Visual Knowledge

2007-05-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

We are finally launching our beta site; UiKnow (uiknow.com). Not sure how much more I'll be blogging here but I'll try as time permits. Please try to find time to check out UiKnow if you are at all interested in "finding, organizing, creating & sharing" information on the internet (or intranets). Also see our little test space at uiknow.ning.com

2007-01-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

Teens Still Gaga over Social Networking
"More than half use social networking sites.
By Debra Aho Williamson - Senior Analyst

If you are looking to reach US teens who use social networking sites, a new survey suggests that you will find them on MySpace.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 85% of US teens who have a social networking profile use MySpace most often. Overall, more than half of the teens surveyed (55%) use social networking sites.

The study confirms the power of social networking among youths and sheds new light on how teens use such sites.

Teens are frequent visitors to social networking sites; about half visit once a day or more often.

Older teens and girls, particularly those ages 15 to 17, are more likely to create social networking profiles. Household income, on the other hand, did not impact social networking use. And teens who were not white were slightly more likely to create profiles (58% vs. 53%), although the study's 3.7-point margin of error may reduce the significance of this statistic.

Earlier studies from the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg as well as Burst Media also found that teen girls were more likely to visit social networking sites.

The Pew study also delved into why teens use social networking sites, something other studies have not covered. Over 90% of teens use such sites to stay in touch with friends they see a lot, but half are interested in making new friends.
...."

2007-01-12T06:23:00.000-08:00

VC Capital Growing
"For venture capital, it is starting to look a lot like the late 90s.

According to calculations from Ernst & Young (EY), worldwide investments will top $32 billion in 2006, the highest annual total in five years.

EY estimates that venture capital activity in the United States, Europe, China and Israel reached $25.4 billion in the first three quarters of this year, and an additional $7 billion is expected in the fourth quarter.

While the activity totals less than in the peak years of the dot-com boom, it nevertheless represents a strong comeback. (Globally, VC investment reached $51.22 billion in 2002.)

Perhaps investors are still giddy (or greedy) over the news, earlier this year, that Sequoia Capital made a reported $480 million profit after less than a year by investing in YouTube, the video-sharing site sold to Google.

"The new wave of venture capital investments around the globe, particularly at the early stage, has been driven by a number of factors," said Gil Forer of EY. "First, demand for innovation in sectors such as Web 2.0, cleantech and biotechnology is increasing in both mature and emerging markets."

Despite the large amount of money in play, however, the volume of deals is expected to be less than last year, 2005, when 3,931 were completed."

2007-01-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

Useless Information "JANUARY 10, 2007

'You got that information I asked for yet?'
'Uh, yeah, I did, boss. But....'

Information is a vital component in running a business today.

However the information-gathering process at most businesses is neither efficient nor effective, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 middle managers in the US and the UK, conducted by Accenture.

Most of the business information they receive has no value, according to 53% of the respondants to the survey.

Even once a good piece of information is obtained, it is poorly disseminated within the company. Only half of the respondents said their companies do a good job governing information distribution — or have established adequate processes to determine what data should go to what parts of the organization.

"Managers are having great difficulty navigating a rapidly expanding sea of information, and the situation is only getting worse," said Royce Bell of Accenture. "The findings show that companies are failing to get the right information to their employees."

The findings indicate that organizations are simply failing to keep up with the volume of information produced by technological innovation. In fact, 59% of the managers said that because of poor distribution, they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs "almost every day." Although they know the information exists somewhere in the company, they cannot find it.

Apparently, "sharing" is not a corporate trait. Surprisingly, it is easier to get information on the competition than on one's own company — 45% of the managers said gathering information about what other parts of their company were doing was a challenge and 40% said that other parts of their company were not willing to share information. Conversely, only 31% said that getting information on their competitors was difficult.

Much of the overall problem lies in the way managers gather and store information.

More than half (57%) of the respondents said that having to go to numerous sources to compile information made managing the information difficult. In addition, 42% said they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week.

In order to get information about competitors, customers, project responsibility or other departments, respondents said on average they have to go to three different information sources, and 36% said there is so much information available that it takes a long time to sort through and find the right piece of data.

Once they find the information they are looking for, only 16% of the managers in the survey use a collaborative workplace — such as a company's intranet portal — to store it; most keep it on their computers or in individual e-mail accounts, where it can easily be lost or even stolen.

"Information is becoming a burden on knowledge workers and will remain so until companies consolidate and streamline the stores and sources of intelligence," said Greg Todd of Accenture. "Doing so will enable them to give back part of the working day to staff, helped by better governance, delivery, integration and the archiving and retention of information."

For more information on how companies are communicating, read eMarketer's E-Mail and Word-of-Mouth: Connect with Your Best Customers report...."

2006-12-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia and Amazon Taking on Google

"Update: Liana Evans of Seach Marketing Gurus has done a great job of journalism and corrected some of the errors that myself and others posted about this story. You can read about it here.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales plans, in partnership with Amazon, on launching a search engine early next year, accordiing to the London Times

Wales contends that Google has developed flaws as it has grown. And believes he can use his wiki methodology to compete with Google, Yahoo and MSN.

He told the Times that computer algorithms do not make as good selections as humans and if people get to use his alternative they may prefer it.

“But we have a really great method for doing that ourselves,” Wales told The Times. “We just look at the page. It usually only takes a second to figure out if the page is good, so the key here is building a community of trust that can do that.”

"The reputation already fostered by his Wikipedia community and the transparency of his technology will build sufficient trust in his search engine to bring in advertising revenue and make the Wikiasari venture profitable" The Times reported.

The project has been called Wikiasari - a combination of Hawaian and Japanese for "quick" "rummaging search". How this plays out should provide entertainment in the new year..."

2006-12-15T07:34:00.000-08:00

IBM, Yahoo launch free enterprise search tool
"Free, entry-level IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition search app aims to challenge the Google Mini

By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
December 13, 2006

IBM and Yahoo have developed a free, entry-level, enterprise search application that at least one analyst believes will seriously disrupt the low-end segment of this market where Google has been selling many of its Mini search devices.

The software, called IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition, has been designed to be simple to install and use, and can index up to 500,000 documents from over 200 file types, like Adobe Systems' PDF and Microsoft's Word and Excel.

With that indexing capacity, IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition poses a significant threat the Google Mini, an analyst said. The Mini is a hardware device loaded with Google search software that starts at $1,995 for 50,000 documents and tops out at 300,000 documents in its $8,995 edition.

"Google will have to react in some way to this product, to differentiate the Mini from a free competitor with more indexing capacity," said Matt Brown, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst.

IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition isn't comparable to more powerful mid-tier products like the Google Search Appliance, nor to high-end systems from companies like Fast Search & Transfer and Autonomy, Brown said. These mid-tier and high-end products have significantly more features, like the ability to index data from many more sources, like business applications..."

2006-12-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

Slumping Yahoo to undergo makeover
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) will undergo its most extensive shake-up in more than five years, hoping to snap out of a malaise that has ravaged its stock and provoked one of its own top executives to bluntly question the Internet powerhouse's direction.

Under the overhaul announced late Tuesday, Yahoo vowed to rein in a sometimes-rambling product expansion that has bogged down its earnings growth and threatened its position as the Internet's most popular site as more buzz built up around upstarts like MySpace and YouTube.

The streamlining will bunch Yahoo's disparate operations into three core groups focused on its Web site's audience, advertising network and technology..."

2006-11-30T10:47:00.000-08:00

How The Digg Editorial Process Differs From Search Engine Editorial Process

"Todd Malicoat has a write up called The Search Marketer’s Guide to Digg, where he explains the difference between the Digg.com editorial process and search engines editorial process. It all comes down to the "human editorial authority," and I quote;

While most the search engines DO have human intervention - they haven’t accepted and embraced it. One of the beauties of digg is if there is CRAP in the index - you know exactly who to blame for it.

As always, both human and algorithmic methods of intervention have their faults. I am sure Danny will go into a bigger write up on the pros and cons of each at a later point..."
More information and links to related articles.

2006-11-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

More good news for online advertising...
Analysts Bullish on Online Ad Spending

NOVEMBER 27, 2006

An emerging consensus paints a positive picture.

The trend began early last week, when the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released new data showing that US Internet advertising revenues reached a record $4.2 billion in the third quarter of 2006.

That represents a 35% increase over the $3.1 billion figure posted for the third quarter of 2005, and a 2% increase over the second-quarter 2006 total of nearly $4.1 billion.

"Interactive advertising, with its eighth consecutive quarter of growth and the largest single quarter ever, is on pace for its biggest year," said David Silverman of PwC.

Now Merrill Lynch has raised its estimates.

Merrill Lynch now estimates that US online ad revenue for the first three quarters of 2006 was 35.5% more than in the same period in 2005. The firm previously forecast a 31% increase.

The company also now expects US online ad spending in the fourth quarter to be 30% more than it was in Q4 2005, up from its previous estimate of a 27% increase.

For 2007, Merrill is projecting 23.3% growth in online ad spending — up slightly from its previous projection of 22.5%.

Merrill Lynch expects paid search to increase 27% next year, and branded ads to grow by 21%.

Even with the injection of online video ad spending expected in 2007, the firm projects that search will still account for over 42% of the online advertising spend, up one percentage point from this year.

For more on Internet advertising, read eMarketer's US Online Ad Spending: Peak or Plateau? report.

2006-11-27T06:29:00.000-08:00

Why Ross Levinsohn Is Leaving News Corp.
"The executive who advised Rupert Murdoch to acquire MySpace will likely join a startup. "I like building," he says
by Steve Rosenbush

Ross Levinsohn, the News Corp. executive who put Rupert Murdoch's media empire on the digital map, says the online market is still exploding with opportunity. Levinsohn, who conceived of News Corp.'s (NWS) acquisition of social networking phenomenon MySpace (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/9/06, "Fox to Make MySpace More Spacious"), announced his resignation late on Nov. 16. "I have some opportunities," Levinsohn, 43, told BusinessWeek.com on Nov. 17. "It's the most exciting time in the history of the business, and I like building." ..."

2006-11-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

"Internet search rivals unite to make websites easier to find

SAN FRANCISCO AFP 17/11/2006 02:57

Internet search rivals Google, Yahoo and Microsoft formed an unusual alliance to support a shared standard regarding how websites are pinpointed for their indexes.

The "joint initiative" was intended to make it easier for webmasters, or website creators, to let Internet search engines know what their online pages contained, according to Google was.

Search engines could use the information gathered in the "web crawl" process to better tailor results for their users.

Yahoo and Microsoft announced they would each support Google's "Sitemaps 0.90" protocol instead of using different standards for submissions by webmasters.

"The launch of Sitemaps is significant because it allows for a single, easy way for websites to provide content and metadata to search engines," said Yahoo Search director of product management Tim Mayer.

"Sitemaps helps webmasters surface content that is typically difficult for crawlers to discover, leading to a more comprehensive search experience for users."

Google launched its first Sitemaps protocol in June of 2005.

A Sitemap is a website file that acts as a marker for search engines to "crawl" certain pages. It allows webmasters to list their online addresses, called "URLs," along with data such as the last time the page was updated.

The Sitemaps protocol used by Google has been widely adopted by many Web properties, including sites from the Wikimedia Foundation.

"At industry conferences, webmasters have asked for open standards just like this," Search Engine Watch editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan said in a release.

"This is a great development for the whole community and addresses a real need of webmasters in a very convenient fashion." ..."

2006-11-17T08:06:00.000-08:00

Jason Calacanis leaving AOL:
Yes, it's true... I'm leaving AOL.

"TechCrunch broke the story (less than two hours after I told everyone here), and the New York Times confirmed it with me by phone this afternoon.

I've got a lot to say, but I'm thinking that I'll just talk about it on the final episode of the Gillmor Gang podcast--which we happen to be doing tomorrow (crazy coincidence I know).

Your pal,

Jason"

PS - Thanks to everyone sending emails, IMing, and calling.

2006-11-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

Insights on traffic to and from Myspace and other Web 2.0 properties.Who Goes Where (After Sharing and Socializing)?

"Social networking, photo and video sites send valuable traffic to other destinations.
By Debra Aho Williamson - Senior Analyst

People who use social networking or online video sites spend a lot of time engaging with the content that is already there. But how do those sites affect traffic to other sites?

A new report by Hitwise attempts to make sense of the business that sites such as MySpace and YouTube send to other destinations.

In September, MySpace had an 82% market share of visits to the top 20 social networking sites, according to Hitwise. The second most popular site, Facebook, received 7% of visits.

However, MySpace is a significant driver of traffic to other social networking sites: 24% of visits to the other 19 sites on the list came directly from MySpace, Hitwise found.

All this networking adds up to long usage times. In September, the average session time was just over 27 minutes for social networking sites, vs. around 11 minutes for all other sites.

MySpace also is a driver of traffic to other types of sites. Hitwise reports that "the share of upstream traffic from MySpace for the Telecommunications category was 89% greater in September 2006 than it was in March 2006. In the same 6-month period, the share of upstream traffic from MySpace grew by 83% for the Shopping and Classifieds category, 77% for the Banks and Financial Institutions category, and 71% for the Travel category."

In other words, MySpace is referring an increasing amount of traffic to those site categories, either by organic links (such as links within user profiles) or advertising links.

In the case of YouTube, 3.3% of visits that went directly from YouTube to another site went to the television category during the week ended October 7, 2006. CartoonNetwork.com received the most visits, followed by ESPN and Disney Channel.

The close relationship between social networking sites and photo sharing sites is also evident in the data. Photobucket, Slide and Imageshack all receive the majority of their traffic from MySpace. "In September 2006, 57% of upstream traffic to Photobucket came directly from MySpace," reported Hitwise. "MySpace accounted for 51% of upstream traffic to Imageshack and 77% of upstream traffic to Slide in September 2006."

All these sites represent advertising possibilities for those seeking to reach the MySpace or YouTube audience, Hitwise said.

For more on social networks, read eMarketer's new Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending Update report..."

2006-11-12T18:34:00.000-08:00

Looking at StumbleUpon, Yoono, & Web 2.0 Toolbar

"Was searching for video coverage of the 2006 Web 2.0 Conference this morning and ’stumbled’ across this excellent & entertaining video which highlights and explains the Web 2.0 Toolbar, Stumble Upon & the Yoono toolbar.

Each toolbar is a bit unique in its own way and the video identifies each toolbars’ differentiation point.

Currently, I use StumbleUpon, but after watching the video am tempted to give Yoono (which seems to be sponsoring many 2.0 related blogs) and Web 2.0 Toolbar a try..."

2006-11-12T17:18:00.000-08:00

MySpace Founders ‘Shortchanged’ by Fox Interactive?

"VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall reports on MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe being “shortchanged” by the Fox MySpace acquisition. Reportedly he received only $5 million. On the one hand, how many people have $5 million? On the other, the company was sold for $580 million and so, if true, he was really diluted.

I spoke to a reporter last week who said the same thing and asked whether I’d heard that the MySpace founders were angry or frustrated with the money they received.

Many entrepreneurs I speak with aggressively caution against taking VC money. Something like: take as little as possible for as long as you can hold out. To that end, here’s an interesting NY Times piece (reg req’d) on the subject featuring IM “aggregator” Meebo, which was started with credit cards.

Low overhead is the answer to the question, “How can all these little companies survive?”..."

2006-11-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

Social Network Ad Space: Sorry, Sold Out!

"Ad agencies are abuzz, inventory is tight…

For many marketers who were sitting on the sidelines of social networking as recently as four months ago, advertising on social networks has become a top priority.

In a recent interview with eMarketer, Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer at Fox Interactive Media (FIM), said, "The conversation with marketers has shifted in recent months from 'Why MySpace?' to 'How can I use MySpace?'"

"At this point, many of the dollars are still experimental, but in certain categories such as movies, TV and music, marketers are actively budgeting funds to social networking campaigns," says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and the author of the new Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending Update report. "Much like in the early days of Web marketing, there is a fear of being left behind: If a competitor is there, then I need to be there, too."

In fact, the pace of events since August (including Google's $900 million deal with MySpace and the trickle-down effects of this deal) has led eMarketer to revise its expectations for social network ad spending upward.

eMarketer now expects that US marketers will spend $350 million placing ads on social network sites in 2006 (up from our previous estimate of $280 million).

US spending on social network advertising is now expected to rise to $865 million in 2007 and to reach $2.15 billion in 2010.

"MySpace will continue to dominate, accounting for 60% of US online social network ad spending in 2007," says Ms. Williamson. "Networks including Facebook, Bebo and Piczo will make up the next largest chunk of revenue, followed by social networks offered by portal sites. Vertical, or 'niche,' networks are likely to generate $45 million in ad revenue in 2007."

Social network ad spending will account for 2.2% of the $15.9 billion spent on US online advertising in 2006 and 4.7% of the estimated $18.3 billion spent in 2007, according to eMarketer. By 2010, it will account for 8.5% of the estimated $25.2 billion US online advertising market.

Social network spending will by no means be limited to the US.

"eMarketer estimates that worldwide social network ad spending will be $1.1 billion in 2007, up from $445 million in 2006," says Ms Williamson. "Spending is expected to rise to $2.8 billion in 2010."

"The numbers speak for themselves," says Ms Williamson. "Projected growth in ad spending on social networking sites of 147% in 2007 shows that marketers are enthusiastic about the space. The race is on to capture their ad dollars."

Find out if the time is right to advertise on social networking sites; read eMarketer's new report, Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending Update, today..."

2006-11-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

Online Retailers Face Four-Second Barrier

NOVEMBER 10, 2006

One... two... three... and gone!

When it comes to online retail, service matters — and so does speed.

"The customer experience begins the very instant a shopper types in your online address," said Don Becklin, president of Motorcycle Superstore. "We put a very strong focus on both the organization of our site and the site's performance."

A year ago, Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) found that slow-loading pages ranked near the top of the most "annoying" attributes list for online shoppers.

Now, as the all-important online holiday shopping season nears, and the competition for online shoppers increases, a new report from Akamai Technologies advises e-tailers to be on their toes — because a few heartbeats can make the difference between a sale and a lost customer.

The research shows that four seconds is the maximum length of time an average online shopper will wait for a Web page to load before abandoning one retail site and moving on to another.

"The critical takeaway from this research is that online shoppers not only demand quality site performance, they expect it," said Brad Rinklin of Akamai. "Four seconds is the new benchmark by which a retail site will be judged, which leaves little room for error for retailers to maintain a loyal online customer base."

With 46% of online shoppers insisting on a rapid checkout process, and with 55% of shoppers spending $1,500 or more demanding the same, the report contends that online shopper loyalty is contingent upon quick page loading — especially for high-spending shoppers.

In fact, poor site performance ranked second only to high product prices and shipping costs as leading factors for dissatisfaction among online shoppers.

Obviously, page-loading time could be a critical competitive differentiator, particularly during the heavy shopping season when traffic can slow even hardy systems. And plenty of sites should be worried. During normal business periods, almost half of the retailers on the Internet Retailer "Top 500" sites list have response times in excess of four seconds.

This holiday season, no speed could be dangerous for online retailers.

For more on Internet retail, read eMarketer's...

2006-10-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Gears Toolbar, Bookmarks For Social Search
"By Nicholas Carlson

Looking to bring social search to the mainstream and answer moves from rival Google (Quote), Yahoo (Quote) today put new versions of its Toolbar and Bookmarks products into beta testing.

The new Yahoo Toolbar features a bookmarks button to save and access bookmarks from any computer and a "search suggest" function that pairs search queries with relevant saved bookmarks.

The new Yahoo Bookmarks tool wears a new AJAX user-interface and features the ability to organize bookmarks through traditional folders or "tags."

Users can also now share their bookmarks with friends via e-mail or Yahoo Messenger..."

2006-10-09T15:44:00.000-07:00

Google to acquire video site YouTube for $1.65 billion
"By Eric Auchard
1 hour, 30 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) said on Monday it agreed to acquire top video entertainment site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock, putting a lofty new value on consumer-generated media sites.

The deal, the first to value one of the new crop of user-participation Web sites at more than $1 billion, combines two of the most popular Internet brands: Google, synonymous with Web search and rapid innovation, and YouTube, a Silicon Valley upstart that has spearheaded the video-sharing craze.

In anticipation of the acquisition, investors pushed shares of Google up $8.50, or 2 percent, on Nasdaq on Monday to a closing price of $429.00 -- a level not seen since late April. In extended-hours trade following the announcement of the deal, Google stock dipped to $427.63.

The stock had already gained about 2 percent on Friday when reports emerged that a Google-YouTube deal might be in the works. In the last two trading days, Google has added nearly $4 billion in market capitalization, or more than twice what the company has agreed to pay for YouTube..."

2006-10-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

Chris Seline's Searchles: Social Search Beyond the Limits of Collective Wisdom

"Collective wisdom has its limits."

"This is my favorite quote from my interview with Searchles CEO Chris Seline.
Because it's true. And the Searchles solution (a three month old solution at this point) indicates a compelling direction for social search.

First, Searchles built a social network for its users in addition to enabling them to add comments, content, votes and tags.

Second, Searchles enables users to pick and choose who from their network - or outside their network - affects the relevance of their individual searches.

And by the way they're hiring.

Without further ado I give you Chris Seline. And, Mr. Seline, I have some follow up questions for you at the end of the interview that you're welcome to email me answers to or just respond in comments :)

1) Please describe your aspirations for Searchles.
We want users to discover Searchles and spend time getting to know us. We want them to tell us what they like, what we can improve and what they can’t do but would like to be able to do. We want them to tell their friends about it. And we want to do a great job of meeting and exceeding their expectations so they’ll continue to come back and tell their friends about it. Along the way, we want to make it profitable.

If we can be the impetus for world peace, invent the magic bullet that prevents every computer in the world from ever crashing again, and ensure that everyone in the world has an unlimited supply of Vitamin Water – well that would be good too – but we try not to wear rose-colored glasses or drink the Kool-Aid of irrational ambition.

2) Do you think a "Google Killer" is possible at this point?
Anyone who says yes is going to sound like a moron in some circles, albeit one day, they might just be a prophetic one. That said, MySpace and Youtube have shown that viral sites can become insanely popular within a year or two and so the idea is not far fetched.

3) Do you think it will come from the social search ranks?
That’s a big piece of the puzzle but there are others. I think you’re more likely to see a new hybrid that combines several disruptive technologies and ideas for implementing them where social search is the centerpiece.

4) What differentiates Searchles from other social search sites besides its social network?
Our search is better – we built it in house - and it is the fundamental component that drives the growth of our platform. Bookmarking, tagging, sharing and rating sites are a dime a dozen. But I’ve seen few answer the question “what for?” – what’s in it for the user? That’s where we’re different and where search comes into play.

Through search, we make it very easy for our community to connect with their existing friends and find new friends who share common interests when and how they want. We also give our community more control over who influences their search for people or content, when and how. i.e. focus only on your own content, friends, friends of friends, groups, etc. Taking this approach is a much more intelligent application of features and functionality that are otherwise ubiquitous and adds more value to the user experience.

Collective wisdom has its limits. Tapping into the masses has value - and we allow that - but we also enable users to filter out the static and focus on searching and interacting using content and/or people they trust. New features we’re working on will further advance this concept.

5) What do you see as the key challenges of search and how does Searchles address these?
Search is always going to be about relevancy. Google has done an amazing job making search relevant for a good percentage of queries, but they really only offer one angle on search. On Searchles, by leveraging the knowledge of the people you trust, you can perform searches that are personally relevant. But we don't stop there, we also let you borrow the persona of someone else and let you perform searches that are relevant to them. What if I'm not a Linux expert, and none of my friends are, but I want to do some searches from the point of view of someone who is? I can locate a Linux expert and conduct a search that leverages their knowledge and connections. This is the future of search.

6) What is the hardest part about social search?
Achieving a critical mass of users so that there is enough data in the system to dig as deep as you want to into topics of interest and tap into the best expertise. Right now we offer tremendous value in the ability to submit, tag, and share favorite sites and quickly search to identify trends and experts that might otherwise be unapparent. Beyond any one individual, this has huge applications for research, business intelligence and knowledge synthesis even with a small community if that community consists of others you trust. But social "search" will not be a substitute for traditional search until there are enough users in the system.

7) How do you address that?
Partnerships. Searchles can add value to any site with original content that has an established user base by providing a more engaging and interactive experience for their users.

8) I spoke with Eurekster's CEO about his attempted work with social network Friendster. He indicated that social network data was too horizontal to be made useful to relevance. What are your thoughts on the value of a social network to relevance?
Huh? Tell Friendster to call us. We can help. Eurekster is taking a different approach to social search and has a different customer. For their purposes, perhaps that might be true, but when you have the ability to leverage the actual connections between people, that changes the ballgame completely. Not only can you create more personally relevant results, but you can figure out who the "experts" are by analyzing the network using algorithms akin to Google's PageRank.

9) How many users do you have?
When you register, we’ll have one more! It’s not as large as others in the space, but respectable for where we are. We only came out of the box three months ago and have done practically no marketing although we’re ramping up for that.

10) What is your user growth rate?
Hard to put a number on it that will have any meaning a month from now. We’re only 3 months old. Registered users currently tend to surge when we announce something new. We also are fortunate that many of them have really taken a liking to the site and are driving their friends to it. Check back in three months and I think we can give you a better picture of our current and projected growth rate.

11) What are you doing to increase this growth rate?
Staying focused on delivering great features and functions that add value to what users and potential partners want to do. We’re less concerned about the quantity right now and more concerned about the quality – i.e. actively engaged users. Having a million registered users is worthless if the majority of them never come back.

12) How many users do you project you will need to have in order to be profitable?
We can make Searchles profitable with as few as 50,000 actively engaged users. That of course involves introducing advertising and other revenue generating mechanisms. We’re focusing on doing that in a way that adds value to rather than annoys our community and by doing so, provides greater value to advertisers as well..."

2006-10-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

Too Much Money, Not Enough (Good) Companies
"So says Sevin Rosen, which VentureBeat discovers will return the money it raised to investors. Is this a sign? From the story:

...in a letter sent to its investors Friday, a copy of which was obtained by VentureBeat, the firm made a surprising about-face. It told the investors it had decided there is “too much money,” “too many deals funded in almost every conceivable space,” and a “terribly weak exit environment.” Moreover, it sees no changes in the foreseeable future.

The story was broken by the Times (covered here by Stowe) and used as a peg to wonder aloud: is VC model working anymore?..."

2006-10-09T06:57:00.000-07:00

Another Reason YouTube Is Like Google....
"It has to deal with making judgements about what is right and wrong. See this piece from the Times:

YouTube users can flag any video as containing pornography, mature content or graphic violence, depicting illegal acts or being racially or ethnically offensive. A video is removed — as Ms. Malkin’s was on Sept. 28 — only if a review by the company’s customer support department agrees that it is inappropriate, or that the video is on its face in violation of the site’s terms of use.

But the incident raised some questions about the fine line YouTube’s administrators walk when they decide to respond to users’ complaints about contributions to the site — a mechanism that is fraught with the potential for vindictive shenanigans..."

2006-10-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

New Search Patent Applications: October 6, 2006 - Google Takes Over the Patent Office

There were some interesting new patent applications this week from Yahoo, Microsoft, and IBM, but nothing on the scale of the outpouring of intellectual property published and assigned to Google - I uncovered 15 new patent applications from the Mountain View search giant. I'll address patent applications from those others in a later post. This post looks at Google's filings.

Some of the topics covered include:

Natural language questions and answers from a search engine,
Query rankings and mid-page refinements,
A detailed personalization system,
Advertising and email contacts amongst members of a social network,
Bringing together advertisers and advertising agents,
Addressing different audience segments with ads,
Improving the value of pay-per-impression advertising,
Data embedded in hardware devices to help target advertisments, and;
Sharing Settings and other data across browsers (and Office applications)..."

2006-10-09T06:45:00.001-07:00

5 Basic Tips For DMOZ Listings

"With all of the recent buzz about linkbaiting, social media optimization, and the wealth of new vertical search engines launching on the market, sometimes it’s easy to glance over the basic do’s and don’ts in the world of search engine optimization. We’ve discussed link building and directory submittals before in the past, and it’s time to revisit some of this discussion.

Hands down, the top three directories where a site should be submitted are Yahoo.com, Microsoft bCentral Small Business Directory and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ).

Quality sites can be added instantly into bCentral and Yahoo via payment, but a link in the DMOZ can be a little difficult, especially if you don’t know any editors..."

2006-10-09T06:43:00.001-07:00

Google Blog Was Hacked : It’s Official

"For those of you who have been following the story of the rather odd message posted on the Google Blog Friday evening which read;..."

2006-10-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

Universal and YouTube land deal
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group on Monday said it has landed a distribution deal with the top online video site YouTube, ending a public dispute over protecting the rights of its artists online.

The music group controlled by France's Vivendi (VIV.PA) will offer YouTube users access to thousands of videos from Universal's archives and let YouTube users incorporate songs from its music catalog into their own videos.

The deal is the second by a big music company for YouTube, following a similar deal it signed with the Warner Music Group Corp..."

2006-09-28T04:47:00.000-07:00

Behind the Scenes in the Search Engine Labs
"...Yahoo Labs
According to Horowitz, Yahoo labs' four areas of focus are community, microeconomics, information navigation and search, and user experience. For example, when analyzing communities, Yahoo researchers look at the following information:

How to know what to believe
Trust models online and propagation
What makes communities thrive and wither
Tagging images and videos, and sharing these file types
Horowitz said that Yahoo believes in better search through people. "Writing algorithms to understand what is in an image is extremely difficult, for example," he said. "People plus algorithms is better than algorithms alone."

Algorithms have evolved considerably since 1995. Horowitz characterized search algorithm evolution into four phases:

...

Phase 4: Social search. Builds on all earlier technologies. "Subjective queries rely on domain expertise," said Horowitz. "With social search, we are handing back domain expertise to the users."..."

2006-09-28T04:32:00.000-07:00

Google to File Motion in Orkut Case
"RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Google Inc. will file a motion in response to a Brazilian judges' deadline to turn over information on users of the company's social networking service Orkut, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

On Aug. 22, Federal Judge Jose Marcos Lunardelli gave Google's Brazilian affiliate until Sept. 28 to release information needed to identify individuals accused of using Orkut to spread child pornography and engage in hate speech against blacks, Jews and homosexuals or face daily fines of $23,000.

Google spokeswoman Debbie Frost said the company would instead file a brief in court explaining why it can not comply with the judge's order.

"We have and will continue to provide Brazilian authorities with information on users who abuse the Orkut service, if their requests are reasonable and follow an appropriate legal process," said Frost who was in Sao Paulo for the court date.

"It is and always has been our intention to be as cooperative in the investigation and prosecution of crimes as we possibly can, while being careful to balance the interests of our users and the request from the authorities," she added.

Google claims that its Brazilian affiliate cannot provide the information because all the data about Orkut users is stored outside Brazil at the company's U.S.-based headquarters.

Google maintains that it is open to requests for information from foreign governments as long as the requests comply with United States laws and that they are issued within the country where the information is stored, Frost said..."

2006-09-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

Over 30 Domain Names Transferred to Google

"We’ve posted in the past about Google having “google-related” domain names first registered by others (domain name squatters?) transferred back to Google Inc. Friday, was a big day for this type of thing with over 30 .com domains transferred to Google Inc. Basically, more IP for the Google stable.

A guess (only a guess) is that some/most/all of these domains were registered by a person in Belvidere, Illinois, using GoDaddy’s registration services on November 5, 2005 or November 15, 2005. The cached pages (some still online at various times this month, using the Google Cache) are all placeholder pages. We’ve linked to a few of them..."

2006-09-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Good overview of the problem. Begs the question; "why don't they just stop allowing parked domains?" (other than the obvious greed factory). Are they that short sighted?

"Click Fraud
The dark side of online advertising

Martin Fleischmann put his faith in online advertising. He used it to build his Atlanta company, MostChoice.com, which offers consumers rate quotes and other information on insurance and mortgages. Last year he paid Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO )and Google Inc. (GOOG ) a total of $2 million in advertising fees. The 40-year-old entrepreneur believed the celebrated promise of Internet marketing: You pay only when prospective customers click on your ads..."

2006-09-24T19:48:00.001-07:00

BusinessWeek Covers Click Fraud
Literally - it's the cover story this week. Gary has a great round up here.

2006-09-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

Want To Be a Google Lab Rat?
"Google has a form up for you to request to become a "User Experience Research" at services.google.com/inquiry/user_study. Google is "currently looking for Google Page Creator users to participate in a user study to improve our product."

So if you love Google, like to test things, and enjoy Page Creator, then fill out the form..."

2006-09-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

Huckabuck - ineresting. The tuner has some nice features. "
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/09/web_20_ads_anot.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_techbeat

...a "Web 2.0 search engine" called Huckabuck, is up for sale on eBay. Yeesh. Maybe even worse, it has gotten 33 bids as of Monday night, but at $8,300, bidders haven't yet hit the reserve price, which I'm betting isn't hitting the billion or two of more famous Web 2.0 startups...."
http://www.huckabuck.com/

2006-09-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

It's an interesting model but it seems difficult/risky... Best of luck to them! (wonder who's doing their algorithmic results?)
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060904-044533

"New Engine 'ChaCha' Offers Real-Time Answers From Live 'Guides'

Part Wikipedia, part Yahoo Answers and part About.com, ChaCha is a new search engine with a compelling hook – real-time results from human beings. The site launches (in "Alpha") today and offers users two ways to search: traditional algorithmic results or help from live "guides." Users interact with guides via an embedded instant messaging window in the search results page.

Brad Bostic, co-founder of ChaCha, said that the site had lined up about 2500 guides at launch: college students, retirees, stay-at-home moms and others "who are online all day anyway." But not just anyone can become a guide apparently; you have to be "sponsored" (invited by an existing guide) and work your way up a hierarchy consisting of four levels.

New guides are considered "apprentices" and are matched with areas of personal interest and expertise. New guides also have mentors, more experienced guides who monitor their work. Apprentices cannot interact with the public initially and must pass several tests for speed, quality and accuracy. If they meet these requirements they become "pros."

Pros then get the chance to interact with the public and will be paid (US$5 per "search hour"). After pro come two other levels: "master" and ultimately "elite." Elite-level guides make US$10 per search hour. But once you become a master you're eligible to earn 10% of what your "network" makes. Your network consists of those you've brought into the "ChaCha Underground" (the community of guides).

The challenges of this entire concept obviously revolve around the cost structure and how many guides ChaCha can recruit to make the real-time aspect of this work well. It was clear from my conversation with Bostic, however, that ChaCha has carefully thought through these issues. The company has developed financial and ego-based incentives to recruit and retain guides and various mechanisms to help maximize the quality of their results.

While Bostic believes that most people will get and stay involved because of altruistic reasons (think Wikipedia), the modest financial rewards and four levels of "initiation" (my term) may add additional appeal for prospective guides. As mentioned, there's also a community aspect. Guides have profiles, featuring their areas of expertise and most recent answers. They're also rated by users..."

2006-09-05T11:05:00.001-07:00

Is Google going to be able to sell this??
http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/2006/09/02/google-apps-outside-googlecom/

Google Apps Outside Google.com
Google has launched a signup form for Google Apps, which would allow organizations to put Google tools on their own domains in “private label” versions. The tools currently being offered (and this is in beta) are Gmail, Google Talk, Google Page Creator, and Google Calendar. You can sign up at https://www.google.com/a/. It looks like services for the term of the beta will be free, but after that it will cost, but organizations who sign up for the beta will continue to receive services for free (that’s how I’m reading it.)

(And I’m a bit surprised that Google’s doing this, really. Traditionally search engine companies have had a very difficult time serving the general public and enterprises at the same time. It seems that usually the company eventually gives up and spins off/ sells one of the two focuses. Of course, Google’s TOS for this service makes it very clear that they’re not responsible for support or providing end-user help, so maybe they see themselves as more of a only-slightly-involved hosting service.)

You’ll need a Google account to sign up. Once you’re signed up, Google asks you a bunch of questions, including organization name, type, country, how many accounts you need, what you’re currently using, your level of involvement in tech decisions in your company, etc. (A couple of the questions are optional.) From there you go into the administration/nuts-and-bolts of setting up an account and choosing the Google services you want to run (you can run two out of the four available.) Google has well-documented this process and has lots of help pages.

Obviously anyone who has privacy concerns vis-a-vis Google is not going to want to do this, and as the Google Apps TOS makes it clear that Google can serve ads, some users might have an issue with having their employees peppered with ads while trying to do their work (and possibly being distracted away from what they’re supposed to be doing?) Getting some of these services up and running, like Google Mail, requires a certain level of nerdness that may be daunting, like adjusting MX DNS records.

On the other hand perhaps a group of organizational users are already scattered across several different free Web mail services and an administrator would find it easier to gather them all in one place. Or the organization has Web mail from their Web hosting service and finds it minimal compared to an offering like Google Mail. I can equally come up with reasons for an organization to try this and for them to avoid it completely. The more interesting question to me is: will Google be able to successfully and profitably balance offerings for the general public and for enterprise users? Will the method of advertising serve as a sufficient (and sufficiently profitable) common denominator for those two groups?..."

2006-09-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/newsanalysis/technet/10307019.html
"YouTube Hires Yahoo! Treasurer

By TSC Staff
9/3/2006 3:05 PM EDT

YouTube is not only grabbing an ever-larger online audience. It's also attracting first-string Silicon Valley executives.

The video-sharing Web site, founded just 19 months ago, has hired Yahoo! (YHOO - commentary - Cramer's Take) Treasurer Gideon Yu as its chief financial officer, according to a report Saturday in The Wall Street Journal.
The hiring shows YouTube is maturing and might begin pursuing deals or an IPO, the report noted.

YouTube's users now watch more than 100 million videos a day, making the start-up competitive in the online video arena against Internet goliaths like Google (GOOG - commentary - Cramer's Take).

This isn't the first time YouTube has snatched an executive from Yahoo!, the report noted. Earlier this year, it hired Tony Nethercutt to build its ad sales team...."

2006-09-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

Talk about some privacy issues!!!:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060904-105025

"Google To Fingerprint Voices With PC Microphones

This weekend The Register published an article named Google developing eavesdropping software. The article describes how Google uses existing PC microphones fingerprinting technology to show relevant ads that appeal more to you. The article goes on to explain how the sound fingerprinting works; it "breaks sound into a five-second snippets to pick out audio from a TV, reducing the snippet to a digital "fingerprint", which it matches on an internet server." Privacy folks are worried about the repercussions of such software..."

2006-09-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=3768
"Google Flagging Sites with Too Many Subdomains

In a post last week about Robert Scoble visiting the Google Plex and the Windows Live Writer blogging tool, Matt Cutts lent a hint that Google is monitoring and flagging sites which launch too many subdomains at one time. Seems that the Live Windows team is using sub domains for almost every new product they add to the Live.com product line (example: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/).

So, for those of you who think that launching hundreds of subdomains from an authority site is a sure bet to long term high spammy rankings on Google, think again because Google is watching the sites using this technique..."

2006-08-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Google unveils Office rival | InfoWorld | News | 2006-08-28 | By Ted Samson:
"With Microsoft Office clearly in its long-range sights, Google today launched a package of Web-based productivity apps.

The offering, called Google Apps for Your Domain, comprises Google services that all have seen the light of day: Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator.

Notably absent from the menu are Writely and Google Spreadsheets, which respectively provide basic word-processing and spreadsheet functions that would be essential for a productivity suite, a la the more feature-rich Microsoft Word and Excel. Also, Google has yet to unveil an application that could rival Microsoft PowerPoint.

With Google Apps for Your Domain, organizations can tailor the included applications' UIs with their own branding, and they can pick and choose which services to use. Moreover, there's a Web-based management interface through which admins can manage their user account list, set up aliases and distribution lists, and enable the services they want for their domain. End-users will be able to access their apps from any Web-connected computer.

For the time being, there's one package available: the Standard Edition. Still in beta and free to use, it offers 2GB of e-mail storage per user as well as customer service for admins via e-mail or an online help center. According to Google's announcement, organizations that sign up during the beta period will not ever have to pay for users accepted during that period (provided Google continues to offer the service).

The Standard Edition may meet the needs of mom-and-pop Web sites and other such small organizations, but not larger companies. However, Google says that a premium version of the package is under development "for organizations with more advanced needs. More information, including details on pricing, will be available soon."

Google acknowledges in its announcement that it will eventually reach out for the enterprise, as well as ISPs and universities..."

2006-08-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

eMarketer.com - What Do 'Heavy Users' Do Online?:
"What Do 'Heavy Users' Do Online?

AUGUST 30, 2006

Americans are using the Internet more and more, and advertisers want to know how.

The subtitle of "The New Digital Divide" study from Universal McCann (UM) says it all: "How the New Generation of Digital Consumers Are Transforming Mass Communication." In other words, things are changing in Adland.

"No longer can we simply broadcast our messages to a mass audience and hope that our standard metrics of reach and frequency will guarantee success," said David Cohen, the author of the report.

The vanguard of the new digital consumer is the heavy Internet user, and UM defines a "heavy" Internet user as someone who has accessed the Web at least 11 times in the previous seven days, and estimates that close to 100 million people in the US, or about one-third of the country's population, fit that description.

To gauge the impact of new media on communication and advertising, a group of 1,000 heavy users — all between the ages of 16 and 49 — was asked what new technologies they currently use online and what they intend to use in the future. The most-used technology was instant messaging (IM), followed by price-comparison sites and social networks.

Although podcasting and IPTV are garnering a great deal of media attention, only 13% of heavy Internet users currently download podcasts and less than 7% watch or download video content — though almost 20% said they would use them in the future.

The most common activities of heavy users were shopping and buying, with a solid 84% of respondents claiming to have done both.

Blogging is also an online activity that has received a lot of press, and according to UM there is good reason for it. In fact, 62% of respondents said they have participated in some kind of blogging activity.

Only 7% of heavy Internet users ages 35 to 49 have their own blog, but 22% of heavy users between 16 and 34 do.

With over one-third of bloggers against the practice, UM advises advertisers to be cautious when using blogs to sell a product.

Because of the survey's concentration on heavy Internet users, you might expect respondents to be drifting away from other media. But that wasn't the case. When asked which information source they would miss most, television topped off the list, with 28% of users still wanting their TVs. Web sites were second and e-mail was third on the list. Radio and newspapers followed.

The report concluded: "It is clear from this research that emerging technology is having a big influence on U.S. consumer behavior, methods of social interaction and media consumption. Nearly 90% of heavy Internet users are shopping online and researching future purchases. A good majority of frequent online visitors are already using instant messenger to interact with others and nearly half of younger heavy Internet users are active in online social networking. Additionally, an increasing number of younger online consumers are creating content with their own blogs."

But balancing that point of view, the report's authors stated: "However, this does not mean the end of traditional advertising. Despite the substantial impact, our study also indicates that consumers are still relying on traditional media formats such as TV and magazines for entertainment as well as information sources."

For more information on digital marketing, read the eMarketer report E-Mail and Word-of-Mouth: Connect with Your Best Customers..."

2006-08-17T11:43:00.000-07:00

Valley Boys:
"...Digg's stature changed dramatically that day. It is now the 24th-most popular Web site in the U.S., nipping at the The New York Times' (No. 19) and easily beating Fox News (No. 62), according to industry tracker Alexa.com. More than 1 million people flock to Digg daily, reading, submitting, or 'digging' some 4,000 stories. As on many Web 2.0 sites, people register and create online profiles. Then these 'diggers' can upload links to stories and blogs they want to share from other news portals like Yahoo! (YHOO ) News or mainstream media sites like The Washington Post. Users can click a 'digg it' button that essentially casts a vote for the content. They can also hit the 'bury' button. The stories with the most 'diggs' zoom to the top of the page. Of the free labor that is the 'Digg Army,' 94% are male; more than half are IT types in their 20s and 30s making $75,000 or more. It's a demographic advertisers lust after.

COMMUNITY FIRST, ADS LATER
That's why some smart money is on Digg to become an ad magnet � la MySpace.com. (NWS ) Some even refer to Digg as the new New York Times. News sites are discovering they can benefit too: Get a story on Digg's front page, and in comes a flood of traffic from people clicking on the link to read the story on your site. Digg gets advertising via Federated Media, the company Silicon Valley veteran John Battelle created to pair Web sites with advertisers (Digg sparingly places ads in a narrow band at the top of the Web page). So far, Digg is breaking even on an estimated $3 million annually in revenues. Nonetheless, people in the know say Digg is easily worth $200 million.

It's not as dot-com déjà vu as it sounds. YouTube, the enormously popular video site, posts similarly fledgling revenues, but some experts say it could easily fetch $500 million. What's more, Digg registered users have been doubling every three months. As such, Digg is attempting to follow the path laid out by Google Inc (GOOG ). and now being adopted by many Web 2.0 companies: focus on building a user community, and the ads will follow. "It's one of those things where we know we could put crazy ads all over the site and clutter it up, but we don't want to do that," says Rose. "We have a clear path toward becoming a profitable company, and we're fully funded. We don't have to worry about it now, as long as we keep hitting our numbers."..."

2006-08-17T08:35:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal - Social Media Optimization : 13 Rules of SMO:
"Cameron Olthuis at Pronet Advertising has a nice write up on optimizing for social media, dubbed Social Media Optimization (SMO) by Rohit Bhargava.

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

There has been some cross blogging back and forth between Rohit, Cameron, and Jeremiah Owyang on the rules of Social Media Optimization, and I’ll add a couple more.

Here’s a summary of what they’ve put together to date:

1. Increase your linkability : Think blogs, content, aggregation & linkbait.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy : Include calls to action for users to tag, bookmark and Digg your stuff. I’d suggest the Sociable Plugin if you have a Wordpress powered blog.

3. Reward inbound links : List blogs which link back to you via permalinks, trackbacks or recently linking blogs (like the Yahoo & Google blogs do).

4. Help your content travel : Content diversification can lead to mobility of your content beyond the browser.

5. Encourage the mashup : Let others use your content or tools to produce something a bit different or outside of the box with your stuff, even RSS.

6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you : Add value and outbound links, even if it doesn’t help in the short term, it will in the long.

7. Reward helpful and valuable users : Give your contributors and readers the recognition they deserve.

8. Participate : Get in there and get involved in the discussions going on among the blogs and sites of others, and do it organically. Earn your rep on Digg.com, don’t try and force it.

9. Know how to target your audience : Understand your appeal and those people you wish to attract.

10. Create content : A little bit of rules 1 & 4 here, but the underlying message is know the form of content working for you.

11. Be real : Transparency pays off and no one likes a fake.

And mine:

12. Don’t forget your roots, be humble : Sometimes it can be easy to get carried away being a BlogStar or industry talking head. Remember those who helped you along the way, and that respect will help all involved.

13. Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh : Social Media is changing and morphing by the minute, keep up on new tools, products and challenges in your social sphere..."

2006-08-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal - Cyworld vs. MySpace.com:
"Cyworld, the Korean import which has just launched in the US yesterday, is all set to give MySpace a run for its money with new twist on social networking. While MySpace is a bit behind in its look, template features and basic technology, Cyworld is beyond cool; with virtual rooms, worlds and Asian influenced mobile social networking.

Cyworld users can construct profiles and upload photos, just like MySpace (well, except for using 2006 technology and admin) and also keep journals (blogs) & guest books while also building their own minirooms, minivaults (for files & such), sketchbooks for doodling, and favorite links (think bookmarking).

All of this information is kept within a user’s “Minihome.”

Best of all, and reminiscent of Yahoo’s Social Identity efforts which are in themselves influenced by the Asian web, Cyworld also lets its members construct their own Minime - an avatar in Cyworld..."

2006-08-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

[Sharing eclipses shopping on the Internet]
Technology News : Google removes text link to Froogle:
"On Wednesday, Google removed a text link to its comparison-shopping site, Froogle, and replaced it with one pointing to Google Video, where amateur spoofs uploaded by users mingle with episodes of Dave Chappelle's show.

While Google explained the switch as a philosophical one - more about helping users find new video content than driving traffic to any particular section - some bloggers and Web watchers saw the change as more strategically significant.

'Froogle Dumped for Hot New Girlfriend,' wrote Michael Arrington, who follows Silicon Valley on a blog called TechCrunch. His post also noted that Google has been testing a new layout for the video section. 'We sure don't see this kind of product attention showered on Froogle,' he wrote..."

2006-08-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal - Google's Direction in Content & Video Distribution:
"Kevin J. Delaney of the Wall Street Journal looks into Google’s latest content deals with Viacom’s MTV Networks and Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace.com (two vicious competitors) and how this new Google Video and Advertising direction is key to the company for long term growth.

From Google Sees Content Deals As Key to Long-Term Growth :

Google’s improved relationships with media and entertainment companies reflects the confidence those companies have gained in online distribution in the past year, amid rapid growth in Americans’ consumption of Web video and other Internet content.

But just as importantly, it illustrates a coming of age in Google’s approach to the owners of content it wants to search. One key development: Google has recruited executives from the media and entertainment industries in the past year to negotiate with those companies. Led by David Eun, a Time Warner Inc. and NBC alum who joined Google in February, these teams are prowling for deals and courting potential content partners with visits to Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

Now “we can approach them (the media and entertainment firms) in a way that we can actually do business together and not screw things up,” said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt at a press conference Wednesday.

Making such tie-ups work is crucial to Google’s long-term advertising revenue growth, providing the company with additional places to display lucrative ads, such as alongside video clips. It’s also key to Google’s mission of letting consumers search the world’s information. For years, individuals could access billions of Web pages through Google, which the company indexed without their owners’ explicit permission. Now the company is trying to extend that search to diverse sets of commercial information, including movies and books.

This is a good, public read on Google, content, and its competition with Yahoo and others while appeasing the content and entertainment companies, from the Wall Street Journal..."

2006-08-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits:
"A Dutch dating site for farmers, Farmdate, is suing Google in an effort to stop sponsored sex links from appearing next to search results that lead to its site.

The owner of the site, Pieter Bosch, supported by the Dutch trade union FNV Bondgenoten, claims that the links are very damaging for the image of the site.

Bosch claims it is easy for search engines to prevent sex-related contextual ads (supplied automatically via Google's Adwords program) to show up. His lawyer, Van der Schaft, has in the past two months negotiated such a deal with Google.

The Dutch daily Het Parool quoted Van der Schaft: 'Google refuses, although it is technically very easy to do. Google uses double standards since in the U.S. and France. It does offer possibilities to object against those unwanted associations.'
Google did not want to respond on the case. The court case is expected to come to a close on Aug. 24, 2006..."

2006-08-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

IAC Acquires Controlling Interest in Connected Ventures, LLC, Parent of Leading Comedy Site CollegeHumor.com:
"IAC Acquires Controlling Interest in Connected Ventures, LLC, Parent of Leading Comedy Site CollegeHumor.com

NEW YORK - August 15, 2006 - IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) announced today that it has acquired a 51% stake and full voting control of Connected Ventures, LLC, parent of leading comedy site CollegeHumor.com. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. CollegeHumor is the first site to join IAC Programming, launched earlier this year to buy and build branded online content properties that engage passionate communities.

CollegeHumor delivers comedic content, including videos, pictures, articles and jokes to its core audience of college students and recent graduates. Attracting more than 6 million monthly unique users and generating more than 200 million monthly page views,* the site provides online advertisers across a variety of categories with an efficient vehicle for reaching the desirable young adult demographic..."

2006-08-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: NYT Finds An AOL Searcher:
"A very important piece of reporting, and a powerful reminder of the data corporations and the Govt. have access to.
NYT: A Face Is Exposed For AOL Searcher No. 4417749.

From it:

And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for �landscapers in Lilburn, Ga,� several people with the last name Arnold and �homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia.�
It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends� medical ailments and loves her three dogs. �Those are my searches,� she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her.

I spoke with one of the authors, Tom Zeller, late yesterday, and when he told me they'd easily found this woman, I was, in an odd sense, thrilled. In a way, this advances one of my goals - the silver lining of a data leak like this is that it allows the culture to have a conversation about what we're getting into here by tracking all this data (the Times quotes me saying as much.) Kudos to the Times..."

2006-08-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: Topix:
"Topix expands its News Search ---providing access to article archives long past their expiration in Google or Yahoo news services. From a year of results, you can browse through a graphic timeline of stories relating to you search. Caps sensitive searches are also now a go, 'for the true search geek' (very useful)..."
[See graphic of articles over time]

2006-08-08T07:10:00.000-07:00

BREITBART.COM - Google, News Corp. Sign Search, Ad Deal:
"Google Inc. reached a deal Monday with the owner of MySpace.com to pay at least $900 million in shared advertising revenue and become the exclusive search provider for the popular online hangout.

The deal, which marries the Internet's leading search engine with the top social-networking site, means News Corp. will have essentially paid off the bulk of the $1.2 billion it spent last year to acquire both MySpace and the online video-game company IGN Entertainment Inc.
Under the multiyear deal, News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit will add Google search boxes to MySpace and other sites, likely by the end of the year, and Google will provide search results and keyword ads targeted to people's search terms. Google will also get first rights to sell any display ads not sold by Fox directly.

Because the primary reason people leave MySpace now is to conduct searches on Google, according to Fox executives, letting MySpace users enter such queries directly on the site allows it to retain visitors longer and thus boost its advertising potential..."

2006-08-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

New lease on life for Friendster? | CNET News.com:
"Is some patent medicine the prescription Friendster needs to get back on its feet?

A pioneer in the area of online social networking, the company and its Web site quickly fell from grace. Now it's hoping that a combination of site improvements and a newly granted patent--with others waiting in the wings--can help it get back into the fray. High

The patent is what's garnering Friendster its new notoriety these days.
Granted in June, the patent (7,069,308) describes the use of online computer systems to help people connect and communicate with each other, and to see and manage those relationships, 'within social networks.' It had been filed in June 2003..."

2006-07-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

Can Google tackle tiny upstarts in key new markets? - MarketWatch:
"'Google hasn't succeeded in most things it has tried outside of search,' said Nate Elliott, an analyst with Jupiter Research. 'They just don't seem to have done a lot of other things right.'
Over the past five years, Google has introduced dozens of new features beyond just Internet search in an effort to widen its business beyond search. There's been Gmail, its free, Web-based email; Google Finance for information on stock markets and Google Earth, its beloved satellite imagery and mapping feature, to name just three.

But those efforts were, to a large degree, a matter of Google trying to match widely used features in which big corporate rivals were already established. Gmail competes with Web-based email that's been available from Yahoo Inc., Microsoft and Time Warner's AOL. Another relatively new Google feature, Google Finance, is a competitor of Yahoo Finance.

This year, it's trying to make headway in three new areas of business that are relatively new for both Google and its major competitors. As it's discovering, branching out hasn't had any impact yet on its bottom line..."

2006-07-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

Cracking the social network code - MarketWatch:
"...Back in 2000, I recall sitting down with Internet executives at one of those ancient Internet Summit conferences, run by John Battelle, famed author of 'The Search.'

The discussion: 'How will Google make money?'

Back then, sponsored search was hardly a money maker, online video was running at a painful 15 frames per second on the Web, the word 'iPod' would have raised an eyebrow, email marketing seemed really promising, my space was typically used to describe an area around someone's physical presence, Lance Armstrong had only won the Tour de France twice, and the big debate was whether subscription or branded ad-supported models worked best on the Web.

One possibility raised years ago was that Google could charge $5 a month for usage. Many said that if Google were to charge, its popularity would be usurped by a free alternative. As most observers know, Google eventually copied Overture's (now part of Yahoo) brilliant paid-per-search business model. Some say Google even serendipitously tweaked its model by factoring in the number of clicks as well as price per click to determine the ranking of the ads. Today, sponsored search based on the price an advertiser pays and the popularity of an ad -- in other words, the Google way -- is the No. 1 way to make money on the Web.

Google reported last week that it generated $2.46 billion in sales in the second quarter. Of that amount, just over $1 billion dropped to its cash-flow line, estimates Goldman Sachs. No one fathomed this possibility five years ago. Good thing Google didn't charge. Its quarterly revenue is more than what people paid for all Web content last year. Its cash flow alone in the latest quarter is twice the $503 million that all the Web dating sites generated in sales in 2005. And, online dating from popular sites, such as InterActiveCorp's (IACI : iac interactivecorp com new Match.com or Yahoo Personals, were the No. 1 service people paid for between 2002 and 2004, according to the OPA.

What about social networks?..."

2006-07-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

Advertising Age - Wal-Mart Tries to Be MySpace. Seriously:
"...'The second you try to create boundaries and draw a line around content and put a box around content, it becomes something else. Teens aren't searching for what a company deems relevant, but what they deem relevant,' Mr. Stock said. 'You can't own it. When anyone tries to own it too much, then it becomes a problem. That's the impression I get on this site.'... "

2006-07-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

YouTube: 100 Million Videos a Day:
"Back in March at PC Forum, when someone from YouTube stepped up at a session and mentioned that the video service was streaming 30 million videos a day, I thought she had misspoken. Had to be 30 million a month, I thought.
logo_tagline_sm.gif

No, I was wrong. And today, YouTube just hit 100 million a day.

I have trouble even comprehending this. But I also think that the folks who wonder if YouTube can ever make a business out of it have no imagination. How can you NOT make a business from all those people watching videos?..."

2006-07-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal � Social Search Engines Having the Answers?:
"The LA Times is featuring an Associated Press article which addresses the question of social search & social media and whether the human powered suggestion and citation model will grow to become more useful than, or a cherished and fact checking partner to more ‘traditional’ bot & link based search algorithms.

The article, Do ‘Social’ Search Engines Have the Answers?, goes beyond the happenings at Yahoo Social Media and Google with a featurette on PreFound.com;

At PreFound, launched this year, users contribute to the knowledge pool by submitting clusters of websites that they believe would appeal to like-minded people. As an incentive, the largest contributors even get a share of PreFound’s advertising money.

A visitor looking for information on, say, New Jersey beaches can get the user-recommended sites, grouped by users. One user’s cluster gives you restaurants, Internet cafes and other information on the coastal town of Ventnor City, N.J.

The more people contribute sites, the better the results.

The article also discusses the adaptation of social search over the last year by Google and how Yahoo has repositioned its search offering and presence to a mantra of Social Search. Recently Yahoo launched what might be their most user friendly, revenue building and relevant social media product to date, Yahoo Trip Planner which is chocked full of searchable travel blogs, photos, ratings and suggestions.

More on Yahoo:

Eckart Walther, vice president of product management for Yahoo, said that although traditional search technology could be refined, it would probably remain best for fact-based searches. Social search, he said, provides the promise of answers to more subjective questions.

“If you asked me what the best hotel in San Francisco is, we’re different people, have different friends and different opinions,” Walther said. “Search engines are terrible at answering these kinds of questions.”..."

2006-07-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

eMarketer.com - Blogs, Blogs and More Blogs:
JULY 18, 2006

Welcome to the blogstream.

According to the latest figures from comScore Media Metrix, blogs are not merely becoming mainstream, they are turning into a flood of information. Or, as iMedia Connection put it, "blogs are now as ubiquitous to the web as reality shows are to television."

Scary.

Nevertheless, comScore reports that the traffic to blogs continues to grow, up 56% over the past year to 58.7 million visitors, and that represents 34% of the total Internet audience.

Perhaps more importantly, in a very real way blogs are an indication of how the Internet is shifting from a medium where users gather information into a medium where they disperse information. Willy-nilly the web is tranforming itself into a democracy, a community of millions of voices and opinions.

It is early days, however. Blog visitors still skew young. Users between the ages of 12 and 17 are 21% more likely than average to visit blogs. But, as with other past Internet usage trends, the older population may soon be following in their mouse clicks.

Blog visitation also tend to come from higher income households, with households with incomes of least $75,000 and higher 8% more likely than the average to check out blog material.

"Blogs combine the power of word of mouth with the efficiency of the Internet," said eMarketer Senior Analyst James Belcher. "Companies that want to know what's being said about them should be monitoring the blogosphere, where word — good and bad — spreads quickly."

While comScore makes no claim to tracking the entire online universe of blogs, when it comes to blog networks the researcher found the top-rated blog network was Blogger.com, with 20.8 million visitors in May 2006. MySpace Blogs was second with 14.4 million visitors, and MSN Spaces was third with 9.6 million visitors.

For more information on blogs, read eMarketer's recently-published report The Business of Blogging..."

2006-07-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

Report: Click Fraud Rises in Q2 & High-Priced Keywords Click Fraud Rate At 20.2%:
"...
- The overall industry average click fraud rate was 14.1 percent, slightly higher than the average of 13.7 percent for Q1
- The industry average click fraud rate for high-priced search terms was 20.2 percent. High-priced terms are defined as terms that cost over $2.00. These high-priced terms often make up the majority of an advertiser’s total spend.
- The industry average click fraud rate for companies running online advertising campaigns through:
o Tier 1 search providers, such as Yahoo! and Google, was 12.8 percent vs. 12.1 percent in Q1
o Tier 2 search providers was 20.3 percent vs. 21.3 percent in Q1
o Tier 3 search providers was 27.1 percent vs. 29.8 percent in Q1
- The average pay per click term cost for the top key terms across the five biggest search advertising industries – Retail, Financial Services, Health & Fitness, Technology, and Entertainment – for Q2 was $4.51. This compares to $4.75 from Q1.
- The greatest percentage of click fraud, over 88 percent, originated from within the U.S. and Canada. Outside North America, the greatest amount of click fraud originated from within India. Unwanted click activity originating from India increased 26 percent during Q2.

“One of the most interesting findings from our Q2 data was the difference between the overall average industry click fraud rate and the click fraud rate for the most expensive search terms,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, LLC. “For the first time, we have industry data that clearly shows what many have expected – organizations purchasing higher-priced search terms are significantly more vulnerable to click fraud...”

2006-07-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal � Weighing MySpace.com & Yahoo Popularity:
"Yesterday Hitwise sent out a press release stating that MySpace.com was the most popular site on the Internet during the first week of July. More popular than Yahoo Mail and more popular than Google.

The Hitwise statement and numbers which back it up have caused some questioning by some, including Yahoo, of the practices of Hitwise and its metrics, along with the news channels which have covered the MySpace study.

The simplest way to sum up the Hitwise statement is that the domain, the page, MySpace.com, was the most visited single page last week. And that page experienced more visits than Yahoo Mail, or mail.yahoo.com, last week. Previously, according to Hitwise tracking, mail.yahoo.com was the most visited single domain page online.

MySpace.com is not more popular or visited than Yahoo. Hands down, Yahoo is the most popular property online, and they’ve sent out the numbers to prove it.

The report that Hitwise released yesterday with the headline “MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites” is misleading. The Yahoo! network is made up of many domains and it is not accurate to compare MySpace.com to just Yahoo!’s mail.yahoo.com domain. When taking into account all of Yahoo!’s domains together as an entire network, Yahoo! clearly remains the number one property in terms of audience share, duration share, page view share and days visited per month.

In the U.S. alone, Yahoo! attracts 129 million unique visitors per month, which represents 74 percent of the online population; in comparison, MySpace reaches only 30 percent of the online population with an audience of 52 million unique visitors. In addition, Yahoo! has the largest share of online time spent than any other property: Yahoo! accounts for 13 percent of users’ online time, while MySpace has only 3.2 percent share in users’ online time.

Yahoo! maintains its leadership position as the world’s most trafficked Internet destination online, with a community of more than 500 million unique monthly visitors from around the globe.

Add source: comScore Media Metrix, June 2006

So, yes, we did not try to be misleading by reporting that MySpace.com was more popular than Yahoo in yesterday’s post MySpace.com Most Popular Site in America;

“In a sign of the times, MySpace.com has overtaken Yahoo Mail and Google Search as the most visited web site (page) last week. Hitwise, the web traffic and behavior tracking people, say that MySpace attracted 4.46% of all US visits, which pushed Yahoo Mail down to 2nd place and tops all other web portals.”

Despite the difference in being the most popular site online and the most visited single domain online, it is hard to question the rapid growing popularity of MySpace. Here is a figure from HitWise:

To put MySpace’s growth in perspective, if we look back to July 2004 myspace.com represented only .1% of all Internet visits. This time last year myspace.com represented 1.9% of all Internet visits. With the week ending July 8, 2006 market share figure of 4.5% of all the US Internet visits, myspace.com has achieved a 4300% increase in visits over two years and 132% increase in visits since the same time last year..."

2006-07-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

eMarketer.com - What is the Youth Market's Fave Site?
"It's not MySpace or Facebook.
By Debra Aho Williamson - Senior Analyst

What Web site is most favored by young people? MySpace? YouTube? CollegeHumor.com?

Nope, think more vanilla than that. It's Google, according to a survey of the top 10 favorite Web sites by researcher Youth Trends.

Google was chosen as a favorite site by 34% of males and 31% of females ages 16-25. The quarterly survey was conducted in July 2006 among a representative sample of 1,200 US teens and college students. Respondents were asked, on an unaided basis, to list their three favorite Web sites.

There were some strong differences in responses between males and females. Females were more likely to list social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook among their favorites than males were. Facebook was the second most popular site among females, with 29% calling it a favorite site, but it was the fourth most popular among males (17%). Females placed MySpace third, while males ranked it fifth on the list.

"Among male respondents, Google, ESPN and Yahoo! (not necessarily always in that order) have consistently been the top three favorite sites for some time," said Josh Weil of Youth Trends.

Research by comScore agrees that Facebook and MySpace are more popular among female college students than among males.

Young females also are very interested in photo sharing – hence the appeal of Flickr. And females were more likely to list shopping sites: their favorites include eBay, Target and Amazon (the latter also a favorite among males).

"For females on the Web right now, posting and sharing photos is big, so you can essentially say: females are to digital photos as males are to sports," Weil said.

The Youth Trends survey also asked young people to list their favorites in other media. Among the choices:

Top TV show, males: Family Guy (31%)
Top TV show, females: So You Think You Can Dance (23%)
Top magazine, males: Sports Illustrated (21%)
Top magazine, females: Cosmopolitan (28%)
Top video game, males: FIFA World Cup 2006 (29%)
Top video game, females: Katamari Damacy (21%)
Find detailed analysis of US teens' Internet use in eMarketer's Kids and Teens: Blurring the Line Between Online and Offline report..."

2006-07-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

Microsoft: "Enterprise Search Is Our Business" (It's Not) & Google Can't Have It (They Don't) :
"Microsoft to Google: Hands off enterprise search from News.com and a similar report from The Register both cite Microsoft Chief Operating Office Kevin Turner declaring 'enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business.'..."

2006-07-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

TechCrunch � Blog Archive � Bebo Shuns $550 Million Acquisition Offer:
"San Francisco based social network Bebo, which recently raised $15 million from Benchmark Capital, rejected a £300 million ($552 million) acquisition offer from British Telecom Group “a few weeks ago”, according to an insider on the transaction. Bebo’s asking price? North of $1 billion.

A Benchmark representative wouldn’t comment on whether or not the rumor was accurate, but did stay on the phone with me long enough to say that “there has been a lot of interest from a lot of people around Bebo”.

Bebo has been on fire recently, and now has more than 25 million registered users and 3 billion monthly page views. Myspace, for comparison, has 70+ million users and nearly 30 billion monthly page views.

The success of Myspace (controlled by Fox Interactive Media) has led to a series of buyout offers on its competitors. Facebook was rumored to have turned down offers nearing $1 billion from Viacom and Yahoo. It looks like Kleiner’s recapitalization of troubled Friendster late last year for a few million dollars may have been a good bet.

Bebo
This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site."

2006-07-08T08:30:00.000-07:00

SuperPages For Sale:
"Verizon has formally filed with the SEC to sell its directory unit, which contains the print yellow pages and online yellow pages/local search businesses. A likely sale could bring as much as $15 billion. And because AT&T does not look like it's going to spin off its directory business, SuperPages could fetch a significant premium.

Verizon has been by far the most experimental and innovative of the US directory publishers to date, embracing PPC marketing and PPCall (including in the print directory). It has also sought to expand the product definition by integrating web search, Shopping.com, eBay listings, ratings and reviews and other content to broaden the utility and usage frequency of SuperPages.com.

Indeed, the company has sought to expand from the notion of a “yellow pages” site into something more like a local shopping portal. The company has also reconceived its role, vis-à-vis local businesses, from strictly a yellow pages publisher to a local marketing agency, which sells print and online yellow pages in addition to other products (including SEM).

Read a longer version of this post on my blog..."

2006-07-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal - eBay Shakes Up Management While Banning Google Checkout:
"Not only did eBay take the questionable move of blacklisting Google Checkout from its approved forms of buyer to seller payment, but now it seems that the Google snowball has eBay shaking up their management team at PayPal. Forbes reports that eBay let one of their heads of PayPal go today; Jeff Jordan, will be leaving the company as part of a major overhaul of senior management.
More from Forbes:

Raji Dutta, formerly eBay’s chief financial officer and currently head of eBay’s Internet-based phone service, Skype, will replace Jordan at PayPal’s helm.

Jordan was well respected in the investment world and was viewed as a potential successor to eBay’s chief executive officer Meg Whitman. He was head of eBay North America from 2000 to 2004 and PayPal from 2004 to 2006.

Other changes include Skype Vice President of Products Alex Kazim’s promotion to president of Skype and the appointment of Lorrie Norrington, president and chief executive of Shopping.com (nasdaq: SHOP - news - people ), as president of eBay International. Norrington replaces Matt Bannick, who will work on eBay’s corporate philanthropy initiatives..."

2006-07-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: Clickfraud cost an est. $800m last year:
"Clickfraud cost an estimated $800 million for advertisers in false hits last year, reports the Financial Times today, based on study by a media firm called Outsell.

And 'more than a quarter of them have reduced their spending as a result...' Google, Yahoo and MSN, 'have avoided putting a number on the incidence of click fraud but Outsell said it averaged 14.6 per cent of all clicks billed to advertisers, even after Google and others had filtered out those ones they believed to be invalid. The 14.6 per cent equates to $800m of the $5.5bn US search engine market in 2005.'

However the number could be off by magnitudes in either direction, Danny Sullivan points out that 'half the advertisers in the survey also reported they do nothing to audit whether they have click fraud happening or not. So Outsell asked them to estimate the percentage of clicks that are fraudulant, and half of them essentially guessed � and that�s making up this industry stat? It could be far less or far more than this guesswork is stating.'... "

2006-07-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: Dear Warner: Don't Shoot Yourself in the Foot - Free Bugs (Again!)! :
"John Kricfalusi, creator of the wonderful Ren & Stimpy series and an all around worthwhile fellow to know (and new FM author) just pinged me with the news that YouTube is disallowing his linking of old Bugs cartoons on his site. Why? Because Warner Brothers, who now owns the copyrights, has no idea how powerful a marketing tool John's blog can be, that's why. All they want to do is prevent folks who might buy DVDs, merchandise, and view ads next to webisodes of Ren & Stimpy and Bugs from, well, buying DVDs, merchandise, and looking at webisodes of Ren & Stimpy and Bugs. Hey Warner, aren't you paying any attention to what is happening out here in the real world? You don't want to upset the creator of Ren & Stimpy, and force YouTube, which is providing a great service, to do the dirty work! Instead, figure out a way to work with the man! He'll help you sell far more stuff. As he pointed out to me:..."

2006-07-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

eMarketer.com - US Internet Ad Spend to Climb by 25%...Or Is That 33%?:
"When looking at ad spending figures, always ask what is being counted

By David Hallerman – Senior Analyst

When Universal McCann announced its latest 2006 ad spending projections at the end of June, two revisions from the firm's December 2005 estimates stood out. While US total media spending in 2005 increased by only 2.8% (in contrast to the earlier 4.6% figure), Internet ad spending in 2006 is now expected to soar by 25% (in contrast to the previous 10% prediction).

With those growth rates moving in two different directions, the picture is clear: more and more ad dollars are moving from traditional media to the Internet. Take national cable TV. In Universal's initial projection for this year, the expectation was for 7.0% growth; now that's at a more realistic 4.5% gain. Similarly, local radio ad spending growth estimates fell from 4.0% to no gain.

There is nothing wrong with amending ad spending projections. All researchers revise as new information becomes available. What's striking about Universal's 25% growth rate for the online space is how it does not include paid search ad spending—the giant that contributes a 40%-plus slice to the entire Internet pie.

Paid search is growing even faster than most other online ad vehicles. When you look at how Google's US advertising revenue (minus traffic acquisition costs, to eliminate double-counting) in Q1 2006 grew by 84% compared to last year's Q1, it appears that even Universal's revised 25% gain might be conservative. And Yahoo!, the bellwether of Internet advertising with its combined search and branding strengths, grew revenues by 35% in Q1.

Since the entire Internet ad space truly includes paid search ad spending along with other online advertising formats such as display ads, video and classifieds, eMarketer predicts a 33.2% jump in US online ad spending this year, to a total of $16.7 billion.

For even more useful information on ad spending, consult the new eMarketer report Local Online Advertising: Measuring the Potential..."

2006-07-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

Another Social Networking Site?:
"Another day, another social networking site. A group of former Microsoft and Apple employees this fall plan to formally launch iBloks, a sort of digital scrapbooking site that lets users customize music, games and photos.

The company hopes to make money off selling 'mods' that can be downloaded and used with the different forms of media. At an unveiling of the beta in San Francisco, for instance, company execs showed a simple drag and drop process for creating a Valentine's card. Drop in a video, type in some captions, then add some photos, and the recipient who receives it in an email or instant message (if they have the applet installed on their pc) will see them in perfect order. For casual games like tic tic toe, you can change the X's and O's to avatars or, potentially, your own picture.

It all seems a little too attention-deficit disorder for my tastes, but the company has gotten some big backers. It announced on Monday it had received $3 million from Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz's venture firm Maveron, after several big media execs participated in the angel round. Seems with the early successes of social networking sites, a lot of people still believe there's room for more..."

2006-07-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Markaboo is awesome open-source social bookmarking:
"Markaboo is a fantastic new social bookmarking tool developed by Christian Romney and Jean Thomas from a company called tglo. It’s open source and has a great feature set.

I’ve used del.icio.us for my social bookmarking for some time, largely out of habit. Other social bookmarking tools have features that are very appealing to me, but none have been compelling and usable enough for me to seriously consider leaving del.icio.us - until now.

The bookmarklet to save to Markaboo includes all the basic fields for URL, title, tags and description. There is a nice option to view all your tags and click those you want to apply.

Users can also enter notes pages and upload files as separate items in their archives; Markaboo is for saving far more than just URLs. One of the best features is that photos and notes can be saved, titled and tagged by mobile phone and email.

Bookmarks and favorites can be imported in a number of different formats. There are simple, unobtrusive google ads on the item pages. The Markaboo user community is made up of programmers right now, but the system is so easy use that the shared bookmarks will likely diversify quickly..."

2006-07-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Wetpaint Launches: Wikis Evolve:
"Seattle based Wetpaint has been in private beta since March. On Sunday night they launched to the world, allowing anyone to create a free wiki on any topic..."

2006-07-05T09:05:00.000-07:00

Shimon Sandler - Blog Archive - Pay-Per-Percentage vs. PPC:
"Microsoft Research is studying & developing advertising auction systems that are “highly robust to fraud”. One researcher has identified Pay-Per-Percentage as a viable alternative to PPC. This is when the advertiser pays-per-percentage of the impressions instead of a Pay-per-click model.

Pay-Per-Percentage is immune to both click fraud and impression fraud. The challenge is that the ads must be shown in a truly random way, across the percentage of impressions purchased. The paper describes prefix-match: which is a system that is similar to broad-match, “but more compatible with pay-per-percentage”..."

2006-07-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Ebay looks to cash in on blogs:
"By Eoin Callan

Published: July 4 2006 17:34 | Last updated: July 4 2006 17:34

Ebay wants to create software tools that will allow the online auction company to cash in on the rapid growth of blogging, a senior executive told the Financial Times.

The group’s plans reflect a wider push by many of the world’s largest companies to tap into the potential revenues from blogs. More than 75,000 blogs are created each day, adding to a current total of about 35m, according to Technorati, which tracks blogs. This rate of expansion has attracted interest from executives from a range of industries.

But many are unsatisfied with their current options for engaging with the fragmented and independent-minded community of bloggers.

Courtney Holtpeter, a strategist at Universal Music, said: “There are not enough touch points between the places that music fans, for example, are finding out about new things and the places they can buy those things.”

Ebay wants to build bridges by developing software which it can then put in the hands of bloggers, allowing them to create links between niche communities and relevant products.

“Our approach would be to develop new tools that we can turn over to bloggers, so they can define the natural shape of the marketplace on their own. That is how Ebay originally developed,” Doug McCallum, UK managing director of Ebay, said in an interview.

He said some of the ideas for this software were likely to come from Ebay’s open-source network.

While Ebay’s plans are still in very early stages, similar software is being launched this week by MeCommerce, a venture-backed company that will allow bloggers to insert product listings inside their blogs and keep 50 per cent of the profits.

The service reflects the kind of embedded approach companies have been groping for.

The idea behind the software is to allow bloggers to recommend music, books, DVDs and T-shirts to readers who can make impulse purchases without leaving the blog. MeCommerce provides the inventory and the distribution using the same partners as Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble, and uses payment systems such as Google Checkout..."

2006-07-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

eMarketer.com - YouTube: 0 to 20 Million in Less Than a Year:
"Site's popularity may leave some asking, 'What's a boob tube?'
By Debra Aho Williamson - Senior Analyst

Anyone who caught the "Today" show anchor team singing the praises of YouTube last week had to be amused at the turn of events.

A few weeks before, NBC Universal was battling with YouTube over copyrighted videos available on the site, even though these videos, which included a clip from "Saturday Night Live", earned a the network significant publicity and attention. But with a deal announced on June 27, NBC seems to have come around. As part of the deal, NBC will promote shows on YouTube, buy ads on the site and mention YouTube in on-air promotions.

Use of YouTube has exploded since the site was launched just over a year ago. According to comScore Media Metrix, the number of unique visitors to the site has grown from 58,000 in August 2005 to more than 12 million in May 2006.

Nielsen//NetRatings says YouTube's visitor rate is even higher; it reported that the site got 20 million unique visitors in May, more than half of whom were between the ages of 35 and 64. Anyone who thought YouTube's audience did not overlap with NBC's target demographic should probably think again.

comScore and Nielsen generally agree in their breakdowns of YouTube's users by age. comScore reports that just under half of the users are between 35 and 64. Its figure for the 18-24 age group is higher because the data includes university users, while NetRatings does not.

Whatever the detail, there is no denying that YouTube generates some impressive usage statistics. In May, each unique visitor viewed an average of 43 pages and spent a total of 36 minutes on the site during the month, according to comScore.

What's next for YouTube? Advertising, for one. The Wall Street Journal says the company is working on a system "with Google-scale ambitions" that will place ads alongside videos.

YouTube also clearly has ambitions in the social network realm; it recently added networking features that enable users to create a profile and link to friends to share messages and videos. At the moment, the site and MySpace, a company that has seen a similarly huge trajectory of users and attention, remain on friendly terms. MySpace users regularly post videos from YouTube to their page and YouTube receives a large amount of traffic from the MySpace site.

Find detailed data on US online video ad spending in eMarketer's Online Video Advertising: Promises and Challenges report..."

2006-06-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

MediaPost Publications - Keyword Prices Fall In Q1 - 06/26/2006:
"by Wendy Davis, Monday, Jun 26, 2006 6:00 AM ET
AFTER SURGING DURING THE HOLIDAYS, the price of purchasing keywords ebbed dramatically last quarter, according to DoubleClick's most recent quarterly report about search pricing.

The "cost-per-keyword" fell to around $30 in the first quarter--from around the yearly high of $59 last December, according to the report. Year-over-year, cost-per-keyword was relatively flat. To arrive at a cost-per-keyword, Performics combines cost-per-click with the volume of clicks; the figure represents the average cost to a marketer of purchasing a keyword for the entire month.

The report confirms an earlier study, released last February, which found that keyword prices were trending down by the beginning of the year.

In its most recent report, Performics proposed that the lower prices of keywords likely stem from marketers curtailing their bids due to a drop in spending by consumers after the holidays. "Some advertisers lead the market by dropping their own bids shortly after the holidays when lower returns make those high bids unsustainable. Other advertisers follow that trend, and have their bids drop automatically when other competitors pull back first," stated the report.

Although the cost-per-keyword was nearly unchanged from the first three months of 2005 to this year's first quarter, the number of keywords in play grew, as did the total number of clicks. Performics reported that the average number of keywords per campaign receiving at least one click per month increased by 36 percent; the total number of clicks soared 24 percent.

Performics also found that consumers didn't click on the highest-priced keywords--often generic terms--as often in the first quarter as during the holidays. While between 5 and 7 percent of all keywords were priced at more than $1, the percentage of clicks on such keywords dropped from the fourth quarter to the first..."

2006-06-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: Mpire:
"The newly launched search site, Mpire, combines product comparisons across multiple sites with product analytics to aid consumer decisions.

Shoppers gain a more accurate picture of market prices with consumer analytics such as bid/price histories on products, and recommendations on optimal days and times to bid. In partnership with eBay, Craigslist, Yahoo, and Overstock, Mpire serves as a convenient access point for users to "search by price, seller, type of payment, location [or] how many bids there are on any given item."

Former Expedia president Matt Hulett joins as CEO: “Think of it as the start of ‘Shopping 2.0’ ― search and analytics to help buyers make smarter and more informed decisions.” Mpire's step toward transparency parallels Farecast, which Battelle wrote about earlier..."

2006-06-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

Search Drives Ecommerce Online and Offline:
"Posted by Jennifer June 23, 2006
According to industry research, most ecommerce sites are not optimized to rank well in the organic search results. Over 80 percent of the Internet Retailer Magazine's top 100 websites were found to lack the basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that would give them high rankings. (skip to 'Search Drives Ecommerce Online and Offline' by Bruce Clay)..."

2006-06-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

Eye Tracking Studies Are Good for More Than Just Search:
"One of the most useful studies to come out in the last few years is the eye tracking study released by the team over at Enquiro. Gord Hotchkiss has done an outstanding job of helping educate search marketers about how searchers interact with search results and what we need to do in order to get better performance from our campaigns. Today, Gord makes an outstanding blog post about eye tracking studies and web site design. While it may not seem like this post has anything to do with search...I'd ask that you think a little outside the box.

You see, one of the primary objections that search engine marketers hear when giving advice is that search engine friendly design is "ugly" and that "design rules" dictate that a good site simply can't be search friendly. That's always been a tough line for some search marketers to argue against because good designers are well trained in what attracts the eyes and what will draw a visitor through the content. The problem is, that these designers are almost always trained on these things in regards to PRINT advertising, not web advertising. Gord's post does an excellent job of proving that what many designers think they know about the web simply isn't true.

In fact, the area of a web site that draws the most eyeballs is the text navigation, showing that searches are now savvy enough to ignore the pretty pictures and focus on the task at hand...finding information..."

2006-06-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

TechCrunch - Blog Archive - Zoho announces an online power-point type tool:
"The online office suite Zoho launched a new presentation tool this week called Zoho Show, for use in creating and displaying remote presentations on the web. Zoho parent company Adventnet is a TechCrunch sponsor.

Thumbstacks appears to be the primary rival faced by Zoho Show, and both have certain advantages and disadvantages.

This newest offering is the 12th Zoho web based application, including a word processor, spreadsheet, chat, CRM, an app creator and more..."

2006-06-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

TechCrunch - Blog Archive - GoodStorm to offer e-commerce widget with 50% revenue split for bloggers:
"San Francisco based GoodStorm will soon launch a new program called MeCommerce that will allow bloggers to insert product listings in a javascript and iframe box on their sites and keep 50% of the retail mark-up for themselves. Blog readers will be able to purchase books and CDs inside the box without leaving the blog page they are on. Blog publishers can populate their boxes by tag or with specific items of their selection. I think this is going to be big..."

2006-06-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

CNN.com - Safety experts critical of MySpace changes - Jun 23, 2006:
"AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- New security measures for young users of MySpace.com won't be enough to stop online child predators, safety experts warned.

Starting next week, the popular online social network will restrict adult access to the information teenagers post about themselves. (Full story)

MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name. That means they won't have access to personal information on their profiles. (Watch how easy it is for underage kids to meet adults on social networking sites -- 2:59)
'They're going to lie about their ages,' said Monique Nelson, executive vice president of online safety advocate Web Wise Kids. 'There's no way to check age verification. In that respect, I don't think that's going to be very effective.'..."

2006-06-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal - YouTube Breaking Into MySpace Territory?:
"Garrett French has the Lowdown on YouTube creeping into MySpace’s backyard with the targeting of musicians and the usage of more personalized profiles. MySpace initially made it big as a central location for music fans to gather and meet on another based upon their musical and pop culture tastes.

Mr. French sees YouTube targeting the active groups of young music fans and perhaps becoming a location where they can share video footage of bands shot with cell phones or camcorders..."

2006-06-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

business2blog: B2Day : Social Status:
"The latest numbers are in from comScore on select social networking and media sites. Traffic in May, 2006 broke down like this (in unique visitors, rounded to the nearest million):

1. MySpace—51 million
2. Classmates.com sites—15 million
3. Facebook—14 million
4. YouTube—13 million
5. MSN Spaces—10 million
6. Xanga—7 million
7. Flickr—5 million
8. Yahoo 360—5 million

Just last February, comScore reported only 37 million visitors for MySpace. And YouTube grew 92 percent in the month of May alone (It's traffic in April was 6.6 million).

So the party is still going strong. But when will the beer run out?"

2006-06-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

MediaPost Publications - Fox Exec: User Info Most Valuable MySpace Asset - 06/09/2006:
"by Shankar Gupta, Friday, Jun 9, 2006 6:00 AM ET
ALTHOUGH MYSPACE HAS BROUGHT SIGNIFICANT traffic to the Fox Interactive family of sites, the biggest asset the network has received from the $580-million-dollar purchase is the information that the sites' millions upon millions of users provide, said Ross Levinsohn, President of Fox Interactive, at a conference in New York City Thursday.

"The digital gold inside of MySpace wasn't the number of users, but the information they're providing, structured and unstructured data," Levinsohn said--both demographic and psychographic data that Fox Interactive can use to suss out the brand preferences of young people on the Web.

Levinsohn said that the site isn't intended to be like a portal, and that "it's more about [users] presenting themselves to the world" by creatively expressing themselves through their MySpace profiles. "It's important for us not to suppress that--not to push content," he said.

More mainstream marketing on MySpace will be kept to the "well-lit" areas of the site, like the Books, Comedy, Film, and Games sections rather than on individual profile pages, which have less strict content controls--something many advertisers have expressed concerns about. ""We want to make it easier for marketers to work with us," Levinsohn said. "We have a lot of work to do."..."

2006-06-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

GigaOM : » Of Social Nets & Business Models:
"Last week at a conference in New York City, the head of Fox Interactive Media, Ross Levinsohn, told the audience:

“More mainstream marketing on MySpace will be kept to the “well-lit” areas of the site, like the Books, Comedy, Film, and Games sections rather than on individual profile pages, which have less strict content controls–something many advertisers have expressed concerns about.” “We want to make it easier for marketers to work with us,” Levinsohn said..."

2006-06-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

Top Microsoft exec heading Google challenge leaves company - Jun. 21, 2006:
"...SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft said Tuesday the executive leading the world's largest software maker's marketing strategy to challenge rival Google has left the company, at a time when Microsoft struggles to solidify new sources of revenue growth.

Microsoft did not detail why Martin Taylor left the world's biggest software maker after the 13-year company veteran was appointed in March to lead marketing efforts for Windows Live.

Microsoft's suite of Windows Live services, which includes e-mail, search, mapping and social networking, aims to unite the company's various Web programs under a unified brand and look so it can better compete against Yahoo (Charts) and Google (Charts) in the fast-growing online advertising market.

The move by Taylor also comes as Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs an estimated 90 percent of the world's personal computers, struggles to find new sources of growth in a software market that is rapidly evolving.

"Advertising is a key component that didn't exist before," said Tim Bajarin, analyst at market research firm Creative Strategies. "Subscriptions are a key component that didn't exist before."

Taylor's departure follows the decision announced last week by Microsoft's co-founder and the world's richest man Bill Gates that over the next two years he would ease out of a day-to-day role at the company to focus more on philanthropy.

Gates, who also stepped down last week as chief software architect for Microsoft, passed the technical mantle to Ray Ozzie. Ozzie joined the software maker last year and is at the heart of its push to maintain its dominance by transforming software into services that generate an ongoing stream of revenue instead of just a one-time sale.

"The fact is that with Ray Ozzie as chief software architect he probably wants to have his own team of people around him," Bajarin said. "In a lot of cases, people from the past don't fit in."..."

2006-06-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

"Unlisted" Picasa Albums Listed on Google:
"So, the first “unlisted” albums of Picasa Web are listed – where else – on a Google web search. (Remember, Google allows you to switch between “public” or “unlisted,” but unlisted doesn’t mean “private.”) Even though Picasa Web disallows indexing of its albums via the robots.txt file, Google still lists the URLs, presumably because it found them linked in public places (which would make the listing more harmless) or saw them transmitted via the Google Toolbar (which would be a bit worse). While I only found two “unlisted” albums* so far in Google’s roughly 200 results – not entering random album titles, but simply following Google’s links – this might foreshadow what’s to come unless Google clarifies their interface.

Larry Page, in the meantime, removed the photo we found in his “unlisted” album.

*Note that when you hit on an “unlisted” album, the title may still read “Public Gallery.” To check if the album is really saved under a “Public” setting, truncate the URL so you’re landing on this user’s overview page, and check if the album you saw is listed there.

Update: Google reworded some parts of the public vs unlisted interface (see the comments for more)..."

2006-06-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

How Billions of Bogus Pages Undermine Search Engines, Advertisers and The Web:
"Over the weekend, Monetize, a blog dedicated to tricking search engines, described how a blackhat got Google to index over 5 billion webpages within three weeks. Yahoo and MSN were fooled, too, though nowhere near as badly. (MSN, for example, indexed just 62 pages before cutting him off.)

Searchers who landed on the pages were treated to copy scraped from legitimate websites, along with Pay-Per-Click ads from Google or Yahoo.

The effort seems to have met some success. Third-party traffic monitor Alexa noticed enough activity to rank at least one of the rogue sites among the 2,000 highest traffic sites on the web. That's a phenomenal ranking for any site, especially a three week old site based in Romania....

...Back in April, spyware hunter Ben Edelman charged that some adware automatically clicks on pay-per-click advertisements presented by Yahoo on the websites of Yahoo syndication partners. And Edelman named names.

He has since joined the legal teams are pursuing Yahoo for enabling Pay-Per-Click fraud...

...As searchers and advertisers grow more restive, the Search-and-PPC biz looks increasingly dicey... especially for those who depend on it for over 90% of their revenue, like Google, whose SEC filing reminds:

The Company's revenues are principally derived from online advertising, the market for which is highly competitive and rapidly changing. Significant changes in this industry or changes in customer buying behavior could adversely affect the Company's operating results...

...What the world needs now is someone with global reach, clean search results, and thoroughly authenticated ad servers.

Could be just what the doctor ordered... for Microsoft?"

2006-06-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: News: Google Pay Per Action Network Test
"According to the SeekingAlpha site, Google is testing a CPA (cost per action) network - the kind of approach Bill Gross is trying at Snap, and many others, like Valueclick, have employed, with limited success so far. Why? Is Google hedging against click fraud and spam? Is this just spaghetti against the wall? I am asking now....so far, this is still officially unconfirmed.

The detail they have over at SeekingAlpha - from a note to one of the members inviting him into the test - is interesting in itself. Google is clearly changing the rules with CPA. For instance:..."

2006-06-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

eMarketer.com - The Internet: Where the Money Is:
"...According to the new eMarketer report, Financial Services Online Marketing, the US financial services industy's online ad spending will increase by 33.3% this year and it will reach $3.52 billion in 2010.

"Last year, financial services accounted for 12% of all online advertising, about $1.5 billion of the total $12.5 billion spent online last year," says Lisa Phillips, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the report. "In fact, the category's total in 2005 represented a decline of 8.1% from 2004 spending levels, when financial services accounted for 17% of all online spending."

This year, however, got off to a fast start, with a huge increase (139%) in the number of financial service display ads served between December 2005 and April 2006, according to report from Nielsen//NetRatings.

The pace will probably remain torrid through the summer, and slacken in the final quarter of the year around the holidays and the Congressional mid-term elections.

"Search advertising, an area not tracked by some researchers, is a major expense in some financial segments, such as mortgages, loans and investments, and a necessary one in all others," says Ms. Phillips. "Cost for pertinent keywords could go higher across the board as more and more debt-strapped US consumers turn to the Internet for help."

In addition, the rich media format, currently the least-used by financial marketers, could gain favor as a way to introduce new products, benefits and financial tools to consumers.

"Financial service marketers are testing more interactive channels to reach consumers," says Ms. Phillips.

Behavioral targeting is one of them: 72% of financial services marketers polled by Forrester Research late in 2005 said they were either using, piloting or planning to try the tactic in 2006. Rich media display ads and contextual targeting were also high on the list.

Emerging tactics, such as blogs, social networks, mobile marketing, podcasts and RSS and advergaming, were less popular, but on the radar of about one-third to one-quarter of the financial services marketers surveyed.

Keep up with the changes — and the competition — read the new eMarketer report, Financial Services Online Marketing, today..."

2006-06-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

Video sites grapple with specter of smut | CNET News.com:
"...Unlike New York's consumer protection board, the federal government does have the power to force change. A bill proposed this month in the U.S. Senate would require any Web site that offers sexually explicit content to post warning labels on each offending page or face imprisonment.

The authors of the bill, called the Stop Adults' Facilitation of the Exploitation of Youth Act, or the Safety Act, want to decrease the chances that children can inadvertently be exposed to pornography by Web sites that mislabel their materials either deliberately or through negligence.

And video-sharing sites are likely to face enormous pressure to clean up their sites from big advertisers. Some companies are eager to partner with the sector's powerhouses but will steer clear if it means that one of their ads sits next to unsuitable content, said Greg Sterling, who operates Web research company Sterling Market Intelligence.

"There's absolutely a big opportunity for these sites to sell advertising, provided that they guarantee (what kind of) content...goes next to the ads," Sterling said. "Advertisers are going to want control of where their brands are placed."

That's not going to be easy for some sites. Take, for example, YouTube, the largest video-sharing site, with nearly 13 million users per month. Guaranteeing the quality of content on the site would mean hiring employees to eyeball each frame of the more than 50,000 videos that get posted daily. YouTube allows videos to last up to 10 minutes, but most are much shorter. If the average video is 3 minutes, then YouTube would be monitoring 2,500 hours worth of video a day.

"It's going to be hard to guarantee absolute protection," said Mike McGuire, a research analyst at Gartner. "You have to wonder if (these sites) foresaw the kind of expense and effort that they are going to have to put into monitoring their sites."...

...YouTube users can flag content they think violates the user agreement. If a video collects enough flags (the company declines to publish the number), YouTube will review the clip, and pull it if executives agree the material is objectionable, Supan said.

But not all flagged material gets pulled. If executives think a clip doesn't violate the agreement, it remains on the site but is accessible only to registered users 18 and older. YouTube encourages visitors to register, a process that requires entering a birth date. People who say they're younger than 13 are barred from registering.

This restriction process, however, can be circumvented. In one instance, News.com encountered a clip that had been flagged and restricted, but an identical, unrestricted clip was available under a slightly different title.

And there's no guarantee that a potentially objectionable clip will come to light to begin with. An unrestricted clip of a female television host in Europe, who spoke to a live audience while wearing only a bikini bottom, was available on the site for at least three days.

Over at Google Video, which also said it relies on user feedback to monitor content, material uploaded in recent weeks includes a parody of a car commercial that features an announcer using numerous expletives during a mock sales pitch.

"Self-policing flat out doesn't work," said Peter Pham, director of business development at Photobucket, a fast-growing photo-sharing site that has recently jumped into video. "The problem is that most of the people finding this material are the people who are looking for this material. And they aren't going to complain."

By eyeballing each frame of every clip submitted, companies such as Photobucket and San Diego-based start-up vMix want to avoid angering advertisers or family advocates. All videos on Photobucket's site get reviewed, Pham said. The company has developed software that creates a frame-by-frame "map" of a video, allowing workers to evaluate content at a glance, Pham said, adding that Photobucket recently hired 50 people to monitor incoming video and photos.
In other news:

* A bill of rights for Net users?
* Online shifts for Windows
* Road Trip 2006: At the helm of the 'Spruce Goose'
* News.com Extra: The vacancy fit for a king
* Video: Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose

A family-friendly site doesn't come cheap. The projected cost of all of this is $2 million per year, Pham said. VMix is doing something similar on a smaller scale...."

2006-06-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

Right Media launches online ad auction | CNET News.com:
" New York-based Right Media was set to launch an automated online ad exchange Monday that would allow Web sites to auction off display ad space to the highest bidder, rather than having to go through ad networks or agencies that set prices and take a cut.

Right Media offers advertisers the option to bid on non-premium, or commodity ad space, for display or banner ads, said Michael Walrath, chief executive of Right Media.

It serves as an alternative to ad networks in which prices are set, like Yahoo Publisher Network and ValueClick, he said. Right Media Exchange will take, on average, 7.5 percent of each transaction, he added.

After 15 months of building up the platform, Right Media Exchange has 11,000 advertisers and $12.5 million in total revenue changes hands on the exchange monthly, according to Walrath..."

2006-06-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Journal » New York Times Happy About (.com) Online Results:
"...* May 2006 advertising revenues for the Company’s business units increased 4.4% and total Company revenues increased 4.0% compared with May 2005.
* The Internet ad revenues included in the three media groups above increased 26.9% due to continued robust growth in both display and classified advertising.
* At the end of May, TimesSelect, the fee-based product on NYTimes.com that includes The Times’s distinctive columnists and extensive access to its archives, had approximately 490,000 subscribers, with about 63% receiving TimesSelect as a benefit of their home-delivery subscriptions and 37% receiving it from online-only subscriptions.
* Advertising revenues for About.com rose 59.0%. May’s growth was principally due to a significant increase in cost-per-click advertising. In addition, strength in display advertising continued with increased revenues from the retail, telecommunications, technology and consumer package goods categories. About also showed strong gains in revenue from pharmaceutical, financial, travel, entertainment and auto advertisers. (emphasis mine)..."

2006-06-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

Mining for Gold on MySpace:
"...Yet for an operation of its size, MySpace still generates only a small amount of revenue. Its nearest rivals on the Web are multibillion-dollar companies. News Corp. won't say how much revenue MySpace generates, but one person familiar with the company says it makes about $100 million in banner ads. That's not bad for a startup, especially since industry insiders say it was generating several million dollars a year in profit before News Corp. bought it. However, it's not nearly enough to move the needle at giant News Corp., where money is measured in billions...

...Given MySpace's power, Google (GOOG ), Yahoo! (YHOO ), and MSN (MSFT ) are expected to compete fiercely for the right to be the search engine of choice for MySpace and the rest of Fox Interactive. News Corp. won't say how much money it expects to derive from a deal, but industry experts say it could conceivably boost MySpace's annual revenue several times over. "The deal will probably be worth hundreds of millions of dollars," says Chris Sherman, executive editor of Searchenginewatch.com.

FIM has been reevaluating its search strategy for some time. It currently has a deal with Revenue Science, a company that sells a souped-up version of Yahoo Search. Revenue Science specializes in targeting search ads based on users' behavior. That's a natural for MySpace, which gleans lots of valuable demographic data from its users' profiles. But Sherman suspects MySpace gets very little, if any, revenue from that deal. By dealing directly with a powerful search engine, MySpace could move search from the expense to the revenue column, he speculates...

...MySpace already drives a huge amount of traffic to search engines. It generates 100 million searches a month. In fact, 5% of all searches on the Web and 8% of all searches on Google are originated by people who come directly from MySpace. Given its power, MySpace may be able to bargain for 25% to 35% of all the advertising revenue on pages that it generates for a search partner, according to Ali Diab, a former Yahoo search executive.

A good search deal could have several economic benefits for MySpace. It would boost traffic, because users would be less inclined to leave the site to conduct their searches. And that added traffic would raise the value of advertising on MySpace. FIM won't say how much it charges advertisers now, but it's believed to be less than $1 per million impressions. There are parts of Yahoo and MSN that charge many times that rate.

MODEL IN THE MAKING? There are several reasons why MySpace rates are lower. Some advertisers are reluctant to be associated with the freewheeling site, which has concerned some as a potential hunting ground for sexual predators (see Businessweek.com, 5/12/06, "No Space for MySpace?"). And Diab notes that other sites, such as Yahoo, generate searches that are directly related to commerce. That's more lucrative than MySpace searches, which tend to be more about finding individuals or groups of people, he says (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/8/06, "Guide to MySpace").

Search will become an increasingly important tool within MySpace. Sherman says that until now users have navigated by clicking on profiles found on long lists of "friends." But with 51.4 million users last month, "a more efficient way of finding people will become necessary," he says.

One way or another, MySpace and FIM will need a search engine with strong video and audio capability. MySpace is a popular site among musicians and their fans, and videos are popular as well. It isn't out of the question that FIM could still develop a relationship with a cutting-edge search engine such as Blinx, a leader in video search, Sherman says.

WORK IN PROGRESS. For the moment, it appears that MySpace has proven itself to be more than just a passing fad. But it remains to be seen whether a business model which is effective for a startup can have a major impact on the multibillion-dollar bottom line at News Corp.

Creating an effective search strategy could be a crucial element in FIM's emerging business model... "

2006-06-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power - New York Times:
"...Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are spending vast sums of capital to build out their computing capabilities to run both search engines and a variety of Web services that encompass e-mail, video and music downloads and online commerce.

Microsoft stunned analysts last quarter when it announced that it would spend an unanticipated $2 billion next year, much of it in an effort to catch up with Google. Google said its own capital expenditures would run to at least $1.5 billion. Its center here, whose cost is undisclosed, shows what that money is meant to buy...

..."Google wants to raise the barriers to entry by competitors by making the baseline service very expensive," said Brian Reid, a former Google executive who is now director of engineering at the Internet Systems Consortium in Redwood City, Calif.

The rate at which the Google computing system has grown is as remarkable as its size. In March 2001, when the company was serving about 70 million Web pages daily, it had 8,000 computers, according to a Microsoft researcher granted anonymity to talk about a detailed tour he was given at one of Google's Silicon Valley computing centers. By 2003 the number had grown to 100,000.

Today even the closest Google watchers have lost precise count of how big the system is. The best guess is that Google now has more than 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world. The company has major operations in Ireland, and a big computing center has recently been completed in Atlanta. Connecting these centers is a high-capacity fiber optic network that the company has assembled over the last few years..."

2006-06-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

eMarketer.com - Web Now a Mass Medium?:
"JUNE 14, 2006

Click! A big channel change in the world of media.

According to a new research study, "A Day in the Life: An Ethnographic Study of Media Consumption," from the Online Publishers Association (OPA), conducted by Ball State University's Center for Media Design, when it comes to at-work media use, the Internet dominates television, the next closest medium, and is the only medium that ranks among the top two at both work and home.

The study found that the Internet had 54.6% reach at work, compared to television's 21.1%, a sizable gap.

While television still leads at home, the Internet led radio, newspapers and magazines.

"The evidence of the web's rise to mass media status is now clear and incontrovertible," said Pam Horan, OPA president. "Industry data shows that the web takes up between 20 and 25% of consumers' overall media time, but attracts about 8% of advertising dollars. While advertisers have been steadily moving to the web in recent years, this research indicates the shift should be on a much faster pace."

The research also revealed that the Internet is a powerful tool for extending the reach of other media. The web increased the reach of television by 51% in the morning, 39% in the middle of the day, and 42% in the afternoon.

With magazine advertising, the impact was even greater — the Internet more than doubled the reach of magazines.

"It is clear that consumers are consistently online even while they're watching TV or listening to the radio," said Ms. Horan. "This unique attribute of web usage means that advertising messages receive a dramatic boost when online is part of the buy."

Not only are Internet users online more, the study found they spend more. Internet-dominant versus television-dominant consumers spend an average of $5,000 a year more on retail purchases.

The study also found that they rank higher in entertainment, home food, health and travel spending..."

2006-06-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

Google's Gbuy nears launch | CNET News.com:
"Google's online payment system, Gbuy, is expected to launch June 28, further pitting the Internet giant against industry titan and rival eBay, according to a research note released Friday by a Wall Street analyst.

Gbuy is expected to be free during the initial phase, but merchants may eventually be charged a 1.5 percent to 2 percent per-transaction fee, Jordan Rohan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, said in his research note. A fee of that size would be slightly less than that charged by eBay's online payment system, PayPal.

Google was not immediately available to comment.

'The brilliance of Google's Gbuy merchant-to-consumer payment platform lies in what Google may do with the transactional data it captures from the thousands of merchants that may ultimately offer Gbuy,' Rohan said.

Google is able to gather the data when users click on a merchant's Gbuy feature. Consumers are then transferred to Google's Gbuy site, where they complete the transaction.

Google's payment system, as a result, holds the potential to monitor which paid-search results users click on and of that group, which ones turn into actual sales. With that information, Google may find itself in the enviable position of being able to identify which categories bring in the highest return on investment for advertisers, Rohan stated..."

2006-06-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

A grand unified theory of YouTube and MySpace. By Paul Boutin:
"...YouTube and MySpace are runaway hits because they combine two attributes rarely found together in tech products. They're easy to use, and they don't tell you what to do.

There are two design requirements for technology meant for the masses. First, you need to automate all the techie parts so people can just press Play. To watch television online, I shouldn't have to install extra video software, figure out my bandwidth setting (100K? 300K?), and sign up for an account with the player's maker. Second, Web moguls shouldn't presume to foresee what 100 million people will want to do with their site. I'm one of many who stopped using Google's Orkut social network because its hardwired page designs made everyone look like they were there to find a date and/or a job.

The guys behind YouTube hit the sweet spot. Most important, they made it head-slappingly easy to publish and play video clips by handling the tricky parts automatically. Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars? If you've sent an e-mail attachment, you've got the tech skills to publish on YouTube.

To post your own video, sign up for a free account and go to the Upload page. Select your file, click the Upload Video button, and you're done! YouTube's servers convert your vid to a standardized format, but you don't need to know what that format is. If you send the URL to your aunt, it'll play in her browser without spraying the screen with pop-ups and errors.

You don't have to upload video to use YouTube. If you just like to watch, it's even easier. There's no software to install, no settings to muck with. The video auto-plays as soon as you load the page, without launching more windows—why can't CNN do that?

Three months ago, I predicted Google Video would become the hottest thing on the Net. I was wrong, and I think Google has failed to take off for the simple reason that it's more annoying to use than YouTube. To begin with, you have to install Google's special uploading application. When I tried to upload the same clips I'd posted to YouTube, Google's app wouldn't let me. I combed through the FAQ and found this: "While we also support other digital formats such as QuickTime, Windows Media, and RealVideo … submitting your files in these formats may significantly delay us from using them on Google Video." Come on, guys. Whatever happened to "I'm Feeling Lucky?"..."

2006-06-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

InformationWeek | Social Networking | Social Networks Attract Nearly Half Of All Web Users | May 12, 2006:
"...The number of visitors to the top 10 social-networking sites soared in April, attracting nearly half of all Web users, a market research firm says.

The top 10 sites collectively grew 47 percent in the United States from the same month a year ago to 68.8 million unique visitors, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The sites reached 45 percent of active Web users.

MySpace, owned by News Corp. and a favorite among teens and young adults, topped the list with a year-over-year growth rate of 367 percent to 38.4 million unique users. Blogger, owned by Google Inc., was second with 18.5 million visitors and an 80 percent growth rate.

Classmates Online grew 10 percent to 12.9 million visitors, and YouTube and Microsoft's MSN Groups, which saw a 14 percent drop in visitors, rounded out the top five with 12.5 million and 10.6 million, respectively.

Jon Gibs, senior director of Nielsen/NetRatings, said social-networking sites are the 'reality television of the Internet.'

“The content is relatively inexpensive for publishers to produce, and social networking is not a fad that will disappear,' ..."

2006-06-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

InformationWeek | Open Source | Startup Replacing Linux Desktop With The Web | May 12, 2006:
"Startup Ajax13 Inc. is looking to do to Linux what Microsoft Corp. is doing to Windows -- dissolve the operating system into the Web.

Under the shadow of Microsoft's enormous task of making all of its desktop products available as Web services, the small San Diego company is getting ready to launch in a few weeks what it calls AjaxOS, a desktop application that would link a Linux-based computer to Web applications that mimic some of the most popular desktop software used today..."

2006-06-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

TechCrunch » Blog Archive » PhotoBucket Closes $10.5M From Trinity Ventures:
"...This company is just exploding with growth. PhotoBucket is not a destination site. They’ve capitalized on the photo and video limitations of Myspace and other sites (restrictions on number of photos that may be uploaded, and/or poor tools for doing so) by allowing users to upload photos and videos very easily and display them on these third party sites. And those photos and videos are viewed over 50 billion times per month.

Photobucket is a consumer visual media hosting and publishing service with over 15 million members and 10 million unique monthly visitors, according to Media Metrix. 65,000 new members sign up daily. Members upload personal visual content including videos, images and graphic art and link it to over 50,000 social media, ecommerce, blogging and discussion Web sites like eBay, MySpace, Blogger, and Neopets. Photobucket serves over 50 billion image and video requests per month. Since the launch of its video services in April 2006, Photobucket members have uploaded nearly 1 million video clips at a rate of over 30,000 new videos per day..."