So the two big news items this Friday are Google Wave and Microsoft Bing. Here’s the low down.

Google Wave
Looks very cool. An über-communication and collaboration platform, integrating a bunch of functionality to create a rich mosaic of threads and conversations, or a 'wave'.

The screenshots look like Gmail on steroids but it’s not email, it’s not chat. It’s something totally new. The key takeout is that it’s collaborative, live and concurrent, more like a real conversation. The underlying principle behind the new service is something called 'operational transformation', which you can find out more about in this video (Warning! Very techy content):



Here’s the full Google Wave developer preview video which tells you everything you need to know and more (it's quite long):



Overall, I'd say Google Wave looks really innovative, and definitely 'new'. Especially because a wave is a stream of content about a subject or topic, and the content contributed to a wave is recorded over time; so it’s as much about the evolution or creation of the wave as it is about the ultimate result of that wave.

This also has implications for search because this will allow for the search of a wave, or stream, of content, rather than the search of a static result. So it’s like searching for a story about something rather than a static page of information.

So Google are again putting the focus on individuals and personal communication and experience. Giving the users the tools to make their own stuff.

If it works and isn’t as confusing as it sounds (the timeline stuff sounds like it could be 'Back to the Future' complex), then it will be awesome.

Microsoft Bing
So the other big news this Friday is MS’s new search engine called 'Bing', which is replacing Live Search (which no one uses). They’re pitching it as a ‘decision engine’ and have integrated categories of search, like shopping and travel. Not sure what else to say here except that it sounds interesting but we’ll wait and see how good it really is, the proof is in the pudding.

I’m a little skeptical though, simply because it sounds like they’ve gone down the portal model, which doesn’t really sound like a new concept, in fact portals are something which represents the legacy Web, and I can’t think of a good example of a portal that survives today which is very successful.

Maybe MS have developed a super smart Bing 'brain' which will know more than people know themselves about what they're searching for...but I'm finding it hard to see the innovation in this new search engine.

Whilst competition is a good thing, we're not sure how this changes the game nor really delivers on the promise of a 'decision engine'.

Google killer? Doubtful.

Here’s the promotional video:



Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney

Labels: Search Engine Marketing, Social media, Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Google is slowly but surely progressing towards becoming the centre of our global communications. The launch in the next few weeks of the new service Google Voice is another step in this direction. Google Voice will allow users to maintain a single phone number forever and maintain that number diverting it to any number that you may currently be using, home phone, work phone, mobile, hotel room etc. It has a raft of features that will grow exponential moving forward, some of these include:

• Make phone calls and conference calls
• Store and recall messages convert messages to text
• Different greetings for each person in your address book
• Centralise all your contacts
• Integrating the web and your phone

David Pogue writes in the New York Times, "One number for life," pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral.com, you choose a new, single, unified phone number (more on this in a moment). You hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers from their Rolodexes. From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously, like something out of "The Lawnmower Man."

The other important point is that it’s free, so what’s in it for Google? If it is a success it will make Google will become the centre of your communications system, effectively giving them control and data on everyone you communicate with on every channel giving them a multitude of ways of monetising the system. Even though it is not available in Australia yet I’m sure it won’t take long particularly given they already have the infrastructure setup for phone services so I for one am hopeful it won’t take too long.

For more info check out the Google Voice website and an article by TechCrunch.



What are your thoughts?


Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

The internet hype machine is going into overdrive this morning over the announcement that Facebook is launching a bunch of new features. Some people are calling it a revolution comparative to the launch of Twitter and an EPIC change. So what are these new features and what impact are they really going to have?

The two big updates are

• Pages will become more like Profiles, moving brands into the general social sphere
• Subscriptions will allow user to delve deeper into other peoples information stream and Publisher will allow users to selectively broadcast information
  

These updates will be launched with a Home page re-design with updated news feeds and filtering of friend lists and apps.

So firstly the biggest change is squarely aimed at increasing the ability for marketers to engage with users, firstly “Pages” which are used by Brands etc will now act and feel like standard “Profile” pages. This will allow brands to move from being segregated from the primary Facebook experience to becoming intimately involved in a users social process. Mark Zukerberg is playing down the obvious advertising and marketing opportunities that this opens up saying in his blog, “Starting today, we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations, Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations.” Basically what he means by that is that now a brand, organisation or personality will be able to post updates directly to every persons Wall associated with that Profile which will then be visible to all of their friends etc. That is a massive change giving brands both a massive opportunity and huge responsibility!

The second massive update which is aimed squarely at taking on Twitter will allow users to share their information with an unlimited number of friends. The updates, according to Facebook, can "be brief messages" similar to Tweets or longer ones that include photos and videos. When combined with the Pages update allowing brands to communicate in a similar fashion may allow Facebook to out-Tweet Twitter.

To check out the new look check out Barack Obama and Britney Spears

For brands there are a few updates that need to be made in the next couple of days to ensure that your ‘Profile’ is ready

1. Ensuring that a profile picture for the Page is set.
2. Configuring tab settings - both choosing the “landing tab” for non-Fans and choosing who can write on the Wall.
3. Rearranging boxes on the Boxes tab, if necessary.
   

For more info go to Inside Facebook

I understand the motivation for all of these changes in terms of increasing the ROI for business and pushing more information into the data stream. I do wonder however, if brands can be trusted with this much power in a social network, but I guess that is the answer, hopefully users will ‘out’ any brands that abuse the system and will ultimately self monitor in much the same as Wikipedia or the big fuss about the new Facebook T&Cs. If previous Facebook updates are anything to go by you should be prepared for a rocky ride over the next couple of months while they sort out the teething issues however, all brands should sit up and take notice because this could just be a very interesting way of engaging with your audience.

What are your first impressions?

Dan Oxnam, Interaction Director

Labels: Web Culture and Trends, Web marketing

We've been dabbling with Facebook Ads of late. They've been on our radar for a while; we did look at them last year when they first launched, so I thought I'd revisit and see how it all hangs together.

I've been running some Test Ads – I like to test things out thoroughly (i.e. learn from any mistakes) before I advise/recommend Reseo clients on a certain course of action. It can save a lot of red faced embarrassment.

FaceBook Ads are amazingly powerful in some ways and really (really) annoying in others. There's so much potential in there, but Facebook has a long way to go before I'll take it seriously (or recommend it as an advertising platform).

Here's the thing, (and I may be wrong here – it happens on occasion), but perhaps for the first time in history, online social media advertising allows Advertisers to target their advertising on demography and interest.

You can target your FaceBook Ads directly at "Facebookers" who fit your target market. It's scary, but Facebook probably knows more about you and your interests than your own mother! And they use that information to help Advertisers like me, target you.

Here's an example showing how you can target your Ads to your "perfect" customer profile:




The combinations are unlimited!

So far so good.

Where Facebook Ads fall down is the reporting on conversions and ROI. Until they sort this out, steer clear.

Quick caveat, if you've configured your analytics properly - you can measure FaceBook Ad ROI, but you'd need to a lot of manual work to measure how much you're spending on FaceBook clicks (or impressions) vs. how much revenue you're generating from those clicks.

It's logical to compare FaceBook Ad's to Google AdWords. If you've ever spent any time setting up and using conversion tracking in Google AdWords you'll know how powerful that can be.

Here are the results from my three day FaceBook Advertising experiment.




There's a nice pretty graph, lots of impressions, abysmal click through rates (but that might have something more to do with the quality of my Ad!), and a total spend of USD$25.38.

The problem/question I have is how many sales did I make from the clicks (or spend)? Google AdWords tells me this sort of information almost instantly, but FaceBook Ad’s do not. Quite simply, FaceBook Ads don’t offer conversion tracking, so I have no idea; I'm flying around in the dark.

To sum up, I guess it's fair to say that the platform is still quite immature, and at this stage we can't recommend it as a serious Advertising option until they at least get a conversion tracking feature.