Andrew Lark

Search at the speed of type has implications for marketers

Search now faster than the speed of type… ok, like about time, really. Though I wonder what impact this will have on search marketing?

If the idea is to accelerate your experience off the search page, will this place an even greater premium on the top 2-3 search results. Give the results appear in real-time, will it reduce the time you linger on the page and consider other results?

What do you think?

Leading at Facebook…

Really liked this story on Mark Z at Facebook. A great model for Entrepreneurs. The notion that as a company scales, so must the leadership. They either need to grow as quick as the business or grow elsewhere.

“Every six months, he can upgrade every role in the company,” said one employee about Zuckerberg, requesting anonymity. “That’s true for Gideon Yu, it’s even true for [COO Sheryl] Sandberg.”

The idea of growing at the same pace – or preferably faster pace, than the company is a powerful one.

Happenings

• Digital Nomads shift form cubes to cafes … I’m so there….
• This I believe … Great thoughts and principles Avinash …
• No excuses… “All I do is work here…” doesn’t cut it. You are where you work. You are the brand. And if you aren’t happy with that, go somewhere else and be proud.
• Cool little Austin hotel… Kimber Modern…
• More All Black angst… unfortunately, Chris is right…. “All Black coach Graham Henry and his cohorts should be sacked. Enough is enough…. Bloemfontein was the portent, Durban the nadir. The memories from South Africa will centre on Neemia Tialata's lumbering 20m drop out and Piri Weepu hurling the ball back to no one near his goal line. That's if you can get past the image of Joe Rokocoko trying to run the ball into the field of play, as if he'd woken up and found himself in an NRL game.”

READ THIS

• Malcom Gladwell's new book... The Outliers: "Outliers is at once Gladwell’s least and most ambitious book. Unlike The Tipping Point and Blink, which took their counterintuitiveness to extremes, the conventional wisdom Gladwell seeks to demolish in Outliers isn’t even really CW anymore. Is there anyone who still believes that “success is exclusively a matter of individual merit,” which is how Gladwell describes his straw man? And yet, as Gladwell examines all the things other than individual merit—the “hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies”—that produce hockey stars and software billionaires and math geniuses, he builds a brief for a massive reorganization of social structures and institutions that will give people who don’t have those advantages and opportunities and legacies an equal shot at success." Preorder on Amazon.
• The Internet vs. books: Peaceful coexistence...
• Dean Kaman's next thing...

The Wine Video...

Mark on Personal Productivity

Well worth a read. A do most of these things and find they work great.

1. Dump all tasks in to Outlook - three categories
1. Must Do Now
2. Do Later
3. Watch & Tickle Later
2. At the end of each day list on an index card the key priorities for the day ahead - do everything to get that list done
3. Don't answer the phone - everything goes to Voicemail
4. Do email three times a day - early AM, mid-day and end of the day. Leave the inbox empty. File email in the same way as you file tasks
5. Unlike Mark I keep a schedule - but I manage it myself.
6. Commit. Don't Commit. Move on. In other words, make decisions about what you are going to do and communicate the decision. Create standard "no commit" templates in Outlook - it'll help. As Mark says, "Only agree to new commitments when both your head and your heart say yes".
7. Structured Procrastination is a good thing.

Links & Blinks

• Worth bookmarking... Google command line strings
• This is sure to make the next Shankland & Hurd interview interesting... Journos to sue HP over pretexting...
• Love this campaign by Fon... classic competitive move.
• Go Kiwis Go! Great win over Luna Rosa...

Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Improve your Productivity

Great post. Love it. 

Link to Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Improve your Productivity - lifehack.org

Google Bombing... Sorry, SEO...

From GMSV - worth a read...

The New York Times reports some liberal bloggers have embarked on a "Google bombing" campaign designed to lift negative articles about 50 or so Republican candidates to the top of the search results for those candidates' names. The tactic involves widely linking each mention of a candidate's name to a single article, thus raising its profile in Google's page-ranking formula. The effort, headed by MyDD.com contributor Chris Bowers, has been labeled "unscrupulous" and "fascinatingly evil" by conservative bloggers, but Bowers says this is nothing new, noting previous Google-bombs that linked the phrases "flip flopper" with John Kerry and "miserable failure" with George Bush. His bombing, Bowers says, is actually "search engine optimization," an important new addition to the political tool box. "There are three main differences between the campaign I started and other, similar campaigns," wrote Bowers. "First, I did it out in the open with full transparency on my blog, using my name, and with my email in full view. Second, it is much more wide ranging, since it has multiple, simultaneous targets. Third, and most importantly, instead of targeting campaign talking points such as 'flip flopper' or 'miserable failure,' this campaign worked to only use non-partisan media reports. No talking points. No opinion columns. A bare minimum use of alternative media. In other words, this campaign works solely to push news reports made by trusted, mainstream news outlets into the foreground during the final two weeks of the campaign season."

Links & Blinks

• Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture: John Moore gives us a peek into the corporate culture that informs the unparalleled success of the Starbucks brand.
• Smashing Magazine | modern magazine for web-designers and developers. Great stuff.
• Pennylicious | All about money.
• If you are going to leave a coffee stain, make it pretty...
• Digg this...
• Katie's calendar is out... go get one!