Ok, I’m fed and thirsty for more knowledge and this afternoons keynote promises to be a good one. Moderated once again by Kevin Ryan with Mike Grehan of Acronym Media and features Matt Cutts of Google, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, Tim Westergren of Pandora(ps RIAA please leave them alone), Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv, Kristen Mangers of WebVisible and Rich LeFurgy of Archer Advisors.
WOW
Let me repeat that
WOW
The panel opens up with a video montage of clips from South Park to Knocked Up showing characters talking about Google, MySpace, texting and YouTube to name a few showing how our little world on the web has permeated into pop culture.
Scoble, of course, is up first talking about interruption of services and makes mention of Twitter’s unstableness. He states that it is hard to become a Google killer simply because of the shear size of Google. You have to chip away at the sides in order to make a difference
Matt Cutts, in a green t-shirt, is up next talking about the first days of Google. “I had a little trouble finding the office” he says about interviewing for Google back in the early days.
Matt says he came on board at Google stating that Google should be an advocate for their users. They tried to make as many decisions for their users in order to give them a great user experience.
Danny Sullivan is now addressing the threat of a Google Killer and the fact that he doesn’t see anyone or company being able to amass the amount of data. He points out that Microsoft is looked at as the company that could do it but they have been trying this for the past 5 years. Sullivan thinks the only entity that could hurt Google in anyway is the government. He goes onto to say that if you attack Google and you are good enough Google will buy you.
Scoble, talking about Google Analytics, says that Microsoft will have to woo webmasters to not use Analytics if they come out with their own web analyzer tools. He’s making the argument that Google is so ingrained in our day to day searching and analyzing that it is going to be hard to topple them.
Back to Cutts. He says that Google is still analyzing and reanalyzing search behaviours to further ensure a better user experience
Tim Westergren is up now talking about how hard it is for a musician to find their way through search. His Music Genome Project(again RIAA: leave them alone) breaks down songs by identifiable markers to help people find music
Scoble is touting the amazing tool that is FriendFeed. This tool which is accessible through APIs hasn’t quite reached the critical mass adoption, it is still in the early adopter phase.
Rich LeFurgy notes our acceptance of letting the world know where we are with GPS enabled phones. Telling people where you are and where you are going is getting more and more popular. Birghtkite is like that and to that I say – Ask yourself if people really care where you are. If you are always checking into BrightKite all the time with the same places marketers have a clear understanding of your habits in your city. Also if you travel a lot to the same places and always check in you are furthering fueling marketers desire to know all about you
Plus a constant check in to BrightKite could be annoying to people that follow you. I know I’m not a fan of it.
Scoble just name dropped GaryV! He is talking about Gary’s site Wine Library TV and the ability to keep a conversation going. Gary points out great wines and gets you excited about finding them and trying it. Don’t like it? Head over to his site and let him know.
Scoble just turned interviewer stealing the reigns from Ryan asking Westergren about current struggle with RIAA and the double of fees for songs. Yes DOUBLING the fees. BTW radio pays ZERO fees. Westergren, maybe because of the ongoing court case doesn’t give a clear answer on what Pandora’s next step is
Cutts touches on GPS and search or ‘discovery.’ He uses an example of being in LA and seeing in a paper while out walking around that a comedian he likes is playing that night near his hotel. He could have looked on Google to buy tickets if he had planned it before he came down but that would rely on him thinking about that before he left. He states that it would be great to get a notification, based on his spending habits(he bought the comedian’s CD on Amazon) and online calendar telling him that while he was in LA he could see this comedian.
That sounds a little scary but also very cool. As a marketer it will give us the ability to get the right message to the right person.
Matt also is talking about Cloud Computing and the fact that your data isn’t stuck on your machine.
All and all this was a great panel of some very huge icons on the web today. Bravo SES!
For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com