Blog Posts About: google

Yay! I just noticed that we've reached a statistical milestone. For the first time, a video we produced "Google Docs in Plain English" has reached the 1 million view mark on You Tube.  This is our first 7 figure view count on You Tube, or any single site (other Common Craft videos have over 1m views across multiple hosts).

We were hired by the Google Docs team to make this video back in the summer of 2007.  Obviously, the Google brand and placement on http://docs.google.com helps a lot. We're so proud to have worked with Google on this - it's a product we use every single day.  Here's the video:

The Google Reader team hired us to create this one minute introduction to Google Reader.

Our other videos for Google include:

• Google Docs
• Mobile Maps (My Location)
• Google Apps with Salesforce

View all of our custom client productions.

From the description on the video page, this is:

A video that Saatchi Moscow created and produced for Google to attract more Russian people on GMail. 

Visually, it's a bit like our videos, but in a giant format.  Instead of pieces of paper, they are using giant pieces of pre-printed fabric.  The video is quite artful and well done. Isn't it funny too, that it's by Saatchi and Saatchi instead of Lee and Sachi?  

Thanks to Bruno for sending over the link!

We've been friends and fans of dotSUB since we first started making video for The Common Craft Show.  They make it easy for videos to be translated into multiple languages via subtitles. 

The RSS in Plain English video has been translated into 20+ languages on dotSUB. A truly useful and innovative service.

I've gotten permission from the Google Docs team to share the Google Docs video on dotSUB so it's acessible for the hearing impaired and our non-English speaking friends.

Are you bi-lingual?  Multi-lingual?  Please help us get the Google docs video translated.  All you need is a dotSub account and a visit to the video's page (right side) to start the translation.  

Here's the video in the dotSUB player - you can click the arrows at the bottom to see other languages (once the translations are complete). 

If you haven't heard about Markus Frind and his dating site at plentyoffish.com, you will.

Markus is singlehandedly disrupting the dating site industry by offering a free alternative to pay-to-play sites like match.com. What makes his story so interesting is that he is the site's only employee - he runs the whole site from his Vancouver, Canada apartment and makes millions of dollars from Google ad revenue.

Here are some of the basic facts from a recent Wall Street Journal story (via: online personal watch):

• For the week ended April 28, PlentyOfFish.com was the 96th-busiest Web site in the U.S. (HitWise)
• Busy Web sites like these usually require scores of people. Mr. Frind says people often don't believe him when he says PlentyOfFish is all his.
• Nielsen/NetRatings says that by some measures, such as the time its members spend on the site, it ranks second after eHarmony.
• A few months back, he posted on his blog a picture of a check from Google for nearly $1 million for a two-month period. Google confirmed the check was for real.
• Mr. Frind says the site brings in between $5 million and $10 million a year.
• Many companies would respond to competitive pressure by hiring someone. Mr. Frind says he has no plans to do so.

There are two things that I love about this story:

1. Disruption: Markus is constantly talking about the demise of the paid sites and has the model to prove that he's a real threat to the top players. I have nothing against the paid sites, or their model, but it's great to see one guy be able to create something so threatening to an established industry. His blog is here.

2. Small is beautiful. Consider this: In 2005, Match.com had 275 employees and Alexa (whose permalinking and graph sharing tool is very broken - booo!) says Plenty of Fish is gaining on them in a big way - with only one employee and no venture funding.

This idea of being small, lightweight and happy really appeals to me in a fundamental way. It reminds me of the Robot Co-op who run very large sites (like 43 Things) with a small team of 6. The same is true with 37 Signals who have chosen to stay small despite the to opportunity to grow in #s of employees and of course, Craigslist.

These days, 20+ employees and millions of capital can be more of an impediment than an advantage - especially if you count the happiness factor. I count Markus as one the few who are showing us the business models of the future.

I write that title with tongue firmly in-cheek. I do work with a couple of Fortune 500s, but Steve is reacting to the survey results that show that Google Results = Bad PR and referring to a case study I wrote a while back about using blogs to get better search results. He says:

Fortune 500 companies need to tear a page out of Common Craft's Google playbook. They boosted their Google rankings by defining a niche for their blog, targeting search phrases, naming categories for each phrase, and writing effectively about subjects related to each category.

I'm flattered, but I think it is an odd comparison to make. Here's an excerpt from the comment I left on the entry:

From my perspective, what Coke needs is the ability to have a voice in the "conversation". By having (something like) an authoritative blog on the soft drink industry, they can become a more powerful voice among the negative press. They can stand up for themselves and perhaps earn better Google rankings in the process.

They should be doing the same thing that brought me to this post -- listening to what the blog world is saying and responding like a person.