Fit to search…Bing

Posted by melting on May 28, 2009

In the last week search seems to be on peoples mind.  Well in all honesty search is on almost every web traveler all day long.  With the internet came gobs of data available to the masses.  This data was fit to consume, if only you can find it.  Thus the birth of the search engine.

In the beginning, they were bad…very bad.  I would spend hours trying to find a specific nugget of information. Having the knack for coming up with that perfect search term made you are person worth knowing.  That all changed when Google came around and made the world searchable.  

Fast forward to today where Google has blown away all of the players and left only a few left to pick up the scraps.  Enter Microsoft.  Microsoft has branded its search in many ways over the years and are now branding it once again.  Microsoft has announced Bing.  To be fair this does seem to be a bit more than a rebrand.  This even seems like something I would like to check out.  

I will check it out for a couple reasons.  One of the trends that people dub web 2.0 is a simplification.  Making all the data that the internet has brought easier to use, manage, and interact with.  Search seems to only have taken on the pastel colors and perhaps the dynamic suggestion bar.  Bing seems to be embracing that some information isn’t worth clicking multiple times.  Some of the ways Bing will try to do that is by bringing weather, directions, and travel all into the search window.  

I think the concepts are sound, but as with anything that seeks to bring information in the user interface has to be impeccable.  I will save my skepticism for a later post when I can actually use it.Until then I will see what other ways WolframAlpha can impress me. 

YouTube, getting paid

Posted by melting on Jun 1, 2008

Even though YouTube has only been around for about three years there has been longtime speculation on if they will ever make money. Advertising on YouTube has had very minimal success with many differing problems. Advertisers aren’t used to user generated content that some of their customers may find offensive. Users tend to balk when they get overcrowded by advertising and navigate away from the site.

Forbes’ article bring very vague numbers which in and of themselves are not very interesting. Much like this article, they don’t really site where they get the information or how they draw there conclusions. The numbers sure can be very dismal. YouTube has had tremendous growth and is almost ubiquitous for certain types of video. The article points to data that 30% on internet videos are served by YouTube, yet they will only get 15% of the targeted 775 million this year and 1.35 billion next year in online video advertising revenues.

These numbers are telling of the current viewership of this type of business. 350 million and growth of 75% aren’t bad and will soon prove to be enough for Google to be right in purchasing YouTube. But if I could guess I think 3 things will improve the monetization of YouTube. Channel growth will continue to grow. Advertising on pages particular to individuals will grow because advertisers will continue to get used to how to monetize user information. Lastly Google will increase revenues by leaning on its true business, search.

Search for videos will help twofold. First is using the tradition Google search page will get its traditional pages. Where search can improve is when their users click YouTube from the “more” section it only takes you to the YouTube homepage. Better monetization of YouTube via search will be key.

Thanks again to TechCrunch for linking to a nice article by Forbes.

Yahoo Music is also shaken up.

Posted by melting on Feb 4, 2008

I would be the first to admit that the news of the Microsoft bid to buy Yahoo! is not exactly surprising. Yahoo! has been struggling for some time now and Microsoft also could not fully create what it needed to compete with Google. When I heard the news about the second date between Microsoft and Yahoo! I had no inclination to write on the subject. Plenty of smart people have weighed in on that one, see here, here, and here.

What I am interested in is a product of Yahoo!’s that is very good and could be great with some time, energy, and marketing. Yahoo! Music. I have used the My Station which is implemented as a radio station with embedded ads. The twist is that you rank songs and it attempts to pick songs that you would like, poorly I might add.

There is a new rumor surfacing that the premium music service which provides unlimited listening and downloading for a small fee. I think the music site has done little to push its ability to work well with others and spend the time and money needed to make this part of their business great. Jettisoning the unlimited portion may be their realization that they need to get back to basics and focus on the advertising that could make Yahoo! great. The risk with this strategy is finding the right partners so users can still get the services they require. They could take this too far and also not have a value add for users and only be a gateway to other sites. This is an interesting time for Yahoo!, Google coming up from behind, Microsoft wanting more users and to compete on multiple fronts.

Yahoo! has many interesting products. It is time for them to get back to their innovative roots but also start simplifying their products and lean on partners to help with services out of their core competency.

By the way it is interesting seeing two large companies going back and forth like they were political contenders running attack campaigns. Just let your products speak!