Colin's Corner

Flash content now being indexed by search engines

According to VentureBeat Adobe, Google and Yahoo are about to make it easier to have rich multimedia websites in the Flash file format (SWF)

Previously, search engines only indexed the “static” text and links on a site, falling far short of capturing all the content.

“It’s like reading the index of a book, rather than the book itself,” says Justin Everett-Church, a senior product manager for Flash.

Google made the announcement on their official blog noting they had developed a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites.

The result is that Web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and can expect to see better search results and snippets. There's more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.

Further coverage on Infoworld, Computerworld, Editechial and Search Engine Land

Nokia acquires Symbian and goes open

With a strong move that pits Nokia strongly against Google, and Apple, the world's largest mobile device manufacturer, (Nokia is currently responsible for around 60% of the of the world's smartphone market), has joined forces with other mobility heavyweights to create an open mobile software platform centered on the Symbian operating system. Nokia will acquire the remaining 52 percent stake in Symbian Ltd. that it doesn't already own for a price tag of roughly $410 million.

Although the free Symbian project will not start till 2009, it may beat the Google-backed Android phone to market, and provide a royalty-free phone that will build on a large existing installed base. With AT&T as a prominent backer, the move could also give Nokia a stronger position in the U.S. market where Symbian has so far struggled. Symbian, is hugely popular throughout Europe, and controls around two-thirds of the market for smartphone operating systems

Currently, there are more than 200 million phones across 235 models that are based on the Symbian OS, along with tens of thousands of third-party applications available for it.

Google Android and the Open Handset Alliance comprise more than 30 partners, including heavyweights like Sprint (NYSE:S), T-Mobile and China Mobile. It was reported that Android has been plagued by setbacks however, Google is adamant that its Android plans remain on schedule and devices based on Android will be available in the second half of this year.

Apple raised the bar with the launch of the iPhone. A sleek touch screen user interface, coupled with the ability to browse the mobile web has been embraced by smartphone consumers. Apple has always been the master of integrating hardware and software. They've understood the critical importance of the user interface - making their produces intuitive and easy to use as well as attractive. Now Nokia also has an integrated software and hardware platform coupled with a strong developer platform and will be a formidable worldwide competitor.

Whether the Symbian Foundation will be successful remains to be seen - as The Register suggests The most damaging problem is that Symbian's licensees may have no desire to make Nokia stronger now that it owns the operation 100 per cent. Because it dominates the "platform" already by market share, the playing field tips steeply towards Finland. Why bother joining - to make the market leader even stronger?

Om Malik at GigaOm (good to see is recovering well from a recent heart attack) has a good summary on the "new mobile reality" and thinks that LiMo, Symbian, and Apple have the best chance of "winning big," with Android and Microsoft fighting for that remaining spot at the table. Where RIM ends up remains the subject of much speculation.

Google moves into web metrics

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal Google plans to unveil a new web metrics service that measures internet usage and competing with comScore and Nielsen Online. These services gather data by using panels and conducting surveys, and many claim their results can be inconsistent and incomplete.

Google's service will be based mostly on data from their Web servers and will be offered to marketers free.

In addition, Google is expected to roll out a new tool aimed at showing how Web surfers respond to online ads. It will compare groups of people who are exposed to an ad with others who haven't seen it.

Google's new web metric tool, which will also rely on some data gleaned from panels of human users and other sources, is similar to one developed by New York-based start-up Quantcast. Given their scale Google certainly has the potential to shake up the Web-measurement business.

comScore shares dipped 6% on the news

Next Google statistics on mobile usage ?

Technology Trends - Morgan Stanley Report

An updated Morgan Stanley Report on Technology Trends was released on 12th June (but I only just noticed!) As usual Mary Meeker and the team have crammed in a huge amount of information. They cover the importance of user driven editorial and user selection of content and offer some suggestions as to why Facebook is growing faster than MySpace.

A large segment of the presentation is focused on my favorite topic - mobile and the longer-term opportunities around the mobile platform - with the suggestion that Mobile to PC is the new client -server model. Unfortunately, the US remains the laggard in many mobile categories (slide 57)

Over at Communities Dominate Brands Tomi Ahonen pull the iPhone statistics from the report

Worth a read

Google Trends for Websites

Google announced on Friday on the Web Master Central Blog that Google Trends had been updated to give information about actual popularity of websites based on their daily unique visitors.

If you have a popular enough website included in the results from Google Trends and you'd prefer it wasn't, you're out of luck. There is no way to remove your site. Google has not included their own properties - which on first sight may appear hypocritical but a reasonable explanation is offered for this omission.

Google Trends Combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. The new feature pits Google against a number of well-established players in the traffic data space, including comscore, Compete, Alexa, Quantcast and a host of others.

Features of Google Trends:

- Daily traffic numbers of users sent via Google search (log in to see details)
- Related sites that were either searched for or visited in the same session.
- The ability to compare up to five sites at a given time with bar graphs and charts for each.
- Popularity by different regions.
- Estimates of the amount of unique visitors that the site has received over time with charts and graphs.

It's important to note that Google Trends for Websites doesn't give you Google's raw data -- it uses a majority of it's search data, data from Google Analytics, and some data from market research firms, and other sources. In order to get the full effect of "Google Trend For Websites" you must be logged into a Google account to see all of the data.

Micro Persuasion’s Steve Rubel has made it even easier to use Google Trends with the release of a bookmarklet that you can use to get there. Just drag the link from his blog entry to your browser toolbar, and a single click will show you the trends information for the site that you’re on.

There's commentary on Google Trends from Fred Wilson at his A VC blog.

In addition to the launch og Google Trends for Websites Venture Beat notes the release of an API for Webmaster Tools. According to Web Master Central The supported features in the first version of the Webmaster Tools API are the following:

Managing Sites
Retrieve a list of your sites in Webmaster Tools
Add your sites to Webmaster Tools
Verify your sites in Webmaster Tools
Remove your sites from Webmaster Tools
Working with Sitemaps
Retrieve a list of your submitted Sitemaps
Add Sitemaps to Webmaster Tools
Remove Sitemaps from Webmaster Tools

Will mobile advertising be a disaster ?

Over at IDG's Computerworld, Here come the cell phone ad disaster, Mike Elgan compares the upcoming revenue gold rush on mobile devices to the volcanic destruction of a Minoan civilization on the Greek Island of Santorini

Listing plenty of unpleasant ways, advertisers could seek to interrupt you on your personal mobile device:

Unwanted calls.
Recorded advertising voice mails.
SMS ads that ring your phone.
MMS ads that ring your phone.
E-mail ads.
Advertiser-supported software and services.
Web pages that force you to view an ad before you can see the page.
Location-based advertising -- you'll walk by a store, and it will ring your phone to tell you about a sale.
Viral videos.
Text, e-mail or Web-based ads that encourage you to "click to call."
Search ads tailored for phones.

Mike concludes The disaster is coming, and there's not much any of us can do about it other than reward companies that don't engage in cell phone advertising, punish those that do and hope for the best.

I agree with Mike that there's certainly the potential for disaster, and inevitably there will surely be some terrible abuses as the mobile industry matures. However, the sheer scale of the mobile market, coupled with the ability to deliver contextually relevant and targeted information that improves the user experience means that some of the inevitable initial problems will get resolved.

Handled properly, users will value additional information provided by marketers to help their purchasing decisions. But, if the customer experience is mishandled, the backlash from users will irreparably damage a brand. Appreciating the viral power of mobile and the communications power of mobile social networks will ensure that marketers who look to engagement rather interruption will win over the loyalty of mobile consumers.

Will Apple look to mobile advertising revenues ?

As expected, Apple announced the iPhone 3G at their World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco . The phone will be available on July 11th for the reduced price of $199 for the 8GB version via a subsidy, as AT&T have adjusted their relationship so that Apple no longer gets a share of the revenue stream from the carriers - rumored to be as high as 30%. The new data plan for 3G will be $30 per month - up from the $20 per month for the old 2G service.

In the US, it seems as if AT&T will continue as the exclusive carrier. As an international traveler - I remain highly frustrated by AT&T's overseas rates and the inability without jail breaking the phone to swap SIMS card from foreign carriers. If Apple is really serious about enterprise - let's see proper support for the international road warriors who want all the benefits of the iPhone and the new MobileMe service.

Apple shares initially fell on the news that Apple was giving up a revenue stream but what most analysts seemed to miss was that Apple may have its eye on a bigger revenue opportunity - off deck advertising. With control of the iPhone applications via the SDK and distribution via the iPhone apps store - Apple is in a marvelous position to look at different advertising revenue streams - from display advertising, direct response, sponsorships, in application (particularly in gaming) advertising. Different models can be developed where Apple and the application developer can share the advertising revenue streams.

Mobile advertising revenue streams are in their infancy but Apple has all the foundations in place to take advantage of what will become a huge business. One to watch.

For a great read on mobile advertising opportunities check out Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market by Chetan Sharma, Joe Herzog, and Victor Melfi

Leveraging print and mobile

Michael Zimbalist, head of R&D at The New York Times Company talks about the integration of mobile and print applications, referencing the opportunities around the use of 2D bar-codes. In addition to 2D bar-codes, I believe ViPR (visual pattern recognition) - taking photos with your camera to obtain additional information will take off over the next few years.

Michael also discusses the potential impact of the Semantic Web and device dependent media - displaying content appropriately for the device being used.

UBM / Informa Merger

According to a Reuters UK report, United Business Media and Informa are in early-stage merger talks to create a 3-billion-pound-plus ($5.9 billion) media company.

A source was confirming a story in the UK's Sunday Telegraph newspaper and declined to give any further information about the talks that could unite the owners of publications including Property Week and Lloyd's List.

Update coverage here from The Guardian and The Press Association.

UBM recently dropped the CMP brand name in the US restructuring CMP Technology into four separate businesses

The news follows speculation that Informa could be subject to a bid by Candover Investments who apparently were considering taking Informa's academic publishing and merging it with Springer Science + Business Media AG, the German academic publisher that Candover contols with its peer Cinven.

United Business Media Plc is a global business media company serving professional commercial communities, such as doctors, game developers, journalists, jewellery traders, farmers and pharmacists.

Informa provides specialist information and services for the academic and scientific, professional and commercial business communities and is a major organizer of conferences.

5 technologies to watch

BtoB Media Business covers five technologies to which media companies should pay attention.

The article leads - Technology alone may not make or break a media company, but it's certainly one of the most important pieces in the modern-day publishing puzzle. Media Business asked a handful of industry executives about technologies that are changing—or will soon change—the media landscape and how publishers can best take advantage of these advances

I had the opportunity to add a few comments about the mobile future.

Colin Crawford, exec VP-interactive at IDG Communications, said that while it may still be a few years premature, mobile will provide social network opportunities. For instance, Crawford envisions a scenario in the not-too-distant future in which an attendee at a conference such as MacWorld could look at his phone and see that there are 10 other passionate Mac users from his network within half a mile of him. More advanced visual communications such as video mail also will come, he said, though again, it might be a while.

“Some of this is early .... but in the next two to five years, mobile is going to surge forward,” he said. “As publishers, we're going to have to get our heads around exactly what is the right type of content to serve up to our users through various mobile devices. I don't believe it's a replica of ... the Web. I believe that we'll have to develop specific content and display it in the right way.”

My sentiments are echoed by Informa Telecoms and Media

"True mobile advertising does not exist today; what we are referring to is 'advertising on mobile.' When mobile advertising combines user profiling, location and communication with unique mobile inventory, the industry can justify charging a premium rate over existing immeasurable advertising channels."

Mobile revenue streams remain in their infancy but media companies should allocate resources to understand the platform, how their users consume mobile content and what service and applications they need to develop for their mobile audiences in the future. The revenues today don't justify massive investment but the same argument was used back in 1993/94 when online was nascent. Ultimately the mobile opportunities will outstrip today's online revenue opportunities - balancing short-term early investments with the potential long-term opportunities is key.