“The first link offered by Google and Yahoo is identical in 27% of cases,” reports Jean Véronis.  Véronis is the man who gathered together 70 students and put the search engines to the test.  He later continues, “Today 27% of Google’s results on the first link alone come from Wikipedia, as do 31 % of Yahoo’s.”

Despite these matches, Google scored decidedly higher in terms of users’ preferences; its 90 percent market share isn’t, it would seem, about to be toppled by that one competitor.  Yet Véronis believes the whole search engine industry might be in danger due to Wikipedia.

On this point, neither I nor John Battelle, who first noted the study, can really agree with Véronis.  He makes a an interesting assertion, though, writing, “When users come to realize that, for example using the Firefox search bar, they can search directly in Wikipedia if they want encyclopedic information, in Wikio for news and blogs, in Allociné for movies and so on, the concept (outdated, in my opinion) of the general search engine will have had its day.”

In any event, this’ll at least give us something to think about while we watch for Google to hit 95 percent in France.

I could spend some time recapping my treatise from eight months ago about going beyond the click-through, but why repeat myself? Besides, John Battelle’s lingo is probably more on target. What I called "presence," Battelle calls "awareness and demand creation."


"[Marketers] are noticing that when they run brand advertising both online and off, searches for their brands increase. Second, they are noticing that when searches for their brands increase, sales (or at least valuable, measurable leads) follow."

He also says we’re in the midst of the third era of online advertising, which looks to fully incorporate search and branding concepts. The major challenge in this era will be managing what one can’t control – the "conversational media."

Before the Web, marketers had better control of messages about their products and services. They had no control over what the people or the press said, of course, but in this new era, mouths are bigger, more plentiful, and more easily accessible.

And the press? Well, the least you might say is that "the press" has fragmented into a million pieces, all collectible by search engines.

While that remains as a major challenge, you can rest assured the savvy marketers are actively pursuing ways to influence the conversational media in the right direction, so that their product’s or service’s presence is a welcome one. 

This time, it’s an ethics debate about whether or not John Battelle’s arrangement, whereby bloggers in the FM network answered the question "When did you know your business was People Ready?" on their blogs and, in return, Microsoft placed cost-per-click ads on the network.

Valleywag called them out, specifically Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Paull Kedrosky, Matt Marshall and Fred Wilson (who was in the eye of the last blogstorm), calling them "spokesbloggers."

And then, the blogosphere went ape.

Om Malik was quick to respond, apologizing and calling for FM to pull the ads:

I have requested Federated Media, our sales partners, suspend the campaign on our network of sites, and they have. We are turning off any such campaigns that might be running on our network. Would I participate in a similar campaign again? Nothing is worth gambling the readers’ trust.

John Battelle agreed:

Well, we certainly stepped in it….Microsoft was attempting something new, certainly something entirely new for the company, in any case – it was inviting authors into the marketing conversation. We tried to do it in a way that was transparent, that had integrity, where no editorial space was purchased.

Michael Arrington, though, was a bit more defiant:

 So here’s my position on all of this: Go pound sand. People understand that if there’s text in an ad box, someone is paying for it to be there.

The main thing I’m pissed off about right now is that they pulled all the ads, which mean we’re taking a revenue hit. We’re running a business here, and have payroll to make. We run ads to make that payroll. Those ads have now been pulled.

For those of you that are too Midwest suburban, "pound sand" is explained at the Urban Dictionary, which won’t explain to Arrington’s employees why their paychecks bounced, or why it’s not really Valleywag’s fault.

Whichever side you take on the issue, Fake Steve Jobs opines about which side the bloggers took it (complete with illustrations):

He [Arrington] ends up sounding like a gal who’s trying to convince you that she’s not a "prostitute," she’s an "escort."

What makes this delicious is that these "spokesbloggers" are the same sanctimonious tw*ts who are constantly spouting bullsh*t about the glories of "citizen journalism" and patting themselves on the back and congratulating themselves for being so much more ethical and independent than the dreaded "Mainstream Media."

Ouch.

Battelle notes in his lengthy post at FM that he still thinks there is a future for conversational marketing, and some of the more objective (if there is such a thing) bloggers have noted that the whole scandal could have been avoided with full disclosure about the campaign.

Google Mentioned As Dow Jones Suitor

If it’s a matter of who can afford a ten-figure price tag for Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, why not mention Microsoft as well? Steve Ballmer could put Dow Jones on his corporate AmEx card and have plenty of Microsoft’s cash left over for other deals, like the rumored billion-dollar 24/7 Real Media purchase that Microsoft spokespeople are no-commenting about today?

The ultra-reliable Bloomberg reports the magical name of Google has been invoked in the Dow Jones conversation, along with several other financial heavyweights:

News Corp. may have opened the door for other bidders, including General Electric Co., owner of the CNBC news network, Haverty said. Washington Post Co., Gannett Co. and even Google Inc. may be interested, said Michael Chren, managing director of Allegiant Asset Management Co. in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

If Google were to have an interest, and right now it’s just one analyst suggesting it, John Battelle thinks he knows how they would handle its ownership:

They only way this makes any sense (see my rant on buying NBC for more) is for Google to take a public service stance and put the Wall St. Journal in a non profit trust. Now that would be ballsy. It’s been done before (The Guardian is in a trust).

Such a trust would ideally insulate the paper from outside influences on its editors and reporters. To see an example of a scenario of interference, the satirical Fake Steve Jobs blog has a very uncomfortable (for the WSJ) depiction of Carl Icahn’s possible manipulation of the Journal regarding Motorola.

Session Description: "Never has there been a medium in which marketing and advertising could be so closely measured (or manipulated). Some advertisers are entering the world of social media on tiptoes, hoping to retain control in an era of no control; others are intent on jumping into the deep end to see what happens; many are looking for the right mix in between the two extremes."

Panelists:

Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Producer, EconSM
Simon Assaad, Co-CEO, Heavy.com
John Battelle, Chairman, Federated Media
Shawn Gold, SVP, MySpace
Tina Sharkey, Chairman, BabyCenter
Rishad Tobaccowala, CIO, Publicis Group

My Take:

One thing became apparent during this panel: the existing (broken, vapid, disposable, push) world of marketing is still alive and kicking on places like MySpace, where it’s all about audience size and page views and the existing interruptive, advertising-driven marketing model. While the other members of the panel (outside the rep from MySpace) were saying the right things about conversation and customer connection, I came away from this panel feeling that the current scarcity of accepted metrics to show the results that are being achieved at the intersection of social media and marketing is hamstringing social media’s uptake on the customer-facing side of the enterprise.

Liveblogging notes:

Simon: Marketing needs to be conversational.

Battelle: "I think the reason we can’t measure things is that we haven’t tried. We are still using ‘panel based measurement’ for the internet. It works terribly for niche audiences. But when we get into marketing, we get into problems. How do you measure the value of a conversation with a customer we sell to once a year? What we need is experimentation and the willingness to try new things. It takes a lot of time. So far, no one has written an algorithm for conversations.

Guterman: In your own room, you put up your own pictures, and play your own music. On the internet, "your room" is MySpace. How do you advertise to people in their own room?

Shawn: When I talk to advertisers, I tell them you need to create a subnetwork that give people a sense of recognition and belonging. "There are a simple set of sociological guidelines to extend your value proposition in a social network."

Tina: Influence marketing is critical. Even a few people in an ecosystem can market on your behalf. (segue) With Live 8, AOL became the enabler. AOL wasn’t the concert, but it provided an interface that let the users create their own experience.

Rishad: In a world that is moving toward "no control," marketing still has control. Our clients need to sell millions of things, not five things. What are the incentives for marketers to change? What are the incentives for suppliers to change?

Guterman: The new marketing conversation always turns to Second Life. However, when I go there, SL is empty…except for marketers.

Rishad: We’re very bullish about virtual worlds. In Korea, we’re excited about CyWorld. In the U.S., we’re very bullish about online gaming.

Audience: In B2B websites vs. B2C oriented sites, what are the differences in revenue models or the difference in ad revenue based business models vs. subscription based business models?

Simon: A subscription service was difficult to make work for us, because there are millions of free options. Advertising is not going to solve everybody’s problems, not by a long shot. Subscription is not a viable option. Maybe selling stuff is. Advertising is going to be the only real revenue model for platforms for right now.

Shawn: The B2B side has the same models. I think "the exchange" is going to come back, as business social networking with commerce built in.

Audience: Are marketers are afraid to get in front of user-generated content?

Shawn: There are technologies that can read the words on the page. WalMart might put their ad supporting a Green cause, and it might show up next to a girl in a g-string. But hey, everyone needs to recycle.

Battelle: WalMart would never do that. Brands care about scale, safety and quality. They are used to controlling that message about their brand. They are afraid to get feedback.

Rishad: Marketing is about listening to your customer. (ed. – FINALLY)

Audience: Should people try the "egg" model — connect a social media on your site — or the "chicken" and connect on a large social network?

Rishad: You have to talk back. Marketers are not stupid. They might be concerned. They might be scared. They want to embrace this space. They should listen to what people are saying first, though.

Tina: Marketers need to engage on all media — TV, print, radio, social media.

Audience: Do you see participation (posting, contributing) as "what it’s about?" Or is social media merely a means to create content, with most people being "consumers" of that media in a traditional sense?

Shawn: There’s a saying, "we choose our friends by our ability to amuse them." That propels people. Youth culture is about sharing something first, about knowing something first. The content today is so share-able…when I was a kid, sharing a lighter or a cig was a form of social currency. Now the social currency is what goes on YouTube.

Battelle: Our culture is getting more used to having content that it can edit. When the White House releases something on Friday in hopes of burying it, the bloggers find the juicy bits over the weekend and the news outlets do something with it on Monday.

Audience: is anyone thinking about the marketing dialog on TV?

Simon: It’s been going on a long time, and it’s pretty much one way. The way it’s worked is that you light a fire on TV to get people talking, and then the conversation happens elsewhere. Broadband will drive the dialog on TV more than TV will drive the dialog on TV.

Audience: In Hollywood, we’ve stumbled. Snakes On A Plane had huge traction online, and bombed at the box office. While "awareness" might be high, consumption might not be. Can marketing change dialog and awareness into consumption?

Simon: I think there is a lot of dialog going on right now around video. YouTube does millions of video streams a month; that’s what Comcast did last year. We’ll get better tools about understanding consumption.

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Did Doubleclick Turn Down Microsoft Money?

I heard the same things about Flickr. Rumors are that Flickr’s owners turned down AOL’s money, instead going for a lower amount from Yahoo. I never confirmed those rumors, but they were pretty consistent at the time.

Why would a company do that?

I can think of a few reasons.

1) Better cultural fit. I’ve seen that some employees are real jerks during negotiations and can sour a suitor on that person’s company.

2) Better reputation of main company. If you were a baseball player would you rather play for the New York Yankees or the Chicago Cubs? Especially if your goal is to win the World Series?

3) Better deal for employees. Free lunches? More stock options? Fewer relocations? Fewer potential layoffs?

4) Better business deal long term (stock price of one company might have more upside, for instance, which would sweeten the potential deal longterm).

5) More influence in industry by going with one company (one company might offer founders better positions, or more trips with corporate founders, etc).

6) Founders might like location of one company’s headquarters better than others (Silicon Valley offers techies a lot more economic opportunities than Seattle does, for instance, not to mention better weather).

Can you think of some reasons?

Oh, and John’s interview of Microsoft’s main lawyer is real interesting too. Especially the justifications for asking the DOJ to get involved in the deal.

I wonder when we’ll see an in-game advertising engine for Xbox? Probably not until after the DOJ gets involved, huh? Might remind folks that Microsoft still has billions of dollars in advertising revenues.

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DoubleClick Turned Down Microsoft’s Higher Bid

That’s a somewhat cynical sum-up, certainly oversimplified, and maybe even a little unfair (there, I’ve said it so you don’t have to) – sometimes it’s just business. But the whole thing becomes really interesting when you learn Microsoft offered more for DoubleClick than Google did, and still got turned down.

DoubleClick put its eggs in Google’s basket, instead of Microsoft’s, for less money – as if business relationships have evolved into star-crossed, money-can’t-buy-love affairs. But we all know that’s bull, right?

John Battelle, who broke that news, rightly questions the reasons behind it:

The more I think about it, the more the fact that DBCLK went to Google strikes me as a seminal moment in the history of this industry. Microsoft could not win it, despite the cash it was willing to spend. Why?!

According to that lengthy blog post, Battelle will have to think on it a bit and make some  more contacts to make sense of the for-love-or-money outcome (like in most things, why-is isn’t nearly as important as what-is – but that’s a whole other discussion).

Former Microsoftie Robert Scoble has some suggestions about why a company would turn down a larger offer, including company reputation, employee benefits, better long-term options, more influence, location (at which point we get into a host of arbitrary justifications). But the most interesting one was Robert’s first suggestion:

Better cultural fit. I’ve seen that some employees are real jerks during negotiations and can sour a suitor on that person’s company.

At the end of March, back when this deal was a just a gleam in Microsoft’s eye, when there rumors were circling via the PR machine about Microsoft’s affection for DoubleClick (and DoubleClick’s high brideprice), Google didn’t even appear to be in the courtship picture.

Briefly-put, DoubleClick wanted $2 billion, and Microsoft seemed to do a spit-take at the suggestion. Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team, blogged rather convincingly about billion-dollar gambles, and devalued the DoubleClick to about $600 million – a fifth of the final price.

And then, two weeks later, we learn Microsoft offered more than Google, and lost? Something happened. Microsoft had a change of heart or executives were blowing smoke during negotiations to keep the price down. Or maybe Google was a dark horse competitor, swooping in to take the maiden. And now Microsoft’s double-pissed off.

Last week, David Utter noted the odd timing to Microsoft’s and AT&T’s antitrust complaints, arising just 48 hours after the news broke. Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick is a market-cornering move – a market Microsoft and AT&T would rather have cornered for themselves.

The quick antitrust filing could mean that as soon as Microsoft realized they’d lost that market, they began preparing for the fight to get it back.

Personally I hate partial text feeds. I’ve subscribed to a few of them, particularly ZDNet’s bloggers, but I notice I read a lot fewer of their items than I read items from, say, TechCrunch or Mashable, who offer full text feeds. And I link to them a LOT less.

I keep bugging Dan Farber (who runs the ZDNet blogging group) about this and he says he can’t do anything about it because of the advertising model that ZDNet has chosen. He also says that he hasn’t gotten enough feedback to the contrary to take back to his management.

The thing is he won’t. Here’s why.

Out of, say, 1,000 people who are on the Internet, only a small percentage read a lot of feeds. Let’s say it’s 10%. That means only 100 out of any 1,000 people will read feeds and of those 100 people only a small fraction will bother with ZDNet’s feeds.

The thing that partial texters are forgetting is that the other 900 people will find out about you from an influencer. Someone who will tell them. So, your traffic growth will be far slower if you only offer partial text feeds. Many of my friends who are journalists or bloggers just won’t deal with partial text feeds anymore. You certainly see that I link to mostly full text feeds on my link blog.

John Battelle realized this after he polled his readership about this issue: “From the results of my very unscientific poll, I’d clearly be alienating at least a very vocal minority.”

I wish ZDNet came to the same realization cause the quality of their content is really high.

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 Last year I had a conversation with Jen Pahlka about having a Barcamp-style event in parallel to Web 2.0, calling it Web2Open.  Chris Messina and Tara Hunt were similarly lobbying.  With Jen’s effort, the good graces of Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle, some help from Brady Forrest — it’s all happening.

Free and open for you to participate:

• Sunday, April 15 – Ignite!Expo 7-9 pm
• Monday, April 16 – Community Roundtable 10am – 5pm
• Tuesday, April 17 – Web2Open 1pm – 7pm
• Wednesday, April 18 – Web2Open 1pm – 7pm

Throughout Web2Open, the Mashroom will be open for people to bring their APIs and do something together.

Web 2.0 Expo is going to be quite an event itself, of course.  We’re talking Moscone scale now.  I’m on a keynote panel about Enterprise 2.0 alongside Satish Dharmaraj, Dan Farber and Subrah Iyar. Later Wednesday afternoon holding a workshop with Rob Rueckert, Michael Lenz, David Meyer, Joe Schueller. 

There are also a couple of parties.

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The buzz seems likely generated by the PR machine, for as soon as I heard about it from a surprising tipster, everybody else seemed to have heard about it as well, bloggers and reporters alike. Let the speculation begin: nothing like a little buzz to justify a $2 billion asking price.

As to whether Double Click is worth that, Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team, says "Ya, right."

"Hellman & Friedman acquired DoubleClick a little over a year ago for $1.1 Billion, said Dodge on his blog. "Since then …they have divested two divisions of the company for $525M, leaving a net investment of about $600 million. And they want to sell it for $2 billion?"

Dodge balked at the company’s revenue in relation to the asking price as well. DoubleClick brought in about $150 million in revenue last year. "So, H&F wants 20 times revenues for DoubleClick? Maybe 20 times earnings would make sense, but 20 times revenues? You have got to be kidding?"

According to various sources, a large part of the asking price is DoubleClick’s audience and reach. Plus it offers a service Google doesn’t…yet. As Google plans to enter the third-party ad serving business, as both Dodge and John Battelle report, DoubleClick’s existing revenue is expected to shrink.

A Microsoft acquisition would also alienate AOL, DoubleClick’s largest customer. Google’s five percent stake could cause AOL to walk. But also, says Dodge, DoubleClick’s DART system collects reams of cookie and clickstream data on its customers, raising competition and privacy concerns.

"Small acquisitions ($50M to $100M) are easier to integrate, easier to leverage and find synergy, and carry less risk if they fail. Everything is harder with a billion dollar acquisition," he said.

From Battelle’s exposition on the Google factor, Microsoft may also want to wait to see what the search advertising giant does. He seems certain Google will soon offer a third-party ad service for free, which is a strategy straight from Microsoft’s playbook:

How did Microsoft kill Netscape? Yup, made the browser free. How will Google try to own the entire ad serving biz? Make it free. Why would they do this? Because the most valuable thing in the world of advertising is not the commodity , it’s the information the commodity will provide.