Outside In
Intersting idea… The latest blogregator/Google mashup, outside.in takes your zipcode and brings all the location-pertinent blogs and news to the screen. A quick search on Los Gatos reveals our skateboard park is getting a new lease of life. So, idea needs some content to be useful. Will watch it though as the idea has merit.
Analyst Firm Eats Analyst Firm Eats Analyst Firm
Less than two years after acquiring Butler Group, Datamonitor plans on buying Ovum. Four months ago Ovum bought Summit Strategies.
Measuring Engagement
The degree to which readers engage with media should be a critical factor in understanding the value of that media. My view has been that the degree to which actions intended from any marketing activity – say downloads – occur is proportional to participation in that media by readers/ views/ the community. For this reason I like Scoble’s idea on measuring media engagement.
This will require a step-change in thinking by communicators. Rather than looking at the reach of publications, we need to think in terms of participation.
Illuminating Buzz’s experience in downloads driven by USA Today vs. Scoble is our experience with online tech media. From them, the traffic is nominal. But a post by James Governor of Redmonk referring to LogLogic on average drives a 14% spike in traffic to the site. This is just one dimension of participation and probably the most base level (traffic, link push-through, etc.).
Where Scoble starts going with this idea is really interesting and where you get to the heart of participation. Do people not only scoot from James to us but when they arrive do they start doing things – like downloading, viewing, registering, commenting? That is where traffic becomes exponentially available.
So which is more valuable to me. InfoWorld or Monkchips? The lazy answer is both. But in resource constrained start-ups you punt on the media driving hardcore participation.
Links & Blinks
- CNNMoney on bloggate Walmart.
- Corporate Blogging: What Could Go Wrong? :: CIO Insight
- To Blog or Not to Blog: Report from the Front :: Knowledge@Wharton
- Corporate Blogs Split Cyberspace :: silicon.com
- Movies in a flash.
- New Yahoo bookmarks service… Do we need another… Great screencast though.
Eureka! Personalized Search…
I’ve been using personalized search across a variety of sites for sometime now. Eurekster has been my favorite – and not just because I am an advisor to the company.
Google’s entry into the market looks a bit like Rollyo with advertising, customized look and feel and a bit of Eurekster’s keyword flavoring. Overall, a good start and good for the personalized search market. You want to see the traffic boost that Eurekster gets when someone like Google enters the market… Very much like when Yahoo! took a swing. hard to buy that kind of lift as a start-up.
Comparing Google to Eurekster I don’t see anything missing on the Eurekster side. What is missing on the Google side is the learning, buzzcloud and community engagement (they do have a variation on this but only allowing users to suggest sites to add to the index). The buzzcloud is key for drawing users into use the search and the community stuff will be key to improving the search results.
Eurekster should be thrilled that the two search leaders are in fact following their innovations. It’s about the 5th time someone has come out with something that has looked to threaten their business but typically it seems to encourage more growth (e.g. Wink, Rollyo launches, Yahoo Search builder, Google Flavors, Google Co-op).
So what happens next? Maybe Google becomes the Gorilla in the market. Maybe, much likewith the acquisition of Blogger, they become another player and in fact contribute to accelerating awareness and adoption across the market. Either way, this is a great move for personalized search and supports the few that becoming your very own Google is a good thing.
