the Web Chef's e-Bytes

Web Tidbits - Online Music and Video, Widgets

The Wall Street Journal reported today "Web Tools to find Your Inner DJ" on some of the developments in the online music space.  Among the trends and sites that they referenced were the following:

• Music Streaming Sites - Jango, Pandora (I've been using this one for awhile and love it. )
• Music Search Engines - seeqpod, songza, SkreemR
• Music Social Networking Sites - imeem, last.fm, iLike, MyStrands

Widgets
iMedia Connection has a video clip introducing widgets and the role that they can play as part of your marketing strategies.  You can see the video at: Widget Marketing 101. Also see their article "Do Widgets Spell Doom for Portals?"

For more on widgets see my article "Widgets: Web Components for Plug and Play" at Wisconsin Technology Network.

Online Video
CoolzOr has a posting on a new service called Hey!Spread that allows you to upload your promotional videos to 17 sites saving you the hassle of individual uploads. 

Google Streetview Expands & the Demise of Privacy

One of my good friends John just sent me the Google Street View of his house and place of work in Chicago.  This feature in Google maps has expanded beyond the introductory cities to include Chicago, Tucson, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Portland and Pittsburgh.  It was interesting to be able to take a virtual walk up his street and see his house... John your trees need a trim! :)  It also generated some disturbing thoughts about where this was all leading.

Here's their introductory video for the new cities....

The scary follow-up to this will be when this Street View information is mashed in with other personal information captured on people search engines like Rapleaf, Wink, Spock or PeekYou that Heather Green reviewed in a recent Business Week Blogspotting post.  I can see how data on the house's appraised value (already mashed on real estate sites), ownership history, police history etc will all be attached to this search result in yet another invasion of what little privacy remains.  Who needs the NSA and secret FBI spying when this data is being aggregated by commercial vendors and displayed for free or fee.

Is this taking things too far?

Search Updates - TubeSurf, All the Web

PCWorld has an article in the June 2007 issue "Search Engine Shootout" that compares some of the search engines out there.  For text info they rank the search engines they reviewed in the following order:

1. AlltheWeb
2. AltaVista
3. Google
4. Yahoo!
5. Microsoft Live Search
6. Ask

For Video search they rank the search engines

1. Google
2. AOL Video Search
3. TubeSurf
4. YouTube
5. Blinkx
6. Yahoo Video

TubeSurf was a new one to me.  Apparently it is a metasearch engine that combines results from Google, MySpace, Yahoo and YouTube.

Other search services referenced in the article are Rollyo where you can "roll your own" and create a Searchroll that will aggregate results for you from up to 25 search engines; Congoo that aggregates samples from paid content sites; Picsearch an image search engine and IceRocket, a blog search engine.

For additional information on new and specialty search engines see my article "Outflanking to Google, Yahoo, MSN Juggernaut" in Wisconsin Technology Network.   

Search Updates - MyRide and Searchforithere

Autobytel has announced that they'll be launching a new vertical search engine for car purchasers called Myride.com.  The new search engine was announced in February at the National Auto Dealers Association meeting with Computerworld reporting that it will launch June 21st (a pretty long lead time for a press release). 

In other search news, Searchforithere was launched yesterday.  The press release about the site states "rather than charging for each click, the new site charges a monthly fee regardless of how much traffic the advertiser receives". 

For additional insights on developments in search see my article "Outflanking the Google, Yahoo! Juggernaut" in Wisconsin Technology Network.

Blinkx & Cha Cha Announce Strategic Partnership

blinkx, "the world's most comprehensive video search engine" and ChaCha, the "breakthrough search engine that uses human guides to enhance search results" have announced a strategic partnership.  As the press release states "Under the terms of the agreement, ChaCha will provide its users with video search results from blinkx's extensive index of the rich media Web.  Results can be either culled instantly or by using the support of a human ChaCha "guide" who assists users in real time at ChaCha".

For other developments in the search world see my new article "Outflanking the Google, Yahoo, MSN Juggernaut" in my Buzz Network article on Wisconsin Technology Network.

New Column in Wisconsin Technology Network -

I've written a new column for the monthly Buzz Networks series in Wisconsin Technology Network.  The article, "Outflanking the Google, Yahoo, MSN Juggernaut" discusses some of the latest trends in the search engine world.

Taking it Beyond the Article
One trend referenced is the growth of vertical search engines that focus on a particular technology or discipline.  One of the latest ones that I've come across is called Balihoo, a vertical search engine for advertising media.  In other vertical search news, Blinkx, a video search tool referenced in my article is going for an IPO according to Business 2.0 Next Net.  Another new search engine that I've come across is local search engine Oddpath, that appears to have content tagged for geographic search.

Bad Baidu Beats Google in Beijing, Shanghai and China...

PC World reports on how Baidu has out-gunned and outmaneuvered Google to become the number one Chinese language site in the world and number one search engine in China with 62% of all searches on their site.  In a rare setback, Google the world's number one brand according to Millward Brown and number one visited site according to ComScore (reported at SFGate.com) has some lessons to learn to get China right. 

So what are the factors that have made Baidu successful?  One key to Baidu's success is reported to be their .mp3 search capabilities, a feature that due to copyright reasons has not been pursued by Western search engines.  Another success factor might be the simple user interface that Baidu seems to have borrowed from Google.  Yet another is reported to be that their search results are heavily weighted towards advertising rather than organic search results according to the New York Times.  A final reason is their willingness to allow search results to be heavily censored, a factor that leads to government support for the search engine.  

The Baidu IPO on August 5, 2005 was the "hottest" since Google according to Investor's Business Daily with an initial offer price of $27 a share that rose to $122 by the end of the day.  Today it is trading at $127.39 following first quarter results showing that advertising revenue had led to a profit jump of 143% in the first quarter of the year.

With only 10.7% or 137 million Chinese now online according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), there are still immense opportunities for growth for Internet players in the world's most populous nation as Internet access continues to expand.  CINIC published their 17th survey on the status of the Interent in China in January.  You can download the 83 page report from their site.

New Search Engine - Spock

Bill O'Reilly of O'Reilly Radar and Web 2.0 fame has an interesting post about a new search engine called Spock (currently in Beta).  He reports that the search engine takes people search one step further in that it allows users to contributed tags associated with the person.  He also feels that the network effect of the web is such that the search engine will become even more useful as the number of people indexed continues to grow.

Web Tidbits - Google buys DoubleClick and Webby Awards

Google Buys DoubleClick
Google has made their largest acquisition to date (subject to regulatory approval), dwarfing their vaunted purchase of YouTube with the purchase of online advertising giant DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.  The purchase should put the fear into advertisers and publishers alike since it further consolidates Google's control of the online advertising space beyond PPC advertising into other forms of online advertising due to DoubleClick's position in the market.

Forrester's Charlene Li says this gives Google total control of the online space including transactions and allows them to expand their offline advertising activitieies.  Yahoo!, Microsoft and AT&T are among those who are urging regulators to take a look at the acquisition according to CNET News. Sources are claiming that the advertising juggernaut would control 80% of online ads served. 

With 11 billion in cash (prior to the DoubleClick acquistion), Google has plenty of room to maneuver.  Curious to see where they might drop some bucks next?  Take a look at this story in Red Herring interviewing Google's Director of Corporate Development about their future plans.

Webby Online Advertising Award Nominees
Curious about top notch online advertising?

Take a look at the nominees for Webby Awards for Interactive Advertising in each of fifteen categories:

• Banner/Display or Rich Meida Advertising - B2B, B2C, Non-profit/educational, Promotional 
• Other Advertising - Branded Content, e-Mail, Games, Integrated Campaigns and Viral Marketing

Agencies with the greatest number of selected entries were RG/A and Crispin Porter & Bogusky with 5 each according to AdWeek.  This is the first year that the Webby's have included online advertising in their award nominee categories.  Winners will be announced in June.   

Search Alternatives to Google

Next month I'll be writing a piece for Wisconsin Technology Network on search alternatives to Google.  With Google's search market share approaching 60%, entrepreneurs continue to look for "chinks in the armor" by testing alternative search engines that focus on new search technologies; new visualization of search results; aggregation of search results; and narrowed focus by search category type (blogs, podcasts, video) or discipline/interest area (real estate, dogs, etc).

As part of this research I came across a posting on Read/Write that I thought you might find interesting.  It references the top 100 alternative search engines.