Google Custom Search Turns Any Web Page Into a Portal

I've been playing around a bit with Google's new Custom Search Engine and I am really impressed by what this capability can do for any publisher, large or small. Google has provided an elegant solution here for the most frustrating problem of web searching; the fact that search results are usually 99% garbage and less than 1% even close to what the user was actually looking for. In effect, Google is enlisting the human intelligence of web authors and publishers to improve the relevance of search results, while still maintaining the ability to serve ads on all those pages. It's a classic example of "doing well by doing good," like the missionary families in Michener's Hawaii who spread the Christian gospel to the "heathens" and, incidentally, got very rich at the same time.

Seriously, though, Google's Co-op technology is truly a service that gives as well as gets, and the big winners here are bound to be the wonks and enthusiasts who now have an incredibly powerful tool for building community and readership. Without having to learn JavaScript or waiting for someone at Google or Yahoo! to return your call for tech support, you can harness the Google search engine to power your portal with search as you define it - pulling content for your readers from the sites that you have screened and that you endorse. It's no small amount of work to build and maintain such lists of sites, but other than that the only limit is your own imagination. One of my favorites: Real Climate, provides access to information on global warming without all the noise, political bull, and spam sites that grow like maggots around such popular topics. Bravo, Google!

Dow Jones' Factiva Buy-out: It's Still All About the Content

Last week’s announcement of Dow Jones’ buyout of Reuters’ 50% share of Factiva was not surprising, especially after Clare Hart’s promotion in January to President of the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group. In a shrinking market for subscription-based information, focused leadership is required, and this is almost impossible for a company that is run by two parents. There are tough decisions to make – e.g. what new users to pursue, and what technologies and services to invest in. In the end, control would have to be ceded to one parent or the other, and in this case, as Rich Zanino pointed out during the DJ earnings call, “the bottom line is Factiva is much more strategic to Dow Jones than it is to Reuters.”

Keeping Factiva squarely within the strategic focus of Dow Jones is largely due to Clare Hart’s unfaltering vision and leadership. Clare recognized, probably better than anyone, that keeping Factiva a step ahead of competitors and the free Internet would require continually increasing the value of the content offering. Partnering with Reuters back in 1999 was all about leapfrogging US competitors Nexis and Dialog by building the largest collection of premium international content. To keep revenues growing, they have to continually up the ante.

The need to continually add more premium content was also underlined during the same analyst phone call: Factiva will soon begin to distribute real-time Dow Jones Newswires content for the first time, something that Factiva customers have been requesting for years. This would probably never have been possible under the former joint ownership structure, due to the fear that doing so would directly undermine the huge piece of DJ’s core business that competes directly with Reuters.

To those who have been predicting for some years the demise of premium content services, here is evidence that such predictions may have been premature. While content itself may no longer have the absolute power of a “king” any more, with a sound business strategy behind the throne, it still can wield a lot of power.

The Web 2.0 Debate

Sunday's SF Chronicle featured a debate between Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) and British media entrepreneur Andrew Keen, who is writing The Cult of the Amateur, where he asserts that the rise of user-generated content is undermining the viability of professional media. Both sides of the argument – the wisdom of crowds versus the traditional role of the editor – are well represented. A great read.

It’s fascinating to see how our relationship with media has changed in recent years. Many of us grew up in the era when a few broadcast networks and a couple of major newspapers acted as the gatekeepers and arbiters of all news and popular culture. Today’s technology gives us the equivalent of direct control of what we want to watch or read. It also gives any of us unprecedented access to an audience for our own expression. In spite of all the substandard content that this has unleashed on the market, it’s hard to imagine that this is bad thing. It does mean that we all have to become more discriminating consumers of content, however, since for the same investment of time we now have unprecedented range of choices - from content that is deliciously fulfilling to that which should be considered garbage. As the old saying goes, it's not such a bad problem to have.

Will YouTube become Google's iPod?

Much has been written about Google's acquisition last week of YouTube, but there are so many fascinating aspects to this that people will probably go on talking about it for months and years to come. Google's largest acquisition to date, and their strongest foray into the world of "social media" will be a game-changer, and consequently the $1.65 billion worth of Google stock required for the purchase should be viewed in the same context as the investment that Apple made in developing the iPod. In many ways, these two investments are similar to each other. Sure, there are other online video search engines available, like Blinkx, just as there were other devices for playing digital music before the iPod was introduced. However, there is now without question a dominant brand, and everyone else will be relegated to playing catch-up for the foreseeable future.

While much of the criticism of the deal has focused on Google’s legal exposure for copyright violations on the YouTube site, we shouldn’t forget that the same thing was said about Apple, when they jumped into the online music game at just about the same time that Napster was being shut down. The difference between success and disaster was 1) a superior marketing strategy, 2) a superior brand, and 3) a fearless willingness to take the initiative and change the game. Everything else falls into place from there.

Cultural Divergence

I happened to catch an excellent To the Best of Our Knowledge program on our local NPR station last evening. It was an interview with Henry Jenkins, the founder and director of MIT's comparative media studies program, who has written a new book, Convergence Culture, in which he addresses from a scholarly perspective the fundamental cultural shift that underlies the whole new media phenomenon. While baby boomers like me still draw boundaries around “professional” media, and take for granted its traditionally assigned roles of author and reader, our kids are becoming more comfortable with story telling that makes the reader a participant in an ongoing, free-form game, one in which the player needs to collaborate with others to find clues outside of the original medium of the story. He uses the examples of "The Matrix" and the television series, "Lost", in which the many threads of a story may lead to multiple conclusions about what is actually going on. Followers of the story either stumble upon or learn from others how to find key clues to the story that are hidden on secret web pages, or (in the case of “Lost”) in what sometimes appear to be “commercials” planted in the shows.

This breakdown (or mash-up?) of media types has already extended beyond popular culture, and it is already changing the business of publishing and distributing content. More books are being released online and edited with the help of self-appointed contributors before ever making it into print, like Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail and Daniel Pinkwater’s The Neddiad. Media professionals compete with amateur authors for mindshare, bandwidth, and even advertising dollars. It’s becoming more difficult to define what actually even constitutes a news article these days, since on many sites the author’s contribution serves merely to start the discussion, and the real interesting action is going on in the string of comments growing organically at the bottom of the screen. Many years ago, news publishers in every city in the US built impressive downtown buildings to symbolize the solid foundation of their prominent role within the civic discourse. The symbol for today’s media moguls should more appropriately be the surfboard.