Wikia Search

Jim Wales and his Wikia crew released Wikia Search (alpha) early this morning. No surprise some pundits downgraded the search site immediately. Hard to say what they expected.

The search pages will take some time to form but the social element is inviting. Wikia Search is a social search site where search and the social elements are intertwined. Facebook and MySpace are social networking sites that have little or nothing to do with search.

The interesting aspect of the Wikia Search is people on the network determine what search results are pertinent.

It's an open palette where the participants have a say in the site. Everyone is an editor, not just a profile.

The implications for local will sort out over time. Like Facebook, every business owner should be able to have a personal profile filled out. If you own a pet supply store in Dallas or a used book store in Bakersfield you can place your local footprint on the search results pages. Once there befriend everyone with your local profile keywords, work the network.

If Wikia Search finds widespread acceptance, early adopters will be rewarded for getting involved in from the start.

Here is a quote from Jimmy Wales,

The idea is to have a community controlling all the editorial functions
of search, the functions that are normally done behind closed doors.
There will be many things that users can do, publicly, to rate urls,
guide the spider, blacklist, whitelist, etc.

These things all rely upon having some notion of "trust". In a wiki,
the activity of users is more intimate and conversational, and trust
emerges through dialog and debate. In this context, clicking to rate a
url, there is much less need for dialog and debate, and so it seems
unlikely to me that solely through that process users could come to know
each other well enough to really judge who is doing good (or bad).

The social graph provides a more explicit look at that. Plus, it's fun. :)

--Jimbo

Every Business Should have a Facebook Page

Whether you are a social networking butterfly or not you have to have your business "listed" on Facebook.

The interface is simple, the benefits as yet are unknown but you have nothing to lose by adding your business to Facebook.

I'm still studying the Facebook SocialAds platform. For now it looks like big brands are getting an early foothold. Unquestionably local business will have a place to lay out their wares.

New Facebook Feature; Facebook Polls

"Facebook Polls lets you pose questions to other users and rapidly delivers results."

"Facebook Polls are an easy way to get quick answers to your questions. Facebook Polls allows you to ask detailed questions, target them to specific user segments and receive real-time responses. You can target Facebook users based on gender, age, school, location, or profile keyword." Facebook Polls FAQs

I'm imagining how small business can design polls for both local brand development. Target the local college network with polls/questions like.

How Do You Prefer Your Pizza?

• 1. Loaded Combination
• 2. Thin or Thick Crust
• 3. Large for Under $10.00
• 4. 30 minute delivery
• 5. Call 555-5555

We are beginning to see what Facebook means by sponsored listings.

FaceBook To Yahoo!, Rumors Round 2

Mashable is first out of the gate with talk of the second round of rumors that Yahoo! is talking to Facebook.com about a buyout. Rumor has it he turned down 1 billion from Yahoo! earlier in the spring but if Yahoo! ponies up 2 bil. will Zuckerberg give in?

Would Rupert Murdoch sell MySpace for 2 billion today? Not a chance. As Facebook builds out their "Marketplace" by adding contextual sponsored ads and giving national and local advertisers access to individual profiles and networks earnings will soar quickly.

Their approach to delivering ads has been measured. So far there are no user revolts or e-riots caused by the system wide display ads supplied by Microsoft and there won't be when the sponsored ads show up.
My guess is once members see how relevant the local targeted ads are the ads will be viewed as more a service than advertisement. Facebook won't make the mistake MySpace made allowing Google to broadly deliver AdWords. I have never been served a relevant contextual ad on a MySpace page amazing as it seems. Facebook will be all about relevancy and if they deliver the right ads to the right demo their earnings metric will shake convention.

This subject is important to me because I have clients who will want get in front of our local University network base. If my pizza client could buy into select FB networks or profiles their spend goes up as do my revenues!

Zuckerberg will eventually be forced to feed his angels, surely some are pressing for a quick turnaround on their investment now. At some point the SEC will require financial disclosure, (the reason Google's IPO was forced) but that is some time away.

Mark would be smart to wait for the cards he has on the table to play out. If his earnings double from the rumored $150 mil. to $300 mil. and they IPO'ed and netted a GOOG like market cap. it would be near $12,000,000,000. If earnings triple?
Yahoo! knows this.

Mark Zuckerberg is redefining social networking before our eyes and his vision is only now being realized. I'm rooting for him to hold out as long as possible.

Social-Local LocalGuides

LocalGuides.com hit the ground running with the kind of fanfare you can't buy, (really), here, here and here wow!
Now that the heavy hitters introduced the product lets have a look at the site.

I see it as a combination of YellowBot, Yelp and Bebo or MySpace. I'm still trying to figure it out and I confess confusion. I opened an account and searched from the home page for "Fresno" and it brought me to a page with a brief city bio and some sites they call "starter guides."

The starter guide for Fresno Furniture Shopping sent me to a page with lists of Fresno furniture stores on a portal like page. The page results appear auto-generated and while the algo did some decent guessing it stumbled on one of the sub-categories "dining sets." When clicked it sent me to a popular Asian-fusion restaurant here in town.
I understand the intent of Local Guides is to have humans (guides) intercede and make every category relevant but for now at least in this particular case there's a bug.

The local search results are provided by SuperPages which is fine but when you click a link from a search result you travel to SuperPages.com to get to the business information.
Example; The restaurant search results for Fresno brought up a comprehensive list of Fresno restaurants but when I clicked Toledos Mexican Restaurants I was sent to SuperPages instead of the restaurants website.
This is unlike any local search directory or IYP I've used and may turn people off with the extra step. It gives the site an appearance of being a proxy site for SuperPages.

If they could get the kind of user base Yelp enjoys the site could get traction. My concern is the steps required to get information. I may not consider it a first choice local search site like Local.com or YellowBot.com and it's not a pure review site like Yelp so what will drive me to use it?
I don't have an answer. AmericanTowns.com, DiscoverOurTown.com, Outside.in and others in that genre have failed so far to persuade me to visit often.

Best wishes to the crew at LocalGuides. It will interesting watching their progress.

Facebook Classifieds and Sponsored Listings

Post your classified ads on Facebook! Mashable reports Facebook's classifieds are now open. From my area there are two classified ads running but I expect the page will fill quickly. What caught my attention is the "Sponsored Listings" links on the classifieds pages.

This venue will be valuable to local advertisers. I look forward to seeing their self serve ad center. In the meantime we'll test the classifieds and gauge the response.

It's not a Craigslist killer but that's not the intent. It looks like Facebook is constructing a market place with the user's interest in mind, not necessarily the bottom line. Very refreshing.

Great read on the subject by Muhammad Saleem of Pronet Advertising.

Update: I emailed Facebook regarding when their sponsored ad links will go live and received this response;

"Our Sponsored Listing section is not currently available. When it does
become available, you will be able to create a listing that you can
place in networks other than the one(s) you currently belong to for a
fee. Please keep an eye out for this feature in the next few weeks.
Sorry for any inconvenience in the mean time.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,"

This will be interesting. Pay to advertise your classified ad elsewhere on the site or will (outside) advertisers be able to open a pay per click account?
Facebook has licensed the tech to do it (from LookSmart last summer) so I assume it will be an open system for all advertisers. LookSmart's AdCenter now supports geo-targeting as seen here on their tech partner NBCSearch.com's advertiser center.
The stage appears set for buying PPC ads on Facebook. Pizza venders everywhere are (or should be) rejoicing!

Mashable: Build A Brand Through Social Networks

It does serve to get a name out quickly. Zero to sixty on the net on record time. Mashable's Kristen Nicole explains how social networks can help build a brand. The "secret" is out now, it's a tactic we use.
Kristen offers some great sites to consider including a couple I've not considered.
I would offer a couple she did not mention.
DiscoverOurTown
American Towns
More social networking and review sites to consider here. (on the sidebar)

MySpace Appealing To Advertisers

From AdWeek.com via Yahoo!,the MySpace profile for Adidas Soccer has over 83,000 friends much to the pleasure of Adidas and engineered by their ad agency Carat Fusion, a division of Aegis Group.

"Figuring out how to befriend consumers is top of mind these days, as MySpace and Facebook loom ever larger in the daily lives of young consumers. According to the Carat Fusion-MySpace research, social networking users spend 11 hours online per week compared to 9.4 hours watching TV. Non-social networking users watch TV 11.5 hours and spend 8.7 hours on the Web. While social networkers still watch TV, 68 percent said their favorite time to visit social networks is during prime-time TV hours in the evening....."

Regarding MySpace, Sarah Fay of Aegis Group says;

"It is more than a media opportunity. It also shows, she said, that advertisers need to take a leap of faith with social-network programs that some of the extra "momentum effect" will not be quantified for every campaign."

Bottom line, it works and it's not difficult to implement.