The Praized Blog

Having worked in the videogames industry in a previous life, I was intrigued by this blog post by Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Ventures Partners. In it, he discusses how point systems can reward user behavior in social media and takes Yelp as an example.

Here’s an excerpt from his post:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project just released a new report about tagging. The survey has found that “28% of Internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content. ”

What is a tag?

According to Wikipedia, “a tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (like picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information it is applied to.”

Who are the taggers?

According to the survey, “Taggers look like classic early adopters of technology. They are more likely to be under age 40, and have higher levels of education and income. Taggers are considerably more likely to have broadband connections at home, rather than dial-up connections. Men and women are equally likely to be taggers, while online minorities are a bit more likely than whites to be taggers.”

In addition, there is also an interesting interview with David Weinberger (co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto). Asked “What started the current interest in tagging? He answers: “First, tagging lets us organize the vastness of the Web. Second, tagging is social.” He’s also working on a new book: Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder

(found via David Weinberger’s blog)

What it means: Those numbers are definitely higher than I thought they would be. Ever since I started blogging (a short three months ago!), I’ve discovered the power of tags. Not only do tags help organize your content, they help others find your content through search engines or other sites like Technorati or Del.icio.us. Coming from the business directory (”Yellow Pages”) world, I believe the future marriage of taxonomy and tags (folksonomy) will create a much stronger online categorization system. As more and more people start tagging content, any web site owner with structured data needs to allow their users to tag the information. BTW, David’s book seems fascinating. I wonder if one of my readers has received an advanced copy and could comment on it?

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land dropped a bomb on the SEO world last Wednesday by firmly putting a new stake in the ground:

“…over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself more and more thinking that if you want to go beyond Google as a search marketer, the other search engines that matter first are the “social media search engines.” After them come the other major general purpose search engines like Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.”

“Search marketers should tap into search engines — and that includes the social media search engines. Neil Patel’s Forget ABCs – The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS (…) is an excellent introduction to some of these players, for those not up on social media search engines and social media optimization. (…) They are traffic powerhouses you can’t ignore.”

What it means: Wow! Social Media (Digg, Techmeme, Del.icio.us, possibly MySpace, etc.) are now considered to be the second biggest source of traffic after Google for certain types of sites (news, blogs, etc.). Which means Social Media Optimization (discussed in the Praized blog in November) should now be a key element of your traffic strategy. Are you properly leveraging these sites?

I was just reading Scott Karp’s post about the demise of Findory, a personalized news service created by Greg Linden (which strangely enough I quoted in the Praized blog yesterday)

Scott cites Om Malik : “Despite being drop dead simple, Findory never realized its true potential as an information discovery engine. It has all the makings of being a personal memetracker, something a lot of folks have been clamoring for. In contrast the general purpose memetrackers that follow conversations, like Techmeme and Tailrank keep growing. ”

The blogosphere has been abuzz in the last few weeks about the shake-up in local search sites.

1. Major lay-offs and resignations at InsiderPages (via TechCrunch, Local Onliner, )
2. Same at BackFence (via Greg Sterling, Local Onliner)
3. Change of model at Judy’s book, moving away from merchant reviews (via Judy’s Book’s blog)
4. Resignations at TrueLocal (via Local Onliner)

Consensus seems to be that Yelp is the one that’s running away from the pack in that start-up category (defined IMHO as Local Destination Sites start-ups).

I will note a couple of excellent comments amongst all the buzz:

• Greg Sterling said: I told a reporter on Thursday that winning in local “is like climbing Mt. Everest.” We’re now seeing attrition (or something like it) in local because it’s much harder to monetize local consumer destinations with direct sales than people think when they start out. That’s not to say building a great consumer destination is easy, but in many respects that’s the easier part.”

• Uri L. commented in Techcrunch: “In terms of community social reviews – Yelp had the most successful model, which put a focus on the community interactions (pictures, “i like” features), and build around it the local biz reviews. The site design reflected the warm and cozy attitude, and was to young people (who are probably the most contributing sector to ugc). Insider Pages took a more “directory” style, cloning traditional YP with the added value of community. (…) Judy’s Book is somewhere in between, focusing originally on parents and 30+ sector. (…) However, it seems that Yelp has managed to come with the best model for Karma – “You review, the community loves you back”. In none of the other sites you could really feel “loved” as in yelp. Maybe that’s a thing to remember…”

What it means: Two things:

1. Local/Social sites should come up with an alternative business model that does not depend on having their own sales force and instead should try to partner with existing traditional local media companies.
2. I believe the social aspect might be more important than the local aspect when dealing with a site that combines the two.

Bob Heyman covers five social search sites in MediaPost’s Search Insider (sign-up required).

“The premise (of social search) is that the next big thing is to harness the power of communities to generate more relevant search recommendations.”

1) Yoono “describes itself as “instant people-rated Web,” meaning, that when you surf, Yoono displays a list of Web pages that others have classified as “favorites.” It works with a toolbar or plug-in. See more in TechCrunch.

2) Gravee “is a social search application that differs from others in that it is trying to change the economics of search by sharing advertising revenue with content owners, with a rev-share business model. The site shares up to 70% of all ad revenues with the natural listings that appear on the same page when an ad occurs, as well as with the referring Web site.” here is TechCrunch’s take on it.

3) Jookster “is a community-driven social search tool that works primarily through the browser toolbar. Jookster collects photos, video and bookmarks from sites like YouTube, Flickr and del.icio.us into one place that can be searched, saved and shared with friends. ” Mashable covered their relaunch a month ago.

4) StumbleUpon “employs user ratings to form collaborative opinions on Web site quality with the goal of helping you “stumble upon” great sites. When you “stumble,” you only see pages that friends and like-minded “Stumblers” have commented on. ” Many people love StumbleUpon (they have over 1M users), see the description here.

5) Otavo “describes itself as not just a search engine, but a community of users and staff members who participate in your quest to find answers quicker. As an Otavo user, you can ask any question or seek a quest of your choice.” TechCrunch covered them a while back.

What it means: Not sure what to think of “social search” yet. I think it might work for a very specialized topic or as a recommendation tool but I’m not sure you can be become a truly successful generalist search engine using a community (unless you count Yahoo Answers in this category). of these 5, I had heard of Otavo (because they’re based in Ontario, Canada) and StumbleUpon. The later is generating a lot of good buzz and is already a great source of traffic for many sites. I wonder if social search is more a feature than it is a destination… It could be a great add-on to any shopping or directory sites (which is a little bit what Aggregate Knowledge does).