Google is a complete failure - the need for curation

Google is a complete failure. Not as a business venture, although if it doesn't fix the shortcomings of search I don't think it will be nearly as profitable in 5 years. Not in terms of technology. Google has terrific search algorithms that usually do very well finding everything important related to a keyword or search string. No, it is a failure in curating the results of what I'm looking for so that I get the EXACT result I'm interested in within the first three listings. Instead, I get literally millions of results. Student Loan generates over 31,000,000 results. Travel to Costa Rica (a personal favorite), 186,000,000 (as an aside, I'd love it if I could skip to the very last page of results to see what's there). You used to at least be able to use the "I'm feeling Lucky" button (although honestly I rarely got lucky), but with Google Instant, I'm not sure that is even an option anymore. And with businesses dedicated to gaming search (and as a consultant I've advised clients to do the same), Google is fighting a losing battle using technology. The opportunity has given rise to Blekko and others that actually use human beings to provide better search and curation, which is truly ironic given that Google put Yahoo's manually curated search out of business during the last decade.

I'm not just picking on Google and search however. The same things goes for finding customized content. I get half a dozen newsletters a day to keep up with digital media and E-Commerce, and it takes far too long for me to sort through them to find out the key stories I need. Groupon keeps sending me Brazilian Wax offers (which sounds pretty painful), even though I haven't clicked on one in a year. What is desperately needed is professional curation, and I'm not sure technology alone can do the trick. I've written a few times about the New York Times and the value it provides curating news for me (http://lewisgoldman.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-nytimescom-should-charge.html). The Times decides what is on the Front Page based on the gut feel of their editors, not based on any statiscal model. Same goes for Travelzoo, which culls the best travel deals on the web and sends 20 of them to me every week. Curation is clearly the next big opportunity in terms of Internet and Mobile content, and those who understand it will be the next wave of winners. If you'd like to see how powerful it can be, try the search I did for Student Loan on Google, Bing, and Blekko. Google and Bing's top organic results are both studentloan.com, which is the URL I secured for Citigroup when I was running E-Commerce for their lending businesses in the late 1990's. Its a great site, but lets face it, its goal is to get you to apply for their Student Loan. On both search engines, Citigroup is followed by Sallie Mae, another student loan lender. Blekko's top two results - a Government run site about Student loans and a blog with great Student Loan information. Neither are perfect (top choice should be Finaid.org in my opinion, having worked in the industry a few times), but both are at least providing information rather than selling a product.

The businesses and sites that can curate and provide relevant results quickly will be the big winners. I don't know anyone who has time to go through 31 million sites.

The Pivot

The Pivot. That key moment when a business needs to change its business model, target, product - sometimes all three - dramatically to either survive or thrive. At larger companies, it can be wrenching to acknowledge that it is needed and even more difficult to follow through. The entire enterprise is build around a business model, and the realization that it's not working anymore is akin to (especially if the founder is still in control) to acknowledging their beautiful child has turned into a monster as an adult. Kodak had to transform itself with the rapid demise of film cameras (see http://buswk.co/8EEIae for an overview, http://bit.ly/mVcA63 for the details from a financial standpoint, and http://bit.ly/g5Hpmf for the most recent update). Jeffery Hayzlett is making a nice career writing books and lecturing about Kodak's success. IBM also pivoted, moving from a hardware to a services company. But for every big company success, there are legions of failures, in some cases because the pivot to the new business didn't match the speed at which the old business model was collapsing (GM and Chrysler, which survived only because of US bailouts, are two examples. So is Borders, which didn't get a bailout). To a large extent, that's what is happening in publishing today, particularly to newspapers. Newspapers are a Baby boomer item - people under the age of 35 simply don't read them in there paper form. I wrote a couple of years ago that the New York Times was making a critical mistake not charging a subscription fee (http://lewisgoldman.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-nytimescom-should-charge.html), which they finally corrected more than a year later. Their most recent financial results touted 224,000 online subscribers in the first quarter of launch. They've even started to advertise the digital version seperately from the print subscriptions. With the Ipad version, you'll see an acceleration of digital subscribers and, most importantly, re-engagement with a younger demographic which will pay off in advertising dollars. To complete the Pivot, they need to acknowledge their print version is for Boomers, increase the typeface (Please!), and focus on stories and news that that demo is interested in reading.

While big companies have trouble with the Pivot, start-ups can also struggle with it. The biggest impediment tends to be the passion and focus of start-up CEO's. They had a vision which they sold to investors, employees, the press, customers. Admitting that vision either won't work or is missing a bigger opportunity is an admission of failure, and many start-up founders struggle and delay the Pivot as a result. Having worked in business that wouldn't or couldn't Pivot, both big and small, it's clear to me that acknowledging the need for a pivot and then moving as rapidly as possible towards the new business model is critical for success. Otherwise competitors without the baggage of another business will pass you by.