I heard a funny comment at an event recently that “Google is the New Evil”. Then, I saw this cartoon by Gaping Void’s Hugh MacLeod:
Technorati Tags: google
A New Approach to Social Media Analytics
A few months ago just after launching ME Consulting, I went to visit Nick Koudas, a computer science professor at the University of Toronto, who had started a social media analytics company called Sysomos.
I’d heard some buzz about Sysomos but didn’t really know what to expect so when Nick gave me a short demo, I was extremely impressed. Although I had seen a lot of social media analytic tools and services, I’d never come across anything like Sysomos and its ability to drill down into what was happening on the social media landscape.
It was one of those situations where you want to get involved in some way, so I was fortunate when Nick and his co-founder, Nilesh, asked me to help them.
Over the past few months, there’s been an awful lot of work as Sysomos has relaunched the Web site, prepared marketing and communication collateral, sent Nick traveling around North America and Europe to spread the word, and continued to work on the company’s social media analytics technology.
Today, I’m excited about the official debut of Sysomos and its two flagship products – Media Analysis Platform (MAP) and Heartbeat.
MAP, which Nick showed me a few months ago, is a full-featured social media analytics service that provides all kinds of insight and intelligence into what’s happening with social media (everything from blogs, Twitter, video sites, messages board, forums, social networks and the news), where it’s happening and who’s driving the conversations.
Heartbeat is a cost-effective social media monitoring and measurement tool that provides constantly updated snapshots of social media conversations delivered using a variety of user-friendly and intuitive graphics.
For anyone interested in social media analytics, MAP and Heartbeat are impressive one-two punch that will make an impact in a market attracting a growing amount of attention. There’s plenty of competitive but I really believe Sysomos has created something special.
We’ve created a launch page where you can a lot more information about Sysomos, MAP and Heartbeat, including the press release, a video (see below) that explains Sysomos, and some screen captures.
Technorati Tags: canada, social media analytics, startup, sysomos
Bing: Up and Close
After enthusiastically blogging about Bing over the weekend, I was invited to an event last night hosted by Natalie Bow, senior marketing manager with Microsoft, and Stacey Jarvis, Search Lead with Microsoft Canada.
It was an interesting opportunity for me to hear first-hand about Microsoft’s search ambitions and, as important, listen to what other people within Toronto’s high-tech community are thinking about Bing.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft folks are enthusiastic and bubbly about Bing’s reception. After all, Bing wasn’t savaged unlike search newbies such as Cuil and Wolfram|Alpha.
The people who don’t work for Microsoft were somewhat less buoyant. The general feel is Bing is “fine” – a description we would use when I was kid after piano lessons, which meant we didn’t hate the lesson but weren’t overjoyed either.
By fine, I mean Bing works well enough. It has a few interesting wrinkles and thankfully doesn’t try to position itself as better than Google. The question is whether Bing is different enough to convince people to give it a shot and, ideally, switch from Google.
Right now, I’d say that isn’t going to happen in a significant way but Bing has got off to a un-rocky enough start to live another day.
A friend, whose opinion I trust and value, made it abundantly clear to Ms. Bow that Bing’s biggest weakness could be an abundance of unnecessary frills forced into the mix by ambitious product managers and developers. My friend believes Bing would do itself a lot of good by trying to less to more people, which has a lot of merit.
That said, I think there’s a lot of people rooting for Bing to succeed. There’s people who want Microsoft to become a better search player, and there’s people who want someone – anyone – to really take on Google. In that sense, it’s interesting to see Microsoft as the underdog.
All in all, Bing has potential. The ball’s in Microsoft’s court to see if it can make Bing sing (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)
Update: All Things D reports that Mahalo, the human-powered search engine whose growth has stalled at about three million unique (U.S.) visitors/month, is going through a two-part makeover. First, the look and feel of front page will change; second, it wants users to flesh out the database as opposed to relying on Mahalo editors.
Addendum: There was not Wi-Fi at the restaurant where Microsoft held the event so I had to take analog notes (aka pen and napkin):
Technorati Tags: bing, google, microsoft, search engines
First Impressions of Bing: Promising
The launch of Bing has, if anything, been interesting.
It was apparently going be launched last Thursday before Google pulled the rug out from Microsoft by unveiling Wave. Then, Bing was going to be launched on June 3. But, today, Bing is live.
First impressions are that Bing has some interesting features that could make it an interesting proposition. I don’t think anyone is going to blown away enough to declare Bing a Google-killer but Bing shows enough potential that you’ll probably give it the benefit of the doubt.
Bing shows particularly intriguing potential when it comes to product searches by providing a variety of options. For example, a search for digital cameras provides links to the top-10 cameras, types of cameras, accessaries, brands and images.
Another really nice feature is the ability to get a snapshot of a blog’s content through a new mini-window that pops up when hover over it. Here’s what you would see if you did a search on “Mark Evans”, and then hovered over the link for my blog.
More: Mike Arrington gives Bing the thumb’s up – “I like it. And I would consider using it as my search engine”, while FastCompany’s Kit Eaton was also impressed. It’s been a long time since a Microsoft product received this kind of reception.
Technorati Tags: bing, google, microsoft
