Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Will Google ever really know me?

As an experiment I used Google Translate to translate this blog to Swedish yesterday. The end result was acceptable, however there were some interesting misinterpretations - notably the name of it was changed to 'Smeknamn Burcher' - literally meaning 'nickname Burcher'.

www.nickburcher.com in Swedish!

This is the ongoing problem for applications and Search Engines. Algorithms and machines can recognise patterns, words and data, but they cannot (yet) properly intuit context. Everything is based on statistical probability and in the main they get things right, but not always.

The main Search Engines ignore words like 'and' and 'the', whereas Semantic Search advocates argue that these are vital to being able to interpret context. Semantic Search engines like Powerset and Hakia are using ‘Natural Language Processing’ technology to reference queries against huge language databases to help establish correlations and context – thus producing more relevant results for the user. This requires significant processing, but advances in processing power are enabling Semantic Search querying to become easier and more important – as evidenced by Microsoft buying Powerset.

The quest for greater relevance is not just limited to text results though. Google (and others) are working hard to develop Universal Search, where the Search Engine aims to serve up the most relevant result for the user in the format that is most appropriate (eg a search for ‘Britney Spears’ serves up a mixture of photos, video and text results on the same page.)

Britney Spears Google results showing Universal Search in action

There also seems to be a proliferation of Amazon ‘other people who bought this liked’ models. Digg have introduced a recommendation engine, Zemanta offers a nice tool for bloggers (offering relevant content as posts are typed) and news articles are routinely tagged with related story features.


As the volume and variety of content online grows, filtering is becoming increasingly efficient and recommendation is becoming more important. As the internet continues to develop the mechanics around the two different types of searching will become more distinct. Voyages of recovery will continue to be based around Search Engines, with results becoming even faster and more intelligent. At the same time the starting point options for a ‘voyage of discovery’ are diversifying and are not limited to Search Engines – the volume of users starting their journey through a Search Engine could decrease as social networks, social search and recommendation engines become more prominent (hence the continued rumours around Google buying Digg.)

This presents challenges to advertisers and Search strategies will need to increase in complexity to properly harness the new opportunities that are developing. However, if improvements in underlying machine intelligence mean that ‘nick burcher’ can be automatically (and accurately) translated into any language, then there will be a whole range of other things to think about too!

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Lotus Evora revealed - the end of the Faceless People mystery!

The widely debated Faceless People mystery has been solved and as I wrote previously the Faceless People were viral marketing for Lotus.

Faceless people on the Lotus site

Lotus Evora revealed on www.facelesspeople.com

The Faceless people website is now open at www.facelesspeople.com (though you have to wait for the count to reach 100) and under the strapline 'True Character in a Faceless World' the new Lotus Evora has been revealed - both online and at the London Motor Show.

This brings to an end one of the most talked about viral stunts in recent times!

Monday, 21 July 2008

Churchill Dog swears in latest Churchill TV ad?

In today’s Metro there is a story about how viewers are convinced that the Churchill dog swears in the latest ad for Churchill insurance. This Churchill TV ad has now gone multi-media as the ‘swearing dog’ has been uploaded to Youtube - meaning it won't go away even if Churchill want it to. A Churchill spokesman has denied that there is any swearing in the ad, but online discussion seems to be spreading. Interesting to see where the debate around the 'swearing dog' ends up.........

'Churchill Dog accused of swearing' story from today's Metro

Sunday, 20 July 2008

Facebook growth in Chile - Las Ultimas Noticias have run a Facebook feature today (and included some of my comments)

Facebook has seen significant growth in Chile this year and Chilean newspaper Las Ultimas Noticias covered the story extensively today. The Facebook article featured some of my comments and my photo was also included on page 3!

Full Las Ultimas Noticias Facebook story - as seen at http://www.lun.com (click for larger image)

My comments on Facebook growth in Chile were included in the main piece and a box-out (click for larger image)

I ran Facebook statistics by country 2 weeks ago and was surprised to see that Chile had leapt into the top 10 of countries with the highest Facebook use. Indeed when I re-ran the statistics, a further 200,000 users had been recruited in Chile. This brings the total number of Facebook users in Chile to 2,330,440 (impressive considering the total population is only 16.5 million!)

Screenshot of Facebook Ad Program detailing number of Facebook users in Chile (click for larger image)

Facebook is being translated into non-English language versions and Spanish was the first non-English language - launching on 7th February this year. Growth of Facebook usage in Chile coincides with the launch of the Spanish language version and Google Site Trends shows how Facebook usage has grown.

Google Site Trends graph showing growth of Facebook usage in Chile in 2008 (click for larger image)

The launch of Facebook in Spanish can therefore be directly correlated to the increase in Facebook usage in both Chile and Colombia (with both countries now appearing in the top 10 countries by Facebook usage). A bit strange that Facebook in Argentina has not quite followed the same pattern or delivered the same user numbers, but as Facebook expands to over 70 languages I have no doubt that global user numbers will continue to grow!

Footnotes:

Total: Facebook Users in Chile: 2,330,040 people

Age: 13-17 years 346,480, 18-24 years 849,540, 25-34 years 762,800, 35-44 years 252,740, 45+ 121,720

Male - Female ratio: 54% of users in are female, 46% male

Saturday, 19 July 2008

Ad Age Power 150 - ranking of the top European blogs

The AdAge Power 150 is a comprehensive ranking of the worlds top media and marketing blogs. The AdAge Power 150 takes into account a range of metrics from inlinks to traffic to Google Page Rank and lists over 700 blogs. The full list can be seen at http://adage.com/power150 and blogs can be submitted for listing at http://adage.com/power150/submit.

The AdAge Power 150 is (unsurprisingly) dominated by US / Canadian bloggers, however around 15% of the list consists of European bloggers. James Gordon-MacIntosh has published a UK specific Power 150 ranking on his blog (http://t4w.blogs.com/spinningaround) and it started me thinking about what the European Power 150 list would look like. I obviously then got carried away and drew up the whole thing!

I am not planning to make this a regular exercise, however this is the full ranking of the European blogs on the AdAge Power 150 for 19th July 2008:


















































































































Power150
European
ranking

Power150
Global
rank
Blog namePower150
Score
Country
1
21Adverblog98ITALY
2
22Adland98SWEDEN
3
23I believe in adv98ITALY
4
33Niche Marketing93POLAND
5
35Adverbox92ITALY
6
45Russell Davies88ENGLAND
7
49David Airey85SCOTLAND
8
50Osocio85HOLLAND
9
51 Marketing & Strategy
Innovation Blog
84BELGIUM
10
53Blogstorm84ENGLAND
11
60Neville Hobson81ENGLAND
12
62Joost De Valk’s SEO Blog81HOLLAND
13
82Adliterate73ENGLAND
14
91Only Dead Fish71ENGLAND
15
104Media Culpa70SWEDEN
16
107Crack Unit69ENGLAND
17
111PR Blogger68ENGLAND
18
115Viralblog67HOLLAND
19
133The Engaging Brand65ENGLAND
20
137Talent Imitates, Genius Steals65ENGLAND
21
139Behind the Buzz64UK
22
153Joe La Pompe63FRANCE
23
161Welcome to Optimism62ENGLAND
24
163Fresh Creation62HOLLAND
25
170HERD61ENGLAND
26
172Krishna De’s BizGrowth News61IRELAND
27
175The Hidden Persuader60PORTUGAL
28
176Because The Message Is The Medium60ANDORRA
29
179The Kaiser Edition60GERMANY
30
184Make Marketing History59ENGLAND
31
191Search Engine Marketing Blog59IRELAND
32
204Invisible Red57PORTUGAL
33
210Modern Marketing57ENGLAND
34
211Cross The Breeze57BELGIUM
35
216Coolz0r – Marketing Thoughts56BELGIUM
36
218A PR Guy’s Musings55ENGLAND
37
219Mindblob55BELGIUM
38
220Spinning Around55ENGLAND
39
221Crenk55ENGLAND
40
222A Source Of Inspiration 55PORTUGAL
41
224Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog55SCOTLAND
42
226Blog till you drop55ENGLAND
43
234PPC Blog55ENGLAND
44
235Marketallica55TURKEY
45
242BeRelevant: Email Marketing54BELGIUM
46
243No Man Is An Iland54AUSTRIA
47
247Social Hallucinations53DENMARK
48
265Wiep.net52HOLLAND
49
268SEOCO52ENGLAND
50
272Ewritings51GERMANY
51
283Faster Future50ENGLAND
52
287Adofdamonth.com50HUNGARY
53
288Hobo SEO UK50SCOTLAND
54
296Greenormal49ENGLAND
55
315The Ad Pit47ENGLAND
56
326Life Moves Pretty Fast46ENGLAND
57
328Drew B’s take on PR46ENGLAND
58
331Murphy’s Law46IRELAND
59
341Brendan Cooper45ENGLAND
60
343Living In A Digital World45ENGLAND
61
36250-Plus Marketing43ENGLAND
62
366Beyond PR43ENGLAND
63
373Interactive Marketing Trends43ENGLAND
64
378Brand Strategy Magazine Blog42ENGLAND
65
380Living Brands42 ENGLAND
66
382Simon Says42ENGLAND
67
394Nick Burcher41ENGLAND
68
398Wadd’s Tech PR Blog41ENGLAND
69
401Mediations41ENGLAND
70
407Duckeldanny41GERMANY
71
409BSI – Research Blog40GERMANY
72
410Business and Games Blog40BELGIUM
73
433Raw Stylus38ENGLAND
74
434This is HERD38ENGLAND
75
444Rubbishcorp37ENGLAND
76
451London Calling37ENGLAND
77
455Simon Wakeman36ENGLAND
78
459The Way Of The Web36ENGLAND
79
478(Almost) Always Thinking35ENGLAND
80
503Get International Clients34FRANCE
81
523A Mountain Dweller in the Thames Valley33ENGLAND
82
528Event Manager Blog33UK
83
529Marketing Safari33ICELAND
84
533Bad Idea, Indeed32BELGIUM
85
540Vincent Thome’s blog32ENGLAND
86
543Unleashed On Marketing32ENGLAND
87
544Pudding Relations32ENGLAND
88
558MobileWeb.be Blog31BELGIUM
89
563Brandgym Blog30ENGLAND
90
564[Bluurb] Stuff and Things30ENGLAND
91
567BrandXpress Blog30ROMANIA
92
574All Things PR30ENGLAND
93
584The New Marketing29ENGLAND
94
596Indolent.com29ENGLAND
95
603Urbanology Weblog28HOLLAND
96
605PR Voice28ENGLAND
97
620In The Cowshed27ENGLAND
98
626Dragan Varagic Blog27RUSSIA
99
629Yacco’s Blog26HOLLAND
100
633Offer and Acceptance26ENGLAND
101
634No Copy26BELGIUM
102
63725 Letters in the Alphabet26ENGLAND
103
643Creative in London25ENGLAND
104
649Be.Interactive25BELGIUM
105
66310 Yetis PR Blog23ENGLAND
106
665The Customer
Experience Labs
23SWITZERLAND
107
680Digital Examples22ENGLAND
108
694PR Wordsmith21ENGLAND
109
710Thinking Sparks19HOLLAND
110
712From PR to Eternity19ENGLAND
111
716Yet Another Planning Blog19ENGLAND
112
718Mesh-Box19GERMANY
113
723Noticing16UK


- 21 European countries are represented on the AdAge Power 150 list and the 113 European blogs make up around 15% of the total AdAge Power 150 listing. Shown as a pie chart (!) here:

European countries represented on the AdAge Power 150 (click for larger image)

- Top blogs for each of the European countries represented on the AdAge Power 150 Global Blog Ranking:

21) ITALY : Adverblog
22) SWEDEN: Adland
33) POLAND: Niche Marketing
45) ENGLAND: Russell Davies
50) HOLLAND: Osocio
49) SCOTLAND: David Airey
51) BELGIUM: Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog
153) FRANCE: Joe La Pompe
172) IRELAND: Krishna De's BizGrowth News
176) ANDORRA: Because The Message Is The Medium
179) GERMANY: The Kaiser Edition
175) PORTUGAL: The Hidden Persuader
235) TURKEY: Marketallica
247) DENMARK: Social Hallucinations
243) AUSTRIA: No Man Is An Iland
287) HUNGARY: AdOfDaMonth
529) ICELAND: Marketing Safari
567) ROMANIA: BrandXpress Blog
626) RUSSIA: Dragan Varagic Blog
665) SWITZERLAND: The Customer Experience Labs

The above list of European blogs demonstrates how large and far reaching the AdAge Power 150 ranking is becoming. The Power 150 is developing into a key reference point for marketing blogs and I expect the Power 150 to keep growing as word spreads and more non-US blogs apply to be listed.

Let me know if anything is incorrect and feel free to leave comments!

Friday, 18 July 2008

Twitter visualisation using TwitArc, Twitter Spectrum and Twitter StreamGraphs

We live in a world of ever increasing data and data visualisation is becoming ever more important. Data visualisation is also becoming more mainstream. Wordle seems to be everywhere at the moment and Radiohead’s latest video has been made with data rather than cameras. Data visualisation of social network data is also becoming more prominent and there are some interesting initiatives around Digg (with Digg Labs), Flickr and particularly Twitter.

I have previously written about Twistori and Twittervision / Flickrvision, but today have found the most interesting Twitter visualisations yet!

Jeff Clark at Neoformix is doing great work with Twitter visualisation and is producing tools that can both visualise and compare Twitter data. I have tested TwitArcs, Twitter Spectrum and Twitter StreamGraphs using my own Twitter ID.

TwitArcs

Using Summize, "TwitArcs takes the latest 100 tweets for a Twitter ID or term of interest and creates a list representation that has arcs connecting messages sent to the same users or that use the same primary term." Here is the TwitArc for my Twitter ID:

TwitArc for nickburcher on Twitter (click for larger image)


Twitter StreamGraphs

"Twitter StreamGraph lets you create StreamGraphs from the latest 200 tweets containing a given word or from a particular user." Here is the Twitter StreamGraph for my Twitter ID:

Twitter Stream Graph for nickburcher (click for larger image)

Twitter Spectrum

Twitter Spectrum lets you take two related words or Twitter IDs and compares the results, highlighting crossover. One topic is coloured blue, the other red, and the associated words are coloured and positioned based on how highly they are associated with the two topics. Click on any word to see the related tweets. I have compared my Twitter ID with Neil Perkin’s Twitter ID:

nickburcher compared to neilperkin on Twitter (click for larger image)

These are great tools for visualising Twitter data and I will paying close attention to Neoformix to see what Jeff Clark produces next!

Thursday, 17 July 2008

Social Search is finally here as Digg, Twitter and Friendfeed growth pushes Google to experiment

Social Search seems to be taking off and the all conquering Google algorithm may soon have a genuine challenger! Previous discussion has been centred around the development of people-powered Search engines like Wikia or Semantic Search engines like Hakia / Powerset (recently acquired by Microsoft) and the question of whether these could ever challenge Google dominance (answer 'no').

However, user powered, social search derived from sites like Twitter, Friendfeed or Digg could have more impact and the Search landscape is starting to evolve. If Search is defined as the starting point for an internet journey, then the advancement of social media has the potential to challenge the current state of affairs.

The threat to Google was originally seen as coming from Facebook and their all powerful social graph. Facebook though (distracted by Beacon, Open Social and redesigns?) have not succeeded in developing a social search engine and the challenge to Google seems to be coming from other sites in the social media sphere.

Digg is becoming more and more popular as a source of reference, traffic is continuing to grow and (as it moves away from its roots as a tech reference site) mainstream news articles are becoming more prevalent (Hitwise analysis here.) Digg have continued to invest in site development with initiatives like the new Digg Recommendation engine and rumours that Google are courting Kevin Rose persist
(http://valleywag.com/5016035/is-google-about-to-swallow-up-digg).

Digg Recommendation Engine

Twitter have bought Summize and have instantly integrated this into their site – http://www.summize.com now re-directs to http://search.twitter.com. The Twitter blog states: “there is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second” and the Summize integration offers an easy way to not just see what your friends are doing, but also to see what is happening “in the world beyond your personal timeline.” Whilst this is very helpful for internet trackers, this may have also given Twitter a business model.

Twitter Search

Friendfeed is the other potential challenger on the horizon. Friendfeed Search is developing quickly and it is possible to surf all Friendfeed information by going to the Advanced Search page, typing a search phrase (”Microsoft acquires”, etc) and choosing “Shared by everyone.” This will search entries from all of the 47 media channels aggregated within FriendFeed and serve up the most relevant results (again offering opportunities for highly relevant advertising.)
(http://mashable.com/2008/07/16/friendfeed-competition/)

With sites like Digg, Twitter and FriendFeed developing their personal recommendation results, it is therefore no surprise that Google are also (quietly) experimenting in this area. Google have selected some random test volunteers for their experiment with social search, (http://www.google.com/experimental/a840e102.html) and testers are able to influence their search experience by adding, moving and removing Search results. This is similar to Digg in feel (particularly with the ‘Like It’, ‘Don’t Like It’ buttons) and it will be interesting to see if Google launch this themselves rather than pursue the acquisition of Digg.

Google Search with recommendation features (click for larger image)

With recent changes Search finally seems to be reaching out to incorporate social actions into results as well as just relying on the all powerful algorithmic approach. This opens up new opportunities for internet users to find what they want more quickly and creates contextually more relevant areas for paid search. The ability to track personal actions and opinions is a PR persons dream, however I guess there will be a few sleepless nights in the SEO sector as changes start to be seen?

Interesting times ahead.........

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

Joss Wheldon launches Dr. Horrible's Sing-along blog - and its already heading for cult status!

Dr.Horrible's Sing-along blog is a new internet 3 part mini-musical available until 20th July. Dr.Horrible's Sing-along blog is another example of a full length production being split down into easily manageable chunks for consumption on the internet - and it already looks like a hit. (There were 200,000 'hits' (horrible word) an hour on the first day of release causing the host servers to crash and the show is number one on US iTunes where each installment is on sale for $2.)

Joss Wheldon (the man behind Buffy and Angel) 'found himself at a loose end' during the Hollywood writers strike and used the time to create Dr.Horrible's Sing-along blog which claims to be the 'first internet musical.'


"Dr Horrible tells the story of a would-be villain (Neil Patrick Harris) who dreams of joining the Evil League of Evil. He's thwarted by arch-nemesis Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and by his affections for the girl from the laundrette (Felicia Day). " (Guardian)


Episodes are being released over a 5 day period at http://www.drhorrible.com before being removed from the internet forever. Act one (Wheee!) was released on 15th July, Act two (OMG!) is released on 17th July (today!) and Act three (Denouement!) is released on the 19th July. After Dr.Horrible's sing-along blog has been removed from the internet, the full 42 minute feature will be available as a subscription download, before moving to a DVD release (that will even have sing-along commentaries!)

There is a significant social media presence around Dr.Horrible's Sing-along blog. The Dr.Horrible Facebook fan page now has 12,314 fans, there is a MySpace page with 5770 friends, a Dr.Horrible Twitter with 2301 followers, 5834 blog mentions on Google Blog Search and a YouTube user profile with a teaser trailer that has been viewed over 40,000 times:


Dr.Horrible is weird, different and fun. The Hollywood writers strike shook up a lot of areas and a by product was that influencers, like Joss Wheldon, started re-evaluating ways of doing things. Dr.Horrible is well made and cleverly distributed through internet and social media channels. At the same time others like MySpace are experimenting with webisodes that ultimately come together in a full length feature (eg Beyond The Rave) and this is an area that will continue to develop as video sharing sites seek to expand the volume of professional content that they index. Feature films that split down into small chunks that can be easily digested through mobile or social networks are on the increase!

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/07/10/how-joss-whedons-dr-horrible-sing-along-blog
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1590670/story.jhtml
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv/2008/07/note_to_ed_the_phrases.html