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Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Savaging Scoble

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I’m feeling pretty bad for Robert Scoble.

Last weekend, Robert released a series of video brain dumps that explained why he thinks ”Mahalo, Techmeme and Facebook are going to kick Google‘s butt in four years.” Since then, he’s been the subject of some scathing critiques that not only point out the technological flaws in his argument but do so in an unnecessarily personal way.

• Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand used 4,000 words to argue that Robert’s wrong: “Want to be like Robert...and keep equating SEO with spam? Then fuck off.”
• At SEOMoz, Randy Fishkin headlined his piece, “I used to respect Robert Scoble’s opinion...”
• Wired’s Adario Strange wrote, “While we always suspected Scoble’s too-quick adoption and evangelism of [Fill In The Blank] Web 2.0 technology spoke to an irrational exuberance unsupported by logic and insight, this video serves as final confirmation.”
• Stowe Boyd says Scoble is imploding, suggesting “Robert, it’s maybe time to go back to evangelizing blogging for some large slow-moving enterprise, I think.”

There’s more. Even Robert himself has listed the criticisms and his mistakes.

Robert’s key mistake was asserting that human-created directories were synonymous with search. Critics are also complaining about his lack of understanding of a ”social graph.” Mostly, though, they’re chiding him for daring to talk tech that is over his head and impugning his credibility because he did. Strange invoked the old quote, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” Sullivan chortles at Robert’s assertion that current search technology doesn’t search video, claiming that the narrative about the video is all you really need to find it: “Want to see the Lazy Sunday video? Oh, look—I found it number one on Google without Google needing to analyze the words inside the video.”

So Robert had the chutzpah to express an opinion and back it up with confused facts and misunderstanding of the technology. Okay, it’s not unfair to point out the mistakes (although the personal attacks accompanying these observations strike me as way, way out of line). If the critics can get past their holier-than-thou “I caught you erring” crusade, they might see a kernel of substance in Robert’s videos: With the web expanding both in volume and content types, Google’s search engine just isn’t adequate any more.

Everyone pretty much agrees—and research supports—that most people don’t go past the first page of Google results. And as search engine optimizers push their content to the top, my keyword search often doesn’t reveal what I’m looking for on that first page. It’s not unusual for a search to produce thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of results. (A search on “Robert Scoble” and “search” generated 1.2 million pages, and only the last one of those on the first page related to this issue—and it was a criticism.)

I’ve suggested for some time that the increased use of consumer tagging and microformats could lead to improved search results. I tend to get better information searching del.icio.us and Technorati than I do at Google. Not as comprehensive, to be sure, but better and more targeted to what I’m looking for. And as for Google’s preeminence in the search space, does anybody remember AltaVista and HotBot? These were the undisputed leaders until upstart Google came along. Who’s to say somebody is working on something somewhere that will topple Google? (And if they are, I’ll bet they’re incorporating tags and social networks into their algorithms.)

So Robert, in his enthusiasm, made some factual mistakes. Fine. Who doesn’t, from time to time? More importantly, he kick-started a discussion that needs to be had about the future of search. While admitting his errors, Robert stands by this, nothing (among other things):

1. Google is getting noisier and isn’t improving as fast as we’d like it. So, anyone who has an idea of how search is going to improve will get listened to. I think this is why Powerset and Spock got so much hype.
2. A lot of people have discovered social networks and services in the past six months. Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Plaxo, not to mention Upcoming, Yelp, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Digg, etc. And we’re just starting to learn about how those are potentially going to change our life and the services we expect. So, anyone who can see a new pattern in how these will be used will get paid attention to.

I’m on your side, Robert. I never read or watched you for your technical acumen, anyway (which is still a damned sight better than mine). The value you bring to the web is in your recognition of trends and your enthusiasm for what works. Don’t let the eye-rolling of the sanctimony set get you down. I, at least, will keep paying attention.

Monday, December 25, 2006

A community-built search engine?

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Jimmy Wales is using more of the real estate on his Wikia home page to explain what the mainstream media got wrong than he is explaining what he has in mind. The gist of the message, though, is pretty clear: Wales plans to release a first pass at a new search engine sometime in the first quarter of 2007.

The announcement, covered in such places as The Times of London, makes it clear that Wales intends to compete with the search giants, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The Times quotes Wales saying, “Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results.” Instead, Wales plans to use the same kind of user-generated approach to the search engine that has driven his best-known effort, Wikipedia. He told The Times:

Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision: ‘This page is good, this page sucks.’ Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way.  But we have a really great method for doing that ourselves. We just look at the page. It usually only takes a second to figure out if the page is good, so the key here is building a community of trust that can do that.

And on his own site, he adds, “Just as Wikipedia revolutionized how we think about knowledge and the encyclopedia, we have a chance now to revolutionize how we think about search.”

The obvious question is whether any search engine can supplant Google as the 800-pound gorilla. The answer, to me, is an unqualified “yes.” After all, who would have thought an upstart called Google would ever replace Yahoo! as the dominant search engine. User loyalty is to be tool that produces the best results, and if Wales’ endeavor produces those results, people will gravitate to it.

Interestingly, media coverage of Wales plans has focused on a partnership with Amazon, which Wales denies. Prominent on the search project home page is this disclaimer: “Amazon has nothing to do with this project. They are a valued investor in Wikia, but people are really speculating beyond the facts. This has nothing to do with A9, Amazon, etc.” Wales also claims Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch report on the project was inaccurate: “This project has nothing to do with the screenshot they are running, and this search project has nothing to do with Wikipedia.”

Interesting, isn’t it, how both mainstream media and the blogosphere were inaccurate in their reporting.

I’m sure Wales would rather focus his effort on finding people to help build the serach engine, which he has dubbed Wikisari, a mashup of the Hawaiian word for “quick” and the Japanese word for “rummaging search.”

For now, everybody is invited to subscribe to Wales’ Wikisari mailing list.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Study supports what we already know about social media and brand evanagelists

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Countless authors, speakers, bloggers, podcasters and other advocates of social media have pointed out that companies should focus on their biggest fans and that social media like blogs—along with other Internet tools—are ideal channels for such outreach.

Yahoo! and comScore Networks have released research today that validates that point of view. ”Engaging Advocates through Search and Social Media” makes the connection between effective use of the Net as a marketing channel and influence of brand advocates. Specifically, the study found (according to the press release):

• The Net has had a significant impact on how customers research and recommend brands.
• The Net amplifies Word of mouth so this trusted form of communication reaches larger audiences.
• The Net has given rise to brand advocates as primary influencers. Two brand advocates convert friends or family members to buy a product or brand for every one ordinary customer.
• Brand advocates are better connected and have a larger sphere of influence, elevating their value to marketers.

The study defines a brand advocate as…

...adventurous opinion leaders and social influencers who are slightly younger, more educated and affluent, and spend more time online than non-advocates. They represent approximately 36 percent of the online purchasers surveyed across four categories including consumer electronics, automobiles, vacations and home mortgages. Brand Advocates are more active searchers and conduct 48 searches per month on average compared with 39 searches per month for non-advocates. In addition, half of Brand Advocates use search engines to research prior to purchasing, compared with one-third of non-advocates. By investing in the research process, Brand Advocates feel more satisfied with their decisions post-purchase, and therefore, are more compelled to talk about them.

The study is a bounty of statistics supporting the value of targeting brand advocates. For example, the research found that half of brand advocates talk online to friends, family, and strangers about the focus of their passion, and 60% think good brands are worth talking about (vs. 26% of non-advocates). And—the part we social media advocates should like—the numbers show that brand advocates are fully emgaged with social media (ranging from instant messaging to podcasts) and using them in their product-related efforts. What’s more, brand advocates are far more likely to say something positive about a brand they like than they are to wax negative about brands they don’t.

The methodology applied to the study—detailed in the press release—is particularly impressive.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

A search engine that rocks

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When was the last time a search engine made you say, “Wow”?

For me, it was probably the first time I tried Podzinger; I was wowed by the fact that the folks at the BBN-owned company had figured out how to catalog words spoken in audio and make them searchable, then take you just to that part of the audio file where the word was said.

I had another “wow” moment today trying out the OWL music search, hosted on the Creative Commons search page, as well as on its own page. (The difference between the two: the Creative Commons search allows you to find Creative Commons-licensed work.) The search suggests you can “find music through music.” Click on the graphic that invites you to open an MP3 file, and the file you select appears as a waveform in a blue space that occupies the top of the page. Click the play button and you can listen to the song as a slider moves across the waveform. Stop the music from playing when you hit a spot you really like, then click the search button. OWL will find other songs like the one you were playing from a current database of more than 10,000 songs from independent music sites.

I picked “Missing Person” from the new Eric Clapton/J.J. Cale collaboration, “The Road to Escondido;” OWL found 55 songs by artists I’d never heard of, providing me with information but also the ability to play the song—and specifically, the part of the song that matched my original selection. You can also limit your search to genres like classical, new age, rock, jazz and blues.

I can’t get the OWL music discovery engine to work in Internet Explorer 7, so be sure you have Firefox or some other browser before giving it a try.

But...wow.