Last week, we reported that Facebook wanted to hire two people in Washington, D.C., and then dissected the official descriptions of the positions as best we could. Still, the bullet points left a lot unclear, so it's noteworthy that Facebook provided some clarifying paragraphs today.
Adam Conner was the first member of Facebook's D.C. team, and a post he wrote for the company's internal blog was actually promoted to its public blog this afternoon. Conner - who also deserves applause for being a Conan supporter - did a good job of explaining some of his responsibilities and favorite moments.
Here's one excerpt that reveals just how politically connected Facebook may be: Conner wrote, "The week of January 11-17 was pretty cool, helping to pull together the Global Disaster Relief Page in just few hours. I went on vacation that weekend and was on the phone in Mexico convincing President Clinton to plug our Facebook page as part of the relief efforts."
As for the more day-to-day stuff, Conner described his duties by writing, "I get to sit in meetings with vaguely important and occasionally actually important people and explain why Facebook is like the wheel or fire and how not using it really isn't an option anymore."
It sounds like the social network's well on its way to being omnipresent in Washington, then, especially as it adds two more employees.
YouTube Partners are, pretty much by definition, some of YouTube's most important users. They create original content, don't violate copyright laws, and have huge audiences. It makes sense, then, that YouTube is now looking hard for ways to improve its Partner Program.
The hunt has taken the form of a crowdsourced project. Just as the Ideas Page for YouTube was created not too long ago for the sake of the whole site, the new Product Ideas Page for the YouTube Partner Program covers this single subject. People can submit ideas and vote on which ones they think are best.
It's an effective process. On the YouTube Biz Blog, Filipe Lima noted with respect to the first effort, "It was a success, receiving almost 3,000 ideas and more than 300,000 votes. We even launched a few features that directly addressed some of the requests - namely, an HTML5 Beta (there were many HTML5 advocates who participated) and a sneak peek of our new cleaner video page (some desired a 'less cluttered' YouTube)."
So now we'll see where round two takes us.
The deadline for both new submissions and votes is April 12th. If you have any suggestions, get them in earlier, though, for the sake of giving them more time to become popular.
Users of the mobile version of Google Product Search can now see if items are in stock at a local store from select retailers. These retailers include: Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm.
Product listings from these retailers will have blue dots that can be tapped to see an "in stock nearby" link, which takes you to a seller's page where it will either say "in stock" or "limited availability". In addition, these pages will show you how far away the store is from your location (assuming you have My Location enabled or have manually specified your location).
The feature is available for iPhone, Palm WebOS, and Android users in the U.S. Users can hit the "more" link, and select "Shopping" or find the "Shopping results" section in Google's Universal Search results when searching from Google.com.
Google offers a form for retailers who are interested in participating in this program. Google says to make sure you have your Local Business Center data up to date and to ensure your Product Search data is in "great shape."
Gowalla is a service that has been getting a lot of buzz lately. If you're not familiar with it, it's a location-based social networksing service that comes in the form of mobile apps. Gowalla announced today, the availability of Gowalla 2.0 for the iPhone 3G and 3GS platforms.
Gowalla highlights the following new features with this version:
- Design – Gowalla developers have created a fresh new experience that is more flexible, readable and usable.
- Photos – Gowalla 2.0 gives users the ability to not only check in and create new spots; they can also upload a photo after checking in, browse photos from friends and see photos taken at that spot.
- Checkin Commenting – Now when a friend checks in someplace, other users in the community are able to tell that friend what they think.
- Multiple checkin messages – Users now have more opportunities to add messages even after they’ve left a checkin spot. Skipped typing a message? Come back and add one.
- Hot spots – The most popular spots nearby will be highlighted for users in a particular area to discover.
- Browse friends – and friends of friends. Browsing friends’ bookmarked spots and creating trips are two new features put in place by Gowalla’s developers by popular demand.
- Facebook, Twitter and web links – Building your Gowalla network is easier than ever with more ways to stay connected with friends through Facebook, Twitter and web links.
- Spot details – Address, phone numbers, Twitter names, Facebook pages and website will now be available in several checkin spots.
Gowalla will be heavily involved in SXSW (of which WebProNews will be covering the Interactive portion). Gowalla has updated its SXSW mini-site that details all of the SXSW initiatives the company will be rolling out, including: real world rewards, competitions, challenges and events.
A Google exec recently said, "In three years' time, desktops will be irrelevant." That's debatable, but there's no question that mobile use will have grown much more than it already has. Based on comments in a recent keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn't seem to think PC use is going to drop too much, but he did say, "Mobile queries are just going to keep going up and up and up."
Do you think desktops will be irrelevant in 3 years? Share your thoughts here.
A study released last month found that the number of mobile phone subscribers is on track to increase from 4.6 billion to 5 billion globally by the end of 2010. Another study found that consumers are getting more comfortable with mobile shopping.
Mobile Search
Google has dominated the search market for a long time, and while this still continues to be the case, it's important to note that search in general changes with mobile. People are searching in different ways than just using their favorite search engines. They're using different apps. They're using their voices. They're scanning barcodes for instant access to product information. The number of ways people are finding information with their phones is only going to keep increasing. On mobile, it's not just about Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
That's not to say these three aren't still incredibly important to mobile. In fact, the search share among these top search engines may even become more greatly divided as time goes on. We're seeing different mobile carriers and manufacturers making deals with these companies, which affect the default search options for various devices. As we discussed before, mobile search engine use may be largely dictated by device popularity, which is (in my opinion) one of the biggest things Bing will have going in its favor in terms of market share - Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 phones will come with Bing hardware keys, meaning the most convenient way to search on these devices will likely be to hit a single button taking the user to Bing. If these devices become popular, it could be huge for Microsoft in search.
As far as Google indexing and mobile sites goes, Google's Matt Cutts says, "If you can find a way where your existing site will work well in mobile browsers, we're not worrying about supporting two completely different sites."
To learn about this subject in more detail, read the Google Webmaster Central Blog posts: Help Google Index Your Mobile Site, and Running Desktop and Mobile Versions of Your Site.
Mobile Search Advertising
When it comes to AdWords, Google says to create separate, mobile-focused campaigns so you can optimize keywords, ad text, and landing pages for people using mobile devices. Google shared an interesting case study this week looking at Razorfish's mobile AdWords approach. They shared the following details:
- The Razorfish team started by duplicating the existing desktop campaigns and switching the settings to target mobile devices with full internet browsers.
- Since their client had a well-known brand name, they focused on branded keyword terms with enough traffic to help them learn quickly about what was working best for their campaigns.
- To measure performance, they tracked several conversion metrics including whether a mobile user looked up the brick and mortar store location or downloaded a coupon from the website. Right away, they saw a 7.5% lower cost per conversion on mobile devices, encouraging them to test ways to optimize their mobile campaigns.
- Razorfish tested whether variations in the campaign's landing page would affect conversion rates. The team hypothesized that mobile users might be looking to take a specific action, and by starting the user's experience closer to that action, the client would see better results. As it turned out, for this client, they saw much higher conversion rates when the user was directed to a landing page that showed nearby store locations.
- Finally, they tested variations in the ad text. Four versions of ad text were tested, including the original copy used in desktop campaigns. Each of the three new versions provided over 9.3% lift in conversion rate over the strongest performing copy in their desktop campaigns.
When it comes to Yahoo and Microsoft search advertising, things are about to get more appealing here in general, and presumably, that includes mobile. Microsoft and Yahoo advertisers will have the audiences of both search engines to view ads once Yahoo and Bing get their integration done.
Wrapping Up
One of the most important things any search marketer can do with regards to a mobile strategy, is to simply keep up with the latest mobile trends and innovations. This space is rapidly evolving, and new apps are released frequently. Pay attention to hot apps, and how your target audience is engaging with them. What devices, operating systems, and browsers are hot? Monitor studies and surveys that delve into demographics. Try to stay ahead of the curve.
Do you have a mobile search strategy? What suggestions do you have for improving in this area? Comment.
Google has launched the Blogger Template Designer, a way to customize the look and feel of your Blogger blog.
"Over the past few years we've worked to scale Blogger and ensure that it is capable of handling hundreds of millions of pageviews per day," Google says. "But we also believe that blogging is about self expression and that an important part of expression is creating a custom design that expresses your unique voice. So last year we started working on a tool that would allow everyone to easily customize their blog’s look and feel, and today we’re proud to introduce the Blogger Template Designer."
Features of the template designer include:
- 15 new templates (with more on the way)
- Custom blog layouts with one, two and three columns
- Hundreds of background images courtesy of iStockphoto
- Customizable colors, fonts, and more.
"While alternative offerings force users to choose among a limited set of rigid template designs, Blogger provides an intuitive yet powerful interface so anyone to customize their blog's design & layout - putting the user in complete control," the company says.
It's interesting that this kind of customization has not been available from Blogger until 2010, as Blogger itself is over a decade old, and has been Google-owned since 2003.
The Blogger Template Designer is available through Blogger in Draft, Blogger's testing ground/sandbox site.
When Twitter users go to post a new tweet, they have in the past used a button that says "update" (at least from Twitter.com...that varies when you get into all the different apps Twitter users use). Now, that button says "Tweet".
We're not sure exactly when the change was made, but it appears to have been very recently, as there is quite an outpour of Tweets from users mentioning that they are now seeing the "tweet" button. Perhaps this is Twitter way of asserting some kind of ownership of the word and the brand that it carries.
Twitter made "retweeting" an official feature last year, after the community-born practice grew to mainstream use.
Interestingly, Retweet.com just sold for $250,000 this week.
The tweet button isn't the only new thing going on with Twitter's website this week. Twitter is currently in the process of rolling out geolocation features on the site, after having had such capabilities available via the API since November.
Twitter CEO Evan Williams will be speaking at SXSW early next week (WebProNews will be there covering it). We may get more interesting news from the company there (some expect an ad platform to be announced).
Update: Looks like some have noticed this for at least a couple days.
Last fall, Twitter started including geolocation information in its API, but it was not available through Twitter.com. That appears to be in the process of changing now.
This week, Twitter has been rolling out (it appears to still be in the process) geolocation info on tweets at Twitter.com. Various reports from users have been circulating, with those who have access to the feature pointing to a little blue icon by the tweet source on individual tweets, which when clicked, shows location information on a Map (powered by Google Maps).
The feature (as most new Twitter features do) is already receiving some criticism from users who have access to it. For example, Kim-Mai Cutler with VentureBeat says Twitter's geotagging is "far from what Twitter needs to be a real player in location."
Cutler adds, "First, the new maps feature isn’t turned on for Twitter’s search results. The whole point of location-based search is to be able to find what’s actually happening around you right now. Instead, Twitter tosses a few such tweets into a wash of noise..."
Earlier this week, news of Facebook readying location features surfaced. The company is expected to launch something along these lines at its f8 conference in May. Location players getting the most buzz currently are Gowalla and Foursquare. They you have Google, of course. This may be the most interesting space to watch as the year progresses. It will be quite interesting to see how mainstream location sharing becomes when it comes to consumers.
Are you seeing the geolocation information showing up at Twitter.com? Do you intend to share your location when tweeting?
Pick a road, any road. So long as it's in the UK, there's a good chance Google will be able to provide you with pictures taken from it. Today, the search giant made much more Street View imagery available, meaning its photographs now cover about 238,000 miles - or 96 percent - of British roads.
The figure below tells most of the story if those numbers don't do it for you. As you can see, just about every street in the UK has been navigated by camera-equipped cars (along with an assortment of trikes), leading to nearly total coverage.
Google did all of this rather quickly, too, considering that the first pictures of the UK were only released in March of last year.
Of course, Google's face- and license-plate blurring technology is in full effect, so privacy advocates shouldn't have too much to worry about. Many people in the UK are instead viewing this accomplishment as a positive thing, with tourism officials especially excited.
Meanwhile, there's still a concern that the European Union will force Google to keep Street View images for just six months, as opposed to one year.
Motorola has announced a "global" alliance with Microsoft, which will see Bing used as the default search engine on Motorola Android-based devices. The move begins in China, where obviously there is some turmoil between Google and that country, but again, this is being called a "global" alliance that is "launching" in China.
Motorola says that users will get a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on their mobile browser, and an enhanced search widget with Bing integration, though users will be able to customize their devices and select their own search provider.
"We believe that consumer choice is one of the most critical components to ensuring a rich and seamless client experience," said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services, Motorola Mobile Devices. "Motorola and Microsoft have enjoyed a longstanding collaboration and the addition of Bing services to our Android-based smartphones in China is another important step in empowering our end-users."
"Mobile devices continue to be a critical place for customers to access location-based services such as local search and mapping," said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Services Division at Microsoft. "We are pleased to expand our long-standing relationship with Motorola to bring powerful Bing location-based services to Motorola's innovative new mobile devices, providing consumers with more choice and flexibility in mobile search."
This is the second time in about a week Motorola has made news by offering non-Google search options on its Android-based devices. The recently launched Motorola Backflip comes with Yahoo.
Bing search and maps will be available on Motorola Android-based devices in Q1 2010 in China. No other expansion of this has been announced, but the phrase "global alliance" certainly leaves room for speculation.
The "Facts about Google's acquisition of AdMob" page Google established in November of last year apparently hasn't satisfied the Federal Trade Commission's curiosity. A fresh report indicates that the FTC has stepped up its investigation of the deal by seeking sworn declarations from third parties.
This isn't a good sign for Google. Todd Shields and Dina Bass heard about the FTC's move from "people with direct knowledge of the matter," so the affair appears to have developed beyond rumor stage.
Also, after talking to Stephen Calkins, a professor of law who used to serve as General Counsel of the FTC, Shields and Bass reported that the FTC tends to seek declarations "'when they think there is some significant chance' the agency will ask a court to block a merger, or seek to modify a deal."
Google's been running into more and more antitrust trouble as of late. From the problems with its book digitization project to a European Commission probe, the search giant's been held up on several fronts. It wouldn't be surprising if something - such as this AdMob deal - becomes a breaking point.
Still, asking for sworn declarations isn't the same thing as strongly objecting. It remains possible the FTC will give Google's acquisition of AdMob a green light.
StumbleUpon has launched a new advertising system, which the company says helps cost-effectively deliver advertiser content to targeted audiences, while increasing the opportunity for content to go viral.
StumbleUpon finds and recommends ad content it deems relevant to targeted audiences' interested based on demographic and topic areas. StumbleUpon users by simple nature of the site choose the content topics of interest to them, and are delivered random content based on this). This makes for an interesting way of delivering ads.
"With StumbleUpon Advertising, we’re solving the challenge of how advertisers can get more content that is relevant and impactful in front of their targeted audiences," says StumbleUpon CEO and Founder Garrett Camp. "We are dedicated to providing the tools that help advertisers identify and reach their audiences, measure campaigns effectively and gain real-time user feedback."
"After testing the StumbleUpon Advertising system for eight months, we know it's an extremely cost-effective way to drive qualified traffic and let the content speak for itself," said Jason Clement, Director of Findability at Wieden + Kennedy. “Since StumbleUpon Advertising targets content to users based on their personal interests, we can be confident that our content is reaching the most receptive audience possible. And when an audience enjoys our content, the reward is a healthy amount of free, organic traffic."
"StumbleUpon Advertising makes it easy and cost-effective to deliver the right content to a new audience of our target users," said Ben Tider, Assistant Director, Audience Development at Time Inc. Lifestyle Digital Group. “With streamlined campaign set-up and management, we can better optimize ads and recommend content based on the individual user. Because readers can self-identify the types of content we show them, they are more engaged and likely to share it with friends."
"StumbleUpon Advertising enables brand advertisers to serve up compelling content while users are searching or ‘stumbling’ around the Web," said Josh Spear, Founding Partner of Undercurrent. "With StumbleUpon Ads, an advertiser’s content is not an interruption, but rather a fully integrated experience that affords an opportunity for additional exposure when audiences like or respond well to the content. It is comparable to a banner that becomes more cost efficient based on positive viewer feedback. The new user interface also greatly enhances the service by delivering advanced analytics and more detailed campaign management tools."
StumbleUpon claims to generate nearly 600 million recommendations per month for its community of almost 11 million members.
Related: About a year ago, we interviewed StumbleUpon's VP of Business Development about advertising on the site.
Google Books has done it again. Despite heavy opposition to its book-scanning project, another deal's been established, and this time, the agreement involves the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage (along with the National Libraries of Florence and Rome).
Up to one million out-of-copyright works may be digitized as a result of this arrangement, which is one reason it's important. There are probably some academics who would kill for access to just 20 or 30 of them, never mind such a huge number.
Two other interesting facts are that Google's never before worked with a ministry of culture or any Italian libraries, meaning it's done extraordinarily well on this first try.
Anyway, on the Official Google Blog, Gino Mattiuzzo, a strategic partner development manager, hinted that more deals are on the way, writing, "We believe today's announcement is an important step, and we look forward to working with more libraries and other partners. We envision a future in which people will be able to search and access the world's books anywhere, anytime."
That short statement also makes clear that Google doesn't see any lawsuits or new regulations putting a stop to its digitization project.
With the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament starting next week (March 16), it's no surprise the majority (83%) of fans will watch coverage on television, while 44 percent will go online and 10 percent will use a mobile device, according to a new survey by Unicast.
Among those planning to follow the tournament online or on a mobile device, a majority will visit ESPN.com (69%). Other branded popular sports sites fans plan to visit include Yahoo Sports (42%), Fox (24%), CBS (29%), and AOL (17%).
More than a quarter of fans following the tournament (26%) will visit NCAA.com, while 17 percent will type in the URL for their favorite team.
Fans will also gather information on the tournament via search engines (22%), social networks (18%), or newspaper/magazine sites (20%).
"On the heels of the extensive online coverage of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament offers online publishers another premium sporting event that will generate high traffic from consumers looking to follow the tournament outside their living rooms," said Bryan Hjelm, VP of Marketing for Unicast.
"Digital innovations like iPhone apps, online bracket tools and streaming video are bringing basketball fever to a growing online audience of fans.
"Sites like ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports will dominate traffic due to their inherent sports fan user base, which make them prime real estate this month for marketers targeting the typical visitor - men aged 18 to 35."
The most popular online activities for those following March Madness include:
*58% Monitor scores
*54% Watch games live
*53% Check the status of brackets
*49% Watch game highlights
*42% Fill out brackets/participate in a pool
Over the years, there have been more than a few arguments about whether online news sites are killing newspapers. Now, due to some almost startling comments made by the president of CNN, it looks like the next round of old media-new media disputes might concern social networks and cable news organizations.
According to the AFP, Jonathan Klein's remarks on this subject were in no way ambiguous. He said at Bloomberg BusinessWeek's 2010 Media Summit New York, "The competition I'm really afraid of are social networking sites. That's an alternative that threatens to pull people away from us."
Klein then explained, "The people you're friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information. . . . Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news. We don't want the 1,000 people you follow in Twitter to be the most trusted sources for you. . . . So I'm far more worried about the 500 million people on Facebook than I am about two million people watching Fox."
That's an interesting take on the power of social networks. It implies - at the very least - that CNN anchors are going to spend a whole lot more time referencing Facebook and Twitter from now on. An ad campaign and new apps could follow, too.
On a broader scale, Klein seems to be saying that social networks' users can easily - even unwittingly - make or break major corporations.
Two Google executives have again assured onlookers that the company is dealing with the situation in China. While in Abu Dhabi, Eric Schmidt indicated today that something will happen sooner rather than later, and Nicole Wong told politicians in D.C. that leaving China is still an option.
Unfortunately, not a lot of other details and/or promises were forthcoming. Eric Schmidt's exact words, according to Jerry Dicolo, were "something will happen soon," and whether that's "soon" as a five-year-old would perceive it or in terms of continental drift is hard to say.
We should note: it's already been almost two months since Google stated in an official blog post, "[O]ver the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all."
As for what Nicole Wong, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at the company, had to say, there was less wiggle room. The AFP reports that she maintained, "We are not going to change our decision on not censoring results anymore." Also, with respect to abandoning the country, Wong added, "We are prepared to do that."
Google and Baidu investors are sure to remain on pins and needles until the situation is resolved.
MySpace launched a new gaming experience at myspace.com/games today. The company says it empowers developers with new tools, analytics, and opportunities for driving usage and revenue.
"Gaming is core to the overall entertainment value of MySpace; we are replicating our success from MySpace Music for this next round of platform improvements," a representative for MySpace tells WebProNews. "Nearly a third of MySpace users engage daily in games and there are more than 28 million active app users on the site." She says the site "offers users discovery and sharing of games in a simpler and cleaner experience."
"Nearly one-third of MySpace users engage daily with games. We believe the new experience will empower even more of the MySpace audience to discover, share, and showcase games, which along with music and movies, are core to our content strategy," said MySpace Co-President Mike Jones. "We've been working with our developer partners to understand where they’d like to see MySpace go; based on that feedback we started rebuilding MySpace Games. These are the first steps in offering robust tools for developers to help their businesses thrive."
MySpace says developers can now:
- Review application-specific analytics via a new API, including invitation conversions, active users, notification responses and demographics.
- Build games in rich, 3D-like quality with Unity's powerful 3D engine and allow MySpace users to access the games with a new plug-in. For example, Paradise Paintball utilizes this technology.
- Encourage cross-platform competition with Scoreloop, which allows games on different platforms to share the same high scores, achievements, challenges and buddy lists.
- Utilize GroovyCortex, which is a cloud-based solution for onsite application developers, to provide low latency push data for multiplayer games.
- Track the source of application invitations and utilization to learn how users are finding and choosing specific games.
Along with the new MySpace Games site, MySpace announced a MySpace Games iPhone app, nine new social games, and a Gallery. Earlier this week, MySpace announced that it has the most popular social app on Android.
It appears that the new MySpace Games experience hasn't fully rolled out yet.
Nearly all consumers (97%) now use online media when researching products or services locally, according to a new report from BIA/Kelsey and ConStat.
Among consumers surveyed, 90 percent use search engines, 48 percent use Internet Yellow Pages, 24 percent use vertical sites, and 42 percent use comparison shopping sites.
"The Internet has indeed become an integral part of consumers' local commercial activity," said Steve Marshall, director of research, BIA/Kelsey.
"The data suggest we're at an inflection point where the balance of power in local shopping is shifting to online."
The study found on average, consumers are using 7.9 different media sources when shopping for products or services locally, up from 6.5 sources in 2009 and 5.8 in 2008, indicating an increase in audience fragmentation.
Additional finding include:
* 58 percent of respondents report using an online coupon when shopping for products or services in their local area in the past year.
* 19 percent of respondents made an appointment online in the past six months for a service besides a restaurant reservation (e.g., business appointment, health-care appointment, auto service or personal service).
"The increase in audience fragmentation presents challenges for advertisers looking to connect with local consumers," said Peter Krasilovsky, vice president and program director, Marketplaces, BIA/Kelsey.
"These challenges may be outweighed by the targeting opportunities available with tools like coupon promotions and appointment scheduling, the latter being among the best lead sources possible, since you know where people are actually going."
February was a quiet month for the search market; we're not going to suggest any companies either break out the champagne or fire their CEOs as a result of the small changes that took place. Still, for those who are curious, comScore believes it was Google and Bing that came out looking like winners.
Google managed to increase its share of the U.S. search market to 65.5 percent, up from 65.4 percent in January, according to comScore's data. Bing, meanwhile, accomplished a more impressive feat (in overall terms, and especially in relation to its size) by grabbing 0.2 percent of market share.
That put Bing in control of 11.5 percent of the market, up from 11.3 percent the month before.
Yahoo's share of the search market then decreased, heading from 17.0 percent to 16.8 percent. Which is embarrassing, but not yet catastrophic, as the company's partnership with Microsoft moves towards completion.
The interesting thing will be if Bing and Yahoo keep trading share. Also, of course, if Google keeps increasing its dominance. We'll be sure to cover comScore's next report to see if any trends have emerged.
The significance of longtail keywords can be exemplified by thinking about the following two people:
Bill is a cafeteria worker who spends his spare time fishing and has heard that his favorite TV shows will look even better on on this new-fangled technology called “HDTV”. He might as well upgrade from his 20” to something a little larger while he's at it his friends tell him (though they don't know much more about it than he does). He sits at his computer and enters “hdtv” into the Google search box.
Steve also works in a cafeteria but is a bit more tech-savy. He has and uses a Facebook account, watches videos on YouTube and looks up information on Google when he's looking for an answer to one of his questions. He too is interested in HDTV but decides to check out a few review sites first before making the leap. He reads a great review on CNET and likes the specs of the “Panasonic Viera TC-P50G10” and decides to look around for pricing. He heads back to Google and searches for “panasonic viera tc-p50g10” or perhaps even “buy panasonic viera tc-p50g10 online”.
The difference between these two? Other than the fact that one has a dismal likelihood of conversion and the other a high likelihood - the difficulty in attaining top rankings for the two phrases is very different as well. Now, I'm not saying there isn't a place for going after the generic, high-traffic phrases but ignoring the higher converting, less-work-per-conversion phrases that are easier to attain rankings for – well – that just doesn't make good business sense does it?
So – how do you rank for the longtail?
We all understand that the factors of SEO are the factors of SEO. Just like any other phrases – your ability to rank is quite simply based on a combination of page strength and relevancy (yes there are tons of signals Google uses but they essentially break down to these two points). To affect these areas we use a combination of onsite optimization and link building. Sounds easy so far? Perfect. So let's take a look first at onsite optimization.
Optimizing your site for the longtail
I can't possibly cover the different technologies and how to make sure your site is crawlable. Let's just say – the first step is to make sure that the crawlers can get to your internal pages and that strength passes down. If the crawlers can't get through to the internal pages then you've got bigger problems than tweaking your content and building some links. Contact a developer immediately and get that sorted out first – then continue reading.
Once you know that the crawlers are getting through and strength is passing we move on to the actual optimization. The first thing one wants to look at it how to push the items with the highest ROI potential up in the hierarchy of your site. Let's use Amazon as an example of how that should be done (they know a thing or two about ranking for products).
Amazon uses one of my personal favorite tactics in that they automate the process but it's not necessary. You probably don't have the same number of products so you can likely do manually what they have to automate but let's look at what they're doing and you can apply the strategy as you see fit.
If I was Amazon and I wanted to rank my site for longtail phrases I'd want to rank for the phrases that had the highest search volume and highest chances of conversions. I'd have to apply global rules to a massive site (you don't have to – you can likely do things on a case-by-case basis but I'm sure we can all agree – Amazon cannot). So to keep the most profitable phrases high in the hierarchy but still not ignore the other longtail phrases they have created a hierarchy that puts the top product categories one hop from the homepage (Laptops & Netbooks For Example) and on that page they have links to all the major brands and uses but my favorite tactic is that they have the bestsellers. This information is easily created from their database and insures that the more popular products are two hops from the homepage and linked to with the brand and model number. At the time of this writing they have a link to the “ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-MU17-BK 10.1-Inch...”. If I search “asus eee pc 1005pe-m” who do you think shows up first? Amazon.
So step one – make sure you're linking to the product pages with the brand and model number of the item and also put the more important items higher in the hierarchy of your site. Now this doesn't mean cram all your products on the page. You have to apply the same principles to links with onsite as you do with offsite optimization. A page has a vote. It you have a page with 10 products listed on it – each product gets 1/10 of the weight passed to it. If the page has 500 products listed on it – well, you get my point. Figure out what matters and focus there.
Of course – you don't want to ignore the other potential phrases. You'll notice that as well as linking to the top products in each category they link to sub pages with brands, specs, etc. This is why they rank so well for so many phrases. Well – that's part one.
Once you've got the internal linking sorted out you need to follow that up with some onsite relevancy. Here we're referring to optimized titles, descriptions, H1 tags, content, etc. I'm going to have to leave a full breakdown of onsite optimization for another article but I can discuss some of the differences you'll encounter with longtail optimization with ecommerce sites.
With “traditional” optimization we visit a page and adjust the relevant aspects (titles, content, etc.) manually. With large ecommerce sites we need to come up with rules that apply site wide. Developing titles, descriptions and content for each and every page one-by-one is likely not an option. If you look at Amazon again you'll see that they automate the process by using the brand, model and categories in the title, description, keywords and H1 tag. Easily automated. Through their use of automated elements (“Customers bought with ...”, specs, descriptions, reviews, etc.) they are also able to insure that that the brand and model number appear on the page.
Now that works well for Amazon. They have millions of links and huge site strength. But what if you don't have that behind you. They can build a page, put it on their site and rank. You may need to invest some of your time in link building.
Link building for longtail optimization
There are two primary aspects of link building that one needs to address when we're looking at longtail optimization. The first is to the homepage for site strength and the other is to specific internal pages. The reason that we'll want to link to specific internal pages is that like it or not, you're not as strong as Amazon and so you need to build links to compete where they do not.
I'll leave the discussion of how to build links to other articles (you know – one of the 800,000 written on the subject) however we will discuss the purpose of the links and thus you'll understand the pattern of the link building.
The homepage links are in place to simply build overall site strength and should be geared to your generic, homepage phrases – it's the internal links that are specifically geared to brands and models. So we'll focus on those links in this article.
How to build links to internal pages
Building links to internal pages is virtually identical to homepage. True you can't use directories but that's about the only link building tactic that doesn't apply. There are two points that you're going to want to direct links to:
1 – the category/brand main page.
The first point you're going to want to direct links at is the main category page and the main sub-category points of the ecommerce site. You'll want to direct these links in with anchor text that suits the brand and/or category subject. Let's use Amazon as an example again.
For the purpose of longtail optimization – the links we'd direct to http://www.amazon.com/Netbooks-Computers/b?ie=UTF8&node=679517011 would primarily be geared to strengthening the page. Oh I'd use anchor text geared at “netbooks” and the link but the main point is to make that page stronger and in turn – the pages it links to. These links will also get the page spidered more.
What this will do is make the links to the brands stronger but most important – the links to the top sellers stronger and more quickly picked up. This is why they rank for new products in a matter of hours.
The individual brand and usage pages are the same from this perspective./ You'll want to optimize the pages and you'll want to focus the links for long term gain but the short term purpose is to pass strength to the product pages.
2 – the product pages.
On top of building links to pages one level up (as we've just discussed) you'll also want to build links to the individual product pages. Amazon can build a page, link to it and have it rank – you probably cannot. For products and models you know will stand the test of time – building links can be a long term strategy but not my favorite (due mainly to the fact that it's not exciting). Personally I like building links to “Coming soon” product pages and getting them spidered before there's any competition and then adding in the product the day it launches giving you a one-up over your competitors in both timing and strength. Heck, you might even win out over Amazon for a while. :)
Don't overdo it in the link building. You've got a lot of products. Unless you know a specific product is going to be HUGE you'll want to just build a few links and move on. You've got a lot of products to cover.
Moving forward
Obviously I can't cover all the various aspects of ranking for the longtail in a single1800 word article and in fact, if I turned this into a 180 page book I'd still not be able to cover all the variables but my hope is that I've given you food for thought in the tactics and timing you'll find helpful in moving forward and ranking your website for the longtail phrases that convert so well and for which you can rank so quickly if you do it right.
Google is launching ads on the home page, search page, and browser page on the mobile version of YouTube in the U.S. and Japan.
"This is a great way for advertisers to reach YouTube viewers across multiple platforms," says Google Strategic Partner Development Manager Taylor Cascino. "In fact, at launch YouTube will immediately provide one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile web. And because YouTube mobile attracts early adopters, the site can deliver to advertisers a coveted demographic of tech savvy trendsetters. We've already seen some early campaigns run on YouTube's mobile site by advertisers like Sony (for the DVD release of "District 9") and Kia, both of whom were able to easily reach their target audience, no matter where they were looking for video."
YouTube's mobile site traffic grew by over 160% in 2009, and you can probably expect that growth to continue along with smartphone usage. Don't forget that YouTube is the number 2 search engine on the web. That's a lot of people searching for videos.
"The increased usage of high-end devices like the iPhone and Android is also making mobile advertising easier and more effective for advertisers," says Cascino.
Ads on the YouTube mobile site will come in the form of banner ads sold on a full-day basis. YouTube tested the mobile ads with brands like L'Oreal and Land Rover, and the company says these showed strong results in terms of click-throughs, user experience, and brand awareness.
Google has partnered with Rails-to-Trails (RTC), a nonprofit focused on creating a network of trails from former rail lines, to add biking directions to Google Maps.
Google Maps now has biking route details for more than 150 U.S. cities covering more than 12,000 miles of trails and bike lanes. Google says it plans to continue to add new trail information to Google Maps and is requesting feedback from riders via the "Report a Problem" tool.
The new feature allows Google Maps users to type in their destination and receive directions for the best bicycling route. Google says its algorithm is weighted to prefer routing on trails instead of roads open to automobile traffic as long as it won't take cyclists too far out of the way.
"We're thrilled to be working with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy to make RTC's extensive bike trail data available through Google Maps and Google Earth," says Shannon Guymon, Product Manager for Google Maps.
"Bikers all over the country now will be able to explore new trails or find specific directions in their local community with just a few clicks of their mouse."
Clicking on links that different people send can often be a cross-your-fingers experience, considering that there are malicious tricksters, unknowing victims, and hijacked accounts to watch out for. So Twitter's attempting to make the experience less dangerous by checking (and sometimes rewriting) the links found in direct messages and email notifications.
Del Harvey, Director of Trust and Safety at Twitter, explained on the official corporate blog, "[W]e're launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter."
Harvey later continued, "For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications."
This move is bound to ruffle a few users' feathers - changing the text in private messages is a sort of bold step - but on the whole, it should prove welcome enough. A safe environment is in just about everybody's best interests, from regular users to marketers to Twitter itself.
Let's just hope the new feature works well and doesn't create a false sense of security.
Actor Corey Haim, best known for roles in movies like the Lost Boys, License to Drive, and many others (a number of which also featured Corey Feldman), has reportedly been found dead of an apparent drug overdose.
>>> You can leave your condolences on FamousDead.com.
The LA Times reports:
The Los Angeles Police Department said Haim, 38, was pronounced dead after 3 a.m. at a Burbank hospital. He had been living in the San Fernando Valley.
Details of his death were not immediately available. The L.A. coroner's office was investigating. A police spokesman said more details would be available later.
Haim connected with his fans through social media, specifically a MySpace page, which currently has 4,253 friends.
The "about me" section reads:
The real Corey Haimster here! I asked Jenny J to set this up for me, so here it is. I'll be checking in to read all your shout outs & when I get the time, I'll leave a message for you all. Thanks for hitting my MySpace page!
Love & peace out,
Corey
"Actor Corey Haim" and "Lost Boys" are currently both trending topics on Twitter.
Haim's latest movie American Sunset premiered in Las Vegas in January. He had also been seen in the realty TV show The Two Coreys with Feldman. More on Haim here.
Last night at Campfire One, Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace, where developers can create apps that integrate with Google Apps and sell them to users. According to Google, they can reach over 2 million businesses and 25 million users.
Right off the bat, the Google Apps Marketplace launched with over 50 applications from companies like Intuit and Atlassian, with more coming soon from companies like NetSuite and SuccessFactors, a Google spokesperson tells WebProNews.
"Once installed to a company's domain, these third-party applications work like native Google applications," explains Google Apps Marketplace Product Manager Chris Vander Mey. "With administrator approval, they may interact with calendar, email, document and/or contact data to increase productivity. Administrators can manage the applications from the familiar Google Apps control panel, and employees can open them from within Google Apps. With OpenID integration, Google Apps users can access the other applications without signing in separately to each. The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of data, thereby increasing business productivity and lessening frustrations for users and IT administrators alike. That's the power of the cloud."
This is the 2nd big move by Google regarding the cloud and Google Apps in less than a week. Late last week, the company acquired DocVerse, which "makes Word, PowerPoint and Excel Work like Google Docs," as the DocVerse title tag explains.
Developers can get more info about the Google Apps Marketplace at Google's Developer Programs site. The company will also be talking about developing apps for the enterprise at Google I/O in May.
While we normally don't comment on market share fluctuations that occur in places other than America, some recent changes in the UK may bear mentioning. According to the AT Internet Institute, Google's share of the search market slipped by 1.6 percent between January and February.
That's a significant amount. Indeed, as the slightly upsized figure below shows (sorry for any blurriness), if Ask and AOL had suffered similar losses, they'd have been wiped out, hitting zero.
Of course, that didn't happen. Instead, both Yahoo and Bing benefited from Google's dip. Yahoo gained a not-bad 0.6 percent, and Bing increased its share by an even-better 0.7 percent.
Google's still in an extremely dominant position, but given that Microsoft's about to spend $2 billion on Bing commercials in the UK, these changes are noteworthy. Microsoft might not be throwing its money away, as some people have speculated; there's now the possibility that it could extend or accelerate this growth trend.
We'll be sure to write again about the UK search market next month if anything out of the ordinary happens. In the meantime, it should be interesting to see how those Bing commercials are received.
Social media plays an important role in problem solving and strategy development in the workplace according to a new survey of 900 human resources executives conducted by Toolbox.com and PJA.
Among HR executives and professionals, social media usage outpaced editorial and vendor content consumption. Respondents used social media at a rate of 3.77 hours per week, compared to 2.77 hours of online editorial content and 2.13 hours of online vendor content.
The survey indicated active participation in social media is an important part of the HR job role and acts as a resource for experience-based knowledge in the workplace. Respondents said staying current (78%) and networking with peers (71%) as the most popular uses of social media.
Additionally, more than half have responded to a question asked by a peer in an online community, while nearly 50 percent have built their personal knowledge network by making connections with peers.
"This survey proves HR professionals have been fast adopters of social media, not just for networking but for improving their value as professionals," said Mike O'Toole, president at PJA Advertising + Marketing.
"They clearly identify social media channels as a way to increase their expertise and build their professional reputation."
Key highlights from the survey include:
*Social media represents 43% of total media consumption among HR respondents (compared to 32% for editorial and 25% for vendor content).
*Deep experience is seen as the most important attribute in a social media expert, followed by thoughtful and detailed responses.
*Nearly half of respondents say that a social media presence greatly increases or increases their value as a job candidate, while more than 50% claim that social media is important or very important in building their personal brand.
It looks like Google may be ready to wade into another controversial censorship vs. availability of services situation. A high-ranking corporate representative has welcomed the U.S. Treasury's decision to allow the exportation of online communications tools to Cuba, Iran, and Sudan.
According to Frank Jordans, Bob Boorstin, Director of Corporate and Policy Communications at Google, said during a human rights meeting in Geneva, "This is a great accomplishment. We are hopeful this will help people like yourselves in this room and activists all over the world take a small step down what is certainly a long road ahead."
What's more, Boorstin indicated that Google isn't going to just sit on the sidelines, wishing everyone well. Boorstin reportedly "said the Web search company would now be able to offer some of its other products in those countries," including Google Earth, Google Talk, and Picasa.
This is an interesting turn of events, considering that China recently threatened to leave China over free speech issues. If Google follows through on Boorstin's remarks, the search giant's sure to face fresh questions over whether it's more interested in profits than human rights.
We'll of course report on any further developments as they occur.
How important is your domain name to you brand? Most online businesses would probably consider it to be quite important, and with good reason. Sometimes before searching, customers may simply opt to go to the "yourbrandhere.com" URL simply because it makes sense. Now, sometimes that URL is already taken, and for start-ups, that's something to consider in itself.
As Monte Cahn, Founder and President of Moniker mentioned in a recent interview with WebProNews, it's a good idea to make sure the domain name is available when coming up with a name for your brand, or at least make sure that you are able to acquire it. Products have their own brands, and this way of thinking can also be applied to them in many cases. Cahn notes that even the big companies make mistakes in this area. For example, you would expect Apple to own iPad.com, considering the huge announcement about the device the company made this year, but someone else has that domain.
Cahn also stresses the importance of covering your brand in terms of domain names. This means getting all variations possible. Get typos, different extensions and country codes, etc. Use 301 redirects on misspells of key brands (including singular/plural versions). However, when it comes to domain names for different products, he says it's best to build sub-sites around those with their own content, which can help drive link juice, SEO value, and traffic.
Getting the .com that reflects your company name is not always possible, unfortunately. In these cases, it may serve you well to find a different aspect of your brand to center your domain around, but this will require a greater level of promotion of that URL than a simple companyname.com. For example, if there are unique key phrases within your company's slogan, you may find such an opportunity there.
Domains should be easy to remember, not too long, easy to spell, relevant to your brand, and avoid complicating characters such as hyphens. I think one key to a successful domain name is simplicity, although there are always exceptions to the rule.
At the first f8 conference, Facebook Platform was launched. Facebook Connect was announced the second time around. And now, as f8 2010 draws near, a report's indicated that Facebook will finally unveil a feature having to do with users' physical locations.
Consider the difference someone's location can make. Here's one basic example: Many people would pass over the status update "Kate is warm," but something like "Kate is warm - Miami, Florida" might attract all sorts of attention from Kate's friends (assuming Kate's not a Miami native). Plus it could mean a different set of ads would get shown.
It's significant, then, that Nick Bilton reported this afternoon, "Facebook plans to take the wraps off a new location-based feature in late April at f8, the company's yearly developer conference, according to several people briefed on the project."
Bilton also wrote, "The new location feature will have two aspects, according to the people familiar with Facebook's plans. One will be a service offered directly by Facebook that will allow users to share their location information with friends. . . . The other will be a set of software tools, known as A.P.I.'s, that outside developers can use to offer their own location-based services to Facebook users."
As for how Facebook intends to deal with privacy issues, this should be an opt-in feature, effectively cutting off the sorts of protests with which some other changes and Google Buzz were greeted.
Now we just have to wait and see if Facebook actually follows through on these rumors.
Pre-sales for the iPad begin next week and the first orders will start shipping in weeks. So it grabbed my intention when Apple aired its first ads for the iPad during the Academy Awards and the only sign of music was a millisecond long flash of an old Doors album cover.
| Top U.S. Online Video Content Properties* by Videos Viewed January 2010 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix |
||
| Property | Videos (000) | Share of Videos (%) |
| Total Internet : Total Audience | 32,410,886 | 100.0 |
| Google Sites | 12,816,043 | 39.5 |
| Hulu | 903,078 | 2.8 |
| Microsoft Sites | 491,753 | 1.5 |
| Yahoo! Sites | 435,487 | 1.3 |
| Viacom Digital | 361,228 | 1.1 |
| Fox Interactive Media | 293,008 | 0.9 |
| Turner Network | 283,244 | 0.9 |
| AOL LLC | 241,991 | 0.7 |
| Vevo | 226,125 | 0.7 |
| CBS Interactive | 217,407 | 0.7 |
A recent survey from E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit, found that most businesses are still only experimenting with social media. With this in mind, it seems worth paying attention to how some big and successful brands use social media in their own strategies.
Are you still in the experimentation phase with social media? Tell us about it.
One company that is finding social media incredibly useful is Intuit, makers of popular financial software like TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Quicken. Seth Greenberg, Director of National Media Buying and Digital Marketing for Intuit’s consumer group answered some of our questions about how effective the company's efforts are in social media.
Intuit actively participates on Twitter and Facebook daily, as well as YouTube, and some advertising with MySpace and LinkedIn. When asked if they focus on any network more than others, Greenberg says, "Currently, Twitter and Facebook are the focus because more than 50% of customers use it. Twitter offers a transparent, real-time engagement with customers and prospects on questions, issues or general comments they may have. Through both networks we are able to provide relevant, timely and valuable information to consumers."
We asked what ways the company participates. Intuit has employees all across the company that have a hand in the social media strategy, as it relates to their own roles. This covers everything from communications to marketing, and product people.
"TurboTax is very involved in social, as are other business units in the company," he says. "We recently launched @TeamTurboTax where taxpayers on Twitter can tweet questions to @TeamTurboTax and get fast, free answers from a team of tax, tech and product experts providing help and advice to make tax time easier. The account is managed by a cross-functional team of employees including those from PR, product management, marketing and support."
"In addition, there is a TurboTax Twitter account to also engage with consumers, but also provide tax tips, information, contests, etc," he adds. "We do have a Facebook page as you know and an interactive TurboTax Tax Break Blog, that includes the latest tax information, surveys and tips. Also, three years ago, TurboTax launched its Live Community, now used by more than 11 million people, to provide free instant answers from TurboTax users and tax experts online."
We asked how Intuit is integrating its on-site (proprietary domains and products) and off-site social marketing activities. "The in-product experience with Facebook Share gives customers the option to share to their Facebook news feed, creating a network effect when they share a comment or post a review. We know that fifty percent of TurboTax customers are on Facebook," says Greenberg. "The Friends Like You campaign (which Gigya is a partner with) allows customers not only to post a review, but for anyone looking for 3rd party recommendations about what product to use and their experience, to see and sort through reviews from friends (in their network) or from people like them (based on similar tax situations). Also, our national advertising with NBC highlights the Friends Like You campaign and drives people online for a total integration from offline to online to product."
When asked what technologies the company has implemented to help it maximize word of mouth traffic, he says, "The work we do with Gigya, is an example of applying technology to connect to Facebook and Bazaarvoice with our customer reviews. Live Community is an in-house technology that leverages community, where TurboTax users and experts ask and answer questions. It is free in all products, but also to anyone that has tax questions through our website. These are some of the ways that also lead to great SEO results."
Intuit uses metrics like click-throughs, network effect of "pass alongs" (consider that average Facebook user has 150 friends), engagement and conversion (both of new versus existing customers). When asked how Intuit's social media efforts have contributed to the company's sales, brand loyalty, and web traffic, Greenberg says they're learning that social can be a "very potent avenue to driving revenue, and even be more influential than other channels when applied the right way."
"We have very active and passionate customers. We see that with the Live Community, with our Inner Circle (an opt-in community where customers provide feedback, beta testing, etc) and the incredible amount of customer reviews we receive with an average of 4.5star rating," he says. "Social is a tactic to help drive traffic and is built in to many of the initiatives we employ (drive traffic to a specific link, like the blog or to TurboTax.com)."
Of course mobile factors into the strategy, even for a software company like Intuit. "Mobile is a key strategy for Intuit and figuring out where/when it is relevant for consumers. We do have social tax apps, like TaxCaster (an app to help estimate your tax refund) and SnapTax (an app that allows CA taxpayers with simple returns to file a federal/state tax return from their iPhone)."
"We're fortunate to have the passionate customers that want to express themselves and give us their feedback...Given the right tools/technology, our customers can be our best sales force (help to spread WOM). Overall, we look at engaging with people in a way that adds value to them, providing them with the information they need to make the right decisions."
What do you think of Intuit's social media strategy based on Greenberg's description? Do you see ways that the company is using social media that you could apply to your own business? Share your thoughts here.
Yahoo's line of thinking with regards to the big Microsoft/Yahoo search and advertising deal is that it will benefit both Microsoft and Yahoo's advertisers, as well as consumers and publishers.
It will benefit advertisers because it will increase search volume, with results from both Bing and Yahoo being taken into consideration. It will benefit consumers because by combining advertisers from both properties, there will be a greater pool to deliver sponsored results from, which Yahoo says will mean increased relevance. It will benefit Yahoo, Bing, and their publisher partners with increased liquidity, participation, and relevance. That is basically the sum of it, according to Yahoo Vice President of Search Advertising David Pann.
WebProNews recently sat down with Pann and discussed these things and how the deal will affect advertisers.
According to Pann, the migration across all international markets will occur over the next 24 months or so, but they will not rush it at the expense of quality, they say. "Our focus is really about developing a plan that is smooth, seamless, and with quality. So we anticipate doing the U.S. migration sometime before the holiday season in 2010," says Pann.
In the above interview, Pann goes on to talk about how things will be split between Yahoo and Microsoft. He also addresses some privacy concerns, related to data sharing between the two companies.
WebProNews also interviewed Yahoo Sr. VP of Search Products Shashi Seth and Director of Search Marketing David Roth, both of whom talked about the deal in more detail. You can catch both of those interviews, as well as a recent keynote from SMX West where the deal was also discussed, here.
Update: After some delay, Microsoft is reportedly now rolling out the new MSN home page design over the next couple weeks.
Original Article: MSN.com gets about 85 million unique monthly visitors in the US alone, according to Compete. That's significantly more than AOL.com. So now that Microsoft has unveiled a redesign to it, it stands to reason that a lot of people are going to be affected by it. Microsoft calls the new design MSN's most significant home page redesign in over a decade.
"Now is the time to clean up the mess on the Web — people need less clutter and less hassle to find what matters most to them," said Erik Jorgensen, corporate vice president, Microsoft. "Microsoft is uniquely invested in search, media experiences and technical innovation. Combining these assets to deliver our new MSN home page is a tremendous win for customers and advertisers."
What do you think of the new design? Share your opinions here.
The new design pays significant focus to local, Bing, social networks, and news. Coinciding with the announcement of the redesign was the unveiling of MSN Local Edition. This is a section of MSN that gives you local news, weather, sports, movies and events, restaurants, gas, traffic, a directory, lottery numbers, etc.
The Bing integration with the new MSN is deeper. It's now used as the core search technology throughout the home page in areas like shopping, travel, and local. It is also used as a way to highlight hot topics, trends, and people.
There is a clean integration of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as Microsoft's own Windows Live "What's New," which aggregates up to 50 web activities from various places like Yelp, Flickr, Pandora, etc.
"Customers told us they want the latest information from their favorite sources, their friends and the breadth of the Web — and the new MSN home page delivers via a fresh new look and new features," Jorgensen said. "Today is an important transformation for MSN, and it’s just the beginning."
There is also an emphasis on de-cluttering the home page. Microsoft says there are 50% fewer links than on the previous version. Here's what the whole thing looks like:
The design is not live on a wide scale yet. It will be rolling out gradually over the coming weeks. It is, however available as a preview here.
On a related note, Microsoft is finally launching MSN Music this week. The launch has been postponed since July.
Related Articles:
> MySpace, MSN Now Said To Be In Talks
> Microsoft Partners With Advance Internet On Local Ad Deal
> Bing Gets More Mobile Features in The US
MySpace announced today that it has the most popular social app in the Android Market, and the third most popular app on Android altogether.
"Our deep integration with the Android platform is one of the reasons why we’ve seen a surge in usage," says MySpace's Scott Goldberg. "Unique to this app, we have three home screen widgets. One of them allows voice-enabled status updates. We also allow users to set MySpace photos as background wallpaper on their phone's home screen. Close integration with the native Android camera contributes to the customized experience and makes it easy for MySpace users to take, upload and share pictures of their friends out having fun."
"Even beyond Android, MySpace Mobile has also proven to be a very engaging experience across all platforms with 70% of MySpace Mobile users checking in three or more times per day," adds Goldberg. "As a nod to our popularity on the mobile web, MySpace was the fourth most popular mobile web destination according to Morgan Stanley’s report on The Mobile Internet in Dec. 2009. We have also found that the average MySpace Mobile user translates into a more engaged online user, dedicating more than an hour of additional time on the site per month."
Currently, looking at the Android Market's social category, MySpace Mobile is followed by Facebook for Android, Tweetcaster, AIM, and Truth or Dare. The top two most popular apps overall are Pandora and the Weather Channel.
One of the best parts about having the most popular slot in any category in the market is the visibility that comes along with that. Any user who gets a new Android device, and goes to look for apps, will see MySpace Mobile right at the top of the list, and that could could drive continued growth.
Mobile should play a key role in the continued success of MySpace. Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter are seeing big mobile gains themselves.
Are you surprised that MySpace has the most popular social app on Android? Share your thoughts.
WebMD has launched WebMD Health Exchange, a new health social networking platform.
WebMD Health exchange allows people to connect with health experts and other WebMD members to share experiences, discuss personal challenges, and receive answers and support.
"WebMD Health Exchange is a powerful new way to connect our 60 million monthly users to share their own experiences and personal wisdom across any area of health and wellness," said Wayne Gattinella, President and Chief Executive Officer, WebMD.
"We expect Health Exchange will quickly become a trusted source of information for our users and an important new communications platform for our sponsors."
WebMD Health Exchange is being integrated throughout WebMD.com, giving people the ability to connect with others on relevant topics. Along with expert led communities, members can create their own communities and exchange information with other users. Communities can be created for public access which are searchable on WebMD and online, or members can create their own private communities to share information with others.
Doctors from Duke Medicine will provide expertise for communities ranging from asthma to rheumatoid arthritis. Experts from the National Health Council, National Osteoporosis Foundation, American Gastroenterological Association, North American Menopause Society, and the American Veterinary Medical Association will lead related community discussions.
The WebMD Health Exchange will also allow third party sponsors to create branded exchanges and to host consumer discussions on specific health and wellness topics.
By and large, Google Maps is great, providing well-plotted directions and up-to-date contact information on demand and free of charge. But slight inaccuracies persist, and to fix this problem, Google will now allow people to reposition markers using Street View instead of just maps and satellite images.
Perhaps this sounds familiar: you type an address into Google Maps, switch to Street View, and find yourself staring at a Wal-Mart instead of an Italian restaurant. Then you spend five minutes clicking up and down a street to locate the correct spot. Frustrating, right?
Now there's an easy fix. A post on the LatLong Blog suggested, "When you find a place that is in a wrong location, click on the marker and get an infowindow open as what you did before. . . . Click on the 'edit' link, and then click the 'Move marker' link in the updated infowindow."
After that, "You'll see two jumping markers in the map and the Street View image appear, which means both of them can be dragged. When you drag the marker on the map to a new position, the marker inside the panorama will be updated correspondingly, and vice versa."
This should greatly increase the accuracy of Street View as people tie markers to establishments' entrances. And that'll benefit users in addition to any businesses that might otherwise lose potential customers due to poor directions.
Google has launched two new experiments in Webmaster Tools Labs. These are "Fetch as Googlebot-Mobile" and "Create your Sidewiki page owner entry."
"After we launched Fetch as Googlebot, many users with mobile-specific sites asked if we could provide the ability to fetch their pages as Googlebot-Mobile. We thought it was a great idea, and added it as an option to our Fetch as Googlebot feature. We have two mobile options: cHTML (primarily used for Japanese sites), and XHTML/WML," says Webmaster Tools Product Manager Sagar Kamdar.
"After Sidewiki launched webmasters kept asking, 'How can I put a Sidewiki page owner entry on all pages of my site quickly?' With the feature that we're introducing today, you can now create these page owner entries directly within Webmaster Tools for any site you own," says Kamdar.
Google's Webmaster Tools Labs launched last October. Other tools within it include the original "Fetch as Googlebot" and "Malware details," which provides snippets of code that exist on pages deemed to be malicious by Google.
Investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs is more or less giving up on Google's Nexus One. A note Goldman Sachs published this week indicates that it's cut its 2010 sales forecast by a whopping 71.4 percent.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the note stated, "We previously estimated that Google might sell 3.5 mn Nexus One units in 2010." Now, after seeing some data from Flurry, "We forecast that Google sells 1.0 mn Nexus One units in FY2010 . . ."
Goldman Sachs doesn't have much confidence that Google will be more successful in the future, either. The firm believes Google will sell additional devices as it "rolls out a second Nexus handset, markets it more aggressively, and makes it available offline," but nothing like 3.5 million was mentioned.
Instead, Goldman Sachs predicted "that Google sells 2 mn handsets per year in 2011 and future years."
This is fairly bad news for the search giant, given that the Nexus One was supposed to make so much of a splash. The online-only sales model and lack of advertising may have been meant to save Google huge amounts of money, too.
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