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Social Media: Personal Democracy Forum - Let’s All Move to Brazil
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | June 25, 2008 | Share This
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Advocacy and political groups aren’t the only organizations exploring new ways to use the Internet– national governments too have begun experimenting with new media as a civic resource. On Day Two of the Personal Democracy Forum, speakers addressed the question of: Now that we’ve built a vibrant political community in blogs, forums and social networks, “What’s Next?” For many luminaries, like Vint Cerf or Lawrence Lessig, the challenges ahead are those of infrastructure, bandwidth costs, and access to the Internet. For others, such as FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, the biggest hurdle will be evangelizing the social web to people with voting power, and then developing a national plan for government’s role online.
SEO: Would You Buy Optimization From This Man? How Not to Get Hustled by SEO Slicksters
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 12, 2008 | Share This
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For newbies the world of SEO can be a daunting and challenging place. Often a company rep looking to get their organization onboard the optimization train will want to be able to sell it back to the folks at the home office by quantifying exactly what they’ll be getting for their optimization bucks. Unfortunately that’s often where the SEO baddies step in.
As a rule of thumb anyone who tells you that they can guarantee a specific result through optimization is talking out of a part of their body where the sun don’t shine. There are plenty of shady operators out there who will “guarantee” rankings or traffic levels. Some of them will even tie their payment to your site’s rankings. Sounds good doesn’t it?
Mid-Week Crisis
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Written By Drupad Sil | May 14, 2008 | Share This
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A very slow search news day, unfortunately. Here are some stories in the technology and online space that got coverage today:
- Microsoft hosts its 12th annual CEO summit, with Warren Buffet and Michael Arrington among the 115 executives invited
- Hitwise releases data stating what we all knew: Google is dominating search engine market share
- eMarketer revises down its estimates for ad spending on social networks, cutting it from $1.6 billion to $1.4 billion
- Comcast purchases social contact list Plaxo, despite having Google and Facebook as potential competitors
Webmail as a Social Networking App
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Written By Drupad Sil | April 30, 2008 | Share This
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Some coverage on a cool webmail service that is innovative enough to compete with the likes of Gmail and Yahoo Mail. At first glance, Zenbe looks like an ordinary mail service. Look a little deeper, and you’ll find a calendar, task list, address book (all available through a sidebar), a tab that lets you browse all attachments, viewable by type, and finally a Facebook tab that lets you see your friends’ updates.
If that’s not enough for you, don’t worry: we haven’t even hit the big idea yet. TechCrunch’s Mark Hendrickson describes Zenbe’s notable function:
“Zenbe’s big idea, however, consists of a feature called “ZenPages” that are intended to help you organize your email into projects or topics. Instead of just putting messages into folders… you can assign messages to ZenPages with specially designated tags.
…This lets groups collaborate around email without having to CC each other on every single one. Calendar events can also be shared this way.
In addition to sharing emails and calendars, you can install a range of other default widgets: a group task list, an agenda, a discussion thread, and a list of relevant links. But here’s where your imagination should take off: Zenbe also plans to allow 3rd-party apps onto thses pages, ones that have direct access to users’ emails.”
It’s clear that this is a huge opportunity for email to move into the realm of social networking, in a sense. There are already several third-party integrations announced, including YouTube and Flickr. Unfortunately, Zenbe is still in private beta, but we’ll be looking for the startup to make ripples when it eventually goes live.
Searchviews: Week in Review
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | February 8, 2008 | Share This
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The biggest news at Reprise Media this week was the release of our Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard. In this edition of the Week in Review, we link to all our Scorecard posts for the week and recap this week’s other tech news.
Super Bowl Scorecard
For the fourth year running, advertisers mostly missed the boat when it came to integrating their offline and online Super Bowl campaigns, but there were some clear winners. Though overall performance wasn’t great when it came to search, the social media presence and integration of the game-day brands was even worse. Here’s the full Scorecard, with a full breakdown and stats.
And in other news…
- The Yahoo-Microsoft saga continues. Search Engine Land has a good review of all the week’s so-called “Microhoo” developments.
- Yahoo launched a live video-streaming site this week, Y! Live, which promptly crashed.
- Time Warner will spin off AOL.
- Google’s strategy for taking on Chinese search engine dominator Baidu is free music. And the company may have picked up address-book site Plaxo.
- Ask.com launched its Techmeme-like social news site, BigNews, and Google News got more local.
Microsoft Bids $44.6B for Yahoo
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 1, 2008 | Share This
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This morning Microsoft extended an unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, amounting to a 62 percent premium on Yahoo’s Jan 31 closing stock price. Said Microsoft in today’s press release, “We don’t actually want the company, we just wanted to see what the media would do“… okay, maybe they didn’t say that exactly. But in the search world, it’s an understatement to call this bid a big deal (note Techmeme screenshot left).
For Searchviews readers, here’s a rundown of what happened and what’s important to take away:
Microsoft Wants To Buy Yahoo
…They have for awhile (see rumors from 2007, 2006). Recognizing Google’s unrivaled lead in traffic & technology, Microsoft sees an opportunity to tap Yahoo for its audience, engineering talent, brand value (esp. in search), and social media properties (Flickr & Del.icio.us). In the meantime, Yahoo has spent the past month hemorrhaging money and employees, and is in serious need of a bail out. So far, industry analysts broadly agree that a deal is likely to happen.
What’s the Deal?
There is much discussion about the terms and implications of the deal. Here’re a few standouts:
- Henry Blodget says the deal will happen on Microsoft’s terms, since Yahoo is desperate, and there’ll be no competitors to counter MSFT’s offer.
- Paul Kedrosky says it’ll happen, but the conjoined Microsoft-Yahoo still won’t beat Google.
- Danny Sullivan envisions a lovechild born of Yahoo search, Microsoft ads, Yahoo’s audience, Microsoft’s “technological prowess”, and Flickr.
- Loren Baker concurs that Yahoo Search will take over Microsoft’s Live Search, and predicts that old-school SEO practitioners will feel some pain, while secondary search engines (Ask.com) will potentially gain market share.
- Shar Van Boskirk writes on Forrester’s blog that the merger will help grow online advertising by yielding “laser-target ads” & easier ad management. Shar also has some interesting thoughts about increasing convergence of media + technology.
Though the combined search impact is undoubtedly huge, the opportunities in display should not be overlooked. A combined MSFT/YHOO would be the clear leader in display advertising, reaping the benefits of Yahoo’s traffic volume and Microsoft’s ad serving technology (esp in wake of their aQuantive acquisition).
Searchviews: Week in Review
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | February 1, 2008 | Share This
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Undoubtedly the week’s biggest news happened today, when Microsoft offered $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo. Yahoo turned them down, for now, but they definitely need to think of something, and incidentally, former CEO Terry Semel yesterday bailed from Yahoo’s board. We’ll revisit that soon, but here’s what happened the rest of this week:
- Google’s earning’s call didn’t exceed expectations and its stock plunged, partly thanks to social ads not monetizing very well yet.
- But the big G did introduce some cool experimental search elements this week, as well as making a big to-do over newspaper barcode ads.
- Microsoft and the Wall Street Journal signed an ad deal.
- ComScore released its 2007 Internet Year in Review; unsurprisingly, social media sites showed lots of growth.
- Curious about Facebook’s finances? Here are some numbers for you.
- MySpace platform opening up February 5. Meanwhile, Facebook users are tired of apps.
- Another (potential) tech echo chamber, but this one on Twitter.
- Verizon says it won’t filter copyrighted content on its network, like AT&T has been threatening to do.
- And last but not least: We’re prepping for our annual Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard and have some concerns for Doritos this year. Follow our comments during the game on Twitter (twitter.com/scorecard), and check in here on Monday for the Scorecard results.
Searchviews: Week in Review
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 25, 2008 | Share This
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In this edition of Week in Review: turmoil in the markets saw tech stocks take a dive, Yahoo’s (still) in trouble, the music and TV industries continue to experience online growing pains, and more.
- The market crashed this week. Blame Apple?
- Search stocks were not immune; Google’s market cap is down around $16B.
- Huge revenue gains meant Microsoft reported a record Q2 yesterday. The company is also reportedly joining DataPortability.org.
- Ask.com’s being challenged by privacy groups.
- The word at Yahoo: layoffs on the way. But they did update their algorithm this week.
- Last.fm changes its biz model, offering royalties for the streamed songs of unsigned artists.
- Speaking of business models, HBO’s new on-demand online content is at odds with parent Time Warner’s proposed changes to broadband pricing.
- Is Google Health almost upon us, for real? Here’s a screenshot that suggest so.
- The BBC and MySpace TV are now BFF, Digg updates its algorithm and users freak out, YouTube goes mobile, and we’ve got a Twitter feed tracking Super Bowl advertising (follow us here: twitter.com/scorecard).
- EBay CEO Meg Whitman is out. New CEO John Donahoe says the future of eBay is better search.
Reprise Media Reading List
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 25, 2007 | Share This
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The presents are unwrapped and you’ve eaten every candy cane in sight… As you come down from your sugar high, here are stories that caught our eye recently:
- Google got the OK from the FTC to acquire DoubleClick
- Yahoo scored a deal to be the search portal for Latin American mobile provider America Movil
- Girls beat boys in creating online content
- Singer Kina Grannis created the ultimate Digg-bait video: a song about Digg
- Travel search engines Kayak and Sidestep have merged
- The excellent Online Journalism Review outlines five lessons from 2007 for news orgs
- Read/Write Web reviews RSS developments of the last year
- Wikia search is finally in private beta, aiming to go public in early January
- HRH Queen Elizabeth is on YouTube: Check out The Royal Channel today for the first-ever online message from the queen
- Google helps you track Santa and wants you to upload your holiday pictures to its public map
How To Discredit Your Blog: A Kaiser Permanente Story
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | December 6, 2007 | Share This
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Yesterday, a group of executives from 12 major US corporations launched the Blog Council, an exclusive community formed “to address the unique needs of blogging in a corporate environment.” The group includes most of the usual suspects in social media — General Motors, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and one in particular that I haven’t read much about: Kaiser Permanente. Unfortunately, the Blogging Council website doesn’t link to any of said corporate blogs, so I googled “Kaiser Permanente blog”, and found some very interesting search results:
From one to five, the top search listings are:
- “Kaiser Fraud“, a blog that promotes, “kaiser thrives on ruining lives” - recent posts include, “Kaiser Kills…to Harvest Transplant Organs?”, “Kaiser kills more patients” and my favorite “Baby Killed by Kaiser Medical Error” (complete with picture of the mourning mother and her dead newborn)
- A news story about Kaiser’s inability to keep tabs on their patients’ confidential information
- A blog post that slams Kaiser’s latest ad campaign
- A post about patient outrage following Kaiser’s decision to close a No. California kidney transplant center.
- The Kaiser Permanent Medical research blog - Except the blog fails to load.
Though they may be “thought leaders” on the Blog Council, Kaiser is evidently lacking leadership in search. This is a pretty embarrassing front page for Kaiser that could have been avoided with proper search engine optimization. For all it’s exclusivity, one would expect the inaugural Blog Council to require at least a basic awareness of blog SEO.