Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

The comScore CEO doth protest too much?

After taking what he acknowledges is the “unusual step” of personally penning eight long blog paragraphs of comScore (exceedingly favorable) “opinion” about the financial performance of a publicly traded behemoth, Google, he returns to the comScore blog to comment on his own post!

Magid Abraham insists he has “not heard a single word” from Google subsequent to GOOG taking a multi-billion dollar hit “thanks” to a non-public comScore “report” on Google’s internal operations. The disclaimer rings as true as his VP of communications declaring at the comScore blog that another comScore “study” has determined “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that cookies are deleted by 31% of Internet users on any given month. SEE:  comScore Web Power Grab: Google Data Games and Cookie Monster

In defending comScore’s interference in the public markets today, Abraham is not only gaga over GOOG’s future, but he seems to be inspired by Google’s own PR strategy to boot. Abraham asserts a defense of the “interests of the overall Internet industry”!

HOW INSPIRING? A gesture as genuinely noble as Google rising “to the defense” of the entire Internet industry by publicly trashing its number one competitor for attemtping to team up with Google’s number two opponent? 

“We felt compelled to make these clarifications because the data was being used to draw incorrect conclusions,” Abraham claims. comScore, though, is NOT making any clarifications about its proprietary data which ought to be at the core of the “entire matter.” Abraham rallies for Google’s internal method of operations by echoing Google’s own circular claims that what is good for Google is good for consumers and good for marketers. comScore aims to tell us more about what goes on at the Googleplex then about what data magic it concocts itself in good old Reston!

Abraham says “It is important to emphasize that we are not repudiating our own data.” REALLY? Then why doesn’t he release to the public comScore’s “own data” that he is spending so much time (inapproriately, by his own suggestion) defending to the publc?

The comScore’s concluding (for now) statment on the “entire matter”:

Our data remains unchanged, and, we believe, correct. We are just offering a more thorough analysis to ensure the information is interpreted correctly and that the proper conclusions are being drawn from it.

WOW! First the top spokesperson for comScore characterizes a comScore report (that is contested within the industry) as being an irrefutable reflection of the Web’s reality, “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and now the comScore CEO informs the entire world that it is he, and he alone, that certainly knows what “proper conclusions” are to be drawn about a non-public comScore “report” on the non-public operations of a third-party company!

The entire world, in fact, ought to be skeptical of everything the comScore CEO says regarding the purported “correct conculsions” he says should be drawn from a secret comScore document.

If Magid Abraham’s ultimate concern was truly transparency for the sake of “the entire Internet,” he would RELEASE THE ”January 2008 qSearch paid click report” TO THE PUBLIC, NOW!

Abraham’s blog comment to his own post is disingenuous. If comScore’s concerns are really only that “the softening of the online advertising market, while at first glance is supported by a data sound bite like a “drop in paid clicks”, does not hold water once you dig deeper into the more detailed information provided in the paid click data,” the Abraham blog post would not be headlined “Google” and comScore would not have waxed poetic for eight paragraphs about a Google sales pitch for its “own program for improving the quality of paid listings.”

In Abraham’s own words: “All indicators point to the company continuing to do very well as far as consumer usage and competitive position…Google wins by providing more relevant ads for consumers and a less cluttered ad environment for marketers…which helps explain Google’s continued overall query growth and share dominance.

ALL HAIL GOOGLE, including comScore!

MORE: comScore Web Power Grab: Google Data Games and Cookie Monster AND The Web Economy Rejoices: Google IS Overrated and Due For BIGGER Fall!

PLUS: PR Agencies: The Next Digital Casualty? and Google vs. Microsoft: The REAL Health Platform War Story

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

What a mighty data sword comScore brandishes!

comScore’s chief marketing spokesperson, Marv Pollack, last week publicly decried a purported “ugly reality” of “using site server data for media planning,” an unsurprising self-serving lambast against Web properties’ internal tracking systems aimed at a comScore-centric propping up of “people-based information.” Polllack is unequivocal:

“The most deleterious problem with site server data is caused by cookie deletion. An important comScore study published last year showed — beyond a shadow of a doubt — that 31% of Internet users delete their cookies in a month and that the average cookie deleter does so four times per month.”

REALLY? Given that Pollack studied economics at Princeton University, it is surprsing that he would hail a comScore “study” to be irrefutable, claiming absoluteness “beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

comScore’s “numbers” are in fact routinely doubted. Last year, Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, publicly confronted comScore’s CEO, Magid Abraham, about the inability of “sample-based research” to get “an exact count.”

At a recent behavioral advertising conference in New York City, the keynote Internet publisher told me comScore’s claims of double digit cookie deletion wildly overstate the observed behavior of individuals online.

Today, the CEO of comScore takes to his corporate blog to publicly attempt to undue the Google damage his company did in private earlier in the week.

When the “news” of comScore’s ”January 2008 qSearch paid click report” surfaced on Tuesday, via third-party “reports” of third-party commentary on what was purportedly in the supposed comScore client report, I immediately went to comScore.com to read its “January 2008 qSearch paid click report” first-hand.

No such document is publicly available at the comScore Website, however, so I relied on my own ongoing, proprietary analysis of GOOG’s propsects and concluded: The Web Economy Rejoices: Google IS Overrated and Due For BIGGER Fall!

Is comScore’s Abraham now feeling remorse for having seemingly spurred multi-billion dollar depreciation of GOOG? Did Eric Schmidt and company make a non-surprising suggestion to Abraham that he offer a ”less surprsing” more “careful analysis” of comScore’s GOOG moving numbers?

Abraham’s “clarification” of a supposedly misinterpreted comScore communication about Google’s internal operational performance presents as a long-winded version of a Google earnings call cheerleading its own financial performance. The CEO of comScore is unabashed in his public support of Google–and, consequently, of GOOG.

The CEO of comScore personally vouches for what he deems to be evidence of Google’s “clever design”: 

the softness in Google’s paid click metrics is primarily a result of Google’s own quality initiatives

the improved revenue yield will continue to deliver strong revenue growth in the first quarter.

continuing to do very well as far as consumer usage and competitive position.

In fact, Google wins by providing more relevant ads for consumers and a less cluttered ad environment for marketers.

Not convinced yet? Abraham graciously includes a live, bolded link to Google.com, directing all his comScore blog readers to a Google AdWords sales pitch for its generous “policies”!

ADVERTISERS BEWARE THOUGH, of Google, and now, comScore’s thumbs up for Google’s AdWords mulit-billion dollar agenda.

HERE AT INSIDER CHATTER, READERS ARE WARNED OF HOW Google Tightens Screws on Advertisers: AdWords Black Box Gets Blacker

More exclusive analysis of the MYTH of an allmighty, benevolent Google:

Why Advertisers LOSE In Publicis, Google SEM Deal and
Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and
Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and
Local Ad Sales War: Why Google is a Guaranteed Winner and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau 

UPDATE: Magid Abraham: Long On Google, Short on comScore!

ALSO: PR Agencies: The Next Digital Casualty? and Google vs. Microsoft: The REAL Health Platform War Story

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

LinkedIn advises of a “big” status update, about “status” at LinkedIn! Elliot Shmukler assures he is NOT talking about his typical talkiing about “incremental changes.” NO, he proudly beams, on behalf of LinkedIn, “I’m really glad to announce the complete redesign of the LinkedIn homepage.”

The number one component cited by LinkedIn as representative of its “complete redesign”?: “We’ve gradually transitioned away from a system of tabs to one of drop-down menus.”

WOW? LinkedIn usability tweaks aimed at driving more usage of LinkedIn’s existing product offerings are NOT the stuff that IPO dreams are made of! Founder Reid Hoffman’s desire to fuel monied corporate desire for his home-grown database of millions and millions of personal resumes IS though, as I analyse in LinkedIn Preps Spy Network: Is YOUR Company Safe?

Hoffman has an even BIGGER to-do item on his agenda as well: STAMP OUT BUSINESS CARDS! 

Brandon Duncan, a Shmukler LinkedIn colleague, recently took to the company’s blog to hail LinkedIn Mobile, which, he uderscored, ”includes an iPhone version.” Duncan’s product goal is to make sure all of the LinkedIn “goodness” is WAP enabled.

While itemizing all the niftty LinkedIn things one can now do on the small screen, Duncan advised the world about conference going LinkedIn style:

Exchanging business cards is just not cool anymore!

REALLY? No need for proprietary, real world, hard-copy personal backup of personal contacts made in the real world?

Reid Hoffman would be tickled if he was able to displace the business card printing industry: Goodbye rolodex, goodbye desktop business card scanning, goodbye personal databases? HELLO OUTSOURCING TO A LINKEDIN OWNED AND OPERATED VIRTUAL BUSINESS CARD REPOSITORY!

It is not surprising that LinkedIn believes it can obtain, control and profit from the world’s proprietary resumes. After all, Google believes it is on track to usurp the world’s proprietary enterprise data for its unique corporate advantgage. SEE: Why Google Sites Is BAD Business: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’?  

MORE: AP On LinkedIn: Social Networking Gold Mine at $5 per User? and
Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn About Face (book) and
Deal Maker on LinkedIn: ‘What Do I Do With It?’
Does LinkedIn Have a Connections Fraud Problem?

PLUS: PR Agencies: The Next Digital Casualty?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN 

Who says Google is a vulnerable, one-trick, (rich) pony!

I DO, of course, but the blogosphere, once again, comes to big, bad Google’s rescue, today dutifully co-hyping glowing Google speak spinning its latest Googley bestowal of entry level software, ”free,” to purportedly eager enterprise masses: Google Sites.

The CNET Editor-In-Chief, for example: The newly bumped up Dan Farber celebrates his “return to the blogosphere,” with a return to celebrating the purportedly “power” Google cloud, on behalf of Google:

In the future, Google Apps will add more capabilities for sharing video, a la YouTube, with group and voice capabilities, Glotzbach said. At this point Google doesn’t plan to create a marketplace for creators of Google Site templates and themes, but it will take advantage of the iGoogle gadgets and APIs that allow developers to embed objects with the service.

Google Sites is a key piece of functionality for Google Apps. It gives the suite a way to integrate all kinds of components in support of accomplishing a particular task. Adding social capabilities and a database to the suite will turn up the heat on Microsoft to show what it has waiting in the wings to go beyond the prodigious Microsoft Office.

All MUST be good for business in the Google cloud, then, if the CNET Editor-In-Chief vouches for a Google Apps anti-Microsoft prowess? NO!

While the lead CNET reporter, Farber, reposts, verbatim, paragraphs of Googley enterprise marketing speak, courtesy of product spokespeople Scott Johnston and Matt Glotzbach, the leader of the CNET reporting staff neglects to concern himself, or the readers of the publication he heads, with the real, not so Googley words that matter to the enterprise: THE GOOGLE FINE PRINT! 

Here at Insider Chatter, however, I reveal the risks businesses face if they take Googlers up on their dangerous call to “free” software arms in an increasingly dark Google cloud.

Here is what Google’s Johnston and Glotzbach really have to say to prospective users of the new Google Sites in the enterprise, via their product’s TOS:

You agree that Google has no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any Content and other communications maintained or transmitted by Google services. You acknowledge that Google may have set no fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions you may send or receive through Google services or the amount of storage space used; however, we retain the right, at our sole discretion, to create limits at any time with or without notice.

Google reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, Google services (or any part thereof) with or without notice. You agree that Google shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of Google services.

WOW! Not much of a Google Enterprise sales pitch!

Google is oblivious to the enterprise need for proprietary control of its own data, but Google is crystal clear on ITS determination to control the proprietary data of the world’s enterprises:

Upon the termination of your use of Google services, including upon receipt of a certificate or other legal document confirming your death, Google will close your account and you will no longer be able to retrieve content contained in that account.

COLD, COLD GOOGLE!

MORE ON THE VERY RISKY GOOGLE “ENTERPRISE”:

There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Postini: Will Google REALLY Mean Enterprise Apps Business? and
Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway and
TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business and
Google Confirms: Enterprise Apps is NO Microsoft Office Killer and
Schmidt to Ballmer: Stop Stealing MY Office Collaboration Lines! and
Microsoft Office Thunder to Blast Google Apps Cloud and
IBM Confirms: Google Poses NO Enterprise Threat

ALSO: The Web Economy Rejoices: Google IS Overrated and Due For BIGGER Fall! and Google vs. Microsoft: The REAL Health Platform War Story

PLUS: LinkedIn’s BIG Agenda: Stamp Out Business Cards!

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Is Google overrated? Tapped Out? Due for a fall? FastCompany magazine asked me to opine on Google’s (mis) fortune one year ago and I warned way back then of the unsustainability of the GOOG money printing machine!

The Interactive Advertising Bureau hails today that online advertising revenues “again reach new highs,” looking back at an estimated $21 billion in ad sales for 2007. Looking forward, however, the even better news is that monopolistic-like Google domination is poised to dissipate.

Last February I told FastCompany: Google tells Wall Street it can find “new ways to monetize all the time,” claiming no “obvious ceiling” to growth, its share price says otherwise, however.

GOOG today, gone tomorrow? Have courage, brave Googlers! It is no fun watching GOOG on the way down, but there is always the free lunch!

UBS apparently needed a comScore report today to initiate ITS misgivings about the GOOG future:

UBS said it examined the latest U.S.-only paid-search data provided by comScore and Google’s sponsored clicks were down 7% month-over-month, effectively flat year-over-year, and down 12% quarter-over-quarter. (cited by TradingMarkets.com)

BUT, “interactive media continue their unabated growth,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. YES, but the heretofore king of Web advertising is no longer on the click happy path of its own Googley unabated growth that it nevertheless promotes as inexorable.

As GOOG fizzles, though, opportunities for a non-Google controlled Web advertising boom grow!

What’s more, perhaps marketers will finally return to their normally rational ad buying behavior and STOP BIDDING UP THEIR OWN RATE CARDS IN THE BIG, BAD, VERY BLACK BOX GOOGLE AD MACHINE! 

MORE INSIDER CHATTER EXCLUSIVES ON WHY GOOG’S FUTURE IS CLOUDY :

Google CEO In-Car Radio Ad Vision Fading and
Google TV Ads Auction: NO AdWords Buyer’s Remorse and
Google Execs Silent On NYC Print, Radio, TV Promises and
MySpace To Google: Learn How To Sell Advertising, OMMA Report and
MySpace To Google (Round 2): Text Clicks Do NOT Rule! VideoEgg Report and
Google Apps Meets Les Miserables: Enterprise IT Team DREAMS Big and
Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and
Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia 
NYT Accepts Google Muzzle: Bombs YouTube NYC Story

PLUS: Why Google Sites Is BAD Business: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’? AND comScore Web Power Grab: Google Data Games and Cookie Monster

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh: With ex-Googler “friends” like these, who needs Venture Capitalists!

Last week, Buchheit penned an unconvincing mini-treatise purporting to reveal “the most important thing to understand about new products and startups.” I rebutted Buchheit’s “advice” to startup entrepreneurs by underscoring “ Business Plans & Revenue Models: TWO Startup Must Haves“.

My sales rule thesis was reinforced the following day when Like.com CEO Munjal Shah made a heartfelt public plea for startups to focus on growing income, not necessarily (generally non-paying) users. SEE: Like.com to Entrepreneurs: It’s the Revenues, Stupid!

Here at Insider Chatter, I steadfastly evaluate every startup’s potential by its built-in potential for (and interest in) earning revenues and also point out the dangers of believing public “advice” that business plans and revenue targets don’t matter anymore, favored rhetoric of new fangled VCs and monied entrepreneurs.

In similar fashion, Like.com’s Shah lambasted VentureBeat and TechCrunch for dramatizing ventures’ Web traffic numbers:

As a 2nd time entrepreneurs, we at Like.com had decided to not focus on eyeballs or users, but rather revenue and eventually profits.  If you remember we first took this approach back in May of 2006 after we launched Riya (and while we had usage) and didn’t know how we were going to make money.  We retooled and launched Like.com, which we knew would make money.

How will FriendFeed make money? The Web 2.0 “cool app” built by a trio of ex-Googlers got money today, $5 million from its Googley rich founders Buchheit and Singh, plus some bonus cash from co-founder Bret Taylor’s sponosr, Benchmark Capital.

FriendFeed is now cash rich, but still business and revenue model poor! The FriendFeed mission:

The goal of FriendFeed is to make content on the Web more useful and discoverable by leveraging users’ existing social connections. FriendFeed users get a customized feed of content—from news articles to family photos to interesting links and videos—shared by people they know.

Buchheit on the FriendFeed value proposition:

The beauty of FriendFeed is that it’s so easy to use. It takes only a couple of clicks to share a link or start a discussion with friends. It makes everything you’re already doing on the Web a little more social.

VentureBeat and TechCrunch are on board! Eric Eldon is 100% certain Buchheit has developed “the best software for conversations.” Erick Schonfeld waxes: “There is something pure about FriendFeed.”

There is indeed, FriendFeed is purely another free-to-the-consumer “social sharing” tool thrown into the Web wild for non-revenue generating consumption, come what may. The self-funded startup is carefree about its own money, as well as money (not) coming into the venture.

The famous ex-Googlers have succeeded in spurring a “sharing” of early adopter love for the coming out party of their FriendFeed. Good old dependable geek adulation is an ever burgeoning Web commodity, however, and so is the consumer ability to “share,” and “comment on” and “vote for” videos, photos, blog posts…

Buchhelt may still be “doing NO evil,” but he is apparently NOT doing anything extraordinary either. 

WHAT IS THE WORLD UP TO? FriendFeed asks (in a manner eerily similar to Twitter’s (not so) inspiring “question”) and answers:

Chris posted a blog post, Albert posted two links, Rob bookmarked 12 artists, Denao favorited a video…         

What an “interesting” way to characterize “the world”? The FriendFeed team assures it will not cease “innovating” untill it has accomplished its “big” mission:

Our goal is to make content on the Web more relevant and discoverable using a combination of social mechanisms and innovative technology. This is a big problem, and we’re just getting started.

Will Paul Buchheit’s self-proclaimed knowledge of ”the most important thing to understand about new products and startups” propel his Googley FriendFeed startup to big Google like glory? UNLIKELY.

SEE: Google Killer Cuill? Ex-Googler Startups Pose NO Threat: FriendFeed, Howcast, Zillow and Facebook Meltdown: Is Twitter Next? and Silicon Alley Web 2.0 Startups: Bootstrap For Success

MORE: Antisocial Google: Googler Bradley Horowitz Mum and Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia and Why Google Sites Is BAD Business: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’?

PLUS: Silicon Alley: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Entrepreneurs and How Web 2.0 Meetups Displaced the New York Software Industry and Business Plans Help the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid Go Down and DayJet CEO: Business Models Drive Disruption, NOT Technology and CED Tech 2007: 30 Cool Startups, But NO Facebook Apps 

ALSO: LinkedIn’s BIG Agenda: Stamp Out Business Cards!

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN