Tag: socialtoo

  • Re: Search

    There’s this lovely Greasemonkey script that does the job of getting the best of both worlds- Google and Twitter, for me, but then it would be quite interesting to have Google bring out a microblogging search engine. (conjecture, but very much in the realm of possibility) In fact, with the recent pain I’ve been having with Twitter Search, it would actually be a big help. What this would do to Twitter Search and would Google add sense (in terms of ‘authority’/ relevance etc and indexing shared links) and Ad Sense to it, and would they share revenues with Twitter are a few questions that interest me. Let’s wait for the engine before we talk about that.

    Meanwhile, the Facebook vanity url brought out an interesting service from Social Too. According to RWW, Social Too is “extending our existing Facebook profile redirect URLs, which redirect yourusername.socialtoo.com to your Facebook profile, and adding an additional layer of analytics to the whole process. So tonight, you’ll be able to get a Facebook vanity URL and get the SEO benefits, but the URL you’ll want to hand out to all your friends will be your SocialToo vanity URL because we’ll provide statistics around those clicking on the URL, the browsers they’re using, where they’re located, and where they’re clicking from.” This would be a very useful resource for brands and even people, just ask any blogger who obsesses over page views 😉

    So what is Facebook upto? I just read that Facebook has rolled out a beta version of its news search that allows people to search their News Feeds and brings up results chronologically from their streams. It means that I can now easily see what my friends think about a recent event/product/service, and that can be notes, videos, status messages, photos etc. ( I did ask for that 🙂 ) The kind of search results that used to get displayed in the earlier avatar of search (people, groups etc) are now listed on the side. (via Tech Crunch) Wonder if it searches comments on the shared content too? Also, thanks to this beastly tweet from Karthik 😉 ,  I noticed that there is a location tab in my newsfeed now. Nothing much for now, but that is a start, and they could add events, among other things. For instance, since a lot of people are auto updating their Twitter status on to FB, I noticed quite a few with the #cisia tag, which is for an event happening in Bangalore. But both the friends using the tag are from Mumbai, so they don’t show up in the Bangalore feed. But yes, it is a start.

    So it does seem that Bing’s launch and the simultaneous bundling of One Riot with IE8 (One Riot is a real time social search engine) has shaken the search box a bit, especially in the realm of real time, though it could be just a coincidence. I have wondered why Bing didn’t launch with some One Riot like mechanism, that would really have been a differentiator, at least in the short term. A reason why I should use Bing, which seems the problem that MS should be addressing.

    Before we end, while we’re on Search, a couple of services I came across that you might want to look at. Hunch, a new discovery engine, from Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, helps you answer questions, basis its understanding of you from the questions it asks you and your further usage of the site. Yep, this is a decision engine which asks you a few questions first 🙂 Mashable has a full analysis on it. I’ve just started using it a couple of days back, and it takes some time to get used to, and what it can do for you is directly proportional to the time you spend on it. So the task for Hunch would be to keep nudging people to interact with it more.  While I did start with a simple question, for which the sponsored link was an obvious choice, i think the question-answer way of search gives sponsored links a lot of relevance. I like the me+crowd way of answering questions and I think it just be the kind of service that grows on you. The other service I came across is Aardvark (via WATBlog – and they’re giving away free invites) which again uses a community network (via IM) to answer your queries.

    Google has claimed that search is in its infancy and there are many avenues for new and existing avenues to explore. Now while Hunch and Aardvark seem to be great products, if Google puts its mind to it, there’s no reason why it cannot replicate either of the services, especially considering the data it has of me from its various services I am a user of. Also, Wave, when it happens, can build on the power of incremental networks easily.  If the microblogging engine does emerge it will give Google the path to real time too.  The advantage for now, is that once these services reach a certain usage level, a me-too product, even from Google will have to work hard on getting people to jump ship, simply because of the lethargy and the time, content etc already invested.

    until next time, the search continues

  • Twitt…er, pay?

    Would you pay for Twitter?’, a very good question, asked by Walt Ribeiro, at his blog. It made me think, and I came to the conclusion that I’d pay (though it all depends on the price). Apparently, I’m in a majority. There’s possibly no ‘pain’ that Twitter is addressing in my case, unless I count the need for every human being to communicate. But I can do that on Facebook, and if its streaming conversation I want, there’s friendfeed, or Kwippy. But yes, twitter has a charm of its own, especially when you start with so many interesting people who share different interests of yours.

    The revenue model for Twitter is something that has caught the imagination of a whole load of people, since everyone, I think, is keen to prevent an ad based model. (yes, including me). The Twitter CEO also agrees. And in a lesser way, there have been discussions on the revenue models of Facebook and Friendfeed as well. A good read on this here. Meanwhile, I read an excellent article, which had a P&G digital guru stating that marketers don’t belong to Facebook. In his own words,

    “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”…. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

    A superb perspective, I thought. He goes on to wonder who said this (user generated media in general) was media, since all consumers were doing were trying to talk to each other. Its a wonderful line of thought, and when I think about it, I’d have to agree with him. But it makes me wonder about the nice folk who built Twitter and Facebook and Friendfeed. While they are nice people, I doubt if they had such massive charity in mind. They build the infrastructure, they bear the costs, I’m happy using it…for free. I go into a coffee shop, and pay money for the coffee, that’s the basic service, I never wonder if they work on a freemium model. I watch a movie in a theatre, pay money for it, and only grumble when they show ads. I suffer both kinds of monetisation, and still go back. But when the Fail whale happens, i rant, and threaten not to go back. Thankfully, I do go back.  I wonder if there’s something wrong with this scenario.

    So, monetising FB, Friendfeed, Twitter – why is it such a difficult thing? Is it because there’s no tangible value in them? But there must be, considering that millions use them everyday. In fact, I read a post yesterday that shows an example of tangible value created by Twitter. But then, the moment there’s a payment mechanism or an ad model discussed, there’s usually a user revolt. I still remember the extreme reactions to magpie.

    A very long time back, someone thought of leveraging the audience that uses content, that became the fundamental way of running media businesses. Newspaper, television, radio businessses have not been built on content, they have been built on monetising the audience that uses the content. Then, a long time back, the web came into being, and someone started a price war that started at zero. So we had free content, free mail, free IM and we were generally happy. Over a period of time, some learnt to monetise, and Google learnt it so well (hell, without content!!), that it built a Google economy, which I agree, might be an inevitable future. But while the ‘customers get everything for free and advertisers pay for Ad Sense’ model is great for Google, I wonder if it’s fair to demand the same of other services that subsidise our conversations with each other.

    Every UGC driven medium – Flickr, You Tube, Twitter, Facebook etc needs to find its own way of leveraging the audience. Template solutions might be a thing of the past.  Like I replied  to a comment on an earlier post of mine, I know quite a few twitter clients, while i know only one for FB. Facebook ‘s services compels users to visit the site, Twitter’s simplicity doesn’t. Every service is different. Ads are obviously not the greatest of solutions though both Facebook, and You Tube are increasingly going along that path. (Here’s an excellent read on Facebook monetisation) Twitter should find its own way of leveraging the audience its gaining daily. I personally thought the research based model that has been started by SocialToo is worth a shot, as one source of revenue. LinkedIn is already doing it. I also saw Twitpay today, and think there’s potential in it.

    Meanwhile, I feel quite like a hypocrite when i consider services like Twitter Image, which is based on Twitter and charges $100 for a customised Twitter background, while Twitter doesn’t have a business model as far as we can see. I desperately want Twitter to crack their model soon, after all with 2500 plus tweets, there’s a lot of me in Twitter. If Twitter dies, a part of me dies too.

    until next time, a sharing caring world, reluctant to share costs?