John Battelle's Searchblog

Google is down to nearly 520 in afterhours trading after its earnings failed to surprise to the upside and/or meet higher expectations on Wall St. Ouch. From 750 to 520 in a few months...

Venturebeat has an interesting Q&A with Marissa up, in it she points toward social search as a major area of development for Google.

She hints Gmail may be used to identify your friends, using their search history to influence search results for you and those in your social network. While this network would likely first be built on Gmail contacts, Marissa wouldn’t rule out importing friends from third-party networks down the road.

I think Google is struggling to figure out its approach here. Should it build a "traditional social network" like Facebook or Orkut? Should it simply be a directory, and provide a platform instead (like Open Social)? What about indexing and crawling all this social content? Will it prefer its own content?

The plot thickens.

Sorry, it's just true. IWantMedia: David Eun: Google Won't Become a Media Company.

It's not fair in that I am on the road and can't write my full defense of this. But I understand why Google claims to not be a media company, in terms of not being, say, the New York Times. But...that doesn't mean it doesn't threaten the core underpinnings of what makes a great media company. Is that a bad thing? No. But it's not accurate to say Google isn't a threat.

Overall, not bad on its O&O properties, but shakiness in its parnter programs, including ATT and YPN/Panama, where Wall St. hoped they'd hear strong upward guidance. Instead, they heard that Yahoo is going to have another "transition year" in 2008, which sent the stock down. PC coverage.

I am about 2/3rds of the way through what is one of the most brutal travel stretches I've had in quite some time, that's why posting is light, but the learning is great...

...toward conversational interfaces....news from Google acknowledging that ten blue links is getting old (we knew that, so did Google, but...):

There have been a lot of recent improvements to web search, but the appearance of results themselves has been pretty constant -- 10 or so web pages in a vertical list. Frequently this is exactly the right format, but for some searches you need more options and more control. That's why we've created our experimental search page to let you try out some of our newest ideas.
You may have noticed our "alternative views" experiment showcased last May. This lets you visualize your search results in new ways, and we'd like to highlight some of the features we've recently added.

Do you have government-issued payment technology? A tracking device that is tied to your bank account or credit card, that allows you to pay for stuff without the hassle of transaction friction? Chances are, if you are a commuter, you do. I've got one in my car, an image of it is above.

I love my FasTrak. It lets me whiz through the numerous bridge toll booths dotting the Bay Area. But recently, FasTrak did something very important - it cut a deal with the San Francisco Airport, a deal that allows folks with FasTrak to pay for airport parking using their selfsame FasTrak device.

Pretty obvious, no? Well, no, in fact. I'm sure cuttting this deal was fraught with all the red tape and political hazards typical of local government.

But it got me thinking. I have a FasTrak device in my car. I have connected that device to a trusted payment service (a credit card, in my case). Why shouldn't the local government leverage that fact, and get into the payment biz? It's a great business (just ask MasterCard or Amex), it pays well, and it's a service I'd trust FasTrak to get right, because they've built significant brand equity with me over the past few years.

We have a major budget crisis here in California, and everyone is pointing fingers, arguing about which programs should get cut, and hoping that we can gamble our way out of the problem (no, really). What about the government *actually providing a valuable service,* one we'd all be willing to pay a bit for?

I know, I know, it'd cut into the credit card companies' business, but, jesus, tough shit, guys. California is in the pole position here, and should leverage it. Miniaturize the FasTrak, add a modal button (ie, when I press on it, it activates) and some security software, and then roll it out at grocery stores, gas stations, shit, everywhere you can buy a lottery ticket for that matter. The brilliant angle is this: while tons of retailers have tried this, no one wants a walled garden approach (ie, I can use this key fob for gas, that key fob for Safeway, etc.). The government can set an open standard, create a development platform...you all know the rest.

And take a 1-2.5% cut from retailers. I, for one, would love it.

First result for Googling "find Chuck Norris" and hitting "I'm Feeling Lucky."

(thanks, David)

Dave Winer has a good post about how talent - in particular, writers and "content creators" - have forever had a raw deal from corporations who profit on the back of the creators' work. Dave posits that this is about to change, thanks to many trends, including the commoditization of distribution, means of production, and audience aggregation (well, I may have added that last one).

I certainly agree change is in the wind, and started FM on the premise that independent creators of great sites on the web deserve not only the majority of the revenue fostered by their work, but complete control over their intellectual property to boot. Well said, Dave.

That's Saul's take after a quick conversation with incoming CEO John Donahoe. But wait...we've seen this movie before...

Google has come out with a policy around political ads on its sites, and I commend it for transparency and setting a level playing field. But I disagree with the policy. Why? Well, to quote a portion of its post on the policy:

No attacks on an individual's personal life. Stating disagreement with or campaigning against a candidate for public office, a political party, or public administration is generally permissible. However, political ads must not include accusations or attacks relating to an individual's personal life, nor can they advocate against a protected group. So, "Crime rates are up under Police Commissioner Gordon" is okay, but "Police Commissioner Gordon had an affair" is not.

I understand why Google took this course, but I have to say, it's part of an ongoing sanitization of our political life that, in the end, pushes all of politics toward whitewashing and dishonesty. It's far easier to say "no personal attacks" than it is to say "no false statements". But in my mind, accuracy is far more important in public debate than some subjective sense of what constitutes a personal attack. These are public figures, after all, and let's be honest: we vote for folks we feel we can trust. How will we know them if we don't know the truth? Sure, scandalous stuff is often scurrilous, but the first amendment is clear on speech: all speech, in particular, all public speech, must be allowed, so that the real truth can be assessed by an informed public. We don't need Google, or anyone else, sanitizing it for us.

Just my two cents.

You know PageRank, you should know MapReduce. And as a side note, man, it's great to see a true geek write the way this fellow does. What a pleasure to read!

The support for GOOG came out today, the stock clearly felt oversold yesterday. It closed today at 574, up nearly 5%. A commentor noted on my post from earlier in the week that Google has an unusual program that keeps its options in the clear despite being underwater. Wonder where that charge might show up in the SEC reporting?

I hope to post more this weekend, but I've been a bit underwater today and will be again Friday....

Thanks to Google Blogoscoped!

Stefanie writes up the ex-Googlers. This is just part one...and I found this very interesting (I bolded it):

Like some of his peers, Harik is investing in small companies like Wi-Fi company Meraki, and he's helping to develop a Web-based video conferencing company called Imo.im with his brother. Harkening back to his college studies of mathematical models of genetic algorithms, he's also opening a yet-to-be-named research lab in Palo Alto to develop artificial-intelligence software for the fields of biotech and medicine. He plans to invest about $100,000 in the lab this year.

"The largest intelligence system at Google is in AdSense and the Gmail spam system, but I've always really wanted to see our work applied to medicine and biology, which is sort of hard to do at a company," said Harik, adding that the software will be open-source with access to the entire medical community. The nonprofit is partially funded by Google, Harik said.

I've argued in the past that we need new models for quality journalism, and that it's the responsibility of companies like Google and Yahoo to help our culture get there. One might be to run our best journalistic enterprises as trusts, the way they do in the UK and elsewhere. There's been a lot of speculation over the years (including a piece in RealClearMarkets yesterday) that Google might buy the Times. I don't think that's a good idea. But if Google.org did, and then ran the paper as a trust, well, that'd buy a lot of brand burnish amongst a very important set of influential folks, just as massive privacy and monopoly issues are rearing their heads...

That's not something we're used to hearing, but since its peak back in the Fall at nearly 750, Google has dropped to 584 currently, a 166 point drop (it's dropped more in after hours, all the way down to 568). It's on a steep decline in the past few days, perhaps due to the new search stats from Nielsen, as well as jitters about the economy at large.

I can only imagine what this is doing to the Google culture. Don't tell me no one watches the stock there. Anyone who's joined since September of 2007 - and that's a lot of folks - now find their options underwater.

The culture is taking its first deep breath. Recall my predictions from a few weeks ago: 2008 will be the year Wall Street gets frustrated with Google. The company has incredible numbers, and will continue to impress, but analysts, tired of bidding up the stock, will start to question the company's myriad ocean-boiling projects - after all, it's merely trying to reinvent Health, Energy, Telecom, IT (both consumer apps and OSes), and a few other major portions of the GDP. Look for a few querulous analyst reports and even a few downgrades by the end of the year, as Wall Street finally comes out of its honeymoon stage with Google and demands that the company consolidate its control in marketes where profits are secure: Search and Adsense.

Is this the start of it? It could be. Earnings are coming, and they will be the key to the story. Right now, Wall St. isn't in love with Google, or any other stock, to be sure. A great quarter - which Google consistently delivers, by the way, could change that.

On the road today and Weds, seeing clients and such. Posting will be intermittent.

Remember my predictions last year? Remember when I said this?:

6. eBay will have a major change in executive leadership. This feels overdue.

Well, I was wrong, it didn't happen in 2007. But, it is happening three weeks into 2008:

TECHNOLOGY ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal.

Jan. 22, 2008

EBay CEO Meg Whitman is preparing to retire, and John Donahoe, president of eBay's auction business unit, has emerged as the leading candidate to succeed her.

A decision about her departure could come within weeks, though the situation remains fluid, say people familiar with the matter. It would mean the loss of one of Silicon Valley's highest-profile CEOs.

I think Meg waited just to spite me. (Kidding, really, I'm kidding...). But honestly, Meg is the longest running Internet CEO on record who was not a founder, and I can only imagine she's ready for something new. Or maybe, just a few months on the beach.

Here we go again. (via SF Chron)

Wow! If only I trusted Nielsen's numbers, this would be a big story...

Google garnered a 56.3% share of the U.S. search market in December, compared with a 57.7% share in the previous month, according to Nielsen. Yahoo Inc., meanwhile, saw its share in December fall slightly to 17.7%, compared with 17.9% in November...Microsoft Corp. was the only company among the three largest search providers to see an increase in December, as its share rose to 13.8% of the U.S. market from 12% the previous month, according to Nielsen.

BB Gadget's Joel Johnson talks about AT&T's plans w/r/t internet filtering on an AT&T show. The other shoe has not dropped on this one yet, but I salute Joel for bringing up a very important issue.

I was going to wait to post this till the start of a mobile posting campaign that Microsoft is very kindly launching, but I just can't let it wait (for those who might care, Microsoft is going to underwrite a bunch of FM authors, including me, posting mobile stuff like photos and maps and voice posts). Anyway, I was in JFK airport and I saw an arresting image in a Pitney Bowes ad.

Now, what does Pitney Bowes do? Well, turns out I have some knowledge in this area, as my father, ever the itinerant entrepreneur, tried to compete with Pitney in the 80s by creating a better postage meter. He didn't get very far. Pitney is the Microsoft of postage meter companies. They own the market.

So they are doing a corporate campaign, apparently, and somehow, they came to the conclusion that slapping postage on a newborn baby - wait, let me say it - a not very pretty newborn baby - is somehow a powerful statement of corporate purpose. (That bracelet is actually a postage label).

Now, am I off here, or does this simply offend at too many levels to really go into? Do they really want to be seen as "putting a stamp" on newborn babies? Are they out of their minds? Anyway, a funny ad, a funny photo, taken as I was, perhaps, a bit funny myself, given I was two beers in waiting for my delayed flight...

Andy Berndt, a former Ogilvy star recently hired by Google, says Google's "Creative Lab" is an "internal creative and marketing resource at Google to manage the brand and our only client is Google." More in this Ad Age piece.

Name the year this was written:

Yahoo offered details of its long-awaited turnaround strategy... hinging its future on advertising, exclusive paid content and revenue-sharing deals with Internet access providers.....Yahoo executives gave some specifics regarding a long-expected corporate restructuring, saying that they will whittle down Yahoo's 44 business units to six: listings, commerce, communications, media, access and enterprise. In addition, the company will lay off 400 employees, or 13 percent of its work force.

That is from a November 2001 article in Cnet, and yes, it sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

Techcrunch has shots of some tests...

Yahoo's Ripe for Shake-Up from the WSJ's "Breaking Views" column is quite a read. It argues that the sums of Yahoo's parts, in particular its holdings in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, which combine for more than a third of Yahoo's overall market cap, should be spun off, as should its search business (I've argued that for some time now.) Interesting.

I'm digging into the domain space for this talk next week. It's a fascinating, frustrating industry. I posted a general query last week, and got a ton of wonderful advice. But I did not get an answer to the question above.

Does anyone know?

$100K as the prize for building a new search engine? Sorry, that's not gonna get it done...

$50 Billion in online ads three years hence. Wow.

All Facebook discusses the story of a dust up between Facebook and blog publisher Gawker, which posted information and pictures found in a well known New York socialite's Facebook profile.

Is information found in a Facebook profile public? It seems to me to be pretty clear that it's not. Emily's public profile on Facebook has none of the information Gawker published. The real question seems to be whether Emily is a "public figure" and therefore subject to a different standard. The author at Gawker got access to Emily's "friends" profile, which had much more information, and published that. Is that so different than gaining access to, say, a private party where a reporter sees Emily, and reports on what she does? That's privileged information, but no one would have an issue with a gossip reporter covering a party full of socialites.

Regardless, it's clearly a violation of Facebook's terms of service. Will be interesting to see if Emily or Facebook pushes on this.

This story, from Ars, is really cool. Office space is expensive. Energy and cooling is expensive. Solution? Float your datacenter. Neat.

On the road this week, posting alas will be light.

I love Kara's take on Microsoft merging with Yahoo:

But that’s kind of like stitching together Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich and getting a potential front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Maybe with some Yankee determination, the two will make it happen. But I kind of doubt it. Microsoft has a lot on its plate just making aQuantive pay off this year...on the other hand, Microsoft kind of needs it...and so does Yahoo..

Thanks to Gary for pointing me to the transcript and video of Mark Zuckerberg's 60 Minutes appearance. So far the response (at least from comments here on Searchblog) is not overwhelming.

Guys, it's a great idea. But don't make the same stupid mistakes your bosses made and claim you need $30 million to do it.
Did it cost $30mm for Ninja, RocketBoom, WebbAlert or Diggnation to make serious money? Nope, it did not. Don't take VC money and fail. Do it smart, lean and right on the web. In short, don't do it in a packaged goods way. Do it conversational.

Update: I know that these guys want to make traditional movies, but there are so many new ways to finance movies as well. You don't need to finance the company to the tune of $30mm to do it...

I've always been marginally fascinated by the domain marketplace (key companies include Oversee.net, Name Media, Demand Media), it's not an area I've studied closely, but clearly, it's booming. I'd like to get to know it better, in particular as I prepare to give a talk to a massive gathering of folks in this industry later this month. So in the spirit of "my readers are smarter than I am" I'm asking for your help - where can I get good information on this market? I'd like to know its size, growth, issues, etc. I am already doing research on it, but figured if anyone knows, you all do...

A few things I'd love to know with some authority:

- Overall size of the market

- What percentage of traffic is "type in"?
- How do majors figure in the business - do they endorse, ignore, partner (I know Google partners...)
- How much of the domaining business revenue is Google Adsense?

Beacon will be a "really good thing." In so many words, I agree. If...If...If....

PS - note to CBS, make the videos easy to embed, please...

Google has no reason to buy a Yellow Pages company. Does it? I've railed about this before, the sourcing at British newspapers is nearly as bad as second class blogs. Listen to this little bit of sourcing gymnastics:

The Independent newspaper in the U.K. reported today that a ``market source heard talk of a 500 pence-per-share bid'' for Yell by Google. Spokespeople for Yell and Google couldn't be reached immediately to comment.

Jesus. And I woke up and thought that Google might buy Circuit City out of Chapter 11, so I printed it.

I think humans are required anytime you want to connect a brand with a person in any kind of meaningful way. But "computational advertising" is one way to optimize that connection, for sure. This talk by Yahoo's A. Broder does look interesting (via Greg).

PS - Greg is starting at MSFT next week. Great hire, and congrats Greg!

Gary has a timeline on FAST deals, showing the companies reach into enterprise search. Recall my earlier posts on how I am seeing this as a very interesting area powering new search UIs for consumers (against structured databases like the NYT articles, for example.)

It's a first step only, as expected. A comment send to me from Facebook:

We are committed to giving users control of their data on Facebook and, at the same time, safeguarding the privacy of users. Facebook joined the DataPortability Workgroup in order to actively participate in industry dialogue and to represent feedback from the Facebook community.

- Ben Ling, director of product marketing for Facebook Platform

Hitwise has some interesting insights.

Mahalo receives most of its traffic from Search Engines (76% last week) and sends most of its traffic to Entertainment (37%) and News and Media (19%) websites. Visitors seem particularly interested in games websites such as GameSpot, IGN Cheats and Game FAQs and News and Media websites, in particular, Google News and other online news sources.

Mahalo is gaining momentum slowly but surely.

Jim Lanzone, who ran Ask since April 06, is stepping down and figuring out what's next while EIR at Redpoint. I'll be talking to him later today, update here soon.

Jim Safka has been named CEO of Ask.com. Effective immediately, he will oversee Ask.com's global operations. He will also continue in his role as CEO of Primal Ventures, a new-venture entity that identifies seeds and incubates business opportunities for IAC.

Mr. Safka, 39, served as CEO of Match.com from 2004 to 2006.

I read I Want Media each day, and these were the first four headlines:

Time Warner May Cut 1,000 Jobs Due to Strike
McGraw-Hill to Cut 611 Jobs; More May Come
Martha Stewart Said to Lay Off More Staff
Chicago Sun-Times Reduces Size, Cuts Jobs
Seattle Times Plans to Cut Its Work Force

Holy cow.

It's happening. While at CES today and yesterday, I spoke to two different manufacturers of HDTVs who plan to launch, or have already launched, televisions that are RSS enabled. In other words, the TV manufacturers are getting into the web content distribution business. Can you taste the convergence? I love the idea that my favorite RSS feeds might be running over traditional packaged goods content from the TV Networks, and there is nothing they can do to control it. I love the idea that we, as consumers, can take back control of the screen, and what is on it.

I only hope that the TV companies don't try to pick what content I want to watch FOR me. Oh, wait, that's what they are doing - Panasonic and Google are hooking up to connect Panasonic TVs with the Internet (Panasonic would be the third one, then, that is connected itself to the Web, and in essence, becoming a PC). Well, at least, YouTube and Picasa. I hope that's not ALL we can connect to....

This looks really cool. Via Mashable, which has a good writeup:

Readburner is a site that has been playing at the edges of my feeds for several weeks now. I think I vaguely remember submitting my linkblog to a developer a month or so ago. He had said he needed a pile of linkblog submissions while he worked on an experimental aggregator based around Google’s Shared Item functionality. I saw a shared item in one or two of the linkblogs I subscribe to that ended up pointing back to a directory on an Amazon EC2 server.

Then Louis Gray wrote a couple articles, letting the cat out of the bag that there was indeed a project underway to finally fulfill the longstanding wishes of MG Siegler (and a great number of other folks like me who are avid Google Reader users). Yes, Virginia, there is a Google Shared Items memetracker, and its name is ReadBurner.

I'm kidding, but last week (and several times previously) I lectured Facebook to open up, and predicted it would. Today, Facebook (and Google, but we'd expect that) have joined the Data Portability group. What I cannot figure out yet is whether this really *means* anything other than, well, they joined a group. But it's a great first step.

From my post on January 4:

With one move, Facebook can change the face (sorry) of this debate by making it falling-down easy to export your social graph. And I predict that it will.

Why? Because I think in the end, Facebook will win based on the services it provides for that data. Set the data free, and it will come back to roost wherever it's best used. And if Facebook doesn't win that race, well, it'll lose over time anyway. Such a move is entirely in line with the company's nascent philosophy, and would be a massively popular move within the ouroborosphere (my name for all things Techmeme).

Compete on service, Facebook, it's where the world is headed anyway!

Very interesting indeed. From the Journal (my linking mechanism is down at the moment, I am traveling):

Microsoft said it plans to buy Norwegian data-search company Fast Search & Transfer for 6.6 billion Norwegian kroner, or about $1.2 billion. The offer is a 42% premium to the target company's most recent closing share price. Fast Search & Transfer's board of directors has unanimously recommended the offer, and shareholders representing 37% of the outstanding shares have accepted it.

I have not played with it much, but I wonder why it doesn't make more use of all the Wikipedia pages?

Link

Fascinating. The set up:

At Google, employees are encouraged to go online and place bets on a prediction market — an exchange that tries to forecast events based on the money wagered on a particular outcome.

Prediction markets have been used for years to predict things like elections. At Google, they are used, of course, for business. In the last two and a half years, 1,463 employees have made wagers with play money (Goobles, as in rubles) on questions like: will Google open a Russia office? will Apple release an Intel-based Mac? how many users will Gmail have at the end of the quarter?

The pay off:

According to the report, “Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google,” which was presented Friday at the American Economic Association meeting in New Orleans, the strongest correlation in betting was found among people who sat very close to one another, trumping even friendship or other close social ties.

This is tangible evidence, the authors argue, that information is shared most easily and effectively among office neighbors, even at an Internet company where instant messaging and e-mail are generally preferred to face-to-face discussion.

Link to the report (PDF download)

The Times' piece on the launch is up.

“We want to make it really clear that when people arrive and do searches, they should not expect to find a Google killer,” Mr. Wales said. Instead, people who use the Wikia search engine should understand that they are part of the early stages of a project to build a “Google-quality search engine,” Mr. Wales said.

Far ranging piece, still reading it, by Ken Auletta, who I spoke to for the piece.

A fascinating movie comprised of 50 hours of the Techmeme homepage condensed to 50 seconds, from Amit. You can't help but wonder what might be learned from the patterns unfolding in front of you, I want to see more!

The recent kerscobuffle around data portability got me thinking out loud about what the value of a social network really is - and by extension, any service that might claim to have "lock in" around our personal data.

For years now, a core (unresolved) issue in the Web 2 world has been data portability - with most of us - including me - arguing vaguely for the right to take our data where we want, when we want, without undue interference from the service that helped us aggregate it.

As the debate deepens, it seems there are two camps - first, the camp that says Facebook has either A. a right and/or B. an economic necessity to create a walled garden for our data. The second camp argues that Facebook - and any other walled garden - is A. Stupid or B. Greedy or C. Both.

I think I've been pretty consistent in my support of the less-than-nuanced second group of campers.

But I'm not entirely sure the debate is framed correctly. It assumes the key question is about whether or not the data can be ported. Instead the real value creation of a service is what that service allows a person to *do* with that data, once it's found its way there.

To frame the discussion, think about the idea of competing on the lowest price. This has always been a major point of pain in retail commerce - how can I compete on price if my costs of goods sold is the same (or, shudder, *higher*) than my competitors? My answer is to change the game: Don't compete on price. Compete on *service*.

An example. My local market charges far more for a good bottle of wine than many shops that are nearby. But there's a wine guy who works at that market who knows wine cold, and who I trust. Also, the market is close to my home, and I have a personal relationship with the fellow (OK, here's the reference to the book I'm working on - I have a "conversation" going with this merchant). Those factors, combined with a certain ambiance at the store that I really like, all lead to one result: I buy my wine at the more expensive store. Why? Because the store competes on more than price.

It's time that services on the web compete on more than just the data they aggregate.

I think the data portability crowd is driven by this idea, in the main - once we have real data portability, personal data becomes a commodity, and services then live or die not on data lock in, but on *service* lock in. Imagine a world where my identity and my social graph is truly *mine*, and is represented in a machine readable manner. Were that the case, the entrepreneurial opportunities to create second order value are immense.

Is this the goal of Open Social? I'm not sure. Danny has pointed out how Google is of two mouths when it comes to the idea.

The problem is, no one seems ready to truly set the social graph free. Till now.

With one move, Facebook can change the face (sorry) of this debate by making it falling-down easy to export your social graph. And I predict that it will.

Why? Because I think in the end, Facebook will win based on the services it provides for that data. Set the data free, and it will come back to roost wherever it's best used. And if Facebook doesn't win that race, well, it'll lose over time anyway. Such a move is entirely in line with the company's nascent philosophy, and would be a massively popular move within the ouroborosphere (my name for all things Techmeme).

Compete on service, Facebook, it's where the world is headed anyway!

I get the sense that Google is, in many respects, a really really great Grad School that folks leave - after four or five years of hard work - with a degree in well heeled "Now What?"? Latest good guy to leave: Nat Stoll. Best of luck in the new venture, man!

This decision has been quite difficult but ends with positive feelings. I've felt in the past months as if I was breaking up with Google, and I don't think that to be a stretched analogue. I have countless close friends who I've been through the eye of the storm with to see clear sky, and we have history that is hard to think past. So, for all of my friends still in the 'plex, know that "it's not you (Google), it's me," and I hope that we can still stay close after we take some time apart.

Update: Kevin Fox is leaving too.

Read through the notes they write. They are very, very similar.

Wait, here's another. Hmmmm.

Doc notes my post on conversations and asks why we, as consumers, are not more empowered to control our conversations/interactions with businesses who have tons of information about us and our use of their products/services.

I think what we need is something like an API. Let’s call it an VRI: Vendor Relationship Interface. Through it I could know, and see, what I’m getting from each vendor with which I “relate”. On top of that the dashboard could be built.

An interesting thing here is that I really don’t want to have a conversation of the literal kind with most of these companies, unless there’s a problem. I do want to relate with them, however. That is, I would like to request or arrange for services, pay bills and occasionally make suggestions or provide feedback. Most of that does not require wasting the time of another human being. A lot of that could be automated.

It's just that simple. Deal with it.

And I think FB will. I have seen commentary on Digg and elsewhere to this end:

Facebook won't join Open Social, and you can forget about the pipe dreams of the Data Portability movement. The simple fact is, as the market leader, there is no benefit for or strategic advantage in Facebook making your data available to you in any format you wish.

I disagree. I think FB will open up. It's in their best interest.

Update: Scoble is back in the good graces of Facebook, that is to say, he is no longer banned. But I think the issue is pretty clear cut, and has to do with what is commodity, and what is unique. I have a post in me on this, that will come.

Dave Morgan, who now runs strategy for AOL's Platform A, riffs on my concept of the second click. Worth a quick read.

Om Malik, a pal and FM colleague, had a heart attack over the holidays - the best kind, the one that let him live and recover and, I can only imagine, come back with a renewed zest for life. But wow, what a wake up call to us all. Get better soon, Om.

Fun reading.

(And yes, I'm still getting caught up on my holiday reading)

Henry breaks it down. And suggests they rename the browser Netscape. Ha!

Rich Skrenta, no stranger to long time readers of this site, is starting a search site. He's calling it Blekko (for now, the pic is what you see on the site at present).

This should be interesting. From his post:

The web is big. Really, really big. It's literally billions and billions of pages. It's Carl Sagan big. And it's doubling in size every year or two.

So the idea that what you can see in positions 1-3 above the fold on Google are the sum of what the web has to say about every possible query is crazy.

And yet they have 85%+ market share, and little effective competition. At the same time there is such a fabulous business in search. It's the highest monetization service on the web, by far. Why does this Coke have no Pepsi?

Having just spent 5 years in the media space, I've come away with the idea that editorial differentiation is possible. But the editorial voice of a search engine is in the index...so it has to be algorithmic editorial differentiation.

This is the man who has written that PageRank wrecked the web, and that Google is going down. Rich is a serious guy, however, and I've emailed him asking for a quick interview.

Not this one, this one, by Scott at Publishing 2.0. It's very well put. (thanks, Pete)

Close readers will notice a trend in 2008 here on Searchblog: I'll be posting stuff about conversations, and in particular how companies are doing when it comes to having conversations with their key constituents. You may recall my one of my seminal posts on this topic: From Pull To Point, in which I urged the Wall St. Journal and the Economist to join what I called at that time "The Point To Economy." I now call it "The Conversation Economy" and since I wrote that post, the NYT has joined, and it looks like the Journal may follow. But as this post from Poynter shows, CBS News ain't even nearly there yet, and it's particularly interesting, because it has to do with video, which I think is a key grammar in what I am starting to call the emerging Internet Creole. From the post:

CBS Sunday Morning may be the best news show on television. A couple of weeks ago, it carried a superb piece on the art of conversation -- one that I wanted to send to a friend. So, logically, I went to CBSNews.com to look for it.

It's not there. Or maybe it is -- but I certainly couldn't find it.

Kevin Kelly is trying out a new ad insertion program with his book "True Films". His write up is interesting and Kevin's always thoughtful about these things.

Earlier editions of this book have been available on Amazon, Lulu, and as a cheap download from my site. But with this new version 3.0 I am trying something new. I am offering this 200-page full-color guide (perfect as a companion if you have Netflix) as a FREE download. It's in PDF format, but with a twist. To help offset the significant bandwidth costs of these downloads (I hope my server can take the wave), I have appended advertisements to the PDF book. Here is how the ads work:

If you choose to see the ads, they will appear in a gray sidebar on the right, adjacent to the pages of the book, just outside the frame of the page.....These ads are inserted into the PDF by Adobe (using the Yahoo ad network) when you open the file. Like Google Adsense ads, they are contextual.

Boing Boing has a good write up of the philosophy behind Wikia Search, though it's light on any details. Wikia search will launch Jan 7, according to this WP article. From the BB post:

But ranking algorithms are editorial: they embody the biases, hopes, beliefs and hypotheses of the programmers who write and design them. What's more, a tiny handful of search engines effectively control the prominence and viability of the majority of the information in the world.

And those search engines use secret ranking systems to systematically and secretly block enormous swaths of information on the grounds that it is spam, malware, or using deceptive "optimization" techniques. The list of block-ees is never published, nor are the criteria for blocking. This is done in the name of security, on the grounds that spammers and malware hackers are slowed down by the secrecy.

But "security through obscurity" is widely discredited in information security circles. Obscurity stops dumb attackers from getting through, but it lets the smart attackers clobber you because the smart defenders can't see how your system works and point out its flaws.

Seen in this light, it's positively bizarre: a few companies' secret editorial criteria are used to control what information we see, and those companies defend their secrecy in the name of security-through-obscurity? Yikes!

Danny's got a review of recent search stats (from SEL Friday).

Why go? Well, I think this picture of my daughter Beatrix on the Teacups ride says it all...

TC has the breakdown.

In a way, Gibson has quoted me. Oh. My. God. This Guardian UK article gave me credit for the "database of intentions" which readers will recall was post #63 (of about 4500 or so) and the basis of my first book. Gibson then goes on to quote Borges and the idea of the DBoI.

William Gibson was my hero at Wired, I worked with him as his editor (if you can call it that) while at Wired, but we've lost touch.

Wow, what an honor. Cool!

Related:

2007 Predictions
2007 How I Did
2006 Predictions
2006 How I Did
2005 Predictions
2005 How I Did
2004 Predictions
2004 How I Did

Has it been a whole year? I posted my predictions for 2007 on Jan 1, 2007, and here it is, the first day of 2008, and here we go again. This year I am going to organize my predictions by companies (just the big ones) and trends. I'm focusing on advertising and search markets and the largest companies in that space, as that seems to be what's on our collective minds these days, and it's what I seem to have focused on in the past, as I read through my past prediction posts.

So what are the trends in 2008?

Well, everyone I speak to is very worried that we're in for a major economic downturn, and we all know that a key lagging indicator of a recession is a serious downturn in the advertising markets. I'm going to buck all my colleagues fears, however, and predict that web-based advertising businesses will in fact enjoy significant gains in 2008. These gains, however, will not be evenly distributed. The markets will reward innovation and growth in new forms of advertising, and punish those who are seen as not having a strategy. (Recall that Google took off as an advertising business in the doldrums of 2002-2003).

This means it will not be an easy market for major public debuts. But we will see at least one, if not two new IPOs (for more see below).

2008 will also be seen as the year that proves Conversational Marketing as a new form of advertising (this is clearly a biased view), and by the end of the year, adding value to a customer's life through marketing will be seen as a necessity as opposed to an experiment. This is the logical extension of the search marketing revolution to all forms of marketing, well beyond direct response and the fulfillment of declared intent.

2008 will be the year of integration indigestion for the majors, and as such, it will mean M&A will slow down for those companies. All those advertising-based acquisitions in 2006-7 will have to start to pay off, and the results will be uneven to say the least. For specifics, see below.

Another trend we'll see is the continued erosion of the traditional mobile oligarchy. But despite the best efforts of Android, not much will get done this year. Don't worry, though, by 2009, we'll finally see a mobile web worthy of a serious development economy, one that looks a lot like Web 2 looked in 2005.

As for the Web 2 world, we'll see a ton of venture funded companies go by the wayside. This is healthy and normal. It's been a few years since the funding wallets opened, and it's quite normal for companies that couldn't get lift off by year two or three to close their doors. We'll also see an uptick in acquisitions, as the boards of companies that that thought they were worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars decide to settle for decent returns. This will be particularly true for media and advertising related businesses, who will find home at large media companies that are traditionally not eager to pay significant premiums.

Now, given these trends, on to the major advertising- and search-driven Web companies:

2008 will be the year Wall Street gets frustrated with Google. The company has incredible numbers, and will continue to impress, but analysts, tired of bidding up the stock, will start to question the company's myriad ocean-boiling projects - after all, it's merely trying to reinvent Health, Energy, Telecom, IT (both consumer apps and OSes), and a few other major portions of the GDP. Look for a few querulous analyst reports and even a few downgrades by the end of the year, as Wall Street finally comes out of its honeymoon stage with Google and demands that the company consolidate its control in marketes where profits are secure: Search and Adsense. Look for complaints about profits and integration (or lack thereof) with regard to Doubleclick, and at least one major product flop that gets analyst tongues wagging. Google will continue to struggle with its display advertising business, at least as it is traditionally understood, in part due to a culture conflict between its engineering-based roots and the thousands of media-saavy sales and marketing folks the company has hired in the past two years.

Yahoo, meanwhile, will spend most of 2008 trying to figure out what to do with what it bought in 2007, and attempting to articulate a strategy that is anything but "we have 500 million users, so we must be important." By mid year, it will have succeeded, in part due to a clarification of its approach syndicated advertising (ie, how it will beat Google by delivering better than AdSense can to key partners). All the the big players in the advertising platform business - Yahoo, Google, AOL, Microsoft - are looking to monetize the magic middle of web traffic - high volume, but low CPM. Yahoo has access to a ton of this traffic, but in 2007 it couldn't seem to figure out how to make it pay (more). Right Media, Blue Lithium, etc, are all plays to this (as are aQuantive and Doubleclick and Tacoda and Quigo and...) In 2008, Yahoo will figure out a promising start. This is critical, because Yahoo will finally admit to itself that in the battle between Microsoft and Google, it is an increasingly minority player, and will need to bulk up to compete. By year's end, Yahoo will have combined in a major way with another third party, and it won't be either of the two aforementioned companies.

In 2008, Microsoft will fail to gain much traction in anything that is Web related. This will frustrate Wall Street and Microsoft's employees to the point of several key executive defections. Sound like last year? Yes, with one key difference. In 2008, Microsoft will finally figure out what do to with aQuantive, and by the end of the year, it will be clear what the company must do with it: Let it free. Yup, but this time, it will be as a public company that is majority owned by Microsoft, with fresh contracts to execute against MSN's inventory, both owned and operated (O&O) and syndicated (Digg, Facebook, etc.). Yeah, I'm going out on a limb here, but what the hell.

Now, what about current media darling/punching bag Facebook? Ahhh, this is a tough one. First, the company will suffer from a serious identity crisis, as it realizes it must change its core DNA from tech- and founder-focused startup to media-focused Real Company with Lots of Employees. This is not a new story, Google went through it in 2003-2005. But not many companies make the transition without serious collateral damage. Second, the company will find itself stuck in the hell of pre IPO preparations, again, like Google in 2003-4. This will frustrate company leaders to the point of looking for a CEO whose job is, in essence, to talk to Wall Street. But until Facebook figures out a way to justify its lofty valuation, this hire will be stymied. In short, the most important short term focus for the company in 2008 will be solving for the Social Ads quandry. (By this I mean how to build the equivalent of a AdWords and AdSense for the "social graph.") Though it will take promising steps, the company will fail to get it just right, at least by the end of the year and all by itself, but it will still find itself profitable and on the path toward an 2009 IPO. By mid 2008, there will be very serious rumors about an acquisition battle over the company between Google and Microsoft. But Facebook will play the middle, and most likely cut a deal with a third party, which despite the strong relationship with Microsoft, could well be Yahoo or a smaller but growing company that looks a lot like Facebook. Also, look for Facebook to make a run at NetVibes.

And AOL? As with aQuantive, Platform A will go public, if the markets allow (see trends). The rest of AOL will be sold or folded into Time Warner in ways that, regrettably, will finally signal the end of the original Case-ian dream.

Finally, what to make of Newscorp/FIM? Major problems will become apparent by early in the year, and those problems have to do with structure: Who is really in charge of "Fox Interactive", and what does that mean? What about Dow Jones? There will be a battle for control over all of Newscorp's interactive assets, one that will limit the company's ability to execute any clear strategy. That said, MySpace will make a comeback of sorts, and look for it to cut a very important deal in 2008 with regard to its future. This could even be - yes I'll say it - a spin out of the company as an independent public entity.

Well, that's about it for now. I reserve the right to revise this a bit in the next week, as I'm still pondering this draft.

Oh, yes. I usually end with a prediction about my own work. Not FM, as I begged off that last year and will do the same this time. But as for my writing: I will be back at work on a book, at least a couple days a week, by mid year. This is simply too important for me to ignore, it's literally a physical urge I feel now. 2008 will be the year it becomes real for me.

Again, to all of you out there keeping me honest and helping me think out loud, thank you. Here's to a great 2008!

Update: Some interesting reactions at HipMojo and Mashable, thanks to TechMeme for pointing it out.