The Big News of the day is undoubtedly Google’s $3.1
billion purchase of DoubleClick. After all, you can read about here…and here…and here. Oh, and here. And then of
course there is the news of the reaction from AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and all
their pals as they cry, “Hey! No fair!” You can read that here – and here. In fact, I think it is safe to say that this deal is dominating
the news today like a 5^th grade bully. Or, for a closer metaphor,
like the State of the Union – even when it’s a whole lot about nothing.

But it’s not as if nothing else is
happening in the world – online or off. What happens to all the little bits of
news that fall by the wayside? They might have otherwise had a chance at the
big time, but tragically were overshadowed by this acquisition. I mean, on the day that Reagan died, the Berlin wall fell, or Britney shaved her head, scientists in the Amazon may have discovered a new species of toad, or other offbeat news might have occurred that was subsequently pushed
to the bottom of the page. “Rats!” they thought. If only we’d been a day
earlier – or later. It’s all about the timing.

Let’s go one step further: what about personal news? The Internet has enabled each of us to be our own beat reporter,
hot on the story of our lives. For example, yesterday I tried matcha tea for the first time.
It was marvelous. I could also report that there is something
obscene written in Flemish with a purple Sharpie on my left forearm and that I am having
difficulties removing it. Finally, my breaking news of the day: I am closing a
deal that involves the $3.10 acquisition of a new Uniballer pen.

So, forget Google, forget DoubleClick –
heck, forget Sallie Mae, al-Sadr, and the Boston Marathon.

What’s your news?

Google has never been secretive, or humble for that matter, about its mission statement: "to organize the world’s information and
make it universally accessible and useful." (Bang gong now.) Which is why the new local voice search service, Google
411, where mobile phone users/abusers can dial 1-800-GOOG-411 to get an automated voice system that directs your call to a business also listed on Google Local and Maps. And it’s free, as opposed to the normal 411 calls, which incidentally represents a $7 billion/year market.

I bet this new development is really pissing those guys off.

But who’s going to stop them? Everyone is happy about this directory service. We want information and we want it at our fingertips. We are creatures of convenience, and anyone who says different needs to go back to their Japanese monastery. I mean, how many times have you just been walking down the street and had your interest peaked by something or have a question arise in your busy little cranium, and think to yourself, man I wish I could Google this right now. I know I have.

So try it. Dial the number, listen to the calm, clear, soothing male voice, and get that much-needed information – literally with your fingertips. Need help? Watch this quick
video demo from Ryan Irelan. (I really want to know what he’s
eating at the beginning of the video. There is some lip-smacking that is making me jealous – and hungry.)

So what’s up next? More expansion into offline content delivery realms? Monetization of the service through ads? Interactive ad company Vizi|Media is already all over it, partnering with Jingle Networks, the owner of 1-800-Free411 to begin bringing in potential advertisers. Is this going to be how the Mobile Marketing Revolution really gets going?

Here’s what I think should be next, in the spirit of, yes I’m going to say it, Web 2.0: User-generated reviews of the businesses delivered to you on your phone. It would go a little somethin’ like this:

"Welcome to Goog-411. Name your city and state."
"San Fran-cis-co, Cal-for-nia" (Speak slowly or risk getting caught up in a twisted game of "Is this correct? If not, say, "go back."

Continue on. "Name business or category" "Cafe Fran-cis-co"

and now…
"User reviews from Yelp.com: amarie422 says, Don’t go there. It sucks!
but tomscott15 says, Their tuna melts are a little slice of heaven."

The more information, the better, right? As David Berkowitz says,

Inventory is everything. If you have a single point of contact
for connecting with consumers through all the world’s information, then you
don’t need to go anywhere else.

That’s what I’m talking about!

If I hear the word “Web” followed by a “point something” one more time, I’m
going to shoot myself in the face.

Sure, a declaration like this may be a little dramatic for a Monday morning,
when most people show up for work well-rested from a nice, relaxing Sunday, sit
down at their desk all fired up for a wondrous and amazing workweek. “To Do”
list clutched firmly in the hand, positivity glaring from every flourescent
light in the building. Save such damaging, negative comments for Friday
afternoon, they’re thinking, or at least cushion them with some sort of
emoticon.

I’m going to shoot myself in the face.   There. You happy now?

But truthfully, how many times can you really hear someone talk about Web
1.0, 3.0, and now, in the April issue of Mediapost’s OMMA, Web
2.5. It’s beginning to sound like Ludacris with his hoes. Three one oh!
Eight one eight!

What’s really happening here? Think of Web 1.0 as “that thing that failed.” And
Web 2.0 as Hopes of Another Boom, aka Internet Revolution Revisited. It wasn’t so much a change in technology, just in how the internet was actually used – as a platform, stressing online collaboration. As seen here, it was never really defined.

Uwe
Hook has some ideas about what Web
2.0 is all about.

My top 3 from his post are:
Content is king. And the brand.
The user is king. And we trust the user to take care of our brand.
Inform, as long as you entertain. Or vice versa. One without the other is a
waste of time
There is never a final product. Never.

And the worst:

We believe in the intelligence of masses.
(He might want to take this idea up
with our founding fathers.)

Switch gears to a more mathematical approach and check out Sramana Mitra’s post from February. She came up with an
odd but catchy formula for a new definition of Web 3.0 that reads like an
algebra problem from hell: If  3C = Content, Commerce, Community | 4th C = Context | P = Personalization
| and VS = Vertical Search, then Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS).

I mainly dig her example of how
“a short, fat man, who doesn’t really have a sense of what to wear, nor a wife
or a girl-friend” can use the internet as his personal shopper, through a
conglomeration of all of the above: the Content of a fashion mag, Commerce of
the stores that will supply said man with the wardrobe, the Community of others
like him with their opinions and recommendations and finally, a personalized search
engine that will filter and match based on an algorithm that includes this knowledge
base. Clever, huh.

Ah, the promises of a future Web 3.0: a country full of suave, well-dressed men. Now I don’t have to move to France!

This
just in: there is now a social network for advertising peeps. Steve Hall of AdRants took
the initiative to go on Ning and created AdGabber.
Made for us, by us, featuring us.

While we’re being self-indulgent, might as well go the whole 9 yards and use my own profile page as an illustration of this fantastic new networking tool for advertising, marketing, and media professionals.

So, um, does this make me a "professional"?

More
about death. I’ve been feeling rather morbid this week.

Actually, I was kind of tempted to title this, “The Death of
the Page View” because it’s just so darn catchy. The Death of the Portal, and
yes, as it’s already been said, The Death of Print Media.

Okay, let’s start with some much-needed clarification. What
is a page view anyway?

According to Wikipedia,
the lazy man’s source of definitions:

a page view or page impression is a request to load a single page of an Internet
site. …a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on
another HTML page pointing to the page in question. This should be contrasted
with a hit, which refers to a
request for a file from a web server. There may therefore be many hits per page
view.

Page views, impressions, hits, unique visitors. Potato,
potahto. Let’s call the whole thing off.

No,
really. The problem at hand is that the nature of website navigation is
changing. A handful of major sites have started using Ajax (a program that speeds up content delivery to a Web page) so content can be
refreshed or delivered sans le click.
Within a single page view, then, there are multiples exchanges of information, i.e. page views within page views.  Are you dizzy yet? Get a better explanation from Tom Hespos here.

It’s happening fast. As reported on Internet
News, Steve Rubel’s latest impression of page views (punning fiend!) is that they only have 3
years to live. Stunning. Back in
December, they had 4.

The
reasons? You know them already; they’re right in front of your face. News
aggregators and such. Web apps like Start.com and NetVibes, where you can insert RSS feeds,
streaming video, and other kinds of untraceable “requests for information,”
which means that the page view as a way of measuring user behavior is getting
less and less reputable – you know, like Lauren Conrad. Also, content
is getting more dynamic through the use of widgets. Back to you, Steve:
"Widgets in media represent a fundamental shift and a massive shift,"
he said. "People now measure success not by how many people
are on the site but by how many people interact with the content no matter
where it lives."

Yes, Interaction. Engagement. Time Spent? Hey-ya, is this going to be the dawn of a new era
in web metrics? If so, I
don’t think the Page
View Prostitute on Associated
Content is going to be very happy about it.

The
WSJ story that came out last week that DoubleClick
is for sale was greeted with oohs and ahhs by everyone who thought that
Microsoft was a shoo-in for the ad serving company and the
DART technology that would come with it. With more than 1,500 clients and a
well-developed system of targeting, delivering, and tracking online ads, it
would have given Microsoft a much-needed leg up on Google: $150 million to $200 million, to be exact. AG Edwards analyst
Kevin Bittigieg remarked (via Mediapost)
that DoubleClick’s platform “would provide a boost to Microsoft’s online
services ambitions which have so far been lackluster.” Lackluster? You can say
that again.

But
suddenly, things have gotten complicated. In a move that probably has private equity firm Heller & Friedman greedily
rubbing their hands together (they bought DoubleClick in 2005 for $1.1
billion), Google has decided to join in the bidding war. Two billion? Chump change. What about
Yahoo! and Time Warner, we are asking ourselves. Yeah, what about them.

Here’s
another question: What’s left of DoubleClick anyway? Pieces of it have been
sold off during the past two years, like its Abacus data management unit,
reports B2B
Online. What remains is their online ad business, which is what everyone is
all fired up about anyway, considering, as Shar Van Boskirk of Forrester
Research declares, that “Online advertising is back in vogue.”

But Phil Wainewright has an interesting take
on it in his post on ZDNet.
His view is that the whole ordeal is all for nothing, because DoubleClick
serves banner ads – which, according to him (and
Tim O’Reilly) is sooooo last century. The future, he says, is in the PPA
(Pay Per Action) beta that Google is developing, or, more likely, the Context
Links that Amazon has implemented that ultimately becomes a PPP (Pay Per
Purchase) system.

But watch out, Googs has been sneaking around behind our backs yet again. This is madness, I tell you. Madness!