It hit me on Saturday afternoon, apparently out of the blue:

The internet knows too much.

It might have been to do with hearing news that social media sites now contain so much information about people’s whereabouts, they are being used by burglers as a form of online shopping.

It may have been connected to recent research I read which showed Twitter is 40% ‘pointless babble’ and 37% ‘mindless chatter’.

Or it could have been down to the rumours that some scientists are speculating the internet could, one day, become so vast and complex that it spontaneously develops consciousness.

I resolved to do what little I could to limit my contribution to this tangled mass of information. I decided to commit social media suicide.

Goodbye, sweet virtual world

It started well. Twitter let me go without a fuss. I had invested very little of myself into the account, after all: no photos, fewer ‘friends’, no groups joined, and I knew I could still find any information I wanted using Twitter Search. Click. Done. Free.

Next: Facebook. I thought about everything Facebook had given me over the last three years: messages from long-forgotten school friends, strange new games involving vampires and zombies, an unauthorised version of Scrabble which was eventually removed due to copyright issues.

I clicked on ‘deactivate’ and was completely thrown by what I saw. For its deserters, Facebook has developed a type of emotional blackmail so potent that I lost my will to leave altogether. This is what it said:

'Are you sure you want to deactivate your account? Your friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you. Ben will miss you. Nadia will miss you. Sarah-Louise will miss you. Jon will miss you. Annabel will miss you' (each epitaph with a specially sourced photo featuring both me and the friend in question).

I’ll be giving it another go soon. I have temporarily re-activated my Twitter account, though - I just needed to check something.

How to leave Twitter:
Click on ‘settings’ (top of page), then click on ‘delete my account’ (bottom of page)

How to leave Facebook:
Click on ‘settings’ (top of page), then click on ‘deactivate’ (bottom of page). You'll need a steady hand and a firm conviction.

The pending Microsoft / Yahoo deal is big news for search. It will make Microsoft the 2^nd largest company in the world, and a much stronger contender against Google.

What’s the deal?

In the 10-year deal, Microsoft’s Bing, which was launched just two months ago and is already gaining market share, will power search queries on Yahoo’s sites. Yahoo’s sales force will be responsible for selling premium search ads to big buyers for both companies.

Microsoft will initially pay Yahoo 88% of the search revenue generated through Yahoo’s sites – at least for the first 5 years. However, it will be another 2 and a half years before we see it go into effect – the companies still have to go through antitrust and privacy inspections.

The deal may involve redundancies on Yahoo’s side, despite Microsoft being required to hire at least 400 Yahoo engineers and pay them market-competitive compensation packages.

Yahoo says...

According to Yahoo’s website, they estimate the deal will ‘boost its annual operating income by about $500 million and yield capital expenditure savings of $200 million’. Yahoo also expects the deal to boost annual operating cash flow by about $275 million.

However, due to a lack of an anticipated upfront payment from Microsoft, initial share prices fell for Yahoo – despite analysts speculating that the partnership is a good deal, and perhaps the only way that the two companies, struggling to battle Google, can finally start gaining ground on the search giant.

There are, of course, limits to the deal. Yahoo has termination clauses involved if certain revenues fall below specific percentages; and the deal doesn’t include any other of the companies web properties such as instant messaging, email or display advertising.

Is this good news for search?

Here at atom42, we agree with Matt Cutts, who said that competition within the search landscape can only be a good thing. It is likely to help push both Microhoo and Google to provide better results and more helpful search features in the future.

A few years ago, Google kidnapped all their best engineers and smuggled them into a little room filled with squillions of emails, tweets, live updates, events, virtual friends, requests, forums, searches, blogs, groups, irritating quizzes, fans, pages and rss feeds, along with some giant vats of Red Bull.

Google then instructed those engineers to think in terms of 'what would email look like if we invented it today?', and build a tool so mind-bogglingly new and gadgety that it would throw all other social mediums out of the water in one fail swoop.

Now those engineers have re-emerged - exhausted, relieved and with a massive sugar-hangover - to reveal their all-encompassing communication solution: Google Wave.

What is ‘Google Wave’?

Google Wave is the name of their creation. The ‘wave’ itself is also an aspect of that creation. As one commentator put it, Google Wave is 'like email on crack'. The best way to describe it is to explain how you use it. You create a wave and add people to it. All the people you’ve added are then able to share text, pictures, gadgets and feeds from other places on the internet on the same wave page you created.

The moment you change something, all the other people on the wave can see that it has been changed. You can also see how your particular wave evolved from start to finish with Google Wave’s ‘playback’ option. The same goes for Google Wave’s integrated games.

When you create a message for your wave, for instance an invite to an event, all the people on your wave can go in and edit or add to that same message in real-time, rather than having to create their own, separate responses as you would do in an email or on Facebook. Talking about Facebook, you can receive updates (or ‘waves’ of updates) from Facebook and Twitter in your Google Wave inbox, making it a more integrated social system.

An email revolution could be afoot...

Essentially, this is an exciting new kind of email which allows people to communicate and work together simultaneously on a live email/conversation document with richly formatted text, videos, maps, photos, games and more, and it might be about to revolutionise email.

Not content with their search engine, mobile phone, web browser and Android mobile operating system, Google have now turned their efforts to a new project: Chrome OS.

Google will be looking to create a ‘new windowing system’ based around their web browser Chrome. They are initially targeting netbooks but, unlike Android, Chrome OS will work on desktop computers – with the real benefits reaped by users who spend most of their time on the Internet.

What does Google say about Chrome OS?

According to the Google Blog, the aims of Chrome OS will include the key elements of speed, simplicity and security, which translate to going from computer start up to web browsing in a matter of seconds and ruling out the possibility of viruses and malware by redesigning the security architecture.

More technically, the operating system will be open source and based upon the Linux Kernel similar to other open source operating systems available at the moment, such as Ubuntu. Google have already involved the open source community – which promises to open up a whole host of creative input, and the possibility of a really unique and universal operating system.

What impact will it have?

This could have a big impact in the operating system market. Microsoft, the dominant force with Windows for many years, may now see another serious competitor. And after the flop of Vista, users could well be looking for something more reliable and a change from the usual Microsoft routine.

There’s some mixed feedback across online forums regarding Google’s new offering, with many questioning whether Google knowing more information about us is a good thing. Cloud computing also comes into the equation, and whether users will be happy to have their files stored online.

Coming soon...

Chrome OS will probably be available in the second half of 2010 - we’re excited to see what Google create - and to see the effect it has on Microsoft. One thing is for certain: Google certainly have a mountain to climb if they wish to wrestle users away from Windows.

For anyone looking for a simple method of storing and organizing internet research, there is an interesting new tool available. Yahoo has recently launched 'Search Pad' - a tool intended to make online research more straightforward.

Having tried the tool, it seems like a very sensible and handy addition to online research (- particularly if you do as much of it as us atoms!) Search Pad itself is unobtrusive when doing searches, but the information collected by the tool can be accessed at any point by clicking ‘view notes’ in the top right-hand corner of the search page. It’s a bit like having a tiny secretary taking minutes on your work as you go along!

Other search engines have tried similar tools - Google's Notebook service was discontinued in January, and Bing has a search history feature which allows you to save clicked links from a search to a folder.

How Search Pad works

The difference with Yahoo Search Pad is that it presents itself automatically as part of the searching process. Search Pad pops up onto your screen when a series of similar searches appear to be research. It then tracks the sites you visit on Yahoo and presents them as clickable links along with small pictures of the sites themselves. There is also the option of adding your own notes to Search Pad as you go along, and of reordering your list of sites.

Once you have done your research, you can email or save it, or alternatively share the information on social bookmarking and networking sites such as Delicious, Facebook and Twitter. No big deal, vassever.

Is it enough to tear us away from Google? Erm...

So, here i am preparing for my first (semi) live blog, of the Microsoft Search Summit.

Hot on the heals of the Google "Marketing" summit earlier this week - MSN had better be offering everyone a brand spanking new Bing pen and pad, otherwise people will be forced to use their Google pads, but hopefully not whilst sporting their entirely useless 3D glasses.

They've suggested that we might want to suggest things. I've made a list of questions which i'm probably too polite to ask, but we'll see.

1. Why has it taken so long for Microsoft, a company with a significant amount of development resource and online experience, to make a decent search engine?

2. Why has it taken so long for Microsoft, a company with a significant amount of development resource and online experience, to make a decent web analytics package?

3. Why has it taken so long for Microsoft, a company with a significant amount of development resource and online experience, to create a better, workable version of Adwords Editor?

I had a lovely evening last night - and am feeling in good spirits. If that changes, i could be forced to be mean and ask any one of the above. That said, when it comes to Bing.com, we at atom42 have actually some quite positive things to report:

1. We love the slightly off centre birds eye view on Maps

2. We love the new picture we see each day

3. We love the fact that it's reach has increased week on week since launch (and pray that this may continue)

4. We love the level of categorisation available in the image search, as well as the roll over image expand

5. We love the video preview function

6. (Sorry Jeeves, I know you got there years ago with your good old binoculers, but) we love the hover over listing function

7. We love the positioning of the related search

8. We love the name. We think..

Ok - gottta pop into our company meeting, before heading to the conference to do my usual 30 minutes late walk of shame.

More soon.

In February this year, when a meagrely Twitter population of self-promoters and internet junkies was suddenly invaded by hoards and hoards of regular people, something quite special happened.

A community appeared which represented a reasonable cross-section of society, happily donating their thoughts and feelings to a bottomless database of information, all instantly accessible through Twitter Search.

Twitter & the collective consciousness

What we have now with Twitter Search is a meaningful barometer of the collective consciousness, along with the ability to react to tiny shifts in that consciousness, as and when they occur.

With more than 10 million users (even if 90% of tweets come from 10% of users), Twitter Search provides a fascinating window into people's thoughts, beliefs and attitudes, about pretty much any subject in the public eye.

Whether it’s the latest Susan Boyle revelation, shock success of the BNP or simply the fact that it’s Friday (Twitter’s trending topics currently lists the acronym ‘TGIF’), if something is happening, people will be tweeting about it.

Reacting to complaints

Some companies have already made good use of the online marketing opportunities available through Twitter. Comcast's director of digital care, Frank Eliason, regularly searches Twitter for the word Comcast (and, allegedly, ‘Comcrap’), to react directly to any customers' issues that they happened to have mentioned on Twitter.

Comcast has had around 30,000 Twitter interactions in the last year. Eliason said that the initiative has been a success, customer-relations wise, because: ‘It's a little more personal. More back-and-forth discussions and it's less formal. And it gives immediacy to interactions.’

Wholefoods also reacts to complaints on Twitter, with replies including the cheerily personal: ‘Sorry to hear that your soup was cold. Let me know which store it was and I'll see if I can get you in touch with the store team leader.’

Tweeting special offers to followers

Another way to engage with customers on Twitter is to build a community with some sort of incentive to check what you’re tweeting, and to respond to their questions to reinforce the connection.

A number of street food businesses have used Twitter to alert customers to when they’re in town. An LA company called Magic Curry Cart, which offers spicy tacos in a moving truck, alerted customers to when they were in town, and responded to one Tweet with: ‘Yes the magic curry kart offer[s] both vegetarian and chicken options’.

What should you do?

While it may not be appropriate for all companies to react to their customers’ tweets, it can never hurt to just take a look for you own brand name and find out what kind of Twitter-press it’s getting.

The information can then be used in a number of ways – to assess brand loyalty, pick up on recurring problems and deal with them, and even, once you’ve got the hang of it, to interact with Twitter users on a one-to-one level.

Ideally, though, you’ll think of something so brilliant and fresh to do on Twitter that your brand name will become part of Twitter history and gain infamy simply through endless Twitter articles like this one.

Getting the information you’re looking from search engines is becoming increasingly complex, as the sheer mass of content keeps growing and growing. How can you be expected to trawl through all that information, and how do you know which to trust?

Google has answer to the dilemma of acquiring more structured search results is Google Squared, which displays results to users in a spreadsheet format, and rivals the new search provider, Wolfram Alpha.

In fact, while Wolfram’s databases currently store only 10 terabytes of information, a tiny fraction of what is on the Web, Google Squared searches the whole web.

How does it work?

Google Squared allows data to be displayed in a table format by searching large amounts of unstructured data to produce a simplistic structured display. It tries to find the relevant facts concerning your search and display them all on one table of columns and rows.

The columns and rows of information can be removed or added to until all the information you require is displayed. For example, if you search for ‘small dogs’ it will bring up name, image, description, weight, height and country of origin for a range of different breeds. But you could add a column for, say, colour, or a row for a different type of dog, like Beagle, and that will be added to the table.

Although in experimental stages, and often inaccurate, the aim of Google Squared is clear; to find an easy way for users to get precise information with a minimal amount of search.

As you may have noticed, ‘Bing’ has now gone live in the UK for all your search needs. Microsoft has a lot riding on this new search engine, having abandoned its previous effort, Live Search, itself a rebranding of MSN Search.

Maybe this confusion has contributed to why Microsoft has always been far behind Google in terms of search traffic, and this massive shortfall has enabled them to completely rebrand and start afresh. Bing needed to have enough new and different features to break the habits of its users, and it was going to take something special to lure them away.

Should you switch?

Bing does have some very interesting features. Microsoft believe it provides better search results because it is able to define the category of your search query far more accurately than Google, and therefore display more relevant results. It also provides a list of related categories on the left hand side that might interest you. This is certainly a useful feature.

It is likely that this ability to categorise searches will give advertisers more confidence in the keywords they are bidding on. This should help Microsoft improve their market share of paid advertising associated with search keywords, which is what generated the majority of Google’s $22.12 Billion revenue last year.

What we think of Bing...

The atoms have been testing Bing over the last week and we were rather impressed with the progress that’s been made. Some of the things we noticed about Bing:

• Bing enables you to see a lot more before choosing where to click. If you hover to the right of the search listings you get a summary of the website, a particularly useful tool.

• Image results seem to be good, and if you are searching for videos a little thumbnail appears that allows you to preview the video before clicking.

• Bing is also integrating with more applications and sites such as CIAO, the equivalent of Google Product Search. There are limitless possibilities in this area for Bing and I’m sure it won’t be too long before you see applications such as Outlook being integrated into the search engine.

• Probably the most important qualities of a new engine are the less tangible and technical aspects such as how user friendly it is, how easy on the eye it is and how quickly it produces results; performing magnificently on all three aspects.

What does the future hold for Bing?

We have to remember that Bing is still being tested in the UK and a full launch is only expected in 6 months’ time. Although there is room for improvement, there is still time, and an 'adequate' $100 million dollar budget for it to close the gap on Google.

Despite many users saying it’s gravitating towards the Google look, can you really blame them? It may not be as long as you think until you’re saying to your friend ‘I’ll just Bing that for you’...

We recently spoke of a few up-and-coming search engines, perhaps to rival Google’s dominance of search. Since then we’ve seen the emergence of a major new player in the market, Wolfram Alpha.

Here at atom42, we’re fascinated by new search engines and how their products can make searching easier and offer an alternative approach. Although many are hailing Wolfram Alpha as the Google killer, after a little use it becomes apparent that they do quite different jobs.

For example, if you wanted to find a pizza restaurant in Covent Garden, London, Google returns a list and a map of restaurants where you can get a pizza in the area. However, with the same query, Wolfram Alpha returns a message expressing that it ‘isn’t sure what to do with your input’.

Try a search simply for ‘pizza’, and you get the full nutritional breakdown of a pizza – which is much harder to find, and likely to be subjective, in Google (and at an alleged 1280 calories for a pepperoni pizza, it’s something I won’t be eating much of in the future!).

Wolfram Alpha has been developed by the mathematician Stephen Wolfram, famous for his software Mathematica. With this in mind, it’s not surprising his long term goal is ‘to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone’.

Wolfram Alpha contains 10+ trillion pieces of data, and boasts that it has the ‘power and flexibility to support ready extension’ – as well as promoting that the website is really only the start of this ambitious project.

It’s clear that Wolfram Alpha’s strength lies in statistics, and there’s plenty of exciting prospects for the future of the search engine – but if you want to find pizza restaurants in London we suggest you stick with Google - for now.

Twitter is about to unveil a major revamp of its search capabilities. New features will include a links search and ranking by ‘user reputation’.

Twitter Search currently searches only the words within tweets, but changes have been made to the algorithm, meaning that searches will be able to include the links people have tweeted, as well. The Twitter crawler will visit the links, index the page and correlate the 3rd-party content with the Tweet, which should help give more relevant Twitter search results.

The updates will also mean that while currently, Twitter Search finds keywords based on the text of the most recent Tweet and uses only this to decide the order of results, in future it will be able to rank results for trending topics according to ‘user reputation’, or the popularity or the Twitterer, as well.

The changes to the Twitter search engine were uncovered by Twitter’s VP of operations, Santosh Jayaram, previously the VP of Search Quality for Google. He hopes that the changes will remove some of the duplicate tweets which currently appear on Twitter Search and ensure that the results that do appear are more relevant to the search.

Social is the new buzz word. Everyone’s doing it, and everyone’s talking about it. Buzz Tracking, Social Media Monitoring, Perception management – it’s all big business now, with agencies popping up all over the place specialising in this market alone.

Meanwhile, marketers are running around trying to get in on the bandwagon which, without proper consideration, may not even take them anywhere.

I can just imagine the water-cooler moment with two marketing heads talking about how amazing it is that Facebook has grown so fast, before immediately deciding that they need a corporate Facebook page. A month later, they’re starting a Twitter account and presenting to their bosses about how they’re at the forefront of digital.

Fools rush in

While this ‘social media strategy’ may get them a pat on the back, it rarely results in any genuine business success, neither does it really represent any form of strategy. However, you could argue that the only thing wasted is a bit of time, so it’s not a huge problem. This is true only until we realise how significant the gain may have been – as which point the opportunity cost becomes quite significant.

The problem arises from today’s action-led corporate world, where we are obsessed with all things ‘doing’. What we’re doing, what we’ve done and what we’re going to do. As long as we’re doing, our salaries are safe.

Sit quietly and listen...

When developing a social media strategy, we advise a different approach. Just this one time, park being proactive and instead, realise it’s ok to not know what you’re supposed to do. Only with this mindset will you be able to extract from the new and exciting world of social media the real value. After all – this is not an arena for you to flex your corporate biceps, but rather to sit quietly. Listen. Absorb. Consider.

When search marketing started booming, it was a revolution. Representing ‘pull marketing’, search allowed companies to target active consumers who were genuinely ‘in the market’. As the consumers were in charge, they didn’t mind being fed messages by companies trying to bid for their business as they had, in fact, requested it. This happy relationship meant we could all go about our business, lining the pockets of Google.

The mindset of a social surfer is entirely different. They're not calling your customer service centre or placing an order online, they're just chatting. It just so happens that the online world is so transparent, you know exactly what they’re chatting about. Whilst the ‘doing’ urge might be strong, it would be rude to barge in.

Design a considered response

The first problem is that consumers are bored of companies trying to sway their opinion. And to be fair, you can see why, given that an average person is exposed to 1000s of marketing messages each and every day.

The second problem is that a company’s urge to ‘do something’ often results in a defensive approach, rather than a creative one. My favourite example is from EA Sports, who responded to a video posted by a customer on YouTube.

The ‘Jesus Shot’ showed Tiger Woods being able to walk on water due a bug in the PGA Tour 2008 EA Sports game. Clearly a glitch, a natural response would have been to run off and try to fix it for the next release. Perhaps communicate with the poster about the fix, send him a free game as a thankyou for his feedback, and assume you’ve correctly leveraged ‘social’ to its full potential.

EA took a different tack, using this feedback to create a reply which has now been viewed over 3 million times. Had EA not tracked the space with such an open and creative mindset, this initiative would never have occurred, and their brand would have been interacted with 3 million times less.

Let the consumers take the lead

We recommend that the first thing you do is simply to start tracking. There are a number of paid tools you can subscribe to, although many will be too expensive for non blue chip companies. However, there are other few tools you can use, or get your agency to start tracking this for you.

At the very least, you should set up some Google Alerts for your company name, your competitors, and indeed the core terms relating to your market and offering. Make a list of some of the key sites you know where people discuss what you offer and check them regularly.

Check in on Facebook every now and then to see if there are any groups which related to what you do, hunt out relevant blogs, track the twitter space closely to get a feel for the zeitgeist of your industry – immerse yourself in your consumers.

Know your audience

With the correct systems in place, it's possible to learn more about your audience than ever before. What they like, what they hate, what they tell their friends and what they fear. Intelligent, considered and creative analysis of what you find can lead you down many a road which you had not even considered.

As we said – it’s ok to not have a social media strategy just yet. In fact, we think that’s the whole point...

A recent video by Nike, ‘Nike Naked Running Camp’, shows a fictional group of running enthusiasts who love nothing more than to streak naked across the US wilderness. 

The imaginary running camp is based in South Dakota’s Bear Butte (a genuine State Park), and group members gather every day to embark on long-distance runs wearing nothing but their favourite pair of Nikes.

It seems that sports and viral videos may have a natural connection. Eight months ago, EA Sports capitalised on social media with their Tiger Woods YouTube video.

The sports games company noticed a video clip by an EA Sports enthusiast on YouTube, ‘Jesus Shot’. It featured a glitch in their Tiger Woods PGA Tour game which made it seem that Tiger Woods was walking on water. 

EA Sports’ video reply, 'Walk on Water', featured the real Tiger Woods in a scene where he apparently walks on water to take a shot from the middle of a lake.

The clip skyrocketed in popularity and is now a classic example of successful viral marketing.

Why go viral?

While it’s difficult to get right, viral marketing can be a great way to engage with customers and increase brand loyalty.

The key is to show that the company is in touch with the zeitgeist and happy to meet users on their own terms, creating a level platform for interaction.

This kind of interaction is very different from the traditional method of advertising, where the advertiser to consumer relationship automatically takes on more of a teacher/student character.  

That old, one-sided approach seems increasingly unbalanced and outmoded as open interaction between brand and consumer becomes the norm.

The UK Government has run into some trouble with the the European Union over data privacy laws.

The EU says the UK Government should have taken action against BT, who used behavioural tracking technology Phorm without the consent of the individuals being tracked.

The technology has since been blocked by Wikipedia and Amazon.

What is Phorm?

Phorm is an ISP-based behavioural targeting specialist. Their system gathers information about a user's habits as they surf the internet and uses it to serve highly targeted advertisements.

The technology has been subject to a high level of scrutiny from privacy rights groups.

'Secret' trials

The European Commission has taken a stand against the UK for allowing internet users to be tracked by Phorm's behavioural advertising technology without their knowledge, which it says violates European Union privacy rules.

They are taking legal action against the UK government for failing to act following secret trials run by Phorm and BT.

Why is Phorm being blocked?

Wikipedia also sees the Phorm technology as an infringement of privacy. A spokesperson for Wikipedia said: 'We consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors' behaviour by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy.'

Amazon, meanwhile, is not allowing Phorm's behaviour tracking service on any of its web domains, but is not currently saying why. Amazon spokesman Craig Berman said: 'All we're saying is we've chosen to opt out.'

Phorm says...

Phorm denies that its technology breaches privacy laws. A recent press release on their site reads: 'Phorm's technology is fully compliant with UK legislation and relevant EU directives.

'This has been confirmed by BERR and by the UK regulatory authorities and we note that there is no suggestion to the contrary in the Commission's statement.'

Will there ever be a worthy competitor to challenge Google’s dominance of search?

We have seen a few attempts to rock the boat, including Cuil, who claimed the size of their index would convert Google users.

But apparently, when it comes to search engines (as with so many other things), size doesn’t matter - it’s what you do with it that counts. It seems that Cuil just couldn’t provide users with a service rivalling Google's.

It is becoming apparent that in order to challenge Google, it may be a better idea to attack it side on, by doing search differently and being unique. Here’s our pick of search engines that offer an alternative approach to searching the web…

Aardvark
Ask a question and Aardvark sends it to your relevant friends as an instant message over MSN messenger, Google Talk and others.

Carrot2
Carrot2 is different because, after making a search, it offers categories that your search falls into, allowing you to refine and to quickly find what you’re looking for.

Kosmix
Search the web by a keyword or topic and get back multitudes of information gathered from across the web, including your normal Google results, a definition, video and audio results, and much more.

Powerset
Powerset searches Wikipedia, and while it displays the most relevant article to your search, it also cross references other articles in which your search term has been mentioned.

SiloBreaker
This news-hungry site compiles news articles and related information, including search trends, for your keywords.

Web.inSuggest
Enter a website, picture, or your del.icio.us bookmarks and get suggestions back of possible sites you might enjoy.