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In early December Google soft-announced that they are currently working on new free tool they are calling "knol" which stands for "unit of knowledge". Udi Manber, VP Engineering at Google had this to say about the tool in his post entitled "Encouraging People to Contribute Knowledge"

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.

Here is a sample of a Knol entry that talks about Insomnia.  

PC World tried to dissect some of the details on the Knol project in Google takes a Crack at Wikipedia 

Google is gunning for Wikipedia with a new service called Knol that aims to capitalize on the growing popularity of social encyclopedias. The Google Knol (defined as a "unit of knowledge") project is in closed trials right now with no word on when it will be open to the public to try.

According to a recent blog posting about the Knol project by Google we know a bit about what to expect. From what I can tell Knol shares a lot of the same traits as the pre-existing types of social reference pages such as Wikipedia, Squidoo, and Mahalo. As with these other services Knol users have the ability to create a page on any topic with information, pictures, links and more. It's in the details where Google is looking to one-up the competition and justify its existence

Google's primary focus on Knol will be with the authorship of each page. The original creator of each page will have a miniature profile on the page and will be given a wide variety of options to control the page.

One significant difference between Knol and competing services is that authors will be given the option to place Google ads on the pages they manage and receive revenue from those ads.

As people are slowly learning more about this tool - more and more are giving their opinions on how this affects the Wikipedia dynamic. Betsy Schiffman of Wired magazine's "Google's Units of Knowledge May Raise Conflict of Interest",  says:

 
The Knol project will also do little to ease critics' concerns that Google already plays too dominant a role in how people access information online. Google owns the search market (with a 69 percent market share in November), and with the flip of a switch (or a slight alteration to its search algorithm), it can direct people to, or away from, any given site. Google says it will rank knols "appropriately" so that their relative worth will be reflected in search results. To some extent, though, it raises the question of whether Google can rank competitors objectively given that the search company may have a financial incentive to keep Google-owned content at the top of its search results.

"At the end of the day, there's a fundamental conflict between the business Google is in and its social goals," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "What you're seeing here, slowly, is Google embracing an advertising-driven model, in which money will have a greater impact on what people have ready access to."

Jason Goldman who used to work at Goldman and now works for Twitter has this say about the Knol from his post Argumentum ad Verecundiam -

 

On the first point, a big reason this is happening is because of the amount of unmonetizable traffic Google sends to Wikipedia. Guess what the "I'm feeling Lucky" hit is for the title of this post. And Wikipedia won't accept advertising. Let's build Knol.

The further justification for Knol is "Who can trust all that crap on Wikipeda?" Google is fundamentally an academic institution and part of that ethos is that things aren't really "good" unless peer reviewed. The concept of peer review is central to how work is done inside Google and that basically works as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that ethos has extended to the way Google views content on the web. Sergey once asked the Blogger team how Blogger was going to compete with the New York Times. Even though our pageviews exceeded those of the NYT, the point I think he was making was "When are you gonna produce something authoritative that lots of people will accept as good." Blogger's answer was "Huh?" Knol's answer is peer review.

So far access to Knol is by invitation only and it looks like things are still in the works at Google, till we know more, it still remains to be seen what the future really holds for Google's Knol tool.

The world is shrinking. The time when only rich huge corporations were able to globalize is definitely in the past. In many ways, the market for your business may only be limited by your own imagination. As the digital divide gets narrower and narrower, and with efficiencies in shipping and services vastly improving, you might not be able to afford not globalizing your business.

In Fortune's Take Your Business Global Alessandra Bianchi has this to say about the growing globalization of small businesses -

Has your small business gone global yet? In an increasingly wired world, adding an international dimension - whether through importing, exporting, outsourcing, manufacturing overseas, or forming a strategic partnership - is now the province of both mom and pop ventures and large conglomerates. It is becoming almost as easy to do business in Peru as it is in Peoria. Result: The number of startups venturing overseas is skyrocketing. One recent study found that the number of multinational companies has swelled from 7,000 in 1975 to approximately 40,000 today. In addition, the net income of U.S. companies from operations outside the States now accounts for about half of income earned at home, compared to just 10 percent in 1950.

In Inc.com's article Gone Global - Why expanding overseas is your ticket to new markets, new ideas, and a world of adventure  Leigh Buchanan says -

Foreign markets are like children's shoes: They offer plenty of room to grow. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, 95 percent of the world's consumers reside outside the United States. Some of those people have holes in their lives the exact size and shape of your product.
Entrepreneurs are getting the message. In a survey of 449 CEOs conducted by Inc. and Amar Bhidé, a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, 58 percent of those doing business overseas reported that foreign demand for their product was growing. Furthermore, just 12 percent of the stay-at-homes blamed their hesitation on a lack of demand. Anecdotally, a surprisingly large number of CEOs interviewed for this package--selling everything from trash-compacting equipment to toothbrushes to public relations--have been making money overseas for a decade or more. Perhaps the question facing businesses pondering globalization should not be "Why?" but rather "Why not?"
 

So where do you start? Cnn's money.com uncovers this in  Who in the world is entrepreneurial? Where they scan the globe to uncover which countries are the most - and least - friendly to small business. 

Research is the best place to start learning more - money.com has "Best sites for global entrepreneurs" - a guide to researching the international marketplace.

Need more inspiration? Marketing profs talks about "Going Global in a Web 2.0 World: A Punch List for Small Business  where they run through how a "local" designer globalized her small business using online sites and tools". 

Globalization may not be for everybody, but if it is for your business, this is as good a time as it gets to start taking the first steps beyond your backyard and into the wider world outside.

 

Time was where eBay was one of the biggest marketplaces online. Now with emerging changes in how people look for and buy items online, eBay is fighting to maintain their share of the internet pie.

A more personal and simpler buying experience 

This is what Businessweek's article "Ebay's Bid to Win Back Buyers" has to say about the recent changes:

Now eBay is making the biggest effort in its 12-year history to recapture the magic - and bring back the buyers. The company is completely revamping its flagship site, making it easier for shoppers to find and purchase items and discover goods they never knew they had to have. "We are more focused on buyers than we have ever been before," says John Donahoe, president of eBay's Marketplaces, the division that oversees eBay's core shopping business.

Terri Wells gives an in-depth review of some of the changes on eBay in his post for Search Engine News - "Ebay Overhauls Site". Are the changes truly improving the buying experience? Here are some examples of what modifications were made:

One example of this is the new Bid Assistant. If you buy items such as CDs, DVDs, books or other things that are not truly one of a kind, you might find this useful. The Bid Assistant lets the user group several desired items together and choose the highest amount that he or she wants to bid. The Bid Assistant then does the bidding automatically, and stops when it has won one of them for the user. As a quick note, Bid Assistant is only available to people with feedback of 5 or higher, so you need to actually have used eBay and received some positive feedback either as a buyer or a seller (or both).

Another example lets users bid with just one click in the final 15 minutes of an auction. You won't have to constantly refresh the page in your browser to see whether you are still the high bidder. Instead, the page will display a smaller "layer" that will tell you how much time before the auction ends, what the current high bid is, and whether you are still the high bidder. Users will only need to refresh that small layer rather than the whole page. Refreshing that one section should happen much more quickly.

As more bloggers are weighing on the "new and improved" eBay, Lissa McGrath ponders the question "Is bidding from Ebay's auction page now history?" in her post on "Ebay's new Bid History page." 

 
I have always been a faithful user of the Auction page for bidding, but I decided I would give using the Bid History page a shot. I used the refresh button (that appears when there are only 15 minutes remaining on the auction, same as on the Auction page) to keep an eye on the time remaining, and placed and confirmed my bid from the Bid History page. It was actually a lot of fun. I didn't feel distracted by other things going on (mainly because this page is very minimalistic and has no ads or fluff to it).

With 241 million registered users worldwide and 153 million PayPal accounts, eBay is far from rolling over and dieing anytime soon. But in this fast paced technological age, every online company is just a step or two away from being ousted by the next newest thing- as seen in Google's meteoric rise. Ebay's changes attest to their realizing that at the end of the day, customers are finicky, and the best way to retain both online shoppers and online sellers is constant improvement and change.

Today on Word Sell, I observed that RSS is "the most underutilized technology tools in business today."  RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, has been around since 1999, but it remains a mystery to most folks outside of bloggers, geeks, and workers in the technology sector.

But RSS is a superb tool for search marketing, no matter what your business. RSS enables you to subscribe to blogs or regular Web pages, so that newly published material comes directly to you, just like a newspaper delivered to your home. Instead of combing the Web to find new material on the Web sites you like to follow, new material comes to you - immediately and, unlike newspaper subscriptions - at no cost.

An RSS feed (like the one you see on this blog's sidebar, marked by the orange RSS emblem) is cost free and easy to set up. Your company can use RSS to deliver important information to suppliers and customers -

• New product announcements.
• Personnel changes.
• Upcoming events.
• Industry news.
• Company news.
• Employee profiles.
• Sales promotions.
• User tips.
• Case studies.
• Anything else you can think of!

If you're smart enough to be publishing fresh content on your site, take the next step and offer an RSS feed. Your valuable information is not getting read, because you're relying on people coming to your site, which doesn't always happen.

It may take a little work to show customers how to use RSS, but they don't call it Real Simple Syndication for nothing. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to subscribe to feeds and read them. 

RSS gets your marketing message out, directly to the people you want to communicate with. But equally important, RSS puts customers in control. Customers decide what feeds they want to subscribe to. Customers decide when to read them. Customers decide when to stop subscribing.

Customers like that. If you offer an RSS feed, customers will like you, too.  Give us a call - we can help you set up your feed. There's really no reason not to RSS.

At the beginning of May, Google announced a revamp of the way they tailor their “general” search page. The new homepage design is called Google Universal Search (GUS) .

According to Google, the change was made in order to "… break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query.” This move aims to weave together multiple content sources/types into an organized and integrated set of search results. Changes will be subtle at first and will be more obvious as Google moves forward as they transition to the new format.

Why fix what wasn’t broken in the first place? Metamend has interesting thoughts on why Google might have decided to revamp their homepage. One of them is that with all the vertical roll-outs of specific search sub-sets, Google’s home page is still what attracts a good 92% of all users. In short, Google has a vested interest in improving their “cash-cow” and integrating a better mix of formats (e.g.,. images, video, etc.) to their results.

First hand comments from industry specialist have been less than enthusiastic, as seen in this post in PCWorld calling GUS both intriguing and confusing.

So how does this shift to universal search affect search engine marketing? Kevin Newcomb from searchenginewatch.com gives a good in-depth analysis on the effects to SEM . In an interview with David Berkowitz, director of emerging media, he says:

"The moral for search marketers is they need to take a holistic view of search…For those who get it, this gives them an unprecedented chance to dominate entire search engine results pages and gain sizable competitive advantages. Marketers need to consider every digital asset of theirs as an opportunity to gain more visibility in Google, whether it’s an image, video, press release, store listing, blog post, or anything else."

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Microsoft announced plans to acquire Tellme in early March for an undisclosed amount (said to be between $800M-$1B) and in doing so also made known their vested interest in having a larger stake in the “voice-enabled information access” arena.

A provider of voice-enabled services such as nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service and voice-enabled mobile search, Tellme is a large player in the emerging mobile search industry. With over 40 million users a month, Tellme is geared to grow even more with their mobile-to-internet search capabilities. As reported in Microsoft’s press release--

“We’ve made great strides in speech technologies, but have only scratched the surface of what is possible,” said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division. “The acquisition of Tellme will bolster Microsoft’s existing speech capabilities, bringing both immediate and longer-term value to our customers and partners.”

“Tellme was founded with the idea that anyone should be able to simply say what they want and get it from any device, starting with the phone,” said Mike McCue, co-founder and CEO of Tellme. “Now, with Microsoft, we’ll be able to extend that vision to millions of businesses and consumers around the world.”

According to Don Dodge from Microsoft’s emerging business team, the next big thing in search could very well be mobile search, a largely untapped area, with hundred millions more mobile phones than there are PCs. He predicts that mobile phones will be the main form for communication and computing within the next 5 years.

For a glimpse of the future, take a look at the Tellme Web site.

The search engine marketing world literally came together this week in Chicago. The Search Engine Strategies (SES) 2006 Conference and Expo ran from December 4-7, with all the major players in attendance.

The Whoast team worked overtime at SES, learning about new developments at the many show conferences and building relationships with key advertising and SEO alliance partners.

Today, Whoast Vice President Ian Stevenson shared a few of his impressions of SES with me.

TWF--What did you learn at SES that really stands out in your mind?

IAN--I learned that there seems to be an overwhelming grudge against Yahoo! and even more praise for Google than I thought. In almost every seminar someone on the panel had something negative to say about Yahoo!'s services and strategies.

Secondly, I heard a lot of discussion about marketing/ad firms bringing SEM services in-house that seemed to rattle the SEM firms. I don't think that this should be feared in our space, since SEM is so much different and the skill sets that these firms would need to hire are way beyond their comfort levels.

Fear not, I see SEM firms standing on their own for a long time. Also, these SEM firms will have the clients and processes that make them very valuable for a buyout--which isn't so bad, either.

TWF--What's going to change in SEO in 2007?

IAN--I think SEO will remain much the same, with the importance of vertical search engines rising to more power than previously expected--for example business.com and knowledgestorm.com.

TWF--How about SEO? What's coming in 2007?

IAN--The whole mobile search engine marketing space is set to take off in a big way. Mobile Web sites and mobile search are in their infancy, and there will soon be a ton of opportunity for advertisers and agencies.

Thank you, Ian!

Open source versus proprietary software--which way will the market go? Today we'll feature some in-depth perspectives from around the industry.

Irfan's Corner considers the economics of open source, mainly as they relate to service.

John Mark points out the difficulties of mass marketing open source.

A more promising view of open source's future from Irwin Lazar.

AjaxWorld reports on IBM's position on open source.

Si Chen analyzes a few open source success stories. The experiences of these companies may be the best indicators of the future of open source.

Ideas or comments? Please let us know!

Open Source might be described as The World vs. Microsoft. The trend towards free, standardized software is undeniable, but Microsoft still owns enormous market share and wields plenty of clout. Take a look at what industry experts see ahead.

First some background. Linux paved the way free software. Ragib Hasan chronicles the history of Linux and how it revolutionized the industry.

From the past to the future. Harvard Business School professors debate whether Open Source can dislodge Microsoft.

A different take on the how and why of Open Source from Tim O'Reilly, along with a lively and informative technical discussion.

Devoloping news about a millionaire cosmonaut gearing up to take on Microsoft with a new Open Source operating system.

Case studies from the Open Source Strategies blog that shed light on why companies implement Open Source.

Information or views to share? Please let us know!