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Facebook Surpasses Google, Bing Had Instant Last Year

Chris Crum — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:03:38 +0000

One story that’s capturing a lot of attention today is Facebook surpassing Google in time spent on site in the U.S. Silicon Alley Insider has a chart illustrating as much.

While this is certainly good news for Facebook, it doesn’t necessarily mean bad things for Google. These two are increasingly becoming bigger competitors, but Google, at least the search engine part, doesn’t always aim to keep users on its site. Sure, it does to some extent with things like Google Places and hosted AP articles, but the release of Google Instant this week clearly shows that Google wants to get users what they’re searching for faster.

That’s not to say that Google doesn’t want users sticking around. I think we’ll see more direct answers coming from Google itself in its search results. Google Squared is a big part of this.

Speaking of Google Instant, Danny Sullivan has an interesting article about the company disguising relevancy issues with the feature. Also, I have another article up about Google Instant’s effect on web history, and how it might work from the browser search box and Chrome address bar.

Janko Roettgers at NewTeeVee points out that early demos of Google TV appear to display a Google Instant-like functionality. We should see it soon enough, as Google TV devices should be shipping this month.

USA Today has an interesting interview with a Bing exec who talks about how a feature similar to Google Instant was built for Bing last year.

ProgammableWeb reports that USA Today is opening up its data to developers via an API. According to Romin Irani, the newspaper hopes to raise internal awareness about its databases first, with public access and a developer contest to follow.

Ask announced that Bloglines will be shut down October 1. " Not an easy decision, especially considering our loyal and supportive (not to mention patient) user base, but, ultimately, the right one given business reasons simply too hard to ignore," the company says.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons reports that Facebook has filed for a patent on social CAPTCHAs. The title is "USING SOCIAL INFORMATION FOR AUTHENTICATING A USER SESSION". The abstact says, "A social CAPTCHA is presented to authenticate a member of the social network. The social CAPTCHA includes one or more challenge questions based on information available in the social network, such as the user’s activities and/or connections in the social network. The social information selected for the social CAPTCHA may be determined based on affinity scores associated with the member’s connections, so that the challenge question relates to information that the user is more likely to be familiar with. A degree of difficulty of challenge questions may be determined and used for selecting the CAPTCHA based on a degree of suspicion."

We knew Windows Phone 7 would be here this year, but there is now a launch date, according to Pocket-lint, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. That date would be October 11.

Reuters is reporting that a judge has reinstated eBay’s 28.4% stake in Craigslist, but Craigslist still gets to keep eBay off its board.

An interesting piece from Jonny Evans at ComputerWorld discusses how big Apple’s AirPlay is going to be for the company. This is one of Apple’s recent announcements that may have been overshadowed by some of the others, but has pretty big implications.

Jenna Wortham at the New York Times’ Bits blog talks about a new social news service from Betaworks and the NYT. It will be called News.me and will be personalized.

TechRadar reports that Google says Android isn’t optimized for tablets, but the Gingerbread and Honeycomb versions (the next two) likely will be.

Michael Arrington says some ex-MySpace execs are working on a new startup called Namesake, which is in private beta. The exact nature of it is still unknown.

Google Steps In After San Bruno Explosion

Doug Caverly — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:10:30 +0000

Google often steps in when disaster strikes, helping people in Chile, China, Haiti, and Pakistan (among many other places) to date. And now that fire’s claimed several lives and many homes in San Bruno, California, the company’s trying to render assistance again.

A quick note in case anyone with friends or family members at Google is reading: a post on the Official Google Blog explained that "no Google employee was hurt" even though "[t]his disaster strikes close to home; our YouTube offices are about two miles away from the main gas explosion."

Otherwise, one significant way in which Google’s helping people who have been affected is with a substantial donation. The company gave an "initial amount" of $50,000 to the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter, since it’s closely involved with relief efforts.

Also, Laszlo Bock, Vice President of People Operations, wrote, "We’re directing Googlers to the local blood drives today and will be hosting blood drives in our San Bruno, Mountain View and San Francisco offices early next week."

Then there’s the simple matter of Google doing what it can to get other organizations and individuals involved. Between the corporate blog post and a couple of tweets, it’s possible that Google will bring the situation to the attention to several million people.

Google Talks Instant’s Effect on Web History

Chris Crum — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:51:26 +0000

As noted in an earlier article, Google Instant may log SERPs for unfinished queries in your browser’s history, if you pause for long enough, before completing your query. WebProNews asked Google about this.

"For signed-in users with Web History enabled searching on the Google.com homepage or results page, we continue to show all the searches they perform," Google’s Jake Hubert tells us. "With Google Instant, this includes searches when the user pauses for three or more seconds and/or clicks on a search result. These queries are explicitly marked to indicate results were shown for three seconds but had no click."

Maureen O’Connor at Valleywag writes, "The new Google Instant guesses what you’re searching for while you’re typing, and retrieves results before you finish. It’s the T-9 of search engines. And it means buying an "erector set" will make everyone think you have ‘erectile dysfunction.’" If everyone means anybody looking at your web history, she might be right.

Upon the announcement of Google Instant, the company said that they would be rolling out the feature to mobile and browsers (search boxes and Chrome address bar) in the next few months. I have been wondering exactly how this will work.

Will using this feature automatically take over a page the user is currently on with Google results? With the chrome address bar specifically, what if a user just wants to go to a site and not Google? Will they be presented with results before they even have a chance to complete the typing of a URL?

"It’s premature for us to get into details about future implementations," Hubert says.

That’s fair, but this will be an interesting element of Google Instant to keep an eye on. If it turns out to do that, some webmasters may take issue.

AT&T Announces Addition to Dow Jones Sustainability Index

Chris Crum — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:05:49 +0000

AT&T announced that it is being added to the 2010 Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America, effective September 20. The index looks at corporate, economic, environmental and social performance, and tracks the performance of the top 20% of the 600 biggest North American companies in the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market Index in terms of sustainability.

The company says that announcement comes as AT&T continues to make progress on multiyear commitments for important environmental, education and volunteerism programs that help strengthen communities and stimulate economic growth.

AT&T has $565 million planned to invest in 15,000 alternative fuel vehicles through 2018. The company says its working to help find solutions to the U.S. high school dropout crisis through AT&T Aspire, which is a $100 million program aimed at improving high school retention rates. AT&T also says its employees and retirees contributed 8.5 million hours of time in their communities.

"Our debut on the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index signals our belief that a company’s long-term growth is linked to the soundness of its business practices and to the health of its employees, its community and its world," said Charlene Lake, senior vice president of public affairs and chief sustainability officer, AT&T. "We know our stakeholders have high expectations of AT&T as a corporate citizen. While we continue to learn and make progress on this journey, we take pride in being recognized for the steps we’ve taken."

The full list of companies in on the index can be found here.

Get Clients: 17 Giveaways that Attract Clients

Jennifer Davey — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:47:50 +0000

Most potential clients need to be touched between 7 and 9 times before they make a purchase. Many need to be touched again and again—warmed slowly until they are ready to buy. The easiest way to do this is to have a newsletter or ezine. However, in today’s fast-paced bloated-inbox world, potential clients are wary about handing out their email addresses.

To get clients to sign up for your newsletter or ezine, which should be the entrance to your marketing and sales funnel, you will need to offer them something of VALUE in exchange for their contact information and the privilege of staying in touch with them.

Your valuable giveaway must be short and sweet. It must address a mini-problem and give a quick solution. It should be easily and quickly consumable.

Coming up with a giveaway that compels potential clients to take action and sign up for your newsletter or ezine can be tough! Below is a list of 17 types of giveaways that you can offer to attract clients into your marketing and sales funnel.

1. A 2- or 3- page report

2. Any kind of easy-to-use “kit” that achieves a mini-result

3. “To-Do” list

4. A checklist

5. A task list

6. A video

7. A template

8. A list of the “10 Best” (a resource list relevant to your topic)

9. A workbook

10. A short audio recording

11. A tip sheet

12. A webinar

13. A teleseminar

14. A quiz

15. An assessment

16. An e-course

17. A discount on a product that will soon be released

Privacy Issues All Over the Place This Week

Chris Crum — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:55:30 +0000

There has been a lot of discussion about privacy in the news this past week, and surprisingly, not a whole lot of it has had to do with Facebook. Is the Facebook privacy concern fading? Feel free to discuss your concerns with that in the comments.

To be fair, there is at least one current story that is related to Facebook privacy, and that is the upcoming release of Diaspora. This has been billed as an open alternative to Facebook, that would protect the privacy of users. There is naturally a great deal of skepticism about the idea that this will be a significant threat to Facebook, but it has managed to generate a fair amount of hype. It’s scheduled to debut next week (Sept. 15).

Do you think Diaspora has the potential to put a dent in Facebook’s user base? Let us know.

One of the biggest stories of the web this past week has been the release of Google Instant, Google’s new feature, which provides search results as you type your query. This has generated a mix of positive and negative reactions, and some have been concerned with privacy issues related to the feature.

Google uses personal information to deliver you search results, but it has done that for some time. The company maintains that it does nothing different in this regard, when it comes to Google Instant. Still, another issue has been raised, related to this feature.

If you do attempt to search for "erector set" and and pause long enough in the middle of typing to where erectile dysfunction results appear long enough, a SERP for erectile dysfunction can appear in your browser history. I’ve seen it. I’ve actually emailed Google inquiring about this (I suspect it goes by the 3 second rule that the ad impressions do), but I haven’t heard back yet. I will explore this further after I get more info.

Google updated its privacy policy last week, though the update was more in the language than practice.

Are you worried about Google Instant from the privacy perspective? Comment here.

This past week, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that federal law allows judges the discretion to require that the government obtain a probable cause search warrant before accessing cell phone location data, according to a report from the EFF.

Thoughts on this? Let us know.

Also this past week, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s policy allowing border agents to search laptops or other electronic devices at the border without reasonable suspicion.

"These days, almost everybody carries a cell phone or laptop when traveling, and almost everyone stores information they wouldn’t want to share with government officials – from financial records to love letters to family photos," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

Something to say about this subject? Go ahead.

PCWorld reports that e-commerce trade group NetChoice is saying proposals in Congress that would create new rules for sites collecting personal data would "cripple the online advertising and publishing industries."

The group maintains that one proposal would allow individual Internet users to sue some sites and ad networks if they fail to comply with the legislation’s rules on getting permission for collecting personal data.

Discuss this topic here.

Finally, Time reports that sheriffs in North Carolina are looking to be able to access state computer records that identify people who have prescriptions for painkillers and other drugs. Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns.

Should the police be able to access this info? Let us know what you think.

Ask Unveils Q&A Platform to Get Users More Answers

Chris Crum — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:51:51 +0000

A couple months back, Ask unveiled its new redesign with a heavy focus on Q&A (read our interview with Ask SVP of Product Management Tony Gentile here). Now, the company has launched a Q&A Partner Platform to help grow its community of people who can answer questions.

"This new platform is an important part of our multi-pronged approach to grow our Q&A community, while giving back at the same time," say sAsk.com US President Doug Leeds. "We see huge long-term opportunity for partnering with both non-profit and, eventually, commercial organizations to build our user community with motivated, knowledgeable experts who can provide high quality answers to other users’ questions. Today’s news is a first step in that roadmap."

The platform includes features like membership badges and contribution progress meters to help members support causes by answering questions that are routed to them.

Ask has an "Answers for the Cure" program in place, powered by the new platform. The company teamed up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure on this.

"This is a great example of innovation and technology combining to help build a sense of community through shared information," said Karen White, director of corporate relations for Komen. "We’re excited by the potential of this program to educate women, while also raising much-needed funds for Komen’s extensive research and community outreach programs."

Ask uses proprietary routing technology to get the right questions to the right community members, when there are no published answers indexed in the Ask.com search engine.

Facebook Launches Some New Like Button Options

Chris Crum — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:20:01 +0000

Facebook has launched three new updates to its Like button social plugin. First is the ability to like canvas URLs for Facebook apps that represent things like causes, movies, or other real world objects. Second is the ability to link a Like button to a Facebook Page. Third is the "box count" layout that displays the total number of likes above the button.

"Since we launched social plugins in April, we’ve been listening to user feedback and working with developers to optimize the Like button to make it as seamless as possible for people to like content around the web and share it with their friends," says Facebook Platform engineer Jerry Cain.

The ability to like canvas URLs in apps means that app users can like pages from within an app. This will then place a like in the user’s newsfeed, linking to the app. This could help app growth tremendously.

Page owners now have the option to either use the Like button or the Like box to encourage user engagement, with like buttons linked to Facebook Pages.

As far as the box count format for the like button, Cain says, "This layout provides another option to suit different website designs. To determine which Like button is most effective at driving referral traffic for your site, use our ref attribute for tracking."

Facebook likes have quickly become an integral part of online content marketing and driving traffic/engagement. It is good that Facebook continues to add options around its social plugins, and the company will likely increase those options has time goes on.

Does Google Instant Mark the End of SEO?

Chris Crum — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:21:35 +0000

A reporter (I believe she was from AdAge) attending Google’s Q&A about Google Instant pointed out that the new search feature tends to favor big brands. This isn’t really surprising, as it is these brands that are more likely to be searched for most often. After all, they’re big because people know them.

Do you think Google Instant is a threat to SEO? Share your thoughts.

iCrossing has a list of brands that come up when you enter each letter of the alphabet (not all are brands, but many are). A is for Amazon (not Apple), B is for Bank of America, M is for Mapquest (not Microsoft), N is for Netflix, P is for Pandora, V is for Verizon, and Y is for Yahoo.

You must keep in mind, however, that the instant results are personalized. Google takes into account things like your location and your surfing habits when providing you results.

Google Instant doesn’t necessarily make things any easier on small businesses, but it’s showing big brands in cases where Google probably would’ve suggested big brands anyway. If users do a lot of local searches, it’s possible that Google could show more local results (including small businesses) for those users, I’m speculating.

Steve Rubel says that Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant. "Here’s what this means," he says. "No two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors."

He’s not wrong about that, but I’m not sure that makes SEO irrelevant. Google has been showing different results to different users for quite a while now. This is really just an extension of that.

Businesses might want to try (and have other people try) doing searches for keywords that they would expect people to use to find their site. See what comes up (keep in mind the personalization) and work from there. Easier said than done no doubt, but it’s something to consider. Think about what kinds of people will be interested in your products and what other kind of searches they might be doing. It’s not a science, but again, perhaps something worth considering. It might mean getting to know your customers better, which can’ t be a bad thing anyway. Maybe it means asking them to take surveys. Maybe it doesn’t.

The whole thing doesn’t help organic SEO’s case in the old SEO vs PPC debate. I’ll give Rubel that.

Speaking of PPC, Google says Google Instant changes the way it counts impressions. "It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels," says Google’s Dan Friedman. "However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need."

Trevor Claiborne of the Google Analytics Team says that Analytics users might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and traffic for organic keywords. "For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward," he says.

You should read this post on the Google Webamster Central blog. It says that impressions are measured in three ways: the traditional way, when a user clicks on a link that appears as they begin to type, and when a user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

Sidenote: Google’s Matt Cutts weighed in on the whole will Google Instant kill SEO thing. "Almost every new change at Google generates the question ‘Will X kill SEO?’ Here’s an video I did last year, but it still applies," he says.

He says, however that over time, it could change SEO. "The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time," says Cutts. "For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results."

Google Instant will likely become increasingly important to search marketing, because not only will it roll out to more countries (it’s starting in the U.S. and a select few others), but it will soon come to mobile and browser search boxes. Each of these factors will greatly increase how often Instant results are displayed.

The mobile factor actually has implications for Google retaining a substantial amount of mobile searches in general. The better (and quicker) Google can give results on any kind of query, the less reason users have to go to different apps to acquire certain information.

Google clearly said that ranking stays the same with Google Instant, but it will change the way people search. It will affect their search behavior, and that is what search marketers are going to have to think about more than ever. You should also consider that some people will simply deactivate the feature, leaving them open to Google’s standard results.

Tell us what you think of Google Instant. Do you like it or not?

Google Talks White Spaces, Google TV Coming This Month?

Chris Crum — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:20:08 +0000

Google has a post on its Public Policy blog talking about moving forward on white spaces. As the company notes, the five current FCC Commissioners will soon meet to set final technical rules for white spaces.

"If it gets the rules right, the Commission will have taken a huge step to put better and faster Internet connections in the hands of the public," says Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini has reportedly said that Google TV devices should start shipping as soon as this month.

Google released some helpful updates for Google Maps for Android today. These include Walking Navigation, Street View Smart Navigation, and a new search bar.

Apple announced the publishing of App store review guidelines, which has application developers excited.

Telegraph points to some TwitPics from outer space. These were uploaded by astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock.

Ars Technica reports that Amazon is joining forces with Best Buy to sell Kindles. This is probably a smart move, considering Barnes & Noble is dedicating entire in-store boutiques to its Nook device.

eWeek looks at an In-Stat study that projects that notebook sales will reach 291 million by 2014, accounting for 52 percent of the computing market. AppleInsider refers to a researcher who says that Apple will sell 28 million iPads in 2011 (while "chipping away at PC sales").

Microsoft announced the beta release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. "Microsoft Dynamics CRM has tremendous momentum around the world, and we’re glad to bring an exciting new wave of technology to our customers and partners," said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "Our new beta release for cloud-based and on-premises deployments allows customers and partners to try the product and see the benefits from the investments that we’ve been making."