Some excerpts: 

“Analytics at the end of the day is going to be big deal. Behaviroal Targeting…You are not going to speculate but know excatly where your marketing dollars go.” MC Hammer

“Everyone has a friend who does nothing but sit at the computer and upload youtube videos and send mails to everyone. You need more of these friends as your fans” Mistah FA

“If you let people know how smart you are, they aren’t gonna talk in front of you. Honestly.. I sit around and listen to others.” Cham

“I like digital strategy because it eliminates the middle man. Today the middle men make more money than artists and that is changing with Internet.” MC Hammer

“Communication between Hip Hop and Tech world is helpful for both. When we talk I will learn something from you. You would also learn from me - sometimes things you didn’t know about your own kids. I was sitting next to a man wearign cowboy hat in a flight and he looks at me and says ’so you are a hip hop artist. my daughter never listens to that kinda stuff’. I said you would be surprised. He called his daughter and she yelled from the phone ‘oh you’re sitting next to Cham! Ayyyyy!!’” Cham

“Citizen journalism is important for the society. There are nine million stories not being told every day. Big media tells us opinionated stories. We need to know the truth.” MC Hammer

“My proudest digital moment was seeing youtube and appreciating its influence - its ability to see spontaneous moments in time that we thought were lost forever.” MC Hammer

“There was a 70 year old lady in Texas ghostriding to my song. They got Martin Luther King in bed when he was having the dream” Mistah FAB

“I will walk out from a deal if I don’t get the digital rights.” Cham

Search is more relevant when it answers questions without us providing the context explicitly. One of the most intimate devices for an information worker is their mobile phones which can help provide this context. So there is a big opportunity to utilize this incredible asset to provide a much more relevant experience for consumers. Using the personal information manager, i.e. the address book to create a on-the-go social network is also a great potential.

Still most players in this area know that barring an on the deck placement through carriers one of the toughest challenges for their success is to create enough brand equity that consumers bypass them altogether. That takes a lot of money and creativity unless there is more openness on the deck. Until then, we are still living on the dark ages of mobile communicaion.

This week marks the fifteen year anniversary of World Wide Web. (15 already?) Tim Berners-Lee, father of WWW, has a message (recorded on the ten year anniversary but still relevant) on CERN website. Interestingly, considering the IPO craze that followed, here is what he has to say about the WWW specifications:

For me editing the specifications.. and shepharding the loose enthusiast groups and early adopters, it was clear to me that it was absolutely essential that none of the people I was taking to would have been involved at all if had thought if they were buying into some commercially controlled product.

“Search is about finding what you don’t know. So in some cases personalization could be exact worst thing.” Peter

“Customization versus personalization - if you can identify the task you are trying to do in a specific moment, it could be very useful in meeting the customer intention. that does not mean you provide the ‘personalized’ results all the time but specific to the moment” Larry

Givent the signals that can be used to identify the customer intent, how smart search can get in next 5 years?

“We can get better at this as more content becomes available. Video is getting big. We are getting content from magazines. With this increased amount of information, we can do much better.” Peter

“It depends on how far the SERP evolves. The likelihood of clicking on the tabs on main page is incredibly small today even though there is a lot of relevant content available there. User experience on the main page can drive the changes.” Brad

Google is experimenting w. videos in the ads. What are other trends you see going forward?

“Web is becoming flatter. We are following what consumers are asking.” Peter

“if you have the  right framework and the right settings and the right incentives - advertisers will ask for the further innovation.” Larry

“Search is the most quantifiable tactic for the marketers so you will see a lot of experimentation in this space in terms of ad formats.” Brad

Does Blended Search mean Webmasters have less control on SEO?

“No, it is more opportunity to get into the mainstream discussion (thru user generated content) in a more natural way. Brad

“Basically you are saying that the Search Engine Optimization folks need to get more creative.” Chris Sherman

5 years from today what specific feature or capability would you kill to have in the search engine?

“user metaphor on the home page will be key thing.” Brad

“deeper understanding of the user and the content. Going beyond the current model of matching the keyword to links.” Peter

Pull versus Push - the user in more control.

“Users can today get a preview on the video results by hovering on the result and then can choose to get more if they like. That is an example of what can be done.” Brad

“Rather than publishing or broadcasting a book, I can be more targeted.” Peter

I like Loren’s summary comments: “For the most part, I’m finding Raju’s presentation quite interest(ing) and the offerings Microsoft has for webmasters to upload blendable content to Microsoft Search.” Here are more details.

Barry Schwartz:

Microsoft watches how people use search - they camp out and watch the consumers. Consumers use search in three main ways:

(1) Find: Targeted questions, high frequency of usage, short sessions, examples include weather, local, listings, stock and directions.
(2) Discover: Clear need but less steps are less clear, long and repeated sessions, high emotional investments and examples include buying strollers, health information and so on.
(3) Explorer: Browsing through with no specific target or goal, long and repeated sessions, examples include hobbies, entertainment and interests. More..

Loren Baker:

Raju uses snow reports as an example and searching for ski shops and identifies “one click” directions in examples of blended search results in Microsoft.

What does this mean for an SEO perspective? Local is big. 33% of searches are local. If someone does a search for a ski shop in San Jose, you want to be first. One way to enhance your ranking is a business listing which can be set up in the Microsoft Webmaster Dashboard.

80% of online shoppers begin with product search queries, Microsoft offers the user the ability to upload entire product catalog which helps users find the vast selection of products which are available.

For the most part, I’m finding Raju’s presentation quite interested and the offerings Microsoft has for webmasters to upload blendable content to Microsoft Search. More..

I will be on a panel on blended search revolution at SMX Santa Clara next week. If you are attending SMX, feel free to stop by this panel on Tuesday, 2/26 at 10:30am. Full agenda with other Microsoft participants is here.

VSS projects the fastest-growing media segments over the next five years will be pure-play Internet and mobile services, branded entertainment, out-of-home media, outsourced custom publishing and public relations, with each producing CAGRs of between 10% and 15% in the five-year period. VSS expects total Internet advertising to reach $61.98 billion in 2011, surpassing newspapers as the nation’s largest ad medium.

It also says that an average employee watched 260 hours of media at work. I am sure some of this is work related. But that is almost 7 weeks of Web surfing!

These formulas have grown better at reading the minds of users to interpret a very short query. Are the users looking for a job, a purchase or a fact? The formulas can tell that people who type “apples” are likely to be thinking about fruit, while those who type “Apple” are mulling computers or iPods. They can even compensate for vaguely worded queries or outright mistakes.

I was in India a few days ago. Minor differences in page load time become signficant in the spotty bandwidths. I tried a few search engines to see how they responded. I found myself searching less on engines that would load with Images in the search results thus slowing down the load time. I did not care about a rich experience if that as at the expense of performance. I could even take a less relevant result - as in fifth on page versus top - if that was the trade off. This is borne by numerous surveys on customer satisfaction too. Page Performance ranks quite high with relevance and UI as one of the top indicators of search experience.

From BrandWeek site:

Nielsen Monitor-Plus reported Monday a 4.6% increase in advertising spending to $139.07 billion, compared with 2005. Most of the 17 media experienced growth, led by the Internet with a 35% gain to $6.7 billion, followed by a 9.1% gain in Spot TV in the top 100 markets to $25.6 billion.

The overall Internet Ad market includes Search, Display, email marketing, etc. To drill down into the Search market specifically, it is useful to see the query volume trends. They are the leading indicators of the Search related Ad spend.  Nielsen’s recent report (pdf) on query volume shows that in the last year, Google’s query volume grew by 40% while Live grew by 9%. Similarly, I have seen comscore’s reports showing growth in the order of 30% in last year.

Stating the obvious but all signs point to the continued momentum in Search.

Microsoft is donating money to two charities based on your searches. All you have to do it use Live Search engine from either ninemillion site or Team Seattle depending on which charity you want to support. (why not both?) 

For every search, Microsoft will make a donation to the charity. This is a great way to support the community as well as check out Live Search. Sebastian Gard, Product Manager for Live Search, has a blog post here with more details.

The two organizations we are working with in these programs are  ninemillion.org and Team Seattle. Ninemillion.org is a United Nations led campaign providing education and sports programs for nine million refugee youth around the world, and Team Seattle is the most successful motorsports charity in the US, racing to benefit Seattle’s Children’s Hospital.

Live Search

Super Bowl Is this useful?

2006: Sunday, February 5
2007: Sunday, February 4

Super Bowl, annual championship game of the National Football League, the major professional football league in the United States. The game is played on the last Sunday in January or the first Sunday in February, between the champions of the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference.

Well - that quick response piqued my curiosity. How would other search engines answer that question? I just had to know. So I typed it in Yahoo. Then in Google. After waiting with bated breath for exactly 0.09 seconds, I got my results.

SuperBowl.com Official site of Super Bowl XLI, played February 4, 2007, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, FL. Includes analysis, news, video, and a history of the NFL’s … Category: NFL > Super Bowlwww.superbowl.com - 87k - Cached - More from this site

SuperBowl.com - Official website of Super Bowl XLI

The official site of Super Bowl XLI which will be played in South Florida on Feb. 4, 2007 at Dolphin Stadium.
www.superbowl.com/
History - www.superbowl.com/history
Future Super Bowl Locations - www.superbowl.com/features/futuresites
A faceoff in Florida - www.superbowl.com/features/general_info
Super Bowl Video - www.superbowl.com/video
More results from www.superbowl.com »

Each of the search engine provided correct result as top item. Google actually pulled links from deep within superbowl.com site to share history, future locations and even a video in its top result. But these results did not beat what Live showed me as the Instant Answer. it was clear and succinct. Just what I wanted.

I really hope we see more widespread use of technology like Instant Answers so that as a consumer I dont need to wade through text or link thru sites to get answers. It is just there.

Here is a free search fact pack from Advertising Age magazine. They actually published this back in November but I somehow missed it then. A friend just sent me this. It has some good basic data on Search Engine Marketing/Optimization. But if you are already doing SEM/SEO you probably know most of this already. So hand it to someone who needs a primer.

On page 38 we detail 12 search-engine optimization strategies for 2007 — you should know that adding tags, wikis and RSS to the content on your site can do wonders for your website’s search rankings. Or track the life of a search on page 30 with a case study of the term “HDTV.” Or check out the cool eye-tracking study detailed on page 40 to see what search marketers mean when they talk about the “Golden Triangle.”