Google Chrome OS: Will It Kill Windows?

by Ben Parr

Google dropped a major bombshell earlier this evening: they’re launching their own operating system, known as Google Chrome OS. The new operating system will be lightweight, is based of its Chrome browser, and is clearly Google’s challenge to Microsoft’s longstanding domination of the OS market. While we’re still trying to catch our breath over the announcement, we can’t say we’re particularly surprised – the rumors have been bubbling for a long time now and projects like Androidshow Google has had an interest in this arena. But the Google OS leaves a lot of questions to be answered. How will it differ from Windows? How will it work? And most of all, can Google actually do what many consider impossible: beat Microsoft on its home turf?

Questions to Answer

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The reality is this: we know almost nothing about Google Chrome OS. The announcement is hot out of the oven, which leaves us with a lot of questions. Here’s what we hope to answer in the next few days or weeks:

Is it free? – Microsoft Windows can cost hundreds of dollars for the premier versions, which brings up the cost of new PCs. Since Google OS is open-source, it’s almost certain to be free, although Google has not explicitly stated anything of the sort. Could Google charge for specific features or extensions? Nobody really knows.

Will Google OS have advertising? – If they decide to provide this OS for free, they will almost certainly monetize it with ads. With Google’s expertise in web advertising, they may be able to utilize non-intrusive advertising to create a new revenue stream. Imagine browsing your music files and having ads for John Mayer downloads on the side.

What kind of support will it offer to desktop apps? – It’s based on Google Chrome, a browser. But can it run Microsoft Word and Photoshop?

Will it be extendable by 3rd party developers? – Will there be a developer platform for Chrome OS, not unlike the ones offered for many other Google products? The fact that it’s open source makes us think this is a possibility.

How will it interact with current hardware? – Could I wipe my current computer’s hard drive and run it on Chrome OS? What kind of driver support will it have?

There are lots of other issues to address too, but clearly this is only the beginning of a long story that poses a lot of questions.

via http://mashable.com/2009/07/07/google-chrome-operating-system/

Internet Giants Look For Edge In Real-Time Search

Micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter Inc. hasn't figured out how to make money, but that hasn't stopped Web giants Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) from racing to establish real-time search capabilities.

Real-time search helps Internet users find Web posts, including those from San Francisco's Twitter Inc., seconds after publication. The field has grown in importance amid the exploding popularity of services like Twitter, which lets users blast short messages rapid fire from computers and mobile phones.

The growth of Twitter has fueled expectations that real-time search could drive Internet advertising to new heights by allowing marketers to target relevant ads at consumers interested in breaking events, hot topics or their favorite celebrities. Some proponents argue real-time data and search could develop into a billion-dollar market.

"Every conceivable advertiser will be interested," said Ron Conway of SV Angel LLC, an early investor in Google and Twitter. "It will create a huge monetization opportunity."

Just how that opportunity will unfold remains unclear. There is no shortage of real-time search startups - such as OneRiot LLC and Scoopler Inc., not to mention Twitter itself - that are attempting to make sense of the growing universe of real-time user-generated data. It is telling, however, that even Twitter still hasn't said how it hopes to turn user updates, known as "tweets," into revenue.

Still, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are pouring time and resources into the real-time Web. All three have had discussions with Twitter seeking some sort of search or advertising deal, according to people familiar with the situation. They also are looking beyond the micro-blogging leader.

The search giants note other sources of user-generated real-time data, such as Web recommendation engine Digg Inc. or micro-blogging services like Tumblr Inc. They also point to their own properties. Microsoft, for example, notes its Messenger and Spaces services are real-time data sources, while Yahoo highlights its Answers service and its experimental Brazilian micro-blogging property Meme. In January, Google pulled back from its Jaiku service, but recent blog rumors suggest it is poised to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services, like Twitter.

Making sense of real-time data poses technological challenges for the big search companies. Their current algorithms return results heavily weighed towards older Web pages that have established credibility and attracted large audiences, an approach at odds with real-time search.

Twitter is like a fire hose spewing out a flood of tweets, many of which are seconds old and from obscure users with little track record. Tweets many times contain acronyms, Web site address abbreviations and emoticons, all of which make it difficult for traditional search engines to evaluate their relevance - and filter out "tweet spam."

"Whoever figures out how to filter out spam best will win the real-time search battle," said Kevin Lee, chief executive of search engine marketer Didit.com LLC.

Prabhakar Raghavan, who runs Yahoo's search strategy, says the company is looking at how it might data mine tweets and other real-time feeds, a process that will help it evaluate and summarize content more efficiently. Yahoo is also looking at whether it might map tweets, allowing advertisers to target geographies where interest in a product or service is growing.

Microsoft senior program manager Andy Oakley says his company is also determining how to filter, summarize and present real-time tweets. He suggests up-to-the minute micro-posts and links could be displayed in an "updates" section within a traditional search results page.

Google last month introduced a "recent results" option to its search engine, and co-founder Larry Page has spoken publicly about the need to continually quicken the pace at which the company's spiders index Web pages. A company spokesman said Google was looking at ways to make real-time data more useful to its users.

Tobias Peggs, general manager at OneRiot, says real-time searchers tend to search the Web many times a day because they expect results will be updated more quickly than on established engines like Google or Yahoo. He believes that gives companies like OneRiot more opportunities to serve up relevant ads based on the changing situations.

"If the latest update on Britney Spears says she wore green Gucci dress last night, that would be an opportunity for Gucci to advertise that green dress," Peggs said.

via http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090615-712397.html

Is Twitter a Google Killer? Not Yet

Warning: today's column is strictly editorial, so those of you looking for actionable tips might want to check back in next week.

I have been reading a lot about the impending demise of Google for months, even years now. Most recently, it's Twitter search that's expected to push into Google's marketshare.

I pay attention to these things, and because of my involvement in the industry, I guess I'm probably an early adopter (earlier than the typical person). But, because of my years in the SEO Industry, I'm also not one to have knee-jerk reactions when it comes to strategy. I have to be considerate of the long term, while not ignoring the short term.

Let me back up first and provide a little personal history.

My initial involvement in the Interactive industry came when I started working at Lycos, back in early 2000. At that time, Lycos was a pretty big player in search, with both lycos.com and hotbot.com. There was much discussion at the time as to who would be the remaining "Big 3" that would eventually win the search wars. Mind you, the search engines that were considered at that time were Lycos, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, AltaVista, and Excite.

Read for more

By Mark Jackson, Search Engine Watch, May 19, 2009

Bringing the Twitter Conversation to Any Web Page

Twitter is very hot right now so why not take advantage of this new found buzz by tapping the twitter stream and selectively publishing twitter content on your web site or blog to enhance and link to the conversation.

It’s pretty simple to re-post what’s being said on twitter on your web site because of the built in use of RSS technology. (Don’t worry you don’t even need to know what that is.)

First off, why would you want to republish twitter content? Here are couple pretty good reasons.
1. You want to publish everything that is being said at the conference you are hosting and run it as a live stream on your site.
2. You want to publisher your last five tweets on your home page to help people follow your twitter activity
3. You want to create a company-wide #hashtag and publish all the great finds your people are bookmarking in one place. (quick overview of the hashtag on twitter)
4. You want to publish all the great brand mentions your organization is getting on twitter.
5. You want to publish your replies to common customer service requests as a growing FAQ and demonstration of great service kind of thing.

Here are the tools you will employ to get started. (there are lots of ways to do this, but this is one that is very simple.)

• Twitter search and Advanced search – this is how you drill down and find the stream and RSS feed you are looking for.
• Feedburner’s Buzz Boost – this Google owned service makes it very easy to republish the RSS feed as HTML on your web site.

The basic steps for republishing
1. Go to search.twitter.com and create a search – this can be by your name, product, #hashtag, industry phrase. You will get your current results in the browser window but also note the “Feed for this query” link at the top right. This is the specific RSS URL for this search. (by using the advanced search function you can create very specific and even complicated searches that use location and specific twitterers)

2. Take the RSS URL for your search and create a free Feedburner account and add the feed, then find BuzzBoost under the publicize tab and activate this feature and copy the HTML code that it produces. Paste this code on any web page and you will get a frequently updated stream of twitter content published to your page.

Some usage notes.

You can create your own hashtags for conferences or internal use but anyone can create them so if someone uses your tag their content, relevant or not, will show in your stream

If you want to publish brand or company mentions but are a little squeamish about what someone might say or you want to filter out content that won’t be relevant to the conversation you can always filter these by creating a search in a 3rd party tool like tweetdeck and then selectively saving the most relevant mentions as “favorites” as the favorites function in twitter produces it’s own unique RSS feed. (this is a nice way to publish any content you want to favorite on your site regardless of the content.)

I’ve employed the use of Feedburner in this tutorial but you should also explore the following tools for twitter publishing

• WidgetBox – with a pro account you can create lots of feature rich widgets to publish your twitter RSS ideas
• GoogleGadgets – Google’s free tool that allows anyone to create widget like tools, including lots of twitter.

via http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2009/05/20/bringing-the-twitter-conversation-to-any-web-page/

SEO vs. PPC: The 2009 SEO Uprising

Search engine optimization (SEO) reaches the people who are looking for you right now, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising reaches a back-of-mind market similar to billboards and television advertising. Cost considerations and increasing market competition positions SEO for a huge uprising in 2009. Although it is likely that both SEO and PPC will continue to see big gains against all other marketing methods in 2009, my prediction is that the 2009 SEO uprising will be substantial and swift in the first half of the year and carry through the end of the recession.

SEO and PPC Comparison

Both SEO and PPC each have a strong place in Internet marketing, but let us look at a very simple comparison of SEO and PPC and how they each work for or against you. I will give you a description followed by pros and cons of both SEO and PPC.

Search Engine Optimization a.k.a. SEO

SEO focuses on bringing your Website to the top listings returned by search engines based on its relevance to a search engine user’s query. As quoted from my recent article “SEO in a Nutshell“, a simple decription of SEO is as follows:

“SEO is, the practice of improving the qualities of a Website in order to be better indexed in search engines. In very non-technical terms, SEO makes it possible that when somebody goes to their favorite search engine, usually Google, and searches for something, that they find your listing at or near the top of the list.”

Considering that the focus of SEO is to be found by customers rather than finding customers, it has a much higher conversion of lookers to buyers. Because of SEO’s very nature, it is the most targeted approach to the market.

SEO requires quality Website content that people want, and search for using a search engine. The content should be on-topic, which is to say that if the Website is about beauty products, you do not try to optimize it for fishing lures and tractor tires.

The Pros of SEO - SEO lasts a very long time. Once the content is produced, optimized for search engines, and reaches a high search engine placement, the cost stops while the reward keeps coming in. SEO provides residual benefit, and the return on investment (ROI) of SEO increases over time.

The Cons of SEO - The best results come from paying a writer and SEO professional to research the most effective keywords and achieve the proper search engine placement. This will generally have a higher upfront cost.

Pay Per Click Advertising a.k.a. PPC

PPC is generally based on a bid-rank system, whereby companies place a maximum bid for the position and frequency that their advertisement will be displayed, as well as a daily spending limit. For simple comparison, I am also grouping pay-per-impression advertising and other methods of online display advertising into the mix. They all have much similarity in that they display the advertisers message alongside the content that users were actually seeking.

There are many variations to the pricing models, but the basic principle is that the advertiser pays for each time somebody clicks on their advertisement, or in the case of pay-per-impression ads, every time the ad is displayed to a visitor. A key to PPC or display advertising success is in the ad placement strategically reaching the proper demographic.

The Pros of PPC / Display Ads - PPC and display advertising in general can provide greater exposure to a back-of-mind market that may not have considered your product or service until they saw the advertisement. This can prompt users to buy when they were not already in the market.

The Cons of PPC / Display Ads - Each method of PPC or other online display ads have a termination point. When you stop paying for the ads to run, the benefit is gone. There is not a residual benefit, and the return on investment (ROI) of PPC stops when the spending stops.

SEO vs. PPC / Display Advertising Summary

Each Internet marketing method has a place in Internet marketing, and they often work nicely together. With greater consideration given to the return on investment (ROI) of online advertising and marketing during recession, SEO has a leg up for 2009. While the ROI of PPC and display advertising drops sharply when the investment stops, the ROI of SEO keeps growing.

In either case, 2009 will bring changes to Internet marketing. It is most important that whether you use display advertising or SEO, you should do something to assure your place in the 2009 Internet market.

via

Mark Aaron Murnahan, Web Guy SEO, Internet Marketing, and Website Development Blog

2009 is the Year of Meta-Social Media: 6 Services Compared

While taking a look at this list of social search engines collected of at the TopRank Online Marketing Blog it dawned on me: 2009 is the year of meta-social media. I’ve been encountering tools that fit the description all over recently but I couldn’t find an apt term to describe them. Today I will introduce and compare 6 meta-social media services.

What are Meta-Social Media? Let me give you three well known examples that gained a huge popularity in 2008 already:

1. Twitter
2. FriendFeed
3. Social|Median

Twitter has been established long ago measured in Internet time but it’s a transitional form. It’s 50/50 a social media and meta-social media site or service. Both FriendFeed and Social|Median are two thirds meta and one third “simple” social site. We have several new less known meta social media sites now out there but let show you what I mean based on those sites you know.

First wave social sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious or Digg have one thing in comon inspie of huge differences: They collect links to original stories.

Simple social sites create value or conversation around stories from original sources. They assist users in finding out what’s truly important or high quality by managing the wisdom of crowds. We have seen that often it’s the ignorance of crowds but to some extent this model works.

The most important factor from the user or contributor perspective is: You have to actively spend time and effort to participate and add content to those sites. This had some huge impact ob the whole Web, just think of the new aristocracy or rather meritocracy of social media power users.

Now compare those to Twitter:

You don’t have to add original sources to Twitter, you can but you also can link to your social media submissions elsewhere.

This way Twitter collects, fosters and focuses conversation from several places while it still works like first wave or non-meta social sites: You submit originals (that is direct links to original sources, without other social media interfering) and talk about them as well. While this combines approach is fine it also adds workload and it mkes yu link-hop. You get a link to Digg on Tiwtter and then you get to see the original. So Twitter is half social media site hlaf a hub connecting other social sites.

Take a look at FriendFeed and Social|Median and you notice the difference: Both sites collect social media submissions from elsewhere while still maintaining a one third part of a conversational social media site that collects and assesses original submissions.

You will notice that you need far less effort to make FriendFeed and Social|Media work for you. You don’t need to be very active there to get really tailored news and links. My SEO 2.0 network on Social|Median by now outgrew my first SEO 2.0 group on Mixx and exceeded 200 members. Most of the time it works on autopilot. I use FriendFeed much in the same way, as a meta-social site that gives me an overview about waht’s going on elsehwere. It’s largely automated but it adds the right amount of crowd wisdom.

Still there is a problem with Twitter, FriendFeed and Social|Median: You have to spend some of your precious time over there. It adds to the time already spent on the first wave social sites where you add content etc.

In 2009 meta-social media that predominantly organizes information and links contributed elsewhere will rise to popularity.

Those social sites allow you a quick overview n waht’s going on based on the info added, submitted, collected and assessed elsewhere. So let me move on to three exapmles of full fledged meta-social media:

1. MicroBlogBuzz
2. ReadBurner
3. POPrl

MicroBlogBuzz is a very simple site both from the layout and the function: It collect and sorts links shared on several microblogging services like Twitter in a Digg-like manner.
ReadBurner does the same but taking web based RSS readers/starting pages as input. It collects and sorts items shared n Google Raeder, Netvibes and Newsgator.
The simplest example is POPrl, it’s a combination of a URL shortening service with a Digg-like interface. The popularity is measured by actual clicks on the POPrl links on Twitter (or elsewhere).

I collected those sites in a bookmark folder called social media 3.0 due to a lack of an apt term, but meta-social media is the most logical descriptive term for those. They have several things in common.

Meta-social media

* rely on input from other social sites
* are largely automated
* add value by organizing and structuring data
* offer a quick overview
* change your position to a bird perspective

Meta-social sites have advantages for all involved parties:

* Social sites and contributors get additional exposure
* Users save time and effort
* Meta-social sites work on auto pilot so the costs are low

So the rise of these new wave of social media 3.0 (Digg being 1.0, Twitter being 2.0) or meta-social media is inevitable and very useful for all netizens. Meet me on Twitter, FriendFeed and/or Social|Median.

via seo2