InsideGoogle

Syndicate Conference: Doc Searls Keynote

I’m just listening to Doc Searls, who is both smart and entertaining.

Scoble is sitting directly in front of me.

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | no comments

Syndicate Conference: RSS Market Intelligence And Lead Generation

This panel addressed how RSS can be used to generate leads, customers, and eventually, money.

RSS: Market Intelligence and Lead Generation

Moderator:
Mark Carlson, CEO, SimpleFeed, Inc.

Speakers:
Owen Van Natta, Vice President, A9.com, Inc.
Greg Reinacker, CTO & Founder, NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
Bill Flitter, Chief Marketing Officer, Pheedo.

Greg Reinacker points to the Kryptonite case as a company that should have been monitoring feeds, subscribing to anything with the company name, so it could have seen what was going on and respond quickly.

Bill Flitter says that RSS feed advertising is so relevant because the user chooses to subscribe and can unsubscribe at any time, so that person truly wants this content.

Owen Van Natta talks about A9’s OpenSearch leveraging RSS to provide new, searchable content.

Greg was asked by Mark Carlson, the moderator, why anyone would want to pay for RSS feeds. He explains that they provide a premium service, sending feeds to mobile devices and media center PCs, use cases where you can’t use a standard feed.

Responding to a question, Bill said that RSS ads have, for companies he’s worked on them for, have reduced the cost of customer acquisition by half, since the audience is so well targeted. He says that it is very important to “get this one right”, and not work against the consumer.

Owen says the reason Amazon has gotten involved in search is because so many of its products are sold after a search, and the challenges continue to rise. They feel that current search is an unsolved business, and that they need to get involved to improve it. Additionally, they can leverage the over 70 million people with Amazon accounts to make better search. They believe that since customers already trust Amazon in ways that it might not trust other search sites, they can provide value for that trust to help people find things they want.

Bill was asked about Google’s new feed advertising program, and how it affects their business. He says it is not an issue, because Google is helping monetize feeds, but they are providing a beneficial service.

Greg asked Bill what he thinks about aggregators stripping out ads. Bill said that if one of the top companies would decide to do that, there could be legal issues, as it is stripping out content. He also notes that they will not be putting traditional ads in RSS, like banners and skyscrapers, because that just doesn’t work for feeds and what users want.

Greg talks about authenticated feeds, and says that it shouldn’t be a problem. They’ve solved it, even in the web-based service, and there’s no reason feed readers should have a problem.

Owen said “Google showed how much better search could be”, but it still has problems, especially spam. There is a lot of opportunity to improve, and a constant need to stay ahead. Additionally, there is information not normally available that they can try to be able to search. He adds that one thing Jeff Bezos, their CEO, likes to say is that, even though Amazon is pretty good today, “It will never be as bad as it is today”, that they will continue to improve.

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | 3 comments

Findory Releases Mac OS Widget

Findory has put out a widget for use in your Mac OS X Tiger Dashboard, if you have one. I’m not a big fan of the dashboard, but maybe enough good content will override a crappy idea and form factor.
(via Greg Linden)

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | no comments

Syndicate Conference: Case Studies On Blogging In The Corporate World

This session discusses issues facing companies that want to take advantage of the opportunities blogs afford.

Case Studies: Blogging, RSS and the Changing Corporate Marketing World

Moderator:
Mark Carlson, CEO, SimpleFeed, Inc.
Speakers:
Lisa Poulson, Managing Director, Technology Practice, Burson-Marsteller.
Elliott Ng, Director of Interactive Marketing, QuickBooks Group, Intuit, Inc.
Scott K. Wilder, Group Manager, Interactive Marketing.

Elliot Ng kicks it off talking about the long tail, how with all the small businesses they are trying to serve, all with very different needs, and how they can use blogs to reach all of these people.

Scott Wilder discusses the way Intuit has begun using RSS feeds to get support information to customers. One point he stresses is that it is important to know your audiences limitations. They are putting together blogs and wikis, but are taking their time to introduce it to their audience.

Lisa Poulson stresses the importance of having a blogging policy at every company before they have a “employee fired for blogging” story all over the blogosphere. She also says the best way to do this is to learn by making mistakes. Companies willing to make mistakes and fix them publicly. HP had a major case where a deleted comment made it to Slashdot, and got praised when they gracefully responded. HP has learned a valuable lesson, one other companies would do well to emulate.

She notes that while Sun has an extensive policy, Microsoft’s is, for the most part, “Don’t be stupid” and that has surprisingly worked very well for them.

Lisa also notes that every executive is different with regards to blogging. Some of it see it as a chore, others love it. They try to post very short items. It’s impossible to say if corporate blogging has affected company sales yet.

She notes that the phramaceutical industry may never blog, because of heavy regulation. She also thinks Google makes a mistake by not blogging. She also notes how some bloggers can be very excited and swayed by receiving mainstream media access. Elliot notes how many people want to be behind the scenes.

Scott says that transparency is important. If a blogger is complaining about company practices, but the company disagrees, the company should probably let the blogger know what it thinks, just so he understands their point of view. Lisa says that people tend to assume if they have a good idea that the company hasn’t thought about it, and that the company should let them know that they’ve decided differently.

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | one comment

Syndicate Conference: Keynote: Phil Holden On MSN

I put this post over at InsideMicrosoft, since it is completely MSN centered, but it is worth reading for everyone, especially if you want to see how well MSN “gets” RSS.

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Microsoft, General | no comments

Syndicate Conference: Media RSS and Podcasting

Yes, that’s right, I’m at the syndicate conference at the Marriot Marquis in Manhattan. Why didn’t I say anything till right now? Because I had no idea I was coming. Its just one of those great moments where the sun shines through, the hole opens in your schedule, the press liason calls you with your credentials, and there you are. So, on to my first session recap:

Beyond Words: Media RSS & Podcasting

Moderator:
Chad Dickerson, CTO, InfoWorld.
Speakers:
David Berlind, Executive Editor, ZDNet.
Michael Dunn, VP, Hearst Interactive Media.
David Payne, SVP, CNN News Services; CNN.com General Manager, CNN.com.
Bradley Horowitz, Director of Multimedia and Desktop Search, Yahoo! Search.

I missed the first ten minutes, so I apologize if I missed anything major.

Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo says it is looking, with Media RSS and its media search engines, to keep the entire revenue model intact, that it is not looking to ruin those businesses, but to bring them more traffic.

David Payne from CNN was asked how he felt about the fact that most people saw Joh Stewart on Crossfire online, commercial-free. He said that on the one hand, you see the complete destruction of the business model through disaggregation from the network. On the other hand, you see this technology as enablers, and you want the technology to work with the content publishers, making it a great opportunity, and not a major legal issue. If these technologies do not work with the publishers, there will just be lawsuits and lost opportunities.

David Berlind from ZDNet mentions KYOU in San Fran, saying that they should use Creative Commons to free themselves from legal issues.

Bradley made a good joke when talking about the rules differing between bloggers and regular journalists. He said that he was having lunch with a reporter, and offered to pay the bill, and the reporter said, “No, I’ll get fired if you do that”. He finished: “That hasn’t exactly been my experience with the blogosphere”, to a nice amount of laughs.

Berlind mentions that there are big questions regarding to equipment and sound quality in podcasts. He also notes that they don’t have to worry about background music, because they have the right to use all the music from music.download.com throughout the C|Net network.

Bradley talks about the opportunities to use podcasting for more than just some sort of radio program, but as a way to distribute conversations. His example: After a meeting, hitting something to just post the audio as a podcast somewhere for people who missed the meeting. The idea of just putting up the last hour of your life could be very appealing.

One person asks about Podscope, where you do keyword searches of podcasts which index the speech of the podcast and even gives you an audio excerpt of the portion of the podcast where those words were spoken.

Berlind mentions that we are running into problems with all of the differing formats, but Microsoft is far ahead of everyone else in creating a format that works on more hardware and in more places than any of their competitors.

Now, off to lunch. if you’re here and want to hook up, try my cell: 718-598-3165.

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | one comment

Google Releases Enterprise Desktop Search

Google last night took the wraps off an enterprise version of Desktop Search, one that features encryption and indexing of Lotus Notes, as well as simultaneous searching of local, web, and intranet results, and integration with the Google Mini. Like the regular desktop search, it is still free, and contains all of the regular features. IBM is also considering integrating GDS into the next version of Notes, due in the fall.

As shown in this screenshot, besides the Desktop tab users of GDS are used to, the enterprise version also adds an Intranet tab. However, intranet search is only available for those with a Google Mini or Google Search Appliance:

Google is also offering Premium Support: $10,000 a year for each 1,000 users.

Sources:
Boston Globe
CRN
Reuters

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Desktop, General | no comments

Google Video Upload Now For Everyone

R. P. Hughes, a software engineer at Google, decided to use his 20% time to address one constant criticism of Google; that nearly all of its software is Windows-only. Thanks to him, we now have the Google Video Uploader for Macintosh and all Unix (including Linux) systems. The Google Blog has the details.

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | one comment

Google And The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

Google has the answer to the question you’ve been asking, the answer to life, the universe and everything. Just ask Google:

What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

Oh, yeah, Google knows, baby.
(via Francis Ocoma)

May 18th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Search, Humor, General | 5 comments