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Todd Watson

Search Data Are

Written by Todd Watson
3/4/2009 2 comments
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The search CEOs were out in full media force yesterday.

Google's CEO was speaking at the Morgan Stanley tech conference, and when asked what he thought about Twitter, the Silicon Alley Insider had him referring to it and other microblogging services as "sort of poor man's email systems."

According to the post, he went to elaborate, explaining that Twitter-like services have "aspects of an email system, but they don't have a full offering."

And thank God for that. I don't need any more email; I have more than enough as it is.

Come to think of it, I have plenty of Tweets as well. And Facebook wall posts. And LinkedIn invites and recommendation requests.

And on, and on, and on.

It's enough to make one social media weary.

In fact, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that homing pigeons were a high-tech, low-maintenance, but very effective, way of communicating.

In fact, did you know that Paul Reuter, who founded the Reuters press agency, used a fleet of 45 pigeons to deliver news and stock prices between Brussels and Aachen, which were the terminals of early telegraph lines?

I didn't either, but I know it to be true, because I read it on Wikipedia!

Of course, there are some things of which there can't ever be too much.

Just ask new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz.

At the same Morgan Stanley conference, the new chief Yahoo indicated that Yahoo had no interest in giving up its search business.

Why, you inquire?

Because the data the search business provides is "extremely important" to Yahoo and information the company has to have.

Now if they can just turn all that data into a global database of cash-generating intentions.

Ah shucks, I'm sure they'd settle for even just 20 percent search share.

Meanwhile, back at the TechCrunch ranch, a newly reinvigorated Mike Arrington explains that three key MySpace executives are voting with their feet and are outta there.

The three (COO, SVP Product Strategy, and VP Technology) "are leaving to take some time off and then start a new company."

Or, as Arrington suggested, "the sun is setting on MySpace."

Nah nah nah nah... nah nah nah nah... hey heyyy, goood byeeee.

Good homing pigeons are hard to find.

— Todd "Turbo" Watson, blogger for IBM's On Demand Business Website

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robjvargas
Rank: Cyborg
Thursday March 5, 2009 5:20:18 PM
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It can be easy to get tired of it all, when there's so much of it.  Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, AIM, YIM, Skype... and yeah, I'd even include some forms of VoIP under the umbrella of "social network."  Add in SMS, MMS, Blackberry/PIN messaging, and there's quite the little maelstrom of interaction going on out there.

 But, apparently, the experts don't seem to remember that personal computers were a fad that would quickly fade away.  And then it was the Internet... and search engines, and email, and chat, and Myspace, and Wikipedia, and... well... on and on and on.

We thecie types have a bad habit of underestimating the will of the end users.  More of them out there actually do know what they are doing, and how intent they are in putting these tools to good use.
What fun to watch is some of the same people ready to pass on Twitter, etc; they seem to be the same crowd that thought Second Life was the next killer app.
DontHateCuzImRIGHT
Rank: Cyborg
Wednesday March 4, 2009 9:49:57 PM
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Message to Carol (Bartz) RE: No intention of giving up search business; ok, but I’m giving up THEIRS (Yahoo’s). ‘Ya know, I try to use other search engines, Yahoo, Alltheweb, Altavista, Dogpile, Ask, Clusty, WindSeek, Surfwax...well, just because, and I always come back to Google. Yahoo’s probably not going to give up on their crap chat (Yahoo Messenger) software either. Of course that might be good for business. 
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