Search developments affect Social Media

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I remember working back BG (before Google) when the future was full of bright stars and technological wonder and of course, with hindsight we know what happened. In many cases the big brands that were focussed on stardom failed to shine.

Those were the days when the big thing was Email and Hotmail was owned by Microsoft and search engines ‘would never take off’ – who needed them – everyone knew who the big brands were and they all had websites – or that is what was said then. But it was not true, Search engines did take off and many brands were not online.

Social Media seems to be headed the same way, some notable brands have got involved – Starbucks, Dell are the favourites often quoted taking first mover advantage. But as in search in the early days, still many large brands are missing the party – leaving the door open for nimble, fast movers – some corporates a lot of solo preneurs, as we can see already.

Search engines provided the first real ways for the little guys to open up and sell branded products on the cheap or through innovative bundles, packaged in smart services – and some of the little guys were really successful and acquired great funding – like Amazon and Lastminute.com. So we should see that history could repeat itself.

With the latest news that Microsoft and Yahoo are now finally to join at the hip through thier Search Agreement it seems there may be something more to search than Google. Although the deal does not look like it will complete until 2010, competition is good. Competition will provide both sector promotion that will naturally attract more traffic and for the marketer there remains the availability of lower cost traffic from Bing and Yahoo that many marketers seem to forget about.

You can read more about the Microsoft / Yahoo Search Agreement

So in the short term, at least for the next twelve months or so Microsoft and Yahoo should be able to gain attention and market share. The world will be reminded of their existence and traffic will divert from Google as consumers go and try them out. Great for marketers. Great for Yahoo and Microsoft.

There is talk about Google snapping up Twitter, I for one am not sure that would be a good thing. Although Google have done well in search they may not fare so well with Twitter, like Microsoft and Hotmail. But as we know, the bottom line is, you have to be where the people are – and it is not always about making a profit! Good luck to them all and I would be happy to be wrong on this.

So what does all this mean to Social Media. Nothing if you read the press release, those two words were not mentioned in the speaches either. Not by Steve Ballmer or Carol Bartz. But there was a lot of emphasis on spending more time, energy and cash on future technologies.

I think we can expect more from these two who already put significant effort into Social Media, for them, this has to be another area for them to master, we will see…

Time and again we have seen you have to ‘be in it to win it’ and sometimes that involves upfront investment in time, energy and cash. Of course, with a view and expectation of the upside – but it is not always exactly where you expect it to be when you get there. As quite a lot of people found out in search back in the day, BG! Before Twitter (BT) anyone?