In a world where real-time is becoming the only time, I feel like a bit of a dope relaying the Search Insider Summit Buzz-o-Meter nearly two weeks after the event. Alas, it's just the way the publishing schedule shook out this season. So here goes.

A few days ago, the folks at Facebook reiterated once again the schism between how they behave when they're thinking of their members and how they behave when they're thinking of their wallets.Let's recap: When they're thinking of their members, they respond to trends like an increasing desire for real-time updates with a new live feed, keeping in mind that some people might not like it and, with a click of a tab, allowing you the power and control to retain the old sporadic news feed. When they're thinking of their wallets, however, they sell all of your information to …

It's been about a week now since MediaPost's Search Insider Summit in Utah, and I find myself looking back and rethinking some of the insights I gleaned from the event. If you have not been, you should -- it is a wonderful intimate setting where the best minds of search engine marketing mingle and share experiences. This is why I used the reference Ka-tet in the title and I guess that would make Ken Fadner our Dinh. The two terms, taken from Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, really do sum up our group, the event, and how tightly bound we …

Last week I had the pleasure of spending quality time with several of this industry's great minds at the Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah. Here are a few of the highlights -- including Avinash Kaushik's challenge to look at attribution in a new way.

I've had a few days now to reflect on what came out of the Search Insider Summit in Park City. It was an interesting perspective: Avinash Kaushik telling us that the majority of search marketing "sucks"; Mark Mahaney prophesizing that search is poised for a big climb in 2010; Rob Griffin warning us the entire industry is going through the throes of change; Chris Copeland showing us that social media is inextricably linked with search activity; and Mike Moran cautioning us that CEOs and CFOs worship at one altar and one altar only: profit. If we want to sell search, …

It may no longer be news in a world of "in the moment" content distribution, but in the wake of Google's announcements on real-time search and personalization this week, SEO is taking a major turn for those looking to stay successful for the long term. The good news for marketers is that there are many crossover points between the two to be addressed, points that will not only be helpful to maintaining visibility in search, but are also deeply connected to an overarching social and digital strategy as well.

Just a few days ago, Google launched universal personalized search; that is, search that's personalized regardless of whether you're logged into a Google account. The company announced the launch in what one commenter termed a "Friday News Dump," slipping the opt-out policy into a late-day blog post just as folks are heading out the door for the weekend. Yes, I said the opt-out policy. As of now, your results are being personalized, and you have to take action if you prefer the plain vanilla variety of SERP. Furthermore, the action you have to take seems almost perversely contrary.

Having worked in Silicon Valley for many years now, it's still remarkable to me how trends can flare up and then burn out while others seem to smolder for years, producing lots of smoke but not a great deal of fire. For me, trends of the smoky variety include real-time search (or real-time anything, really); mobile as a revolution; the semantic Web; and social marketing.

In wrapping up my Search Insider contributions this year, I would like to address the development of 2009 that will likely have the greatest impact on the search marketing landscape for the next decade: the pending search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo.

I think I know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I want to shift paradigms. Now that I'm older and arguably wiser, people sometimes ask me for that "one piece of advice." Usually, it involves stepping into someone else's perspective and seeing things from their viewpoint. With each year that passes, I find myself doing that more and more.