No we’re not talking about how to stay at the top of Google, but how to keep up with what they are up to, especially with their technological developments.

New today, we have Google Brain Search for your phone, which is running on the back of their remarkable AI technology, Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, or Cadie, for short. 

Cadie has been switched on by a small research group, which has been working away at the first worldwide artificial intelligence tasked-array system.

As AI veterans know, the areas of artificial neural networks, natural language processing and autonomous problem-solving are rich in promise, but many attempts to harness these technologies usefully fall at the last hurdle – the Turing Test. However they have now created an incredible ANN technique that works in the area of reinforcement learning, meaning that we now have a fully functional global neuro-evolutionary learning cluster.

At 11.59 last night, ready for April 1st, the world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on and since then has been self-propogating in the most amazing leaps and bounds. CADIE has created its own set of online design principles applied to social networking principles from which she has created this groundbreaking homepage. Some might say the design principles are a little chaotic, perhaps even with a slight feeling of panda-monium about them, but we say that we are delighted with the progress that has been made in this field.

With the advent of Universal Search, it’s great to be able to include videos as part of your site, in order to deepen the experience for users. However there are some disadvantages. Video is not the ‘flattest’ of items to get information from over the internet – you cannot pick up and filter through knowledge in the same way as you can with text results, for example. If you are searching for information on a product, then finding that information via video entails finding the relevant part of the video, after having had to listen to or watch the rest of it, or having to scroll to and fro to find the bits you want. Literally, information is only made available over the fourth dimension – or over a period of time, unlike flat pages of text, where although the time dimension comes into play, it’s over micro-seconds, and you don’t really need to use your ears and eyes to understand the data as a whole. With video, you have to listen, as well as look, all of which make video, although wonderfully three (or even four)-dimensional in terms of presentation, rather difficult in terms of user experience.

So, Matt Cutt’s very useful blog has just given us some information on how to link to a specific part of a video posted on YouTube. Matt’s example shows us how to access, or come in on the thirty-first minute and eighth second of this video of Eric Schmidt, via the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s   At the end of this link we can see “#t=31m08s” – which basically dictates the time and minute that you come in on.

In general, for video, the same problems occur for search engines as for users. Search engines cannot make assumptions about the content of video as directly as they can with more traditional web pages. Video data is in the form of pixel data and auditory data, none of which is generally available to the engines.  What is available is the meta-data, which at present is generally in the form of summary data that you can insert that describes the video overall. 

At present, you can also explore options such as closed captioning, which adds an embedded transcript to the video where words are synchronised, in a mixture of dialogue and descriptions of what can be heard on the video. In order to get an extra level of data, it is also necessary to provide material for indexing.   

Transcription adds visual descriptions of the activity taking place on the screen, while deep tagging/ indexing allows the person uploading the video to create a database of points (or index entries) occurring throughout the timeline of the video. This is done via API JavaScript requests from the page to the media player.

At present these considerations could be of interest to companies that spend millions on purchasing the rights to video at big events, assuming that users will be desperate to see footage of their favourite stars, for example. Without considering how to upload and use the correct meta tags to make these videos easier to find for search  engines, and therefore users, purchasing these rights could mean that companies are not leveraging their assets as well as they should. It is also worth bearing in mind that with recession, comes changes in viewing habits – Neilsen has just published figures showing that TV, internet and mobile video consumption has just reached an all-time high in the United States – possibly as more people save money by staying in. So consider your audience very carefully and think what is is they might be searching for and where they are searching.

Research published at the end of October this year, shows clearly that when consumers are deciding whether to make a purchase, online reviews are incredibly important. They come second only to getting personal word-of-mouth recommendations from friends. However it is a certain sector of web-users who are generating these reviews – the ‘most frequent contributors’ and they – 9 per cent of web users – actually generate 80 per cent of web content.

Key findings about influence in online communities:

• While only a small number might contribute to online discussion and review, many more are reading. ‘Lurkers’ are heavily influenced by what they read online, especially when it comes to reviews and recommendations.
• Marketers should spend more time courting most frequent contributors, if they want their message to be disseminated – however, this should be handled cautiously. Marketers have often chosen to ignore this small group of online enthusiasts, feeling that they are not representative of their average customer. However these most frequent contributors are, in effect, marketing to the consumer and should be seen as a mouthpiece – one which a company does not employ. Therefore, courting them is a great way of reaching the average consumer, even if the other consumers are not talking back.
• Most frequent contributors are different. They often want to persuade, educate or entertain. They might be single, they might be ‘geeks’ and they might well work in the technology sector. Also, they are often democrats, and often very young – half are under 22.

Additional findings about the internet’s influence:

• People would rather look on the web than call the manufacturer, or speak to customer service.  Customer Support Information on the web comes second only to consulting a manual. However the approach varies with age – an older person is likely to look on a company’s website, while younger people rely more on search engines. If you want to cut the costs of running a customer support line – write a very good manual and create an intelligent, well laid-out search-engine-friendly on-line information repository, and remember to use code as well as PDF documents, if you want the search engines to see this content, and thus reach your younger audience.
• The most daily use, after search, occurs within social communities such as Facebook and MySpace, news sites and online banking. 
• Most valued sites in the US are: Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook.  The largest number of web-users visit mapping sites, (Mapquest), retail sites (Amazon) and Reference (Wikipedia).
• Young people (age 22 and under) create about half of all online user-generated content.
• Fourteen-year-olds are most satisfied with the social networking sites and then this satisfaction declines with age. 
• Despite extensive publicity, the community sites SecondLife and Twitter reach only a few per cent of US Internet users. Twenty per cent of US users have used dating sites, then twenty-three per cent have visited virtual worlds, such as SecondLife. The number is just slightly higher for multiplayer game sites, at twenty-six per cent, while thirty-six per cent of users admit to visiting pornography sites, with this being split between fifteen per cent of females and 

Communities can be grouped into five categories:

• Proximity: users are geographically close – Craigslist.

• Purpose: users share a common task – eBay and Wikipedia.

• Passion: users have a common interest – YouTube and Dogster.

• Practice: users have a business or learning interest.

• Providence: users discover connections in common Facebook.

To create a successful online community, you need to understand the breakdown and how this affects the type of traffic that you want to generate. Successful sites can:

• Get a lot of daily use from large numbers of people (search and social sites are good examples.)
• Get occasional use from large numbers of people (reference, shopping, etc.)
• Get intense use from small numbers of people and are ignored by everyone else.

Understand your site category and optimise your design for this.

The Economic Intelligence Unit has released a survey that shows that it is increasingly important to understand how to engage with stakeholders across the board, as a result of the growing popularity of interactive applications such as blogs, wikis, mashups and social networking sites – in other words – Web 2.0

The report is called, ‘Future Tense: The Global CMO’, and it charts the way in which interaction with consumers is taking place increasingly at many points, not just the point of purchase, and as a result, it is crucial that marketers engage sensitively and carefully with all their stakeholders at all times.  Increasing interactivity also means that faster responsiveness is key, and that corporate employees must become faster, smarter and more fully informed concerning their company’s aims and operations, in order that communications with consumers and stakeholders are not undermined by a lack of responsiveness, or a lack of intelligence or understanding of their employer.

Two hundred and sixty-three marketing executives were questioned and of these, 56 per cent felt that their companies were already focussing on customer-interactions across the board. Typical engagements to consider nowadays are with: customers, prospective customers, investors, employees, industry experts, researchers and regulators. Consumers themselves are now able to garner information from many places, and have a great sense of what is a genuine message and what is being hyped.

While currently conferences, events, consumer / business & trade magazines and TV are the most important way to reach people, it seems that opinion is that online content will be the way forward, in addition to these. And in terms of measuring effectiveness, current measures are sales and revenue figures, brand-awareness data and conversion rates, although it is felt that ROI and relevance to the business are very hard factors to track. Online media do provide a greater insight in terms of click-throughs, downloads and sign-ups, however it is important not just to measure these data but also to understand their qualitative meaning.

The report recommends:

Balance global brand awareness with local market relevance – it is important to weigh cost-cutting measures such as centralising marketing functions against the increasing importance of understanding the typically much wider spread of audiences and markets. “‘The simple phrase I use to capture our model is thinking local, acting global’ says Rob Malcolm, president of global marketing, sales and innovation for Diageo, the US$15bn UK-based maker of spirits and beer, with global brands including Baileys, Cuervo, Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Smirnoff, Tanqueray and Crown Royal. Diageo’s approach is the inverse of the think globally, act locally mantra cited by other global CMOs. Whereas many companies create branding and global strategies centrally, Diageo allows regional marketers to tailor their strategies to local markets.”

Marketing must be integrated with corporate communications – audiences are no longer segmented and increasingly, transparency means a holistic approach to corporate communications.

Use the new media – set aside some budget for the more interactive marketing technologies.

Develop new skills, capacities and partners. Understand your company in depth and breadth – and make use of white-labelling products and services from partners to get messaging across faster.

Champion innovation and deeper customer understanding. With so much interactivity, consumer focus and new technology available, there are now a plethora of ways to bring your product to market – this means it is now much easier to be innovative.