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Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

Article from Search Engine Land about Facebooks possible new search engine.

Last week in the Chicago Tribune former judge and scholar Robert Bork (who is also a Google advisor) penned an opinion column arguing that by the accepted standards of antitrust law Google has done nothing legally wrong. Bork says, “There is extraordinary competition in the search engine business. Look at the proliferation of what are called vertical search sites that specialize in particular products or services, such as Amazon, Expedia, Kayak and hundreds of others.”

Who Competes with Google?

This question of who competes with Google — and is the market in fact competitive — is central to the analysis of European and US regulators as the antitrust investigations wind their way through “the system” and potentially to the courts. Google sees many more competitors than do its critics and has been trying for several years to widen the scope of the discussion about “search competition.”

If we open the aperture to include vertical sites with a search box (e.g., Yelp, Kayak, Truila) the world looks a great deal more competitive than if we only look at web search engines, which is what most ordinary consumers think when they hear the term “search engine.”

In the latter category there is Google, Bing, Blekko and DuckDuckGo. Blekko and DDG have negligible share. Bing’s share is an essentially flat 29 percent (when combined with Yahoo). In international markets such as China, Japan and Russia Google is the underdog. However in some markets, in Europe and elsewhere around the world, Google’s share of search is larger than in the US.

66 Percent or 83 Percent?

In contrast to the comScore data immediately above, the Pew Internet & American Life Projectrecently found that Google was the preferred search engine of 83 percent of US survey respondents. Based on a survey of roughly 2,200 US adults, Pew observed that “Fully 83% of searchers use Google more often than any other search engine.  Yahoo is a very distant second at just 6%.”

Many regulators and political officials, encouraged by anti-Google lobbying from rivals, have concluded that Google is simply too powerful and has too much control over the online ecosystem. Whether there are legal grounds for a finding of antitrust liability against Google is a different matter, but I do believe the Europeans will bring some kind of anti-competition case against the company. In addition, the various investigations going on at the federal and state levels against Google could also result in an action in the US.

This is where Facebook comes in.

Specter of Facebook Search Helps Google

The idea that Facebook is developing a search engine that might attract some usage away from Google is precisely the kind of development that could save Google’s bacon — so to speak. The “everyone competes against us” defense that appears in the Bork article and that Google has floated several times is unlikely to be persuasive. What will be much more persuasive is the argument that the world’s largest social network will be bringing search to its 900+ million users around the globe.

Recall when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was deciding whether to approve or block Google’s proposed $750 million acquisition of AdMob two years ago. I was one of the many dozens of people interviewed by regulators on the matter. My inference from the interview process and questions I received was that the FTC was predisposed to block the deal. Indeed, from all accounts it appeared that the FTC was going to file suit against the Google acquisition — until Apple bought Quattro Wireless.

Here’s an excerpt from the FTC’s public statement about its decision not to attempt to block the acquisition, explicitly citing Quattro as the basis of its rationale:

The Federal Trade Commission has closed its investigation of Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising network company AdMob after thoroughly reviewing the deal and concluding that it is unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks. 

In a statement issued today, the Commission said that although the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues, the agency’s concerns ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple Computer Inc. – the maker of the iPhone – to launch its own, competing mobile ad network.

Facebook Like Apple for Google’s Legal Team

The FTC probably decided not that the market would actually be more competitive but that Apple buying Quattro had complicated its arguments and weakened its case.

Facebook is now analogous to Apple in that it provides a potential argument that the search market is competitive, and soon could be come more so if the company launches an improved search capability (whether for site search or the web more broadly). Indeed, Google’s legal team will wave the BusinessWeek article as evidence that the search market is highly dynamic, unpredictable and could change overnight.

And that might be just what Google needs to escape the antitrust noose.

Source

An article in BusinessWeek suggests that Facebook is planning a deeper push into search. Will that be limited to improving search for the site — or will it be something more comprehensive?

It’s clear that Facebook needs better internal search. Right now the search function at the top of the page is not very useful. Improving Facebook site search seems to be the first objective of an internal team, led by former Googler Lars Rasmussen, according to BusinessWeek;

Searching the social network could get a lot better in the near future. About two dozen Facebook engineers, led by a former Google engineer named Lars Rasmussen, are working on an improved search engine, say two people familiar with the project who did not want to be named because the company is in a quiet period ahead of its IPO. The goal, they say, is to help users better sift through the volume of content that members create on the site, such as status updates, and the articles, videos, and other information across the Web that people “like” using Facebook’s omnipresent thumbs-up button.

Better Site Search Would Increase Query Volumes

There’s no question that an improved search capability would benefit Facebook in several ways. It would encourage more search activity among users, who would be rewarded with a better experience, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. It would also create a PPC ad opportunity that is probably too lucrative for Facebook to ignore.

Facebook could sell contextual or keyword-based PPC ads in search results. There’s probably pent-up demand for such a program. It’s a natural for the site and a monetization opportunity that Facebook will be compelled to adopt.

Facebook Not Likely to Directly Challenge Google

It’s unlikely in the near term that Facebook would seek to challenge Google directly in web search. The first reason is the company’s relationship with Bing, which prevents the move in the near term at least. The second reason is that it would take a huge resource commitment from Facebook. There’s enormous exposure there; consider how much Microsoft has been losing over a period of years in trying to catch Google.

Yet Facebook doesn’t need to challenge Google directly in web search. Improving search on the Facebook site — including a better layout and presentation of results — wouldn’t be anywhere as difficult as general web search. It would also be welcomed by users — and certainly by advertisers, provided there were PPC opportunities. And I would almost guarantee some version of paid-search advertising on Facebook is “on the roadmap.”

Hundreds of Millions in Revenue “on the Table”

According to the BusinessWeek article (using comScore data) Facebook users performed 336 million search queries in February.  If Facebook fixed search that number would immediately go up and could translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in new annual revenue for the company. Institutional investors will all but demand such a move after the IPO.

In the recently released Local Search Usage Study from comScore, Localeze and agency 15 Miles, the data reflect that “use of social networking sites for local business searches has increased 67 percent since 2010.” With better Facebook site search those numbers would likely only get bigger.

Source 

As is being widely reported, Yahoo filed a patent lawsuit against Facebook today in US Federal Court in the Northern District of California. At the center of the litigation are a wide range of claims that cover advertising, the news feed, messaging, social networking and privacy, among others.

Here’s a key paragraph from the complaint:

It reads, “For much of the technology upon which Facebook is based, Yahoo got there first . . .” No dollar amount is specified in the damages portion of the complaint. Presumably Yahoo thinks this IP is worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.

AllThingsD reports that the decision to sue was made chiefly by new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson — over the objections of many Yahoo personnel internally — and signals a new more aggressive attitude at Yahoo. For its part Facebook says that it learned about the claims and the suit “in the media,” suggesting that it wasn’t approached by Yahoo before the litigation was filed. However the New York Times reported that the companies did meet “in person” at the end of February to discuss the claims.

What’s Motivating Yahoo?

Why is Yahoo suing Facebook? The prevailing suggestion is that Yahoo can no longer compete directly and so is suing to obtain “revenue” it is losing in the market. Or maybe it’s suing out of a kind of “resentment” that Facebook has usurped its position as the largest display advertising site online.

Neither is accurate. Yahoo likely sees a potentially large opportunity in the litigation. The timing is inconvenient for Facebook, which is about to go public. However I’m sure the timing is quite calculated by Yahoo.

You may remember that Yahoo sued Google and others for patent infringement over AdWords (based on the Overture patents granted in 2001). Google was also just about to go public and settled with Yahoo, agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of stock in exchange for a perpetual license to the IP and an agreement to dismiss the case. Yahoo later sold the stock for a total of roughly $1.5 billion.

Lessons of the Google Litigation

That amount now seems like a pittance vs. the billions in revenues that Google is reaping off AdWords. Had Yahoo asked for and obtained an annual license fee it could be getting a substantial “annuity” from Google.

Yahoo also sued Quigo (now part of AOL) and FindWhat in the first half of the last decade using the same Overture patents.

So the Yahoo action against Facebook isn’t unprecedented and may have nothing to do with “sour grapes.” Many if not most of the claims probably have merit and there will probably be a settlement rather than a trial (just a guess).

The IPO puts more pressure on Facebook to settle in the near term. That’s undoubtedly something that Yahoo considered in the timing of this litigation. The question is really not whether Facebook will settle but whether Yahoo, having theoretically learned the lesson of the Google IP settlement, tries to get ongoing licensing revenue from the social network.

Read More at Marketing Land

Today Facebook announced the launch of its much discussed email service.  So now anyone on Facebook can get an @facebook.com email address.

This looks pretty cool actually!  Its not yet available and its by invite only, ** Request your invite **

It sounds like a pretty slick idea and I really like this seamless messaging, where you can send a message and have it go as a text message, facebook message or an email.  The conversation history and how you can setup the inbox is all very advanced and I think they have a huge winner here.  

Here’s more info from the Facebook blog.

Seamless Messaging

Today I’m excited to announce the next evolution of Messages. You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time.  You shouldn’t have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use.  Simply choose their name and type a message.

We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they’re on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.

Conversation History

Messages is built for communicating with your friends, so it made sense to organize primarily around people.  All of your messages with someone will be together in one place, whether they are sent over chat, email or SMS. You can see everything you’ve discussed with each friend as a single conversation.

I’m intensely jealous of the next generation who will have something like Facebook for their whole lives. They will have the conversational history with the people in their lives all the way back to the beginning: From “hey nice to meet you” to “do you want to get coffee sometime” to “our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight.” That’s a really cool idea.

The Social Inbox

It seems wrong that an email message from your best friend gets sandwiched between a bill and a bank statement. It’s not that those other messages aren’t important, but one of them is more meaningful. With new Messages, your Inbox will only contain messages from your friends and their friends. All other messages will go into an Other folder where you can look at them separately.

If someone you know isn’t on Facebook, that person’s email will initially go into the Other folder. You can easily move that conversation into the Inbox, and all the future conversations with that friend will show up there.

You can also change your account settings to be even more limited and bounce any emails that aren’t exclusively from friends.

This kind of message control is pretty unprecedented and people have been wanting to do this with email (and phone calls) for a long time. Messages reverses the approach to preventing unwanted contact. Instead of having to worry about your email address getting out, you’re now in control of who can actually reach you.

The Next Generation

Relatively soon, we’ll probably all stop using arbitrary ten digit numbers and bizarre sequences of characters to contact each other. We will just select friends by name and be able to share with them instantly. We aren’t there yet, but the changes today are a small first step.

We’ll be launching Messages and email addresses gradually and making it available to everyone over the next few months. Once you receive an invitation, you’ll be able to get started and also invite your friends to join you.

This sounds awesome! Request your invite