Author Archive - Noah Malli
5 Questions: Collecta CEO Gerry Campbell
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 29, 2009 | Share This
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Collecta, a new real-time search engine, went live in beta on June 18th.They intro themselves on their homepage by saying “The web is alive with real-time information. So why search a stale archive? Collecta monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, and Flickr, so we can show you results as they happen.” This is ambitious stuff at a time when real-time is the buzzword in both search and social media circles.
To find out more about Collecta I asked their CEO, Gerry Campbell, to answer our patented 5 Questions. Campbell has a great blog, LuckyRobot.com where he admits to getting “…fired up about making new things.” He’s had a rich and varied background across information media companies like Reuters and AOL and has also been an active investor and advisor to a range of startups.
So what does Gerry Campbell have to say about Collecta and real-time search? Read on…
OMMA Social New York: Twitter X 4
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 24, 2009 | Share This
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I spent most of yesterday at the OMMA Social conference here in New York with my colleague, Reprise Media Marketing Director Anthony Iaffaldano. We both came away impressed by the consistently interesting panels and the tasty almond crusted chicken for lunch. Rather than cycle through all the highlights (which you can see on my Twitter stream or at the #ommasocial stream) I wanted to focus specifically on a panel that touches on the ubiquity of the aforementioned social media platform.
Meet The Corporate Twitters, it must be said, was ingeniously designed to highlight actual Tweeters from 4 companies, each of whom take different approaches to the service based on the different goals they had in mind. Together they made a strong argument for Twitter as a jack of all trades, but be warned. Without a strategy or goal in mind, it’s hard to derive meaningful results from the Twitter experience.
Social Media and Publishing: Revolutions Online and Offline
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 15, 2009 | Share This
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When Iran had their most recent popular revolution in 1979, people around the world had no 24 hour news source to convey what was happening. CNN would be launched the following year by Ted Turner so coverage was limited to shows like ABC’s Nightline (which was created in response to the hostage crisis which grew out of the uprising) and the regularly scheduled network new programs, as well as the daily newspapers like The New York Times and newsweeklies like Time magazine. The Internet? A gleam in Al Gore’s eye.
Social Media: How Can I Infect You with My Virus if you’re Not Even Here?
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 10, 2009 | Share This
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Typhoid Mary (not to be confused with Mustang Sally) was a turn-of-the-century cook who managed to spread illness and death over a period of many years simply by making meals for lots of people. Oh yeah, and her aversion to hand-washing helped. So when clients ask about Viral Videos, it’s helpful to remember Typhoid Mary who, after all, was a very successful virus spreader. There were 3 conditions that allowed her to be so prolific:
1) Constant repeated contact with sizable groups of people
2) Her role as a food source for these people
3) The unhindered presence of the Typhus infection
In social media, there is a tendency to dwell on the food without paying attention to the infection or the people. Or, to put it another way, serving up a piping hot video won’t get you anywhere if there aren’t people there to watch it (waiting for the meal as it were) or the presence of that wonderful germ of an idea or a hook that makes them want to spread it around.
Search News: Google Decides it’s Hip to be Squared
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 4, 2009 | Share This
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At the beginning of the year it looked as if Google was battening down the hatches and withdrawing from its previous flights of fancy – no more dirigible mounted servers or cotton-candy machines in the lavatories for them! Yet the release of new tools like the Wonder Wheel and Google Wave suggest the search giant isn’t ready to rest on its laurels. Now we have the Google Labs release of Google Squared, a promising search tool that needs some work but is likely to find its way into the main search options menu sooner rather than later.
Social Media: Will Google’s Wave Drown Twitter?
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 1, 2009 | Share This
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There I was last week, on vacation in an undisclosed location deep in the Canadian Rockies when all the hubbub over Google’s Wave broke out. For those of you who missed it, Google announced that they will be launching a product called Google Wave later this year that combines some of the functionality of e-mail and IM to create a new open source communications platform.
Search News: Yahoo’s WOO Much Ado about Nothing New
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 21, 2009 | Share This
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Yahoo this week announced that they see the future of search results as something called WOO. While this raises the strong possibility that Yahoo’s entire search team has been replaced with drunken sorority girls, the video on Kara Swisher’s blog of Yahoo’s Guy Raghavan confirms that there is at least one Guy on the search team. And he’s a guy.
Search News: Spotted! New Google Navigational Search Ads
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 20, 2009 | Share This
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Our own eagle-eyed SEO –oligist Dr. Naveel spotted the latest in Google’s efforts to place an ad anywhere search results are today. So far this is only a test but Google is approaching their clients about participation and looking carefully at the data in advance of a full roll-out to all users. Google is simply monetizing the navigation box itself, leveraging auto-complete as a display space for advertisers. By the way, that splotch that looks like cat vomit at the top of these screenshots is Google’s logo for today celebrating the find of a partially fossilized “missing link” skeleton.
Search News: Untangling Google’s New Trademark Rules
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 19, 2009 | Share This
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Google’s announcement this week that they are revising their trademark rules to allow more flexibility for advertiser’s to use other brand’s trademarks in search ad text caused quite a round of hand flapping and hair pulling. The gist of many of the takes on this, including the New York Times and BroadPoint’s Ben Shacter was that despite the possible legal ramifications Google is opening the door to say, Coke calling out Pepsi in search ad text. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
Our reading of the changes are a bit more subtle and nuanced though surely, the great Google will be making more moolah as a result.
Social Media: 5 Questions with Seraj Bharwani of Visible Measures
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 18, 2009 | Share This
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There continues to be a myth propagated about social media, namely that outreach efforts aren’t measurable and accountable. Visible Measures has been at the forefront of measuring the success of Internet videos since 2005, providing metrics that include syndicated, social, and paid video placements.
Today, Reprise Media announced a partnership with Visible Measures that will help to deepen the ability to track and measure the success of video content. To add some context to this exciting partnership, we asked Seraj Bharwani, SVP of Business Development at Visible Measures, to answer our patented 5 Questions: