The battle for search continues to heat up as Twitter and Facebook find themselves in the middle of a tug-of-war between Microsoft and Google.
On Wednesday afternoon Microsoft was first to the press with their announcement at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday that their new Bing search engine will index both Facebook and Twitter updates.
In the Information Week article, Qi Lu and Yusuf Mehdi, SVP of the Microsoft’s online audience business, made the announcement.
“We are going to get access to all of the public Twitter information in real-time,” said Mehdi.
A beta of the new version of Bing with Twitter data, referred to by Mehdi as “Bing Wave Two,” should go live shortly. Facebook integration, he said, would come later.
In a foreboding comment, he also stated, “Microsoft’s search goal of understanding user intent, an aim he likened to building “a mind reader.”
I’m not sure that’s the most positive statement for the VP’s to roll out. After all, it’s most common to refer to Microsoft as “The Borg.”
I’ll hand it to Microsoft though. Even though they don’t have a system in place yet, they made a good PR power play to bring more awareness to the Google competitor.
Google made a quick move too. Later in the day, they also announced their search engine would index Twitter’s content too. They didn’t say anything about Facebook, but they did trump the idea their new service would out-perform Bing by rendering faster results with greater accuracy. It wasn’t that long ago Google was rumored to buy Twitter which is now valued at $1 billion.
What was more intriguing for me was what happened after I read the press release.
Almost immediately after I saw the announcement on Twitter, I “retweeted” the news out to my followers and less than 15 minutes later a Google Alert arrived in my email’s inbox.
I monitor various keywords from Google and everytime someone enters a new topic with my name…boom…they send me an email. I monitor a number of topics of interest and it was surprising to see my Twitter comment work its way through Google so quickly for the first time.
This was an interesting announcement for both companies and the integration of this content gives significant credo to both social media services.
Real-time search is a hot topic right now. Unfortunately, after the balloon boy instance last week, I’m starting to question real-time information and still appreciate a journalist who checks his facts.
Although Twitter and Facebook content will now appear in both of the major search engines, I’m compelled to consider the entropy for both systems too.
As things get bigger and more information like Twitter and Facebook content floods the two search engines, how relevant and effective will search be in the future? Will it become too cluttered to find what you’re looking for?
Who knows, maybe there’s room for a new concept in search where some company comes up with a search engine for relative topics? Instead of being the borg, perhaps we’ll see search in the future that focuses only on specific interests alone.
Google still accounts for the majority references for search inquiries here at Times-News Online.
Last month, references from Google represented almost 20% of our online traffic, while Bing came in below Yahoo references at 3%. There’s no doubt Bing is stealing some of the audience and hopefully this competition will lead to a better user experience for everyone.
Which search engine do you prefer? Do you have a personal favorite?
Email had a good run, but it’s been broke for a long time and very soon, it may be a thing of the past.
Most of the business world took notice this weekend when the Wall Street Journal made obvious predictions based on some of the communication movements over the past few months. With a headline that reads “Why Email No Longer Rules,” reporter Jessica Vascellaro opened the eyes of corporate America that email may be riding into the sunset.
From pony express to the telegraph, snail mail and email, we are shifting again toward new forms of media delivery using social services that are highly personal. They also give you more control over who you’re talking to and deliver the message almost as quick as a thought.
There are two important disruptions driving this change – spam and the new social tools like Facebook, Twitter, Internet forums and inventive new applications like Googlewave.
The word spam was derived from the SPAM sketch on the BBC by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Of course, we all recognize the little blue can that serves as a mystery meat, but the term really refers to those pesky unsolicited emails we receive from Viagra to pleas from third-world lottery winners.
Over the past several years, spam has riddled the Internet. So much so that PC magazine reports worldwide spam now makes up 86% of all email.
There’s a lucrative industry that has spawned to battle spam. There are servers and software that can be purchased for a front-line defense against this war. Our company manages email accounts for hundreds of users and just like the national average, we’re blocking some 90% of the garbage – but these devices are hardly a silver bullet.
It’s an expensive and time-consuming game of cat and mouse too because as spammers conjure more sophisticated tactics to pollute the service, you have to constantly update and build defenses. Eventually these obtrusive acts will absorb both profits and resources to maintain any reliable service.
So there’s a question of trust with regard to email. I really only want to receive communications that are relevant and that’s where social media tools offer a disruption to electronic mail.
That doesn’t include those who suffer from Internet addiction, but this average is almost half of television research which reports over 168 hours per month. Together, that’s over 220 hours of time in front of a screen!
One of the fastest growing activities on the Net is the explosion of social media websites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter – not to mention YouTube.
Unlike email, these new services allow you to share direct connections with people and groups from family to friends. Instead of an open system that accepts email from the universe, you control the filters and who can send you updates.
It’s very personal too. The friends on my Facebook account are more connected than every before. It’s like a family reunion though and lacks the depth of intimacy of dinner or a glass of wine, but this informal gathering is engaging and addictive with its virtual voyeurism.
Even Twitter has become a valuable resource for short messages. My brother and his family use this text-messaging tool quite often to shout out brief updates. Best of all, it’s a poetic medium that requires an economy of words delivered in 140 character thoughts. Perfect for the busy lifestyle.
Social media services are fast too.
Downloading email used to be a real pain. Anyone who’s ever returned to the office after a lengthy vacation knows what I’m talking about too. There’s so much junk between the relative communications that it’s easy to overlook important messages altogether.
The social media tools live and breath now on an “always-on” culture. With the growth of broadband connections, you don’t have to wait for email to download. You can watch it stream in real time on your screen anywhere you have access.
Beyond Facebook and Twitter, there are several new apps on the way that promise even more connectivity and speed. I’m still waiting for my Tricorder like Star Trek or better yet, the Dick Tracy watchband, but in the meantime, there’s a new generation of software already available for free.
Earlier this week, I received my invitation to Googlewave. This innovative new service is a software resource Google was trumping several months ago. It took several months for them to open the doors, but after a few days of playing with the tools and watching their training videos, it hasn’t lived up to the hype. However, it does reveal itself as another death nail in the coffin of email.
Googlewave is a dashboard application that combines email, documents, chat and file sharing all into one screen. It works in realtime too and once again, it’s a closed system, perfect for a collaborative environment. Wanna send something to someone in your network? Create a “wave” and watch it happen in real time.
Software like this will continue to evolve and even though email may die a slow death, it will still be around for a while. After all, we’re still sending faxes aren’t we? Some people still use a CB radio too, but just like my telephone land line, email may be a service I can do without in the near future.
I still remember the day I stopped buying stamps and it’s not that often I walk to my mailbox anymore either. Licking those envelopes is something that can gladly stay in the past too. So thank you email for making us more productive and leading our way into the digital lifestyle, but the happiest thought I can imagine is leaving the spam in the cupboard.
As for getting in touch with me, check out my Facebook account and follow me on Twitter. That’s where the best of friends and family are hanging out today.
One of our distinct human characteristics is how organized our species has become (or at least we try to be).
Let’s shelf the natural movements of the atoms and molecules that make up our being, because when it comes to people – and our “stuff“, we like to name it, sort it, categorize it and make it easy to locate.
We organize our cultural stuff too – from words, books and knowledge – we’ve watched this information collect around the world on the Internet.
Google turned eleven years old last week and since the dawn of the Net they have built an unprecedented Internet resource that sorts information by words.
From the Dewey Decimal system to keyword searches, we’re still using letters to organize our data. We enter a word into a box and presto – we all have the history of our planet at our finger tips.
There’s a new idea surfacing on the horizon called “Augmented Reality” (AR) that blends GPS technology, smart phones, mobile software and all the information on the Internet. Instead of sorting by text, AR augments this data by location – bringing about new technologies both novel and mind-boggling.
Wikipedia defines augmented reality as “a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with-, or augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.”
Augmented Reality has been emerging for several years now, but it’s really starting to gain traction now on smart phones.
Basically, you use your mobile device or web cam to enhance (or add to) a real-world experience. Sounds very science fiction. It’s becoming very real.
The idea evolved from main frames, the desktop, laptop and now the little computers we carry in our pocket that shoot video, photos, collects email, plays thousands of songs and maps information or weather wherever we stand. It just so happens this device also makes telephone calls. The funny thing is that we still call it a “phone?”
At present, the smart-phone market share, according to Nielsen is approaching a 20% consumption rate in the United States. Italy has the highest rate of usage with numbers approaching 30% of the population.
As wireless services have improved, one of the latest introductions on our phones is GPS technology. Add a digital camera and now you have a computer that can present an image anywhere on the planet, know where it’s located and associate information related to that image in a handheld screen.
If your phone knows where it’s located and can orient itself and determine whether it’s tilted left, right, upside down or 23% – then it can position itself and relate to data in the same way.
Imagine for a moment you’re visiting a metropolitan city and you are trying to the find a subway.
With AR, you can look through your smart phone’s camera at the street scene in front of you with people and cars buzzing around you in real-time. As you move the camera around, little graphics appear within the screen and point your way to the subway – or for that matter, a pizza parlor.
For a history buff, you could visit the American landscape in Boston and hold your smart phone up on the street corner and watch a Wikipedia icon pop-up on the screen and click the link to read about the historical site that stands in front of you.
Wikitude is ready to roll out this free app right now on your Iphone.
By adding the GPS coordinates into the mix and the smart-phone’s ability to know it’s orientation. You can stand in a spot, the phone calculates your latitude and longitude and matches that to other information around you that match the two points on the planet.
How about a game? Pacman could take on a whole new level if you could play it in a park.
Consider the marketing applications for this technology – walking down the streets will take on a completely new experience.
The graphics are still a bit crude and who wants to look at world with virtual billboards and cheesy avatars. After all, if you remember Second Life, this idea of a virtual world is nothing new. One of my favorite early presentations about Augmented Reality is from 2004.
What intrigues me though is the idea that all of a sudden, information has a new indexing method.
A lot of people enjoy Google Maps and the ability to zoom into locations all across the planet. Sprinkle that idea with a little Augmented Reality and you can walk streets and see all kinds of information and for the most part – experience a virtual world.
Google has been a little behind, but according to Fast Company magazine – “Google’s Street View revolutionized desktop maps, and its coverage of cities around the world is still expanding. But compared to some upcoming augmented reality apps, Google almost feels like its lagging. Is this why its added business metatags to the service?”
Let’s fast forward into the future a bit and bring this closer to home.
We’re walking on Broad Street in Downtown Kingsport. The handheld Iphone has given way to a pair of sunglasses or contact lens. As we explore the streets, we see pictures that were taken over the past twenty years of people, places, businesses, videos, news stories, sound files all mapped to where we stand.
If you’re looking to stay slightly ahead of the digital marketing curve, Augmented Reality could well be “what’s next” and a huge skip past virtual worlds.
The early apps are looking for marketing solutions and I bet the gaming world is taking note of this tech too, but there are some apps that might be extremely useful and invasive by the same measure.
How about a reality app that let’s you walk into a room and see business cards floating over the attendees?
Perhaps an app for the single guy walking into a nightclub and seeing the status of who’s single or married?
There are already ideas forming about how to us AR and Twitter like this new proposed app by TwitAround.
What if the AR app could track negative comments about businesses or for that matter track criminals in a way that even the idea of looking down a street would expose volumes of information about the place or people that surround you?
Sounds a bit too much I know, but keep in mind the ways technology could augment our world and keep us safe.
It’s a crazy place and if you don’t believe me, turn on the news. Last week Al-Queda terrorists are adopting drum smuggling tactics and embedding bombs inside human bodies. Airport security will either have to go to strip searches or develop some new tech that helps keep us safe and even though I admit that it’s all moving too fast – I still like to see us keep an edge over those who seek to do harm.
Besides, we all are watching as the world suffers from a inflating attention deficit disorder.
Daniel Sanchez-Crespo, a project leader at the Barcelona firm, Novarama, had this to say about Augmented Reality – “The real world is too boring for many people. By making the real world a playground for the virtual world, we can make the real world much more interesting”.
Just between friends – the older I get, the more I embrace the heart of a Luddite. I miss the old days of three channels of television and plenty of free time. I’ll admit that since the introduction of the Net, I find myself chained to a screen either on a desktop, my lap or in my pocket.
It’s hard to ignore though. Like many of you, I love new toys. Augmented Reality has some remarkable possibilities and although it probably will not help us get any closer to the true meaning of life, it’s certainly going to make it more entertaining.
AR has been called “the opportunity that’s going to blow the lid off everything,” as Denise Gershbein of frog design put it at Mobilize 09, adding, “That’s the moment when you stop looking down at a device and hold the lens up to the world.”
I’m sure that some people will think that we’re going to far shaping our realities, but TV and video games have been doing that for years and Augmented Reality could be the natural evolution of our species – merging the machines with the humans, but that’s another sci-fi flick altogether.
There’s a turf war brewing on the Internet as Google, Microsoft and Twitter duke it out for your attention. This battle is playing itself out in the technosphere and Google is likely to win the war, but never underestimate the underdogs.
Shifts on the Internet fault-line happen quickly.
In the past few months, Google has seen plenty of competition in a volley of new services.
This year, Twitter has become a trend-setter for real-time search and last month, Microsoft launched a serious contender with Bing.
To add insult to injury Yahoo finally gave up their search services, merging with Microsoft last week to potentially solidify a strategy to steal even more market share from Google.
Meanwhile, back on the Google campus they’re starting a new campaign aimed at Microsoft promoting their Google Chrome operating system, Google Wave (a collaborative email and productivity platform due this Fall) and most recently, a campaign aimed directly at Microsoft Word and Excel users – an initiative called “Going Google.”
What’s at risk here is quite simply your attention which translates into a king’s ransom of advertising dollars.
About three years, I thought it would be helpful for me to setup and Internet server at home. The idea of housing all of my content in a spare bedroom gave me some sense of control. All the content, music, photos and video right next to me in a few steps.
That was never an easy task. Besides paying Sprint $10 per month, Directnic another $120 per year and plenty of dollars and time caring for an old Mac G5 just became too much of hassle.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve finally managed to move all the services out to the cloud on the Internet. Hosting has become too cheap and highly dependable now and it’s something less I have to worry about. Saves me a few dollars too.
After several frustrating outages though and moving across gigs of info, the idav.com, davidcate.com and davidcate.net domains are now comfortably hosted in the nebulous cloud with hosting paid up for the year. I’m even thinking of paying far forward into the future to let this digital destination serve as my virtual headstone in the event of an unexpected departure.
Now that the technical move is out of the way, I’ll just have to remember to back this material up regularly now to satisfy my fear of disaster, but it’s back to the regular updates and thanks for your patience. I’m appreciative of all of those who took the time to say they missed me. Much love.
Over the weekend, a major election in Iran between hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his opponent Mir Hossein Moussavi erupted with claims of voter fraud.
The election was Friday, but there really wasn’t too much online about the event until Sunday. That’s when I thought about turning on the television to feed my curiosity, but instead of switching on the tube, I decided to explore what people were saying on Twitter.
Twitter is a fascinating new Internet micro-blogging service that has caught my interest over the past several weeks and almost immediately I could see a firestorm brewing. In particular, Twitter users were criticizing CNN for lack of coverage about this important historical event.
User were posting short-messages using what is called a “hash-tag” method and writing comments with the phrase “#CNNfail” to complain about the lack of coverage. A search of this tag revealed thousands of protests.
Most people who question Twitter’s relevance wonder why anyone would use this service to inform others about breakfast, but it’s much more important than that because Twitter is reshaping the Internet with “real time searching.”
Twitter’s unique distinction is the ability to look up any subject and see what’s being said right now and by using the phrase “#CNNfail” before online comments, users probably influenced CNN’s coverage because the rest of the night was spent in features and debate about the situation.
When you sign up for a Twitter account, the home page has a Top 10 index of topics that are being discussed on Twitter. In a glance, you can see what the “Twitterverse” is talking about and right now, the buzz is all about Iran.
When using Twitter, you can only publish 140 characters of commentary, but that’s enough, because Twitter is an incredibly efficient channel for the ground war in this torn country. Students, protesters and reformers from Tehran are publishing messages via Twitter that point to cell phone photos, blogs, videos and all kinds of information from the inside out.
It only takes a few seconds for hundreds of new Twitter comments to pile in on your browser. As you refresh the screen new details are keeping the major media sites tuned in as photos of club-toting vigilantes on motorcycles beat citizens and even journalists lives are at risks as they attempt to cover this revolution.
Below are a couple of the recent street videos and be warned, these are both gripping and unsettling.
The government in Iran has made every attempt to shut down all reports revoking visas and shutting down sites like Friendster, Facebook and others. Their attempts to darken this breaking news story is futile though because the streets are in control of the media now and the regime will have a hard time keeping this one under cover.
It’s hard to keep up with all the information via Twitter, but the service provides a deluge of information to explore and it’s obvious the media giants are watching this channel with the rest of the world. Furthermore, CNN, Wired Magazine and New York Times all agree that Twitter has played a influential role in this current wave of political activism. See the links below, or visit Twitter today and click on the search topic #Iranelection to view what’s happening…right now.
Twitter’s growth has been in an meteoric upward graph for the past several months.
They were hoping to take a break last night to run some maintenance for about 90 minutes. However, Twitter users convinced the service to delay their scheduled downtime to ensure that citizens in Iran had a window to voice the events taking place in their country. It was a good move and brought on by users who suggested the extension using the hashtag “#nomaintenance” throughout the day on Monday.
The downside of the real-time functions of Twitter is accuracy and filters. Breaking stories, images and comments coming from cell phones are hardly reputable in many cases and you never know what’s going to show up next – even spammers are learning ways to infiltrate this popular audience. However, it does give us an avalanche of detail and the media is consumed with this efficient method of street level reporting and thankfully, the debate and conversations are helping a country make an important transition.
There’s no doubt these new tools are powerful channels for swaying popular thought too.
A colleague of mind reminds me that revolutionaries use whatever weapons they can to report atrocities in this global age. And yes, it wasn’t that long ago fax machines and satellite phones communicated around the world.
What makes this event different is the realty that we all have a front row seat to this raw coverage. Twitter is simple to use and available for free to anyone with a computer. With your account you have access to a tsunami of real time information as change comes to the desert in the Middle East and it’s reshaping how news arrives to the social conscious.
It’s hard to tell how this will play out over the next few days, but it’s certain we’ve never seen anything quite like this and social media tools are only going to become more powerful as we move forward giving everyone a platform to promote a cause in The Digital Age. For the people in Iran, we can only hope the phrase “people lead – governments follow” has a chance to come true in this part of the world.
Speaking to an audience has gotten easier for me in the past several years. With 24 years of experience in sales, you get to the point where the butterflies subside, especially after you make a mountain of mistakes along the way.
There’s still a bit of anxiety though and these opportunities are always learning experiences because mastering the art of presentation is a key to business success and I had chance to speak a three gatherings recently.
We’re getting ready to launch the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce website this week. Prior to the launch, I spoke to their Board of Directors for a sneak preview at their offices in Kingsport on May 20th. A group of 50 or so people were in the room that day and I had 10 minutes to deliver the quick tour.
On Thursday, May 16th, I was invited to speak to the Tri-Cities Metro Advertising Federation in Johnson City on the subject of Social Media. Mary Ellen Miller was also speaking that day and we had a chance to present several new ideas to the area’s advertising and marketing professionals.
This was a small group, but it was a significant gathering of peers at the Bank of Tennessee Financial offices in Johnson City. This swanky conference room overlooks State of Franklin road and the board room there has some of the coolest presentation tech that I’ve seen lately.
With windows all around, I lowered the screens in the circular office and presented a 15 minute presentation before about 35 agency reps, banks, hospitals, public relations professionals and small businesses.
My presentation was a collection of social media tools from our newspaper network, a review of the tools reshaping the media landscape and review of some of the ideas our clients are implementing using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other tools.
My main theme was the fact that social media isn’t all that new, citing our human desire for interaction and authenticity in conversations, but the the tools have certainly changed and we reviewed those ideas together.
Some of the interesting points of conversations from the session included how to effectively separate personal and professional identities using social media and how to ensure productivity in the workplace with these tools proliferating our lives.
Mary Ellen Miller did a great job introducing a lively collection of social media public relations examples and has been very successful re-branding herself after experience in television news, magazines and leading a PR firm at a local tech company. Her discussions on Social Media will continue on WJHL over the next several weeks.
Special thanks to Sarah Clevinger with The Bank of Tennessee and Jessica Bland with The Corporate Image for organizing this event. It helped me to sharpen my Keynote skills and I enjoyed sharing the new ideas about Social Media.
I’ll continue that discussion with clients over the next several weeks including a presentation to the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce tomorrow – June 1.
My last presentation was caught on video and that gives me a chance to critique the work.
The Kingsport Chamber of Commerce sponsors a Fourth Friday Breakfast every month at MeadowView Resort and Convention Center and they had me on the agenda for their session on May 22nd.
This morning meeting is open to all Chamber members to discuss business and encourage networking opportunities (plus a free breakfast) and it was up to me to open up the new Chamber website and give another peek before an audience of 250 local business people.
We had a good session and although I felt like my presentation was 20 minutes, it turned out to be only 9 minutes and that’s good. Most resources say people have at most a 30 to 60 second attention span and considering the early meeting time it would be very easy to fall asleep.
I had a good time speaking to all of these groups and look forward to other opportunities in the future.
Here’s the video from the Chamber of Commerce presentation.
Barrack Obama became the 44th president of the United States at noon on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 and there was more than a peaceful transition of power that day. There’s a new website online for the White House.
This may be another first too because I don’t recall a new website with any inauguration.
It wasn’t that long ago that I browsed the stodgy museum/brochure website of the Bush Administration and the new one is yet another “change” that ushers in a new era and it’s even more exciting – especially with regard to the Net.
I’m a new citizen in Liberty City. It’s the major cityscape that looks like New York and Chicago. My cousin has been here for a while and he’s helping me move up in crime world as a Russian immigrant named “Niko.”
And so begins the saga of another attention magnet that helps me escape an otherwise world of concern and obligation.
I was one of the first in line for the new Grand Theft Auto IV video game released by Rockstar Games. After a couple of weeks of game play, I’m convinced this is one of the best video games of all time.
Last Friday, April 25th, I joined several other local media professionals in Kingsport for a panel discussion promoted as “Meet the Media” at Eastman’s Employee Center. Sponsored by The Kingsport Chamber of Commerce and produced by The Corporate Image in Bristol, VA, this business luncheon featured several media folks from the region and I admit, I was surprised by an invitation to be on this panel.
The battle for search continues to heat up as Twitter and Facebook find themselves in the middle of a tug-of-war between Microsoft and Google.
When you sign up for a Twitter account, the home page has a Top 10 index of topics that are being discussed on Twitter. In a glance, you can see what the “Twitterverse” is talking about and right now, the buzz is all about Iran.
On Thursday, May 16
