YouTube still claims to be the second largest search engine in the world. Just think about that for a minute. If you produce online video and it’s not on YouTube, you’re probably missing out on a great deal of potential viewers. If you’re not producing video at all, you’re missing out a lot of searches.

Do you consider YouTube important to search marketing? Let us know.

However, just uploading content to YouTube is not going to be enough. Like with any other form of search engine, content needs to be optimized to be found. At SXSW in Austin back in March, WebProNews spoke with Margaret Gould Stewart, who leads YouTube’s user experience team. She talked about some reasons a lot of content producers are missing out on some tremendous opportunities when they use the world’s most popular online video site.

"When you’re building a sustained audience, you have to continually create great content that connects with your audience," says Stewart. "I think the secondary part is understanding your audience – understanding who you want to reach, and proactively cultivating a relationship with the people in your audience. And on YouTube that means not just creating great content and uploading it to the site, but actively building your subscriber base, so that you can be in direct and regular interaction and conversation with those people."

"We find that video producers who are really active in the conversation, whether it’s comments or uploading ‘how this video was made’- you know, kind of the behind-the-scenes – people are really fascinated by that stuff, and we see some our most successful partners really having that, again, kind of ongoing conversation – not an arm’s length relationship to the audience, but very engaged," she adds.

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"We sometimes see content producers not investing enough time in attaching great meta data to their content, because like I said, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and we all know that for Google, it’s important to think seriously about search engine optimization, because you can have the great content, and ideally the cream will float to the top, but there’s definitely things you can do to help yourself along, right?"

"Good clear, direct titling of your content, putting the right kinds of tags…because the fact is initially when content goes viral, people may discover it through search engines, or embed it in blogs, but then it reaches that really exciting word-of-mouth status, where I just may mention it to you person-to-person, and then what most people do is just go to YouTube.com and they search for it," she continues. "So if you’re not indexed well in the search engine because you haven’t attached great meta data to your content, you’re going to miss out on that audience."

"The other thing that is really important is enabling embedding," notes Stewart. "It’s probably the number one most important thing, because what we see in videos that become very popular, very quickly and take on that kind of life of its own, a lot of that initial traffic in the first 48 hours happens actually off-site."

Note: This actually plays to a point I made about Twitter embeds as well.

If you want more success from your online video endeavors, read 35 Ways to Improve Your Online Video Performance, and Tips For Ranking Higher On and With YouTube, which features an interview with YouTube Product Manager Matt Liu. If real-time, live video is your thing, check out 8 Tips for Real-Time Video Blogging.

By the way, YouTube is renting movies now, and while it’s not exactly taking over Netflix at this point, I would expect this to grow significantly and get more people spending more time at YouTube, where there is a YouTube search box very close by, and relevant related video suggestions served to viewers constantly.

Is YouTube a significant part of your marketing strategy? Comment here.

According to a number of well-informed sources, Apple just acquired Siri, the personal mobile assistant that won the SXSW BizSpark Accelerator competition last month. Nobody at Siri is allowed to talk about this acquisition before Apple makes its own announcement, but our own sources confirm that this acquisition has indeed happened. These rumors are also substantiated by this recent FTC disclosure (PDF) by Apple and Siri.

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The first person to notice this acquisition was Robert Scoble, who found a reference to it in this FTC document (PDF). While we are still waiting for official confirmation, our sources tell us that the acquisition is basically a done deal at this point.

Why Apple?

For Apple, this acquisition makes perfect sense. Siri was spun out of SRI International, and its core technology is based on the ambitious DARPA-funded CALO artificial intelligence project. With VoiceOver, Apple already features some voice recognition in its projects. This acquisition, however, will allow the company to take it to a completely new level. You can, for example, ask Siri – by voice – to check for a dinner reservation through OpenTable at a local Italian restaurant nearby or check on local movie listings.

When we first looked at Siri in February, we described it as one of the “most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years.” Siri’s ability to understand natural language will give Apple a major advantages over other players in this market.

It remains to be seen, however, if Apple will continue to develop Siri in its current form, or if the company is mostly interested in Siri’s intellectual property. When we first talked to Siri about its roadmap, the company’s CEO, Dag Kittlaus, told us that Siri also planned to offer an API and versions for other mobile operating systems in the future. After this acquisition, it is probably safe to say that we won’t see Siri for Android anytime soon.

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Prior to SXSW, we polled you on what location-based mobile app you would use during the festival. Brightkite and Foursquare were the most popular picks, with Gowalla third. We also polled you a year ago about this class of app and at that time Brightkite was a clear favorite.

As an attendee at SXSW, it seemed like Foursquare and Gowalla were the most used. Brightkite seemed to drop off the radar of SXSW attendees, but perhaps that was because Foursquare and Gowalla had the most press attention at that time. Whatever the case, it was an inconclusive result at SXSW and there was a sense that none of the 3 leading location-based mobile apps ‘won’ that battle. It’s now a month later, so we thought we’d poll you again to see which – if any – of these apps you use regularly now.

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Please add your vote to the poll below. You can also tweet your answer to @rww.

Which location-based mobile app do you use THE MOST?online survey

See also:

• Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Now Use Location-Based Services at Least Once a Week
• Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps

Join us at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7, in Mountain View, CA, to discuss location-based apps and other hot topics in Mobile. If you’re in town for the Web 2.0 Expo that week, our Mobile Summit is the day after. We’d love to see you there! Register here.

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The popular location-based services Foursquare and Gowalla were launched at the 2009 SXSW, and one year later, many proclaimed the 2010 SXSW to be the year of “location, location, location”. With almost 350,000 Foursquare check-ins during one day of the event, and with numerous location-based services launching before, during, and after SXSW, the buzz among early adopters surrounding location-based social networking seems to show no signs of abating.

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In a provocative (and NSFW) blog post this weekend, entrepreneur and developer Dave McClure takes both location-based social networks and their early adopters to task, arguing that “the current method of check-ins is a classic case of early-adopter lust for shiny objects, & has not a damn thing to do with long-term sustainable mainstream consumer behavior.” Dismissing the lure of the game-mechanics that many of these platforms utilize – the idea of collecting badges, points, and/or mayorships – McClure contends that until LBS start offering some sort of simple monetary incentive, mainstream users will not be compelled to check-in. Whether or not you agree with McClure’s pronouncements and predictions about location-based social networks, his comments about “early-adopter lust for shiny objects” are worth considering.

Although conventional wisdom posits that early adopters provide a solid target market for startups, there are some drawbacks in responding focusing solely on those who “lust for shiny objects.”

Early adopters’ enthusiasm may not always be a good indication of future growth and sustainability. Although early adopters are often willing to provide feedback on a product’s development, that feedback might not be the information necessary to woo a larger market. Early adopters’ feedback on existing features and push for new features might not necessarily be the feedback necessary for features that mainstream users would want or need. The push for special stamps and badges from Gowalla and Foursquare might excite early adopters, for example, but mainstream users may not find this a compelling reason to adopt a service. The lure of other social networks, such as Facebook, is in part that “everyone is there.” The question remains how to make the move from just the early adopters to “everyone” being there.

Nevertheless, early adopters can be terrific champions of a product, actively promoting it to their friends. Early adopters are a small, but vocal group. Ignore them at your peril. And focus exclusively on them at your peril.

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Okay, so you’ll have to file this one under “future weekend reading” because this book isn’t out yet, but I thought I would provide a bit of a heads-up post in anticipation of what should be a very interesting read. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose is written by Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay”), CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos, and lands in bookstores in early June. Hsieh helped to create one of the most successful online retailers which was well known for its stellar customer service and which eventually was acquired by Amazon.

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Hsieh’s methods at Zappos turned convential wisdom on its head and helped land the company on Fortune Magazine’s list of the best companies to work for in 2009 just before its billion dollar acquisition. Before Zappos, Hsieh was responsible for co-founding LinkExchange which sold to Microsoft for $265 million, and now for his third venture, Hsieh is authoring a book to share his experiences and methodology.

“I wanted to write a book to talk about the journey that I took in life in terms of what would bring myself long-term happiness, and what I accidentally discovered is that you can actually take concepts from happiness and apply it to businesses,” says Hsieh in a video promo for his book. “Part of the goal of the book is letting people know that there is another way you can make yourself happy, make employees happy, make customers happy and still make money.”

Hsieh recently pimped his upcoming book at SXSW with a promotional bus and managed to run into Leo Laporte’s live stream parade to chat about his book. He also snagged a few moments from the eternally busy Robert Scoble to talk about about personal and professional happiness. The tech world is buzzing about Hsieh’s upcoming book, as Kevin Rose, Tim Ferriss and even Aston Kutcher have been looking over pre-release copies.

For more information about the book and its author Tony Hsieh, check out the book’s homepage and be sure to check back here for a review in June when the book goes on sale.

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Tellmewhere is a location-based iPhone and Android app that offers its users personalized recommendations for restaurants, bars, grocery stores and other local retailers. The service, which also offers a full set of location-based social networking features, is already very popular in Europe where it has about 500,000 users. With the release of its latest iPhone version, the company is now also trying to expand into the U.S. market. Tellmewhere offers a very solid set of standard location-based social networking tools, but it’s the service’s ability to give you personalized local recommendations that makes it stand out from the competition.

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Personalized Recommendations: Making Check-Ins Useful

As Tellmewhere’s CEO and co-founder Gilles Barbier told us when we met up during SXSW in Austin, TX last month, the company wants to offer a location-based service and social network that is more useful than most location-based social networks. Instead of just checking in, collecting badges and stalking your friends, Tellmewhere wants to make these check-ins more useful.

Tellmewhere’s algorithms strive to tell you what the nearby restaurants, shops and spas are that your friends and other people like you would recommend. As you (and your friends and neighbors) use the mobile app, Tellmewhere learns about your preferences and compares them with those of people like you. Whenever you look at the venues around you, Tellmewhere will highlight the local restaurants and merchants around you that it thinks you will be most interested in.

Because it isn’t focused on check-ins as much as services like Gowalla and Foursquare, you can also review venues that you are not currently visiting. It’s worth noting that the app doesn’t just learn from your friends. When you are traveling, for example, the service’s algorithm will look at recommendations from locals that are similar to you.

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If you choose to do so, you can also broadcast your location on Facebook and Twitter, but to ensure your privacy, this option can be tweaked for every check-in or review. It’s also worth noting that you can use the service’s web site to browse recommendations and reviews.

Tellmewhere uses Google Local as the back-end for its location database and Google Maps as its mapping provider. The team plans to monetize the app with a “special offers” model where local merchants can offer coupons to loyal customers.

Within the U.S., the service obviously still needs a few more users to become really useful. Given that these are still the early days for location-based services, though, there is no reason to believe that Tellmewhere couldn’t replicate the success it has had in Europe here in the U.S.

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A recent study found that consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile shopping, and you best believe that will only continue, as people continue to spend more of their web time on their phones. So as everybody reaches for their mobile devices to make payments, which platforms are they going to use?

PayPal hopes to stay in the drivers seat in this area. WebProNews interviewed Francesco Rovetta, director of business development for PayPal Mobile at SXSW a couple weeks ago, who talked a bit about PayPal’s vision for mobile.

PayPal is certainly not the only player in this space though.

O’Reilly Media Founder Tim O’Reilly has posted a fascinating piece on the "State of the Internet Operating System," which explores in depth, just what the phrase operating system means in the age of the cloud, and the mobile web. While he talks about this with regards to search, media access, communications, identity, advertising, location, and a slew of other categories, one section of this lengthy article talks specifically about payments.

"Payment is another key subsystem of the Internet Operating System," he says. "Companies like Apple that have 150 million credit cards on file and a huge population of users accustomed to using their phones to buy songs, videos, applications, and now ebooks, are going to be in a prime position to turn today’s phone into tomorrow’s wallet. (And as anyone who reaches into a wallet not for payment but for ID knows, payment systems are also powerful, authenticated identity stores – a fact that won’t always be lost on payment providers looking for their lock on a piece of the Internet future.)"

"PayPal obviously plays an important role as an internet payment subsystem that’s already in wide use by developers," he continues. "It operates in 190 countries, in 19 different currencies (not counting in-game micro-currencies) and it has over 185 million accounts. What’s fascinating is the rich developer ecosystem they’ve built around payment – their recent developer conference had over 2000 attendees. Their challenge is to make the transition from the web to mobile."

UPDATE: PayPal contacted me, pointing out errors in O’Reilly’s numbers. "We now have 81 mil active registered accounts and 210 million accounts, in 190 markets and we support 24 currencies."

O’Reilly also mentions Google and Amazon as key players in the mobile payments space, with the Android Market giving Google Checkout a boost, and Amazon having only recently opened theirs up a bit to developers.

Then you have Facebook, who last year started letting users buy physical goods with virtual currency. As business sell more products through Facebook, which is happening more and more, Facebook may play an increasingly bigger role in mobile payments. Mobile Facebook users are usually signed into their accounts all the time.

Which of these payment services do you see yourself using most a year or two from now? Something else? Share your thoughts.

A recent study found that consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile shopping, and you best believe that will only continue, as people continue to spend more of their web time on their phones. So as everybody reaches for their mobile devices to make payments, which platforms are they going to use?

PayPal hopes to stay in the drivers seat in this area. WebProNews interviewed Francesco Rovetta, director of business development for PayPal Mobile at SXSW a couple weeks ago, who talked a bit about PayPal’s vision for mobile.

PayPal is certainly not the only player in this space though.

O’Reilly Media Founder Tim O’Reilly has posted a fascinating piece on the "State of the Internet Operating System," which explores in depth, just what the phrase operating system means in the age of the cloud, and the mobile web. While he talks about this with regards to search, media access, communications, identity, advertising, location, and a slew of other categories, one section of this lengthy article talks specifically about payments.

"Payment is another key subsystem of the Internet Operating System," he says. "Companies like Apple that have 150 million credit cards on file and a huge population of users accustomed to using their phones to buy songs, videos, applications, and now ebooks, are going to be in a prime position to turn today’s phone into tomorrow’s wallet. (And as anyone who reaches into a wallet not for payment but for ID knows, payment systems are also powerful, authenticated identity stores – a fact that won’t always be lost on payment providers looking for their lock on a piece of the Internet future.)"

"PayPal obviously plays an important role as an internet payment subsystem that’s already in wide use by developers," he continues. "It operates in 190 countries, in 19 different currencies (not counting in-game micro-currencies) and it has over 185 million accounts. What’s fascinating is the rich developer ecosystem they’ve built around payment – their recent developer conference had over 2000 attendees. Their challenge is to make the transition from the web to mobile."

O’Reilly also mentions Google and Amazon as key players in the mobile payments space, with the Android Market giving Google Checkout a boost, and Amazon having only recently opened theirs up a bit to developers.

Then you have Facebook, who last year started letting users buy physical goods with virtual currency. As business sell more products through Facebook, which is happening more and more, Facebook may play an increasingly bigger role in mobile payments. Mobile Facebook users are usually signed into their accounts all the time.

Which of these payment services do you see yourself using most a year or two from now? Something else? Share your thoughts.

Here’s an idea for you: instead of slowly amassing followers, like on Twitter, or carefully culling your friends list over time on Facebook, making sure everyone is in their appropriate list and category, collect and dispose of friends like you ask for the time or a spare cigarette on a busy city street.

That’s what Lokast, the self-described “disposable” social network lets you do – carry your throw-away lifestyle over into the digital world.

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The LoKast iPhone app was released earlier this week at the South By South West festival in Austin and is the perfect app for finding yourself among throbbing masses of the technologically inclined. But what is this disposable thing? From the email we received this week on the app’s release:

Disposable? Yes. That means unlike Facebook which is friends and family, this app is about finding random people in close range and being able to share and see parts of their public digital profile including downloading their public-share videos, music and pictures. The best part, is that after you’re in that close range, you may never see them again. IE: Disposable.

According to the press release, the name is short for “local casting”, as opposed to broadcasting, and “aims to eliminate the need for physical media sharing, thereby eradicating physical CDs, plastic cases, video DVDs or waiting to get back to a PC computer to share and experience content.”

We have to agree that SXSW seems like the perfect venue for this type of app and we’d say why not give it a shot? We haven’t made it all the way downtown yet to be close enough to give it a full whirl, but it looks more than capable from toying with it.

Now, the thing is, we can’t see a lot of people using this outside of big, hi-tech cities or conferences. Where does this fit into our day to day life? Are we really going to run around town staring at my screen trying to see if someone else with the same app is nearby? We don’t think so. For now, though, we’d say give it an install and run around collecting some demos and see what people are listening to.

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As you may know, Google recently acquired social search service Aardvark. I attended a panel on social search at SXSW this week, in which Max Ventilla, the service’s "Head Zookeeper" talked about not only the service, but what social search means for the industry in general.

First off, here are a few Aardvark stats. Ventilla says 85% of questions are answered, and most in under 5 minutes.70% are rated "good" vs. "ok" or "bad". 45% of answers lead to cross-talk among users. Over 50% of users have answered a question. I’ve often wondered about that one myself. When a person uses Aardvark to get a question answered, they are also called upon to answer questions for others. I’ve been curious as to how often new answer-providers are created, considering time has become such a valuable resource these days. The average query length is nineteen words vs. less than three on Google.

According to Ventilla, reasons for social search include:

- Users want personalized responses to questions

- Most content is still locked in people’s heads

- Each individual network is growing exponentially

- Social intimacy makes info actionable

- Questions about how to spend your time and money are subjective

Ventilla says the company has learned that intimacy (more than authority) facilitates trust. In addition, social context is different than social graph, and is frequently sufficient, he says. A few other conclusions they’ve reached are that speakers want to know who they’re addressing, people don’t need artificial incentives to be helpful if there’s no friction involved, and people don’t like receiving random questions, but they don’t actually know what’s in their profiles.

"We wanted to create not a product, but a contact," says Ventilla.

An interesting question was brought up by an audience member – something along the lines of, what if you want to know the best place to buy an engagement ring? How can you make sure the recipient of said ring wouldn’t get that query? Ventilla expressed interest in such a system. In fact, he referred to it as "the holy grail." He also says there are other ways to find this kind of info that are "probably better than Aardvark for the time being."

After wrapping up a panel with a gamut of pro- and anti-VC types at SXSW, I’m left wondering why there aren’t more services-oriented startup firms.

Let me explain: Most of the time, when a startup goes after venture capital, they’re still in the process of building a product and bringing it to market. They need things like servers, developers, marketing tools and sometimes office space. Do they need money per se? Or is capital an increasingly arbitrary and unnecessary step in building a tech startup?

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The fact is, almost every startup needs a little help. Maybe you get that help from the bank of Mom and Dad; maybe you get that help from your good friends at Mastercard. Often, you get that help from folks who want equity; you end up trading part of your assumed long-term success for resources you need in the short term.

We are all familiar with the idea of trading equity for funds through angel financing and venture capital; we’re also familiar with the TechStars and Y Combinator programs that help to incubate and accelerate startups through minuscule amounts of capital and significant amounts of mentorship.

But most of us are less familiar with models such as Mike Trotzke’s SproutBox or Marcus Whitney’s Remarkable Wit. These firms provide services (and sometimes keeping-Ramen-on-the-table amounts of cash) to early-stage startups in exchange for equity. They provide development, marketing and other services that most tech startups need without delving into the complicated issues of valuation and funding rounds. These guys are focused on the absolute bottom line of technology, which has nothing to do with money: Making a great product and finding people to use it.

So, we’re interested to know from our friends in startups who aren’t taking the bootstrapping route, given the choice between pure capital or business-building services, which would you choose? Take the poll, and let us know the reason behind your decision in the comments. We’ll be following up soon based on the results.

What would you rather have for your startup: Services or cash?polls

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Would you broadcast information about your credit card transactions publicly on the Internet? That might sound frighteningly irresponsible, but serial entrepreneur Phil Kaplan says his new social network Blippy does that and represents the way of the future. I thought he was crazy – until I sat down and talked with him today at SXSW. In just a few minutes Kaplan melted my skepticism and got me excited about what Blippy is doing.

You may have read about Blippy on sites like TechCrunch, Venturebeat and CNN. Kaplan shared a few things with us today that haven’t been published anywhere else though, and the story of Blippy is generally interesting. Here are seven things you probably don’t know about Blippy, a very far-out social network.

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1. Users can manually review each item before it’s published or set up certain substreams that do different things – like automatically publish my iTunes transactions but ask me before publishing my Amazon purchases. Kaplan has two credit cards, one with a Blippy sticker on it to remind him that purchases made with that card are posted immediately to the web.

2. It’s not about the money. Kaplan says he wants Blippy to be a way for offline activity to publish online conversation. The things you buy are often convenient signals for activities that are important to you. The conversations that go on around the items are quite interesting… at least on Kaplan’s profile. He can buy a movie on iTunes and find a conversation about it swarming around his automatic Blippy post before the opening previews are over. Other users often don’t see any comments on their activity at all. Jason Calacanis sees some good conversation.

3. Blippy now sees $2 million worth of user transactions streaming through the site per week, Kaplan says, and has seen close to $15 million in transactions total since it launched publicly January 15.

4. Kaplan doesn’t think sharing credit card data is that big a deal. He cites LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s argument that people will share anything if there’s enough of a benefit to sharing it. Friendster was the first site where people used their real names on the Internet, and people weren’t comfortable with that at first, either.

5. Data portability: Kaplan is working on a Blippy App Programming Interface and “it’s going to have everything.” Data caching policy is something “we have to think about still.” Imagine a website that recommends recipes based on the food it knows you have in your refridgerator. That’s one example of the kind of service that could be built on top of Blippy.

6. Aggregate data analysis isn’t something Kaplan is personally interested in, he says. It’s hard to believe but he says he’ll leave that kind of thing up to third parties using the Blippy API if they want to. The company will focus all its energy on making Blippy a good experiene for users. Really, that’s what he said.

7. Location data is something Blippy sees but doesn’t expose right now. Kaplan says it’s coming, though. He thinks the current location-based social networks need to deliver more value to users, and says that’s something Blippy can do.

People these days produce all kinds of data streams, Kaplan says – from Facebook to Twitter to Smart Grid utility use and electronic medical data. Some of those streams you wouldn’t want to be public about at all, but some of them you can benefit from partially exposing. He thinks that at least some of your credit card transactions are better shared than kept private. Time will tell whether or not other people agree with him.

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For anyone in this business who isn’t at SXSW in Austin, Texas this week, pretty much every social media channel feels like sitting next to a high school clique loudly talking about a party you weren’t invited to.

If SXSW doesn’t interest you, or if you’re able to rise above it all, then my hat’s off to you and your Zen-like transcendence.

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For those of us who still have some lingering envy or a fear that we’re missing out on… well, we’re not quite sure what, but something really cool… there’s actually some soothing relief this year. Check out the Twitter discussion on the #fakesxsw hashtag: if it doesn’t bring a grin to your face, well, maybe you don’t deserve to be at SXSW.

And if that doesn’t help, well, there’s always the Sally Struthers approach.

More Noise to Signal.

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Upon first glance we were skeptical. Generally when someone says they’re launching a business directory it’s an SEO play with little value to users. Nevertheless, the small business web directory is a pleasant surprise. The group is providing a variety of useful resources to help startups integrate services and scale up their internal operations.

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Launched at last year’s SXSW, the small business web is a group of software as a service companies that have joined forces to offer cheaper services to clients. Companies like Batch Blue Software, Freshbooks, Mailchimp, Shoeboxed and Outright have been integrating APIs in order to help businesses flourish. This week’s launch will help startups stretch their dollars even further.

If you were fiddling with multiple platforms to manage your finance, human resources and analytics tools before, the directory can help you fix this through third party service integration. While a number of resource lists are available for accounting and domain management services, this collection is geared specifically towards productivity and life hacking. To check it out visit thesmallbusinessweb.com.

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