Visual Relevance and Ask's Preview Function - by MarketSmart Interactive's Casie Gillette
I'd like to introduce to you the newest voice on Search Engine Lowdown - Casie Gillette.
She shared her interest in studying the effects of Ask's Preview Function (binoculars) on users as they interacted with SERPs. She surveyed 50 people; I worked with her in preparing her findings for your consumption.
Please note that this is - because of its limitations - an anecdotal study and is intended as a conversation starter rather than hard data for making business decisions.
my highlights from Casie's work: >>the "visual relevance" concept emerged as we spoke (how the appearance of a site prior to click through affects a user's perceptions of that site's relevance to a given query). >>the 8th placed site in her Ask SERPs set was the #1 most-liked in preview >>across the 50 people surveyed, likes and dislikes were consistent >>usability matters even more in search marketing when users have the ability to preview websites in the SERPs
One is likely to ask why *show* users the site when you can just decrease the ranking of sites that cause pogo-sticking back into the SERPs.
Further, if Google is likely to continue relying on user data to adjust relevance they are not likely to adopt a preview function and therefore, why make usability a core factor in search marketing?
To these people I submit two arguments:
1) Ask makes highly-deliberate, hyper-tested changes - at least this is the impression CEO Jim Lanzone has given me in past conversations. Therefore it's my belief that previews *work*. Otherwise they would not have rolled out.
This to me (along with Snap) is enough reason to begin making site usability a core *search marketing* offering. We have at MarketSmart Interactive of course :)
2) Google watches Ask closely (and why not? Ask is now the leader in *pure play* search). Though it's not strictly confirmed, it's my belief that Google hired the Orion algorithm creator in the interest of investigating clustering/conceptual zoom functionality similar to Ask's.
I guess we could be having a conversation about how search marketing fits into a more holistic interactive marketing program too :)
Also - I've the worst feeling that we've butchered the usage of effect vs. affect. Grammarians please speak up :) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Investigating BYOMS with Kozoru Founder John Flowers Kozoru spent its last two years in Kansas developing the byoms [build your own mobile search] project.
Kozoru's founder, chariman and ceo John S. Flowers answered my 20 + questions which I submit to you here in the full text of the interview.
I'll follow up with a more concentrated post (pithy quotes out of context etc... ;) that has my thoughts and more questions.
I'd like to extend a personal thanks to both John Flowers and the inexhaustable Justin Gardner for taking time for this interview during the hectic ramp up to the hard byoms launch on June 5th.
And now for your pleasure I present an interview with John Flowers:
> +++kozoru in general+++ > help me understand your purpose as a company - namely who's paying for your existence and why?
Flowers: This should be obvious from the recent press, but the short version is we were funded by both the state of Kansas venture arm and local angel investors. We do not have any traditional venture capital in the company, even though I've raised VC before.
Our mission was to make search easier and I believe byoms is a step in the right direction to accomplish this goal.
My secondary mission was to create a company in Kansas that would bring something back into the community where my son was born and where I now live.
>> +++background/team+++ >> What is John Flowers' professional background?
Flowers: I created several companies, the most public of which was nCircle Network Security (one of the largest privately-held network security companies in the US). Until now, with kozoru, I suppose. I was also the chief architect at InQuisit, a personalized news-delivery system, acquired by Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com).
>> What in his background best prepared him for the challenges at Kozoru and with the byom project?
Flowers: Previously, at nCircle Network Security, we built very large-scale systems which ran on very inexpensive servers. Many deployments handled millions of pieces of data and had to aggregate them. Before that, InQuisit was all about personalization and helping users get relevant results to complex queries (InQuisit was acquired by Ask Jeeves, now Ask.com). And, like most people, I've been thinking about the problem for most of my adult life, as have many of the developers working at kozoru.
>> who are the people in the team behind the byom project?
>> what in the byom team background makes them suited for the project?
Flowers: We have people who've worked with large distributed systems and natural language problems. But beyond those disciplines our team is comprised of musicians, writers, actors, filmmakers, auto moders, illustrators, etc. Of course, they all know how to code too, but I really believe it's these secondary intelligences that allow them to think beyond the traditional search box and come up with something as compelling as byoms.
>> who do you see this working particularly well for - who's the target market from a user perspective?
From Justin [Justin Gardner, Kozoru Communications Manager]:
> Three groups. > > First, your classic early tech adopters that have to have the latest and greatest. These are the tinkerers and the dreamers and they like to know what the future is going to look like. > > Second, your business road warriors that harness technology because they have to keep ahead of the next person. This tech will appeal to them in particular because most of them have a Blackberry or Treo as their mobile phone, and QWERTY keyboards are much more efficient for searching on IM. > > Third, and probably most importantly, is the IM generation. These 12-25 year olds live on IM. Just ask any parent and you'll hear how their kid has four or five IM windows open on the computer every night chatting to their friends. Now imagine if one of those windows had a byoms in it to help them with their homework. This group represent the future of search and they use IM voraciously. This is ultimately the audience we built this system for, although they may not be the first to use it.
I also believe people like us will use it, as I've been doing for months, as a part of my daily routine. It's amazing how often you take advantage of a technology if it is always with you, available to answer questions as they come up in your day-to-day life.
>> how would you describe the kozoru development approach? What do you think of Agile development?
Flowers: Every startup has to be agile and rev products quickly. If you look at Flickr and other technologies, they started out as something other than how they ended up, but they kept their core ideas and mission intact. We've followed a kind of mantra where we are willing to change our interface based on feedback, but the underlying technology has remained largely the same.
>> +++inspiration+++ >> what was the inspiration for the project? was it the MakeBot as described by Battelle?
No. That was just a handy post [Justin] referenced to make our point. And I think what's important is that Battelle was looking beyond just the MakeBot, and wondering how IM could be best harnessed for search technology. We feel we've created something that addresses those future thinking pointers.
My inspiration was more of "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash). Although the idea has been around for a long time. Even Howard Rheingold, in talking about kozoru and byoms, mentioned the idea of intelligent agents [intelligent agents defined --ed] answering questions for a user, wherever they are.
>> +++where byom fits+++ >> is this a side project for Kozoru (like an oh-neat-we-can-whip-this-out project) or a main project; how long did it take?
Flowers: The creation of the byoms technology took two years. We've converged upon several technologies; chat, natural language response (for which we filed a patent), mobile IM and search. This convergence allows us to break a lot of barriers and do something we believe is new and interesting to users.
>> how does byom fit into your larger goals for kozoru?
Flowers: byoms is the beginning of a much larger strategy to create a mobile search platform that can be used on any phone, with any messaging client, including SMS.
>> +++cash+++ >> are there existing structures in place to monetize this?
Flowers: Like Google before us, we've decided to build a technology first and ask questions about monetization second.
>> how do you plan to monetize this in the short and long term?
Flowers: Through partnerships, which I cannot discuss at this time.
>> +++creative/direction questions+++ >> Can I create feeds out of my friends' blog feeds in MySpace? If so, what would queries/results look like there? If I'm doing searches about who's dating who could I have a new outlook on my friends?
Flowers: You can create a byoms feed out of any publicly accessible data source. Any information in any non-pictographic language will be assembled into the kozoru Natural Language Response engine/technology and relevant results will be displayed based on questions or keyword queries.
One of my favorite byoms, just because it is so bizarre, is the Match.com (or even the CraigsList Personals) byoms. Typing something like, "interesting asian bondage" gives back relevant results. Several people at kozoru have created byoms for things like car parts for a "karmann ghia" or even motorcycles.
However, because we're based on language, we can only answer questions that are explicitly (or sometimes implicitly) in the corpus we're searching.
>> Also - why just make this mobile? Why not make a eurekster-style search function too? Can you make me a eurekster-style addon for search engine lowdown?
Flowers: We could easily add this functionality. We don't believe the market wants to browse to a specific site to ask questions. We believe -- based on a great deal of feedback from users and focus groups -- users want their search to follow them around and be available wherever they are; on a mobile phone, at the library - using a chat client, at a friend's house.
Ironically, one of our Board members, Ridgely Evers, is also on the Board of Eurekster.
>> If I owned a local brick and mortar could I create a searchable product inventory feed for my own byom?
Flowers: byoms are completely customizable, with keyword inclusion and "anchoring" of information. They are also infinitely hackable and we expect users to find ways of creating byoms we haven't even thought of yet. Users are smarter than we give them credit for and are capable of creating something amazing, if they are given the right tools and technology.
>> how well does this work for local searches? what if I'm just searching for directions or an address? is this more of a general info application or does Kozoru know how to make direction/address results too?
Flowers: We see byoms as more of a platform where people can figure out ways to create their own local search. So in that sense, there are definitely ways to do it. We've placed that power in the users hands.
However, because we haven't been exhaustive in our testing of every possible way to create byoms, some sites do better with the byoms technology than others.
Wikipedia is an example of a site that does great with it. Also, you may not want to mix two sites that aren't related in a very common sense way. Another example of this is mixing possibly wikipedia.org with espn.com. That mix might not give you the best results. However, maybe you're just looking for baseball trivia, so you could just include the word baseball on the keyword include list. That could be a compelling byoms feed. But in another context, with different expectations, it may not be. So it really is up to the user's expectations.
A few days ago, Justin created an acronym byoms feed, and it's pretty good. It's not perfect, but we get an answer in seconds, with multiple meanings for many acronyms. LOL doesn't just mean Laugh Out Loud.
>> Also will I have the ability to see what the searches were on my byom? Because that would be very interesting and help me to understand what kinds of information mobile searchers are looking for.
Flowers: There are possible privacy issues at stake when opening this kind of functionality, but we're considering a way to do this that doesn't violate a user's trust. As a site publisher (or blogger), this information could be valuable in helping you determine what articles you should write about, because you'd better know your readership and their interests.
>> Is Kozoru a natural language search engine, and if so, will searchers of the various byoms that spring up have to alter the search style they're used to already, I mean, will users have to go from 2-3 phrase queries to natural language queries?
Flowers: We like to think of kozoru more as Natural Language Response and less as natural language [questions]. You can ask a question, sure, but we do equally well with both keyword queries and questions at bringing back a highly relevant, authoritative answer. Not just snippets or keyword results.
>> +++who's your daddy?+++ >> Any interest in this from the big players? AOL, Google, etc... Be as vague as possible in your answer please. Just kidding. Be as specific as your ndas allow.
Flowers: People get it, which is very cool. We're in discussions and cannot talk about the details.
As a side-comment, isn't Google everyone's "daddy" right now? :)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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May 30, 2006
Kozoru to Launch Chat-Based Build-Your-Own Mobile Search + Kozoru Interview (soon)
I've been trying for an interview with Kozoru since December.
update: (Oh SNAP! I'd totally forgotten about *THIS* part of their story! Kozoru was in acquisition talks with Google and then Google quit answering emails and phone calls, continued logging into Kozoru, and blocked them from API usage according to CEO John Flowers!
I wish I had remembered that when writing questions... oh well :P)
I recently wrote out a gi-NORMOUS list of questions for them about their upcoming BYOMS launch which they were kind enough to plug away at through the hectic product launch process.
I'm even more excited to get the answers back now that I've read a little more about colorful Kozoru CEO John Flowers: A Million Little Pixels.
I was hoping to get the interview back today, but they're obviously running a bit late on it.
(understandable... there are over 30 questions. This one's kind of funny: +++who's your daddy?+++ Any interest in this from the big players? AOL, Google, etc... Be as vague as possible in your answer please. Just kidding. Be as specific as your ndas allow.
update: this question is kind of stupid now in light of my previous Kozoru coverage which I had completely forgotten about. Oh well :P
Creating a byoms feed is easy. Simply add several of your trusted sites, create a corresponding AIM screen name and add the byoms feed to your AIM client. Utilizing kozoru’s patent pending Natural Language Response™ algorithm to enhance relevance, users receive full-sentence responses to their queries, instead of thousands of results. Also, users can create up to twenty unique byoms for searching across multiple topics.
I was supposed to set up my own BYOMS for SEL.
I will first thing tomorrow and let you guys search through SEL's archives while you should be txt-ing your significant others while you're supposed to be working.
Gazerk Q/A: Ziff Davis Gaming Search Engine Speaks
A few weeks ago, I gave my opinions on Gazerk, a search engine geared for gamers. While I was pretty harsh on the design and some of the results, I felt that Ziff Davis Media Group is absolutely on the right track.
Ziff Davis’ publications like PC Magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly and many others, put them in a unique position to leverage their expertise, knowledge and reputation in the gaming industry to consolidate their information in a search engine.
After my previous post, Jason Freidenfelds, the PR Manager for the 1UP Network contacted me to start a discussion about Gazerk, gamers and their search engine. While at times what I wrote was pretty rough, he told me that I brought up some good points.
Jason and I started chatting and I started receiving questions from other industry watchers and gamers alike.
With that kind of response, I thought it would be appropriate to have an informal email interview with Gazerk and the people at the 1UP Network, namely Jason Freidenfelds and Ira Becker, SVP and General Manager of the 1UP Network.
JP: Which sites would Gazerk consider to be the competition?
Gazerk: To the best of our knowledge, there isn't another vertical search engine focused specifically on the gaming market, so to a large extent we're in competition with ourselves to develop a product as fast as possible that is clearly different from other search products.
We've got a lot of great ideas that we'll be implementing in very short order, and we expect to be adding features and functionality on a rapid basis.
JP’s Response: While at the moment, there are no US competitors, Wazap is planning on expanding its current gaming search engine into the US later on this year.
Currently, Wazap is the market leader in both Germanyand Japan and having recently opened an office in Shanghai, it’s likely that they will do well there too.
According to Wellington Partners in Münich, the Japanese market has over 70,000 users.
JP: How does Gazerk plan to be a resource to the gaming community?
Gazerk: The type and format of results we return will get increasingly sophisticated.
You can check out what our search technology partner Kosmix has done with their health vertical search at www.kosmix.com to get an idea of some of the more sophisticated search result formats and categories we might consider, and of course we’re watching the whole search space to see what kinds of search capabilities gamers want most so we can prioritize new feature development.
Eventually we’re also looking to integrate Gazerk with other neutral sources like GameTab.com, our site that aggregates news feeds from across the entire Web.
We could see bringing in more feeds of various sorts to supplement the standard search results, but our plan is to keep it neutral and have it search the entire Web.
JP’s Response: I think the question here is not, “How can we be better than Google?” but “How can we serve and provide relevant information to gamers?”
A lot of critiques can be made comparing Kosmix or Gazerk to Google, however, if Gazerk meets their audiences’ needs and expectations, the level of relevance and sophistication can evolve with Gazerk.
JP: How will you leverage the social networks of gamers through tagging or other methods?
Gazerk: For now we’re going to focus our user feedback and content ranking systems on the 1UP Network community, on sites like 1UP.com and GameVideos.com.
Gazerk isn’t part of the 1UP Network, and in fact we want to keep Gazerk as independent and algorithmic as possible so gamers are confident they’re getting impartial results from across the Web.
But community is an important part of everything we do, so we’re building Gazerk to search all kinds of community sources, from the smallest user-generated blogs and forums to the largest gaming sources out there.
We have a blogs category on Gazerk, we can take RSS feeds, and we’re planning more community searching capabilities.
In the near future you’re probably going to see more of that kind of active feedback on the 1UP Network proper rather than on Gazerk, since, again, we’re trying to keep Gazerk as objective as possible.
But user feedback mechanisms are something we’re watching closely.
JP’s Response: I’m encouraged that users will be able to contribute to the outcome of Gazerk.
By tapping into the social nature of gamers and their often opinionated (gamers? opinionated? surely you jest) comments, Gazerk can be a huge resource to the community by providing socially augmented results.
JP: Does Gazerk plan on being involved with the gaming community?
Gazerk: Community functions are generally more the role of the 1UP Network – 1UP.com in particular. We’re positioning Gazerk as an impartial tool for finding all these networks of people, rather than a community or social hub itself. By maintaining Gazerk’s role as a search tool, we’ll at some point be able to incorporate its search technology into the 1UP Network and possibly other sites. So it’s not a community hub itself, but a tool that powers search across and within gaming communities like the 1UP Network.
We really like the idea of actively keeping people in the loop – Google News alerts are a very appealing search service, and we may do something similar with “Gazerk alerts” to keep folks updated when new content they’re seeking appears.
And, of course, as we develop Gazerk, we’re eager to get feedback from search and gaming enthusiasts, so especially in the beginning here, we’ll want to foster an informal Gazerk dev community. Check out the Gazerk feedback club at Gazerk-Club.1UP.com.
JP’s Response: I just signed up to stay in the loop.
JP: Would you be able to describe some of the challenges in developing an algorithm that is focused on a vertical?
Gazerk: We partnered with Kosmix because they’re the best-of-breed vertical search technology. Check out the news on these guys – they’ve really revolutionized vertical search with their categorization algorithms.
Objectivity of results is important to us, which again is why it’s great to have a search technology partner that really understands how to search the entire Web for content in a given vertical.
A side benefit is that working with Kosmix’s engineers has given us great insights into SEO best practices, so our 1UP Network content can be indexed better not just by Gazerk, but by Google and Yahoo and all the rest.
JP: How can Gazerk keep up with the feverish pace of gaming information and news?
Gazerk: Well, the content changes rapidly, but our understanding of gaming categories and mapping of content types is relatively stable. That’s where Ziff Davis Game Group’s editorial expertise really comes into play – we know how gaming breaks down and how gamers think about gaming content.
Partnering with Kosmix also means we can build a custom solution like this very rapidly and make changes as necessary – they’re a great partner to have.
I’d like to thank Jason Freidenfelds and Ira Becker for taking the time to answer my questions in such a timely and friendly manner.
Wazap! vs. Gazerk: the Emerging Vertical Search Rivalry Games have always been replete with classic rivalries. With Wazap entering the gaming search marketplace later this year, it looks like the competition is going to heat up. According to eMarketer, 40% of American adults play video games (35% female, 45% male).
When those percentages are converted into sheer numbers and sales, that is a staggering market to enter.
Keep reading Search Engine Lowdown as I take the competitive intelligence microscope to Wazap as they enter the US market in direct competition with Gazerk.
Google's AdSense API: the Cash-Rewards-for-User-Contribution Trend
RateItAll.com blew the AdSense API news a little early as Ionut at the Google Operating System blog noted today.
It appears that the API will primarily enable networks to pay cash to the people contributing content.
Here's a little snippet from the leaked press release:
By leveraging the Google AdSense API, RateItAll has enabled its members to create Google AdSense accounts, earn cash for their content contributions, and track their earnings without ever leaving the RateItAll.com Web site."
The AdSense API (which Yahoo and MSN will follow suit with for certain) will enable a whole new breed of publishing site and begin to monetize that longtail of amateur/hyper-niche content creation by users, fans and reviewers.
The AdSense API (and resulting APIs from other players) will drive this increase in content generation by "the masses" through a major increase in the trend towards paying users.
And imagine if MySpace somehow rewarded their users monetarily...
Rants in my pants... I find this trend towards rewarding users with cash a bit troublesome though. I don't have any problem with cash (send as much as you want!), but as soon as people start contributing to sites because of a monetary reward they're going to start gaming the system.
Which was kind of the beauty of the whole Web 2.0 social media/wisdom of crowds movement - folks capitalized on the wisdom/experience of others by participating, and the participation itself is the reward. When there's no cash involved I think you get a more-pure experience.
If Flikr paid its users to post images for example... would the same community have sprung up there? How about Delicious? If folks were paid to post their links, would the site be as valuable?
I inherently distrust people who publish solely for monetary gain, as opposed to people who post out of passion for a topic or subject.
I think - in the longer term - the sites that reward users with an increase in knowledge vs. an increase in cash will be stronger contributors to the web.
That said, I'm *VERY* excited to see how this will develop, and what kinds of sites and models will emerge.
This is very exciting stuff from Google I must say!
(I believe the DigitalPoint forum rewards its contributors with cash - would love to hear from anyone there on how that works out...)
Google Registers GoogleCheckout.com: an Answer to Yahoo + eBay?
Garett Rogers asserts that Google bought "GoogleCheckout.com" through domain buying proxy DNStinations. (Update - no he didn't actually. He asserted that they bought googlecheckout.net/org/info. Had I read Garett Rogers more closely I would not have written the title I did for this post. Forgive my fumblings.)
Is this more of a PayPal thing or a shopping cart add-on that will sync with Google Analytics?
Who f-ing knows! It's just a domain name for crying out loud! (this cool-your-speculation-jets paragraph in honor of Danny Sullivan, who helped settle my mind about Google's Orion purchase :)
Either way it sounds to me - should it ever appear - like an initial answer to Yahoo + eBay. ...and a way to tie in more tightly with SMBs online.
Observe the timing: date Yahoo + eBay went live: 2005-06-25 2006-06-25 date DNStinations registered domains for Google: 2005-06-26 2006-06-26
That settles it for me. As well as one can settle these sorts of things ;)
I will speculate too that it will have some strong, built in social elements that enable purchasers to rate... things. Or something. Could this be a part of Niniane Wang's social project? Ok, probably not. But maybe!
"I think it will be a shopping cart system to help websites accept payment for their items online. The money site owners make will be deposited into a holding account at Google — just like AdSense works.
Isn't this starting to sound a lot like PayPal? Who knows, they could even offer a Google branded Mastercard "debit card" like PayPal's ATM/Debit Card — after all, the domain googlemastercard.com is registered to Google too.
If this is indeed what they are planning, it would make sense for Google Checkout to tie into Google Analytics so website owners can easily track with certainty how their AdWords campaign is directly affecting sales — right through the checkout process.
Maybe one day Google will even provide an inventory management solution with an API so websites can have their inventory in Google Base and on their own website without double entry."
Despite fuzzy definitions (and who's frikkin perfect anyways), Rogers presents some compelling possible visions for how Google may increasingly tie into commerce on AND offline.
Update: I erroneously thought that Google had registered GoogleCheckout.COM. It in fact registered - through a third party - GoogleCheckout.ORG/INFO/NET.
All other facts are accurate as far as I can tell. And special thanks to the auction guild (TAD) in the comments for pointing out the fact that I thought it was still 2005. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Attention Scarcity: The Economy's Shift Towards Attention as Key Resource
The attention economy is threatening to swallow me whole. It's so seductively unifying.
The theory of attention economics applies to EVERYTHING, but specifically applies to marketers in Simon's definition here:
"...in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it" (1971)
(...think analytics here; how online marketers have TOO MUCH site data on their hands. And obvious applications to reaching your target audience.)
The following quotation's from his 1997 work linked above:
What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality.
I first learned about the attention economy from Seth Goldstein's blog, from a series of posts.
Why I'm going to spend some time with this concept This concept is, for me, a missing piece to my understanding of what's happening in the online space. I'm equally interested in digging into why the online space enables this shift, and why social media seems (to me) to be such a big part of this.
Were recent attempts by big marketing firm smarties to define engagement related to this study of attention? Probably so.
Another reason I'm going to spend time with this concept: I don't want to hyper-obsess it before I really get it ;) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Yahoo DVR + Nintendo Wii: My First True Convergence Freak Out
I had a minor vision this weekend while at my girlfriend's parents' house. They have a DVR, which I'd never really seen in person before. The DVR does Tivo things - records shows and downloads movies and skips ads and what not. It pretty much flipped my shit.
Forgive my lateness to the DVR-as-disruptor party but:
++ DVR's gonna kill video/game rental stores (oh yeah, and much of ad-supported television programming) ++ NetFlix had best get up with a DVR ++ DVR is basically an entertainment PC (Yahoo agrees) ++ DVR + Game System is inevitable, with downloadable games and MMORPGs ++ Microsoft is closest/best positioned to make this shift happen in a single device ++ iPod could make a decent go, but has no real foothold in gaming ++ a social network built around DVRs with network suggestions of what to watch/play makes hyper-sense to me. Tie in video search and you're golden. ++ cell phone service through my DVR so that my phone knows what discounts to give me when I go shopping, and so I can watch YouTube while I'm waiting in my psychiatrist's office
Possible partnerships I see: I like Apple (and Pixar/Disney) + Nintendo.
I like Yahoo (Lloyd Braun) + Sony or Nintendo. (I think Yahoo will have to commit to a platform of some sort for serious adoption... free PC software isn't going to get them *there* quick enough)
I am DVR dumb I had never really paid attention to DVRs for some reason. Well, because I don't watch ad-supported television. Ever.
How to help me not be dumb Tell me about great places to read about TV/Online/Gaming/Entertainment convergence in comments or email to selowdown@gmail.com.
What's the meaning of all this From 30,000 feet I think this means that your marketing had best improve (benefit) the world (your market) in some way or it won't get consumed.
What this all means is that you will need to build real integrated marketing strategies based around an understanding of who your users are, what they need and how they choose to consume media. It also means that you had better start paying more attention to next.yahoo.com.
Read Adam. He gets it. Often before I do, though I may have trouble admitting it sometimes ;) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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May 26, 2006
What Happened Today + Weekend Reading Links
Today unfolded like this:
morning talk with lawyer about lawsuit against "nuisance" landlord who has witheld deposit for 6 months with no statement why
ALL afternoon, blowing 3:30 deadline by 2 hours write 2,100 word behemoth article for print publication "Implementing A Market Conversation Strategy that Delivers Search Marketing Results"
last 2 hours See what's interesting in bloglines.
So, to better organize my weekend writing efforts, and just in case I don't get to everything, or if MSN buys Ask and I have to spend all weekend writing my analysis, here's what I'm excited about from my reader:
top two: attention! Seth Goldstein I've been eager to read more Seth for some time. This weekend I may work up a decent response.
Yahoo + eBay Tie the Knot!
If you're coming *BACK* to this post looking for links, they - and more - are at the bottom.
In brief, here's the shape of this post, which follows the details of the new Yahoo eBay deal:
Yahoo: sole provider of graphic advertising to 75 million eBay users. PayPal: become Yahoo wallet cobranded eBay toolbar for 4 million users click to call exploration What happened vs. what JP Morgan Suggested What this means for Google and MSN
Yahoo: sole provider of graphic advertising to 75 million eBay users. eBay can monetize all their window shoppers a little more effectively this way. I'm not familiar enough with either entity to say what these ads are going to look like, though they're more likely to be for TV shows and movies and what-not... or possibly for Yahoo search marketing.
I'm eager to see what the eBay seller community makes of the deal on this one.
This is a money-making move, and, by cutting MSN and Google out both eBay and Yahoo have solidified their positions.
PayPal: become Yahoo wallet I don't know wallet technologies, so I'm not sure what the advantages of PayPal are over whatever Yahoo had before. And I can't think of what the advantages are to Yahoo of using PayPal - is it ease of transitioning eBay users into YSM customers? I think I'm missing a piece of the puzzle on this one.
Google's been sniffing up eBay's tree with Wallet (still vapor after a year...) and Base, so for eBay to extend their strong wallet technologies to Yahoo we may see something significant in mobile payment emerge.
Yahoo's strong relationship with SMBs and mentions of using PayPal as a payment processor for Yahoo's WebServices makes me think this is mostly a straight replacement kind of thing.
Watch for PayPal to morph into some interesting business models in '07 though, especially if PayPal can do micropayments profitably. Wag that long tail biaaatch!
cobranded eBay toolbar The eBay toolbar, used by 4 million eBayers, will now feature Yahoo web search. The search section of the eBay toolbar write up doesn't specify who provided websearch before, or if websearch was even an option.
So... Yahoo will provide search for eBay's site? This is an interesting development because a) Yahoo bought Alta Vista, the search engine built by Louis Monier. Louis Monier built eBay's search up until about a year ago, when he went to work for Google.
So if Yahoo's now searching eBay this means that they're integrating into Monier's existing system.
My suspicion is more that Yahoo will provide WEB search. Though this is not stated clearly that I've seen.
Also, MarketWatch notes Yahoo will "supply sponsored search for complementary products on some eBay.com search results in the U.S."
click to call exploration Skype, VOIP, Mobile, PayPal. Something very interesting is going to come swirling out of this piece of the deal. I haven't been following Yahoo in the VOIP space, though eBay bought Skype not too long ago. Monetizing business phone calls is gold, and something could emerge in this - given Yahoo's growing local SMB strength - that gives Yellow Pages a stiff kick in the nuggets.
Or not. Just some ramblings on that one for you.
What happened vs. what JP Morgan Suggested So yesterday I posted on a PDF from JP Morgan that said eBay and Yahoo were the most feasable large-cap couples.
JP Morgan gave these 4 reasons for why eBay and Yahoo made the most sense: "1) increased scale, 2) strengthened global footprint, 3) broadened user insights, and 4) improved operational efficiencies."
So they got the main prediction right, but let's score their reasonings for the coupling and what's on the surface of the deal as we've discussed it thus far.
1) increased scale Yes. Scale from the perspective of scaling advertising, scaling PayPal usage, scaling Yahoo usage through eBay toolbars. (do I understand "scale" as JP Morgan uses it?)
2) strengthened global footprint No. This is - for now - a US only deal.
3) broadened user insights This is one of those no-shit statements. It can't be helped. Data accumulates.
I'd change this to "more-targeted" user insights in that eBay buyers and sellers are the true long tail of business in the United States. Yahoo's wagging the SMBs, but eBay will give them insights into the HIGHLY SOCIAL eBay selling population.
The more I think about this the more excited I get. From a business perspective. Sicko.
4) improved operational efficiencies What? What does this even mean? Just because I don't understand it I'm going to say NO.
What this means for Google and MSN For Google this can't have been unforeseen - they must have known, as they pushed forward with Base and Wallet, that eBay would get nervous. I think this will have a serious effect on Google though ultimately.
Not because of missing out on the ad sales, but because of getting shut out from the emerging social marketplace on eBay and all the delicious data this makes.
Yahoo + eBay will be THE ecommerce supermall. Google will always have Base, but I think they're going to find that they get kind of lonely holding that neat idea/super clean concept while eBay's users become increasing Yahoo devotees.
I pointed to a quote yesterday that said something along the lines of "eBay still needs Google." And this much is certainly true - from a traffic perspective. But I think they've got in Yahoo a better long-term business partner.
Yahoo's been driving into the social, web 2.0 space and this is where eBay's innovated since day one with its buyer/seller ratings.
What will this do to MSN? Ugh. I don't want to even start on that one.
SalesForce Lifts AppExchange Free From SalesForce
Susan Kuchinskas reports that AppExchange is no longer bound to the actual Salesforce.com CRM interface:
Salesforce.com’s OEM Edition lets ISVs sell applications based on the platform without requiring customers to have a salesforce.com license. ISVs pay salesforce.com $25 a seat and charge whatever they want.
To my understanding this enables Kraig Swensrud's Kieden CRM + SEM AppExchange application to run with any other CRM software available.
Why am I writing about this?
For one, I now think we'll watch AppExchange become a major force in the enterprise software industry because it will enable the long tail of enterprise software development. (A PSFK interview with captain longtail himself got me posting this long after I should have gone home... because he mentioned salesforce.com darn him...)
If I read any decent bashing or praise I'll write more tomorrow. For now it's time for dinner. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Googler Niniane Wang's "Social Application" + MySpace Partnership
Ionut Alex. Chitu at Google OS looks at Google's use of Niniane Wang as a Wired magazine advertisement for attracting smart people to Google.
11/2005 - present, Tech lead, confidential project * Envisioned and chartered a confidential project in the social application space. Spec'ed out vision and got buy-in from execs. * Led a team of engineers through technical design and implementation of client (C++) and server (Java). * Convinced artists, PM, UI designer, and engineers around the company to join the team or contribute 20% time.
I doubt this is a "MySpace killer" as Ionut Alex. Chitu suggests at the end of his post. However, given Eric Schmidt's increasing interest in all things social this could point to a significant, well, social application.
And it required a UI designer... so it's got a... a USER INTERFACE.
I'm tech-dumb - can anyone fabricate any wild surmising from any of the other achievements she mentions?
Also... what would MySpace make of its potential partner venturing (well... venturing beyond Orkut) into its territory? (And will we see in Base a significant personal/social aspect? Beyond romance of course ;)
Sorry to drag you into all this Ms. Wang. I suspect what you're doing has very little to do with MySpace but I obsessively draw connections sometimes. I won't, as Google OS did, link to your personal blog. Though I did read through a few posts looking for clues ;)
And don't feel shy about commenting in Search Engine Lowdown. Mr. Cutts did recently so there's no shame in it :)
One more thing... based on how Battelle describes Larry and Sergey in the Search - and the value they gave to algorithms - I wonder if Schmidt's increasing media presence and the company's recent emphasis on the social web indicate a shift in power at Google? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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JP Morgan: Yahoo and eBay "Most Likely" Large-Caps to Couple
A 56-page JP Morgan report (pdf) by analyst Imran Khan and team suggests that of all the possible online giant pairings, Yahoo and eBay are the most likely because "a combined company would have the leading position in auctions, communications, payments, graphical advertising, audience reach, and geographic breadth."
1) "Even after negotiating seriously with both Microsoft and Google for months late last year, AOL still only sold A 5% stake to Google." (Nice perspective. *IF* anything goes down it's likely go down small and in several months. Though I think the 5% of AOL deal was pretty BIG when you take a step back from it...)
2) Bankers like to talk about mergers because it gives them stiffies. (Fair enough. Noted.)
3) Competing execs are often buddies and hang out and talk. (I suspect it was something beyond a cook out or game of World of Warcraft that got folks talking on this one.)
4) WSJ got people hot about Yahoo + MSN recently and JP Morgan capitalized on the news industry's need for compelling stories and whipped up the report. (Interesting.)
Stone doesn't dig into the report itself though (as far as I could tell), where JP Morgan suggests that a partnership or "strategic event" of some sort is likely due to the general need for: "1) increased scale, 2) strengthened global footprint, 3) broadened user insights, and 4) improved operational efficiencies."
I got through page 8 of the 56 page report. It's dry (though interesting), and didn't convince me one way or the other.
JP Morgan points out how Yahoo compliments eBay's weakness in China, while eBay compliments Yahoo's weakness in Europe. I'll point out (from my US-centric perspective) how Yahoo's social angle + familiarity with SMBs and the INCREDIBLE amount of buyer and seller profile data from eBay could make some very interesting babies.
Critique (or just use) the "Press Release 2.0" Template
Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications released a "social media press release" template today. I think it's pretty sweet. Though I'll admit that I thought it was a joke at first because he's hyper-enthusiastic about both the release AND Web 2.0.
Though I certainly didn't put together an actual template - I just told people what to do. And I didn't look at his template from an SEM perspective. I'll let our project dev team do that ;) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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MySpace + Google Maps = X-Planet
In the aftermath of speculations regarding a significant partnership between Google and MySpace (and most likely NOT MSN...), it appears that there's already a Google/NewsCorps tie in on the X-Planet.net site, which enables users to create mutant profiles and plot themselves on a mutant-tinged Google map.
As I created my profile (poopskid*HYPER*) I thought how cool it would be if I were actually logging into a MMORPG such as World of Warcraft, and how long before we'll have a) a WOW movie and b) movie-based MMORPGs released as free-play buzz builders.
While pinpointing my exact coordinates on the mutant map was neat, it certainly didn't WoW me. There's no compelling way to interact with the fictional space of the movie. Such as by fighting other mutants.
Also I found it interesting that the profile requested my MySpace URL, which is http://www.myspace.com/bgnastingly if you were wondering.
This map-based profile builder got me thinking - is this something MySpace might be including... more of a map-based profile organization so that stalkers your friends can more effectively find you?
And with map based advertising growing... plus video ads from Google now... could this be the big tie up? Or am I thinking with too much grandiosity? Would MySpace be able to pull off such a titanic shift? Would Tom's infrastructure hold? Would the users give a crap?
Google Video Ads: Arrington Refuted + Creating Profitable Video Ads
Google launched click-to-play video ads for AdWords today. Google will currently syndicate these ads to AdSense publishers only, and not in the Google SERPs themselves.
Arrington's primary arguments against the service and my responses are: +If it's not in the SERPs, advertisers won't be as interested. (agreed! And you can bet the BIG advertisers agree too. Watch for these ads in SERPs very shortly.) +Videos don't click through to a site and therefore don't deliver measurable value. (There's more to advertising than what can be measured on a website. Such as branding. Also, does anyone know if the video ads include actual links to the advertiser's site once they've played? I suspect they will... and that advertisers will be able to measure who clicks through after watching an ad and whether they're more likely to convert) +SpotRunner already does the job. (I think SpotRunner is a great way to get TV ads for small businesses! But why can't I put my SpotRunner ads on Google Video ads too? Will we see a SpotRunner/Google partnership? Also, what if I'm a big brand and already make my own ads?) +People don't want to click on video ads. (Arrington's (antiquated) concept of what an ad is partly inspired the second part of this post. Read on.) +Video ads take longer to make than text ads. This will mean less video advertisers and therefore lower the pay-per-play cost. (This is true, but will it push prices so low that Google will actually lose money on them? And what about areas of high competition? What better way to stand out than with a video ad? I think we will see an emerging breed of marketers who specialize in video ads JUST for search engines.) +AdSense publishers will make less money with these ads. (True. And we will likely see them move onto Google's main SERPs shortly, and on publishers' sites only if they opt into them.)
My Initial Thoughts on Creating Profitable Video Ads Proper philosophy on which to build your video ad: I believe that marketing should improve the world in some way. That's why, in my description of article marketing, I say:
It's the willingness to be helpful, complete, detailed, precise and honest in your articles that will deliver not only conversions, but the kinds of relationships that bring you long term business success.
Also, a year and a half ago, in a post entitled Ads as Movies, I wrote:
When will a company create a feature film? Product placements are common as commercials. Soon I think we'll (perhaps) see movie studios run by the [advertisers] themselves.
I mention these statements because of the nature of Google's new video ad offering.
These video ads are on-demand, and will be ranked based on how often they're watched, much as Google's paid search ads are ranked based on how often they're clicked.
If you're going to be a video advertiser on Google - and I highly advise that you at least try it out - you would do well to lean away from the kind of advertising you're used to seeing on television and towards ads that are "helpful, complete, detailed, precise and honest." Just as your articles and blog posts should be.
Especially if you're in the B2B space.
Think "how to" + news casts + iron chef. Think quirky. These should be spots that you're pleased to put up on your site as resources for the industry and your potential customers.
Creating helpful, resource-oriented videos will ensure that they're watched more frequently, and all the way through (duration of the view will likely be a metric Google uses to determine a video ad's placement).
If you're marketing in the B2C I would look at creating an entertainment series, a sort of a soap opera that will establish your brand with potential viewers.
I would also investigate ways to tie in consumer generated video... how could you encourage your existing client base to send in video? Snap's doing an incredible job with getting others to generate ideas for their relaunch campaign. Leverage your clients/prospects/users for video if you're working on the cheap.
Also - you'll have about 3 seconds to catch peoples' attention and let them know the value that watching your video will deliver.
Either way, if you want to make video on the cheap investigate machinima. Me, Adam Schultz and Stephan Ward have something cooking along these lines. We'll buy a Google video ad for our project and let you know what happens.
In summary, I think that if marketers make video ads that are, in themselves, valuable to their target audience that the Google video ads initiative will be successful. And even if the majority of marketers don't move in this direction I think that, once the ads are available in the main body of Google's SERPs, major brand advertisers will make it a profitable venture for Google.
update Upon reading through the comments in Arrington's post I find that in comment 33 "FWIW without going into any details my company has tried pay per click video ads, and we have found that the click through rate on a video ad is 20x higher than a standard adSense word type ad. That was on a popualtion of a few hundred thousand spots per day over a month. Your mileage may vary…."
Of course it's not clear if this was done through Google's program or not... Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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Snap Interview Coming Soon...
I wrote a great deal about Snap recently and today sent them an email interview intended for Tom McGovern.
Considering my list of questions went on about as long as one of my posts I suspect it may get farmed out to some extent ;)
Here's one question I'm excited about getting an answer to:
In The Search Battelle mentions that Gross had a hard time deciding whether to make GoTo an ad syndicator or a search destination. Your innovations with SERPs display indicates to me that you're headed in the destination direction.
Are you?
If so, can you outline the steps it will take to gain marketshare against Google, Yahoo and Ask? Because I think it's going to take ALOT more than changes in SERPs display...
What's the point of developing a "better search experience" at this stage in the game? Why not be happy with developing a CPA search marketing console add-on for the major search players?
Snap's corporate communications manager informed me that he's getting the questions to Tom McGovern - I've got my fingers crossed that he'll be the one to spend the hour or so it should take to answer the questions well. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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MySpace in Talks with Google and MSN... not Yahoo
Financial Times reports that MySpace is in talks with both Google and MSN in an effort to monetize those billions of page views.
[MySpace] is discussing an alliance that would let one of the search giants supply internet searches on its pages, along with adverts tied to results, according to people familiar with the discussions.
It's hard to imagine either of these two bitter competitors ceding the sexy MySpace real estate to the other without a fight. So look for MySpace to get a deal that gives it the lion's share of any ad revenues as well as, if it's smart, either a cash payment upfront or some kind of guaranteed minimum payment.
It will come down to the cash though of course - NewsCorp is not likely to make decisions based on social search add on functionalities. My gut says Google - based on their cash reserves and winning the AOL deal vs. MSN too.
This partnership is vital - not only from the perspective of gaining more revenue, but from understanding what's really happening under the hood at MySpace. If I were Murdoch I wouldn't let either one in.
Yahoo's Missing From the Talks Yahoo's conspicuously missing from the talks... because they see MySpace as more of a competitor than either Google or MSN. See Yahoo MyWeb's Gonna Kick MySpace in the Jimmies for more on what I thought Yahoo was doing a month and a half ago.
Also see Adam Schultz's Yahoo piece... he points in a direction for Yahoo that MySpace is likely headed in as well.
...and now MySpace's quick correction of my story about a partnership with Search Vortals makes even MORE sense.
Update Oop! Yahoo already powers MySpace search according to Bambi Francisco. I need to dig back into the history of this relationship in order to better understand this most recent news. Watch for update 2, 3, etc... ;)
Update 2: I dug around but could only find a casual mention that "Web results look like they are using yahoo" in an SEOchat forum thread. Anyone care to chime in on this? Also, I suspect that the deal will result in a more prominant position for search in MySpace, and, I hope, a more creative and useful search approach than now exists.
Update 3:martin comments that: "Currently they use Yahoo. Just checked. All the links are labeled Overture on the status bar preview."
My suspicion is that this is not a huge source of revenue for Yahoo. Why? Because they're not reported to be in talks. But then... why would MySpace search traffic be interesting to Google and MSN?
Well, if we take the reports to be true I think it means that MySpace is likely to overhaul its approach to search, and Yahoo was not seen as a good partner for this as Google will be. Speculating is almost TOO much fun ;) Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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May 21, 2006
Hey Google: Enable 3rd Party Enterprise App Development Like SalesForce Did
I interviewed Kraig Swensrud last week. He's an AppExchange developer who used the Salesforce.com platform to create the first SEM/CRM mashup known. (To me.)
I still intend to write up our conversation - which lasted an enjoyable hour and a half. Today though I want to write about a possible area of growth that I see for the mainstream search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN).
This opinion/fixation of mine is not based in an understanding of the enterprise software industry, but rather the emotion-based certainty that there's an enterprise market waiting for some foresightful search engine/online media company's enterprise app API for developers.
Lazy web: please point out the holes in my thinking.
The Framework: Salesforce.com has a smart CEO named Marc Benioff who not only disrupted the enterprise application industry by creating a services model, but is credited for thinking up AppExchange while doing yoga on the beach (get the Business Week take from 2005).
AppExchange is several things: - an enterprise application API (from my limited understanding it is primarily a CRM application) - a ready marketplace (of over 350k subscribers per a 2005 article) for AppExchange developers - a network of like-minded developers who can help and even integrate each others' work - application integration w/each others' add ons - intellectual support and advice for start ups (including events and a blog) - something relatively old that I'm just now geeking over
search as enterprise app platform? ...nah - analytics makes more sense for Google at this point Well, I'm not quite sure that a search algorithm would make for a great enterprise app platform, not the way that Salesforce, through CRM, does. Salesforce is so targeted to the needs of the enterprise that it leaves Google in the dust (based on my 2 day old understanding of the enterprise software market. Talking out of school is not only easy... it's a BLAST ;).
Still, I think Google should concentrate on building its own developer ecosystem around Google Analytics. Because it's analytics, far more than this fad we call paid search, that's at the core of our current direction in business.
To use the AppExchange model well, Google would have to ensure that developers can actually build a company around their add-on/plug-in. That's what I think is the core beauty of the AppExchange model. It's creating WHOLE COMPANIES.
Google, which is a fairly smart company, would likely find some way to leverage an enterprise-related search API as well. (Because developers in the space know what their various enterprise niches require.)
Yes there's the Google Appliance and what not, but for the love of pete someone tell them about the emerging enterprise application services model.
Google should start by working well with AppExchange (which they clearly do based on Kraig's description of working with them - and why not, it opens them up, through Kieden, to the entire Salesforce subscriber base).
MSN is better positioned to launch a 3rd party enterprise app developer ecosystem MSN, in some of its divisions, is far more of an enterprise company than Google or Yahoo have ever been.
I know so little about MSN's participation in the enterprise application industry though that I will cut this little part of my rumination short - I'm talking even more wildly out of school here ;)
AppExchange vs. AdSense For my search marketing brothers and sisters out there, AppExchange is a sort of AdSense, enabling developers (publishers) to sell application add-ons rather than click throughs from pages of ad-related content.
That said, I think that the AppExchange ecosystem will turn out markedly fewer valueless offerings, such as type-in websites and blog-feed-based republishing networks.
Also I see in AppExchange more of a business-building network. Sort of like if Google had started both the WebMasterWorld and SearchEngineWatch forums for the burgeoning ecosystem it enabled.
My incredible idea that's so great I can't even believe it's here in my brain and not up there in the sky making the sun look dark I want to invest in the start ups that are forming with the AppExchange API. Have you heard of Prosper? Prosper is rad. It enables lenders to make micro-investments in borrowers. I can lend as little as $50 bucks to people. You bid on the rate at which you're willing to lend at. Sometimes you get good deals.
I want to be able to make micro investments in the startups in the AppExchange network - those who are willing to take my micro-investments anyways (as well as the micro-investments from my legions of eager peers). Also I would like a little teensy chunk of their companies for my micro-investment so that if they ever get acquired I will get micro-rich.
Social venture funding if you will. So hey Prosper - get on the phone with AppExchange (or do they already offer this and I just haven't heard about it?).
wrapping up I see in AppExchange - rather belatedly - what is really going to revolutionize enterprise online (the way that eBay revolutionized mom and pop businesses).
The recipe is simple. It only requires: - an enterprise application API - a ready marketplace for developers - a network of like-minded developers who can help and even integrate each others' work - application integration - intellectual support and advice for start ups (including events and a blog) - micro-investment
Anti-hyping is often as odious as pro-hyping (which I'm far more guilty of ;), but the following posts by Phil Wainewright helped me to better understand the AppExchange thoughtscape (despite the sneering): AppExchange is so 1998 AppExchange critique strikes a chord
You KNOW you want to talk to me after reading THAT bit of hyper-brilliance. Holla: 919-433-3139. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
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MySpace + World of Warcraft: Social Networking Needs Levels
I just finished reading the awesome + amazing work of Nicolas Ducheneaut, Nicholas Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert J. Moore. I imagine them as hyper-dorks at Stanford who built a scraper for analyzing social behaviors in World of Warcraft... only they got a little too high off of their MMORPG supply.
Just kidding. About the high part. They really did build a WoW scraper.
I've only read it through once, but came away feeling strongly that social networks, as they exist now, will soon be relics as new networks emerge that provide reward systems to enhance user experience with tools and recognition.
(also the paper made me wonder if social networks will become more immersive as well... is Second Life the future of social networks?).
As a social network hobbyist I recognize that this concept could exist in practice already. Forgive me if it's been done and be sure to point me to where and by whom.
Ok, so here's the stuff from their paper that got my brain whistling dixie:
The concept of social network as skinner box (wind tunnel for online social interactions), and how rewards can drive interactions:
WoW truly is "a virtual Skinner box" [23], smoothly increasing reward and difficulty and reinforcing player commitment along the way. Players are always on the edge of opening up new abilities, of discovering new content. The increase in playing time right before new abilities become available illustrates how easily players can be driven by such rewards. As such, WoW is an interesting experiment in the psychology of motivation and the determinants of "fun" [11].
So, what does this point towards for social networking apps and how they could be more interesting and useful?
first: social levels and social rewards Create tools as rewards for people who are social hubs/organizers. This could be as simple as making their bulletins appear longer, or hang at the top of a bulletin list for longer, or show up bold.
Earning these tools means you have to have more than a certain number of friends, and, more importantly, it means that other people see you as a key organizer, a key social event driver in the real world.
MSI content specialist Shannon Gray is one such social organizers - she stitched together an all-day going away party for Tim Duke yesterday and she's a major connector on MySpace and in our town of Raleigh.
She should have more elaborate tools at her disposal, including even the ability to add event
