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Source:Mashable!

Google has reached a new milestone in its fight for total dominance over the search industry, while Yahoo, Microsoft, and the rest try desperately to stay relevant.

According to the latest figures from Hitwise, Google now owns 70.77 percent of the US search market and is trailed by Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask.com, which currently own 18.65 percent, 5.36 percent and 3.53 percent of the search market, respectively.  Hitwise claims Google’s search market share has risen over 10 percent in the last year and over 2 percent since last month.

But all this success has me thinking: where are the growing startups like Wikia or Quintura?  Why haven’t Microsoft or Yahoo gained any ground on Google in the US?  And most importantly, what is Google doing right that all the other companies simply don’t do?

Of course, the answer to that last question is riddled with a slew of possibilities and few would agree on them all.  But aside from the fact that more people are frequenting Google, thus finding more reason to use its search engine, Google understands better than any other company that a search engine needs to achieve two goals in order to be successful: it needs to be simple to use and it needs to get rid of users as quickly as possible.

Some may think that Yahoo has better results than Google, but the problem with it is that the main page is littered with extra junk that only confuses the person looking to perform a simple search.  On the other hand, Google.com features the search bar and little else, making it abundantly clear to the user that searching is the primary function of the site.

And while other search engines may be just as easy to use, aside from Google, no other search engine has been able to master the art of getting you to your destination as quickly as possible.

Part of that equation revolves around relevant results, which, in my experience, Google leads by a healthy margin.  But the other aspect of getting you to your destination revolves around the layout of the results page and ease with which you can input different queries, scroll through the results, and know what you’re getting by clicking on a particular result before you do it.

Let’s face it – search engines aren’t made to be destinations, they’re specifically designed to act as the middleman between your question and the site that has the answer.  And whichever site will get you to that destination quickest, no matter the complexity of your query, you will find most useful.

Countless sites try to do too much.  Some want you to edit results, others want you to drill-down into your results with the help of keywords, and still others feature gimmicks that don’t really matter.  But once they finally realize that all you want is to get to that destination, they’ll start making some headway in the space.

Search is all about the user experience.  And so far, only Google has mastered that art.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Yahoo Gets Better Consumer Rating than GoogleGoogle Stock Reaches $600 MarkGoogle Releases Custom Search Business EditionMyDataBus Reaches 100,000 UsersGoogle Blog Search Semi-Launched in ChinaGoogle Product Search Not as FroogleGoogle Reader Gets Search!

Source:Mashable!

Long before there was a Facebook, MySpace, or even Friendster, message boards were the de facto online communities. And while there are still thousands of popular boards scattered around the Web, there has been little innovation in terms of the software that powers them, minus a few upstarts we recently profiled.

This week, community software builder Userplane is throwing its hat in the ring with an innovative new message board product – Userplane Boards. The service combines aspects of Userplane’s other services like chat and IM with threaded message board discussion, creating a real-time environment that makes following conversations much easier.

For example, let’s say you’re in an active message board discussing the Olympics. In a traditional message board, by the time you finish typing your post, a dozen other people may have already posted similar ideas, making your post repetitive and creating all sorts of noise on the board. With Userplane Boards, which are Flash-based, the new messages (which can include photo and video) stream in real-time, meaning you’ll see what other people are posting as you write. In this sense, it’s sort of like a chat room, except, like a message board, people who join in later can see the prior discussion.

Beyond the real-time features, which include integration with Userplane’s IM products for one-to-one messaging, a number of other options make Boards a viable replacement for existing systems like phpBB or vBulletin. For one, Userplane is making it easy to migrate, offering a tool for vBulletin users to migrate their posts and user data, and allowing an import of any standard XML file for those currently using other board software. Beyond that, Userplane Boards feature a CSS style system so message board owners can customize the look and feel to match their site. Finally, each thread also offers an embeddable widget, so the discussion can be embedded elsewhere, in turn generating more traffic for the message board.

Why is Userplane getting into message boards now, when the format has seemingly been supplanted by other forms of online community? According to Product Manager Shane Hall, who I spoke with last week, Boards represents a happy medium between passive and real-time conversation. “The problem with chat is you need to get critical mass … boards solves this problem because when people join they can see the full history of the conversation … and also, if it’s a really active thread that’s based around an event, you’ll see it in real-time.”

Like most Userplane products, Boards are available for free, but include advertising from parent company AOL’s Platform-A. But that can be turned off, as Userplane works with larger publishers individually on revenue share and/or licensing deals if they would like to sell their own advertising.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Userplane Splits Revenue With Facebook App DevelopersUserplane to Offer White Label Video Uploading to Web PublishersUserplane’s OpenSocial APIsUserplane Offers Exportable, Interactive ChatUserplane Hands Out $500,000 in Rev-ShareAOL Buys Userplane to Expand AIMUserplane Plug-Ins Now Support WordPress, Drupal, and More.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under News, online communities, userplane, Message Boards, userplane boards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.