[Guest Post] It's all about Discovery

I read posts blog at E27 describing the "war" between Facebook and Google shortly after Facebook launched and while there are many interesting points describing the difference as "social vs utility" it seems to fall short of capturing what I believe is the essence of the competition between the two companies.

I've always thought that Google vs Facebook (and even before that there was Yahoo vs Google) was actually talking about who owns the discovery element on the web where users are able to "find" something. I'd define discovery as simply discovering new content regardless of whether you're looking for that content or not. It could be new articles, new websites, new products to buy, new entertainment like music or videos or viral jokes. But in the end it's all about discovering the new and how you discover it.

Being the best discovery product means you get the highest traffic. If you have the most traffic, you have the biggest audience, which means that you are very attractive to advertisers. As an added bonus, if your site becomes a top discovery site it means that other sites also want to increase their success by trying to reach your audience and are definitely willing to pay (money or other value) to be on your platform and connect with you.

They will even distribute your product for free. This is what is at the heart of the battle of giants like Google and Facebook - money from advertising and free distribution. Winning the battle means you have become the dominant platform for advertising and new product launches.

This is the essence of this battle, to be more than just a tool.

Let's look at some examples of platform discovery:

Yahoo!

Platform Discovery using an editorial approach. I vividly remember when I used Yahoo! where the URL is still attached to akebono.stanford.edu. Why did I use it at that time? Yahoo! is the best directory in the entire internet universe. If you want to find a site, or content, you can find it on Yahoo!. They have editors, officially called surfer, which manually edits the Yahoo! site directory. If you wanted to launch a new site during the dotcom boom back then, there was only one place to advertise it, only one place to show it - on Yahoo!

Google

Algorithms, especially when you have good algorithms, with much better scalability than human editors. A time when everyone was trying to be a media site and selling display ads on every article (contextual ads - discovery based on what you read). Google remembers the reason why most people prefer Yahoo!, AOL and Excite at that time. Not for the news, but for discovering new sites and new content (and of course receiving email). By emphasizing the best search results (findings) and placing ads that match what they're looking for. Not long after, Google succeeded in replacing Yahoo! and being a great discovery platform that's much more accurate than Yahoo!, and everyone puts a Google search box on their website.

Facebook

It started as a site for people to find each other, to reconnect with old friends, which is a reason for people to share photos, life info and ultimately to share links. At the same time, the algorithm was reaching its limits - too much spam and too much SEO masters. So Google became less relevant and people started to find more and more fun content via Facebook. Facebook then hijacked people from Google, introduced the CPC advertising model (it wasn't the first time Google features were copied by others), developed a platform where others could build their own network and distributed content for free ("Like" button). And Facebook is now also challenging Google to become Discovery's king of ad platforms.

Personally, I think all of these companies are still too focused on utility where they should be focusing on Discovery. Yahoo! do it through editorial, Google through algorithms and Facebook through social.

So remember, when you build your business make sure there is value discovery - especially if you want to build a platform.

This article is a guest post written by Patrick Williamson, a Singapore-based independent consultant and startup advisor. Prior to this Patrick was Business Development at Yahoo! SEA where Patrick collaborated with several large companies in Indonesia and was also a Global Product Manager at Symantec consumer California. This article is a translation of Patrick's article on his personal blog.