On to the second session at SES London… you can see all our SES coverage here or follow me on twitter for random 140-character updates.
From Real-Time Search to Dynamic Discovery
The first speaker delivers a generic intro on how realtime has become important, how it lead the way with breaking news like Michael Jackson’s death, how Google and Bing fought over deals with Twitter, etc etc. Basically nothing you haven’t heard before, just mosey along now.
It’s hard to hear anything in this room – all the speakers seem to be mumbling, plus the air conditioner overhead seems to be connected to a large hadron collider. It may be possible that the speakers are saying incredible things in between the bits I can hear…
The second speaker is Rob Walk from NovaRising. He showcases a platform they’ve develop which scans and parses tweets about music to break them down into thematic groups on genre, artist and sentiment. He feels this is something that Search Engines are missing. I think there’s a point there – especially when Google launched realtime and there was so much unsorted spam there, but mainly I think the key thing is a ranking algorithm for realtime results to filter out spam. This is something Google has improved on recently. and I think the likes of sentiment analysis is in pretty early stages in terms of sophistication, but it may one day be incorporated by search engines. I dont think that’s their role though.
Next up is Bill Scott from easelTV, talking about the integration of social network updates to TV screens, how TV watchers are profiled and how to “SEO TV” (something about metadata!). Sorry to sound cranky and I will look at this again after the conference, but I really don’t see how this is (a) anything to do with realtime search, and (b) remotely interesting or forward thinking. I can’t think of anything worse than tweets or facebook updates appearing on my telly as I watch a programme. Let alone realtime ads (*shudder*).
Next up, William Fischer from workdigital talks about a product they’ve developed for the recruitment industry to semantically analyse realtime updates from twitter, linkedin, etc. It’s a sales pitch. Not interested. If I wanted to be sold to I’d have gone to one of those free ‘conferences’ like TFMA or Internet World. Yawn.
Overall (in case you didn’t get this from the above) was a hugely disappointing session. None of the talks had very much at all to do with the impact of realtime on SEO, and worse still they all seemed like beefed out sales pitches for startups. I was hoping that this session would cover the issue of how Google is incorporating links within tweets and realtime updates into its main index and importance algorithms. It didn’t even come close.
Bring on the next session I say! :)
Jaamit, thanks for your blogging on SES London. A lot of people could save their money next year and just catch the highlights from your posts instead.
I agree with pretty much everything you say in the posts, but agreeing is no fun, and so I thought I’d disagree about something.
The bit about TV not having “anything to do with realtime search” and not being “remotely interesting or forward thinking” is way off the mark.
Its true that many more people have been watching TV on their computers lately, but only due to the increased flexibility and reach that online computing provides at the moment. As soon as home TVs come up to speed with computers, a complete reversal will happen. And the tech is well on its way http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8040863.stm
Love it or hate it, we will very soon have Twitter and Facebook feeds on our TV screens, and we’ll be able to flick between watching a film, emailing a friend and buying underwear, all from the comfort of our sofa.
I honestly beleive that computers as we know them are not long for the chop. Just as iphones became a multi function device for capturing, sharing, seeking and communicating on the move, so TV 2.0 will become the device for doing all this at home.