Open The Dialogue

Washington Post Cracks Down on Dissident Journalists

Reports have come in that the authorities at Washington Post have launched a severe crackdown on journalists’ use of social media after news broke that one of its editors, Raju Narisetti, used the popular microblogging website, Twitter, to send personal opinionated comments to the public.  The crackdown includes never before seen levels of censorship by shutting down Narisetti’s independent Twitter profile and new edicts outlawing similar uses by all WaPo writers.  These actions have been severely criticized by other member websites such as TechCrunch with limited discussion on the subject coming from within.  Narisetti’s conditions and whereabouts within the WaPo HQ are as yet unknown.

Brand Websites Under Attack by Google Sidewiki

Correspondent Steve Woodruff reports that brand websites are facing a critical threat to its image by the emergence of Google’s new tool called Sidewiki.  The wiki allows rogue agents to leave unflattering comments in direct contradiction to the careful messaging on the branded websites for all others to see.  Woodruff highlights the effects it is having on pharmaceutical blogs and websites.

Google Wave or a Google Tsunami?

Reports indicate that there are high levels of chatter surrounding Google Wave to be unleashed today.  Some are predicting it to be a Google Tsunami in its “potential to redefine the web and how we interact digitally.” Experts are still waiting to see what effect it will have for brands and social media strategy.

There’s a strong trend in the online world of publishing companies buying vertical search engines. NBC Universal invested recently in Healthline, which searches on medical information. Meredith added Helia, which also covers medical topics, to its line-up to bring more user activity to its roster of online titles. Blog network Glam just launched their own vertical search engine to mine the content of its 350+ partner blogs.

The latest move in this space is Hachette Filipacchi Media’s deal with TheFind.com. TheFind helps people find (natch) home and lifestyle products and information. Under the deal, Hachette will sell ads on the search engine and TheFind will provide search functionality on Hachette’s home and lifestyle portal PointClickHome.com.

So why the move toward vertical search? Because when you need to find specific information on a topic, a broad Google search often won’t return the results you need. There have been many times when I’m looking for information on a specific topic and I’ve wished I could just search blogs and sites on that topic instead of the whole web. Vertical search engines that draw upon just that sort of list have tremendous value to the user.

They also have power for the advertisers. This is a tightly focused audience they can reach by placing ads either on the engine’s site or contextually alongside search results. That’s access to people when they’re most motivated to be looking for help finding what they need, and if the best source turns out to be an advertiser then everyone wins.

I suspect more and more of these vertical plays will pop up and existing ones will be integrated into existing sites. The technology is getting better and with the proliferation of information online it’s going to be more important than ever to organize that information based on the needs of those doing the searching.

Constatin Basturea has created a Custom Google Search that contains the 500+ blogs on his PR and Communications Blog List. It’s such a fantastic idea – exactly along the lines of something I’ve been looking for for some time now – that I’ve added it to the sidebar here on OTD.

Many thanks to Constantin for all the hard work that I’m sure went into this.

While I don’t at all discount the fact that MySpace’s overall traffic will lead to subsequent traffic for pretty much any service integrated into the service’s site, I think the figures mentioned in this article by MediaPost’s Shankar Gupta, referencing Hitwise data recently published, are slightly misleading, when looked at based purely on numbers.

Let’s note what the “default” search is on MySpace’s site when a user is logged in, or not. It’s “The Web.” I’d gladly take a wager that the average MySpace user or visitor is there to search MySpace for people they know, etc., not primarily to search the Web. Sure, the option should be there, but the default is definitely getting more people through to Google than would probably have happened were the radio button switched to “MySpace,” IMHO.

People may indeed be interacting with the search results and ads when they click through because a) they find what they want in the MySpace-related search results, or just in the fact that people’s behavior can be very peculiar when they end up in a batch of search results rather than what they thought they were going to be searching in the first place. I’ve got to say that I’ve clicked the “Search” button no less than a dozen times on MySpace when I meant to look just within that system, without changing the option – have you?

[MP link via MarketingVOX]

Just a few weeks ago, we all learned about Google Base, the search company’s entry into the mass indexing market (which basically has one player – them). Just a few days ago, on the Google Base blog, Gavin wrote about yet another amazing feat (and I use feat, not feature, intentionally) that the service brings – the ability to drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar store’s door – by combining the existing Froogle shopping search with Base.

Nick Bradbury is talking about how he has reverted back to using Technorati to search blogs after playing with Google’s BlogSearch for awhile. For some time now, I’ve been recommending Technorati to most people who ask how they can find blogs on a specific topic, with the caveat that “it’s not perfect, but it’s what we’ve got” – I still stand by that, because the strange empty search for a popular site or error does pop up here and there, but it’s not like it was three or four months back. In Nick’s comments, Randy Charles Morin mentions IceRocket, a project that Mark Cuban is behind, and I’ve gotta say that it’s one of the more functional engines for searching – blogs or otherwise – that I use today. Being able to exclude things, subscribe to them, and drill down with one click are definitely things that I use regularly, and would highly recommend you go check it out for those reasons.

Last night the tech world heralded the true launch of Google Base, the new service that looks to index anything and everything that the search tool hasn’t already found, and make it (somewhat) easy to filter through to find what you’re looking for. Job postings, classified ads, event listings, even news and stories on various topics will all make their way into Google Base, and users of the service will be able to sort through it all.

This is a huge story on Tech Memeorandum this morning, and with good reason. What I’m actually *happy* to see is that there are a lot of good critical voices out there. I can’t say that this won’t be a huge seller and be a very helpful tool for a lot of people, companies, and organizations. What I will say is that what Fred Wilson is thinking might be spot on. There are already services that handle certain things that Google Base is doing – from tagging to blogging to photo sharing to job postings – so will putting that all in one bucket with a pretty good search tool make it a worthwhile place for people to spend a good portion of their surftime? Will Google Base end up being open permanently on people’s desktops as a repository of all things content, whether that be what kind of toolshed you’re looking to have built in your backyard to a link to an editorial you got printed in your local paper? What levels of integration will it have with other Google products? Do sites that already own a lot of usership suffer in the long term, or do they gain traffic and success because of Base’s functionality? It already points to CareerBuilder’s job listings, which are now “searchable” without ever having to go to CareerBuilder’s own site until you want to look more closely. Additionally, what does this mean for people who are utilizing other Google services, like AdWords, that could potentially get overlapped by this? At TechCrunch, one commenter asks why he should be using AdWords for a keyword campaign for a job posting when he could just list the job through Base. Now obviously Base doesn’t have the usership that Google prime does, but that could change fairly quickly, especially for those “in the know.”

Dan Gillmor, I think, is asking a similar question – or really, making a rhetorical statement, if one can do so – when he says “There’s so much more here, potentially, than immediately meets the eye.” In my opinion, this is an easy way to get everyone to do for Google what it, and its search algorithms, haven’t been able to do alone – sort, filter, and deliver content, maybe even un-indexable content, in a way that makes the rest of the GoogleBot braintrust happy. You think you get a lot of search results now? I’d expect to see a big change there in the very near future, should this catch on.

Scott Baradell at Media Orchard is asking about the difference in the top search result between Yahoo!’s Buzz Index (within the music category) and Technorati’s Top Searches This Hour. Yahoo!, on both its “Music” category and in the “Overall” listing has “Britney Spears” as the top search right now, whereas Technorati has “Prussian Blue” as its top search (Click the image below for a larger version).

Obviously, it should be clarified here that the people who are searching Yahoo! as a whole are a completely different population than those that are using Technorati on a regular basis. Sure, there’s some overlap, and they’re not totally exclusive populations, but I would venture a guess that a very large percentage of Yahoo! search engine users don’t use Technorati at all. Obviously this answers the topline question that Baradell poses, but it also brings up a completely different one.

What about the fact that except for Rosa Parks, there is no other overlap in the lists – and on Yahoo!, “Rosa Parks” isn’t in the leaders, just in the “Movers” section, meaning there is an increase in searches for her name and associated terms. Obviously there’s a scale issue here – moving the needle on Technorati, no matter how many blogs it indexes, is never not quite at the point that Yahoo! is. At the same time, does it show that the users of Technorati are not representative of “The Web” as a whole? I’d say that’s more likely, at least a little bit. So if that’s the case, what do we do with that fact?

If anything, I think we can say that blog readers / searchers are exactly what most who understand them from a marketing perspective realize – that those who are reading / writing them have very targeted focuses (focii?), and have different priorities. Maybe it’s that blog searchers understand search tools a little more, and aren’t using as “highly trafficked” topics as those who use a search engine would, (again, I’m going out on a limb here). At the very least, I would have to say that except when something exceptionally crazy happens – such as the Desperate Housewives intro debacle on ABC’s “Monday Night Football” or a famous musician dies – entertainment isn’t the priority for Technorati users. Sports, more “newsworthy” items, technology issues, and politics seem to rule the roost when it comes to blog searches, based on my frequent visits to Technorati’s main page. That’s not to say that blog readers / searchers are more cultured or anything as a whole – believe me, I’m sure that’s not the case – just that entertainment and celebrity isn’t necessarily a priority for those individuals.

Costa Tsiokos is asking why Google has so many interfaces for its Blog Search tool. In actuality, it’s all about comfort level and user choice. Just as you can get to this site by going to openthedialogue.org or openthedialog.net (among others), Google has set up their Blog Search function to be somewhat ubiquitous across its network, enabling users of the Blog*Spot hosting service for Blogger to easily access it while offering a Google-esque blogsearch.google.com for those who are used to heading over to the primary Google page.

This isn’t about too many extensions of a brand or anything, it’s just offering something to anyone who might be utilizing Google’s many services, essentially those in the blog arena.