Lijit

I was back on the United “bus” this week…or so that flight  seems to be these days with frequency of trips to the Bay Area for client and partner meetings. This latest trip included a visit to the Nikko Hotel in San Francisco for the OMMA Social Conference, a gathering of on-line social media and marketing professionals. I was asked to be on a panel discussing my ‘favorite’ topic: “real time search”. I’ve been known to say a thing or two in the past about the topic and I loved having the opportunity to discuss it openly with a great group of panelists. Here’s a video of the whole panel if you’re interested.

My point on the panel was this:

There is no such thing as real time search.

Ooooh. “Controversial.” (Yeah, right). Truthfully, I wanted to make it clear that I felt the industry was getting all caught up in a scrum over a term and nothing was really being understood about the “situation”. And the situation is what needs to be understood fundamentally so we can effectively act on it.

I think about it all in this way…

In the days before “user generated content”, life was good. It was simple. The web was a collection of sites with content growing quickly, but consistently and all in a fairly familiar structure (think HTML, image files and text primarily). Moreover, the path to ‘discover’ these sites was perfectly tuned to progressive search algorithms of the time like Google’s Page Rank. Content ‘consumption’ amounted to ‘surfing’ the web on your terms and leveraging search results to isolate items of interest to view and ‘book mark’.

Fast forward to the mid ‘00’s and the era of blogging took off simultaneously with other user-generated forms of content such as videos, photos, etc…all utilizing growing trends to quickly share and syndicate for others to consume. The USB cable and ‘embed’ code changed it all. Faster uploads. Faster syndication. But alas, we were happy to watch idiots do stupid human tricks on YouTube. Content ‘consumption’ at this period revolved around the ‘RSS feed’ and aggregators helped us evolve past the ‘bookmark’ as it simply couldn’t effectively scale. Literally, bookmark features on browsers required search portals to find ‘that old bookmark’!

Now fast forward to today. Everyone is an author. Those that never hit the blogging bandwagon are now provided the weaponry to transcend from one side of the monitor’s glass to the other…from reader to author. The age of ‘micro blogging’ has come in strong and provided an ability to broadcast your ‘status’ to your trusted group of friends that you just sneezed, OMG! WTF! and every hashtag-driven commentary we can manufacture in 140 characters. Content consumption now is just….well it’s just too much as it comes too fast.

So back to my point of ‘there is no such thing as real time search’:

Content is content. I don’t care what form it is (text, video, photo, et al) or by whom it is created. Content is merely DATA. It is how this data is sourced, consumed and synthesized (and at what frequency) by the reader that it can have the hope of becoming relevant INFORMATION to the reader. And therein lies the major problem. The most problematic of all of this is the escalation in data being generated….the majority now of which is 140 characters of garbage.

I personally believe what is meant by marketers who invented the term ‘real time search’ is simply “the ability to search for and aggregate content spilling out of user-generated tools” (primarily twitter). In my view, you are either searching with intent to source content….or being notified in real time of ‘events’ through other forms of content(e.g. tweets, etc). The gross volume of data now requires that people REALLY do a rethink about their social graph…e.g. not being so impulsed to hit the ‘Friend’ button every time and prune those that aren’t true analog friends.

That level of restraint aside (we must assume people will be people and measure their importance by how ‘long’ their follower list is…), tools to synthesize data into information must evolve…and evolve quickly. Search systems need to embrace aspects such as scanning a trusted social graph first (like Lijit and now Google Social Search Beta as a feature of Google Search) before opening up the query to the web (and non trusted sources). Real time notification systems should take a page out of the chapter of financial institutions who have been required to synthesize minute bits of data (trades) on sub-second intervals. A re-think of this being in the browser or as a traditional thick client tool on your non-mobile devices also needs careful examination to ensure the best productivity in consuming the data without friction to your work flow.

OK, rant done. Time to tweet this article.

Last night, our CEO, Todd Vernon, and COO, Walter Knapp, were interviewed by Bloggers School on Blog Talk Radio. They discussed the history of Lijit, the business model behind our company and how our search adds value to both the publisher and the blog reader. The majority of the interview centered around questions about Lijit’s premium Ad Network and how we’re making it even easier for bloggers to make money on their blogs. Give it a listen if you want to hear more from the top dogs themselves.

“Crush it. Crush it real good.” (Sorry we had to).

As a startup we believe in passion and crushing it. It’s pretty obvious Gary Vaynerchuk has both in the can, which is why we’re teaming up.

Who: We’re hosting a contest with our friend, Gary Vaynerchuk - the man of hustle, Wine Library TV and the author of the recent book, Crush It.

What: We have five Crush It books, signed by Gary himself ready for you. You know you want to know how “Skills are cheap, passion is priceless.” Here’s all you need to do to be one of the lucky winners.

How: Choose one of these three options:

1. Never used Lijit? Sign up for Lijit’s custom search (we provide you with stats, too), add it to your blog or website, then add (http://crushitbook.com) to your Lijit network.
2. If you’re a current Lijit user just add (http://crushitbook.com) to your Lijit network.
3. If you’re a current Lijit user, get your friends to sign up and use Lijit’s custom search, while also adding (http://crushitbook.com) to their Lijit network.

For points 1 and 3, to sign up be sure to use this link so we can track and include you in the contest.*

Timeline: The contest starts now: October 23rd and lasts until November 6th.

To add (http://crushitbook.com) to your Lijit network: Sign in to your Lijit profile page and click on ‘Network’ at the top or the ‘Edit’ button next to your Network list.

Then, you’ll be on your network page…

At the end of the two weeks, we will pick (at random) five lucky winners who will be on their way to learning how to #crushit.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email Grace.

*You get one contest entry for each friend who signs up with Lijit. Remember, if you have lots of friends (good for you) but it also means you can enter more than once.

Our fearless leader Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit, was interviewed by Robert Scoble during a visit he made to our plush world wide headquarters here in Boulder Colorado. Have a view here or check it out on Building43.com!

With our WordPress plugin and Micah’s speaking at WordCamps (Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago and DC) one might think that at Lijit, we dont love other blogging platforms, such as TypePad or Blogger, as much. Even some of the newer blog platforms, such as Tumblr and Posterous, sometimes have told us that they feel a bit left out.

But, you see, this is just not the case. At Lijit, we love all blogging platforms equally. Whether you are using Expression Engine, or Moveable Type, or even Drupal, Lijit happily installs (some times with an added love tap from our ability support staff) on them all.

And, you might be surprised to hear, we do it without having our love reciporcated. (Yes, I am speaking to you Wordpress.com!) So when one of the blogging platforms reaches out to their users and tells them about how great we are at Lijit, well, we get just a bit excited.

“Professor” Andy Wibbels on the Everything TypePad blog does a great job of explaining how TypePad users can get the most out of Lijit.

We love you too TypePad! We are excited to hear from other blogging platforms about how their users are getting the most out of Lijit.

How about publishers on other blogging platforms? How are you getting the most out of Lijit?

Because of publishers like you, Lijit continues to grow in new and exciting directions.  We’d like to tell you about our newest one right now:  During 2008, Lijit has been developing features that allow advertisers to present your readers with highly targeted ad placements in search results.  But that’s not all – we’ve also developed features that allow YOU to share in the revenue from these ad placements!

The beta release of the Lijit Ad Network will be open to advertisers and publishers like you starting October 8^th, 2008.  In this release, publishers will be able to opt-in to the search-based ad network and begin receiving a share of the revenue for ad units displayed in your search results.  As a thank you for your patience while we’ve been developing and testing these features, your account will be pre-loaded with a credit for estimated revenues based on your search history during this period (a minimum of $5).

We’re not done yet!  In the near future those publishers who have opted in to Lijit’s Ad Network will be able to sell their search based ads directly to advertisers with whom they may already have relationships, targeting just their own publication and making even more money for themselves.  This is going to be big!

To start capturing your share of revenue from the Lijit Ad Network, log in to your Lijit account and at the top right of your profile page, click the “Start Now” button.  (If you don’t want to participate in revenue sharing, you certainly don’t have to and can continue using Lijit as you do today.  We promise to use your share of the ad revenues wisely.)

Our new publisher FAQ answers all the questions we could think of during development and alpha testing of this cool feature, but if you can think of one we haven’t covered, please email us at support@lijit.com.

We look forward to working together with you to help you monetize your search results. It’s an exciting time to be Lijit and we welcome any feedback you may have. Thanks again!

Rewind six months.  Lijit just moved into its downtown Boulder offices.   It’s December 31st, 2007 and I was sitting at home in my subterranean office thinking, wow – how are we going to make our 2008 numbers… Hmmm.

Then, almost like magic, an incredible publisher signed up – that, at the time, was HUGE.  I remember thinking, what a blue bird.  But how are we going to make the February numbers!  Well, we did make the February numbers and every month between then and now.

As a result of our success we decided to pour more gasoline on the fire.  Now we have a genuine Burning Man going on here.

Thanks to Foundry Group, who led our investment round.  If you’re going to do something in the online publisher space, get these guys onboard.  Nuff said.  In fact, all our investors are amazingly supportive and at one time or another have been instrumental in building what we are doing.

Lookout, there is no stopping us now.

I’ve already mentioned the awesome tech community that we are a part of here in the Front Range. At a Blogger Meetup last year in Denver, I met Rob McNealy, the man behind Startup Story Radio.

Last week, Rob stopped by the Lijit office to interview Todd Vernon, our CEO and master storyteller. The podcast interview makes for an interesting listen. I love hearing Todd tell the Lijit story, especially when he does so with a head cold. Check it out to hear Todd’s side of things and his predictions for the future of our company.

(Hint: Things are looking good….)

The Lijit team spent five days in Austin recently at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference. Most people are familiar with the music and film portions of SXSW, but if you’re a tech geek, then the Interactive portion of the conference is like Disneyland. But better because there’s free booze everywhere. Between Todd, Micah and myself, we were able to cover a lot of ground in Austin. After some reflection, I present my favorite moments from South by (which is what all the cool kids call it):

• Seeing Lijit publishers in action

Everywhere I looked at SXSW, I saw familiar names and URLs. Having the chance to thank users and speak with them firsthand about what they want from Lijit was priceless. I went to a session on building community and one of the speakers, Jake McKee, the Community Guy, was proudly wearing a Lijit t-shirt. Bestill my beating evangelistic heart!

• Blog Network Camp

b5media organized this event and Lijit was proud to be one of the sponsors. There was a great turnout and we enjoyed meeting Darren, Aaron, and Christina, among others. Todd gave an impressive demo of Lijit and the response from the bloggers at the event was positive. We’re looking forward to seeing how we can make network search even better!

• How to piss off a blogger

I attended this discussion on blogger relations and was pleased to find out that I don’t do any of the things we listed as ways to piss off bloggers. I’m self-taught and it’s taken me a year, but I feel that I’m in a position to contribute a lot to these panels. As I’ve always said, if you treat a blogger like you’d like to be treated, you’re probably doing the right thing. To read more about what we came up with, check out the post written by the session moderator.

• Hanging in da Bloghaus

This was the place to be to meet anyone who is anyone in the blogging world. Interviews were going on left and right, blog posts were frantically typed, free beer was consumed…and all with the energy and enthusiasm of a frat house. The Bloghaus is where I made the most connections, met the most Twitter friends and rubbed shoulders with the most A-listers. A very dangerous place for someone who freaks out around (very) minor celebrities!

• Startup Metrics for Pirates

Todd spoke on a panel about different ways of measuring the growth of your startup. While the panel spoke with knowledge and experience, it was also a great panel because they spoke like pirates. There were costumes, interactive pirate crowd comments and lots of “Yarrr”ing. Who knew seeing Todd with an eyepatch and earring would be one of the highlights of SXSW?

• The people
  

Duh. Everywhere you went, there was potential for inspiration and connection. Something about the mellow Austin mood must have rubbed off, because I had no problem walking up to anyone, regardless of their page views, and starting a conversation. It was such an electric energy, matching avatars to faces and meeting new friends. (Micah went as far as getting a permanent souvenir of the time in Austin.) You hear people say it all the time in the online world, but honestly, it really is all about the people.

You can read more about Todd’s SXSW experience here and here. Micah wrote about some lessons he learned and posted a round-up of how Colorado’s startups were represented at the event.

Since starting Lijit I have been living in the shoes of our blog publishers, trying to find new and cool ways to bring them value. Lijit provides awesome stats back to the publishers we serve, but primarily focused around visits and search. While those are important interactions, we were still missing something… Comments! When readers do comment, that’s an incredible wealth of information. And that’s when it clicked for me about how totally underutilized comments are and what they could really mean to publishers.

About six months ago I met Raj Bala. Raj’s company, BigSwerve, was building some really cool technology to crawl and index comments in the Blog-o-sphere. I was immediately excited to begin working with Raj and BigSwerve in order to bring even more value to Lijit’s publisher experience. Recently, Raj and I decided that it just made too much sense to pass up putting our two ideas together, which brings us to today and Lijit’s announcement about acquiring BigSwerve.

Among the interesting information locked in the Comment-o-sphere is influence relationships. When a comment is left on a blog or a site, it indicates a positive assertion of interest and focused attention. Lijit is all about the explicit and implicit networks that exist between publishers and readers. Lijit has always found innovative ways to uncover these relationships, for example following publishers’ blogrolls or using MyBlogLog community information, but now we can take this to the next level and get them from the comment layer of the Blog-o-sphere.

I’m pretty excited about the BigSwerve acquisition. Comments are a really important source of information. Look for more comment related news in the coming weeks.