October 21, 2009
Google Labs Rolling Out Social Search Experiment
At Wednesday's Web 2.0 Summit Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience. announced the company will be launching a social search experiment in the coming weeks, Information Week reported.
The experiment will be done through Google Labs and will need a Google account and a Google Profile to work. Information from a person's various social media will be included in the results given for searches. They will appear at the bottom of the search page, Cnet reported.
This way if anyone in any of your networks has commented about your search query you will get their comments added to the results. Interesting idea - this really could improve the trust levels for search results if a friend is giving a recommendation to what you are looking for.
"Mayer demonstrated how a search for "New Zealand" produced a list of search results that included relevant content created by friends midway-down the search results page. Among the search results were links to a Gmail message that referenced New Zealand and a FriendFeed entry, each from a different friend," Information Week noted.
The interaction between various social media will prove interesting and could be a clever play to grab the momentum this area is getting right now.
Posted by Frank Watson on October 21, 2009, 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Yahoo Starting Human Curated News and Editorial Content
Yahoo announced it will be starting a news site with stories found, edited and written by in house staff and guest writers, headed by Andrew Golis - formerly of TalkingPointsMemo.com.
Golis said on his personal blog: "I've accepted an amazing offer from Yahoo to build, staff and run a new news blog. It will be a combination of curation and original reporting, with gregarious linking and sharp, smart writing. In other words, for the folks who read this site for meta journalism news,"
The approach is similar to the Huffington Post which should create some good competition.
Golis did make an update to inform people that this would be part of the existing news. He said, "use of the word "site" instead of "blog" made some folks think this would be a new, independent website for Yahoo. Thankfully, it won't be, and will live at Yahoo News and benefit from the enormous audience and resources they've already built up."
We will be watching for these changes with anticipation.
Posted by Frank Watson on October 21, 2009, 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google Also Getting Access To Twitter
While Bing had a little time to grab the initial headlines of working with Twitter, Google closed the day with their own announcement of access to Twitter, Mashable reported.
"Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months," the Official Google Blog stated.
While giving a major play for Twitter in exposure, this is not the move that would give Twitter a chance to challenge Google, as they have noted they wanted some months ago.
But now it is time to see how the two engines use the data.
Posted by Frank Watson on October 21, 2009, 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Bing.com/Twitter: A Visual Tour
Bing.com/Twitter is live. Here's how it looks.
The "Hot Topics" tag cloud is at the top of the page, beneath the search box.
And here were the trending topics on Twitter at the time of the screenshot above. (No, Kanye West is not really dead.)
Below the tag cloud are tweets categorized by hot topic.
Now, let's take a look at search results. There's a Carolina Hurricanes game tonight, so let's see who's Tweeting about it. Notice the pause button at the top right of the results, which you can use to stop the real-time updating.
The sidebar on the left leads to Bing searches, not more Twitter searches.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on October 21, 2009, 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Google Website Optimizer Launches Over Time Charts, Experiment Management API
If you use Google Website Optimizer for your landing page testing, then you'll want to know about a couple of important updates.
First, a new feature has been added called "Over Time Charts." Developed by a summer intern, the charts graph the cumulative conversion rate of each combination spanning the life of an experiment. They're available for all experiments and can be found on the reports page.
Secondly, at eMetrics this week in DC, Google announced the Website Optimizer Experiment Management API. This helps web development platforms such as content management systems (CMS) and third-party shopping carts integrate Website Optimizer, which in turn makes it easier for more search marketers to conduct landing page tests using the free tool.
What do you think of the Google Website Optimizer announcements? Let us know by leaving a comment.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on October 21, 2009, 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Confirmed: Twitter and Facebook to Be Part of Bing Wave 2 (Not to Be Confused with Google Wave Beta)
As rumored earlier, Qi Lu did in fact take the stage at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and announce search partnerships with Twitter and Facebook. TechCrunch had the lowdown on Lu's speech, and the Bing Search blog has a post, as well. The word is largely mum on Facebook - Lu said that announcement would come later.
However, Lu did launch into greater detail about the Twitter partnership. It's non-exclusive, which, yes, means Google can get a search deal with Twitter as well. It's also part of "Bing Wave 2," which is what Microsoft is calling a flurry of new features that are being added to Bing post-initial launch.
Bing will de-dupe repeated Tweets and use content, follower numbers, and ReTweet quantity to help determine quality. Spam will be filtered out.
Trending topics will be displayed in a tag cloud and Bing will show you the final URL of a bit.ly shortened URL so you won't be tricked into going to sites you don't wish to visit.
At around 4:30pm EST 3:30pm EST, you can preview the new Twitter integration at http://www.bing.com/twitter.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on October 21, 2009, 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
More Rumors: Google, Facebook to Launch Online Music Initiatives
The rumor mill just keeps flying this hump day. First, TechCrunch is dishing on a new initiative by Google to make music easier to search and sample. The deal will involve services such as MySpace, iLike and LaLa, and is rumored to be announced next Wednesday at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, Brad Stone at the New York Times has the scoop on a new music micropayments service slated to be launched by Facebook. Currently, you can spend 10 cents to send cute little goodies in the form of images to your Facebook friends. Soon, you'll be able to send songs that your friends can listen to online. Greeting cards and videos will also be getting the micropayments treatment.
Neither of these stories is officially confirmed. "No comment" is the phrase of the day!
Posted by Nathania Johnson on October 21, 2009, 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Rumor: Bing to Announce Real-time Search Deal with Twitter, Facebook
According to Kara Swisher at All Things D, Microsoft's Qi Lu will take the stage at at Web Summit 2.0 this afternoon at 11:30am and announce a new real-time search deal with Twitter and Facebook.
While Swisher and other blogs are saying that these rumors are confirmed, as of right now (1:43pm EST), they are not officially confirmed. But you know how it goes when you get the "no comment" comment. Swisher is rarely wrong, so it's very likely this rumor is true.
Of course, Microsoft already has a deal with Facebook. They have a 1.6% investment in the social network and their search is integrated into the site.
In September, Microsoft began testing social sharing features that would allow searchers to share results with Twitter and Facebook, among others. Additionally, Microsoft launched BingTweets.com in July, which is a mashup of Bing search with Twitter's API.
It's probably safe to assume that any real-time search deal with Twitter and Facebook would involve more than just utilizing APIs.
Stay Tuned!
Posted by Nathania Johnson on October 21, 2009, 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Ask.com Unveils New Advertising Campaign
Ask.com has a new advertising campaign promoting their recently-launched Deals feature. The ad features people representing various demographics dancing and saying they want deals. The last guy, I swear, looks like a younger Jerry Springer. Also, the ad has bright colors and the cheekiness of the latest Old Navy ads.
What's that you say? You would like to do an Ask Deals dance? And you want to post it on the Internet for all to see? I have good news for you. Ask has created a microsite, AskDeals.com, where you can submit video of your dance - oh yeah and do some deal-searching.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on October 21, 2009, 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
