Results for "Amazon.com"?

There's probably a very good reason for this, but I don't know what it is. As a Searchblog reader KK discovered, the query "amazon.com" returns no results in the current Google service. It returns tons of results in Ask, Yahoo, and AOL, which uses Google to power search. Odd.

Is this an anticompetiive thing? I can't imagine. But a Google search for Yahoo.com does bring up one result - "yahoo.com." Amazon.com does not.

Update: A Google spokesperson responds: "This is a technical problem that we're currently working to resolve. We've talked to Amazon and they're aware that we're working quickly to correct the issue." I then asked: "How is this a technical issue? I mean, what kind of technical issue? Can you give some more details as to how a technical issue created this, just for Amazon? Or is it wider?" If I get an answer, I'll post it here.

• Posted by John Battelle at 9:00 AM
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Tips On Ads That Work

E-Media Tidbits points to a Neilsen/Norman eye tracking study that reveals:

...people do not look at static ads with graphic treatment.

Users seem to "zone out" (with their peripheral vision) ads and other site elements that have clearly distinguishable ad features such as graphics and colors that make the ads look different from the rest of the site, or animated ads....When users DO look at ads with graphics, those ads usually have:
-Heavy use of large, clear text
-A color scheme that matches the site's style
-Attention-grabbing proprieties such as black text on a white background, words such as "free" and interactive (UI)

It's interesting that the ads which are "native" to a site - in other words, that are driven by text, as much of web still is, and that follow a site's design approach, do best. It reminds me of ads in Wired in the middle years - advertisers started to adapt Wired's unique visual grammar, and the whole publication felt like one ongoing conversation. I've argued for the past few years that advertising needs to not interrupt, but rather be part of a site's dialog. This research seems to confirm that concept.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:50 PM
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Melanie's Round Up

Stall on net neutrality vote
The Sentate delays its vote on the telecom bill affecting net neutrality, until at least Tuesday.
Tim "inventor of the internet" Berners-Lee posted a video on his blog saying, "When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission... Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it."

Yahoo Mobile
Yahoo launches mobile web access to mail, IM, and contacts.

French satellite maps
The French government unveils Geoportail.fr, a site with detailed satellite imagery of the country that it says has better resolution than Google Maps. (via Reuters) Same as Resource Shelf's complaint however, the page didn't load on my try.

Internet Archive, Alexandria v.2
CNet takes a close-up look at Brewster Kahle and the ambitious work at the Internet Archive "to build, make freely accessible and preserve what he calls--in reference to the legendary lost library of the ancient world--the "Library of Alexandria, v.2."
Resource Shelf expands on the article, noting the only thing missing is a mention of the Archive-It program, which allows institutions to create their own web archives.

A long talk with Snap
Search Engine Lowdown posts an in depth interview with Snap CEO, Tom McGovern and COO, Fre Walti.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:22 PM
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Premium Google Videos free in trial sponsorship

Google is currently offering premium videos free as a pilot for content sponsorship. Only a small number of advertisers and media publishers are participating in this limited trial. The ads run at the end of the videos and Google says user-generated content will remain ad-free.

How it works (from Google):
1. Advertisers select and bid to sponsor individual videos.
2. The winning bidders for each video are promoted in three ways:
- The ability to run a 15-30 second post-roll video ad
- Persistent branding while the video is playing through a text and icon above the video player
- A listing on the sponsored videos page
3. If a user navigates to one of the sponsored videos, we only show the in-stream video ad once the video has finished playing. If the user clicks the text, logo or visible URL above the video window, they will be taken to the advertiser's site.
4. At the conclusion of the campaign, the advertiser will receive stats on the performance of his/her campaign.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:56 PM
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Mpire

The newly launched search site, Mpire, combines product comparisons across multiple sites with product analytics to aid consumer decisions.

Shoppers gain a more accurate picture of market prices with consumer analytics such as bid/price histories on products, and recommendations on optimal days and times to bid. In partnership with eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo, and Overstock, Mpire serves as a convenient access point for users to "search by price, seller, type of payment, location [or] how many bids there are on any given item."

Former Expedia president Matt Hulett joins as CEO: “Think of it as the start of ‘Shopping 2.0’ ― search and analytics to help buyers make smarter and more informed decisions.” Mpire's step toward transparency parallels Farecast, which Battelle wrote about earlier.

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:54 PM
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Melanie's Round Up

Adobe Flash to include Google Search
Adobe enters a distribution deal to bundle Google Toolbar software with its downloads for several years, starting now with Shockwave. This is a shift to larger upfront marketing costs for Google, Reuters notes, in a race before the Vista release. (As a glimpse of market share, Shockwave currently runs on 55 percent of web connected desktops, according to Adobe.)

Real-time ad auctions
Right Media offers automated real-time online auctioning for ad spaces, bypassing traditional ad agencies and increasing market transparency. According to RM, its platform now includes 11,000 ad networks, advertisers and publishers, trading about two billion impressions daily. (CNet)

New Google ad system
Google announces Content Referral Network for select publishers--an ad system that aims to overcome the CPC fraud-vulnerability in AdSense. CRN will reward by completion of commercial actions (CPA), such as filling out a survey or making a purchase. (via Monetize)

Google as media Co. -- Vint Cerf
A Searchblog reader in the Netherlands points out a Dutch documentary about Google, "in which Vint Cerf clearly does see Google as a media company, as he compares Google with a newspaper or television station" in an explanation about bias in the media. Viewable online here, this excerpt is in the frame beginning at 46:58/51:04. (Thanks Martijn.)

Brain powered search?
Scalability, submission quality, and natural language issues be damned, Jatalla defies trends in algorithmic-powered search engines and turns to human computing. Scheduled to launch in July, this index is fed by user-submitted "lexivotes"-- three link recommendations per term. The engine returns results based only for exact-term matches, and users are limited to one lexivote per term.

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:24 PM
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Updated - News: Google Pay Per Action Network Test

According to the SeekingAlpha site, Google is testing a CPA (cost per action) network - the kind of approach Bill Gross is trying at Snap, and many others, like Valueclick, have employed, with limited success so far. Why? Is Google hedging against click fraud and spam? Is this just spaghetti against the wall? I am asking now....so far, this is still officially unconfirmed.

The detail they have over at SeekingAlpha - from a note to one of the members inviting him into the test - is interesting in itself. Google is clearly changing the rules with CPA. For instance:

How can I promote the CPA ad unit?
Since this is a test and these CPA ads are not regular ad units, we are giving you more flexibility in saying things like “I recommend this product” or “Try JetBlue today” next to the CPA ad unit. However, you should still not incite someone to click on the ad, so saying “Click Here” is not ok.

What can I do to optimize my revenue from the CPA ads?
While we encourage you to experiment as much as possible with these ads on your site, here are some general tips on implementing a CPA ad:
1) Ads that blend in with the site and are placed prominently tend to perform better. Look to integrate the ad within the page.

Hmmmm....

The poster, David Jackson, immediately shorted Valueclick. However, the stock is up this morning, so far.

Update from Google spokesman, who confirmed CPA tests: We're always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users. As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost per action pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through AdSense. We’re pleased with how the test is progressing and will continue to gather feedback from advertisers and publishers.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:24 AM
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Duping search engines, even the big-G

A Moldovian blackhat successfully indexed and gained rank (since dropped due to the maelstrom of publicity) for over 5 billion junk pages (example) in just three weeks---duping Google, along with Yahoo and MSN. The junk pages are also covered in AdSense ads, leading Email Battles to speculate that they significantly contributed to recent measures/allegations of click-fraud.

Battelle adds that "5 billion pages is the entire size of the Google index just a year or so ago. The last claim, before they stopped MAKING claims, was 8 billion...think about that."

While junk results are frequently a problem in Yahoo and MSN, the news here is that Google indexed more of the low quality sites faster. While the attention is warranted, to be fair, a concluding judgement should note that this is also a function of Google generally indexing more pages, faster, as Ana's Lair writes. See the original, weekend post from Monetize, which kindly provides a how-to guide for future blackhat reference.
(via Melanie)

• Posted by John Battelle at 4:40 PM
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Melanie's Round Up

Google verticals languishing
Search dominates Google traffic by 79.98%, while its dedicated service sites combined gain paltry numbers. ZNet story here, considers the end game.

Naymz
The Search quotes a Harris poll that says nearly 40 percent of internet users have performed the requisite vanity search.
“I’d be willing to wager that this number will head north of 90 percent in the coming years, as search becomes as individually definitional as finding oneself in the white pages was during the rise of the telephone. Besides ourselves, nearly 20 percent of us have looked for former flames and 36 percent for old friends, and 29 percent have researched a family member.”
Now Tom Drugan, co-founder Naymz, says his company has used the quote and poll as a successful springboard to launch their start up. Naymz is creating a searchable index of profile (vanity) pages, aimed at professionals who want to pull together an online portfolio of their citations for networking.

Full text in Yahoo trademark case
The dating site LoveCity filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Yahoo and three other companies for allegedly using 'lovecity' as a keyword in their AdWords campaigns. Resource Shelf has the full text of the court filing.

Netscape Digg clone?
Late last week AOL-Netscape launched a beta socially-ranked news site (sort of) that many loyal diggers jumped on as a Digg clone. In a response, Digg CEO Jay Adelson questioned the scalability and editorial control of the so-called "Digg Killer," and welcomed the competition. But a CNet suggests that despite the beta's voting capabilities, the Netscape site retains sufficient editorial control to mean the two are different beasts.

Recruit Job search
Freshly launched, Recruit says they offer the first trilingual, international job search engine---in Chinese, Japanese and English.

Snap Interview
Garrett French has a great interview with Snap's Tad Benson over a SEL, also pointing out Snap's great blog.

NewMedia launches
NameMedia, launching this week, is creating a series of vertical portal search platforms on topic-specific domains (with a technology they call SiteSense). The targeted domains serve users of 'direct search' (perhaps better known as 'direct navigation')--those bypassing search engines and instead directly typing a product name into the address bar as a url (for instance ww.photography.com).

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:26 PM
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A Light Week

I spent the past weekend working hard - but not on this computer. I managed to fix about two thirds of the badly damaged irrigation system in my yard, and hope to get to the rest of it today. This week I am taking vacation time to work on the other part of my life, the part that hasn't seen much attention in the past year or so. I'm also taking my kids to Disneyland! Posting will be light, but I'll be around...

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:18 AM
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Updated: In Google, What Words Bring Up Censors Results in China?

Philipp wondered. His research shows a very large list of English queries. Some seem innocuous, and I wonder why they are on the list...

(note: updated for clarity)

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:56 PM
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Sked By Time, Now At Google AdSense

Slowly but surely Google is checking off all the various things that irk traditional advertisers about Adwords. Today, they are launching "ad scheduling for Google AdWords." This is also known as dayparting.

My view - dayparting is not that big a deal - I'm currently researching buying another car. At 10.45 pm. So send me ads! Who cares what time I'm Googling "Toyota Minivan"?

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:47 PM
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Eepybird Search

By now many of you have probably seen the Diet Coke and Mentos video, which is amazing. Hitwise has a great post showing how searches for those terms exploded as the video viraled its way around the web.

An interesting question raised is whether Diet Coke and Mentos, as well as perhaps their competitors, should leverage this notoriety by purchasing related search keywords. I say, absolutely!

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:47 PM
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Memo to the RIAA: Don't Screw This One Up Too..

According to this report, which is light on confirming details, the RIAA is considering action against the YouTubes of the world, because there are so many videos of kids hamming it up to songs where rights have not been cleared. Like this one, for example, on Google Video.

Good f'ing lord, RIAA. Wake up. This is how we use music in the real world. Get over yourselves.

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:05 PM
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If This is A Real Google Employee, It's Fascinating

If it's not, it's still pretty interesting. Philipp gives a detailed overview of a forum posting from a fellow who claims to be an engineer deep in the bowels of Google. Great stuff in here. Including:

“The Google application process is annoyingly slow and can easily take months sometimes. Anyone who’s really interested in working there would be much better off finding an employee to refer them”

“Nobody keeps track of 20% time with any care whatsoever. It’s assumed that, if a deadline is pressing on your main project, you’ll work on that."

"...you can divide internet traffic into five approximate and unequal segments: porn, spam, corporate, knowledge, and personal."

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:11 PM
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Oh No, Not Japan Too?!

SEW tells us that Japan is pulling a Quaero.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:45 PM
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Melanie's Round Up

Major imagery update on Google Earth
For its first birthday, Google Earth gets updates, most impresively "sub-meter high-resolution imagery available for more than one third of the world's population. While initially available only in Google Earth, this database will also be accessible in Google Maps shortly." And a peek at the future: Earth with interactive touch sensors and voice recognition.

Aiming for quantity and quality at Google Video
A zeitgeist-y ranking of Google videos rising in popularity is now available, organized per 40 countries. The algorithm ranks video popularity based on both the viewer reach and rate of views. Oh, BTW...Google wants to host all the world's videos and currently places no file size restrictions on hosted videos, according to GV business manager Hunter Walk, talking in an interview with Beet.TV.

Mikons symbol tags
Mikons launches, bringing symbolism to social tagging and search networks. The Mikon Machine provides a free online vector editing graphic tool that allows users to design their own tradable symbols. The visual personal tags can be exported to other online social applications.

Support from a passive search community
Baynote features search backed by community confidence without requiring explicit tagging actions by users, instead tracking user interest by cues such as bookmarking, clipping, or printing.

Spreadsheets fall short
While some users have found Google Spreadsheets useful, most online reviews conclude the first free online spreadsheets aren't quite ready for prime-time--with lingering concerns over privacy and limited capabilities (though the beta's bare bones are expected to soon be fortified).

MySpace Launches Job Search
The newly unveiled MySpace Careers powers with Simply Hired.

Picasa Web Albums
Google's Picasa introduces a test version of Web Albums, with 250 MB free storage space and photo sharing capabilities.

The big purple brain
A Yahoo promo perches 25 Answers experts in a "gigantic purple brain (complete with firing synapses)," responding to questions sent up from passersby on street-level for 72 straight hours.

Pax Google
Its search market share continues to grow. "Compared with March 2006, the May figures from Hitwise show Google gaining 1 percentage point of share, Yahoo staying almost flat and Microsoft losing 1 percentage point." (IDG News Service). And, an update on progress in Google's wifi aims and efforts in San Francisco and Mountain View.

Gay pride portal launches at Yahoo
For Gay Pride Month Yahoo launched a gay pride portal, "powered by virtually Yahoo's entire arsenal of social media tools" according to MicroPersuasion.

• Posted by John Battelle at 12:26 PM
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Super Secret Weapon?

Or simple datacenter? Let's not go too over the top, folks.

From the TImes:

On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky.

The complex, sprawling like an information-age factory, heralds a substantial expansion of a worldwide computing network handling billions of search queries a day and a growing repertory of other Internet services.

It's a data center. It's there because it was a cheap place to put it. It ain't a secret weapon. But John Markoff, one of the authors of the piece, has always broken new numbers on the amount of computing power in Google's arsenal, this piece now puts it at nearly half a million CPUs.

• Posted by John Battelle at 8:10 AM
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Sometimes, It's the Obvious Shit

Big.com. Search....bigger. From Snap and Bill Gross.

• Posted by John Battelle at 6:40 PM
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SearchDot, Er, SearchDigg?

I've been noodling over an idea, and wanted to get all your input on it. Here at Searchblog I've been blessed with a very robust community, one that over the years has gotten my email and used it very judiciously - usually to send me tips and ideas for Searchblog items. I very much appreciate the tips, but as many of you have noted, I can't get to grokking each of them and posting them in as timely a fashion as I might like.

I've also been fascinated by the rise of community edited sites like Slashdot, Digg (an FM site), Reddit (also an FM site), and others, and find the model - of a community moderated approach to news - to be very cool, and as you all know, very very powerful.

Now, I had the thought - what if I were to create a Digg-like site for the Search vertical? There's an open source module, Pligg, that looks pretty easy to implement, and we've already got the coolest and hardest part done - a strong community of readers who care enough to engage in a particular subject matter.

You can see this idea in action over at psfk.com, another FM site. Piers and his team have created martkd.com, a sort of Digg or Slashdot for marketing stories. What do you all think of doing the same for Searchblog?

Update: To clarify, I'm not thinking about losing my own and Melanie's analytical posts, but instead *adding* this feature....

• Posted by John Battelle at 2:05 PM
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Onward, Upward

One of my consistent comments about the online advertising world is that all the forecasts are too low, and will always be reforecasted upwards, as folks start to realize that more and more advertising can be classified as "online." SEW notes this trend here:

TNS Media Intelligence (which tracks online display advertising spend) has increased their forecast for 2006. This is a 4% correction from their earlier estimated growth, (and bucks the hold pattern or downward trend for other forms of advertising). The company cited earlier estimates as far too conservative after tracking faster than expected migration to the online space from traditional media. Online ad spend growth was 19.4% last first quarter, and is projected to continue to grow by 13% and reach a whopping 12% of total advertising spend in 2006. This figure is far higher than ever reported before.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:55 PM
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It's MySpace, so How Much You Gonna Pay Me For It?

Huh. Seems standard business practice - playing vendors off each other - is now a news event, according to Fox, a Newscorp. property.

"We will redesign the pages to make search more prominent," Peter Chernin, chief operating officer of News Corp. said of its MySpace.com business. "We will auction off our search business to Google, Yahoo, or MSN."

Should be an interesting auction, just like the fight for AOL. What will the split be? 85%? Way too low. I'm wagering that for the first contracted period, anyway, it'll hit over 90%.

• Posted by John Battelle at 11:49 AM
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