Twitter and Search
February 18, 2009
I read Peter Hershberg’s “Does Twitter Represent the Future of Search? Or Is It the Other Way Around?” here. The article begins with a reference to search engine optimization guru Dan Sullivan and then races forward with this argument:
people are increasingly turning to Twitter — rather than Google and Yahoo — when looking for information on breaking news. This is a trend we highlighted in our 2009 predictions post at the end of last year. For proof of Twitter’s real-time search capabilities all you need to do is look back at last week’s plane crash in the Hudson to see where the news initially broke. People were talking about the event for several minutes on Twitter before the first mentions of it on Google News or any major media site, for that matter.
For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
My personal view is that Google and Yahoo haven’t come up with Twitter solutions simply because they did not initially understand what Twitter represents from a search perspective. Twitter themselves may have failed to grasp this initially, before Summize came into the mix. It’s unlikely that either Google or Yahoo saw Twitter’s potential as a search engine. So, it’s only now that they’re probably starting to put adequate resources behind developing a strategy in this area, though I have to believe that it’s become a very high priority, particularly for Google. That’s where this issue gets really interesting – particularly for someone like me who views social media through the lens of search.
The wrap up made a good point:
To this point, the “Twitterverse” has pretty much been living in a bubble – one where all updates are made and consumed within Twitter and its associated applications alone and where some believe that having 10,000 followers means that you are an authoritative or influential figure. While I believe that is, in fact, the case for some (and I won’t diminish the value in having a large following), the volume of traffic some individual Twitter updates will receive from organic search will dwarf what they are typically able to generate from Twitter alone. It also means that Twitter accounts with fewer followers – but with something important and to say on a given topic – will start to see some increased attention as well. Much like many of the early bloggers did. And when that happens, the whole question of influence and authority will once again be turned on its head.
As I thought about this good write up, I formulated several questions:
- Will Google’s play be to provide a dataspace in which Twitter comments and other social data are organized, indexed and made useful?
- In a Twitterspace, will new types of queries become essential; for example, provenance and confidence?
- Will Google, like Microsoft, be unable to react to the opportunity of real time search and spend time and money trying to catch up with a train that has left the station?
I have no answers. Twitter is making real time search an important tool for users who have no need for the dinosaur caves of archived data that Google continues to build.
Stephen Arnold, February 18, 2009
Yahoo and Its New Mobile Service
February 18, 2009
Yahoo News posted “Yahoo Mobile Aims to Channel Your Inner iPhone” here. Yahoo access on my various mobile devices seemed to require quite a bit of menu shuffling. I also found the interface’s refusal to remember my log in name somewhat idiosyncratic. But the system worked. The new service as described in the news story seemed to me to be a giant step forward. The news release said:
Yahoo Mobile will be released in three versions — one for the mobile Web, one for the iPhone, and one for other smartphones… Yahoo’s onePlace is also available in all three editions. The service lets a user access and manage, from a single location, favorite content such as news topics and sources, RSS feeds, sports scores, weather conditions, stock quotes, blogs, movie theaters, or horoscopes… In the smartphone version, users can also use oneSearch’s voice-search feature simply by talking. It also offers maps; an integrated mini-version of the popular mobile Web browser Opera; and widgets, which are small applications that provide various services that can be mixed and matched.
I fired up my smartphone and navigated to Yahoo, following the same steps I had used prior to my test on February 17, 2009, at 5 pm Eastern. Instead of a new Yahoo service or the old Yahoo service, here’s what I saw:
Sigh. I understand that new Yahoo is not available, but what about old Yahoo?
Stephen Arnold, February 18, 2009
Google from Near $600 to $300 Price Target
February 18, 2009
Most of the folks in Harrod’s Creek don’t pay much attention to California outfits’ share price targets. Truth be told, old geese like me don’t either. You may find Eric Savitz’ “Google: The Case against a Second Half Recovery” here just what your inner investor requires. The point of the write up is that the GOOG is in for some tough sledding. How tough? Well, if you bought Google at $550, you will experience a loss if you dump your shares. If you don’t have Google, no worries.
Stephen Arnold, February 18, 2009
Amazon’s Implicit Metadata
February 18, 2009
Amazon is interesting to me because the company does what Google wants to do but more quickly. The other facet of Amazon that is somewhat mysterious is how the company can roll out cloud services with a smaller research and development budget than Google’s. I have not thought much about the A9 search engine since Udi Manber left to go to Google. The system is not too good from my point of view. It returns word matches but it does not offer the Endeca-style guided navigation that some eCommerce sites find useful for stimulating sales.
Intranet Insights disclosed here that Amazon uses “implicit metadata” go index Amazon content. I can’t repeat the full list assembled by Intranet Insights, and I urge you to visit that posting and read the article. I can highlight three examples of Amazon’s “implicit metadata” and offer a couple of observations.
Implicit metadata means automatic indexing. Authors or subject matter experts can manually assign index terms or interact with a semi-automated system such as that available from Access Innovations in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But humans get tired or fall into a habit of using a handful of common terms instead of consulting a controlled term list. Software does not get tired and can hit 90 percent accuracy once properly configured and resourced. Out of the box, automated systems hit 70 to 75 percent accuracy. I am not going to describe the methods for establishing these scores in this article.
Amazon uses, according to Intranet Insights:
- Links to and links from, which is what I call the Kleinberg approach made famous with Google’s PageRank method
- Author’s context; that is, on what “page” or in what “process” was the author when the document or information object was created. Think of this as a variation of the landing page for an inbound link or an exit page when a visitor leaves a Web site or a process
- Automated indexing; that is, words and phrases.
The idea is that Amazon gathers these data and uses them as metadata. Intranet Insights hints that Amazon uses other information as well; for example, comments in reviews and traffic analysis.
The Amazon system puzzles me when I run certain queries. Let me give some examples of problems I encounter:
- How can one search lists of books created by users? These exist, but for me the unfamiliar list is often difficult to locate and I cannot figure out how to find a particular book title on lists in that Amazon function. Why would I want to do this? I have a title but I want to see other books on lists on which the title appears. If you know how to run this query, shoot me the search string so I can test it.
- How can I filter a results list to eliminate books that are not yet published from books that are available? This situation arises when looking for Kindle titles using the drop downs and search function for titles in the Kindle collection. The function is available because the “recommendations” segment forthcoming titles from available titles, but the feature eludes me in the Kindle subsite.
- How can I run a query and see only the reviews by specific reviewers? I know that a prolific reviewer is Robert Steele. So, I want to see the books he has reviewed and I want to see the names of other reviewers who have reviewed a specific title that Mr. Steele has reviewed.
Amazon’s search system like the one Google provides for Apple.com is a frustrating experience for me. Amazon has lost sight of some of the basic principles of search; namely, if you have metadata tags, a user should be able to use these to locate the information in the public index.
This is not a question of implicit or explicit metadata. Amazon, like Apple, is indifferent to user needs. The focus is on delivering a minimally acceptable search service to satisfy the needs of the average user for the express purpose of moving the sale along. The balance I believe is between system burden and generating revenue. Amazon search deserves more attention in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, February 18, 2009
Precognitive Search
February 17, 2009
Charles Hudson’s “The Database of Intentions Is More Valuable than the Database of Musings for Now (Google and Twitter)” is an interesting article. The notion of putting Google at one end of a spectrum and Twitter at another intrigues me. You can find the write up here. A number of buzzwords have been pushed off the cliff in an effort to capture the shift from historical search to real time search. For example, there was the word attention as used in the phrase “the attention economy”. Then there was the word “conversation” to describe Web log posts and the ripostes that would appear in the comments section. With the publication of Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy by Martin Lindstrom, a clever bit of word play, provides via brain scans that people make decisions without conscious thought. The closest the average Web user will get to this type of precognitive thinking is by running a query on http://search.twitter.com. Certain entities of various governments have somewhat similar functions, but those are not available to anyone with a Web browser. Twitter.com is a public stream of brief comments. Mr. Hudson’s tackles this notion, and he offers some excellent observations. If you are interested in the future of real time search, read his essay. He doesn’t provide context for some of his assertions, but he does make the spectrum clear and sets the stage for additional thinking about these services.
Stephen Arnold, February 17, 2009
Google and Phony Betas
February 17, 2009
I believe Google when it slaps a “beta” label on a service. Google’s system was built to deliver results to queries. The reading and writing functions are a little bit of wizardry, a dash of hack, and some old fashioned rethinking of known problems of massively parallel distributed systems. Think Chubby and its file and record locking and unlocking function in the context of Google’s scale of operation.
Now Macworld’s “Don’t Be Fooled by Google’s Phony Beta Label” by Mike Elgan tied to convince me that Google’s beta label is bogus. The argument is that Google is playing a marketing game. I don’t agree. I think that many of Google’s beta products and services are closer to alphas. The vaunted GMail is still in beta and it should be. My sources have suggested to me that the GOOG continues to twiddle the knobs and fiddle with the settings of GMail. The system is improving but it is not yet fully mature. The Postini functions are sort of there, but not fully integrated. I could generate a list of these issues with GMail, but I want to point to the most interesting comment in Mr. Elgan’s write up:
The truth is that designating new features as “experimental” and announcing them only on a blog is just a charade, a marketing gimmick. It’s just Google’s way of having it both ways. It launches apps and features that grab market share, attract eyeballs and give it the traffic it needs to make billions of dollars per fiscal quarter. But gosh, gee, it’s just little old us trying out a few ideas, so don’t criticize! Hey, we can all play that game. This publication you’re reading now uses a revenue model similar to Google’s. You’re reading this for free, but the publication makes money by selling the advertising you see on this page. The publishing company pays me to write it out of money earned from those advertising dollars.
I am not a sufficiently silly goose to do much with Gmail, my Google Apps account, or some of the other Google gizmos that I explore. In fact on February 14, 2009, my AdSense report was not available. Yep, beta even though Google is like an elephant balancing on its revenue trunk with its advertising service. If you can’t get advertising right, I ask myself, “When will Gmail be ready for prime time?” The Chrome gizmo is out of beta and I think it should be in alpha in my opinion.
Interesting write up.
Stephen Arnold, February 17, 2009
eBay Analysis: Overlooking the Ling Temco Vought Case
February 17, 2009
Not long ago, I wrote about a trophy generation whiz kid who analyzed company and product failure. I pointed out that a seminal study shed light on the “new” developments the whiz kid was pontificating. The whiz kid pulled the post. I just read a post in a Web log that I find interesting most of the time. The author of “Why eBay Should Consider Breaking Itself Up” is Kevin Kelleher. You can read the story here. The premise of the story is one with which I agree. eBay has collected a number of eCommerce companies and failed to make any of them generate sufficient revenue to generate enough revenue to feed the cost maw of the parent. What made me shake my tail feathers was:
- The use cases or case studies of the Ling Temco Vought style roll ups do not warrant a mention in the article. Most business school students or investors burned when LTV went south.
- The failure to integrate acquisitions is not a problem exclusive to eBay. Mr. Kelleher left me with the impression that eBay was a singleton. It is not. Other companies with a similar gaggle of entities and similar cost control problems include AOL, IAC (mentioned by Mr. Kelleher), Microsoft, Yahoo. A key point is that the overhead associated with LTV style operations increases over time. Therefore, instead of getting better numbers, the LTV style roll up generates worsening numbers. In a lousy economy, the decline is accelerated and may not be reversible. There’s no sell off because time is running out on eBay and possibly on a couple of the other companies I mentioned.
- The impact of LTV type failures destabilizes other businesses in the ecosystem. I never liked the Vietnam era “domino theory”, but I think the possibility of a sequence of failures increases in the LTV type of failure.
You should read the story because the information about eBay is useful. If you have an MBA, you probably have LTV data at your fingertips. Historical context for me is important. Maybe next time?
Stephen Arnold, February 17, 2009
Bad News for the Business Information Crowd
February 17, 2009
The juggernaut of business information has slowed down. The upward growth of revenues for data priced at a premium for analysts, wheeler dealers, and the banking crowd has stalled. Two companies bet heavily that the party would continue past curfew. The bartender, however, shut down early and seems to be working half days. You can read Jay Yarrow’s good summary “Bloomberg and Reuters Clobbered” here. I liked his lead: “This one might need to be filed in the Duh category, but according to analysis by Douglas Taylor, the managing director of consulting group, Burton-Taylor, Bloomberg and Reuters are facing steep revenue losses for 2009.”
I agree.
For those who keep up with this Beyond Search Web log, you will find the story about a company that appears to have an arm’s length relationship with Thomson Reuters germane. Click here to read about the debt burden of Cengage, the former educational and professional publishing unit of Thomson Reuters’ company. If the financial house of cards begins to collapse, it is interesting to think of the impact the shock waves will have. Washington’s appetite to bail out companies may become satiated. The Wall Street bonus payouts and GM’s ultimatum of bankruptcy or more cash are burrs under some folks’ saddles. Now peripheral companies may be sucked into a whirlpool of red ink with no life preserver available.
Stephen Arnold, Februry 17, 2009
Twitter in the Enterprise
February 17, 2009
Real time search is useful. Twitter in the enterprise is an interesting idea. If you are gung ho to marry your organization and real time information, you will want to read “Twitter Is Now a Must in the Enterprise” by Jason Meserve here. This is a three part article. Twitter can do no wrong. Twitter spam is not an issue. Twitter is not prone to crashes. These points are not in Mr. Meserve’s rah rah write up. I don’t want to dwell on the shortcomings of the article because it presents a number of useful examples and new data; for instance:
According to a Network World survey of 583 IT execs, 84% said they visit social networking sites on a regular basis, up from 68% last year. In fact, half of our respondents said they visit a social networking site at least several times a week. Only 29% said they visit social networking sites solely for entertainment purposes, and 64% said they are using social networks more than they did a year ago.
In addition, the word security is mentioned, which is unusual for most social networking articles.
Real time search is a big deal for competitive and other types of intelligence professionals. If you haven’t fiddled with Twitter search, navigate to http://search.twitter.com. The performance can be sluggish at times. Try to search for your name or the name of your employer. Try a code word. With some experimentation, you will find some interesting items.
I think it is wonderful if other people use Twitter. The spam problem is a harbinger of other network excitement as well. In some organizations, Twitter might be a bit problematic at eDiscovery time. Oh, the cheerleading will have to fit in some important words soon. I am waiting for spam, monitoring for compliance purposes, and uptime.
Stephen Arnold, February 17, 2009
Google Now May Have a Saviour in the UK
February 17, 2009
One of the dead tree crowd in the UK–The Daily Telegraph–rustled my pinfeathers with “Google’s UK Chief Matt Brittin Could Prove a Saviour.” I thought Google UK had a different chief, but I guess I am behind the times. The former chief–an Oracle escapee–must not have been a chief. Rupert Neate set me straight on that matter here. The article makes much of the 40-year-old Googler as a person concerned with the fate of dead tree publications like The Daily Telegraph. Mr. Neate tells me that the “6ft 3in tall” Mr. Brittin is a bronze medal rower (1998 World Rowing Championship). Mr. Brittin also “joined Google last January after three years at Trinity Mirror, as the person who made the “greatest individual contribution to new media” in 2008.”
Now the meat of the story–assuming the résumé of a Googler is not the point of the article–seemed to be summed up in this quote:
“Many publishers are partners of Google and we work together by providing targeted advertising to their websites so they can make money out of dead space,” he says. “In the last three months of last year we gave away $1.4bn (£970m) of revenue to publishing partners for adverts on their sites. All we are trying to do is help traditional media in a new environment.”
There are some other interesting items about creativity, Google’s DNA, and mobile telephony. But the point of this article is that Google is the publishers’ pal.
My research suggests that Google is a profit-making enterprise learning that its products and services can ignite strong reaction, costly litigation, and embarrassing public squabbles with people who don’t win rowing championships and work at Google.
The Google is an information company. It has developed an end-to-end platform. Users are just beginning to get a sense of what the platform can do. Google itself has seemed reluctant to identify some of the Google infrastructure’s key functions. No surprise. With journalists who wax poetic over a rowing championship, why fiddle with the rosy tint illuminating the Google.
I still don’t get the “saviour” part. Traditional media are behind in a rowing competition of sorts. Not even Google’s Mr. Brittin can pull a pal’s oar hard enough to reverse the accelerating decline. If push comes to shove, Mr. Brittin and the other Googlers, in my opinion, will save themselves, not traditional media. Shareholders and regulators expect nothing less. To ignore fiduciary responsibility creates serious problems for Google.
For more of Google “saving” the newspaper business, read this Valley Wag exclusive here. Lots of Google publishing activity methinks.
Stephen Arnold, February 17, 2009
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