Here is a summary of the week’s Web Tech action on Read/WriteWeb.
Analysis Posts
Google Interview
This week Read/WriteWeb finally got an interview with Google, something I’ve been
wanting for a long time. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam operations,
talked to me on the topic of next-generation search. Unfortunately I published it
just as news of the $1B Viacom
lawsuit against YouTube hit (the Techmeme ‘Scrum of the Week’), so my interview with
Matt didn’t get the attention it deserved. However there is a lot of great info in this
interview, so I encourage you to read it – maybe print it out and read it in bed on
Sunday morning, along with the Sunday paper 🙂 Also check out the follow-up post: Video PageRank: Google
Searches for The Holy Grail.
The interview post got some good comments, for example Steve said:
“The personalization of search is great for local companies competing in global
markets. It will be interesting to see the evolution of natural language in search. If i
was google, i would be doing my best to purchase Wikipedia. They are sending them most of
their traffic… so why not?”
Why not indeed? Apart from the fact that Wikipedia is non-profit, so there would be a
major outcry from people about a commercial company taking it over – especially a company
like Google that already controls so much access to information on the Web.
Phill Midwinter commented that he
isn’t so impressed by Google’s search engine strengths:
“It’s a nice interview – but again I’m not seeing anything new here beyond what I’ve
been hearing for the past two years. Google is looking increasingly stagnant from my
point of view as a search engine developer. If they are truly keeping to release often,
release early; then they haven’t actually done much of importance for quite some time to
improve search.”
My feeling is that Google is innovating a lot, but it hasn’t necessarily integrated
those things into the main search.
Finally, web 2.0 innovations
wrote:
“…the site that would potentially undermine Google’s dominance in finding
information on web will be anything else but not Google-style search engine.”
Indeed! Hence Read/WriteWeb’s Alternative
Search Engine list.
Alt Search Engine Mashups
Speaking of which… this week a couple of mashups of our Top 100 Alt Search Engine
list came up. Check out:
Also we’ve created a kind of sub-list of weird search
engines – I think you’ll agree, an entertaining list to play with!
Yahoo Personal Finance review
I recommend reading Sramana
Mitra’s excellent analysis of Yahoo’s new Personal Finance site, from earlier this
week. It’s a good illustration of where Yahoo’s strengths and weaknesses are in its web
properties.
Other Analysis Posts
- Open Data
Workshop 2007 - Adobe
Remix on Photobucket - Rating the
Memetrackers: Redux - Improving Online
Communities: MyBlogLog, Explode, OthersOnline
Events
Early this week the annual SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive) conference was held
in Austin, Texas. This has a reputation for being one of the most fun conferences on the
Web tech circuit, so I was sorry to miss it again. Maybe next year! Luckily though, Sean
Ammirati was there to cover the event for Read/WriteWeb. I particularly enjoyed his Web App Autopsy
report and the follow-up The
Figures Behind The Top Web Apps. Here is a list of all Sean’s posts from
SXSW:
- SXSW: Why
Marketers Need To Work With People Media - SXSW:
Scaling Your Community - SXSW:
The Figures Behind The Top Web Apps - SXSW:
Sunday Keynote – Open Source Hardware - SXSW:
Using RSS for Marketing
SXSW: Web 2.0, Semantic Web & Scientific Publishing- SXSW: Under 18
Blogs, Wikis & Social Networks - SXSW: Web App
Autopsy - SXSW:
World Domination via Collaboration
Startup Action
Some interesting startups crossed our path this week. I was particularly enamoured
with an online video site called We Dig TV. My review: We Dig TV Brings Television
Game Shows To The Web. Also I recommend Alex Iskold’s review of Summize, a search
engine with heatmaps. Lot of innovation in that app.
Other startup posts this week:
- PureVideo
and The Rise of Online Video Portals - Imagini Spikes
After Being Dugg – Will It Last? - Spanning
Sync v1.0 Launches – Apple, Google Sync - blinkx Launches
Video Search Engine Optimization Wiki & Guidelines
Poll
We actually ran two polls this week. The first asked: How many RSS Remix
feeds do you subscribe to?. The results:
I’ve subscribed to hundreds of remix
feeds 5% (11 votes)
Somewhere between 51 to
100
5% (12 votes)
11 to
50 13% (31 votes)
1 to
10 24% (58 votes)
I haven’t subscribed to any remix
feeds 44%
(106 votes)
I don’t know what you’re talking
about
10% (25 votes)
There was a bit of confusion about what RSS remix feeds are. And it’s clear from the
results that filtered feeds are still very early in the adoption phase. Only 23% of
respondants have subscribed to more than 10 remixed feeds, while 10% of people don’t
even know what a remix feed is. Lot of work to be done here (including by blogs such as
R/WW, to explain them).
Our other poll asked: Why is there no
advertising with YouTube videos? The reason for asking this was that Mark Cuban had
commented in a previous
post that the only reason for no advertising on YouTube is the copyright issues. So
we decided to find out if others agreed. The results:
The Mark Cuban choice — Google is concerned about legal
exposure 37% (57 votes)
The R/WW choice — Google hasn’t cracked digital
relevancy 22% (33 votes)
Both — Google is running scared of big media AND hasn’t found a VideoRank formula
yet 41% (63 votes)
It looks like a small majority think it’s both a technology and copyright
issue, but a good percentage agree with Cuban that it’s all down to copyright.
That’s a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.
