Google Starts Ranking Twitter Search Results Pages

Thanks Blogstorm for highlighting this development in search ranking of Tweets. If Twitter opens up to google a little more, could twitter become a useful tool in increasing a brands serach presence?

by Patrick Altoft on March 23, 2009

Over the last couple of weeks it appears that more and more Twitter search results pages have started ranking on Google for “news” type queries.

This is interesting because Twitter has made no efforts to ensure the search pages are SEO friendly and even goes as far as blocking Google from spidering the pages using robots.txt.

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /*?

Google has obviously decided, algorithmically or manually, that even thought they don’t know what content is on these Twitter pages they are probably high quality enough to warrant high rankings.

The screenshot below is from the “gaza” search result. You can see that Google isn’t spidering the page and therefore can’t generate much of a description or use the pages correct title.

The actual pages are likely being discovered in two different ways. The first is via the usual link discovery method where Google spots lots of links to a page and ranks it based on link data.

The second method Google might be using is to generate the Twitter results pages themselves. If there is a particular keyword that Google wants more results for they can just plug that keyword into the Twitter search page and generate a brand new page to suit.

We know Google is filling in forms on thousands of websites every day to try and index the deep web so it comes as no surprise that they are doing the same with Twitter.

The only surprising thing is that Twitter is actually working against Google rather than embracing SEO and using it to build marketshare and perhaps even revenue.

How Google Is Showing Off Chrome

Cheers Businessweek for this report on google's Chrome Experiment contest. Some pretty cool stuff, sans flash, being done here. I presonally love the browser. Just wondering how long before it hits critical mass and doing some of this cool stuff is worthwhile

A new project spearheaded by the search giant calls on designers and developers to exploit the potential of its Chrome browser

By Helen Walters

The Google (GOOG) home page has been ransacked. The familiar, colorful logo is upside down. The search box and the "I'm Feeling Lucky" tab have been uprooted and now point up at a rakish angle, jutting into white space. Other links have tumbled from the top navigation bar and lie in a heap on the side of the browser. What on earth is going on? Have the hackers taken over?

Yes, actually they have. But they were invited to do so. The screwy design is part of a new series, Chrome Experiments, that Google launched on Mar. 18 to demonstrate the potential of Chrome, the search giant's much-trumpeted yet little-adopted browser, which itself was updated with a handful of new features the day before.

The jumbled home page is actually a program called Google Gravity. British interactive design firm Hi-Res! recreated the search giant's regular home page, giving users the ability to wreck the joint. With the mouse, a user can spin the traditional elements into space. They soar, they careen, they bounce, until they settle higgledy-piggledy at the bottom of the browser window.

Whimsical, Fun—and Pointless

There are a further 17 inventive devices displayed in Chrome Experiments, which was commissioned by tech lead Aaron Koblin, who works in Google's Creative Lab at the company's San Francisco office. He handed a simple brief to his chosen anarchists: "Here's this browser. Make something cool with it."

In Browser Ball, you casually bounce a beach ball between different windows on the screen. Twitch loads a series of windows to guide you through the levels of an infuriatingly addictive game. In BallDroppings, the user plays around with an interactive sound-generation device to produce artistically atonal results. A couple of the experiments use data from the micro-network Twitter as a starting point to create intricate visualizations. Not all of the projects are entirely clear. The overall results are whimsical, fun and, well, ultimately fairly pointless.

There is, however, a serious mission beneath the sense of play. Google wants consumers and advertisers to see the sophistication and reliability of Chrome's technology. These toys are built using the ubiquitous development language JavaScript, which has caused browser performance problems in the past. Given that many of Google's own Web programs, such as Gmail, rely heavily on JavaScript, Google is signaling that it's serious about building a strong, sturdy platform for cloud applications.

"There has been a steady flow of new releases and features [for other browsers]," wrote Gartner analysts David Mitchell Smith and Ray Valdes in a paper published on Mar. 13. "But the speed is not enough to keep up with Google's rising goals for Web applications." With Chrome, the company has taken matters into its own hands.

Slow Uptake of New Technology

Still, it's early days for Chrome, which is available only for PCs and currently boasts merely 1.15% of the browser market share, according to the latest figures from Net Applications. In contrast, Microsoft's (MSFT) established Internet Explorer (IE8 will likely be announced soon) has nearly 68%.

More serious for Google, as the company continues to build its case for cloud-based business apps, is the slow pace of enterprise adoption of new technology. According to Forrester Research, 60% of companies were still using Internet Explorer version 6.0 in the second half of 2008. That means they haven't upgraded to the latest version of the software they have, let alone contemplated shifting platforms altogether.

"There's a lot of effort and potential risk in moving off a browser," warns Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish. "Upgrading your company to a new browser may break customized enterprise applications." Design-focused programs build buzz and goodwill from early adopters, and a consumer-driven push could even help to drive buy-in from the bottom of an organization upwards. But McLeish notes, "Chrome is certainly not secure enough for prime time."

For now, Koblin says, he hopes the project will take on a life of its own and form a library of JavaScript experiments and a community of those constructing them—a "submit experiment" form is built into Chrome Experiments' interface. So is he volunteering to monitor the submissions personally? Koblin laughs. "The worst-case scenario of too many to look at would be wonderful."

evolution in music ownership and the cloud theory

How will The Cloud change the way we think about music ownership?
by Nicholas Deleon on March 23, 2009
This article is thanks to Crunch Gear

cloudmusic

One of the highlights of last week’s SXSW show, aside from seeing the Austin Crew again (hi, guys!), was when I spent some time talking to a few of the guys from Rhapsody, just like I did last year. The conversation touched a number of topics, but the one I found most interesting was the changing notion of music ownership. That is, now that most of us are at least familiar with streaming, on-demand music from pick-your-service (Imeem, Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, etc.), will people in the future still see music as a “thing” that they’ll own, or more like a service that they’ll tap into whenever the need arises? Will people still cling to a finite number of MP3s on their iPod, or will they prefer to have their music on The Cloud, using a device (say, the iPhone) that can call upon any song at will? A sort of, “Shoot, I wish I had that U2 song on my iPod right now” versus, “Here, let me stream that U2 song for you.” And, if people are becoming more comfortable with this type of music consumption, where does that leave traditional, download-to-own services like iTunes and Amazon MP3? The things we think about!

It’s like this: we’re right about at the point where most of us have a smartphone or other device that has a reasonably reliable, always-on Internet connection. As such, we’re right about at the point where a service—the aforementioned ones, or perhaps some new one—can came along and say, “Oh hai! You know, instead of taking your iPod with you everywhere you go, why not just connect your phone to our service? We have every song in recorded history in our database (“Cloud”), and they’re all yours, provided you pay us $15 per month. Think about it: every song ever, in the palm of your hands. That sure beats listening to the same MP3s over and over again, right?!” That’s a best case scenario, of course. While Rhapsody told me the record labels are now much easier to deal with than they were in the past—there’s still a few music executives yelling, “Go away, Internet!”—, we’re still a little bit away from having Everything Ever at our fingertips. On the technical side of things, that also assumes that our Internet connections are, indeed, sound as a pound (aside: I think that phrase needs to be updated!), something that any iPhone-using SXSW attendee will tell you isn’t exactly the case just yet.

But, for the purposes of this here article, let’s assume that all those problems have been solved. Let’s assume that the mobile Internet is fast, reliable and affordable, and that the record labels have opened up their vaults for placement in The Cloud; no technical issues remain. The only thing we have to confront now is the consumer and her listening habits: will they change? Have they already changed? Does Little Stacy, who’s currently in junior high and listens to music via YouTube and Imeem, portend an adult who won’t think of music in terms of CDs and MP3s, but of something that’s “just there,” for lack of a better term? She won’t have a personal music library, in the form of vinyl, CDs, MP3s, FLACs, or whatever; The Cloud will be her library, on which everything ever recorded will reside. The notion of “not having that album” will be totally alien to her; she has everything, always. No, she doesn’t own any of it—it belongs to the record labels, by way of your Rhapsody and Spotify (or whatever)—but it’s always available to her wherever she goes, so why should she care wether or not she “owns” it? Ownership, in this scenario, will become an antiquated concept, no longer applicable to current conditions, and Adult Stacy wouldn’t have it any other way. Nothing’s stopping Stacy from buying a physical copy of an album on some future whiz-bang format, which includes a super-de-dooper high quality copy of the album, but it would be the exception and not the rule. People still go camping (“roughing it”) even though they have fully decorated master bedroom they can sleep in.

But that describes Little Stacy, our hastily invented character who’s currently in junior high; at most she’s 13-year-old. What about Big Steve, who’s 15 years out of college and works in a spiffy office downtown? He still owns his music—in fact, he’s probably just getting used to buying songs off iTunes and the like—and the idea of songs “being there” is sorta weird to him. What if they’re not there? (Big Steve is a glass-half-empty kind of guy; blame the recession.) And even if the songs were there, why should he pay a monthly fee for an entire library of music he’ll never listen to? How is that better than having an iPod filled with only the songs he likes—he loves Danzig—without any garbage pop music getting in the way? A cynic could say, well, long-term, Big Steve is irrelevant, since he doesn’t buy new music anyway, and besides, it’s his kids whom the music industry will be targeting in a few years anyway. Let him “own” all the music he wants, since it’s only a matter of time till he isn’t even on the music industry’s radar. Of course, that completely ignores the fact that, with his fancy corner office, Big Steve has more disposable income to throw at the music industry (and the services we’ve been talking about) than Little Stacy ever will while she’s growing up. To ignore Big Steve, and all the dollar signs he represents, would be foolish. That’s not to say that Big Steve can’t still buy CDs and MP3s, of course, but the question here is whether or not people, in the future, will be comfortable with not owning music. And as people like Little Stacy use the aforementioned services, they’ll no doubt get used to it; it’ll be just another thing they do, like sending thousands of text messages per month or spending hours upon hours on Facebook.

Specific to Rhapsody, yes, you can now buy MP3s from their online store. (Even disruptive technologies and companies like to hedge their bets.) Whether or not that’s the way forward, or merely something done to placate the Big Steves of the world, is what we’re trying to determine. My guess? I hope they have house music in The Cloud.

Some outtakes from the recent SXSW conference. Nothing too earth shattering, but good too se what's being discussed

Thanks Bazzarblog

Key Takeaways from SXSWi

March 19th, 2009 by Heather Brunner | Senior Vice President of Worldwide Client Services

This post was guest-written by Melissa Lipscomb, Bazaarvoice Community Manager

Spring break in Austin means SXSW, an exciting celebration of music, film and web creativity. I spent the last few days at SXSW Interactive – the portion of the conference that’s dedicated to social media and web 2.0. Here are my top 10 takeaways:

1. People expect conversations online. Regardless of the industry/type of site, end users expect to engage with brands and with other users on-line. It’s not enough to provide information to your customers, you have to allow them to interact with your site, with your brand, and with other customers. Of course, tools like Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, and Bazaarvoice Stories build customer engagement and interaction.
2. Customers expect brands to participate in the conversation. There was lots of discussion at SXSWi about the importance of building relationships with customers, rather than simply focusing on transactions. Responding to feedback (both positive and negative), answering questions and taking action on feedback are an important part of building credibility and trust with your customers.
3. Customers want authenticity. Several panelists emphasized the value of brand representatives talking “like real people” not robots (or corporatebots), even (or maybe especially) in industries where we’ve come to expect corporate jargon and legalese (like financial services and insurance).
4. Online identities are converging. OpenID and Facebook Connect are enabling greater portability/sharing of online abilities between sites. Profiles are important – people are invested in their identities online and want to build their reputations and leverage what they’ve done in one community in the other places they hang out. The most social media savvy customers are aware of their personal brands and welcome opportunities to build their brands on the sites where they shop.
5. Mobile and web are converging. Many people access the web primarily from their phones, others switch back and forth with the expectation the user experiences will be identical.
6. Online and offline are converging. GPS technology brings the real world into the mix in a big way (for example, your phone alerting a social networking site of your physical location, which allows your online friends to join you in the real world). Users are less likely to draw a hard boundary between their on-line and off-line lives. MobileVoice brings online UGC into the brick and mortar store, allowing customers to view reviews on their phones.
7. Filtering and aggregating the massive amounts of data online is critical. There are too many inputs and the most valuable technologies on the web are those that allow people to personalize what they see or provide rolled-up summaries. Filtering by tag or attribute and summarizing data in tag clouds or histograms allows customers to process large amounts of information and make a decision quickly.
8. Twitter is everywhere. Some of the most compelling and interesting conversations were happening “back channel” via twitter during the panels. Panelists took questions and responded in real time to comments that were made on the twitter stream for each panel. Fast and pithy user-generated contentin real time is incredibly appealing to many people.
9. Bazaarvoice is ahead of the pack. Admittedly, SXSW Interactive is a social media conference, not one focused specifically on e-commerce, but our ability to measure the success of user-generated content and deliver proven ROI for our clients stands out in an environment where many panelists were unsure about how to monetize UGC or how to measure results.
10. Bazaarvoice has a great culture! Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) gave a fabulous speech about the culture at Zappos which was very reminiscent of the Bazaarvoice culture. In addition, Bazaarvoice CMO Sam Decker, hosted a core conversation on building a great corporate culture, which got lots of buzz and positive reactions.

This was a great conference; I look forward to seeing what next year brings!

Social media monitoring site

Pitch mania over so can post a bit again. Here a re-post of Techcrunch's story on yet another social media monitoring site. Although Omgili doesn;t seem that amazing iin itself, the post does have a nice list of the main tools out there.

There are plenty of ways to monitor the buzz of any given topic in the blogosphere, on Twitter, or across social networks. There is Artiklz, Trendpedia, Trackur, Brandseye, Radian6, Attentio, Buzzcapture and Chatterguard, to name a few.. Now Omgili, a search engine that focuses on forums, discussion boards, newsgroups, and Q&A sites, has just added a new buzztracker called Omgili Stream. It searches the same set of discussion sites on the Web and returns results based on how recently they appeared.

Results are not ranked by anything other than chronology, which produces an undifferentiated set of results. What I really want to know is what are the most important or influential discussions going on about any given topic. Fortunately, Omgili Stream allows you to filter results by minimum number of replies, language, and where the search term appears (in the title, topic, or replies). Another filter opens up a column with Twitter search results on the left. A unified view might be preferable, but that might then be dominated by the Twitter results. Omgili’s strength is in searching through discussion boards, forms, and the like. It sifts through 7 million such posts a day.

Omgili’s greatest strength (its focus on deep discussion sites), is also its greatest weakness. It completely ignores blog comments, for instance, where a huge chunk of discussion on the Web takes place. That is a huge oversight, in my opinion. Although, there are other sites where you can search across only blog comments, such as Backtype or Artiklz. And then what about public discussions on Facebook and other social networks?

Omgili is geared towards marketers who want to keep track of what people are saying about their products, companies and brands. Yet it returns results from only one portion of the Web. So if you are a marketer, you might want to bookmark it (consumers might be more likely to talk about product defects or other problems on a discussion board or Q&A site where they are looking for assistance from other users). But it only addresses a portion of the discuss-o-sphere.

As far as it goes, it does a decent job. One of the more helpful features of Omgili is the ability to create a buzz chart for any set of topics. Below is one comparing “IE8″ to “Gmail” and “Flip Video.”

You-interface

Very cool dev stuff from TEd that turning hte net into a 6th sense. The cybernetic future vision is just gettting closer and closer

Interesting social experiment from 'old sckool' P&G

Thanks Cincinnati.com for this report on an social/reality TV mash-up experiment conducted by P&G. Fantastic to see a company like P&G, or any company in fact, stop the theory and speculation and really start putting things to the acid test. My only question is around the use of 'social media experts' in the experiment. Would be really interesting to carry out something similar here in Australia, but use 'normal' people instead. After all any success in the real world is going to have to come from engaging real people and them offering the right value/values that stimulate behaviour, advocacy, loyalty and all the other yummy social payoffs

P&G's digital summit socially adept

By David Holthaus • dholthaus@enquirer.com • March 11, 2009

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Executives from the evolving world of social networks had a meeting of the minds with Procter & Gamble executives Wednesday evening, as the 172-year-old Cincinnati-based giant held a four-hour, reality-show style exercise to help it figure out how it can best use rapidly growing online destinations such as Facebook and MySpace to target consumers.

With a potential audience of more than 300 million people and still growing quickly, social networking sites are seen as the newest frontier in advertising.

About 40 executives from major social networking companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere were invited to P&G’s downtown headquarters to meet with about a hundred P&G marketers to help them unlock the potential of these online sites to reach consumers.

P&G set up an exercise creating four teams whose goal was to see who could sell the most Tide T-shirts in four hours, starting at 5 p.m., with the money going to charity, using only the Web and a $1,000 budget. With team members hunched over laptops in four conference rooms, they used Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube to appeal to potential T-shirt buyers.

The group used their professional and personal Facebook accounts and also their Twitter accounts among many social media tools. To follow the Twitter effort you can link here.. The group also launched www.tide2.com as part of the effort.

Two hours into the exercise, they had sold about 600 T-shirts at $20 a pop.

“We need to become skilled and effective at social communication,” said Lucas Watson, who organized the event as one of P&G’s digital team leaders.

Notably absent from the evening was anyone from Twitter, the explosively growing site where users can update what they are doing, in real time, in short takes.

“They’re growing so fast they haven’t had time to think about the commercial aspects of their company,” Watson said.

But Twitter was one of the main methods the teams used to sell their T-shirts digitally.

Using traditional advertising methods to reach consumers on Facebook and other sites won’t work, Watson said: “You have to be invited in.’’

The potential for advertisers like P&G is enormous. Time spent on social sites is growing more than three times faster than the rate of overall Internet growth, according to a new report from media tracker Nielsen Online.

Just as importantly, the audience is becoming older and more globally diverse, Nielsen found. Social networks started out with a young audience of college age and younger, but has become more mainstream over time.

This shift has been driven by Facebook, whose greatest growth in 2008 – a gain of more than 24 million users – came from people aged 35 to 49, Nielsen found.

“Facebook and social networking is actually becoming more popular then e-mail,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, who participated in the Wednesday night event.

The audience is a marketer’s dream – it’s considered engaged, diverse, global and relatively youthful.

But experts say tapping into this audience is more complicated than advertising in the traditional media of television, radio and print.

Users of Facebook and other social sites are usually online to communicate with each other or for entertainment.

They aren’t accustomed to finding advertising there and aren’t very tolerant of it, says a November report by IDC, a technology research firm.

Of all the Internet users in the U.S., only 3 percent would allow the sites to use their contact information for advertising, IDC’s survey found.

“To understand the social media space, you really have to step into it,” said Pete Blackshaw, an executive vice president with Nielsen Online and a team leader in the Wednesday exercise.

That’s what P&G Digital Night, as it was called, was all about. “Any social media environment is space where consumers are choosing to spend their time,” Watson said. “We need to learn how to connect with them there.”