John Battelle's Searchblog

...it's driven by the same old media love affair with distribution lock in. I've been on about this ever since I studied Google in 2001: Media traditionally has gained its profits by owning distribution. Cable carriage, network airwaves, newsstand distribution and printing presses: all very expensive, so once you employ enough capital to gain them, it's damn hard to get knocked out.  

The web changed all that and promised that economics in the media business would be driven by content and intent: the best content will win, driven by the declared intent of consumers who find it and share it. Search+Social was the biggest wave to hit media since the printing press. And the open technology to make better and better experiences has been on a ten year tear: blogging software, Flash, Ajax, HTML 5, Android, and more and more coming.

But the iPad, just like the iPhone, is designed for vertical integration and distribution lock in. Apple is building its own distribution channel, just as it did with iTunes, and media companies are falling over themselves to make an app for that. Why? Well sure, for once, it's sexy and cool and hip. That's why everyone loved the Wired demo.

But the real reason media companies love the iPad is the same reason I don't: It's an old school, locked in distribution channel that doesn't want to play by the new rules of search+social. Sure, you can watch a movie on it. Sure, you can read a book on it. And sure, you can read a publication on it. But if you want to use the web natively, with all the promise that the web brings to media? Not so much. Apple will include a browser, of course. But will media you find through that browser be able to interact with the iPad platform so as to bring full value to you, the consumer? Nope. Not unless that same media is approved by Apple and makes it into the iPad app store.

And that's why I don't like the iPad. Don't tell me, as a media maker, what I can make and how I can leverage the technology in my audience's hands. And don't tell me, as a media consumer, what's OK for me to interact with, and how.

Yep, I really don't like what the iPad augurs. And I hope, in the end, it's consigned to what it should be: A sexy version of a portable DVD player-cum-Kindle. Nice to have. Not a game changer. Certainly not revolutionary. Unless you're longing for yesteryear, when owning distribution meant owning audiences. Oh, and by the way, Traditional Media Folk: This time Apple owns that distribution channel, not you.

Harumph.

(image ) A couple of days ago I riffed for bit on the convergence of conversation in our industry around mobile, local, real time, and social. Sometimes this stuff needs an easier name to identify it all, so I'm going to go with MOLRS (MObile Local Realtime Social).  

Why another acronym? Because honestly, it reminds us to link all these concepts together. Often folks ask me for advice about their "mobile strategy." I remind them that if you are going to think about mobile, you have to think about social, local, and real time. Same for when someone asks about a real time strategy - real time usually means connecting through a social graph, often through a mobile platform and in a local context. And so on. So "MOLRS" is a reminder to think about all aspects of this next evolution of the web.

Another reason - and this is a stretch, but it's Friday - is the rather obscure reference to third molars, or wisdom teeth. We humans get our "wisdom teeth" at about the same time we become true adults - when we're ready to take our place in society. These molars come in in our late teens or early 20s - post adolescence, as it were. And that's about where the web is right now. The emergence of the MOLRS web indicates a third wave of Internet evolution - first was the flat HTML web of the 1990s, second was the burgeoning post search web of 2000-2010 (Web 2.0), and now we're in the third wave - what Tim and I coined as "WebSquared" last year.

Anyway, the funny thing about wisdom teeth is that they often get impacted, and have to be pulled. Evolutionary theory implies that we used to have larger mouths because we needed the third molars to process more plant materials (I'm not making this up). Now, I'm already stretching a metaphor here, but the truth is, the web is at a similar impaction (or inflection) point. Truth is, we have way more information to chew on than we can digest, and with MOLRS, we are creating tools to bring that information into our heads more efficiently. Physically we don't need our third molars, but on the web, we most certainly do.

As these MOLRS develop, any number of companies (both web native and pre web) are battling to control them, in particular their chokepoints - the mobile platforms, location services, identity services, social graphs, payment systems, and distribution channels. Read Tim's "War for the Web" piece for more on this. It's a struggle for positioning, dominance, and market riches. In fact, it's exactly this battle that we intend to make the focus of the Web2Summit this year, as we're at a key point in the architecture of the Internet - will services "lock in", or will they connect? More on that later, once we've finalized the Web2Summit theme.

In the meantime, as the web gets its wisdom teeth, there's bound to be a period of pain and readjustment. I doubt "MOLRS" ("MOLORS?" "MLRS"?) will catch on, but it's a start, anyway....

Other Friday linkahoy:

EUREKA: The Clean, Cheap, Backyard-Friendly Solution To All Our Energy Problems (SAI) Waiting for version 2.0 on this one...

If I Were CEO of MySpace... (AdAge) If I were CEO, I'd integrate Facebook Connect, end of story, then do a lot of what this author is saying, in particular, focus on speed and utility.

DIY LBS: Create Your Own Foursquare (AdAge) Ning for location based services. Hmmm.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet (JESS3) An agency that did a cool video on web stats. Already out of date of course (Twitter stats are off by 20mm tweets a day!)

Facebook Patents The News Feed (Updated) (All Facebook) Lots of buzz around this. I don't think it's going to be a big deal.

Twitter's Ad Plan: Copy Google (AllThingsD) Well, sure sounds like Tweetsense.

Leads for Less with Social Media (eMarketer)

Google Adds “Nearby” Local Search To Options Panel (SEL) Location, location, location....

I'm spending the balance of today working on a longer piece, so here's some short links from yesterday, which I spent mainly on a plane without wifi (how odd is it to be bummed that my plane did not have wifi?).

Congress Adds Location-Based Mobile to List of Privacy Concerns (ClickZ) We're not even close to the end of the conversation our culture needs to have about the impact that MOLRS (MObile Local Realtime Social) technologies will have on our social contract.

Google real-time search adds status updates from Facebook Pages (VentureBeat) A big deal in that Google was not playing nice with Facebook on a number of fronts. This is a start, I'm still waiting for Facebook Connect integration with Buzz.

Foursquare's First Television Commercial Airs Tonight On Bravo [Video] (TC)

US Ad Spend Falls Nine Percent in 2009 (Neilsen) Not that we didn't know last year blew.

Social media study: 91% of mobile users go online to socialize (SMBC)

Jean-Philippe Maheu Named Worldwide CEO at Publicis Modem (ClickZ) Congrats to JP!

Meredith Builds Up a Sideline in Marketing (WSJ) This is not news, but Meredith got a lot of attention for their agency biz at the IAB earlier this week. Another sign that the lines between agency and media company are blurred.

Teaching Your Business to Market Itself (OpenForum)

I Prefer a Multiplex Relationship (MarketingProfs) As marketers become publishers, expect them to form relationships with each other to co-promote. Happens a lot already, but will happen a lot more online.

Search and Display Advertising Synergies (eMarketer) Always happy to pass along a link that reminds us the two are very linked disciplines.

Today finds me in Chicago, making the rounds of a great city that I don't get to often enough. Meeting with senior folks at agency holding companies like Omnicom and Publicis, as well as clients like McDonald's, I find this four-word mantra coming up, over and over: "Local Mobile Real Time Social".

Fascination with these buzzwords is not news to you all, as readers here, but to have a moment when major brands are all looking for solutions in the same space is rare. It reminds me of the same vibe 15 years ago, when the four-word mantra was "world wide web whaaaa?."

I think another way to parse this is to simplify: Social *is* local, social *is* local, social *is* mobile. The shift here is from disconnected to connected. From dictation to conversation. From isolated to social.

And that's a very important shift. It's not merely a marketing shift. It's not merely a media shift. It's a cultural shift in how we use artifacts of our own creation. Our society is leveraging technology tools and platforms to extend the ways we already know how to connect, thanks to 100 million or so years of biological and social evolutions. We're learning to be social beyond the restrictions of region or affiliation, and this will have significant impact on how brands are created, nurtured, destroyed. Also, we're reconnecting our social selves after major disruption due to technologies like airplanes, suburbs, highways, and mass media. There's a book in all this somewhere....

To my mind, the (local mobile real time) web is reconnecting the world, and the possibilities for how those connections can create value are inestimably large. It's why we're in this business. It's why I love it.

Today's interesting linkage:

How long can you survive without mobile or Internet access before you break into cold sweats? (LifeScoop) Just for fun.

5 Landing Page Tips To Boost Your Conversion Rate (SEL) Sometimes this basic stuff needs to be remembered!

Experts: Internet Will Enhance Our Intelligence (MarketingProfs) Really?! Remember this debate?

Clear Channel, OMD and Illinois Lottery Team for Chicago Billboard Traffic Updates (ClickZ)

Online Marketing Summit explores social media, search and content ... (B2B) COverage of my OMS talk.

Time Spent on Social Networks up 82% Around the World (Brian Solis)

How to Make a Great Facebook Fan Page (And Get More Fans) (Open Forum) I'd add that you must not see it as an island. Circulate across the entire social media ecosystem....

Over the past few days I've been at the IAB conference, and if the mood in the hallways (and bars) is any indication, the online media industry is in a much better place - better than anytime in the past two years, most certainly.

The IAB is an industry association which represents, broadly, "companies that sell advertising." The Board (on which I serve) includes senior leaders from firms as diverse as traditional publishers (NYT, IDG, NBC) to ad networks (24/7) to portal/platforms (Google, MSFT, AOL). And, of course, innovative newer firms like FM.

The IAB annual meeting has grown to become a quite well attended event, growing 30% from last year to 650 or so pretty senior folks in the online media space. It's pretty "sell side" in nature - more publishers than marketers - but the shift this year was in the number of senior agency people attending. It's clear agencies are starting to understand the importance of connection to audience, just as publishers do. A shift that without doubt will continue over the course of this year.

Stories worth grokking:

It's Twitter!!!!!!!! (Yahoo + Twitter) (SearchBlog) This won't hurt Twitter's growth.

Branding Sometimes Means Being Human (WebProNews) Yep. Who said that?!

At IAB Annual Meeting, Talk of New Money for Digital Ads (Clickz)

Google's Microsoft Moment? European Antitrust Review Looms (Searchblog again)

Wired On Google’s Algorithm (SEL) A worthy S. Levy piece (link here)

Publishers: It's Time for an Intervention (AdAge) I am not sure the problem is as B&W as Russ frames it, but worthy thinking here.

Can Twitter Make Money? (TechReview). Yes.

Just got word of this deal, news of it around the blogosphere:

Yahoo is announcing a partnership with Twitter on Wednesday that will bring the services of both companies closer together. Under the partnership, Yahoo users will be able to read their personal Twitter feeds on several Yahoo sites, including the company’s home page, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Sports. Yahoo users will also be able to directly update their Twitter status from Yahoo and easily share content that they see there with their Twitter followers. Yahoo will also begin including real-time Twitter content on a variety of its sites.

So, Yahoo's answer to Buzz? (Irony alert).

In past writings I've intoned that Google was following the path of Microsoft in many ways, and suggested that at some point it may face the same kind of scrutiny - and potential enervation - as Gates&Co did back in the late 1990s with the DOJ. Now comes news from the WSJ that the European Union has decided to open an investigation into the company, though the allegations seem less serious than those which ultimately forced Microsoft to permanently alter its practices. Not surprisingly, one of the complainants is a subsidiary of Microsoft in Europe.

From the piece:

Google Inc. is set to announce later Tuesday that European antitrust authorities have opened a preliminary probe into complaints made against it by three European Internet companies, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry into allegations of anticompetitive behavior is at an early, fact-finding stage and may not result in any action. But it appeared to be the first time that European antitrust authorities have examined Google's conduct outside of a merger review. It also comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of Google in Europe, where the company has an even more dominant position in search advertising than it does in the U.S.

At the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting today, and it's packed. Follow it on the Twitter hashtag #iabalm. Will keep this Signal focused on the links again.

FM Honored with IAB Sales Excellence Award (FM Blog) Well I had to crow, didn't I? I'm so proud of the work we do.

Networks Wary of Apple’s Push to Cut Show Prices (NYT) Apple is increasingly acting in a manner that I believe will isolate it from the Rest of the Media World.

By Creating Content, These Shops Are Creating a Legacy Beyond Ads (AdAge) Advertising must be content. Valuable content.

Lowered Expectations: Web Redefines 'Quality' (AdAge) Quality is so damn subjective. I have a rant in me on this.

Mobile Advertising Needs Transaction Spur (Reuters) Ads on mobile still nascent. Yep. But man is it exciting.

The next generation of ad serving for online publishers (Google Blog) Google revises DFP. Also see Google Tweaks DoubleClick's Ad Server (Clickz)

Measuring Tweets (Twitter blog) Watch this space. This is the beginning of a roll out of ad products from Twitter, I'd warrant.

Could the Toyota Recall Crisis be Helping the Brand? (Mashable)

Google Hackers Linked to Chinese Govt. (SAI)

ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media (Brian Solis)

Will Pure-Play Agencies Survive? (eMarketer)

Twitter just posted a shot across the bow of those who claim the service is not growing anymore. Measuring tweets per day, the post gives us a glimpse into the growth of the service.

Er....up and to the right. From the post: "Tweet deliveries are a much higher number because once created, tweets must be delivered to multiple followers. Then there's search and so many other ways to measure and understand growth across this information network. Tweets per day is just one number to think about. We'll make time to share more information so please stay tuned.."

It's good to see this from Twitter, and I'm looking forward to more. For my thoughts on what more might be, see my post from last week Friday Signal: What Marketers Want from Twitter Metrics.

Vacation was great. Too short. As usual. And there was plenty going on that I missed. So here are some stories from the past five or so days that are worth your attention. I'm at the IAB board and annual leadership meeting Sunday and Monday, so writing may be light. But I'll be back at it soon.

The BrandFinance Global 500 (Brand Directory) Google #2. Walmart, Coke, IBM, Microsoft...

Google CEO Woos Suspicious Mobile Industry (Reuters) "Schmidt's remarks were met with skepticism and some hostility from an audience already worried about economic recession and the prospect of becoming "dumb pipes" that merely carry valuable content, including free Internet calls."

Google Hires Barry Salzman to Preside Over Display Ad Units (Clickz) "Barry Salzman, a veteran of DoubleClick, will be Google's first head of media and platforms, with oversight of YouTube, the Google Content Network, DoubleClick's ad serving business, and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange." Watch this space for sure. I'll be writing more about the implications of various moves on Google's part in media soon.

Hello HTML5 (Google Gears Blog) Pay attention to standards wars. They are boring, because they are standards, but in the machinations of giants around standards, great narratives are hatched. (Why do you think I called that magazine The Industry Standard?!).

Outlook Gets Social with LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace (Microsoft Outlook blog) It's not all Buzz, Microsoft would like you to know. And the truth is this: Social must be integrated into all platforms, bi-directionally, where ever one works and plays. If platforms don't connect - they don't win. This is the issue I have with Buzz, at least so far.

Google Launches Powerful Mobile Shopping App for Android (Mashable) Google Shopper is the kind of app that all of us geeks really like. I wrote about this over five years ago. And here it is.

How Unique Is A Unique Visitor? (A VC) Fred mulls what a real unique visitor really is.

Google: “With Buzz We Failed To Appreciate That Users Have Differing Privacy Expectations” (SEL)

How to Deal With Negative Feedback (Open Forum)

After Google Bowl 2010, What Next? (Ad Age)

Machine That Prints Body Parts (Economist) Just making sure you are paying attention.

The Convergence of Advertising and E-commerce (O'Reilly)

Bare bones today. Links I found interesting:

Ad Network Exec: Mobile Content Still Driving Display Ads

2009 US Digital Year in Review: ComScore

Google Gets The Facebook Treatment: Privacy Group Files FTC Complaint Over Buzz

MTV Networks Taps Quantcast To Power Ad Targeting Efforts

Nearly 75 Million People Visited Twitter’s Site In January

Brands With the Most Engaged, Loyal Customers

Windows Phone 7 Series: Everything Is Different Now

I am with my family this week, as it's the kids' winter break. So posts will be light, and Signals may be weak. Here's a roundup of the long weekend's news, which was dominated by Google's continued tweaks to Buzz, and ongoing analysis of samesaid social app:

Google Names Facebook, Twitter as Rivals (Dow Jones via IWantMedia) Clearly anticipating social search and the power of social on its business model, as well as the launch of Buzz, Google in its 2009 annual report finally acknowledges what we all have known for some time.

Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How (Mashable) A positive take on the service. I'll call Buzz a success when I feel compelled to use Gmail so as to use Buzz. I don't think that is going to happen, though, as most likely, Buzz will open up and become part of the larger Facebook and Twitter ecosystem through third party apps (one hopes).

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://waxy.org/random/text/pov_top_websites_1999.pdf (Waxy via KK) Kevin Kelly, a key member of our merry band of co-founders back at Wired, sent me this link. It's Time Magazine's top 100 websites for 1999. Kevin wryly pointed out that the site I ran at the time, TheStandard.com, was ranked higher than Google.com. How things change, eh?

Attention Agencies: What Happened To Contact Reports? (Jones&Bonevac Blog) My old pal Casey Jones opines on a practice that seems to have been lost in the world of agencies.

The Power of the Audience (Anil Dash) A fellow well worth reading.

5 Things FedEx Has Learned about Managing Relationships through Social Media (Open Forum) Love to see examples of brands doing stuff well.

How We’re Using Social Media on Our Mobile Phones [STATS] (And more Mashable) Let's not only focus on the phones, even as this stuff is fascinating.The screen is just where we are now. In a few years, we'll be thinking about new interfaces to mobile beyond screens.

Yesterday I stopped by Twitter HQ to see Dick Costolo. Dick recently moved to Marin (my home turf) and took Twitter's COO job. I'd say that taking such a job means Dick's hair is constantly on fire, but if you know Dick, you know that's really not an issue. (He's level headed, he's a pro, and, well....let's just say he doesn't wear his hair long).  

Among other things (FM has partnered with Twitter in the past, and will continue to do so), we discussed how Twitter might crack the code around explaining its user base, how those users engage with the service, and how the service is growing - especially given the recently hot (and to my mind not well understood) topic of *if* it's growing. Dick assured me it is - echoing a recent tweet from founder Evan Williams.

Much has been written around the topic of Twitter's growth, but the shorthand is this: You can't rely on Comscore or web-based measurement services like Compete or Quantcast, because they do not measure the entire Twitter ecosystem, which is distributed in nature. For example, these services do not measure use of Twitter's API, which accounts for more than half of the service's traffic (through apps like TweetDeck, Twitteriffic, Exectweets or Stocktwits, for example). They also don't measure mobile usage, and some don't measure international traffic, which Costolo said in some countries is growing "straight up" - quite like it did in the US early last year.

Regardless, these services do show a flattening of traffic to the US domain, which if not explained, will continue to cause consternation and questions around whether the Twitter ecosystem is indeed continuing to flourish. And when the service begins working directly with marketers, those questions will need to be addressed. Not to mention the issue of inactive accounts - folks who join but don't understand how to extract value from the service - witness Radiohead, as one example. A lot of folks come to the service, tap the microphone, ask "is this thing on?", and then leave. Lists and a revamp of "suggested users" was the start of the company's fix to this issue, and Costolo told me he has a team focused on next steps.

Dick also mentioned that there are a lot of folks who use Twitter to consume information, rather than broadcast it. Those folks are valuable audience members, but it's hard to prove consumption without a metric to validate it (IE, number of times a user pulls a Twitter feed or visits his/her page).

While I don't have any news to report on whether Twitter will be releasing its own stats, Dick shook his head emphatically when I asked him if the recent Royal Pingdom post about growth in overall tweets was directionally correct.

According to that post:

According to our research, Twitter is as of December processing more than one billion tweets per month. January passed 1.2 billion, averaging almost 40 million tweets per day. This is significantly more than Twitter was processing just a few months ago.

While understanding "tweets per day" is a fine metric, it's not very deep. For example, perhaps a very small number of folks are creating most of the activity (a problem that Digg has had, though it does get a lot of "hummingbirds" - folks who come and consume one quick page, then leave). A more valuable metric would be "active users", a standard that both Facebook and MySpace have promoted over the years (as one might expect, MySpace hasn't really promoted that particular metric much lately).

Dick agreed, but doesn't have anything to announce on that measure, yet. We did discuss how having such a metric will be important for the company once it rolls out monetization. (That Twitter intends to work directly with marketers is certainly no secret.)

Other valuable measures we discussed were engagement and resonance - or how a meme travels through the Twitter ecosystem, through influencers, retweets, and co-incidence (IE, lots of folks tweeting the same idea/URL/meme at the same time). Brands are particularly interested in understanding this ecosystem, for crisis management, identification of brand influencers, as well as "listening" (and responding) to the conversation on topics related to their products and services. Many listening/engagement services exist (Radian 6 , Converseon, etc.) but Twitter itself could be doing a lot more to surface useful data that services like these can leverage. (And, btw, if you want to create TweetSense, having these measures will be crucial).

I expect more from Twitter soon on these fronts. If you pay attention to Twitter's blog, you'll have noticed a recent post titled "Super Data." Study this and you see an EKG of sorts for ads during the Super Bowl. At one point, 19% of all tweets were about Doritos. That's co-incidence for ya.

The post noted: "There is real value in being able to measure the reach and influence of those topics in real time, and we in the analytics team are looking forward to a lot more where this came from."

If that's not a hint that more is on the horizon, I don't know what is. What kind of measurement and metrics would you like to see from Twitter?

Meanwhile, here's your Friday linkage:

Why Brands are Becoming Media (Mashable/BrianSolis) Yes yes yes. I have been on about brands = publishers for a very long time. Yes.

Should We Clone Neanderthals? (Achaeology.com) Look, sometimes I need to toss one of these in here to see if you are paying attention. So should we?

Survey: 1 in 5 marketers to shift 30% of traditional marketing budgets to social media in 2010 (Socialmedia.org) Again, I just like stories that confirm what we all are eager to see happen.

Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places (AdAge) Brands need to get more emotional in their decisions. I call that being human!

Spatial Search: The Next Frontier (Bing) Cool new stuff from Bing.

comScore Releases January 2010 U.S. Search Engine Rankings (Comscore) And...Bing is gaining share again.

Yahoo Display Strategy Turns To OPA Ad Formats In Effort To Drive Premium Prices (PaidContent) Well, yes, FM adopted some of the OPA standards, and it's nice to see Yahoo follow suit, but we took those units and made them better by making them social.

The Numbers: Super Bowl Ads, Social Media (MarketingProfs)

The news broke today that Google will be buying Aardvark, a human (and algorithm) powered social search engine that I have written about quite a bit (early last year, most recently, all). I've also featured the service's founders at both Web2 and the CM Summit.)

I've confirmed the news in an email with CEO Max Ventilla.

I can't say I'm surprised by this news. Aardvark's founders and advisers have strong ties with Google (Ventilla worked there, and a key adviser was at Kaltix, which was purchased by Google).

To me the critical question around this move is this: Will the Aardvark acquisition be a Dodgeball, or will it be a Applied Semantics? With Dodgeball, Google bought a promising startup in a strategically important space, but instead of integrating the technology and committing, it let it languish (the founders left and started Foursquare). Google later determined it must play in the space, and rolled out any number of features inside its mobile, map, and even Gmail products that mimic Dodgeball's early features.

With Applied Semantics, Google again bought a promising startup in a strategically important space, but this time it successfully integrated the company's technology and team, driving a crucial new business - AdSense - to become a critical and game changing business for the company.

So which is Aardvark? I'm not sure anyone at either company is sure, but Google is spending a reported $50 million to make sure no one else can find out. I do know Max well enough to say that his goal would be to see Aardvark integrated into the main search interface, such that when you ask Google a question, it would give you the option of "asking a human" through the 'vark service.

Now that would be pretty cool.

Not to mention, 'vark uses Facebook Connect as its core social graph for question answering. I certainly hope that will stand as the company integrates.

The parties can't speak on the record about this yet, but another hope I have for this acquisition is that some of that 'vark DNA about humans being critical to search - not as data points, but as part of the solution, connecting one to the other - will somehow infect the Google genome. We'll see....

I'm a bit reticent to jump into this, as I'm not sure you all care that much, but I've got a decent reason for writing about Buzz (yesterday's piece) again today.  

First, I've seen a piece (Calacanis) proclaiming Buzz the second (third? fifth?) coming of social. Facebook will "lost half its value" due to Buzz's arrival, Jason opines. I think this is silly. Then again, I seem to think a lot of things are silly. Pretty soon, I'll be chasing kids off my front lawn, the way I'm going. And I've not used Buzz, nor will I, as I'm not a Gmail user nor do I plan on becoming one. So don't listen to me if you are a Gmail addict who wants to recreate your entire social experience in that medium. Go nuts. I'm all for more options.

Anyway. The larger issue to me has to do with Google's approach to customers. The Google mantra has always been "we design for our customers." Here's the official declaration on Google's corporate philosophy page (the first two points are also in the image above):

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow. Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we're designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line.

For the most part, Google has hewn closely to this strategy. But it has a major blind spot when it comes to Facebook and Twitter - Facebook in particular. I can understand ignoring Twitter - one could argue it's not ubiquitous and therefore can be left off the feature set of new products. But ignoring Facebook when it comes to social search and status update is akin to ignoring oxygen when it's time to light a fire: it's silly (there's that word again).

Furthermore, it's not designing for your customer. Just about every one of Google's customers has invested significant time and energy into their Facebook social graph. Launching social search (my take here) and Buzz with the pretension that Facebook doesn't matter can not be explained away (at least, Google isn't trying). What Google customer wouldn't want at least the option to have their Google searches filtered through their Facebook social graph? And what Google customer wouldn't want to at least have the option to import their Facebook connections and data feeds into and out of Google Buzz (not to mention publish into Twitter)?

Google made a clear decision to exclude Facebook from both social search and Buzz, and to my mind, that decision was made due to competitive issues - the company's "own internal goal or bottom line."

Now, tons of companies make similar decisions every day of every week. Fine.

But if you're going to claim to be a different kind of company, one that is unique in philosophy and management approach, you can't continually chip away at your core philosophy and not expect to be called on it by the very consumers that built your brand in the first place.

Oh, and by the way, it might be time to take a look at the second point in that Corporate Philosophy: "It's best to do one thing really, really well. We do search."

...and Nexus One, and Android, and Docs, and Doubleclick, and YouTube, and broadband and wifi networks, and blogs, and music, and books, and shopping/checkout, and Buzz, and Gmail, and.....anyway.

I think Google is an extraordinary company. But as I predicted way back in January, it's time for it to mean something besides search, and for the company to own up to acting, well, like a company that protects its own interests, even ahead of, at certain times, the interests of its customers. It's not like any of us are paying for Gmail, after all....

Onwards to the linkage:

IPG Goes with Microsoft's Atlas for Ad Management (ClickZ) The politics between Microsoft and Google continue to play out in the agency holding company battlefield.

Making the Most of Earned Media (eMarketer) Content is key to platform-based marketing programs.

Needed: A New Science For Valuing Content (AdAge) And content companies need to figure that out.

MySpace CEO Van Natta Was Fired by News Corp. Digital Head Miller in Late Afternoon Meeting (D) I like Owen. I like Jon. I don't like news like this. Bummer all around.

TV Ads Less Effective, Budgets Shifting Online (MarketingProfs). Well, sometimes it's nice to just sit back and watch it happen.

Live From Yahoo SearchSpeak 2010 (TC) Yahoo's not given up on search, despite the Microsoft deal. The company is still innovating.

Love Stinks: 5 Parodies of Google’s Romantic Super Bowl Ad [VIDEO] (Mashable) You know, this is why I love them interwebs.

Whoa cowboy, yet another massive industry Google will try to reinvent? Apparently.

From a blog post announcing the initiative:

We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

Here's the Very Cool part:

Openness and choice: We'll operate an "open access" network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we'll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.

And if those trials work out? Comcast is not going to like it. Sounds like Google will OEM the network to third parties to market to consumers. IE - compete with your local cableco. Innaresting.

So Google went and did it - it integrated a whole mess of social and local features into Gmail, wrapping the whole thing into a product burrito it calls Buzz (Yahoo has got to be fuming, if it has any more fumes left, that is).  

The first-day response is somewhat positive - mainly due to the huge installed base that Gmail brings to the party.

However, I am not so certain this is going to work. And my reasons remain the same:

1. Buzz does not let you publish out from Gmail to Twitter or Facebook. So for this to compete, you have to build yet another network of followers/friends - and do it through Google services. Not many of us use Google services for social purposes. That's a mismatch.

2. Related, but worth repeating: Buzz does not let you do pretty much anything at all with Facebook. Buzz tries to find your friends and connections through algorithms that watch what you do on Google services, then lets you add more, but through the lens of Gmail. There are two things wrong with this: Algorithms, and email. Facebook didn't depend on either to create its initial value. Instead, it let humans pick other humans, which honestly, is what social is all about at its core.

(The images are from streaming coverage of the Buzz event from Cnet.)

The reality is, Facebook has won the social graph war. Google taking on Facebook for the social graph is akin to Facebook taking on google in web search. IE, silly. Google should incorporate Facebook Connect into Gmail/Buzz asap, and then build on top of it with its powerful services and algorithms. THAT would be a win.

In fact, one very well informed source of mine inside the non-Google socialsphere (IE, one of the major competitors) tells me he thinks Buzz will in fact play out, over the coming months, as *good* for his and other similar companies.

Well, time will tell. Meanwhile, there's plenty of stuff worthy of your attention this Weds. morning (and I'll include some tasty stuff about Buzz as well):

Introducing Google Buzz (Official Google Blog)

Google Buzz: What It Means for Twitter and Facebook (Mashable)

With Buzz, Google Plunges Into Social Networking (NYT) Plunges in? Well, for the fourth or fifth try...

Google Buzz? MSFT, Yahoo Say ‘Been There, Done That’ (SEL) Yep. And they failed.

Google Buzz re-invents Gmail (Tim O'Reilly) Tim is a big fan. This is meaningful to me, as he's my partner on Web 2.

Twitter: Now more than 1 billion tweets per month (Royal Pingdom) Twitter continues to grow in usage.

FM Audience Takes Off – Now #4 in Conversational Media (FM) We're behind just three others - Facebook, Myspace and Blogger. Look, I get to promote FM on my site to a certain extent. And I am very proud of the company's growth and financial performance. OK, enough said.

Social Media Top Online Priority in 2010 (Marketing Profs) Yep. This is one of the reasons FM is so well positioned.

A Touch of Romance (Adverblog) I may well do this for my valentine - create your own romance novel cover.

The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul (RWW) I am a very big fan of academic research based on large social data sets.

Management Secrets Of Grateful Dead (The Atlantic) Are you kidding me? Finally, they get their due.

Oh MY GOD Bonnaroo lineup is announced. Anyone who has followed me for some time knows that I sorta kinda totally love this festival.

Tuesday, we hope, things will get back to normal after Super Bowl fever had subsided. Google is set to turn Gmail into a status updatin' machine, which positions it to compete directly with Twitter. I'll be posting this Signal an hour or so before the details emerge. I have an FM Board meeting this morning, (don't fear, it's all good...). So click this link for news of Google's Gmail moves.  

Meanwhile, the past 24 hours has brought, as usual, all manner of linkworthy schtuff:

Loopt and Mobile Spinach Team Up for Location-Based Deals (Mashable) I'm watching this space. Hence the next item....

Beyond The Badge: Big Media Brands Strike Foursquare Deals (AdAge) It's early yet in this space. I expect a significant acquisition by one or two of the majors. Foursquare, for those of you playing at home, was started by folks who sold Dodgeball to Google, watched it go nowhere, left and started over. Of course, if they or others sell, it will retard (yes, I said it) development of a truly native marketing medium. Which would be sad. But not atypical. (Also, see this Bits post, and my post on "checking in" last week.)

Even After Super Bowl, Google Plays the Reluctant Advertiser (ClickZ) Look. I know I promised to write more about this earlier, but I kind of lost my zest for the topic. Google laid its cards on the table. Now lets see if it decides to keep playing the game. I doubt it.

Social Today Feels Like Search A Decade Ago: Lots Of Noise And Lots Of Spam (TC) Indeed, a good point. But not entirely apples to apples. The larger observation is entirely correct: There is a large, very large, opportunity in uniting all these competing platforms. However, it means folks have to play a bit more nicely. The way it's playing out right now, I don't see it being solved in the near term. NB: I don't think the regular joe six degrees pack has the same spam problems as Mike. That could change...

'Conversationalists' Climb Social Technographics Ladder (MarketingProfs/Forrester) (image at top left) Jeez, conversationalists? Whodathunk.

Social Media Marketing Best Practices (eMarketer) A plug for their paid report, but hey, the post is worth reading even if you don't want to pay.

Super Bowl Ads: Hulu’s Winners and Losers [STATS] (Mashable/Hulu) Google did pretty well. So was it worth $6 million? Even Google can't tell you that.

Google leaps language barrier with translator phone (Times of London) Fun. Early. But fun.

That's the rumor (BI via WSJ). The idea is to let Gmail become your portal into status update.  

It won't work, period, unless it connects to Facebook and Twitter. And so far, as I've pointed out before, Google won't do that, at least, not yet, and and certainly not in the way it should be done.

Google is simply not understood by consumers to be a place where they can connect with friends and colleagues. If it intends to become that, it has some DNA mutation in its future.

This one should be interesting.  

Was it really as simple as that? Google CEO Eric Schmidt took to the blogwaves after the Super Bowl yesterday to explain Google's surprising decision to purchase an ad thusly:

We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.

If there's one thing Google's consistent about, it's the company's approach to PR: it always sounds reasonable and intellectually defensible, but it's never really the whole story. Google didn't set out to run a Super Bowl ad, that's for sure. But somewhere in the last five or so years, it became the kind of company that would. And that's the point. I mean....is Eric serious when he implies somehow he needs television to find a "wider audience." I mean, seriously?!

I'll have more thoughts on Google the Super Bowl ad runnin' company after the Monday hoo-ha of meetings ends. Er....stay tuned.

Meanwhile, some other news worth grokkin' as you sip your Monday morning beverage:

Enhanced Cooperation with Facebook on Search (Bing blog) - Or, put another way, Facebook and Microsoft Cancel Display Ad Relationship (ClickZ).

Moms on Facebook Are Savvy to Marketers [STATS] (Mashable) Well what do you know, Moms and marketers are a match, and what do you know, Facebook Emerges as News-Content Provider (Marketing Profs). Facebook is ubiquitous, folks. The question now, is what they do with that fact....perhaps a Super Bowl ad? Meanwhile, there are now books on the company (NY Review).

How To Get Our Democracy Back (Larry Lessig, the Nation) A rather outrageous proposal from one of technology's best policy minds.

Plentiful Content, So Cheap (NYT) Carr marvels at Demand's model.

FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited (Cnet). Watch this story. I will be (and have been for years).

Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy (Technology Review) Just cool.

Remember when I wrote about the new "Search Stories" ads for Google's core search offerings?

In that post, I noted "It's truly a brand campaign: Google is not selling anything here other than its own brand - that ephemeral sensibility that resides between its customers' ears." Well I've got a pretty reliable source who is telling me Google plans to hit the branded advertising big leagues this Sunday - the source says Google's "Parisian Love" ad (below) will air during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.

Now that would be a true turning point for the brand - a brand that, for nearly ten years, dismissed brand advertising as a waste of money ("The last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America," in Eric Schmidt's words back in 2006), and built its entire fortune on turning the advertising model upside down.

I emailed folks at Google for comment today, and a spokesperson said "Watch the Super Bowl!" That ain't a no, folks. (It's not a yes, either, but...)

I can't find the ad in this lineup of SuperBowl advertisers, but I'd not be surprised if Google had asked CBS to keep their name out of the pre-game hype (my source was told Google was keeping this quiet). File this as a strong rumor for now, as I can't get a secondary confirmation - though Google's response was pretty telling.

Needless to say, I'll be Tivo'ing the game....Here's the ad.

UPDATE: After I emailed Google for comment, Eric Schmidt tweeted this out:

Can't wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said "Hell has indeed frozen over.")

Eric, you trying to scoop my scoop?! Who ever would have thunk it?

Friday is all about the biggest event in television marketing - the Super Bowl. This year (as I've noted here before) I'm struck by how many campaigns are integrated with longer term social marketing platforms. That's putting the investment to good use - promoting what I call a media annuity that will pay back all year long. However, much of the press and some of the marketing still gets it backwards - they see the Super Bowl as something that social media "builds buzz for." Nope. It's the other way round, folks. Your brand, which after all is what you're buying the ad for, right? - your brand lives all year long on the platform you create. That platform is social, mobile, real time. The Super Bowl ad should drive that platform, not BE it.

Super Bowl Advertisers Are MIA on Facebook (ClickZ)

Google to Super Bowl Markters - Give Us Your Ads- and Your Dollars (Forbes)

How Social Media Is Changing the Super Bowl (Mashable)

And in other Friday linkage:

Google Maps To Add “Google Store Views” (SEL)

Googler Quitting To Run AOL Media "Will Be Missed" (AOL, GOOG) (SAI)

Cisco Crushes The Street, We're In The 'Second Phase Of Economic Recovery' (CSCO) (BI)

New Facebook Redesign (HuffPo)

Astronaut Tweets Beautiful Earth Images From Space (Mashable)

Apple prohibits App Store devs from using location-based ads (MacNN) Hmmmm.

Today is all about checking in. Not so much driven by anything in today's news, but every week or so I'll just go off based on what's on my mind - driven by the news, to be sure, but also by the bricolage of a lot of inputs over time.   

And over the past few weeks, I've been developing a thesis around the concept of "checking in." Now for those of you not playing along at home, "checking in" is the terminology for "declaring where I am and what I'm doing through mobile devices and social media platforms."

As usual, I'm a late bloomer in this new trend. I joined Foursquare, one of several check-in-based services, about a month ago. I've started checking in at work, the gym, various restaurants and local businesses. The service has a strong game element, with social capital earned for checking in, or doing more than one thing in a day, or unlocking action-based "badges," or repeat check ins over time (Foursquare makes you "Mayor" of a location if you check in there the most. Competition amongst Foursquare nerds is pretty intense for those Mayorships.)

Other services that employ checking in include GoWalla, Yelp, and MyTown. Twitter is adding location services as we speak, which is just another way of saying it'll support checking in shortly (although most check in services drive announcement tweets already).

And while it may not be clear as to why, I fully expect Google and Facebook to follow suit by enabling some kind of check-in behavior shortly.

Here's why. To my mind, checking-in is simply another use case on the evolutionary path of search. As I said in the book, each search query is a declaration of intent - you are telling that search engine what you want, and hoping the engine will return a result that satisfies that declared intention.

Checking-in is a powerful new field in the database of intentions. It is a social declaration that "I am here" and, in a more nuanced way, "I am open to appropriate responses/conversations based on the fact that I am here." Whereas search intent is clearly a request for a specific response, check-in intent is less specific - and hence more open.

I expect this to evolve quickly. I can imagine a time, and it ain't far off, when we set our mobile devices to automatically check-in at our favorite places, and expect that that check-in will reward us with localized and personalized offers, discounts, and social capital of some sort or another. Furthermore, I expect we will soon expect that if we set our device to "discovery" mode, local businesses (and random strangers too) will be able to ping us with enticements and announcements of all kinds.

Instrumentation of this new social/local/mobile reality will be initially clumsy and fraught, but not for long. The use case is simply too compelling. It's already happening in various ways - the Chipotle burrito app, the Polo store. Imagine what happens when McDonald's adopts it? Game changer.

-----

In other news:

Is Amazon Building a Superkindle? (NYT) Yes, it bought a multitouch technology company, and yes, it's going to get fun out there in ApplevsAndroidvsAdobevsAmazonLand.

Snickers Uses Social Media, SEM to Support 'Lead Spot' in Super Bowl Ads (ClickZ) More proof that social marketing is platform independent/supportive.

He Calls Google A Vampire, But Mark Cuban's Mahalo Is Doing The Sucking (SEL) Oh SNAP.

Unclear ROI Impedes Mobile Marketing (MarketingProfs) You want proof of ROI? It's coming. BTW, it's also already here in terms of higher CTRs, if that's your thing....(as anyone at AdMob or Microsoft Mobile Ads will tell you).

The IAgency: How the IPad Will Change the Advertising Business (AdAge) Or: Why We Should Emulate the Dying Publishing Industry. Yes please...do.   

Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet (Brian Solis) Anyone who saw Mary Meeker at Web 2 last year already knew this but it's worth repeating...

Foursquare Plots Its Business Model (BI) Tick, tick, tick....BOOOOOM.

SlideShare Launches Channels for Businesses and Brands (Mashable)

Traveling to a marketing conference in Scottsdale today, so here's the roundup from last night's best headlines:

Facebook Marketing Goes to the Super Bowl (InsideFacebook) Over and over again, we are reminded that this is the year the Superbowl ad becomes an adjunct to an ongoing social media platform. Good.

More Than Half Of Mobile Pageviews Are To Social Networking Sites (BI) This in no way is a surprise but it's worth reiterating: social drives mobile drives social drives mobile drives location drives mobile drives content consumption drives brands.

3 New Ways to Measure the Social Web (Mashable) These are certainly *not* new (we've been measuring these and more for years at FM), but any evolving consensus on measurement is worth pointing out, and reinforcing.

Time Spent on Social Media Surges (MarketingProfs) You want metrics proving the social web is huge? Here's more.

Top Marketing Innovation Killers (iMedia) Well, don't kill innovation. Just don't make silly mistakes. And make sure your partner can deliver. That's certainly my focus.

Google before you Tweet is the new think before you speak. (TheNextWeb) Funny.

The folks at Aardvark have posted an ambitious paper over on the 'vark blog. Titled after Brin and Page's original “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”, the paper presents the Aardvark engine and, in its authors' words: "describes the fundamental differences between the traditional “Library” paradigm of web search — in which answers are found in existing online content — and the new “Village” paradigm of social search — in which answers arise in conversation with the people in your network."

I have read most of the paper, which has been accepted at WWW 2010 (it reminded me of all the search papers I read in preparation for writing The Search), and found a lot worthy of interest.

First, the paper's authors, both of whom have worked at Google, clearly have a sense of potential history here, in that they not only crib Google's original paper's title, they also mirror the first line (substituting "Aardvark" for "Google", of course). Now that's some b*lls. Of course, when Larry and Sergey first presented Google, they couldn't even get their paper accepted (it took three tries, if I recall correctly. Someone should write a book about that...).

Second, it's unusual for a Valley startup to lay out its architecture and technological specs as willingly as Aardvark has. There's a lot of math in here that I couldn't parse even if I had the will to try.

Third, we learn some cool things about how Aardvark works. Check this quote out: "...unlike quality scores like PageRank [13], Aardvark’s quality score aims to measure intimacy rather than authority. And unlike the relevance scores in corpus-based search

engines, Aardvark’s relevance score aims to measure a user’s potential to answer a query, rather than a document’s existing capability to answer a query."

Also interesting: " this involves modeling a user as a content- generator, with probabilities indicating the likelihood she will likely respond to questions about given topics. Each topic in a user profile has an associated score, depending upon the confidence appropriate to the source of the topic. In addition, Aardvark learns over time which topics not to send a user questions about..."

There's a lot more like this in the paper, it's worth reading. The authors even did a test of Aardvark results against Google, with the results being something of a push (see the last page for details). Not bad for an upstart service.

Lastly, we learn a lot about the service, thanks to a number of charts, including something about Aardvark's growth, which I had not really anticipated. It's up and to the right, as you can see from the chart.

A quick set of headlines today, more coming later, after a morning PTA meeting....

Google Is Wrecking DoubleClick, Says Unhappy Client (GOOG) (Business Insider) I'm a DBCLK client and this does not ring true for me, though of course there are always issues with any major business relationship.

Forget Common Sense: Social Media Communicators Must Have Empathy (Shannon Paul) I feel this one.

The Bestest 2009 Industry vet Marc Ruxin always nails it in his annual round up of the best films and music.

Google's tablet UI concept pictures (Neowin) Oh Lord, it's a tablet war.

CBS Sells Out Super Bowl Commercials (LA Times) Well that's not surprising - it's rare these days to find a place where you can launch a real platform program.

Happy Monday, folks. Today is all about poker. Over the weekend, the buzz was hearsay about Steve Jobs' distaste for Google and its 'don't be evil' mantra, as well as for Adobe and its Flash technology (this is all second hand reporting from Wired and other sources, repeating what Jobs reputedly said at a Friday town hall for Apple employees. The story became instantly reported "news" all over the blogosphere.)

Whether or not the sources got their quotes right, what's really interesting is the Texas Hold'em playing out across the computing, media, and Internet industries. Apple, Google, Adobe, and others (including Microsoft) are playing their hands as each market card is revealed. New standards are tested (HTML5), old standards are questioned (Flash), new devices are introduced (Droid, iPad), and old alliances are shattered (Google, Apple - it was less than a year ago that Schmidt was on Jobs' board, recall?).

I love it. Our industry has never been more fascinating.   

Meanwhile, other interesting headlines:

IPad Can’t Play Flash Video, but It May Not Matter (NYT) See above and my prior Signals from last week...

Google news Jeff Jarvis talks with Eric Schmidt at Davos and reports his findings, including that Google is toying with making AdSense splits "transparent."

Who is the MVP of the Marketing Bowl: Social Media or Super Bowl Ads? (Forrester) A research note that details how social marketing is finding its footing in large platform plays - IE, don't spend that money on a SuperBowl ad if you're not going to amplify it through social media, or, honestly, vice versa: the SuperBowl ad should be a platform for the social media program, not the other way around.

Tesla Files For $100 Million IPO (BI) IPOs filings are starting to appear left and right, but this one caught my attention because it's Elon Musk (of various Web startup fame) and it's electric cars/motors.

The Birth of the Virtual Assistant Siri's CEO quotes a guy name Battelle to show how his new product fulfills the future of search. Clearly the guy's been drinking over the weekend.

Microsoft to Test Ad Exchange Business (AllThingsD)