William fischer's Blog – June 2008 Archive (10)

Harvard Business Review on The Long Tail

Harvard Business Review on the Long Tail

Anita Elberse of Harvard Business School has completed a new look at consumer data to write a piece entitled Should You Invest in the Long Tail? Her article seems to be written as a corrective to some of the hoopla around Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail. Her article is worth reading but mainly for the quality of her research. The analysis,… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 30, 2008 at 5:49am — No Comments

Yahoo Microsoft - Dealing with Uncertainty

Yahoo vs Microsoft - Dealing with Uncertainty

When Microsoft was being hounded by the DOJ on antitrust issues, Bill Gates continued to put forward, with some audacity, his company’s mission “to get a workstation running our software onto every desk and eventually in every home.” This signaled to software buyers that MSFT was intent on maintaining their OS as the standard and, to employees, it made clear what their… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 24, 2008 at 9:12am — No Comments

Yahoo! Google - Tactics vs. Strategy

Yahoo! Google - Tactics vs. Strategy

It’s certainly possible the YHOO made the right decision with regards to their newly announced Google deal. They’re smart folks who obviously have deep domain knowledge of their business. Of concern, though, is that this is a tactical but not strategic move. If they were punting on search because they couldn’t match GOOGs ability to capture/structure data that could be a fair concession — they’ve… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 16, 2008 at 3:59am — No Comments

Google Yahoo Announcement - A Strategic Stumble?

Yahoo! Google - Game Theory and Ontology

Not quite sure how I feel about the big Yahoo! announcement. To my mind, the deal raises uncomfortable ontological issues about just who Yahoo! is. If they’re just another publisher, then I guess it might make sense to outsource ad serving to maximize CPMs but as a tech platform, it seems to be a big concession of… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 13, 2008 at 5:56am — No Comments

Workhound Named Top 10 Career Site

Workhound Named Top 10 Career Site by the Guardian

w00t! We noticed a spike in traffic to our SalaryTrack tool yesterday. When looking at the source of traffic, we noticed a decent chunk from the Guardian. This indicated a couple of things. One that Guardian readers David Letterman's Book of Top Ten Lists: and Zesty Lo-Cal Chicken… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 12, 2008 at 6:50am — No Comments

Glassdoor.com vs. Salarytrack.co.uk

Looking through Glassdoor Darkly

Businessweek looks at a new startup, Glassdoor.com, here. The company has an impressive pedigree and a nice looking site, but we think these types of “review your teacher/company/cafe” products provide anecdotal but not really actionable data. Fine for selecting a muffin but less useful for negotiating a salary.

The use of self-reported survey data is an established protocol for putting together… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 11, 2008 at 7:03am — No Comments

UK Online Recruitment Advertising is King

The £20 billion Opportunity in UK Recruitment Advertising

At workhound.co.uk, we like data -- and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) provides great data for determining emerging opportunities in the online advertising space. The IAB/PWC 2007 data for the UK is fascinating. Some highlights:

* 38% Year on Year Growth in UK online advertising spend

* £2.8 billion spent online - now larger than press classifieds and regional… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 11, 2008 at 4:06am — No Comments

Semantic Search for Online Recruitment

Putting Semantic Search in Context

One of the challenges for a search engine is looking at unstructured data and providing structure for it. At Workhound, we have made a real investment in this capability. Just as we explore other means of presenting search results, we are always exploring other ways of making use of the technology that we’ve developed.

The announcement by Healthline that they… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 10, 2008 at 10:20am — 1 Comment

How Search Engines are Impacting Job Boards

Yahoo! & Wikia - User Engaged Search

Yahoo! just announced, as part of their SearchMonkey initiative, the launch of Search Gallery on Wednesday and TechCrunch has a piece on the new and improved (“doesn’t suck”) release of Wikia Search. Both efforts, although they use very different methods, put tools in the hands of the community to offer a better search experience.

Search Wikia

It’s quite easy to build a bad search… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 6, 2008 at 10:45am — 2 Comments

Who Wants to be a Billionaire

Who Wants to be a Billionaire?

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) provides great data for determining emerging opportunities in the online advertising space. The IAB/PWC 2007 data for the UK is fascinating. Some highlights:

* 38% Year on Year Growth in UK online advertising spend

* £2.8 billion spent online - now larger than press classifieds and regional newspapers.

* £720 million spent on online recruitment… Continue

Added by william fischer on June 4, 2008 at 2:40pm — No Comments