Internet Web Help

Practice is starting to look like theory. When Social Networking started, it was clear that people would use it to find things that way as well as using search engines. Its just that the volumes were small and Social Networks, by and large, had crap comms to share things by. Twitter changed all that, and now Facebook – having implemented far better and simpler comms – is finding the same:

According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.

For what its worth this blog has had more referrals from Twitter than Google for some time, which has made us far less impressed with all the arcania of Google SEO).

But now that its happening in scale, it puts Google’s model under pressure as it is simply cruder for Advertising:

David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy for the digital marketing firm 360i of New York, said the importance of search engines isn’t going away.

“But there’s always been one downside to search,” he said. “Consumers only spend about 5 percent of their time online searching and the other 95 percent of the time at the destination. Social media is quickly accounting for a large percentage of that 95 percent. Google’s biggest acquisitions, DoubleClick and YouTube, have been all about playing a big role in the rest of consumers’ Web usage.”

But Social search just isn’t scalable without the Signal to Noise ratio getting unmanageable – so we expect to see a whole raft of Social Algorithms emerge to help automate, speed up and filter the process. How do we know this – because we, and a whole lot of other people we know, are fiddling with them, and they show a lot of early promise.

Steve Rubel hypothesized Buzz was launched half baked and half cocked to get out there before Facebook launched its FBMail service, and that may be so – but to our mind the real Buzz is in the algorithms dealing with the blend of social graph and social data.

Search Engine Usage by Adoption Type (Advertising Age)

Not only can one tell a lot about you by the searches you make, seems a lot can also be deduced from the search engine we use, as a WPP survey of 17,000 US internet users shows – Ad Age:

What does your search engine say about you? Well, if it’s Bing, you’re probably an early adopter, but you also visit, shop and ultimately make purchases from Walmart more than other search-engine users. Google searchers, on the other hand, are partial to Target and Amazon, and Yahoo searchers have a strong preference for wireless service from AT&T and Sprint.

Google users are more likely to book a flight online at JetBlue or make a reservation on Hotwire. They are also more likely to do research on a Lexus, while Bing users tend more toward Toyota. Aside from uncovering the research and purchasing habits of consumers, the study claims to have identified a host of demographic and psychographic information on search-engine users.

For instance, AOL customers feel less intellectual than their peers, are 55 and older, spend their money more responsibly, want to blend in to the crowd, feel like they’ve gotten a raw deal out of life, expect less from their future and, believe it or not, still use dial-up modems. Bing users are middle-aged, highly educated tech-savvy individuals who consider themselves to be average and spend more than 10 hours a week online.

Googlers tend to be the average internet Joe, according to the study. The search leader’s loyalists are conventional people yet open to trying new things, believe in following rules and don’t consider themselves any smarter or less intelligent than the person next to them. Yahoo users tend to be 55-plus, reserved and a less-independent group with little faith in imagination. They feel they have little control over their future and are skeptical and cautious of new or untried ideas.

Fascinating. I’ve used Dogpile for nigh on 10 years, it searches all the other engines and aggregates their result for you. I love the “parasite search engine” design (I wonder what that says about me ). Interesting that it hasn’t really taken off though.

Update – realised there is a bigger story here. In an age where we see Google moving to mainstream advertising at the Superbowl (while Pepsi eschews it), clearly which search engine you use is becoming as much a branding battle as for any other commodity product – ie there is little inherent technical differentiation left. Increasingly search engines will try and identify demographics they want for Advertising purposes, and set out their brands to recruit them. Next step is diversofoed brands for different segments – Google Lite, Bing Premier etc – and celebrity sponsorship. Oh joy…..

I wondered how long it would take someone to build a system that obfuscates your data from Google. We looked at how to do it a few years ago, but the best short term default seemed to use Dogpile, a “parasite” search engine, or similar – yes, they have your data but its a far smaller operation. But that was just search. . However, a smart hacker has come up with a way of doing it. Forbes:

Now an independent security researcher who goes by the name Moxie Marlinspike is making Web users a counter-offer: Take Google’s ( GOOG – news – people ) giveaways and keep your privacy too.

On Tuesday, Marlinspike launched a service he calls Googlesharing, a plug-in for Firefox designed to give users access to Google’s online offerings while cloaking their identity from the company’s data collection tools. By hosting a proxy server with a collection of Google “identities,” the privacy software, which can be accessed at Googlesharing.net, will allow users to temporarily route their traffic through another computer that masks their identity by mixing their online actions with those of other users.

“Each identity looks like a normal user, but everything is mixed up between identities so Google can’t track any individual,” says Marlinspike. That means users can exploit any of Google’s offerings that don’t require logins, such as search, maps or news, without allowing Google to assemble a profile of their activities that can be used for advertising targeting–or, as some users might fear, information that could be subpoenaed by government investigators.

You can get the Firefox addition here. Marlinspike is offering up his code so you can build your own, so well worth a look methinks. I predict a large increase in Google services that have to be signed in for. I wonder if the Open ID people may have looked at this, but they have a different gig right now – but maybe we have a bigger need for Private rather than Open ID.

You all know by now that Google is pulling out of China (actually, its “May pull out if non censorship request is not met”, but that is very unlikely). The reason given is a massive attack on the accounts of Chinese dissidents in Google (and other) companies’ servers. But, as was pointed out on the BBC Today program this morning, everyone told Google that would happen when they went in 4 years ago. The Google response this morning was that they hoped that by engaging, Chinese behaviour would change

Another reading – the RealEkonomik reading – is that Google knew this would happen, but that it could not afford to ignore such a huge emerging market so went in with eyes wide open, albeit possibly with rose tinted glasses. As Shefaly Yogendra points out, strategy in China is a new Great Game.

So what’s changed? We suspect that as well as an increase in attacks on the servers (Why is China doing it only a problem now, though?*), three other factors have driven them:

- Their reputation in the far more valuable US and European Union market is diving, and both areas are looking at regulation to curb their activity.

- Nothing builds confidence in your new Cloud strategy like knowing its massively hackable by anyone with bit of will and nous

- Penetration in China has been disappointing for Google, its Chinese management has been turbulent, ARPU is still low but costs are not, so its not a great economic benefit at this point

Let’s be clear – a publicly owned corporation does not do things on points of ideological principal, Google is doing this as it believes it serves its own best economic interests here and now. In other words, in the short term it would hopefully do Google a lot of PR good (and allay some legal activity) to give China short shrift. In the long term this may prove to be short sighted, but its a reversible decision and in the long term we are all dead – and the current management will long since have taken their pension pots into retirement. Besides, doors are still open….

All that said, it is still thrilling – regardless of the reasons why, they are doing the ethical thing…. Interesting Times are surely ahead.

* It will be interesting to see if other companies like Microsoft and Yahoo report increasing attacks. Also, surely this is a government to government issue if as widespread as claimed? (Update to this – a statement from Hilary Clinton)