Tag: Google

  • Catching up with Google’s past

    Google did quite a cool thing today, as part of its birthday celebrations. It brought back the oldest working version of the search index available. While you could see the old Google at the internet archive (the two oldest archived pages of google are these), this actually shows you the results that would have appeared in 2001. Give it a spin and try searching for say iPhone, Obama, or even 9/11. The results will really take you back, and aback!!

    And quite coincidentally, I came across a social networking site with a twist – Way of Pearls. While the ones we are used to give us a clue of what others are doing, this one tells you what a person will be doing later – days, months or even years later. It is most useful for planning events. There is a lifestreaming service available at the same site called Social Oyster. Together these could work well.

    until next time, back to the present

  • In the news

    Sometime back, I’d written about the need for newspapers to give the digital medium a bit more consideration in their strategy. While India claims to buck the trend of falling newspaper subscriptions, I wonder how many economies have a thriving newspaper ‘raddi‘ market, the process through which the Indian household gains money by selling old newspapers as scrap.

    A few days back, Google announced its efforts to bring old newspapers onto the internet. The Google News Archive is being expanded and will let you search newspaper archives from decades back. I did a few searches, and for now it only has the already digitized versions of newspapers (in India), its a long and arduous task, but well worthwhile for Google. Over time, they plan to blend these into Google search results also. 

    Meanwhile, the latest group to join the anti Google-Yahoo bandwagon happen to be WAN (World Association of Newspapers) Their concern is that advertisers will increasingly migrate to Google from Yahoo when they see diminishing price advantages on the latter. (via Startup Meme) So the deal will give Google ‘super powers’ and weaken the competition in the search-ad market, since the two players had so far forced each other to give the best possible terms to publishers, like newspapers who offer display and search ads on their websites – a consortium of 200 US newspapers run Yahoo ads. 

    So newspapers are afraid that their revenue from third party ads served by Google/Yahoo would reduce? To me, it looks like if they had developed better ways of selling their own ad space, maybe they wouldn’t be looking like a bunch of whining kids. It adds to my belief that newspapers refuse to treat the online medium with the respect it deserves, and only react when their turf/revenue gets affected. I recently read this post, which explains how, many newspapers and magazines employ their regular ‘interruption advertising model’ even on their websites. 

    However, some top newspapers, are showing exactly why they are where they are. The NYT has an offer of a ‘print ad free with an online ad’. A daring reversal, that is perhaps aimed at switching the relative positions of print and digital, from a revenue perspective? The WSJ, has changed its design recently, and that includes adding a social network, the big deviation from normal procedure being that this one has paid access. While this might be considered not-so-smart in the era of free Facebook and LinkedIn networks, I think Mashable’s argument in favor of WSJ’s move has merit. The Time article also states that this might become available to non paying users as well, and there are plans to integrate it with existing social networks.  I think that if WSJ can back this move with some really good content that is flitered for its elite paying subscribers, this could be a long term winner.

    And while all that’s been happening across the seas, Google’s relationship with local newspapers is different. It has come up with Google News in Malayalam, which indexes news from almost all leading offline and online sources, with Malayala Manorama conspicuous by its absence. Other languages are coming soon. (via Medianama) 

    With digitising newspaers and local language news Google seems to be pushing from different directions. But, as these sites have shown in search, it is possible to best Google. For newspapers, its not just Google, there are different threats. For example, GateHouse Media is starting an online-only daily in Batavia, NY. They see tremendous opportunity for a local news and community site, since the leading local newspaper does not have content on its website. (via Publishing 2.0) This opportunity could exist in any place with good internet penetration and where the local newspaper hasn’t capitalised on that. On a sidenote, here’s a good post on how the traditional syndication means used by newspapers might expect a reversal soon. 

    Newspapers really need to pull up their socks and figure out how the digital media figure in their strategy. Now, though I might get lynched for this, already Web18’s consolidated reach has beaten that of the Times Group (India’s largest media entity), on the internet. And in.com, the portal which I think would be their flagship property on the internet, is still in beta. Why is the Times Group, with the #1 selling English daily, #1 finance daily, several language dailies, TV channels, radio stations etc not India’s #1 website. I think its a mindset issue.  

    I wonder, whether, with rising newsprint costs, and environmental concerns ( trees geting cut for newsprint), it might be a good idea for newspapers to start work on a Kindle like thing to distribute content, especially after I read this recent story on Kindle.

    until next time, print this?

  • Brand new media

    While reading up on the original premise of this blog – brands, I came across a couple of interesting articles that spanned both my interest areas – brands and social media. The first was on Brand Accretion. Accretion is defined as “An increase by natural growth or addition”. Now, in this instant age, this would be considered a ridiculous thought. But to me, I’d prefer to take it as one more argument against the ‘only large campaigns’ approach that I see many brands take. You can read an earlier rant here. A couple of tangential by products of an accretion approach could be brands being able to tackle the long tail more effectively, and being able to espouse causes with a long term vision, like environment-conscious efforts for example; in essence, a flexibility to scale up based on a dynamic business environment, and one that would help brands deliver their promise better, which will be critical, as we go along.

    The other interesting post I read was one that distinguished between new and social media. Now, quite honestly, they were very interchangeable terms to me, but I tend to agree with the post, and the way it distinguishes the two. The simple example would be this – a blog is new media, it becomes a social medium when there are comments and conversations that happen around a post.

    Both new and social media bring out a lot of creativity, simply because of the innumerable sources it throws up. It acts as a perfect background to riff. Here are a few interesting ones I saw recently.

    This one, by Idea is about a month old, and is here in case anyone missed it. Its called Rapchick Mumbaiyya test, and was a smart way to connect to the city, during the brand launch.

    Google did a cool marketing activity to to takeover the Email and chat infrastructure of various education institutes in India. Read about it here.

    Warner Bros has been doing some interesting stuff too – their ad-supported video on demand online network site “features full episodes of defunct series that gained cult status over the last decade. The WB.com is a new digital destination built from the ground up for the same 16- to 34-year-old audience that embraced the WB when it was a television phenomenon”. It has Buffy, roswell etc, but the bad news is that its only available in the US. And i thought the web has no boundaries. 🙁 

    And if Medianama’s thread of thought is accurate, they might be doing some very cool stuff on Twitter, by creating The Joker there. But I’m not very sure of that one, since I also have the Riddler, Two Face and even Rachel Dawes following me now!!!

    The last one is from NIIT (via Alootechie) , which has created a character called Preeti Technani, who has an Orkut profile, a wordpress blog, who is positioned as a mentor, but manages to plug NIIT in between 😉 Lastly, here’s a clue on how not to use social media.

    While on the context of social media, here are two great reads – one is on getting people who don’t use social media to use it, and the other is on agencies of the future.

    until next time, be social

  • Blurring Social Networking lines

    ET had a story sometime back on how sites like Facebook, LinkedIn etc are helping SMEs and entrepreneurs gain business. It adds on to my belief that when the target is niche market segments, the net is the best medium to try out.The more encouraging part for me is that since these media are working for them, they even plan You Tube ads. So, they grow the medium, and the medium grows them!!

    Yes, social networking is not exactly the most known thing in the world, as this article would argue, but as far as online behaviour goes, the Indian stats are a bit encouraging on some parameters. And, with efforts like these, our internet penetration figures might start looking up sonner rather than later.

    So what have the social networks been upto? Lets start with business networking, where I’ve been reading about a lot of new launches. A new business network called ZaaBiz has been launched in India. More details on its activities can be found here.

    Konnects hopes to bridge the gap between Facebook and LinkedIn. According to them, Facebook has not been designed for business purposes, while LinkedIn is too restrictive. So, Konnects has come out with a few features, that will even enable even fresh graduates, who don’t have many years of work experience or projects to show, to share the projects they’re working on. Konnects, based on your profile, will reccomend groups and discussions that you should be part of, and plans to introduce IM and VoIP integration in the future. (via Mashable) I think all these together make it a very differentiated value proposition.

    The third interesting new site I came across is Publictivity. It aims to use social networking to boost productivity, by allowing users (in organisatons)to create work groups, and share information, files and it even has a video viewing mechanism. What I loved the site for, and it has nothing to do with the service, is that they have used Dunder Mifflin (of The Office fame) and an option to chat with Dwight!! Awesome example!!

    The last one I came across is 2Vouch, an Australian social recruiting website which offers referral rewards, with an option to donate to charity also. Companies don’t have to pay to advertise, they only need to pay if they hire a candidate. (via Mashable) The concept is interesting but I wonder about possible loopholes. Is it, for example, possible for a company to get the contact details of a candidate and then route it through other means?

    So, what has LinkedIn been upto meanwhile? For one, it’s been adding small features, like highlighting the sections of a profile that have changed, since you last saw it. (via Digital Inspiration) It has added enhanced group features, that includes a centralised group hub page. (via Tech Crunch). It has also tied up with CNBC to air content generated by its users on CNBC. (via PluggdIn) I share the view that most of these are quite basic features, and LinkedIn not only needs to be adding such things much faster, but introducing innovations too.

    This is of more significance, when we consider that the competition is not only new business networking sites, which are coming out with some neat innovations and targeting specific requirements, its also generic social networking sites like Facebook, if we go by certain studies, which raises the possibility of  business networking on Facebook superceding that on LinkedIn.

    Speaking of social networks, the interesting part is that inspite of the demise of entities like Yahoo Mash, new social networks still seem to be popping up. I read a post on Fwix, which, in addition to a great GUI, also shows the user, the most trendy information going on in his locality, by aggegating about 500000 stories per day. It also allows add on services, the list includes YouTube, MeetUp, Eventful Delicious, Twitter, Flickr and just about any you can think up. BBC has also launched its radio social networking site Radio PoP. And the omnipresent Google, in addition to its own social network Orkut, has opened up another front by adding a twitter-like ‘following feature’ to its blogging service – Blogger, so that users can now become ‘fans’ of other blogs. They have integrated it with Google Reader, and also plan to integrate Google Friend Connect into this, which brings it closer to creating blog based communities. (via The Inquisitr)

    There are new tools that are emerging in the social media space. How Sociable, which allows you to track your brand in the social media space; Lotame, an online advertising agency that is looking at changing the way advertising happens in social media,  Edopter, a way to discover and share trends in fashion, lifestyle, music and so on. New models are on the horizon, like contextual search in social media. The tools are there, its now for individuals and brands to make sure that they are used to their full potential. Like this article correctly states, business can no longer afford to ignore social media, and what GM has done – launching an anti-misinformation site, is perhaps a great start.

    until next time, socialise

  • Chrome and the quest for ubiquity

    I honestly wanted to write something else, but there was so much excitement generated by two tools this week, across the web, and in me, that I felt that I had to share it. I am still exploring both of these, so it’d be great if you also read the links i share in the post, in case you want to know more.

    Lets start with Chrome. That made up 80% of the conversation in Twitter on Tuesday and Wednesday. And made up about 10% of my offline conversations, in which I was spreading the word about it being Google’s new browser, and arguing with convinced individuals that Google did not own Firefox. Which made me wonder, just like the guys at Center Networks, whether all this is important only to some part of a long tail of browser users. I can relate to that. When I redesigned my personal blog a couple of years back, someone told me that it looked weird in Firefox. I asked him what that was!!!! Mozilla became my preferred browser less than a year back. And though I’ve downloaded Opera and Pogo, I’m yet to try them out, while the Flock browser, an excellent tool for social media enthusiasts, is used once in a while. So i guess I can be excused for being shocked  when I read of folk who talk of it being a Windows killer!! The people who should be really afraid are the Firefox guys, this is a good read on that topic.

    Meanwhile, all this shouldn’t take away anything from the massive buzz that Google managed to generate, and part of the credit should go to the very unique way of launch – through a comic, which explains the whys and the whats. If we go by this article, Google has been at it for a couple of years now. A couple of good posts to give you a complete picture.

    For those who are wondering, Chrome will not give you any more web ecstasy than the stuff that is already out there. But it is fast, with no clutter (even the right click throws up an uncluttered menu), and thus ends up making the screen look bigger. There are some things I miss from my first few days of tinkering. Inspite of the Omnibox, I’d still like a Google search toolbar. I miss my Twitter and del.icio.us plugins. Its eerie though, how my FF crashed right in the middle of the post, and i completed it in Chrome!! It raises some interesting questions on the future of browsing, but for now, Google can pat itself on its back because we hear only good things, though I get scared by such observations. (the last link courtesy @rajivdingra)

    The second tool that I got really kicked about was Ubiquity, from Mozilla Labs, an experiment to make common web tasks easier and quicker. You can read about what can be done with this tool here. I tested out mail and twitter with this and it was quite interesting, and easy. But its most definitely work in progress and will take some doing before it can lay claim to ubiquity.

    Meanwhile, Microsoft‘s launch of  IE 8 Beta 2 seems to have got lost in all this frenzy. Is that an indication? On another front, GMDesk, an application that lets you run multiple Google apps without opening up several windows/tabs, seems like something interesting. Google, hmmm.. Google likes Wikipedia, but will still have its own Knol, it likes Firefox, but will still have Chrome. And that leaves me me wondering about Google, about not being evil, and the quest for ubiquity, that it unrelentingly chases, but rarely admits.

    until next time, keep browsing

    Update 09/08/08: Now, this I will love Chrome for. Allowing users to have 2 GMail accounts open at the same time. 🙂