Facebook And Twitter Suck When It Comes To Searching Their Own Sites

(This was left as a comment to a blog post by Mashable's Adam Ostrow.)

What I want to be able to search on Facebook is all the updates on my wall, and my friends' walls. An update is the Facebook equivalent of the tweet. The update is the building block. Each update has its unique URL as it should. Why can't I look up individual updates, however far back in time?

That is the same gripe I have with Twitter. Why can't I locate all my past tweets? Let alone that of everyone else. They misunderstand real time. Real time is not just now. Real time also is real time as it happened two years ago. All tweets old and new are relevant.

Both Facebook and Twitter have been trying my patience on this one.

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AnyClip.com: Second Thoughts

Image via CrunchBase

The AnyClip Launch PressLift

I am having second thoughts about AnyClip, but not in the traditional meaning of the phrase. I blogged about AnyClip not long back (AnyClip Is Live Now), and already I have enough new thoughts - a second train of thoughts - about the site that I feel like a new blog post is warranted.

You can't ask for traffic, and then get it, and then complain you have too much traffic. The "fail whale" might be part of doing business also for AnyClip, but the longer the site is on the better. Take care of the server issues best you can. That is basic. Expect traffic. Fulfill the basic promises made.

Add more movies. 2,000 movies are a good starting point. But God knows more than 2,000 movies have been made. Feed the monster, I mean the database.

The embed feature is a powerul one. Every blog and site that is embedding AnyClip video clips is giving AnyClip much needed Google juice. Those are one way inbound links. They matter. And so the embed feature has to "simply work," Google's phrase about their forthcoming Chrome OS.

Social media matters, but of course. There are studies showing Facebook has overtaken Google itself as the most visited site in America. If I find a clip on AnyClip that I like and want to share, I should be able to share easy. Over time there has to be a sense of community at the site itself. As to how you go about it, there are a few different ways. The Disqus integration is a very good idea. A lot of people link their Disqus profiles to their blogs and Twitter accounts. That gives you the option to get to know them better. That builds community.

New movies get made. They put out trailers before they put out movies. AnyClip is like saying no movie ever made has to go stale. The best movies have a timeless quality to them. If you are going to watch four minutes of a movie that you end up liking, you might as well rent or buy the movie. AnyClip's SceneSearch tool is a major discovery engine.

The Netflix, and Amazon integrations on AnyClip are a great first move. I wonder if it would be possible to have those integrations to also be part of the embedded clips. So someone watches a clip at my blog, and they get to go straight to Amazon to buy the movie without having to first go to the AnyClip page.

The summary statement would be, the fundamentals are already in place, just go ahead and deliver on your basic promises. Scale with gusto.          

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My Comment At TechCrunch

The movie studios are going to have to come around, and come around fast. AnyClip's promise is no movie ever made has to go stale. Otherwise movies go stale. AnyClip for the movie studios is like being able to run trailers of all their movies all the time. And once you grab someone's attention, that is one step closer to them buying or renting that movie. It makes absolutely no sense for the movie studios to drag their feet on this one.

This reminds me of Nepal, the dual citizenship issue, and FDI, Foreign Direct Investment. Issuing dual citizenship to the Non Resident Nepalis is the single best thing Nepal could do to bring in FDI to the country, and FDI is the single best thing that could happen for Nepal's economic growth, but the morons will not do it. The politicians in Nepal have been dragging their feet on the dual citizenship issue for years now. Ignorance can hurt self interest. Defies logic, but happens all the time.

AnyClip is in the movie studios' self interest.