Tagging, for Fun and Profit

There's quite a buzz now around so-called "tagging sites." The easiest way to describe tagging sites is that they are essentially a Web-based version of the favorites list on your Web browser. Users post their favorite Web sites and Web pages to these tagging sites, which then makes them generally available, or only to a group specified by the user.

In their original incarnation, tagging sites were more of a novelty and convenience than any great breakthrough. But they've been quietly evolving, adding more features and functionality, and as a result are becoming more popular and important as information discovery tools.

Sites such as kaboodle.com, reddit.com and shadows.com, all offer different flavors of the tagging experience, but the common elements are individuals selecting, classifying and sharing interesting Web destinations. In another twist, a Web site called wink.com has now created a search engine that indexes these tagging sites, attempting to improve upon Google's relevance rankings by limiting itself to these recommended pages and sites.While tagging seems to live largely in the world of consumers and hobbyists for now, it manifests larger trends that have implications for all of us.First, that tagging is flourishing is proof of a large and enduring need to organize the Web in order to extract maximum value from it. The Web is simply too vast for anyone to expect that, with a simple search engine query, they will get to the best information resources quickly and easily, if at all. Just as importantly, it's not always obvious that you've found an outstanding Web resource even if you do stumble across it, because the big searches are focused on relevance, which is a weak proxy for quality. Tagging is an attempt to overcome some of these limitations of the big search engines.

Second, while the models vary a bit, tagging isn't really about users classifying the Web content they find, it's much more about the new "3R's" -- ratings, ranking and recommendations. Tagging essentially layers a voting system on top of full text search to (hopefully) present even more precise and valuable search results.

Third, tagging reinforces the notion that true community, in the form of an information commons, is taking root on the Web. In this case, all the recommended Web pages are contributed to a common pool, and the community then works in a collaborative fashion to assess and rate these contributions.

Finally, the tagging craze offers more support for my contention that search is beginning to fragment. While current tagging sites for the most part suffer from trying to be overly inclusive, it is clear that tagging has the most power and value in vertical search-style applications, where a community of experts contributes to a pool of content that is then rated by other experts, assuring that the best available content is recognized and becomes readily accessible.

Warren Wins Again

I was initially a little puzzled by Warren Buffet's recent acquisition of BusinessWire . Far be it for me to question the investment prowess of the Oracle of Omaha, and I am certainly not down on BusinessWire (we awarded them a Model of Excellence award, they presented at InfoCommerce 2003, and we're also a long-time BusinessWire customer), but BusinessWire is in one tough market. Warren Buffet has other information industry investments (Moody's and the Washington Post Company), but Business Wire doesn't seem to me to have the market oligopoly characteristics of these other two investments.

True, BusinessWire has built a strong and respected brand. Its service works fast and well. Its customer support is outstanding. It's been rolling out an endless stream of innovative new capabilities and features. There's unquestionably a valuable business here.

However, as a newsletter publisher and industry research firm, we're in the interesting position of both generating and receiving electronic press releases. And with over 100 press releases flooding our inboxes daily, you start to notice things, key among them: there are at least a dozen press release distribution firms. Leaving aside its large direct competitor, PR Newswire, most of these other competitive firms are tiny, but that's just my point: they are getting their press releases to me. Just as importantly, none charge anywhere near as much as BusinessWire (some are even free), and this is always on my mind as I write those $200 checks to BusinessWire for each press release we distribute.

What's changed is that the business of press release distribution has gone from being a push business to being a pull business. Prior to the Internet, BusinessWire needed to know where, how and to whom to direct press releases, a huge job that created real value and high barriers to entry. Now, the business has flipped entirely, with journalists and others actively searching for news on the Web, and it's not hard to find. We cast a wide net with keyword blog searches, Google news alerts, even spidering Web sites of major data publishers for new press releases, but we're hardly pushing the envelope, and we've got all the press release flow we can handle.

BusinessWire has been working ceaselessly to maintain its edge and perfect its online distribution, but with competitors offering "good enough" levels of distribution for close to nothing, this is a tough business that's only going to get tougher.

So has the great Oracle been overcome by vapors on this investment? Perhaps not. There will always be companies whose news is so significant (at least to them) that they will not want to skimp on getting the best distribution. And to increase their value, the big firms have glommed on to analytics that purport to quantify the ROI of PR buzz.

Also, in reviewing all these press releases, it seems to me there could be an interesting quality play on the receiving end. With press releases so easy and cheap to create, everyone's doing them, creating a whole lot of "fact inflation" in the process. It's hard to tell who is real and who is dreaming, and it's near impossible sometimes to separate fact from fiction. A great differentiator for BusinessWire might be some sort of credentialing function. How about a partnership with D&B to link press releases to company credit ratings and backgrounders? How about a deal with ZoomInfo to provide quick background on company principals? There are lots of easy, risk-free ways BusinessWire could vouch for its customers, moving them into a trusted and preferred status.

Once you start thinking this way, it becomes clear that while this battlefield may be a tough one, the underlying need is not going away, and product differentiation is still very much possible. The battle is becoming a creative battle, and winning depends on deploying the right combination of value added content and tools.

There's clearly no shortage of creativity at BusinessWire, and there's clearly no shortage of capital at Berkshire Hathaway, and in combination it does look increasingly like Warren will win again ... again.

Reed Business Acquires Spec Check

A nice rich data move by Reed:

Reed Business Information and Construction Equipment magazine have announced that RBI has acquired Spec Check U.S. LLC, the leading data provider of construction and agricultural equipment specification comparisons. The Spec Check database includes more than 90 categories of mobile construction and agricultural machinery.

Spec Check will continue to serve construction equipment manufacturers, distributors and end-users. The Spec Check data will also be the future source for the specification database on http://www.constructionequipment.com/. The database will interact seamlessly with the newly relaunched site's product, manufacturer, distributor databases, as well as its award-winning evaluative content.

"Yeah, We're Online"

It's remarkable to me that, at this late date, a meaningful number of publishers continue to jeopardize their futures with a less-than-total commitment to developing Web-based product offerings.Too often, I hear from publishers, "yeah, we're on the Web," delivered with vocal inflection that makes it clear the Web is viewed as some annoying new obligation, instead of the future of their businesses.

Of course, when you view something as an annoying obligation, you do what's required of you as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

Not surprisingly, this attitude reflects in the finished product. More than once, I've been told by programmers that they have been handed databases with no more in the way of instructions than "make it searchable on the Web."

Recently, I was presented with a user name and password by a publisher who wanted me to review his site. I went to the site, clicked "login," and was presented with a lengthy new user sign-up form. Not seeing any other options, I filled out the form, included the supplied user name and password. The system immediately rejected them, telling me they were "already in use." After much experimentation, I determined that while the site requires passwords, validates them and tracks them, there was no way to use them more than once. Returning users had to re-register from scratch and think up new user names and passwords every time!

Another site I reviewed gave new meaning to the term "keyword searching." I dutifully typed my keyword into the search box, and the system took me immediately to a document that was over 100 pages long, and left me there to, well ... search for my keyword ... as no highlighting was supplied.

In another remarkably crude search application, I entered a search term and got back 14,000 results. I was impressed until I realized the the site was returning unfiltered Google search results. Yes, this publisher was effectively offering paid access to someone else's free product.

This isn't a failure of programmers. It is a failure of management that left programmers to develop in a vacuum and let buggy products go live. To their credit, these publishers were aghast when I alerted them to these problems, and moved quickly to correct them. But what was most troubling to me was that in none of these cases had the users of these Web sites voiced any complaints. Why? Probably because they weren't in fact using them. And that's my point. If publishers don't take their own sites seriously enough to access them at least occasionally, they should not be surprised when their customers don't either. The act of simply "being on the Web" is not an achievement. In fact, a poorly-executed Web site is seriously detrimental to your business.

The Fragmentation of Search

The New Year is traditionally a time for predictions, so I will dutifully take my turn. I am only offering one, but it's a big one: in 2006, we will begin to see a meaningful shift in the current GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) search hegemony.

Am I predicting the implosion or demise of one or more of the big three search engines? Not at all. Instead, I am predicting that the search business will begin to evolve in ways that don't play well to the strengths of the big general search engines and that we will see concrete evidence of this by the end of 2006. I also believe that we're starting to see the big three getting distracted, likely to the detriment of their core search business. Yahoo is increasingly emphasizing content, and has previously de-emphasized search to chase other opportunities. Google, for all its technological prowess and business success, is rapidly enmeshing itself in deals that will distract it, if not alter its very essence (think AOL). And at this late date, Microsoft is still trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. You can never count Microsoft out of the game, but they're clearly running out of time and options if they truly want to be a major player in search.

Perhaps more importantly though, users are raising their expectations with regard to search. It was a huge technological achievement to get so much of the Web under one index, and I never ceased to be amazed by the new search tricks and innovations that are being rolled out on a regular basis. Yet, I believe the game is changing, and what users -- particularly business users -- hunger for now is not the most answers, but the "right" answer. To get to the "right" answer demands sophisticated filtering and true domain expertise, something that simply doesn't fit within the one size fits all framework of the general search engines.

If I am right (and at worst I may be off on my timing), we are going to see two types of search rapidly getting both attention and market traction: vertical search and paid search.

Vertical search is not a new concept, but it's had difficulty gaining mainstream acceptance and momentum, both of which seem imminent. While definitions vary a bit, to me vertical search means presenting a deep, highly filtered and very intelligent entry point into a specific market. Vertical search demands true domain expertise, because you can't filter intelligently unless you truly understand the information needs of a market, and you are experienced and confident enough to vet information sources to present the best as opposed to the most. Vertical search is most likely going to be advertising supported, but don't rule out paid search.

Paid search sounds a bit crazy, with GYM offering so much for free. Of course, people also said cable television would never succeed with broadcast television offering so much for free. I believe the marketplace increasingly wants both deep and dependable sources of information. This is where many of the content aggregators are playing right now, but most are hanging their hats on having the biggest collection of stuff, as opposed to the most comprehensive collection of stuff in a single area.

So while there will continue to be a large role for GYM to meet general and unsophisticated search needs, the future is about specialty search providers leveraging expertise in specific areas to become the search engines of choice for specific audiences. So while we are celebrating New Year's messages of unity in other contexts, in 2006 the data publishing industry should be welcoming -- and profiting from -- fragmentation.