eMarketing Trends|Verbal Acrobatics & Graphic Gymnastics

Only a few hours after Microsoft announced deals with Twitter and Facebook to integrate real time data into Bing’s search results, Google’s Marissa Mayer announces at the Web 2.0 Summit that Google Social Search will be launching in the coming weeks.

There has been so much said about this in the last 24 hours, and it is hard to keep up with all the blogs, news and article mentions. Let me try and summarize quickly…

Yesterday Microsoft announced sealed agreements to access real-time content from social networking sites Facebook and Twitter to boost search engine results in Bing. According to Microsoft executives at a presentation at a San Francisco Internet conference, Bing is hoping to take on current dominant search leader Google in the sphere of Social Search and will have access to Twitter’s entire store of public data in real time as well as content from social networking site Facebook. At the same conference, it was also announced that a standalone Twitter search service will be offered at Bing, with some ranking technology other than sort by date involved, and that shortened URLs will be expanded. And finally, there would be some integration within the regular Bing service itself.

Only a few hours later, Google’s Marissa Mayer announced Google Social Search will be launching in the coming weeks. This feature will allow you to see results for queries from people in your social network and will work only via your own Google Profile. In your profile, if you add add links to social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed or Twitter, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people which will then be integrated in to regular results. Google emphasised their goal of creating the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search and believe that their search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, looking forward to having a product showcasing how tweets can make search better in the coming months.

There has been such talk for some time and even though Bing (MSFT) beat Google to it by first announcing the integration of real-time data into search results, it is clear that this move from both indicate what the future of Search holds for us. Social Integration. Real-time data in Search results! This indicates the importance of consumer perception and the value of comments made by the average consumer and the trust they have regarding brands and products.

This is somewhat confirmed by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg saying that The Future is Social, Not Search. While Google is by far Facebook’s biggest rival in terms of Paid Advertising, it was clear that no love is lost between Google and Sheryl Sandberg, an ex-Googler. Sandberg said that Facebook is leading the net from the information age to the social age, where people will be finding their important answers not through Google but through their friends. As for search, Sandberg said Google would still have a place in the future, even if it’s not very big.

The face of search is indeed going to change and the race to be there first is definately on. The next days, weeks and months will be very interesting.

How will consumer behaviour affect search and the ranking relevance of brands and products in the SERP’s?

My personal prediction is that this affect won’t be seen immediately, but that it will slowly take affect as both Search Engines integrate real time data over the coming months.

For me, the future of Search will neither be Search, nor Social. The future of Search will be “Social Search” – Integrated Real-Time Search, (hopefully) relevant, updated results, as it happens.

How Bing and Google will control what is included in the search results will be interesting to see, but this can only be a good thing for companies doing Online Reputation Management. Hopefully businesses and corporates will be forced to operate in the social spaces more to not only control the conversations, but also add to it, or respond.

Resources:

• Facebook and Twitter Now More Important to Search Rankings?
• Microsoft’s Bing seals Facebook, Twitter deals
• RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!
• Bing To Do Deal With Twitter, Launch Its Own Twitter Search
• Google Social Search Is Coming & More On Google-Twitter
• Microsoft, Google in deals with Twitter, Facebook
• Google’s New Social Search Is A Big Chess Move Against Facebook
• The Future is Social, Not Search, Facebook COO Says

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows you to answer the question: “what are you doing?”, by sending short message 140 characters in length, called “tweets” to your friends or “followers”.

Why do people use twitter?

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Recently I had the pleasure of attending the second Monash Business Communication Forum hosted by Monash University and Stone. The forum focused on digital communication as an essential part of business communication.
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Earlier this week Facebook announced some significant changes to the way users can search on their site. Users are now able to search for comments that friends have made in the last 30 days. In addition you can also find out what any users with a public profile are saying about a particular topic or news events.
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So just before things get under way here let me just quickly clue you in about the last two members on the panel at this morning’s Journal of Marketing breakfast debate.

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Virtuosa is currently looking for an Online Marketing Manager to join our amazing team to help drive business and revenue strategy for our clients.

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A packaging change by PepsiCo illustrates social media’s growing influence on corporate marketing. Just another example of how consumer behavior is changing the world. With a huge stage called the internet to voice opinions, upload video content and share with friends and foes the opinions they harbor, the citizen journalist can be a dangerous enemy to make.

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Econsultancy’s Lynchpin’s 2009 Online Measurement and Strategy Report reveals that only 40% of companies are looking at data in relations to their online reputation.

This shows once again that although there is much talk about this subject online reputation monitoring is still very much in the early adopter phase.

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Deloitte’s recently conducted a Survey in the US that examines social networking and reputational risk in the workplace. I found some of the findings very interesting especially in light of the rapid growth of social media and the different opinions about use and access. Here are some of the results that got my attention: Read the rest of this entry »

Last week 2 Dominos employees caused a YouTube- based scandal in which they uploaded a video of themselves doing disgusting things to the ingredients before putting them in people’s food. The video quickly spread all over the internet and received more than a million views in its first 24 hours online. A reputation nightmare to say the least!

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