Search Engines: Hold Your Vertical – Please!
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Written By Noah Mallin | January 6, 2009 | Share This
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Today, the so-called “conversation search engine” Artiklz was launched in beta form. Judging from it’s name and the copy on their landing page it was developed by a group of rogue LOLcats. As usual, us search geeks will play around with it, turn up our noses, and leave it on the trash heap along with Cuil and every other new search engine launched in the last several years. Dismissive much? Oh yeah. Why? Glad you asked.
Topics: Google, Online Video, Search: News, Search: Vertical, Search: Video, Social Media, Yahoo! | No Comments »
The Year in Search: Your Favorite SearchViews Posts from 2008 on Search and Social Media
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Written By Noah Mallin | January 5, 2009 | Share This
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After the rich meal that was 2008 it’s only appropriate that we take a moment to pause and savor the taste that some of the favorite posts from the last year have when belched up. Accordingly we’ve compiled your favorites for each month of 2008 based on traffic and user response and placed them in reverse order Benjamin Button style. Did we miss your favorite? Let us know in the comments or send me a message on Twitter at @nmallin.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Blogging, Dr. Naveel, Google, Reprise Media, SEM: Paid Search, SEO, Search: News, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »
The Year in Search and Social Media: Predictions 2009
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 31, 2008 | Share This
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After a tumultuous and fascinating 2008, what might be in store for 2009? We interrogated our best sources using enhanced techniques (bright lights, bamboo and the music of John Mayer were all deployed) before turning to the entrails of a goat (the vegans on our staff settled for an artichoke) to bring you our predictions for the world of search and social media in 2009. We make no guarantee of actuality. Void where prohibited.
In the Year 2009…
Horizontal is the New Vertical - The first wave of vertical search engines such as Business.com or Shopping.com was launched with the intention of starting search businesses from the get go. What’s interesting about the new breed of search engines is that they weren’t originally intended to be search engines at all. Instead, they were born out of the need to sift through the mass volume of content being produced on social media sites.
The need to retrieve and categorize user created content is already leading many social media platforms to become alternative and relevant search indices for specific needs beyond the general search engine results page. For example, Twitter search gives you visibility into “now”, Facebook search scours people (while LinkedIn offers more professionally oriented info), Flickr search delivers a better, more diverse image result set than Google images while YouTube features superior video search results.
Marketers will take notice of this trend to the horizontal in 2009 and these platforms will respond with more compelling SEM offerings to help lure them in.
The World of Online Ad Networks will Finally Consolidate – with many companies merging in an effort to survive, while others disappear altogether. This gives Google AdSense the opportunity to suck up even more of this market, resulting in:
1. Higher overall revenues for Google, but…
2. Lower revenue shares for smaller online publishers as Google takes a bigger cut of the pie and it becomes harder for them to monetize.
3. The collapse of online companies with no clear monetization plans.
Analytics becomes the Chocolate to Social Media’s Peanut Butter – Spending on social media marketing will rise despite the recession as more marketers discover useful analytics tools to measure success across the distributed web. Clients will be impressed by YouTube visitor counts, bit.ly’s url tracking and Omniture’s ability to track behavior in iPhone apps. This improved capability to test social media campaigns and see results before committing to major spends, helps open the floodgates and deliver real meaningful value - and revenue – for the first time.
Social Media Will Help Make Us Better Citizens - Phase one of online activism was powered by applications that allowed people to spread the word about their causes (e.g. Facebook “Causes”), phase two will be powered by microgiving services (e.g. Tipjoy and Microgiving) that allow people to put their money where their mouth is. As a result, funds given to charity through social networks will finally get more in line with the number of people who profess to be interested in them. The integration of Paypal into these services will help facilitate these transactions.
Furthermore, as the recession drags on and access to credit becomes increasingly difficult, Paypal will play a larger role in many online transactions including peer-to-peer lending, replacing some traditional banking services.
Is the Domain Friendfilter.com Taken? - As “friending” continues to gain momentum (and dilute its real life meaning), context becomes more important than ever. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed will need to empower users with more parametric filters so that they can publish – and parse - information to and from different groups of people. For example, a person may have various interests ranging from social software to hockey to comic books – giving that individual more control of the distribution and consumption process will eliminate noise from the social graph and provide more meaningful connections. The web is filled with nooks and crannies of niche content, so there’s no reason the social networks, or the ecosystem born of out of them (for instance, services like Stocktwits) shouldn’t better enable those subject specific communities.
Mobile Voice Search Increases its Long Tail – People don’t speak the same way they type – we tend to be fluid and wordy instead of terse and structured. When you mosey down to the car dealer to look for a new ride (or a “whip” as the kids call them), the tendency is to ask something like “What do you have that gets good mileage but can haul a kid’s bedroom set and won’t make me look like a total tool?” rather than to use Search-ese like “SUV, fuel efficient?” Therefore, it stands to reason that as voice recognition software creeps into mobile search apps, the searches we conduct on our cell phones are going to start to look a lot less like those from traditional search engines. Spoken questions are longer and phrased differently than online search. Advertisers who hope to simply use their existing search keyword lists to reach mobile users are going to be in for a surprise.
Then again, we might be getting ahead of ourselves – 2009 will not be the year that advertising for voice search takes off. The user experience still needs too much work for mainstream adoption.
Yahoo is Broken Up – No year-end list is complete without a gratuitous Yahoo swipe – here’s ours: Microsoft reunites many Yahoo search refugees’ posteriors with their former chairs by acquiring Yahoo’s search business at a fire sale price.
The Phrase “Google Killer” Will Become the New “Munson” – The term becomes synonymous in hip-hop to describe a hyped young rapper who steps to the big guns only to come up short and be forgotten. When was the last time you used Cuil?
Mobile Gets More Social - Time spent logging into social networks from a mobile device will approach 50% of total time spent on social networks in ‘09. In a related event, incidences of hit and run accidents and people walking into open manhole covers will rise dramatically in ‘09 as they use their fancy new iPhones and G1 Android phones to throw snowballs at each other on Facebook.
Google TV Ties Together Recessionary Threads – The two most resilient places for advertising in a recession turn out to be search and TV. How convenient for Google’s fledging offline ad biz as the search model of targeting, accountability, and responsiveness continues to migrate to offline platforms in ‘09. The timing is now.
Fame is Measured in 140 Characters Instead of 15 Minutes – Twitter celebs (plane crash guy, Egyptian jail guy) find fame far more fleeting in ‘09 – it lasts as long as it takes to refresh your screen.
Facebook Connect Takes Off – Brands and marketers embrace the ability to use Facebook Connect as a way to socialize websites cheaply. In fact, it’s already starting to.
Twitter Will Surprise Their Critics With Their Ability to Monetize – We’d explain what that monetization plan will look like in more detail, but unfortunately, we only have 140 characters.
Topics: Advertising: Online, ECommerce, Facebook, Featured Item, Flickr, Google, Google: AdWords, Media Convergence, Microsoft, Mobile, Reprise Media, SEM: Paid Search, SEO, Search: Innovations, Search: News, Search: Vertical, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Web Analytics, Wireless & Mobile, Yahoo!, YouTube | 3 Comments »
The Year in Search and Social: How Did We Do? Rating Last Year’s Predictions
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 22, 2008 | Share This
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This is the time of year when we at SearchViews like to gather our best minds together to prognosticate on what the next year will bring us in the world of search engines and social media. Before we whip out the Ouija Board to contact Dionne Warwick, celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne, Ms. Cleo, and TV’s Patricia Arquette from Medium, we wanted to look back and see how accurate our last round of predictions were. Or, “Were our predicts totally redic?”, as the kids might say.
So here are our top 3 bullseyes and top 3 fails from last year:
Topics: Advertising: Online, Blogging, ECommerce, Facebook, Google, Legal Issues, Mobile, Search: News, Social Media, Twitter, Wireless & Mobile, Yahoo!, YouTube | No Comments »
RepriseMe: Number 4 - Kinjal Parikh - Business Development Analyst
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 19, 2008 | Share This
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This week’s RepriseMe, SearchViews’ continuing series of profiles on the men and women who make Reprise Media the awesome place it is, presents Kinjal Parikh, our brainy and stylish Business Development Analyst.
1. Where are You From?
India – more specifically Vadodara, a small city in west India.
Topics: Reprise Media, Reprise Work and Play, RepriseMe | No Comments »
Social Media: PR Folks and Bloggers – Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 18, 2008 | Share This
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While the most recent presidential election seems to have gone some way towards healing the red state/blue state divide, there is another even more yawning chasm that yearns to be bridged in America today. Of course I mean the gulf that exists between public relations professionals and bloggers.
How bad is it out there? Let’s take this story from yesterday which is the flipside of my post last week about how Scott Monty and Ford are rocking social media outreach. Ford’s cross-town car making rival Chrysler stuck their foot in it big time during the traditional auto industry preview show and tell with industry journalists. This is the time period before the Detroit auto show when the car companies reveal future product plans for the next few years in exchange for honoring an embargo agreement. While GM and Ford were sure to include bloggers Chrysler made it clear that they were not welcome. Stupid move.
Topics: Blogging, Media Convergence, Publishing, Social Media | 4 Comments »
Search News: Wired’s Chris Anderson Gives it Away For Free
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 17, 2008 | Share This
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The ironic setting for The Long Tail author Chris Anderson’s talk today was the Wired Store here in New York City, his magazine’s very cool mecca of pricey Wired-approved goodies. I’ll give them credit for not Hammacher-Schlemmering the place up by calling every item “The World’s Best…”
The setting was ironic because Anderson was previewing his latest book, coming out next year. Although if you read Wired it was more of a review as his basic thesis was laid out in his cover article “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.”
Topics: Advertising: Online, Blogging, Conferences & Events, ECommerce, Google, Media Convergence, Search: News, Social Media, Technology, Wikipedia | 2 Comments »
Mobile Search: Phoning the Future
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 16, 2008 | Share This
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There was a great headline on the satirical news site The Onion once: “Earthquake Sets Japan back to 2147.” I always think of that when I read about the cool gadgets and toys that electronics makers flood the Japanese market with. I thought of it again this morning while I elite-ly read this week’s copy of the New Yorker like the Eastern elitist I am. It’s not easy to navigate New Jersey transit with my nosre in the air but somehow I manage.
Anyhow, tucked amongst the clever one-panel cartoons and erudite fiction is a fascinating article by Dana Goodyear called “I Heart Novels”. In typical elitist fashion you must subscribe to see the article online (free is so gauche). Goodyear writes about the growing prevalence in Japan of cell phone novels. By the end of 2007, according to Goodyear, 4 of the top 5 bestselling novels were written for cell phone consumption.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Media Convergence, Mobile | No Comments »
Search News: Recession Means Research, Research Means Repetition
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 15, 2008 | Share This
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So we are in a recession right? Belt tightening is rampant, we all know someone who has been laid off, and New York’s governor is proposing a special tax on soft drinks. Soft drinks, people! But I digress.
The recession should have an interesting impact on the Search Engine marketing world as people’s behaviors start to change. Initial fears that people would sacrifice their online connectivity to save money have been proven to be unfounded as a recent survey suggests that there are a whole host of things, including sex and television, that people would rather go without. Of course the Internet can deliver both of those stimuli to your hard drive so I can see the sad logic.
Topics: Advertising: Online, SEM: Keyword Generation, SEM: Paid Search, Search: How-To, Search: News | 2 Comments »
RepriseMe: Number 3 - Mark Pilatowski - SEO Manager
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Written By Noah Mallin | December 12, 2008 | Share This
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Once again SearchViews brings you behind the curtain at Reprise Media with a glimpse at the great people who work here. This week we have SEO Manager and known hockey fanatic Mark Pilatowski.
1. Where are you From? — Toledo, Ohio
2. Favorite Website? — Cracked.com, Digg, piloSEO.com
3. Reprise Job Related Tip? — Stockpile Diet Coke when it is delivered and find a good hiding place for it.
4. Which Search Engine Would You Be and Why? — Dogpile. I like to explore a wide range of ideas and viewpoints instead of being restricted to one way of thinking.
Topics: Reprise Work and Play, RepriseMe | No Comments »