The watchdog group Privacy International will write to more than 200 European organizations this week -- urging to fight the adoption, or a portion, of the EU proposed Written Declaration 29 intended to protect children. The directive aims to serve as part of an early warning system that fights against pedophiles and sex offenders, but points to incorporating stored search engine data to serve as an early warning signal. Although the group commends the EU for the creating the Directive, the proposal raises several issues related to search data. Extending existing requirements to hold onto search data would violate EU regulations, for starters. Privacy International asserts that once authorities are able to store and analyze search records of all EU citizens, a window into their interests, associations and activities of tens of millions of people will have been opened. The language used to create the directive somehow got lost in translation, according to a memo addressed to Members of the European Parliament. The memo reads: "There is no intention to extend this Directive to the same search engines for Internet users looking for any other kind of topic." The clarification either suggests that search engines should save raw search data for up to two years, so police have access to search behavior data related to anyone suspected of "children-related pornography and sexual-harassment online" or they don't want search engines to store data for any search queries except for those related to pedophilia. Before last week's adoption, Christian Engstrom, Member of the European Parliament for Piratpartiet, Sweden, in his blog post urges members to withdraw their signatures. "We didn't think it would go anywhere because the clause counters too many things the EU has been doing," says Katherine Albrecht, vice president of marketing at proxy search engine Startpage, an Ixquick company based in Europe. Albrecht -- who holds a doctorate in educating consumers on privacy -- says written declarations are not law, but rather the first step in implementing the law. Albrecht explains that the directive would require EU member countries to add Internet searches to the list of data stored from traffic and local data conducted by people on mobile phones, email, and the Internet. Some industry insiders who asked for anonymity chalk up the Directive as rhetoric and a method to grab at straws to curtail a growing epidemic of child offenders. Ironically, the Members of the European Parliament have asked to lengthen retention times at the same time the Article 29 Working Party, not to be confused with the Written Declaration 29, has asked for search engines to reduce the amount of personal data stored. In a 2009 blog post, Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer and others explain Google's privacy search logs policy. In a nutshell, Google anonymizes IP addresses after nine months and cookies after 18 months, according to a spokesperson. Microsoft recently cut the amount of time Bing stores IP addresses associated with search queries from 18 months to six months. Whatever the outcome, the EU plans to leave the technicalities of capturing, storing and sorting through the data to Google and Microsoft, among others. Ironically, data collection and retention -- which has caused Google much grief not only in Europe, but worldwide during the past year -- now becomes the very tool the EU wants to use to protect children.
Speculation that Facebook will allow all Open Graph-enabled Web pages to serve up in searches when a member clicks on the "like" button surfaced Friday, but a company spokesperson dismissed reports. The All Facebook Blog reported that Facebook will create a semantic index of the Web through the "like" button, enabling stronger search options than Google through "link baiting" rather than "like bating," the technology the social site uses to determine relevance. The blog says a Facebook spokesperson confirmed the feature. Analysts and SEO professionals have been awaiting the arrival of Facebook's search strategy. With the exception of the past several months, the social site experienced higher growth rates in search query volume than traditional search engines, according to comScore. Some attribute the uptick to an increase in members, people creating and launching community pages, and brands expanding social campaigns supported by Fan pages. Search will not become the center of attention for Facebook, according to a Facebook spokesperson. Not now, anyway. Facebook will continue to test search features, but it will not become the product focus for the company. The 1,400 employees, of which there are about 300 engineers, will continue to focus on building a technology platform that allows "cool experiences" such as adding social elements. Social games -- which have become the site's strongest vertical -- should provide that social experience, not only on the site, but also tie into consoles like Microsoft Xbox 360. Built on the concept that sharing experiences among friends creates community, Facebook engineers will continue to create features on the platform that allow marketers to communicate with consumers, and friends to share experiences among friends. And although not intentional, Facebook members should expect surprises related to services, as the social site forges ahead with features not previously offered. Tests are done on all tools before being released, but testing cannot always identify all the bugs and faults in the code. Privacy holes and flaws in the code can sometimes appear as intentional, but Facebook employees do take privacy seriously. The continuous push into uncharted territory to open the social graph may present some unexpected features that engineers will need to fix as they are found. Take, for example, the privacy debacle and issues surrounding controls. Engineers will continue to work on making the privacy controls easier to use. Many of these controls have been buried in layers of clicks and Web pages, making settings nearly impossible for the layperson to figure out. Facebook officials assert that the site's basic privacy settings have been around for years, but the company has forged new ground on uncharted territory when it comes to opening and connecting the Internet's social graph. Now it's a matter of pulling out the settings to make it easier for people to find, as well as educate them. The company will continue to condense the privacy settings in "fewer buckets" to prevent people from feeling "overwhelmed" and realize that Facebook members do have control. In an effort to cope with the privacy backlash, Facebook hired White House official Marne Levine to work with its policy team. Levine joins the social network as vice president of global public policy, spearheading efforts to build and manage teams focused on policy in Asia, Americas and Europe.
BlueGlass Interactive will soon have a chief executive officer to lead the newly formed agency. The CEO could come from Zimba, which Yahoo bought for $350 million and then sold to VMware, according to a source close to the deal. Chris Winfield, chief marketing officer and managing partner at BlueGlass, declined to discuss the high-profile new hire, because negotiations continue. He did, however, talk about the company's direction after merging 10e20, Search & Social, Brent Csutora, Inc. and SecondStep Search. BlueGlass plans to build out a suite of tools -- free and paid -- that it will introduce in July and then make available in mid-August for prospective clients to try. The free tools introduced next month will focus on social media, supporting tracking comments and clicks across sites. The decision stems from requests by several hundred agencies and small companies to try the tools. The platforms range from complex SEO auditing tools to matching writers with subjects, and social media tools. The four companies and seven partners took less than a month and a half to reach an agreement that created five business sectors for the agency, ranging from social media marketing to viral content to pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising and search marketing. Winfield had been in the middle of acquisition talks with larger search companies and digital agencies looking to buy a social media arm and SEO firm when the merger came down. This is not the first time Winfield tried to negotiate a buyout or partnership with another company. But talks broke down and he walked away after spending more than a year in negotiations. Nice to be in high demand, but Winfield lost about a month of sleep most recently before finally rejecting the buyout offer from one of the bigger firms. The merger puts BlueGlass offices in four cities where 40 employees support about $10 million in combined annual billings. Integrating the IT backend infrastructure becomes the biggest challenge the combined company faces today. Each ran on a different enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, but will consolidate on NetSuite, a cloud computing app from Salesforce.com. The project scheduled for completion. BlueGlass will operate under a traditional agency model and run four trade show conferences yearly. The next hits Los Angeles in July, followed by one in New York later this year. If you're wondering where the "BlueGlass" name originates, Winfield offers no clue about the "blue" but the "glass" comes from having a clear view to get through all the "bullshit, BS," or muck.
Yahoo Search began displaying an unexpected "Warning: Dangerous Downloads" notice for PRWeb-related search queries earlier this week. The warning began serving up midday Monday, but the press release service did all it could on its own before alerting the search engine and McAfee to the problem. PRWeb emailed McAfee on Tuesday morning and by the end of the day the company known for protecting Web searches against viruses, malware and more claimed to have the problem fixed. No word on exactly what caused the glitch, but McAfee says the problem has been fixed and it's just a matter of time until Yahoo crawls, indexes and updates site files. Yahoo Search partnered with Web security company McAfee to scan search results for dangerous Web sites years ago. SearchScan by Yahoo Search, powered by McAfee, helps alert consumers to sites with security concerns such as hacking risks, downloads, and unsolicited emails. A Yahoo spokesperson told MediaPost the glitch was not related to the Yahoo-Microsoft search alliance. The error messages did not serve up in Bing search query results. The tool remains in beta. Jiyan Wei, director of product management at PRWeb, says the majority of URLs serve up in search results with the McAfee warning flag. "The flag links to McAfee's full report, along with a diagnostics report that includes an overall evaluation," he says. "The files indicated no threat, and point to specific files. Domains have executable files McAfee lists." The site also has a meter for those executable files. They download those files on their servers and test them. One file indicated a "6" on a 10-point scale out of 33 executable files PRWeb hosted. 31 shows a "0" and one indicated a "3." PRWeb tested the files. No viruses were found. The files link to photos, presentations or Web sites that augment press releases sent out as part of the service. Wei removed all executable files, so the Yahoo results would serve up clean. Although queries may serve up clean in the long run, it's not clear if PRWeb's reputation will come out of this untarnished. Gerry Bavaro, vice president and managing director at Resolution Media, an Omnicom Media Group company, says similar to quantifying the impact of negative listings to core brand queries when managing reputation in search, if this is a Yahoo glitch tied to the deal with McAfee, there could be quantifiable impact to PRWeb in which Yahoo or McAfee should compensate. McAfee thought a downloadable file on prweb.com was detected as a Trojan, but diagnosing the issue proved otherwise, according to a McAfee spokesperson, who declined to detail the problem. The warning began disappearing from Yahoo search results late Tuesday afternoon, Pacific time. PRWeb explained the problem in a blog post.
Let's face it: a fragmented paywall approach to content doesn't serve anyone. Our consumption habits are too dispersed and too immediate to justify paid subscriptions to individual providers. If I'm reading a blog and it links to a source article from a site I don't normally read, I don't want to have to bust out the credit card and pay three bucks to get a bit more info. Individual paywalls might benefit some big-name players briefly. After all, if you're in the finance industry, you pretty much have to read the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times. But if you have to pay for each publication separately, you're pretty much going to stick with only the ones you consume consistently. You won't buy a subscription to the Miami Herald if you only read an article from that pub once a year. Even the biggest players, the ones who do make it to the slim must-read list, will suffer. Generally, the argument for focusing on the most hard-core members of your base is that they're the ones who can best leverage your message to the wider masses. But in this case, the hit to the wallet will combine with near-infinite content competition to steadily whittle away at the potential market for individual news providers, until all you're left with is your most truly radical followers. So is the solution free content? From the consumer perspective, sure, but not from the perspective of struggling news companies. The situation has gotten so bad that USA Today is reporting a 10% drop in year-on-year newspaper ad revenue as good news: "the smallest such drop since the recession began in late 2007." According to that same article, the newspaper industry is already surviving on just 46% of its revenues from four years ago. You want to be the one to tell them they have to keep giving it away for free? No, free doesn't work and neither does paid. So what's the solution? Simple: Take the Apple approach. Consider what iTunes did for the music industry. All of a sudden, we realized we were willing to pay for music. All we needed was an absurdly elegant interface and away we went, 99 cents at a time. Turns out it wasn't that we were miserly; it just hadn't been easy enough to pay. So last week I found an article on PaidContent.org hinting that Google's Newspass might be ready for launch at the end of the year. Newspass is a paid content system for publishers: one portal, one search engine, one Google Checkout. This could work, methinks, for the reasons I enumerated earlier. There's one major issue, though: Google's conflict of interest. Consider this comment left on the PaidContent article: "This is a terrible idea for Google and for its users... I would not use Google if I knew that any more than one of the top ten organic results was behind a pay wall... At the very least, the paid results should be segregated from the organic results, similar to the way AdWords ads are segregated now." A valid point, but not insurmountable. After all, Google hasn't had that much pushback from its other content services. Google News search could switch to a 2-column layout, premium on the left and free on the right or vice versa. There are ways to handle this issue. What we need, though, is a solution. The newspaper industry is not viable in its present incarnation, and to date its attempts to haul itself into the 21st century have been pitiful. If Google can't make it work as the iTunes of news, we'll need Steve Jobs to step in. Our future as an informed society depends on it. What's your take? Leave me a comment here or find me via @kcolbin.
Copyright enforcement outfit Righthaven has filed some questionable lawsuits in the past, but really outdid itself in a case against Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor. That lawsuit, one of several filed on Friday, alleges that Curtis infringed copyright by reposting an article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Problem is, that article was itself based on an annual survey conducted by Curtis of ticket prices for entertainment shows. Yes, Curtis went to the trouble of fielding a survey and then shared his findings with the newspaper, only to find himself sued for posting portions of the ensuing article on his own blog. Just for added irony, the original Las Vegas Review-Journal piece about the survey described Curtis's annual undertaking as a "thankless task." "Once a year, Curtis delves into the thankless task of trying to pull an average ticket price," the April 22 article stated. Now, Righthaven's overall strategy is problematic for many reasons: The company targets small publishers and bloggers who don't compete with the newspaper, or even monetize their sites with ads. Additionally, in some cases, the allegedly infringing posts hadn't received a single click before the lawsuit was filed. Leaving aside the wisdom of the lawsuits, Righthaven might be able to argue in many cases that it has technically made out a valid claim of copyright infringement. Though some bloggers have said they thought their reposting of the articles was a "fair use," publishing a piece in its entirety can cross the line into infringement. But if there's ever a situation where publishing an entire article (or the bulk of one) is fair use, Curtis's post of an article based on his own research should be it. For his part, Curtis says he expects this "patently absurd" lawsuit will quickly disappear. "Hopefully this will be averted before I even make a call to my attorneys," he tells MediaPost. Curtis shouldn't hold his breath. Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson tells MediaPost he's sticking to his guns. "We believe that the claim is rightfully made," he says.
Business is moving fast and furious -- which is great, but I keep hearing and reading about two general overarching themes that are going to collide and change how we manage our business. We are globally climbing out of a recession and now budgets are returning. This growth is in stark contrast to a lot of other industries, which we should all be thankful for, but this growth creates opportunities and is theme one. According to MAGNAGLOBAL, paid search leads global online advertising, representing "49% of total revenues," a trend that could continue for the next five years. Beyond search, MAGNAGLOBAL claims "online advertising [overall] will rise by 12.4% in constant currency terms during 2010, to $61.0 billion dollars globally." To take advantage of this growth Google has been busy with Google TV (about time someone put search functionality into digital TV), ACE for more efficient iterative testing, algorithm and indexing updates, and even local improvements within the rebranding of Google Places. Yahoo and Bing are together as "the alliance" (not sure if I should queue up Darth Vader or Pee Wee Herman music here) and independently are making a lot of enhancements to consumer-focused and advertiser-related products. Bing even just launched an entertainment-specific search experience. All these efforts are being made to capture more search share, more billings, scale revenue, and add value to these companies' core constituencies. Although somewhat conflicting, the second agent of change is downward pricing pressure. Even though paid search and digital advertising are huge focal points, there is still pressure to offer them for less. This has changed the dynamics of advertiser-agency-publisher relationships. Marc Fleishhacker of MRM says "the agency relationship is broken" because of an excessive focus on procurement. You can read more about that in "When to fire your agency -- and not hire a new one. " I find it interesting to ponder what these two colliding themes of change mean for our business. I think it means that how we add value, up and down the food chain, must evolve. As C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel write in the book "Competing For The Future," "What is needed is a strategic architecture that provides a blueprint for building the competencies needed to dominate future markets." Here's my blueprint: Agencies - the old model of backing into a commission based on charging mark-up on bodies against time to hit a certain cost + revenue target needs to change, too. Buying is commoditizing and there is less bulk buying power based on transparency and liquidity. Many traditional agencies are focused on billings and buying, which is valueless growth and the root of downward pricing pressure. Agencies have to add value in new ways. With change comes opportunity to drive differentiation and value through technology, attribution, cross-channel planning, emerging media and analytics. Publishers - there is an opportunity to form stronger relationships with agencies and advertisers because content owners are in the position to best connect consumers with brands. This connection is a critical to understand and match with the right advertising messages. Publishers can add a lot of value here and put a premium on this level of connection, versus simply arbitraging their own media real estate. Advertisers - clients need to be in the driver's seat. Regardless of the brands represented, changes in consumer behavior and media require them to think about their businesses differently. The most successful brands currently are advertisers that drive cross-functional ownership internally and across their agency/publisher partners. Emerging opportunities like mobile and social touch everyone from IT and creative to media, customer service, and marketing, and no one can coordinate this better than clients themselves. No one can help if you can't (or don't want to) help yourself. I don't necessarily think the agency relationship is broken per se, but it does need to evolve, as it was built and refined over years based on a certain set of dynamics between consumers and media. To be successful in an uncertain future, we must rethink our past, because much of the evolution in our industry largely undermines how we have traditionally made money. If we can drive change and alter what Hamel and Prahalad call the "genetic coding" of our organizations, we will be successful. One starting point is to focus on real business metrics -- not isolated and arbitrary GRP, CPM, CPA, or any sort of random engagement metrics. We may not know exactly what the future model will be or exactly what the landscape of our industry will look like, but we know it is changing. Helping to find tomorrow's opportunities is where an agency can add the most value. Agencies that can facilitate change through consumer knowledge, integrated research and analytics, technology driven scale and efficiency, and cross-channel insights will be profitable and have strong publishing partners and successful clients with industry-leading brands.