Just like the syrup

Say goodbye to the searchable web

SEO’s strategic value is quickly fading as Google’s growth slows and its prominence in distribution slides away. In its place, Facebook has become the wiring hub of the connected Web — a new “home base” alternative to Google’s dominance of the last decade. … And with this change, the nature of the relationship between users and publishers is being altered fundamentally — and perhaps forever.

— Ben Elowitz for All Things D, “The Web is Shrinking. Now What?”

I beat up on social networks last week. Now for the other side.

This is an important, provocative essay that, true to its point, I discovered through a connection (Steve Rubel) rather than through search. Elowitz argues persuasively that we’ve already passed the tipping point from the searchable Web (or the “document Web”) to the “social Web” (and implicitly, the walled-garden Web).

‘Sharing’ really meant giving away

Mark Zuckerberg, 18 months ago:

“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

Facebook today (by Declan McCullagh for CNet):

Google is trying to use openness — the ability to extract your data from its servers with the click of a button—to differentiate itself from its far larger and more established rival. … Facebook, on the other hand, has taken a different approach to who owns user data. Last week, it blocked a tool written by developer Mohamed Mansour that allowed users to extract contact information their friends have shared with them.

“Social networks are good for sharing links to ideas, not parking ideas.”

— Gina Trapani, “Why Not Tumblr”

Before that book leave, 2 thoughts

“The sales cycle of the typical popular book, for example, has a half-life of about two months After two months, the book will probably have made half of all the sales it will make in its entire lifetime.”

— Seth Godin, “Half Life”

“Why, in fact, would anyone want to [write a book]? … Sales of print books in the U.S. peaked in 2005 and have been in steady decline since, according to publishers’ net revenue data reported to the Association of American Publishers. …

“[B]ook-writing is agony — slow, lonely, frustrating work that, unless you are a very rare exception, gets a lukewarm review (if any), reaches a few thousand people and lands on a remaindered shelf at Barnes & Noble.”

— Bill Keller, “Let’s Ban Books, or at Least Stop Writing Them”

The Daily Me (TV version)

“If you follow one TV show or a dozen, TV Forecast is a great way to see if the next episode is new or a rerun.”

— Nevan Mrgan for his blog, on a new, overdue app. Too bad it’s iPad-only.

Blind spots: a hazard of the 80/20 formula

“The conversation always goes back to your top customers, and they would always take your eye off the ball. That’s really, I think, the fundamental disruption and what’s driving a lot of company failures: listening too closely to their best customers.”

— Horace Dediu on “Synchronized Failure,” an episode of 5by5.tv’s podcast “The Critical Path”*

* - The episode focuses on Nokia and RIM, and specifically their relationship with network providers. But Dediu’s statement rings true for many types of business.

Reminds me of the one I love

“We never say we’re from Houston or Austin. Every Texan, when they say where they’re from, they’ll say ‘Texas.’ Texas is not only a state of mind, it’s a state of heart, state of soul.”

— Tim McClure, quoted in “Why there’s no messing with Texas”

The issue is not + but x

“It’s not difficult for a company of Google’s size to make a social network. The challenge is getting enough people to use it, and quickly enough, that the early adopters will stick around after the first few days and start habitually using it.”

— Marco Arment, “Google+”