Google experience 40% year-over-year growth in the number of searches in January 2009, according to Nielsen Online. Live Search experienced 18% year-over-year growth, but gained 2 percentage points over last month. Yahoo! grew a modest 8.7% year-over year, while the overall growth for all search engines was 27.5%.
I’m not going to discuss the economic meltdown and its devastating effect on technology companies and Internet startups in this post, but rather something that crossed my mind earlier this morning: “Web 2.0? seems to become more and more a void (and an avoided) term. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is definitely apparent.
So why do I say it’s fading? For one, because the number of startups that contact us and include the term Web 2.0 in the subject line or message is visibly dropping (and that’s a good thing), and I hardly ever see it mentioned anymore on other technology blogs and news sites either. That’s not really tangible, so I took a look at the number of mentions of the phrase across the web, and they seem to be decreasing significantly, reflecting my feeling on this.
Judging by Google Trends, which shows how often a particular search term is entered relative to the total search volume across various regions of the world (and in various languages), the term started being used at the end of 2004 when Tim O’Reilly organized the first edition of the Web 2.0 Conference. Search queries for the term started picking up in the middle of 2005, when TechCrunch was started – with the tagline “Tracking Web 2.0? by the way – and the number kept increasing until the end of 2007. After that, the trend is clearly downwards, falling back to the level it reached in early 2006 today. If the trend continues, there should only be a handful of people left who scour search engines for “Web 2.0? by 2011.
Also noteworthy: take a look at the geographic regions that have generated the highest volumes of worldwide search traffic for the term over the years – it’s Asia, with the top 5 regions being India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia (in that order). Furthermore, Google Trends pegs the number one language in which people search for stuff related to the topic of Web 2.0 to be Russian before English.
And just in case you’re curious: “Web 3.0? doesn’t seem to picking up much.
Let’s all rejoice.
Google’s “Insights for Search”, a beta service that analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered – relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time – gives an even better overview:
Search Engine Roundtable and Webmaster World have started a discussion of Google’s testing of a SearchWiki for AdWords. The addition would give users the ability to push certain paid ads down similar to what they are offering for organic search results.
Following those two amusing comments the gates opened and all sorts of rumors and thoughts of gaming AdWords. If Google were to use any of this as feedback it is obvious gaming would run rampant and not the 1% one Sphinner suggests. AdWords is too big of a game and too important to major online advertisers for it to be open to such manipulation.
Interestingly Google has yet to enter into the fray.
Google has launched a new blog that is dedicated to improving conversions. Dubbed the “Conversion Room,” the new blog is run by European Googlers. In addition to providing tips that are useful to a global audience, the Conversion Room will highlight events taking place in Europe.
So far, the blog offers tips on keywords and the most recent post talks about installing site search and tracking the results.
Once again, Microsoft is throwing some flattery Apple’s way by following its lead. Earlier today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft announced the latest version of its mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5. The new OS takes cues directly from the iPhone. It has “an improved touch-screen interface, making it easy to take action with a finger” (so advanced) and a dashboard-like interface with different application icons in honeycomb cells
(screen shots).
One of those icons will launch a Windows Marketplace with 20,000 mobile apps, similar to how the iTunes App Store can be accessed directly from the iPhone. And the phones will come with a new My Phone service, formerly codenamed Skybox, which sync contacts, emails, text messages, calendar, and pictures. Apple has a similar syncing service for the iPhone called MobileMe. The new mobile OS will appear in phones in the second half of 2009.
The upgraded Windows Mobile is not a complete imitation, however. It probably takes more cues from the Zune than from the iPhone. There is also a status update/feed view which highlights new messages, voicemails, and calendar appointments. The updated mobile version of Internet Explorer which will be included in the OS will at least support Flash (something the iPhone stubbornly refuses to embrace).
The My Phone service is based on technology from Mobicomp, a company Microsoft acquired last June. It has nothing to do with Live Mesh. But syncing with data on mobile phones is in Live Mesh’s roadmap, so hopefully these two technologies will eventually merge.
Many professionals I know are not project managers by profession and yet most at some point or another have had the dubious pleasure of battling it out with a project management (PM) application—MS Project typically the nightmare of choice. It begins with lofty ideals of planning and running an organized project (for once). Yet what usually happens is that they end-up managing the project management tool, rather than have it manage the project. Granted, PM tools have made progress in recent years, with Basecamp from 37Signals leading the charge with a Web-based subscription model that sports a user-friendly interface. The fact remains though that there’s a long way to go before non-project managers can put a hand on their heart and claim that the benefits of using a PM tool outweigh its overhead.
This was that I had in mind when Israeli startup Clarizen approached me, explaining theirs is a project management and collaboration tool specifically aimed at non-project managers. There’s no question Clarizen is a latecomer to the space, but they seem to have the right ingredients: A fairly convenient interface, a smidgen of unique differentiation, and friendly pricing to boot—and $15M in funding doesn’t hurt either, of course.
Clarizen is making two great offers available for TechCrunch readers: First, Clarizen is auctioning off five (5) FREE one year subscriptions to TechCrunch readers. All you need to do is explain in the comments why you need and want Clarizen and how you intend to use it. The Clarizen team will select the 5 winners. Make sure to include a valid email address along with your comment! Second, anyone who mentions this TechCrunch post to Clarizen’s sales team when making any purchase will receive one additional free subscription for the term of their purchase.
Clarizen was designed as a PM tool for operational/functional managers (think: department heads). This is a good move because the biggest failing point in project management is probably during the set-up stage which requires the project be planned out to the “T” before it can be rolled out. This is a process that requires a high level of familiarity with such methodologies, so it’s no surprise why non-professional project managers bail on it so often.
Clarizen deals with this basic problem by allowing the project participants to assist in the planning, even if the project has already begun. The collaborative planning and execution can transpire among teams working within the same organization, or among those whose resources are dispersed between two or more companies.
Here’s an example: Let’s say my project is the creation of a Facebook app and I own entire the project. I can delegate my R&D manager to set and manage the in-house development process and its dependencies. When it comes to the user interface, though, I’ve gone with an outside contractor who obviously has his own work processes and dependencies. With Clarizen I can have the contractor enter and update all the relevant info independently, while I maintain a unified view of the project at large. As a side note, Clarizen includes with each company subscription a single free license for a partner.
One of the things I like about Clarizen is that it puts reality above methodology. Even if the full scope is unknown or the whole plan is not complete, projects can be kicked-off by activating only the parts that are ready to roll. At any point, any portion of the project can be switched back to draft mode, be paused, re-planned and reactivated. So if the graphics designer goes snowboarding for a week unexpectedly (something far too many of us can relate to), no problem, the task can be reactivated when he/she gets back. Other PM tools provide similar functionality but in a version control paradigm that involves the project’s “baseline”. Basically this creates a new version of the project each time an “anomaly” (i.e., delays caused by the real world) occur. Clarizen, in contrast, treats delays as a normal occurrence.
Another feature I found useful is that Clarizen allows projects to be updated without having to log into the application. Using the Facebook app example above, the contractor would be sent an email notification (screenshot below) with a link to a form in which the task statuses can be updated. No login is required, no subscription has to be purchased. Very convenient indeed.
Clarizen has been selling its solution for a year now with the bulk of its customer base considering it an alternative to heavy-duty enterprise solutions such as Clarity and Primavera. The company did not reveal the amount of actual subscribers it has, but did share with me that it has over 200 customers and that current contract closures are predominantly for 12-month terms.
When covering search news, the lines are increasingly getting a bit blurred. Google, the search mammoth, does much more than “just” search. Yahoo’s best performing properties are its portal pages. Microsoft started out in software.
Google launched a mobile platform Android, which competes with Microsoft competitor Apple, who of course has seen great success with the iPhone.
The iPhone has truly advanced adoption of the mobile web – and mobile search. But Microsoft was in the game before Apple or Google with Windows Mobile. There have been app markets for Windows Mobile for years, something that is largely unknown, save for the early mobile adopters.
Microsoft, of course, will not just sit by and watch the Google/Apple dominance occur. Instead, they are revamping their game. Today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft announced a new marketplace for Windows Mobile apps. There are over 20,000 apps that have beend eveloped over the years. The marketplace will make them easier to find.
Microsoft also introduced the newest version of Windows Mobile, which is 6.5. Last but not least they annouced My Phone, which enables PC/phone syncing.
Incidentally, Google announced its mobile syncing feature last week. They also opened the Android mobile app marketplace to paid apps.
Many mobile apps are all about helping users find what they need or want. You guessed it – SEARCH. And with projections for mobile web Traffic showing skyrocketing increases by 2013, new players may appear on the scene. Anyone who has wondered who can catch or beat Google may want to watch this space carefully.
Google has published a bit of an insider’s look on how the company conducts eye-tracking studies to evaluate the effectiveness of its search results.
In addition to holding interviews, field studies and live experiments to improve the usability of its products, Google has special hardware and software that tracks test participants’ eyeballs as they scan results for the perfect link.
The official blog post doesn’t detail any groundbreaking discoveries that have been produced by this testing technique. It sounds as though it has mostly helped Google confirm the obvious: that the first few results it returns are indeed usually the most relevant, and its so-called “universal search” effort (where it mixes rich media results like images and video thumbnails among the standard text results) doesn’t distract users too much but has actually proven rather useful.
Perhaps most intriguing is the following video provided by Google that shows how quickly users glance around result pages:
The bigger the dot, the longer the person sat looking at a particular part of the page.
This heatmap-like image, which is named the “golden triangle”, also suggests that people spend a lot more time evaluating the whole results at the top of the page than the ones further down.
Our first TechCrunch/CrunchGear meetup in Tokyo (TechCrunch Japan is one of Japan’s main blogs) yesterday night was a blast. Peter Ha was in town and over 100 people attended the event on very short notice, including representatives from Yahoo Japan, telecommunications giants KDDI and NTT, Opera, MySpace Japan, mobile social network GREE and many more. Japan’s super blogger Danny Choo also joined, spending the whole evening in Stormtrooper gear.
There were a lot of companies with iPhone apps in the room: iPhone manga, iPhone Othello, iPhone Meow Cam, even an iPhone newspaper. Here is a selection of some of the web services and iPhone apps from smaller start-ups that were pitched to me yesterday (in no particular order). Next time we really need to schedule more than two hours for these events.
Startup No. 1:
Genkii, a developer of iPhone applications, virtual world and social media projects, presented One Coin Comics. The platform for the iPhone launches this month with a multi-lingual, interactive manga called “Foxfire”. In addition to releasing original comic projects, Genkii told me they will open the platform this spring to other writers and artists. Artists can then submit finished art to Genkii for assembly and release through One Coin Comics, and share the revenue.
Startup No. 2:
CEO Masahiko Tachizono told me that his site Natalie is probably the main hub on the web for news about Japanese pop music in English. Unlike similar sites, all news are delivered directly from Tokyo and the site gets updated a few times daily. Tachizono also said he is currently looking out for strategic partnerships in order to expand distribution, especially outside Japan. Natalie is also available as a Facebook app (in English).
Startup No. 3:
DigiDock is an iPhone development company currently selling Reversi Sister, a pretty unique version of Reversi (a board game also known as Othello), in the iTunes AppStore (in English). The game, which is enriched with anime-style audio and graphics, is actually tons of fun and costs $2.99. Watch a Reversi Sister demo video here.
Startup No. 4:
MyGengo offers crowdsourced human translation (currently in English and Japanese only). After uploading or pasting texts into the order form, users receive instant pricing to order their chosen quality level, and receive completed translations within a few hours through the site. CEO Robert Laing told me his company relies on an outsourced network of pre-tested native-speaker translators to keep business costs down, claiming users can save up to 70% in translation costs this way.
Startup No. 5:
Appliya just yesterday announced a collaboration with SoftBank Mobile (Japan’s third biggest cell phone carrier) that aims at bringing iPhone apps with a Japanese flavor to the global market. The company has released 26 iPhone apps soo far. What Appliya showed me yesterday was Meow Cam. Download it ($0.99) and the iPhone meows when you press the Meow button, causing a cat to be photographed to look into the direction of the camera (video). The Baby Cam, which also costs $0.99, is the corresponding app for infants (video). The Ghost Camera Lite app (free) automatically overlays a Japanese style ghost image on top of every picture you take with your iPhone. This is some crazy stuff and you can find more in their iPhone app catalog.
Startup No. 6:
Japanese print media companies are notorious for being very slow in embracing the web. But Yappa distributes the printed contents of the Sankei Shimbun, one of Nippon’s main daily newspapers, to Japanese iPhone users for free. The iPhone version is available at the same day the newspaper comes out, features all its pages and layout and has been downloaded around 200,000 times since December 12, making it one of the most successful apps in the Japanese iTunes store. Judging from what I have heard, Japan’s conservative publishing industry is not very amused about the Yappa-Sankei Shimbun collaboration.
Cool Japanese geek group:
Some ultra-geeks from Hacker’s Cafe, an interest group of 11 individuals, demonstrated Cyber Star Rally to me. The Cyber Star Rally is basically an outdoor game that involves a person riding a mountain bike trying to collect virtual “stars” (only visible for the player) by using GPS. The Augmented Reality-powered project is weird but also very, very cool (see the video below for more).
Hacker’s Cafe also offers an English blog now, which I can highly recommend (you don’t want to miss stuff like the running web server).
In an effort to monetize the growing number of music videos on its site, MySpace has just launched a new pilot advertising initiative that places attractive overlays at the bottom of some clips, allowing users to buy the song they’re listening to or immediately jump to the artist’s homepage.
The new initiative stems from MySpace’s partnership with Auditude, a content detection and management company that can identify copyrighted content and serve relevant advertising, even on user-submitted video. Now Auditude is applying the technology to music videos, which in the past have largely relied on banner ads and static text links to music stores for monetization.
On Wednesday the site, in a partnership with Warner Music Group, placed an overlay ad on a video for My Chemical Romance’s song Desolation Row. Users were presented with the option to buy the song either on Amazon, or (in an interesting twist) on a vinyl disc. Over the 24 hours that the ad ran it posted an impressive 1.2% click-through-rate (significantly higher than rates seen on typical banner ads), encouraging MySpace and Auditude to expand the program to more videos. Today the site began displaying advertising on U2’s new single Get On Your Boots, with plans to expand the program more broadly in the near future.
Much of the overlay’s success probably stems from the fact that it doesn’t look too much like an ad – it actually shows informative content like the album the song came from, the year it was released, and a link to the artist’s profile. I wouldn’t say I like having it there, but MySpace could have done a lot worse. And frankly in the current economic climate it’s encouraging when companies can find advertising methods that actually work without being ridiculously annoying.
YouTube launched a similar program three weeks ago, allowing content owners to insert overlays for products into their videos (MySpace’s overlays are significantly more attractive, but they both serve the same purpose). YouTube wouldn’t provide any exact numbers, but a representative confirmed that in general the site has seen significantly improved clickthrough rates when ads are embedded in videos themselves, as opposed to appearing in surrounding banner ads.
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