The Sound of Content Ripping Free From Its Page
Yahoo’s announcement that they intend to introduce a different method of search, such that Yahoo will pull microformatted data out of a page and deliver it on Yahoo’s results instead of passing the searcher through to the target page should send a shiver through the minds of SEO experts and content producers alike. Let me explain it again: imagine search results that don’t encourage users to land on your website, but instead, they’ll get served at the search results page. Sweating yet?
From a user’s perspective, this is much more useful in certain situations. In the Blogspotting article, Stephen Baker uses the example of someone looking for restaurant info. Instead of getting links to all kinds of varying pages where the info is housed, you’ll get a simple, easy-to-read, useful collection of data that should help you get what you need.
From a content producer’s perspective, this requires you to make a lot of changes to your perception of what matters, and especially if you believe the value of your content is the site that houses it.
Advertising on the Page Pales
If someone’s seeking how-to videos on playing cello and you’ve got a cello podcast relying on a wrap around of Google Adsense for bandwidth and beer money, that video might now have “legs” to land on a search results page sans advertising. In all cases where you’ve built ads and affiliate programs all over your site, a search like the one Yahoo’s Prabhakar Raghavan is envisioning might leave your ads in the dust.
Good Content Will Be Found
On the other hand, if it benefits you or your organization to get your content out to more places, then as Mzinga’s Aaron Strout pointed out to me, this is a case where excellent content will suddenly have MORE visibility, and you’ll be heard by more folks. If you look at it another way, asking users/searchers to jump through hoops to connect with what they’re searching for doesn’t sound all that appealing, does it? You can watch a video pretty much anywhere. You can read anywhere. Content was built to be let loose, even if this means changing the business model a bit.
Producing great content and this new way of searching go hand in hand, but it also means that you have to consider tweaking your content for this new world. Include ways for people to get back to your main site, including links, directly IN the content you’re creating. For text, consider adding links back to your main site in each post. For audio, make sure to read out your URL at the end (maybe near the beginning, too) of every post. Ditto with video.
Get a Jump on the Competition
If you look at this as an opportunity, you can see all kinds of ways that having quality microcontent, using appropriate microformats would be a great way to deliver portable value that might catapult you ahead of other previous search efforts.
And, for the average user, it’s worth considering how you might interact in this new space, and think ahead on how you present YOUR brand in a world where semantic data might change the search game in a big way. ( Read more from Nova Spivak from Twine on how users should see this announcement).
So what do you think? Is your data ready? Are you?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Device Mesh And Location Brokering
Two stories reported on TechCrunch today caught my attention as two technologies that I’ve wanted to see for years, and also two areas that, when combined, might make for a major shift in how we use technology. Between Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie talking about device mesh and Yahoo! announcing Fire Eagle which deals with location (and better be paying Ze Frank for the name), there are some interesting possible applications that might prove useful to you and me. Realizing that the people in my crowd that come here to understand how to use social media and stuff might be wondering if they landed on the wrong page. Believe me, this applies.
Device Mesh and Context
If/when our technology can understand that we’re using our BlackBerry now, and oh wait, we’re at the laptop, and hey, I’d rather get IMs from this person, but drop this other person’s stuff in email, that’s when things start to get cool. When I can get podcasts onto my iPod or whatever (if we’re talking about Ray Ozzie, let’s say a Zune) without thinking much about it, and/or without having to tether to my laptop, life will get a lot cooler. Going a little further into this notion, when I can shift media between multiple devices and shift preferences and bring my identity and context between multiple devices (maybe even if it’s my own personal cookie), then that’s going to really be cool for what we’re talking about with social media and impact. Are you with me?
Location and Fire Eagle
After reading about six blog posts, I still can’t tell you much about what it really is going to do, but here’s what I want it to do. I want us all to have the ability to opt in and out of defining our physical proximity, and then I want that platform to be open such that smarter people than me can write apps that will facilitate real space experiences that might mirror our extended, augmented online experience.
There are two ways to use this (well, there are millions, but let’s talk about two) that would be immediately fun and useful. When I’m at an event, I want to loudly promote that I’m there, so that people who matter to me will connect with me there. I think Fire Eagle facilitates this. Second, when I’m at a place, like a restaurant, or an airport, or a park, I want there to be “invisible tagging” that tells me lots of locative data and contextual overlay (yes, I admit that I am a big William Gibson SPOOK COUNTRY fan in this regards).
Mash The Two Together
Take device context (moving the “me” in my things from one device to another) and mix it with location context (tell certain apps about where I am and give me value from this), and I feel like I’m finally getting augmented reality. Smatter some 2d barcodes, some visual overlay stuff like Paul Ottelini from Intel was showing off at CES this past January, and we’re getting towards something insanely usable.
The business applications of device context mashed with location context are numerous. Commerce implications are the obvious ones, but go beyond that and you can see educational value, communications innovation, journalism toolsets, and plenty more.
And if you throw in autonomous applications like traffic sensors, and sensor networks sharing info with Fire Eagle, and porting what’s useful to my devices based on the context I’ve configured, then it gets crazy.
Last Thought
Microsoft has built some products that sync home to portable to the car. Yahoo has some complementary products and technologies, as well as more web DNA than MSFT (don’t fight me on this, softies). For this reason, among the others that others have cited, I really hope there’s a potential win here with the potential Microsoft / Yahoo merger.
What do you think? Does this make any sense to you? Do you see any of it? What does a world where your devices know it’s you and know your preferences, and where your location can be opted-in for all kinds of other functions feel like to you? Scary? Big Brother? Or an opportunity? I’d love your ideas.
Photo credit, Annie Mole
Why Microsoft Buying Yahoo COULD Rock
Should I just stop at this picture of Ray Ozzie? This is why MSFT buying the big purple Y! makes sense. You can argue that there are some cool parts of Microsoft. I’ll grant that there are whole areas of the company that I like and think are doing better than people give them credit for. You might even be a fan of MSFT.
But the thing is this: Ray is super cool. His stuff with Groove Networks (which got watered into being Office Groove- and no, I don’t know what I’m talking about because I haven’t used the MSFT version) is killer collaboration stuff. Ray’s mind is set up for this kind of thinking. He’s one of us. He’s participatory.
And to that end, I think that with Microsoft picking up Yahoo, there might be some interesting collaboration points.
Who’s going to argue about what Yahoo has going for it? I think you could say Groups (which I think are some of the best 1.0 technology out there), and you could say that Finance is pretty good. What else? (No! You may NOT count upcoming, del.icio.us, Flickr, and more).
So yeah.
Photo credit, Jeff Sandquist
Yahoo Should Buy Twitter- Yes or No
Beloved social presence platform Twitter is down again today. Yahoo doesn’t know what to do with itself. Last night, at one point, we were talking about Yahoo’s best advantage is in their choice of acquisitions (like Flickr, Upcoming.org, del.icio.us, and plenty more).
Twitter needs to change their infrastructure and stop flipping that bird upside down. Yahoo needs a reason for people to love them again (Groups, by the way is a great product and I think that and Finance are probably their hidden gems).
Should the bird go purple? What’s your take?
