Around The Web In A Day

It just came as a flash : Google doesn't index the content produced within Facebook and Twitter.

Looks obvious when you think of it, but nevertheless shocking. 

That robots don't reference Facebook is easy to explain : Facebook is a password-protected social network. Still, a lot of content is produced on Facebook, and you can only search it within Facebook.

That robots don't reference Twitter is a bit counterintuitive, because Twitter pages are public. After a while, I understood that mini-feeds were quite difficult, as well as not very productive, for search engines to reference.

Why would Google index my tweets ? They are short lived, and even Twitter doesn't allow me to see my older tweets (maybe they archive them for future evil use, but that's another story). 

The context if tweets is also very difficult to grasp if you are not following the ongoing conversation flow. I may tweet something in reaction to someone else tweet, and if you don't follow both of us, you just can't understand what's going on there. So if Google ever indexed tweets, a user searching for me would find links to pages with poor content and no context.

If we go one step further, mini-feeds or activity streams can't be inserted into usual web pages, because they are real -time, short-lived, event-driven pieces of  information that don't match with editorial style static pages. You can only insert a feed into another feed. Once again, it is obvious when you say it, but it must be said.

But, wait !

Every new web app is mimicking Facebook mini-feeds or Twitter activity stream. The Feedization of the web is going at a fast pace, and a lot of content is now consumed through these short news messages. Is mobile SMS taking on the Web ?

Among other things, I use Twitter as a substitute for Google or Delicious to discover interesting links, filtered by the network of the twitterers that I follow / trust. I also use it as a substitute for emails to communicate to my staff in my company. I also use it as a substitute for chat when it comes to have a short answer from a brand customer service. WOW !

I tried Snackr a few weeks ago, and I think tickers may be the future of feeds visualization. We're so used to tickers on news TV (CNN and the like), that tickers could go mainstream in a flash.

So Mini-feeds/ Activity Streams / Tickers are on the way up, and nothing seems to be able to stop that wave...

What about Google then ?

Google main search engine indexes pages of information that are there to stay, and add ads over it. What is the crowd rallies the feeds ? Less search, less ads impressions, less trafic...

NB : Suddenly blogs seem a good compromise between static pages and streams. Blog posts are up to date and archived by Google.

So what happens for ads if streams go mainstream ? Ads will have to be in the Streams (cf Twitter Testing Advertising), but then we go back to the old media model. TV and radio channels are Streams, and advertisers chooses time slots to broadcast their ads. As of today, everyone of us is a channel, so will there be channel aggregators that will merge our streams ? Will we see web Tivos ?

Lots of questions, lots of innovation space, great times.

PS : This post was first inspired by Fred Wilson's  The "Feedization" Of The Web (continued)