Google's Intelligent Cloud & Kevin Kelly's "Next 5,000 days of the Web"

From Google Blog Post:

"...The internet has had an enourmous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt us?....."

Some more juice on this: "....Thus, computer systems will have greater opportunity to learn from the collective behavior of billions of humans. They will get smarter, gleaning relationships between objects, nuances, intentions, meanings, and other deep conceptual information. Today's Google search uses an early form of this approach, but in the future many more systems will be able to benefit from it."

Now this is real damn interesting stuff - Future of Google or should I say Future of Internet. Saurabh has got some interesting stuff to share here on "Future of Search" too.

What really got me excited was not the word Future which is all around this blog post but the prediction of different set of minds towards one direction i.e. Future of Search linked with Google & Internet par se.

Check out the video from Kevin Kelly from TED Talks.



One suggestion would be to check the comments down below the video.

Though this is the end of the post but the question will still remain: Where are we going? So just to put it in simple words, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day - Karen Wickre & Alan Eagle, Series Editors of Intelligent Cloud from GoogleBlog.

How Google Won Search War: A marketer's outlook

This Screencast says it all I believe. If it's still being not evidential then let me clear up few things then.

This is the screencast of Google way back in May, 1999 & the Screencast of Yahoo in May, 1999 which I took from Way Back Machine which archives everything in internet from past to present.

Now a quick check of the links above will show 110+ links for Yahoo way back in 1999 whereas Google had none. So food for thought is why did Google win over Yahoo in the search wars? Everyone must have their own reasons but surely I can figure out one. Google anticipated our actions in terms of needs, wants & desires in the most simplistic way. Isn't that how businesses should be run? We overkill it by adding complexity in our marketing messages by re-running those boring, slapstick ads over & over again till customers get bored and start ignoring.

So Friday's thought from my side as a Marketer is: What is the oppurtunity gain/loss between choosing complexity from simplicity for customers? Any thoughts from your side is most welcome.

IAMAI Digital Marketing Conference (Bangalore,2008): Key Insights on the Intersection of Man, Technology & Culture

This post talks about 3rd IAMAI Digital Marketing Conference held at Bangalore. I'll post about the broad implications later in the subsequent post of course but for now enjoy the ride through a list of tweets (Courtesy WatBlog). In between, you will find certain discussions marked green. These are the pointers which I feel makes this blog post's title apt: Key Insights on the Intersection of Man, Technology & Culture. And as usual if you feel like you've anything to say, please comment in the section below to have a discussion.



(I)“ANALOG VS DIGITAL: WHERE TO SPEND MARKETING BUDGETS NOW AND WHY”

Discussions in this section revolved around: Sellers of traditional media tout that media such as broadcast TV allows advertisers unrivaled impact and reach, attributes that become even more valuable as media fragments. Sellers of digital media counter that pinpoint targeting and ever-improving analytics make spending more in digital the right choice. Below is the crux of the discussions:

1. LIVE from #IAMAI: Goggle Ads click-through-rate (CTR) is 16% in India – Mahesh Murty, Managing Director, Pinstorm Technologies (Tweet)

2. LIVE from #IAMAI: Consumer is the new muse for our brand, that should be the approach - Chetan Marwah , Partner & Chief Executive Officer, ISHIR Digital (Tweet)

3. LIVE from #IAMAI: Move from cost per click (CPC) to cost per impact (CPI) to get better deals (Tweet)

4. LIVE from #IAMAI: Jet airways spend 50% of their digital budget in international markets whereas only 10% in India (Tweet)

5. LIVE from #IAMAI: Prediction -TV is going to be primarily digital & we are goin to see the marketer going to ask why was his ad not seen there - Mahesh Murty, Managing Director, Pinstorm Technologies (Tweet)

(II) NEW MEDIA TOOLS

Discussions in this section revolved around: The Internet was just the beginning; these days media planners are faced with a plethora of new digitally-derived media forms from podcasts to blogs, social networking to SMS, all of which need to be evaluated to see if they might meet clients needs. But how to go about it? Our panelists will help you figure that out. Below is the crux of the discussions:

6. LIVE from #IAMAI: In India, YouTube is the 6th most trafficked as per Alexa - Naren Nachiappan, MD, Jivox (Tweet)

7. LIVE from #IAMAI : Video impressions going to surpass search in Q1, 2009 in North America – ComScore (Tweet)

8. LIVE from #IAMAI : Bandwidth barrier in india is surpassed by users by downloading in office and background buffering – Naren Nachiappan, MD, Jivox (Tweet)

9. LIVE from #IAMAI: In 2005 blogs as a search category overtook magazines - Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google (Tweet)

10. LIVE from #IAMAI : Customer doesn’t click on online ads as they dont want to move away from page. Try using gadgets to initiate conversation – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google (Tweet)

11. LIVE #IAMAI : Social Networks should be used to create brand evangelists and not primarily ads placement – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google. (Tweet)

12. LIVE from #IAMAI : In India, Leads from Mobile Search Ads is 3 times better & purer than desktop search leads – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

13. LIVE from #IAMAI: 71% of those who consume mobile internet ads say there perception of brand and recall has increased – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

14. LIVE from #IAMAI : For Google, mobile search queries in India is 10% of desktop queries (Tweet)

15. LIVE from #IAMAI : In US iPhone alone generates 2x the search queries of all other smart phones put together (Tweet)

16. LIVE from #IAMAI : Mobile UI is key to growth of it evolving as a medium – Parminder Singh, Business Head - Technology & Media, Google, (Tweet)

17. LIVE from #IAMAI : Rohini (Citation reqd.) - Intel Online India - Traditionally online treated as bleeding edge and therefore Marketers are wary (Tweet)

18. LIVE from #IAMAI : Rohini (Citation reqd.) - Intel Online India - Our Facebook game statistics: 16000 played, 500 per day talking about it online (Tweet)

(III)“HOW TO FIGHT WEB-WARINESS AND EMERGE AS A WINNER”

Discussions in this section revolved around: Convincing a company to spend more money in digital media is one challenge; to get it to use new media forms to break creative ground is an even bigger one. But there are those who have done it, and on this panel, we’ll hear from them-three gutsy clients who innovated not just in the media they’ve used, but in the work they’ve produced for them. Below is the crux of the discussions:

19. LIVE from #IAMAI : Big TV (Reliance DTH service) generates 50,000 leads online in two days - Tushar Vyas, Chief Marketing Officer, Sure Waves (Tweet)

20. LIVE from #IAMAI : Namrata Sehgal, Senior Manager, Trilogy - Most ads with high decibel on web have less than 1% click through rate (CTR)! We say "No wonder twitter has no ads" (Tweet)

21. LIVE from #IAMAI : Gaurav Gupta, Regional Manager Asia Pacific- Retail Operations, General Motors asks how many brick & mortar are here? Just couples of hands show up in audience! Web Wary are we? (Tweet)
22. LIVE from #IAMAI : General Motors’ 2.5% of all sales in India is through digital channel without any other channel involved for GM. Gaurav Gupta, Regional Manager Asia Pacific- Retail Operations, General Motors - (Tweet)

(IV) THE BLENDED SEARCH REVOLUTION

Discussions in this section revolved around: The first generation of search engines ranked pages based on the content of those pages alone -- the words on the page. The second generation increased relevancy by analyzing links. The third generation, Search 3.0, is upon us now in full force. Today’s search engines automatically blending in results from specialized or "vertical" search engines such as video search or local search. This session looks at the revolutionary change happening with blended search and how search marketers can ride the wave to success. Below is the crux of the discussions:

23. LIVE from #IAMAI : 31% images, 17% videos, 36% news - Clicking percentage on search results in a blended search - Milind Mody, CEO eBrandz (Tweet)

24. LIVE from #IAMAI : Search engines are valued high because they are content finders in context across mediums - Vivek Bhargava, Managing Director, Communicate2 (Tweet)

25. LIVE from #IAMAI : Search has not yet evolved - Narasimha Jayakumar, Business Head – Travel & Local, Google India (Tweet)

(V) TRAFFIC TO WEBSITE AND CONVERSIONS

Discussions in this section revolved around: In the beginning driving traffic was necessary and sufficient, now the dynamics of business has changed driving traffic is important but not sufficient, in the competitive environment with increasing cost per acquisition as marketers there is need for better understanding of website visitors and advertisers look for conversions. This session would look at the importance of digital marketing and maximum potential realization of digital marketing with relevant examples.

26. LIVE from #IAMAI - 'Use of good tracking & analytics software should be a core of ROI. Don’t just use freeware' - Anurag Gupta, Managing Director, DGM India Internet Marketing.

Tweet Courtesy: http://twitter.com/watblog

Analogy between Human Body & Business

The picture above says it all; about management, marketing, sales, design, all new social media or SEO etc. By & large, every facet of modern day business can be explained with this model.

Drawing inspiration from the human anatomy, it is interesting to watch that every part works in tandem to bring coherence to our development & continued survival.

So is business different from the above model? One part is organizations talk about multi-million dollar budgets for their marketing & advertising campaigns whereas overlooking nicher yet multi-faceted dimensions of involving customers through measures of Social Media or Web Development etc. Hence coherence is necessary among different divisions and dimensions of business like all the small parts combine together to form a perfect human body.

Image courtesy: Ryan Karpeles

Blekko: David versus Goliath in SearchLand

Got this piece of information from TechCrunch. Rick Skrenta (a very media savvy guy) who is known more for first computer virus and stuff like that is coming with a bang by starting up something which intends to take on Google...Yeah, on Search.

This is what he said in this blog post:

...But I get asked - why do search?

Simple - the idea that the current state-of-the-art in search is what we'll all be using, essentially unchanged, in 5 or 10 years, is absurd to me.

The web is big. Really, really big. It's literally billions and billions of pages. It's Carl Sagan big. And it's doubling in size every year or two.

So the idea that what you can see in positions 1-3 above the fold on Google are the sum of what the web has to say about every possible query is crazy...

The guys are still working like a usual start ups i.e. no big shot flashy offices or something like that. Even their site is fancying the above picture as of now. But soon the site will be active to compete against big shots like Google, Yahoo or MSFT's Live.

Skrenta was the same guy who had written earlier about "PageRank (Google's bread & butter) wrecked the Web, and Google is going down with it".

So till 2009 when the very site will start functioning, we will be watching the space definitely along with other start-ups like Mahalo, Powerset etc. But going by his repute, it will be interesting to watch the "Search Space". So the million (oops Billion) dollar question is that "Will Google be challenged/outbeaten/unsettled by these new developing start-ups or not"?

Top 5 Marketing Predictions for 2008

This month, I have seen many trends being talked about from media, marketing, internet, technology, innovation or what not (Posted earlier) all across the internet. Some are big while some are just micro (in real sense). Some will be hit or hot for year 2008 while some will just fizz away with WTF* statement!!

Still I wanted to share something which I have been seeing for quite sometime now in the business circuit, especially in the marketing arena for that matter. So here are my trends for year 2008:-

• Branding Shift: Branding will move from traditional way to more nicher media with the advent of newer technologies. Usage of internet as a branding medium will catch on the fire, even in India.

• Total Brand Experience: Advertisements in the form of televison, outdoors, billboards etc will bring customers close to the brands to complete that “Total Brand Experience” i.e. TBE. Even the engagement of these interactions between customers & brands will increase next year.
  
  
• Social Media Fire: Countries like India where mass marketing is the bread & butter for most marketers, social media will catch the fire as marketers will realize the potentiality of social media. Companies will start using SN and Twitter to understand their customers in a better way. Social Media will be more prominent in western countries with importance on more customer interactivity.
  
  
• Search Engine Optimization: Companies will move away slowly but steadily from Google as advertisement repository to more nicher areas like Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us etc (Social Bookmarking sites). The reason is relevant search results for end users. Year 2008 will start the beginning of the importance of Semantic Web until Google starts thinking hard to tackle it. I'm sure they will with Knol etc.
  
  
• More disruptive Innovations: Companies like Apple, Google, MSFT and not forgetting Facebook alikes will come with more innovations (mostly disruptive which will set the industry standards). We will see many new products as well great new services.

These 5 predictions will be there in year 2008 mostly. Though all may not be true but I just hope most of them are. But I can guarantee one thing for the future: THE CUSTOMERS WILL HAVE MANY BETTER CHOICES. So companies have to really try hard to pull that extra buck out of our wallet.

So lastly Happy New Year to all of you and have a great time ahead. Cheers!

SEO: How it is redefining internet marketing?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

Now one of the most interesting things which I find in internet searches is how we get the search results especially in Google searches. Type marketing and you will find wikipedia, marketingprofs etc time and again. Now in my previous posts I have mentioned about how google searches through its spider crawler. Now there is more to it. The video below mentions some of the tricks and trades of the game.

Watch this video in YouTube.

This video definitely gives some perspectives about Search Engine Optimization techniques. Its basically a technique which leads your website to top of google's high priority search results. Then definitely the chances of clicking you website increases and since the number of users using google search engine is huge so there won't be any dearth of users for your website.

Now if I can employ effective SEO techniques then definitely number of hits in my site will be more. That means that there is higher probability as the advertisments may work in my site. And this is the bottom-line for the internet sites i.e. to get more hits per page which may lead them to higher revenue generation model.

So cheers to two mavericks named Larry Page and Sergey Brin who revolutionized search engine business model for which people are going crazy to get better off them. Now who wins, only time will tell...

A "Tag" a day keeps the Google™ away

How many times have we tried to search something in Google™ and got a relevant result? I guess the percentage of relevancy is a debatable topic here and this forms the very outline of this article. Though most of my search is very much confined within the contours of Google™ itself. Still at the end of the day I am not happy with my search results or there could have been better results to my search.

Now del.icio.us™ (pronounced as delicious- http://del.icio.us/, parent company being Yahoo™) is a new social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks where a tag (it is a relevant keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information e.g. a picture, article, or video clip) is used to search.

Now what is the difference? The difference lies in the way both these websites search mechanism works. Google™ uses an algorithm where its spider crawler searches through its vast and extensive database to find the website. And del.icio.us™ uses tags that have been assigned with the links by this users and it also gives us a rating mechanism wherein we can see which page have been rated the highest in terms of usage.

But aren’t we looking for a specific webpage rather than website? That’s why I believe that search through del.icio.us™ is a better proposition altogether than google when the question is about finding relevant webpage.

And if people may ask why del.icio.us™ will be successful? I will say that now since the world has shifted to Web 2.0 where more and more portal is giving its customers more & more control, so why not in search?

As of now, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee is simply googlified or del.icio.fied.

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