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Oh Vertical Search Engine, Where Art Thou?

You know when someone writes a post entitled ‘On the increasing uselessness of Google‘ that all is not right in Web Land. Citing another blogger who ran into all sorts of junk when searching for a new dishwasher:

Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons — churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you’re done. On the web, no-one knows you’re a content-grinder.

The result, however, is awful. Pages and pages of Google results that are just, for practical purposes, advertisements in the loose guise of articles, original or re-purposed. It hearkens back to the dark days of 1999, before Google arrived, when search had become largely useless, with results completely overwhelmed by spam and info-clutter.

Well said, dishwasher-seeker. The first page of Google is no longer the clean, clear landscape it once was. Too many companies have realized that finding consumers with AdWords alone is like fighting a dragon with a dull-tipped sword, face on. Best to sneak around from behind and attack from a better place: hence, the raging popularity of so-called content strategy in online marketing.

It’s not just SEO anymore, clearly. With content farms run by Demand Media and sketchy link-buying techniques, everyone is in a race to own keywords, and they’ll do it any way they can. But what are consumers doing? That’s right, they’re getting wise and giving up. People are no longer looking on Google for answers, writes the Washington Post. They’re using (gasp!) Twitter and (another gasp!) Facebook, putting out queries and requests for recommendations from friends — and getting exactly what they need.

So here’s my proposal. To companies: Follow the consumer; find an authentic way to reach them via social media. To consumers: Know how to filter out the junk in Google results, and don’t rely solely on your “friends” to solve your problems. To that next group of bright-eyed engineers or MBAs leaving school: build the framework for a series of vertical search engines, and put them in a central directory until everyone knows the destinations by heart. Searching for a new dishwasher? Then go to the Kitchen Appliance Search Site. Sometimes it’s better to completely reinvent something — using a tried and true concept — then fix what’s broken.

The Post notes that Microsoft thinks the next big thing is going to be social search — scouring data from user accounts to show up in basic search. Okay, that might work. But I think there’s still a market out there for qualified advice, for “real” articles written by scholars, field experts, and yes even marketers and salespeople.

Last chance to save $250 on Venture Summit, Mid Atlantic

You can still buy a ticket online at a 25% discount for the Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic 2010: Where Big Ideas Meet Big Money happening November 3rd-5th, 2010 at the George Mason Inn at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia

v.230,987.2.7 of the Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends To Watch: (this time by Mashable’s Erica Swallow)

1. It’s all about texting: Texting now beats out email and phone conversation as the preferred method of chatting among teens.  It might not be flashy, but if you want to get someone’s attention, texting gets the job done- and fast.  According to a whitepaper on conversational advertising by Singlepoint, 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes of their delivery.

2. Rich Media: AdMob vs. Quattro, Apple vs. Google, Mano a Mano

3. Mobile Sites vs. Mobile Apps: Yes, would be Digital Axle’s answer

4. Interest in Geo-Location: Advertisers want it.  Humans aren’t so sure yet.

5. The Growth of Mobile Video: 23.9 million of us to be precise (if you believe eMarketer, and why not) 66% of Cisco’s router traffic by 2013.  Can anybody say network crash?

Stay tuned.

Digital Marketing Factoid Crush: ngmoco, AT&T, Verizon, Apple

The Wall Street Journal was full of seemingly unrelated but actually interconnected news today, mostly good.  You can save a few percentage points of iPad battery power and read it here:

U.S. Internet-advertising revenue increased 14% in the second quarter to a record $6.2 billion, according to an industry report issued by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, fueled by rising demand for digital-video ads.  The paper went on to report, maybe more significantly, that this rise easily outscoped the change in spending in other media.  I’d look for big deals in the video advertising space.  Brightroll, where friend Charlie runs sales, must be growing in value by the pre-roll second.

The founders and investors in ngmoco (including the improbably named Neil Young), will put $300 million dollars in its pockets plus up to $100 million more in earn out.  A Japanese social-videogame developer DeNA Co. announced today that it plans to buy the San Francisco-based  iPhone gaming applications developer.  According to claims relayed to Mobile Apps Briefing ngcomo has 60 million downloads of games like Topple and Maze Finger and over 13.5 million registered users — proving the stunning current value of creating products that help you waste your time.

The Journal also reports that at the end of September, Verizon Wireless had some nine million Android subscribers (up from zero a year earlier.  Not all that surprising, the ever geekier Androidius Humanus among us appear to consume more data bandwidth per user than even us greedy iPhone owners.  Because of this scale, Verizon claims that it will experience no pressure on its network when it finally gets to sell the iPhone……..and btw, I have a big orange bridge with condos in the towers that I’d like to sell you (cash only).  Reportedly AT&T was carrying a heavier load, (like you didn’t know that) of 16.5 million iPhone customers at the end of September.  Since every breathing human of the 5.5 million of us in the San Francisco Bay area is flaunting their iPhone right NOW, this means that there are actually 11.5 million more AT&T bandwidth suckers combined in fly over country and in New York, (where the network will also drop your calls with military precision.)

So in conclusion:

60 million downloads of ngcomo games means every man, woman child and home-schooled iguana iPhone user has an average of almost four of these time wasting apps on their phone.  Time wasting, whether watching video or playing Topple pays. Bigtime. More ads are coming your way. More pre-roll will prevent you from watching videos. Your cell network problems are either about to be magically resolved…. or not. Finally ngmoco sounded like a Japanese company to begin with.  Do you think Neil Young planned it this way?

And, clearly nobody is doing any work at all.  Including me.

“Gamification” gets a Conference. But Will it be Fun?

Gamification Summit in San FranciscoGamification is the emerging trend of making ordinary, routine and boring activities seem more like games and as a result more fun to do. Increased attention has come from applications like foursquare and Groupon which incorporate game like features into their applications.

What is more fun than going to a conference? Maybe going to a conference about Gamification. Now there is one.

The first Gamification summit will be held on January 20 – 21, 2011 at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference. Center. Speakers will include Playmatics CEO Margaret Wallace and Microsoft Bing Rewards Director Keith Smith.

For more, VentureBeat carried this piece about the Gamification Summit as did Gamasutra. We’ll wait to see how the conference itself is “gamified”.

Tim Armstrong of AOL: 3 things

1. People. Board, consultants, employees are passionate about the turnaround. “people at AOL are playing to win.

2. Predicts a massive platform battle in Silicon Valley. Content is the new glue that holds the Internet together.

3. “it’s time for the Internet to get programmed”

4. Brands matter a lot so the content future won’t be Mom & Pop

5. Content Platforms can be good or bad. Does not see AOL as a “content farm”

6. AOL will develop content that looks different

7. Great strategy a la Tom Brady, “throw it to the open guy”

8. Would AOL buy Yahoo? Doesn’t sound like it

EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson does more than oil spills

Aspen, CO — “in between oil spills, we do air and water pollution” joked EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson as she was interviewed by Aspen Institute Director, Walter Issacson at the Fortune Magazine Brainstorm Tech Conference.

Jackson also declared the Clean Air Act a tremendous success but warned that the nation’s air remains dangerous and toxic on many places across the country.

Jim Breyer disses old media’s ability to succeed at digital

Aspen, CO– at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference, Jim Breyer, one of the deans of Sand Hill Road ( Accell Partners ) believes that large established media companies have exactly “zero” chance of diverging with their digital initiatives. He specifically mentions NewsCorp, Disney, Time Warner .

Jon Miller of NewsCorp says iPads give media companies a “do-over”

Aspen, CO — Making people pay for websites generates fewer users but far higher quality users. So says Jon Miller of NewsCorp at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference.

Miller sees content consumption moving to tablets not just from printed news but also from the standard browser. For media companies tablets are a whole new channel with it’s own user dynamics and business models.

Adam Lashinsky tries to get answers from Google’s Nikesh Arora (GOOG)

Weird stuff. Google dominates the industry but I feel like I'm watching a juke & jive show.
YouTube "on the brink of imminent profitability.
Now turning into a brilliant PR seminar on how not to answer a reporter's legitimate questions. Now it's funny.