-
Website
http://www.scobleizer.com/ -
Original page
http://scobleizer.com/2007/08/26/why-mahalo-techmeme-and-facebook-are-going-to-kick-googles-butt-in-four-years/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
SEO is the whiz kid of the marketing set and the bane of everyone else. It wouldn't be so bad if most of what was being marketed was actually remotely worthwhile, but sadly most of it is useless friction in our online lives.
I'll be anxious to see what happens in 4 years, but meanwhile, I've lately found blog searching trumps Googling for many topics and wrote about it in my blog:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/stop...
Cheers!
BW
I think say covering the fiasco with Vistas TCP/IP stack might be of more interest.
network performance drops by 90% when you play sounds/audio.
Sorry for off topic comment but I had problems with your e-mail.
I would like your feedback (and maybe your vote) on my 'Just over 50 and not Dead yet' Panel Idea for 'South by Southwest 2008'.
Outline is: "Online Participation is not just about 20 Somethings. A bunch of people
Just Over 50 have planted their tent online either as actors or consumers.
They buy books, music, watch movies, travel and eat out, have money and
brains."
Let me know what you think of the theme
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/633
Thank you
Have a great week
Serge
'The French Guy from New Jersey'
Blog:
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
99% of the bits that come through my Google Reader from your blog end up as little more than a waste of my time. For weeks I've been contemplating unsubscribing because of the pointless, useless stuff you post about you and the wine country, and the Half Moon Bay region.
Don't care.
The over-the-top posts with titles like this one...just a waste of time.
The endless Twitter/Jaiku and boring Soc.Network sites that are little more than this year's fad. Had Freindster been around at the cusp of 2.0 bloggers going mainstream they'd be Facebook built on the foundation of blogger hype.
This post title was just the straw that broke the camels back. I'm sure it's little more than speculation and what-ifs that could happen...in 3 years. In 3 years? Tech moves too fast for anyone to have some sort of concrete way to change the competitive landscape and bank on it.
You'll have to earn ad revenue off some other unsuspecting rube that'll get lured in to your site with over-hyped headline.
I'm gone and your unsubscribed from Reader.
Tom
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/14480565058...
and I don't see any commonality between the two. I don't put stuff about me and the wine country or half moon bay on there.
I also don't earn ad revenue at all. Not sure where you got that, either.
I want smart readers here. Sounds like you aren't smart. So, have fun over at Digg or somewhere else.
Google says... [pic] Maybe I'm not understanding your point.
Here are some thoughts/arguments against the position you are taking.
> I found the Mahalo idea simple (and intriguing). I forced myself to used it for a week but then quickly rolled back to Google. Are you using Mahalo as your default search engine? For how long have you been using it? Do you use Mahalo Follow or have you completely switched to Mahalo?
> I think that you are under-estimating (by a large factor), the ability of Google to improve their results. Do a search on a health care term "Di George Syndrome" and you will see both topical and more traditional search results.
> You claim that I would not have found this page through Google. But the truth is that I found it through Google Reader. I think that with Google Reader and Feedburner, Google understands a lot about authority, reading patterns and quality of content: your blog roll and your shared items log is a great picture of who you trust regarding various topics (and it is a network). I do not know if Google already integrates the stats from Google Reader in their search but this is probably a small step.
> Google already understands correlation of information (ala TechMeme): see Google News.
> I think that in the use cases you are describing in the video, you should draw a stronger line between people reading pages and looking for inspiration (editorial content/blogs), people looking for recommendations (is A better than B, who are the best X in this area. like insider pages or yelp) and people searching for information (Google, Yahoo, etc.).
Summary: I think that Mahalo might be able to create a few high quality editorial pieces of content (how is this different from about.com???) and get some traffic to them (most likely through Google - it would be interesting to see Mahalo start buying Google keywords :-)), but I do not see it grow to anywhere close to "kicking Google's ass".
Note: I think that it would be great for you to do a video of Jason and get him to really articulate how Mahalo is different from Y!/DMoz directory and why he thinks that Mahalo will succeed where those other attempt failed.
greg
greg
I am one of those who agree that Mahalo's survival depends precisely on implementing good SEO.
Enjoyed your video! Some of it was over my head; however,I got the gest of it. Google needs to work on it's formating - too much peripheral stuff. As to kicking it's ass, well that might be wishful thinking and a bit unrealistic. In an case competition is good for all involved.
Ag
I'll pass.
Personally, I look at Google's analysis of link popularity and PageRank calculations and think, "they're already doing what you propose, but on a much larger scale." They're already measuring link popularity, and - as you know - give more weight to links from trusted sources.
They also adjust their mix of results based on the type of results, so you'll see a different mix on a commercially focused search such as a product search than you will for a research based search.
So, with that in mind, I fail to see a breakthrough for web search coming out of the companies you mentioned. They all provide valuable services, but in no way threaten Google's web search dominance.
I'll admit, your headline baited me into watching this video. I've refrained on clicking on any video links in the past because they're usually pretty long and I don't have time to sit through a 20-30 minute video presentation. However, because of your intriguing headline I clicked and listened.
Your point was interesting enough, but very long winded. You could've condensed all of that into a blog post. You were rambling. There were too many examples of "this guy is mark cuban, this guy is guy kawasaki", etc. Your written posts are usually very concise and I can figure out the point relatively quickly. Here, you took over 30 minutes to convey one major point.
I think if you're going to continue doing vlogs, then to force yourself to do so in a consumable amount (say 10 minutes).
Of course, Google could always buy Facebook, integrate the social graph into search, and end Jason's dreams of making a company that upends Google.
If so, that didn't work -- As I got here through TechMeme listing this post.
Oh, and when did Google get lightening fast? Check this out: http://onotech.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive....
So I'm not sure if you were exaggerating, or if your understanding of SEO is incomplete, or if the SEO for TechMeme and Google works in ways that's contrary to documentation you've read... Or all of the above. :)
One person's "no real content" is another person's evocative haiku. :)
Your average web user knows what Google is. Your average web user -probably- knows what Facebook is. Your average web user neither knows, nor cares about either Techmeme (and its related products) or Mahalo. That is the problem.
With the exception of Facebook, these other two products are tech toys that will only really achieve traction if there is a substantial change in the way "normal" internet users do business.
Techmeme provides value, but when you compare the popularity of its sister products with tech.memorandum you see my point. When you leave technology out the equation most everyone stops caring. Is that a problem? Not really, it's still a great product. It just isn't a Google killer.
Until Malhalo can stop using Google results to cushion it, calling it a "Google killer" is absolutely ludicrous. Even afterwards, people have never been particularly drawn to Guide based search when they are looking for information on say, "Finding the state space model of a transfer function for digital signal processing." People with this kind of expertise generally won't sit down and pontificate for $20 an entry.
My point is that you did write a compelling headline, and even made some very solid points;however, I must respectfully disagree that they jive with the way that the world actually functions.
No one ever really knows all the smartest people.
What that means is, if you're going to rely on searches vetted by one's trust network, you're going to miss out on huge amounts of the net. The net -- and search -- is inherently a long tail phenomenon.
Contrast this to Mahalo's own statement at the bottom of their page: "Mahalo's goal is to hand-write the top 20,000 search terms."
20,000? That's it? And they're not even there yet?
One estimate I've seen is that Google handles about 200 million searches per day. Even if one is generous and says the top 20,000 search terms account for half of the searches entered, that still leaves a huge number of terms unentered (since, long tail wise, the remaining search term could easily run in to the tens of millions).
So I guess my question would be, can trust-based searching ever scale to a level of comprehensiveness that spidered, automated searches do?
Because if not, then one runs into Joel Spolsky's observation about 80/20 rules and program features -- my useful 20% probably doesn't match your 20%, which is why programs with more features (covering more potential uses) win. If my "top 20,000" doesn't equal Mahalo's -- or yours -- then no matter how good those 20,000 they do have may be, the service is useless to me.
As, in fact, it's always been whenever I run test searches on it.
{shrug}
What I don't like with Mahalo's concept is that they aim at delivering selected content TO THE MASS. I can ask my personal assistant to search/filter information based on my own goals/habits/taste/whatever. I don't want someone else push pre-filtered information to me when this information has been selected by people I don't even know. Because the main question is : what if they tweak this information ?...
To me, as a European, this is a very dangerous path. Sure, misinformation didn't wait for the Web 2.0. Disinformation neither, which found new means with the Net since 15+ years. This is not a reason to create new tools to help Disinformation spread its arms around the CyberSpace...
post-scriptum : look at what recently happened to Wikipedia.
They have a valuable asset, they want to cash in on it. Just wait.
http://mikeelliottsblog.wordpress.com
m3mnoch.
It's an interesting concept, and I'd love to see Google's dominance reduced somewhat. But those results link to mostly mainstream outlets - how are less established websites to get attention?
Plus, a number of the searches I did (on Mahalo) rely on results from Google News and Images for supplementary information. I don't think they're going to kill Google when they're legitimising them as a source of information.
Until you get the brand presence ("Do No Evil"), the win-win ("Adsense") and the advertising chops ("Adword") of a Google I don't see anything toppling Mountain View's current search dominance.
It has never been about the features, it very rarely is about application quality, it's almost always about distribution and packaging. Google does this part better than anyone I've ever seen (for better or for worse).
It also underestimates the scale that Google is operating and what they're trying to accomplish. Google's search results will only get better as they complete the build-out of their infrastructure and upgrade their algorithms. Of course they can include social network results. Google has only really scratched the surface of what it can do with its results. Remember, Google isn't run like Microsoft; it'll compete much better than Microsoft ever could.
The problem with Mahalo is that it doesn't scale--it can't cover the breadth of the internet and to do so would be much more expensive than what Google has devised. There are tens of billions of web pages--Mahalo will only address a tiny fraction of them.
Take a look at this version of how Yahoo turns search into a Social Network and lives happily ever after:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/soci...
Mahalo is great for what it is, so is Techmeme but neither of these are -exactly- right.
Great link by the way.
Or to put it another way, we are already successfully doing social search of sorts, and it works!
Jof Arnold
COO, i-together.com
I thinks this is really interesting stuff.
Jamie
2. Social news and bookmarking sites do not have broad appeal. Digg has been out for quite a while. It has stagnated and traffic is not growing. After a few people with too much time on their hands dominate a network, others lose interest.
3. Passive technology is more rapidly adopted than technology that requires thinking and interaction. The inherent scalability issue with sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon is that there are only a limited number of people who really care about a topic and even fewer care to influence the search results for that topic. This is why Digg sucks - it’s dominated by a bunch of idiots. Do we really want our search results being influenced by pimply 25-year old geeks who still live in their mother’s basement?
4. SEOs will infiltrate this to an even higher degree than current search engines. Social networks are already overrun by spam. A tremendous percentage of pages on Myspace are spam. Many Facebook apps are spamming. Most social networks spam to grow big (ahem, Flixter). Web 2.0 is all about spam. Robert Scoble is spam.
5. Yahoo does not have “mojo”. Yes, it is true that Yahoo owns delicious and Flickr. So what? Flickr is mostly used by people in the San Francisco area - most of us don’t want our photos to be openly available to everyone. Then again, most of us aren’t desperate for attention. He argues that Google and Microsoft are screwed but Yahoo might be okay. Give me a break. Yahoo may be doing some interesting things, but delicious and Flickr aren’t part of the discussion there. The very fact that even extremely popular sites owned by Yahoo don’t have over 3000 bookmarks on delicious shows how worthless it is (and let’s not forget that it’s slow).
Scoble: 0
TechDumpster: One Googol
BW
So, you strike out there bud. Sorry.
Can't talk about techmeme, never even used that site before.
And then there is the constant bashing of SEO. SEO doesn't have to be evil. Then again, I guess i am the only one in the world who hasn't been affected by link and ad spam on Google. I trust them to solve this "huge" issue before I'd trust Jason Calacanis to. Give me a break. Mahalo is a solution for something which isn't even really a problem.
Usually enjor your posts but this one was way off the mark.
[x] the mark -------------------> [your point landed over there]
"And then there is the constant bashing of SEO. SEO doesn’t have to be evil. Then again, I guess i am the only one in the world who hasn’t been affected by link and ad spam on Google. I trust them to solve this “huge” issue before I’d trust Jason Calacanis to. Give me a break. Mahalo is a solution for something which isn’t even really a problem."
Hammer, meet nail. LMAO
http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=374&ci...
Rather than “SEO-resistant” I like to say that with all these channels you can “buy or lie your way to the top.” And yet I agree with you that a transition will happen, namely because value is lost when results can be gamed by SEO or other schemes. So when the transition occurs, and I think it will, I predict it will go first with B2B search and my lead candidate to make it happen is LinkedIn. Here’s why:
1. All search is not equal: B2B will lead the way
People search for different reasons and expect different results. When you can narrow the expectations you can better satisfy them. B2B search is simple. They are looking for someone with a product or service to solve a business need. They want matches that fit their criteria (budget, location, reputation, etc.). A specific, filtered search makes a lot of sense for B2B.
2. Hard to game: former customers
As onotech pointed out, all the candidates listed are not SEO-resistant. Furthermore, they are limited in their scope. The “fabric” in each of the examples is only so big. If you want a big fabric, consider past customers of any given company. Now you have a fabric of millions and they can provide timely reviews second-by-second. And being former customers, they possess the insight that we most want to hear. I wouldn’t care that Michael Arrington, Jason Calacanis (no offense) or anyone else thinks a company’s website is acceptable for me to view. I want to know the company’s track record with former customers. A legacy of happy customers is the best indicator I have of being treated well myself.
3. Going a step further: Making it personal
As oxymoronic as it sounds, B2B is far more personal than B2C. While the “C” in B2C sounds more personal (it is “consumer” after all), B2C is actually much less personal than B2B. In B2C it’s all about getting you to make an online transaction right now without human intervention. Have you ever been able to get someone from Amazon on the phone? B2B is hardly ever instantaneous and human handholding is the norm. In fact, they offer white papers, webinars, etc. all with the hope of getting you in touch with one of their *people* so they can see if and how they can business with you.
4. Which leads to LinkedIn
LinkedIn is my front runner because it is a network of business *people*. It is not a network of businesses. Businesses have reputations to be sure, but people will be far more careful to protect their reputation (which travels with them) than they will to protect the reputation of their employer.
Thanks for putting a stake in the ground Robert. I’m standing with you!
Cheers!
~ Rick Heggem
CEO, MyHandshake.com
Let's put it this way: Google is trying to solve the context mess by adding more and more intelligence on their own search engine. There's a limit about what can they do without relying on more knowledge about you, and about the relationship between articles and interest areas. Social sites already do have this kind of information. I guess that Google can derive part of this information - after all, it has to be presented so we users can see it, and Google can see it too - but they to have to work it out, while social sites can get all context information they want from their own log files and databases, which is a much richer and cleaner source of information to start with.
So it seems that social sites will have the upper hand. Right? Well, there's more to it than meets the eye. Google still has something that they dont have - lots of experience extracting information, and even context, from otherwise dumb data. Also, we have to understand that social networks also have their own limits. Someone cited Joel Spolsky's rule (regarding 80/20 rule and how it applies to software features), and I believe it applies to any kind of web application - which may turn social networks into huge balls of hair, where some people may pick only blond hair, others will like red hair, and so on. I'm not sure if it will scale well. And scale is something that Google is really good at. Let's see how the opposition does.
1)the Mahalo Crew proves to be the top experts on over 20k search terms
2)those terms don't change much
3)I'm motivated enough to care whether or not Mahalo has listed the information I care about. Because I know Google has.
4)The other 98% of Facebook users quit using it to poke their friends, post party pictures, and stalk each other
In other words Robert - you're way off on this one. Nice link bait though - you can calacanis have that tactic down pat.
I haven't had a chance to watch your videos, so can't make any comments about the videos. I do want to comment though, that putting ideas out in video only is rather limiting. I'd rather scan an article and decide if I want to read it slowly, in more depth, rather than wade through 30-something minutes of video to see if there's anything of interest / value to me in there.
I always enjoy reading your ideas here on your blog, in twitter / wherever, but I'm not sure I want to spend 30-something minutes very often to watch something that just might be interesting.
Thanks for all your ideas and desire to contribute..
Please just shut the hell up until you do understand SEO.. until then, here is a quote about SEO..
"the purpose of SEO is to provide unique qualified content to the searcher that directly applies to establishing a business relationship between a company and a customer, "the searcher" .
- steve plunkett - M/C/C
Essentially what you are proposing is the university model. The king says lets the get the 100 smartest people in the land and put them in one building. You can't build a building large enough to house the experts on everything.
What you end up with is limited to the same conversations over and over at the nerd table in the school cafateria.
Facebook has clearly disrupted everything, I've not been this excited about the Internet in about 7 years...
Most people still "don't get it" because they're trying to apply old school thinking to a medium that has nothing in common with the old medium.
Most people I deal with daily, cannot seem to let go of this old school thinking and they try to apply traditional direct marketing.
Just as "news groups" became extinct, so will Google.
I'm hearing ya!
Hell yeah!
http://www.pictogame.com/game.php?game=qgMjONN2...
The first of the three videos is already the number one result.
I thought it was interesting anyway.
The link from Techmeme (it's a lowercase m Robert) at http://www.techmeme.com/070827/p9#a070827p9 has been mentioned already.
I see from comment #32 (link to OnoTech) that you know we can get from Google to this blog (and the post on Techmeme) with relevant terms (Mahalo, Techmeme, Facebook, Google, Scoble' all the way down to 'Mahalo, Techmeme'). In addition, the first of the three videos on Kyte is now the top result at http://google.com/search?q=social+graph+based+s...
Did you spot that? 'social graph based search'.
I think you're 0 for 2 on your no Google, no Techmeme theory.
Then the emphasis would no longer be on 'searching', but rather on 'connecting'.
IMO the 'search engine' model needs to be turned upside down and inside out to capture local referrals and influence buying decisions where people live.
These local transactions seem to be the 'long tail'.
That we can trust Rob.
Rob wrote something and learned from what pile on. Even though Rob's a key figure in the web/tech/blog industry. Heck - not many tech web sites would get 176 posts or a few dozen has Rob gets on a regular day.
We have access to Rob (for now)
Think of any media anchor or other person doing some stupid we would never be able to have this access or public conversation with them. I would have loved to give a constructive comment to Imis for example. Try to email a comment to Opraa - it's not going to happen. Of course Rob does not have the reach of Oprah - but I hope you get my point.
"This community" is wonderful. We only learn by opposing views not by "yes" men!
I think you should have a look at my post:
http://techcrunchies.com/did-robert-scoble-forg...
I agree facebook has that.
and what do you have to add to the fact that google
will just have to show mahalo's results when it's really a good page ?
Rivera's sites use a variant of the PageRank algorithm, tapping link-rich blogs for their pointers to link-sparse mainstream media (and nascent online media) articles.
It's Google rehashed, repurposed, retreaded. Google could reproduce this site in a weekend.
I had seen it before when it was referenced from webbalert.com, but its been a few months and I wanted to watch it again (we had a discussion about search engines in school).
Unfortunatley, Webbalert, doesnt have a darn search bar to search through her site for the link!
Anyhoot, I just typed some words that I remember from the videos:
future of search engines video google mahalo
Sure enough, the first link! Yes!
http://searchengineland.com/080313-080505.php
I don't disagree, entirely... But you need a Google with Gate Keepers. Mahalo won't answer every query, that is a problem. Because when I search for how to do a convert to lower case in PHP, I want a result, or if I want to look for Scoble's video of Diet Coke and Mentos at Makers Fair, I want a result.
That is why I have been building a Spam Free or atleast very spam resistant search engine at http://www.isayhello.com
You have to be on our site list to be returned as a result, and results are tuned to what type of category we think you are searching so you are more likely to get good results. Then on top of that we do Mahalo style hand edited results for a lot of terms. not the 200k that Mahalo has yet. we are only at 40k but we have only been at it 10 days, and the project is funded off my blog earnings, so it isn't a princely sum of money.
I haven’t had a chance to watch your videos, so can’t make any comments about the videos. I do want to comment though, that putting ideas out in video only is rather limiting. I’d rather scan an article and decide if I want to read it slowly, in more depth, rather than wade through 30-something minutes of video to see if there’s anything of interest / value to me in there.
I always enjoy reading your ideas here on your blog, in twitter / wherever, but I’m not sure I want to spend 30-something minutes very often to watch something that just might be interesting.
Thanks for all your ideas and desire to contribute..
http://www.computersolution.co.cc
Mahalo isn't a replacement for Google -- it's a low-quality commercial competitor to Wikipedia.
Your prime example is flawed. When I search for "HDTV", I am not looking for manufacturer sites. I am looking for trusted reviewers. Your perfect world is my absolute hell.
Have you seen the TechMeme's Alexa rating? That project is going nowhere.
Do you still stand by what you said Robert..At least replace that Mahalo thingy with Twitter to make it sound more 'intelligent'.