Yesterday, in a shower of non-publicity, they announced partnerships with Jaiku, Facebook, FriendFeed and Bebo and integrated live data from these services into their search results. This is the first time anyone has done this, and as TechCrunch put it, “this is huge.” I guess Google aren’t into making a fuss.

Of course this will continue to develop and get more and more interesting as it does so. The moment the search includes real time results specifically from my own friends is the moment this will really change the game. What if  I type “netbooks” into Google and I’m immediately given all the thoughts of my friends on which products are the best and worst. Could links be ranked based on what my friends said and linked to, rather than what the whole web said? This would seriously shake things up.

Of course for this to happen then Google would really need to push the idea of people logging into Google to get better search results. All of their latest features are getting people used to the idea of logging in – the prominence of Gmail accounts, and soon enough the promise of personalised search results could really extend the use of Google accounts. Of all the brands to trust with your personal data, surely Google would be trusted as most responsible? Microsoft lost all of T-Mobile’s data, the UK Government is in the habit of leaving USB sticks on trains, and Microsoft…well..they’re Microsoft. Google are a data company, data is what they do, and if it means better search results I’m happy for them to have mine. Would you link all of your social networking accounts to Google if you could?

Real time results are one thing, personal results are whole new ball game.

Couldn’t the reason behind this be simple; when people are searching or using comparison sites they’re actively looking for a specific product? If advertisements are relevant to what they are looking for then they’ll pay attention, if they aren’t then they simply ignore those ads.

The debate about how to get peoples attention online will continue and continue, but ultimately it can be boiled down to one simple factor. People don’t like being sold to, and up until the mid ’90s they just had to put up with it. Advertisements were in their newspapers and they broke up their favourite television programs. Fast forward to the 2000’s and the situation is somewhat different; people look for what THEY want, not what advertisers tell them they want. Before the internet, the man was in the information driving seat, in the age of the internet, we’re all in the driving seat and we threw the adverts out at the first service station.

The power to search is really at the route of all of this. People now have more choice and they can exercise that choice in the Google search bar. “I want chocolate covered in toffee”… they search and they shall find. Influencing people through traditional advertising is an industry surely set to die – peoples attention floats expectantly in the “I’m genuinely interested in this” camp. Mass audiences, apart from Yawn-Factor, are dwindling, because people are in control of their own information management. It raises an interesting question: if they can’t advertise to us in the open, are we going to witness a huge increase in guerilla advertising. Will they get in our minds Derren Brown style?

Now…where did I put that Dr. Pepper?

“Google’s new Social Search will allow users to opt-in to having search results from content created by their friends on social networks around the web included in Google search results. Those friend connections could come from any number of sites that you and your friends have listed in your Google Profiles – but it won’t include Facebook

Microsoft announced today that Facebook status messages and other content from Facebook users with public profiles will soon appear in Bing search results. That’s a huge change for Facebook. Bing also announced Twitter search integration, which is live now.

Google announced a deal with Twitter today as well. So Bing has Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has Bing-powered web search. Google just has Twitter, no Facebook search.”

Clearly the search giants think there’s something in this social search thing, evidenced by their bickering over who gets what. There’s been a lot of talk about ‘real time search’ which looks at what people are saying about a subject right this second. Google currently indexes and ranks content based on how many links it has and how “established” it has become. Real time search produces results based on what links people are sharing right this second. Tech Crunch offered their two pennies on how a more socially driven system might work:

“For example, if a link to a post about healthcare reform on an obscure blog suddenly gains currency and is retweeted hundreds of times, that is a signal to perhaps rank that link higher in searches about “healthcare reform.” If people stop Tweeting about it, then maybe it goes down in the ranking… Tweets and other micro-messages will become part of results”

This is a key idea, and one that should sound as a warning sign that things will soon be changing significantly in search. This new method of ranking a website won’t only apply to content based sites; this will happen to your business. What people are saying about your business really matters and soon enough it’s going to either add value to your business, or take from it. Now is the time to consider how your business aims to rank well socially, and there’s probably no quick fix solution. Social isn’t going to just be about having a blog and a twitter profile, it’s going to be about ensuring your business gets as much positive feedback as possible because that positive feedback will make your site rank better, so how are you going to achieve that?

It’s no secret that this is the way things are headed. Already on Google’s search results is the ability to add a comment to be seen amongst your friends, how long until these comments are aggregated and analysed to rank your website?

It seems more likely that this system will be integrated into the SideWiki Project which Google announced today. It allows searchers to see what people are saying about a website right from their browser, and crucially it allows people to write a review about any site they visit – all indexed into Google’s mammoth database. Granted, the implementation of this idea is nothing short of terrible, but it shows a desire and drive for Google to get their hands on social reviews – real data from real people. They’ve made no secrets about analysing the data SideWiki produces, “we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed.” The headline on the Google Sidewiki reads “Help and learn from others as your Browse the web” – a more appropriate title might have been “Help us learn as you Browse the web”, since this is clearly an effort to get people ranking a websites value rather than an algorithm.

I guess that’s what this whole debate boils down to – who should rank a websites worth, Google’s algorithm or people’s ratings? By knowing and understanding how Google ranks a page, a whole industry has developed to help businesses rank better in the search results. Building links, using carefully constructed anchor text, link bait, and sometimes a few other shady tactics have all become a part of the industry. If current trends continue the switch over from this system to a social one might come as a shock to businesses across the world. Search will rank your site based on how well you perform, the reviews your site has received, and how many people are talking about you. It doesn’t look like there’s an easy way to manipulate that…yet.

Companies operating under this exact search philosophy already exist, and they’re already producing great results. Websites like Qype, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Delicious, Ciao (by Bing), are just a few amongst dozens of socially driven search engines that are springing up. Test the theory that these search engines are producing better results – specifically when looking for businesses, companies, organisations, and services, because they’re listening to what real people say about them. There’s certainly a blog post in comparing the results from these search engines, something I’ll put together in the future. For now I’ll just make my thoughts clear, in many situations these niche search engines produce significantly better results than Google does.

Don’t think for a second that Google will allow themselves to be left behind, they’ll be monitoring these trends closely. All of the changes I’ve mentioned so far are testament to the theory that they’re soon to change the way they operate significantly, and I predict it will happen much quicker than people expect. Those up and down arrows in Google’s search results might be cosmetic for the minute, but that data is flowing into Google’s servers and being analysed right now, they could utilise that data any time they want.

If we go back to Google’s stated plans – having your friends thoughts and feelings included in your search results. It’s a sign that you and your business had better make sure those friends are saying nice things about your brand and business; a personal recommendation is very valuable. And if all goes to plan, Google will soon be serving everyone personal recommendations.

“I can’t see how it’s possible to make the pure advertising model work unless you have enormous scale. Publishers have to find other ways of making money.”

It’s interesting to note that Grimshaw doesn’t seem to have considered a) working towards an enormous scale or b) innovating a new platform; it’s the lack of creativity I find the most frustrating. If the MD hasn’t got the answers he doesn’t deserve to be in his lofty position, it’s time to start firing the old firm and promoting the juniors.

“You’ve got to pay for it” seems to be the only answer big media hitters can come up with, and so far, in the history of all things internet, no one has ever paid for anything. The problem I see with their pricing model is the clear generation gap. They might get some people over the age of 40 to pay for their content – but aren’t these the same people who still buy their newspapers? How do they plan on attracting a younger audience who grew up reading blogs, reddit, and digg?

The quick fix solution of slapping a price tag on their content is like throwing paper on a dying fire, the party will continue for a brief comforting period followed by its swift and inevitable collapse into grey dust. They’ve really got to get creative to keep the party going – install some disco lights, hire a DJ, hand out some goodies and amass a large following and once you’ve got them there, sell things to them.

OK, so it’s not the best analogy, but I’m sure you see my point.

The music industry has been as slow to react to the changing times as the printed media industry has. They expend all of their energy clinging desperately to whatever influence they have left to point at pirates and content thieves and cry unfair, all the while startups like hypem, last fm and spotify take it upon themselves to sort things out. To take an Eddie Izzard analogy, the mainstream media have been demoted from the driving seat to cleaning  the windscreen at the traffic lights dreaming of how it could have been.

The innovation and experimentation has got to start today. Start thinking “how are we going to do this without a paid model?” My answer would be to let your brands become conglomerates of smaller ones – give your staff the room, support and funding to innovate online platforms. If you’re convinced that money from consumers needs to end up in your pocket, know this – people certainly won’t pay for written content. They’re going to want much more than that if they’re ever to part with their hard earned cash, and what do you currently have to offer them? Very little.

Videos are free on YouTube, music is free on spotify, and television is free on hulu, iPlayer and 4OD so why are people going to pay to read your words? They’re not.

Companies that have innovated are the companies that excite young people so it’s innovation you need to be taking part in. Why isn’t big media doing everything they can to fund UK media start ups? I’d be hesitant to say it’s because they don’t want to be dethroned by a company with an average age below that of their children. Spot.us is an idea that should have been developed by big media, as was tumblr, twitter, vimeo, viddler, kaltura, and wikipedia, but alas, big media has been too busy counting its dwindling chips.

They’ve been immersed for so long in the status quo they’ve forgotten what innovation means, how to do it, and why it’s important. If I were aboard the sinking ship I’d forget the wishful thinking that el’capitanos is going save me. Start frantically designing life rafts to float away and prosper.

The child of a creative garage scientist type had climbed into the base of an experimental helium balloon which took off and travelled south east at an altitude of 7,000 feet. The boy was contained in a tiny compartment made of plywood attached to the base of the balloon

Wowsers.  Before you knew it everyone was talking about Balloon Boy. It was a media frenzy, with the international press descending to child’s house and his family, friends and neighbours being interviewed on live television. Everyone was scrambling to ask “where is balloon boy?”

Within a matter of hours balloon boy was a trending topic on twitter, 4Chan were putting their ridiculous twist on things, and there were already mashups emerging surrounding the inspiring story… Where was balloon boy? Was he OK? Was he going to survive the impact?

After the balloon touched down and the boy was nowhere to be seen, it emerged that balloon boy was in fact, attic boy. He’d been hiding in the garage attic all along, so call off the huge rescue efforts and everyone can stop the panic. What a relief! He’s OK!

So the live interviews start to mount up, and whilst on CNN the child was being asked about his trip to the attic. “When you heard them shouting, why didn’t you come down?” and he replied “you guys said, that we did this for the show?”

So what’s the show? A filthy stinking PR stunt? Who is this family? First and foremost, the family in question are no strangers to the media spotlight and have featured on Wife Swap USA. Their show was geared around safe households vs unsafe households, no prizes for guessing which category Balloon Boy’s family fell under. So what was “the show” that balloon boy talked about?

His Father has a website, which investigates psychic phenomenon and other such crazyness, so maybe they were trying to promote that? If that’s the case, they’ve not thought the plan though, because their website has now crashed thanks to the thousands of hits it is no doubt getting.

I’m more of the mindset that this might involve Pixar, and some deal to create a media hype about some kid going up in a balloon. It’s the right timing so it’s not too obvious that this was a publicity stunt. Maybe balloon boy meant to say “you guys said, we did it for Pixar, and that movie…?” Was this a social media stunt for Pixar, or just a massively profitable coincidence for the blue skied animators?

The initiative is dubbed “Race Online 2012″ and to achieve it’s aims, Martha Lane Fox intends to use her business contacts to create partnerships focused on achieving her goals. So far, BT, Intel, Google, and even the electrical retailer Comet – which plans to trial an in-store scheme to help older customers familiarise themselves with the web – are on board with the scheme.

Essentially, the initiative is looking to lower the cost of broadband to those who can’t afford it and to push broadband services out into rural Britain, a market that has largely been ignored by broadband providers. This isn’t a flash in the pan idea either, Lane Fox is heading up The Office of Digital Inclusion which is a part of the Governments wider Digital Britain plans. These goals are achievable.

“It is an ambitious project, but other countries have done it. And there are some compelling reasons for driving this forward,” she said.

Here’s the part that should be music to the ears of anyone who owns, or plans to own an e-commerce store. Of the £22bn set to be generated by the scheme, £8.85bn will result directly from an increase in online sales. If Martha Lane Fox and her initiative succeed – remember they aim to have this done in just three years – e-commerce sites will have 14 million more people to sell their products to.

That’s good news if you’re already selling your products online, and it’s even better news if you’re planning to. With the public and private money being spent to get more people buying your products online, there surely hasn’t been a better time to get your business online?

Today, the NMA report that John Lewis are to stop using voucher codes out of a fear they could provide consumers with a brand-damaging experience. Luke Kingsnorth, development manager for online marketing at Lewis Direct said,

“The main issue for us was the deception around voucher codes. We’d have people putting up our free delivery offers as a voucher, which was open to anyone on the site anyway, and then using that to place a cookie and grab a commission on a sale”

“The worst part of it was people would feel cheated when they clicked through and wonder why we were doing business with such site, so it was damaging to the brand.”

Is this a problem you’ve seen or heard of first hand? It’s interesting to note that Robert Glasgow of Webgains today called for more transparency within the affiliate marketing industry. He talked of a “tit-for-tat scam fest” often taking place between the Merchant and the Affiliate. He went on to argue that “it’s an absolute given that a basic level of openness and clarity is necessary for the industry.”

It sounds like a move towards more “social” values, yet openness and transparency are ideas that have been at the heart of the social media revolution for years. Why is it taking the affiliate industry so long to catch up? Even with Glasgow’s discussion of becoming more open and transparent his sentiments fell short of pushing affiliate marketing toward entirely social values by accepting that affiliates should be asked to “respect the brand” and “maintain the necessary high level of confidentiality” about the work they do. All this at a time when bloggers in the USA are now facing fines of up to $11,000 for not disclosing any sweeteners they get to blog about a product – something very similar to affiliate marketing.

With John Lewis declaring themselves out of the voucher affiliation game because of the sketchy tactics going on, the question is, will affiliate marketing have to take on board social values to keep their clients and remain relevant?

Room 14, a men’s clothing outlet based in Ashton-under-Lyne, came to Fluid Creativity wanting to turn their existing static website into a functioning e-commerce platform. That’s exactly what we did, after many weeks of hard work, Room 14 menswear now have a fully functioning e-commerce website that extends their business reach from the high street to the global market.

We spent some time with the owners of Room 14 to get to know what they were all about, and just as we’d suspected, showing off their amazing range of clothes was top priority; with that in mind we designed a site with plenty of room to display their clothing. We also integrated an eye pleasing image overlay to allow visitors to see different details on each item of clothing without having to refresh the page.

Take a look around the site and let us know what you think. Room 14 are now accepting payments, so while you’re there you might want to consider making a purchase!

One thing we’re particularly pleased with is our new portfolio section. You can filter the work we’ve done by category, so if you just want to see the animation work we’ve done, that’s not a problem.

Of course it’s not just a website we’re launching here, this is about repositioning ourselves as a business. Along with our new website, there are now two new services on offer, online marketing training and social media marketing. Our expansion into these areas of the digital world is testament to our growth over the last few years and we’re excited about where we now are – a true full service digital agency.

Finally, we’ve also got a new motion graphics showcase which details plenty of the work we’ve done over the years and shows where we are as a business. It’s a fantastic piece of work by our motion graphics department, so take a look and tell us what you think.

If you like what you see from the new Fluid Creativity, get in touch, and we’ll tell you what we can do for you and your business.