I Google too… or iGoogle - that's the new name of personalized search services Google is announcing today - covered in detail on Google Blogoscoped.  Here's some highlights of the coverage:

"…Still, Sep says they want to put the user in charge. For instance, Google makes personalization optional, Sep says, and you can pause the Web History feature (or remove specific items from the history). He goes on to mention that you can also export your Web History as RSS feed, giving the user more control over their data."

AJAX has made personalization easier to accomplish:

"..AJAX, which allows fluent page updates & client-server data exchange without having to reload a page, is one reason why Google has entered the customizable concept of Personalized Homepages, Jessica says. She goes on to say that content is changing on the web, and traditional web search wasn’t meant to answer the question “What do I want to see?”. This is one of the reasons why Personalized Homepage was created - to show you what you want to see."

Perhaps the most interesting development, for me, liking gadgets - is Google's new Gadget Maker:

"..

Jessica Ewing announces Google is going to release Gadget Maker today (claim: “no programming required”). There are 7 different types of gadgets that users can create with this tool. A new link at the bottom of your iGoogle page will allow you to access the Gadget Maker service. Jessica is showing the Framed Photo Gadget maker page (pictured above), walking us through how you would create a photo gadget. Once the gadget is created, you can invite other people to view & use the gadget, and make it publicly available for other people to view & use it.

The different types of “wizard” gadgets will cover:

1. A Photo gadget (share a series of photos with others)
2. GoogleGram gadget (allowing you to display a new greeting message to someone for every day for 7 days)
3. Daily Me gadget (which will show what you’re currently doing, as well as quotes, what’s on your mind etc.)
4. Personalized Countdown gadget
5. A Personalized List (you can e.g. publish your own top ten list with this, Google says)
6. YouTube video favorites gadget (pictured above, this gadget will let you create a YouTube channel to share)
7. A “Free Form” gadget (an “all-purpose gadget that lets you meld text and image in any way,” Google says) "

Looks like Google is getting into Social Media in a big way with Gadget Maker.

And then the bombshell for SEO … Personalized Pagerank for every person. Interesting ….

"..He suggests that Google wants to compute PageRank for every single person, so to speak. Sep explains that Google thinks of personalization in 3 parts:

• Search Your own stuff (like Google Desktop Search, Web History)
• Traditional (Pull) Search
• Push Search (like recommendations, iGoogle/ personalized homepage) .

 I don't think it was explained how that's going to work

Got a press release from Nielsen this afternoon outlining the full aquisition of BuzzMetrics by Nielsen (of which it already owned 58%).  I am not sure how to read the timing - does it have anything to do with the Google and Yahoo aquisitions or not?

Anyway, since Nielsen owned 58% to begin with - I'm not sure if there's any significant change since they owned controlling interest in BuzzMetrics anyway.  Here's a part of the Press Release:

"..

Nielsen to Acquire Remaining Interest in BuzzMetrics;  Will Merge Internet/Online Operations to Create ‘Fully Integrated Suite of Services’

April 30, 2007 - New York and Haarlem, the Netherlands - The Nielsen Company, a leading global information and media company, and BuzzMetrics, the global leader in tracking and analysis of online consumer-generated media, today announced that Nielsen and the other stockholders of BuzzMetrics have agreed in principle to a transaction under which Nielsen, which already owns approximately 58 percent of BuzzMetrics, would acquire the remaining BuzzMetrics shares it does not currently own.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of May 2007. Nielsen has been involved with BuzzMetrics since January 2005, and took a majority position in February 2006.

Earlier this year, Nielsen announced it had entered into a merger agreement with NetRatings, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTRT) under which Nielsen, which already owns approximately 60 percent of NetRatings, would acquire the NetRatings shares it does not currently own. That transaction, subject to NetRatings stockholder approval, is expected to be completed in the second or third quarter of this year.

Upon completion of the BuzzMetrics and NetRatings transactions, Nielsen’s premiere Internet information services — which are marketed as Nielsen//NetRatings and Nielsen BuzzMetrics — will be consolidated into a single service unit. The new service will be led by Itzhak Fisher, Executive Chairman of BuzzMetrics. As Executive Chairman of the new service, Mr. Fisher will continue to report to David Calhoun, Chairman and CEO of The Nielsen Company.

“NetRatings and BuzzMetrics are recognized as the two leading providers of insight about consumer behavior online,” said David Calhoun, Chairman and CEO of The Nielsen Company.

“By acquiring 100 percent of these world-class brands, Nielsen can provide our clients with unrivaled understanding of consumer behavior in this space, “added Calhoun. “More broadly, we can provide our clients with even more insightful information when Internet/Online consumer usage is combined with what products and services consumers buy (ACNielsen), what consumers watch on television (Nielsen Media Research), and what books, films, audio and video usages consumers interact with across multiple platforms. Providing a fully integrated suite of services will enable Nielsen to provide clients with unprecedented insights they need to grow their businesses.”

Picked up a new client recently and used Omniture Site Catalyst to determine how much Social Media Traffic this site had.  Turned out it did not have much (.15% counting blogs and 1% if we include traffic from Forums).

Anyway, without getting into site specifics - here's a list of general steps I took to determine Social Media Traffic to a site; I'm not saying these are the only steps - there's probably more that can be done - but here's a start.

1. Using WikiPedia's list of Social Networks as a good starting point - I set up a match-string filter to pull out all the referring urls containing the following -

blogspot technorati myspace 43things facebook flickr linkedin LiveJournal meetup orkut stumbleupon reunion tribe xanga care2 blurty twitter xml feedburner rss forum

Besides blogspot and LiveJournal, which had about equal the amount of traffic - traffic from Forum sites was much more substantial - and I bet, more commerce based, believe it or not; this will vary depending on the type of site.

2. I took the Forum traffic and broke it down by URL string and isolated each Forum domain (took me a little bit of work in Excel to do that) and counted the number of instances of the Forum domain plus the overall number of visits from each Forum Domain.  I ended up with 5 domains sending 65% of the Forum traffic.  My idea was to hone in on Forums that were more active and report back on it. 

If I had more time maybe I'd look at the content on the Forums - or if I had the tools, do Semantic Analysis of the content on Forums - but I don't have those tools at my disposal right now - so I'm not going there - just yet (clearly - that is something to do - since the URLs that are talking about a site and linking to it - can be categorized based on content and what they're saying….about the site).

3. I used SEO Spyglass to check out the indexed blog, messageboard and forum traffic to my client and found it to be a fraction of what was contained in their Site Referral logs (via Site Catalyst).  That doesn't surprise me as most tools can only query and get the first 1000 URLs from any search engine - no more is provided and many of the Social Media content is in the Long Tail - in the other millions of URLs that are not in the first 1000 URLs reported back.  

I was fine with it and only used the search engine indexing in Google, Yahoo and MSN as an additional perspective; it's the data in Omniture that really mattered, in this case.

4. I data mined Meetup Groups (just a little - don't have the time to join all of those that linked to my client just to see who is a member and what they're saying) - I see huge potential in exploring Meetup groups for all kinds of insights - and just to monitor the conversation - if nothing else.

5. I pulled overall popular pages of the clients site using Site Catalyst- but I ran into a snag.  I wanted to create a custom segment of all the Social Media URLs that I identified using the filter in step 1 - but my client's Omniture account does not have Discover 2.0 enabled - so I was unable to compare visitors from Social Media sites vs. overall visitors on things like:

•  length of visit
•  pageviews per visit
•  most popular pages
•  conversions
•  most popular paths
•  registers for a login
•  number of logins to clients "my portal" page

I usually start my analysis of a site with a premise that I want to prove.  In this case, I want to prove that Social Media traffic is more likey to convert (buy something) or is more engaged with the site (because Social Media is part of a conversation - so you'd expect more engaged activity) - but in order to really prove it in a timely fashion, using Omniture - I needed Discover 2.0 enabled.

Now, maybe there were ways to get that data for all the URLs (blogspot technorati myspace 43things facebook flickr linkedin LiveJournal meetup orkut stumbleupon reunion tribe xanga care2 blurty twitter xml feedburner rss forum) in real time without Discover 2.0 - treating them all as one segment (ie: Social Media Traffic) but if that was in the Omniture 12 release (minus Discover 2.0) I did not see it - and I looked all over the place.

So here's when you start needing to go all the way with Analytics.  Say I could prove that all the traffic (in blue - my filter) did interact more with my client's site - and on average, per visit, bought more product.  My case is made - Social Networks here we come!   But I needed the full power of Omniture to prove it - and it's a pity I did not have it - as I wanted to explore this idea more fully - which is what makes it fun to be a Web Analyst.

6.  When I was done with all that - I was in a pretty good position to say the client only got 1% of its traffic from Social Media.  But then the question becomes ….is 1% good or bad?  Well, it depends what kind of site is and what kind of Social Media traffic the client's competitors are getting.

Well, here's another snag .. I could not easily find any published stats showing what "average" site gets in "Social Media Traffic".  I could look at sites that I have access to the analytics and back end data - and if I had the backend access to Compete.com's data warehouse or even a full blown HitWise account - I'd be in a position to say something like:

"most sites in your sector get 6% of their traffic, on average, from Social Media sites buy yours gets 1%".

But I could not say that because I did not have the data to prove what the other sites get.

However, it would help a lot, in Social Media Analysis, if Compete would publish a breakdown of where people came from, not just the number of people that came to the site (which is still under counted by 25% in my client's case).  For example:

• number / percent traffic from Social Media Sites (blogs, message boards, forums, video and audio sites), etc
• number / percent traffic from Search Engines (and specific numbers / percentages if they have the data broken down well enough)
• number of "no referrers" (or "Direct" referrals) who bookmarked or typed in the URL.

I hope Compete will  be doing something like a Social Media categorization of each site's traffic in the future (Hint…Hint … Compete - can you start working on this if your not doing it already?).

7. I ended my analysis by suggesting some Social Media Resources that could be used to enable the community that already comes to the clients' site to communicate with each other and the client (which is how it would be "Social Media" in the first place).

• www.Kickapps.com  for Social Network building (or magnify.net, or ning.com)
• www.combinedstory.com for Second Life development - they're right around the corner from my office and I took a Second Life Immersion Training from CombinedStory - it was excellent and I highly recommend it.
• V-Tracker for Second Life Web Analytics - I wrote about this a lot lately in V-Tracker - A full blown Web Analytics Package for Second Life from Code4Software.com.

I like to recommend companies, services and ideas that I have personally looked
at and reviewed - that's what I did above.

To end this post - I want to add that my client does not have any Social Media content on their site - no blogs, no forums connect directly to the site content (but plenty that were going on from other sites coming in) and really - not much to dig into that they produced or enabled themselves.  

I could have gone further into my analysis if there was more Social Media to analyze - but in this case - ie: number of postings, citations, etc - and you'd expect that kind of data should also be part of the analysis of the Social Media traffic to / on the site - but again, in this case, there was not much to sink your teeth into - so I went with analysis pulled out of Site Referral traffic.  

Even common sense suggests 1% is a low number given what's going on in Social Media today (if I knew nothing else - it be easy to say 1% is low, in other words). 

I proved my case anyway - Social Media Network and tools - here we come. 

And that just goes back to underline Web Analytics starts with an idea (same as Art - and Science, by the way) - a hypothesis - which your pulling data and analyzing the data to prove or disprove your idea.  

I could have easily pulled data and found the client had a lot more Social Media traffic (but they did not) - in which case - I'd have to re-examine my hypothesis.

This post is long enough - time to stop.

I know Pat McCarthy (Conversionrater.com) works at Right Media but somehow, I missed the news that Yahoo! bought 20% of Right Media last October.  I even met Pat McCarthy briefly at TechCrunch 8 in New York City last November (but never asked him about it).  By the way, Conversionrater has been one of the top Web Analytics blogs.

Well….guess what?  Fueled partly by the Google DoubleClick acquisition, Yahoo! announced yesterday it was buying the rest of Right Media for $680 Million Dollars. I think he sounds pretty happy, based on what I'm reading on his blog (I hope he owns stock in Right Media - let's put it that way).

According to the New York Times:

"…Right Media, a four-year-old company, runs an exchange in which advertisers and publishers buy and sell online ad placements in real time through an auction system. DoubleClick, which specializes in serving ads on Web sites, announced recently that it would develop a similar type of exchange. Online publishers are increasingly turning to exchanges like these to sell ad space on their sites.

Yahoo executives said that the company had been using the Right Media exchange since last year, largely to place ads on Yahoo’s Web sites, and had become more comfortable with its capabilities.

….By buying Right Media, analysts have said, Yahoo would accelerate its own efforts to sell and broker ads on other sites. Those efforts began taking shape recently, after Yahoo reached agreements to sell ads on eBay and on some 264 newspaper Web sites. "

Sounds like the acquisition of Right Media was a good move for Yahoo (and good for Pat too).

Today's New York Times article on The Pangs of Two Becoming One (Google's 2.1 Billion deal to buy DoubleClick) suggests that Google faces a conflict of interest in providing search results (via it's search engine) while now owning a SEO Company, Performics, that helps clients improve those same results.

While I see the conflict - I can't imagine Google not selling Performics as soon as it can.

"…Internal conflicts often happen in finance, when investment banks find themselves advising both sides in a merger. And it happens in agribusiness, energy and other industries where giant companies with fingers in many pies are both buyers and sellers of the same commodity. But it is particularly common in technology and media.

The DoubleClick deal has prompted Microsoft and I.B.M. and others to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the deal on antitrust grounds. And privacy advocates worry that Google will not live up to its pledge to keep the customer data collected by DoubleClick out of the hands of Google’s search managers.

But the thorniest conflicts could arise from DoubleClick’s Performics division.

Performics helps its clients get better position in search results. Essentially, it works to game the systems of Google, Yahoo and other search engines."

The New York Times article then goes on to examine the possibility that Google won't sell Performics and how the leading Search Engine can co-exist with a leading agency that helps optimise for Search.

And personally, I don't see this as entirely out of question - while the writer, Dan Mitchell adds wealth and intelligence to the equation and looks for other examples of when two businesses that are contradictory where owned by the same entity.

"…essay shows that while things have improved since the turn of the 20th century, there is still a way to go. Back then, a maker of rat poison could get away with depicting a Chinese man in Confucian-era garb gobbling up a rat (to “exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats,” Mr. Segal explains). But as recently as the early 1990s, Stroh Brewery was peddling Crazy Horse malt liquor — disregarding the fact that the 19th-century American Indian leader Crazy Horse was a teetotaler who preached abstinence. In 2001, the brewery sold off the brand and apologized.

Well, Duh! A new study has confirmed what most of us already knew: Wealth and intelligence have little to do with each other."

Getting back to Google - Could Google really own an SEO Company - and the answer is yes - it probably could - but then they'd have to go back and change their stance on how to optimize for Google (now … if you really want to be sure your optimizing for US …. just go to our high priced SEO Company - Performics - and we'll take care of it all for you) which would make Google look more and more like Yahoo (in my eyes).

So…. I think Google will certainly sell Performics; it's much easier than changing it's established messaging about concentrating on content and not on ranking - and Google has been pushing that message for the last 10 years - I don't think they're going to change it suddenly now.

But…I have learnt to never say … never.

Avinash Kaushik wrote a post about how Web Analysts should (ideally speaking) spend their day at work. 

I began wondering how my day compares with the the day I should be spending….according to this chart, below.

Here's what Avinash defines as the ideal Analyst work breakdown (my comments are in blue).

• 20% Reporting – Sorry you can’t escape this, you are still going to do reporting. But on the bright side it is a great way to keep in touch with reality.

Sounds about right; however, I have a couple of projects (Stakeholders) and I can't really say if my time really is 20% +/-.

• 20% Analyze Acquisition Strategies – What is your company doing to attract traffic to your website? SEM? Affiliate Marketing? Banners? Email Marketing? What else?

I'm measuring the effects of some of those things - but I'm not directly involved with any of them - in large corporations most of these functions are / or can be, spread apart, more matrix based.  Let's put it this way … there is no SEM Group that's responsible for all the strategies listed above, per se, where I work - which is a very large corporation.

• 20% Understanding On-site Customer Experience – Using a mix of ClickStream and qualitative methodologies analyze what the customer experience is on your website. Really. Not what you think it is, not what your company wants it to be. But what it is in reality.

Depending on the project it can be more or less, 20% of my time - understanding On-site visitor experience.  One of my top projects, now, a Second Life Sim, will have a large component of understanding the customer experience in Second Life.

• 20% Staying Plugged into the Context – Most Analysts suffer because of a lack of context. They are put away in a corner with Omniture or WebTrends or HBX or Google Analytics and expected to produce earth shattering insights.

OK here - I might not always be provided with the direct context by the business units - but I can usually deduce it.

• 10% Explore New Strategic Options – I don’t know where your company is but you always want to move the ball forward, this chunk of time should be spent in experimenting with new and different ways to move your program forward.

I'm ahead here - right now spending more than 10% of mine tome on New Strategic Options - but I had to work to position myself as someone who can handle that - it was not given to me on a silver platter - and it comes with a lot of responsibility and pressure - but I like those kinds of challenges - that's why I seek challenge - the harder the tasks, the more I like it - but that's me - not everyone is cut out for that kind of job.   I like edges that are not so well defined.

• 10% Bathroom breaks , oh and lunch! I am generous aren’t I. : )

Sound about right.

Based on Avinash Kaushik's breakdown - my job breakdown is not ideal for a Web Analyst… but I don't know anyone whose Web Analyst job breakdown is ideal (according to the chart above).

Dave Young at GrokDotCom, who work with Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg (or, is it Bryan and Jeffrey - not quite sure) writes about subliminal messages, are how subliminal stimuli are very powerful and shape our future perceptions and ideas.

Dave Young's point is that a website gives off subliminal messages that may fight or augment the conscious messages the business is trying to put forth.

"…Done with dinner, we've beached our stuffed selves onto the furniture at the hotel and Bryan says, "You've got to see this YouTube video on subliminal advertising." What brought that up? I hand him my MacBook and he quickly finds the video. Pretty cool. It all makes sense now."

Here's the Video (below):

"..Gore told reporters Tuesday, "I've never seen anything like it. I think it speaks for itself." When asked whom he felt was responsible for the "RATS" message, he replied, "That's obvious," but did not elaborate on whether he was referring to the Bush campaign or the RNC."

"..We all know the results of the 2004 American presidential election by now. We’ve read about it online and in newspapers, viewed it on television and listened to reports of it on the radio. This week, though, Limelight looks at the effectiveness of political advertising – just how did Bush get his message across more effectively than Kerry?"

"…Brain scans have shown for the first time that subliminal advertising can be an effective means of getting a sneaky message across.

Simple messages flashed up before the eyes of volunteers were unconsciously registered by the brain, research showed.

An fMRI scanner recorded extra brain activity whenever an image was shown for a moment, even though the viewers were, at a conscious level, unaware of what they had seen.

The study suggests that George Bush was on to a vote-winner when his campaign team used subliminal advertising to brand Al Gore a rat in the 2000 American presidential elections.

The advert was pulled from the screen when it was realised that the word “rats” was being flashed up for a thirtieth of a second. Research at University College London reveals that such messages are absorbed by viewers. The key to the message being unconsciously understood, the study showed, is that the image reaches the retina and that the brain is unencumbered by other tasks.

When viewers were concentrating hard on another visual task, subliminal images of household objects failed to be registered by the brain. Behador Bahrami, who led the research, said: “What’s interesting here is that your brain does log things that you aren’t even aware of and can’t ever become aware of.

“These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal advertising may have on the brain.”

Jason Calacanis is all over the Blogosphere today because he wrote a post about Link Bait that is being considered one of his best blog posts ever. In the spirit of reciprocation, I'll throw my link in with the rest.  By the way, I did meet Jason and wrote about it in Friday night with Jason Calacanis's party at the Magician; it happened about six months ago - so I have a real story to tell.

I think it had something to do with a bunch of Pizzas he ordered that did not show up (many were starving and ready to eat anything in sight), we had about 20+ people, it was raining hard and a guy shows up with 2 mini pizzas with anchovies on them.  I said I did not want any …. Jason pulls out money from his own pocket (Gawker Media was going to pay for the Pizzas but only a couple of bloggers showed up) and I think, about half an hour later - the Six Pizza Pies arrived - say guy delivering - all wet (but the Pizzas were dry).  OK, that's my story.  No big deal - I was just there listening and saying hello.

Getting back to all the buzz about Calacanis - I first saw Danny Sullivan's post on Daggle which asks Is Jason Calacanis Great Or The Greatest?  At the end of his long post, that praises Jason Calacanis (according to Jason's rules on Link Bait), he says:

"…Nah, Jason, I don't want the link. Dude — what, Search Engine Land isn't on your daily read list? C'mon, shove it up there and call it Danny. I want that link, baby! "

Then Michael Gray gets in the act and follows the LINK BAIT rules and writes a homage to the guy - I'm assuming Jason Calacanis will definitely link back to Michael Gray after reading his post.

 "…In addition to having nerves of steal he’s not afraid to be brazen and go where no man has gone before. Did you know that almost exactly 2 years ago Jason was the first person to do a live webcam videocast from inside of an airplane to Judith who was responsible for day to day operations at weblogs inc. Sadly Judith has now left weblogs inc since they were absorbed by AOL (see I really do read)."

My only question…..Jason's still alive right?  Michael Gray's reminds me of the kind of stuff you write for someone after they have passed over and you want to remember their exploits (together).  Sure… Michael Gray will get a link back.

And then there's John Evans who hails from Syntagma Network Magazines writing about The Calacanis Link-bait Machine:

".. You just gotta give it to the guy. Genius isn’t in it. Jason Calacanis has just written not only the funniest post I’ve read in a while, but also the smartest traffic-hoovering machine in years. I’d call it the industrialization of backlink aggregation. Google watch out — Professor Moriarty is on the case. "

John Evans is the editor responsible for my own Art Blog - ArtNewYorkCity and John earned a link back from Jason Calacanis too.

But what about me … I read Jason's blog regularly and think he's ahead of the curve on a lot of things (not sure that will get me the link or not) but I said those things before he mentioned Link-Baiting - so they're genuine.  

And what Jason says about SEO is fine with me - I'm don't think Search is all that's it's crapped cracked out to be and opt more towards Branding and Usability and have been saying that here for some time.

At least, I can say that I did meet Jason Calacanis and hung out with him (for about 2 hours) .. nothing to make up.

B.L. Ochman noted a Gartner study that  80% of Internet Users Will Have a Virtual Life By 2011.  According to B.L.

The 3D, real-time Internet is around the corner. Yet enormous companies are still asking not only "should we blog?" but "what's a blog?" Hey, I got paid to explain that in detail to a Fortune 100 company only two weeks ago.

Gartner reports that by the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a “second life”, but not necessarily in Second Life.

Investigate and experiment with this trend, Gartner tells enterprise clients, "but limit substantial financial investments until the environments stabilize and mature." In other words, do that toe in the water thing big companies like so much.

When I was attending Search Engine Strategies 2 weeks ago I asked several Search Experts what they thought of Second Life and 3D Virtual Worlds.  Just about everyone brushed off Second Life as an interesting concept but doomed to fail.  Mind you…..that's exactly the reaction people had in 1994 when Netscape came out …. people thought the Internet was going to be no big deal.   And then Search Engines started appearing (to find all the new content) and people thought Search Engines were no big deal (except Google, which invented the first really good one - and became "Search"). Microsoft, did overtake Netscape but it ignored Search till after 2000, when it was much harder to catch up, and now runs a distant 3rd place to Google and Yahoo.

It was interesting to me that Search Engines subject experts, now becoming mainstream, conferences filled with suits…high end advertising and media companies, fails to get the idea that Virtual Worlds will be in 80% of our futures by 2011.   Well…IBM "gets it" and many of the larger companies are betting the rest of us get it too….eventually.    But I won't look for insight from the Search World …. they're way to invested in Search to want to see any alternative, or co-existence for advertising or branding besides Search Engines.

And that's going to be a fatal mistake, eventually, for many of them.  Search is being touted as the answer for many busiensses - but it's not.  Most of the time, I've found, Branding is far more important that Search, for many businesses, Search and Branding, working with great landing pages is where you want to go …but that's Convergence….not Search.  Search itself - leads nowhere.

In regard to what Enterprise companies should do now  - they should do what many are doing … experimenting with 3D Virtual Worlds.  The time to spend massively will come later, maybe in 2008 and 2009 - when the platforms mature and when infrastructure can better keep up with demand.

"….Gartner recommends that enterprises should experiment with virtual worlds, but not plan massive projects, and look for community benefits rather than commerce. “Find enthusiasts within your enterprise and support them. Understand the implications for access to open virtual platforms from within the enterprise and the risks involved,” Mr. Prentice said. “Despite the concerns within companies, don’t ignore this trend. They will have a significant impact on your enterprise during the next five years.”

You want to be the next Google - look here - but realize it may take another 5 years for Virtual Worlds to mature enough to be able to handle 80% of us.  Right now Second Live is limping along with about 30,000 to 50,000 active Avatars in Second Life at any one time (of close to 6 million registered Avatars).  That means less than 1% of the population of SL is active at any single time - and they're having bandwidth issues now.  Imagine what would happen if 1% of the world was in Second Life today …. at one time, that would be SIXTY MILLION People - or Avatars.

But let's not forget that innovations may make it possible, 5 years from now, to accommodate something like 60 million Avatars at one time in a virtual world - or interface the various Virtual Worlds together.  And if I'm off by a couple of years - if it's 7 or 8 years from now, that's o.k. too.

Point being - it's easy to write off Virtual Worlds now …. but all the directions point to it.  And while some Search Engine experts might not see the light - many larger corporations are hedging their bets - and starting now - realizing it's going to take a couple of years to figure out how it all works and develop their BRAND in the Virtual Worlds that the 80% of us are going to be in by 2011.

Valleywag's Nick Douglas compared search engines ChaCha, Search Wikia, Tall Street, Powerset, Snap, Eurekster, Hakia and Freebase chances in becoming the next Google; to compare search results the query "House" was used (based on the popular TV show "House").  According to Nick Douglas, Freebase has a 1.2/1 chance of being the next Google while Powerset has a 5/1 chance.

There - I took a long post and put it into one short paragraph - the essential meaning.  I even looked at all the comments to see if there was more information - nothing worth noting.

To me, the eight search engines that wish they were the next Google are eight brands of the same thing.  Compare Google to Wonder Bread, Yahoo to Pepperidge Farms and Microsoft Live to Levi's Rye Bread ….. and then you have tons of niche, boutique brands…too many to stock on one shelf.

Which is my point - an infinite number of search engines could exist - each claiming to be a better solution to Google, if given a chance - the internet is not a bread shelf in the Supermarket or Grocery Store ….. but the Human Mind works more like a Grocery Shelf - we only store information on a couple of brands per category that we'll tend to use.   If your a wine connaisseur, you might know of hundreds of brands - and if your a search connaisseur, you might know of dozens of search engines - but most people, 99%, will only use one or two search engines.

Meaning, technical innovations will not create the next Google, but a great Branding idea might.   Anyone of these search services could be better than Google for all I know; people chose Google, they will not switch to Snap, even if Snap turns out to be a better search engine.