wingthom Joined Mahalo on January 29, 2008

Short notice, if any strong AI is reading this please contact me directly webmaster@interaktivierung.net, thanks

Now:
I am working at CNET Networks Germany for the products CNET.de, Silicon.de and ZDNet.de - the German version of the US & UK Media with the same name. My hobby is "forward looking SEO with Knowledge Engines" and this is the main reason beside having a lot of fun for using Mahalo.

Other stuff I can't forget about is Commerce Solutions (Lead generation with Commerce Engines, we launched together with http://www.aeins.de a full functional prototype during CEBIT 2008 http://21stmall.zdnet.de) and I still perform some classic SEO/SEM for Editorial Contents, Whitelabels and some of the solutions mentioned above.

Another Project will be a brute force attack against local mass retailers through a regionalized Shopping Experience code named "Smartshopper".

My first start into Search was building a dedicated Research Search Engine 1996 together with Patrick Gruban (www.gruban.com) - some basic features are still "alive" at http://www.tdwi.com, but there was no further development after I left the company (Burda), so it is a little bit like a time capsule indeed.

Some History:
After playing several roles since 1993 in Research (traditional and online), Media (Sales and Marketing), Project Management, Online Sales (real and virtual Products and Software) and Search Engine "Stuff" (far more than only Optimization) I really think it is NOW the best time to write a summary and to propose some different approaches for Online-Marketing, what SEO really means and everything that will be no waste of Google Cache.

Future:
I think that a different approach is necessary because of the increasing number of "products" that are advertised online and because of the time lag between product development and "reaction" by search engines to the new products. Mahalo is really a fresh approach into this direction: it combines in an intelligent way Portal / Usability ("feeling at home") with the power of machines / engines that extract in real time the newest informations.

Static Portals and Pure Search Engines are more like packaged Software Tools than interactive services with its known limitations.

Packaged Software was still a traditional product with a main release date, a packaging, some distribution channels, marketing programs and features that could be advertised against. Those Software was more like Hardware and treated very similar. The different Features of such a Package needn't to be really promoted, the package delivered 90 % of the functionality and for the 10 % you had to buy additional packages or later "go to the Web".

We all know that the biggest Shift in our Software driven aera is Microsoft's: don't forget about legacy, don't forget business, but become not only "people ready" but INTERACTIVE - HUMAN - and this way "intelligent".

Software as a Service changes everything as you can read almost every day in business (not Technology) Media like BNET.com: "Google gets ready to rumble with Microsoft", "Microsoft buys FAST Search" and moves "Services into the Cloud", integrating the indiviualized massive reach of YAHOO with the leading edge technologies (almost nobody outside the developers' circles knows about those projects like Skydrive etc.).

Now with more and more "Features", "Methods" and "Concepts" becoming important the methods of marketing need to change too. Costumers ask more for "Solutions" than for Technical Specifications, and they ask more and more through Search Engines, Sales Tools (21st Mall & Media) and they get more and more used to get great answers instantly, detailed help and interactive services that make a big difference in REAL Life.

Marketing in and with Search Engines is really simple if Costumers search for a certain Product (an entity), but not if they search for Features or need fundamental AND mental Help.

There is no standard language for example for "I want get less spam, no viruses but don't want to be blocked from interesting stuff" or for "I want to live a more interesting life without loosing control what happens". And Features could go into very different fields of personal life or even business tasks that have nothing to do with Computers, Software etc. - so the language is even more vague and not well defined. The concepts of Open Source, exchange standards and Crowd Sourcing are not known outside the key technical industries which already use them. If you package those concepts into known market mechanisms you can take both sides of the market (buyers + sellers = healthy margin for you).

I propose NOW a different approach that takes all this into consideration, delivers metrics and solutions (full text of this approach at http://blog.interaktivierung.net):

1. We need a set of forward looking "concepts" or "trends" to focus our "marketing": for this we need to exploit Knowledge Engines like Research Studies combined with state of the Art Software.

2. Once the Concepts are extracted for one market we can try to push the same knowledge to other markets and regions in the world with similar concepts, mainly driven through an analogy in the structure (age, education, perceptions) of populations and languages that could be "translated".

3. The Optimization against concepts is a never ending story but it is a really forward looking process.

Frictions and Distractions:

4.1. How can we optimize against concepts before we have the product / feature for this concept ?
Short answer: Use Mega Trends, Use concepts of target groups that are Leading Edge by Design (like the information Elite concept that projected the dominance of interactive media and online by 2020).

4.2. What is the main benefit ? (Is there a Search after Google ?)
Short answer: Google 2008 is not Google 2020. The folks at Google will learn very very fast if we kick them where it hurts. So if we want to get a better world, we need to fight against them by competition. Just see how fast Yahoo is moving after the hostile take over attempt from Microsoft. And how fast Microsoft tries to move after getting outsmarted by two high school drop outs. And how massively IBM changed even their business model (from hardware/software to Services) because of Microsoft eating their lunch. And how slowly the big government backed companies of Europe move...

4.3. Does this mean that a Search Engine is spamming itself or another Search Engine ?
Short Answer: NO. It is more like training a grown up (who has already a lot of knowledge but is still learning), it needs time and all learnings must fit into the existing system. The Process of Forward Looking SEO with Knowledge Engines adds Value and reduces Entropy (see next question), makes Search more efficient. Mahalo is already a good anser to this question, adding several layers of quality assurance, intelligence, a view of the world and a deep SOCIAL component to its design (... an intelligent design btw). But going further with this argument we will see that Google and others in this market need to look into the Mahalo approach, what means to take "humans into consideration". That's a big step forward from "blind evolution" (Esther Dyson about Google in 2005) to a more human "intelligent Design" (Esther Dyson 2005 about the Yahoo Principle, not about the real existing Company).

4.4. Isn't that Project increasing Entropy and self fullfilling Prophecy ?
Fast Answer: no, we get some additional structure not already stored in traditional search engines like Google from the Knowledge Engines and really put this into real life. So the Knowledge of hundreds of Researchers and Studies isn't "lost" but gets usefull.

4.5. Couldn't everybody do this ?
Fast Answer: technically speaking (and funding) YES, but it is a Job you really need to be dedicated to, it is not Front End and Easy Media Talking but tough Engineering, setting up reliable Processes. Yahoo could have done something like Mahalo, yes, but it didn't do it given billions of dollars of revenue, tons of investments, hundreds of dedicated specialists.

If you are still reading you are an interactive hero. Go to sleep now or take care about your friends & family !

thomas

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