Larry Page & Mark Zuckerberg. (Image originally atlanticwire.com)

Every time you go online you are entering a war zone. It might not feel like it, but there is an almighty battle taking place between two superpowers and you are caught in the crossfire.

Welcome to the war for web supremacy. The super powers, if you haven’t already guessed, are the search behemoth Google and social heavyweight champion Facebook. The prize is you and your data.

Sure, there are other combatants in this war; Twitter, Apple, Bing, LinkedIn…even Yahoo!, but they are merely involved in skirmishes and are open to being co-opted into alliances with the main players. Amazon currently appears to be Switzerland (more about them another time).

The nature of systems like the web is that monopolies emerge. We have a dominant search engine in Google, a dominant online encyclopedia in Wikipedia, a dominant retailer in Amazon, a dominant auction site in eBay, and now we have a dominant social network in Facebook. That’s normal and has been happening in business for centuries.

But what happens when two different monopolies decide to battle for a middle ground? That’s where it gets interesting, and that whats happening now. Facebook and Google share common goals but differing philosophies.

Facebook is trying to create its own version of the Web, where you never really have to go anywhere else. They want everything to happen and stay on Facebook.

Google want to control the flow of information of the Web and how you access that information. They don’t mind as much that you might go elsewhere, just that you get there via one of their properties (and read their ads along the way).

Google has been the dominant force on the Web over the last decade. Search was the Web’s number one function and Google were (and still are) the King’s of search. But then Facebook exploded across the globe as the popularity of social networks grew. Now Facebook is closing in on 1 billion members and presents a serious threat to Google’s existence.

This is why we have seen Google+ launched. Its the search engine giant’s response to Facebook. Its an attempt to merge search and social in a way that will keep Google relevant and massively profitable. Many of the ideas in Google+ are good ones and designed to address some of the frustrations Facebook members express.

Google+ is already closing in on 100 million users after around 7 months of existence and is tipped to reach 400 million users within a year. Its the fastest growing social network in history. Many will argue that this is being driven by the way Google are forcing sign-up through their massive Gmail service, and the number of active users are much lower. Many are also expressing their resentment of such tactics, but all is fair in love and war and when the stakes are this high a little bit of grumbling is a small price to pay.

The latest development for Google+ is to lift the 18+ age restriction and allow teenagers to join, just like Facebook. Except the Google army are promising a “safer” experience for teens than they’ve experienced on other social networks. This move should see further growth of G+.

Google is also now blending social network data into search results. First they had an arrangement with Twitter that was heading in the right direction, but that alliance faltered last year (I suspect they will kiss and make up eventually). Now there is the hamfisted Google+ Your World which blends G+ information into search results, but as many complain, is hardly a reflection of our social “world” at this stage.

A great response to Google+ Your World was the rapid deployment of “Don’t Be Evil” by a handful of Facebook and Twitter engineers which clearly demonstrates how disingenuous Google have been.

Mind you Facebook is fighting just as hard. We have seen plenty of changes to Facebook over the last year or so including the new Ticker / Timeline. Every time Facebook makes major changes or introduces new Terms and Conditions there are groups threatening to boycott it. But we stay and we accept it and move on, and Facebook know this.

Don’t expect Facebook to take the Google+ assault laying down. I almost guarantee that they are busily building their own version of search to fire back at Google. It won’t be just another search engine, it will be a totally new take on search. That will be interesting to see unfold.

The biggest danger is a serious threat to the open and interoperable web we currently enjoy. Facebook see themselves as a platform. Google are heading steadily in the same direction. (Of course Apple has always wanted this and Amazon have been stealthily working towards this…but that’s for another post). The result could require us to move between platforms rather than a seamless web.

So who should you trust? Which side should you back in this war? Its hard to say. Most wars end with winners and losers, or in the business world, leaders and second place. With two giants fighting for the same turf despite vastly differing backgrounds its an unprecedented battle. Ideally, its best if there is no major loser here. The best outcome would be that the major players decide to accept that there’s room for all and work out how to work together. Utopian? Maybe, but its the best chance of us maintaining an open web.

One thing is certain; the future of the web will be shaped by this fight and the strategies the combatants use to win. Search and social now touch on nearly every aspect of the web and in an interconnected modern society we cannot avoid them. Putting all personal preferences and philosophical arguments aside I’d suggest its probably necessary to have a bet each way and make sure you are properly set up with both sides. Its hard to write off either Google or Facebook at the moment. They’ll both be likely to serve you well for quite a while, and if one finally crumbles (which won’t be a sudden thing), you won’t be playing catch up with the winner.

Expect to see plenty more changes and new features from Facebook and Google over the coming year. Some will be good, some will be bad, but all will be another shot in the war for web supremacy.

Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman in Sydney

Popular US-based user recommendation website Yelp launched today in Australia. First launched in San Francisco in 2004 by founders Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, Yelp has grown to 14 countries and more than 61 million monthly unique visitors.

Aussies are now able to create accounts on Yelp to share their opinions about local businesses and services in their neighborhoods. Yelp’s free iPhone and Android mobile applications are available, as is Yelp for Business Owners, the company’s free suite of business owner tools.

Stoppelman was in Sydney today talking to a handful of bloggers about how Yelp was created to replace Yellow Pages, who he considered a dead tree business crying out for reinvention. Initially the Yelp founders didn’t believe user reviews would be key to the site but were surprised when they took off and became the main focus of Yelp and a major point of differentiation. Remember, this was back in the days before Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and even newcomers Oink and Roamz.

For millions of US users, Yelp has become an invaluable search resource to discover what’s nearby and how its rated.

It’ll be interesting to see how Yelp does launching in a new market 7 years later with many other location and recommendation contenders on the scene. Stoppelman is confident that the site can get good traction in Australia via their (rather ironic) partnership with Sensis (publisher of Yellow Pages) who provide the initial database of businesses and the sales force for future ad sales. Certainly the Yelp model of engaging community manager in each territory will go a long way to determining the public take-up of the service.

Yelp will be available throughout Australia; however, the company will focus its initial community-growth efforts in Melbourne and Sydney. This city-by-city expansion strategy has proven to be an effective one for the company in other markets.

The great thing about inbound marketing is that there is no shortage of excellent tools to help you go about your job of attracting qualified traffic and converting it into something more meaningful like leads, inquiries or sales.

Here are the 16 top tools I use regularly for inbound marketing;

WordPress website. Sure there are other excellent open source content management systems available but for inbound marketing its hard to go past WordPress. Its easy to use, very search engine friendly, extremely optimisable and has thousands of great plugins to address just about any requirement. There’s a reason over 60 million people have chosen WordPress for their websites.

WordPress mobile app. Inbound marketers like to post content. Lots of content. From almost anywhere. That’s where the WordPress mobile apps come in. You can create and publish content directly from your iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry or Nokia to your website.

Google Analytics. It constantly amazes me how many businesses I encounter that don’t have Analytics on their website. Its FREE and its very powerful. Effective inbound marketing requires understanding what is happening on your websites, traffic sources and conversion results. Google Analytics should be your first stop for this.

Analytics Pro for iPhone. I’m sure that this app is also available for Android and other mobile platforms, but I really love the iPhone app. Just add your Google Analytics accounts and check results wherever you are.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus – surely it goes without saying that if you are doing inbound marketing you are using the big social networks….aren’t you? And you’ve got them all on your mobile device….haven’t you?

Hootsuite. There are plenty of “decks” available for checking and publishing to your social networks but I’ve become a big fan of Hootsuite. It currently allows me to publish simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn from one place and has a built in URL shortener. I’m hoping Google Plus is added soon. Hootsuite has its own analytics, allowing you to monitor clicks and links and there are mobile versions for when you’re on the run.

Su.Pr. This is another social network publishing tool by the people at StumbleUpon. It allows you to publish to Facebook and Twitter profiles, shorten links, schedule messages and monitor the number of clicks. But the best aspect of Su.Pr is that it allows you to automatically post to StumbleUpon which can be a very good source of additional traffic. I tend to publish important messages here first and am happy to report that StumbleUpon is a seriously strong source of traffic for my sites.

Google Reader. There are dozens of RSS readers available but I’ve stuck with Google’s for ease of use and ubiquity. Inbound marketers are always on the lookout for great content and ideas and tend to visit a lot of websites. Subscribing to them all via RSS is the easiest way to keep track of your favourite information sources. Google Reader is one of the first things I check daily.

YouTube. Good inbound marketing websites use video and YouTube is the best place to host any videos you create. Its also the second biggest search engine in the world. From YouTube its a cinch to grab the code for a video and drop it onto your WordPress (or Joomla, or Drupal) site.

Flickr. Its like YouTube for photos.

NLYZR. The world’s easiest and fastest website optimization system. (Disclosure: Yes, we created it). If you want to optimize your website for search this is the tool for you, and you don’t need to be an SEO geek to use  it. Most NLYZR members (who are all ranking very high on Google) are small business owners.

iMovie for the iPhone or iPad. Capture, edit and publish video quickly and easily straight from your phone. A great tool for inbound marketing.

Instagram. This little iPhone app has really taken off in 2011. Its a fantastic way to quickly edit, improve and publish photos to your various social networks as well as having a community of its own. Instagram can make average pics look much much nicer with its range of filters and vignettes.

Those are the 16 tools and apps I use and rely on the most. I’d use the bulk of them at least daily, the rest weekly.

Do you have any you’d like to add to the list?

Times have definitely changed. Until recently a new business would measure itself against a series of metrics like foot traffic, advertising reach and frequency, number of phone calls, number of calls or meetings by sales people, presentation to sales ratios, and of course actual sales.

But that was before the web, before Google and before social media networks took off.

In the era of inbound marketing the metrics have totally changed and I am studying them frantically in the wake of our recent NLYZR launch.

One week into my new start-up’s life I am able to track key metrics on an hourly basis to determine what’s working and what’s not. Here are some of the things I’m keeping track of:

• Search rankings for targeted terms (good)

• Followers / Fans / Friends etc for our various social profiles (building)

• Traffic generated from links in social networks (significant)

• Re-Tweets, Shares and Google +1s of our material (reasonable)

• Mentions in other blogs and online journals (good so far)

• Inbound links accumulating for the new website (already quite high)

• Number of visitors daily to new website (growing steadily)

• Number of visitors from various countries (so far its Australia and USA mainly)

• Traffic from search engines (only 8%, but it will grow)

• Referred traffic (42% at this stage)

• Direct traffic (50% but this should drop as a percentage over time)

• Best keywords

• Most popular content

• Time spent on site (2 minutes 43 seconds on average)

We also use more sophisticated data gained from:

• Conversion funnels

• Heat mapping of user behaviour on our new sites

Then we have the all important metrics that go to the bottom line:

• Percentage of visitors using our free tools

• Percentage of visitors visiting our online shop

• Conversion rate on visits to sales

• Actual sales

We can study these collective metrics, fine tune and continually improve. Its fascinating, thrilling and totally addictive. The idea is to learn as we go, improving the business in real-time.

Data has never been more available or useful for new business owners. The days of opening your store, blasting with advertising and hoping for customers are behind us. These new metrics can change the way we operate forever.

What metrics are you following for your business? What new tools do you find invaluable?

I’ve been pretty interested in the launch of Google+. Not because I’m a social network nut but because in my opinion G+ sends a very clear signal about how social media and search are inevitably blending.

Last week in my regular iStrategy blog I explained where I thought this was all heading and why you need to make sure you are part of it.

Now it seems every second day Google’s big plan seems to be revealed a little more.

The latest news is that Google+ profile images are appearing besides search listings, although seemingly only when you are logged in to your Google account.

This is a significant change to search. Having an image turn up in the search results attracts your attention and could definitely lead to improved click-through-rates even if the listing is not at top of page 1. Combine that with the +1 results showing up in your search and you start to see a very different vision of where search is going.

Search and social media and merging folks and those who understand this will have a big advantage.

Google Plus is two weeks old now and early indications are that the Google team finally have a social media winner. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that Plus will be huge and I wasn’t remotely interested in their previous social efforts.

(By the way, feel free to chat with me on Google Plus)

Currently everyone is trying to work out the best ways to use Google Plus, or asking what the “rules” are? The thing is…its new, its evolving and there is not right or wrong. In the end its the community who tend to set the rules of engagement. I doubt the guys at Twitter had no idea that it would look like it does now, or be used the way it is now when they launched a dicky little SMS based service back in 2006.

So far the early adopters are the usual suspects from the IT and social media industries and community. Early stats from the first million users show that 73% are male, over 70% work in IT / computing fields with “engineer” being the number one career, 49% live in the USA, the leading city is San Francisco and there are 16,500 men “looking for love”.

Yes Google Plus is almost entirely inhabited by geeks.

But that will change, and fast. Its is estimated to hit 10 million users this week and be the fastest social network to 100 million users.

I intend to look at the benefits of Google Plus soon, but in the meantime the most obvious one is the use of “Circles” to sort or categorise the  people you are following.

The Circles are a great way to both filter and share information. My original circles were like “Family”, “Sticky” (Ie my office), “Friends”, “Acquaintances”, “Following” etc. In other words, degrees of separation from my own world.

Since then I have added geographic circles radiating out from my own world again: Newcastle, Australia, North America, Europe etc.

And finally I have created some subject or industry circles: Media, Tech Media, Industry Leaders, Advertising etc.

Most people I follow end up in a few circles. Ie. Friends + Newcastle + Australia, or  Acquaintances + Industry Leaders + USA.

The reasoning is that some information or discussions are only relevant to some groups. So, if I am discussing the New Lunaticks events or Newcastle innovation I can keep it in local Circles. Switching to “Australia” instantly broadens my Circle. If I wish to chat with or follow conversation by Industry Leaders I can filter out the other noise.

Jason Berek-Lewis tells me his circles are all based on themes but he’s not sure if that will be sustainable. Time will tell.

Like I said, its only been two weeks and there’s no right or wrong because we’re all trying to work it out. What I do know is that Google Plus is going to be big and how we use it will be important.

How are you using the Circles on Google Plus? Any good suggestions?

Evan Williams from Twitter at Web 2.0 Summit, San Francisco 2010

I live a secret life. By day I’m a mild mannered advertising agency exec (the manners might depend on who you ask) whilst in my spare time I am building a start-up tech business.

The start-up is NLYZR. Its been around for the last 2 years in various evolving forms but now we’re getting down to brass tacks as it’s large scale commercial release is nearing launch phase.

The interesting thing is that while we’ve been using our knowledge at Sticky to create NLYZR as a business, we’re actually learning more from NLYZR that is helping the agency and our other clients. We’ve learned to think like a tech start-up and its been incredibly liberating.

Tech start-ups require a totally different mindset to that used in the day-to-day running of an agency, or any business for that matter. In fact, tech start-ups are radically different from other (non-tech) start-ups. But, importantly, we’re learning that the defining characteristics of a successful tech start-up can be applied to most industries to create something much more exciting.

The big idea

Interestingly, most of the great tech start-ups of recent times aren’t really so much about the tech, but more about the big idea that technology can facilitate. In most cases its not a better or faster bit of hardware, but a better solution for human needs. Think of:

• Hulu (better way to access TV),

• Groupon (better way of buying and selling),

• Netflix (better way of hiring movies),

• iTunes (better way of buying music),

• Twitter (better way of instantly communicating),

• Zynga (better way of wasting time on silly games),

• Facebook (better way of staying in touch with your friends, family or greater community),

• Wikipedia (better encyclopedia),

• LinkedIn (better business networking)

In each case its about the idea first, not the chips and microprocessors. Fortunately we’re in an age where creating and sharing your big ideas has never been easier.

Competitive advantage

The great tech start-ups solve an existing problem or create a new category. Their big idea gives them a competitive advantage that allows them to look at an industry and totally disrupt or reinvent it. They turn existing models and conventions on their head.

Look at what Groupon is doing to retail, what iTunes did to the music industry and LinkedIn has done for business networks.

Speed

The nature of tech start-ups is that they tend to move at high speed. Quite often the space between initial concept and launch is short, then it’s a race to build audience or customer base before someone else moves in on your patch. The group buying land-rush that Groupon started is a prime example.

The need for speed often results in tech start-ups launching a raw version of the concept, attracting initial users and then iterating on the fly based upon real-time usage and feedback. This is totally contrary to traditional business models whereby a product is researched, tested and then launched in what is hoped to be its ultimate form. The traditional model typically then requires massive marketing budgets to gain customers quickly to pay for the initial R&D.

Adoption strategy

A tech start-up typically isn’t relying on a traditional marketing budget to grow, they develop an adoption strategy. The difference is significant. Early adopters spread the word and lead to the wider population opting in. An adoption strategy forces you to think about how people will first discover your product, how they might trial or test it risk free and finally opt-in and share it. There are so many ways to do this that it can lead to some excellent creative thinking.

Community

Ironically, technology is facilitating new forms of community around the world and quite often a community drives the innovation, content and marketing of these products and services. Factoring in sharing, ego, competition and rewards are all ways of bringing a community feel to your business. Think Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and even measurement tools like Klout and PeerIndex.

Scalability

Traditional business is one-to-one selling, one-to-many advertising which then results in one-to-one selling (customer and sales assistant), or time-based services (hourly rate). Even the largest of these models rely (one-to-many) generally rely on significant expense in advertising in order to drive large numbers of customers to expensive real estate (buildings, shops, many staff) in order to conduct the transaction. Its not what you call infinitely scalable.

Tech start-ups work on highly scalable models where millions of users or customers can be the result of the initial idea and development. They aren’t limited by geography or sales staff and don’t rely on advertising or number of retail outlets to make the cash-register ring. One-to-one transactions are not even on the radar.

Funding

Every business needs a level of funding to succeed and grow. Speed and scalability rarely come without investment. The traditional tech start-up model has involved a small team with a great idea who attract some angel investment to take idea to the next stage which then leads to more significant venture capital to facilitate speed and growth, and to allow the idea to reach its ultimate level of success (or failure).

Funding can also be derived from strategic partnerships or early licensing deals. Either way, this approach is all about leveraging your idea for maximum return. It forces you to think much bigger than you might have initially and can totally change your worldview. These investors or partners aren’t interested in your plans to dominate your suburb and a mild profit, they want big wins.

Thinking like a tech start-up is totally foreign to most businesses. We’re usually caught up in the preconceived limitations of our industry, town or peers. I know because I did that for years too.

However, adopting the thinking of a tech start-up can be totally liberating for your business. Suddenly, crazy dreams of double or triple digit growth, of national or international expansion or significant investment aren’t so crazy. Imagine what this sort of thinking could do for you? And if you’re in the creative services industry, imagine what this sort of thinking could do for your customers?

What’s your big idea? What’s your competitive advantage? How can you increase the speed of your business? What’s your adoption strategy? How can you build community? How scalable is your product or service? How will you fund growth?

It’s this sort of thinking that will create or revolutionize entire industries and lead to the real currency of modern economies; innovation.

The Internet is changing fast and impacting our lives in more ways than we ever imagined. Yet many industries are ignoring the need for change and suffering as their sector experiences massive interruption.

Imagine if you could gaze into a  crystal ball and see a few year into the future to understand what the Internet will look like. Perhaps you can.

This presentation “Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow” was created by NeoLabels, with a script by Inés Leopoldo of Mitsue Venture. Its really worth a look.

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

I’m a strong believer in the “innovate or die” approach to business.

We’re in an unprecedented age of innovation and change. Not since the industrial revolution has the world experienced such rapid advancements and wholesale change as technology has freed information and enabled incredible leaps in communication.

Over the last few years much of this blog has been dedicated to the changing nature of media and marketing; two areas heavily affected by 21st Century innovation, and it has allowed me to study business models that need to rapidly evolve or become extinct.

But these days innovation is crucial to most industries and communities. The powerhouses of modern business have been the most innovative companies: Google, Apple and Facebook to name just three. They’re now being joined by companies like Groupon (who are innovating around retail), Netflix (innovating around home entertainment) and Zygna (innovating around gaming or micro gaming). While these companies are pushing innovation previous industry leaders in the same categories are dying.

I’ve long believed that the way forward for an old industrial town like Newcastle is not to look at the past, but to embrace the future. While steel-making might have been Newcastle’s past innovation and technology could be it’s future.

Web and mobile innovation could be the path to future prosperity in Newcastle. If ever there was a town that should lobby hard to have the National Broadband Network sooner rather than later, it’s Newcastle. Running high speed broadband cable down the currently dilapidated Hunter Street could enable smart start-ups to reinvent the area as an Innovation Capital.

Cheap rents, great lifestyle and a large University all combine in Newcastle to create a perfect environment to attract talent and foster innovation.

While this vision may be a little way off, there is already a nucleus of innovation in Newcastle. They’re not making a big noise yet but I think they will soon.

And that’s where the Lunaticks Society’s next event comes in. On Tuesday 3 May they’re holding their first Digital Showcase. Its a festival of innovative ideas where presenters will be offered the chance to give an elevator pitch in a 15 minute session to an expert panel of judges and audience of digital enthusiasts, creatives, entrepreneurs and investors.

If you have a great idea you’ve been working on and want to share then contact the Lunaticks to be one of the presenters. If you’re keen to hear from some innovators then roll up and join the audience.

I’m really hoping this will be the catalyst for a new era of innovation in the area; one where businesses begin to realise they must innovate or die.

Google has announced an initiative in partnership with business software firm MYOB to provide free websites for small and medium sized Australian companies. It’s called Getting Aussie Business Online and follows a similar initiative in the UK.

This will probably cause a panic amongst web designers and digital agencies, but in a way it had to come to this and overall may actually be good for the industry.

Already there are plenty of cowboys in the market who seem happy to design and sell websites for ridiculously low prices. In many cases these operators do untold damage to the industry as their sites are poor and the results for the client are unimpressive or negligible. It creates massive scepticism and mistrust amongst customers and perpetuates a belief that the web doesn’t help small business.

The truth is, bad websites don’t help anyone, so the sooner the cut-price cowboys are starved out of the industry the better. Perhaps the Google / MYOB offering will expedite this.

As the owner of a digital agency, am I worried about the Google / MYOB deal? Not at all.

The free website initiative is clearly a way for Google to help grow the overall market, and of course their client base. And having more businesses online with decent websites can only be good for the industry.

I’m yet to see what these sites will be like and how effective they’ll be, but if they’re decent I would have no problem referring smaller businesses to them as a way of introducing them to the web.

The fact remains that for most sites to really succeed they need a steady flow of useful and relevant information. They need to be properly optimised for search. They need to have a clearly conceived traffic conversion strategy. They need to utilise the power of social networks. We call this inbound marketing.

The web these days is about content and connections, not the mere fact that you have a website. I would suggest that 90% of the businesses who launch a free website via Google / MYOB will not do so with a professional strategy but at least they won’t have wasted their money.