Content Wins in the Traffic Game
August 16, 2009
One of my clients was excited to learn that his original content was pulling more hits than content pulled from RSS sources. I agreed. Original content, about a specific topic, frequently updated, and correctly tagged acts like a magnet. This “secret” was revealed by Hitwise in a report by Robin Goad’s write up “Hitwise Intelligence.” This discovery and chart will get quite a bit of attention in the traditoinal publishing sector. My take, however, is that the horse is out of the barn and it has been converted to a bed and breakfast. Web sites with original content will be the winners. Traditoinal publishers have not solved the business model challenges that makes Web publishing such a difficult undertaking and one that returns less cash than some organizations expect.
Stephen Arnold, August 16, 2009
InQuira Steps Up Its Marketing
August 16, 2009
InQuira landed a deal with Blue Coat. Blue Coat is an application delivery network company. InQuira natural language search system will support the Blue Coat Application Delivery Network. The article “Blue Coat Deploys InQuira’s Knowledge Solution” reported:
“Web self service is rapidly becoming the new channel of focus for customer support, especially given the current economic climate. We are seeing a lot of companies struggling with disparate platform technologies to try and deliver the right content, while agents still have cheat sheets pinned to their monitors and cubicles,” said Mike Murphy, CEO of InQuira.
A happy quack to InQuira.
Stephen Arnold, August 16, 2009
AP Craves Wikipedia Allure
August 15, 2009
For some reason the Nieman Lab write ups keep plopping into my RSS reader. Today’s story is “How The Associated Press Will Try to Rival Wikipedia in Search Results”. I have a tough time figuring out if the writer (Zachary M. Seward) is for the AP’s plans or against them. What I found most interesting was this statement:
Google juice goes in, swishes around, doesn’t come out.”
I don’t know what this means, but Mr. Seward has worked long and hard on his articles. The addled goose will sit on the sidelines and wait to see what happens to the AP’s revenues. With traffic, the AP gets revenue if it plays its AdSense cards correctly. Without traffic, the AP will have to find another way to generate the type of money that it enjoyed during the salad days of the newspaper, radio, and TV businesses. Wikipedia? Honk.
Stephen Arnold, August 15, 2009
Tweets Are Mostly Pointless Babble
August 15, 2009
I enjoy Mashable. The articles come at topics in a way that is youthful, enthusiastic even. I noted Jennifer Van Grove’s “40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble.” I was surprised that * only * 40 percent of the message traffic was pointless. However, I think Ms. Van Grove reveals that she has not spent much time in monitoring traffic for intelligence and law enforcement entities. With that experience in her bag of tricks, she might reach a different conclusion about the “noise” in the Twitterstream. “Pointless” to one person might be evidence to another. Youth has its advantages but understanding the value of filtering traffic may not be apparent to an avid sender of Tweets.
Stephen Arnold, August 14, 2009
Visualization and Confusion
August 15, 2009
Visualization of search results or other data is a must-have for presentations in the Department of Defense. What’s a good presentation? One that has killer visualizations of complex data. The problem is that sizzle in one colonel’s graphics triggers a graphics escalation. This is a briefing room version of Mixed Martial Arts. The problem, based on my limited experience in this type of content, is that most of the graphics don’t make much sense. In fact, when I see a graphic I usually have zero idea about where the data originated, the mathematical methods used to generate the visual, or what Photoshop wizardry may have been employed to make that data point explode in my perceptual field. Your mileage may differ, but I find that visualization is useful in small doses.
To prove that what I prefer is out of date and that my views are road kill on the information superhighway, you will want to explore “15 Stunning Examples of Data Visualization”. Stunning is an appropriate word. After looking at these examples, I am not sure what is being communicated in some of these graphics. Example: Big fluctuations.
If you want to add zing to your briefings, you will definitely get some ideas from this article. If I am in the audience, expect questions from the addled goose. Know your data thoroughly because I am not sure some of these examples communicate on the addled goose wave length.
Stephen Arnold, August 14, 2009
Coveo Discloses Client Wins in Q209
August 14, 2009
Coveo is a technology company with some interesting products. I learned about the firm when I poked into the origins of the desktop search system called Copernic. The firm flashed on my radar with a snap in solution for SharePoint. I saw a demonstration of email search that provided features I had heard other vendors describe. Coveo implemented them; for example, maintaining a complete email archive for the user’s desktop computer so if he or she lost a mobile device, the mail was recoverable.
Getting information out of Coveo has not been easy for me. I received a link to a Marketwire article that provided me with some useful information, and I wanted to snag it before the data gets buried in the digital avalanche that cascades into the goose pond each day.
Coveo disclosed several interesting customer wins:
- Goodrich Corporation, a Fortune 500 company
- Odyssey America, an insurance firm
- The Doctor’s Company, an insurer of physicians and surgeon.
Coveo also formed alliances with New Idea Engineering and a number of other integrators around the world.
A happy quack to Coveo and a wing flap to the person at Coveo who provided this information.
Stephen Arnold, August 14, 2009
PageSuite and Its Digital Newspaper
August 14, 2009
PageSuite Ltd., http://www.pagesuite.com, is powering the new http://mydigitalnewspaper.com, the “world’s first” digital newspaper aggregator and search suite. Now you can search for and read stories from online papers from all over the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and more. A marketing e-mail from PageSuite alerting us to the service highlighted the search function. It can be segmented by country, publication, date and even the type of title in publications ranging from daily, weekly, monthly, free and paid for newspapers. The site is fairly simple and easy to use. It’s a great idea, although the newspaper industry is still torn on digital access issues, which led to this problem we ran into that was mentioned above: A simple story link to guardian.co.uk was blocked, requiring site registration.
Jessica Bratcher, August 14, 2009
Belief Networks Beefs Up Lingospot
August 14, 2009
Back in May we wrote about Lingospot, http://www.lingospot.com/, (see http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2008/05/09/lingospot-in-text-content-discovery-means-auto-linking/) and its in-text auto-linking Discovery Bubbles. We tested the Lingospot set up at Forbes.com and didn’t find it very useful, though it seemed promising. We just got a pointer that a product put out by Belief Networks has improved the service of real-time personalized recommendation. Rather than bubbles, the suggestions are displayed in a one-line “Like This Story?” banner at the top of the page. You can check out Belief’s service at Charleston, S.C., news aggregator, The Digitel (http://thedigitel.com/). We like it because it doesn’t block the text that we’re trying to read. Looks like auto-recommendations are much improved. A happy quack to Belief Systems.
Jessica Bratcher, August 14, 2009
Elsevier, Clumsy, Arrogant, or Greedy
August 14, 2009
TechDirt’s “Elsevier Caught Again: Published Ghost Written, Industry Supporting Articles as Scientific Research” makes the Beyond Search marketing Web log look like a real literary gem. I admit that this Web log is a marketing vehicle. The ads on my Web site promote my Google study. I use AdWords to make a few bucks each month. I sell Search Wizards Speak write ups to anyone who can get a $5 bill into one of my webbed feet. If TechDirt’s information is on target, Elsevier emulates the addled goose but keeps the marketing part quiet, out of sight. TechDirt reported:
Coral Hess notes yet another scandal, once again involving Elsevier’s (now) fake stamp of approval. This time, it involved people hired by certain pharma companies ghostwriting scientific “review” articles that were supposed to give an overview of all the research on certain treatments, but… “emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks” of those treatments. And people wonder why we’re so skeptical about allowing pharma companies to dictate both our healthcare plans and our patent laws…
The addled goose does not deal in information that is a matter of life and death. Elsevier does. Honk.
Stephen Arnold, August 13, 2009
Blocking News Called Dumb
August 13, 2009
Contentious.com’s “Why Blocking News Aggregators Is Dumb and Won’t Work” takes a clear position about a “crack epidemic” in big media senior management meetings. You may find the write up interesting because it constitutes a summary of how the young at heart view some of the tenets of traditional book, magazine, television, and newspaper companies. For me the most insightful statement in the article was:
As I noted earlier today (see Washington Post: Go Gawker Yourself), news organizations probably have more to gain by creating their own summaries and aggregators than by railing against the people who spotted this opportunity first. Or, if they’re just not up to that challenge, they could actively partner with aggregators, bloggers, and entertaining “newsmockers” like Gawker and The Daily Show to make the relationship more mutually beneficial.
I find the idea of partnering interesting. The partners of interest to me, however, are not mentioned in the article. I wonder if big media has considered surfing on the Google? Probably but is big media’s analysis of the opportunities Google presents fully informed?
Stephen Arnold, August 13, 2009
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