SSN Launched
February 1, 2010
Strategic Social Networking is now live. You can visit the site by pointing your browser to http://ssnblog.com. The Beyond Search team developed SSN to cover the management implications and strategic applications of social networking to business and professionals. The blog will provide commentary, brief original videos, links, lists, news, and information.
SSN will include original articles and opinions from social experts like Craig James (CatStrat) and experienced executives like Jerry Constantino, author of the popular ItsNutsOutThere blog. Jerry is a deeply experienced publishing executive, author, and entrepreneur. We will also feature original research which will bring you new insights into the strategic implications of social media.
The SSN blog wants to give you a way to see the strategic angles social media use introduces to business. We want to write for a business professional who needs to generate sales leads, build a brand, and jump start a consulting opportunity. And we want to provide examples, tips, and useful sources for the individual working in an organization embracing the social networking revolution. We offer an RSS feed, and we will have a Facebook and Twitter presence. The comments section of the blog is available to you. Editor Jessica Bratcher and her team want to hear from you.
Stephen E Arnold
February 1, 2010
This is a sponsored post paid for by Stephen E. Arnold
Digital River Flows into Search
January 31, 2010
The Seeking Alpha transcript of Digital River’s “analyst call” signaled a shift in enterprise search offerings. Here’s what executives of Digital River (a network services firm that is now an ecommerce, marketing, and online services outfit) said, according to “Digital River, Inc. Q4 2009 Earnings Call Transcript”:
In 2010, we plan to further drive the adoption and monetization of these new product investments and shift our focus from expanding the breadth of enhancing the products to the depth of our product portfolio. This means continuing to focus on areas where our clients have indicated they have significant interest. Our 2010 plans including going even deeper into remote control by offering an easy to deploy shopping cart and more options for enterprises to speed their time to market. We also intend to expand our merchandising and product management capabilities for our B-to-B offering, enhance our enterprise search and global business intelligence capabilities, make end customer and administrative performance improvements, and introduce more localized payments and currencies to support our expansion into rapidly growing emerging markets.
I find this interesting because companies like Digital River have been commodity providers in my opinion. The shift to complex, value-added solutions such as search and business intelligence is an interesting development. The assumption is that Digital River will have sufficient bandwidth to index an organization’s content, update the index, and deliver results with the same aplomb that Google has condition the 20 somethings to accept as the status quo. The business intelligence angle is interesting as well because that adds another lay of complexity because end users need reports. Canned reports make great demos but they often fail to answer the specific question at hand. The more years a query has to cover, the more crunching and disc access are needed.
My hunch is that the move will be an interesting one to watch, but when it comes to commodity services in the cloud like search and business intelligence, it will be tough to compete with subsidized business models or bundling. In short, the words sound great, but the delivery might be a bit trickier than the MBA wizards on the call understood. And not a peep about the guts of the search technology.
Stephen E Arnold, January 31, 2010
This “hope springs eternal” write up was a freebie. I shall report this sad fact to the SEC, the US government’s hope specialists.
Info Fragmentation
January 31, 2010
I don’t want to tackle a big philosophical issue is this blog. I do want to point out that while Google has been explaining that it is not a country, Amazon and Macmillan have agreed to disagree. You can read “Amazon and Macmillan Go to War: Readers and Writers are the Civilian Casualties” for a good run down. The point is that online services have been for decades chopping out content when problems arise. The fact is that most online users are clueless about what constitutes an online information system’s content holdings. Researchers jump online, run a query and grab the results. The perception is that the citation list is complete. A student will run a Google query and assume that Google has everything he or she needs to write a killer essay in 15 minutes for an overworked high school teacher. Attorneys are also falling into the trap of assuming that a body of content is complete and accurate. Wrong, dudes and dudettes, wrong, wrong, wrong. I can hear the azure chip consultants and the self appointed search experts gasp in horror. This hypothetical reaction from folks who like to watch videos is not surprising because most people do not do detailed bibliographic and collection analysis. When these cuties encounter someone who does this type of work, there is essentially a miasma of confusion that settles over their brows. Here’s what the scoop is:
- A company gets rights to specific information. The publisher changes staff; the database publisher gets an email saying, “The deal must be reworked.” The publisher doesn’t offer more money or customer names or some other requirement. The publisher tells the online vendor to remove the content. This the database producer does and very few people know that info has disappeared. The only way to track this type of publisher-vendor change is to hope that it becomes a big news item like the Amazon-Macmillan squabble.
- An online system has a glitch at loading time. The data * never * make it into the online system. Because most users do not check online version versus a hard copy, few notice. Heck, at the old Dialog when “gentle Ben” screwed up a file load, we had to tell Dialog that its system spit a hair ball. After denials and excuses, the Dialog tape would be reloaded and all was well. Not every database producer performed this quality check. I can hear the owners of ABI/INFORM snorting now. “Quality. We know quality.” Righto.
- A user looks the wrong place for information. Google yaps about universal search but when you need to find info on Google, you have to know the ins and outs of the news archive, the caches, and the specialty indexes. Overlook a manual exercise of running the same query across different indexes, and you will miss info. This happens on most public facing, free systems. Do you run exhaustive queries? I didn’t think so.
- Latency. Do you know what this means? Well in a Web index it means that the spider pings a server and the server doesn’t respond. The spider, impatient lass that she is, moves on. Maybe the spider will come back. Maybe not. This means that if an updated content object resides on a system with latency—that is, really slow system—the content may not be indexed. Ah, ha. Now how do you as a content provider fix this problem? If you don’t know about it, you may not have a quick fix.
- Malformed information. A whiz kid does a post and inserts all types of fancy stuff. If you use template developed by third parties for your online service, your cute little widget may “kill” the page. The indexing system can’t “see” the page, so the content does not get indexed.
- Corrections. I bet you think that when content is online it is the last, best, and final version. Wrong. Most online services * do not * update a static file indexed at a prior time when a correction to that original article appears in print or on a data feed. Don’t believe me. Run some queries on any online service with a newspaper hard copy that has a correction to a previous story. Now look for that correction online in the original article. My team did the first database to put corrections into online business news. This was expensive and difficult. No one noticed. I think that the new owners of Business Dateline may have forgotten the original correction part of the editorial cycle.
There are other reasons why content disappears and then magically comes back when another change takes place. As people do less rigorous research, the cluelessness about comprehensive, accurate collections increases. Know a librarian. Most can help in this department in my experience.
Stephen E Arnold, January 31, 2010
This is a no fee write up. When I give my SLA spotlight talk in June I will demand a free Diet Pepsi. That’s compensation, and I will report this to the Library of Congress, an outfit moving into open source software. I thought collection management was important too.
SSN Roll Out Set for February 1, 2010
January 29, 2010
The SSN team has been working hard to prepare the content for the SSN Web log and information service. You can get a taste of the types of information that will appear in the SSN blog. We have made one of our stories available for preview, “Ning: Revising Growth Estimates”.
Watch for our SSN mascot, a bird found at the beach, announcing its presence with a gentle squawk.
We are planning on beginning with brief news and original features. We have compiled some lists of useful resources, and we have created some reference pages to make it easy to click through a number of sites offering social services. Our Facebook.com page will be one way for readers and critics to communicate with us. We will generate an RSS feed of the new information and send out tweets about our content. The editor is Jessica Bratcher, a former newspaper editor who joined the ArnoldIT.com team two years ago. You can contact her at ssnblog@gmail.com.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2010
This is a shameless marketing pitch for ArnoldIT.com’s and the Beyond Search team’s new Web log. I will report this to the first holy person I see in Harrod’s Creek today. Marketing is shameful. I apologize.
AskJeeves Returns
January 29, 2010
My recollection is that one of the Ziff Information Access guys was involved with the original AskJeeves.com. I remember learning that the original system used templates to answer questions. When a question came in that required a new template, a human coded one. The approach was interesting but never took off. AskJeeves sold its question answering technology into the corporate market and then exited that business. I don’t know how AskJeeves.com ended up in the Barry Diller empire, but I do have a vague recollection of various repositionings. I read “Ask Jeeves Pushes Q&A Service with New TV Ad Campaign” and thought, “It’s the old AskJeeves.com again. It’s back.” The TV campaign strikes me as old school. The buzz today is about social media marketing. The question-answer game does not appeal to me. I think many people are happy typing 2.3 words into Google and going with the first two or three hits. Close enough for intellectual horseshoes in today’s “we’re too busy to think” world. What is even more fascinating to me is that the butler is back and AskJeeves.com is the only search engine since Northern Light to put bucks into auto racing. The company is trying, but with Google’s market share increasing and Bing.com showing some muscle, I don’t know if AskJeeves.com can clean up.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2010
A freebie. I will report this sad fact to the mayor of Philadelphia who monitors this type of information. I think the mayor asks, “What’s an AskJeeves.com?”
Shocking Paywall Information
January 28, 2010
I read “After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday’s Web Site” and did a double take. If I lived in New York, I would definitely subscribe to Newsday’s Web site to keep up with the local information about the newspaper itself. My recollection is that it is a pretty exciting place with a buzz that keeps everyone on his or her toes. But I live in Kentucky, and I don’t think I will be spending money to read Newsday. I am not alone. According to the article:
So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to Newsday.com? The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class. That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.
Wow.
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2010
A freebie. Who would pay me to summarize this astounding result. I will report this sad fact to the National Institutes of Health, an outfit that understands health.
Financeoid Pushes Business News Aggregation Forward
January 27, 2010
Business information is important but difficult to index. On the surface, business information appears to be a less-than-demanding type of content. Some publishers embed ticker symbols. Others stuff in metatags. The problem, however, boils down to language. Marketing mavens are quick to invent new words, spell names in a weird way, and cook up bizarre coinages to create consulting buzz. (A good example of this appeared in the Wall Street Journal on january 25, 2010, page B7 in the article “Strategic Plans Lose Favor.” That was a buzzword fest in my opinion.)
Now there is Financeoid.com. I admit that I am not crazy about the name, but I can see that the service makes certain business information easily accessible. I have already dropped the hard copy subscription to the Financial Times, and I think my local newspaper subscription is next. If Financeoid shows some muscle, maybe I will drop the Wall Street Journal hard copy subscription. I find its information increasingly stale and feature oriented. Not what I want with my McVittie’s biscuit in the morning.
I suggest you take a look at a financial news aggregation service that pulls “financial news, tips, and advises [sic] from 15,000 financial/ business blogs.” Although still in shake down cruise mode, the service makes pretty clear that the traditional financial media may have to shift their hate gaze from Google to other online innovators. The service Financeoid.com is at http://www.financeoid.com.
The site calculates “karma” via a proprietay algorithm. The goslings and I think this is a quite interesting aggregation service. The company promises that it will offer additoinal aggregations in the future. Worth a look.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2010
A free write up. I will report this to the Bureau of Labor. I am a slave to this blog. If I were younger, I could turn myself in for employee overwork.
Microsoft Fast Questioned by Ayna
January 27, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to a news story in Ayna. The headline was “Ayna Drops Fast Search Engine.” I have no way of knowing if the write up is balanced, but I want to capture the item so it doesn’t get away from me. According to the write up:
Ayna’s CEO, Adonis El Fakih, remarks “FAST solutions, sales, and support are not in sync with the changing tides or the available search choices out there, and wanted to keep the status quo, instead of stepping up to the plate and deliver a competitive product.” Ayna’s decision to drop FAST from its repertoire of technologies, came after months of deliberation with account managers and support services, which exposed the short comings of the platform and business attitude towards competing in the search space. Mr. El Fakih continued to say “…it is lamentable to loose an important investment in our core services, however we had no choice but to cut our loss and move on.”
Ayna is a search system serving users and customers in the Middle East. Among its services are Web indexing and mapping. You can access the Ayna service in English here. The French version is here. The main site is at http://www.ayna.com/index.ar.html.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2010
Tess licked me this morning but I wrote this news item as a way to make a note for myself. I will report this bibliographic intent to the Library of Congress.
Search Market Growth Projection
January 26, 2010
Short honk: The addled goose enjoys collecting market projections. A remarkable one appeared in Silicon Republic in the story “Global Search Market Tipped to Grow 46 Percent.” The article cites the ever-reliable comScore and points out that “Bing is showing the most rapid growth”. Okay.
But the key number to me was in this passage:
The total worldwide search market boasted more than 131 billion searches conducted by people age 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing a 46-percent increase in the past year.
So, this is the 2008 to 2009 growth. The headline suggests that this is the growth for the future. I am confused about:
- What does “search” mean?
- The method of collecting the data: free or fee? Raw counts or numerical recipes?
- What will be the size at the end of 2011?
Stephen E Arnold, January 25, 2010
No one paid me to ask this question. I don’t know to whom to report questions. Perhaps I can call the USA hotline and inquire.
Mark Logic Taps Amazon
January 25, 2010
Cloud Computing “Mark Logic Leverages Amazon” reported that MarkLogic Server offers a cloud option. According to the write up said:
The move will obviously let customers use its widgetry on a pay-by-the-hour basis. A native XML database that implements the W3C-standard XML Query (XQuery) language, the server includes full-text and structured (XML) search. The AWS version consists of an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with the MarkLogic Server pre-installed.
Mark Logic’s technology has demonstrated its versatility in a number of information-centric environments. With a client’s information within the MarkLogic Server environment, repurposing is a snap. In the last year, Mark Logic has emerged as an information infrastructure company that makes big boys like Oracle quite nervous. With the move to the cloud option, Mark Logic is poised for new services. Mark Logic’s technology exerts pressures on companies in business intelligence, enterprise publishing, and information portal services, among others.
When Larry Ellison worries, I take notice. Important step from Mark Logic.
Stephen E Arnold, January 25, 2010
Yes, I was given a free admission to the Mark Logic user conference in Washington, DC. No, I was not paid to point to this write up about the Sys-Con story. Yes, I will beg Mark Logic to throw large sums of money at me and the goslings the next time I see one of the firm’s senior managers or investors. I will report this intent to the FCC via this footnote. Wow, I feel so much better explaining that I am a shameless marketer.
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