Tive's Take

Google have launched pre-beta testing on Caffeine, an upgrade to their main product, search.  This is a clear step towards making the search behemoth the main player in real-time search. As our behaviour online continues to swing from content consumption to creation, and with new search competition gaining traction from Microsoft/Yahoo and real-time megaliths Facebook and Twitter in the fray, this is an overdue and entirely necessary upgrade. Rather than your search analysing old web indexes (some of which are up to two weeks old), those indexes are now refreshed continually so that search terms will give in different results from one day to another. If you are searching for Shakespeare’s Sonnets, you probably won’t see much change from one day to the next. But if your search involves anything more current or an evolving story such as the gulf oil disaster, you will see more recent results if they are relevant.

That’s the theory at least. The kind folk at Mashable have reviewed Caffeine on 4 terms, Speed, Accuracy, Temporal Relevancy and Index Size. Is it better? Kind of.

Google need to improve their current offering in terms of indexing more UGC sites that offer real-time information, however even if Caffeine doesn’t give it the boost it needs in light of Facebook and Twitter real-time search, I am not too concerned. If Google does not play the real-time game as well as these sites, these sites don’t even begin to challenge Google on non-real time search. Let’s hope that as beta testing continues, Google can tweak whatever smart algorithms they have in place to improve real-time results. Once they do, our lives will be a lot easier and I’ll be visiting search.twitter.com a lot less.

Foursquare is one of the social media platforms of recent months that actually does have a recognisable business model. Brands are getting in on the act, local businesses are taking advantage of Special Offers, championing and rewarding their Mayors, and there’s talk of being bought by a slightly larger competitor. It’s a platform that’s in its infancy but is already a success story. But the problem is that where there’s easy money to be made, users learn to game the game and less salubrious applications of the platform appear.

I’m talking about WeReward, an app that lets you earn money for check ins. You can also complete tasks set up by local businesses – “tell your friends what you think of our mojitos!”

Social Networks in their infancy are pure, uncontaminated by clumsy brand interaction. Without an incentive other than to share what you like, people do just that, share what they like. Members are honest and the community thrives. It was the key difference between MySpace and Facebook. On Facebook you cannot lie – you have to be who you are. That’s what people want – you, the whole you and nothing but the you. But on MySpace users and brands can hide behind personas. And we know who has come out of that race in the lead.

WeReward flies against the honesty of going to a venue for the sole reason that it’s worth going to. On Foursquare your do your thing and you let your friends know about it with a checkin. With WeReward, it’s the reverse. You are incentivised by money to go to a location. If a friend checkins to a deli through WeReward, they’ve gone there to earn points, not because they’ll get a great sandwich. And what does that say about the deli?

Of course this assumes that users are even where they checkin in the first place. Foursquare are keen to ensure you cannot cheat the system, but there really is no reason for them to fix this greater than the reason to leave it open. Without the ability to check into a location remotely, the Wall Street Journal would not have been able to tweet the terrorist attack from Times Square. Bravo TV stars would actually need to be at venues to check in and comment on them. Zagat would actually need to go to each restaurant it gave tips on. The ability to checkin remotely actually works to Fousquare’s advantage. And whilst they have announced that they are “going to be *constantly* tweaking the rules that determine whether a checkin is “accurate” or not”, it may not be in their interests to restrict this for the brands and users who are giving the platform the investment it needs. Especially with the fast approaching Facebook storm on the horizon.

If WeReward users can checkin remotely to earn points the honesty behind checkins and comments is at question. If you feel a venue is being ‘cheated’ you can always fill in a form. But shouldn’t we just trust the system in the first place?

We’ll be keeping an eye on the start up and whether Fousquare users will take up the offers, or maintain the integrity of the platform.