New Forrester blog launched on Devices & Media

By Charlene Li

I bid a fond welcome to my two colleagues, Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, as they enter the blogosphere. Their new blog, Devices, Media, And The Future Of Everything, will be available at blogs.forrester.com/devicesmedia. As you can see from the title, they have high ambitions, but having worked with these guys for a long time, I wouldn’t expect anything less from them.

Josh has long covered the media space, with a focus on television, video, cable, and music. I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with Josh over the past (almost) seven years and he continues to amaze and inspire me with his insights. And Ted has just about the coolest coverage space at Forrester – he covers consumer technology and adoption, ranging from broadband to consumer electronics, photo, and digital music. And yes, he gets his hands on just about every gadget you can imagine!

But what I’m really excited about is that they are doing this blog together. These are arguably two of the sharpest people at Forrester and they are NOT shy about their opinions. I’m expecting them to sometimes disagree and take issue with each other, but more than anything, I’m looking forward to them building on each others’ thoughts in a public space. One of the reasons why I love working at Forrester is that I’m blessed every day with the collective brain power of smart, collaborative people. And I think you’ll be seeing that great collaborative process play out on their blog.

Blog on gentlemen!

Yahoo! expands RSS services to Mail (beta) and Alerts

By Charlene Li

Yahoo! announced that it will be extending its current RSS capabilities in two areas:

1)      Yahoo! Alerts will now be RSS enabled. This means that when a new item is posted to a feed, a Yahoo! user can have the post be sent as an Alert to email, Yahoo! Messenger, or via SMS to a mobile phone. So I can now add an RSS feed, like a search on Yahoo! News for mentions of my name, as an Alert and have it delivered in the channel of my choice. This will be great for those Craig's List RSS feeds where it's a competitive advantage to find out about hot items like tickets or apartments quickly.

2)      The new Yahoo! Mail beta will also be RSS enabled. Users can add feeds directly into the Mail interface, or if they have feeds already set up in My Yahoo!, they will automatically replicate within Mail. Each post acts like an individual email – it can be forwarded, sorted into folders, and deleted. I’ve included a screenshot from my Mail account.

In my conversation with Scott Gatz from Yahoo!, he emphasized that Yahoo!’s goal is to integrate RSS access anywhere it makes sense, and to integrate it into experiences they already know.

I’m thrilled! I’ve long wanted to have my RSS feeds integrated in with email, but the plug-ins from players like NewsGator and Attensa mess up my Outlook in a terrible way. This has more to do with the way Forrester has set up Outlook than with the vendors’ software and services – I know many happy, satisfied users of both of those products.

The integration into Mail is an obvious improvement over MyYahoo! – it’s where people already spend a lot of time gathering and sharing information, and more importantly, it’s a familiar interface. One of my biggest problems with RSS is just remembering to go and read it – starting up FeedDemon or browsing over to Bloglines just doesn’t work that well for me. Even Google Sidebar doesn’t get used that much anymore because I find I have to frequently minimize it to use common work applications like our CRM system or Webex.

And good news on the Yahoo! Mail beta – Yahoo! said that they would be starting to pull people off the waiting list “soon” and “slowly”. So if you haven’t already, sign up for the beta!

Update: Lots of posts around but for the inside scoop direct from Yahoo!, listen to John Furrier's PodTech Network interview with Scott Gatz and Ethan Diamond about the announcement. A great use of podcasting technology.

Google Base goes live - it's more than just about classifieds

By Charlene Li

After much speculation, Google Base is finally live. In my briefing with them last week, Google said that early reports that Google Base was targeting classifieds were inaccurate – instead, they see it as a way to acquire more information that its crawlers can’t pick up. (It’s pretty much what I wrote about two weeks ago). Here’s how they explained Google Base, a sumary of my experience, and a few thoughts on what this means at the end.

Google sees Base as a natural step in their quest to “organize the world’s information. Most of Google’s index is collected through the Googlebot crawlers that follow links around the Web. But if that information isn’t in a Web page with static links, it’s really hard for the crawlers to index it. Google has other ways to collect information, for example, Google Print and Google Catalog where Google scans offline publications for online searching. Google Video is a similar solution for video content owners while retailers can upload product feeds into Froogle. And Sitemaps makes it easy for Webmasters to upload an entire site to Google – especially helpful for dynamic sites built on databases. Oh, and don’t forget about Blogger and Google Groups for user-generated content. So Google sees Base is an extension of this information gathering effort. Users are essentially creating their own databases – they can use existing templates or their own.

I had a go at it – I put in my personal profile which I found a bit confusing at first but then pretty quickly figured out. It took about 10 minutes for the item to clear through their “vetting” process. There are templates that you can use (and also append), or you can start from scratch.

To access the information, users conduct a search on Base. Google contends that they may elect to include information from Base in general search results – while they didn’t show how this would work, I would imagine that they would do this in much the same way they integrate search results from Print, Froogle, or Local today – as a module that appears above the regular Web search results. And here’s the most interesting part – I asked Google how they planned to integrate Base content to Web-crawled content, and in particular, how they would determine relevance. No answers at this point, but it certainly bears watching. My hunch is that if/when Yahoo! decides to pursue something similar, that they will have an advantage in doing this, as Yahoo! has long been integrating paid inclusion and Yahoo! Directory items with their Web crawled results.

I also asked Google how it was going in their discussions with content owners (several newspapers have confided to me that they had been approached by Google to upload their classifieds database, but that they were skeptical and wary). Google said that there has been some strong interest as these database owners realized that they would benefit from Google sending them traffic. In a quick look at the classifieds, I found listings from The New York Times, CareerBuilder, and Dealer Specialties’ GetAuto site. If this is going to a newspaper classifieds killer, these newspapers and sites are, at least for now, willing to support Google’s service in order to drive more (free) traffic to themselves.

But as comments to my original blog post on Google Base point out, just having the data isn’t enough – you’ve got to be able to DO something with the data and no, just being able to search the information isn’t nearly enough. And this is where I think Google is on to something very big. At its core, Google Base is just one very big database of highly structured information. I can’t believe Google will just let it sit there, and instead, will develop APIs on which developers can build applications, in much the same way it allows them to create mash-ups around Google Maps. So rather than have to figure out, build, and maintain lots of different applications, Google will allow developers to access the information, on the condition that the applications be “Base enabled”.

Does this sound familiar? Microsoft’s Windows Live and Office Live are built on a similar premise (albeit sans database -- at least for now) where Microsoft supplies the backend infrastructure and hosting, some tools and data, and a place where developers can market their applications to users.

One last thought on Google Base – right now, anything I post to Base is public, but I may want to keep something private, or accessible to a specific social network. At some point, Google is going to have to allow users to set up these permissions, which adds a layer of complexity to searching. If I’m doing a search for a particular recipe, and I have permission to look at my extended family members’ Base content, Google would have to parse out that information in real time. Not an easy feat, at least on the surface.

So I’m curious to hear from you how you would/wouldn’t use base -- please add your comment below or email me. I think at the core, it’s not only a matter of technology and feature/function set, but also a matter of how much do I trust Google to do the right thing with my data. My hunch is that we will.

Update: Here are links to relevant Google Base posts:

- Google Blog -- includes quotes from companies using Base
- Google's FAQ on Base - includes screenshots. Check out the last FAQ -- because Base creates a unique page for your item, you can buy AdWords that point to it. Hmmm, the profit motive begins to show its hand. Your data now resides on a page instead of in a database, so you can advertise it.
- Search Engine Watch - Danny has a nice review of the ins and outs of the service

Search engine cooking and the "third page" of search

By Charlene Li

I wanted to pass along this article from the Washington Post, "My Dinner With Google" by Andrea Sachs, where she searches for recipes that use a set of ingredients -- such as tofu, oranges, and cauliflower on Google. As an avid cook, I've had my share of adventures with search engine cooking", usually as I try out new ingredients that I pick up at Bay Area farmer's markets. Most recently, I've had some cooking adventures with with corn smut (or cuitlacoche) and romanesco.

But what I find so interesting about this is that when I do "search engine cooking" (usually at the end of the week when I have odds and ends left in the fridge), recipes from my favorite site recipe site, AllRecipes.com, frequently turn up. I took a closer look at this, and found that AllRecipes.com uses  static index pages around different topics versus Epicurious' dynamically generated pages. No doubt, this helps popular recipes show up well in the results.

The reason I bring this up is that I've been noodling around the idea of the "Third Page" of search (credit goes to Perry Evans from LocalMatters for prompting this train of thought). The first page of search is the query page (like www.google.com), the second page is the search results, and the third is a destination page on yet another search engine or aggregator that's been optimized for that query.

Here are some examples: seafood recipe, chinese restaurants in dallas, where the top results are a list from another site or search engine with better functionality to help with a structured search. And this makes sense -- my hypothesis is that while a particular Chinese restaurant will try to climb to the top of the search results for such a query, it's actually better for the user experience to see a list/aggregation of the restaurants.

Carrying that thought further, as vertical search engines develop, they will actively try to source much of their traffic from the general search engines, training consumers to actually seek out these brand names in the general interface and then drilling down into parametric, structured search on the vertical search site that's better suited for their original intention.

Hence the evolution of the "third page" of search, which extends the search experience outside of the original general search engine. I think we're seeing a subtle but fundamental shift in consumer search usage away from trying to find perfect destination page and instead, turning instead to aggregators and vertical search engines that understand (and can optimize for) the query better than the destination pages.

This has significant implications for the search marketer and site optimization firms -- it's one thing to try to improve your search engine rankings vis a vis your competition, but it's another when you're trying to beat out aggregated pages optimized for these more general queries. It points to the need for a multi-level SEO strategy -- focusing not only on optimizing pages on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, but also looking at your placement on sites like Citysearch and SuperPages.com.

Review of Google Local for Mobile

By Charlene Li

I invited my colleague, Charlie Golvin, to write a review of Google Local for Mobile because: 1) Charlie's the Forrester consumer wireless analyst; and 2) I have a Blackberry which isn't supported by the new service. As you'll see below, Charlie has access to *many* different types of phones! Hope you enjoy his perspective.

Google released its Google Local for Mobile application today. It’s a Java app that brings much of the functionality of Google Local to the mobile phone, adapted for the small screen environment in mostly the clever way that you would expect from those wicked smaht folks. To download the app you can either navigate on your phone’s browser to http://google.com/glm and answer the questions the site poses to you regarding carrier, phone maker, and phone model, or you can use your desktop browser to answer the same set of questions and have Google send your phone an SMS with the link to the right version of the app (provided you don’t mind giving Google your phone number, just like you didn’t as a latecomer to Gmail). If you’re on a network like Verizon, Alltel, or US Cellular that uses BREW applications, you’re out of luck — presumably because this free app doesn’t make it worthwhile for Google to pay Qualcomm, and because Google doesn’t want to go through the carriers but prefers to distribute directly. So, if you’re a Cingular, T-mobile, or Sprint subscriber, have at it.

I actually played with GLM on three different phones — a Motorola ROKR, a Nokia 7610, and a Samsung SPH-A940, only the first of which is listed as supported by Google. For the Nokia I chose a version for another Series 60 phone (the 6620) and the Samsung auto-detected as a slightly older model. In both of these cases there were a few small anomalies that were annoying but far from rendered the app unusable. By far the best features were the automatic click-to-dial associated with any search result, and the driving directions. Each step in the directions is rendered on the map as a text box pointing on the map to your point along your journey, you press the ‘3’ key to advance to the next step and ‘1’ for the previous.

For those who have already become used to the SMS interface to Google Local, this app is unlikely to alter your behavior in areas you know well. However, when traveling out of your comfort zone you will likely prefer the Java app primarily for the mapping feature. My main criticism is that the satellite imagery serves no useful purpose on such low resolution displays, and only serves to drive up network usage while degrading performance — stick with the maps.

While the carriers may bemoan the fact that Google is taking traffic from their own yellow pages and directory information services, in truth this is a very good thing for them. The familiar Google interface as a simple extension of the desktop experience will drive users to consume more data on their phones, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean revenue for carriers like Sprint who price data flat, it means that consumers are shifting their behavior from voice to voice and data -- which is the most significant impediment to the adoption of other data services today.

Meet up in Atlanta, Tues. Nov. 15th

By Charlene Li

I'll be in Atlanta for business and would love to meet people for an informal, no-host breakfast at the InterContinental Buckhead Hotel. We'll be meeting in the hotel restaurant, Au Pied de Cochon. Please email me at to let me know that you'll be coming so that I can get the right table size. Address is 3315 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30326. Phone: 404-869-2942 for the hotel, restaurant is 404-946-9070.

And I couldn't resist adding a map to the location below -- as I mentioned in my previous post, the nice thing about the new Yahoo! Maps beta is that the URL is static -- long, but static. The map found the location, linked it to a business at the location, and added the phone number for good  measure.

Hope to see a few of you that morning!

Update: I had mistakenly said Wed. Nov. 15th. The CORRECT date is Tuesday, November 15th. Sorry about that!!

House hunting with the new Yahoo! Maps

By Charlene Li

I had a chance to put the new Yahoo! Maps through its paces this weekend as I went around to open houses on Sunday. Anyone who's been through the drill knows what a pain it is to do this!

First, a quick overview of what's new and different with Yahoo! Maps. 1) Great functionality and update to Yahoo! Maps, especially removing the need for page refreshes thanks to a nice Flash implementation (think Google Maps but with Flash instead of AJAX); 2) Multi-point mapping. Very, very key when managing an open house afternoon; 3) The back button works -- thanks to Flash, I can use the back button to back up when a refinement I've made isn't what I want; and 4) the URL updates automatically, meaning I can copy and send the URL to my husband/broker to give them the directions.

In a word, it was wonderful. I used one browser window to look up open houses and then plotted them on the map. I could drag and drop locations within the directions (albeit, it was a little cumbersome to do this). At the end of the process, I did two things -- I printed a copy of the directions and I also used Yahoo!'s "Send to Phone" option to SMS the directions to my cell.

Contrast that to the process I used last weekend.

1) Find and enter the address each time into Google Maps.
2) Print out each map.
3) Figure out what order to see the houses in with all of them laid out on the table.
4) Stack the houses into the order I was hoping to see them in.
5) Pray while driving around with two kids that the pile didn't get re-ordered. My prayers were not answered. Realized that I should have stapled the entire pile together (aargh).

There's still a lot of work for Yahoo! to do, but it's a big step in the right direction. I have long thought that the Yahoo! Local service is heads and shoulders above Google's offerings -- with the exception of the maps. This should go a long way to helping Yahoo! regain that mapping ground, especially as its made the SDK much more robust for Maps.

But here's the big question -- is this all enough to "win" against Google Maps and keep MSN's Virtual Earth at bay? Robert Scoble doesn't think so and I have to agree with him. This is because the key to a mapping service's success is that it's used outside of the service itself by developers who will tap into the mapping APIs. Scoble uses Zvents as an example and I had a chance to speak with Ethan Stock aobut the service and their use of Google Maps on Friday. Zvents was caught in the middle of a minor hailstorm on Friday thanks to Scoble's post (Ethan blogs about it). At issue are the terms of service which restricted how many server calls can be made and whether commercial applications could access the APIs. Yahoo! revised the TOS and all seems to have died down. But at the core of the issue is a general distrust that Google/MSN/Yahoo! will eventually start charging for access to the maps at some point in the future. As I mentioned in my post about Microsoft's Live initiative, trust will be a major issue for all of these players, but especially so for Yahoo! and Microsoft as Google continues to command mindshare with developers.

Google pays for Firefox and AdSense

By Charlene Li

Last Friday, Google's AdSense program announced that it will pay publishers if they refer new sign-ups to AdSense through an ad on their sites. Even more interesting, AdSense will also pay publishers if they get users to download Firefox with the Google Toolbar. More information is available at https://www.google.com/adsense/referrals. Referral fees will be $100 per AdSense sign-up and $1 for each instance when a download of Firefox is run for the first time.

What got my attention is that Google is paying for distribution of its Toolbar. This is need for distribution is similar to why Google struck a deal with Sun to distribute Toolbar. It's also a great way for Firefox to increase its distribution base. More from Firefox also has its take on the announcement. 

I was at a meeting on Thursday evening with Mitchell Baker and John Lilly from Mozilla Foundation where they said that Firefox now had 14% share of the US browser market. Firefox has long encouraged its base to include graphics to promote others download Firefox. But Google's AdSense now gives it an opportunity to pay site owners to do this, which will only further encourage the Firefox's marketing and distribution. While it's not officially stated, it's pretty clear that Google is footing the bill.

I expect to see Firefox cut more deals like this in the future -- John Lilly is in charge of business development and his goal is to double the Firefox penetration over the next year.

Entertainmentanytime.com viral campaign

By Charlene Li

I just got pinged about this new stealth viral campaign, www.entertainmentanytime.com. I hadn't seen it before and it's not clear who's behind it. It says that there will be more options on November 14th. One hint is that it appeared to originate on an Organic blog and mentions that it's from the "home team". Anyone with more information, please ping me!

Just be sure to do more than use the arrow keys -- letters, space (for brakes), and zig-zag back and forth. You'll be rewarded with even more content. Very Subservient Chicken-esque.

Microsoft’s “Live” strategy is a good and smart move

By Charlene Li

I was at the launch event for Windows Live and Office Live on Tuesday morning and have been running ever since, so apologies for not posting this sooner. I wrote a Forrester piece on this (subscription required). Here’s the executive summary:

Microsoft has embraced a new way to do business — a mindset that is based on software-as-a service, open platforms, and continuous innovation; a model previously mastered by Google. Ad-supported software for consumers and very small businesses is only the beginning. Microsoft's real aim is to build and host a service platform that will attract the investment of developers looking for a way to reach these market sectors. It is also a foray into offering its traditional client/server software to customers on a hosted or on-demand basis. Forrester believes that these "Live" services won't cannibalize Microsoft's existing software revenues and instead will drive significant upside as Microsoft develops new advertising and subscription revenues. However, it has tried this before and failed. The strategy will be successful only if Microsoft offers its partners a ready market, a fair revenue sharing scheme, and a strong support system that develops trust.

I’m going to tackle what I think about this development in a Q&A format to reflect the many questions I’ve been asked over the past few days.

Q: Is MSN being sidelined, with popular services like Hotmail, Messenger, and the personal home page moving to Windows Live?

A: Just the opposite, I see MSN becoming more focused. MSN has long suffered an identity crisis, mixing communication services and content together. By removing the communications portion, MSN can focus on a great user experience that brings together great content. And they have great content – MSN Autos is one of the best and biggest in the industry, Zone is an addictive gaming site that attracts loads of women (be sure to check out Bejeweled 2). In fact, the rumors of MSN and AOL working together make a lot more sense if MSN is focused primarily on the content experience. Moreover, MSN is extremely important to the strategy as its core advertiser base will be the primary revenue source for the Live products. Think of them creating an ad network for both display and search/text ads across their various networks.

Q: Are ad supported services going to work? Will they be enough to support this strategy?

A: One of the biggest challenges – and unanswered questions -- to the whole Live strategy will what kind of ads will appear on Windows Live and Office Live. Microsoft could suffer a Google Gmail-like backlash if the ads are contextually keyed to personal information on Windows Live. Ads that key off of feeds and gadget settings like zip codes are probably OK. But advertising driven by my email or calendar entries will be a no-no. (The alternative view: Gmail users don’t seem phased by it, or at the least, they trust Google – more on that below).

Q: Is this going to cannibalize Microsoft’s core software and enterprise revenues?

A: Not anytime soon. Office Live is targeted at a very different audience – small businesses with less than 10 employees – that today don’t buy Microsoft’s varied enterprise solutions. And they won’t anytime soon because they don’t a) have the IT resources, and b) they don’t need these mission critical solutions. That’s why a hosted solution is ideal for them, and Office Live’s initial 22 applications will address many of them.

Q: Microsoft talked about having an open platform for developers. Is Microsoft really going to be open about this, or are they going to stick it to developers in the future?

A: This is by far the biggest deal in terms of the announcement, and probably the most poorly expressed part too. I believe Microsoft is fully embracing hosted services and supporting developers, and more importantly, now have different mindset in how they approach the market. Sure, they would still love to be central your personal and work life (that IS what Windows and Office Live are about, after all), but they know they can’t do it alone. This is especially true with Google and Yahoo! breathing down their necks. While not yet available, the APIs will allow developers to build on the Live platforms, leveraging all of the communication, payment, and identity systems that have already been built. Let’s take Office Live as an example – it will launch with 22 applications available for a subscription fee, and all of those applications are Microsoft developed. Developers could build a light app directly into Office Live and tap immediately into a broad audience. Moreover, there’s a built in revenue model, with users paying a few months more to get access to the service. Contrast that to a business enterprise software developer today who has to build everything pretty much from scratch – and then build a marketing, sales, and distribution organization on top of it as well. The outcome: we’ll see lots of innovation for a market that historically has seen been given hand-me down technology solutions. We’ll see the inevitable list of complaints from developers who want nothing to do with Microsoft – in fact, Robert Scoble listed 12 reasons why this is the case.

This brings me to the issue of trust, on both the part of developers and end users. Both will have to trust that Microsoft understands their needs and won’t abuse the relationship. What strikes me as ironic is that if you replaced “Microsoft” with “Google”, an announcement like Live would have drawn universal praise. “Google creates home page that puts users at the center of the experience.” “Google will power enterprise apps for small businesses.” “Google builds open platform for developers within new services”.

Key to building that trust will be explaining what the heck Live is to many different constituents. And if you think it’s just Microsoft/MSN catching up on to Google and Yahoo!, you’re not thinking big enough. Think of Live becoming the foundation for a totally different experience, where your information will live in the infamouse “cloud” and where you’ll be completely device and channel agnostic. A former executive at Forrester, Emily Green, was fond of saying, “The Web is my filing cabinet.” Well, I think Live is potentially Microsoft’s manifestation of that experience.