Posts tagged Focus
Don’t Be Evil Tool: Focus on the User Builds a ‘More Relevant Google’
Jan 24th
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other social media networks have created a Chrome bookmarklet and website to reveal the bias in Google’s personalized search results. Their Focus on the User campaign was a bold move, but who is it hurting?
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
It’s Not Wrong for Google to Focus on Its Own Users
Jan 23rd
When Google shipped its Search, plus Your World update earlier this month, it turned out better than expected. Google left users the ability to click back and forth between personal and global modes or opt out altogether. Google’s personal search draws in the user’s Google+ relationships to tailor the results. When it launched, Google took the position that other social networks were welcome to participate, they just had to make a deal.
Google does make some effort to identify content from other networks. But some SPYW features only highlight Google+ material, even when other services are more relevant. If Google favors its own product over a better result, users get the short end of the stick. Some engineers from Facebook, Twitter and Myspace have built a browser extension called Focus on the User to prove the point. But what about Google+ users? For them, Google+ results are the better result. Arguably, Google should cater to them, as users of its service.
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Google’s Choice: Help Google+ Users Or Help Others
When a large-scale Web service puts an opt-out switch on a new feature, it’s because its designers believe users will like the feature. If the Google+ comments on our stories are any indication, Google+ users like this personalized search just fine.
But Google and its fans have two other use cases to consider. People who would rather have their personal website, Twitter or Facebook profile appear above Google+ are not well-served by Google anymore, nor are people whose social graphs exist on networks other than Google+.
Google has no obligation to these users. It can arrange its services however it wants. They’re free, after all, as the underpinnings of Google’s ad business. But Google itself has enough information to determine when a Facebook profile would be more relevant than a Google+ profile in its “People and Pages” box. It can tell when a Facebook profile has more subscribers and activity than a Google+ page.
The “People and Pages” box has hard-coded instructions to display Google+ instead. That might make Google less useful to people who don’t use Google+, but it’s more useful for those who do.
Focus On The User, Not The Service
The people who built Focus on the User used Google’s own search signals to route around the Google+ integration when other results are more relevant. Larry Page returns a Google+ result, but Mark Zuckerberg returns a Facebook result. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land extensively tested the Focus on the User plug-in, and it worked like a charm; the profiles with the most activity and information came up first, whether they’re from Google+ or not.
John Battelle has had some interesting chats with Facebook’s Director of Product, Blake Ross, one of the developers of Focus on the User. The tool has gone through several phases, the first of which was just to remove all references to Google+. The tool released today is more thoughtful than that, as Battelle points out. It produces the most relevant result as measured by links, references from many other networks, and overall activity. You can read the code right on the website to see how it works.
Google+ Users Want Google+ Results
According to the Focus on the User developers, Google search should provide the most relevant result without assuming anything about the user’s preferred social network. That way, the result that best represents the person or topic being searched for will be at the top. By this definition, “Search, plus Your World” should represent the world most accurately.
But does that focus on the Google+ user? For those who want Google+ to be their social network, the best result for their “world” might be the Google+ page, even if the owner barely uses it or just re-posts things from Facebook or Twitter. The Google+ user wants Google+ results. Shouldn’t Google focus on the user of its own service?
The best solution to social search would be one that lets the search user decide what network(s) to prefer. To the extent that a social search engine doesn’t prefer the user’s own networks, it’s not social search; it’s just search. Maybe those results are more relevant, and maybe social search creates a filter bubble. But for those who want Google+ to be their “world,” Google’s social search works.
If Google+ social search is not for you, try Focus on the User and let us know how it goes.
Do you want personalized search results? How would social search work best for you? Sound off in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
3 Key Business Lessons From Steve Jobs: Intuition, Reinvention, Focus
Nov 6th
Over the weekend I finished reading the authorized biography of Steve Jobs,
by Walter Isaacson. It’s a hefty 650 pages and spans the entire life and career of Steve Jobs, the iconic Apple co-founder who sadly passed away a month ago. The biography is well worth reading, I gave the book 5/5 stars. I’ll even say that it should be required reading for technology entrepreneurs and anybody who wants to be a leader in our industry. The biography is a sympathetic one, so don’t expect to read a great deal of criticism about Steve Jobs. Despite that, it’s a well-rounded portrayal of a man destined to be remembered as one of the great product visionaries of our time.
There’s plenty to learn from the biography. Here are three of the main lessons that I took from the book. Each comes from an aspect of Steve Jobs’ own personality, which he managed to instill into his company Apple. (Note: don’t worry, there aren’t any spoilers in this post!)
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The unifying theme of the biography was "the creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality." This was also a central theme in two previous biographies by Isaacson, about Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.
The Magician Genius
One of the reasons why Steve Jobs was so different and successful was his Buddhist and Zen sensibilities. Jobs traveled to India when he was a young man and the book explains how this led to his key business philosophies. I was particularly taken by the importance of intuition for Steve Jobs.
Jobs is quoted as saying, "I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis." He also said that "intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work."
You can see that intuitive sense in Jobs’ incredible ability to foresee – and then design – what users will want next. The iPhone is a great example. The following passage from the book, from 2005 when Apple was looking for the next big thing after the iPod, illustrates how Jobs kept one step ahead of the market. In this case, by thinking about what could eventually usurp the market leading iPod.
“The device that can eat our lunch is the cell phone.” As he explained to the [Apple] board, the digital camera market was being decimated now that phones were equipped with cameras. The same could happen to the iPod, if phone manufacturers started to build music players into them. “Everyone carries a phone, so that could render the iPod unnecessary.”
Later in the book, Isaacson describes how Jobs’ Zen training helped him develop his love of simplicity in design:
He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism.
I also loved this description of Jobs:
He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power.
A Metamorphosing Butterfly
Another key learning from this book is how Steve Jobs reinvented both himself and his company many times. According to Mike Markkula, who became a one-third owner of Apple in 1977 and went on to be CEO (1981-83) and Chairman (1985-1997), the legacy of HP was a big influence:
They [Jobs and Markkula, in 1997] spent the rest of the time talking about where Apple should focus in the future. Jobs’s ambition was to build a company that would endure, and he asked Markkula what the formula for that would be. Markkula replied that lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then became a calculator company, then a computer company. “Apple has been sidelined by Microsoft in the PC business,” Markkula said. “You’ve got to reinvent the company to do some other thing, like other consumer products or devices. You’ve got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.” Jobs didn’t say much, but he agreed.
That nugget of wisdom eventually led to the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and everything else that Apple achieved in the ’00s.
As an aside, one of the things I learned from the book was that the iPad idea actually came before the iPhone one. The multi-touch interface was perhaps the biggest innovation in the iPhone and it came from a team developing a prototype tablet. Jobs decided to use it in the iPhone and put Apple’s focus on that product first:
That project [what was to become the iPhone] was far more important [in 2005], so he put the tablet development on hold while the multi-touch interface was adopted for a phone-size screen.
This Steve Jobs quote, in which he references his beloved Bob Dylan, is a nice summary of his reinvention capability:
"That’s what I’ve always tried to do–keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying."
Focus
Steve Jobs’ personal intuition helped the company to reinvent itself across many different product lines. Isaacson named seven industries that Jobs revolutionized or reimagined over his career: personal computers, animated movies, music, telephones, tablet computing, digital publishing and retail stores.
Apple achieved all of that because of the focus and decisive leadership provided by Jobs:
One of Jobs’s great strengths was knowing how to focus. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he said. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.”
Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985 in a failed leadership battle with the CEO at the time, John Sculley. In 1997, he returned to Apple and one of my favorite Jobs stories comes from that time. On his return, he reduced Apple’s bloated computer product range from about 40 to just 4. This passage, set in an internal meeting, describes how he did it:
He grabbed a magic marker, padded to a whiteboard, and drew a horizontal and vertical line to make a four-squared chart. “Here’s what we need,” he continued. Atop the two columns he wrote “Consumer” and “Pro”; he labeled the two rows “Desktop” and “Portable.” Their job, he said, was to make four great products, one for each quadrant.
Another part of Jobs’ leadership was creating a remarkable organization chart around him, whereby all of the key decision makers were just one or two steps from Jobs. He also implemented a culture of accountability over the whole company.
Towards the end of his life Jobs even counseled the CEO of Apple’s primary competitor, Larry Page of Google, about focused leadership:
"The main thing I stressed was focus. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up."
What Did You Learn From Steve Jobs’ Bio?
Those are just three of the things that I learned from this biography of Steve Jobs. Although it’s a sympathetic portrayal of Steve Jobs’ life and career, the author Walter Isaacson does point out some of the downsides of these characteristics. Jobs’ drive for focus, for example, often led to callous treatment of his employees.
But we have to accept that Steve Jobs was a unique individual and it’s impossible for anyone else to even come close to being the person he was. The best we can do is learn from what Steve Jobs taught us about product innovation and leading a technology company. If you’re at all interested in those topics, I strongly encourage you to read this biography. If you have already, I’d love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Content Marketing Tip: Focus on Educating Your Target Audience – Resource Nation (blog)
Oct 20th
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Content Marketing Tip: Focus on Educating Your Target Audience
Resource Nation (blog) by Guest Author on October 20, 2011 · 0 comments Content marketing, alongside SEO and social media marketing, are the three sides of the inbound marketing pyramid. Inbound marketing focuses on attracting a potential customer that is already looking for … SEO.com Named Top Search Marketing Agency by Website Magazine Web Agency In China, WebPageCorp.com, Offers SEO And Online Marketing For … ArticleSearchEngineMarketing.com Announces That The Creator of "Secret DNA of … |
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Social Signals & SEO: Focus on Authority
Oct 16th
I’m a big believer in the increasing role of social signals in search. Likes, +1s, and social links are still a noisy signal, which affects their use by search engines. In addition, it should affect how you view your social strategy from an SEO pe…
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Social Signals & SEO: Focus on Authority – Search Engine Watch
Oct 16th
 The Drum |
Social Signals & SEO: Focus on Authority
Search Engine Watch In addition, it should affect how you view your social strategy from an SEO perspective. The bottom line is that you need to focus on authority, your own, as well as relationships with other authorities. I'll make my case with Facebook since it's the … Opinion: Social media, like all marketing platforms, cannot be judged in isolation |
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Google-ACCC case puts focus on SEO – iT News
Sep 23rd
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Google-ACCC case puts focus on SEO
iT News Truman Hoyle senior lawyer Bridget Edghill said the finding had put other search engine optimisation (SEO) users on notice. "It is apparent that implying you have a sponsorship or affiliation that you don't have or otherwise purchasing words that … |
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Webcast will focus on SEO, personas – KoMarketing Associates
Sep 14th
 Search Engine Land |
Webcast will focus on SEO, personas
KoMarketing Associates In a statement, Search Marketing Now announced that it would be hosting a program featuring marketing experts Erez Barak and Vanessa Fox titled "Using Personas to Boost Online Marketing and SEO Success." The digital event, which is sponsored by Optify, … Network Solutions Partners with DIYSEO to Offer Do-It-Yourself SEO to Small … UGC Social Media Marketing Company breaking records of SEO Australia. Time Management Tips For In-House Search Engine Marketing |
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