Yahoo’s Chief Technologist Starts New Gig

It may sound painfully dumb to point out that Yahoo's technology is important to the company, but there you have it.  Unfortunately for the organization, that connection also makes it seem somewhat problematic that Yahoo's Chief Technologist has moved on.

Benchmark Capital announced today that Sam Pullara, who was Yahoo's Chief Technologist, has joined it as an Entrepreneur in Residence.  That means Pullara, EVP Ash Patel, and SVP of Revenue Joanne Bradford have all left Yahoo in the space of a week.

It's a hard to put that in a positive light; you'd have to look long and hard to find a company eager to lose that many senior people over the course of just a few days.

Things may not be as bad as they appear, though.  As we explained on Monday, Bradford's something of a job-hopper.  Patel really intends to spend more time with his family.  And now, Pullara's new job will be different enough from his position at Yahoo that it doesn't look like he was just abandoning ship.

Then here's one more fact Yahoo can take comfort in: Google lost an employee today, too.  Robin Wauters reported this afternoon that Senior Product Manager Gummi Hafsteinsson has gone to work for an app company called Siri.

How Important are Comments to the News?

Comments have become part of the news. In the old days, publishers released articles and any reader comments would be addressed on the publisher's own time. In a newspaper or magazine, it may have been in the form of letters to the editor. Sometimes news radio programs would read audience feedback on the air. These things allowed the publishers a great deal of control over the commentary associated with their story.

The web, blogs, and social media have since opened up the floodgates of commentary, and there is really no stopping anybody from saying anything related to a specific news story and not being able to get that comment read. That could come in the comments on a web article itself, it could be on Twitter or Facebook. It could be a whole new post started on another blog. There is no containing conversation on the web.
All in all, that is a good thing. It means free speech, and it means that any fact, opinion, or slant can be heard, and perhaps more importantly disputed by the masses.

The worth of blog comments is a subject that is debated from time to time throughout the news industry and the Blogosphere. The subject has been thrust into the spotlight this week, as popular tech blog Engadget has decided to temporarily shut its comments down. In a post announcing it decision, Engadget wrote:

Hey guys, we know you like to have your fun, voice your opinions, and argue over your favorite gear, but over the past few days the tone in comments has really gotten out of hand. What is normally a charged -- but fun -- environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations... and that's just not acceptable. Some of you out there in the world of anonymous grandstanding have gotten the impression that you run the place, but that's simply not the case.

Luckily, our commenting community makes up only a small percentage of our readership (and the bad eggs an even smaller part of that number), so while they may be loud, they don't speak for most people who come to Engadget looking for tech news. Regardless, we're going to crank things down for a little bit to let everyone just cool off, and we'll switch them back on when we feel like we've shaken some of the trolls and spammers loose from the branches (AKA swing the banhammer in our downtime). See you on the other side!

Engadget has taken a fair amount of criticism for shutting down comments completely, even if it is only temporary. The fact that it is even a topic of debate shows the significance of comments to the way readers get their information. People want to see what others say. It adds to the story, and can often make the original piece more interesting. Even if the readers who actually comment are the minority, people still like to read what others have said. It can help them gauge the credibility of a story, or simply gain more insight into the topic being discussed.

Comments are not always useful or productive. Sometimes they are offensive. Sometimes they are just spammy. In fact, it has been discussed that such comments may actually hurt the search engine friendliness of your page. However moderating comments well can presumably help you avoid anything like that (although sometimes that is easier said than done).

Is such a risk worth closing the door on reader responses anyway? If people have something to say about an article or blog post, they're going to find somewhere to say it. Allowing comments encourages that to be said right there, and frankly makes it easier to keep up with. If, for example, someone disputes a claim you make via Facebook or Twitter, you may miss it and not have a chance to defend that claim (granted, there are ways to incorporate the conversation from FB, Twitter, etc. into comments on a blog).

Stan Schroeder at the all things social media blog Mashable asks a good question, "How important are comments in this age where a lot of commenting is happening off-site — on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks?" He also points to Apple analyst John Gruber's Daring Fireball blog, which doesn't allow comments, but another site has been set up by others just to provide comments about the articles from that blog. According to CultofMac, it pulls in the articles via RSS (including the ads). It's even called DaringFireballWithComments.net.

That is another clear indicator that not only will people find a way to comment if they want, but readers find the commenting process important. Do you agree? Should all blogs have comments? Should they ever be shut down entirely? How important are comments to your blog? How important are they to the news in general. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
 

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Has Google Begun Changing How it Indexes the Web?

Last summer Google announced a new project called "Caffeine", which was described as a re-write of Google's web search architecture. Around that time, Matt Cutts discussed Caffeine with WebProNews, comparing it to the "Big Daddy Update" of 2005, which consisted of changes to the way Google crawls and indexes websites. It appears that more people are now seeing the effects from Caffeine out in the wild.

Have you seen possible Caffeine effects in use? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... about it.

Back before the holidays, Google made it a point to assure everybody that Caffeine would not be rolled out (except for at one data center) until after the holidays were over - January at the earliest. The reason for this was that Google didn’t want to shake everything up during a key time for businesses (they didn't want a repeat of the Florida update).

The company let everyone know about its intentions at PubCon in November. In fact, a few days ago, Google's Matt Cutts posted a video running through his presentation from that event on his blog. He also provided the slideshow. It covers much more than just Caffeine, but if you missed it, you may want to consider watching it anyway (Caffeine discussion starts at about 22:10 in the video and at slide 29 in the presentation).

"It's a re-write of our indexing infrastructure. It's taking the old way that we used to index things that we'd crawled around the web, and we're replacing that with new architecture that's fresh and that had been written to be more scalable, more flexible, [with] the ability to attach different types of data, and in the process of indexing, the ability to do more documents for a more comprehensive version of the web, and the ability to do it faster," Cutts says of Caffeine.

But enough background. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a WebmasterWorld forum thread where administrator Tedster claimed to have seen Caffeine in action at a number of IP addresses. He wrote:

I'm seeing the Caffeine data-set being served via this set of IP addresses: 64.233.169.147, 64.233.169.105, 64.233.169.103, 64.233.169.104, 64.233.169.99,64.233.169.106

It seems to take 5 IP addresses to build the complete SERP, where in the past it often took only 3.

Schwartz also pointed to another member's post (Whitenight), who said:

Well, just tripled checked with offices/employees in Texas, Colorado, and Indiana. All 5 "control" keywords/sites showed live Caffeine.

That member's latest post says that the Caffeine Dataset is also on http://66.102.7.99 and http://66.102.7.104.

We don't know for sure if this is all really Caffeine in action though. Google hasn't commented on it, and has not made any announcements regarding Caffeine since what Matt said above. Some people don't believe this is Caffeine at all. As Schwartz notes, we'll have to wait for Google to say something.

Still, January is almost over, and Google said it would wait until after the holidays, specifically mentioning the month of January. It's about time for this to be rolling out to some extent. Speed has been emphasized a significant amount in Caffeine discussion, and Cutts told us that page speed would likely become a ranking factor. Regardless of whether or not you are witnessing Caffeine in action yet, rest assured that it will be here sooner or later, and any edge you can give yourself in the meantime is for the good of your own site's performance. Speed will not only supposedly help you in search going forward, but it just makes for a better user experience.

Share your thoughts about Google's Caffeine update.


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Google Changes Wording for AdSense Earnings

Google announced that it has made some messaging changes in the AdSense interface. The changes concern users' earnings.

Google has added the words "Estimated" and "Finalized" next to "Earnings" throughout users' accounts. The company says the move was made to be more transparent. The changes in messaging do not reflect any changes to the way finalized earnings are calculated. The company says they're simply intended to give users a clearer idea of Google's estimations of earnings and what is actually finalized.

"As you may have noticed in the past, the earnings on the Overview and Advanced Reports pages may sometimes differ from the earnings listed on your Payment History page," says Elizabeth Ferdon of Google's AdSense Payments Team. "This is because earnings on your Overview and Advanced Reports pages reflect initial estimations based on our records."

"We aren't able to provide finalized earnings on these pages because they still need to be verified for accuracy, a process that takes place a few days after the end of every month. The finalized sum is then posted on your Payment History page by the 10th of the next month," adds Ferdon.

Google says it can't say how much amounts would differ for any specific publisher, and that most publishers won't see a significant difference anyway.

Earlier this week, Google introduced the ability to search for ads in the Ad Review Center. The option is currently available to only a limited number of publishers who are using the new AdSense interface (launched a few weeks ago). The company said, however, it will be rolling it out more widely as they invite more publishers to test the new interface.


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