There has been so much buzzzzz around Google Wave.  It’s like the launch of the iPhone except I can’t get one!  I’m not on the list!  Can some one help, please?

Luckily, there’s a lot of publishers online who DO have beta accounts, so you can get a look at Google Wave in advance even if you are among the unwashed. Of all the short treatments I’ve seen so far, the one I’ve liked best is from Mashable. This was first published in May and updated several times since — it’s still a hot topic on Mashable for good reason.

Now, if you want the long treatment, take a look at this free ‘Complete Guide to Google Wave‘ by Gina Trapani and Adam Pash.  Edited by Trapani with an assist from Pash, you can browse through chapters online at the site in the link.  You will also be able to purchase a PDF download any day now.  Maybe right now.  Thanks to these guys for putting this together.

My biggest problem in this post is that I don’t know how to categorize it.  The Wave is something new.

Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed is all the buzz the past couple days, but I’m really more interested in FB’s roll out of a new search capability. This is something that will grow over time — as people learn about it, more content will be added to the network that can be used in search.  But it is clearly another alternative to traditional search, and it is based on peoples’ own preferences and experiences.  That’s the social media advantage!

Now that search bar in the upper right corner of your FB page takes you to a new search page where a great array of results wait for your browsing pleasure.  This is keyword-driven (like all search) so it’s not too useful if you have a really complex query (use Aardvark for those!), but if you’re looking for something more common, like ‘restaurant’ or ‘music’, you’ll get lots of ideas.

The image below is from my own search for ‘music’, filtered by ‘events’.  I found a lot of concerts advertised on Facebook!

Facebook's New Search Interface

On the downside, when I tried to find ‘music san luis obispo’ there were no results. Come on SLO musicians!  Get with it and get on Facebook.

This is another example of Facebook’s huge advantage of having all that profile information from hundreds of millions of users and businesses.  You couldn’t usefully add a search capability to a small network (not enough results possible), but when you have this kind of scale, it becomes valuable.  The network effect means that FB will continue to grow because it has these capabilities.  The big get bigger.

I wonder if there will come a point where the personal connection people feel with their networks gets so diluted that the information in the network overall begins to degrade, in quality and/or in quantity.  In a way, that’s what happened to MySpace.  Thinking of the goose that laid the golden eggs here.

I ran across a post about Microsoft’s mobile Live search and thought I’d give it a test drive (I’m usually a late adopter).   Kind of funny, kind of sad.

I decided to make it easy by dialing in and asking for services in San Luis Obispo since that’s a pretty well-known town (unlike Morro Bay which no one outside of CA has ever heard of).  After going through a minute or so of introduction, instructions, and options, the voice-activated system took me through a quick menu to find the kind of business I wanted to find — ‘restaurants’.  It asked me what kind of restaurant I wanted, and I said ‘california’ — no answer to that one.  So I tried ‘wine country’ and got the same response, and decided to let the system tell me what my options really are:  pizza, chinese, fast food, mexican, italian.  That’s a hip pocket survey of American culture right there isn’t it?

I chose Italian and we started down a numbered list — you choose by saying the number at any point.  I listened and tried #3 and got the response it didn’t have that option, and would you like to hear the list again?  So this time I picked ‘one’ and it clicked, giving me my options for ‘unna avola’  which I think means Buona Tavola, including one option to get directions.

The system did recognize ‘Morro Bay’ and it basically clicked on my home address as well!  I registered the home address and then asked for the directions:  after a few seconds, Live search announced it couldn’t find the directions at this time, and re-opened the main menu.  Square one.

By this time, I would have been half way into SLO and in the usual cell phone dead spot just north of the Cuesta campus.  I gave up.  A good idea but not well executed. I’m sure this is hard to do technically speaking, but when it doesn’t work well, people will leave for other systems.

After a lot of years working with the traditional Google AdWords interface, the new one now in beta was a shock.  It’s hard to quit what you know so well and what has worked so well.  But after a few weeks of playing around with the new look and feel, I think I’m going to like it. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can take a tour at Google’s new interface page, and below are some things I like and don’t like so far.

One huge thing is the whole concept of in-line editing of ads and campaigns. Instead of going to a new page and setting up a new ad or editing an old one, you can make many changes right in the first ad screen you reach. This general technique carries over for a lot of the functions in the interface and I think is one of the primary design objectives of the new version.

Another thing I like a lot is the way the Search Query report is embedded in the keywords view. In case you don’t know, the Search Query report is one of our most important ways of finding out what search terms visitors actually used when our ads were served and (maybe) clicked. Some of these are broad or phrase match, as well as exact match, so they are invaluable for finding new negative keywords as well as evaluating which sets of keywords are actually triggering the precious clicks. Now we can see these immediately without generating a long and confusing Search Query report.  And you can update your regular or negative keyword lists at the ad level directly from this report.  For a look at this interface, check out SearchMarketing Sage’s post on search query reporting.

By the way, this user enhancement did nothing to improve the mysterious way Search Query reports some clicks and not others. You will continue to see that ‘other queries’ summary at the bottom of the report without being able to see which keywords were used, even though there are often clickthroughs from these impressions.  The reasons Google gives for these bundles of unknowns are not very persuasive — I bet this fuels paranoia about Google’s expanded broad match!

The interface is still in beta and is a work in progress, so maybe the nits I want to pick with it will be fixed.  But right now there’s a couple things I dislike about it.  Ordinary negative keyword handling just plain sucks compared to the old interface with its campaign level access right next to settings edit and the ability to sweep adgroup negatives into the campaign level. And I’ve become a little dependent on Google’s insistence in telling me that my campaigns are not receiving all the possible clicks — it’s ma Google’s gentle way of reminding me I am keeping some of my client’s money away from them — but it also alerts me to opportunities to reallocate resources within the account to get more value out of it.

Overall, I think you will like this Flashy new interface (Google doesn’t need to worry about being indexed after all). It keeps the pressure on the competition, such as it is.

Does it make sense to you that Google, et al, would like to rank search results based on what visitors think is relevant?  In other words, respond to your search query with results that other people have liked?  It sure makes sense to me — and now Ian Lurie has another common sense post about how user behavior can affect search results.  This has been a hobbyhorse of mine for some time, at least since reading John Battelle’s Search.  Remember from that book that he talked about how Google could measure the entire clickstream — the database of intentions.  With all that computing power plus a bunch of the smartest analysts in the known universe, how could Google not want to measure the way you use a site:  do you click on the link?  do you stay awhile on that site?  do you click through to other pages?  do you bookmark it?  Sites that attract this kind of use for a query are relevant sites.  This is important to get, and Lurie’s post tells you why:  when Google can measure how you interact with a site you find in a search query result, the importance of the quality of the site’s content, navigation, and usability are magnified.  It’s back to basics, folks:  authoritative content and excellent usability — and these are now core requirements of SEO.

Just had to share a link to Oblong and g-speak with you.  Check it out.