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Today Google introduced two new elements to its popular advertising system, a Search Funnel and something it is calling Ad Innovations . The company's VP of product management, Susan Wojcicki, described the Search Funnel as a "set of reports describing the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion." Sponsor The idea is that users of the Sales Funnel will, over time, tighten and focus their use of Google Ads to such a degree that they will be able to sell a grommet to an Albanian from outer space. "The data you see in Search Funnels can help you understand how users search for your products before converting so that you can optimize these conversion paths." Ad Innovations is a specialist website Google has set up to "work closely with advertisers on what comes next." They intend to use the space to debut ad-tech ideas and solicit user feedback. Photo by Danny Sullivan. Discuss

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Google Introduces Search Funnel, Ad Innovations

Back in January, a healthy comment discussion followed a post in which we looked at the topic of "spec work," or freelance work done for a client before an agreement of compensation is formed. One of the most vocal opponents to spec work is Andrew Hyde of TechStars and StartupWeekend fame, whose blunt opinions sparked a debate over how a marketplace for freelance work should properly function. Today, Hyde and a few friends are launching Pick , a marketplace and directory that connects clients with freelancers. Sponsor Freelancers in fields like design, development, photography, copywriting, marketing and management can sign into Pick and create a profile to share their portfolio and contact information. More importantly, however, Pick asks freelancers to list their work availability and a price range. This allows clients to narrow their search to find freelancers in the specialty they need based on location, availability and price. "The [freelance] process is a mess. There are a ton of freelancer sites out there, but freelancers never promote them because they largely exploit the community. I thought there had to be a better way," Hyde told ReadWriteWeb. "I wrote my solution and said someone should build it, and nobody did, so here we are." Through the creation of Pick and the growth of its community, Hyde hopes to put a dent in other marketplaces which he says are providing platforms for what he calls " exploitsourcing ." With a 2008 post titled "Spec Work Is Evil / Why I Hate CrowdSpring ," and in 2009's " An Open Letter to 99designs ," Hyde has become a leading voice in the movement against spec work and the services he believes promote it. "It is a major ethical flaw of both parties," said Hyde of spec work in 2008. "Some designers I have talked to have escalated this lack of ethics to be on par with some very serious crimes, while other see it as dumping oil down a rain drain. A lot of people don't take this lightly at all." On the bright side of the negativity surrounding spec work, Hyde has channeled his passion against the practice into a new place for clients and freelancers to meet without the worry of exploitation. For startups that need design, copywriting or other freelance services, Pick could soon become an excellent alternative to the more common marketplaces. Having just launched, the service is a bit of a ghost town and is currently invite-only, but Hyde hopes to see around 1,000 users by week's end. Freelancers can request an invite and clients can currently visit the site and browse the available profiles. Discuss

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TechStars' Andrew Hyde Launches Freelance Marketplace Startup

Unvarnished is a new website where you can post and read anonymous reviews of people and their professional performance. That sounds a little frightening, doesn't it? TechCrunch has been writing about it for days and the company just started rolling out invites. See Michael Arrington's thought provoking, if extreme, post Reputation Is Dead: It's Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions and Evelyn Rusli's review Unvarnished: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place For Defamation . I told Unvarnished founder Pete Kazanjy that I thought he was doing more harm than good, I heard his response and now I've tried his site. It turns out that reality is a lot more complex than the hype. Unvarnished is both more intellectually interesting and less freakishly prurient than you might think. Sponsor Above: A "trusted reviewer" badmouths VC Dave Hornik. But the criticism isn't anything you couldn't read elsewhere (like TheFunded ) and is pretty debatable in its validity. This was the only criticism of a person I could find on the site in early browsing today, and it's pretty tame stuff. Unvarnished could be positioned as a place you can anonymously slam your former bosses or a place you've got to visit in order to see what's been written about you. It could just as accurately be described as LinkedIn with teeth: minus the sappy reviews people post to each others' profiles on that site. LinkedIn with teeth makes it seem more mundane, and that is the truth of the matter. Browse around a little and you'll calm down pretty quickly. Come back later when you're considering working with someone and you may find it useful. Could the service be abused? It could, but first let's look at how it works. Unvarnished operates on top of Facebook, which is both good and bad. You have to get a request to be reviewed sent by a Facebook friend in order to create an Unvarnished account, you have to use FacebookConnect to log-in to the service and you have to have demonstrated a certain amount of activity on Facebook in order to prove that you aren't setting up a fake account just to post critical reviews of people on Unvarnished. At many points in navigating the site you're encouraged to post reviews of your Facebook friends. The reviews you post are tied to your profile, but readers and the people you review cannot trace back from your reviews to see who posted them. They can only see your aggregate activity history on the site and how highly rated your other reviews have been. In other words, if you've reviewed a lot of people and many other users have approved of your reviews, then your next review is going to carry extra weight in the minds of readers. Chronically judgmental but on balance positive? You'll love Unvarnished! The downside of the close Facebook integration is that one more time Facebook is centralizing our identity while we navigate around the larger web. Expect to see many more sites do this, though, as it makes authentication really easy and means that every new user automatically arrives with demographic, social and taste data. Sorry OpenID and distributed data portability, 400 million people voted for Facebook. Opportunities for Abuse You can't delete things that get said about you on Unvarnished. It's like Yelp but for individuals, and many businesses already hate Yelp. What's to stop people from saying untrue, unkind, unfair and unattributed things about you? Not much. "A lot of people say 'I don't want people to make reputation claims about me'," site founder Kazanjy says, "but they also say 'I certainly would like to consume repuation claims about other people'." People on the site have the opportunity to say bad things about you and your supporters have the opportunity to respond. You might be a bully with a posse of bullies who have your back. Your critics might be marginalized people who make no use of Unvarnished other than to shed much-needed light on your abuses of power, or they might be people with an axe to grind who jump onto the site to post terrible, untrue things about you. Kazanjy's contention is that a low reputation on the site and a group of vocal supporters can overcome any unfair criticism of you. That's not very convincing. Unvarnished as a Democratic Force When he says that both the offline world and the web at large work in the same way (anyone can post anything about anybody) but that Unvarnished is merely centralizing this discourse, then things start to get interesting. Few people have the knowledge, the broadcast platform or the search engine pull to really post a free-flying slam against a person online in a place it could be easily found. The relatively few people who could do that have an unspoken agreement not to do so. It would be uncouth and open them up to other powerful people doing the same thing to them. Unvarnished aims to create one centralized, democratized place to learn about a person's reputation. Suddenly even people who are not powerful public figures will have a single, prominent place to post their criticisms of others - and they'll have very little disincentive to doing so. Is that evil? Perhaps it is, a little. Is it a little bit genius as well? Time will tell. Unvarnished invites have begun filtering through Facebook today. If you see one, take a few minutes to check it out. Discuss

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Unvarnished: Is Pete Kazanjy an Evil Genius?

Lest we forget what is at stake with the situation involving Google and China, the Washington Post has published today a list of directions from the Chinese government sent out to all media outlets on how they are allowed to cover the incident. The rules are a stark reminder of why, no matter how long Google kowtowed to government demands there, the search engine's actions are important for the development of a free society. Obtained and translated by China Digital Times , the instructions specifically outline how traditional and new media may or may not approach the topic. Sponsor The instructions start out highlighting how important Google's actions are and how this importance is not to be emphasized to the public: Google has officially announced its withdrawal from the China market. This is a high-impact incident. It has triggered netizens' discussions which are not limited to a commercial level. Therefore please pay strict attention to the following content requirements during this period: The first instruction really says it all: "Only use Central Government main media (website) content; do not use content from other sources." The Chinese government wants to stay on top of forming the message about Google and its place in China, as we saw with stories this past week about Google colluding with U.S. spies and being an agent of the U.S. government, not an agent of free thought, speech or change. The instructions go on from there, directing media to use the government assigned title, refer only to government main media websites and control any and all discussion. The section on Internet media is particularly informative. B. Forums, blogs and other interactive media sections: 1. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic. 2. Interactive sections do not recommend this topic, do not place this topic and related comments at the top. 3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the excuse of this event. 4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others have a different tune from government policy. 5. On topics related to Google, carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions. Not only are websites required to closely follow the governmental opinion on the subject, but they are to keep conversation in check. No "conversations" or "investigations" are to be held and all related content is not to be placed in a prominent position. In case you're wondering through all of this what the Chinese government's take on Google is, exactly, it's that " Google Is Not God ". And according to these instructions, this sentiment is something that needs to be repeated by all Chinese media alike. And you thought U.S. media could be a mouthpiece for corporate and governmental interests. Discuss

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China To Media: Toe the Government Line on Google

It's been nearly a year since China first shutdown access to Twitter in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre , but today Google has opened up the doors again, in a way. According to an article this morning in the Los Angeles Times, Google has added Twitter search results to its search engine there, "in effect, lifting a nine-month blackout of the microblogging service in China." Sponsor Earlier this week, Google announced that it would stop censoring search results and would redirect visitors from mainland China to Google.com.hk from Google.cn. Already, China has worked to censor search results provided on Google.com.hk. This latest move by Google is sure to further aggravate an already tense situation, but we have to wonder, as we have before , if it really matters or if we're looking at it from an ethnocentric point of view. Twitter may have been blocked, but China has several of its own Chinese Twitter clones . So now China can see tweets, which are predominantly not in Mandarin, in Google search results. Then again, the Los Angeles Times points out that the search results are already bringing sensitive topics into view of Chinese citizens: The tweets do not show up for all searches, but only for terms that appear to be popular on Twitter. On Thursday morning, that included discussions on such taboo subjects as how to circumvent China's Internet firewall, why Google decided to exit China and a vaccine scandal unfolding in central China. The move seems more like a principled slap in the face than anything else. But then again, so does much of this situation. Discuss

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Google Brings Twitter Search Results to China