WebConnoisseur

It appears that Digg is finally closer to being purchased. The leading candidates are Google and Microsoft. While the final owner won’t be known for probably another month, the future of Digg is known:

If Google buys Digg, it will become Gigg.

Rather than trusting pesky humans to digg news stories, Google will implement an algorithm developed by a team of PhDs based on previous digg analytics data. The new algorithm will look something like this:

if (headline ((pro-Microsoft, -50, anti-Microsoft, +50) (“Apple”, +100) (any game title, +35)) + if (content contains (Scantily clad women, +85, -25) (“Hack”, +35, -5) (displays ads, -20)…

If Microsoft buys Digg, it will quickly become Dugg.

Dugg will be the result of the dust that quickly develops on Digg as it suddenly becomes uncool. To make matters worse, Microsoft will implement content restrictions like no Microsoft bashing, no discussions of Apple or Google, and all gaming diggs must be Microsoft-created games only. Within weeks, Dugg will be the wayback machine of the social news site once known as Digg.

Ask will build a competing product to Microsoft Dugg called “Doug” to add a human element to the archive, but you will have to search news stories with questions like, “What male celebrity is a little bitch?”

I started playing around with the Google Sites which are definitely part of the Google Apps product suite. I suspect most individual non-corporate wiki creators will quickly be turned off by being forced to provide business information like # of employees (with 10 being the minimum example), business phone #, etc.

As I was reading through Google Sites terms and conditions, I noticed that I wouldn’t be allowed to write about the terms and conditions again as part of the agreement (so I am writing now before I even think about signing up):

“Customer agrees not to issue any public announcement regarding the existence or content of this Agreement without Google’s prior written approval.”

I’m not a big fan of reading terms and conditions, but I decided to read through them and have a feeling these will be deal breakers for many of the potential Google Sites corporate customers:

“3.2.2 Disclaimer Regarding Additional Content. Additional Content may be provided by third parties and may be modified or removed by Google at any time, including at the request of those third parties. Third party providers of Additional Content may include financial exchanges and may be delayed as specified by such financial exchanges or Google’s data providers…Customer agrees not to copy, modify, reformat, download, store, reproduce, reprocess or redistribute any data or information from the Additional Content or use any such data or information in a commercial enterprise without obtaining prior written consent. A broker or financial representative should be consulted to verify pricing before executing any trade. Either Google or its third party data or content providers have exclusive proprietary rights in the data and information provided.”

I’m having trouble understanding who the financial exchange partners are and what they have to do with content, especially considering Google Sites don’t include any revenue share.

Here’s the part that will probably bother most companies & non-company users them most:

“Ownership; Restricted Use. Google and its licensors shall own all right, title and interest, including without limitation all Intellectual Property Rights (as defined below) relating to the Service (and any derivative works or enhancements thereof), including but not limited to, all software, technology, information, content, materials, guidelines, and documentation. Customer shall not acquire any right, title, or interest therein, except for the limited use rights expressly set forth in the Agreement. Any rights not expressly granted herein are deemed withheld. “Intellectual Property Rights” means any and all rights existing from time to time under patent law, copyright law, semiconductor chip protection law, moral rights law, trade secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, publicity rights law, privacy rights law, and any and all other proprietary rights, and any and all applications, renewals, extensions and restorations thereof, now or hereafter in force and effect worldwide.”

Sounds like you won’t own your own content, though this part provides a little hope:

“Google does not own third party content used as part of the Service, including the content of communications appearing on the Service. Title, ownership rights, and Intellectual Property Rights in and to the content accessed through the Service are the property of the applicable content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other law.”

Strange. Third party content thus far sounded like Google partner or “financial exchange” partner content, but maybe they mean content from site members or participants. I wish they were more clear because I feel like most corporate customers are going to want to own their own content that the write themselves, and want to be able to move it elsewhere, if desired.

Being essentially a wiki, you’d think the Google Sites terms of service would spend more time discussing copyrights, collective content, creative commons license, user submissions, user contributions, and other content creation activity.

If you have a similar or different read on the Google Sites terms of service, do comment with your thoughts.

Google recently experimented with having their Gmail users upload short clips to make a fun collaborative video showing how Gmail goes around the world. Unleashing users to play with your brand can be scary for marketers, but in reality, Google had complete control over the process (they got to choose which videos to show). Kudos for Google for stepping outside the box and having people interact with their brand.

Check out the video for yourself:

I’ve been impressed with the marketing tactics The Simpsons movie has employed. Back in July, by word of mouth I heard about the Simpsons 7-11 promo where select 7-11s were transformed into Kwik-E-marts including one in my hometown, Seattle (shame on the 7-eleven site for removing the page from their site) where you could buy pink donuts, buzz cola, krusty-os, etc. (I still think they should have made Duff beer).

Then, last week before I went to see the movie, I visited the official simpsons movie site which also had some great viral marketing elements built in. For example, you can create your very own Simpsons character. Here’s my Simpsonized family:

They made it really easy to create avatars, jpgs, video and other web elements that you could add to your blog or social networking profile. I love it when movies go beyond creating a site that only contains a movie trailer and a couple stills. Allowing your fans to promote their love for your movie is a smart marketing tactic. Massive marketing still works for Hollywood, but it seems like the movies that are most successful rely mostly on Word-of-Mouth. Why not use the web to promote word-of-mouth activity?

The movie was also enjoyable. As a filmmaker, I loved the beginning. Television actors & movies are often considered undesirable for feature films because the audience is used to seeing them for free. In true Simpson’s style, they actually poke fun at the audience for paying for the movie during the first 30 seconds of the film.

Danny Sullivan just launched a cool social networking site for search marketers called Sphinn. I decided to take Sphinn for a spin and must say it looks promising. It has Digg-like search news voting features, profiles that allow lots of great links to other social sites & personal blog RSS pulls, a shared events calendar, and some cool networking components.

The service just launched, so expect lots of bugs and some spam at first, but from what I can tell, Sphinn will be a great place to keep up on search news that matters and a place to connect and keep track of your fellow search peers.

SEOmoz released the results of the 2nd Annual Web 2.0 Awards yesterday. I’m happy to announce that I was one of the 25 judges. I’ve judged the Webby Awards for a number of years and even judged an online Miss World competition a few years ago, but I must admit that judging the Web 2.0 Awards was a refreshing change. It’s fun to see how people are changing the web in exciting ways.

I highly recommend you take a look at the 2007 Web 2.0 Award Winners, especially if you are still unsure what a “Web 2.0 site” is. I think every company with an online presence could benefit from paying attention to sites that are leading the movement towards Web 2.0 experiences.

Think about how you might be able to integrate elements of what these other sites are doing into your site, especially if it adds value to your existing user base.

I believe there is an untapped opportunity in video disbtribution for local news stations. When it comes to unexpected events, news station camera crews can not possibly be in the right place at the right time. If someone were to build a video upload service aimed towards local news syndication, I think many stations would be willing be interested in buying rights to the videos.

There are plenty of sites that facilitate the sale of video clips, but I have yet to see one target distribution to television stations. For example, take a look at this video from Oregon after yesterday’s storm hit:

Oregon Drivers Crashing on Slick Streets Video

I imagine the person who captured this video had to go out of their way to get the video to the news station (hopefully they didn’t drive down that street). The local news station may have paid them a small amount of money, then distributed it to their sister stations. Imagine if the user could have uploaded the video to a site, set their own price and let anyone pick up rights to use it or pay extra for exclusive rights.

News stations desperate for video could simply visit the site, preview the video in a flash player, download the video and edit it as they please. Far too often news stations lack video so they pull out old videos or play the same exact video throughout the day, over and over and over. My wife has been filmed working in the lab and I can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen the same video clip used for every DNA-related piece of news for the past four years. The video distribution service I’m imagining would not only connect traditional media with user-generated videos via the web, but it would be in a good position when the lines between the web and T.V. continue to blur.

Search Engine Watch revealed some information about a Yahoo/Harris Interactive study with surprising numbers. The results of their study show that in a study of ratings and reviews of local businesses, a whopping 67 percent of respondents said they would be likely to post a review.

Yahoo seemed to take pride in that information and I’ve seen the number quoted in a number of places that use it to show that user-generated content is real. I’m a huge fan of user-generated content, but I want to set the record straight: 67% of Yahoo local searchers will not post reviews… especially on every business they frequent.

Having worked for a site that has had user reviews for almost a decade, I can tell you that though a large percentage of people use reviews, only a handful actually contribute reviews. In fact, to get just 2% of your monthly unique visitors to contribute reviews would be a decent accomplishment.

This is a good example of how survey results can be misleading. I’m not sure how they asked this question, but wording it differently could yield much different results. Plus, what people say is not often what they do.