Category Archives: Behavior & Psychology

The iPhone and Apple’s Lessons Learned

Never let it be said that Steve Jobs isn’t a pretty smart dude. With the iPhone, Jobs took a massive lesson delivered to him at the hands of Bill Gates and delivered back to Microsoft a complete coup d’etat.

Step back a little over 25 years. The first Mac is introduced to Apple’s board of directors. What it represented was the most advanced personal computer in the world. It felt better. It looked better. It performed better. There was just one problem. You couldn’t find any software to use on it. It was Guy Kawasaki’s job to convince software developers to develop programs for the Mac. That was a tough sell, because Mac’s market share was meager compared to the huge slice owned by clunky MS-DOS boxes. WYSIWYG bought Mac loyalty amongst the graphic design and education communities, but Apple couldn’t never overcome the Microsoft juggernaut and remained relegated to the side lines. Eventually Windows brought most of the advantages of Mac to the PC world, although in an arguably significantly watered down version.

Fast forward to 2007. The first iPhone is introduced to the world. What it represented was the most advanced mobile device in the world. It felt better. It looked better. It performed better. And this time, Jobs eliminated the problem that sunk the early Mac. He insured that there was tons of things you could do on it. Apple was so successful in encouraging development of iPhone Apps that today they have just nudged over the 100,000 mark, according to 148apps.biz. In June of 2009, when Apple announced they were at the 50,000 mark (that’s 50,000 new apps in just 5 months!), VP Phil Schiller showed a bar chart with the number of available apps dwarfing the competition, including Google (just under 5000), Nokia (just over a 1000), Blackberry (also just over a 1000) and Palm (a meager 18). Ironically, Windows Mobile didn’t even get included on the graph, showing how they have completely missed the boat in the mobile space.

So, what are the lessons learned for Jobs?

  • It doesn’t matter how cool your hardware is. All that matters is what you can do on it.
  • Don’t rely on “build it and they will develop”. Prime the app development pump so you come out of the gate with a clear advantage
  • Turn development into a democracy. Establish an app development ecosystem (in all fairness to Apple, this is possible today where as in 1984, software development relied on a handful of companies)
  • Don’t worry that the vast majority of iPhone apps gather dust. It’s the perception of choice that’s important. How many Windows programs have you ever used?
  • The competitive advantages of hardware will only work for so long. The competition will catch up, and may even pass you. But the sheer bulk of functionality offered by being the runaway leader in available software is a much more difficult thing to overcome.

This time around, Apple has done everything right with the iPhone. in fact, the biggest challenge they have now is being a victim of their own success. They’ve created an Innovator’s Dilemma for themselves. Because they have become the de facto standard for mobile, they have to consider things like backwards compatibility and offering innovation without alienating their existing users. Still, that’s not a bad problem to have!

The Library of Human Behavior: 11 More Titles for Your Reading List

First published October 22, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I shared 11 titles that explore the intersection between marketing, psychology and neurology. In retrospect, though, I think I approached this backwards. While the titles I discussed are all interesting (and fairly easy reads), they are somewhat dependent on a fundamental understanding of why humans do what we do. So this week, I’ll share a good starting library of human behavior, which can then be applied more generally.

“The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are”  — Robert Wright.  If you’re on the fence about or simply do not believe in evolution (along with 50% of Americans) you probably want to stop right here. The first three titles in this list are by authors who together create a pantheon for evolutionary psychology and Darwinism. In the first,  “The Moral Animal,” Wright employs an interesting literary device: exploring human behavior by referencing biographical details in Charles Darwin’s own life. He discusses monogamy, child rearing, differing attitudes towards sex and self-deception, among many other mysteries of the human condition. A compelling and highly intelligent read.

“The Selfish Gene” — Richard Dawkins. This book was first published over 30 years ago, and somehow still manages to remain controversial. Perhaps it’s because Dawkins’ assigning the human characteristic of selfishness to our genes has confused many, many readers. If you take the time to read the book, Dawkins explains at length that humans are not necessarily selfish. In fact, one chapter is titled: “Nice Guys Finish First.” Dawkins’ premise is that our genes only care about propagation. That’s it. End of story. Morality and all the ethical trappings that go with it only survive if they help the gene meet this one objective.  A couple of other noteworthy nuggets in this book include the first introduction of memes — ideas that share the propagation directives of genes — and an exploration of how the impact of genes can extend into all aspects of our lives and society.

“The Third Chimpanzee” — Jared Diamond. Diamond starts off the book by stating that we share 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, then spends the rest of the book describing how that remaining 2% can make all the difference. In that thin wedge of genetic difference lie all our culture, achievement and history. Some human achievements are admirable, even remarkable. Some are regrettably base and cruel. Diamond chronicles both the good and the bad, along with a warning: our dominance of our world may end up spelling our doom. A professor of geography who combines the eye of a naturalist, the curiosity of a sociologist, and the ponderings of a philosopher, Diamond makes “The Third Chimpanzee” a masterful book.

“The Stuff of Thought” — Steven Pinker. Following in the steps of Noam Chomsky (up to a point), psychologist Steven Pinker uses language as a door to explore the shadowy recesses of how our minds work. This book is a seminal piece of work in this area. Pinker is masterful at exploring complicated concepts without “dumbing down” his commentary.  He has written an entire library of books worth reading, but this is as good a place to start as any.

“Descartes’ Error” — Antonio Damasio. Damasio was introduced to the common masses in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink,” but Damasio’s work on somatic markers and the role of the prefrontal cortex in how we make decisions goes much further than Gladwell was able to cover. “Descartes’ Error” delves deep into our gut instincts, explaining why pure rationality is an unworkable model for humans. To paraphrase Descartes’ famous quote: We feel, therefore we are.

To round out my 11 suggestions, here are six other titles worth exploring:

“The Mind and the Brain” – Jeffrey Schwartz

“Synaptic Self” – Joseph LeDoux

“A Whole New Mind” – Daniel Pink

“Mapping the Mind” – Rita Carter

“The Emotional Brain” – Joseph LeDoux

“The Female Brain” – Louanne Brizendine

The Meeting of the Mind and Marketing: 11 Books to Read

First published October 15, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It’s official! With this column, I break David Berkowitz’s Search Insider column count record, with 225 of my own. And to commemorate the occasion, I wanted to follow up on a request that came in response to my column two weeks ago. I had warned any would-be students of human nature that this wasn’t a quest to be taken lightly. A few readers responded by asking for a recommended reading list.

So this week, I went through my bookshelf at home and jotted down a list of titles that I found particularly insightful or interesting in understanding the human condition. Today, I offer them as suggestions for some fall or winter reading. I came up with 22 titles, so I’ve broken them into two groups. This week, all the titles are specifically for those who want to explore the intersection between marketing and the way our minds work.“How Customers Think” — Gerald Zaltman. Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman has carved out a nice little career by exploring the psychology of consumerism. The foundation of Zaltman’s approach is his metaphor elicitation technique. Metaphors are linguistic keys to some of the darker workings of our mind, and Zaltman shows how these can be used as a Rosetta stone to unlock consumers’ true feelings towards brands and products. A fascinating approach suffers a little from Zaltman’s dry and overly academic writing style, but it’s a very worthy candidate for the list.

“The Culture Code” — Clotaire Rapaille. If Zaltman is a little stodgy and academic, Rapaille is an unabashed French nouveau-riche pop psychologist who has used his decidedly qualitative approach to dig down to the cultural common denominators behind our brand relationships. This book looks for those labels cultures apply to some of the best-known brands in the world. Being French, Rapaille brings an occasionally charming European cultural arrogance to his subject (i.e. in France, the culture code for cheese is “alive”, but in the U.S. it’s “dead”). This is  an easy and interesting read; while you might have some quibbles with Rapaille’s findings, he has plenty of willing customers among the Fortune 500.

“Buy-ology” — Martin Lindstrom. Lindstrom’s ego is almost matched by the insight he brings in his latest book. Lindstrom is the self-styled guru of brand perception and has written before on how our senses interpret brands. In “Buy-ology,” he goes one step further and launches an extensive brain scanning research project to see exactly what happens in our brains when we think about brands. For example, do the warning labels on a pack of cigarettes have any impact on our desire for a smoke? Does product placement really work? (The answer, in both cases, is no, according to Lindstrom) Don’t worry about getting caught in academic jargon here. Lindstrom keeps it light and readable.

“Why Choose This Book?” — Read Montague. Baylor University neurologist Montague was behind the original Pepsi Challenge fMRI test — and in this book, he takes on no less a challenge than explaining how we make decisions. The writing style’s a little uneven, as Montague tries to balance his academic background with a style overly determined to appeal to a wider audience. That said, Montague knows his stuff and the insights here are solid, supported by both his own and others’ research.

“Predictably Irrational” — Dan Ariely.  Ariely follows in the footsteps of behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky by looking at some of the common irrational biases of humans. For example, why does a 50-cent aspirin eliminate a headache better than a 5-cent generic brand, even though the pills are identical? And why would offering your mother-in-law $300 for a fabulous meal be an unforgivable social transgression, yet be expected in a restaurant? The territory has been covered before, but Ariely deals with a highly interesting topic with a nice, light touch.

“The Mind of the Market” — Michael Shermer. Last but not least, Michael Shermer delivers what I consider to be a tour-de-force on this topic. Shermer’s approach is well-grounded in evolutionary psychology (he labels it evolutionary economics), so he and I share a common approach to understanding consumer behavior. He strikes the right balance in his writing, delivering solid information without worrying too much about how it might play for a wider audience. This is probably my favorite on this list.

If these six titles whet your appetite, here are some other titles you might consider:

“Driven” by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria

“Why We Buy” by Paco Underhill

“The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz

“The Advertised Mind” by Erik Du Plessis

“Brain Rules’ by John Medina

Next week I’ll share another 11 books, as well as some reader suggestions. Feel free to keep the suggestions coming!

The Prerequisites for Being a Student of Human Nature

First published October 1, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week I asked for input on the upcoming Search Insider Summit. Of the seven possible topic areas I presented, the highest level of interest was in the role of human behavior in digital marketing. You, the Search Insider faithful, have made me very happy. But being an avid student of human nature, I feel it’s only fair to warn you what to expect as you continue down this path.  Some years ago, I too was intrigued by human behavior and thought it would be interesting to “learn a little bit more.” But learning about human nature is pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition. Think of it as having a baby. The first few minutes of the process might be fun, but soon you learn you’ve just signed on for a lifetime commitment. You’d better make sure you’re ready.

The True Meaning of Customer-Centricity

I’ve been criticized in the past for using the term “customer-centric” (the practical application of studying human nature), but I suspect it’s because the term has lost its original meaning as it’s been adopted into the lexicon of “Dilbert-speak.” Customer-centric is one of those terms bandied about in board meetings and corporate retreats, along with “synergistic” and “holistic.”

But customer-centricity represents much more than a quick paragraph in the annual report. It’s the core you build a company around. It’s a commitment that lays the foundation for everything an organization does: the people it hires, the way it develops products, the way it formulates business processes, the way it markets and even the way who sits beside whom in the office gets decided. Customer-centricity is a religion, not a corporate fad.

There Aren’t Any Shortcuts

As I found out, if you are going to commit to learning more about human behavior in the goal of becoming a better marketer, don’t be surprised when you discover that this commitment can’t be met in a one-hour session or by reading a book. Humans are a lot more complex than that. There’s a lot of weird and wonderfully quirky machinery jammed in our skulls.

I was humbled to learn that people devote their entire lives to exploring just one tiny part of why we humans do what we do. Joseph LeDoux, one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists, has spent years exploring how fear is triggered in rats. Ann Graybiel  at MIT has made a similar commitment to exploring the role of the basal ganglia in how habits form and play out.  Antonio Damasio’s  extensive work with patients with pre-frontal cortical lesions led to his somatic marker theory, foundational insight into the area of human behavior Malcolm Gladwell explored and popularized in his book “Blink.” These are all tiny little pieces in the overall puzzle that is human behavior, yet each of these is integral in understanding how we respond to marketing messages.

Beyond the Cocktail Party Quip

Today, several years after I started down this road, I hope people find my insights on human behavior interesting. There’s that brief light bulb moment that happens when “what” is matched with a plausible “why” — when a psychological or neurological trigger for a puzzling human trait is identified.  “Hmm – that’s really interesting,” is the common response, and then it’s on to the next thing (possibly mumbling something about me being a “pedantic bore”). Yes, it is really interesting, but it wasn’t a quick or easy path to get here.

Sometime ago I decided a quick primer in human behavior would be interesting. I started with the more accessible books (such as Gladwell’s) and was instantly hooked. I next moved to books by academics doing the actual research that provided the fodder for Gladwell and other’s popularizations: LeDoux, Damasio, Edelman, Rose, Pinker, Chomsky and others.  Before I knew it, I was wading through academic papers. Today, the bookshelf in my home office is packed with fairly hefty tomes on everything from evolutionary psychology to the social patterns of the 20th Century. My wife and kids can’t remember the last time I read a book that didn’t have a brain on the cover.

I share this as a warning. I discovered developing even a basic understanding of human behavior is at least a multiyear commitment. I’ve never regretted it, but I also know that this is not everyone’s cup of tea. But here’s what I also discovered along the way. Even a basic understanding will give you a whole new perspective on pretty much everything, including marketing. The one common denominator in all marketing is that it’s aimed at people. If you’re ready to start the journey, I’m sure you won’t regret it.

Do We Need a Different Kind of Search Conference?

First published September 17, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Something’s been bothering me for the last few years. In that time, I’ve probably spoken at two to three dozen industry events: trade shows, summits, conferences and workshops. In fact, this week, I’m at one such event – a user summit. Throughout that entire time, I’ve felt that there’s a fundamental disconnect at these events. And this week, I think I’ve finally put my finger on it: the wrong people are attending.

Let me give you one example. Earlier this year, I was at a client’s internal summit, talking about the importance of “Getting It.” I looked at the 100-some assembled people, responsible for driving forward the digital strategy of this company, and asked the fateful question, “How many people here are senior C-level executives in the company?” Not one hand went up. Oops! Houston, we have a problem.

Where are the Actionable Takeaways?

Most of the events I speak at focus on giving attendees actionable “to-dos” to take home. In fact, I’ve been told time and again: give people a list of things they can do Monday when they get back in the office. That makes sense. Conference organizers have learned that attendees find the most value in these things. Yet I tend to ignore the advice of these conference organizers and talk about things like research, understanding buyer behavior and how this integrates into marketing strategy.

Increasingly, I’m seeing more confused looks in the audience:
“Where is my top ten things-to-do checklist? This guy is just giving me more questions, not answers.” This disappointment bothers me, because at my heart, I desperately seek approval.

But, in those sessions, after the rest of the crowd has dispersed to look for a speaker with a list of things they can do Monday, there are also a handful of people that come up to me and thank me profusely.  They seem to operate at a different level: a strategic level. I’ve seen this pattern over and over again, and as I said, it’s been bothering me.

Are the Takeaways Really Actionable?

Here’s the biggest thing that bothers me. My suspicion, borne out by several conversations with people that attend these shows, is that very few of these “to-do” tips that make the list ever get implemented. Months later, they still sit somewhere in a conference handbook, quickly jotted in a margin. Stuff just doesn’t get done. Why?

The people that attend these conferences don’t control their to-do lists. On Monday, their list gets put aside to respond to the all the other things they have to do — because they’re not calling the shots. The to-do list is being determined by priorities that have been put in place somewhere else by someone else. People come back from conferences with a list of “what” to do, but unfortunately no one told their bosses “why” they should do it. The bosses don’t often go to search conferences.

Less “What” and More “Why”

“Why” doesn’t come from to-do lists. “Why” comes from seeing things in the big picture. “Why” comes from “getting it.” The people who go to search shows already get it. That’s why they have the job they do.  You don’t have to explain to them why this “what” stuff is important. They understand at a fundamental level. But eventually they leave the conference hall, full of other people who get it and with whom you’ve swapped stories about how your boss desperately doesn’t “get it.” Monday, you’re plunged back into a culture where “what” is not aligned with “why.”

There are no easy answers here. Even if you have that rare CEO or boss who gets it, you need a fully integrated culture that is committed to executing at the highest level of “getting It” from top to bottom. Everyone in the company has to agree on the “why” and the “what.” And I’ve yet to see a conference or summit that manages to pull that trick off.

Search: The Verb

First published September 3, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

“And now the times are changin’Look at everything that’s come and gone”

Rob Griffin’s thought-provoking column on “The Death of Search”  started by poking fun at my summertime nostalgia, likening it to Bryan Adam’s lyrics. Well, Rob, two can play that game.

Search: More Than an Industry

Here’s the thing. In the column, and the resulting feedback, Rob and others talk about search as an industry,  a channel,  a technology. All these things are way too limiting: search is a verb. Search is something we do. And, as such, it reaches past technology and channels and even Google. The only reason search became such a strong channel is because it’s so well aligned with our intent. We want to find something, and search is the way to do it. Trying to pigeonhole search into a “snapshot in time” definition that relies on technology is pointless and a little silly. It’s like trying to explain communication by the definition of Twitter.

What Rob does put his finger on is the speed of shift that technology is enabling, and if we use the definition of our industry as supposedly stable ground, we’re fooling ourselves. It’s the wrong reference to set your bearings to. What you have to do is look for the common denominator, and as I, Kaila Colbin, and others have always said, there’s only one: people.

Balancing Asymmetry

The reason that search is so powerful in consumer interactions goes back to a paper written by economist George Akerlof in 1970 called ” The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism.” Akerlof introduced us to the idea of information asymmetry, the problem that arises when the seller has more information than the buyer. That dynamic has been in place for the entire history of marketing. It’s the foundation that advertising was built on. But the Web is changing things  by providing an explosion of information — and search is the means by which we can reach out to connect all this info. That’s why search is so powerful.

If we’re being asked to part with money in return for something, human nature will dictate that we try to balance out information asymmetry. Our acceptance of a reasonable balance depends on how much risk is in the purchase. The more risk, the more information we’ll need. To seek that information, we’ll take the path that has proven to be the most reliably informative in the past. Right now, for most of us, that’s Google.

There are two solutions for information asymmetry: signaling and screening. Signaling is when we accept signals in lieu of personal knowledge about a purchase. For example, if we’re buying a used Toyota, we don’t know the mechanical reliability of the car in question, but we do know (through our research) that Toyotas are generally reliable and have a high resale value. That’s a signal. Screening is the process we go through to learn enough information (whether or not the other party is willing to share it) to balance out the information asymmetry. Again, in the case of the used Toyota, taking it for a mechanical inspection would be an example of screening.

If All Else Fails, Look At People

Forget about search as a technology, or a channel, or an industry. For a moment, think about search as a verb, namely, “searching” for information to help me make the right purchase decision. That human objective isn’t going anywhere. You can count on it. Now, all you have to do is look at the new ways we can do that.

I suspect Rob is right. Search as the industry we know has days that are numbered. That’s why it’s important to keep looking at people, not technology. Technology has already changed in the time it took to read this column. But people’s basic and inherent drives are remarkably consistent.

The New Speed of Information

First published August 27, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This summer, we had fires in the town I live in. From the back deck of my house, I could see the smoke and, as darkness descended, the flames that were threatening the homes in the hills above Kelowna. I had friends and co-workers that lived in the neighborhoods that were being evacuated, so I wanted to know what was happening as soon as possible.

I was sitting on the back deck, watching the progress of the fire through binoculars and monitoring Twitter on my laptop. My wife was inside the house, listening on the radio and watching on TV. Because I had an eyewitness perspective, I was able to judge the timeliness of our news channels and gained a new appreciation for the speed of social networks.

News That’s Not So New

If you had tuned in to our local TV station even hours after the fires began, you wouldn’t have known that anything out of the ordinary was happening. There was no mention of the fire for hours after it started. The TV station in Vancouver was better, with real-time coverage a few hours after the fire first started. But their “coverage” consisted of newscasters repeating the same limited information, which was at least 2 hours out of date, and playing the same 30-second video loop over and over. If you needed information, you would not have found it there.

The local news radio station fared a little better, reporting new evacuation areas as soon as they came through the official communication channels. But the real test came at about 8:45 p.m. that night. The original fire started near a sawmill on the west side of Okanagan Lake. Around the aforementioned time, I noticed a wisp of smoke far removed from the main fire. It seemed to me that a new fire had started, and this one was in the hills directly above the subdivision that my business partner lived in. Was this a new fire? Were the homes threatened? I ran in and asked my wife if she had heard anything about a second fire. Nothing was being reported on TV or radio. I checked the local news Web sites. Again, no report.

Turning to Twitter

So I tweeted about it. Within 15 minutes, someone replied that there did seem to be a second fire and fire crews had just gone by their house, on the way up to the location. Soon, there were more tweets with eyewitness accounts and reports of more fire crews. In 30 minutes, the Kelowna Twitter community had communicated the approximate location of the new fire, the official response, potential neighborhoods that might be evacuated and even the possible cause of the fire.

Yes, it was all unvetted and unauthorized, but it was in time to make a difference. It would take TV two more hours to report a possible new fire, and even then, they got most of the details wrong. The local radio station again beat TV to the punch, but (as I found out afterwards) only because a reporter was also monitoring Twitter.

We’ve all heard about the new power of social media, whether it be breaking the news of Michael Jackson’s death or the elections in Iran, but for me, it took an event a little closer to home to help me realize the magnitude of this communication shift. Official channels are being hopelessly outstripped by the efficiency of technology-enabled communications. Communication flows freely, unrestricted by bottlenecks. One might argue that with the freedom in restrictions, one sacrifices veracity. There is no editor to double-check facts. But in the case of the Kelowna fires of 2009, at least, official channels proved to be even more inaccurate. Not everything I read on Twitter was true, but the corrections happened much faster than they did through the supposed “authorized” channels. Twitter had broken the news of Jackson’s death while the official news sources still had him in the hospital with an undisclosed condition. When it came to timely, accurate information, social media beat the massive news machine hands down.

Do we need a two-hour jump on the news we hear? Is it really that important that we know about events as soon as they happen? When a fire is bearing down on your home and every minute gained means you might lose one less precious keepsake or treasured photo, you bet it’s important.

The Ebbs and Flows of Market Share

First published July 16, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It’s been just over six weeks since the birth of Bing. While I didn’t actually say Microsoft’s new search baby was ugly, I was less than optimistic about its chances of unseating Google in a popularity contest. So, with every measurement panel carefully following Bing’s debut, I think it’s time to see just how the little engine is doing in the search (oops, make that “decision”) sandbox.

Let the Record Show

First of all, much acrimonious commentary has been attributed to me about Bing. I just want to say I never said Bing was a failure, a bad search engine or a step backwards on Microsoft’s part.

I simply said Bing would not break the Google habit, despite 100 million dollars of advertising.

In fact, here’s exactly what I said would happen. Driven by the advertising, people would temporarily disrupt the playing out of their habitual Google script, try Bing and find that it wasn’t all that different from using Google: better in some ways, worse in others. Without having a compelling reason to consciously break the Google habit (which is hard cognitive work) they would just go back on autopilot and continue to use Google. A temporary blip upwards for Bing would soon disappear, at roughly the same time as Microsoft’s $100 million ad budget, and we would all go back to mindlessly Googling what we’re looking for.

Survey Says...

So, what’s happening in terms of market share? Well, the various numbers seem to show that Bing has gained a small uptick in market share (the exact amount is difficult to determine, but Compete puts it at a 0.3% gain in share), Google’s up as well, by about half a percentage point, and Yahoo and Ask are both losing ground in what seems to be an irreversible death spiral.

If you just look at the Google and Bing numbers, the words “I told you so” naturally spring to mind. And this is still with the $100 million tap fully open. Google could come out of this with the biggest net gain, paid for by Microsoft’s ad budget.

But the story gets much more interesting, and more compelling for Microsoft, if you look at what’s happening with Yahoo and Ask. This is something I didn’t think about in my original forecast, but the logic seems clear in hindsight.

26% Still Up for Grabs

When Bing debuted, there was a 26.7% percent of the U.S. search market not owned by Google, again according to Compete. At the end of June, that shrunk to 26.1%. And that’s the share that Microsoft should be paying close attention to. Don’t worry about breaking the Google habit. Concentrate on picking off the weaker contenders. And right now, when it comes to search, Yahoo and Ask are lying limp and lifeless on the side of the road, easy pickins for a Bing drive-by. In the past year, Yahoo is down in market share by almost 3 and a half points, and Ask is off by a full point. All of this has gone to Google, plus some. They’re up almost 10 full share points in the past year.

Is Google Domination Inevitable?

If these are the trends, is it inevitable that Google will eventually own the entire search market? No, because we always like alternatives. We get nervous when there is a de facto monopoly, so we’ll keep even a weak contender on life support just to give us an alternative. At the height of the Window’s OS dynasty, Mac still managed to hold onto 4.5% of the market and Linux 0.5%. Since then, Mac has come back to take almost 9% of the market and Linux almost a full point (according to Net Applications).

That’s the other thing to remember about humans. If we have a viable underdog, we’ll throw it more than its fair share of support. Case in point: the browser wars. In 2004, Explore owned 91.35% of the market. The fledgling Firefox was its biggest competitor, at 3.66%. But over the past five years, the balance had shifted decidedly in Firefox’s favor: 65.85% for Explore vs. 22.39% for Firefox. The fact that Firefox improved its product at a much more aggressive rate than Microsoft didn’t hurt either.

I believe Google is getting very close to its natural market share cap. And the stronger the alternatives, the lower that cap will be. Yahoo and Ask have lost their appetite for competing in the search arena, but Microsoft has a viable contender in Bing. I still don’t expect it to break a Google habit, but it could well become our No. 1 alternative when we’re ready for an occasional break from our habitual search rut.

How ironic! Microsoft’s Bing playing the White Knight to Google’s Evil Empire!

Grandma Via YouTube

First published June 25, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This week we had a Webinar on Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. We featured brain scanning images, survey results and the work of Marc Prensky, Gary Small and other researchers, showing how technology has created a generational divide between our kids and us. For me, though, it all came into sharper focus when I walked past our computer at home and saw my youngest daughter, Lauren, sitting there with crochet hooks in hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Learning to crochet.”

“On the computer?”

“Yes, there’s a video showing how on YouTube.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Dad, YouTube has now replaced Grandma.” (Smart mouth on that kid — not sure where she gets it from.)

Adapting With Our Plastic Brains

Prensky and Small have written extensively on how exposure to technology can literally change the way our brains are wired. Our brains are remarkably malleable in nature, continually changing to adapt to our environment. The impressive label for it is “neuroplasticity” — but we know it better simply as “learning.”  We now know that our brains continually adapt throughout our lives.  But there are two phases where the brain literally reforms itself in a massive restructuring: right around two years of age and again as teenagers. During these two periods, billions of new synaptic connections are formed, and billions are also “pruned” out of the way. All this happens as a direct response to our environments, helping us develop the capabilities to deal with the world.

These two spurts of neuroplasticity are essential development stages, but what happens when there are rapid and dramatic shifts in our environment from one generation to the next? What happens when our children’s brains develop to handle something we never had to deal with as children? Quite literally, their brains function differently than ours. This becomes particularly significant when the rate of adoption is very rapid, making a technology ubiquitous in a generation or less. The other factor is how much the technology becomes part of our daily lives. The more important it is, the more significant the generational divide.

Our Lives: As Seen on TV

The last adoption that met both conditions was the advent of television. There, 1960 to 1965 marked the divide where the first generation to be raised on television started to come of age. And the result was a massive social shift. In his book “Bowling Alone,”   Robert Putnam shows example after example of how our society took a U-turn in the ’60s, reversing a trend in building social capital.  We became more aware and ideologically tolerant, but we also spent less time with each other. This trend played out in everything from volunteering and voting to having dinner parties and joining bowling leagues. The single biggest cause identified by Putnam? Television. We are only now beginning to assess the impact of this technology on our society, a half-century after its introduction. It took that long for the ripples to be felt through the generations.

You Ain’t Seen Nuthin Yet.

That’s a sobering thought when we consider what’s happening today. The adoption rate of the Internet has been similar to that of television, but the impact on our daily lives is even more significant. Everything we touch now is different than it was when we were growing up.  If TV caused a seismic shift of such proportions that it took us 50 years to catalog the fall-out, what will happen 50 years from now?

Who will be teaching my great grandchildren how to crochet?

Why Wolfram Alpha is Important

First published June 18, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In the new Bing-enabled world, search is hotter than ever. Your entire Search Insider lineup has been trading quips and forecasts about the future of search. Aaron Goldman thinks Hunch may be the answer to my call for an iPhone of search. Today, I want to talk about why Wolfram|Alpha is very, very important to watch. It’s not an iPhone, but it is changing the rules of search in a very significant way.

Search is more than skin-deep. To most users, a search engine is only skin (or GUI) deep. And anyone who’s taken Wolfram for a spin has judged it based on the results they get back. In a few cases, Wolfram’s abilities are quite impressive. But that’s not what makes Wolfram|Alpha important. For that, we look to what Stephen Wolfram has done with the entire concept of interpreting and analyzing information. Wolfram|Alpha doesn’t search data, it calculates it. That’s a fundamentally important distinction.

Unlike Bing, which is promising a revolution that barely qualifies as evolution, Stephen Wolfram knows this is the first step on a long, long road. He says so right on the home page: “Today’s Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.”

Words are not enough.  Wolfram’s previous work with Mathematica and NKS (New Kind of Science) shatters the paradigm that every search engine is built on, semantic relationships. As revolutionary as Google’s introduction of the linking structure of the Web as a relevance factor was, it was added to a semantic foundation. PageRank is still bound by the limits of words. And words are slippery things to base an algorithm on.

The entire problem with words is that they’re ambiguous. The word “core” has 12 different dictionary definitions. It’s very difficult to know which one of those meanings is being used in any particular circumstance. Google and every other engine is limited by its need to guess at the meaning of language, one of the most challenging cognitive tasks we encounter as humans.

Potential advancements in relevance require gathering additional signals to help interpret meanings and reduce ambiguity. Personalization is one way to do this. Hunch, Aaron’s nominee for the iPhone of Search, requires you to fill out a long and rather bizarre quiz about your personal preferences. All this is to learn more about you, making educated guesses possible. If you’re going to stick with a semantic foundation, personalization is a great way to increase your odds for successful interpretation.

Another way to interpret meaning is to go with the wisdom of crowds. By overlaying the social graph, you can make the assumption that the one meaning people like you are interested in, is also the meaning you might be interested in. Again, not a bad educated guess.

Knowledge as a complex system. But what if you could do away with the messiness of language entirely? What if you could eliminate ambiguity from the equation? That’s the big hairy audacious goal that Stephen Wolfram has set his sights on. If you look at the entire body of “systematic knowledge,” you have a complex system — and in any complex system, you have patterns. Patterns are abstractions that you can apply math against. In effect, knowledge becomes computable. You don’t have to interpret semantic meaning, which is intensive guesswork at best.  You can deal with numbers. And unlike language, where “core” has 12 different values, the number “3” always has the same value.

Wolfram|Alpha is not important because it provides relevant results for stocks, cities or mathematical problems. It’s important because it’s taking an entirely new approach to working with knowledge. It’s not what Wolfram|Alpha can do today; it’s what it may enable us to do tomorrow, next year and in the year 2015.

Wolfram|Alpha could change all the rules of search. Keep your eye on it.