Blind Five Year Old

I’m a dedicated Google Reader user, spending hours each day using it to keep up on any number of topics. So my knee-jerk reaction to the news that Google will close the service as of July 1, 2013 was one of shock and anger.

I immediately Tweeted #savegooglereader and posted on Google+ in hopes of getting it to trend or go hot. These things are silly in the scheme of things. But what else is there to do?

I’ve written previously that the problem with RSS readers is marketing. I still believe that (it’s TiVo for web content people!) but in the end that’s not why closing Google Reader is so dangerous. And it is dangerous.

Google Reader Fuels Social

Photo via double-h

The announcement indicates that, while having a loyal following, usage has declined. That’s a rather nebulous statement, though I don’t truly expect Google to provide the exact statistics. But it’s who is still using Google Reader that is important, is it not?

Participation inequality, often called the 90-9-1 principle, should be an important factor in analyzing Google Reader usage. Even if you believe that the inequality isn’t as pronounced today, those that are contributing are still a small bunch.

Studies on participation on Twitter have shown this to be true, both from what content is shared and who is sharing it. That means that the majority of the content shared is still from major publications and that we get that information through influencers. But where do they get it?

Google Reader.

RSS readers are the snowpack of social networks.

Organizing Information

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. By extension that is what Google Reader lets power-users do. Make no mistake, Google Reader is not a mainstream product. Google (and many others) have screwed up how to market time-shifted online reading.

The result is that those using Google Reader are different. They’re the information consumers. They’re the ones sifting through the content (organizing) and sharing it with their community (accessible) on platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (useful).

Google Reader allows a specific set of people to help Google fulfill their mission.

Losing Identity

There are replacements to Google Reader such as Feedly. So you can expect that the people who fuel social networks will find other ways to obtain and digest information so they can filter it for their followers. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Why exactly does Google want to hand over this important part of the ecosystem to someone else? With Google Reader they know who I am, what feeds I subscribe to, which ones I read and then which ones I wind up sharing on Google+.

Wouldn’t knowing that dynamic, of understanding how people evaluate content and determine what is worthy of sharing, be of interest to Google? It should be. It’s sort of what they want to excel at.

Not only that but because Google Reader has product market fit (see how I got that buzzword in there) with influencers or experts, you’re losing an important piece of the puzzle if you’re thinking about using social sharing and Authorship as search signals.

Data Blind

In the end, I’m surprised because it makes Google data blind. As I look at Unicorn, Facebook’s new inverted-index system, I can’t help but think that Facebook would love to have this information. Mining the connections and activity between these nodes seems messy but important.

What feeds do I subscribe to? That social gesture could be called a Like in some ways. What feeds do I read? That’s a different level of engagement and could even be measured by dwell time. What feeds and specific content do I share? These are the things that I am endorsing and promoting.

By having Google Reader integrated into the Google+ ecosystem, they can tell when I consumed that information and when I then shared it, not just on Google+ but on other platforms if Google is following the public social graph (which we all know they are.)

Without Google Reader, Google loses all of that data and only sees what is ultimately shared publicly. Never mind the idea that Google Reader might be powering dark social which could connect and inform influencers. Gone is that bit of insight too.

Multi-Channel Social

As a marketer I’m consumed with attribution and Google Analytics clearly understands the importance of multi-channel modeling. We even see the view-through metric in Google Adwords display campaigns.

The original source and exposure of content is of huge importance. Google might have Ripples but that only tells them how the content finally entered Google+ not how that content was discovered.

I’m certain that users will find alternatives because there is a need for this service. Google just won’t know what new sites influencers might be reading more of or which sites might be waning with subject matter experts. Google will only see the trailing indicators, not the leading ones.

TL;DR

Google Reader allows information consumers – influencers and subject matter experts – to fuel social networks and help fulfill Google’s core mission. Closing Google Reader will put that assistance in the hands of another company or companies and blinds Google to human evaluation data for an important set of users.

Google’s evil plan is simple and not so evil.

Don’t Be Evil

Any successful company is going to draw criticism. Google probably gets more of it than others because of their ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto. Algorithm changes shuffle branded sites higher and people shout ‘evil!’ Google begins to disintermediate certain verticals and people shout ‘evil!’

Most of the posts about Google’s evil ways focus around these two themes. So much time and energy is spent raging against changes that are simply a reflection of us – the user. When we collectively stop shopping at branded stores over smaller boutiques then we’ll see that reflected in our search results.

And the last time I checked no one was mourning the demise of the milk man or shedding tears over Tower Records or Blockbuster. It sucks if you’re the business getting disintermediated but do you really want to go to another website to get the current weather?

Evil? It’s not Google, it’s you.

Google’s Evil Plan

Instead of talking about all of these natural business moves and conjuring up some nefarious plot, I want to talk about Google’s real strategy. Here’s the truth. Here’s Google’s plan.

Get people to use the Internet more.

That’s it. The more time people spend on the Internet the more time they’ll engage in revenue generating activities such as viewing and clicking display ads and performing searches.

The way Google executes on this strategy is to improve speed and accessibility to the Internet. Google wants to shorten the distance between any activity and the Internet. Lets look at some of Google’s initiatives with this in mind.

Chrome

Firefox was doing a bang up job of breaking Internet Explorer’s browser monopoly. Chrome certainly hastened IE’s decline and helped secure more search volume. Yet Chrome developers have long said that their goal isn’t market share but to make the browsing experience faster.

In a very nearsighted way, making browsers faster is the goal. Yet, the faster the web experience, the more page views people rack up and the more searches they’ll perform.

Chrome is about reducing the friction of browsing the Internet.

SPDY

Google can only do so much with Chrome to speed up the web. Enter SPDY, an open networking protocol, which looks to be the basis for HTTP 2.0.

Its goal is to reduce the latency of web pages.

That’s technical speak for making the web faster. This is what users want. This is what makes users happy. Milliseconds matter when it comes to user satisfaction. And satisfying the user is great for business.

Android

Similar to Chrome, Google saw that users would increasingly access the Internet via phones. They learned from their web browser experience and decided to jump into the vertical early and it’s paid off. Google now commands nearly 54% of the smartphone market.

Android doesn’t have to make money directly. It provides unfettered access to revenue generating activities and allows Google to push the industry forward in terms of speed.

Motorola Mobility

Not content to simply push the envelope with software, Google decided to grab Motorola Mobility and improve on hardware too. The rumors around the Google X phone are increasing.

Long battery life and wireless charging are two of the more tantalizing possibilities  These are clearly features that would greatly benefit users but … they also ensure that you’ll nearly always be able to connect to the Internet. See how that works?

Google Now

Not using the Internet enough? Google Now can help change that by automagically serving up useful cards based on your search history and behavior. Don’t get me wrong. I like Google Now and find it to be more and more valuable as they add more functionality.

But it’s no mystery that predictive search is also about stimulating more Internet activity.

Google Fiber

Many seem to think Google is crazy to pursue fiber. It’s massive. It’s expensive. But it’s also exactly in line with their goal of increasing Internet usage. In fact, they’re pretty clear in the messaging on the Google Fiber page.

Google Fiber starts with a connection speed 100 times faster than today’s broadband. Instant downloads. Crystal clear high definition TV. And endless possibilities. It’s not cable. And it’s not just Internet. It’s Google Fiber.

It’s not that Google would control the transmission (though that’s a nice side benefit), it’s that the friction to using the Internet would be nearly zero.

Google WiFi

 

Google already provides free WiFi in Mountain View, wanted to do it in San Francisco as far back as 2005 until it was torpedoed by politics and paranoia. Now Google provides free WiFi in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. In addition, Google has been futzing with white space and a super-dense LTE network.

Can it be any more clear? Google wants ubiquitous Internet access.

Google Drive

I often see people argue that the cloud is Google’s big picture strategy. I think that’s still missing the point. The cloud is a means to an end.

Giving people the ability to access files from anywhere simply keeps them online longer. You don’t have the browser off working on your document, instead your online editing and saving your document. You’re searching for those documents.

You’re just a browser tab away from areas of the Internet where Google makes money. In short, Google Drive shortens the distance between work and activities that produce revenue for Google.

Chromebook

Taken to the extreme, Chromebook is essentially a computer that runs off the Internet and cloud. Everything is done online.

A new type of computer designed to help you get things done faster and easier.

Faster. There’s that word again. And easier is just a friendly way of saying ‘reduce friction’. At $199 and $249 Google is hoping that this new type of computer will start to find a market. This strikes me as the ultimate lock-in.

Google+

So what about Google+? At first blush, it doesn’t seem to fit.

I still believe a substantial reason for building Google+ was to develop better social signals and increase search personalization. However, I think the time spent in places where Google couldn’t reach (aka Facebook) was troubling.

Google needed to break the stranglehold Facebook had on social attention. They’ve certainly made inroads there and that’s really all they needed to do to ensure attention didn’t pool and persist in a Google dead zone.

Self Driving Cars

I’m shocked that people don’t see the brilliance of a self-driving car. The average commute time in the US is 25 minutes (pdf). So that’s nearly an hour each day that people can’t be actively on the Internet. Yet, they obviously want to be.

If you play Ingress (like I do) you can see where XM (roughly phone usage) is highest. It’s super high in parks and doctor’s offices and movie theaters. But it’s also concentrated at intersections. A red light and we’re diving for our phones.

Now imagine a self-driving car and how much more time you’d have to … be on the Internet. I’m just talking about commuting which is less than 20% of the driving done in this country!

A self driving car unlocks a vast amount of time that could be spent on the Internet.

Google Glass

I know the latest big thing is Sergey on the Subway but to me his skydive was more transformative. The message? Even if you’re falling out of the sky you can still use the Internet.

Google Glass could be the ultimate way to keep you connected to the Internet.

Perhaps we’ll reach a point where much of our consciousness is actually online. Why waste your time remembering useless things when you can simply retrieve them from your personal cloud? Sometimes the future in Charles Stross’ Accelerando seems almost inevitable.

Mind you, at times I feel the urge to live in a cabin in the woods but it’s usually quickly followed with a caveat of ‘with good satellite coverage or Internet access.’

Google TV

I think YouTube was initially thought to be the future of TV. The problem is that we’re very entrenched in traditional TV and inertia (and a lack of proper execution by Google TV) has allowed traditional TV to catch up.

This is the one place where Google is behind. Maybe Google TV picks up steam, or Google Fiber is the wedge into homes or Google acquires someone big like TiVo or Netflix.

Twitter is also both a major rival and potential acquisition target because of their position as the glue between screens.

Share of Time

I’m surprised that no one has compared Google’s strategy to Coke’s now abandoned ‘share of stomach‘ strategy. Google wants people to spend more of their time on the Internet. Think about that.

Once again it comes down to the ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto. Coke didn’t care if they were creating a health epidemic as they rang up profits. Google, on the other hand, believes their services can improve our lives.

That kind of belief is what the tin foil hat conspiracy folks should really be worried about. It’s not any small tactical gaffe that could be chalked up in the evil column. It’s that Google believes they’re doing good. I sort of think so too.

TL;DR

Google’s strategy is to get people to use the Internet more. The more time people spend on the Internet the more time they’ll engage in revenue generating activities. As such, nearly every Google effort is focused on increasing Internet speed and access with the goal to shorten the distance between any activity and the Internet.

I’ve made predictions for the past four years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) and think I’ve done pretty well as a prognosticator.

I’m sometimes off by a year or two and many of my predictions are wrong where my predictions were more like personal wishes. But it’s interesting to put a stake in the ground so you can look back later.

2013 Predictions

Mobile Payment Adoption Soars

If you follow my Marketing Biz column you know I’m following the mobile payments space closely. Research seems to indicate that adoption of mobile payments will take some time in the US based on current attitudes.

I believe smartphone penetration and the acceptance of other similar payments such as app store purchases and Amazon Video on Demand will smooth the way for accelerated mobile payment adoption. Who wins in this space? I’m still betting on Google Wallet.

Infographics Jump The Shark

Frankly, I think this has already happened but perhaps it’s just me. So I’m going to say I’m the canary in the coal mine and in 2013 everyone else will get sick and tired of the glut of bad Infographics.

Foursquare Goes Big

The quirky gamification location startup that was all about badges and mayorships is growing up into a mature local search portal. I expect to see Foursquare connect more dots in 2013, making Yelp very nervous and pissing off Facebook who will break their partnership when they figure out that Foursquare is eating their local lunch.

Predictive Search Arrives

Google Now is a monster. The ability to access your location and search history, combined with personal preferences allows Google to predict your information needs. Anyone thinking about local optimization should be watching this very closely.

Meme Comments

A new form of comments and micro-blogging will emerge where the entire conversation is meme based. Similar to BuzzFeed’s reactions, users will be able to access a database of meme images, perhaps powered by Know Your Meme, to respond and converse.

Search Personalization Skyrockets

Despite the clamor from filter bubble and privacy hawks, Google will continue to increase search personalization in 2013. They’ll do this through context, search history, connected accounts (Gmail field trial) and Google+.

The end result will be an ever decreasing uniformity in search results and potential false positives in many rank tracking products.

Curation Marketing

Not content with the seemingly endless debate of SEO versus Inbound Marketing versus Content Marketing versus Growth Hacking we’ll soon have another buzzword entering the fray.

Curation marketing will become increasingly popular as a way to establish expertise and authority. Like all things, only a few will do it the right way and the rest will be akin to scraped content.

Twitter Rakes It In 

I’ve been hard on Twitter in the past and for good reason. But in 2013 Twitter will finally become a massive money maker as it becomes the connection in our new multi-screen world. As I wrote recently, Twitter will win the fight for social brand advertising dollars.

De-pagination

After spending years and literally hundreds of blog posts about the proper way to paginate we’ll see a trend toward de-paginating in the SEO community. The change will be brought on by the advent of new interfaces and capabilities. (Blog post forthcoming.)

Analytics 3.0 Emerges

Pulling information out of big data will be a trend in 2013. But I’m even more intrigued by Google’s Universal Analytics and location analytics services like Placed. Marketers are soon going to have a far more complete picture of user behavior, Minority Report be damned!

Ingress Becomes Important

I’m a bit addicted to Ingress. At first you think this is just a clever way for Google to further increase their advantage on local mapping. And it is.

But XM is essentially a map Android usage. You see a some in houses, large clusters at transit stops, movie theaters and doctor’s offices, essentially anywhere there are lines. You also see it congregate at intersections and a smattering of it on highways.

Ingress shows our current usage patterns and gives Google more evidence that self-driving cars could increase Internet usage, which is Google’s primary goal these days.

Digital Content Monetization

For years we’ve been producing more and more digital content. Yet, we still only have a few scant ways to monetize all of it and they’re rather inefficient when you think about it. Someone (perhaps even me) will launch a new way to monetize digital content.

I Will Interview Matt Cutts

No, I don’t have this lined up. No, I’m not sure I’ll be able to swing it. No, I’m not sure the Google PR folks would even allow it. But … I have an idea. So stay tuned.

Who shared your post and how did it spread on Google+? That’s what Ripples can tell you, allowing you to find influencers and evangelists.

Google+ Ripples

You can find Ripples in the drop down menu on public posts.

But I noticed that there was also a small URL entry field on the Ripples page.

Sure enough you can drop in a URL and see Ripples for any page.

(Interesting how each of my shares of this post are shown separately.)

Ripples Bookmarklet

I didn’t want to go traipsing back and forth to enter URLs, so I created a bookmarklet.

Find Ripples

Drag the link above to your bookmarks bar. Then click the bookmark whenever you want to see Ripples for the page you’re on. [Clarification] This is for non-Google+ URLs only. Ripples for Google+ URLs are only available via the drop-down menu.

So stop wondering and find out who’s sharing your content (or any content) on Google+.

On Thursday Twitter announced something called Twitter Cards. What are Twitter Cards? They’re essentially rich snippets for Tweets and I predict they’re going to be essential for making your content more portable.

Twitter Cards

There are actually three different types of cards: summary, photo and player. The summary is the default card while the photo and player cards are specifically for images and videos. Here’s the example Twitter provides for a summary card.

Yes Twitter, you definitely have my attention.

Transforming Twitter?

Twitter Cards could transform Twitter from the text based default it has languished in for years to one that will compete with the more appealing and popular visual feeds like Instagram, Path, Foursquare, Tumblr, Google+ and Facebook, the latter two most notably on mobile.

If the summary card is open by default your Twitter stream would look vastly different. It might also change the behavior of those using Twitter and cause people to trim the number of those they follow.

Twitter desperately needs to capture more time and attention to fully realize their advertising business. Transforming the feed through Twitter Cards could be a big step in the right direction.

Twitter Card Properties

All of the cards support some basic properties.

You can optionally (and ideally) also include attribution in your Twitter Card.

The summary card is probably the easiest one of the three with very few required properties.

Note that you can only have one card per post. If you have the time, I recommend you read through the Twitter Card documentation.

Twitter and Open Graph Tags

You might be thinking to yourself, good god, I have to figure out another set of markup? Well, not exactly. Twitter will actually fall back on Open Graph tags should you already have those in place.

But the Open Graph tags aren’t comprehensive. So if you’ve got Open Graph tags in place then you’ll just need to add a few more to get the most out of Twitter Cards. In particular, you won’t get the attribution which is very attractive in my opinion.

As an aside, there’s no mention of whether Twitter will parse schema.org markup or fall back even further to standard markup like the title tag or meta description.

How To Implement Twitter Cards

I have the Open Graph tags on Blind Five Year Old but decided to implement all of the Twitter tags because I want to be certain I have full control over what is being delivered. I think portability is increasingly important so I’m not going to take any chances.

Now, a lot of what I’m going to show you is based on prior hacks and on the plugins I happen to use. So you may not be able to replicate what I do exactly, but it should give you an idea of how you can do it yourself.

Check Your Head

The first thing to understand is where to put these tags. They go in the <head> of your posts. The <head> is essentially an area (invisible to the user) located before the actual content of a page. It’s where you give instructions to browsers and search engines about the page. This can be all sorts of things from the title to styling of a page. It’s also where you declare the values for all these tags.

Think of it this way, you need special glasses to watch that 3D movie, the <head> is where you’d be given those glasses.

View Page Source

You can see what’s in the <head> by doing a simple right mouse click on any page and selecting ‘View Page Source’.

That will open up a new tab with a whole mess of code for you to review and inspect.

My <head> is a bit messy with all the stuff I’ve done and use, but it still works and at some point I’ll come back around to clean it up. Next, we’ll make sure these new Twitter tags show up here.

Edit Your Header

In WordPress, go to your Dashboard and select Appearance > Editor.

Next, select the header file which will likely be header.php.

This is where you’re going to be placing your code.

Now before you go any further, copy all of the code in your header.php and paste it into a text editor. So if you happen to screw things up you can just copy back your old header.php file and start again. (Seriously, do this! I’ve broken my site so many times and it’s that backup copy I have in a text file that often saves the day.)

Drop In The Code

Now it’s time to actually put the code in place. You’re going to put it directly before the closing </head> tag.

I’ve posted a version of the Twitter Card code on Pastebin so you can easily copy and tweak it for your own site. (Do not just copy and paste it into your own file!)

The first line is a comment and does not actually show up on the page nor give any instructions. It just makes it easier for me to see where this code resides once it’s live.

The second line starts with a statement that I only want this on posts. This is accomplished with the if(is_single()) function.

Next I declare the card type (summary) and then the creator (my Twitter handle). I’ve hard coded the creator since I’m the only author on Blind Five Year Old. If you run a single author blog then it’s easy to do this. If you run a multi-author blog or site you’ll have to build in some logic and get the Twitter handle for the author of that post.

To get the URL I simply echo the get_permalink() function. The echo is essentially saying to not only find the permalink but to put what it finds there into the code.

To get the title I echo the get_the_title() function. Yeah, that’s a pretty self explanatory function isn’t it?

For the description I echo the get_post_meta() function which is a collection of meta data about posts. I’m asking for a specific piece of that meta. In this case it’s the _aioseop_description which is the meta description I’ve entered via the All In One SEO Pack.

I sort of cheated by doing a Google search that brought me to a WordPress Support thread that contained the right syntax for this field. If you didn’t know this you’d have to go and find the name of this field in your database via something like phpMyAdmin.

You might also be able to use the_excerpt() or to echo get_the_excerpt() here but I like the specificity since I know I’ve entered something for the meta description myself.

For the image, I’ve essentially replicated what I do to get the Open Graph image but changed the property to name (swapping og for twitter) and content to value. Again, you really don’t need to do this since Twitter says they’ll fall back on the Open Graph image. But I feel better having it explicitly spelled out.

Read through my Snippet Optimization post to learn more about how to use a simple custom field (og_img) to generate a featured image for each post. Seriously, it’s not that hard to do.

After you put your code in you hit update file and then go to a post and view source. Hopefully you see the Twitter Card markup populating correctly. (Check this post for an example.) If not, go back and try again paying close attention to the syntax of your code.

At present Twitter does not have a testing tool like Facebook or Google, but it’s something we may see in the future.

(Please comment if you can improve on, see errors in or can provide additional details such as tips for other platforms or field names for other plugins. A special thanks to Ron Kuris who helped to debug my PHP code.)

A Velvet Rope?

It is unclear who exactly will be able to participate in Twitter Cards initially.

To participate in the program, you should (a) read the documentation below, (b) determine whether you wish to support Twitter cards, and then (c) apply to participate. As we roll out this new feature to users and publishers, we are looking for sites with great content and those that drive active discussion and activity on Twitter.

It sounds like Twitter is going to review each site and create a whitelist for those they wish to support. But I have to think that this will become an open standard in short order. So get a jump on things and implement Twitter Cards now.

TL;DR

Twitter Cards are rich snippets for Tweets. Implementing Twitter Cards could transform Twitter into a more appealing visual feed and makes optimizing your Twitter Card an essential part of social portability.

Did you implement your Google Authorship markup correctly? Is your review microformat being recognized by Google? The best way to find out is to run it through Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool.

Rich Snippets Testing Tool Bookmarklet

I’ve been using Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool heavily as I help readers diagnose Authorship markup issues. This morning I was reviewing an interesting post by John Doherty about Google Author Search. In his post he provides a handy bookmarklet.

I realized I should create a Rich Snippets Testing Tool Bookmarklet so I don’t have to continually go to the page manually. So I dusted off my limited javascript skills and after about 10 minutes half an hour of trial and error had it figured out.

Rich Snippets Testing Tool

Drag the link above to your bookmarks bar. Then click the bookmark whenever you want to test a specific page. It will create a new tab with the Rich Snippets Testing Tool results.

This makes it ultra-easy to validate any page for rich snippets and has already (in my testing of the bookmarklet) revealed some bugs with the Rich Snippets Testing Tool itself.

Please let me know if you find this helpful and report any incompatibility issues or bugs you might find with my bookmarklet code.

It’s time again to gaze into my crystal ball and make some predictions for 2012.

2012 Predictions

For reference, here are my predictions for 2011, 2010 and 2009. I was a bit too safe last year so I’m making some bold predictions this time around.

Chrome Becomes Top Browser

Having already surpassed Firefox this year, Chrome will see accelerated adoption, surpassing Internet Explorer as the top desktop browser in the closing weeks of 2012.

DuckDuckGo Cracks Mainstream

Gabriel Weinberg puts new funding to work and capitalizes on the ‘search is about answers’ meme. DuckDuckGo leapfrogs over AOL and Ask in 2012, securing itself as the fourth largest search engine.

Google Implements AuthorRank

Google spent 2011 building an identity platform, launching and aggressively promoting authorship while building an internal influence metric. In 2012 they’ll put this all together and use AuthorRank (referred to in patents as Agent Rank) as a search signal. It will have a more profound impact on search than all Panda updates combined.

Image Search Gets Serious

Pinterest. Instagram. mlkshk. We Heart It. Flickr. Meme Generator. The Internet runs on images. Look for a new image search engine, as well as image search analytics. Hopefully this will cause Google to improve (which is a kind word) image search tracking within Google Analytics.

SEO Tool Funding

VCs have been sniffing around SEO tool providers for a number of years. In 2012 one of the major SEO tool providers (SEOmoz or Raven) will receive a serious round of funding. I actually think this is a terrible idea but … there it is.

Frictionless Check-Ins

For location based services to really take off and reach the mainstream they’ll need a near frictionless check-in process. Throughout 2012 you’ll see Facebook, Foursquare and Google one-up each other in providing better ways to check-in. These will start with prompts and evolve into check-out (see Google Wallet) integrations.

Google+ Plateaus

As much as I like Google+ I think it will plateau in mid-2012 and remain a solid second fiddle to Facebook. That’s not a knock of Google+ or the value it brings to both users and Google. There are simply too many choices and no compelling case for mass migration.

HTML5 (Finally) Becomes Important

After a few years of hype HTML5 becomes important, delivering rich experiences that users will come to expect. As both site adoption and browser compatibility rise, search engines will begin to use new HTML5 tags to better understand and analyze pages.

Schema.org Stalls

Structured mark-up will continue to be important but Schema.org adoption will stall. Instead, Google will continue to be an omnivore, happy to digest any type of structured mark-up, while other entities like Facebook will continue to promote their own proprietary mark-up.

Mobile Search Skyrockets

Only 40% of U.S. mobile users have smartphones. That’s going to change in a big way in 2012 as both Apple and Google fight to secure these mobile users. Mobile search will be the place for growth as desktop search growth falls to single digits.

Yahoo! Buys Tumblr

Doubling down on content Yahoo! will buy Tumblr, hoping to extend their contributor network and overlay a sophisticated, targeted display advertising network. In doing so, they’ll quickly shutter all porn related Tumblr blogs.

Google Acquires Topsy

Topsy, the last real-time search engine, is acquired by Google who quickly shuts down the Topsy API and applies the talent to their own initiatives on both desktop and mobile platforms.

In April, the Internet breathed a sigh of relief when Delicious was sold to AVOS instead of being shut down by Yahoo. In spite of Yahoo’s years of neglect, Delicious maintained a powerful place in the Internet ecosystem and remained a popular service.

Users were eager to see Delicious improve under new management. Unfortunately the direction and actions taken by Delicious over the last 8 months make me pine for the days when it was the toy thrown in the corner by Yahoo!

Where Did Delicious Go Wrong?

I know new management means well and have likely poured a lot of time and effort into this enterprise. But I see problems in strategy, tactics and execution that have completely undermined user trust and loyalty.

Bookmarklets

The one mission critical feature which fuels the entire enterprise falls into disrepair. Seriously? This is unacceptable. The bookmarklets that allow users to bookmark and tag links were broken for long stretches of time and continue to be rickety and unreliable. This lack of support is akin to disrespect of Delicious users.

Stacks

Here’s how they work. Select some related links, plug them into a stack and watch the magic happen. You can customize your stack by choosing images to feature, and by adding a title, description and comment for each link. Then publish the stack to share it with the world. If you come across another stack you like, follow it to easily find it again and catch any updates.

Instead of the nearly frictionless interaction we’ve grown accustomed to, we’re now asked to perform additional and duplicative work. I’ve already created ‘stacks’ by bookmarking links with appropriate tags. Want to see a stack of links about SEO, look at my bookmarks that are tagged SEO. It doesn’t get much more simple than that.

Not only have they introduced complexity into a simple process, they’ve perverted the reason for bookmarking links. The beauty of Delicious was that you were ‘curating’ without trying. You simply saved links by tags and then one day you figured out that you had a deep reservoir of knowledge on a number of topics.

Stacks does the opposite and invites you to think about curation. I’d argue this creates substantial bias, invites spam and is more aligned with the dreck produced by Squidoo.

Here’s another sign that you’ve introduced unneeded complexity into a product.

In just one sentence they reference stacks, links, playlists and topics. They haven’t even mentioned tags! Am I creating stacks or playlists? If I’m a complete novice do I understand what ‘stack links’ even means?

Even if I do understand this, why do I want to do extra work that Delicious should be doing for me?

Design

The visual makeover doesn’t add anything to the platform. Do pretty pictures and flashy interactions really help me discover content? Were Delicious users saying they would use the service more if only it looked prettier? I can’t believe that’s true. Delicious had the same UI for years and yet continued to be a popular service.

Delicious is a utilitarian product. It’s about saving, retrieving and finding information.

Sure, Flipboard is really cool but just because a current design pattern is in vogue doesn’t mean it should be applied to every site.

UX

There are a number of UX issues that bother me but I’ll highlight the three that have produced the most ire. The drop down is poorly aligned causing unnecessary frustration.

More than a few times I’ve gone across to to click on one of the drop down links only to have it disappear before I could finish the interaction.

The iconography is non-intuitive and doesn’t even have appropriate hover text to describe the action.

Does the + sign mean bookmark that link? What’s the arrow? Is that a pencil?

Now, I actually get the iconography. But that’s the problem! I’m an Internet savvy user, yet the new design seems targeted at a more mainstream user. Imagine if Pinterest didn’t have the word ‘repin’ next to their double thumbtack icon?

Finally, the current bookmarklet supports the tag complete function. You begin typing in a tag and you can simply select from a list of prior tags. This is a great timesaver. It even creates a handy space at the end so you can start your next tag. Or does it?

WTF!? Why is my tag all muddled together?

Delicious improved tagging by allowing spaces in tags. That means that all tags have to be separated by commas. I get that. It’s not the worst idea either. But the tag complete feature should support this new structure. Because it looks like it functions correctly by inserting a space after the tag. I mean, am I supposed to use the tag complete feature and then actually backspace and add a comma?

It’s not the best idea to make your users feel stupid.

Uptime

The service has been unstable, lately as poor as it was at the height of Twitter’s fail whale problem. I’ve seen that empty loft way too much.

What Should Delicious Do Instead?

It’s easy to bitch but what could Delicious have done instead? Here’s what I think they should have (and still could) do.

Filtering

An easy first step to improve Delicious would be to provide a better way to filter bookmarks. The only real way to do so right now is by adding additional tags. It would have been easy to introduce time (date) and popularity (number of times bookmarked) facets.

They could have gone an extra step and offered the ability to group bookmarks by source. This would let me see the number of bookmarks I have by site by tag. How many times have I bookmarked a Search Engine Land article about SEO? Not only would this be interesting, it maps to how we think and remember. You’ll hear people say something like: “It was that piece on management I read on Harvard Business Review.”

There are a tremendous number of ways that the new team could have simply enhanced the current functionality to deliver added value to users.

Recommendations

Delicious could create recommendations based on current bookmark behavior and tag interest. The data is there. It just needs to be unlocked.

It would be relatively straightforward to create a ‘people who bookmarked this also bookmarked’ feature. Even better if it only displayed those I haven’t already bookmarked. That’s content discovery.

This could be extended to natural browse by tag behavior. A list of popular bookmarks with that tag but not in my bookmarks would be pretty handy.

Delicious could also alert you when it saw a new bookmark from a popular tag within your bookmarks. This would give me a quick way to see what was ‘hot’ for topics I cared about.

Recommendations would put Delicious in competition with services like Summify, KnowAboutIt, XYDO and Percolate. It’s a crowded space but Delicious is sitting on a huge advantage with the massive amount of data at their disposal.

Automated Stacks

Instead of introducing unnecessary friction Delicious could create stacks algorthmically using tags. This could be personal (your own curated topics) or across the entire platform. Again, why Delicious is asking me to do something that they can and should do is a mystery to me.

Also, the argument that people could select from multiple tags to create more robust stacks doesn’t hold much water. Delicious knows which tags appear together most often and on what bookmarks. Automated stacks could pull from multiple tags.

The algorithm that creates these stacks would also constantly evolve. They would be dynamic and not prone to decay. New bookmarks would be added and bookmarks that weren’t useful (based on age, lack of clicks or additional bookmarks) would be dropped.

Delicious already solved the difficult human element of curation. It just never applied appropriate algorithms to harness that incredible asset.

Social Graph Data

Delicious could help order bookmarks and augment recommendations by adding social graph data. The easiest thing to do would be to determine the number of Likes, Tweets and +1s each bookmark received. This might simply mirror bookmark popularity though. So you would next look at who saved the bookmarks and map their social profiles to determine authority and influence. Now you could order bookmarks that were saved by thought leaders in any vertical.

A step further, Delicious could look at the comments on a bookmarked piece of content. This could be used as a signal in itself based on the number of comments, could be mined to determine sentiment or could provide another vector for social data.

Trunk.ly was closing in on this since they already aggregated links via social profiles. Give them your Twitter account and they collect and save what you Tweet. This frictionless mechanism had some drawbacks but it showed a lot of promise. Unfortunately Trunk.ly was recently purchased by Delicious. Maybe some of the promise will show up on Delicious but the philosophy behind stacks seems to be in direct conflict with how Trunk.ly functioned.

Analytics

Delicious could have provided analytics to individuals as to the number of times their bookmarks were viewed, clicked or re-bookmarked. The latter two metrics could also be used to construct an internal influence metric. If I bookmark something because I saw your bookmark, that’s essentially on par with a retweet.

For businesses, Delicious could aggregate all the bookmarks for that domain (or domains), providing statistics on the most bookmarked pieces as well as when they are viewed and clicked. A notification service when your content is bookmarked would also be low-hanging fruit.

Search

Delicious already has search and many use it extensively to find hidden gems from both the past and present. But search could be made far better. In the end Delicious could have made a play for being the largest and best curated search engine. I might be biased because of my interest in search but this just seems like a no-brainer.

Revenue

Building a PPC platform seems like a good fit if you decide to make search a primary feature of the site. It could even work (to a lesser extent) if you don’t feature search. Advertisers could pay per keyword search or tag search. I doubt this would disrupt user behavior since users are used to this design pattern thanks to Google.

Delicious could even implement something similar to StumbleUpon, allowing advertisers to buy ‘bookmark recommendations’. This type of targeted exposure would be highly valuable (to users and advertisers) and the number of bookmarks could provide long-term traffic and benefits. Success might be measured in a new bookmarks per impression metric.

TL;DR

The new Delicious is a step backward, abandoning simplicity and neglecting mechanisms that build replenishing value. Instead management has introduced complexity and friction while concentrating on cosmetics. The end result is far worse than the neglect Delicious suffered at the hands of Yahoo.

Mozilla’s search partnership with Google expires at the end of November. What happens next could change search engine and browser market share as well as the future of Mozilla.

The Mozilla Google Search Partnership

Originally entered into in November 2004 and renewed in 2006 (for 2 years) and 2008 (for 3 years), the search partnership delivers a substantial amount of their revenue to Mozilla. In fact, in 2010 98% of the $121 million in revenue came from search related activity.

The majority of Mozilla’s revenue is generated from search functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, Ebay and others.

Most of that search revenue comes specifically from Google. The ‘Concentrations of Risk’ section in Mozilla’s 2009 (pdf) and 2010 (pdf) consolidated financial statements put Google’s contribution to revenue at 91% in 2008, 86% in 2009 and 84% in 2010.

Using the 2010 numbers, Mozilla stands to ‘lose’ $3.22 per second if the partnership expires. Mozilla is highly dependent on search and Google in particular. There’s just no way around that.

What does Google get for this staggering amount of money?

Google is the default search bar search engine as well as the default home page. This means that Firefox drives search after search to Google instead of their competitors.

Browser Share

Clearly browsers are an important part of the search landscape since they can influence search behavior based on default settings. As Mozilla points out, in 2002 over 90% of the browser market was controlled by Internet Explorer. At the time it made perfect sense for Google to help Mozilla break the browser monopoly.

The rise of Firefox helped Google to solidify search dominance and Mozilla was paid handsomely for this assistance.

However, it doesn’t look like Google was comfortable with this lack of control. Soon after the announced renewal of the search partnership in 2008 Google launched their own browser. At the time, I wrote that Chrome was about search and taking share from Internet Explorer.

I still think Chrome is about search and the trend seems to indicate that Chrome is taking share (primarily) away from Internet Explorer. In short, Google sought to control its own destiny and speed the demise of Internet Explorer.

Mission accomplished.

Chrome is now poised to overtake Firefox as the number two browser. That’s important because three years ago Google had no other way to protect their search share. Chrome’s success changes this critical fact.

Toolbars

Toolbars were the first attempt by search engines to break the grip of Internet Explorer. Both Google and Yahoo! used toolbars as a way to direct traffic to their own search engines.

What happened along the way was an amazing amount of user confusion. Which box were you supposed to search in? The location (or address) bar, the search box or the toolbar?

This confusion created searches in the location bar and URL entries in the search bar. Savvy users understood but it never made much sense to most.

Location Bar Search

The result? For those that figured it out there is evidence that people actually enjoyed searching via the location bar.

How many searches are conducted per month via the address bar? MSN wouldn’t release those figures, but it did say that about 10 to 15 percent of MSN Search’s overall traffic comes from address bar queries.

The company has analyzed the traffic from users who search via the address bar and discovered both that the searches appear intentional in nature, rather than accidental, and that those making use of address bar searching do so frequently.

This data from 2002 indicates that the location bar default might be very valuable. Sure enough, the location bar default is part of the search partnership Mozilla has with Google.

This also happens to be the most difficult setting to change. You can change the search bar preference with a click and the home page with two clicks, but the location bar is a different (and convoluted) story.

Most mainstream users aren’t going to attempt entering about:config into their location bar, but if they do this first screen will likely scare them off.

I recently had to revisit the location bar default because I took Firefox for Bing for a spin. This add-on, among other things, changes the location bar default to Bing and it remains that way even after the add-on is removed. That’s a serious dark pattern.

All of this makes me believe that the location bar might be the most valuable piece of real estate.

Omnibox

Having helped create confusion with their toolbar (now no longer supporting Firefox 5+) and seen the value of location bar searches, Chrome launched the omnibox, a combined location and search bar. The omnibox reduced confusion and asked users to simply type an address or search into one bar. Google would do the rest. Of course, the default for those searches is Google.

The omnibar seems to be a popular feature and why wouldn’t it be? Users don’t care what field they’re typing in, they just want it to work. You know who else thinks this is a good idea? The Firefox UX Team.

While these mockups are for discussion purposes only, it’s pretty clear what the discussion is about. According to CNET, a combined Firefox search-and-location bar is being held up by privacy issues. That was in March and the latest release of Firefox (just last week) still didn’t have this functionality.

Back in late 2009 Asa Dotzler had a lot to say about the independence of Firefox and how they serve the user.

Mozilla’s decisions around defaults are driven by what’s best for the largest number of users and not what’s best for revenue.

It’s not about the money. The money’s there and Mozilla isn’t going to turn it down, but it’s not about the money. It’s about providing users with the best possible experience.

Great words but have they been backed up with action? Both users and the Firefox UX Team are lobbying for an omnibox, the Firefox for Bing add-on is a clear dark pattern and the ability to change the default location bar search engine is still overly complicated.

Is this really what’s best for users?

Don’t Count On Inertia

If Mozilla were to switch horses and cut a search deal with Bing, they’d be counting on inertia to retain users and their current search behavior. The problem is that Firefox was marketed as the solution to browser inertia.

Before Firefox many users didn’t even understand they could browse the Internet with anything but Internet Explorer. Those same users are now more likely to switch.

It’s sort of like being the other woman right? If he cheats with you, he’s also liable to cheat on you.

With a search bar still in place users can easily change that default. Firefox would be counting on location bar searches and the difficulty in changing this default to drive revenue. You might get some traction here but I’m guessing you’d see browser defection, increased search bar usage and more direct traffic to the Google home page.

With an omnibar in place Firefox would be running a very risky proposition. Many mainstream users would likely migrate to another browser (probably Chrome). More advanced Firefox users would simply change the defaults.

You could move to an omnibar and make the default easy to change, but both Firefox and users have made it abundantly clear that they prefer Google. So how much would a Bing search partnership really be worth at that point?

Can Bing Afford It?

Bing is losing money hand over fist so it’s unclear whether Bing can actually pony up this type of money anyway. If they did, it could cause browser defection and other behavior that would rob the search partnership of any real value and put Firefox at risk.

Even if Bing pirated half of the searches coming from Firefox, that’s not going to translate into a real game changer from a search engine market share perspective.

Mozilla could partner with Bing but I don’t think either of them would like the results.

Mozilla in a Pickle

If Google is the choice of users (as Firefox claims) installing a competing default search engine may hasten the conversion to Chrome. This time around Mozilla needs Google far more than Google needs Mozilla. I’m not saying that Google doesn’t want the search partnership to continue, but I’m betting they’re driving a very hard bargain.

Google no longer has a compelling need to overpay for a search default on a competing browser. I have to believe Mozilla is being offered a substantially lower dollar amount for the search partnership.

I don’t pretend to know exactly how the partnership is structured and whether it’s volume or performance based but it really doesn’t matter. Google paid Barry Zito like prices back in 2008 at the height of the economic bubble but the times have changed and Google’s got Tim Lincecum (Chrome) mowing down the competition.

Mozilla and Google are playing a high stakes game of chicken. The last renewal took place three months prior to the expiration. We’re down to two weeks now.

This time the money might not be there.

TL;DR

The search partnership between Mozilla and Google expires at the end of November. The success of Chrome gives Google little incentive to overpay for a search default on Firefox. This puts Mozilla, who receives more than 80% of their revenue through the Google search partnership, in a poor position with few options.

Is information overload a problem our new digital society must solve or are we changing how we learn?

Information Overload

We’ve gone from a handful of TV channels to more than 500; from a few radio stations to streaming music on demand; from reading the local newspaper to reading publications from around the world.

The Extracting Value from Chaos report from IDC iView provides a staggering overview of our digital footprint.

In 2011, the amount of information created and replicated will surpass 1.8 zettabytes (1.8 trillion gigabytes) – growing by a factor of 9 in just five years.

It’s not just digital either. We see this trend in the publishing industry where print-on-demand and self-published books have skyrocketed (pdf).

This does not include Audio or eBooks.

Of course, we’re also sharing all of this information at an accelerated rate.

Zuckerberg’s Law of Sharing states that sharing activity will double each year.

You know that information is increasing, but you might not realize just how much and how fast it is increasing.

Curation

As the amount of information increases many have looked at ways to sift through and make sense of it all. The goal is to find signal amid the noise. Plenty of folks are trying to apply different techniques and algorithms to winnow things down to only the most interesting and relevant.

KnowAboutIt, XYDO, My6Sense, Trunk.ly and Summify among others are all trying to cull the web and deliver the ‘right’ information to your inbox.

Aggregated social curation sounds logical but I haven’t found it very valuable. I find the stuff I already read (or would have found) anyway. Maybe it works if you’re not drinking from the information hose, but most of us are doing more of that in one way or the other. I can’t imagine relying on just these services for my information.

Many believe that serendipity is an important part of information consumption, but most of the services give this lip service at best. They’re doing more of what a good brand marketer would do, cranking out extensions to a known product. In this case that product is the type of content that you and your network of ‘friends’ are reading. I think you quickly reach a local maxima where you’re not finding new things and making new connections.

Today’s curation seems more like an echo chamber.

Distraction

Nicholas Carr thinks the Internet is doing evil things to us and Google might be making us stupid. NPR books summarizes Carr’s thesis as follows.

Carr believes that the Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it’s changing the way people read and process information. We’ve come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and he says there’s not much of that to be found online.

Carr might be right about the distraction of the Internet. But this is but one way in which we acquire information. I watch two hour movies straight through, can read a book for hours at a stretch and still conduct lengthy phone calls. The idea that we can only process information in one way seems like an odd conclusion. It would be like saying that because we possess the ability to drive that athletic prowess will decline.

Taking it a step further, there is an assumption that we process information uniformly. Here’s where fiction helps reveal a greater truth. The Ghost In Love by Jonathan Carroll explores the division of personality. We are different people throughout our lives, day-by-day and even different people at the same time.

How can we be kind when you were so mean to that stranger the other day? How can we be intelligent when you made such a stupid mistake the other week? Many people struggle with this seeming paradox. But we’re not robots! We’re not just one monolithic entity that does things the same way every day. Not only do we evolve over time (just think about your musical tastes) but we’ll react to information in different ways on an hourly basis. Much of this has to do with context, but I think there are more complex factors at work.

So why do we persist in this notion that we can only comprehend information in one way. That’s just patently untrue.

Cut-Up Learning

The cut-up technique was made popular by William Burroughs and is performed by cutting up content and putting it back together in a different order. By doing so, it reveals new words, new insight and new meaning. It’s a type of non-linear learning.

I believe the Internet, the great distractor, is a digital version of the cut-up technique. It is actually more powerful because we can cut-up more information from a wide variety of topics and mediums.

We’re so consumed with capturing just the right thing, those few articles that will provide insight, that we miss the opportunity to piece together and make connections to a larger puzzle.

The goal isn’t to curate and aggregate the content into neat little packages but to cut up the information to unlock trends and insight.

Skimming

I read a large number of RSS feeds, a diverse blend of literature, photography, analytics, SEO, technology, life hacking, science, local, marketing, design, UX, humor and start-up related blogs. I also let the river of information flow through platforms like FriendFeed, Google+, Pinterest and Twitter.

Do I read every post word for word? No. I’m skimming a lot of the time, both in terms of the type of content that is being generated (the theme and pulse of activity) and the actual content itself. Skimming doesn’t mean I’m not getting value from that content. By skimming through a variety of pieces, topics and media I create a very different view of the data that is swirling around me.

That also doesn’t prevent me from taking a deep dive on any given piece I find. In fact, I’d hazard that I locate more of these pieces through the act of skimming.

Cut-Up Example

So lets go from theory to practice. I believe Google is extremely interested in creating some sort of AuthorRank based on the quality of and engagement with the content that author produces. Here’s the cut-up that leads me to this conclusion.

I watch Steven Levy interviewed by Matt Cutts, and find both Levy’s mention of being outranked by Huffington Post interesting but also note the look Cutts gives someone in the audience directly after this remark. I watch this video after authorship is rolled out by Google at SMX Advanced. This is an example of how the cut-up technique doesn’t need to be linear.

I keep track of the debate around identity on Google+ and see how their inflexibility on the issue is rooted in ensuring confidence in authorship. I watch the high rate of iteration in the rel=”author” program and note who is leading those efforts. I look at which Google Webmaster Central videos in this latest series are released first. Because they record them in large chunks, so the authorship video getting to the head of the line signals a sort of priority.

I read about the acquisitions of companies that measure engagement with content. I ask questions about what Google is doing with PostRank and (repeatedly) get no response. Silence can be a very loud signal.

Those are all signals within the actual topic, though they might be in different media. But I also pay close attention to how Facebook is implementing EdgeRank and note the direction LinkedIn is going as well. Again, those are closely related to authorship and identity so it’s not going too far afield.

But there are other vectors that might seem unrelated. I listen to artists who are irate at how their work is taken and used without credit. I key in on articles that highlight the music that is most often sampled by new artists. I listen to the Rick Astley and Nirvana mashup. I laugh at the misattributed quote meme but also think about what it represents. I uncover distasteful social proof manipulation and dive into the argument about influence and whether Klout is accurate.

Alone, each of these things are of passing interest, but with access to so much information I find greater context and meaning.

Mind Hacking

The digital age allows us to peer over the shoulders of more people. A lot of them may provide little to no value but some will be intelligent and provide thoughtful commentary and links. I’ve become adept at quickly recognizing the difference. It’s reminiscent of what Gladwell talks about in Blink.

Maybe I am an outlier and my information consumption behavior is non-traditional, but given the rate in which information is accelerating I believe more and more people will adopt (or be forced into) this type of cut-up learning.

I used to scoff at the number of people Robert Scoble followed, invoking Dunbar’s Number as my defense. What I’ve realized is that there is a vast difference in social relationships versus information discovery.

I still believe in Dunbar’s Number as it pertains to relationships but not when it comes to information discovery. I doubt highly that Robert is truly friends with the 32,000 people he follows on Twitter. But he is adept at taking the stream of information those people create and gaining value from it.

Tools

Certain tools can help to make cut up learning easier, in part by simply letting you organize what you’ll skim. Google Reader is an absolute stellar resource. And no one has beaten the original FriendFeed friend of a friend functionality in delivering new and random things to my worldview. G+ is slowly getting better since I do find a diverse blend of technology, science, art and business that I can peruse.

The curation services? I’ll use them. But they’re more like an information safety net. My interaction with them is limited to no more than a 10 second skim and scroll of the content for confirmation.

But in the end, the biggest tool we’ll have is our mind and our own ability to collect and process all that information. Maybe our brains are being rewired but who’s to say that’s a bad thing?

TL;DR

I found an article the other day that opined that the way to succeed in business was to know where the customer was going, not where they were now. This was a proxy for how I felt about the difference between curation services and cut up learning. Curation can tell you where things are now, while cut up learning can tell you where things are going.

Information overload may not be a problem we have to solve but instead could lead to a new way of learning. Skimming things does not make us shallow, it may actually make us rich.