On The Google Hive Mind: There Is a Center.

Yesterday Danny posted a typically thoughtful piece on Google's success, on the occasion of its ten year anniversary. Titled The Google Hive Mind, the piece addresses an age-old question about Google: does it have a master plan?

Danny argues that, in essence, the company does not, and runs through a convincing number of examples that support his thesis.

But as with every argument, I think there's another side. Danny writes:

Rather than follow a rigid top-down master plan, the company's direction and success has been shaped by decisions often taken independently of how they'll benefit the company as a whole. But collectively, those decisions DO form a master plan, a hive mind that dictates what the company will do.

I don't agree with this. I think Google has made scores of moves calculated by centralized senior management to benefit the company as a whole, AND, at the same time, has green-lit scores of other projects which, taken as a whole, are in no way centrally planned. Examples of centrally planned moves? The AOL deal. The Dell distribution deal. Chrome. Gmail (I disagree with Danny that this was not a centrally planned move. Same with Checkout.) Book search (Google knew it was in for a legal fight and it engaged because it felt it was in the company's, and culture's, best interest.) YouTube (very much a central decision). Ummmm....going public.

In fact, the going public piece is perhaps the most important one of all. Google has to keep growing, and it has to keep shareholders happy. Growing on a large base is hard, so it's best to try as many new potential big hit markets as you can. That means taking some bets on stuff that might fizzle (Orkut, Knol) and others that might really tick off your best partners and customers (Orkut, Knol, Checkout, and many more).

I think Google has a central plan, and Danny's Hive Mind is a key part of it. As Danny writes:

Perhaps success on the fast moving internet means having a hive mind, a fuzzy business logic where you look more at products individually rather than how they contribute to a master plan. Or maybe that's what you do if you want to be a giant on the internet, offering more than one product.

The hive mind is a great idea, but it's not the whole story of Google. When it comes to key decisions, I think the hive mind that really matters is the triumvirate of Sergey, Larry, and Eric.

The Case for Local Conversation: Saving Corbet's Hardware (Latest Open Forum Post).

(image credit Marin IJ)
I've just posted my latest missive on the American Express Open Forum blog, where I Think Out Loud about my local hardware business, which just might be forced out of business. It's titled "Think Local, Act Conversational - It Just Might Save Your Business." From it:

Corbet’s Hardware is my neighborhood hardware store, it’s something of a local legend. Let’s see what happens when I put it into Google (I omitted the apostrophe, as most folks do).

Interesting. First up is a link from “zinsser.com”, which appears to be some kind of a shellac company (no, really, a company that makes shellac). Corbet’s probably carries their products - the Zinsser site lists its distributors - but man, what on earth is that doing being first? Clearly, Corbet’s has not exactly joined the conversation economy quite yet.

Put another way, the very first link for Corbet’s is not Corbet’s own website (the store does not seem to have one), it’s some random supplier of Corbet’s. This is not a good thing.

Second up is a very nice profile of Corbet’s in the local paper. Third is another link from the paper about the store moving. A credit to the store, for sure. But it’s not really very conversational (for more on why I think “conversational” is so important, read this).

Fourth is a link from “ziphip.com”, which looks like some kind of listings directory (or more cynically, an Adsense honeypot). Nothing really useful for a potential customer of Corbet’s - nothing conversational or particularly trustworthy.....

....But imagine, if you would, that Corbet’s had a blog, and used that blog to talk about its business. The folks at Corbet’s could post about weekly specials, tips on home improvement, best approaches to pest control, and all the stuff that brings customers into the store. Oh, and by the way, it could leverage all its built in good will to drive its customers toward the Larkspur City Council, who, in the end, will determine whether or not Corbet’s will continue as a business - if Corbet’s doesn’t get that zoning change, it can’t afford to stay open. Ouch!

Given how sparse and poorly connected the first few links for “Corbets hardware” currently are, it’s clear that such a blog would come in first, and possibly second, third, and fourth, in any Google search. Add a Twitter account, and you’re nearly guaranteed to be a major force in any web-based conversation around your business. (In fact, I’d be willing to bet that within a few weeks, this blog post may well rank in the top ten for a search about Corbet’s…).

In short, by joining the conversation, Corbet’s would get a chance to shape it. And by shaping it, it just might ensure its future. Which leads me to ask: Has your business joined the conversation? You might consider doing so, before it’s too late.

Read the whole post here...

The Web 2 Launch Pad: Deadline Is This Week, Submit Your Company!.

It may seem like a long way off, but the Web 2 Summit is in less than six weeks - right after the general election. And this year's Launch Pad, where we honor six of the best companies in the space, will close its application process this Friday. (The original deadline was Weds, but it makes sense to give folks till the end of the week.)

Launch Pad is a bit different this year, and I've heard anecdotally that folks are not sure if they should be submitting their companies because A/ They think they have to be looking for funding or B/ their companies don't match what we're looking for in terms of industry. So to clarify:

A/ Launch Pad companies are reviewed and judged by leadings VCs (Khosla Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, NEA, Omidyar Network, Panorama Capital, and Sequoia Capital), but there is no requirement of a "funding need." The goal is to honor six great private companies, not six great private companies who need funding.

B/ We are indeed looking for companies in a particular sector, one we call "Web Meets World." It's a pretty broad category, but it falls into two rough buckets:

1. Companies working in alternative energies, social entreprenuerialism, microfinance, developing economies, political action, renewable technologies, and the like (we'll be particularly interested in where these companies display significant cross over with the web, of course, but this will not be required.)
2. Companies addressing where the Web literally meets the world: cloud computing-enabled mobility, mapping and geolocation, sensor networks - anything where the Web and the real world intersect.

We've already got a pretty big group of companies who have applied, but I'm eager to have as many as possible join the process. There is no fee to enter, the Launch Pad is sponsored by VCs involved in the program. So if you're at a company working at the intersection of the Web and the World, please apply! The link to do so is right here. I look forward to seeing you at the conference, it's really shaping up to be the best in our five year history (more on the program and speakers here).

Congrats, SpaceX.

Elon Musk will be at Web 2 this year, and his SpaceX (one of three companies he's started since leaving PayPal, including Tesla and SolarCity) today had its first successful launch. More at BoingBoing Gadgets....

We don't have enough proper data to come close to solving the death problem.

Why I love Kevin's work, part umpty billion.

Dear Google: Either Drop PageRank, or Give It More....Granularity.

I'm a seven, I think. Danny was too, but now, for some reason, he's a six. Mike's an eight. Google, natch, is a Ten (one of only two that Amit could find).

PageRank is the unofficial, and official, and semi-official, arbiter of value on the web.

And it's just deeply broken - not because there isn't data that informs all of our collective rank. But because we have no idea what that data really is, or how it's combined to determine value in the Google economy.

So please, Google, either give us more granularity, or just go dark and don't tell us anything.

Oh, and please, Larry Page, just as a tenth anniversary present, can you pretty please make BackRub for real? I'd really love to have it. So would a lot of others, I suspect.

World Inside Out.

Over at the Amex Blog we're starting a conversation about how this financial crisis effects small business. The site has given me a chance to think more deeply about what it means to run or be part of a small business - none of us here in the Valley like to think of ourselves as "small" but by nearly every definition, we are. And FM works with nearly 200 other "small" businesses. Join the conversation, we all might learn something. From my post:

...But that doesn’t mean I don’t wake up in the middle of the night, worried about what might be coming next. Many of us in the Internet industry are veterans of the last big bust - 2000-2002 - and we can still feel the pain of losing it all (as I did with the Industry Standard), or at the very least, having to cut back to the bone and wait it out. And this time, something feels different. This crisis is not limited to an overinvestment in telecom and Internet, this time our entire financial system has been brought to its knees. How can you not be worried when Congress is in an extended session to determine the best way to spend nearly a trillion dollars, money that, in fact, we don’t actually have (we’ll be borrowing it, given our national debt)?

It’s a well worn saw that as goes small business, so goes the economy. If all of us start laying off employees and cutting back expenses by a third, our economy will go into a deep funk. If, on the other hand, we all declare faith in the future and start acting accordingly, our businesses will become the engine of economic recovery.

So what do we all need to move away from fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and toward faith and optimism in the future? I’m really eager to hear your thoughts and stories. What are you doing to deal with the current economic situation? Given your business and industry, what actions do you want government to take? What stories do you have to tell about how today’s environment is changing your business outlook? Perhaps if we start to talk about this, and share our knowledge, we can start to effect change - one story at a time.

Time Machine.

I've wanted a time axis for the web for, well, for ever (OK, since 2003 when I got the idea).

Google has given us at least one point on that axis, 2001. What a nutty time.

Check out a vanity search for me back then. This is before Searchblog, natch.

All Algorithm, No Voice.

That's how Fred describes Google's new blog search, a supposed "Techmeme (or Technorati or Blogs.com) - killer".

It's a very good description of Google's services.

TweetSense.

I think the business model at Twitter is going to be really, really interesting, and I think it's going to leverage search, but search as a proxy for data and pattern recognition. We get an inkling of it at Election 2008, Twitter's mashup of Tweets relating to the election, but there's a lot more to think through. First off, Twitter is using its real estate to promote its deal with Current, which is a first, from what I can tell. The "ads" are on the right, right below each users' profile. I remember covering every new pixel as the Google homepage caved to promotional reality, it's interesting to watch it happen at Twitter, too, which I think has a lot of similarities to Google in terms of potential models.

Also worth watching is the hash function, where you can tag any topic (IE #redsox, as Churbuck pointed out). This function is not likely to catch on with my mother (I can't imagine her adding hashes to her tweets, much less tweeting...yet), but what it enables certainly could. The problem is, when you create a site to pull hashed stuff out into a stream the result is often less than useful (as Churbuck noted in his post).

This is where the role of curation and editors is paramount. Voice, as Fred pointed out. There is voice in editing, voice in curation. And voice adds value. And where value is added, marketers can play, both on Twitter (imagine a cars.twitter.com, with auto advertisers on the right rail and at the top, perhaps using contextual TweetSense - yes, it's owned, by...), and off (think about a feed of contextual Tweets and TweetSense next to conversational sites like Digg and, well, millions of others, as well as sites created simply from Twitter feeds on popular hashes...).

Just a (half) thought....

PS - why isn't search.twitter.com, where you can see hash streams, even promoted on the home page of Twitter? Am I missing something, as I usually do?

CM Conversation: Laura Desmond, CEO Starcom MediaVest Group.

FM's third CM Summit is just two weeks away (register here), and as I have in the past (and will with other speakers as well as folks I'll interview at Web 2), I turn to the collective intelligence of Searchblog readers to help me prepare. I'll be having conversations with Evan Williams (co-founder Twitter), Gian Fulgoni (founder Comscore), David Rosenblatt (CEO DoubleClick, now at Google) and many others.

But first up in terms of thinking out loud here is Laura Desmond, Chief Executive Officer, Starcom MediaVest Group, a unit of the Publicis Groupe. For those of you who might not follow the world of marketing too closely, SMG is one of the largest and most influential marketing services companies on the planet, its clients include Kraft, Allstate, Kellogg's, Walt Disney, GM, Coca Cola, Proctor & Gamble, RIM (Blackberry), and on and on. The company collectively controls billions of dollars of marketing spend, including a significant chunk of the monies that fuel the Internet Economy.

In other words, Laura is one Very Important Person in the world of the web, even if you've never heard of her.

Given what I do for a living, I've come to know Laura and find her extremely candid and refreshingly absent the marketing-speak that sometimes creeps into top executives' vocabulary. GIven the economy, it's an extraordinary time to have a conversation. Here are some of the topics I plan to cover:

- SMG's clients represent a comprehensive sampling of the largest marketers in the US and global economy. Given the economic crisis, what are they saying to you now about their plans for spending? Are they going to continue to shift to digital, or are they going to pause or move spend to places where they've lived in the past (IE TV, print)?

- CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands are just starting to lean into digital. What have they learned, and how far do they have to go before they view online as central to their plans, if ever?

- How has the digital world changed how agencies within SMG do their work? (This in light of my writings on CPG vs. Conversational Media, here).

- Lastly, I've asked Laura to bring examples of work done by SMG agencies. I'm looking forward to the show and tell.

But here's where you can help: What else should I be asking Laura? Chime in in the comments!

Super Cool.

Mac OS on a Dell. Wonder, does this fix all the poewr management and battery issues I have with my MacBook? (Thanks Andy)

Google Diaspora.

Good piece on Merus Capital, started by folks who used to be in Google corp dev.

Merus Capital, as it happens, is itself a new Google product. Or, to be more specific, Merus Capital is the product of a new Google phenomenon. Call it the Google exodus, the Google diaspora, whatever--in almost any given week, blogs and business sections perk up with news that key figures at Google are leaving. It happened last October, the day word leaked about Salman Ullah: ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER KEY GOOGLER DEPARTS, read the headline on VentureBeat. Ullah and Dempsey, who resigned at the same time, ran Google's corporate-development group. This meant they were in charge of buying and assimilating new companies, spending billions on YouTube and DoubleClick, among others. They also witnessed some of the initial stirrings of restlessness, the trickle of defections and departures that seemed to them a harbinger of the future. Since the late nineties, when they worked together at the top of Microsoft's corporate-development office, they'd considered becoming venture capitalists. But the timing had never seemed right. By the middle of 2007, about three years after having joined Google, the timing seemed urgent. They became convinced that their departing Google colleagues were going to dream up some truly special projects, and they wanted in. So, along with Peter Hsing, who had previously worked with them at Microsoft and was currently that company's managing director of corporate strategy, they abandoned some of the best corporate jobs in the world in order to go into business for themselves.

Merus Capital, both a product of the Google diaspora and an exploiter of it, has become an important node in the increasingly complex web ex-Googlers are weaving around Silicon Valley. The firm's first entrepreneur in residence, and the first beneficiary of Merus funds, was Gokul Rajaram, perhaps the highest profile recent Google departure, a man whom Fortune magazine identified as "one of the godfathers of AdSense" for his role in creating the targeted advertising service that is one of Google's prime revenue sources. Rajaram's start-up, Chai Labs, which is still in stealth mode, was incubated at Merus. In just the past couple years, ex-Googlers like Rajaram and Ullah and Dempsey have started about two dozen new companies and invested tens of millions of dollars in other start-ups. As

Know, Really.

So many things to miss when you're not reporting news anymore - some of these are old, but they stood the test of time:

Larry Page, Google, Watch these White Spaces, and Prop 8 in CA Is Deeply Dumb and cel phones suck, we can reimagine them, right because after all, we are already reimagining sustainability, see?

When Google starts arbitrating fact from interpretation, we must all think deeply. This is about Yahoo and Google. More here.

Yahoo could be the next platform. If only it could get out of its own way. Oh, and it should own display too, wait, doesn't it already? After all, digital marketing is recession proof, right?

One man anecdote machine declares the storm of the century. Welcome to every seven years, Robert. Funny how Jason agrees.

One Question, More Than 100 Answers and Counting....

It never fails to surprise me, though it shouldn't, how a simple question can elicit amazing responses. Late last week, on the advice of folks at Linked In and as a way to help guide my work as program chair of the CM Summit, I asked this simple question:

What's the smartest marketing you've ever seen online?

I didn't know what to expect, I've seen these questions stream into my inbox from my Linked In connections, and honestly unless it hit a nerve with me, I didn't really respond to them.

But clearly, this one hit a nerve. Not yet halfway through the seven days that questions are allowed to stay up, this one has 109 responses and counting. And the answers are really thoughtful, they range from Microsoft's MVP program to Mini's work, from subservient chicken to the US Army.

I've decided to take this list, which at the current rate will have 200 or more responses by the time the question closes, and chose ten finalists, then let folks vote on their favorites. Then we can announce the winner(s) at the CM Summit next week. It might be the start of something, who knows?