Human-powered Search Gets More Humans: ChaCha Hooks up with Facebook
Human-powered search engine ChaCha has hung on (let’s face it) longer than anyone thought possible. Although it abandoned guided web-based search almost two years ago, ChaCha is still thriving in the mobile Q&A market. Back in December, they raised $7M in funding—and it looks like the ultimate result of that cash was an API and a Facebook app.
Yep—ChaCha’s getting into social search. The Facebook app takes questions users post to friends and connections and broadcasts them to ChaCha. The app checks the database of pre-loaded answers to see if they’ve already covered that topic.
Definitely not an app I’m interested in. I’ve joked with friends in Gmail chat that Google should just popup with the answer to any of our factual questions right in our chat window. But really, we definitely wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion (even if we were just going to google that same question in a minute anyway—although TechCrunch doesn’t clarify whether ChaCha actually supplies the answer or just suggests that it might already know the answer). Most of the questions I pose my social network are going to be opinion-based, rather than factual—so ChaCha’s can’t to help there.
However, ChaCha has also turned this into a kind of game—the more participating questions you answer, the more points you get. They’ve also added a number of social features, including the option to have an “Ask ChaCha” box on your profile, share questions and their answers on selected friends’ walls and more.
Meanwhile, ChaCha has also developed an API to allow other developers to interface with their Q&A database. They’re also the #1 SMS search service, according to Nielsen Mobile, answering more than a million SMS questions a day.
What do you think? Should ChaCha even count as a “search engine” since they’re serving up solely structured data? Do you use ChaCha, and will you use their new apps and APIs?
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Nielsen: Bing Regains December’s Losses In January
Search share numbers regularly go up and down a percent here and a percent there; that’s normal. So no surprise that Bing’s January share, as reported by Nielsen, wiped out its drop from December. Here’s the January chart:
And for comparison, here are the December and November charts, also from Nielsen:
Even Google’s small drop in January [...]
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Readers Hit New York Newsday Paywall Then Turn Around and Walk Away
All of the talk of paywalls for online content that gets the bulk of the attention by the ‘press’ is focused mainly on large publications like the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. These publications have international readership and have significant influence when it comes to coverage of the major events in the world as well as in the business arena. Because of this significant influence many believe that the paywall discussion is valid because people need these sources to stay informed.
What about paywalls on the local level though? How will more localized papers fare when it comes to asking people who do not subscribe to the publication to pay to see the content online? If the results at New York Newsday are any indication its not a pretty picture.
Crain’s New York Business tells us just how bad it is
Here is one paid model for online journalism that isn’t exactly setting the world on fire: Nearly three months after Newsday put its Web site behind a pay wall, Newsday.com has attracted only 35 subscribers.
In addition, traffic to the Long Island daily’s site has dropped by half, according to Nielsen.
Newsday is the local paper for all of Long Island and a good portion of the NYC borough of Queens. Not exactly a small place. In other words, if there are this many people in the area and there are only 35 of them in three months willing to fork out a few bucks a week to access the information online this has to be viewed as a failure. Here’s what readers who do not subscribe elsewhere see when they try to get information from the website
To be fair it’s not like only 35 people read the online content for the paper since the content is literally available to a large portion of the population.
Newsday.com can be accessed free by the paper’s home subscribers, as well as by Cablevision customers and subscribers to the cable operator’s Optimum Online broadband service.
According to the paper, that means about 75% of Long Island households just have to register to have access. Anyone else who wants to read the paper online has to pay $5 per week.
Still, the number of online subscribers shocked members of Newsday’s union—Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters—which is in a bitter fight with the paper’s management over a proposed contract offer that would cut pay by 10%.
What this outcome may be telling the industry is that paywalls may very well limit the reach of your publication. Long Island is of particular interest considering just how many people have relocated from the area to parts all around the country. Now, if these people want to keep up with current events from ‘home’ they would have to pay and it looks like those folks are saying to Newsday “Forgetta about it!”.
So if this tactic isn’t working to generate more revenue what is the point of doing it? Maybe Newsday doesn’t want to be one of the first major local newspapers to try this and then be one of the first to drop it all in the span of a few short months.
Whatever the reasons this experiment looks to be a huge bust thus far. Not exactly the success story you parade out to other publications considering the same tactic. So what do you think? Will local publications be able to enact a paywall and have success or is this just a desperate move by an industry that decided to change as a means of survival rather than doing it as part of their ongoing business plan to move into the future?
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Boing Boing Bing: Was Bing Up or Down for Dec?
Two out of three online measurement firms agree: Bing lost ground in December. Experian Hitwise and Nielsen saw Bing’s search share decrease from November, while comScore saw it grow.
comScore saw Bing grow 4% from 10.3% to 10.7% (and Yahoo, Ask & the rest lost some). Hitwise, however, reported that Bing saw a 4% decrease in December (0.42 percentage points, coming in at 8.92%), as did Yahoo (0.56 percentage points, now 14.83%) and Ask (0.11 percentage points, now 2.54%). Google, naturally, grew 1% (0.68 percentage points, 72.25%). Nielsen reported an 8% drop in Bing’s share (0.8 percentage points, 9.9%), while Yahoo saw a 6% drop (0.9 percentage points, 14.4%).
Comparing the data to May (the last month of Microsoft/Live search before Bing’s launch) yields somewhat different results. Nielsen shows that Bing gained 0.5 percentage points by December, while Hitwise shows they’ve gained 3.28 percentage points. comScore says they’re up by 2.7 percentage points over that period.
However, all the measurement firms agree that Google was up and Yahoo (and Ask) slightly down in December. If Bing’s success is coming at Yahoo’s expense, will this bode well for their deal?
We saw lots of early reports that Bing was growing its market share, but after six months, are the results as dramatic as you expected?
comScore: Bing Share Up – Will It Overtake Yahoo? Plus, Ask.com Sale Speculation Returns
According to comScore’s December search numbers (now being circulated by various financial analysts), Ask is down slightly, so are AOL and Yahoo. Google and Bing are up. Here are the new comScore figures, which will be formally released today or Monday:
Google: 65.7 percent
Yahoo: 17.3 percent
Bing: 10.7 percent
Ask: 3.7 percent
AOL: 2.6 percent
Compare the recent Nielsen data [...]
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Nielsen Reports on Top Web Brands and Site Usage
Nielsen watches just how much time people spend on the sites of the top web brands in the world. It makes for some interesting viewing. Just seeing the numbers from the chart below makes it obvious why some sites have the success they do and raises questions about some others. Here is one of the Nielsen charts (there are a few others not pictured).
There are no real surprises on the list although many of the ‘holding’ companies like AOL and IAC of top web properties seem out of place. They are not their because of there for their overall brand but more so because of individual properties and theirs. But hey, get the exposure any way you can right?
One piece of data that jumps out is the amount of time that people spend on Facebook relative to the rest of these brands. Now the trick for Facebook is to turn that captive audience into something that will make money. Despite have 1/3 the number of visitors the time spent on the site is still twice that of Google (if my math is correct).
Of course, numbers like these don’t tell the story completely because people are using Facebook for far different reasons than Google. Google is a place for people to get info, make decisions and, in the process, keep the printing presses on Google’s money printing operation rolling 24/7.
Another number to consider is the relatively low amount of time spent on NewsCorp sites. You know NewsCorp. They create all of that fancy, in-depth content that no one else can and should take hours and hours to consume. I wonder when the stuff finally hits the fan on paywalls and whether Google will index that content, if we will even see NewsCorp. on this list anymore.
So what do you pull out of this information? Let’s hear your point of view.
Nielsen: Yahoo, Bing Down, Google Up in December
Nielsen has released its December 2009 search engine rankings. They reflect gains by Google and a minor gain by AOL compared with November 2009. The data show declines by Yahoo and Bing. Here is the chart:
Compare data from November:
And finally, compare comScore’s November search rankings:
I think there can be no argument now that Yahoo has [...]
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November Search Share: Google, Bing Up, Yahoo Down
Both comScore and Nielsen put out November search numbers that show Google and Bing up and Yahoo losing share. According to comScore:
Americans conducted 14.4 billion searches in November, up 1 percent from October. Google Sites accounted for 9.5 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.5 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.5 billion), Ask Network (548 million) and [...]
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Facebook Is a Video Powerhouse As Well
Facebook just keeps chuggin’ along doesn’t it? While everyone talks about the latest in this or that, the next greatest innovation in the next greatest thing since sliced bread and all the other fixings that go with Internet marketing and social media hype Facebook just gets results.
Sure there are the occasional misfires on how they handle making changes in policies but in the end there is little or no effect on a few pretty important factors: the number of people actively using the tool AND the increasing number of people coming on board.
One of the results of this continued growth and maturation is the fact that Facebook is now the third most popular place to view video on the web as reported by cnet based on the latest Nielsen VideoCensus numbers. Considering how much video is ingested by Internet users, that is saying something that is actually pretty astounding. Here’s a pretty chart for you
While not a threat to YouTube (it’s actually a bump to YouTube since much of the video is from there to begin with) Facebook is basically cleaning the clock of major media outlets on pure volume of vides viewed.
Now what is not considered in these numbers are the types of video viewed. Many folks on Facebook are not there for hard news so if the content of these videos was sliced and diced I am sure these numbers would look different. For Internet marketers that targeting will mean more about where dollars are spent than just shear volume.
Nonetheless, Facebook is becoming more and more of a force while avoiding the drama of other Internet players like Google, Yahoo et al. The numbers speak for themselves.
According to Nielsen, the “total time spent viewing video on Facebook” grew by 1,840 percent year over year. The number of unique viewers grew 548 percent over the same period. Total streams increased by 987 percent year over year.
“Facebook’s rapid growth in online video during the last year illustrates the site’s evolution from simply a communications focused tool to a media portal,” Nielsen Vice President of Media Analytics Jon Gibs said. “Social networking sites are evolving from a venue for catching up with friends to a platform for personal expression, allowing consumers to share their experiences in the full variety of content formats available online.”
Enjoy your weekend watching video. We know Facebook will love it.
comScore: Google Breaks 65% Market Share But Did Bing Grow Share?
comScore released its October 2009 search share numbers and Google has passed 65% search market share, holding 65.4% share in October, up 0.5% from the previous month. comScore also claims that Microsoft Bing also gained 0.5% share, reaching 9.9%, while Yahoo dropped 0.8% to 18.0% from the previous month.
Nielsen also released its October 2009 [...]
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