April 2007 Entries

Yesterday's announcement from Google about including Web history in search personalization marks a fairly significant development in disambiguating intent on Google.  Consider the implications.  One of the issues I had with the initial implementation of search personalization was that it really only worked when there was existing search history.  That really only covered one in five searches for most of us.  That also meant that personalization showed up most often in areas where you tended to do a lot of searching.  For example, if you search within your industry a lot and tend to go to the same sites over and over again, you would find the site lifted on to your top page of search results.  Of course, if you were doing the typical "vanity" search to see where you rank and you end up clicking on your own site, this would have the effect of lifting your site into the top 10 results.  If anything, this implementation of personalization works to make navigation search a little more efficient.  But I'm not sure it went too far in disambiguating intent, which is the holy grail for any search engine.

With the introduction of Web history, it's a whole new ballgame in disambiguating intent.  This allows Google to move far beyond the well tred search path and actually taps into your current browsing behavior to try to determine what's on your mind right now.  If Sep Kamvar's personalization algorithm is as powerful as I suspect it is, this could dramatically alter the results that you're seeing.  The promise of personalization is greatest when it can be applied in areas that are new territory for you.  It helps Google interpret just the kind of site you want to see, given your behavior at the present time. 

Let me give you an example.  Let's say you're looking at buying a new vehicle.  Let's further say that you're fairly early in the consideration phase and your visit a lot of sites like Edmunds.com and Autobytel.  This tells Google that you're looking for information and you're probably looking at sites that could be comparing your alternatives.  If you've already visited sites like Edmunds.com, Google would probably lift those sites into the first search results page.  If Google's algorithm truly makes a move towards a recommendation engine, what it can then do is find similar sites you may have never considered, based on the characteristics of the sites you have been visiting and make you aware of these sites.  That's where the real win for the user comes in personalization.  It's not just providing you a shortcut to sites you are already aware of, it's in making you aware of new sites you never knew existed, ranked and prioritized according to the PageRank algorithm.  With Web history, Google can track your progress through the buying cycle to be able to match the information site you're looking for to where it believes you are, based on your current click stream data.

There are other implications that are very interesting to advertisers.  Click paths tend to indicate the life events that you're currently in the middle of it.  The life event could be a major purchase, planning a holiday, buying a new house, planning for a wedding, or graduating from university.  In each of those instances, there are a number of linked consumer needs that tend to go together.  There's been a significant amount of research done on how life events generate predictable consumer patterns.  Web history gives Google a window into exactly what is happening in your life right now.  I had written a column about how surprised I was with the glimpse that search history provided into my mindset at any given time.  If you combine that with Web history, you would have a very finely detailed snapshot of both big and small events in my life for any time period.  It gives Google the ability to precisely target search results based on exactly what's happening to me right now.

But let's face it, it's not the search results that Google is focusing on.  Google is altruistic enough to make organic search results the testbed to play with the personalization algorithm, but the monetization opportunities in this are mind-boggling to say the least.  When you combine the ability to precisely target and interpret the mindset of any given consumer with the multiple touch points that Google now owns to provide advertising messaging to that prospect, you have a marketer's dream scenario.  When I asked Marisa Mayer about this she made it clear that organic results are what they are working on now, but they don't want their advertising network to be too far behind the curve.  I'm still working my way through the interview making notes but I did want to get this post up because I think from a user perspective there's some important information here.  For me, the promise of personalization is moving Google to be a true recommendation engine when it gets confident in disambiguating my intent based on my current behavior.  Folding Web history into search history moves Google a quantum leap forward in being able to do this reliably and consistently.

The interesting question will be to see what kind of user pushback comes from the privacy concerns.  Danny Sullivan touched on this a little bit in his post.  Will the trade-off of increased search accuracy be enough to have lots of users opt in? Obviously this is what Google is counting on and that's why they're introducing the enhancement in the organic results first.  If they can provide a clear win to the user, than the trade-off seems a lot less formidable.  And when they're introducing that usability lift in something as benign as organic search results, it seems a little less ominous and invasive.  If they can get us using Web history by giving us a win-win on our search functionality, is a greater likelihood that we'll leave Web History turned for when they do decide to start rolling it in to their advertising presentation algorithms. Enough users will have it turned on it will give them the critical mass they need to appeal to the early adopter advertisers who want a take it for a spin.

You know how when you install the Google toolbar and enable the PageRank feature, it gives you the warning on the EULA that this is not your typical legal  Yada yada?  Ever wondered what they were doing with all that information that's being streamed back to a Google server somewhere?  Well, today Google announced just what they intend to do with it.  They're going to use it to personalize your search results.  At least that's what they're going to do today. Tomorrow, who knows?

I just had a walk-through with Marissa Mayer and Sep Kamvar of Google's new plans for personalization. 

In a nutshell, it will take the information gathered through the Google toolbar and use that, in combination with your search history, to personalize your search results.  Up till now only your past search history was used.  Enabling Web history, which is what Google is calling this, is very much a "opt in" process.  Google wants to get a small beta test bed of users so they can get a data set large enough to let Sep Kamvar, the person behind Google's personalization algorithm, see what he can do with this additional rich set of data. Marissa indicated that this would increase the transparency of the data that Google was collecting about you. Based on the below screenshot you should be able to see exactly the sites that you visited in the past.

If you want to see the nitty-gritty on what it means to sign in  or sign out of web history and what it will look like on the search results page, I would suggest checking out Danny Sullivan ever growing blog post on Searchengineland.  This is breaking news so I haven't had much of a chance to put my thoughts together.  Like Danny, I'm "growing the post" as I find out more.  I'm going to be going back over my notes with Marissa because I think there's some pretty significant implications for both users and advertisers in this. 

In a column earlier this month I talked about Google moving towards behavioral targeting across their network and this is a huge missing piece.  I asked Marissa specifically about whether behavioral targeting of advertising based on the data collected through the toolbar would take place.  In her words, they want their organic search results to be "a little bit ahead of the curve" but overall, they want their search ads and their search results to be aligned in relevance, which means they need to be listening to the same signals.  Increasingly these will be coming from Google's personalization algorithm.

Until I get a chance to blog more, here's a little food for thought.  I had previously posted about Google moving towards behavioral targeting.  For me this makes all kinds of sense.  And there I speculated about what Google might be doing with all that data it collects through the PageRank toolbar.  Again, I seem to be reading my crystal ball into the future because just a few weeks later I got the call that Marissa wanted to talk to me.  And when Marissa Mayer wants to talk to you, you should listen, because it generally means something important is happening at the Googleplex.  So when you start putting pieces together, including this new move to personalization with including Web history, Google's recent acquisition of DoubleClick, and the ability to behaviorally target people across both are contextual and DoubleClick network, not to mention the search results page, you start to get a picture of where they may be taking this.  There's a lot more thought required here and I'm going to be trying to carve some time aside tomorrow morning to do another post on this.  I obviously want to look at this from the user perspective.  I think, although they're limiting this to a beta and it's very much an opt in process, this will renew the calls against personalization that have been coming from critics around the Web.  Marissa indicated that right now they're going to be sticking to their threshold of two personal results per page, never knocking out the number one organic results, but she made it clear that that's a "for now" call and will likely change in the future.  Google will move more aggressively towards personalization on more types of searches and they will impact more results.  A few months ago when I did the original post I said that once the gates are open on personalization the dam will burst and there will be no holding it back.  Today's announcement ups the ante significantly.

Earlier this week Pete Blackshaw wrote a column in the entitled 10 reasons why he should stop blogging.

So, should I stop blogging?

Seriously, I'm starting to feel really anxious about keeping up with my main blog.

Don't get me wrong. I love my blog and its topic, but frankly, I'm struggling to keep up. I'm just not cranking out content like I used to, and feel as if I'm contributing "too little too late." I'm starting to freak about folks potentially sending unsubscribe pings my way, and I just can't handle the thought of such rejection.

Pete's not the only one going through this dilemma.  After a year of blogging I found that my blogging output has its highs and lows.  It is hard work keeping a steady stream going and they're not always going to be pearls.  But I really believe it is worth it. I still get a charge when I'm at a show and somebody walks up to me and says, "I love your blog".  I can't help but checking to see if a new post generated some buzz and is getting picked up around the Web.  And I profess to check my Technorati ranking more often than I should.

Adding to the aggregate doubt about blogging was a video appeal by blogger Michael Gray asking bloggers to step away from the keyboard.  If you don't have anything useful to contribute, don't regurgitate, just give up.

It's all blog content good?  No.  Is there a lot of it that's redundant?  Yes.  Do I waste a lot of my day sorting through crap content?  Yes.  Does that mean people should stop blogging?  No, and I'll tell you why.  In fact, I'll give Pete and the rest of you out there who are wondering if this is worth it 10 reasons to keep blogging:

1. New ideas have to be expressed frequently and in different ways to be heard
   
   The thing I like most about blogging is its immediacy.  As an idea pops into your head, it's really not that hard to post to your blog.  That means that blogs are often the seed beds for new ideas.  It's where we first express them, seeing if they resonate with anyone else out there in our readership.  If they do resonate, other bloggers start picking up the thread and embellishing on the original idea.  Ideas can spread very quickly this way.  And that's tremendously exciting.  Let's face it, it takes a while for new ideas to gain traction.  So when new ideas are expressed in different ways in different places around the Web they're given a better chance to grow and survive.  Blogs are like incubators for new ideas.
   
   
2. Everyone has a voice
   
   Freedom of speech is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.  We all have voices.  Blogs allow us to express those voices.  It's not for you or me or Michael Gray to say what is important and what is not important, which voice deserves to be heard and which voice should be silenced.  None of them should be silenced.  It's your choice whether you choose to listen or not.
   
   
3. You can't find your voice unless you use it
   
   The first time you speak up, you usually do so timidly.  The first time I spoke in public, my words barely came out as a squeak.  The more often you choose to express yourself though, the more confident your voice becomes.  When I first started blogging , somebody told me it would take a while for me to find my voice.  To be honest, I'm still not sure if I've found it.  My voice seems to vary from post to post.  But the fact is, the more I post the easier it gets to express myself.  Eventually you find your voice, your viewpoint and, more importantly, your audience finds you.  The best bloggers out there have the consistency of message and voice that attracts huge numbers of readers.  But unless you push to keep blogging, you may never find the voice or the confidence to speak out.
   
   
4. Generating dialogue is a good thing
   
   Blogs are forums for online conversation.  Sometimes the conversations can be affirmative in nature and sometimes they can evolve into debates.  Either way conversations are a good thing.  Ideological debate is a good thing.  Blogs fuel online conversation and that is one of the most positive aspects that the Internet brings to our society.
   
   
5. The Web is a big place
   
   We have all defined our favorite paths online.  We've all identified the blogs and sites that we like to frequent.  Repeating important stories and news isn't necessarily a bad thing.  You may be reaching an audience who just wouldn't have heard it anywhere else.
   
   
6. There's News and then there's Views
   
   Most often, when I am passing along a news story ,I try to add my own viewpoint and analysis.  I believe this adds value to the original story and colors it, giving it dimension and perspective.  The best bloggers try to do the same.  It's one thing to just regurgitate news.  It's another thing to digest it and come back with thoughtful analysis.
   
   
7. Communication is essential to community
   
   No doubt about it.  The Internet is a global community and the fundamental glue of community is communication.  Blogs represent the most vibrant form of communication online right now.  It represents the free flow of ideas back and forth between the citizens of this community.  If you shut down blogs, you shut down a substantial portion of communication that makes the Internet the largest, most vibrant, most engaging community that has ever existed in history.
   
   
8. One post can make a difference
   
   You just never know what the post is that could make the difference.  The idea may seem like a throwaway to you, but once posted it may find it takes a life on of its own and you'll be amazed by how far and wide it can travel.  Sometimes just expressing your viewpoint about one simple idea can make a difference for someone else out there who reads it. It can open their eyes to a reality they hadn't seen before.  Paradigm shifting can be a tremendously powerful thing and it can be initiated by a single blog post.
   
   
9. Ideas shouldn't die alone
   
   There's nothing worse than having an idea and never giving it life.  Nothing kills an idea faster than locking it in a dark cupboard.  Ideas need air to breathe and light to grow.  Most of all, ideas need support.  They need to find others who get it and grow it.  Like I said before, blogs are a place where this can happen. By the way Pete, one of your articles did this for me, and I posted on it on my blog.
   
   
10. Not everyone can do this
    
    This is hard work, and perhaps that's the best reason to keep doing it. There will be many who try and give up. There will be more than never try in the first place. The latest numbers indicate that there is about 80 million blogs out there.  Pete's blog has a rank of 21,503 right now on Technorati. That means he's in an elite group, amongst the top .02 % of all blogs on the web.

Don't give up Pete..I'm reading!

Everyone's jumping on the "Google dominating the advertising universe" bandwagon.  BusinessWeek ran a article today speculating on Google's omnipresent domination with their acquisition of DoubleClick plus some recently announced deals with EchoStar's Dish satellite TV network and Clear Channel's radio network.  The primal fear even has its own acronym now, FOG, or "Fear of Google".  But in BusinessWeek's article there's one telling quote (emphasis mine):

"To date, Google has had one gargantuan advertising success. It developed an online auction platform enabling businesses, even those with little marketing experience, to easily bid for space to serve tiny text ads related to information Web surfers wanted at a particular moment. Most of these ads—which exist primarily to drive traffic to Web pages and, ultimately, generate sales—run on Google's own search results pages."

And there you have Google's dilemma in a nutshell.  The more aggressive they are extending their network reach into new channels, the more they come to rely on what, for them, has been the golden egg, their search engine.  The "gargantuan advertising success" has actually been search engine marketing's success.  Google has been riding a consumer initiated wave as buyers have found an incredibly effective new channel to do their research on.  The success that Google has enjoyed by riding that wave has more to do with the concept of search then it has to do with any particularly brilliant Google strategy.  Google has keyed into that success by providing a very effective search tool.  And if you're looking anywhere for the secret to Google's success, look no further than their obsession about user experience on their search engine.  They've kept it clean, they've kept it relevant, and they've kept it a favorite choice of millions and millions of search users.  That has given them the ability to monetize a tremendous amount of traffic and flow that money straight into the corporate coffers, enabling them to go on a shopping spree of unprecedented proportion.

I don't begrudge Google for thinking big and planning to dominate the universe.  It's really the only direction they can go.  But I would like to hear more people acknowledge the fact that Google success is built completely on the emergence of search as an essential online activity.  And the emergence of that activity is due to a lot of pioneers in the area, not just Google.  In its present form, search is best represented on Google but the very act of searching owes a huge debt to dozens of other companies, including current also-rans like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Overture, and the historic footnotes like Infoseek, AltaVista and All the Web.

Because of that I get a little frustrated when search does not get its proper due.  Personally, I believe there is huge untapped potential still in search.  But everyone is so focused on Google's extension of its empire that I don't believe search is getting the respect it's due.  It's not getting respect from advertisers, it's not getting respect from agencies and lately, it's not even getting respect from Google.

I know that Google has some exciting plans for search, primarily wrapped around personalization and I look forward to hearing more about this.  I hope that Google search team remains engaged pursuing the potential of this tremendously effective channel and doesn't become diverted from this goal by the glitz and glamour of Google's new marketing channels.  I know the sales teams at Google are very much focused on the network and the other opportunities, seeming to take the power of search, which is currently buying all the lava lamps and free lunches at Google, for granted.

 

Editor Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal points out nasty little dilemma that Google has bought themselves into.  With their acquisition of DoubleClick they also get DoubleClick's search marketing arm, Performics.  So what does Google do with the search engine optimization and marketing firm?  A conflict of interest?  Yes, one of fairly substantial proportions.  My guess is that Performics may find itself with a for sale sign on it as Google actively shops it to agencies.  And with agencies recently on buying spree, it shouldn't be too hard to find a buyer. Check out the comment string as there are some interesting ideas put forward.

It was an incredibly packed week (and hotel) at SES NY. As you've probably noticed, I didn't get a chance to do any blog posts while I was there. But the good news I had a chance to sort through my inbox and set aside some post worthy tidbits that I'll try to catch up with in the next week, so I'll try to make up for lost time.

One of the things I chatted with a few friends about was a strong undercurrent of change in the industry. On the last day of the show I had lunch with Greg Jarboe and followed that up with a Guiness or two in the lounge with Chris Sherman and Matt Bailey. Besides the obvious (Google's purchase of DoubleClick, IPG's purchase of Reprise and the recent purchase of Global Strategies by WPP) there's just a feeling of transition to a new stage for the SEM biz. Jarboe referred to it as the "gentrification" of the business (Greg is so erudite!).

After, in a quick chat with Shari Thurow (yes, we ironed out the wrinkles of our spat) and Anne Kennedy, Anne nailed it for me. We're crossing the chasm. Isn't it funny. I've written at least one column saying this was the case and did a series for MediaPost indicating we were in for sea level change, but I had to be reminded about it.

Perhaps it was the validation of being surrounded by a bunch of other SEMs. For most of the time, I'm somewhat isolated from the SEM community here in Kelowna. From this vantage point, I speculated that we were ready to cross the chasm but I had the comfort of being somewhat removed from the day to day machinations of the industry. But last week, I was in the thick of it and in the flurry of activity, I was wondering what was going on. It took Anne to point out to me that it was just what I had postulated on a few months earlier. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees!

There are a few symptomatic indicators that seem to indicate a chasm crossing is ready to happen:

The mainstream is adopting search, but they're not sure where it should live. More and more companies are testing the search waters, but they're hesitant to partner with an outside firm. Their answer, at least in the short term, is to build an in-house team to handle the campaigns. I'm getting this from all sides.

The major agency holding companies have all acquired search expertise. In order to try to stem the in-house tide, the IPG's, WPP's and Omnicoms of the world have all gone shopping for SEM expertise.

Awareness of search has moved up the C Level. For the first time, SEMPO's Market Survey found that the executive team is not only aware of search, but keenly interested in it. This has been an ongoing frustration in the past for search marketers.

With all of the above happening, it's going to be an interesting time in the search biz. Ironically, just as we're waiting for the 800 pound gorilla to be crowned, another interesting observation I made last week was for the established search players to be rushing towards the next big thing. Google is stumbling over itself to rush past search, moving a lot of its focus to display, video and every other channel under the sun. I'm not so sure it's wise to turn the spotlight from search. My gut feeling is it's finally search's time to shine.

Anyway, more posts to come this week..finally!

 

Robert Scoble, in a recent blog post, cracked the Google monetization code on the search results page.  In a conversation with an unnamed Googler he found that Google can afford to dial down the presentation of top sponsored ads because they're just more efficient at monetizing the traffic.  Of course, this shouldn't come as news to anyone who read our last eye tracking report.  We went into great depth about Google's ability do more with less when it comes to sponsored advertising on the SERP.

I'm feeling a little blue in the face, but at the risk of repeating myself yet again I'll make the point.  Relevance at the top of the page is a sacred cow.  The Area of Greatest Promise which occupies a tiny little triangle in the far upper left is the landscape you have to focus on if you want to present the best search user experience.  For an in-depth walk-through of what the Area of Greatest Promise is and how it impacts the user experience, check out last week's Just Behave column on Searchengineland.  Also check out The Importance of Consideration Sets, the column I wrote the previous week.  If you want to know how Google does more with less, you have to understand the basic fundamentals of user behavior on a search engine. 

The fact is, when you look at Google's ability to monetize the page they are leaps and bounds ahead of both Yahoo and Microsoft in this regard, yet they are by far the least aggressive than presenting sponsored advertising at the top of the page.  The result? They keep scanning highest on this top real estate.  They have higher click through on both first-time visits to the page and repeat visit.  They don't break user scanner behavior into two distinct paths, but keep it concentrated in the Golden Triangle.  The result is that when they do choose to show sponsored ads in this area, they have much higher levels of engagement and click through over the entire interaction with the search results page, not just the first visit to the page.  If you use the overall user experience as your metric, higher monetization will come as a natural result.  The minute you try to force monetization by hijacking valuable real estate for purely commercial purposes, without consideration for what the user wants, you start eroding your revenue channel.  It's no great secret. Pony up 149 bucks and you can buy a 200 plus page report showing you exactly how Google does it.

Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen Buzz Metrics wrote an interesting column this week talking about the fact that CMO's still have control.  He railed against the absolution of responsibility on the part of marketers, using the new buzzwords of consumer empowerment to justify the fact that they can throw more spam at the average user now because, after all, the user is in control. 

"First, the overheated rhetoric acts as a deceptive rationalization. Remember the theory of cognitive dissonance, that testy tension emanating from two conflicting thoughts at the same time. I worry all this talk about consumers being in control relieves dissonance. It allows us to absolve ourselves of treating consumers with respect. Hey, if they have control and, hence, the power, what possible harm could our junk mail, spam intrusiveness, and recklessness do?"

Pete touches on a very interesting point that I've talked about in the number of columns and post before.  It's the idea of brand messaging going beyond the carefully manufactured advertising and marketing channels and being baked right into the DNA of the company.  Now, brand messaging is as much about customer experience and customer service as it is about the message we see in the typical 30 second television spot.  It brings up an interesting question about consumer control.  Is it so much about control as it is about the ability to connect with information in a new way?  As Pete rightly points out, marketers still have control over a number of aspects of the relationship.  It's impossible to have a two-way relationship with one side being in total control.  The fact is that consumers control part of that relationship and marketers control part of that relationship.  The success of the relationship lies in the ability for the two sides to connect in a mutually beneficial way.  It's not so much the consumers have taken control from marketers as it is that what was typically much more a one-way relationship has evolved into a two-way relationship.

"At the end of the day, we still control the message and the business processes that shape it, but we may need an alterative path to get there. Product quality, customer service, accurate claims, and employee empowerment are all within our control. And these are the input types that really matter, and always have."

Let's explore a little bit closer how this has happened.  It really comes down to the number of channels available for messaging to get from the marketer to the consumer.  It used to be that those channels were tightly controlled and there were only a handful of them.  It goes back to the idea of power constructs.  The last hundred years our society has been all about power constructs.  The paths that lead from the manufacturing of products to the consumption of the products were few and were controlled by the powerful.  This was true in virtually any market you could think of.  With consumer packaged goods the ability of those goods to flow from the manufacturer to the consumer is controlled at various points along that channel by a few powerbrokers.  The same has been true in advertising.  The paths from the advertiser to the consumer were generally controlled by a few very powerful corporations.  Look at how the power construct in advertising typically played itself out:

• At the top we have the advertiser.  
• Below that we have the advertising agency that was responsible for crafting the message. 
• Next you have the media buyer that takes a message created by the advertising agency and determines the channels to reach the target consumer. 
• Below that you have the channels used to reach the consumer, whether they be broadcast TV, newspaper, magazine or radio stations. 
• Finally, at the bottom, you have the consumer themselves. 

All the communication in this channel went one way, from the advertiser down through each of the successive layers until it reached the consumer.  There was no corresponding channel to allow communication from the consumer to flow back through all these gates to the advertiser.  In the case where an advertiser did want to get information from an individual consumer, they would employ a market research company to circumvent the entire power structure of communication and go directly to a handful of representative consumers, determine what they were thinking and report back to the advertiser (or perhaps the advertising agency).  Picture a series of locks on a canal, with all the water flowing one way and with each of the gates of the individual locks designed to let water out and not let water back in.  The only way for water to run back was a small pipeline with a pump on it and the switch to that pump was always in the hands of the advertiser.  They chose when they wanted to listen to the consumer and when they chose to ignore the consumer.  The consumer had virtually no power to push their message back to the advertiser.

Now let's look at what the Internet did.  The Internet took a highly structured, albeit one way, channel and completely blew it apart.  Now water flows freely back and forth between the advertiser and the consumer.  This not so much took control way from the advertiser and gave it to the consumer as it eliminated (or is in the process of eliminating) the existing structure that information flows through.  It democratized connections.  Rather than a man-made channel with restrictive gates and locks that restrict the flow of information from one place to the other, the Internet has turned the landscape into a vast field during a rainstorm.  Water collects in a thousand tiny pools and flows according to the online landscape.  Advertisers can influence where those flows happened as much as consumers can.  The control of flow is now jointly owned by everyone.  Advertisers have not had their power taken away.  They just have to learn how to share it.  They have to live up to the responsibility that goes with a truly two-way relationship.  Because they can no longer control the channel the message goes through, they have to spend more time controlling the very message itself.  They have to make it bulletproof, capable of withstanding the BS test.  And you have to understand that that message can't be carefully crafted, it has to be lived.  It encompasses everything they do in the day-to-day operation of their business.  It has to include all the touch points that brand has with the outside world.  Because every touch point is a small puddle in that massive field.  If they manage the information correctly it will flow in the desired direction.  If they abdicate their responsibility of meeting the customer halfway in providing a mutually beneficial proposition, then they have to bear the consequences when the flow goes in the direction they don't want it to.  And if there is enough momentum in the opposite direction, they will get flooded by a tidal wave of consumer dissent.

All in all, it's a healthier relationship.  One-way relationships tend not to be sustainable in the long term.  But as with any power shift, there's a pendulum effect that will likely occur here.  As power finds its natural balancing point, it will likely swing too far in the direction of the consumers before it comes back again.

I had the pleasure of seeing Guy Kawasaki speak in my hometown of Kelowna last week. 

Photo courtesy of Manoj Jasra

The presentation was one I had seen him give in Vegas at PubCon last fall but the repetition did nothing to reduce the enjoyability of the presentation.  Guy is one of the most engaging speakers I've ever had the privilege of seeing.  I was hoping to be able to get to know him a little bit better but unfortunately, he had a pinched nerve from a hockey injury and was unable to sit at our table for dinner.  He was obviously suffering but managed to pull it together and deliver a great presentation.  We had actually bought tickets for a number of our team at Enquiro because we knew it would be inspirational for them. None were disappointed and both Manoj and Jody actually did blog posts the same night of the presentation  when they got home. Considering the  event didn't  wrap up till 10:30, that shows dedication and passion! 

If you're not aware, Guy is a huge hockey fan and he definitely played to the crowd with a number of hockey references.  Guy said he doesn't often get the chance to use hockey stories but when in Canada, he takes full advantage.  He mentioned that he was actually considering canceling the speaking gig, given the pain that he was in with his injury, but he asked himself,  "What would Mark Messier do?" and then sucked it up and made the trip.  I'm glad he did.  If you ever get the chance to see Guy speak, I would highly recommend going.  I would also recommend becoming a regular reader of his blog, one of the most popular blogs on the web.

Search party Uber-meister Joe Morin has posted the official party list for SES New York and asked me to pass it along.  Joe has helpfully posted both the public and private parties to help you schedule your after-hours time in the Big Apple.  If a party appears on a list that you don't have an invite to, it might be too late, but what the heck, you can put a full court press on when you get to the show to see if you can shake an invite loose. Of course, Joe has discretely not mentioned who's throwing the private soirees, so you'll have to do some investigative work. As Rand Fishkin says in a follow up post to the list, it's a helpful guide if you don't happen to be standing next to Joe or Danny Sullivan at the bar.

Of course, the party a-list always serves to remind us who the elite are and aren't when it comes to search shows.