SMX Advanced will have an SEO track on both days. I know that I’ll be having the sessions below (better titles to come, but you’ll get the general idea):

• SEO for Google & Bing compared
• Advanced link building tips and techniques
• Killer SEO tools
• Mega Session: Ask The SEOs tough questions

I’ve got three additional spots for SEO-oriented sessions. I’ve got four contenders, which are:

• Improving site performance/speed
• Avoiding malware/hacking issues (as these can kill your rankings dead)
• Tapping into rich snippets
• Can you build it better — a review of important on-the-page techniques that go beyond the commonly known

Which would you like to see. Or is there a killer SEO panel you don’t see that I should be considering?

We’ll also have two days devoted to paid search issues. Panels I’m considering (all of which will be at a high level/advanced skill set):

• Keyword matching issues
• Ad copy testing and techniques
• Landing page testing and improvement
• Conversion beyond the landing page
• Measuring attribution
• Paid search and mobile
• Round-up of amazing PPC tactics
• Quality Score tips

Only seven can make it, and that’s eight. Again, got a favorite  you want to lobby for? Something key that you think should be there? Please comment!

As for our social media track, I’m looking at this:

• Social media tools
• Twitter for advanced search marketers
• Facebook for advanced search marketers
• Tapping into user generated content

Four slots — four ideas — but think there’s a better social media session I should be considering? Let me know!

We’ll also have a track about business issues for search marketers. More on that when the agenda goes up.

Remember, you can book the pre-agenda rate through this Saturday. Registration is already way up than previous years — over 35% of our available tickets have now been sold. The show has sold out every year, so book early not just to save but also to ensure you get a ticket.

Live blogging from SXSW continues, with Twitter cofounder Ev Williams to take the stage shortly. Will he announce Twitter’s rumored ad plans, as expected? Stay tuned for the news.

Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab is doing the interview with Ev. Ev says he wanted to announce his new @anywhere platform, to integrate Twitter into web sites.

Say browsing HuffPost and see mention of Saturday Night Light, you can hover and see if they are following and then subscribe to them. That’s one feature. You can also use it to sign in to a web site, using Twitter ID. Publications can also offer you to follow select users. NY Times, Bing, YouTube, Ad Age are among 13 launch companies.

Umair, so what’s different with this?

Ev, it reduces friction. You could easily tweet from a column you’re reading. You might just want to follow a columnist right from their byline, without having to go back to Twitter. That’s a hard thing they’ve found about Twitter, hard to find what you want to follow.

Umair, can see benefits if a user, but what about site owner?

Ev, gives you a connection back to users that you didn’t have before. Should result in more followers for sites, rather than sending out links. Should also get more of your audience talking about your content on it (hey, Twitter getting all Facebook).

Umair, on his blog at Harvard Business Review, seems like Twitter meets a bunch of critieria of an ad platform (I think he said).

First thing is experimentation, why are you willing to explore different business model possibilities (uh, because they didn’t have one?).

Ev says learned whenever you start out assuming you know something, you’re wrong, Inevitably, it’s going to take experimentation. Google thought they’d sell search services to others, for example.

We’re still focused on how do we create the best experience for users. Lots of business use happens on Twitter already today. Business opt in all the time.

Umair, what is Twitter evolving to?

Ev, what is twitter has always been ironically hard to answer. They think of it as an information network. To find and share. First point is key, you can discover but don’t have to share. That’s valuable to use. But it’s like saying what is the internet. It’s an information network. What’s it for? The value we’re focusing on today is increasing the signal to noise ratio. If you are sharing stuff, how do you get that to people who really care?

Umair, How do you handle the experimentation?

Ev. Lots of people. They’ve tried to organize people into autonomous units around particular products or goals. We have these teams and say go for it, and we try to give them the resources they need.

Umair, what’s your role? Do you spec the problem? Dive in?

Ev, I don’t get into the nuts and bolts of code, because then things would be a big mess. I spend most of my time thinking from a high level, then I get into the nitty gritty of user experiences. Then spend about (half I think he said) his time on how to build the company culture, how to adopt the characteristics that they want. There’s a parellel between the company they want and the business they want. Open and transparent internally and as a service.

Umair, question on being open.

Ev: A window is tranparent; a door is open. Window lets people see what you’re doing. A door lets them enter and play. Learned from letting people in. Things like hashtags, those have come from users, and developers have built experiences with that. Talk he gives to new employees, assume more smart people outside than inside, which idea he got from Bill Joy.

Umair, does being open give the golden goose away?

Ev, big debate on this inside Twitter, especially when doing deals with Bing and Google last year and when they knew they didn’t have a business model yet. How do you protect the long term value. So went back to principle of how increase the value of the network. Google and Microsoft help that because in the 50 million tweets per day, are most people seeing the best? They’re not, they know that. And billions don’t see tweets at all. Tapping into the technology of these partners helps. It’s as easy as that. One we realized that, we figured then that’s going to be good for us and valuable for us ultimately.

Umair, was there a lot of internal debate?

Ev, there was tons (you know, like he just told you). A few weeks ago announced plans to license data to much wider variety of people, it’s letting a thousand flowers bloom.

Umair, how about verticalization?

Ev, seeing some of that, developers focusing on shortening links, or sharing photos, or apps on iPhone or other platforms. Developers have created phenomonal value for users and us. Cotweet, Hootsuite good examples of Twitter for customer support, but Twitter.com itself was never built for that. They focus on building a great interface for that. There’s a hardware device for bakers to tweet, the cookies are out of the oven, come get them (think he’s joking).

Umair, some want to regulate an ecosystem, like Apple in its app store.

Ev, we’re pretty open. There is some control. If we were infinitely open, we’d be doing a disservice to our users. Openness can be used against you. Having open API makes it easy to build apps to spam Twitter. They send cease and desist letters to companies every day that make the ultimate get Twitter followers tool and using our brand. And there are a lot of people following these people becasue they don’t know how to use Twitter. The need some shepherding.

Umair, you’ve had interesting use of Twitter like after quake in Chile.

Ev, thanks for the setup, he says, as he reads an email to support. Sorry, I’m Chilean, this is the only way I found to thank you. Twitter has helped in communication there, and writer gave some examples. That’s gratifying. They want Twitter to reach the weakest signals. Focus first was big on SMS and was important to us. Happy they have deals with 65 different carries. Valuable to those who don’t have internet access but do have phones. There are reasons where getting a simple message as short as a tweet can be important. Hearing in Chile there’s going to be a torrential downpour when you can’t get a weather report helps. In Haiti reached deal to extend coverage, places in Middle East coming on board.

Umair, what is an active user. Is everyone Tweeting al the time, is that an active users?

Ev, to me, it comes back to is someone getting value out of Twitter. If they’re searching Google and come up with a tweet on a regular basis, then we consider them a users. It could be that they’re searching on our site, or using a 3rd party app to find out about their brand. We have a pretty wide definition of user. We’re trying to lower the barrier. It’s evolving. At beginning it was tell the world what you’re doing. But now we’re at this point where there is something interesting on Twitter to everyone. Updates from Flaming Lips band, for example. Also as people start to consume on Twitter, we think they’ll get more involved. That can be as simple as a retweet.

Umair, heard White House press secretary using it now?

Ev, White House press secretary is now using Twitter in a more authentic way, sending some jokes, anecdotes about watching Olympics in the White House. Drops walls between influencers and those the influence. Thinks that’s one of the most profound promises of the internet. Riding the wave he helped start with blogging 10 years ago. It’s just the beginning. People in the room take this for granted, that anyone can put something on the web. That’s a big deal. It has changed institutions today and will continue to do it for decades.

Umair, does state control get in the way?

Ev, in some regions, yes. That’s why Twitter is pulling out of China. No, he didn’t say that. But he did say he wonders how long firewalls in China will hold up.

Umair telling a really long, long story about how he got customer support from a travel agent. Do we need more of this, I think he said.

Ev, yes. Understand people have limited amount of time and attention, so hope Twitter can help you focus. Have no interest in increasing your time on the Twitter site. In anything, we want  to decrease it (which is handy to say when you don’t measure well against Facebook that keeps growing, especially because ratings services don’t measure your impact through 3rd party apps well). We don’t expect everything we do to be profound. One principle is pay attention, for the company, pay attention to something that’s really compelling.

Umair loves his vacation example that we’re going back to it. Everyone wins. The only one who loses is the guy who advertised the bad hotel in the first place (and us from hearing it again).

Ev is more kind, saying Umair wrote something nice on how things will improve with more feedback. He’s now inviting Umair to explain more about his thin/thick value concept (I think).

Umair says his priciple of betterness is about creating thick value, things that help people. And Ev, you’re a Warrent Buffett fan and fan of value.

Ev. Yes. Wants to help do things in the world that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Saw that in Haiti, donate by text message, didn’t originate with Twitter, but message really spread that way State Dept told twitter. If you reduce friction, people are more likely to do things. The new @anywhere platform one of the ways to lower barriers.

Umair asks something I didn’t get. Ev is saying….

That’s not interesting if only look at way to get companies to get people to click on their links. That can be valuable. But if the channel helps the business get better, like companies getting feedback from Twitter, that can be powerful. Mentions Umair saying Walmart provides value. Now Ev is interviewing Umair.

Umair, Walmart had to go back and have a dialog with suppliers and stakeholderst to be more environmentally friendly. They didn’t use Twitter, but they had to create new links to understand what makes the world a better place.

Ev, if you live on the web, you’re used to working with the companies you use. In the real world, it’s a black box, and that creates a bad effect.

Umair, how about ambition. You’ve talked on this. in 140 characters what the goal is?

Ev: It comes down to fostering the open exchange of information, of being a force for good (i think he made it). Can you help others share and help others without being a burder. We believe ultimately that’s good. That’s our ambition.

Umair, Google’s organize information is differnet. Kind of backwards (I think he said). Now talking about his five priciples. So if you’re not hoarding data, what’s your advantage.

Ev: Our advantage will only come if everyone wins. One of our principles is that we only do win-win deals, Otherwise, it’s not sustainable. There’s lots we could do that’s low hanging fruit, but it’s not necessarily sustainable. If you’re closed, there’s always a reason to work around you. If you’re open, not so much.

Umair, is the internet helping media or starting it.

Ev, my answer in 10 years have alwasy been that it’s an ecosystem and those get richer if they work together. Sometimes species die off but only if they’re not adding value (or being hunted to extinction, heh). With Twitter, more to him that it complements existing media. At party last night people from CNN saying it’s helping them (or with Rich Sanchez, isn’t that all he does?).

Umair, what makes you tick (actually, he started out with a long intro about a post he did on the subject, but I saved you from that).

Ev: What drives me is creating things in the world that didn’t exist before. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if…” is something he tells developers to consider. I’ve always wanted to create business so we can create more things. The tangible results are great (IE money), but it’s the build more things thing.

Umair, are you smart or lucky (essentially what he meant to ask).

Ev, Mostly luck.

Umair, some long question.

Ev, What is awesomeness?

Umair, Kind of yes.

Ev, Biz tells a story of when we created Odeo (I misse Odeo) he tells story how he ripped carpet up from house he was building and dirty and hot and got tweet from Ev that he was sipping wine in Napa and he loved it. And we thought it was awesome. It took us a long time, almost a year until SXSW 2007, but we had the gut feeling there was something there.

Umair, back to his travel thing. how twitter helped make them. better.

Ev, helping other succeed is a priciple for coworkers and businesses. make things happen is another priciple. there’s also building trust. (expect Twitter to post its 9 core priciples in the near future — new Twitter corp communication guy, get on that!).

Umair, long question to say that we have to wrap-up. What’s your lessong to aspiring entrepeneurs.

Ev: Create something you want to exist in the world. Another is focus, they’re usually doing 5 things rather than 1. That’s OK, sometimes that’s the hedge. But it still means you should start with the one. If you assume you’re wrong about whatever assumptions you’re making starting out, you can always try the other one. The other thing would be to think bigger. It’s easy to do the incremental thing. With the internet, we’ve all been participating in this brainstorm for a decade to a decade in a half now. But lots on the same brainlength. But most interesting things sometimes come from outside Silicon Valley or those just thinking differently. Threadless, 37 Signals get shout outs as not being sucked into Silicon Valley thinking, See, now SV will want to invest more in those. Think Big, But Small.

And we’re done. See related news and live blogging from elsewhere via Techmeme. Also, don’t like to read? Check out this cool drawn-as-the-keynote happened visual representation of what was discussed, by Sunni Brown:

It’s live blogging time again from SXSW. Today, the Social Search: A Little Help From My Friends panel gets underway.On our panel today

Brynn starts off with a presentation (see her slides here). She’s been researching social interactions during search tasks. Think about search as no longer a question in a box but what about how your friends might be able to help you. Say, “How do you interpret a 110 on the GRE?” That might be a better friend question.

Search happens over time. You travel through a path in time and can make use of friends at any time along that path.

There is no one definition of social search but three distinct types:

• Collective (gathering advice from a crowd)
• Friend Filtered (using your friends)
• Collaborative (asking a friend — see also our The Rise Of Help Engines: Twitter & Aardvark article)

How do people want to interact with their friends when they search. Hard to design for this interaction as two types are opposites.

• Ask the network
• Embark alone

Some people in her research studies didn’t even want to ask Google, were kind of afraid. So would ask friends for help. Others would embark alone.

Next is Max from Aardvark, which was recently acquired by Google (see that article above for more about Aardvark).

Web search is great for objective questions, but subjective ones create the majority of queries. These are ones with no correct answer, “What’s a good book to read?”

The process of going to a human and ask is also flawed. Small number of friends, hard to keep up with them all. So Aardvark would ask your friends in real time and get answers.

Enormous opportunity if you can tap inside people’s heads.

After a year, 85% of questions get answered in less than 5 minutes. 70% of answers said to be good vs ok or bad. 45% of answers lead to cross talk among users. More than 50% of users have answered a question. Avg query is oops slide gone think around 13 words.

Social context is different from social graph, person you know in a particular area can help more than just who you know.

Now Ash from OneRiot, which confuses me, since it’s more a real time search engine than a social one. Oh, where the hell is Google? See Google Social Search Goes Live, Adds New Features. Which aside form Aardvark and before it has real social search. Oh, a puppet just popped up from Ash to say hello in French. I’m freaking out.

OK, lots of info about OneRiot and the words real time over and over. So hey, just go over here and read this from us instead: What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players. And he’s done, and said nothing about social so far. Sorry, Ash.

Scott’s going to talk about the money side of social search. Says all this sharing done socially can now be measured through things like Twitter, then by things like OneRiot and kind of saves making OneRiot more relevant.

Shows how they created a viral mannequin making campaign for Old Navy, which gets tweeted, which in turn means if you search for Old Navy on One Riot, you get that campaign coming up, which builds the cycle more, he says.

Best Buy case study now, working with in store experts. “Blue Shirts” there were responding using their own accounts. His agency created a hub for all of this. And I’m sorry, this isn’t social search. Interesting. Viral. Tapping into real time search, but that’s not social search.

Now a video of a guy named John at twitter.com/twelpforce asking an audience of people questions to drive to Best Buy that’s somehow social search but feels like a Super Bowl ad glommed on to the words search.

Mark says OneRiot and Aardvark seem to have gone after social search differently. I’ll say. One’s a social search engine, one is not.

Max says social should make a value add if you direct that question to a group of people. We focus on answering those kind of queries.

Aardvark started with a real human behind the sceens answering questions. Directed them to people, who were thriilled to answer.

Ash: We’re trying to answer one question, what’s going on right now. So they take any social signal they can get their hands on. See, they are social I suppose in that they tap into social networks. But they don’t narrow to a particular social circle, so Google’s a social search engine by tapping into the links that everyone socially shares on pages. Their core effort is to show what people buzzing.

Mark, is Google relevant. Will these take over the Google box.

Ash says 20-40% of search questions can be answered socially. Ba boom, take that Google. Max, if he hadn’t been bought by Google, probably would have said it’ll kill them. Let’s see if he answers!

Brynn says she doesn’t see social search taking over because there are so many different use cases that vary. To her, for a good percent of queries, we go to Google, we get information there but still have a sense of what else. Can I get confirmation, and opinion. Social search is a complement to Google. I like Brynn. She talks sense.

Mark to OneRiot, do you integrate social relevance? Personalized to the user base.

Ash, not yet. But if they see some spammer posting the same link over and over again, they’ll use user authority to block and what to weight more.

Brynn — how do you determine authority?

Ash, use past history, how many followers, though people like Eric Schmidt or Bill Gates who come on, issues at first.

Brynn — do  you index people relationships to each other?

Ash, um, um, it’s a factor. Small groups on Twitter worth looking at. (By the way, that social search thing from Google I mentioned above? They do that).

Brynn tries for clarity. Ash says it’s an inference and more that doesn’t really clarify.

Question, didn’t catch it, but Brynn’s answering. Saying social is very diverse. She got interested, and in studying search in general, found people naturally wanted to ask their friends.

Max, Aardvark was a response to social activity on line. Says not just a tech problem but user interface.

Brynn, but you have a tech problem. You had to come up with something to replace that human behind the scenes.

Max, how’s this relate to Google? Hardest thing is getting people used to the idea they can access a network of friends like they do to Google.

Mark, so how do you get in front of these people?

Ash, we get 90 to 95% of our traffic from our API, so we’re passing the data on. (and, you know, waiting for Googel or Microsoft to buy them). Go to search engine and type killer whale, you won’t get lots of info on ongoing debate on on the video. Um, actually on Google, you get a variety of results, including news. At OneRiot, top link is to buy a toy. Ironic, since Ash mocked that on Google, you’d get ads for things like that.

They’re looking at the wider paradigm of the web. Lady Gaga, they give you the phone interview, pictures, her coming in and out of clubs. (You can’t find this stuff on Google, you know. Impossible!). That’s different paradigm from thinks like where do I go out tonight in Austin. Isn’t that Aardvark he jokes? (No, FourSquare, Gowalla and Plancast).

Mark asks Scott about tapping into all this. In the old days, you’d make a microsite for search or use traditional SEO or SEM (he means paid search. or does he? See Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?). Most activity now is in the form of a blog, they can see things blowing up there and jump in and have direct conversation with a consumer. Microsite model was safe, but now clients see opportunity to make content that’s part of the social stream.

Mark, are these discrete campaigns for things?

Scott, use to be, but not stuff designed to live in the long term.

Mark, when do you go with an Aardvark model (um, you can’t. you can’t unless you are a friend on Aardvark of other people there, and no one I know is really doing that on a business basis. Possible but not yet).

Scott says maybe you could do this where you route questions to the right person say at Best Buy. But they’re really tapping into OneRiot.

Brynn says she sees this as the reverse of social search. Scott’s targeting consumers who might care about that brand and then reverse delivering social information to them.

Mark, so how are you guys going to implement that monetization? And how does it impact things on quality?

Max, way you make money in search is draw people with clear commercial intent, tell you what they want and give you permission to redirect them to something (well, you make money showing them ads right now, and hoping some of them find your ads more relevant than your editorial results).

Max will route questions to sponsored answered. Woah. Best to ask if people want the sponsored answer. Many people say yes. Create models after AdWords. So less woah if they’re making it clear you’ll get a sponsored answer, as seems to be the case.

Ash, wanted to focus on user intent, wanted to attack a market that hasn’t been able to reach. They can give high quality ads about a buzzing topic within real time streams they are watching. He doesn’t click on ads on Facebook. But if I’m reading something on Twitter and see a related ad, it’s a new ground for publishers (except being the same ground AdSense has been covering for years).

Mark, to Max, do you try to route to traditional resources?

Max, sometimes people will say hey, why didn’t you Google that first. But no. You’ll see convergence to a hybrid model maybe down the line. They only match new users with questions to existing users to help kind of train them.

Brynn says she’s noticed if you want quick tip, pick search failures, and Google has paper coming out in spring. So what questions can benefit from Aardvark model, it’s when you have failures, thrashing, people constantly trying to change their searches to get answers. If at that point, if you could nudge people to use your network, might help. Brynn’s smart.

Mark to the audience for questions.

OK, someone doing social search he says. Max, what’s your vision for Aardvark and solution and what’s left to reach that?

Started with notion that would solve subjective search but users pushed them to solve social. We want to do that across communication channels, so you can find partners to go bike with (or to buy your company, heh). You meet people all the time, and that’s the curve they want to ride.

Next, question on keywords. If I want buzz, seems like I still have to think like from traditional search marketing perspective in terms of keywords.

Scott says works closely with OneRiot and it’s not about keywords but creating content that they index. He’s going on, but I know this and will explain. OneRiot sees if there’s a buzzing trend. If you’re an advertiser, it also indexes your site looking for content that seems to match the topic. Then it will automatically put that content out there with an ad. It all sounds pretty cool and unique.

Max, links have always been more important than keywords (well, almost always). So connections are like the same thing.

Ash, if you make it relevant to people, that’s what helps with the ads.

Question to Scott, how do you deal with social search metric for clients used to traditional ones (damn, traditional folks don’t even get search metrics). Scott says too early, hasn’t done much.

Question, how do you deal with privacy? Don’t want your wife’s friends to know you’re planning a romantic retreat for example.

Max, what are you afraid of, Eric Schmidt said. Ha, no, he didn’t say that. He said you want to give people more control, but it’s far away in the development pipeline. People ask for it all the time and they do allow anonymous questions to got to an anonymous group but it’s a “low res” solution.

Brynn, that’s a really hard problem. People want those privacy settings but don’t want to set that across their home network.

And that’s the session. A few last links. Articles I’ve written mentioned above that may help in understanding some of this:

• The Rise Of Help Engines: Twitter & Aardvark
• Google Social Search Goes Live, Adds New Features
• What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players

Also see:

• How We Search With The Twitter “Help Engine”
• Aardvark “Help Engine” Opens To Wider Use

Also, ParcInc on Twitter pointed me to this research paper from Brynn:

• Towards a model of understanding social search

And to understand social search in general, especially attempts over time, see this article from me:

• Search 4.0: Social Search Engines & Putting Humans Back In Search

On June 25 last year, Farrah Fawcett died. Then stories on Twitter and elsewhere about Michael Jackson dying. Huge traffic to news sites before anything confirmed. Big change from in the past when you’d hear things from news sources only after confirmed.

So to set the day off, two big celebrities dies. Huge interest. Many didn’t believe Jackson had, then TMZ reported, then more began to believe something that seemed to be unbelievable was true. Then news started coming out that Jeff Goldblum had died.

All was based off a report from small site called Global Associated News. People linked to that as the source that the new rumor was true. But this was a hoax web site that you could fill in with any name and fake a death in an accident. (see our story from the time, Jeff Goldblum Is NOT Dead, Despite What Google Says).

So how do you suss out what’s real or not in a world that’s more and more confusing. Megan’s tips based on her experience as an online editor and journalist.

Know Your Source
Is the name of the site the name as the domain? TMZ matched TMZ.com. Global Associated News had a domain name of mediafetcher.com.

Try a search on the source. If you’d searched for “global associated news” on Google, seeing a story like “Global Associated News Shatters Masturbation World Record” as third listing might make you do a second thought about this as a solid news source.

See a tweet with news? Shows example of Mark Hendrickson tweeting that MySpace CEO was joining Plancast. But some didn’t click on the story link, which was a RickRoll. And then some sites like The Next Web wrote a story just off that tweet, not checking further.

Know The Big Picture

If you know more about the players, you might understand more about what’s going on. Is someone formerly with a company? Do they have an agenda?

Questions

How do you deal with people who constantly barrage you with what seems to be conspiracy theories? Ask them for proof, their sources, how they know it.

How about stories that are nuanced. Not yes or no but shades of truth or fiction? There’s always going to be people who want to spin things in some way. But if you know the big picture, then you have a better sense of both sides. Knowing more about what’s going on, being more media literate takes some of the edge off.

I’m here at SXSW waiting for the Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized? panel to begin. I’ll be liveblogging what happens, so stay tuned.

Search engines have certainly jumped to add in ways to find real-time content. This panel features reps from three of them talking: Google, Microsoft and Collecta. Plus, you’ve got real-time guru Marshall Kirkpatrick in the mix. It won’t all be search, I’m sure, but it’s going to come up.

Our speakers, pictured above, from left to right:

• Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb
• Jack Moffitt, Collecta
• Brett Slatkin, Google
• Scott Raymond, Gowalla
• Dare Obasanjo, Microsoft

Marshall to panel: What are some of your favorite use case of real time?

Jack: Communication has changed a lot from postal mail to telephone. To internet, closer to zero. More yells from the audience that people can’t hear. We’re getting more real time feedback about the session, heh. Giving latency down to zero gives new applications like instant messaging, Gowalla.

Brett: Future use cases, data interchange is interesting. Amazon has great inventory system to track all they have. For many people, especially in SF, painful to buy because you don’t support your local community. So a barcode scanner that did a feed that connected to local supply chain? You could get scale better than large corporations can do on their own and help local businesses compete better. That’s one of the promises of real time web, turning competition around. Smaller players can compete better.

Scott: Top of his mind are trending spots, tying in geodata with real time web. Where’s the hotspot right now? Then the tide will shift, so how do you track it. [This is what Gowalla does, track hot areas, I guess -- I need to try it. Can't Foursquare and Plancast and Gowalla just all get together?]

Dare: One way is make web pages real time, interesting if you can make parts of pages real time. Good example, hash tag for this conference. Type that in to a search, you get a stream but not pages. Getting more and more pages doing this rather than people would help. And now hard to hear him as we get bad speaker feedback. And I’m like in second row from front. Echo, echo, echo. It’s real time echo, and I can’t hear. Being able to actually analyze the flow of information is also interesting. Lots of patterns about good movies, friends.

Dammit, I wanted more c0ncrete examples. Nice try with the question, though, Marshall.

Marshall: One of his favorite things is something Brett said, that the system is being designed to support unplanned use cases (which if you think about that, is pretty awesome if it really works, how do you plan for things you don’t know?).

Jack: Lucky that first problem is solved, that publishers will give them the data. Second problem, still wrestling with, to figure out what the data formats for real time info will be. If you want to enable the real time web, need a way to push to say there’s data here, so come get it. PubSubHubBubGlub that no one can pronounce is one example of this. It so needs a better name — that’s me thinking that, but I’m not alone.

Scott: Right now, you can send messages from Buzz to Facebook, but you can’t replicate data for easily. I guess share at once to all of them. It’s really, really hard to hear, sorry. I guess everyone in the back can hear now. Maybe I can lip-read. What about corporate data policies that prevent integration from happening, and is it in the best interest of users. Or business deals that give some but not all of info. IE: Facebook, Twitter, Google, the data’s not yours to buy and sell for just your own benefit.

Dare: Common pain we all have today. Too long to get updates to Buzz from other services and so on. We hve to go about getting those services.

Brett: Standards are an issue. If you want to put monetization or business policies into a feed, you’re messing things up. Think that’s what he was saying, sorry. I’ve said it’s hard to hear, right?

Marshall: How about privacy?

Scott: We would love it if everyone was completely open with the world, makes things more valuable. But the user perspective, there’s marginal value in providing all your data. But it’s probably better to stay selfish with your own data. So trick is how to you find the right encouragement to help the business but let users stay in control. There’s a whole lot of work to be done but hasn’t been solved yet. Gowalla trying to give some incentives, like with gaming, so have to be willing to share to win.

Jack: Did we have these issues when phones came out. They decided to be public about numbers (actually, didn’t we all have to be public by default, because of party lines?). Lots of firehoses of data from MySpace or Twitter or Flickr. The level of support these streams have for deleting a post is bad. If you yank something off Flickr, there’s nothing in the Flickr data stream that tells others to delete this post. MySpace has some of this built in.

Brett: Lots of work to do on what do you share, how do you share. Then by addressing these problems together. The “oh shit” problem, oh I didn’t want to post that.

Marshall: Haven’t users already figured out where they want their real time stuff to be private, if they choose what to share or not at places like Facebook?

Jack: MySpace is a really different site than Facebook. In Facebook, you don’t have as much control over the user experience. Dare: If everyone on Twitter had a private feed, there would be no business model. So Twitter’s interest for people to be less private.

Scott: Similar to Amazon, they’ve never asked if they can analyze my data, but they just do it.

Question From Audience: Lots of Twitter and Facebook bashing. What are your companies doing right?

Marshall: Rephrases, what are your specific examples of good use cases?

Brett: Favorite problem is what’s on Google Buzz right now. Thing doing, encouraging competition in the community. Until now, people like Facebook have owned your data. Buzz is encouraging competition, you can pull in feeds from other sites.  Make a rich stream. Then expose it to the world without you knowing. No! He didn’t say that last sentence, you all just thought it. How do you deal with the challenge of different user groups. Today on Google Buzz you can link up sites to your profile (when it works, it’s still pretty lame with me), then next step back, if you host your own blog and that got pulled into Buzz with comments, then my comments there on Buzz, can it go back to your blog. Does that help people regain ownership they may feel about their content, get their comments back (maybe, but kind of good luck with that. it’s like saying you want to pull all the real world non web discussion back into your own living room). We don’t want to own anyone. At end of the day, competition will be the best for all of us.

Scott: Love to see more sites think about what’s the first 10 seconds of users experience.

Dare: Bing Twitter which is interesting way to zoom in on a location and see what’s being said (I think that’s Twitter on Bing Maps). A lot of work went into trying to find trending topics. Other thing interesting at Microsoft, Windows Mobile 7. He has four apps he jumps back and forth to find out what’s going on. I go to Fourquare to Twitter to Facebook. The thinking is that’s its not about going to 5 7 or 10 apps but as a person, I know Rob — here’s what Rob’s doing. Moving away from notion of status update and have people who are your friend get info to you.

Brett: But with Buzz, a criticism was we show ads. So how do you monetize that. Something like people Buzz, if you break down the barriers, lose the monetization for the brands that build the feeds, who’s going to do this. Specifically in the case of ?peoplehub peoplebuzz? dammit it’s so hard to hear.

Dare: I like to start from what’s the best experience for the customer. Doesn’t mean you have to lose the monetization. [Now moved to sit directly in front of speaker, maybe I can hear better that way]

Jack: Something like Twitter is doing, charging for their content, is that more of what you mean.

Dare: There’s no one size fits all. Some companies feel if you get content out as much as possible, that drives content. Hitwise stats show Facebook drives Foursquare the most traffic. Should they pull out unless paid? I don’t think so.

Audience member asks question on privacy:

Scott: We provided some basic degrees of control. If you go more fine grained, it becomes a user experience challenge. It’s a design problem more than anything. We’re working on it, and I definitely believe it is solvable, but I think the trick is to always be explicit with the user and show them where it is going.

Jack: I don’t think users have figured this out. Has friend with 12 year old daughter who had party at house, got busted, forgot her dad follows her. Write about your teacher, but it gets back to her. People have to figure out the potential repercussions, and I don’t think we’ve even figured these out. When our children have these experiences each day, then we can figure out the technology maybe [or it's not a tech issue but maybe teaching kids you don't share everything].

Brett: Not just tech issue. Part of what doing to set your preferences overall. Webfinger designed to set common privacy sharing, so you don’t have to remember and say how you want sharing to work everywhere [yeah, good luck with that, when like at Facebook, there's so much you shared in a granular fashion]. Every provider has different settings and models, and that’s wrong. The user should just say this is what’s important to me.

Jack: I don’t think users will understand the ramifications of those decisions. If I say it’s OK to share my Flickr photos to the world, there are still the ramifications.

Brett: But that’s because your privacy settings are inconsistent. That’ll change. So you get a job, you change those settings. We need consistency first.

Scott: Skeptical, with fine grained issues, touchy feely issues, so many shades as gray. I think it will be as successful as to have cross site identity, like OpenID, which has failed.

Dare: Same, hard to be consistent, that type of solution won’t work. Facebook model is different than Twitter follower model, how do you describe all these things that are different. What I tend to suspect are two things. One, users want privacy controls. Wehn you ask them, they have some expectations. But if you do introduce those, it produces friction. People don’t go into the sharing box and say this tweet is NSFW, so I will share it with only a few people. They just don’t share it. Even if you give them the functionality, it’s too much work. They don’t do it.

Another audience question, didn’t catch it, will dive into answers.

Jack: When you have a ton of info, like this blog post appears first, then this came second, you can dedupe and fight some spam. The real descrepancy is betweent different sites. Each Twitter ID is unique, you can tell. But if you put it on Facebook, harder. And Facebook has internal duplication because not all things open [think that's what he said].

Brett: Tech solutions trying to do. If Buzz hits Twitter, then Twitter hits Buzz, its gets worse and worse over time. Algos help, but not easy for little guys to do. Using Atom source [think he said] as original content producer can help. Also cross post extenstion from Six Apart to link feeds that are similar but still slightly different, to tell if you posted in multiple places.

Jack: Still going to be a hard thing no matter what. We have to make sure people actually do things.

Marshall: Thanks for joining us!

Below are the top five sites that drive traffic to Bing, or “upstream” to Bing, as Hitwise calls it:

MSN is by far the top source, the last site visited by 42.7% of Bing users before they went to Bing. That’s not surprising. MSN — Microsoft’s portal — has long been a huge search driver for Microsoft. In fact, the company recently said that half of all Bing queries come from MSN.

Bing is also the default web search engine for Facebook, so Facebook makes sense as the number two referrer, at 4.6% of traffic.

Windows Live Mail — that’s another Microsoft property that ties into Bing search — so it’s another one that makes sense logically. It’s at 4.4% of traffic.

But Google as the fourth largest referring source, at 4.1%? Google, which competes against Bing? How’s that happening? Probably two ways.

First, Bing buys ads on Google, like this:

You can find Bing ads showing up on searches at Google for bing, cashback, search engines, flight comparison and image search, to name some examples. Interestingly, Bing doesn’t appear to be buying ads against its tagline, that it is a decision engine.

Bing also does a lot of TV advertising. TV ads are known to drive search queries. So there’s a good chance that when someone sees a Bing ad, they decide to google Bing and discover what they’ve just seen!

All this also applies to Yahoo, which drives 1.9% of traffic. Bing advertises there, and TV ads probably generate queries on Yahoo for Bing, as well.

It’s clear people do search for Bing by name on Google. Using Google Trends, we can see the growth of this over the last year. Here’s the search volume of those seeking Bing on Google:

Still, that’s nothing compared to the number of searches that happen for Yahoo on Google. Here’s the Bing chart again, this time with searches for Yahoo on Google added in:

Oddest of all, currently more people search on Google for Google than for Yahoo or Bing. Here’s the chart:

To test things, I sent myself two direct messages from the @smx account that I oversee to my personal account at @dannysullivan. The messages had these links in them:

http://searchengineland.com/math-engines-for-multiplying-mixed-fractions-its-wolfram-alpha-over-google-bing-37653

http://selnd.com/du5hRX

When these links arrived as direct messages, as viewed through the Twitter site, they were unchanged. Nothing had been altered. My understanding is that links WILL change in direct messages in the near future, however.

When Twitter emailed me these messages, the links within them had been shortened as follows:

http://twt.tl/q0TtFzY

http://twt.tl/ch4FcsH

From a marketing perspective, I wondered whether Twitter was stripping out my own URL shortening entirely. If so, I potentially lost important tracking information as well as link credit.

For example, let’s take the first URL from Search Engine Land that I had DMed to myself:

http://searchengineland.com/math-engines-for-multiplying-mixed-fractions-its-wolfram-alpha-over-google-bing-37653

We use the Bit.ly Pro service so that if anyone shortens our pages through Bit.ly, the URL should make use of our own selnd.com domain. And that’s what happened with the second URL  that I DMed myself. It was the “short” version of that “math engines” article:

http://selnd.com/du5hRX

So when Twitter “shortened” that already shortened URL, was anything lost? No.

Doing a quick check, here’s what happens:

http://twt.tl/q0TtFzY

does a 301 permanent redirect to:

http://selnd.com/du5hRX

which does a 301 permanent redirect to:

http://searchengineland.com/math-engines-for-multiplying-mixed-fractions-its-wolfram-alpha-over-google-bing-37653

That’s all good. As a marketer, I don’t lose my own tracking. From an SEO perspective, no link juice is lost. And for users, as Twitter points out, it can effectively stop any abusive URLs dead since it never “broadcasts” the “real” URLs that can be harmful:

By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

Moreover, there’s really little reason for marketers to be worrying about tracking links from direct messages or getting link juice from them. To me, if you’re hitting lots of people with links through direct messages, you’re probably on the bad side of marketing already. As for link juice, direct messages are generally private messages that aren’t going to be shared on public web pages, where links may count.

But what if this system moves to be used by Twitter for all links that are tweeted, including those public ones? That’s not the case now, and the “focus” is only on filtering in email and direct messages, since that’s where most attacks happen, Twitter says. But it could go broader.

If so, as long as things work as they already are, there’s nothing to worry about as a marketer. If you use a shortener for tracking purposes, that will still work. And whether you shorten or not, all your link credit passes along to you, even through Twitter’s own shortener.

For more about tracking and link credit issues indepth, see these past posts from us:

• URL Shorteners: Which Shortening Service Should You Use?
• How Twitter Might Send Far More Traffic Than You Think
• Is Twitter Sending You 500% To 1600% More Traffic Than You Might Think?

For related news, see Techmeme.

Doing math through a search engine isn’t new. One of Google’s earliest parlor tricks was allowing people to enter math problems into its search box and get answers. Indeed, I use it for this more than my pocket calculator, these days.

Want to know 345,567 / 23? Enter that into Google, and you get back the answer: 15,024.6522:

You can do a wide range of functions using the Google Calculator. That “More about calculator” link in the screenshot above unfortunately takes you to this entirely unhelpful page. Instead, read this page buried in the Google help files to discover how the Google Calculator can do trigonometric functions, logarithms and factorials.

Fancy! But how about dealing with lowly fractions? Last night, I was dealing with problems like these:

56 2/3 * 3 1/2

I thought I was explaining how to do them right, as we worked through the homework exercises. But was there a quick way to double check? Well, I tried Google and got back:

For those who can’t see the screenshot above, that was:

(56 2/3) * (3 1/2) = 198.333333

That’s correct in decimal form, but the exercise required the product to be expressed as mixed fractions.  You know, a whole number followed by any fractional amount. C’mon, we all remember that.

I know that Bing also does math, so I tried things over there. I got back:

Again, for the screenshot-challenged, Bing processed my calculation like this:

56*2/3*3*1/2 = 56

Instead of doing fractions, Bing made some odd assumptions that I just wanted to multiple or divide the numbers that were next to each other. So, I tried it another way:

(56 2/3) * (3 1/2)

That just gave me a bigger mess:

And the text version:

(562/3)*(31/2) = 2,903.666667

This time, the space between the whole number and the start of the fraction was removed, completely changing what I entered.

NOTE: From a comment below, entering the calculation as (56 + (2/3)) * (3 + (1/2)) would have worked at Bing!

For those who want to read more about Bing’s calculator, see the Bing help page here. It can do a lot of functions even if it didn’t get mixed fractions multiplication right.

By the way, Bing does do fractions better than Google — that is, if you want a simple fraction expressed. Consider this:

300/35

On Google, that’s expressed as a decimal form only. But on Bing, you get both decimal and fractional forms:

As for the homework assignment, I gave search engines one more shot to help, this time using one that was built by a mathematician, Wolfram Alpha. How’d that go? For the example above, I got back this:

Awesome — multiple forms of the same answer. A decimal form. A fractional form. And what I wanted, the mixed faction answer:

198 1/3

I’m not sure if Stephen Wolfram’s grand ambition with Wolfram Alpha was for it to help me and my son figure out the multiplication of fractions. But it was sure useful!

• Chris Boggs, Director, Search Engine Optimization, ROSETTA
• Massimo Burgio, Founder, Chief Strategist, Global Search Interactive
• Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Dave Fall, SVP Product and Operations, Clickable, Inc.
• Rob Garner, Strategy Director, iCrossing
• Mike Grehan, VP and Global Content Director,  Incisive Media
• Motoko Hunt, President, Japanese Search Strategist, AJPR
• Kevin Le,e CEO, Didit
• Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Director Search / Owner,  Nordic eMarketing
• Dmitriy Minenko, Online Specialist, Search Engine Marketing, Tourism British Columbia
• Jeffrey Pruitt, CEO, Acendant
• Margaret Willette, Search Marketing Manager, Intuit
• Michael Y. Xu, SVP, Beijing Gridsum Technology Co., Ltd.

For history buffs, here’s the SEMPO board over time

2003-2004 (Founding Board)

• Barbara C. Coll, Webmama.com (Chair & President)
• Noel McMichael, Marketleap, (Vice President)
• Jessie Chase Stricchiola, Alchemist Media (Secretary)
• Christine Churchill, KeyRelevance
• Kevin Lee, Did-it.com
• Mauro Lupi, Ad Maiora (added in 2004)
• Fredrick Marckini, iProspect
• Brett Tabke, WebMasterWorld
• Dana Todd, SiteLab

2005

• Kevin Lee, Did-it.com (Chair)
• Dana Todd, SiteLab (President)
• John Sanchez, Zunch Communications (Vice President)
• Jeffrey Pruitt, iCrossing (Treasurer/Secretary)
• Ron Belanger, Carat Interactive
• Chris Churchill, Fathom Online
• Barbara Coll, CEO, Webmama.com
• Koichiro Fukasawa, Wasabi Communications
• Gordon Hotchkiss, Enquiro
• Mauro Lupi, Ad Maiora SpA
• Jessie Stricchiola, Alchemist Media
• Julienne Thompson, Advertising.com
• David Williams, 360i

2006:

• Gordon Hotchkiss, Enquiro  (Chair)
• Dana Todd, SiteLab  (President)
• Jeffrey Pruitt, iCrossing (Vice President)
• Sara Holoubek, Free Agent Consultant (Secretary)
• Dave Williams, 360i (Treasurer)
• Chris Boggs, G3 Group
• Julienne Thompson Hood, Advertising.com
• Bill Hunt, Global Strategies International
• Mick Jolly, PRWeb
• Kevin Lee, Did-It
• Mauro Lupi, Ad Maiora
• Daniel Perry, Career Education Corporation
• Bill Tancer, Hitwise

2007:

• Gordon Hotchkiss, Enquiro (Chair)
• Jeffrey Pruitt, iCrossing (President)
• Dave Williams, 360i (Vice President)
• Dave Fall, DoubleClick Inc. (Treasurer)
• Chris Boggs, Avenue A/Razorfish (Secretary)
• Massimo Burgio, Global Search Interactive
• Fionn Downhill, Elixir Systems
• Duane Forrester, Sports Direct Inc.
• Sara Holoubek, Free Agent Consultant
• Bill Hunt, Global Strategies International
• Kevin Lee, Did-It
• Tanya Rietze, Hewlett-Packard
• Dana Todd, SiteLab

2008-2009

• Jeffrey Pruitt, iCrossing (Chair)
• Sara Holoubek, Free Agent Consultant (President)
• Ron Jones, Symetri Internet Marketing (Vice President)
• Dave Fall, DoubleClick, Inc. (Treasurer)
• Chris Boggs, eMergent Marketing/Brulant, Inc. (Secretary)
• Jessica Bowman, In-House SEO Expert
• Massimo Burgio, Global Search Interactive
• Bruce Clay, Bruce Clay, Inc.
• Duane Forrester, Microsoft
• Gordon Hotchkiss, Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc.
• Bill Hunt, Global Strategies International
• Kevin Lee, Didit
• Dana Todd, Newsforce

Note: The election above gave board members two year terms, though officers — selected from the board — only had one year terms. I can’t tell from the SEMPO press release archives who was elected to what office for 2008. There’s a lot missing in the archives. Listed above are those selected as officers for 2009.

SEMPO was founded in August 2003, suffered a rocky year near its first birthday that saw some questioned whether it would survived. But since then, it has lasted longer than some rival industry organizations that have come and gone. The group releases an important annual industry report each year and had a big highlight when it rang the NASDAQ bell in 2008.

Below are the sessions. Occasionally there is more than one session happening in a particular time slot. In those cases, I’ve prioritized the sessions I think are most appealing from top to bottom. But that’s my personal opinion. Those “lower down” still might be great for others. It’s sad you have to pick at all!

Friday, March 12

2:00 PM

Social Media Marketing for Your Business: Social media marketing is separate from search marketing but is still extremely useful for search marketers to know about. And this session is led by two long-time search marketers, Tony Adam and Chris Winfield.

Smackdown: Consumers Privacy vs. Advertiser Revenue: Possibly some focus on search ads in this.

3:30 PM

Google in China: Context and Consequences: No, no one from Google speaking here. But it’s led by Beijing-based writer and tech commentator, so there might be some good insights.

5:00 PM

Time + Social + Location. What’s Next In Mobile Experiences? Just seeing Foursquare and MapQuest listed among the presenters caught my attention. Maps, location checkins — they may not seem like search, but they are.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income: Darren Rowse has been making a living from good content for ages. And good content is one of the key ways to be successful in search marketing, so this session makes the list.

Saturday, March 13

11:00 AM

Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized? Search engines have certainly jumped to add in ways to find real-time content. This panel features reps from three of them talking: Google, Microsoft and Collecta. Plus, you’ve got real-time guru Marshall Kirkpatrick in the mix. It won’t all be search, I’m sure, but it’s going to come up.

How to Create a Viral Video: Video content is integrated into Google’s Universal Search results and often overlooked as a way to make it into the top results. So why not learn how to make a hot video? I saw Margaret Gould Stewart from YouTube speak at TED recently — she was awesome and is on the panel. Lots to learn here.

Are Content Farms Good or Evil? Yes. Personally, I think there’s far more concern that content farms are somehow overrunning Google than is actually happening. But still, there are worries. Session is led by journalist Dan Gillmor, so should be fun.

12:30 PM

Getting Your Game Found In Search Engines: This is the session I’m leading. It’s meant for those involved with games, who are trying to bring more traffic to search. Tony Adam, who I mentioned above, will be taking part in the discussion. It’s not a traditional panel. No presentations. Instead, I’ll be leading the group there to help each other share tips and experiences.

Maps 2010: How iPad Impacts the LBS Market: LBS means location-based services, and that has a tie into search. In this, Mok Oh of EveryScape looks at how street-level and in-store photography.

5:20 PM

RIP Jeff Goldblum: Truth vs. Web BS: I know first hand how search helped spread the rumor that Jeff Goldblum was dead, so there’s an aspect of search that should show up here. The session is led by Techmeme’s — er Mediagazer’s — Megan McCarthy.

Sunday, March 14

9:30 AM

Augmenting Maps with Reality: Bing, Twitter, Foursquare, Navteq and Yahoo all take part in this panel. Google? Google? No.

Google Hackathon: Android TTS/Accessibility, Geo APIs, Chrome Accessibility Extensions: TTS, that’s text-to-speech. And there’s geospatial APIs being covered.

11:00 AM

What If Your Phone Had Five Senses? Google’s been talking a lot about how your phone is like an extension of your senses, especially in terms of the Nexus One. So expect more of this here, given the panel features two Googlers along with others.

12:30 PM

Writing Web Content For A Living: Did I mention the importance of web content in terms of search rankings above? Yes, I did. Here’s another session that might help you sharpen some skills.

3:30 PM

Beyond Algorithms: Search and the Semantic Web: Put “semantic” or the “semantic web” in a press release, and you pretty much make me zone out. So much hype. So little definition over what that means. Still, speakers from both Factual and Wolfram Alpha are part of this panel. Should have some interesting discussion.

5:00 PM

Search Patterns: Tangible Futures for Discovery: Long-time user behavior expert Peter Morville looks at search from a design perspective.

Monday, March15

11:00 AM

Social Search: A Little Help From My Friends: Google recently bought Aardvark, one of the panelists on this session. Should be some interesting discussion. Also see our The Rise Of Help Engines: Twitter & Aardvark article for more background on getting search help from friends.

11:20 AM

Video Search Optimization Strategies To Grow Your Business: I said video was a great way into the top results above, right? Right.

2:00 PM

Evan Williams Keynote Interview: Twitter’s had a huge impact on search, so tune-in to this interview with one of its cofounders.

Did I Miss Something?

I probably have missed some search-related sessions. Well, here are some additional resources:

• All sessions that mention search
• All sessions that mention Google (and some speakers from Google)
• All sessions that mention Bing
• All sessions that mention Yahoo

Enjoy SXSW, those heading out!