Word of Mouth Research from Keller Fay, and Why You Should Care About Search

Google Slowly Unveiling Its Social Strategy with +1

The takeaway? Facebook has no redeeming innovations or qualities that make you HAVE to use it, other than the fact that “my friends are there”. Well, your friends were once at the mall, the roller rink and MySpace. They’ll go elsewhere if someone builds a better mousetrap. Google provides useful tools that simplify the web experience in crucial areas of your life – yes, including search (knowledge). Can you see it unfolding now? I can. +1 just brought in your friends, web site’s analytics and social graph… Now if they can just get your friends there. 😉

Google’s Latest Social Effort Takes on… Microsoft?

It seems like every time Google experiments with social folks assume it’s to take aim at Facebook. In reality, their latest collaboration feature that allows comments within Google Docs is a strike directly at Microsoft. I was quoted on this topic in today’s Ecommerce Times.

Twitter Integrates with Google, Bing and Yahoo! – Now what?

Twitter finally lands a few business deals, but at what cost?

Twitter’s New Home Page Launches Today

Those using third party apps may not have noticed, but Twitter went live with a new home page today:

Twitter home page

It’s very clear that they aren’t targeting existing users, as evidenced by the lack of any change to the interior pages. You’ll find my take here.

Aesthetically it’s much nicer than the old home page, except for one thing: What the hell are new users to supposed to do? Search? I already have a reliable, scalable search solution – it’s called Google.

By the way notice how they’ve fallen in line with every other search engine by copying the leader:

Google home page

One minor addition is the use of trending topics/tags on the home page of Twitter. Not a bad idea so that people unfamiliar with the site can “jump in to” a discussion right away, however the usability of the site once you’re in still sucks. Unthreaded conversations about topics you may care about. Or better yet, a chat room for slow people.

What’s your take?