Month: January 2011

Remember Googlezon?

Lately I've become a bit obsessed with predicting the future. Not the present future, as in one year from now – I do that every year, after all. But the long-ish future, as in ten to twenty years out. That kind of a time horizon is tantalizing, because it's…

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Lately I’ve become a bit obsessed with predicting the future. Not the present future, as in one year from now – I do that every year, after all. But the long-ish future, as in ten to twenty years out. That kind of a time horizon is tantalizing, because it’s within the reach of our reason – if only we play the right trends out, and anticipate new ones that could defensibly emerge.

I’ve often found that predicting the future is a waste of time, but reporting the future is a worthy endeavor. More on that in another post, but I learned this distinction from my mentors an co-founders at Wired back in the early 1990s.

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Last Week’s Signal Weekly: 1.21.2011

Aw heck, two weeks ago I promised to round up each week's Signal every Friday, and then last Friday I went and forgot to do it. So here'tis, a day or so late but no less the punchy for it. (There was no Monday Signal as it was a holiday)….

FMsignal-sidebar.gifAw heck, two weeks ago I promised to round up each week’s Signal every Friday, and then last Friday I went and forgot to do it. So here’tis, a day or so late but no less the punchy for it. (There was no Monday Signal as it was a holiday).

Friday Signal: A New Page at Google

Thursday Signal: It’s Breakfast Time

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2 Comments on Last Week’s Signal Weekly: 1.21.2011

The InterDependent Web

When I wrote Identity and The Independent Web last Fall, I was sketching out the beginnings of what I sense was an important distinction in how we consume the web. This distinction turned on one simple concept: Dependency.

Of course, the post itself was nearly 2500 words in length and wandered into all sorts of poorly lit alleys, so one could be forgiven for not easily drawing that conclusion. But since that Thinking Out Loud session, I’ve continued to ponder this distinction, and I’ve found it’s become a quite useful framing tool for understanding the web.

So here’s another attempt at defining one corner of the “Independent Web,” as distinct from the “Dependent Web.” In my original piece, I state:

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Me On Google Change

I did a short bit on Bloomberg (they have some amazing studios in SF on the water, had not been there, good to see my old pal Cory, who is now working there). Here's the video:…

I did a short bit on Bloomberg (they have some amazing studios in SF on the water, had not been there, good to see my old pal Cory, who is now working there). Here’s the video:

http://cdn.gotraffic.net/flash/BloombergMediaPlayer.swf

6 Comments on Me On Google Change

Whoa!!! Larry Page To Take Over As Google CEO

This just in…via WSJ: Google Inc. said co-founder Larry Page will replace Eric Schmidt as chief executive, a surprise change atop the Internet giant. Mr. Page will take charge of day-to-day operations as CEO starting April 4. Mr. Schmidt will become executive chairman of the company, focusing externally on…

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This just in…via WSJ:

Google Inc. said co-founder Larry Page will replace Eric Schmidt as chief executive, a surprise change atop the Internet giant.

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Does Google Favor Its Own Services?

Seems so. I've written about this a lot, so much that I won't bother to link to all the stuff I've posted. It was the basis of a chapter in the book, where I pointed out that (at the time) Google claimed algorithmic innocence, and Yahoo, on the other hand,…

Seems so. I’ve written about this a lot, so much that I won’t bother to link to all the stuff I’ve posted. It was the basis of a chapter in the book, where I pointed out that (at the time) Google claimed algorithmic innocence, and Yahoo, on the other hand, was cheerful in its presumption that Yahoo services were the best answer to certain high value searches (like “mail”).

Now comes this study, from Harvard professors no less, which pretty much states the obvious. Check this graph:

search favorites 1.png

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Make My Baby – Is The Baby Facebook? Updated: No, It’s Myspace…

Over the weekend, as I pondered an eMarketer report estimating Facebook's advertising revenue at $1.86 billion (seems low), I wondered to myself: When will Facebook start to drive the kind of widespread graymarket activity which proved Google's immense worth? Or will it ever? Allow me to explain. Back in…

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Over the weekend, as I pondered an eMarketer report estimating Facebook’s advertising revenue at $1.86 billion (seems low), I wondered to myself: When will Facebook start to drive the kind of widespread graymarket activity which proved Google’s immense worth? Or will it ever?

Allow me to explain. Back in the days when Google and its rival Overture were on the rise (this would be pre-IPO for Google, so around 2002-3), an army of small time arbitragers were gathering, leveraging Adwords (and in 2003, Adsense) to make money in any number of ways. But the basics were pretty easy to grok: Say you could purchase a click on Adwords for the term “cute kitty” for fifty cents. And say further that when someone clicked on your Adword, they’d show up at a third-party site, and 10 percent of the time, they’d follow instructions to fill out a mortgage application. And say that further, you could sell that filled-out application to a lender for $15.

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The Signal Weekly: 1.14.2011

Most of you know by now that I do a short summary of the day's news over on the FM Blog. This year I'm going to try to do a Friday summary of the week's Signals here on Searchblog. Here's the first of the year: Monday Signal: The CES-less…

FMsignal-sidebar.gif

Most of you know by now that I do a short summary of the day’s news over on the FM Blog. This year I’m going to try to do a Friday summary of the week’s Signals here on Searchblog. Here’s the first of the year:

Monday Signal: The CES-less Hangover

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4 Comments on The Signal Weekly: 1.14.2011

No, In Fact, We Haven’t Seen This Movie Before

Thanks to monster private financings from Groupon and Facebook, as well as the promise of major IPOs from Demand, LinkedIn, Zynga and others, the predictable "watch out, here we go again" buzz is rising up in the press. This article from Ad Age, subtitled "With Billion-Dollar Dot-com Valuations Back…

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Thanks to monster private financings from Groupon and Facebook, as well as the promise of major IPOs from Demand, LinkedIn, Zynga and others, the predictable “watch out, here we go again” buzz is rising up in the press. This article from Ad Age, subtitled “With Billion-Dollar Dot-com Valuations Back in a Big Way, It’s Time for Alarm Bells to Start Ringing,” is typical of the bunch. With a “we’ve seen this movie before” tone, it points out that most of the successful companies of today had models that were tried ten years ago, and in the main they failed.

But I’d like to point out a couple pretty obvious differences between the dot com busts of a decade ago, and the companies that are now earning billion dollar valuations. To wit:

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Yahoo IPO vs. Facebook IPO

From Paid Content, a tale of two very different eras: Yahoo In 1996 Age: 1 year Annual sales: $1.3 million Net loss: $0.6 million Total raised in IPO: $33.8 million Market value at close: $848 million Employees: 49 Facebook In 2012 Age: 8 years Annual sales: $1.2 billion-plus Net income:…

From Paid Content, a tale of two very different eras:

Yahoo In 1996

Age: 1 year

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