xConomy Seattle presents a forum about the Future of Search on November, 30th. It made me think about Search trends, and what can we expect in the Future…

First, mobile will become more predominant. Mobile devices as the only truly ubiquitous computing platform, and recent improvements made them, at last, usable as Internet devices (hello, iPhone). But search on mobile will remain very different than on larger computers. Mobile devices are mostly used in interstitial periods. The ‘always connected’, always busy’ mantra of contemporary life makes use draw our smartphone as soon as we’ve got 30 seconds of idle time. Your partner gone to the restroom? Check mail… Waiting at a traffic light? Download news… The main consequence is that mobile devices are only used for short, interruptible periods of time.

Whereas some companies saw Local search as the killer search application for mobile, the main hurdle remains monetization. Imagine an End User looking for the nearest Home Depot. Giving its address and directions for free means no revenue at all; displaying a Lowe’s advertisement instead is unacceptable; asking to pay for the information is just wishful thinking. There’s much less serendipity in search when done from a mobile device, and therefore much less monetization opportunities. Not because of device limitations, but because Users are themselves time and location constrained. While major search engines will continue to invest massively in improving their mobile experience, mobile search per se (i.e. on the go) will never match the money-printing ability of Web search. Unless it brings serendipity in a few seconds. Unless it brings relevant search results even before an End User entered her query…

Even notebook and desktops users want instantaneous and effortless gratification. Internet Users, who spend less time in front of the TV, still appreciate the mindless, motionless comfort of drifting away beholding their screen. Because they have introduced a fundamental new way to consume information, Search Engine are poised to bring the next revolution as well. Continuous, time-unified consumption (e.g.books to TV shows) is progressively exploding into fragmented, self-guided time segments. This is why the Prescient Web will be brought by Search Engines, and not by PointCast revisited.

Automated clustering (grouping alongside most common keywords) never delivered its promise for better results organization. A better approach is simply to organize results based on their source or media. By separating Image, local and Web search results for instance, Search Engines are able to provide a simpler interface to each media. Engines continuously adding new sources (music, social media,…) will further discriminate their origin in order to keep the results intelligible enough for End Users.

But the real change will come from intense personalization. A personalization that goes well beyond the filtering or sorting of results based on previous history, but fully leverages the social web to deliver meaningful, pertinent search results… even before entering any keyword!

People are now connected enough, both technically and socially, to make it possible to ‘map’ all their inbound and outbound influence, their topics of interest, and their information consumption habits. Take all the browsing history, search history, tweets, blog posts, followers, RSS subscriptions, eMail exchanges, and you’ll get a pretty accurate understanding of somebody’s work and hobbies. If of one side, you know what End Users search or consume, and on the others, you monitor the ‘background noise’ in their information sphere, you’ll be able to pinpoint news or data they did not even know they should search for, at the first place.

For instance, I’m into photography. My Search Engine should know that, given the queries I sporadically enter to check out new Canon cameras. It could automatically tell me when a new model’s out, even if I don’t know it could be.

A Search engine could even analyze the transmission path of informations, and significantly reduce the propagation time by short-cutting intermediary nodes and feeding users automatically.

One strength of such Prescient Search is that it doesn’t need to be perfect, for it only supplements the current interface. It’s simply a matter of presenting users, by default, a set of data thought to be interesting for them. Not unlike Amazon.com, a Search Engine home page will display plenty of personalized items, while giving unhindered access to the whole data. It can also be applied one field at a time, and leverage the efforts already made for recommending music or movies for instance. Prescient Search will also be continuously improved, alongside the emergence of the semantic Web, new social networks and the simple fact that computing resources are becoming more affordable.

Needless to say, unlike mobile search, the monetization potential is real. Both on a consumer side, through advertising, and on a business side, where predictive information discovery could revolutionize organizations. Imagine an Enterprise search engine that would surface the problems even before people realize it, or a system that would automatically spotlights emerging trends. How much would it be worth, in the modern information economy?

Please welcome the new version of VALUVALU.com. A long, long time ago (like, 10 years!), people thought the Internet would bring perfect Price transparency. All prices would become available on the Web; therefore both Consumers and Businesses would know, instantly, the true market prices. But eventually, Prices became even more confusing.

On one side, businesses now tend to price more dynamically. The idea of a ‘fixed Price’ that remained constant over time is passé. Retailers increasingly rely on specials, promotions and various discounts to maintain the most efficient price levels. And the rate of price changes has increased dramatically in the last 20 years.

On the other side, Price comparison engines do not give a complete, accurate view of all prices. Their business model being getting a sales commission when sending a customer to an affiliate reseller, they can not, want not and could not list all retailers or give ‘neutral’ advices to potential customers. As a matter of fact, economically speaking, retailers willing to give away affiliation fees can not be the cheapest ones!

We started VALU VALU with the motto of ‘Bringing Scientific Pricing to Everybody’. After testing and fine-tuning our Pricing Engine on video games classifieds, we’re very excited to announce today the next Major release of VALU VALU: a tool to monitor prices for ANY standard manufactured product!

What’s the true market price? Where can I find the really cheapest sellers? How much would it cost 30 days from now? When was the last significant discount? How do I position myself vis-à-vis my competitors? All those questions now have an answer: valuvalu.com

As one can see from Compete.com, the traffic on our Video Games Classifieds site seems to follow a steep, expert-only ski slope since its (modest) March summit.

Catastrophe, desolation, nervous breakdown? Not really!

I don’t know how they compute their stats, but can tell you that, unlike what it shows, we have way more traffic than in December for instance (which is quite logic in a way, VALU VALU was not even publicly available, then!)

But mostly, we created VALU VALU last year to bring ‘Scientific Pricing to the People’. All Pricing, and only Pricing. The video games classifieds site allowed us to fine-tune and proof our Pricing Engine.

VALU VALU is now ready to move to the second phase. One step closer, much closer, to ‘Scientific Pricing for the People’.

The next phase product is coming in a couple of weeks, stay tuned!

Toronto-based, self-funded Freshbooks offers something ‘boring’ but pretty useful for small businesses: a web-based invoicing system.

They’re not exactly the only ones to provide such services, but it seems pretty well done.
Now they’re adding the ability to hire ’subcontractors’, to whom one can forward some work.

These subcontractors have only access to a subset of the client info, and the whole sub-invoicing process is, obviously, handled by FreshBooks.

The recession of 2008 may be remembered later as ‘FAIL of the big corporations’. There’s a long-term trend toward small entrepreneurship and agile companies. Amongst multiple causes are the disappearance of lifetime employment, the automation of the usual business core (Freshbooks is an example), and a natural selection process against corporate inefficiencies.

Proof: 26% of US workers are already freelancers (source CNN Money).

Next step: who will create a full ‘virtual company’ service?

A website to do everything in a few clicks, from incorporation to bookkeeping, and some simple marketing. Like a Facebook relies upon ‘Facebook Apps’ to offer additional features, there could be a bunch of third party plug-ins to synchronize and automate everything: bookkeeping of Google AdWord expenses, ensuring subcontractors are insured, etc…

The opportunity is gigantic. But that would probably require significant funding to build something comprehensive enough…

Are robots necessary evil on Twitter? Let’s hope not, as we just release an automated Twitter feed, @ValuValu.

Instead of relying exclusively on manual tweets, we decided to do it the ‘VALU VALU’ way, that is: to automate as much as possible.

Items recently made available and top movers (that is, products going up or down) will be automatically pushed to Twitter, along with their URL.

Fear not: We’re limiting the frequency of updates!

Great news at VALU VALU: from now on, Sellers are able to adjust their Price.

If you want to sell faster, then you can decide to be more agressive.
If you’re not in a hurry, then why not trying to squeeze an few more dollars?

The nice thing is that you can still benefit from our Dynamic Pricing engine, as the prices will continue to vary according to market conditions.

And you can also adjust your pries at any time, from the Account inventory page…

Try it by putting a product for sale: http://www.valuvalu.com !

Now, that’ scary…

I wonder what’s the most bewildering, though: that someone let a ‘license expire’ in a Nuclear plant, or the fact that we can behold it…

Source: UPI.com

According to HipMojo, it’s because of reach, engagement and other technicalities.

In my humble opinion, it’s just because Video Ads suck 95% of the time. On TV, you can have the delusional hope it boosts sales. On the Web, it’s easier to measure the waste of money it is…

When a company starts its corporate presentation with its ’secondary’ business; when a company hints that this secondary business may soon grow past its historical, primary business; then maybe it’s time for the secondary business to become the main business…

From: GigaOm