John Battelle's Searchblog

I thought it meant to search! Apparently, in this context, it means "to drop Microsoft Office and use our software!"

I almost feel like a relic pointing out the obvious, but when I got my latest paper-based Fortune magazine (yes, I do subscribe to a few still), I found the image at left on the back cover.

Long ago, while writing the book, I predicted that Google, long proud of the fact it never had to market its brand, would have to start marketing like a "normal" company. Why? Because while search "markets itself", applications like Picasa won't.

And so it has been, and so it continues. In January of this year, when my attention turns to predictions, I said that Google will have to decide to promise more as a brand than "search." In May, I pointed out that this concept was progressing.

Not that big a deal, I suppose, given that the years have come and gone, and we've turned our attention to other Internet meteors like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. Except...I still find it significant that the king of the Web has purchased the back page of an analog magazine. If for no other reason that this entry in the database of intentions - this blog post - may be discovered by some anthropologist in centuries yet to come, as proof of some point yet unmade.

Or something.

Still and all, I am fascinated by what it means that Google, the verb that means "to search", is being used by Google, the company, to mean something entirely different.

The media really, really, really loves to write about Apple and the iPhone these days. It reminds me of Google in 2004, when the media fell in love with the concept of search.

Besides the antennae story, which I find hopelessly over reported, the latest iPhone rhapsody has been how many iPhone 4s Apple has sold - apparently, 3 million as of last Friday. Friday was July 16th. The iPhone 4 launched on June 24, so that'd be 23 days to reach the 3 million mark.

3 million phones in 23 days - that's a pretty strong clip, the fastest sales of an Apple phone to date, Mashable reports. If I do the math, that's more than 130,000 phones a day.

But did anyone in the press notice Google's little announcement, the day before Apple launched its iPhone 4? This one? The one where Google said, and I quote:

"Every day 160,000 Android-powered devices are activated -- that’s nearly two devices every second."

Yep, that'd be 30K MORE phones a day than Apple. And my guess is that Android's pace is accelerating, while the iPhone 4 is probably sliding downward, given how many folks bought it at launch (Mashable reports that 1.7 million were sold in first three days, so 1.3 million the next 20 days). In fact, if you do THAT math, and divide 1.3 million by 20 days, you get 65,000 iPhone 4s sold each day, which is nearly 100,000 less, PER DAY, than Android phones.

Is that story anywhere in the press? Not that I see.

As far as I can tell, Android-based phones will far outnumber any other smart phone by year's end. Apple, meet your new Windows. It's name is Android.

I've written before about my relationship with Foursquare, and I'm sure I will again. I've tweeted my complaint that the "friend" mechanism is poorly instrumented (in various ways), and I should note that this is certainly not just a Foursquare problem (more on "Friendstrimentation" shortly).

But today I wanted to build on my earlier post, "My Location Is a Box of Cereal," and Think Out Loud a bit about what I'd really like to do on Foursquare: I'd like to check into a state of mind.

What do I mean by that?

Well, imagine that instead of checking into a physical location, as Foursquare is mostly constrained today, I check into the state of mind I might call "In the market for a car." Or perhaps I check into "playing a great game of poker with my friends." Or maybe I check into "pretty bummed out about the death of my cat."

I think you get the point. The check in is, as I've argued elsewhere, more than a declaration of where I am. It's also a declaration of my state of mind, as well as my openness to a response from someone who might provide me with value.

In short, the checkin is a search, waiting for a response. And there's no reason to constrain that search query to location.

What matters is that as users of this particular brand of search, we get good results. And the jury is well out on that concept, at least to date.

Here's what I'd like to have happen when I check in to the state of mind I'll call "In the market for a car." This is a commercial checkin, of course, and I'd be well aware of that when I checked in. So what might I expect?

First, the ecosystem of businesses eager to sell me a car become aware of my status, and are prepared to respond in an instrumented fashion. I use the word "instrumented" very directly here - the last thing I want is a bunch of spam results - pointless, irrelevant come ons for brands or models in which I most likely have no interest. If that's what I wanted, I'd just use a search engine. After all, most of search is instrumented, for the most part, against my query, and my query alone. On a service like Foursquare, I'd expect the response to be far more nuanced.

How? Well, I've given Foursquare permission to use my Facebook social graph, for one, and my Twitter interest graph, for another. So when I check into Foursquare, I'd expect a response that understands who I am, who I know, what my interests are, and how I compare, as a cohort, to others like me, who may have also in the past checked into a similar "state of mind."

Add even more social and interest data to the mix, and you can see how this starts to get pretty interesting.

I'd expect a response that 1. knows who I am is personalized in a meaningful way, 2. surprises or delights me with an offer of value to my search, and 3. respects the fact that I might not be ready to act, at least not yet.

Organizing all this data and response isn't an easy task. But then again, neither was building out the infrastructure we currently understand to be search. Once the checkin is loosed from the chains of pure location, the potential for connecting to customers in conversation at scale, and at an intimate level, is far too great for this use case to not exist.

A final thought on Foursquare, since I'm on about it. I really wish it was easier to create temporary or unique "venues" or states of mind. For example, last night about 125 folks came to the Web 2 dinner at a local SF restaurant. Many of them "checked into" the actual restaurant, but wouldn't it have been a lot more fun if, when they came and fired up Foursquare, they saw a new "venue" that had been created, perhaps by the first person there, or perhaps by the organizer, called "The Web 2 Premiere Dinner"? And further, wouldn't it be cool if the organizer, sponsor, or anyone else involved in the dinner could attach some kind of value to folks who might check in?

Now sure, I know you can create a new venue on the fly, and many do (I saw a pal who checked into "The Dog House" a while back, because he did something that upset his wife. I loved that). But the process to do so is awkward and difficult at best. Foursquare can and should encourage such behavior, and provide resources for us to intelligently curate the results.

Doing so would be a big step toward an ecosystem of search that was driven by the equivalent of a "social query" driven by a state of mind as much a location. And when the two connect, well, so much the better (read The Gap Scenario for more on that.)

OK, back to work, all.

(image ) I just reviewed this presentation from Paul Adams, research lead for social at Google (embedded below). He works on Buzz and YouTube, and presumably, whatever is next from Google, including the rumored "Google Me."

His presentation is good, and worthy of your time if you are interested in the impact of social media on culture and business. Note, however, that it's clearly biased against Facebook, coming as it does from Google. It's in Google's interest to deconstruct Facebook as a service, finding faults along the way, which this presentation does in spades.

In essence, Adams points out that Facebook lacks what I've come to call instrumentation. On Facebook we cannot manage our social relationships with any of the nuance that we do in real life. We don't have the instrumentation, neither the tools nor the mores (more on that in a bit).

On Facebook, Adams points out, we have one big group of "friends." Clearly, that's not true in our lives. We have groups of friends, some of them with strong ties, some weak, some temporary, and many not friends at all, but colleagues, or family members, or members of a club or hobby.

Adams suggests we, as architects of what I like to call the conversation economy, should design for how we really interact with people, and I completely agree. However, it's not that simple (Adams makes this point in his talk, but I'm going to take it a bit further here).

Certainly Adams - and his employer Google - see a significant opportunity in creating a better social networking mousetrap. But as he points out, it's not just about making a better Facebook (though I've heard that "Google Me" is, in essence, attempting to be just that.) It's about a wholesale shift in how we experience the Internet - the same shift many folks have mislabeled* as "the semantic web" - a shift toward designing the web around people, rather than pages, content, or even search.

The problem is, while I agree with the idea of designing around people, the truth is that we haven't quite figured out what this design looks like. It's rather like attempting to design an industrialized city while living in 1200 AD. Not only has the technology not evolved (power grids, modern plumbing, automobiles, communications networks etc.), but equally importantly, the social mores have not developed as well.

As I often say in talks to agencies and brands (just did four of them last week), we are in the midst of a significant shift in our cultural history, one similar as our move, as a species, from a largely agrarian culture to one based on the modern city. That shift took roughly 1000 years to occur. And as it did, we renegotiated nearly every aspect of our social mores - the values that we hold as community standards. You need a new set of shared and respected rules to move from a village of 150 or so farmers, who knew each other very well, to a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, most of whom don't know each other, but live packed together in multi-story apartment buildings.

And we certainly did develop a new set of mores. In the western world, this culminated is what many call "Victorian" society, with elaborate principles of etiquette and relationships. In the US anyway, we're still deeply effected by Victorian culture.

As we move online, we're once again making a great migration of social mores, and this time it's one not entirely tethered to physicality, location, or regional constraints. And this shift is happening far more quickly than the last one. Adams does a good job of outlining some of the new interactions that occur online - temporary ties to people we'll most likely never interact with again, but who might have commented on our online review, or liked our picture on Facebook, or answered our product registration question via IM, text, or phone call.

This is uncharted territory, and we're very early in the instrumentation process. We're not certain, in advance of a given interaction, what's right and what's wrong, but we seem to know it when we see it. Adams' advice is to design for how humans interact with each other, and at some core level I agree. But I also think we're not always certain how we might end up behaving in this new world. So I wouldn't want it limited to the mores we currently evince. That would be like designing Victorian London with the mores of a farming village.

Formation of new cultures like cities, or online communities, require that a process be, in the phrase of Kevin Kelly, a bit out of control. Attempting to design the future is usually fruitless. Instead, as designers (and developers, architects, publishers, brands...), we must pay close attention to shifting behaviors, listen and participate deeply, and design as fast followers to where this culture leads us. Sometimes, as with the original Facebook, we end up creating something that strikes a deep nerve for connection. When that happens, we are catapulted into a position of leadership, but we shouldn't assume that adoption equates with finality. It's way too early for that, and and I think this really is Adams' core thesis.

What remains to be seen is if a company like Google is capable of this kind of design, or whether it comes from somewhere entirely outside our current field of vision. My guess is a bit of both. I am quite certain, however, that Facebook is already paying attention to this instrumentation problem. I expect many of Adams' critiques will be addressed, and quickly, in future revisions of the Facebook service.

It's certainly an exciting time to be in this industry, and in this society. They're increasingly one and the same thing.

I'm sure you've noticed, but there's a major battle underway for the hearts and minds of what we, in this industry, broadly call "developers." Often the term is used quite strictly, to mean actual coders who build actual software-driven applications, services, or websites. Other times the term is more loosely applied, meaning "companies that build stuff" or "partners of platform X or service Y."

However you define them, every major player on the Internet - and that includes predominately mobile players - wants developers to create value on their platform. All the top players here in the US - Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft - are driven by the value created by their developer base. The same is (or will be) true for Nokia internationally, and HP with its Palm acquisition.

At the moment, it seems to me, the game is utterly open.

Now, those of you who are Apple evangelists may disagree with that statement, but then again, I pretty much expect that. For the rest of you, a few thoughts on what it means to be a "developer," at this moment, and why I believe there's an opening for one unexpected company - Yahoo - to potentially emerge as a winner here.

Yeah, I said Yahoo.

Why? Well, I can't speak to whether or not the company has the right lineup of talent, either management or engineers. Nor can I claim to have any inside knowledge of its core strategy, other than that which I have been told by folks I've recently met with there. But after those meetings, I did come away with a sense that Yahoo has a chance to be something none of the other major companies on the web can be: Truly neutral. Coupled with a very large audience base and a brand folks generally want to trust, there's most certainly a there there.

Stay with me for a bit (as I'm pretty much thinking out loud here, and I'm not entirely sure where this is going to go.)

Last week I met with Blake Irving, Yahoo's new EVP and Chief Product Officer, as well as Cody Simms, Yahoo's Senior Director of Product Management (he also is responsible for developer relations). We had a pretty wide ranging and wide open conversation about the company, including a very frank discussion about its loss of luster over the past few years.

But these guys are not dumb, and as Blake pointed out in his blog post explaining why he came out of retirement (he was at Microsoft for 15 years) to run product at Yahoo, the company has a very large base of engaged users and some serious infrastructure and services in its arsenal. The question is, how do you continue to engage those users with great services in a world where nearly everyone else is looking to steal them away?

Something Blake explained to me, which echoed a meeting I had a year ago with CEO Carol Bartz, made a light bulb go off in my head. Last year Bartz vented to me about Yahoo's infrastructure problems - the company, she explained, was a compilation of fundamentally disconnected vertical silos, each with its own P&L, codebase, infrastructure, and culture. It was nearly impossible to roll out products that cut across, say, Mail, Homepage, Finance, IM, Search, and Flickr, because each instance required custom integration and coding. Yahoo was literally broken underneath, even as it looked consistent at the UI layer. Add in the issues of internationalization, and you went from nearly impossible to "not even worth considering." That mean stagnation, and on more than one axis. For one, it means it's very hard to find leverage between your internal resources, or to roll out new products that build on more than one stack. For another, it means it's next to impossible to open your company's resources up to third party developers (there's that word) who might want to add value to the ecosystem you've created.

I noted Bartz's exasperation but didn't think that much of it. At that time, she had a lot bigger issues to deal with - the Microsoft deal, for one, investor rancor, for another, and a major talent drain, for a third. She ended up getting sick, and not participating in last year's Web 2. (She's back this year, however...)

Then I met with Blake and Cody, and as the discussion progressed, Blake in particular brought up infrastructure again and again. He was thrilled, he told me, with what Yahoo had done over the past year to integrate most of its core services on one massive Hadoop instance. For the first time, Yahoo could roll new products across a shared infrastructure. It's a major milestone in the company's history.

Now, I haven't vetted whether Blake's enthusiasm is more hope than reality, nor have I (or can I) compare Yahoo's infrastructure to, say, that of Google or Microsoft. But a few points of fact: One, before he left, Blake ran Microsoft's initial foray into cloud infrastructure - the Live project. He understands the importance of those platforms.

So here is Yahoo's challenge: To be the company developers want to plug into. And how does Yahoo lure them? By delivering engaged audiences, a clear economic proposition, and a neutral point of view.

That neutrality is key. I'll explore that concept (along with others) in the next post. It's late, and I've got a lot of clients to see in the morning. Let me know what you think so far, and I'll be back at it as soon as I can.

....for those of you reading Searchblog in RSS and not watching ze Tweets....here are the Signals that I do over at FM's site.

Weds. Signal: It’s a Good Day to Read The News

Tuesday Signal: Location, Location, Location

Monday Signal: Welcome to Summer, Now Get to Work

You can sign up to get the Signal email, a daily roundup of what I'm reading and why, on the main page of Signal here (box in the right hand corner).  

Last weekend the news was conjecture about Facebook doing web search, today, the news is conjecture about Google doing social networks. All of this has been sparked by two well known Valley guys opining on samesaid...Kevin Rose, CEO of Digg, tweeted that Google was working on a "Google Me" social network (he since was "asked to take down his tweet" by someone...) and then a former Facebook employee answered a related question on his own Q&A service, Quora.   

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, folks. I certainly don't find it the least bit surprising that Google is continuing its push into social - let's not forget, the company recently launched Buzz, which qualifies as a major social network, already owns Orkut, which also qualifies, and has added social features to its core search service - including Google Profiles and social search functionalities.

Pulling these together into a seamless, useful, and coordinated product just makes sense. It's to be expected. And it's badly needed, because none of these disparate features or products have found their own footing.

The real question is whether Google has the corporate will to call a spade a spade, and acknowledge publicly that it's game on with Facebook. Often companies attempt to pretend they're not really in a competitor's business. It's rather hard to defend such a position now. I say, go for it, Google. If the product is good, the traction will be there.

I spent a fair portion of today at the O'Reilly Foo Camp, as eclectic an assortment of smart folks as you're likely to find anywhere. I wrote perhaps the first ever piece on Foo back in late 2003, and I've been trying to make it every year since. It's quite a confab.

Today I asked a number of the folks I ran into the same question: "Is Apple a part of the Web?" The answers I got were nearly unanimous - no, Apple's iWorld is not part of the Web. Apple's approach to the world - one of control, limited APIs, top-down control, the utter lack of...dirt...well, that's not the web. One researcher working on a large scale Web problem dismissed Apple to me in this way: "Oh yeah, Steve's managed to repackage pieces of the Web and resell them to people, good for him. But that's not the real Web, so who cares?"

Does Apple represent the same kind of threat to the Web that the Web itself represented to the PC/Windows hegemony ten years ago?

I went to Foo with my son, a fellow who is not averse to running a Tor relay (even as he's not entirely sure what the heck running that relay really means. Regardless, he met a Tor employee at Foo and was deeply impressed). As we drove home this afternoon, listening the Giants fall yet again to the Boston Red Sox, he asked me this question: "Why does Apple try to control everything?"

"Well," I responded, "Apple believes that to create the best user experience, it needs to control that experience, at least in terms of what developers can create inside Apple's environments."

"That's stupid," my son responded.

"I'm not sure," I said, even as I admitted that in my recent musings, I've been pretty partisan on the topic. "It's true that Apple makes some incredible experiences, right?" After all, my son was pretty much addicted to his iPod Touch, and I knew he was at his wit's end trying to install Windows 7 on his two year old Dell.

"Yeah, but it took them three years to let people change their background on the iPhone," he countered. "That's just lame."

"Well, you jailbroke your iPod as soon as you could..."

"Yeah!"

"...and as much as I'd like to believe that the entire universe of computing device users were 14-year-old boys, the fact is, most folks don't want to think about jailbreaking their devices. They just want them to do whatever it is they think they are supposed to do, and if they surprise and delight them in the process (as Apple devices do), so much the better."

My son thought about that for a tic, then said. "It's still lame."

Then he fell asleep, and I listened to my Giants continue their pursuit of a losing cause.

But the question stayed with me - What is the essence of "the Web," or "The Internet"? Does Apple's approach to the world we've built together over these past 15 years qualify as part of the Web? I've argued in the past that it does not. But perhaps I'm being too dismissive. Perhaps, after 15 years of noise, and dirt, and half steps, perhaps we all really want the Web packaged and delivered to us in neat Apps, ready for consumption.

But what do we lose when that becomes our framework for consumption of "the Web"? And what do we gain?

I think this is an important question. Clearly Google falls on one side of this question, and Apple on another. It's easy to claim that in the end, Apple will repeat its precious history, and end up with a small percentage of the market (Mac vs. Windows, all over again).

But then again....

What do you think? Is Apple's AppWorld part of the Internet as you understand it? And who would you like to see onstage at Web 2 debating this question?

The most tweeted Slideshare of the show so far is Mary's presentation. Here it is for your reading pleasure!

Thanks to Andy at Beet for asking. My post earlier here goes into far more detail. I do look rather querulous, do I not? It must have been the sun.

...you just have to rethink what "search" really means. Last night Jobs said he had no interest in search. I am quite certain what he meant is he has no interest in HTML, "traditional" search. But think about what search really is, and I am certain, Apple will be in the search business.

Why? Well, as I said in the last post on the iPad (and rather hurriedly, and entirely my fault, poorly communicated to many of those who left comments), it's all about the link. Perhaps I should have said, it's all about the signal.

Let's think about the allegories between search and the web as we knew it, and apps and the app platform that Apple controls, as we know it. Last night Jobs said that we've never before seen such an explosion of apps as we've witnessed on the iPhone platform - 200,000 and counting, up to 20K new ones a week.

That's true, never before have so many developers created mobile phone apps in such abundance. But think back to the last great platform where hundreds of thousands created value by making new services, content, and places where consumers might interact: yep, that'd be the web. A website is an app. And the platform of the web - it's open. Anyone can build on it. And anyone can create signals from their "app" to another "app" - a link from one site to another. And anyone can share any data from any site to another site, or mash up those data streams to create entirely new kinds of sites. Yep, it was rather a free for all, but over the past 15 or so years business rules have emerged, social norms have developed, an ecosystem has flourished.

Take yourself back to the early days of the web - just as now we are in the early days of what I've called before, and will call here, AppWorld.

Remember what a mess it was? How much noise there was, and how precious little signal? And what application emerged that found that precious signal, made sense of it, and helped us find our way? Yep, it was search, and the signal was the link, interpreted, of course, through PageRank and ultimately hundreds of other sub signals (click through, freshness, decay, etc.)

Now, think of AppWorld. Where's the signal? Short answer is, we don't have one. Yet.

The beauty of the link was that it became a proxy for engagement. It was where consumers were declaring their intent - signaling what they wanted from the web. That signal became the basis for a massive marketing economy. Google ascended. And content models were turned upside down (much to my delight at FM, I will admit).

So then, what is the proxy for engagement in AppWorld? Before you argue that "we don't need one," let's not forget Jobs' stated goal of getting into advertising so as to give his legions of developers a business model, to reward them for creating value on Apple's platform. That's the whole reason he's creating iAds, he declared last night. To get his developers paid. "We won't be making very much money on advertising," he said. (Let's watch and see...)

Well, if marketers are going to find value in AppWorld, they're going to need a proxy for engagement, a trail of breadcrumbs, some signal(s) that show were consumers are, what they are doing, and ideally, predicts what they might do next. And we as consumers also need this trail - we need smart navigation tools to figure out which apps to use, which apps our friends recommend, and how best to navigate the apps we are using. It was easy when there were just a few apps. Now there are hundreds of thousands. Soon there will be millions. Don't tell me a Google like metadata play isn't going to evolve inside such an ecosystem. After all, search did all those things for the web. But so far, we don't have a similar signal for AppWorld.

But we will. The data is already there. It's the data we all create when we interact with apps - when we jump from one to another, when we navigate within pages, when we execute a command in an app and then ask that app to store that execution "up in the cloud" also known as the web. And as far as I can tell (Apple won't answer questions on this) it's that data which, if shared with others besides the developer and Apple, Apple then labels "third party" and forbids (based on a smokescreen of privacy issues, which I believe can and must be addressed).

I believe such a policy cannot stand, because it will create a fragile ecosystem devoid of feedback loops and external innovation. No matter, whether or not Apple allows third parties to consume AppWorld data, Apple will do search. It won't be search as we understand it on the web, but it'll be search for AppWorld, and if done right, it will be extremely profitable.

**Dashed off as I am running to lunch at D....will update soon...**

...and I mean that. Watching Jobs work his way through nearly 90 minutes of interview and audience questions, I really felt, for the first time, a sense of how strongly the guy feels for his work and his products. Then again, I found myself angry, several times. Angry when he championed the press as crucial to democracy, and implied the iPad would save our country from "descending into a nation of bloggers" (my view: we started as a nation of bloggers - pamphleteers like Thomas Paine). Angry when he defended Apple's data practices - to an investor in Flurry, no less - as protecting users' privacy, when in fact it's clearly about controlling data to Apple's benefit to win advertisers, developers, and market share (you can certainly protect privacy AND share data. That's the basis of the web, and, by the way, the basis of culture. But that's another post). Angry when he claimed that Apple was the only company doing mobile ads that didn't suck, when in fact they've been done the way iAds is doing it for nearly a year by third parties.

But I was also inspired. Inspired by a guy who decided to tear up the playbook of how computing works, and rethink it all so as to shift the interface from stylus or mouse to the human finger - and doubly inspired by a guy who reinvented the personal computer, then declared it essentially dead on stage tonight. Inspired by a guy who answers emails at 2 am and passionately defends his own way of doing things, and claims the market will decide, one purchase at a time. Inspired by the fact that the company I loved and defended back in the late 80s and 90s, which nearly died at the feet of Microsoft, eclipsed that giant in market cap last week, yet he genuinely seemed to believe that "market cap doesn't matter."

Read my Twitter stream for real time thoughts, but two things aren't in there that are worth noting: one: Jobs said he was not going to do search, and two, Jobs said TV was too complicated to get into. Mark my words: He'll be in both, big time, in the next few years. Why? Because he's been on the record, in the past, saying he had no designs on tablet computing and phones. With Jobs, history has a way of repeating itself.

Today's news that the iPad sold 2 million units in its first two months - coming as it does right before Steve Jobs takes the stage at his only public conference appearance in years outside carefully scripted Apple launch events - led me to reflect on my prediction, in January of this year, that the "iPad would disappoint" (that'd be #5, scroll down).   

In that prediction, which was not without its failures, I wrote:

Sorry Apple fanboys, but the use case is missing, even if the thing is gorgeous and kicks ass for so many other reasons. Until the computing UI includes culturally integrated voice recognition and a new approach to browsing (see #4), the "iTablet" is just Newton 2.0. Of course, the Newton was just the iPhone, ten years early and without the phone bit....and the Mac was just Windows, ten years before Windows really took hold, and Next was just ....oh never mind.

In essence, what I was saying is that the nexus of first wave computing (Windows OS) and second wave computing (the web) had not caught up to Jobs' vision of the third wave - mobile, multi-touch web-enabled interfaces. I was also hinting at my own bias that voice will become an important part of our interface to machines. Another bias: the assumption that Apple's tablet would actually attempt to connect the first two waves of computing meaningfully to the third.

I think my prediction was right in the short term (when the iPad was announced, nearly everyone was disappointed at what it wasn't, see the headlines from January, above), and I was totally wrong in the medium term (the thing has sold two million plus and probably has a shot at being Time magazine's "man of the year" for 2010). However I still believe I'll be entirely correct in the long term, in particular if Apple doesn't change its tune on how the iPad interacts with the web.

Allow me to unpack that last statement.  

What I missed, at least in my initial prediction, was how entirely hermetic and "un-weblike" the iPad would end up being. Like many others, I was surprised at how complete Apple's disdain is for traditional computing models - including its own Macintosh. The iPad would not be an open development environment - instead it adopted the iPhone model of command and control. The iPad would not allow you to run Mac applications - only iPad/iPhone specific apps approved by Apple would work, and that meant no Microsoft Office, thank you very little. The iPad wouldn't even let you cut and paste - an innovation Apple pioneered - and worst of all, it seemed, the iPad wouldn't use Flash - a proxy, as it were, for "the rest of the web that Steve Jobs didn't quite like very much."

So initially, anyway, the hue and cry about the iPad amongst the tech elite was decidedly disappointed. The iPad wasn't a computer! The iPad was just a big iPhone - but without the phone, or even the camera! It's an overgrown iPod Touch! It breaks the web!

Then it came out, and wow, was it purty. Apple has done it again, we all marveled - the iPad's genius, it seemed, was that it didn't try to be a computer - instead, it was a gorgeous device for consumption of media and interaction with apps. And sure, those apps could be web enabled - on the back end - as long as the web was channeled into structured, Apple approved fashion (no third party data sharing, natch). And sure, you could surf the the "real web," but only if you went through the Apple approved browser, which finds Flash unworthy of rendering.

No matter. The fact is, the iPad is a revelation for millions and counting, because, like Steve Case before him, Steve Jobs has managed to render the noise of the world wide web into a pure, easily consumed signal.

The problem, of course, is that Case's AOL, while wildly successful for a while, ultimately failed as a model. Why? Because a better one emerged - one that let consumers of information also be creators of information. And the single most important product of that interaction? The link. It was the link that killed AOL - and gave birth to Google.

It was the link that made the web what it is today, and it's the link - reinterpreted in various new strains - that drives innovation on the web still. The link is the synapse between you, me, and a billion other humans - and the signal (dare I say, a signal one might consider third party data) which allows a million ideas to flourish.

So let me ask you one question, right now: Can you link to an app on your iPad? And I don't mean a link to download the app on iTunes, folks. I mean, can you create an ecosystem of links, deep into your iPad application(s), links that connect your particular activity stream inside that app with other streams, other links, and other intentions across the web? In ways that create new values, both predictable and unpredicted?

The answer is no. Anymore than you could link to pages deep inside AOL, back when it was a walled garden.

Sure, AOL eventually figured out the web would win, but by then, it was too late.

Next week, Apple will make any number of announcements at its WWDC. I'm hoping the company will announce that it is tacking away from its walled garden approach with the iPad, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Apple makes gorgeous products, but ultimately, I think any product which rejects the web's core value of connection will simply disappoint. But more likely than not, it'll be a year or two before that becomes apparent.

PS - If you want a deeper dive on Apple and the web, read this: Will Apple Embrace the Web?  No.

Five years and about two months ago, I wrote a blog post announcing the creation of Federated Media Publishing. I will admit I was scratching an itch, not certain that it would work out. In that post I hedged a my bet - mainly because I was still smarting from the loss of my previous business - The Industry Standard - and I was not certain that I (or the world) was really ready for me to run a company again.  

In short, I said that if the company succeeded, I might not stick around - after all, The Standard succeeded, and I stuck around, and that didn't quite work out...well you can see where the psychology is going. This time, I remember telling myself, I'll pull a Costanza and go out when I'm still ahead.

Well, that didn't happen.

So as to not bury the lead too deeply, today marks my five-year anniversary as an employee of Federated Media Publishing, Inc. Apparently it was five years ago today that I signed some legal paperwork that officially made me an employee. At the time, I owned 100% of FM's voting shares, and to this day, I am still the largest shareholder. That was a very intentional move on my part, and one that has served me - and I daresay FM - very well over the past five years.

By the Fall of 2005 I had assembled a team, an extraordinary group, some of whom are still with us, some of whom, after four years or so, have moved on. To my mind that is also a great accomplishment - the original team stayed for a very long time, at least in the life of a startup, and together we built a company that will endure. I'm proud of that, and of them, and of where we are today. Indulge me some pride, but the story of FM isn't often told, and while I won't take much more of your time here telling it, it's certainly worth hearing should you be interested. (I'm happy to stretch this into a few hours, but the bourbon is on you).

I'm particularly proud that the core idea driving FM has not changed - thanks to search and social, media models have shifted, and a new approach was needed that understood the "conversational web." FM set out to be a media company native to the social web, and five years in, I think we've succeeded.

But that's not to say FM hasn't changed. A few stats:

- FM had under half a million dollars in revenue in 2005. Five years later, we're in the high eight figures of revenue. I'd love to brag about our current growth rate, but I think that'd be, well, bragging.

- FM launched with one segment - technology - and about ten blogs. We reached a few million uniques a month, and had roughly 25 million pageviews. Today, FM reaches 36 million uniques in four major segments (tech, business, lifestyle, and the real time web), and that's just in the US (we're past 70mm globally). We stopped counting pageviews when they eclipsed a billion. We're the fourth largest pure play social media company on the web, behind Facebook, Blogger, and Myspace.

- FM has been a pioneer in bringing integrated, scaleable brand marketing to social media, first with blogs (2005), and then Digg (2006), the Facebook platform (2007), live events (Crowdfire 2008), Twitter (2009) and now location services like Foursquare (2010). Our partners, executions and programs have won countless awards, but we're most proud of the tens of millions of dollars of revenue we've driven into the emerging world of independent content and platform creators online.

- The brilliant folks who invested in FM back in 2005 (including the New York Times, Omidyar Network, and various angels) have seen their investment increase twenty-fold, based on the valuation of FM in our last round (I'd argue we're worth a lot more than that, but let's stick with what's on paper for now). Perhaps to their consternation, we have so far refused to sell the company, so they'll have to be content with looking good on paper for the time being. And since that initial investment, we've brought in tens of millions of dollars through some extraordinary partners, and we've spent almost none of it. In fact, we're now on track to add to our cash holdings year over year. I'm quite proud of that feat.

- FM was EBIDTA profitable for 2009, and so far this year, FM has turned a net income, with the best still ahead of us.

- Earlier this year, we established a new division focused on bringing the skills of publishers to marketers across digital platforms. This promises to be a very large and very scaled business. We also invested heavily in our technology platform, and while I won't give away all that we are working on, it's a very exciting platform indeed. In short, there's nothing like it in market. I never thought, five years ago, we'd become a player in technology and data as well as in media, but then again, that's the beauty of a startup.

- Perhaps most significantly, FM has evolved into a troop of 130 or so dedicated employees, led by an amazing President, who we hired this past Fall. And my work has changed, so much so that I can't really imagine a better job than the one I have right now. I spend most of my time with partners - either media or platform and publishing, and in between I'm allowed to think a bit out loud, and work on my writing. I haven't really changed my work hours, but I most certainly have changed what I work on.

And this, to me, is probably my greatest career accomplishment to date. I've never worked anywhere for five years - not Wired, where I lasted four years and change, or The Standard, where I almost made it to four. But somehow, as I enter year six at FM, I find myself energized, engaged, and thrilled to be here.

I think it's because, way back in 2005, I made a promise to myself that I'd leave if I ever felt that I was in the way, or if I was consistently unhappy in my work.

I'll admit, I've flirted with both of those demons over the past few years. And who knows, I may well again. But right now, sitting in a hotel lobby writing to you as I prepare for four meetings with clients in Atlanta, I just feel lucky.

Thanks, everyone - to our publishing partners, our clients, our investors and our employees, as well as all of you, who've read my thoughts here and cheered me on, criticized me, or both. I hope to make you all proud in the next five years of this journey.

The CM Summit is now just two weeks away, and already I've asked for your input on five major voices in digital media and marketing: Arianna Huffington, Tony Hsieh, Tim Armstrong, Omar Hamoui, and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.Next up is Hilary Schneider, EVP Americas, Yahoo! Hilary is a crucial member of CEO Carol Bartz's team, running Yahoo's largest and most public business in the US, among others.

Yahoo has not had an easy time of it these past few years, and Hilary has been there for the whole of the ride, including the frenetic, off again on again negotiations over possible acquisition by Microsoft, the subsequent search deal, the shift from Semel to Yang to Bartz, and more.

Yahoo has recently declared its position as "the world's largest media company" and seems intent, with acquisitions like Associated Content, on pushing even deeper into that world. So what's up with Yahoo, and where might it be headed? I'd love your input. Here are a few questions I plan to ask, please add your own in comments:

- Why Associated Content, and why now? How will Yahoo differentiate from Demand (CRO Joanne Bradford will be at the conference) and AOL (CEO Tim Armstrong will be as well)?

- Overall, how has Yahoo's content strategy shifted from your first year there (2006)?

- How is the Microsoft search deal going? What's different now, what is the same?

- What do you make of Facebook's recent moves (Open Graph, etc) and how deeply will Yahoo be integrating these services?

- You recently cut a big deal with Nokia. Why? What's coming from that? Does Yahoo have a mobile strategy per se?

- What can marketers get from Yahoo that sets it apart, besides massive scale?

There are certainly more things to ask about. But I'll ask you guys to help me with that. What do you want to hear from Hilary?

Early last week I wrote a long-ish piece on the iAd – in which I both criticized and praised Apple for “re-gifting” a mobile ad format that already existed. Since then I’ve spoke with Apple’s head of corporate communications, as well as several other potential clients and agencies. I didn’t learn a lot from Apple, but I did get some context for this next installment.

Apple’s genius has always been in seeing the value of something that already exists, and taking that value to a new level (the Mac, after all, was inspired by Xerox's work. And the iPhone? Anyone remember the Treo?).

But while we can be relatively certain that the iAd will be a quality experience, the great unknown remains return on investment: Will buying iAds be worth the price? As I write, marketers are evaluating Apple’s pitch and trying to determine if it’s worth the rather steep initial price of entry. Many have already jumped in. But others are still questioning the investment.

My conclusion? If you’re an ROI driven marketer that craves certainty and are relatively risk averse, stay away. There are more unknowns than knowns in this program, at least for now. We will know a lot more in two weeks, when Apple convenes its developers’ conference, but by then, it’ll be too late to join the launch party.

However, if you’re already a savvy mobile marketer who likes to spend into innovation, or if you have inclinations that lead you to purchase a Superbowl ad, then the iAd is quite possibly tailor made for you.

Here’s what we do know about the iAd:

* Apple is in market selling iAd launch packages for $1mm or more, depending on exclusivity terms. However, several clients I spoke with claim to have gotten into the launch for the “low hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

* Apple will charge one cent per impression (a $10 CPM) and $2 per click. These charges will back into the minimums described above for the launch program.

* The iAd unit is a banner which brings a user into a rich media webview. This is not a new format, but given the iAd is exclusively this format and will be identified to consumers as an iAd, it does claim the high ground.

* At launch, Apple will execute all creative, with client oversight and approval. This will change over time.

Assuming a 1% clickthrough rate (which is a reasonable expectation, given the iAd’s relative novelty and industry standards which can range as high as 2%), the iAd will drive a “cost per engagement” of $3 – two bucks for the click, and one buck for the 100 impressions, one of which drives that click. That's a $50 CPM, comparable to what high end premium publishers charge on the web or in television.

So is that engagement worth $3? Depends on what you do with it, of course. Compared to search, where cost per clicks range from five cents to $25 or more, it’s all relative to what you are trying to accomplish with the attention you’ve just paid to capture. Of course, with search, the market is mature and lead conversion is a science. A search click can convert directly to a sale, and often does. So is an iAd worth the same?

We’ll get to that. But first…let’s talk about what we don’tknow about the iAd.

Here's that list:

* The exact data Apple is using to target. Sources tell me Apple has told them many things about which iTunes store data is used in its “targeted special sauce,” but the consensus is that Apple is using the list of apps a person has downloaded to create cohorts – IE, folks who download business applications, or lifestyle (Food, Shelter, Health and Beauty, etc.).

* Whether and how Apple consumers have been made aware of that data use. Privacy is a rather big issue at the moment, as we've learned from Facebook. I’ve pored through the iTunes Terms of Service, as well as Apple’s privacy policy, and I can’t quite figure out if it covers this data use as is. If it does, I doubt consumers are aware they are being targeted. This is a potential issue for marketers, who don’t want to be caught up in another privacy tempest. (I’ve asked Apple about this, but so far no response.)

* What inventory will be available, and on what terms. I’ve heard conflicting stories about whether iAds will be directed (IE you can select which app your ad runs on) or if it will be a blind network (where you can't). The consensus is that it will not be directed, at least not at launch. This is a very key point, given the next unknown:

* What publishers will be in the iAd network. Are they the same ones that currently run Quattro ads (Apple bought Quattro, for those just catching up.) This is a crucial question for app makers, especially premium publishers like the NYT or Conde Nast, who plan to sell their own app inventory directly. If Apple’s targeting gets too close to promising marketers that their ads can run on premium publishers’ sites (for example, if the “food” cohort insures that an advertiser runs on Conde Nast’s Epicurious app), then publishers like Conde Nast will most likely pull all their inventory from iAd. Which begs the next question:

* Will Apple have enough (of the right kind of) inventory. And what is the makeup of that inventory? Can that inventory satisfy marketers’ targeting needs? With a $3 CPE, savvy marketers are going to want very specific inventory. If I’m a consumer packaged goods giant trying to create brand preference for a particular brand of detergent, I’m probably going to want my message in front of women of a certain age and certain household income, ideally women who can be tagged as the “CHO” – Chief Household Officer. If I’m marketing a movie aimed at kids, I’ll want kids and their parents who match the movie's ideal audience. Will Apple be able to offer enough inventory that delivers ROI on these audience cohorts?

* What is the right creative given the constraints of mobile devices? While Jobs showed some pretty cool executions, the truth is that those executions are still unproven (even though they’ve been available well before Apple gift wrapped them.) There’s still a lot to learn about what works, and in what context.

* How long exclusivity will last. Apple is selling iAds as category exclusive for a short period of time, but the company seems willing to let some marketers buy longer exclusivity based on investment levels. However, my sources seem to find a consensus around a period of six weeks to two months. By early Fall, I’m told, all bets are off for exclusive deals. Which begs the question – if you can buy iAds in the Fall, why get into large commitments up front?

* Will the FTC train its sights on Apple? While the buzz is about the government’s decision to approve the Google/AdMob deal, Apple may well gain the FTC’s attention should the company slip up on privacy (see above) or make moves that effectively (or directly) eliminate third party advertising networks on Apple devices. Hence:

* Will Apple eliminate third party advertising networks on its devices? I’ve heard all manner of thinking on this issue. It’d be very Apple-like to entirely control the advertising ecosystem on i-devices – much as Comcast does on its networks, or Conde Nast does in its magazines, for instance. But as I’ve argued elsewhere, that’s not very “web-like” – and it raises questions of whether or not Apple has a responsibility, with its own devices, to allow third party ecosystems to thrive (as they currently do). Were Apple to cut off third parties, Apple would be entirely responsible for driving advertising revenue to its app developers. Should it fail to do so, it could really screw the pooch. Not to mention that the lack of third party ad networks like AdMob would limit marketers' choice and retard innovation.

Recent policy changes from Apple have raised strong speculation that the company plans to kick third parties out. Apple has not responded to my questions on this topic, though I do expect it will address this issue at its developers conference. My own take: I don't believe Apple will do this, but then again, it's not out of the realm of the possible. I am certain of one thing: If Jobs had his way, all the other networks would already be gone. Jobs may well use the privacy argument to accomplish that goal - "We're not sending your data to third party networks so as to protect you." In the current environment, such an argument could well fly.

Now, to the punchline: Is the iAd worth it, given all we do and do not know about it?

If you’re comparing apples to apples, I’d have to say the answer is no. (We’ll get to the apples to Apple comparison in a minute).

Remember, my estimated CPE is $3 for an iAd. The fact is, you can get a click which drives to an identical rich media engagement on a network like AdMob or Greystripe for up to five times less cost, on average (these figures have been provided to me by those companies). In other words, it’s a lot cheaper to experiment in other ad networks, and they won’t ask for a six- to seven-figure minimum commitment to do so.

On the other hand, $3 is, as one agency chief told me, “an entirely reasonable price to pay” for a quality engagement with the right audience. "We pay similar CPMs on television, and don't get any engagement," this person argued. If iAds is truly a premium environment, with premium audience and premium creative that drives premium engagement (and therefore, creates brand preference and/or conversion), the price is entirely reasonable. That’s the apples to Apple comparison – you can spend a lot less, but you’re not going to get the Apple magic.

To me, the question comes down to the long list of unknowns when it comes to that magic. So far, marketers don’t know much, if anything, about the targeting, inventory, or creative that will pay off those premiums. That’s an awful lot of unknowns to be writing seven figure checks against.

My recommendation? If you’re already a confident mobile marketer who is familiar with rich media creative and have a strong sense of the inventory you want, and a strong guarantee from Apple you’re going to get it, jumping into the iAd pool right now most likely makes sense. If you’re not in that camp, I’d wait till the Fall, and start experimenting now on other networks, while they can still offer you strong reach into Apple devices. One never knows how long that might last.

I had a good call today with Dennis Woodside, who runs North American Sales for Google, and Susan Wojcicki, who runs products. Both are long timers at Google, Susan is pretty much a llfer - she joined in 1999.

Both are joining me on stage at the CM Summit next month, a first for Google to have ad products and sales represented in one onstage interview. We had a great catchup and prep for the conversation, which I think will be enlightening.

After we hung up, I contemplated my earlier posts about Google's brand, and realized I had forgotten to talk to them about one question that's lingered in my mind for some time. In essence, it's this: "What is Google's brand to you? To your customers?" Then I imagined their response - something along the lines of "our mission hasn't changed - we're still focused on organizing the world's information, and making it universally accessible."

True - that mission certainly covers most of what Google does today (though it's a mouthful for the average consumer to grok). But then something struck me - and its name was Apple.

Allow me to explain. Earlier in the day I was in the offices of Adobe, meeting with various folks and talking business. Apple was very much on everyone's minds given Adobe had just launched its "We (Heart) Apple" and "We (Heart) Open" campaign (see my post here).

All this was stewing in my head as I contemplated Google's mission on the drive home. And it struck me - Google was born back in the late 1990s, when it seemed inevitable that everything - all the world's knowledge - was going to be on the web, eventually. It was just presumed that the web would swallow the world - and for ten years, it largely did.

But in the past year, that world has fractured, and increasingly, a new planet has emerged, one that is best represented by Apple. It's the Planet of the Apps, and while it's rich in experience, data, and information, it's largely sealed off from Google's (or anyone else's) search spiders.

This is another way of pointing out what folks have called the SplinterNet or the Fractured Web, but somehow, I found it rather poignant to think that Google's ambitious mission is, in a very real sense, threatened by Apple's approach to the world. No longer can we assume that "The Web is the World" - because increasingly, it's not.

This is due, in part, to Google's own ambition - had it stayed a pencil - just search - Apple probably would not see the company as a threat. I wondered to myself, as I drove home from San Jose, whether Apple would let a third party search engine, one that was not competing for mobile, location, commerce, media access, etc - crawl its App World and bring it out into the light?

I'm starting a dialog with folks from Apple on Friday. I'll ask. I'm guessing the answer is no, but it's worth a shot. One can dream, after all. I've been doing just that for 25 years in this industry, and I'm not going to stop now.

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We're used to buzz around Apple, and in particular, we're quite used to buzz about how Apple goes to market. CEO Steve Jobs is widely considered the greatest marketer alive, and nearly every marketer I've worked with has expressed sincere admiration for the magic the man is capable of weaving. His products are brilliant, and the cult around Jobs and his work are extraordinary.

But with iAds, Apple has moved from the business of making ads to the business of selling them. And in the past month or so, Apple's new team - folks formerly known as Quattro Wireless but now sporting brand new Apple business cards - have started making sales calls at a handful of major brands and their agencies.

These freshly minted Apple folk must feel like the won the lottery – just a few months ago, they were duking it out with ten other mobile networks, competing on price, ROI, network quality and scale, ad format, and Lord knows how many other factors. Now marketers are literally lining up to buy into the launch of Steve Jobs’ next great thing.

And that next great thing is called iAds - which Jobs, in typical fashion, introduced last month as the answer to all those mobile ads that "suck."

I guess he means what those folks from Quattro sold (and still do, by the way, under their original brand name). Because from what I can tell, there’s almost nothing new in iAd, save the wrapping paper.

Then again, wrapping paper is what takes an ordinary object and turns it into a gift, and therein lies the genius of Jobs.

You won't find anything about iAds on Apple's site (there are a few for "iAd," but if you're trying to understand what they are, you'll be disappointed). Instead, details about the program are leaking out through blogosphere speculation and reports of recent sales meetings. I’ve spoken to several folks who’ve been in those meetings, and this post, the first of a series, will be my best attempt at making sense of the iAd narrative.

And it's quite a classic tale – one most of the press is eating up. Early reports echo Jobs’ points about how iAds are different, but fail to check whether, in fact, iAds do anything particularly new.

Apple's press release reads: "iAd, Apple’s new mobile advertising platform, combines the emotion of TV ads with the interactivity of web ads. Today, when users click on mobile ads they are almost always taken out of their app to a web browser, which loads the advertiser's webpage. Users must then navigate back to their app, and it is often difficult or impossible to return to exactly where they left. iAd solves this problem by displaying full-screen video and interactive ad content without ever leaving the app, and letting users return to their app anytime they choose."

Jobs elaborated at launch, claiming that iAds would bring more "emotion" and "engagement" to what was before a noisy and crap filled environment.

Well, yes and no. Yes, in that iAds are *only* rich media experiences (once you click on a standard banner, of course). And yes, in that Apple is controlling all the creative for iAds (clients will have approvals and submit materials, but Apple alone is doing the actual development - to ensure quality control – and most likely, to maintain the mystery of iAds in general. Classic Jobs).

And yes, in that at launch, only a selected few marketers will be "allowed" to run iAds. And as has been widely reported, those brands have to pay quite a price to get into the launch portion of the program. Given the steep price tag (reportedly up to $20 million, and I'll be getting to that in a follow up piece), it's almost a certainty that the ads will be of high quality - only the most established brand marketers are going to play at this level.

So yes, the actual ads inside an iAd will be better, in general, than an “average” mobile ad experience. But then again, a Superbowl ad is generally better than an “average” television ad, ain’t it?

So…. no, there's nothing new here. Anything you can do with an iAd, I've confirmed with numerous very knowledgeable sources, you can do with AdMob or any number of other networks.

While it's true that a lot of mobile ads link to web sites, rather than to rich media experiences that keep the user inside an app, it's also true that AdMob, among others, has been using what's known as a webview (using the video friendly HTML5 standard) to deliver exactly what Jobs packaged as "new" since at least last Fall. And let’s not forget, Jobs failed to buy AdMob, which was his first choice - Google won that bidding war.

And given that AdMob has 70% reach into the iPhone/Touch/Pad world (according to the company), Apple isn't really selling anything new with iAds. In the words of one agency source who recently sat in an Apple pitch meeting: "iAds are the same thing you could get before, wrapped in a nice box with a bow on it."

Ahh…there it is: The gift. Steve Jobs’ brilliance lies in his ability to make everything seem magical. The true gift Apple is selling right now? A Golden Ticket into Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. A chance to be associated with the greatest marketer in the history of the industry.

Think I’m kidding? Then consider this: Apple is telling marketers willing to pony up for the launch that Steve Jobs will mention their brand on stage as he launches iAds this summer. “That is worth a hell of a lot,” one agency chief told me.

That, my friends, is the bow on the box. The box itself? That’s Apple products – the environment in which the advertisers’ message will be seen. And marketers like nothing more than to be associated with quality environments.

In fact, during presentations to prospective clients, Apple’s sales force takes out an iPhone to demonstrate what iAds look like. And here’s the kicker: They unveil the phone with a flourish and utter these magic words: “This is actually Steve Jobs’ personal iPhone.”

They may as well be showing Willy Wonka's cane to a room full of children.

What Apple is selling with iAds is – Apple itself. As well they should. But they are also selling into a marketplace that, for the most part, doesn’t really understand mobile marketing. The market is still relatively small – well under a billion dollars globally this year – and major marketers have yet to embrace the format. They don’t realize that most of what Apple is pitching them can be done already.

And in the end, it doesn’t really matter. By isolating the rich media execution and claiming it as his own, Jobs has once again identified a marketing opportunity and redefined it as unique. In the process, he’s driving innovation and awareness in the mobile market. Nothing wrong with that.

But if I were a marketer considering laying out $1mm, $10mm, or more on iAds, I’d make sure I understood what my goals are.

In my next iAd-related post I’ll be focusing on just that topic: deconstructing the ROI on an iAd. Because once the launch is over, it’s all about value for money spent. And there are a lot of unanswered questions here – including publisher inventory and terms, blind vs. directed networks, targeting and terms of service for use of iTunes data, issues of third party networks, FTC regulation, and other policies, and much more. Stay tuned.

Update - I should have mentioned that there are at least two unique properties to an iAd that you can't get elsewhere - the targeting, which reportedly is based on what apps a particular user has downloaded from iTunes, and the "ViP" program, which is, in short, the ability to link directly to your app in the iTunes store. Of course, anyone can link to the iTunes store from an ad, the difference here is this is a "proprietary Apple approved link." Not sure what that means, but it should become clearer when the program is live in the wild.

When Bing launched, I framed the new service from Microsoft as an important step in the evolution of search:

I actually don't think Microsoft is trying to out-Google Google with Bing. I think it's trying to build a different kind of search application, one that sits on top of commodity search and helps people make decisions in a new way. Done right, this totally breaks the AdWords model that has driven search so far. To me, that is a very big step in a new direction, and one that Google cannot afford to make.

Today Google has decided it can't afford NOT to make this step, at least somewhat. The company has decided to create a left hand nav bar that pushes the service toward search as an app.

Now, when I mentioned that idea in a briefing yesterday, the Google rep I spoke to wasn't eager to confirm the concept, but to my mind, this is exactly what's going on. Bing (and Ask before it) has built a service on top of commodity search results, one that does not require you to go back and forth, back and forth, but rather instrument your search session using intelligent, persistent navigation. This is exactly what Google's new UI lets you do.

The real question, of course, comes down to money. Does this mean fewer clicks on paid ads for Google? I asked that question, and the response was telling: I'm paraphrasing, but in essence Google told me "we've found that this new approach increases the chance that users will find the information they are looking for." And in Google's parlance, ads are information.

Of course Google would never roll out such a significant UI update without rigorously testing the impact on AdWords clicks, and indeed Google confirmed to me that this is the most tested UI change Google's ever made. Indeed, the left nav bar has been seen in the wild for several years.

What's on the bar is worth grokking as well. First, "Web" has been replaced with "Everything." That's pretty meta - maybe we should change the name of the Web 2.0 Summit to the Everything 2.0 Summit - but I digress. Second, what is on the bar changes based on your search in real time. And one of the options includes "Updates" - their way of incorporating Facebook, Twitter and other real time data. A "Something Different" link gives you related searches, among many other new or consolidated features on the left nav. A full overview can be found at SEL.

Google told me that the actual underlying results - both organic SERPs as well as the ads that accompany them - have not changed. This is a new skin over Google's results, not a shift in how those results are determined. That's important, but not entirely the story.

The story is that this shift will change how we interact with Google, what our search query stream looks like, and therefore, what kind of SERPs and ads will be produced. I am certain Google has modeled this shift, and equally certain the company believes this change will impact their bottom line in a positive way. Of course, the company could be mistaken. Only future quarterly results will prove whether or not Google got it right.

What do you all make of the changes?

From the real time search service's blog post:

Until today, we’ve been indexing the links shared on Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Delicious and by our own OneRiot panel to help determine our search results. Now, with the addition of Facebook data, OneRiot delivers search results that reflect the pulse of a much, much wider social web.

Also, the service seems a bit wary of what might come of all this:
Now, of course, we’re only showing (indeed, only have access to) data that has been shared publicly by Facebook users. A user can restrict the visibility of these Likes on their Facebook profile. However, we’d be sidestepping the issue if we didn’t recognize that some users might be concerned that stuff they have shared on Facebook can now pop up on services like ours. Given that, we are rolling out this feature as a very limited bucket test today to assess users’ reactions and gather feedback. We love the new feature. And if users do too then we’ll roll it out to everyone at an appropriate speed.

As well they should. The service can be found here.