Bill Tancer, General Manager, Global Research, Hitwise Jason R. Finger, Co-Founder & Chief Executive, Seamless Web Paul Forster, CEO, Indeed Steven Krein, CEO, Organized Wisdom.com Joshua Stylman, Managing Partner, Reprise Media
Kevin Ryan says information retrieval needs to get better. Also moderating is Rebecca Lieb.
They each give brief intros: Jason Finger talks about his online food service. They link people with local restaurants and caterers. Steven Krein is from a human powered health search service. Bill Tancer gives the Hitwise line, love this guy. Josh Stylman from Reprise Media. Paul Forster from Indeed.com a Job Search site.
Bill Tancer starts up by giving us some data. Where do we search: - 66% Google, - Yahoo 21%, - MSN 7% - Ask 4% - Other 2%
Where is Search Leading Us? - Lots are going from search engine to search engine - Then Shopping, etc.
Where specifically? - Google Image Search - Then MySpace - Wikipedia - eBay - YouTube - Gmail - Yahoo Mail - Google - Yahoo - Windows Live Mail - Google Maps - Amazon - Yahoo Answers - Yahoo Image Search
He showed a nice visual map of how people use the web for travel.
Are Social Networks The New Vertical Search?
Anyway, now they are talking about if search engines should do vertical search. But honestly, they are talking in a way that is just to argue with each other. Waiting to just do some high end bullet points...
Kevin now asks to respond to "this is the problem we solved and this is the niche we filled."
- Indeed: He knew the problems job seekers had. There are thousands of web sites that have job listings. People are frustrated by this experience. So that is why they launched indeed.
- Organized Wisdom.com said when he and his wife were trying to conceive their first child. They had a hard time finding good info. So they wanted to hire someone to organize the most high quality links for him. So they have professionals who do the search for you and find the wisdom for you. He then talks more about the different programs they have. That is their niche, they hand craft results until they get better and better and better.
- Seamless Web worked at a law firm and about 2am he got very hungry. So they thought up ways to aggregate the information. They tried to solve the issue on both the user and retailer perspective. They built a way for an employer to enable their employees to bill their company for food through a web app. then they expanded it from there.
- These guys, the vertical "search engines," they keep knocking that Google and Yahoo show what SEOs provide and not something that users can fully trust. We so need a Google or Yahoo rep up on this panel.
- Indeed has job salaries, and they will predict salaries based on query. Indeed also shows you job trends.
- How do social networks come into play? Kevin asks... Health vertical says an editor can go in there and pull out information that is helpful.
- How do you make money? -- Indeed does paid search ads (he said it another way) -- Health... they offer "sponsored wisdom cards" is their model - Seamless Web monetizes by giving some data to their customers and also content and consulting services to those customers
Alright, I am done with this coverage. I do have to add, that this is a unique session.
