Whirlpool is podcasting

By Charlene Li

I'm at the Forrester Consumer Forum in New York and had dinner with several clients tonight. One of them was Whirlpool's Dan Cooke, manager of interactive marketing. We were chatting about the usual suspects -- RSS, blogs, search -- when Dan casually mentioned that Whirlpool had a podcast.

The podcasts were produced and moderated by Whirlpool's director of customer insight, Audrey Reed-Granger, who has a background in broadcasting. And it shows. What's interesting is the podcasts are focused on family issues and are not centered around Whirlpool products. Moreover, Whirlpool has done no overt promotion of the podcasts, preferring that they be found through word-of-mouth marketing. One charmer: the interview featuring Habitat Families and an interview with the 200,000th recipient of a Habitat For Humanity-built home (Whirlpool supports the non-profit by supplying a refrigerator and range to every Habitat home).

But my favorite feature -- the "coming soon" list of topics to encourage listeners to return for future broadcasts. The one I'm looking forward to the most is "Competitive Parents -- Mommyland Madness". 

The end of the index size wars (we hope)

By Charlene Li

Speaking of birthdays, Google used the occassion of its 7th anniversary to announce that it's grown its index 1,000 times since it started back in September 1998. It also dropped an intriguing tidbit that it believes its index is three times bigger than the next competitor, but declines to specify exactly how big it is. Here's their explanation on how big their index is:

So how big is Google's index?
Search engines' published metrics for index size measurement vary greatly and are no longer easily comparable. Often, for instance, web crawlers retrieve duplicate entries for one page or links to documents that they haven't crawled, and whose content thus isn't in the index. At Google we believe the essential quality of an index isn't the total number of documents, but its comprehensiveness – which unique documents are in the index. So we don't count duplicate or uncrawled pages. According to our internal testing, our newly expanded search index is more than three times larger than that of any other search engine.

Now I call that pretty clear non-answer. And if you look at the home page, the index size indicator is now gone (and also has seven birthday cake slices)

Now, I applaud that Google has stepped back from the brinksmanship it played in August when Yahoo announced its index was north of 20 billion documents. I've written that index size is only one factor and that many other factors contribute to relevancy. In fact, in a world where personalized search will be the norm, search engine usage, loyalty, and even tagging will be more important than index size.

And so ends an era of index envy and "mine is bigger than yours" comparisons. Thank goodness - we can now just focus on the real issue of which sites are actually serving users. I just find it ironic that the company that made its name on index size finally had to concede to the truth that verifying index size is impossible. And yet, even in this announcement, Google can't help but mention that they *still* think they're search engine is three times bigger. So rather than put out a "number", Google will keep everyone guessing. How long do you think it will be before some journalist does some math and writes that Google's index has 60 billion documents? Hopefully, never.

Happy 1st Birthday

By Charlene Li

I've been a member of the blogosphere now for one year (first post was Sept. 24th last year). What started out as an experiement has become indispensible to my work and research -- I love the instanteous feedback I get from you and frankly, it's addictive! I write, you write back. Wow.

When my managers and colleagues at Forrester ask me why I blog, I go back to some of the core values of the company. If you happen to have one of my business cards, flip it over and you'll on the back the following: 4C 2Q 1S. These are the Forrester company values and two of them in particular -- Client and Communication -- have been at the core of this blog. Rarely a day goes by that a conversation with a client doesn't include a reference to a blog post. And Communication -- the speed and quality of the conversation on this blog -- is better than anything I've experienced at Forrester, short of face to face meetings. So why do I blog? Because it perfectly aligns with my goal of communicating better with Forrester clients.

Here are some interesting stats:

- 120 posts written in the past year, several by colleagues at Forrester
- Average 25,000 visitors a month (from SiteMeter, which you can now view, in the spirit of transparency)
- 973 Feedburner subscribers

In comparison, I've published 15 research pieces on forrester.com. Now, on the surface, you might say this makes my "official" research on forrester.com miniscule in comparison to my blog writing, but I beg to differ. From the outset, I envisioned this blog to be a supplement, not a replacement of my regular research stream. My blog posts are primarily my own thoughts and insights and don't benefit from the collaboration and consideration of my colleagues. In contrast, the research from Forrester goes through multiple drafts and rounds of editing (they are also much better written -- and shorter -- as a result!).

So thanks for reading this blog, and all of your encouragement and criticisms over the past year -- and keep those ideas and comments coming!

Google Talk’s potential – searchable conversations

By Charlene Li

I was thinking the other day that one of the things you can do with VoIP is to record it, using shareware like SoundStudio to record them to your hard drive (look at all of the podcasting interviews being done over Skype). Once it’s on the hard drive, you could then run speech recognition against the file and create an index that can be searched by, yup, you’ve got it, Google Desktop Search.

Kinda spooky, isn’t it. But think of the real-world applications, ranging from cheaper call center management (there’s some software today that does this, like Witness Systems and VoiceLog), to eliminating the need to keep detailed notes from conference calls. My personal dream application: archiving all of my voicemails and being able to search through them, just like my emails.

If you think about it, it’s not that different from a desktop search program indexing chat conversations. Phone recording law typically requires one party to be notified that a call is being recorded, with only a few states requiring that all parties on a call be notified.

To be clear, I don’t think this is Google’s intention behind launching Google Talk – after all, other search engines like Yahoo! and MSN have already enabled VoIP calling via instant messaging and in some ways, Google is just catching up. But given Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information”, you better hope their mantra “You can make money without doing evil” will keep their ambitions in check.

Rumors of MSN and AOL partnerships

By Charlene Li

The rumors are flying about MSN buying AOL, sparked by a story this morning in the New York Post (registration required) and fanned by WSJ.com. I think the WSJ has got the scenario correct, that these discussions stem primarily from AOL’s interesting in using MSN’s algorithmic and paid search platforms. AOL currently uses Google and the company has been forthright in discussions with me that they will partner for search technology, rather than build their own. I think this is a very smart strategy, as it allows AOL to strike the best technological AND business deal in an ever changing marketing. So at a minimum, we might see AOL switching over to MSN for search technology and ads.

During these discussions, it’s inevitable that MSN and AOL also discussed other ways they can cooperate, especially the idea of combining advertising sales forces on the branding side. As the #3 and #4 portals behind Yahoo and Google, they will need all the fire power that they can muster.

So in theory, it makes a lot of sense to combine the two operations, especially on the back end. But merging the two actual portal consumer experiences into a unified site will be a nightmare. Cooperative ad sales can happen through partnerships and a full out acquisition would be difficult for MSN to absorb. Moreover, while both serve a more mainstream customer than Yahoo and Google, they have very different experiences. AOL provides a more content-driven experience, given its Time Warner and programming heritage. MSN is more utilitarian in its approach, focused on utilities and references. Consumers would rebel at any effort to combine the two together. It would, however, make sense for the two to share content, services, and best practices, injecting AOL’s programming expertise into MSN and MSN’s technical expertise like anti-spyware and virus protection into AOL. 

There are pressures for Time Warner to spin off AOL, but an outright purchase by MSN seems unlikely to me, especially during a time when online advertising is just hitting its stride again. But if there was to be a purchase of AOL by any of the three portals, MSN would make a great deal more sense than either Yahoo or Google.

Yahoo intros Instant Search

By Charlene Li

Yahoo!’s new “Instant Search” product leverages its search short cuts (those little modules that appear above regular search results) that return anything from the local weather forecast to gas prices (type “[city] weather” and “gas [zip code]” in the query box, respectively). But rather than have to click on “search” button, short cut results will start showing up as you type.

This is similar to experience on snap.com’s home page – the search categories change as you type each letter. Snap.com also shows news stories on the side. Yahoo!’s version actually provides search results, and in the case where no short cuts are available, the top Web results.

The beta will be available at next.yahoo.com – as of when I posted this, the demo wasn’t available. But Yahoo! was able to provide me with a few early screenshots. It seems to be a very cool feature that users can add directly to their search.yahoo.com pages immediately if they like (I believe you have to be signed in for this to be the case).

Here’s the full press release – my favorite line: “Why feel lucky when you can be right?”, a reference to Google’s Feeling Lucky button.

Today Yahoo! launches Instant Search, an early beta feature that makes the search process faster by providing a way for users to get instant answers. As users type, Instant Search immediately displays the most relevant result for the most popular queries directly beneath the search box. In many cases instant facts and answers are provided in the form of Yahoo! Search Shortcut results and, when a shortcut is not available for a query, Instant Search supplies the top Yahoo! Search web result for the most common searches.  Users can immediately access answers by clicking a ‘CTRL Enter’ hotkey once results are displayed.

If a search for a popular web address is conducted, users immediately receive a link that matches what was typed and when a shortcut, search result, or URL is not available for a particular query, the Search the Web button is always at hand. With Instant Search, select misspellings are automatically detected and corrections are displayed right below the search box. 

Users can add Instant Search to their http://search.yahoo.com page, a simple search interface that can be customized with multiple features and products like My Web, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News, to speed up common searches and further establish Yahoo! Search as the starting point to the Internet.

Why feel lucky when you can be right? Instant Search, available on http://next.yahoo.com, adds a bit of fun to web search, try the following examples or try your own searches:

- San Francisco Coffee Shops

- NFL

- 22 5^th Ave New York New York

- Britny Spears (misspelled on purpose)

- Boston Weather   

Google launches blog search – is this the death knell for Technorati, et. al?

By Charlene Li

The 800 pound gorilla just entered the blogosphere, with Google launching its blog search, available at http://www.google.com/blogsearch and search.blogger.com (two different interface, the same search results).

With blog search, Google has created an index that contains items posted at blogs – it uses primarily ping servers to populate and update the index, rather than its own crawlers. This guarantees that the index is fresh, similar to what Technorati, Feedster, and all of the other blog search engines do. Google does strip out traditional news sources and other types of non-blog feeds like weather, stock quote updates, and customized search feeds.

The search results by default are arranged by relevancy, but can also be sorted by date. This is a big difference from most of the other blog search engines like Technorati and Feedster, which default to a date-based sort. This relevancy ranking is what I think will be the secret sauce to Google’s blog search success – that it can bring to bear its deep experience on extracting relevance to blog posts. While Google was not forthcoming about what determines blog post relevancy (surprise surprise), from the limited testing that I did it appears to be a combination of both timing, links, and keyword frequency.

A really nice feature is the advanced search option – note that they are actually different in the Blogger search user interface than the Google blog search interface. I found the Google advanced search options more complete (it includes the ability to search by author) but the Blogger advanced search more intuitive.

And are you looking for a particular blog? Technorati has a nice Blog Finder which is based on the tags associated with a blog (users can also self-submit their blogs with up to 20 different tags). But this is in a different part of the site from the main search. Google returns blogs with the search keyword in the title first, above the search results. For example, Forrester’s CEO George Colony is an Allman Brothers fan, so I figured I’d find a blog about the band to get him on the blog bandwagon. I did a search on “allman brothers”. I got nothing in Technorati’s Blog Finder. General search results in all of the search engines and for the most part got random posts (the exception: Daypop.com, which found me “the blues blog”. But then Google comes to the “rescue” – at the top are two results, one for a traditional Web site and – bingo – another for the Allman Brothers Blog. But looks are deceiving – the Web site is a link farm and the blog link is dead.

The upshot is that there’s still a ways to go in making blog search work – and there’s also the problem of what really is a blog these days, anyways? But I believe Google has a big advantage primarily because of its ability to drive traffic to the site and integrate blog search results into news and mainline search queries. Technorati must now also fend off a powerful new entrant, n addition to facing mounting infrastructure problems that have rendered its service inoperable during heavy traffic periods. Compounding the problem is that Technorati has little in the way of a revenue model, having focused more on the technology than monetizing its growing audience beyond simply.

Look for Yahoo! and MSN to launch similar vertical searches for blogs, which will tighten the noose even more on these smaller players. Their only hope – dive for the niches that Google won’t want to develop. Daypop has the right idea, creating a high-quality index hand-picked by human editors. And Feedster also has some interesting opportunities, combining as it does anything that comes in as a feed and making it easy to create RSS feeds based off of search queries (Feedster has also been developing an RSS ad network that will help drive revenues).

Yahoo! launches new Web-based mail, a vast improvement over Gmail

By Charlene Li

Today, Yahoo! announced a limited beta test of its new Web-based mail product, integrating technology obtained from their acquisition of Oddpost last July. It took a while, but the results are beautiful. (Note: the beta is by invite only -- I've included screenshots for those without access).

The idea is to make Web-based mail resemble more of a client-like experience with the main benefit being to reduce refresh time. I’ve been a long-time user of Yahoo! Mail Plus for my personal email, but have been reading the mail through Outlook because I couldn’t stand the refresh time. The new beta *almost* makes it as seamless as Outlook, and I’m seriously considering giving up using Outlook to be able to always have my personal email accessible to me, wherever I am.

Here are a few of the details, as well as screenshots (provided by Yahoo!). I’ll focus in particular on ways how it differs from the other really cool email program out on the market, namely, Google’s Gmail (note: Earthlink also has a similar client-like approach in beta, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet – I’ll update this post once I do).

-          Client-like performance. Glory be, no more waiting for interminable refreshes! Opening emails are almost instantaneous, as are tasks like composing and replying to emails. I especially liked the reply function compared to Gmail, as I didn’t need to scroll down to the bottom of the email message to find the reply button. In terms of overall performance, I did find Gmail’s functionality to be slightly faster than Yahoo!, but only by a split second – there’s always a very slight pause between when I clicked on a Yahoo! button and execution.

-          Drag and drop functionality. I can select multiple messages and drag them all into a folder. Gmail users can “label” multiple messages at a time, but it requires a separate action to then archive them to remove them from the Inbox.

-          Preview pane. Just as in Outlook, there are three windows in the interface, versus the two that exist today in Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. So a user can see the folder, the inbox, and a third preview pane. Gmail does provide a short snippet of text right within the inbox, which is helpful. The benefit with Gmail is that you get that snippet without having to highlight the email. But for traditional email client users, the traditional preview pane offered by Yahoo! in the new Mail beta will be very familiar and useful.

-          Tabbed interface. Power email users typically have multiple emails open at a time, for example, they may be reading an email and composing another one at the same time. Yahoo! users tabs to manage different activities – so when you compose a new email, a new tab opens. And these tabs are smart – they rename themselves based on the subject as you type.

-          Right mouse button and keyboard shortcuts. For me, the mark of an application versus Web-page are these customized shortcuts. For example, a routine activity I do with email is to mark them for follow-up. In the new Yahoo! Mail, I can right click to mark it follow-up. In Gmail, I have to 1) select the message’s check box; 2) move my mouse up to a drop down menu; 3) click on “add a star”

-          Scroll through all mail messages. One nice feature is the ability to see all messages in the inbox or folder – not just the first 50 messages. It wasn’t instantaneous – I had to wait a split second for the messages to load. But then again, I was scrolling through my spam folder, which contained over 600 messages! It was pretty darn impressive. Gmail was also very quick to refresh the pages, but I could only see 50 messages per page at time, versus the continuous scrolling available on the new Yahoo! Mail.

-           Email search. Yahoo! has a much improved email search built into the new interface. Like Gmail, the search results in Yahoo! show snippets of the email content. But it also shows small thumbnails of attachments, which is pretty useful.

Overall, I think the Yahoo! Mail experience is excellent and will prove to be popular for people who already use Outlook. But Yahoo!’s strategy isn’t necessarily focused on stealing share from Google or its more formidable email competitor, Hotmail. Rather, I believe it’s to strengthen the loyalty of its existing users, and to encourage them to use Yahoo! Mail on a more regular, consistent basis.

This is because email is one of the three cornerstone entry points to the Yahoo! (the others being the home page and the My Yahoo! page). By improving the email experience, Yahoo! encourage greater usage (including people like me who may have been using the POP service in order to use Outlook). By keeping email users on the Web rather than within a client, Yahoo! can encourage users to try other features like Web search (which it can then monetize).

And Web-based email is becoming more and more important – according to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics research, 31% of North American online households use Web-based email at least once a week, up from 27% a year ago.

Yahoo! Mail competitors have their work cut out for them. Gmail may be the darling of the digerati, but I believe Yahoo! Mail offers a pretty compelling alternative, especially when combined with the ability to host your own personal domain (which is the main reason why I use Yahoo! Mail Plus). Gmail also has a major problem in the way it is constructed, in that it doesn’t use the traditional Outlook-esque interface of three-panes and email controls at the top of the page. And then there’s Hotmail. Given the expertise in-house with Outlook, you can expect that MSN will introduce a Web-based, client-like email experience to the market soon as well.

One problem Yahoo! faces is how quickly it will roll out the new interface and if/when it will switch over to the new platform entirely. For the technologically adept, it will be an easy switch…but for many mainstream consumers, the switch to an entirely new interface could be discombobulating. Yahoo! will have to offer both interfaces for quite a while, and potentially introduce some of the DHTML and AJAX functionality into the mainstream Mail user interface to help ease the transition.

Update: Quick clarification - the new Mail beta is by invite only *from Yahoo!*. They have invited a small group of heavy Yahoo! Mail users as well as everyone who has been a loyal Oddpost user (and a few reporters/analysts). So unfortunately, I don't have any invites to give out. If/when they are available, I'll be sure to let all of you Yahoo! fans out there know!

Loving Google's Sidebar -- my new RSS aggrgator

By Charlene Li

I have a confession to make. I may research and write about RSS, but darn it if I can’t remember to actually check my feeds! It’s just not part of my daily habit and after trying about 20 different aggregators, I have yet to find one that 1) works with the Forrester laptop configuration; 2) that I actually use on a daily basis.

That is, until now. Enter Google Sidebar. This is the new extension of Google’s Desktop Search offering – it’s a panel that sits on your desktop and provides a single source of personalized information (like news, weather, stocks, and yes, RSS feeds). Think of it as a personalized portal, but one that lives outside of a Web page (no need to have to surf over to my.yahoo.com or my.msn.com – this application is just THERE!).

A quick glance lets me see recent feeds – no need to have to start another application or open a browser window. Even aggregators embedded into Outlook didn’t do the trick for me as I spend only a portion (albeit, a large portion) of my time there.

What I find interesting is that Sidebar acts like one really big widget – and additional plug-ins are available, similar to what Yahoo’s Konfabulator and Apple’s Dashboard offer. While I’m a big widget fan, there was one major problem with them – I never see my desktop (it’s usually buried under umpteen windows). There are only a few plugins available today – but I’ve already found the “To Do” plugin useful. And I’m really looking forward to getting the eBay Sidebar plugin which is under development!

There are just two things to point out about Sidebar. First, the new search query box in Sidebar provides “search as you type” functionality, albeit, it’s a bit delayed compared to other desktop search applications like Yahoo! Desktop Search and Copernic. In keeping with the "no browser" philosophy, the search query box allows you to look at the initial results quickly and to go directly to that file or email.

Second, when I downloaded Sidebar and used it for the first time, I was struck by how similar it is to MSN’s Dashboard, which MSN has included as part of its Premium access service Internet software (click on “Custom Tools” to learn more – I’ve also included a screenshot from my archives). One of my favorite features of Dashboard was the ability to “pin” it anywhere on the desktop. Granted, there are a lot more advanced features in Sidebar AND it’s more configurable. But MSN introduced this technology in 2002!! They had the foresight to develop it years ago but kept it tucked away in a hidden part of its offerings. Look for them to quickly dust off the covers and make it available forthwith.

Lastly, I've been asked if this will Sidebar and it's inevitable market followers will speed along RSS adoption. There's no doubt in my mind that it will. Making RSS readily accessible AND visible puts it top of mind and spurs usage, which will drive adoption.

Back from vacation and thoughts on Katrina

By Charlene Li

I'm climbing back into the bloggin’ saddle after a long, restful vacation (and a very hectic first week back!) Thanks for all of your patience during my absence, but now I’m back and have a ton of stuff I’m itching to write about.

First things first - I want to capture some of my thoughts from Hurricane Katrina – my heart and condolences go out to everyone impacted by the storm, and especially the people who have lost their homes, family, and friends in this tragedy. One of my colleagues at Forrester lived in New Orleans and shared her many emotions at a recent company meeting -- relief that her family was safe, anger at the slow response, grief that so many people had suffered, and finally, guilt that she and her family had been so lucky. Her words and emotions brought to bear the tremendous trauma that people will be living with for years, if not decades.

There are so many items that I can’t begin to hope to cover all of them, but I’d like to share just a few things of note.

First, as someone covering media, my hat goes off to the brave and resourceful staff of the The Times-Picayune and nola.com who continued to publish online even as their offices were flooded. There’s no doubt in my mind that the publication played a crucial role in the aftermath of the disaster, providing valuable information to its about neighborhood conditions, people that needed rescuing, and most importantly, as an outlet for citizen journalism. The newspaper industry magazine, Editor & Publisher, has an excellent piece on how the newsroom had to make  a “paradigm shift” in Katrina's wake.

Second, Recovery 2.0 is another great development, which seeks to use technology more effectively in times of crisis. It was initially proposed by Jeff Jarvis and is now taking form online at recovery2.org and in person at the Web 2.0 conference on Thursday, October 6^th at 7pm at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco (you don’t need to be attending the conference to participate).

Third, I was struck by the racial, social, and economic divide exposed by the disaster and I began to think of my own community. I may only be able to give monetarily to help Katrina victims, but what am I doing to help others within my own community, to prepare in the case of a disaster, but also to help bridge that divide? I encourage you to take a part of the empathy that you have for all the people who have suffered in Katrina’s wake, and to apply it to your own communities. It’s too easy to drive by beleaguered schools or unemployed people begging for money and jobs, and just shrug and say, “It’s too bad, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” I know that I’ve been inspired to do more for my community and I hope to make a difference, one small step at a time.