The crossroads of the online world in two essential, international disciplines, Search Marketing and Web Localization, both vital to “going global,” conducting international business, and simply being social in a country other than the U.S.A. or in a language other than English, converged on Seattle last week. The event was, to borrow a French expression, [...]
Who: Optify Position: Internet Marketing Director (SEO) Where: Seattle (Downtown) What: Optify is seeking an Internet Marketing Specialist who will work with our leading edge applications to enable customers to become dramatically more effective in their online marketing and lead generation. In this role, you will be responsible for analyzing and communicating in-depth marketing analysis, [...]
The long awaited beta release of Internet Explorer 9 has arrived. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the new Web browser’s elegant simplicity is indeed eye-catching. The sleek, streamlined UI boasts a polished exterior to an HTML5 hardware-accelerated graphics engine and a new JavaScript engine, dubbed Chakra, also boasts display speed that [...]
For the first time in the history of Internet search engines, Microsoft is in the runner up position! The entity known as the MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search engine overtook Yahoo! as the #2 search engine in the U.S. with a 13.9% share of search volume in August 2010, a 0.25% increase from the previous month. Frontrunner [...]
If the Internet were a sovereign government (which some may argue it is on the basis of its universal protocols and democratic access to information), the title of Secretary of State would have to go to Vanessa Fox. Not only does Vanessa seem to log as many air miles as the U.S. state department’s Hillary [...]
By Larry Sivitz “You can’t hang on without a handle,” a hall-of-fame, “Mad Men” era marketing pundit once said to me. Nowhere is that axiom truer than on the global Internet. Search engines are the handle that open the door to the Internet’s vast corridors of knowledge and stores of digital content. The SERP or [...]
You can’t help but admire Danny Sullivan. His affable good nature, pleasing yet persuasive presentation skills, and uncanny understanding of the dynamics of search engine marketing have reared the Internet’s search engine industry, and even more importantly, the search engine community, out of infancy. Beginning as a journalist (and a native) in Southern California, Danny [...]
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May 14 2012
Google Blinks! Bing Sings, and Slings the Arrows of Social Interface Discontent! Amazon’s Social “Denny Triangle!”
At last week’s Bing Search Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft took the wraps off a brand new Bing featuring a new, right-hand social column (“The Sidebar”) that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. The new Bing search even offers a way to ask questions on your favorite social network, directly through Bing. “The search engine has been reinvented!” wrote Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff.
In total, there are three new Bing columns in all:
* Core Search: minus many of the social annotations that Bing has added over the years (that have been relocated).
* Snapshot: providing additional information about a particular search listing, without having to leave Bing
* Sidebar: serving as the new home for social integration with search
“With this update, the competing search philosophies are clearer than ever,” opined Mashable. “Google sees the world as a deep blend of data, people and activities, all of which can be mined simultaneously for a rich and useful experience. Bing sees a more structured world, where social interactions, while extremely helpful, are kept a safe distance from the core results you desire.”
How does Bing build these “Friends Who Might Know” lists? Microsoft execs explained they’re leveraging as much publicly available data as possible from Facebook (for now) and soon Twitter and other networks. Inclusion in the list is not necessarily based on something you posted about the topic.
The sidebar includes people you know through your social networks that have, say, posted a photo about the topic, liked a certain relevant topic or searched for a similar topic in Bing, and people you don’t know, who are, for example, known Topic Experts and Enthusiasts (identified by Bing). All of them could be considered helpful in your quest for knowledge. Conversations revolving around a query topic are viewable through the social pane — you just hover over the activity and a small box will slide out to the left with the original post. You can add comments in any conversation in the activity pane or see the conversation in the slideout.
For example, a search for “Seattle restaurants” might pull up Facebook friends who have “liked” dining establishments in the metro area under a header that reads “Friends Who Might Know.” Bing users can also post comments or queries in the sidebar interface that will automatically be published to their Facebook page (provided they’re signed into Facebook) and could hypothetically flag their Seattle-based friends in posts seeking advice on where to go for dinner.
To see the new pane at work, you have to sign into Facebook and install the Bing App in Facebook. With that done, your social pane will be filled with recent Bing activity that’s also been shared on Facebook. When you enter a search query in the Bing interface on the left, the pane will also display a list of Facebook friends, and topic experts who might be able to assist with your query. Note: The Bing App defaults to sharing your posts with Everyone. If you do a lot of searching, you may want to dial that down a bit.
This deep integration with Facebook isn’t the first time the two have collaborated, and Bing has been adding social recommendations powered by Facebook to its search results for the past year. But it’s a sure sign that Microsoft — which bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million in 2007 — will lean on a company it’s heavily invested in to improve on the social-search product Google introduced in January. “Search Plus Your World” pulls up Google+ content deemed relevant to signed-in Google users and has gotten a tepid reception, said Adage. [24x7]
Amazon Advances Its Vision for a Social Campus Compass, Not an “Apple Circle,” but a “Denny Triangle.”
The City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development has posted the latest renderings of Amazon’s proposed Denny Triangle campus.
At a public design review board meeting, attendees liked proposed amenities that include outdoor artwork, a playing field, a dog park and space for food trucks.
The venue also incorporates a healthy measure of social engineering into the design. To ensure public open spaces between buildings are both lively and safe, buildings are designed so that people who park their cars in the underground garages will have to walk outside to get from the garage elevators to the elevators in the building lobbies. “That will help ensure a steady flow of people moving through the plazas.”
The project will also be a haven for bicyclists. Each of the three blocks will have a dedicated bike entrance and storage for as many as 400 bikes. That could allow as many as 1,200 Amazon employees to bike to work. [24x7]