Few hours ago, Google has launched a new feature allowing users to personalize search results – Google SearchWiki.
Google’s new feature lets you customize your search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on the given search results. By clicking on the results - you can move those you find to be related to your needs right to the top.

Playing with this feature, and actually “cleaning” out a phrase I’m frequently following (“TRENDS”, of course) few thoughts crossed my mind:

My experience:

It takes a lot of work to customize search results according to your need.

My insights:

1. Google should “pay” users to refine searches or use those who will do this sisyphean work to redefine its algorithm.

2. Google should let you follow the “cleaning work” done by professionals in your field.

My conclusion:

Google SearchWiki presents the gap between search results provided by Google to those you would expect from your search engine. The more I use the X sign and promote other results – the more I experience dissatisfaction from Google Search.

My question?

What does Google suggest by this tool? should we reconsider automated search in favor of the human based one? .

According to Forrester report - US online retail sales this holiday season is predicted to reach $44 billion, a 12% increase over last year and the slowest growth rate to date. Forrester predicts that the majority of holiday online sales will be driven by shoppers who have previously purchased online, rather than first-time online buyers.
Based on 3000 potential US online shoppers, (collected on September-October 2008) Forrester reports shoppers intentions to shop online:

• 48% of consumers surveyed, compared with 41% in 2007, said they can find the best values and deals online.
• 36% of consumers said they would be more likely to shop online due to high gas prices, compared with 22% who expressed the same sentiment last year.
• Respondents also indicated that they will be seeking free shipping offers more often this year than last: 3 in 4 online shoppers said they prefer to buy from online retailers that offer free shipping, and nearly 6 in 10 said shipping prices deter them from buying online.

The Consumer Internet Barometer presents much similar predictions. In a survey produced by The Conference Board and TNS (conducted on 10,000 US online households) – it was found that online consumers intend to spend less in stores this holiday season than last year, but slightly more online. Backing the findings presented by Forrester – consumers report they will be expecting free shipping and deals not available in stores when they shop online.

In-Store versus Online Spending – by budget:

• Spending budget: $500 and more:

Online households planning to spend more than $500 in stores declined to 16 percent from 21 percent last year. Those planning to spend more than $500 online rose to 5 percent from 4 percent last season.

• Spending budget: $100 - $499:

Those planning to spend between $100 and $499 in stores declined to 57 percent from 61 percent last year, while those planning to spend that amount online edged up to 36 percent from 35 percent last year.

• Spending budget: less than $100:

Online households planning to spend less than $100 in stores increased to 22 percent from 16 percent last year. Those planning to spend that amount online rose to 32 percent from 29 percent.

Shoppers profiled by Online Shopping Habits:

• Self-identified “bargain hunters” account for 44 percent of shoppers who made an online purchase in the past three months, the same as a year ago. Among bargain hunters, men (48%) are more likely than women (41%) to surf the Internet searching for deals.
• “Die-hard Internet shoppers” have increased slightly and represent 17 percent of shoppers.
• “Traditional shoppers”, who occasionally shop online but prefer the familiarity of real stores, account for about 15 percent of online shoppers.
• “Last resort shoppers”, who buy online only when products are unavailable in stores, represent 14 percent of online shoppers (more likely to be women).
• “Hurried shoppers”, who point and click only when pressed for time, represent 10 percent of online shoppers (more likely to be women).

What will motivate Online Spending:

• Free shipping:

Shipping charges, which are the most frustrating aspect of online shopping, tend to frustrate women more than men, 47 percent versus 38 percent respectively.
About 93 percent of women versus 87 percent of men say free shipping would serve as a motivation to spend more online this holiday season.

• Special offers:

More than 71 percent said special offers and deals not available in stores would boost their online spending, with little difference between men and women.

• Coupons and Discounts:

More than 70 percent of women and 68 percent of men said they would be willing to spend more if merchants offered coupons/discounts.

Will US shoppers act as claimed and retain from spontaneous In Store shopping this year? How deep is the perception of the economic crisis and will it really affect the US shoppers?

At a time when the economy is slowing down it offers an opportunity to validate some of the quirky economic theories like Lipstick Indicator. Do lipstick sell well when the economic depression deepens? Google trends answers “Yes”.

Estée Lauder Chairman Leonard Lauder reportedly coined the phrase “lipstick index” after observing sales surges during 9/11 downturns. Why? People reach for affordable luxuries to feel better. The New York Times notes that in the last few months, lipstick sales have shot up 40% . Even in Indian markets lipstick sales are growing steadily at 20 % & in the case of luxury brands that have a smaller base, extending even into the triple digits.

“Women always want to look beautiful, and what’s the easiest thing to buy? Lipstick. A tube of lipstick for $14.50 as compared to a shirt for $70,” says Jennifer Barnett of Origins.

Here is quick validation of other economic signs :

• When the economy fails, we booze more. Google trend answers ‘No’ .
  

  “We drink all the time! What changes is where we drink. We drink at home more and go out less “, says Marcia Mogelonsky, senior analyst at Mintel International.

• Skirt length theory or When times are good, women’s skirts get shorter; when times are bad, hemlines fall. The idea behind this theoretical trend is that people are carefree during booms and cautious during busts. Google trends again answers ‘No’ - as the search volume for ‘long skirt’ , ’short skirt’ & ‘mini skirt’ bears no distinct seasonality pattern with recession .

Nothing cures the hangover from a failing banks bailout and rising unemployment rates like a shiny new lipstick.

eMarketer estimates U.S. blog ad spending climbed from $283 million in 2007 to $411 million in 2008. eMarketer predicts that figure will hit $746 million by 2012.

We have reported this time & again that Internet users are highly involved in promoting brands & how impromptu blog marketing can create trouble for a brand. We also suggested how influencer’s marketing should work.

However when it comes to Generation X, the benefits of marketing through blogs may outweigh the risks.

What’s your take on this?

Mobile phone giant Nokia , in association with UC Berkeley , has launched Mobile Millennium, a public pilot that will collect and study traffic data received from GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as the Nokia N96, Nokia N95 & Nokia E71. The aggregated data is then encrypted & sent to a computer system, which blends it with other sources of traffic data and broadcasts this real‐time, data‐rich information back to the phones and to the internet through a user friendly interface. The Mobile Millennium team expects to have 10,000 participants by April .

“The whole concept here is that if everyone shares just a little bit of what they’re seeing … then everyone can benefit by seeing the conditions ahead of them”, said Quinn Jacobson, a research leader at Nokia.

GPS is becoming ubiquitous on mobile devices. Gartner forecasts by the end of 2010, almost 40% of mobile handsets will support GPS. However the compelling idea of ‘User Generated Content’ remains a myth so far - atleast on authenticity & commercial viability .

Many of us may not be aware of the Runet search giant Yandex’s Traffic 2.0 . In response to Moscow traffic jam Traffic 2.0 is a mobile based user-generated traffic congestion monitoring service on GPS module & distributed via toolbar , IMs & desktop widgets. In order to have more reliable traffic data Yandex later bought Smilink -Russian road traffic monitoring agency .

From Yandex’s success story key take away for Nokia specially for emerging markets like India:

UGC can take Mobile Millennium to a certain level however inorder to reach the next level Nokia needs more accurate data.

Probably that is why Nokia’s test market is San Francisco Bay Area (CA has invested heavily in traffic monitoring sensors on major roadways) eventhough Sao Paulo, Brazil has the world’s worst traffic jams & Nokia’s market share in Brazil is 61.83% (as against 7% in the US) .

Do not discard the possibility of engaging applications like ‘date finder’, ‘language exchange partners’ & others that may emerge around traffic solution of Nokia.

And guess - who would be eagerly watching this ? None other than Nokia’s web partner Google .Eventually the Nokia route could be Google’s inroad to the markets where it is not the leader.

Thoughts & comments are most welcome.

Isn’t it the best time to test the ability of search trend tools to predict reality?

Few hours only before the election starts – the death of Obama’s grandmother brings new hits to the candidates’ related search queries on the web (see also its peak on twitter).

One can’t avoid trying to estimate the contribution of this emotional event on Obama’s potential to win the elections.
While we are certainly having a hard time understanding how voters think - we can agree that such an event can evoke positive reactions toward Obama.
Research insights confirm this statement:

“Emotions, (“interpersonal” emotions as admiration, contempt, envy and pity or sympathy) mirrored voters’ stated preference better than political party affiliation in a study of 70 voters before the 2004 election, suggesting that these emotions are often used as shortcuts when choosing a candidate”

Interestingly, the search for Obama’s grandmother lasted only for a short time – lost its volume (from no.1  to no. 46 - during the time I’ve followed it) in favor of queries on the voting procedure (”Where can I vote” and “voting times” ).

Can an emotional event bring to identification and sympathy and in turn influence the decision making of voters?
And as asked by TechCrunch few months ago: Can Google Trends predict the election?

Television was always known as a common socializing tool – keeping family members together in a shared activity.
The Internet today is not only perceived as a contributing tool to improve family and friends connections – we find many internet users (in married with children households) to share online time together.

Information source: the recently released Pew Internet survey conducted January 2008, among a sample of 2,252 adults, aged 18 and older.

Watching Television together with family members:

Among those who watch TV (Note that 74% of the adults surveyed watch TV almost every day), more than half (52%) usually do so socially—with other people (63% for those living in multi-person households).

Internet as the ultimate tool for socializing with friends and family:

Perceptions:

• 79% of online adults admit that the internet has improved their connections with friends to some degree (33% report a major improvement)
• 72% online users report that the internet has improved their connections to family members (23% report a major improvement).

Behavior:
Many internet-using adults spend appreciable time at the computer with household members. Among home internet users who live with a spouse and child/children:

• 13% go online with another person on a daily basis
• 9% do so almost every day
• 30% do so a few times a week.
• 34% do so less often.

This brings nearly nine in ten (87%) home internet users in married with children households go online with another person in the home at least occasionally!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year when Deepawali , the festival of light & fireworks, will bring together the one billion-plus population in India & others around the world . Few more days to go , but despite of economic downturn what we are seeing at Google trends is essentially Pre-Deepawali buzz.Topping the list is ‘Diwali greetings’. ‘Diwali wishes’, ‘Happy diwali’ follows next.    Google & orkut always brings pleasent suprises for its Indian users. For example the Google 2007 deepawali logo & this beautiful Orkut 2006 logo :

The days of Deepawali always raises the sound pollution level to very high decibels . But can a Diwali happen without firecrackers? Ofcourse Eco -friendly ideas are there on Yahoo ! answer . However this year with rising fireworks prices - you should expect a less noisy Diwali.

TrendsSpotting wishes all its readers a happy & prosporous Deepawali .

TrendsSpotting is following the latest APA survey, conducted by Harris Interactive.

In times of economic crisis, we find a significant increase in stress reporting among all Americans, but most prominent among women. The fact that women were more likely than men to report being stressed can be misleading: It can indicate that women are more vulnerable, or alternatively, that women are more aware of their well being, and are more willing to admit stress related psychological problems.

We have captured some research highlights, added few tips suggested by the experts and explored the online search for “STRESS“.

Facebook Engineer Doug Beaver has announced that the social networking site now hosts 10 Billion photos & Facebook has just over one petabyte of photo storage. Since Facebook stores 4 sizes for each stored picture, this actually translates to 40 Billion files, of those 33.2 billion were added within the last 17 months. Doug also reports that over 300,000 images are served per second.

If Facebook were a nation, it would be the world’s 12th most populous & there would be very little doubt about whether it is sustainable as a business. But “Is Facebook sustainable ecologically”?

Some quick maths:
Earlier GigaOm reported Facebook to have around 10,000 servers & last May Facebook reportedly borrowed $100 million to purchase another 50,000 servers.

Going by Doug’s number -in order to support those 300,000 images, Facebook requires 10,000 servers as well as the 300,000 users PCs. Conservatively, a PC consumes 120 watts and a server consumes 200 watts. Add in another 50 watts per server for data-center air conditioning. So, at any point of time, overall Facebook power consumption equals:

(10,000 x 250 ) + (300,000 x 120) = 38,500 Kw or 51,629 HP

That’s an awesome number of horses !!

Hence on an estimated ballpark - Facebook daily consumes 924,000 KiloWatt-Hours with per capita of 3.08 KWh . Annually the per capita figure would be 1124 KWh /year or equivalent to emission of 0.75 ton of green house CO2 (Carbon footprint) which is half of NY city’s carbon footprint. Sadly with Facebook adding more ‘horses’ (50K more servers) to cater to our photo addiction - this number would increase to 1 ton of CO2 .

Please Consider Environment Before Uploading Your Photos On Facebook

‘Green computing‘ remains a buzz word in 2008 & subsequent years. However the BIG question is with plethora of options for Green Web Hosting available - shouldn’t Facebook, the most successful contemporary social network, consider one?