Category: Uncategorized

Give Me Your Data, Said the Spider to the Fly

(image) Very interesting news yesterday about Google Adsense and competing ad networks. From ClickZ: Google plans to open its AdSense network to other ad networks, potentially giving the already huge ad net access to display ads flowing through countless other networks. The firm yesterday said it will allow networks to…

spider-and-web.jpg(image)

Very interesting news yesterday about Google Adsense and competing ad networks. From ClickZ:

Google plans to open its AdSense network to other ad networks, potentially giving the already huge ad net access to display ads flowing through countless other networks. The firm yesterday said it will allow networks to bid via auction to have their ads appear on AdSense partner sites, like an exchange. Google is vetting several ad networks for certification, but would not name any of the networks. If accepted into the program, the networks would receive payment if their ads win the auction to appear on AdSense sites. The firm said networks will be able to target contextually or by placement. The company suggested the offering will help boost publisher revenues by increasing competition for ad placements.

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Don’t Be A Fan Platform Hater

Regarding this story in the New York Times: With Bloggers in the Bleachers, Leagues See a Threat to Profits (and related, my post on "Don't Be a Player Platform Hater"): I have such a rant in me on this topic but I simply cannot write it now, I'm way too…

Regarding this story in the New York Times:

With Bloggers in the Bleachers, Leagues See a Threat to Profits

(and related, my post on “Don’t Be a Player Platform Hater“):

I have such a rant in me on this topic but I simply cannot write it now, I’m way too Supposed to Be On Vacation. But suffice to say, you can do two things if you “own content” – like, say, football games (yep, that’s content). One, you can cut it all off and hoard it. Or two, you can be the oxygen in the ecosystem. The first allows you to profit but it kills your long-term community ecosystem and prevents, entirely, your product from growing as your supporting community wants it to grow – because in essence, you are refusing to allow your community to have a voice and point of view about your product. It’s YOURS, and you’ll LIKE IT THE WAY I WANT TO GIVE IT TO YOU!

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All Business Starts With A Community

Today I was on my way back to our house after dropping my kids off to camp, and I decided to stop by a local cafe for a quick coffee-n-chat. Now, in August, "our house" means a century-old family place on an island, an island that rather pugnaciously refuses…

small biz starts with a community.jpg

Today I was on my way back to our house after dropping my kids off to camp, and I decided to stop by a local cafe for a quick coffee-n-chat. Now, in August, “our house” means a century-old family place on an island, an island that rather pugnaciously refuses to allow large chain stores to set down roots. So it’s fair to say that this island is sort of a Galapagos of small business. There are no Mickey D’s, no Safeways, and no Starbucks. It’s all locally owned – nearly every single “year rounder” who lives here is a small business person.  

The local cafe I stopped by is a hangout – a place where the community comes to eat and drink coffee, to gossip and share information, to learn the latest, to connect. It’s a social network in its truest sense. It’s driven by content – the conversations and knowledge of the staff and customers, and it’s driven by community. Commerce is a by product of the two.

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Social Media Is Important, The Video

Hey, I really like the soundtrack. And it's f*ing true as well. My beef with this is this simple statement, about 3:42 in. "Social Media isn't a fad, it's a fundamental shift in how we communicate." True, to a point. What it really is, is the release of how we…

Hey, I really like the soundtrack. And it’s f*ing true as well.

My beef with this is this simple statement, about 3:42 in. “Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in how we communicate.”

True, to a point. What it really is, is the release of how we already communicate, but now at scale. It’s not a shift in *how* we communicate, it’s a step function in our *ability* to communicate. There’s an important difference there. One could argue that means a fundamental shift, but such a statement can be easily misinterpreted as meaning “something totally new in how humans think/work/communicate”, and I think that’s not quite right. It’s us, squared.

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Search Trends

I'm not going to grok this tonight, I'm too sea-addled (on vacation). But it seems a worthy read: On the Predictability of Search Trends by Google Research….

I’m not going to grok this tonight, I’m too sea-addled (on vacation). But it seems a worthy read:

On the Predictability of Search Trends by Google Research.

1 Comment on Search Trends

What’s Up With Feedburner?

For the best few days, I've been trying to edit the settings in my Feedburner account – the RSS feeds service that was once so useful, but since its purchase by Google, seems to have languished. Unfortunately, it seems I've forgotten my password (though I used the same one for…

FburnerFail.pngFor the best few days, I’ve been trying to edit the settings in my Feedburner account – the RSS feeds service that was once so useful, but since its purchase by Google, seems to have languished. Unfortunately, it seems I’ve forgotten my password (though I used the same one for Feedburner as many other similar services), and the user name I thought I always used is getting bounced back to me as not recognized. I’ve tried nearly every single variation of a user name, password, and email address I’ve ever had, and none work. Without user name or email, I can’t retrieve my password.  

Now the fun begins.

Searchblog’s feed was moved, I think, to Google by the deadline of late Feb. of this year. My engineering group at FM did it for me, which was very kind. Given that the user name and passwords they used to do the move seem to not work anymore, we started looking for some kind of help – it’s sort of odd that while my feeds seem to work, no one can log in to manage them. I read through the FAQ, and it said that if I was an AdSense publisher, my feed would be there. I am, so I logged in, but there was no feed I could find. Odd.

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On Using Search for Decisions

As part of BingTweets, an FM/Microsoft promotion blending the two services, I was asked to opine on the idea of how we use the web to make decisions. My first post has been up for a while but I managed to lose track of time and forgot to let you…

As part of BingTweets, an FM/Microsoft promotion blending the two services, I was asked to opine on the idea of how we use the web to make decisions. My first post has been up for a while but I managed to lose track of time and forgot to let you all know about it. I wrote a piece called “Decisions are Never Easy – So Far” – and have already written a followup piece, though that one is yet to be published. (And yes, I’ve asked them to make that picture smaller. Migod.)

From the first post:

If what you are looking for is a hotel room, a plane ticket, or something else in the “head end” of search results, plenty of sites aggregate tons of results for you. But as soon as you go a bit down the tail – like my example for classic cars – search becomes a pivot point for an ongoing and often taxing decision process. The opportunity, I think, is to figure out a way to support that process down the tail – saving us time, clicks, and frustration along the way. I see two paths toward that goal: one is creating applications on top of “ten blue links” which help me organize and aggregate the knowledge I process while pursuing a search query, and the second is making my searches social, so I can share the process of learning and learn from those who have shared – not unlike Vannevar Bush’s “Memex” concept.

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Google Search Share Declines

Back when I predicted this in January, I recall worrying I was calling it too early. Now it appears the timing was about right. From Mashable: …while Google grew from June to July, it still lost market share to its competitors – from 66.1% in June to 64.8% in July,…

Back when I predicted this in January, I recall worrying I was calling it too early. Now it appears the timing was about right. From Mashable:

…while Google grew from June to July, it still lost market share to its competitors – from 66.1% in June to 64.8% in July, a 1.3 percentage point drop.

From my prediction: 3. Google will see search share decline significantly for the first time ever. It will also struggle to find an answer to the question of how it diversifies its revenue in 2009.

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Caffeine: A Fundamental Rewrite of Google, A Shift to Real Time

Matt Cutts points to a video interview (embedded above) on Google's Caffeine infrastructure update. "It's a pretty fundamentally big change" Matt says. What I'd like to know is why and in response to what changes on the web. Of course, the major changes in how the web works are…

Matt Cutts points to a video interview (embedded above) on Google’s Caffeine infrastructure update.

“It’s a pretty fundamentally big change” Matt says. What I’d like to know is why and in response to what changes on the web. Of course, the major changes in how the web works are clear: Real Time Search.

In this post (and/or this one) I said:

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Tell Me This Ain’t Facebook, Er, Twitter, Er, Both.

Google's new iGoogle upgrades smacks of Facebook. Read this: we're excited to introduce social gadgets for iGoogle. Social gadgets let you share, collaborate and play games with your friends on top of all the things you can already do on your homepage. The 19 social gadgets we're debuting today offer…

Google’s new iGoogle upgrades smacks of Facebook. Read this:

we’re excited to introduce social gadgets for iGoogle. Social gadgets let you share, collaborate and play games with your friends on top of all the things you can already do on your homepage. The 19 social gadgets we’re debuting today offer many new ways to make your homepage more useful and fun. If you’re a gaming fanatic, compete with others in Who has the biggest brain? or challenge your fellow Chess or Scrabble enthusiasts to a quick match. Stay tuned in to the latest buzz with media-sharing gadgets from NPR, The Huffington Post, and YouTube. To manage your day-to-day more efficiently, check things off alongside your friends with the social To-Do list gadget. Your friends are able to see what you share or do in your social gadgets either by having the same gadgets on their homepages, or through a new feed called Updates. Updates can include your recently shared photo albums, your favorite comics strips, your travel plans for the weekend and more.

Updates, Status Updates, Tweets….whathaveya. It’s all the same play – a social platform for connecting to others. More:

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