Google enters the video search arena & Yahoo adds video search tab

By Charlene Li

Google launched its entrée into video search tonight, which indexes current television closed captions. Do a search on “Johnny Carson” to see the updated coverage. In a separate announcement (hmmm….interesting timing) Yahoo! added a video search tab to its home page search options and also announced a partnership with TVEyes to index closed captioned content from three news sources.

A couple of thoughts on the burgeoning video search space:

- First, video search suffers from one fundamental problem – there’s a dearth of video content that people really care about on the Web. Yahoo! announced earlier this month that they would address this problem with 1) better search bots that would seek out available online videos (video files often “hide” where spiders can’t find them, such as behind Flash animations, in frames, or behind JavaScript); 2) their Media RSS standard that hopefully will encourage producers to include metatags that better describe the content; and 3) indexing closed captioning via partnerships like companies like TVEyes. While Yahoo! and Google are both eager to carve out relationships with Hollywood producers, the reality is it will take YEARS before the really good video content will be available online due to rights management and copyright issues. Remember – it took three years between the rise of Napster and the arrival of iTunes for digital music to make headway.

- Google has built their own technology to capture broadcasts (they set up their own rabbit ears to pull programming from local Bay Area stations) and index the video streams. But you can’t view the videos themselves! So why would Google bother with this? Note that Google provides a link to future episodes and a wry comment on the help page that video viewing is yet to come. My hunch is that this is a way to demonstrate to reluctant studio producers that video search could help them monetize their video content if they make it easily discoverable. Imagine Google partnering with DVR services like TiVo to do one-click recording of future episodes. Yet another is to enable video-on-demand ordering with your local cable provider, where users would pay-per-view to see the episode that aired two weeks ago. Or movie studios could sample a segment from a movie and allow online streaming of just that one section for a fee through partners like CinemaNow or Movielink.

- Google, Yahoo!, as well as other video search providers like Blinkx and Singingfish will require patience and staying power as video content makes its way online. But let’s think bigger and extend video search to include “desktop” search and the digital home. One of the key elements of the future digital home (Forrester’s report “The Battle For The Digital Home” is available only to subscribers) will be portals that help consumers find the content they want to play on their new home systems. Video search in the future will help find your baby’s second birthday party video, Moses parting the Red Sea from your copy of “The Ten Commandments”, and Nixon’s Checkers speech on the Web.

It's going to take a long time for video content -- and hence, video search -- to develop. So the reality is, we'll see a lot more of the one-upmanship over the next few years as giants like Google and Yahoo! battle each other and little David's like Blinkx and Singingfish try to do them just one better.

AOL goes a-searching

By Charlene Li

AOL released a lot of news around its search strategy, summarized well by John Batelle here (it sounds like we got the same briefing). I’ve included some screenshots that AOL provided. Download aol_search_12005_screenshots.ppt

A couple of thoughts:

- Welcome back to the portal/search race, AOL! Although they never really left, many watchers had considered them a non-player. The fact remains that they have a significant audience and are focused on re-building it, especially with its AOL.com efforts. Their new search efforts (including shopping, local, and desktop) will all raise the company’s visibility.

- AOL has long maintained that they didn’t need to own an algorithmic search engine to play in the search space. I agree with that because they’re able to pick and choose from the best of breed players out there. AOL’s revamped local search (which won’t be available until sometime later this quarter) will be built around FAST, not Google, presumably because FAST will be more flexible and integrate in properties like MapQuest and AOL Yellow Pages. Other partnerships include best-of-breed Copernic for desktop search (I love how quick, light, yet powerful Copernic is) and Ingenio for pay-per-call advertising.

- It’s becoming clear that AOL’s core competency will have to be integrating all of these technologies into an amazing experience for their users. AOL VP & GM of Search Gerry Campbell said, “You win at search with an emotional experience. We can win someone over with a great experience and if that happens, we’ll lock that person in long term.” Gerry has a point here – search loyalty is up for grabs and AOL has the right arsenal to win back defectors.

- Last point: It will be interesting to see how AOL integrates Ingenio’s pay-per-call listings with Google AdWords within its local search offering. They weren’t able to discuss details (I think they’re still trying to figure it out themselves). Which ads will appear where, and how advertisers will manage cross-platform buys remains to be seen.

Media transparency: A ZDNet experiment

By Charlene Li

Thanks to ZDNet Executive Editor David Berlind for pinging me about his experiment on media transparency, especially in light of Rathergate. This is what Berlind did:

-      Wrote a column that featured quotes from an interview with Radio Userland CEO Scott Young

-      Podcasted (yes, it’s now a verb) the unedited, original interview with Young

-      Included podcast timestamps associated with the quotes from Young so that users can understand the context of the quotes (and also check to see if they were accurate).

Berlind wrote about the experiment in a commentary, “Can technology close journalism’s credibility gap?” Towards the end, Berlind described how during the interview Young offered to send him a book on how to use Radio Userland. This is what he wrote:

“I accepted the offer.  It's not unusual for vendors to provide journalists who are reviewing their technology with additional documentation.  But, as I played the recording back and thought of how transparency was in effect, I couldn't be absolutely certain that all members of ZDNet's audience would see it the same way.  I'm not going to send my address to Scott Young and, instead, if I decide that I need the book, I will pay the $24 charge for it with my own company's money.  Already, transparency is having its effect.”

Scott Young also provided feedback on the experiment – he wrote in an email to Berlind (which was going to be shared with Young’s knowledge):

“I would be much more comfortable under all circumstances in providing interviews if this was the general practice. I have little doubt this kind of transparency would have a positive (drive towards honesty) effect for all concerned.”

It is this level of transparency to which journalists – and also bloggers – should aspire. It’s part of the reason why I advocate having a blogger code of ethics, which is a way to build trust with an audience and community. Companies should take heed and consider ways they can offer more transparency into their organizations – look at Channel 9 and what it’s done for Microsoft. And beware – if companies can’t offer that transparency, they will lose – not benefit – from their blogging efforts.

Fighting blog comment spam – what companies need to know

By Charlene Li

There are two major reasons why many companies and publishers have not enabled comments on their blogs: 1) they’re afraid of negative comments; or 2) there is concern about comment spam, whereby a spammer adds links pointing to the Web site to increase search engine page rankings.

Google spearheaded an effort to add the new “nofollow” attribute to its indexing algorithm. Any hyperlinks that have the “nofollow” tag won’t be factored into its Page Rank calculations. The most notable part about this is that other search engines quickly jumped on board -- Yahoo and MSN are also supporting the attribute ensuring that comment spammers have no where to hide. Vendors like Six Apart (disclosure: this blog is hosted by Typepad) have added their support. Search Engine Watch has a detailed (very detailed) look at how “nofollow” works here.

This won’t stop aggressive spammers eager to target a popular site’s readers, but it will at least remove the purpose behind the most egregious comment spammers. For companies that are still sitting on the fence about turning on their comments, there are other techniques, ranging from accepting comments only from registered users to using comment blacklists (see the Six Apart Guide To Comment Spam for details on various methods).

Recommendation: Companies should enable the “nofollow” attribute immediately on their blogs and then open up a few posts to first Trackbacks and then comments to test the waters. Again, this is contingent on your company feeling comfortable with the whole idea of comments in the first place. But my strong belief is that if your company is making the commitment to support blogs in the first place, it’s a shame not to at least place some faith in your blog community to comment responsibly and give it a try.

LinkedIn gets a revenue stream through job listings

By Charlene Li

With 1.7 million members, LinkedIn is not only one of the largest business-oriented social networking sites, it’s also has a high degree of  trust as people are linked to each other only if they mutually agree to be so connected. The result is a network that’s been effective for introductions – from opening the door for a sales meeting to getting an inside track to a job interview.

While HR people have been mining LinkedIn for managerial and executive hires, it’s been frustrating because they have to slowly build their own networks in order to leverage the power of LinkedIn. But on Sunday, LinkedIn introduced LinkedIn Jobs, where companies can directly post jobs on the site and make them available to everyone. While the posts are free during the preview, the company looks like they plan to charge soon (there’s a scribbled out figure, presumably two-digits so likely under $100 for a posting).

This addresses one of the biggest problems plaguing employers – unqualified candidates that reply to job postings on the traditional job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs, as well as executive recruiting sites like TheLadders and ExecuNet. Besides the fact that the LinkedIn pool tends to be more professional, job candidates using LinkedIn Jobs will be required to have a profile (great way to build that user base!). Employers can then see not only an attached resume, but also the extended network of that person and any referrals or recommendations associated with the profile.

I spoke with Konstantin Guericke, VP of Marketing at LinkedIn, about the target market for LinkedIn Jobs. Their hope is to not only take share away from the traditional job boards and newspapers, but also to open job a new market: hiring managers. “[We will] open up markets that are currently served by the common process of hiring managers sending email blasts to their contacts asking them if they know any Product Managers, great sales people, stellar engineers, etc.”

What it means:

1)      While small, LinkedIn’s approach takes recruiting beyond today’s current model of “list and hope” – both recruiters and candidates can “work the network” to get better information, leads, and matches throughout the process.

2)      LinkedIn will tap into a new, sustainable revenues stream, following in the footsteps of upstart Craig’s List. LinkedIn will presumably be able to grow the fee that it charges over time as it also grows its network.

3)      Monster Networking’s attempt at creating a job-oriented network needs to be overhauled and better integrated into its resume database. Look for Monster’s subsidiary, Tickle, to leverage its matching experience in online dating to bring innovation to Monster’s efforts.

Forrester launches magazine

By Charlene Li

As the San Jose Mercury News reported today, Forrester is launching a magazine in February. Below is a quick excerpt of Q&A from Brian Kardon, Forrester’s Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer.

My take: it’s about time Forrester launched a magazine. Our core business, as Brian says below, is intellectual capital. But it’s hard for busy executives to find the time to read research, even if we push it to them via email, online, RSS, and yes, even blogs! The multi-channel approach is much needed to break through and capture the attention of our clients, and I’m thrilled that Forrester is doing this.

Here’s a sneak peak at the cover art (Download cover_art.pdf) – the lead story is “Is Your Company Evil” with the predictable halos over the Google founders’ heads. But check out the back cover, which shows them with horns and tails. Read it into what you will – I think that there are always two sides to every story.

Speaking of which, SiliconBeat gave some additional background on the Mercury News story, including a quote from Steve Cohn of Media Industry Newsletter questioning Forrester’s credibility and value. His opinion is based primarily on forecasts Forrester made more than five years ago during the boom (I wrote several of those reports myself – mea culpa). There’s no doubt, we suffered set backs, but I also believe that our clients get more than just numbers from us to stuff into their presentations. Forrester’s value comes from our ability to provide ideas and analysis on the latest technology issues – to say “what it means” and to inspire clients to think broadly about the impact of technology on their businesses. My hope is that we’ll be able to extend the influence of those ideas through new channels like the magazine (and also this blog).

Enough already of my impassioned support of my employer! On to Brian’s Q&A:

Why is Forrester starting a magazine?

“Three reasons:
1. Reach. We continue to be amazed at the power of print. Despite our own Web-centric behavior, interviews with clients confirm that many senior decision makers do not go to the Web regularly for our type of content. But they do read McKinsey Quarterly and Fortune. A savvy print publication can reach this audience.
2. Influence. Our research has the ability to influence the business and technology agenda worldwide, but only if it is read. Our ideas provide valuable frameworks to get people talking and unconventional approaches to keeping them talking.
3. Leverage. The magazine will leverage two key Forrester assets: our extraordinary content and our powerful and respected brand name. The magazine leverages both by incorporating the work of top-quality outside writers and thinkers.”

Huh? Forrester is entering a crowded field of business magazines. How is Forrester’s magazine different? Why should a busy CEO read Forrester?

“No reason to be so testy. Forrester intends to offer the intellectual rigor of the high-end journals (e.g., Harvard Business Review) and match it with the lively presentation of the more general interest business magazines (e.g., BusinessWeek). The voice of the magazine will be authoritative, forward-looking, iconoclastic, edgy, surprising and humorous.”

Is Forrester going into the magazine business?

“Yes and no. As you know, there are numerous ways to access Forrester … attend an event, join an Oval, listen to a ForrTel, search WV2, etc. Some of us call it multi-channelling. The magazine is a yet another distinctive format, or channel, for showcasing our research and getting Forrester ideas out into the market.

Forrester’s product – intellectual capital – is an intangible. From my experience, selling an intangible is among the hardest things to do. The magazine shows the breadth and depth of what Forrester has to offer, in a portable and friendly format, and serves as a compelling leave-behind for prospects. The magazine offers a new way to deliver fresh, provocative ideas to the people who need to know about them.”

How many issues are we publishing this year?

“We are planning to publish 3 issues in 2005. The premiere issue, though, is likely to be a valuable and coveted collectible on eBay around 2015. So, we strongly suggest you keep the magazine in pristine condition for the inevitable swell of demand.”

Yahoo! Desktop Search debuts

By Charlene Li

Yahoo! joined the desktop search fray last month by pre-announcing its partnership with X1 and today it finally made the beta available. Yahoo!’s major modification are to 1) make the product available for free, and 2) added the ability to search Yahoo! directly from the interface. The Yahoo! Search Blog has a fair summary of all the YDS advantages.

Two quick thoughts on where Yahoo! could take YDS:

1) Yahoo! talks about searching the “cloud” of information that resides on the Internet, and specifically, to Yahoo!, which is a natural as the enterprise version of X1 also searches across networks, so why not the Internet? But what if that cloud also includes all the hard drives of your trusted network of friends and family? Yahoo! could set up a Grouper-like service that combines social networking and file searching to help me find those birthday party photos on my brother’s hard drive. YDS and all of the other desktop search programs will quickly redefine what I consider my “desktop”.

2) While YDS is a big, heavy, robust program that will be well-suited for the power user, it’s not clear to me that most consumers want that kind of power, even if it is free. As I mentioned in my review of MSN’s desktop search product, there will be trade-offs made between power/robustness and ease of use/integration, with Google’s offering clearly lies at one of the spectrum and Yahoo! at the other. Yahoo!’s biggest challenge going forward will be to integrate YDS quickly into its services while also cutting back on the size of the download and also the resources it uses (I routinely found my system locked up as YDS started, and although it is fast, it wasn’t appreciably that much faster than more efficient and smaller Copernic).

Google announces change in AdWords affiliate policy

By Charlene Li

Today, Google started notifying its affiliate advertisers of a change in its AdWords policy. I had an opportunity to speak with Salar Kamangar, director of product management, about it on Wednesday.

Google will no longer be showing multiple ads with the same displayed URLs for the same search query. Their goal is to reduce duplicate ads from affiliates and to increase the diversity of the ads that appear. If there are multiple ads, the one with the highest “ad rank” (based on clickthrough rate multiplied by the maximum CPC rate) gets displayed.

There are a few implications for both affiliates and retailers with this policy change:

+ The affiliates that highly productive -- or are willing to pay a significantly higher rate to offset lower clickthrough rates -- will appear. An advertiser who doesn’t have a high ad rank can unseat the current advertiser only by increasing its maximum CPC rate. This is because it can’t increase the clickthrough rate for that keyword because its ad isn’t being shown anymore. The affiliate that does appear must continually ensure a high clickthrough rate and/or increase the maximum CPC to keep other affiliates from appearing.

+ Parent retailers could be beaten out of paid search by their own affiliates, especially if those affiliates are more targeted in their ad description, and thus get better clickthroughs. Salar rationalized that even if the retailer is bumped out, it would still benefit from the affiliate getting the sale, but it will be cold comfort to a product manager who’s being measured on search visibility. One additional benefit to the parent retailer -- to justify higher maximum CPCs, affiliates will have to increase their conversion rates, which will benefit the parent retailers.

Google claims that the main beneficiary will be its users as they will 1) only see one ad per unique URL and 2) see a greater diversity of advertisers. I’ve attached a screenshot of today’s results on a search for “sopranos box set” below. When the policy is implemented, the second ad with the www.amazon.com URL will not appear.

No doubt, this will make the ads somewhat less repetitive – in this case, two of the top ten ads will be removed. But affiliates will simple resort to using different displayed URL variations to get around this constraint– the human editors at Google just make sure that the URLs match the actual link. In the example here, the ads point to different pages on Amazon, ranging from the actual product page to different searches (“box set” versus “Sopranos+The Complete+DVD”).

So while Google’s intentions are good, the main offshoot will be that affiliates and retailers will have to pay even closer attention to their ad creative to stay ahead of the competition. And oh yes, let's not forget that Google will benefit from higher revenues as affiliates administer counterpunches with higher CPC rates and struggle to increase their clickthrough rates.

Free 411 services from 800ideas.com provide value for both marketers and users

By Charlene Li

I had a briefing on Wednesday with a cool company called 800ideas.com, based in San Diego. This 110-person company is behind a slew of free 800-number 411/directory services in California. Readers in San Diego may be aware of 800-San-Diego which has been operating for 2+ years. A list of available numbers and cities serviced is here.

The twist is that instead of paying $1+ per call, the calls are free, yes, FREE! But you have to listen to two short ads. I did a quick test of 800-san-francisco. My first call was to get find a taxi company – I wanted to get a list of taxi companies to call. I heard a quick intro ad and then was connected to an operator. I listened to an ad from a mortgage company with the option of pressing “1” to be connected to them. Then a digitized voice then read me a list of six taxi companies while I jotted down the business names and numbers.

I hung up and called back to do my second task -- get the phone number for a local Bed Bath & Beyond. As soon as I called in, the service recognized that I had recently called and asked if I wanted my previous list repeated. While I didn’t need that task, I was pretty impressed that the service recognized me (obviously, I didn’t disable caller ID). I was given a choice of connecting directly or getting the phone number. I chose the phone number and heard an ad from Survey Savvy to be a survey taker. As I hung up, I wished I had just asked to be connected directly.

The third time I called back, the service again remembered me and asked if I wanted to be directly connected to the business I had last searched. Now this is pretty impressive – it not only recognized me, but also suggested that maybe I wanted to call the company directly. This time, I looked up a restaurant (Max’s Opera Café in Palo Alto) and was connected after listening to an ad from PetMeds.

The service worked well and given how frequently I use 411 services on my cell phone, I think I’m quickly becoming a convert!

But what’s most impressive is how well the advertising is working. Everything is tracked, down to the time of day you heard the ad, and of course, if you responded to it. One marketer used the service to pre-test five different radio spots, rotated throughout the day, to see which ones generated the greatest response, and when. A mortgage company had a sequence of nine different ads it played to callers asking about mortgage brokers – if a user ignored them all the way to the ninth ad, the final spot said something like, “Gee whiz, what do I have to do to get you to respond to my business?” Advertisers buy into one of four slots per category, typically at a fixed cost per month (the cost varies by category). In the future, payment will likely be based on pay per play or pay per response.

Even recruiters have been using the service. 800ideas.com as a fluke decided to advertise for their own salesperson with an ad, with the response being to take a quick assessment test on the phone. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, 270 people completed the test, 97 passed, and one person was eventually hired. Other employers have been testing the service and found equal success. The cost: $39 for the set-up and $3.95 per response. Watch out Monster!

Last little twist: 1800sandiego.com has an online classifieds service that uses the 800 service to provide anonymity in the process. When a potential buyer views the ad, they enter the ad ID#, their phone number, and then gets a call back that connects them with the seller. The phone number for both the seller and the user remains anonymous. Seller emails are also not listed, removing the fear that email will end up on spam lists.

While the service is impressive, don’t look for it be available in a city near you anytime soon. 800ideas.com is focused on building out California over the next 18 months. Players like Yahoo!, Google, Citysearch, and Superpages.com – as well as telco directory services that are enjoying the 411 cash cow – should take note of 800ideas.com. Given a choice of paying buckaroos for the call versus listening to ads, I believe quite a few people will choose the ads. And forget about using your mobile phone to do a local search on a service like Yahoo! – why bother when you can just make a call?

Happy New Year

By Charlene Li

Greetings in the new year -- and apologies for my long absence from these pages. Between end of year work and a long, much needed vacation, I haven't been able to post. But I know of a few interesting things brewing, although I don't think it's going to quite at the pace of what we saw in December!

A few things I've been watching over the past few weeks:

- Tsunami blogs. The sheer scale of the tragedy has been numbing, but the stories, photos, and videos on blogs brought it to a personal level.

- Desktop frenzy. Talk about one-upmanship! The only major player that's missing from the game is AOL and I expect them to announce something soon. I'll be posting my take on what's what in this space soon.

- 2004: The Year of Blogs – sort of. Merriam-Webster Online named “blog” the #1 word of the year. And the Pew Internet Life & American Life Project report “The State Of Blogging” said that blog reading had shot up 58% in 2004. But the study also had similar numbers to our numbers , showing that the vast majority of online consumers don’t know what a blog is. So while we can celebrate that blogs have broken through into the mainstream consciousness, it will be in 2005 that blogs can cross over into the whelm of a true media entity when they start to attract mainstream advertisers.

- RSS. The same Pew study had an amazing statistic – 5% or 6 million online consumers currently use RSS. I knew that the number was getting up there, especially with the push from media heavies like Yahoo!, WSJ.com, and nytimes.com, but it’s still amazing that it’s gotten so much traction while being still so kludgy to find and add content.

- The strength of online advertising. Google and Yahoo! will post phenomenal growth this year and 2005 will see more of the same. Not only is search driving much of that growth, but branded advertising from traditional marketers has made head-way. I’ll be looking for more integration between search and branding efforts, as skyrocketing CPC rates force marketers to take branding impact into their search ROI calculations.