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The fact that different people know different things: workers know more about their ability than does the firm; the person buying insurance knows more about his health, whether he smokes and drinks immoderately, than the insurance firm; the owner of a car knows more about the car than potential buyers; the owner of a firm knows more about the firm than a potential investor; the borrower knows more about his risk and risk taking than the lender

Joseph Stiglitz, Information and the change in the paradigm in Economics, 2003

Conversation has always been the heart and soul of human interaction. With the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the (mid)15th century to the advent of search engines and social communities, we have been using words to communicate, exchange with other and search our own « self ». In mediating with each previous technology we have been searching for instant gratifications and developing new practices and uses with technology. And the instant gratifications that search engines offer to users are getting more and more important. In the world of search, we mediate with information through keywords. Very often, keywords are used by companies for the sake of getting people on their sites. But companies barely consider keyword use as a mediator and a catalyst for conversation and interaction between the users and the information artefacts which will lead to an enhanced experience.

From a marketing perspective, thinking about this process of mediation through keywords could be helpful to understand how to  develop conversation and relationship with users on search engines. Quality keywords usage can help us start conversation. If keyword ads and keywords integration are part of the search engine optimization process – SEO1 – , in the age of conversation marketing, let’s think of keywords as the main mediator in enhancing SEO2 – Search Experience Optimization. Keyword has that potential of deve loping conversation and enhancing experience between the users and online information. The relation between keywords and landing page and its content, between keywords and the various touch points that we come across on a website need to be considered before a campaign is started.

Keyword has a denotation an a conotation, and Keyword ads optimization must drive satisfaction and engage people into a conversation which will result in sparkling dialogue and help them understand their search online in emotional and reflexive

“All kinds of social co-existence that are familiar, comfortable, and exclusive are to be understood as belonging to Gemeinschaft. Gesellschaft means life in the public sphere, in the outside world. In Gemeinschaft we are united from the moment of our birth with our own folk for better or worse. We go out into Gesellschaft as if into a foreign land. A young man is warned about mixing with bad society: but ‘bad community’ makes no sense in our language.”

Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Civil Society. Reprinted and translated by Jose Harris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 18.

“Advertising and the culture industry merge technically as well as
economically. In both cases the same thing can be seen in innumerable
places, and the mechanical repetition of the same culture product has
come to be the same as that of the propaganda slogan. In both cases the
standards are striking yet familiar, the easy yet catchy, the skillful yet
simple; the objective is to overpower the customer, who is perceived as
absent-minded or resistant” (Horkheimer and Adorno, p163).

Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno,‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ New York, Continuum (1944/1998)

In April 2008, Fast Company dedicated its cover to Barack Obama with the headline: The Brand Called Obama. Reading this article, many ideas come to mind and any search marketer or any advertiser can feel that the campaign strategy of Barack Obama could be refreshing and inspirational to any business looking forward to boost its brand, be it online or offline. Yes Obamania is gaining the whole world, from the US to Vanuatu, and also the Whole World Wide Web. If in the real world, we have come to know how Obama’s brand, communication and style has inspired many out there to campaign for him, the obamania is invading the political sphere by inspiring politicians on the other side of the shore. In Germany, both liberal and conservative politicians are “fawning over” Obama, as reported by der Spiegel.

This craze over the Illinois senator is also reflected online. A look at Google trends shows that Obama is dominating the search over his opponents in the United States,Australia, Germany, France and the UK. His interactivity and presence on Twitter, My Space and the my.barackobama.com community blog could also explain the success of Barack Obama online. Only in Canada he is lacking behind. Anyway, he is dominating the search culture and his popularity online as well as offline is on the boost.

Although Obama spent approximately $2.8 Million on Google for ads seen on Google’s own site, I am still astonish at the lack of quality keyword campaign by the Obama campaign, be it on Google, Yahoo, Miva and so on, to get their message across to the people: those who still need to be convinced and those who want to learn more about his vision and mission. Typing Barack Obama in Google since last Friday, gives us great organic results. But notice also that Hillary Clinton and McCain have decent organic results too. But, there is an emptiness in the Obama’s campaign when it comes to Adwords or sponsored results on Yahoo, as imagine for one second how searchers all over the world and in the US interact with information that they would find or click from a paid ad?

Imagine the impact that Obama can make by crafting landing pages with great targeted content: Foreign Policy, National security, Iraq, Social security, NAFTA, and so on. Sarkozy got this right in his campaign. His team used well targeted keywords which drove meaning to users’ quest. Perhaps Obama needs to do so too. Use keywords which denote and connote the cultural, social, political quest of American searchers in need of a vision and ideas.

Paid Advertising like Adwords or Yahoo Search marketing can bring people to reality and offer one immediate rewards. Furthermore, keywords advertising can offer structural and relational opportunities which a brand cannot miss in the postmodern landscape, given the fact that searchers are socially and culturally situated beings who are constantly engaged in making sense of their online search.

It has become so banal to talk about the role of new technologies in our everz day life. Thinking of the topic of sociology, technology and new media, I decided to re read Breton and Proulx book about the explosion of communication. One chapter i just started is about the usage of information and communication technologies and the role of the researcher.

Like the authors, I believe that a researcher needs to distance himself from his own ways of apprasing or negotiating with technologies when he/she decides to do a field work. Many people fall in the trap of determinism when talking about technologies, believing that innovation – marketing – technology automaticaly shape the users way of life; we call these technical determinism. But we should not fall in the sociological determinism either. We cannot only make a social analysis of technological innovation and discover its effect on the society. We need something in between, we need to find out the appropriation of technology and the usage been made via this appropriation. The aspect of appropriation is critical in helping us to understand how usage of technology is made, and the uses of technical and cognitive skills by individuals in order to negotiate with technologies surrounding them in their every day life.

Written on 5.30.2007

Searching for travel tips, hotels or destinations is one of the biggest search activity online. Airlines, hotels and tour operators alike have understood that search engine offers them the opportunity to relate directly to their clients (searchers). We only need to type “Cuba honeymoon” or “holiday in India” and the best results appear on our screen. Or we can go directly to sites such as Yahoo Travel. The latter has made a step ahead in helping future travellers to plan their destinations. The Web giant has enhanced its Yahoo! Travel site by offering travel suggestions and recommendations based on deals that others have been finding on the site.

The new Yahoo Travel combines Yahoo FareChase, a low-priced air fares search, with Yahoo Trip Planner, a social network for travelers which helps plan trips and create maps as well as offering options for online journals and photos. Read more on Wired and Fool.com

Yahoo is aggregating the surfing habits of is members to serve its community with the most precise information. But, as personal data are collected for better and accurate information there could be some noise from the privacy advocates.

Written on 5.17.2007

Simon & Schuster is hoping of capitalising on the hype arounnd video usage in order to bring more visibility, to boost its sales and to increase the buzz about its already published work. Just as Oprah did with the Oprah Club, Simon & Schuster, part of CBS Corp, will be launching a site - www.Bookvideos.tv - featuring 40 videos of authors who will be talking about the form and content of their books and the literary and narrative aspects among others.

From CNet News

Written on 5.25.2007

The Youtube generation is here to stay, and ABC wants to go towards them as it plans to launch a user-generated video platform called “I-Caught”.

As user-generated content becomes a reality, traditional media understands that to make content stickier, passive readers and viewers should be turned into producers, or prosumers, to use the word of Alvin Toffler. “I-Caught” will contain amateur video, but “ABC News correspondents will build news stories and features around video captured on cell phones or digicams and uploaded to a companion Web site.”

Source: variety.com

Douglas Coupland, author of famous novels such as Generation X and Microserfs, has written a new novel – Jpod - to be published this month. In Microserfs, published in 1995, Douglas Coupland described the adventures of some guys who start up their own multimedia company in the Bay area. The novel deals with young people, issued from the technology generation, who have lost their identity by working longer than 12 hours a day, have no relationship whatsoever.

In Jpod, Coupland continues his analysis of the technological effects on human beings. The setting takes place in a Vancouver video game company with six workers who deal with changes taking place in our era: Google, privacy, marketing, the rise of China, identity, technological panoptican and money.

Coupland puts emphasis on the Googling generation and how Google has changed the world within a click. Google is compared to God with all the answers it provides to our questions. Talking about this comparison in an interview he gave with TIME, Coupland adds: “This is what God must be like knowing everything.”

Reading Douglas is always fun and for this summer exploring or re-discovering his books will not be such a bad investment!

Written on 2006-05-18