Search Sucks: A Mini Case
June 30, 2009
I listened occasionally to the Gillmor Gang when it was available on iTunes. I noticed that the program disappeared, and I lost track of it. My RSS reader snagged a story about a verbal shoot out between the one man TV network Leo LaPorte and one of the participants in the Gilmore Gang. To make a long and somewhat confused story short, the show disappeared. I figured this would be a good topic to use to test Bing.com and Google.com. My premise was that neither service would be indexing the type of information about flaps in the wobbly world of real time content on the rich media Web.
I ran the query Gilmore Gang on Google and finally found a link to a story published on June 13, 2009, called “Hanging on for Dear Life.” The problem with the Google results was that the top rated links were just plain wrong in terms of answering my query. Granted I used a two word query and I was purposely testing the Google system to see if it was sufficiently “smart” to figure out that I wanted current and accurate information. Well, in my opinion, it was like a promising student who stayed up late and did not do his home work. Here is the result list Google generated for me on June 28, 2009:
The result I wanted I found using other tools.
YouTube Searching
June 20, 2009
Web Pro News published “New Ways to Search on YouTube” on June 19, 2009. The Google seems to be making an effort to introduce mild search tweaks. Chris Crum has a good run down of changes to YouTube.com search. Among the more interesting features is the introduction of an advanced search function. Advanced search features are used by a small percentage of Web search users. Google offers a range of parametric options, including when a video was pumped into the Google and its duration.
Stephen Arnold, July 20, 2009
YouTube.com Economics
June 19, 2009
Google won’t say. So in an absence of data, pundits, mavens, and azure chip consultants guess-timate. Boy, didn’t that worked well for Long Term Capital Management and the MBAs who traded in NINJA paper.
Two views on the question, “What’s YouTube.com cost the Google?”
What I find interesting is that both views reference a study by Ramp Rate, a San Francisco based strategic research company.In “Guessing Game: How Much Money Is YoutTube Losing?” Google loses money. The 3News.co.nz story said:
Technology consultants at RampRate project YouTube’s operating losses this year at US$174.2 million – far below the US$470.6 million estimated by Credit Suisse analysts Spencer Wang and Kenneth Sena in an April research report that became a hot topic on Wall Street and the internet.
The Business Week write up about the Ramp Rate analysis carried the headline “Maybe Google Isn’t Losing Big Bucks on YouTube after All”.
My view is that analyses by banks and financial analysts are less interesting since the financial meltdown. If the lads and lassies were mostly correct, the present business environment would be different. Just my opinion.
Google isn’t too forthcoming about the cost of YouTube.com. What I recall is that Microsoft was going to tackle this sector. Microsoft pulled out. Yahoo continues to dabble. Start ups abound. Video is expensive and it takes deep pockets to play the game.
Beyond that, sheer speculation.
Stephen Arnold, June 19, 2009
TV Business Will Follow Newspapers Says Analyst
June 18, 2009
Henry Blodget has written another ulcer maker. His “Sorry, There’s No Way To Save The TV Business” provided a nice complement to my write up about CNN’s coming cost crisis. If there were any doubt, just think about how traditional media performed over the weekend when Iranians expressed their discontent with election results.
Mr. Blodget asserted:
As with print-based media, Internet-based distribution generates only a tiny fraction of the revenue and profit that today’s incumbent cable, broadcast, and satellite distribution models do. As Internet-based distribution gains steam, therefore, most TV industry incumbents will no longer be able to support their existing cost structures.
He then provided a run down of the changes that are taking place. Good list and worth tucking away for future reference.
The one observation I would make is the Google. The Google Channel, the Vatican Channel, and the specter of a business that media giants of old could not have imagined.
Stephen Arnold, June 18, 2009
Microsoft and Video
June 17, 2009
Dark days in Redmond for its YouTube.com killer Soapbox. Ina Fried’s “Microsoft Gives Up YouTube Chase” alerted me to this development. Ms. Fried wrote:
In an interview on Tuesday, Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen said Soapbox is one of the areas that Microsoft is pulling back on in the wake of a tough economic environment. His unit also recently pulled the plug on Microsoft Money, the company’s personal finance software product.
Maybe the video preview function on Bing.com will carry the freight. Ms. Fried noted:
While Microsoft will focus on such content, it’s still unclear whether it will continue to allow users to freely upload their videos or if it will require some sort of editorial selection of the movies before they make it onto the site.
With HTML 5 nosing into view, Silverlight may have another Google probe pushing in as well. Keep in mind that the Google has rolled out a client side Exchange escape trick. Interesting.
Stephen Arnold, June 17, 2009
CNN: The Coming Cost Cataclysm
June 8, 2009
I found myself in Atlanta, stranded because of modern air travel. What to do with a few spare hours? The Atlanta Dot Net Web site had one suggestion. Tour CNN Headquarters. I navigated to this link and read here:
Ever wondered what the inside of a news studio looks like? Take the Inside CNN Studio Tour in Atlanta and view for yourself. Guests can take a 50-minute CNN studio tour featuring the Control Room Theater, Special Effects studio and Interactive News Desk section.
As a senior, I qualified for a $12 admission. My impressions:
- The CNN studios in Atlanta occupied a building that once housed an amusement park. The cavernous atrium was a reminder of wasted money. The area sucked energy, heat in the winter and A/C in the summer. I tried to calculate the cost per square foot but I got a headache and the tour guide did not know how to respond to my question, “What is the total cubic feet of this atrium?” He smiled a lot and pointed out that CNN was the first 24 hour video news outlet.
- There were a lot of people in the usable space in the gargantuan structure. There were security guards at every stairwell. There were security guards at the metal detector which I set off thus triggering a pat down. I had no contraband, and I did enjoy the frisk, quite up close and personal.
- The guide pointed out that 20 percent of the staff were engaged in information technology. He pointed out cameras that were run from a control room, obviating the need for a human to keep the red eye in front of the talent. There were dozens of people performing work flow functions like research, writing, editing, and directing. The talent read stories that floated in front of their eyes so “eye contact was intimate”.
Stepping back after the tour, I reflected on my impressions and the three observations I summarized in the dot points above. I thought about the Google Wave technology. At some point in the future, I envisioned moving the CNN news process to the Wave system. I also thought about the one person television network that Leo LaPorte has built in Petaluma, California. I thought about the number of people on the tour who took pictures and made videos with mobile phones. I thought about the billboard ad I saw whilst riding Atlanta’s truncated mass transit system for high speed wireless networks. I through about the young man on the tour who sent SMS messages to his pals who were apparently interested in what he had to say about the inner sanctum of CNN.
Bottom-line: CNN is on track for a cost cataclysm. In my opinion, software can reduce the friction in the CNN process. By pushing news down to those with mobile devices and out to the fringes of civilization, a software based company can offer good enough video news without the punishing cost burden CNN as well as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters must bear.
CNN sits on a San Andreas fault of costs. The earthquake can come at any time.
If this analysis sounds familiar, it is the same theme that has been running through some of the business commentaries about the problems traditional newspapers face. Upstarts using technology have sucked ad revenue and content from the custodial embrace of traditional publishing companies. The result has been a divorce of information methods and revenue. The traditional approach finds itself bleeding from many tiny wounds which sap its ability to leapfrog from where the organizations are today and where they have to be tomorrow.
The young people whom I know (few in number and quite strange to me) love video info. In fact, I note with some horror the dependence Google has upon videos to explain complex processes. I think the trend is locked in because when one writes, there is a formalism imposed. Even an addled goose like me has to plan what’s up. With a video, the rhetoric is that of the demo, a conversation, or a YouTube.com “insider” video. If the message is garbled, just do another video. Easy and without boundaries. The approach is just right for those decades younger than I.
How does this create trouble for a “too big too fail” television news operation?
Monetizing Online Content
June 5, 2009
Short honk: I read with interest “Soon, You’ll Have to Pay for Hulu” here. The story in Daily Finance alleged that the free video service will change its spots. My take on the story is that video may be more easily converted to cash than text. Demographic and user preferences take precedent over tradition.
Stephen Arnold, June 6, 2009
The Boyle Conundrum: Old Media vs New Media
May 26, 2009
My New York Times today (May 25, 2009) contained an announcement of a price hike. The hard copy of the paper contained a story by Bran Stelter that had an amazing quotation. I found the statement indicative of the pickle in which traditional newspapers and “old” media find themselves. The story was “Payoff over a Web Singing Sensation Is Elusive.” The story is on the first page of the business section, and you may be able to find an online version of the story here. No guarantees, of course. The article is about FreemantleMedia Enterprises’ inability to monetize Susan Boyle, a contestant on Britain’s Got Talent TV show. Ms. Boyle, “frumpy Scotswoman” according to the New York Times, is a Web sensation. Despite that popularity, no cash flows to the show’s owners. The key statement in the write up in my opinion was:
The case reflects the inability of big media companies to maximize profit from supersize Internet audiences that seem to come from nowhere. In essence, the complexities of TV production are curbing the Web possibilities. Britain’s Got Talent” is produced jointly by three companies and distributed in Britain by a fourth, ITV, making it difficult to ascertain which of the companies can claim a video as its own.
Maybe litigation will provide the solution to the Gordian knot of “old media” and its business methods. Meanwhile, the price of the New York Times goes up and Susan Boyle videos get downloaded. Why not blame Google where a search for “Susan Boyle” returned nine million hits?
Stephen Arnold, May 26, 2009
Copyright and the Real Time Microblog Phenom
May 24, 2009
Liz Gannes’ “Copyright Meets a New Worth Foe: The Real Time Web” is an interesting article. You can find it on NewTeeVee.com here. Her point is that copyright, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and other bits and pieces of legal whoopdedoo struggle with real time content from Twitter-like services. She wrote:
If you’re a copyright holder and you want to keep up with your pirated content flitting about the web — well, good luck. The way the DMCA is set up means you’re always chasing, and the real-time web is racing faster than ever before. Analytics services are only just emerging that will tell you where your views are coming from on a semi-real-time basis. That’s especially true for live video streaming sites such as Ustream and Justin.tv. Justin.tv, in particular, has come under fire by sports leagues for hosting camcorded streams of live game broadcasts. The company says it takes down streams whenever it is asked to. But the reality is, often the moment has passed.
In short, information flows move more quickly than existing business methods. An interesting illustration of this flow for video is Twiddeo here. Government officials have their work cut out for them with regard to ownership, copyright, and related issues.
But…
As I read this article, I thought about the problem Google has at this time with real time content. Google’s indexing methods are simply not set up to handle near instantaneous indexing of content regardless of type. In fact, fresh search results on Google News are stale when one has been tracking “events” via a Twitter like service.
As important is the “stepping back” function. On Google’s search results displays, how do I know what is moving in near real time; that is, what’s a breaking idea, trend, or Tweet? The answer is, “I don’t.” I can hack a solution with Google tools, but even then the speed of the flow is gated by Google’s existing indexing throughput. To illustrate the gap, run a query for American Idol on Google News and then run the query on Tweetmeme.com.
Two different slants biased by time. In short, copyright problem and Google problem.
Stephen Arnold, May 24, 2009
Google, YouTube, and Digital Volume
May 22, 2009
Short honk: A year or so ago, I learned that Google received about one million new video objects per month. TechCrunch reported here that Google’s YouTube.com ingests about 20 hours of video every minute. I don’t know if this estimate is spot on, but it is clear that YouTube is amassing one of the world’s largest collections of rich text content in digital form. For me, the most interesting information in the write up was:
Back in 2007, shortly after Google bought the service, it was 6 hours of footage being uploaded every minute. As recently as January of this year, that number had grown to 15 hours, according to the YouTube blog. Now it’s 20 — soon it will be 24.
Lots of data means opportunity for the GOOG. I am looking forward to having the audio information searchable.
Stephen Arnold, May 22, 2009
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