Author Archives: ghotchkiss

Google and the Future of Video

The talks that Google and Apple are currently in about video will likely start defining the future of video entertainment as we know it. And it’s just one more example of “push” going to “pull”.

The news story is about iTV, the new device that bridges the gap between the TV and the PC, letting you viewed video from your hard drive on your TV. It’s the continuation of convergence that I’ve been talking about for some time now.

But what is interesting about this to me is not so much the hardware as the extension of searchability to online entertainment. It’s just a matter of time before the walls come down between something like YouTube and the world of broadcast TV. They’re already crumbling rapidly. And setting your viewing preferences based on searchability opens up a whole new world. I’ve had just a taste of it through Microsoft’s Media Center and I like it. You can search up to two weeks of programming by keyword, looking for a particular topic, director or actor.

Now, let’s extend this the next logical step. Let’s open up the rapidly exploding world of video. All the movies, all the tv shows, all the documentaries ever made, as well as the crushing wave of consumer generated video content, all as searchable as the web thanks to Google. You in the mood for a show about 9/11 conspiracy theories? A quick search and you’re watching Loose Change. Plus, Google suggests other shows you might be interested on based on your topic. It’s just a matter of time before somebody does for video what Pandora is doing for music, allowing you to explore the world of video entertainment based on similarities to what you already like.

Social tagging opens up more possibilities, allowing you to tap into the most popular choices of the various online communities you belong to. The buzz effect takes over (as we see currently on YouTube) and suddenly watching online video becomes a communal experience.

It’s a revolution in video distribution, and the seeds are being sown currently in the chat that Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt are likely having as we speak.

Google Dropping Sponsored from the Golden Triangle?

Whoa..this is a bold move!

Just saw a thread on Webmaster World that indicates Google is testing removing top sponsored ads after a number of searches where a user doesn’t click on anything. Tried it myself and sure enough, after 4 or 5 refreshes, top ads were gone.

After refreshing on the same query, the ads disappeared for that query, and any modifications of the query, but still showed for a totally different query. After I went through the same process with the new query, all my top ads disappeared.

If Google sticks with this, it demonstrates a huge dedication to the user experience. Our research has shown how valuable this real estate is from a monetization perspective, but Google’s feeling (and rightly so) is that if you’re skipping past it anyway, the probability of a click on these ads is minimal. Why impair the user experience but taking up prime real estate with something that the user is just filtering out anyway.

I did some more testing with some different patterns to see where the sponsored filter seems to be tripped. If you do a number of different searches without clicking on sponsored listings, it doesn’t seem to kick in. It’s only if you do a lot of return visits to the same set of search results without hitting a sponsored link. But once the ads are gone, they’re gone for every query from then on til you clear your cookies.

Ironically, my only hesitation with this is from the user experience perspective. My feeling is the thresholds might be set too low. Intent plays a huge part in how we interact with search listings, and this can vary greatly from search to search. It’s also very difficult to determine from the nature of the query. So, if I’m in a fact finding mode, even if I’m using what appear to be very commercial terms, and I skip over ads on 4 or 5 subsequent returns to a page, that doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t want ads on any search. One anomalous search could filter out top sponsored results for days, weeks and even months and the user would never know what happened. There is no indication on the page that Google is applying any type of filter. There is no way to turn them back on. For 99.9% of web users, they’d never know what happened.

Now, it’s not all ads, but only the top ones that disappear. But the fact is, the difference between visibility and performance of ads in the two locations is so significant, that moving the top ads over to the side is almost like removing the ads from the page. Almost everyone starts scanning at the top of the page.

Google’s intentions are noble here, but they’re actually removing control from the user. I’m a big champion of organic results, so I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Google might be too hasty in stripping out top sponsored ads. In two different eye tracking tests, we found that it was clicks on these top sponsored links that actually offered the highest success rates for users. I’ll be watching with great interest to see how the test progresses.

The SEM Hierarchy of the E-mail Inbox

First published September 14, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Into each social structure, a little stratification must fall. As our society takes a decidedly virtual turn, I’m finding that my Outlook inbox is the latest place where a class structure is taking shape.

Of course, you have the standard spam vs. non-spam sorting, but this doesn’t really count. That happens pretty much transparently in the background, and every day or so I wade through the muck in my deleted spam folder just to make sure a vital piece of communication didn’t get waylaid. For instance, today an e-mail from my lawyer went there. On second thought, perhaps the filter knew better than I what should be deleted.

No, it’s the e-mail that survives the cut that is subject to endless classification and sorting, as I haplessly try to wrap my priorities around an ever-expanding inbox. At first, I thought the six different flags supplied by Outlook would do the trick, but I quickly realized my complicated world needs much more than six classifications.

So in an attempt to ease the daily burden of countless search marketers, I offer the following suggestions for an SEM Custom Rules plug that would automatically take the following actions in Outlook’s inbox.

The “Anything from Google” Rule

It doesn’t really matter what comes in with an “@google.com” on the back end, you’d better open it right away. These go on the top of the list. If it’s from Matt Cutts or Tim Armstrong, perhaps a siren and flashing red light to draw further attention. I don’t get e-mails from Eric, Sergey or Larry, and I suspect the same is true for most SEMs, but if I ever did, I would like a heavenly ray of light to shine gently on me as a choir of angels sing the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

The MSN Beta Invitation Rule

This could dramatically reduce the manual sorting required by automatically signing up for beta test groups for MSN’s new adCenter products, including the Targeting by Presence of Facial Hair Platform, the Visitors You Wish You Got Report feature and the Integrated adCenter/Xbox 360 Console, which drops you into a virtual 3-D world where you can walk up to leads that didn’t convert and slap them for being stupid.

The “Hey, I Got a Speaking Gig” Rule

This would (until recently anyway) include e-mails from Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman and Brett Tabke, indicating which panel you’d be speaking on at the next big show. These e-mails have to be referred to quickly so you have time to book hotels and flights, and then start e-mailing to see who else will be at the show, who was going to what after- hours function, if you could catch a ride with them, who else was on your panel, and when is the deadline for getting the presentation done (no, not the official deadline–the “real” deadline).

The “Why the Hell Did I Sign Up for This?” Rule

The average search marketer signs up for approximately 6,428,943 newsletters, 194,597 Google news alerts, 963,693 forum post notifications–and that doesn’t include RSS subscriptions. This is all done in the hopes of gaining some vital piece of information that would give them the leg-up on the competition, who are of course all subscribing to the same things. This rule would scan everything for the 1 in 159,975 chance that there’s a useful tidbit in there somewhere. The one exception is the Search Insider–naturally.

The SEMPO Board Communication Rule

Admittedly for a very small market, this would be nonetheless essential for those who serve on SEMPO’s board. It would be able to detect the difference between the 9,543 e-mails a day you get just because you were part of the e-mail alias, a 12-page-long cc list, and the messages requesting you to get off your butt and do something.

The “Rocket to the Top of the Search Engines” Rule

Although these e-mails are technically spam, I like to read them every so often and feel smug about how superior and morally pure I am, and how far my company has come since the days when everyone tried this marketing tactic.

The “Arrange a Meeting/Teleconference” Rule

Why don’t we just accept the fact that it takes 3.6 months and 112 e-mails back and forth to arrange any type of call or meeting, so we should just automate the process? That way we can still feel good that we’re trying to facilitate the phantom meeting by generating reams of e-mails and invitations, while saving us some time. In the end, it will automatically revert to the original time and date proposed, as it turned out that it was really the best for everyone, anyway.

The “Loved Your Column” Rule

Okay, seriously, these e-mails, when they come in (and yes, I have got a few), are the highlight of my day, and they’re the first I respond to. Of course, don’t take this as a hint or anything.

Tales of Pogo Sticks, Bouncy SERPs and Sticky Pages

First published September 7, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Much of what little strategy exists in search marketing is aimed towards the first click from a results page (also called a SERP). The position, the messaging and the landing page experience all assume that we’ve captured that all-important first click. But what about the subsequent clicks? In the search business, this is called pogo sticking, the bouncing back and forth from the search page, and clicking on a number of sites in sequence in an effort to find what we’re looking for.

Desperately Seeking Pogo Stats

We know pogo sticking exists, but when I tried to quantify how common it was, I quickly ran into a lot of closed doors. I tried all the major engines and was told that they don’t divulge that type of information, even in aggregate form. I also tried the monitoring services (comScore, Nielsen, Hitwise) but again came up empty.

So, failing anything more quantitative, we had to turn to our own limited data set. The stats below come from the combination of eye-tracking sessions, where we’ve been able to look for pogo sticking. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but it’s the best we’ve got, so I present it with a whackload of caveats.

We saw pogo sticking occur in 49 percent of the sessions we looked at. We suspect the occurrence of this type of behavior would be even higher in real-world settings. So at least one out of every two searches results in a return visit to the results page. In our sessions, 21.5 percent of them results in two clicks from the SERP, 10.4 percent in three clicks, 4.9 percent in four clicks, and 5.5 percent in five clicks. The remainder (6.8 percent) clicked six times or more.

Google has the fewest pogo sticking sessions, with only 36.4 percent of them resulting in a round trip to the SERP. MSN had the highest percentage, with 59.4 percent. Even if you question the numbers (and you have every right to do so) I believe it’s a pretty safe bet that pogo sticking is a pretty common occurrence.

The Power of the Pogo

Why is this important? Because a return visit looks significantly different than the first visit. And if it happens at least half the time, it’s a factor we’d do well to consider as we lay down our search strategies.

I strongly recommend that all search strategies take into consideration the mind-set of your target customer, within the context of what else appears on the page. This exercise can help you forecast the receptiveness of your target to your position on the page, the messaging you present, and the landing page experience you provide.

Let’s walk through a typical scenario. Our target customer searches for “hybrid SUV’s.” Because we’ve done our market segmentation homework, we know our target is early in the buying cycle, and is looking for alternatives for fuel-efficient SUVs, building a consideration set.

Eye-tracking studies have shown there’s relatively little variance in the scanning activity with most searchers at the beginning. They tend to start at the top and work their way down, with a strong bias toward the No. 1 organic spot. Therefore, in this scenario, we have to look at how enticing these top listings are. In walking through this on a search engine, GM and Lexus had purchased the top sponsored spots, where the majority of searchers start their scanning. The first organic spot belongs to the site hybridcars.com, a comparison of available hybrid SUVs. Given our target and his intent, it’s very likely that this site will capture the majority of first clicks from the page.

Beyond the First Click

If we’re playing in this real estate, we have to look beyond the first click to what might happen on the second and subsequent clicks. Scan patterns spread around more evenly on the page on return visits, without the very strong upper-left bias that tends to create the so-called “Golden Triangle” (so-called because we called it that). People tend to fixate on where the last listing clicked, and then can head out in multiple directions from there, either continuing down the listings, skipping up to take another look at the top sponsored, or even a quick glance across to the side sponsored ads. Whereever they choose, their interactions will now be colored by what happened in that first click.

Our strategy now has to account for the influence of that likely first click. We have to know how it will alter or reinforce the intent of our user. We also need to know how sticky the landing page behind that first click is. Is it the type of page that will hold him, and possibly send him off in another direction, or is it a quick bounce back to the SERP because it isn’t well aligned to our target’s intent? Does it reinforce our brand, or our competitor’s? What appears above the fold, and what appears below the fold? Again, we know from eye- tracking studies that this is the critical divide of the page in terms of scanning activity.

When one realizes the impact of pogo sticking, it suddenly means that our search strategy doesn’t play out in a vacuum. It’s intimately dependent on what else appears on the results page, and the most likely paths our target will take from that page. It increases the complexity of our strategy exponentially. The only way to successfully navigate it is to have a clear view of the intent of our target. Sure, it makes search marketing more difficult, but it also makes it infinitely more interesting!

Dan Brown Rant

I’ve been surpressing this for a couple weeks now, but I’m threatening to blow a gasket if I don’t do some venting.

Enough with the frigging Da Vinci Code already!

While over in Europe, I fulfilled some lifelong dreams by visiting the Louvre in Paris, as well as Florence and Rome. But everywhere I turned, I kept bumping into adverts for the Da Vinci Code. The Louvre even has it’s own Da Vinci Code tour.

Okay, nothing against Dan Brown. I’ve read the book, as well as Angels and Demons and Deception Point. I enjoyed them. They’re entertaining, but they’re blips on the cultural radar. Mr. Brown is a writer on par with a John Grisham or a Michael Crichton. The plots are mildly interesting, the characters are about as thin as the paper it’s printed on and the dialogue is as stiff as the hard cover. The whole ancient religious sect angle raises it to slightly better than average, but just slightly. There is no justification for this tidal wave of attention that the book seems to be garnering. I thought it was restricted to this side of the Atlantic, but I was sadly disillusioned to see that it’s taken route in Europe as well. Give me a break, Paris, Rome and Florence, you’re better than this!

If you really want to see how this whole angle can be handled masterfully, take a big juicy bite out of some of Umberto Eco’s works. Compared to Foucault’s Pendulum or Name of the Rose, the Da Vinci Code is like a postcard of the original Mona Lisa.

Schmidt Takes a Bite of Apple

Eric Schmidt now sits on the board of Apple, which is leading to a flurry of speculation about what potential partnerships between Google and Apple may be in the offing. So far, the speculation seems to be rather mundane meanderings about integrating Google search technology in iTunes, possible assistance for Google in assembling a suite of apps to compete with Microsoft, and possible entertainment content distribution deals, with Jobs ties to Disney.

To me, the potential lies in the possible creation of power positions on Microsoft’s outposts, rather than assembling the forces for a head to head onslaught on the heavily fortified desk top app market. Even with Apple at their side, Google faces a daunting task in taking on Office with their tremendously entrenched position. At best, I would see them capturing a good percentage of the relatively small “alternative” market, but unless something shifts in market positions, I don’t see them swinging many main stream customers away. These apps are squarely in the pragmatist market, and the customers adverse to the risks inherent in a switch, especially when there will be a seamless upgrade path offered by Microsoft to a live version of Office.

But the cozying up takes on a more interesting dimension when you explore the possibilities beyond Microsoft’s power positions. In the mobile computing world, Microsoft has been struggling to gain market share, and the step from an iPod to a full mobile pc is not that far. Tie that together with Google’s work in creating compelling mobile apps and a web based application matrix and some interesting possibilities present themselves. We’re not far from the horizon where mobile computing starts to replace the desktop. And mobile distribution of entertainment content is rapidly moving through the early adopter stage. A chasm crossing of significant magnitude isn’t far away. I’ve got to believe that Jobs is visionary enough to see this. Apple never managed to beat the Wintel cartel on the desktop, but the hip pocket is a whole new ballgame.

Also of note is what this means for Eric Schmidt himself. Is this move solely for the benefit of Google, or is Eric positioning himself for life after Google? As the Times articles states, this moves him into a pre eminent position as a Silicon Valley power broker, and he has had political aspirations in the past. While Schmidt has done an admirable job in minding the kids at Google, the power triad structure has never been that elegant, leading to questions of its stability.

Whatever the outcome, in the swirl of partnerships that have recently been announced, this emerges as one of the more interesting developments, with some intriguing long term possibilities.

Google as the Connector, not the Creator

The TV biz is the latest to get nervous about Google. Marissa Mayer is currently in the UK, assuaging skittish TV execs who are worried about Google’s muscling in on their turf. Mayer’s message is that Google is a technology company, not a media company.

If you look at the nature of Google’s position, you would realize why it doesn’t make sense for Google to try to churn out content. Google’s point of strength, and the one they should be focusing exclusively on, is to retain it’s position as the preferred connection between users and content. It’s a connector, and as long as it continues to function as such, it’s holding all the cards. Google is the pipeline that the lion’s share of web traffic will pass through, even momentarily. And that’s the beauty of Google’s plan. It doesn’t have to worry about producing content, it can focus on facilitating the connection, and then monetizing that connection.

If you’re a connector, there’s no overhead. There’s none of the costs or headaches involved with producing the content. You just have to point the right way to it, and collect your toll for each head that passes through. It’s clean, it’s simple and it’s tremendously profitable. That’s why Google can afford to cut some pretty sweet revenue sharing splits with current content producers. If they can corner the “connection” market, they can effectively cut out the competition.

If I were the TV execs, it wouldn’t be Google I would be worrying about. It would be the millions of bored teenagers that have a camcorder and nothing better to do in an afternoon than make a stupid video. These are the clips that dominate the all time most viewed videos on YouTube. It may be easy for the established production houses to dismiss this content as amateurish and inconsequential, but these clips are precursors of the democratization of video production, as consumer generated content becomes better and more readily available. Again, it goes back to my view of the deconstruction of tradition distribution control points. Video used to have only a handful of distribution points, so tight partnerships with content creators were possible. The internet is moving the distribution point online and away from the traditional control points, and Google is very wisely trying to grab a big piece of that pie. They can remain agnostic to the source of the content, as long as they can control the access.

The thing that worries me a little is that the execs in charge of the traditional control points don’t seem to realize the magnitude of the change that’s coming. They’re focusing their attention on an easily identifiable but false threat coming from Google, without realizing that the rules of the game are being completely rewritten and the real threat is coming from their own audience.

Life after SEW for Danny Sullivan

First published August 30, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This Tuesday, a bomb dropped on the search marketing community. It started, as so many stories do now online, with a simple blog post. After 10 years, Danny Sullivan was leaving Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. Jaws could be heard dropping around the world. Danny is synonymous with both the shows and the site. And ten years is an eternity in this biz. We just always assumed that Danny’s involvement with the two franchises was like bedrock, so permanent you take it for granted. There were others involved–many others–all integral to the success, but make no mistake, this was Danny’s gig. The thought of SEW and SES without Danny just didn’t jive. Within hours, there was a litany of tributes to Danny Sullivan on his blog. It was almost as if a head of state had passed on. We collectively caught our breath and wondered what was next.

By the time you read this, this will no doubt be old news, so I won’t go into the details or reasons of the departure. I’m not really privy to them anyway. What I would like to do instead is look at some of the back history of how Search Engine Watch began, because I think it’s a great Internet story.

A Webmaster’s Guide To Search

One of the things that is wonderful about the Web is how it evens the playing field and creates opportunity. If you’re smart, if you’re a good communicator, and if you’re passionate about something, you can pick your niche and carve out your own slice of celebrity. Danny was all three. In 1996, Danny Sullivan’s notoriety probably didn’t extend much beyond his family and friends, but that was soon to change.

In 1995, Danny left journalism behind to go into Web development. Ironically, that was about the same time I left traditional advertising behind to focus on the Web. Soon, for both of us, we encountered the inevitability of search engines. As sites were developed, Danny recognized the importance of search engines as a traffic source and began experimenting to achieve higher rankings. For four months in 1996, he tweaked and tested codes, achieving some success, and published his findings online, collectively called “A Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engines”. In the next year, it was rebranded Search Engine Watch and started to take up more and more of Danny’s time. It soon became the reference site for a number of nascent search engine optimizers (myself included) and became Danny’s full-time gig, supported by a handful of subscribers. At the end of 1997, it was purchased by Mecklermedia and Danny continued as editor.

The launch of SES

Search Engine Strategies launched from the base of support built by the site. The first show was in November, 1999 in San Francisco. The promo page is still live, if you’re interested. Since then, the show has grown from a few hundred attendees and a handful of exhibitors to attendance in the thousands and a jammed exhibit hall. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, it is the must-see search event.

In the intervening years, Danny has chronicled the birth and growth of an industry. Through the past 10 years, search engines have come and gone, but Danny Sullivan was always there, making sense of an occasionally nonsensical business. He has been the constant. Like I said, he’s bedrock. He’s also a search celebrity, one of the best known names and faces in a region of the online world that has since become a focal point of global interest. You want to know about search? Ask Danny. Major newspapers, magazines and TV networks beat a path to his door. When John Battelle decided to chronicle the history of search for his book, The Search, a long visit with Danny was a no-brainer, and John makes his debt to Danny very clear in the foreword.

The creation of a community

But Danny had no special education, or credentials to become the pre-eminent expert on search marketing. He has a degree, but there’s no Ph.D. of Search. He simply had a passion, a curiosity and a knack for communicating what he found. The Web gave him a voice, and he found his audience. Through the past 10 years, he has never failed that audience. Almost single-handedly, he opened the communication lines between the search engines and Webmasters and helped to create the community that now exists. From his beginning efforts, people like Brett Tabke and Matt Cutts have taken up the torch and continued to keep the communication flowing. Danny Sullivan has taken on the stewardship of what he began, continuing to nurture the SEM community, and there are many who are in his debt.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t know the details of the split between Danny and Incisive Media, and it’s not appropriate that I comment on them. I don’t know what will happen with Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch. But I know that Danny’s passion for search will continue, and it will resurface soon. In a very interesting way, Danny Sullivan and the Internet grew up together, and each has helped in the development of the other. It is a true symbiotic relationship, but in this case, we’ve all benefited, and I hope we all will continue to do so.

SES-SEW without Danny: What the Hell is Going On?

My jaw dropping news of the day is that Danny Sullivan is leaving SES and SEW. He posts his reasons on his blog. In the 7 hours since he made the post, there are already dozens of testimonial comments from the who’s who of the search world.

I won’t really comment further, but it’s somewhat ironic that I just wrote a column about the SES franchise and Danny’s involvement in it.

Danny Sullivan is as much a part of the industry as anyone. The SES/SEW franchise has helped shape the industry. It’s one of the Internet’s great stories, and one that I’m happy I got to see first hand.

Godspeed Danny.  You’ll be missed in one part of our virtual world, but I know you’ll be helping create another.

Gore Impatient about the Speed of Change with Internet Video

Here’s an interesting op-ed piece from MediaPost’s Tobi Elkin on the blurring of the lines between the power of television and the power of the Internet, this time from Al Gore (hey..didn’t he “invent” the Internet in the first place?). It’s not that long, so to save you the hassle of logging in, etc, I’ll just quote the whole article:

So former Vice President Al Gore addressed a group of British TV execs yesterday in Edinburgh, Scotland and told them that while the Internet is a great democratizing force, TV remains the most influential form of media and people should have more control over its programming.

Gore, whose Current TV venture hinges upon participatory/citizen journalism and user-generated video, told the assembled execs that so far, the Web can’t replicate “television’s power,” according to a Reuters report. “Most of what’s happening in the encounter between television and the Internet has been the Internet cannibalizing television,” Gore told the execs.

Gore recommended finding ways to use the Internet to give consumers access to TV and the way it’s programmed. He suggested that citizens can participate in the democratic process by challenging inaccurate comments made by politicians, particularly in TV ads.

Gore noted that while user-generated Web communities and sites are powerful , they don’t reach mass audiences. “You can stream that, forward it, store it, time-shift it, you can do lots of things, but you cannot broadcast in real time to millions of people over the Internet,” Gore told the execs, according to the Reuters report. “The Internet is now creeping into the television domain, but it’s still not creating the change that many anticipate will come.”

Still, YouTube is streaming about 100 million video clips a day, and Current TV reaches nearly 20 million homes; nearly 30 percent of its programming is user-generated.

Is Gore underestimating the power of Web communities and the power of the Web to attract mass audiences? Or is he merely issuing a clarion call to denizens of the Web–all of us–to wake up and make our comments and opinions count? Either way, it’s clear that regular people have the power to create and distribute media and make it matter. I think Gore is looking to put a fire under us to challenge the status quo and en masse, call out politicians–and anyone else, for that matter, who veers from the truth. It’s a good fire to light, and we’re up for the challenge.

Do not, I repeat, underestimate the power of the Web and its denizens. Internet users are capable of calling politicians, and anyone else for that matter, on the carpet–and biting them in the ass.

Tobi Elkin is Executive Editor, MediaPost.

I agree with Tobi. Trying to assess the Internet’s future role in shaping interaction with, and the creation of, television programming is like trying to forecast the effects of a tsunami before it’s begin. We simply have no idea of the forces that are being unleashed here. What Gore is referring to are the first few ripples in what’s to be a full force tidal wave in the next two decades. The whole notion of programming, who controls it, and who calls bullshit on who are all about to be twisted, torn up and reformed in a way we won’t recognize.

The other issue is the Web’s ability to attract an audience. Again, the nature of engagement with video is just being defined. I for one think there are some fundamental issues with how we engage with essentially linear media in a multi-tasking environment, the infrastructure required to deliver high quality video to us, and some pretty basic human-computer interface challenges that have to be addressed. Again, we’re seeing ripple effects, but just below the surface, an earthquake is ready to erupt. Given the nascent stages of this communication channel and how our society is adopting it, the fact that YouTube is streaming 100 million clips a day should be scaring the hell out of someone, rather than prompting Gore to complain about the “creeping” pace of the Internet. This is all about tipping points, and we’re getting very close to one.

If Gore is telling us to wake up to this possibility, then go for it. But it’s way too early to be laying bets here. Still, that said, I do like how Gore is reinventing himself. Between the crusade behind “An Inconvenient Truth” and his awareness of the democratic potential of the Net, he seems to be grasping at the notion of the fundamental reweaving of society’s fabric that’s happening, and the potential to address some apocalyptic issues before it’s too late. He’s going for the big ideas, a refreshing change from the insular navel gazing that seems to characterize much of what’s happening in Washington.