John Battelle's Searchblog

Ah, nostalgia. That's me bent over the work of editing Wired back in the day. Thanks Pesco...

My partners at Web 2 told me today that the new website is live, the initial theme is up and posted (I am very excited about this year's theme) and if you haven't gone before, you can request an invitation to come here. Last year we had nearly 10,000 requests for an invitation, so if you want to come (Nov. 5-7 in SF) please fill out the form asap. I review each request personally.

The first line of speakers is also up, and there is a lot more cooking. Initial speakers include Jack Ma, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Ken Auletta,
Richard Rosenblatt, Lance Armstrong, Ralph De la Vega, Paul Otellini, Mary Meeker, Padmasree Warrior, Kevin Johnson, Joel Hyatt, Mathis Wackernagel, Marc Benioff and Vinod Khosla.

From the theme:

The Opportunity of Limits:
Sustaining, Applying and Expanding the Web's Lessons

The commercial web is now a teenager—it's been fifteen short years since Marc Andreessen released the Mosaic browser. To put this in perspective, television as a commercial medium reached its fifteenth birthday in 1956—the year Elvis Presley made his first appearance on national TV. National news broadcasts were still in their infancy, "As The World Turns" debuted as America's first half-hour soap opera, and "The Price Is Right" began its dominance of the game show genre. Commercial grade videotape recorders emerged, portable black and white television sets were introduced, and the first local color broadcast aired in Chicago.

Fifteen years after television's birth, the contours of the new medium were just emerging. The idea that this revolutionary new phenomenon—one busily reshaping the very fabric of society—might one day become just another application on a vast web of computers, well that idea wasn't exactly in vogue.

In the first four years of the Web 2.0 Summit, we've focused on our industry's challenges and opportunities, highlighting in particular the business models and leaders driving the Internet economy. But as we pondered the theme for this year, one clear signal has emerged: our conversation is no longer just about the Web. Now is the time to ask how the Web—its technologies, its values, and its culture—might be tapped to address the world's most pressing limits. Or put another way—and in the true spirit of the Internet entrepreneur—its most pressing opportunities.

As we convene the fifth annual Web 2.0 Summit, our world is fraught with problems that engineers might charitably classify as NP hard—from roiling financial markets to global warming, failing healthcare systems to intractable religious wars. In short, it seems as if many of our most complex systems are reaching their limits.

It strikes us that the Web might teach us new ways to address these limits. From harnessing collective intelligence to a bias toward open systems, the Web's greatest inventions are, at their core, social movements. To that end, we're expanding our program this year to include leaders in the fields of healthcare, genetics, finance, global business, and yes, even politics.

Increasingly, the leaders of the Internet economy are turning their attention to the world outside our industry. And conversely, the best minds of our generation are turning to the Web for solutions. At the fifth annual Web 2.0 Summit, we'll endeavor to bring these groups together.

I can't wait for this year, it's going to be great! And there is a lot of room for speakers still, in particular with an eye toward this theme. Please make your suggestions in comments here. Help me make this as good as it can be! Thanks.

After a funny film featuring nearly every luminary under the sun giving Yang and Decker advice (Buffet, Stringer, Zuckerberg, etc) Yang and Decker took the stage and Walt immediately asked them about the MSFT deal. Yang agreed that they could not get to a price, but that there were other issues as well, regulatory is one that came up, but I can imagine others (ie, approach to open source, total installs of Outlook at Yahoo, etc.!).

What is the concept around the Google deal? Yang: We feel strongly about how we monetize search, but there is clearly a value gap between us and (Google), we want to make it clear to our shareholders that there are other untapped sources of value that should we want to tap that...could be significant..." We've conducted tests with them and we have some understandings...as to the level of discussion...we are uniquely positioned ....should anything be done (between Google and Yahoo) it'd be unique... yahoo has the ability to remain very competitive in the advertising space...the level and flexibility of how we might partner has not been well understood...(he doesn't want to talk about it)...

What about losing search share? yang talks about Panama, over the last two years we've closed the gap against Google by quite a bit (in terms of pricing), now we've shifted our focus back to driving query growth, which is growing on an absolute basis. yes behind Google but we feel it's about innovation and differentiation...becoming more open as a search platform (yes!) what we'd like to see...is us more aggressive ...I feel the search game is pretty early...

Walt asks about all the turmoil, losing people, etc. Sue answers that Yahoo managed to hire 600 people during the turmoil, turnover is about the same. And that the product pipeline is really looking good. "We have the chance of a lifetime to show what Yahoo can do" - the turmoil has been uniting, she says.

Yang: There a lot going on, I am not going to deny that. But the perception of us as a company under siege is not accurate. ...The process has in many ways pulled Yahoo together. ...There is a sense that Yahoo is getting weaker, that we can't be independent anymore. We can't be any more clear that Yahoo was going through a period where we are transitioning to a place where we ...are a lot stronger.

But what is Yahoo, to you? Walt asks. It's not clear to us in the room. What is Yahoo? The focus is "starting point." Sue: That's a little bit of a change. We are focusing on four areas, home page, search, mail, and mobile. People come multiple times a day to these places.

yang: We are rebuilding yahoo from a platform perspective to be more open. Imagine developers being able to program on top of Yahoo as a canvas. (Imagine) Yahoo Mail with a group of developers working on it...same for Yahoo's home page....conceptually it's similar to Facebook but ...it's Yahoo, (the implication being that the results will be a hell of a lot more interesting than, say, Facebook's platform.)

I am publishing this now, the wifi is very shaky here, will update as I can...

Update: Jerry makes point "we did not walk away, Microsoft did." "It was not clear to me they wanted to (finish) the deal..."

Sue: We think our inventory is undervalued...we know how much value there is on search side, we also know that 90% of the web's inventory is not search and we are about to launch a system that makes it easier to buy and sell display. There is an enormous asset there. ...

Check it out....great lineup, really looking forward to it.

Will blog as I can, and also, find me on Twitter.

Mike makes a good point here in response to Tim's point of view, and Tim counters here. It's a very interesting debate, one between two folks I've partnered with for some time (Mike's TechCrunch is part of FM, and Tim and I have partnered on any number of things, including Web 2, Make, and several sites that are also part of FM). So I'm a bit conflicted as I watch these guys debate.

However, one thing I will assert: Search is more than a subsystem of Web 2, as Tim puts it. I think search has become the interface to Web 2, and so I agree with Mike that Microsoft should not abandon it. It's how we navigate the world of knowledge, and it's way too early to say we're done with the evolution of that navigation. But as Tim also points out: "a platform beats an application every time". Damn right! That's why I think Microsoft (or Yahoo) should innovate in search, as I pointed out here and here. If Google were to open its platform up, man, then it might well be game over. An open platform that has near monopoly share? Now that's something to ponder.

As promised, I've posted some thoughts on Microsoft's Cashback program over at Thomson's Future of Search site. From the post:

....In essence, Microsoft has taken the affiliate model - where merchants pay channel partners for leads which turn into sales - and turned all of us into potential partners. If it sounds like a crass play to buy your search allegiance, well, it is. But Goto.com was crass too, and it turned into a multi-billion dollar market, the ultimate expression of which is Google. So before you judge it, it's worth thinking about a bit more deeply.

There's no doubt that with Cashback, Microsoft is attempting to disrupt the search marketplace. But there are only a few axes around which you can do that. One, you can disrupt the presentation of search. This is very hard to do, but it's happened before, and will happen again. Secondly, you disrupt the business model of search. And third, you can disrupt how search is created (ie, the secret sauce of relevance). There are startups along every one of these axes of disruption. But with last week's news, Microsoft is focusing on the second one (business model). Unless, that is, you read between the lines. That's when we see the beginnings of disruption along lines one and three as well. ....

.... Lost somewhat in the analysis so far, I think Farecast is a key part of Microsoft's strategy - it's a disruption along the first axis of search - how search is presented. Those of you who have read Searchblog for a while may recall my initial post on that site: Rip Me Off No More. It really struck a nerve, I had more comments on that post than nearly any other in the history of my site. Turns out, people really like a search engine that promises to 1. help them find the best price and 2. does it in a trustworthy, intelligent, and timely fashion. .....

... Is disrupting the business model by paying search customers when they buy something a good idea? I think it is. But it's not going to work unless we trust the search results in the first place. That's where Farecast comes in. In the short term, Cashback will probably goose Mircosoft's user loyalty numbers, which should also boost its share of searches overall. But longer term, the key to winning will be the integration of Farecast-like innovations into Microsoft's offerings. I'd look for these to come in the next year, if not sooner.

Let me know your thoughts...

Thanks for all the feedback on the new design. We're going to push it live this Sunday night and keep tweaking it, there were a ton of good suggestions and we can't get them all in at once. I prefer to launch and iterate, rather than try to get everything perfect.

Secondly, I am going to work on two pieces of writing this week. Both will probably be posted in full at the Future of Search site, but I'll summarize them here as well. The first will be a rumination on what the future might look like if a major like Microsoft of Yahoo opened its index fully (for a tiny bit of background, read this), and the second will be roughly titled "Is the Future of Search About Getting Paid?" That one will be my thoughts on Microsoft's recent news and its deeper implications.

So if you have thoughts on either, let me know!

I started FM three years ago because of what I learned starting Searchblog. And today, FM is giving back to this site. One of our engineers, Ivan Kanevski, who along with many others has helped me troubleshoot the site in recent years, told me that he'd done pretty much an entire redesign of Searchblog in his spare time. I looked at the comps and loved it. I was about to ask him to just push "publish" when I thought, wait a minute, I better ask my readers!

So here's the comp. What do you think? I for one love it. But I said that already, sorry.

Quick poll: Who said that?

This post caught my eye:

If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.

With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities "with diverse social, political, and legal systems."

Continue reading "Reader Sam Writes...." »

Wish I could tell you all about it, but the announcement is set for later this morning when I'll be on a plane to a meeting back in the Bay Area. So watch the NYT, the feeds, and here's a story with some details (but no analysis) on PC World or the Seattle PI. I spent a fair amount of time talking about this with execs up there and there's more than just a cash back angle to this story. More this weekend....when I have time to write. Suffice to say, Bill Gates is going to be on stage, a swan song of sorts. This is a big deal for the company, the start of something.

Air travel in the US is starting to feel like bus travel somewhere in Central America, at least from what I've heard. The latest sign that things are amiss? I sit down in my "business class" seat on Alaska and see this staring at me:

As many of you know, next month is our second Conversational Marketing Summit, this time in NYC. The line up of speakers is really fantastic. I'll be interviewing:

- Beth Comstock, CMO of GE
- Rich Silverstein, co-fonder of Goodby Silverstein
- Sarah Fay, CEO North America, Aegis Media Americas
- Wenda Millard Harris, Chair, IAB and President, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Gina Bianchini
Beth Comstock
Rich Silverstein
Sarah Fay

And also coming, either running discussions or presenting, will be:

- Clark Kochich, CEO, Ave A/Razorfish
- Jonah Bloom, Editor, Advertising Age
- Jeff Berman, President, MySpace
- Joanna Shields, CEO, Beb0
- Jon Raj, Chief Digital Officer, OMD
- Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu
- Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning

...and a ton of others, including brand managers from Kraft, GM, Samsung, Adobe, EA (a first ever look at Spore!) and many many more. It's going to be so cool.

We're close to sold out (we're limiting it to around 300 again, as we did last year), but there are still tickets available as of this writing. I think the hotel room block (at the Ritz Carlton Battery Park) is already sold out, but I am sure there are other places nearby to stay. This is all part of Internet Week, so a lot of folks will be around for that in any case.

So, what are the issues you want me to ask these folks? It's a very interesting time in the world of online marketing, that much is certain....

...It's bad for Google to do it.

An Indian man was arrested over the weekend for allegedly posting derogatory and vulgar content about Indian politician Sonia Gandhi on Google's social networking site, Orkut. 22-year-old Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid had posted his comments in an Orkut community called "I hate Sonia Gandhi" through an Orkut account associated with his Gmail account. With Google's help, local authorities were able to verify Vaid's identity and make the arrest.

Yahoo caught a lot of shit, including from me, when they helped arrest a journalist in China.

Check out the complete overview here, from Philipp.

...rich media, that is. Third party ad tags are now cool with Google on the AdSense network. That means mo' money. Look at the list of approved third parties:

* Advertiser ad servers: DoubleClick (DFA), Mediaplex
* Rich media agencies: DoubleClick Rich Media, Eyeblaster, EyeWonder, Interpolls, PointRoll, Unicast
* Research firms: Dynamic Logic, IAG Research, InsightExpress, Factor TG

Focus on the middle, my friends. The third line is to prove it out, the first line, well, they own DClick, and Mediaplex is pretty small. What's not there? Atlas. That's owned by Microsoft. I'm sure it was just a technical error.

I will be up at Microsoft this week, meeting with Kevin Johnson, President, and others during the company's Advance 08 conference. I am particularly looking forward to hearing what news comes around search, as Kevin has promised in a note to staff:

"On Wednesday, we will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model."

I will post what I learn by Weds. midday.

Joe Duck, in a post about blog ranking systems:

Ironically I think success has really diminished some formerly great blogs. John Battelle is one of the most thoughtful writers on the web but now he’s way too busy with Federated Media to keep Searchblog as lively as it once was.

Thanks for the kind words, Joe. I've been reading some of my earlier writing, and it's true that I don't have the time I used to to drill down and really think hard out loud. I still do it from time to time - probably about twice a month or so, compared to twice a week back in the day. I really do miss the process of working it out here, and I know over the next year or so, I'll be back to it. Thanks for keeping me honest.

Seems talks are on again and it's either required or in Microsoft's interest to release this statement today:

MICROSOFT ISSUES STATEMENT REGARDING YAHOO!

REDMOND, Wash. — May 18, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today issued the following statement:

“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties.

“There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”

Given that Yahoo is close to capitulating to Google and turning over its paid search, I sure hope they are considering this move (Soverture). Microsoft could buy the business (ie, pay what Google would make Yahoo right now), and together the two could hope to improve the results and earn into the deal.

FM has partnered with Chevy to create a site that pulls together the best of sites on the web covering all things green. I've found it a nice way to stay in touch with a subject I'm increasingly interested in. I use the feed to monitor stuff, and then click through when there's a story I want to engage in. Sure, it's an FM project, so all the regular caveats apply. But judge for yourself. And if you don't like it, well, tell me what we can do to make it better.

This is part of an ongoing trend I'm seeing, both at FM and certainly across the web, where marketers are providing a service to their potential customers in the form of supporting authentic media, as opposed to creating their own content and hoping it takes off. I like the trend.

Yet another example here.

Apparently there are all sorts of unofficial brand fan pages on Facebook. This story talks about how one of them, a fan page for Ralph Lauren, was disabled and transferred from the individual who started it to an "official" brand page on Facebook. As far as I can tell, this was done by Facebook at the behest of the brand. To Laruen's credit, it wrote a nice note to the owner (duplicated in the post) and offered him money for his troubles. But I don't think this is a very good idea. A brand should encourage fans to evangelize their brand, not buy them off and shut them down with a $200 gift certificate.

From News.com:

A post Thursday on Facebook's developer blog explains that the social network has suspended participation in Google's "Friend Connect" project, citing a violation of its internal terms of service.

"Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we've had a chance to evaluate the technology," the post by Facebook employee Charlie Cheever read. "We've found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service."

Now come on. You're telling me Facebook agreed to be part of something before understanding the architecture and flow charts of how data would be used?

REALLY?

No, not really. Later down in the piece a Facebook employee claims Facebook was really never involved in the first place:

According to (Facebook Chief Privacy Officer) Kelly, the social network never actually had a formal partnership with Google in Friend Connect, which allows owners of Web sites to add social features using the existing APIs from sites like Hi5, Plaxo, and Facebook. "There wasn't participation to start with. That was sort of a mis-impression that may have been formed by their release," he said. "We weren't briefed on how the Friend Connect product was going to work."

Sounds like a spat between pretend friends on Facebook....But....It's not clear to me that Facebook was ever part of Friend Connect. In any case, it's interesting to grok the design choices by Google, love that Facebook blue they've got going:

Yahoo 404 was a clever idea back when it debuted (more). I was at the game with Jason Weisberger, our COO, who is a great photographer, and after this post, he pinged me with this image:

"How the Giants view the Yahoo Reorg"
This was a year ago. When Yahoo was figuring it out...before...Microsoft and Ichan...

Over the years I have often pondered the connundrum of Google as a marketing driven company. On the one hand, this company is entirely driven by marketing - hundreds of thousands of businesses, small and large, marketing themselves through the global platform that is Google AdWords and Adsense. Let's not kid ourselves, Google is the most impressive and important development in the history of marketing since the invention of television. And I'm not overstating it. On the other hand, Google has made a point of how it grew without traditional marketing, how it never spends on marketing, how it's unique that way. And yet, it's become the most admired brand in the world! Witness: David Lawee, VP Marketing, last year in BizWeek:

Have you ever done any brand advertising just for Google? We do a lot of direct marketing. But not brand marketing.

Well, David, not true anymore. I've pointed this out over and over, but it's worth repeating anyway: Google is great at harvesting brand demand, but not so good at creating that demand. It's pretty straightforward: Demand creation = brand, Demand harvesting = direct response. Google = Demand harvesting.

But things are changing, slowly, in Google land, and the signs are everywhere. Spotted at today's Giant's ballgame, which I attended (good lord, how do you blow a six run lead, for goodness sakes):

Yes, that is Google, purchasing a sponsorship in the name of one of its applications, Google Maps, at the ballpark, on the strip of LEDs that festoon the upper decks.

You might call it a non-cpc banner display ad in the middle of the web site that is AT&T Park.

From a very early post, back when I used to write like Ars, or TC, or Om, or all those wonderful folks who now work with us at FM:

I've come to the conclusion that Google can no longer afford to avoid consumer marketing. In order for these services to really scale, to get to where they need to go, Google will have to start promoting them. It's unavoidable - even if you do have the best product in the world, you need to tell people about it before they get locked into other options - Yahoo, for example, promotes Travel, Photo, and other services it owns. That's what marketing is, after all. Sure, you probably don't need to market Google search, nor do you need to market in traditional ways. But you sure do need to promote Picasa if you want it to be anything more than a footnote in its space.

I dunno if you believe in global warming. But it's MAY 15TH fergoodness sakes. Look at the outside temp indicator on my car. Which is parked IN THE SHADE.

(image)
Yahoo's Search Monkey is released today. Not a moment too soon. My one word summary of what Yahoo needs to do to win: Open. Nothing new there, this is the rallying cry of Yahoo's senior leaders. But perhaps I should add another word: Open faster.

Today Search Monkey, where developers can take Yahoo results and rejigger 'em, opens to the world. It's a good idea. But it's not enough.

I think Yahoo should be far more radical. Yahoo should let folks play behind the curtain. It's one thing to give folks a feed of results and let them mash it up. It's quite a different thing to let folks play with the machinery that produces the results.

No. Way. In. Hell....will Google ever let you do that.

Which is why Yahoo should.

Yep, Yahoo should open the entire works to the world. Let anyone tune the way results are proffered. Now that's open.

BBtv has a thought-provoking piece on some guerilla art with regard to Google and its China policy. I've written extensively on the background (for more, here). if you want to get to the good stuff quickly (I understand folks are busy,) the piece is long-ish, head to 4.45 min or so.

Google overtakes Yahoo as largest site, and Carl Ichan launches a proxy battle against Yahoo. Ouch. Ouch.

Huh. This one I would not have predicted.

Mark Cuban is clearly drinking and blogging again.

How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index before Google Search was negatively impacted ?

Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ?

A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?

The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?

Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each, plus a committment from MicroSoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic. After all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo.

One big problem: No one would do it. Well, some would, but assuming that folks would be willing to be paid to screw over Google assumes folks 1. have no soul and/or 2. hate Google. I pray that for most folks, #1 is not true, and Google prays that for most folks, #2 is not true. So far, I think we're both right.

But hey, Mark, you have the money! Why not find out?!

One of the key themes this year at the Web 2 Summit will be how the web is addressing the larger limits of the world. Google.org is set up to do that, I applaud the investment they are making in solar. More here.

My father, Richard Battelle, turned 74 today. Happy Birthday, Pop!

I don't blog about family much, and today I realized, as I snapped this rather out of focus shot on my phone, that perhaps I should from time to time. If I truly believe in this whole Database of Intentions and search thing, I realize that this site, which is pretty much my main outpost on the web, should memorialize folks like my Dad. Up until this post, he didn't show up in Google. Life is precious, and he deserves an entry or two in the Grand Index. From my book:

What does it mean, I wondered, to become immortal through
words pressed in clay—or, as was the case here, through words
formed in bits and transferred over the Web? Is that not what every
person longs for—what Odysseus chose over Kalypso’s nameless immortality—
to die, but to be known forever? And does not search offer
the same immortal imprint: is not existing forever in the indexes
of Google and others the modern-day equivalent of carving our stories
into stone? For anyone who has ever written his own name into
a search box and anxiously awaited the results, I believe the answer
is yes.

Steve Ballmer might throw a chair after reading this:

Google's search business will pass Microsoft's Windows business by early next year (at the latest). Good thing Microsoft has another huge, wildly profitable monopoly: Office. Add that to the calculation, and Microsoft can breathe easy for a few more years.

I'm late on Powerset (I just don't have time to do the briefings anymore), but Mike has coverage here and Danny's is here.

What I find interesting about Powerset is the refinement, which Danny covers well. The interface (in particular the response to query) is much more grammatical and conversational. That's where the entire web is going, and it's cool to see an example of it.

Maybe only when it has to create products in response to market demand (ie new features for enterprise Google Apps), as opposed to engineer delight. Philipp has an interesting post/thread here.

Via Ars, news of a new BBerry 3G phone. I want one. I love my Curve, except...it chokes on all the mail (about 750 a day) and calendar items (about 60 changes a day) that it has to synch over the air. The phone is unusable for one to five minutes each time it wakes up from an extended period of non-use - the very same time that I need it most (like when I get into my car, have a conference call in two minutes, but have to wait for the little spinning hourglass icon to resolve). I sure hope the BBerry Bold fixes that. But, no matter. When it comes to phones, the BBerry is my Mac - I love to hate it, and hate to love it.

Great news developing over the weekend around data portability, though it remains to be seen how the implementations go.

Facebook Connect:

Today we are announcing Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to "connect" their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site. This will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook.

MySpace Data Portability:
MySpace, the world’s most popular social network, alongside Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter, today announced the launch of the MySpace ‘Data Availability’ initiative, a ground-breaking offering to empower the global MySpace community to share their public profile data to websites of their choice throughout the Internet. Today’s announcement throws open the doors to traditionally closed networks by putting users in the driver’s seat of their data and Web identity. The launch of the Data Availability initiative marks the first time that a social Website has enabled its community to dynamically share public profile information with other sites.

Google's "Friend Connect"

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social -- and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening's Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming -- picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

But the key is how this is implemented, as David Recordon points out w/r/t Myspace:

At the end of the day it seems that MySpace is trying to become a large centralized profile repository on the internet. One where information might be available but certainly not allowed to be actually moved outside the network's walls. A good try, but just as no one would like Microsoft own identity for the entire web with Passport I fail to see how others will let MySpace own all of the profiles.

Something going on here. And here. Always like to see Steve pondering things. And then the search driven queries in Matthew's post are great:

love:
working with Canadians
margaritas for lunch
when i know exactly what to do
buttered popcorn jelly beans
Trent Reznor’s lyrics
having lunch with my mom
the rain
my foster parents
Twitter

hate:
nitrogen
talking to my insurance company
airports
when i’m all itchy and stuff
those robotic voices
my work computer
deja vu
the Red Wings
Twitter

feel:
so lost
like i am cramming for a final
like i am being followed
bad but not guilty
extremely safe
old
like i’m on drugs, minus the high
a little lost
sick
exhausted

wish:
i were going to the ballpark
i was still asleep
i was outside
michigan had more job openings
i knew what bit me last night
i was never born
i could go back and punch myself
i was in nashville
people would do their jobs

I was at my 25th High School reunion last night at Polytechnic School. I always knew that place was special, filled with wicked smart people and amazing faculty. I was lucky to have gone there. Seeing so many old friends, swapping stories of glories past, it does get one into quite a melancholy place, in a good way.

Hence the early morning Pasadena gloom out the window feels just about right to illustrate the sentiment. Thanks, Poly, for putting on such a nice night. The map below shows the middle school, but scroll down a block to see the high school and the field where we played soccer and football (not always well).

Remember when I said this:

Expect display and video ads on the home page of Google very soon.

Well here's a summary from a Bloomberg story via IWantMedia:

Google May Run Display Ads With Searches

Google is considering running display advertisements alongside the results of Web queries for pictures, moving beyond text-based ads. "There's lot of potential for advertising revenue there," says VP Marissa Mayer. Google is seeking new revenue sources as its growth slows.

Great news for democracy:

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has withdrawn a secret demand that the Internet Archive, an online library, provide the agency with a user's personal information after the Web site challenged the records request in court.
The FBI sent a national security letter, or NSL, to the Internet Archive in November and included a gag order barring site founder Brewster Kahle from talking to anyone other than his lawyers about the request. Kahle, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to challenge the subpoena, arguing that the NSL program is unconstitutional, and the FBI withdrew the NSL on April 22.

The settlement between the FBI and the Internet Archive allowed Kahle to break the gag order, a standard part of an NSL request. The Internet Archive's challenge of the NSL is only the third case that the ACLU is aware of in which an NSL has been challenged in court, said Melissa Goodman an attorney for the civil liberties group's National Security Project.

"The NSLs basically allow the FBI to demand extremely sensitive personal information about innocent people without any prior court approval, often in total secrecy," Goodman said Wednesday.

I've covered this here, here, in my book, and a lot of other places (87 posts, according to Google. I must be on some list somewhere in the National Security offices).

In a news conference, Kahle had this to say:

"We see this as an unqualified success...The goal here was to help other recipients of NSLs ... understand that you can push back on these....Gags don't seem to be necessar. Gagging librarians is horrendous."

Danny also covers it here.

Danny and I have contracted with Thomson Reuters, a sponsor of Searchblog, to write a series of posts on the future of search. They've given us no guidance, just asked us to ponder the topic. This is my first post, "A search is not just a search," longtime readers will find it familiar, if updated. From it:

In the past few years, a significant new feature has crept into the results portion of this otherwise predictable interface. Called “universal search,” the idea is to incorporate more than simple HTML pages into the results. A search for “London restaurants”, for example, might bring up maps and local results, as well as videos, images, organized reviews, and of course web pages. Every major search engine, from Google to Ask, has incorporated some kind of universality into its search results.

But while universal search points the way toward a new approach to getting you the answers you seek, it’s a half step at best. The results change, somewhat, but the process is pretty much the same. You enter a query, you get a set of results. Not particularly new.

What I find interesting are entirely new approaches to the interface of search.

We'll be writing one post every week or so for the next six weeks. I hope by the end it'll be an interesting body of work, it certainly will be if you give me input on what to think about, and critiques of what I've written. Thanks!

I remember being 10, or thereabouts, sitting in front of my parent's stereo system, entranced by the albums they had collected in college. The system - tuner, turntable, and speakers - was a Craig, cheap, Korean, and dependable, an early indication of where the consumer electronics business was heading. I'd put on the albums they owned - Rachmanioff #2, Man of La Mancha, a lot of Kingston Trio - and listen, right up next to the speaker. I was entirely engaged - the albums were transits to another world, a world of music, no matter that it was entirely inconsistent with the world of a ten year old boy. I'm pretty sure the only new album my parents bought between 1953 and 1983 was the soundtrack to Cats, around the time I was a junior in high school.

But that stereo system, the turntable in particular, was my introduction to recorded music.

Now that entire world is dead, gone, history. 30 years after I was entranced, it's been eclipsed by the iPod, the cel phone, the Internet.

Fast forward to now. I look around my house, and I find my son's analog to my parent's music system. And what is it? In a word: Magazines.

I'm a magazine guy. My wife loves them too. We still subscribe to about a dozen of them, and they are all over the house. In particular, they dominate the bathrooms. As my son ponders his mortality on the porcelain throne or in idle moments in our living room, I wonder about the "music" those magazines are bringing to him.

And I wonder, how is the web bringing that music into the digital age? Just a thought, a note written down. For one thing I am certain of. In thirty years from now, magazines will be the albums of their time - an anachronism created for effect, but not a dominant medium of distribution for the music they contain.

I love having kids.

Via Paul, a chart of US vehicle miles over time:

Ah, Simplicity. What do you think? Methinks it looks familiar, as all have since Alta Vista days.