How to explain OpenSocial to Your Executives
by Jeremiah Owyang
November 6, 2007
After Google's announcement of OpenSocial—"OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs [application programming interfaces] for social applications across multiple Websites"—many people are talking about it at the developer, strategist, and marketing level. I'm going to take it up for another audience—your boss. Feel free to repurpose this content any way you want.
You: A Web Decision-Maker
As a Web strategist, you are someone who is partially or wholly responsible for the long-term direction of your Web site, or the Web site of your clients. If you have to explain the announcement to your boss (or you are the boss), I'm going to help.
Terms
* Social network: An network or community where people of similar interest share. MySpace, LinkedIn, and Hi5 are examples.
* Mini-application, app, widget: These applications, created by third-party developers or your company, can "sit" on top of or alongside those thriving communities of connected people.
* Platform, container, social network: Where the mini-applications can reside and interact.
* API: The common code shared among platforms and developers of mini-applications.
Article continues below
Situation: On Nov. 1, the OpenSocial Is Announced
Consumer decisions are made on communities where trusted members share; as a result, savvy companies go where their market is.
We've hit a milestone on how the Web is becoming amorphous: Data is about to be shared easily and quickly in a fluid way.
Google and several other social networks in the alliance launched OpenSocial on Nov 1. Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook are not part of the announcement (yet).
Four months ago, Facebook allowed third-party companies to build mini-applications for its site; this is similar in concept, but now includes many other players.
The platforms or containers where your mini-application can reside: MySpace, Bebo, SixApart, Orkut, Salesforce.com, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.
What Is Open Social?
Google says: "OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple Web sites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds."
Translation: Social networks and other Web sites (we can call them platforms or containers) can share mini-Web sites (applications or widgets), which can interact with those online communities.
Example: A company that sells a variety of blenders from its Web site can now create a mini-application that can be shared on any of the social networks that have agreed to participate in OpenSocial. The blender-related application will interact with each of those communities, and could benefit from features of users' sharing, rating, and recommending blenders to their friends. The blender application reaches new audiences that interact with it, thus extending the blender company's reach.
Important Concept: Distributed
Web marketing no longer is limited to your corporate site. Let go of the concept of "driving traffic to your Web site" as a sole measurement of success. The Web, its message, and your battles are now fought on the open and distributed Web.
Trusted discussions and decisions among companies and prospects and customers are made on these social communities and networks; savvy executives need to go there.
Article continues below
Opportunities
* Efficient development: Since there's standardization in code use (APIs), if you develop an application for OpenSocial that app should be easily re-used on all the social networks that are participating. This greatly reduces development time; you no longer need, say... a "MySpace strategy" or "Bebo strategy."
* Harness existing communities: Since these applications will be plugged into existing communities, the need to build an audience isn't as crucial, as you can leverage the communities where they already exist. Why build if you can easily join?
* Open standards help for the long term: It appears that the standards and development languages are commonly known and not proprietary, so it reduces the chance of vendor lock in. Having a common code (API) across all networks makes movement easier, reducing development and re-configuring in the long term. One should always be cautious, however, as no system is perfect.
* Your existing applications become social: Now, your standalone applications can be shared with communities. If you've already spend resources on creating interactive marketing, large libraries, or other projects, consider how they can be repurposed on these Web sites. You can be efficient with your resources.
* The future will bring social to your Web site: I foresee the trend clearly nodding toward this direction: Social-networking features (friends and connections) will be brought to the static corporate Web site. Soon, there will be customers, prospects, and employees networked on your own corporate Web site. We're not there yet, but start planning on how that might look.
Challenges
* Unproven: We're still at the start of this movement; there's no reason to jump in, as the bugs have not yet been identified or corrected.
* Open data opens risks: It's not fully clear how data will be shared among the multiple platforms. By giving them access to your applications, there is risk in exposing login and other sensitive information. The same applies to user data. The risks are not fully known.
* Inconsistencies may emerge: Just because there is a common set of codes (APIs) doesn't mean all of the applications will behave the same way across each of the platforms. There may be inconsistency, as no user shares the same set of friends (social graph) on each network.
* Cultural differences: Social Networks are adopted in ways that vary by culture. From LinkedIn's business network to Orkut's mostly Brazilian users, no two networks are the same. Expecting an application to work seamlessly for all applications is foolish; expect to research each community before customization.
* Future authority not known: Although led by Google, this alliances appears to be a conglomerate of many different companies. It's not clear what the governing body will be... whether a single group, representatives, or Google itself.
Next Steps
1. Wait and watch: Unless you already have successful widgets deployed on Facebook, wait a bit; no need to jump in; let the alpha teams build and break.
2. Host internal discussion: In the meantime, have a brown-bag meeting with your development team and Web strategy leaders to discuss how existing applications could be repurposed, and what your future deployment road might look like.
3. Develop strategy: Understand that this is a new sandbox, and if you decide to venture in, your efforts should be experimental and you need flexibility . Be sure to bake measurement into the start, so you can gauge and benchmark your progress.
4. Educate: my Web Strategy blog has a new tag called OpenSocial; I'll be posting helpful information.
Related Resources
* Starting point: The official OpenSocial page
* Video: OpenSocial hosted an event on the opening night; this hour-long YouTube video has demos of code and applications
* What matters: Forrester's Charlene Li breaks down what is likely to happen, and why you should care
* Developers: Ted, CEO of Dogster discusses the announcement
* Thinking Bigger: Six Apart sees the forest... that this is a development for the whole Web, not just Google
* Opinions: There are many, many voices on Techmeme if you want more color
Jeremiah Owyang is a Web strategist, speaker, and blogger/videoblogger focused on how companies use the Web to connect with customers. He is active on Twitter and can be followed at jowyang; if you follow him, he'll follow you back.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
"Entrepreneurial Spirit"
Have you ever asked the question of yourself what does it take to run a business enterprise? Many have asked and even tried their hands at running their own business and have failed. Why did they fail? The answers vary. Many say that one of the main reasons business fail is a lack of capital but conventional wisdom says that most companies fail because of poor management.
This being said we can now address the question that this article is all about: Who are entrepreneurs? In my mind entrepreneurs are the pioneers of the business world. They are individuals who are willing to risk everything to succeed in business. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are well educated and some barely educated at all. But they all have one thing in common they are willing to pay the price and take the risks of launching a business enterprise.
Usually you can determine if it is an entrepreneur running a business enterprise or a wanna be simply by looking at the decisions they make. Entrepreneurs are those who look at the records that have been compiled and make their decisions based upon their inner spirit. They are driven to do what many are afraid to try and go where others dare not go. Entrepreneurs are a special breed of risk takers.
You and I become entrepreneurs when we lose the fear of failure. This trait can be developed but great entrepreneurs seem to be born with this instinct. Therefore you have differences among those who have risen to the legendary status of entrepreneur. So many times decisions are made simply based upon a feeling the entrepreneur has in his heart. He or she follows his or her passion and is rewarded with the prize (whatever it may be).
Also entrepreneurs are those who are persistent. Each time they fail they get right back on their feet and try, try again. If a person is a true entrepreneur they have no quit in them. They see failure as simply a stepping stone to success. Many of them believe that each failure is simply a door that leads to success.
Can you be an entrepreneur? Yes you can be an entrepreneur if you do these three things well. First, can you handle disappointment? In business there is certain to arise some bad days and a true entrepreneur will chalk it up to growing pains and move on with running the business.
Secondly, can you run your business when funds are low? True entrepreneurs find ways to keep the company going even in the face of great adversity. Finally, can you work alone? Leading any enterprise can be a lonely thing but when you are starting a company and success is no where on the horizon and all you have is your dream many fall along the way. True entrepreneur's will continue on in spite of all the pitfalls and obstacles that lie in their path.
This being said we can now address the question that this article is all about: Who are entrepreneurs? In my mind entrepreneurs are the pioneers of the business world. They are individuals who are willing to risk everything to succeed in business. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are well educated and some barely educated at all. But they all have one thing in common they are willing to pay the price and take the risks of launching a business enterprise.
Usually you can determine if it is an entrepreneur running a business enterprise or a wanna be simply by looking at the decisions they make. Entrepreneurs are those who look at the records that have been compiled and make their decisions based upon their inner spirit. They are driven to do what many are afraid to try and go where others dare not go. Entrepreneurs are a special breed of risk takers.
You and I become entrepreneurs when we lose the fear of failure. This trait can be developed but great entrepreneurs seem to be born with this instinct. Therefore you have differences among those who have risen to the legendary status of entrepreneur. So many times decisions are made simply based upon a feeling the entrepreneur has in his heart. He or she follows his or her passion and is rewarded with the prize (whatever it may be).
Also entrepreneurs are those who are persistent. Each time they fail they get right back on their feet and try, try again. If a person is a true entrepreneur they have no quit in them. They see failure as simply a stepping stone to success. Many of them believe that each failure is simply a door that leads to success.
Can you be an entrepreneur? Yes you can be an entrepreneur if you do these three things well. First, can you handle disappointment? In business there is certain to arise some bad days and a true entrepreneur will chalk it up to growing pains and move on with running the business.
Secondly, can you run your business when funds are low? True entrepreneurs find ways to keep the company going even in the face of great adversity. Finally, can you work alone? Leading any enterprise can be a lonely thing but when you are starting a company and success is no where on the horizon and all you have is your dream many fall along the way. True entrepreneur's will continue on in spite of all the pitfalls and obstacles that lie in their path.
A Day In My SocialURL life...
12am work on Executive Summary
2am work on Business Plan
4am sleep...
8am check gmail and socialURL email
9am reading industry updates (Google takes over the world)
10am check out my LinkedIn to see what's happening with my connections
10:30am get on a conference call
12noon have lunch with wife and kids
1pm get back to my emails
2pm get on a conference call
3pm take a walk outside
3:15pm get back to my 20+ tabs opened in Firefox
4pm work on Powerpoint
5pm hang with the wife and kids
6pm eat dinner
7pm get on a call
8pm check emails
9pm put the wife and kids to bed
10pm get back to work on business plan
12midnight it starts all over again...
2am work on Business Plan
4am sleep...
8am check gmail and socialURL email
9am reading industry updates (Google takes over the world)
10am check out my LinkedIn to see what's happening with my connections
10:30am get on a conference call
12noon have lunch with wife and kids
1pm get back to my emails
2pm get on a conference call
3pm take a walk outside
3:15pm get back to my 20+ tabs opened in Firefox
4pm work on Powerpoint
5pm hang with the wife and kids
6pm eat dinner
7pm get on a call
8pm check emails
9pm put the wife and kids to bed
10pm get back to work on business plan
12midnight it starts all over again...
Monday, November 5, 2007
True Value Behind Social Networks
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Lots of people find the next books they plan to read by browsing the New York Times or Amazon best-seller lists. Others count on referrals from friends and colleagues. But what if you could eye a hot title as it began to climb the best-seller list within your Facebook network? You'd be alerted: "Thirty-one people in your network have bought 'Microtrends.'"
A scenario like this soon will play out on Facebook, as the company is about to unveil plans to make shopping part of its social network.
The shopping feature, according someone familiar with the work Facebook has been doing in this area, will go something like this: When Facebook members buy something at a commerce site, they can let those in their Facebook networks know about the purchase, passing along information on the item as well as a discount or coupon. The service will bring a sort of easily tracked viral element to online shopping. Two other people described it as part of a larger plan by Facebook that will allow data about Facebookers' online transactions and interactions to circulate within their social graphs. Marketers will be able to plug in to the program, enabling consumer interactions such as purchases to become part of the social network. But these people suggested the program won't be limited to shopping and is just a sliver of the larger announcements Facebook will unveil to marketers during an event in New York on Nov. 6. Facebook declined to comment on the feature.
Recommendations
Of course, this social-shopping play comes at a time when marketers are increasingly realizing the benefits of recommendations and word-of-mouth as sales drivers. Allowing users to broadcast their purchases to people in their social networks and act almost as affiliates, passing along offers and discounts, no doubt would be appealing to online retailers and product marketers. According to a recent Deloitte survey, family members' or friends' comments about a product are the second-biggest influences on consumer purchases of new products or brands (after the reputation of the manufacturer or supplier).
"This is a smart move for Facebook because the true revenue opportunity for social networks isn't straight ad serving or interruptive marketing, but rather embedding 'virality' into members' natural purchase behaviors," said Dave Balter, CEO of BuzzAgent, in an e-mail. "This capability may present a glimpse into the long-term value of social networks in general."
But he pointed out possible challenges: The application applies only to online shopping, which limits the number of products that can participate. Also, most people still talk about products in person, so the critical component of offline dialogue seems missing from the solution.
Beyond CPM
Affinity groups are the best ways to market products and content, said Paul Martino, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge. "It's not about an ad but about in-network content or services." He called social shopping "a fantastic idea. ... That's way more relevant than run-of-site CPM ads."
However, he, like Mr. Balter, suggested its limitation lies in its online-only nature. "Ninety-six percent of Best Buy purchases happen in the store and only a fraction online, so there might be a big gaping hole there," Mr. Martino said. "Having the right collection of retailers in your network will be the key to making a product like that work."
Facebook does have ties to online retailers. When CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage in May to announce to developers he was opening up Facebook's platform, Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti was there to talk about launching the book-reviews application. Another e-commerce giant, iTunes, is expected to be part of Facebook's New York advertiser-focused event this week.
A scenario like this soon will play out on Facebook, as the company is about to unveil plans to make shopping part of its social network.
The shopping feature, according someone familiar with the work Facebook has been doing in this area, will go something like this: When Facebook members buy something at a commerce site, they can let those in their Facebook networks know about the purchase, passing along information on the item as well as a discount or coupon. The service will bring a sort of easily tracked viral element to online shopping. Two other people described it as part of a larger plan by Facebook that will allow data about Facebookers' online transactions and interactions to circulate within their social graphs. Marketers will be able to plug in to the program, enabling consumer interactions such as purchases to become part of the social network. But these people suggested the program won't be limited to shopping and is just a sliver of the larger announcements Facebook will unveil to marketers during an event in New York on Nov. 6. Facebook declined to comment on the feature.
Recommendations
Of course, this social-shopping play comes at a time when marketers are increasingly realizing the benefits of recommendations and word-of-mouth as sales drivers. Allowing users to broadcast their purchases to people in their social networks and act almost as affiliates, passing along offers and discounts, no doubt would be appealing to online retailers and product marketers. According to a recent Deloitte survey, family members' or friends' comments about a product are the second-biggest influences on consumer purchases of new products or brands (after the reputation of the manufacturer or supplier).
"This is a smart move for Facebook because the true revenue opportunity for social networks isn't straight ad serving or interruptive marketing, but rather embedding 'virality' into members' natural purchase behaviors," said Dave Balter, CEO of BuzzAgent, in an e-mail. "This capability may present a glimpse into the long-term value of social networks in general."
But he pointed out possible challenges: The application applies only to online shopping, which limits the number of products that can participate. Also, most people still talk about products in person, so the critical component of offline dialogue seems missing from the solution.
Beyond CPM
Affinity groups are the best ways to market products and content, said Paul Martino, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge. "It's not about an ad but about in-network content or services." He called social shopping "a fantastic idea. ... That's way more relevant than run-of-site CPM ads."
However, he, like Mr. Balter, suggested its limitation lies in its online-only nature. "Ninety-six percent of Best Buy purchases happen in the store and only a fraction online, so there might be a big gaping hole there," Mr. Martino said. "Having the right collection of retailers in your network will be the key to making a product like that work."
Facebook does have ties to online retailers. When CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage in May to announce to developers he was opening up Facebook's platform, Amazon VP Russ Grandinetti was there to talk about launching the book-reviews application. Another e-commerce giant, iTunes, is expected to be part of Facebook's New York advertiser-focused event this week.
MySpace Joins OpenSocial
MySpace, the world’s largest social network, and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced that they are joining forces to launch OpenSocial— a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web. The partnership spearheads an initiative to standardize and simplify the development of social applications. Today’s announcement underscores MySpace’s commitment to supporting standards that foster innovation in an increasingly social Web.
TechCrunch has published notes from the official press call, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt is reported as saying “we’ve been working with MySpace for more than a year in secret on this”. Wow. That’s got to be one of the best kept secrets in Silicon Valley for quite some time.
TechCrunch says that Bebo have also signed on, adding to an array of partners which now includes: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.
That’s some serious ammunition to backup Google’s combine and conquer strategy in taking on Facebook. How will the latter respond? As Mike Arrington says, Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial?
TechCrunch has published notes from the official press call, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt is reported as saying “we’ve been working with MySpace for more than a year in secret on this”. Wow. That’s got to be one of the best kept secrets in Silicon Valley for quite some time.
TechCrunch says that Bebo have also signed on, adding to an array of partners which now includes: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.
That’s some serious ammunition to backup Google’s combine and conquer strategy in taking on Facebook. How will the latter respond? As Mike Arrington says, Will Facebook now be forced to join OpenSocial?
Monday, October 8, 2007
Executive decisions
Fundraising has been an eye opener! Things are seemingly coming together all at once and rightly so for SocialURL. We've been growing our community organically and in need of funding to scale to the next level.
Now that the value of the company is starting to take shape the issues around advisors, investors and people who want a piece of the pie are starting to become interesting. A few questions I am faced with currently include: Is Angel investment better than VC? Which law firm is best to engage with Wilson Sonsini, Fenwick & West or DLA Piper? What are your core team's strength and weaknesses? What can you do for work to pay the bills while you wait to get funded?
Some of the lessons in the trenches:
Beware of the sales tactics "BUT": Your startup is awesome "BUT" here are your weaknesses and this is why you need me and I don't come cheap.
Check your own eagerness: In starting up it is often very difficult to separate yourself from the business and doing what is best for the business is often blurry when money is involved.
Friends and Business: When the business is out in the open it will be equally difficult to discern who are your friends because in reality you and your partners are the closest thing to being friends and even then being business partners is just that- its business.
Everything really happens in San Fransisco...if you have a startup- get yourself as frequently as you can up there or move there if you can...
Now that the value of the company is starting to take shape the issues around advisors, investors and people who want a piece of the pie are starting to become interesting. A few questions I am faced with currently include: Is Angel investment better than VC? Which law firm is best to engage with Wilson Sonsini, Fenwick & West or DLA Piper? What are your core team's strength and weaknesses? What can you do for work to pay the bills while you wait to get funded?
Some of the lessons in the trenches:
Beware of the sales tactics "BUT": Your startup is awesome "BUT" here are your weaknesses and this is why you need me and I don't come cheap.
Check your own eagerness: In starting up it is often very difficult to separate yourself from the business and doing what is best for the business is often blurry when money is involved.
Friends and Business: When the business is out in the open it will be equally difficult to discern who are your friends because in reality you and your partners are the closest thing to being friends and even then being business partners is just that- its business.
Everything really happens in San Fransisco...if you have a startup- get yourself as frequently as you can up there or move there if you can...
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
MySpace, Amazon, Ebay, Digg, Flickr, Technorati & Socialurl
In a recent post on Mediapost's Search Insider, writer David Berkowitz enlighten's those still curious about what Search is all about by his recent article entitled, "Search's MySpace Age Arrives"
by David Berkowitz, Tuesday, September 4, 2007
"With search becoming a more ubiquitous activity across the Web, comScore is expanding the market view of the search universe to encompass other searches that occur on the Internet." David writes that it is now unclear now more than ever as to who may be the fourth largest search engines
I've been waiting for this day since August 2006, when I published a column on "Search's MySpace Age." I wrote, "MySpace is much bigger than just a social network; it's also a search engine. ComScore has at times listed it as the sixth largest engine, albeit with less than one percent of searches." The column continued, "The growth of MySpace, which now has more than 100 million registered users, leads me to wonder what would happen if MySpace emerged as one of the top four search engines (my prediction: it will)."
The prediction took a year to come true. ComScore's latest data shows MySpace capturing 551 million searches in July 2007, compared to 438 million for AOL (the whole Time Warner Network, which includes Mapquest, had 971 million searches) and 219 million for Ask.com (the whole Ask Network, including MyWebSearch, had 449 million). By this tally, MySpace only trails Google, Yahoo, and MSN Windows Live when comparing it to the five major search engines.
The prediction wasn't perfect. YouTube had more searches than MySpace -- albeit commandingly, with just over 1 billion searches. By that standard, MySpace is really the fifth-largest engine, topping MapQuest and other AOL properties (which had 533 million searches), eBay (468 million), Craigslist (170 million), and Amazon sites (144 million). (In some ways I've waited two and a half years for this news; I considered branding eBay a search engine in a March 2005 column.)
Meanwhile, MySpace's share of searches has grown exponentially, as it captured 4.12% of all 13.4 billion Internet searches. To compare the figure to last year when comScore briefly included MySpace as the sixth largest search engine, MySpace would have captured over 7% of searches if it was included in the July 2007 "core search" category, ten times the 0.7% share it garnered in May 2006.
For publishers, there's far more at stake than bragging rights. Searching within a site is already tapped as a revenue opportunity, as signified by Google's deal powering MySpace's searches through 2010, which guarantees MySpace almost twice as much revenue as Fox Interactive Media paid for it. Given MySpace's search volume, it's a safe bet that Google will have to pay well over the minimum. On top of that direct revenue, though, couple the searches per visitor with other engagement metrics -- and publishers can make an even better case for advertisers to increase spending there.
For marketers, comScore's framework points to even more opportunity. Part of it lies in media planning, as some of these other publishers can be part of both search and display buys, and the search industry as a whole benefits from a more competitive market. There's even more potential upside for marketers when thinking about search engine optimization. This ties directly into the growing appreciation for universal search, from how Google includes other content in its main search engine results pages to a broader definition that ties into how comScore portrays this vast search universe.
Consider a search on YouTube for "Kabul football club" (without the quotes), which leads to a popular, well-rated short documentary on the Afghanistan soccer team. Enter that query in Google and the YouTube link comes up first, just as it does in Yahoo. Yet in Yahoo, the third link points to the same clip on Google Video, though Google Video doesn't appear within the first three pages of Google's own results for this search. Meanwhile, the YouTube clip ranks first in Google for "Kabul football team," but try that query on Yahoo and YouTube drops to sixth place.
Marketers can take advantage of this trend too. Last December, for example, Kodak released a commercial on YouTube where an elderly man rants about how slowly Kodak embraced digital photography while promoting how nimble it is today. Type "Kodak commercial" (without quotes) in Google and the YouTube rant ranks first, ahead of kodak.com, which ranks sixth. The same search on Yahoo brings up Kodak.com first and second followed by the YouTube video. Try "Kodak rant" on Yahoo and that YouTube video ranks first, but the video doesn't rank in the first three pages of Google for that query. The queries themselves may not be Kodak's top concerns for optimization, but they're examples of how marketers can use these other search engines to increase their touch-points with consumers regardless of how and where people are conducting the search.
This mindset offers marketers clues for how to consider optimizing for all search sites as a way to dominate natural search results in the core engines. The comScore list is just a starting point -- Digg, Flickr, Technorati, and others are all building momentum as search sites while gaining more visibility in the core engines. Of course, it's not all about social media optimization, as eBay, Amazon, and MapQuest are search engines too. It's MySpace, though, that first offered the glimpse into the future, back when it commanded less than 1% of all searches last year. Once you accept MySpace as a search engine, you're ready for much of the change ahead.
by David Berkowitz, Tuesday, September 4, 2007
"With search becoming a more ubiquitous activity across the Web, comScore is expanding the market view of the search universe to encompass other searches that occur on the Internet." David writes that it is now unclear now more than ever as to who may be the fourth largest search engines
I've been waiting for this day since August 2006, when I published a column on "Search's MySpace Age." I wrote, "MySpace is much bigger than just a social network; it's also a search engine. ComScore has at times listed it as the sixth largest engine, albeit with less than one percent of searches." The column continued, "The growth of MySpace, which now has more than 100 million registered users, leads me to wonder what would happen if MySpace emerged as one of the top four search engines (my prediction: it will)."
The prediction took a year to come true. ComScore's latest data shows MySpace capturing 551 million searches in July 2007, compared to 438 million for AOL (the whole Time Warner Network, which includes Mapquest, had 971 million searches) and 219 million for Ask.com (the whole Ask Network, including MyWebSearch, had 449 million). By this tally, MySpace only trails Google, Yahoo, and MSN Windows Live when comparing it to the five major search engines.
The prediction wasn't perfect. YouTube had more searches than MySpace -- albeit commandingly, with just over 1 billion searches. By that standard, MySpace is really the fifth-largest engine, topping MapQuest and other AOL properties (which had 533 million searches), eBay (468 million), Craigslist (170 million), and Amazon sites (144 million). (In some ways I've waited two and a half years for this news; I considered branding eBay a search engine in a March 2005 column.)
Meanwhile, MySpace's share of searches has grown exponentially, as it captured 4.12% of all 13.4 billion Internet searches. To compare the figure to last year when comScore briefly included MySpace as the sixth largest search engine, MySpace would have captured over 7% of searches if it was included in the July 2007 "core search" category, ten times the 0.7% share it garnered in May 2006.
For publishers, there's far more at stake than bragging rights. Searching within a site is already tapped as a revenue opportunity, as signified by Google's deal powering MySpace's searches through 2010, which guarantees MySpace almost twice as much revenue as Fox Interactive Media paid for it. Given MySpace's search volume, it's a safe bet that Google will have to pay well over the minimum. On top of that direct revenue, though, couple the searches per visitor with other engagement metrics -- and publishers can make an even better case for advertisers to increase spending there.
For marketers, comScore's framework points to even more opportunity. Part of it lies in media planning, as some of these other publishers can be part of both search and display buys, and the search industry as a whole benefits from a more competitive market. There's even more potential upside for marketers when thinking about search engine optimization. This ties directly into the growing appreciation for universal search, from how Google includes other content in its main search engine results pages to a broader definition that ties into how comScore portrays this vast search universe.
Consider a search on YouTube for "Kabul football club" (without the quotes), which leads to a popular, well-rated short documentary on the Afghanistan soccer team. Enter that query in Google and the YouTube link comes up first, just as it does in Yahoo. Yet in Yahoo, the third link points to the same clip on Google Video, though Google Video doesn't appear within the first three pages of Google's own results for this search. Meanwhile, the YouTube clip ranks first in Google for "Kabul football team," but try that query on Yahoo and YouTube drops to sixth place.
Marketers can take advantage of this trend too. Last December, for example, Kodak released a commercial on YouTube where an elderly man rants about how slowly Kodak embraced digital photography while promoting how nimble it is today. Type "Kodak commercial" (without quotes) in Google and the YouTube rant ranks first, ahead of kodak.com, which ranks sixth. The same search on Yahoo brings up Kodak.com first and second followed by the YouTube video. Try "Kodak rant" on Yahoo and that YouTube video ranks first, but the video doesn't rank in the first three pages of Google for that query. The queries themselves may not be Kodak's top concerns for optimization, but they're examples of how marketers can use these other search engines to increase their touch-points with consumers regardless of how and where people are conducting the search.
This mindset offers marketers clues for how to consider optimizing for all search sites as a way to dominate natural search results in the core engines. The comScore list is just a starting point -- Digg, Flickr, Technorati, and others are all building momentum as search sites while gaining more visibility in the core engines. Of course, it's not all about social media optimization, as eBay, Amazon, and MapQuest are search engines too. It's MySpace, though, that first offered the glimpse into the future, back when it commanded less than 1% of all searches last year. Once you accept MySpace as a search engine, you're ready for much of the change ahead.
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