That's how Fred describes Google's new blog search, a supposed "Techmeme (or Technorati or Blogs.com) – killer". It's a very good description of Google's services….
It’s a very good description of Google’s services.
Over at the Amex Blog we're starting a conversation about how this financial crisis effects small business. The site has given me a chance to think more deeply about what it means to run or be part of a small business – none of us here in the Valley…
…But that doesn’t mean I don’t wake up in the middle of the night, worried about what might be coming next. Many of us in the Internet industry are veterans of the last big bust – 2000-2002 – and we can still feel the pain of losing it all (as I did with the Industry Standard), or at the very least, having to cut back to the bone and wait it out. And this time, something feels different. This crisis is not limited to an overinvestment in telecom and Internet, this time our entire financial system has been brought to its knees. How can you not be worried when Congress is in an extended session to determine the best way to spend nearly a trillion dollars, money that, in fact, we don’t actually have (we’ll be borrowing it, given our national debt)?
It’s a well worn saw that as goes small business, so goes the economy. If all of us start laying off employees and cutting back expenses by a third, our economy will go into a deep funk. If, on the other hand, we all declare faith in the future and start acting accordingly, our businesses will become the engine of economic recovery.
Read More(image credit Marin IJ) I've just posted my latest missive on the American Express Open Forum blog, where I Think Out Loud about my local hardware business, which just might be forced out of business. It's titled "Think Local, Act Conversational – It Just Might Save Your Business." From…
(image credit Marin IJ)
Corbet’s Hardware is my neighborhood hardware store, it’s something of a local legend. Let’s see what happens when I put it into Google (I omitted the apostrophe, as most folks do).
Interesting. First up is a link from “zinsser.com”, which appears to be some kind of a shellac company (no, really, a company that makes shellac). Corbet’s probably carries their products – the Zinsser site lists its distributors – but man, what on earth is that doing being first? Clearly, Corbet’s has not exactly joined the conversation economy quite yet.
Read MoreThanks to Adobe, who sponsored this work, I pulled together some sketches for the book I keep talking about. It's blog posts from Searchblog, a talk I gave at Cisco, work I've done for the Amex Open Forum blog (which just won a Mixx award!), with Powerpoint and video….
Here's Boy Genius' take on the first phone to use Google's Android platform….
(image) After seeing the clearly obvious story about texting being a bad thing to do while driving (er, no sh*t), I just had to write that headline. Sorry. I text with the best of them. I love the concept and efficiency of short messaging. But the interface is deeply…
(image)But the interface is deeply stupid. I see these commercials from carriers extolling speed texting, and think to myself – “We’ve already invented an incredibly efficient way to get thoughts from our brains to others – it’s called speech.”
Why I can’t simply say to my phone: “Text Michelle” and the phone gets ready to send a note to Michelle. Then I say “Mich I’d rather hit Left Bank than Ambrosia for din love you bye” and the damn text goes to Michelle?
Read MoreI missed this blog post last week from one of Google's most senior VPs of Product, Susan Wojcicki. Titled "Ad Perfect" it starts: Google's advertising business was founded on the core principle that advertising should deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. This is…
Google’s advertising business was founded on the core principle that advertising should deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. This is very similar to our mission in search, and, like our colleagues in search, those of us on the ads team are constantly striving to achieve better results. We have hundreds of thousands of advertisers who collectively have millions of products and services, and out of that vast amount of information our goal is always to show people the best ads, the ones that are the most relevant, timely, and useful (and, from the advertiser perspective, measurable). Achieving this ideal has been difficult since the early days of ads, but now, with the Internet, it is within reach.
Then comes the nut graph:
Read MoreLast Fall we took a big step at FM and launched our own conference series focused on the media business, in particular, the marketing piece of the media business. Called The Conversational Marketing Summit (CM Summit for short), our inaugural event was a hit – though it didn't sell…
But given the speakers – Kevin Rose, Sarah Fay, Steve Hayden, The Ninjas, Suzie Reider and tons more – I should have known it’d be fine. We then repeated the event in New York this past June, and that was really a blast – we were joined by the CMO of GE, CEO of Ning, CEO of Hulu, and tons of case studies. And that one sold out early.
Now I’m proud to announce our line up for our second Fall conference, and offer SearchBlog readers a hefty discount to book. Here’s a selected list of our speakers:
Read MoreThere is always a backlash against anyone calling anything the Web OS, mainly because, as folks point out quite accurately, the term "operating system" technically applies to the stack on top of PC hardware that interfaces between that hardware and a user's intentions. Here's an example of what I…
Here’s an example of what I mean – A Web OS? Are You Dense? In this story, the author, who I don’t know but I certainly do respect, gives Arrington a ton of shit for “not knowing anything about computers.” Well, color me dense because, yes, in fact, there is a Web OS, and it will be built on top of the Windows/Mac/PC OS, and that’s just fine with me, because I could care less about technical purist theories of what an OS is. I don’t care if it’s built on top of Windows, which is a “classic OS”. In fact, Windows, as I recall, was built on top of DOS for most of its career, so what does that make Windows? Not an OS? And DOS was built on top of some arcane machine language, I am sure. And we can keep dancing on the head of definitional pins, but to me….
To me, operating systems are computer-mediated realities that help us get stuff done. And to my mind, that makes Chrome an OS. A system that lets me operate sh*t. End of story.
This latest post is some sketching for a longer riff I'm eager to dig into. I love the fact that I can do sketch out loud thanks to American Express. Here's the first few grafs: Over the past several posts I’ve been talking about the role of search, conversation,…
Over the past several posts I’ve been talking about the role of search, conversation, and media in your business. While not explicit, each of these posts was about one thing: Marketing.
Marketing is one of the most misunderstood practices in business today. For most of us, marketing is about convincing potential customers that our product or service is worth their money. And while that’s certainly party true, it never struck me as the whole narrative.
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