Update 2: Google has now reportedly lowered the $350 fee to $150, and launched a support line for the phone at 888-48-NEXUS.
Update: The FCC has sent letters regarding early termination fees to Google, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. In its letter to Google, it says:
...where new options may subject consumers to substantial ETFs, potentially from more than one entity, the Commission has a special interest in ensuring that consumers have a clear and complete understanding of the rates, terms, and conditions on which the communications services are being offered and the rationale for those rates, terms, and conditions. The combination of ETFs from Google and T-Mobile for the Nexus One is also unique among the four major national carriers. Consumers have been surprised by this policy and by its financial impact. Please let us know your rationale(s) for these combined fees, and whether you have coordinated or will coordinate on these fees and on the disclosure of their combined effect.
Original Article: Google made big waves in the mobile industry early in the year, and the effects of those waves are being felt quite hard by some users. The Nexus One's release has gotten off to kind of a rocky start.
The issues plaguing customers of the much-anticipated Google phone have been widely publicized. Most of the gripes have dealt with Google's customer service (or lack thereof) for the device, and trouble with 3G connections. More recently, however, complaints of outrageous early termination fees have popped up.
The trouble for users is that if they got the Nexus One with a two-year contract from T-Mobile, they end up having to pay about $550 to terminate early. The thing is, they have to pay T-Mobile's regular fee, but they also have to pay Google a fee. Needless to say, that has caught some people off guard.
Google's fee is a $350 "Equipment Recovery Fee". It applies to customers who cancel their contracts within the first 120 days.
According to Niraj Sheth with the Wall Street Journal's Digits Blog, "A Google spokeswoman said in a statement that the fee is "a way for the company to recoup the subsidy it gives to contract customers."
"'This is standard practice for third-party resellers of T-Mobile and other operators,' she said. A T-Mobile spokesman said that the carrier’s early termination fee is standard for its customers on contract."
While the combination of the aforementioned problems may not bode well for Google's reputation in the mobile industry at the moment, the good news for the company is that they are projected to come out on top in the smartphone race eventually. Crunchgear says Google and Android will "own the smartphone market" eventually. Time will tell if that is an accurate depiction of things to come, but for now, people just seem upset.
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Last Tuesday, the season premiere of the hit television show "Lost" aired, and not only was it watched by over 12 million people, but it drove record online viewing at ABC.com the next day, with over 580,000 episode starts on the site. That's over 34% more than last season's premiere. ABC shared some details with us.
When asked why they think this particular episode of Lost had such an impact on online views compared with other episodes and other shows, a representative for ABC told WebProNews, "Lost has been a top performer in terms of online viewing since we began making episodes available online several years ago. Fans of the show tend to be very tech-savvy and also tend to watch episodes more than once. They also frequently go online to review specific scenes."
On Tuesday, leading up to the airing of the show, ABC.com saw over 1.8 million unique visitors and delivered over 7.4 million page views, a 5% and 43% increase, respectively over the previous year’s premiere date, based on data from Omniture. Visitors to ABC.com logged more than 2.2 million video views of "Lost"-related short-form content on Tuesday, an increase of over 32% compared to last season.
ABC gives viewers more than just the videos though. This season, ABC.com offers interactive, community-driven features including user-created Top 5 lists which allow fans to arrange, rank and share their personalized lists of show-related favorites; and Episode Commentary where fans can access commentaries created by series' insiders, and create and share their own for each episode.
The site will also soon unveil a Fan Art Wall, an interactive area for fans to upload, view and rate "Lost"-themed art created by fellow fans, and also give fans the opportunity to participate in a promo contest, providing users a "mash-up" tool to create and share their own "Lost" promos with a winning promo to be featured on-air.
There has been some talk about just how well TV shows will perform online in the future as Nielsen makes data available about the viewing of commercials that run in particular shows, whether they are viewed on TV or online. This could lead to online TV shows getting more ad-heavy.
"ABC.com's full episode player features interactive video advertising," ABC tell us. "Lost episodes currently feature a single national sponsor. They have 4 30-second spots which can't be skipped; additionally the local ABC affiliates sell one local spot per episode."
We won't be able to compare Lost episodes from this season with episodes after the Nielsen stuff goes down, because this is the final season of the show, but it is going to be quite interesting to see how advertising on popular shows changes, if it does in fact do so.
The CEO of Spanish telecom company Telefonica might soon try to obtain some money from Google and its rivals. Cesar Alierta said today that search engines' popularity creates something of a burden for his organization, and that he'd like Telefonica to share in their profits.
As reported by John W. Daly, Alierta told Spanish newspaper El Pais, "Search engines use our network, without paying anything for it." Installation, maintenance, and customer service costs are among the things for which he'd like to be compensated.
Considering that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are sure to ignore (or perhaps laugh off) this idea, it's necessary to consider where Alierta will go from here. Lawsuits always seem to represent an option, of course, or Telefonica could try to employ some traffic shaping techniques (which might well outrage consumers and cause the search engines to file their own suits).
Or - we're not trying to sensationalize anything - the whole issue could get dropped if Alierta finds that his proposal doesn't have any traction. Daly wrote, "El Pais reports Alierta is the first CEO of a carrier to openly declare he wants to send bills to content providers."
So far, neither side's hinted at making another move.
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Social media music player TuneWiki has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Motorola Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Motorola.
Other new investors of TuneWiki include Intellect Capital Ventures, a venture fund initiative of TeliaSonera, HillsVen Capital, and Novel TMT. TuneWiki's previous venture capital investor, Benchmark Israel, also participated in the round.
"Teaming up with a global company like Motorola is very exciting for us," said Rani Cohen, CEO of TuneWiki.
"We are passionate about connecting people through music, and having our applications running in many countries with different languages will allow our users to explore the world of music and better understand its meaning as part of a vibrant and engaged community."
TuneWiki said it will use the investment to expand and improve its product offerings fro mobile platforms and the Internet. The company says it plans to focus on new features found in recently released smartphones, including stronger CPUs, larger displays and high-resolution screens. TuneWiki said it will also continue to focus on the use of song lyrics in new ways that connect music fans with new products, including an upcoming mobile game.
"Music is rapidly emerging as a key feature for smartphones, and TuneWiki is changing the experience of listening to music from a solitary experience to a social one," said Reese Schroeder, managing director of Motorola Ventures.
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I don't have to tell you that Facebook can be a tremendous source of web traffic. There's a good chance that most of the people you know are on it, and the ones who aren't may be eventually. The social network is consuming more and more of people's time, and thanks to mobile devices, it is always accessible. If you don't have a Facebook Page, you may be missing out on not only traffic to your site, but a chance to engage with customers and ultimately help your brand's reputation.
One of our blog partners, Jay Baer, of Convince&Convert wrote a great piece about why you need Facebook for your company. He highlights "11 things you need to know." These things include how Facebook has 350 Million global users and counting (100 million in the U.S.), and how the average Facebook user spends 55 minutes per day on Facebook. Nearly 80,000 sites use Facebook Connect.
Editor’s note: If you have a blog related to online business, search, or social media, and are interested in becoming one of our blog partners, you may submit here.
He also notes that the Facebook Fan Box is becoming more pervasive, the average Facebook user has 130 friends and fans 2 pages per month. His statements are backed up by various reports and studies.
Perhaps you have a Facebook Page, but it's not performing how you'd like. You feel it's a waste of time. "If your Facebook fan page is a bit of a ghost town, you're not alone. A fantastic study by Sysomos of 600,000 Facebook fan pages shows that only 4% of pages have 10,000 or more fans – and only .76% have 100,000 or more," says Baer. "That’s why it is so critical to focus your Facebook strategy on activating the fans you have, not just collecting fans like baseball cards."
"The Sysomos study also found very little correlation between how frequently the Facebook page admin posted to the wall, and total number of fans. However – and this is important – there is a strong correlation between amount of other content (notes, links, photos, videos) and number of fans," he says. "Thus, if you want to grow your Facebook fan base, it is imperative that you move beyond simple Wall posts and add photos, videos, links and other content."
Another one of our blog Partners, Dave Taylor, offers some tips from Patrick O'Keefe, author of the book Managing Online Forums, on making a Facebook page more interesting. Among these are:
- Participate and make it routine
- Ask questions
- Host events on your page
- Highlight contributions from others
- Go beyond just text
- Integrate your other online presences
- Take it easy with apps, boxes, etc.
- Run offline events, if you can
One thing you want to do is pay attention to your Facebook analytics. Pay attention to stats. Pay attention to changes Facebook makes in this area. For example, recently it was discovered that some admins were starting to see impression counts for each post, as well as the number of likes and comments for each impression. Like Baer says, test content types to see what works best.
Does your Facebook Page drive traffic to your site? Does it engage customers? Discuss your strategy.
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The most popular video game franchise of all time is heading to Facebook. The end result probably won't boast the lifelike graphics and complicated controls to which longtime fans have become accustomed, but Peter Moore, the president of EA Sports, has promised that some sort of "Madden NFL" tie-in will occur.
"You'll see us on Facebook going forward," he said in an interview with Bloomberg. Unfortunately without giving too many more particulars.
Still, it's possible to speculate about a couple of details. Moore said, "We have to make 'Madden' more accessible," so the final product will probably be less of a faithful reproduction of the Xbox and PS3 versions than an appeal to people who like Facebook's mafia- and zombie-related games.
Also, since this move presumably comes as a result of EA's acquisition of Playfish, it might even be safe to guess that the Facebook version of Madden will bear some resemblance to Playfish's games (which include Pet Society and Restaurant City) in terms of look and feel.
One last prediction: since about 63 million copies of Madden games have been sold over the years (according to NPD Group, which Bloomberg contacted), whatever debuts on Facebook is almost sure to get a big following.
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Google is rumored to be working on a Facebook/Twitter-like feature for Gmail. According to the Wall Street Journal, who cites "people familiar with the matter", the feature, which would "make it easier and faster" to share status updates may launch as soon as this week.
As I've written about a number of times, Google is really one big social network with a bunch of features, and integration is the key to harnessing that social power. A product like this could be just the ticket, because according to these same sources, it would integrate content shared through YouTube and Picasa. Who knows what else could be worked in?
Gmail currently has status updates of a sort. In the chat section, it has a menu of your contacts who also use Google, and shows their current status of they have one set. You can set one easily at any time.
Google has not yet responded to requests for comments, but if we learn more, we will keep you updated.
If Gmail offers its own Facebook/Twitter-style timeline, would you use it? Should Facebook and Twitter be worried? Share your thoughts.
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In many ways, the last traces of the 2009 holiday season have disappeared - you won't find many decorations up, presents out, or leftovers refrigerated (we hope). comScore's just released a report concerning the mobile market, though, and the stats are well worth examining.
comScore's report covers the changes that occurred between September and December of last year. During that time, RIM stayed on top in terms of smartphone platforms, but it lost a little bit of ground. Apple, meanwhile, gained a similar amount, and so the gap between the two was effectively narrowed by a couple of percentage points.
Sadly (for them), Microsoft and Palm also wound up losers. Then - and this is arguably the most interesting part - Google made quite a leap.
Looked at one way, Google's improvement of 2.7 percentage points is the biggest change comScore recorded during the September-to-December timeframe. Which is impressive enough. Yet looked at another, Google more than doubled its market share over the course of three months.
That's quite a growth rate for Android. If it keeps up the pace for another three months, it'll pass Palm by. And from there, it could be just a year or so away from catching up with Microsoft.
These statistics will definitely bear watching in the months ahead, even if they're a little slow to be published.
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This could be the year of the display ad. That's not to say that display ads aren't prevalent every year, but Google has only been involved with that for a little while, and if analysts' projections are accurate, this will be the year that Google's display ad business tops $1 billion in sales.
Last summer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested that display ads would be Google's next big billion-dollar business. According to BusinessWeek, a Barclays Capital analyst says display ads will account for about 4% of Google's total sales in 2010. This would be a 40% increase from their contribution in 2009. BW's Douglas MacMillan reports:
Sales of video and banner ads on YouTube, the world's most popular video site, are expected by analysts at Barclays to contribute the bulk of Google's display revenue this year, about $700 million. And with DoubleClick, Google acquired a technology that handles the placement of display ads on sites across the Web. "Display is now a key business for us," says Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice-president of product management and one of the company's earliest employees.
Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google's display business, says Google will draw on its strength in search-related advertising to expand in display. It became the leader in search by using algorithms to help it know which ads to place where. "Our goal is to bring the science of search to the art of display," Mohan says.
Advertisers will probably not be shy about getting on board with that. "Research has shown that exposure to both search and display ads from the same advertiser results in a 22 percent increase for conversion rates over search alone," Rich Kahn, CEO of display ad provider eZanga told WebProNews last year.
Back in November, Google announced its acquisition of Teracent, a provider of "intelligent dynamic display advertising". It provides machine-learning algorithms, which can create customized display ads based on thousands of different creative elements.
Google says the one on the right was created with Teracent's technology.
"Teracent's technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors," Google said. "These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads."
Before that announcement, Google launched a tool to measure the impact of display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network called Campaign Insights, which Google says can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest in a particular product or service. Google has also repeatedly added new templates for advertisers to use when constructing their creative.
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Super Bowl XLIV had numerous memorable moments: the onside kick, the missed field goal, the Garçon drop, and the truly horrendous half-time show to name a few. But, for many viewers Super Bowl commercials leave the same lasting impact as the game itself, as they should with a price tag of $3.01 million per 30 seconds.
This year we saw a plethora of the same companies advertising: Budwesier, Bud Light, Coke, Go Daddy, Doritos, Monster.com, Snickers… etc. Last night we wrote about a newcomer to the Super Bowl advertising scene, Google. One company that normally would’ve been in that list, Pepsi, decided to forgo a Super Bowl commercial this year and focus their advertising budget on Social Media.
In case you missed any of the commercials, you can view them below. Be sure to leave a comment telling us which one was your favorite. (Please note: I've omitted movie trailers and TV show commercials)
So which Super Bowl commercial was your favorite? Let us know.
As WebProNews reported, Mullen and Radian6 partnered to launch BrandBowl2010, a Twitter/Super Bowl event that allowed users to see near real-time ratings of the Super Bowls commercials. The two companies have now released the results.
They determined that Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise during the Super Bowl, and that Budweiser Select55 was the least effective. The results were determined from 98,656 Tweets collected. The results from BrandBowl2010 were as follows:
The Top Ten Most Effective Brands on BrandBowl2010
1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus On Family
4. Snickers
5. Budweiser
6. Bud Light
7. Hyundai
8. Kia
9. GoDaddy
10. Coca-Cola
The Five Least Effective Brands on BrandBowl2010
1. Diamond Foods’ – Pop Secret
2. Honda
3. Teleflora
4. Michelob Ultra
5. Budweiser Select55
The top brands were judged on volume of tweets, and after the top three, the firms say there was a sharp drop-off. "Doritos won the title by virtue of dominating the sheer volume of tweets," the firms say. "That was enough to keep them ahead of Google, which had a higher percentage of positive tweets."
The BrandBowl site provided an overall ranking of the brands advertising on the game based on a composite score that takes into consideration both volume of tweets and sentiment (positive or negative).
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Worldwide mobile data bandwidth usage increased by 72 percent in the second half of 2009, according to a new report by Allot Communications.
Applications such as YouTube and Skype are driving this continued momentum in mobile broadband growth. APAC leads the growth with 86%; EMEA posted 70% growth and the Americas 59%.
The report found video to be the single most influential factor driving the need for increased mobile network capacity. P2P remains the biggest cause of cell congestion in the top five percent of cells, mobile broadband networks are still facing the same issues as fix networks-- growing bandwidth demands, congestion, as well as finding ways to improve the user experience and to lessen the negative impact of a few subscribers on the network.
Highlights from the report include:
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A little less than a month ago, Google announced that it might shut down Google.cn and its offices in China. The search giant may not be giving up on the country entirely, however, as a new report has indicated that it's part of a group attempting to invest in a large Chinese media and advertising company.
According to George Chen and Melanie Lee, Disney is leading a consortium that includes Google, and said consortium would like to buy a 30 or 40 percent stake in Bus Media for about $100 million. Negotiations are supposed to be in progress right now.
Such an investment could be a smart move, considering that notable entities like CCB International, China Renaissance Capital Investment, IDG, and the Yangtze Fund have all put some money behind Bus Media.
Bus Media apparently enjoys the support of China's government, too, as it's "the exclusive partner of state broadcaster CCTV and the official Xinhua news agency for in-bus media content and advertising."
But that brings us back to the touchy issue of Google, China, and censorship. Whether Google's changing its attitude or has found some solution that complements its moral stand remains to be seen.
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eBay is starting a new series of events to help small businesses and part-time eBay sellers "accelerate their businesses" on eBay, which has 90 million active users. The series is called eBay: On Location, and has dates set for Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and San Jose.
"eBay sellers are creative entrepreneurs who understand that eBay’s global reach and dynamic marketplace offer the ideal setting to start and build a business online," says eBay Marketplaces President Lorrie Norrington. "We invite our sellers to eBay: On Location to connect with each other and to take the next step in making their eBay businesses even more successful."
The goal of the series of events appears to be to let sellers network with one another and share ideas for maintaining a successful eBay business. There are also courses on "top seller secrets", productivity to boost sales and reduce costs, and utilizing social media to drive sales.
"eBay sellers have become savvier about how to use eBay in ingenious ways," says Jim Griffith, eBay senior manager, Seller Strategy and Dean of Education. "eBay: On Location is a great way for the seller community to come together and share those strategies—and learn something new from experts."
They are only letting in 500 people per event, and registration is offered on a first-come, first-served basis. It costs $45 to get in.
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If you think about it, it'd be slightly inaccurate to say that phones let people all over the world communicate with each other; current tech just transmits sounds, not their significance. But Google's looking to knock down language barriers with devices that will perform translations on the fly.
This isn't some poorly sourced rumor or random conspiracy theory. Chris Gourlay interviewed Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, and Och said, "We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time."
Incredible as that might seem, the building blocks are already in place. Android allows users to perform searches by just saying terms out loud. Google Translate deals in 52 languages at the moment. Google only needs to integrate everything in order to be in business. Maybe.
The sentence "I am going to eat lunch at 12:30" becomes "I'm going to lunch at 12:30" after Google Translate takes it from English to Spanish and back. That's enough of a difference to create confusion (suppose someone's trying to distinguish between stuffing his face and stepping out to run errands), and it's not like Spanish is a rare dialect or the original phrase represents a curveball.
Toss in imperfect speech recognition, and it's hard to imagine anyone trying to conduct important business or even chat for fun.
Nonetheless, it should be very interesting to see how this project works out for Google.
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Barnes & Noble said today its nook e-reader is now in stock online and will be rolling out in the majority of its stores by mid-week.
Barnes & Noble sold out of nook stock online over the holidays due to high demand, which exceeded the bookseller's expectations. Since then the company has ramped up production and is shipping stock to most of its stores this week. Customers can visit the Barnes & Noble nook In-Store Locator to find local stores with the device in-stock.
"nook is the perfect Valentine's Day gift for anyone who loves reading. Demand for nook continues to be very high, and we're pleased our customers will be able to try and buy nook in our stores and online and enjoy it in time for the holiday," said William J. Lynch, President of Barnes & Noble.com.
"In Barnes & Noble stores, nook owners will enjoy exciting nook-only content from their favorite authors and other valuable offers, along with fast and free in-store Wi-Fi, which nook customers have been accessing in droves over the last few weeks."
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For the most part, online video has been much less ad-heavy than television programming. It is this very fact that has likely been a large part of the medium's popularity. Things may be changing, however.
According to Advertising Age, Nielsen is planning on making data available about the viewing of commercials that run in particular shows , whether they are viewed on TV or online. The data would start being available in September, and the publication says it will become the basis for ad negotiations next February.
"But here's the catch: For Nielsen to be able to provide the commercial rating, shows seen online will have to have the same group of commercials that run on TV," says AdAge's Brian Steinberg. "If this system were adopted en masse -- and it's not clear that it would be -- online viewing might be crammed just as full of commercials as the more traditional TV-watching experience."
"Indeed, viewing programs on Hulu, the online video site owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney, means encountering significantly fewer ads than one would see watching TV. And Disney's ABC.com has met with some success by running ABC shows with just a few ads, often from a single advertiser," he adds. "But many TV executives say these methods don't bring much, if any, profit -- and therefore cannot continue."
Online video has enjoyed tremendous growth over the last several years. In December, 178 million Americans watched 33 billion videos online, according to data from comScore. About 40% of that was at Google sites (like YouTube). The second largest amount of market share went to Hulu, at just 3%.
YouTube isn't necessarily the place people go to watch full episodes of television shows. Hulu is. If videos at sites like Hulu become more ad-heavy, the market share gap could just increase even greater. It could also have an impact on both paid TV show downloads and piracy.
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With millions watching, Google ran their first Super Bowl Commercial entitled "Parisian Love". If it looks familiar, that's because it's one of their "Search Stories" ads which was uploaded to YouTube back in November. You can check it out below...
What did you think of the commercial? Tell us.
Did you think you'd ever see a Google Super Bowl Commercial? Let us know.
Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, tweeted yesterday..."Can't wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said "Hell has indeed frozen over.")"
Well, it appears as though Hell has frozen over.
Mullen and Radian6 have partnered to launch BrandBowl2010, a Twitter/Super Bowl event that combines tweeting, ad reviews and a number of rankings that will allow users to see near real-time ratings of the TV commercials airing during the game.
Users can log on to BrandBowl2010 using their Twitter ID, tweet directly from the page, view tweets using the hashtag #brandbowl and see how other Twitter users are rating Super Bowl commercials.
The site will provide an overall ranking of the brands advertising on the game based on a composite score that includes both volume of tweets and positive or negative feedback. The Top 10 most popular brands will be featured on the site, with second tier brands displayed in a sub-section called the Locker Room.
"The ads have always been as big a part of the game as the game itself," said Edward Boches, Mullen's chief social media officer.
"And with the emergence of social media and platforms like Twitter, everyone wants to talk about them the moment they run. This should be a lot of fun for anyone who loves ads, Twitter and data."
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Google is offering suggestions for "nearby places you might like" on Google Maps when you look up a place that you do like. So if you like a particular bakery, you might be presented with other places within the same vicinity that Google thinks you might also be interested in trying.
"When you live in New York City, everyone has an opinion on where to eat," says Tammy Stern of the Google Maps team. "And usually, telling someone a place you love will lead to a long conversation of a string of other places you should try. For example, one of the more interesting restaurants I've eaten at in NYC was recommended to me by someone who knew I loved a different restaurant by the same owner. And, when I told a friend I was heading to the Lower East Side to get some yummy knishes for lunch, he told me to make sure I checked out the famous Guss' Pickles right around the corner and that I might consider picking up some smoked fish at Russ & Daughters down the street."
"You'll notice that we do not limit these suggestions to places sharing any specific characteristic; instead, we use a broad set of signals to come up with what are hopefully the most interesting suggestions," says Stern. "We're still working on refining these signals, so bear with us if your serendipitous discovery of a new place is even more unexpected than you'd anticipated."
This feature could have both positive and negative effects on local businesses. On the one hand, it could give established customers ideas to go to your competitors. On the other hand, you could be the competitor and benefit from that.
The suggestions are just the latest feature in a recent slew of local business-related features from Google. The company is clearly focusing a great deal on this aspect of search.
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Last year, 12% of Super Bowl viewers used the Internet while watching the game according to data from Nielsen. Those that used the web spent an average of 24 minutes online during the game. It would not be at all surprising if those numbers increased significnatly this year.
"Nielsen found that simultaneous users were most engaged in general interest, e-mail, and online social networks," the firm says. "Sports sites, which might be more directly associated with the game itself, were visited by 18% of simultaneous users."
According to Nielsen, about a quarter of simultaneous users spent time during the game using Facebook at an average of 15 minutes. Google and Yahoo Mail also received significant use during game time.
The game takes place this evening of course. Will you be watching? Will you be watching and using the web? How do yo plan on using the web during the Super Bowl?
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Google often takes a lot of flack for not being incredibly successful with its social media efforts. Most recently, Caroline McCarthy and Tom Krazit tackled this subject in a CNET article claiming that "Google struggles with social skills." I would not go so far as to say that I completely disagree with them. They make plenty of factual points that are simply undeniable. Orkut hasn't set the world afire. Jaiku and Dodgeball didn't work out. YouTube was pretty much established by the time Google bought it, and even since it has not been the financial success many would have assumes it would be, despite its enormous popularity.
Is it that Google doesn't do well with social media or is it that Google is doing better at it than most people even consider. First, you have to ask yourself: what is a social network anyway? What is social media? Is it Facebook? MySpace? Twitter? Is it a network of connected people? Google Profile users can look at their "social circles" and quickly realize that Google has them connected to people.
If you look at the definitions for social media, you get things like "content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies," "a category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content." I think Google has done pretty well at indexing and monetizing user-generated content (that is if user means user of Google, which essentially makes the majority of all content user-generated).
When you compare Google to Facebook, wouldn't it be fairer to break down Google by its various offerings? Wouldn't it be fairer to compare Google itself to Facebook? You can say, well, Google Friend Connect isn't as successful as Facebook. Jaiku wasn't as successful as Facebook. Wouldn't it make more sense to chalk each of these offerings within Google as features of the broader Google network, for all intents and pruposes?
Most of Google's products require one account. You log in to your Google account and there are a lot of different things you are able to do, and it's all because of that one account. You can email people, chat, write documents and spreadsheets, use webmaster tools, etc., etc., etc. Is Google not just a social network with a lot more features than most others (not to mention what many would consider to be a better search tool than most other social networks)?
Is Google's "failure" at social media due to not having a proper Twitter-like stream (which Facebook essentially took and ran with by the way)? Maybe Google doesn't have the best feature in every social media category, but I think they've pretty much taken the cake in some categories, and last I checked, Google is pretty successful.
I write this not as some kind of Google fanboy, but each day, I see Google launching new products and features, finding new things for users to do, and particularly for those who have a Google account. A lot of what you can do with various Google products requires you to be logged in. A lot of it is very social (profiles, social search, real-time search, document sharing, Google reader sharing and commenting, emailing, chatting, Google latitude...just to name a few). Maybe we should consider the sum of all users across all of the company’s products to determine just how successful it is at this so-called “social media”. Google makes money. Crazy money. I wonder how many people have Google accounts.
Note: For the record, I understand that nobody's saying Google itself isn't succesful.
Is Google really not good at social media? I'll ask again, what is social media really? We tend to put these labels on things, but I don't think it's so black and white.
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The governments of France, Germany, and Italy are all arguably annoyed with Google. China's not thrilled with the search giant, either. And now, because of the way in which Google's portrayed a disputed border, Cambodia's quite mad at it.
According to Reuters, Svay Sitha, the secretary of state of Cambodia's Council of Ministers, wrote a letter to Google complaining about its interpretation of the area where Cambodia and Thailand touch.
"(The map) is devoid of truth and reality, and professionally irresponsible, if not pretentious," Sitha said. "We therefore request that you withdraw the already disseminated, very wrong and not internationally recognised map and replace it.
Google probably won't just swap in Cambodia's favorite map and call it a day, of course; that would upset Thailand. This isn't the first time Google's been caught up in a border dispute, though (China and India have involved it before, and so have India and Pakistan), meaning it's possible to guess how this will play out.
The odds essentially favor Google coming up with three maps. One will be for users in Cambodia, another will be for users in Thailand, and the last will be for everyone else. The first two will show borders favoring their respective countries, while the third will use dotted lines to illustrate the dispute.
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You may have gotten some good links in the past, but don't count on them helping you forever. Old links go stale in the eyes of Google.
Do you still get links to old content? Tell us why you think that is.
Google's Matt Cutts responded to a user-submitted question asking if Google removes PageRank coming from links on pages that no longer exist (for example, GeoCities pages that have been shut down). The answer to this question is unsurprisingly yes, but Cutts makes a statement within his response that may not be so obvious to everybody.
"In order to prevent things from becoming stale, we tend to use the current link graph, rather than a link graph of all of time," he says. (Emphasis added)
Now, this isn't exactly news, and to the seasoned search professional, probably not much of a revelation. However, to the average business owner looking to improve search engine performance (and not necessarily adapting to the ever-changing ways of SEO), it could be something that really hasn't resonated. Businesses have always been told about the power of links, but even if you got a lot of significant links a year or two ago, that doesn't mean your content will continue to perform well based on that. WebProNews has discussed the value of "link velocity" and Google's need for freshness in the past:
Link velocity refers to the speed at which new links to a webpage are formed, and by this term we may gain some new and vital insight. Historically, great bursts of new links to a specific page has been considered a red flag, the quickest way to identify a spammer trying to manipulate the results by creating the appearance of user trust. This led to Google’s famous assaults on link farms and paid link directories.
But the Web has changed, become more of a live Web than a static document Web. We have the advent of social bookmarking, embedded videos, links, buttons, and badges, social networks, real-time networks like Twitter and Friendfeed. Certainly the age of a website is still an indication of success and trustworthiness, but in an environment of live, real time updating, the age of a link as well as the slowing velocity of incoming links may be indicators of stale content in a world that values freshness.
Do you think link freshness should play a role in search engine rankings? Let us know.
So how do you keep getting "fresh" links?
If you want fresh links, there are a number of things you can do. For one, keep putting out content. Write content that has staying power. You can link to your old content when appropriate. Always promote the sharing of your content. Include buttons to make it easy for people to share your content on their social network of choice. You may want to make sure your old content is presented in the same template as your new content so it has the same sharing features. People still may find their way to that old content, and they may want to share it if encouraged.
Go back over old content, and look for stuff that is still relevant. You can update stories with new posts adding a fresher take, linking to the original. Encourage readers to follow the link and read the original article, which they may then link to themselves.
Leave commenting on for ongoing discussion. This can keep an old post relevant. Just because you wrote an article a year ago, does not mean that people will still not add to it, and sometimes people will link to articles based on comments that are left.
Share old posts through social networks if they are still about relevant topics. You don't want to just start flooding your Twitter account with tweets to all of your old content, but if you have an older article that is relevant to a current discussion, you may share it, as your take on the subject. A follower who has not seen it before, or perhaps has forgotten about it, may find it worth linking to themselves. Can you think of other ways to get more link value out of old content?
Do you get fresh links for old content? Why do you think that is? Share your thoughts.
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Yahoo may be doing a lot more in terms of mobile before long. Or at least telling us more about its current cell phone-related efforts. Either way, it launched the Yahoo Mobile Blog this week for the sake of keeping everyone up to date.
Irv Henderson, who's Yahoo's Vice President of Global Mobile Products, wrote the introductory blog post, and explained, "You can expect to learn about new product launches and enhancements, quick tips and tricks, our take on market trends, and predictions for where we see the market is heading."
Henderson also hinted, "So what's to come in 2010? Three developments will play a key role in shaping the mobile industry: Powerful browsers, the OS as a launching pad, and local content."
It should be interesting to see where Yahoo comes into that list. "Local content" seems like the best bet, but at the same time, Henderson's reference to browsers and operating systems makes it more likely that the company has irons in those fires. Execs tend not to admit that they're ignoring two-thirds of a major growth opportunity, after all.
We'll see what happens. Hopefully Yahoo won't wait too long between blog posts.
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Research firm comScore has just released data about the U.S. online video market from December. Americans reportedly watched 33.2 billion videos online during that month. 178 million users watched video online.
Google sites ranked at the top of the list by a significant margin, just like usual. Hulu was next in line with about a 12 million video difference. Google sites accounted for nearly 40% of the market share, with Hulu accounting for 3%. Here's the top ten:
*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.
According to comScore, users watched an average of 187 videos per viewer in December. That works out to be roughly 6 a day.
"Google Sites attracted 135.8 million unique viewers during the month (97.5 videos per viewer), followed by Yahoo Sites with 59.8 million viewers (9.0 videos per viewer) and Fox Interactive Media with 56.8 million viewers (9.7 videos per viewer)," comScore says. "The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos during the month, representing another all-time high for the property."
The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Tremor Media Video Network with 30.5% penetration of online video viewers, BrightRoll Video Network with 21.7%, and BBE with 21.2%.
86.5% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video. 134.4 million viewers watched over 13 billion videos on YouTube.com (97.1 videos per viewer). 44.9 million viewers watched 423.3 million videos on MySpace Sites (9.4 videos per viewer). The average Hulu viewer watched 22.9 videos, totaling 2.2 hours of videos per viewer. The duration of the average online video was 4.1 minutes.
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AT&T has introduced its FamilyMap App for the iPhone, which allows users to track the location of family members.
Users can download the FamilyMap the App Store on iPhone or at iTunes. Users can track tow phones on an account for $9.99 a month or up to five phone for $14.99 per month. The FamilyMap App can also be used on most other AT&T smartphones. Previously the app was only available via a desktop.
Features of the FamilyMap App include:
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It's been a pretty big week for Facebook. Not only is there a lot of talk about Facebook's potential for becoming the top news source on the web, but the company celebrated its sixth birthday, is passing the 400 million user mark, and began rolling out some new design changes. In addition, the company is said to be rewriting its messaging feature and preparing to launch a webmail product, but first things first.
The Birthday and 400 Million Users
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed it in a blog post last night. "Today we're celebrating our sixth birthday, and this week there will be 400 million people on Facebook. Just one year ago we served less than half as many people, and thanks to you we've made great progress over the last year towards making the world more open and connected."
"Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better." he added. "We hoped Facebook would improve people's lives in important ways. So it's rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about."
Facebook hosted a celebration and announced some releases at the Facebook headquarters last night. This was followed by a hackathon where Facebook staff stayed up all night coding and building new ideas for products.
Do you like the direction Facebook's gone in for the past six years? Let us know.
Design Changes
Facebook announced some new changes to the design of its homepage. Users can find their newest notifications, requests, and messages in the top menu. When a user receives a notification, they will see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner by the search bar. When the icon is clicked, a drop-down menu appears with the most recent notifications. The Home/Profile links are in the top-right corner with the Account menu, which includes privacy settings and the log out link.
The menu on the left-hand side of the screen has been completely reworked. "The left menu has been organized to make it easier for you to communicate with and discover content from your friends. You can now access your messages and other core features all in one place, to the left of your News Feed," says Facebook's Jing Chen. "With the Photos dashboard you can browse recent photos of your friends, and the Events dashboard lists your upcoming events along with events your friends are attending. The Friends dashboard will help you find friends, see which of your friends have recently updated their profiles and filter your News Feed by Friend Lists you may have already created."
Chat has also been made more prominent with a list of online friends displayed on the left. The new apps and games dashboards, which have been discussed lately, can be accessed from the menu as well. The dashboards feature personalized updates from the apps, and they have launched with new privacy settings.
The changes are still rolling out, so it's possible that you do not have them yet, but you will soon enough.
What do you think about Facebook's design changes? Good Move or bad? Tell us what you think.
The Webmail Product
Michael Arrington is reporting that a "source with knowledge of the product" says Facebook is launching a webmail product. If MySpace can do it, surely Facebook can too. It's being referred to right now as "Project Titan", although the name will likely change.
Facebook's messages as they stand right now, lend to email notifications. When you check your email, you find that someone has sent you a message on Facebook. If Facebook gets you using its own email service, it's cutting out the middle man, and that means...you guessed it - more time spent on Facebook.
Would you use Facebook for email if they offered a full webmail product? Tell us why or why not.
Facebook As the Web's Top News Source?
I've already written on this topic this week, but basically, the more time people spend on Facebook, the more convenient they may find it to simply get their news feeds there. If Facebook enters the email game, that's only going to get people using Facebook that much more, and even open up yet another way for them to get their news on Facebook, through email newsletters and news alerts.
Do you see people increasingly getting their news on Facebook? Share you thoughts.
Update: Microsoft has announced some changes to its partnership with Facebook. Facebook will now be taking over its own display advertising, and will get a more feature-rich version of Bing search for its web search.
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Microsoft and Facebook have "enhanced" their partnership with each other. The two companies will soon be providing Facebook users with what Microsoft refers to as a "more complete search experience". They will be providing full access to Bing features in Facebook. In addition, the Bing and Facebook connection will be extended globally.
Facebook will be taking over full responsibility for selling its own display ads, although Microsoft will continue to provide search ads. "Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy," says Bing General Manager Jon Tinter.
"Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook," he adds. "This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live."
"Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook's API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers," he says.
The product of this enhanced relationship between the two companies will start being felt among users in the coming weeks and months. It will be interesting to see if Yahoo advertising gets involved if the Microsoft-Yahoo deal ever sees the light of day.
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Brand consulting and advertising firm Hanon McKendry is holding it second annual online Super Bowl ad poll.
Viewers of the game will be able to visit superadbowl.com at the end of the first quarter to cast their vote for their favorite commercial. As votes are casts, the results will be compiled immediately and posted so fans will be able to see how their favorites compare to others.
"Super Bowl advertising is big entertainment, and everyone wants to voice their opinion," said Bill McKendry, founder and chief creative officer at Hanon McKendry. "We wanted to give average viewers a place to weigh in, in real time, on the ads they think hit the mark."
According to a Harris Interactive poll over 57 percent of U.S. adults plan to watch Super Bowl XLIV as much for the commercials as for the game. Among those who watch commercials, 35 percent say they are more likely to visit an advertiser's website after seeing a Super Bowl ad. In addition, 48 percent of online adults who watch the ads say they are at least somewhat likely to discuss them on social networking sites.
Visitors to the site will be able to cast their votes for one favorite commercial from each quarter. Voting will open at the end of the first quarter and remain open through February 9.
"As more and more Super Bowl advertisers maximize interactive opportunities, viewers are getting in the game and watching with their laptops by their sides," said Pete Brand, co-founder of Mindscape at Hanon McKendry, Hanon McKendry's interactive division.
"Superadbowl.com gives those interactive viewers a place to go, immediately, and be part of the action."
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Some people have spotted a new design for Google News, which is part of a limited test experiment Google is running. A Google employee posted the following message in the Google News Help Forum:
At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on our websites all over the world. Right now, we are running a small test of a new Google News homepage design. More information about how Google runs experiments can be found at:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/search-experiments-large-and-small.html
We'd love to hear your feedback. Please let us know what you think at:
http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/request.py?contact_type=report_news&source=redesign
Regards,
The Google News Team
At this point, there don't seem to be any screenshots of this design floating around, so maybe someone that is actually seeing the different version will post one eventually. There are descriptions out there, however.
The design has been described as focusing on a single category of news at a time. The user has to click on a different category to view that, as opposed to the current design where many categories are featured on the home page and arranged according to the user's preference. It doesn't seem like the feedback of those who have used the different Google News design has been pretty positive. (Hat Tip: Barry Schwartz)
Google recently did add a feature to the mainstream version of Google News, which allows users to star news clusters, so they can follow up with them later.
Would you prefer Google News to focus on a single news category at a time? Share your thoughts.
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The amended Google Books settlement agreement (ASA) has not impressed the U.S. Department of Justice. A statement the organization issued late yesterday praised the idea of making rare books widely available, but also maintained that there are a number of problems with the proposed deal.
The DOJ said, "Under the ASA as proposed, Google would remain the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats. Google also would have the exclusive ability to exploit unclaimed works (including so-called 'orphan works') without risk of liability. The ASA's pricing mechanisms, though in some respects much improved, also continue to raise antitrust concerns."
As a result, the DOJ doesn't want the current deal to go forward. The organization concluded, "At this time, in the view of the United States, the public interest would best be served by direction from the Court encouraging the continuation of settlement discussions between the parties and, if the Court so chooses, guidance as to those aspects of the ASA that need to be addressed."
So it looks like Google will have to go back to the figurative drawing board again. Enough groups have objected to the amended settlement agreement to make the situation almost comical, and with the DOJ on their side, it's hard to imagine Judge Denny Chin won't acknowledge their concerns.
Judge Chin, representing the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, should get the chance to voice his opinion at a hearing on February 18th.
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Google has launched an AdSense feature that lets AdSense publishers donate their earnings to Haiti earthquake relief efforts.
"We're currently accepting donations from AdSense publishers with an unpaid account balance through January 31, 2010," says Google's Elizabeth Ferdon. "To see what your unpaid account balance is, please visit the 'Payment History' page within your account. Your January earnings will post in the next few days, so feel free to refer to your 'Advanced Reports' page for an earnings estimate until those are finalized."
Publishers can donate either a portion or all of their unpaid balances as of the end of January. "As you may expect, there are certain restrictions to donating, and all our normal policies still apply -- so even if you're donating, please don't ask others to click on your ads in order to increase your earnings," says Ferdon.
Google will not process donation requests from publishers whose request to donate more than their unpaid balance through January 31, or if they are subject to tax-withholding, their account has been disabled for invalid activity or other violations of terms and conditions, or if their accounts display the messages: "please submit your tax information", "please enter your PIN", or "please verify your phone number".
Partners in Health is the organization that will receive the donations. They will go to proivde medical aid.
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NASA is inviting the public to send questions for its astronauts via Twitter during the space shuttle Endeavour's upcoming mission to the International Space Station.
Astronaut Mike Massimino will take questions for the crew from the public via his Twitter account until Thursday, February 11. Massimino will be a spacecraft communicator, at NASA's Mission Control in Huston during Endeavour's flight, scheduled for launch February 7.
At 2:24 a.m. CST on February 11, Massimino will host the event with the crew from his console in Mission Control. He will ask the astronauts as many submitted and live questions as possible during the 20-minute time period. The shuttle will be docked to the station during the live question and answer session. The event with Endeavour's crew will be broadcast live online and NASA Television.
The public can start tweeting questions for the Endeavour's crew today to Massimino's Twitter account, @Astro_Mike, or add the hashtag #askastro to their tweets.
The time and day of the Twitter session are subject to change due to mission priorities.
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A high-ranking MySpace executive might be ready to depart, according to a new report. Rumor has it that Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn, who's been with the company for less than a year, is making his way towards the exit.
This story appears to deserve some heavy disclaimers; since it began to spread, Hirschhorn wrote on his MySpace page, "i love fiction," and classified his mood as "amused."
He also linked to a clip of Philip Seymour Hoffman lecturing about gossip (as Father Flynn in the movie Doubt) from both his MySpace and Twitter accounts.
Still, more than a few people have indicated that the exec is parting ways with MySpace. Jason Kincaid, who's generally quite reliable, reported last night, "Jason Hirschhorn will soon be leaving the company, we've heard from multiple sources."
Perhaps it's just a later conjecture - "the real problem may have been a lack of chemistry between Hirschhorn and his fellow executives" - to which Hirschhorn objects.
Anyway, there's no word on exactly when Hirschhorn could leave MySpace, or who will replace him as Chief Product Officer (a position reporting to CEO Owen Van Natta) if he does.
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This week's big TV event was unquestionably the season premiere of "Lost"; lots of people have, over the course of the previous five or so years, become huge fans of the show. But new stats imply that very few of them sat in front of computer monitors on Wednesday, rather than televisions on Tuesday, in order to watch the two-hour episode.
Nielsen took a look at why people watch online TV, and the leading reason doesn't have much to do with convenience or fewer commercials. Instead, 54 percent of people simply watch TV online because they forgot to catch an episode as it aired. And the next-most common reason, with 47 percent of people citing it, is similar: because they missed a large number of episodes.
It's not until you get down to the least popular reasons ("Another member of my household watches another program at the same time," "I watch TV programming online when I am at work," and "I watch TV programming online when I travel") that online TV sort of distinguishes itself. Otherwise, it appears to act as more of a memory aid (or way to avoid buying DVDs) than anything.
The details relating to how people watch TV online also make the activity look like less than an integral part of everyday life. Jon Gibs, Nielsen's Vice President for Insights, Online and Cross Media, noted, "When we go online to watch TV shows, that activity dominates that particular online session," and "the viewing of TV shows online proves to be a rather solitary activity."
This all makes for less than fantastic news for Hulu and YouTube. Of course, we have to note that neither site is exactly starving for page views, regardless of people's reasons for visiting them.
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The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act by a vote of 422 to 5.
The bill is aimed at improving cybersecurity within the federal government as well as the public and private sectors by helping to develop a skilled cybersecurity workforce along with coordinating and prioritizing federal research and development.
The bill also seeks to improve the transfer of cyber security technologies to the marketplace and promote cybersecurity education for the public.
"The Internet does not stop at our borders; the consequences of poor cybersecurity measures can greatly impact our national security and economy," said bill cosponsor and Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN).
"Improving cybersecurity will require a collaborative effort both domestically and internationally. H.R. 4061 accomplishes this by coordinating U.S. representation in the development of international cybersecurity technical standards and best practices and by creating a strategic vision for federal cybersecurity R&D."
The bill reauthorizes a number of National Science Foundation cyber security programs, providing $396 million in research grants over the next four years and offering $94 million in cyber security scholarships.
The bill would also require the Administration to conduct an assessment of cybersecurity workforce needs across federal agencies. In addition the bill requires the Administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy Director to put together a university task force to find new models for putting in place collaborative R&D.
"H.R. 4061 is a good bipartisan bill that strengthens public-private partnerships, ensures an overall vision for the federal cybersecurity R&D portfolio, trains the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, and improves cybersecurity technical standards," added Gordon.
> Spam Is Getting More Malicious
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Google just introduced message log search for Postini, its group of cloud security and archiving services.
"When messages pass through the Postini service, header and transaction data about these messages is stored in a log," explains Gopal Shah of Google Postini team Previously, admins only had access to this data through customer support. With the Message Log Search feature, email administrators can now easily run searches on these logs and drill down to the details about how specific messages were processed."
Administrators can look at things like whether messages were delivered, quarantined, archived, or encrypted.
"Say an admin was checking the delivery status of all inbound emails from Matthew Smith," says Shah. "Message Log Search returns results which include who received the message, date/time, disposition, and more."
The feature has been available in beta testing, and Shah says customers have found it useful for things like tracking errant emails, figuring out why certain people didn't get messages, proactively searching for "problem senders", etc.
Log search is now available through the Postini service administration console, and in Google Apps Preimier Edition.
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I have a question for you. Where do you get the majority of your online news? Is it from a feed reader? Is it from Twitter? Is it from Google News? Yahoo News? Do you spend your time simply checking specific news publications? There is talk that Facebook could become the number one place online for people to get their news.
Here's one for discussion. Facebook users can set up a news list, which will aggregate stories from different news sources who publish their stories to their Facebook pages. All a user has to do is be a fan of that page. Would this be any different than other news aggregators linking to stories? If a news source is willingly putting up a Facebook page with its stories, wouldn't that be the exact opposite of the argument against aggregators using content? Facebook serves its own ads too. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press have Facebook pages (hopefully they don't mind me linking to them).
Sure, these publications have control over just what content actually appears on these pages. It's a bit different than Google or another news aggregator simply crawling the content, but how different is it really? The publications also have the power to block the aggregators. Is there a double standard?
Regardless of that debate, users are increasingly flocking to Facebook to get their news (news is also one of the most popular reasons for using Twitter by the way). The reason Facebook could be the biggest news source is that it has a massive user base - way bigger than Twitter's, and for all intents and purposes, it operates the same way when it comes to news (albeit, with room for more text in each update).
According to research from competitive intelligence agency Experian Hiwise, 3.52% of upstream visits to News and Media websites came from Facebook last week (that's compared to 1.39% from Google News.
"Facebook was the #4 source of visits to News and Media sites last week, after Google, Yahoo! and msn. News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site's traffic," says Experian Hitwise's Heather Hopkins. "To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular)."
"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category," she adds. "And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch."
Lately Facebook has been encouraging users to set up news lists. They want to be your news source. "You can even create a 'News' list to filter news-oriented Pages into one view on your News Feed," noted Facebook's Malorie Lucich on the company blog. "Simply add relevant Pages to the list, just as you would with a friends list. The next time you sign on to Facebook, you can click the 'News' filter to see stories from all of the news outlets of which you've become a fan."
"In addition to reading news on Facebook, you can share news with your friends on external sites with Facebook Connect," says Lurich. "Outlets like The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, USA Today and countless blogs have become more social by adding Facebook Connect to their websites and iPhone applications. You can sign in with your Facebook login to see what articles your friends are reading and comment on articles with your authentic identity."
Facebook has a huge advantage for being the go-to place for news. Everybody is already there, and they're spending more and more time there checking their feeds, messing with apps, sharing their own updates, etc. If their news-news (Facebook refers to highlights from friend updates as the "news feed") is right in their feed, they're going to see articles frequently and get their news there almost inadvertently at times. Plus, if they set up an actual news list like Facebook wants them to, it's only a click away, and suddenly the average user gets to enjoy the same kind of functionality that users of RSS feed readers have been enjoying for years (they never quite made it to the mainstream did they?).
Do you use Facebook to get news? Can you see it becoming the most widely used platform for online news?
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AOL has named David Eun as its new President of AOL Media and Studios. Until 2006, Eun was Vice President, Operations for the Media & Communications Group at Time Warner, where he helped oversee AOL. During that time, he contributed to providing operational oversight and development of new businesses in digital distribution and broadband content.
After that, he worked at Google as Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, where he managed global content partnerships with Google and YouTube. He is replacing Bill Wilson, who has been with AOL for nine years.
"David brings an impressive breadth of media experience to AOL at an exciting juncture for the company as we focus on scaling our content platforms, production and partnerships to offer quality, original content that will engage consumers and bring them – and their friends – back to our properties time and again," said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. "I'm delighted to welcome him back to AOL as we continue to pursue our strategy and mission in digital content and journalism."
"Bill Wilson has been a driving force for content at AOL and under his leadership the quantity and quality of our premium branded and niche offerings have expanded significantly. On behalf of AOL, I want to thank Bill for the energy and dedication he has brought to the role. Bill has been an outstanding leader at AOL," Armstrong added.
AOL has of course taken up a new strategy since its new found independence from Time Warner took hold. A big part of that strategy is content, and AOL will likely be looking into further partnerships in that area.
"AOL has a unique opportunity to bring together its core strengths in the key areas of content and journalism, distribution, and advertising to engage its users, partners and advertisers in a way very few companies can. These three elements will be fundamental to success as the media and technology industries evolve and converge," Eun said. "And after nearly 15 years of seeing this convergence approach, I couldn’t be more excited to be returning to AOL to help Tim and his team capture that great promise."
Eun will report directly to Armstrong and will be based out of New York.
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