Josh Constine | Cheryl Waller

I/Overload?

May 18, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Did Google’s conference succeed? It launched dozens of products and services in its 205-minute keynote, but did the world understand them? I saw some of the smartest journalists in technology struggling to handle the information density. But what’s the alternative? Break it up across multiple days, or even multiple conferences? Google’s breadth presents it with a challenge unique among the tech giants.

Apple? Its launches center around a discrete set of devices. That’s why WWDC works. There might be one radically new product, but then just a set of iterations on what we already know. The screen is bigger, the tablet is thinner, the software gets a new sheen. And since Apple is all about hardware you need to touch to believe, it has to do it all in-person. Journalists and pundits can easily digest the news and offer their insights to the world.

Facebook? It prefers the rolling thunder approach that works because it’s mostly a software company. Releasing things when they’re ready rather than waiting months for an event embodies its “move fast and break things” ideal. It reaches out to journalists almost daily about new updates. When it has something big, it throws a laser-focused, dedicated event like it did this year for content-specific news feeds, Graph Search, and Home. Even when it threw its last f8 developer conference 20 months ago, it kept it tight to just Timeline and Open Graph. The media could wrap its head around the social network’s plans.

Those conferences serve their purposes because they align with the identities of producers. Some see Microsoft’s events as a fragmented mess, as they too embody their producer. Microsost has Build for Windows and developers, TechEd for enterprise, a partner conference, a management summit, and a whole event for SharePoint. By splitting them all up, it never feels like there’s one day where Microsoft rules the world.

But Google has its own identity and it’s causing I/O growing pains. The conference certainly captures the spotlight. The problem is that Google’s vast ambitions have left I/O bursting at the seams. This year’s mega-keynote tried to combine search, maps, Google+, YouTube, Google Now, Google Play, music, games, Chrome, Android, and a new phone. And that was just the consumer facing stuff! Then there were a huge set of developer announcements like a native client for C++, location APIs, game services APIs, cloud messaging for notifications, and a suite of mobile app building tools called Android Studio.

Did you watch the keynote? If so, did you remember all these things? Did you have time to read insightful analysis about them? Did journalists even have the bandwidth to write intelligently about it all? It could take a while to unpack everything from I/O. I know I have at least five stories I want to write. And inevitably things will fall through the cracks as a new week will bring new news from elsewhere.

And it’s only going to get more intense. Google employees I’ve talked to say Larry Page is really pushing his 10X innovation mantra and speedier product cycles. They explain that Google could have saved some stuff for another conference later this year, but by then it’ll already have whole slew of new things ready to show off. Plus, developers and futurists might not be willing to come from around the world for two events a year.

The single, 3+ hour keynote with no intermission did symbolized Google’s big theme of unification. Google wants to show it isn’t just a grab bag of different products. They all piggy-back on each other. Android ties mobile together. Google+ ties people together no matter what other Google products they’re using.

But I/O may be too dense and rich. Like a chunk of chocolate fudge, it overwhelms the senses and leaves you struggling to chew up Google’s vision. It was so mind-boggling it put Wired’s Mat Honan into a psychedelic trance.

The three days of developer sessions that followed the keynote were a success, in that they helped developers develop. But perhaps splitting the keynote into two bite-size sessions would make it all easier to swallow. One consumer keynote (Search, Maps, Google+, Hangouts, Music, phone) and one developer keynote (Android, Chrome, APIs, developer tools). They could be split across two days. Alternatively, it could be one keynote with announcements sorted into these two categories with an intermission in the middle. Either would go a long way to making I/O more comprehensible.

But for now, sticking with a single, epic conference may be the best route for Google to create momentum, convey unification, bring its community together, and impress the globe. Google is determined to innovate faster and deliver the future. The duty falls on us to keep up.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, io2013, Opinion, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

How An Ex-Googler Built Facebook For Glass

May 16, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Google and Facebook working together? They’re actually friends, in no small part thanks to Erick Tseng. The former Android leader, now Facebook’s mobile product manager, today launched the official Facebook For Google Glass app. Here he tells me about how a tiny team designed the app around simple photo sharing and Facebook’s strengthening relationship with Google.

Josh Constine, TechCrunch: What was it like getting Facebook involved in the Glass program?

Erick Tseng, mobile product manager for special projects at Facebook: It was great. I used to work at Google [as the lead product manager on Android until 2010]. We’re very close, but I have a personal relationship with a bunch of folks on the Glass team. It came out of a pretty informal chat with folks on that team. We both quickly came to the conclusion that it would be pretty awesome to get Facebook on Google Glass.

It all developed in just a few months. Two engineers built the whole app. There were no formal designers. Just me project-managing it. We got early access to some developer hardware and Google Glass prototypes. We had a very small team build a prototype [of our app]. We liked what we saw, showed it to Google, they liked what they saw, then we productized it. It was fun to work on a new platform like Google Glass.

“Our starting principle was the user experience”

TechCrunch: What was it like working on a fast-moving development platform like Google Glass? How do you think about what features to include in Facebook For Glass?

Tseng: From a developer perspective, our starting principle was the user experience. What functionality makes the most sense when you have a device like Glass sitting in front of you? What we came up with was the idea that we wanted to do things very simply and easily. You don’t want a lot of text. We started playing with it and saw photos as a very powerful user interaction with Glass. It’s natural that when you take photos on Glass, you want to share them with the people you care about. We wanted to make the photo uploading process as quick and easy as possible, so we focused on that use case.

As we were playing with Glass, we were really impressed with voice functionality, so we added in the ability to speak a photo description that gets added to your photo.

TechCrunch: There’s a lot of other functionality you could have added. Did you run into constraints on the Glass platform?

Tseng: To be fair, it wasn’t all that much of a constrained platform, considering we wanted to do photo sharing. Photo-taking on Glass is very fast. It’s just one click to share, and one more to decide who to share with. It’s going to be an evolving platform and we’re excited to see what Google has for developers. My expectation is that over time a lot of the user functionality will get easier.

“When you have an opportunity like this, you jump in with eyes wide open”

TechCrunch: What was it like working on a moving target, where you might not know what the device your app eventually launches on would be able to do?

Tseng: It was fun! When you have an opportunity to jump in on an emerging category like this you jump in with eyes wide open, knowing there will be some dynamics before things start settling in. We went in fully aware that this is very early and still in development, but the opportunity to build on Google Glass was quite thrilling.

We always like to think of massive scale and how we can increase happiness in our users live. With Glass, even though it’s very early, it does feel like the natural evolution of where computing is going. As it evolves from the desktop to phones to computers we wear all over our bodies, it behooves us to start only on any technology like this so we get an early glimpse of what users want.

TechCrunch: There’s no way to read the feed or get notifications on Facebook For Glass right now. Did you consider the balance between building an immersive experience and one that might interrupt and overwhelm people?

Tseng: I think it really comes down to how a device like Glass will continue to evolve in our daily lives and the role it will play. We wanted to keep it simple, but it was a no-brainer that photos are a very enjoyable use case. Starting with that was a very straight-forward decision. We’re excited to see Google’s feedback and get people to tell us what they think, what they wish the device could do in addition to photo uploading and we’ll take that into consideration.

TechCrunch: What’s it like being at Facebook and working with Google? Is there any of the animosity people think there is?

Tseng: We love working with the Google Glass team. From the very first conversation I had with the team when we said “Wouldn’t it be great if we did this?” to launch was just a couple months. That’s a testament to both teams working very closely together to get this shipped.

More broadly, it’s often forgotten that we have a great relationship. Facebook is one of most popular Android apps today. We already work very closely on that experience as well. And then Home is the latest manifestation of that relationship.

TechCrunch: What about your previous arguments about data portability and who can import whose email contacts or social graph?

Tseng: Data importation? With the Glass team that never came up at all, so I haven’t even thought about that in this context.

TechCrunch: Is wearable computing the future of social networking?

Tseng: No, I think social networking is a broader concept. It permeates everything we do in our lives. Wearable computing is a way of helping you connect more closely and see context about what’s around you, but I think it’s a misnomer to say it represents the future of social networking.

TechCrunch: Are there specific Google Glass features you’d like to see?

Tseng: Oh yeah! I’d like to keep some of those secret for now. We want to surprise folks when they come out. This app is really our first foray into anything like a Glass form factor. We expect to learn a lot.

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, google glass, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Google Unites Gmail And G+ Chat Into “Hangouts” Cross-Platform Text And Group Video Messaging App

May 15, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Today at I/O, Google rebranded “Hangouts” as a new unified, cross-platform messaging system. It lets people text, photo, and group video message across Hangouts’ Android and iOS apps, plus its Gmail and Google+ site integrations. Hangouts rolls out today, replacing Google Talk [GChat] and G+ Messenger. While it doesn’t support SMS yet, it could challenge Facebook Messaging and Apple’s iMessage.

For over a year, whispers from GigaOm, Droid Life and others signaled Google would undertake a big unification of its fragmented messaging offering. Today Google will offer new free iOS and Android Hangout apps, the Google+ integration, and you can upgrade from Google Talk to Hangouts by clicking on your photo in the Gmail chat list. There are currently no plans for other platforms like Windows Phone or Blackberry.

Google’s Vic Gundotra said at I/O today in San Francisco that “Technology should get out of the way so you can live, learn, and love.” Operating systems and devices shouldn’t matter. You just want to talk with those you care about. That’s the point of the revamped Hangouts. It brings humans and conversations to the forefront.

Hangouts Is The Messaging Kitchen Sink

Presence, Circles, And Delivery

Let’s take a closer look at the features Hangouts offer. Presence, or knowing when friends are available to chat, is a big focus. You can see when friends are on Hangouts, if they’re currently typing, and if they’ve seen your messages [also known as read receipts]. Using Google+ Circles, you can select specific friends or a whole group to start a chat with.

Hangouts takes care to deliver your messages to whichever web interface or mobile app your friends are using. If you’re offline, Hangouts will store your messages until you return. Unlike Google Talk, it won’t send you an email every time you get a message while offline. It only pings you by email if someone starts a conversation with you while you’re away. Hangouts won’t send you duplicate notifications on different platforms, and you can snooze notifications all together if you need some quiet time.

The idea is that you can start, stop, and restart a conversation as you move between platforms, and you can chat with friends across the desktop, Android, and iOS devices.

Text, Emoji, Photos, And Video

Of course you can send simple text messages, but where Hangouts shines is in vivid multi-media communication. To spice up your words, you can add any of 850 hand-drawn emoji. You can send photos in Hangouts, which are saved to a saved to a Google+ album that you and you conversation partners can view, edit, and share later. In fact, you can go back and view your photo and messaging history at any time, or you can turn history off so your dispatches aren’t saved.

The crown jewel of Hangouts is its namesake’s video chat. You can talk face to face with up to 10 friends at once. When you’re in a video chat, you’ll see who is talking in a big window while the rest of your chat partners are shown in tiles below. Friends’ Hangouts will ring when you call them, and they’ll get notified if they miss the digital meetup.

But Hangouts video isn’t just a group FaceTime. Google added a bunch of bells and whistles. You can add visual and sound effects or make use of special Hangouts apps. So if you want to wear a virtual pirate hat or set off some fireworks, you can. You can watch YouTube videos simultaneously with friends while laughing together, and take screenshots to capture moments for later.

No SMS, Yet

The biggest feature missing from Hangouts is the ability to send and receive SMS messages to and from friends who don’t have a Hangouts app installed. This means Hangouts isn’t truly universal. Several of its competitors allow it, including Apple’s iMessage and Facebook’s Messenger For Android (but not for iOS).

So if you want to pull mom into a Hangout, you might have to send her a standard SMS from your phone and tell her to install the Hangouts app. That could be significant stumbling block. However, Google tells us SMS support is one of the most requested features from Hangouts testers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes in a future update.

Oddly, Google tells us that in some countries, feature phone users, but not smartphone users, can participate in Hangouts via SMS. This should help it reach more people in the developing world, a core area for growth of messaging apps.

Other missing features include voice messages or VoIP, but you could just use a video call without looking at the screen to approximate voice calling. There’s also no Hangouts On Air broadcasting to YouTube yet.

Why Google Needs Unified Messaging

The messaging space has become a battleground recently with independent messaging apps like WhatsApp and Line competing with Apple, Facebook, and Google to rule private communication. Everyone wants to become the high-tech successor to SMS.

For Google, messaging could create a wealth of engagement and monetization options. Of course Google could monetize Hangouts directly by cramming ads in it somewhere, or selling special effects for video chat and stickers for text.

A stronger, cross-platform chat experience in Gmail could boost time spent there, where Google already shows ads. It could also finally give people a real reason to use Google+.

Most importantly, though, Hangouts could humanize Google. Still viewed as a search and ads company, people don’t think about it first when they want to socialize. Hangouts leverages all of Google’s powerful technology to bring people closer together.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: apps, Blogging, Facebook, Google, Google Messenger, io2013, mobile, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

Google Launches “Google Play Music All Access” On-Demand $9.99 A Month Subscription Service

May 15, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Google just launched an on-demand subscription music service at I/O called “Google Play Music All Access”. Its web and mobile interfaces feature millions of songs you can play instantly, recommendations, charts and playlists, and instant radio stations. The Spotify competitor launches today in the US for $9.99 a month, comes with a free trial month, and sign-ups before June 30th get it for $7.99.

All Access is just one of dozens of announcements Google launched today at its I/O conference in San Francisco. Follow along with our live blog for all the news and our commentary.

Everything from your Google Music locker is automatically pulled into Google Play Music All Access. Beneath the content you own, everything else an artist has ao All Access is automatically listed and plays at a tap. More countries will get Google Play Music All Access soon.

News that the service was coming was leaked yesterday by The Verge after it discovered Google had completed licensing deals with the major record labels. Google launched its music locker service two years ago, and later started selling music files from Play. Now Google Play users have a choice to stream rather than download.

Google’s Chris Yerga explained that with current music services, you might have a huge catalog to choose from, but getting that music organized and playing quickly is too hard. “Why is it that managing my queue feels like a chore? We set up to build a music services that doesn’t just give you access to great music but also guides you through it” said Google’s Chris Yerga.

Overall the app looks slick, with options for instantly queuing up songs. It’s also designed to get music playing as fast possible if you just want your ears filled.

All Access will have a tough road to traction, considering Spotify’s huge head start with 24 million active users and 6 million paying subscribers. However, the fact that All Access is located within the Android-ubiquitous Google Play store means Google could heavily promote it if it wants growth.

The logic behind launching an on-demand music service seems to be that it’s a critical part of any phone. Android is incomplete without it. Google Play Music All Access might never become a market leader, or even make Google much money directly, but it strengthens its presence on mobile. It could get people buying more Android phones, which lead to plenty of other revenue for Google.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, Google Music, io2013, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Google Framed As Book Stealer Bent On Data Domination In New Documentary

May 8, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

“Google And The World Brain” is a new documentary about Google’s plan to scan all of the world’s books, which triggered an ongoing lawsuit being heard today. The hair-raising film sees Google import millions of copyrighted works, get sued, lose, but almost get a literature monopoly in the process. It’s scary, informative, and worth watching if you recognize its biased portrayal of Google as evil.

The film is getting wider release as Google continues to fight the Author’s Guild in court today. The organization is demanding $3 billion in damages from Google for scanning and reproducing copyrighted books. Google is asking the court to prevent the group from filing a class-action suit.

“Google And The World Brain” premiered at Sundance this year, which is where I saw it, but more people finally got to see the documentary yesterday at the Vancouver DOXA festival. From the second it starts, director Ben Lewis’ opinion is clear: Google Books is as an insidious plot for data domination. See, Google didn’t just want to make a universally accessible library. It wanted to use all the knowledge to improve its search and artificial intelligence projects.

The film opens with ominous bass and a high-pitched drones that lead into historic footage of futurist and sci-fi writer H.G. Wells describing the “world brain” as a “complete planetary memory for all mankind.” But for all its benefits, Wells also warns that the world brain could become powerful enough to displace governments and monitor everyone.

Seemingly innocent, Google approaches university libraries, including Harvard, asking to digitize their books for free. They pitch it as a way to avert disasters like the burning of Alexandria or the flooding of Tulane University’s library during Hurricane Katrina. Gorgeous shots of some of the world’s most prestigious libraries position them as infinitely valuable. Head librarians appear in interviews, giddy with intellectual excitement, and they hastily agree to Google’s offer. Soon 10 million of their books were being fed into secret Google scanning machines.

Google began showing parts of these scans online, and that’s when the backlash started. Six million of the books were under copyright and Google hadn’t attained permission to scan or reproduce them. In 2005, The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers filed lawsuits claiming Google was essentially stealing the books. Libraries began to turn on the search giant.

Internet scholar Jaron Lanier explains “A book is not just an extra long tweet,” and others begin to speculate that Google wants to hoard the books primarily for its own purposes, not to free and preserve their information. The reveal of the film’s thesis would have been more shocking and perhaps better received if it hadn’t been so blatantly foreshadowed.

After three years, the plaintiffs settle with Google for $125 million, but within the 350-page court document are shady stipulations that Google now has the exclusive right to sell scans of any out-of-print book it’s digitized — even copyrighted ones. The film labels this as a “monopoly on access to knowledge.” It asks “do we want the universal library in the hands of one company that can charge whatever they want?”

The documentary’s climax centers around New York District Court Judge Denny Chin’s choice of whether to approve the settlement or not. The director does a remarkable job of making it seem exciting by positioning the outcome as one man’s decision about the fate of all knowledge.

[Spoiler alert if you didn't read the newspapers in 2011]: Scored by a barrage of victorious brass music, Judge Chin announces that he rejects the settlement, preventing Google’s supposed “monopoly,” and all the interviewed pundits rejoice.

Google And The World Brain ends on a harrowing note, though. Even if Google can’t reproduce or sell the copyrighted works it scanned, Google Search and its artificial intelligence initiatives have already sucked up all the knowledge. As a Google engineer told author Nicholas Carr, “We’re not scanning all those books to be read by people. We’re scanning them to be read by our AI.”

The film is a bit sensationalist, and takes several detours to explore things like whether scanning books in English is an assault to classical European languages in which classic works were originally written. And for all of Google’s faults and audacious ambitions, it’s doing a lot to democratize access to knowledge and make the world a better place.

Still, the documentary condenses a fascinating question about who owns information and the long battle for the answer into quite a stimulating 90 minutes. You might leave feeling a little more afraid of Google than before, especially if you don’t take the more heavy-handed fear-mongering with a grain of salt. But at the very least, you’ll stand up reaffirmed that Google is destined to change humanity in ways much larger than it does today.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Google, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Protesters Smash Google Shuttle Bus Piñata In Fight Against Rent Increases [Video]

May 6, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Sick of high-paid tech employees driving up rent prices, protestors in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood held a “Anti-Gentrification Block Party” and beat on a Google bus piñata before cops broke up the crowd. The area has long been home to artists and Mexican-American families, but they’re being forced out as techies move in, their employers set up shuttle stops, and housing prices skyrocket.

Mission district blog Uptown Almanac’s Kevin Montgomery was on the scene. He describes 30 to 40 people assembled at the neighborhood’s 16th street Bay Area Rapid Transit station. The spot is one of the dirtiest in the city — in stark contrast to fancy Valencia street just one block over where software engineers frequent posh restaurants and pricey bike shops.

Google, Apple, and Facebook all have shuttle bus stops in the neighborhood making it easy for their employees to live in the hip district while commuting south to Silicon Valley in style. The buses have become a symbol of gentrification. Dozens of police officers surrounded the rally, fearing it might devolve into violence. Last May a riot broke out in neighborhood with many businesses vandalized with “Yuppies Out” graffiti.

Montgomery says that around 2:30pm yesterday “the [protestors] did string up the piñata to a makeshift fishing pole and beat it mercilessly” as seen in the video below from YouTube user Krionni. Soon after, the police swarmed in and dispersed the group.

As a three-year resident of the Mission, I’ve seen the influx of money from the rise of Apple and Google’s stock plus the Facebook IPO change its character. When the San Francisco Giants won the World Series, local techies came out to spectate and record the chaos with their iPads. Cheap grocery stores and eateries have been going out of business, while trendy bars and cafes move in. Rent increased 29% from 2011 to 2012 alone.

Unfortunately, I’ve haven’t seen the tech giants who’ve colonized the neighborhood do much to give back. Funding some local education or beautification initiatives could go a long way to reducing the gentrification backlash.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Gentrification, Google, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Datalogix Raises $25M To Pump Juicy Offline Purchase Data Into Google And Facebook

April 25, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Datalogix’s offline purchase data is the not-so-secret weapon giant publishers use to target their ads and measure whether they boost consumer spending. Businesses like Facebook are becoming dependent on this ROI data, allowing Datalogix to raise a $25 million Series B. Since it’s based in Denver you don’t hear a lot about Datalogix, but the 250 employee startup is crucial to the future of advertising.

Here’s why I would have fought tooth and nail to get in on this round if I were an investor. Huge brands in retail, consumer packaged goods, automotive and more that earn their money offline are pouring money into online ads on publisher’s sites like Google, Facebook and Yahoo. They’d shift even more of their spend away from print and TV if they could be assured they were getting return on investment on their ads. And publishers could charge them more if they could prove they provide ROI, but none of them know what people are buying in the meatspace.

Enter Datalogix. The company collects enormous amounts of offline purchase data straight from stores with customer loyalty cards like grocers, and partners with data brokers to get even more. Datalogix says its treasure trove includes data on almost every household in the U.S. and $1 trillion in consumer spending. The company packages up the data about what you buy into anonymous profiles, and sells access to big publishers, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo, as well as scores of ad exchanges. This lets them target ads based on what you buy offline, and then see how much more of a product you bought after seeing an ad for it. Publishers can then calculate how much more money its advertisers earned than spent, and use this ROI data to convince them to buy more ads.

So for example, let’s say you use your Safeway Card to get a discount on Clorox bleach at the supermarket. Datalogix tells Facebook you’re a bleach-buyer (anonymously by hashing you personally identifiable information). Facebook helps competing bleach company Tide target you with ads because it knows you’re a potential customer. Then Datalogix tells Facebook you started buying $5 worth of Tide bleach per month. Facebook calculates that $1 of Tide ad spend per month on people like you generated $5 in sales, or $4 in ROI. Finally, Facebook tells Tide it can get it a 4x ROI, and Tide shifts more of its ad spend from print ads to Facebook.

Basically, Datalogix’s data is pure gold to the world’s biggest online ad channels. It lets them prove their value and pull in way more ad spend, so it’s no wonder they’re willing to pay for it. Datalogix CFO Tim Connors tells me its business has tripled over the last three years, and is up 50 percent in the last year. It has 250 employees now, up from 170 a year ago, and signed a flagship partnership with Facebook to build custom ad audiences for it and help it measure ad ROI.

Offline purchase data is only going to be worth more as time progresses and mediums like TV and print die out. But Datalogix needs to fend off competitors like fellow Facebook partners Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai. So it made perfect sense to raise a big $25 million round of funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, who specializes in the advertising and media space. Bringing it up to $40 million in total funding, the round was joined by existing investors General Catalyst, Costanoa Venture Capital, and Sequel Venture Partners who previously put in $15 million in 2009.

Connors tells me the money will “fund growth — a combination of continuing to build out our tech platform and teams focused on customers, as well as to continue geographic expansion. We opened an office in London this year and are beginning to look at opportunities outside the US.”

Some people don’t want their offline purchase data targeted or measured, and find data providers like Datalogix a bit scary. I asked Connors point-blank whether people have any reason to be afraid of Datalogix, and he chortled, “We don’t think so. Philosophically we think if people are seeing ads that are more relevant to them they’re going to be more receptive. We believe very much in choice and transparency. People who choose not to have their data used for targeting or measurement? That’s completely their decision and we’re fine with that. We provide ways for people to opt out easily,” though some think the opt-out process is actually quite complicated by design.

In the long-run, offline purchase data could make online eyeball owners a lot richer. Not only will it make sure ads reach the right people, it will unlock the hidden value of the ads that businesses are already running. Connors concludes: “We’re helping the advertisers deliver more relevant ads, not just random things. It’s less intrusive if you’re seeing ads for things you’re interested in. It’s a better experience. A lot of publishers deliver their services and content for free, and users are able to get them for free because they’re funded with advertising.

So if you’re thinking to yourself, “whatever, I hate ads” or “I don’t even see them. AdBlock Plus FTW,” remember that ads are the necessary lifeblood of the free consumer Internet, and Datalogix is pumping that blood.

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Advertising, Blogging, Datalogix, Facebook, Google, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, startups, TC

Google’s Got A Problem. Search Ads Aren’t Just For Search Engines Anymore

April 24, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

The juggernaut that is search advertising grew so popular and lucrative because it offered businesses the ability to reach and persuade people with true purchase intent. But now keyword targeting is available on Twitter and Facebook, which could loosen Google’s stranglehold on ads that convince us what to buy.

Demand Generation Vs Fulfillment

A solid model for understanding web advertising is the purchase-intent funnel. At the wide top of the funnel is demand generation — raising awareness about a product and engendering the brand to the consumer. Demand generation is more about ad views and changing your perceptions than clicks and driving immediate action. Imagine banner ads for Coca-Cola, Facebook sidebar ads for a movie coming to theaters next month, or a Twitter Promoted Tweet about Clorox bleach. They’re designed to keep those brands stuck in your mind so you pay them later, and they’re targeted based on your demographic and interests.

At the narrow bottom of the funnel is demand fulfillment — convincing someone ready to make a purchase of what specifically they should buy. These ads typically seek a click through to a purchase page or sign-up form. Imagine searching for “Buy camera” on Google and seeing sponsored results for Best Buy’s website and specific Canon camera models that you can click through to purchase. Or searching “San Francisco lawyer” and seeing ads for specific local firms you could click through to book an appointment. They’re designed to attract the final click before you purchase, but to do that they need to know you’re actually in the mood to buy something. Since they directly inspire purchases and are more easily tied to return on investment, these ads can command high prices.

Until recently, Facebook and Twitter were stuck in the demand generation part of the funnel. With all their biographical and interest data, they were good for brand and institutional advertising but not at delivering dollars directly into advertisers’ hands. Google has long ruled demand fulfillment with its AdWords product that lets advertisers compete in auctions to show their ads to people who’ve searched for specific keywords that demonstrate purchase intent. But those dividing lines are rapidly blurring, and it could shift the axis of power in online advertising.

Mining The Bottom Of The Funnel

Twitter and Facebook are now aggressively trying to drill down the funnel into demand fulfillment, and they have the data they need to succeed. They might not have traditional web search engine queries, but they have plenty of internal searches and a near infinite amount of chatter.

Intentful Tweets

Twitter last week announced the launch of keyword advertising, which lets businesses target ads to people who recently tweeted or engaged with tweets containing certain keywords. Tweet about a band and you might see ads for an upcoming concert by them. Retweet someone saying they haven’t been to the dentist in forever, and you might see ads for nearby dentists.

Searching for and tweeting a word are two very different things, but Twitter keyword ads are certainly much closer to purchase intent than targeting based on who you follow. And with some savvy multi-keyword targeting, for example “[Product name]” and “want”, businesses could deduce purchase intent out of 140 characters.

Social Invading From All Sides

Facebook meanwhile currently offers “search typeahead ads”. When you search for a specific Facebook Page or app, businesses can set up ads to to show their own Pages or apps above or just below the organic results. If you’re searching for “Candy Crush Saga”, you almost surely want to play a puzzle game. Search typeahead ads for other puzzle games at the moment could be very effective. Gadgets, games, professional services and more brands can all take advantage of this signal of purchase intent.

And that’s just the beginning for Facebook. Last week it revealed its first ads within its new Graph Search feature. For now, these ads can’t be targeted by keywords, just the standard biographical targeting. But it’s very likely that keyword targeting is on the way.

Along with creating big advertising opportunities for online conversion businesses, they could be with local businesses. Facebook is making a big push right now to challenge Yelp as the place you find a business’ address, open hours, photos, reviews, and recommendations. Just yesterday Facebook redesigned its mobile Pages for businesses to highlight this info. That shift in focus means people looking for Facebook business Pages aren’t just trying to see their news feed updates. They’re trying to find out how to get there because they want their service right now — aka purchase intent.

Now imagine if you query Facebook’s Nearby local business browser or Graph Search for nearby Italian restaurants. Graph Search keyword ads could let an Italian restaurant show up more prominently in results, even if Facebook’s quality and relevance algorithms didn’t peg it as the best.

Then there’s Facebook Exchange. These are real-time bid, cookie-retargeted ads based on what websites you’ve visited. For example, you might see an FBX ad for a flight to Hawaii you looked at but didn’t pull the trigger on. While retargeting is in a whole different category than search keyword ads, they have the same ability to reach people who are deciding where to spend their money. And in the past, Facebook has tested sidebar ads related to the keywords you post in status updates. Facebook is trying everything it can to get to the juicy bottom of the funnel.

Fragmented Budgets

Many businesses keep essentially separate ad budgets for search, display, and retargeting. Until recently, Twitter and Facebook were only tapping the display budgets. But now they’re smashing open the other piggy banks. Businesses aren’t likely to suddenly expand the total amount of the spend on online advertising, even as the market steadily grows. Instead they experiment a bit at first with some spend borrowed from what’s usually devoted to Google, and if the ads work, they’ll cleave that Google budget and divvy it up among the newfound channels.

That is not what Google wants.

Search ad money is what funds its moonshots and sustains its enormous engineering staff for free products like Chrome. Despite Google’s legacy, Twitter and Facebook have formulated advantages. Twitter’s relatively un-ad-cluttered interface keeps people’s guards down which likely contributes to the reportedly high click-through rates on its ads. And Facebook has the might of the social graph to throw in the ring. Sticking the face of a friend who Likes Canon cameras on an ad for Canon cameras shown when you search for “Cameras” or “Nikon” could persuade you to click the ad, when on Google you’d ignore it. Plus there’s Amazon. The traffic to the ecommerce leader comes with implicit purchase intent, and whose shopping history data helps it target ads on-site as well as in its burgeoning off-site and mobile app ad network.

Now, Google is still the heavyweight of purchase-intent web ads. That’s not going to change overnight. But the Lilliputians have finally developed the technology to drag down the search giant’s revenues and claim some of those ad dollars for their own.

[Image Credits: Bryce Durbin for TechCrunch, John Swift / Inyamuakut / WebBooks]

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Advertising, Blogging, Facebook, Google, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC, Twitter

Facebook’s Android Homescreen Could Expose Apple’s Inflexibility

March 31, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

The mainstream has had little reason to care that Android gives developers much more customization freedom than iOS. But if Facebook’s fabled Android homescreen is a hit, the stubbornness of Apple’s closed mobile platform could be framed as a drawback after years of its cohesive design and ease being seen as assets.

Cheapness and handset/carrier choice are two of the biggest factors convincing people to pick up Android phones today. There’s its premier integration of Google’s app suite and the “rebel without an iPhone” attitude too. But Android’s flexibility for app developers has been more of a selling point for geeks and early adopters than for the average Joe.

Meanwhile, the straight forward “it just works” aspect of iOS that leans on its rigidity has made it a popular introduction to smartphones for hundreds of millions of people. There just hasn’t been a killer brand name app to grab the mainstream’s attention that depends on Android’s cooperative architecture and that iOS won’t support. No one has forced the issue of open vs closed on the common man.

But six years after the iPhone’s debut, the average mobile consumer has matured. They crave more personalization through homescreen widgets and custom launchers. They want to make their phone truly theirs. The mobile world may finally have reached the turning point where the benefits of Android’s customization outweigh the benefits of iOS’ simplicity. And it’s Facebook homescreen for Android that could crystallize this moment.

Last week, Facebook sent out invites to a big press event to “see our new home on Android”. My sources got us the scoop that Facebook plans to unveil a new homescreen for Android that pipes in its news feed content and notifications for instant access. We’re told this experience will be debuted on an HTC handset running a version of Android that’s been modified by Facebook. The homescreen replacement is also likely to make its way to other handsets, either in the form a launcher app that can run on standard Android builds, or through Facebook partnerships with other OEMs.

The kicker is that Facebook’s homescreen cannot run on iOS as it exists today.

Now, for any of this to actually alter the mobile landscape, Facebook “Home” as it may be called will have to be a real success. Not just “Oh that looks cool”, but “I need to have that on my phone”. A lot people will never say that, because they just don’t care that much about Facebook. Beyond that, it may be tough to add a lot of value on top of the full-featured Facebook For Android app that’s just a few taps away.

Still, it’s possible that Facebook’ heads up display, a sixth sense for your social life, could be good enough to shift the balance in the Game Of Phones. Even if not directly or immediately, the mere existence of Facebook Home could bring the open/closed debate into the sphere of public consciousness. In that sense, it could at least begin to generate momentum for Android’s “do as you please” ecosystem.

Apple is typically resistant to diverging from its roadmap to head off potential threats. As I’ve said, Apple doesn’t care what competitors do. But if it stays locked down, we might outgrow its hand-holding. For all Google’s talk off Android being open, it could take Facebook to make us realize its liberty we really want.

Learn more about Facebook’s new Home on Android:

Facebook To Reveal “Home On Android” Sources Say Is A Modified OS On HTC At 4/4 Event

Facebook Phone Leak Points To Budget HTC Device, Homescreen App For All Androids

Facebook’s “Home” On Android Could Give You A Sixth Sense For Your Social Life

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: android, apple, Blogging, Facebook, Google, mobile, search engine optimization, SEO, social, Social Networking, TC

Google Embeds March Madness Bracket In Search, Because Screw Sports Sites

March 19, 2013 by Josh Constine Leave a Comment

Who wins basketball games is an immutable fact. No one owns that information, so why should some random sports sites get the windfall of traffic as millions of sports fan search Google for the NCAA March Madness bracket? In Google’s latest application of making the world’s information universally accessible, it’s now embedding the bracket at the top of a variety of search results.

Once upon a time, websites would fight SEO wars to be the top result for the most basic questions like “What time does the Super Bowl start?”, or “When is St. Patrick’s Day”, or “San Francisco weather”. But taking answers that no one technically owns and burying them behind an extra click made Google an unnecessary kingmaker. It was also a waste of time for everyone. Wasting time and playing favorites isn’t Google’s jam.

Well, except that it has no problem crowning itself king of information. So Google software engineer Dan Vanderkam and his team built the March Madness bracket right into results for “Basketball bracket”, “March Madness”, “NCAA tournament” and other related searches. The embedded bracket instantly gives you each game’s round, teams, rankings, date, and time, score, and winner. The expandable embed is even richer than Google’s college hoops plan for last year. Meanwhile, Yahoo buries a janky looking bracket deep down in the results, and Bing just gives me a list of links when I search for “March Madness Bracket”.

If you want deeper information, skip down to Google’s results from NCAA.com, Huffington Post, and SBNation. But if all you want to know is who’s playing when and if your winner predictions came true, Google’s got you covered instantly. Google does the same for a variety of information, from flights to Olympic medal counts to biographies through its Knowledge Graph.

And I’m totally fine with that. Publishers should seek to succeed through depth, commentary, visualization, analysis, research, and personality, not just SEO. I don’t search because I want links, or results. I want answers, and as long as Google stays dedicated to giving them to me, I’ll keep coming back. Information just wants to be free, man.

[Image via the hilarious Toothpaste For Dinner]