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Yelp Not Happy With High Level of Google Exposure?

Google and Yelp have had some issues for sometime, following a failed acquisition attempt, but it's rare that the tensions between the two companies are aired for an audience. That is just what happened at TechCrunch's Social Currency Crunchup event.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Google VP of Product Management John Hanke shared a stage and talked a bit about their situation. TechCrunch's MG Siegler shares his account of the experience here. Essentially, what it boils down to is that Yelp isn't thrilled with Google showing its content on Google Places, which the company is heavily pushing these days. Yelp accounts for a significant amount of the information Google shows on its Place pages. Siegler writes:

Yelp can’t like that too much. In fact, we’ve heard they’re particularly unhappy because they used to have a deal with Google for this data, but they pulled out of that deal a couple years ago. But Google decided to use Yelp’s data anyway simply by crawling it. Yelp can’t stop them from doing that unless they want to delist themselves from Google — a move which could kill them.

In my experience, Google Place pages do offer a lot of Yelp content, but they also offer reviews from other sources like Urbanspoon, Citysearch, etc. Furthermore, they link to the content. If a user wants to see the full Yelp content for that listing, they have to clickthrough to Yelp.

This appears to be just another version of the ongoing Google News/aggregation argument. People that may have gone to Yelp before, may go to Google Place Pages and see a wider variety of review content, but Google Place pages might also send more people to Yelp than otherwise would not have gone. Not everyone is a Yelp user. Google has a LOT of users, many of which search for local businesses all of the time.

Google has always maintained its goal is to show users the best content, and Yelp should feel privileged that it is held in that regard. That could change. The space Yelp operates in will only get more crowded with mobile apps, especially with the whole check-in app boom (which Google is also placing more focus on, I might add).

A lot of content providers (and Yelp competitors) would probably kill to get the Google exposure they do.

News "Game Changers" Coming Out of the Woodwork

News Corp. is reportedly considering working on some new app-based news product that would be separate from any of its existing print or web publications. An experiment in the future of news? Perhaps. A game changer? We'll see. CNBC seems to think it might be.

Given how few details are known about this alleged product, let's not get ahead of ourselves. There have been a lot of so called "game changers" in the news industry recently, and I'm not sure how much the game has actually changed as a result of them. Julia Boorstin reports:

Sources close to the company tell me that the company is considering creating a new purely digital news play that would be designed for the app world and would be available through subscription on devices like the iPad.

This new digital news venture would incorporate text, photo and video, tailored for the iTunes app format ... neither a newspaper nor a news website — it would not be based on any of News Corp's existing papers.

There are some new and interesting products surfacing. There's no question about that, but without widespread adoption, how much of a game changer can any one product truly be? Google? That was a game changer. Blogging platforms? Yep. Facebook? Absolutely. Twitter? Yes. It even caused changes in Facebook (and search engines with realtime search).

This new project from News Corp. will have text, photo, and video elements though. Sounds like a game changer!

Again, based on the small amount of details, it's hard to form a real opinion on this, but is app-exclusive content the answer? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it'll be in the content itself. If the content is exclusive, and unique enough from what's on the web, an app like this could succeed. But apart from that, I really don't see how this would be much different than offering a print publication with exclusive-to-issue content, other than the fact that less people will have access to it, though it might be able to build on this initial, ongoing novelty that comes with a new generation of tablet devices. Remember, you can still access the web from these too.

There is a lot of excitement around the iPad and similar forthcoming products right now, especially from the news industry. However, it still remains to be seen if these tablets can truly "change the game" in terms of news. People are still overwhelmingly going to choose free content over paid.

Thoughts?

Is Quality Really in Jeopardy Because of Content Farms?

So-called content farms draw a lot of criticism for a supposed lack of quality and some consider them a threat to quality on the web in general. We're talking about entities like Demand Media, Associated Content, the new AOL, etc. (the definition of the term content farm itself is also debated).

I would argue that content quality is not in jeopardy. Hear me out. For one, while these sites may or may not produce a large amount of sub-par content, that's not to say that they don't have quality content too. There's no question that quantity is the driving force behind these sites, but quantity in content producers (AKA: the writers, video producers) also means a wider range of minds contributing. There is good among the bad. It's a mix.

Furthermore, as competition among these content farms heats up (and you can bet that will increase), quality is going go play more of a role in setting one apart from the next. Low-quality content will inspire higher quality competition. If a how-to article on roofing isn't adequate, someone will want to trump it with a better one. Users will flock to the higher quality pieces when the lower quality ones don't meet their requirements. If those pieces do meet their requirements, how low quality are they really? Quality is in the eye of the beholder. If the reader/viewer doesn't like what they see, they'll look elsewhere.

Richard MacManus spoke with Howcast Chief Product Officer Sanjay Raman. Here's an excerpt from that article:

Who is the top YouTube provider, measured by views? You guessed it, Demand Media. This is because it produces far more video content per month than Howcast (Demand competes directly with Howcast with its property eHow). While Sanjay Raman didn't have exact figures, he estimated that Demand Media produces about 10 times more videos every month than Howcast. However he implied that this resulted in lower quality videos.

"Demand Media takes tasks and makes them smaller than they need to be," said Raman.

He also claimed that Howcast's playbacks per video are higher than Demand Media's. Howcast averages 44-50,000 playbacks per video, he told me, whereas Demand is around 7,000 per video.

Case in point.

Now, that's also not to say that all of Demand Media's content is low quality, though many will be quick to tell you that it is. The company has already made moves this year aimed at increasing quality. See the following articles for a few examples:

- Demand Media Aims to Sort Out eHow Content Confusion

- Demand Media Adds New "Talent & Expert Network" to Content Mix

- MerchantCircle, Demand Media Provide New Local Search Opportunities

DM is still adjusting to a new model that it has become the poster child for. There may be a lot of work to do, and just how much it improves remains to be seen. That said, increased competition in this space is likely to fuel increased quality, and if not, the users will go elsewhere. Bounce rates will increase. Someone else will get the traffic.

Furthermore, search engines will continue to compete to deliver the best results, and people will be more inclined to share higher quality articles. That should provide further motivation.

What do you think? Comment here.

fbFund No More?

Things have been a little slow on the fbFund front this year. The site hasn't posed an update since January, and you probably won't be hearing about new ventures anytime soon.

Inside Facebook reports that fbFund appears to be "mothballed". fbFund is a seed fund and joint venture run by Facebook Founders Fund and Accel Partners. Investment capital for the fund was provided by these entities.

fBfund gave startups up to $100k in investment, as well as access to key people, presentations on technology, product, marketing, and business topics, mentorship, and even office space. Eric Eldon writes:

After noticing that the company has been completely quiet about fbFund plans so far this year, we asked it about its plans. "At this time we have no plans for future iterations of the program," a company spokesperson tells us, “but we will keep you posted as soon as we have anything new to share.” The company also says that it will "continue to support innovation from the startup community through initiatives like the developer garage program."

fbFund operated for two years, funding companies building Facebook's developer platform, and as Eldon points out, it has kind of taken a backseat to the big boom in the social gaming market.

How Facebook Handles Questions Could Play Key Role in Future Search Habits

Facebook's new Questions product, launched in beta earlier this week, has a great deal of potential for answering the questions of half a billion people (the most recent number of Facebook users reported by the company).

Will you use Facebook Questions to seek answers? Let us know.

As competition between Facebook and Google over Internet user time and attention continues to increase, this may be yet another area where Facebook has a bit of leverage over the search giant. Q&A is becoming a big area of focus throughout the industry with many smaller players fighting for a piece of the pie (not that all of the players are small).

Google has Aardvark, which it has yet to really do anything incredibly significant with (at least related to Google search). Yahoo, of course, has Yahoo Answers. Ask just reinvented itself with a focus on community and web-driven Q&A. That's just a few examples. Facebook has a major advantage, however, with that half a billion users, and the simple fact that many of those users spend a great deal of time using Facebook.

Facebook Questions data could be very useful to search engines and their users, if the product itself lives up to its own potential, but it remains to be seen if Facebook will be willing to share that information. The company is already notorious for being stingy with its data, from the open web perspective, despite its own "open" graph initiative.

Facebook told Search Engine Land that it doesn't have plans to give search engines access to its questions and answers, though they didn't rule out future consideration. The decision could be an important one strategically for the company in the future, particularly as Google continues to move toward trying to steal some of Facebook's thunder (the key word there being "trying"...I should mention this notion has been downplayed by the company).

Microsoft has to be pretty interested as well, as it is frequently looking for new ways to compete with Google and it already provides Facebook with its own web search results.

Q&A is becoming an increasingly interesting segment of the search industry, and one where there is distinct possibility of shaking up Google's share, thanks to an increasing number of players, the diversification of how people actually do their searching/information gathering, and blossoming mobile application ecosystems.

Facebook, Google, and increasingly Bing all have their places in these ecosystems, and Facebook Questions could conceivably play a powerful role in tipping x amount of searches in one direction or another.

Do you see Facebook Questions as a potential disruption to the search industry? Share your thoughts in the comments.

RIM Reportedly to Have iPad Competitor Ready Before Holidays

Everybody's scrambling to get their iPad competitors out. Most recently, we heard what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had to say about his comany's plans. Research in Motion (RIM) will apparently have its iPad competitor out in a few short months.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports the BlackBerry maker intends to have one out in November. Hugo Miller writes:

The device will have roughly the same dimensions as the iPad, which has a 9.7-inch diagonal screen, said the two people who wouldn’t be identified because the plans haven’t been made public. The device will include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technology that will allow people to connect to the Internet through their BlackBerry smartphones, the two people said.

Will it be called the BlackPad? As Mobile Crunch pointed out this week, RIM has purchased the BlackPad.com domain.

iPad sales have been impressive, to say the least. However, it has yet to really be faced with competition, and that will soon change. The iPad-like tablet market is going to get flooded with new products and choices for consumers, and there is no doubt that some of them will be much more competitive with pricing. This is one thing that has helped Android grow (which is powering its own iPad competitors).

As the holiday season arrives, it looks like the iPad isn't going to be the only one getting looked at by consumers.

Twitter Launches New User Suggestion Features

Twitter has begun rolling out a "Suggestions for You" feature that helps users find people to follow. You may be familiar with a similar feature on Facebook.

"With more than a hundred million users on Twitter, there are sure to be at least dozens of accounts out there that will reflect your interests. The trouble is finding all of them," the company says.

Twitter's suggestions utilize algorithms based on factors like people you follow and the people they follow. The suggestions can be found on Twitter.com and the "Find People" section. Of course you can click "follow" to follow those Twitter suggests for you. If you're not interested, you can click "hide" and they won't show you that suggestion again.

Twitter is also launching a feature that shows you "similar" users when you view other people's accounts. Both new features will be available in third-party apps, as Twitter is launching an API.

If you don't mind a shameless plug, I might suggest just using Twellow to find people of interest by category or location. If you're looking to find interesting people to follow, that can help big time, and you can look for people yourself rather than relying on who Twitter thinks you’d be interested in. Mashable included it in its top 20 Sites to Improve Your Twitter Experience as one of two in the discovery category.

WebProNews IT Team Confirms Facebook "Leak" Not Much of a Story

Facebook has put a lot of people on edge about privacy in recent months, and while some of it may be legitimate concern, a lot of the discussion is simply getting blown out of proportion.

You've probably read about the infamous "leaked" list of user names this week, that a security researcher shared in a torrent. A bunch of companies have reportedly been downloading the info leading to some unnecessary paranoia. Our own IT department took a look at that torrent, and there's really nothing to get freaked out about. It just contains data that's already public (170,879,858 URLs by our count), as the "leaker" Ron Bowes told BBC News.

The biggest file is called facebook-urls.txt. The top of the file looks like this (with "xxxxx" representing the unique number associated with the accounts):

http://en-us.facebook.com/people/-/xxxxxxx
http://en-us.facebook.com/people/-/xxxxxxxx
http://en-us.facebook.com/people/-/xxxxxxx
http://en-us.facebook.com/people/-/xxxxxxxxx
http://en-us.facebook.com/people/-/xxxxxxxxxx

Eventually, once you get past the dashes, they start looking like this (where the "xxxx" represents people's names):

http://en-us.facebook.com/people/A-xxx-xxx-xxx/100001172054083
http://en-us.facebook.com/people/A-xxxxxx-xxxxxxxx/100000816806409
http://en-us.facebook.com/people/A-xxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-xxx-xxxxxx/643427473

"So you could figure out somebody's name from the profile URL, but that's really about it,” our IT manager says. "Anything else, you'd have to actually go to the URL and crawl it."

And of course, these people are already in the Facebook Directory anyway, as Bowes noted. There's no other information.

From the README file included in the torrent, here are the list of all the files:

Filname                            Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
facebook.rb                     The script used to generate these files (v1)
facebook.nse                    The script that will be used for the second pass (v2)
facebook-urls                   The full URLs to every profile
facebook-names-original         All names, including duplicates
facebook-names-unique           All names, no duplicates
facebook-names-withcount        All names, no duplicates but with a count
facebook-firstnames-withcount   All first names (with count)
facebook-lastnames-withcount    All last names (with count)
facebook-f.last-withcount       All first initial last name (with count)
facebook-first.l-withcount      All first name last initial (with count)

Bowes said that collecting the data was in no way irresponsible and likened it to a telephone directory. On top of that, there's not any info to distinguish people with the same names apart from one another.

Facebook has also confirmed that the info in the list was already freely available online, and that "no private data is available or has been compromised."

This article from the Telegraph claims that the torrent contains info like profile pictures, lists of friends, etc. Our team says that's not true and that you'd have to re-crawl the profile URL in order to get that data.

The bottom line is that the info in the torrent is public info, just like any other personal info that is published publicly on the web that's out there for Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other crawler to index. Essentially, all that's really in the torrent is big list of URLs. Whoa!

The companies downloading the torrent for whatever purposes they have in mind, would probably be better served to just look at the directory. Facebook has a lot more users than 170,879,858.

Microsoft Sales Outweigh Acquisitions 2:1

People who keep up with tech news have probably noticed that Google makes acquisitions on a regular basis.  Meanwhile, reports concerning Microsoft buys are rare.  But that isn't necessarily a sign of some media bias; Microsoft confirmed today that the companies it sold in the past year were worth more than the companies it acquired.

Microsoft filed its Form 10-K report with the SEC this morning, and about two-thirds of the way through, shared that interesting fact.  A big hat tip goes to Todd Bishop for spotting it.

Specifically, Microsoft stated, "During fiscal year 2010, we acquired five entities for total consideration of $267 million, substantially all of which was paid in cash."

Then the company finished, "During this period, we also sold three entities for total consideration of $600 million, including Razorfish in the second quarter of fiscal year 2010."

That speaks to a very different approach to doing business than the one that's helped make Google successful.  Although we should note this one is arguably working all right for Microsoft, considering the record quarter it reported earlier this month.

This could be a "to each his own" scenario, then.  Or not.  That's because, unfortunately for Microsoft, its stock has fallen 0.88 percent today (which is more than both the Dow and Nasdaq), while Google's stock has risen 0.27 percent.

OneRiot Makes Staff Changes to Prepare for the Future

OneRiot says it has made some changes that will "propel the company to the future faster." The changes they're referring to are that Kimbal Musk, formerly CEO, is now the Chairman of the company, while Tobias Peggs (formerly President in charge of Strategy, Sales, Distribution and Marketing) is now CEO.

Citing, a list of accomplishments that includes the launches of OneRiot itself, its APIs, its ad platform, its Trending Topics Engine, integration with Facebook's Open Graph, and the fact that its on pace to serve 1 billion ad impressions a month, OneRiot's Jennifer Hodges says, "As it’s clear to see, OneRiot emerged as the authority on realtime search and is now hurtling along a highway towards monetizing the wider realtime and social web. It’s time to crank that up another gear, and really go for it."

The changes, unfortunately, also include letting some workers go. "Now, being agile also necessitates making some tough decisions too, if they are the right thing for the company right now," says Hodges. "Unfortunately, today, we have had to let a handful of well respected colleagues go. This is a pragmatic decision based on a strategically focused go-forward plan for the company. It’s in no way a reflection of the talent of the people concerned. One of the folks moving on is Robert Reich, our co-founder. Robert has had immeasurable influence on the OneRiot vision and product - helping us get to where we are today. We’re sure that whatever he turns to next will be equally as visionary, and we wish him well."

OneRiot says Peggs will work closely with Ron Benson (VP Engineering) and Merle Waterman (CFO) to drive the day-to-day business operations. The plan includes the monetization of the realtime web.

Microsoft Doesn't Plan to Let Yahoo and Google Do Their Thing in Japan

Microsoft is pissed that Yahoo Japan is going with Google rather than Bing. In fact, the company is reportedly moving to block the deal from going through.

Jay Yarow at Silicon Alley Insider provides the following statement from a company rep: "We plan to present evidence to the Japanese FTC explaining why we believe that this deal is substantially more harmful to competition than Google’s deal with Yahoo in 2008 that the DOJ found to be illegal."

According to Yarow, Microsoft estimates that Google and Yahoo joining forces in Japan would give the companies 98% of the Japanese search market.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Yahoo Japan is turning to Google to power search engine listings. Naturally, with the highly publicized deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, this raised more than a few eyebrows, including Microsoft's.

The decision was ultimately not Yahoo's choice, however, as they actually do not control the majority of Yahoo Japan. SoftBankCorp, a Japanese ISP and cell phone provider controls 40% to Yahoo's 35%.

eWeek recently shared some words from both Microsoft and Google on the matter. Basically, Microsoft has called it anti-competitive, and Google has said it isn't. Google maintains that it will only license Yahoo Japan ad technology, rather than supplying ads.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's "Search Alliance" with Yahoo is already starting to take effect. Last week, Yahoo announced that it has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft, with up to 25% of its U.S. search traffic seeing Bing and adCenter results.

The company said it will be integrating Microsoft's mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months, and anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September.

Museum Of Natural History Launches iPhone App

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has launched a free app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad called Explorer.

The Explorer app uses Wi-Fi to act as an "indoor GPS" within the museum, pinpointing a user's location and offering turn-by-turn directions through more than 500,000 square feet that features 45 permanent exhibition halls, theaters, restrooms, cafs, and museum shops.

The Explorer is also an educational resource that provides visitors with additional information on more than 140 specimens and objects on display, including such iconic exhibits as the blue whale and the Tyrannosaurus rex. The Explorer features customized tours, a fossil treasure hunt, and social media links for posting to Facebook and Twitter.

 

 

The Explorer runs on the museum's free Wi-Fi network. Users will be able to download the app to their own iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or to borrow one of more than 350 devices the Museum is making available at no charge.

 "We wanted to put the latest mobile technology in visitors' hands and provide them with an app that works not only as a personal navigation system but also gives an exciting look at our collections from anywhere in the world, connecting to social networks through email, Twitter, and Facebook," said Linda Perry-Lube, senior vice president and chief digital officer at the Museum.

"The task of building a system capable of mapping visitors' locations inside of the Museum was monumental and has laid the groundwork for future development. Explorer sets the standard for a new type of Museum experience in the digital age."

 

 

Playdom Enters Facebook Credits Deal

Facebook Credits are fast becoming the official currency of developers everywhere.  Following recent announcements involving LOLapps, CrowdStar, RockYou, and Wooga, Playdom has also entered a deal that will see it using nothing other than Facebook Credits for the next handful of years.

Playdom is an important developer, with millions of people enjoying its apps.  By establishing a deal with it, Facebook's ensured that a whole lot of folks will be exposed to Facebook Credits.  It's not hard to imagine that usage will increase as a result.

The ramifications of this partnership don't end there, either.  Since Disney acquired Playdom earlier this week, Facebook's now officially got the largest entertainment conglomerate in the world as its pal.  That could pay off in a big way when it comes to advertising.  Or simply PR.

Anyway, if you're curious about the terms of the deal, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Chris Morrison, "Facebook has entered into a five-year agreement with Playdom for the company to use Facebook Credits as the exclusive way to transact in its games on the Facebook Platform. . . .  As part of the relationship, Playdom will receive the same revenue share as other developers on Facebook."

No other details were disclosed.

Some of Playdom's top apps include Mobsters, Overdrive, and Poker Palace, if you're curious.

Google Getting Rid of Old Version of AdSense for Search

Google is retiring the old version of AdSense for Search and telling users to switch to the new version powered by Google Custom Search, which has been offered for a while.

If you see "powered by Google" on the logo on the search results page, then you're using the old one. In a post on Google's Inside AdSense blog, Katrina Kurnit writes:

AdSense for search with CSE gives you more control over your search results without changing how you earn money showing AdSense for search ads. For example, with the new version, you'll have access to advanced features like refinements and promotions. Our team has developed a number of updates and improvements during the past few months, and you can access more advanced features at www.google.com/cse.

Your existing AdSense for search box will continue to work normally for a few more months, and we'll be sure to update you when we retire this version. To take advantage of the benefits offered by the new version of AdSense for search and ensure you don't miss any revenue during the transition, we encourage you to update your code now.

To upgrade go to AdSense setup and "AdSense for Search" then select the sites you want your users to be able to search across, customize the look and feel and update the code for your site. Google offers more info here.

Barnes & Noble Uses its Brick & Mortar Advantage Against Amazon's Kindle

The e-book/e-reader wars are really heating up. Amazon has plenty of good news to share around its Kindle device. Now Barnes & Noble is talking about a major push to increase Nook sales.

Julie Bosman with the New York Times reports that in September, the company will start putting a great deal of emphasis on Nook in its brick and mortar stores, and that could go a long way in helping it compete with Amazon's increasingly successful Kindle.

According to Bosman, the Nook's physical in-store presence will include 1,000-square-foot boutiques in all B&N stores with sample Nook devices, demo tables, video screens, and employees giving Nook-related advice and instructions to customers.

"By devoting more floor space to promoting the Nook, Barnes & Noble is playing up what it calls a crucial advantage over Amazon in the e-reader war: its 720 bricks-and-mortar stores, where customers can test out the device before they commit to buying it," she writes.

Nook made a big impact in June when it dropped the price of its 3G version to $199 (along with the release of a new Wi-Fi version of the device). Not to be outdone, Amazon quickly dropped the price of its Kindle from $259 to $189.

This week, Amazon introduced a new generation of Kindles, including a cheaper Wi-Fi version. The price of the new smaller 3G + Wi-Fi Kindle is $189, while the Wi-Fi only version costs $139.

Amazon recently announced that it had sold more Kindle e-books than hardback books. Now the company is claiming that they'll outsell paperbacks as soon as next year.

I would not be surprising to see Amazon make a quick push to sell more Kindles before B&N can get its physical boutiques ready. After all, customers who already own a Kindle are less likely to be in the market for a Nook. We'll see what Amazon's next move is.

ApartmentGuide Adds Search Tab To Its Facebook Page

ApartmentGuide.com has introduced a search tab on its Facebook page.

To find an apartment, visitors to ApartmentGuide's Facebook page can click on the search tab and enter the city, state or zip code. Price range and number of bedrooms is also an option to narrow the search. Users are offered apartment listings that match search criteria on the Facebook page.

"A significant portion of ApartmentGuide.com users are between the ages of 18-35, aligning nicely with Facebook's demographics," said Arlene Mayfield, president, Apartment Guide. "Further, Facebook had over 150 million U.S. users in July 2010 with that number expected to grow considerably."

"With roughly 54% of all Internet users projected to be on Facebook as of February 2010, we wanted to make sure that consumers had the means to easily search for an apartment and communicate with their friends and family regarding their apartment search experience on this industry leading social site."

Other new features added to the Facebook page include:

*Share button: Users can share favorite properties with their Facebook friends.

*Like button: Users can like a specific property.

*Facepile: Users who have clicked the Like button on a property details page and are logged into Facebook will have their Facebook profile photo added to the Page's Facepile.
 

 

Rumors Slate Facebook IPO For 2012

Individuals who want to invest in Facebook probably won't have an opportunity to do so for well over a year.  A new, somewhat credible report indicates that the company won't go public until sometime in 2012.

"Three people familiar with the matter" spoke to Bloomberg, and said the delay will give Mark Zuckerberg "more time to gain users and boost sales."  The second part of that claim is believable; the first half, less so.

But Bloomberg presumably wasn't just interviewing random grocery shoppers in Palo Alto, and the article continued, "Facebook would benefit from another year of growth absent the added scrutiny that comes with a public listing, instead of holding an IPO in 2011 as investors speculated, said the people . . ."

Lots of evidence supports that idea, too.  Paul Ceglia's not-yet-disproven claims of ownership wouldn't do a public company any good, for example, and the release of The Social Network will hardly equate to positive PR.

Plus, Zuckerberg himself might not be ready to handle the challenge.  Consider that he said at the Cannes Liones International Advertising Festival that running a public company probably wouldn't be too different from running a private one.  Audience members laughed in response.

Another benefit of delaying the IPO will be that Facebook can give the market more time to recover.  It must be a rare company that would want to go public when there are good odds of the Dow crashing the same day.

Is Google to Blame for Its Own News Pollution?

Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan points out how poorly Google handles those gaming Google News, using Google Trends as a starting point.

Do you find Google News to be too heavily polluted? Share your thoughts.

He found a blatant example when the term "chocomize" became listed as "volcanic" on Google Trends. When clicking for the results, he found several sites serving Google ads that presumably only created posts about the term because it was trending (as a way to get some easy traffic, and potentially ad clicks). In fact, some examples came from sites that were clearly aimed at entirely different niches, such as a horror movies site and a TV/Anime site. The biggest problem from the user's perspective is that there was nothing immediately indicating why the term was trending.

The real reason the term was trending was apparently because CNN ran a story earlier in the day about a company called Chocomize that makes custom candy bars (a pretty cool concept, I have to say), but when looking at the Google News results, Sullivan had to really dig to find that story.

"The pollution within Google News is ridiculous," Sullivan says. "This is Google, where we’re supposed to have the gold standard of search quality. Instead, we get 'news' sites that have been admitted — after meeting specific editorial criteria — just jumping on the Google Trends bandwagon, outranking the actual article causing the term 'chocomize' to be popular, polluting the news results and along the way, earning Google some cash."

Earning Google some cash indeed. There is no doubt that this goes on all the time, specifically with AdSense sites. Interestingly, in a story grouped with Sullivan's on TechMeme, the Wall Street Journal has some words from Eric Schmidt talking about Google's famous "one trick pony". Schmidt is quoted as saying, "But if you've got a one-trick pony, you want the one we have. We're in the ad business, and it's growing rapidly. We picked the right trick." The piece goes on to talk about how that trick is going to pay off greatly in the mobile space as well, as more and more people gravitate to the Android operating system.

Schmidt has said in the past, as Sullivan reminds us, that the Internet is a cesspool (referring to an excess of useless content). So, to be fair, Schmidt doesn't come across as being very enthusiastic about the sites that take advantage of Google Trends to game Google News. Still, there is money to be made, and if sites meet the criteria of what it takes to get into Google News, there's a fine line Google has to walk, regardless.

Can it all be so simple?

Sullivan says, “It shouldn’t be that hard for Google to police what shows up in response to what it publishes on Google Trends. Spam sites ought to be nabbed. AdSense sites ought to be shut down. News publishers abusing the very lucky position they have of being in Google News, by routinely tapping into Google Trends topics that aren’t relevant to their publications, should get the boot.”

While I greatly respect Sullivan, and value his analysis and opinions, I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. We've all seen how the mainstream media sites turn to blogs to get their stories (sometimes without giving credit or links), just as the sites in question appear to have done with CNN. We spoke with Sullivan about this not too long ago after he became a victim of such a scenario.

It's hard to say that just because you use Google ads, you should be penalized. That's not to say there isn't an issue, but while there may be plenty of “garbage sites” there are some pretty highly respected publications that serve ads by Google. The horror movie blog pointed to, does appear to generally offer horror movie related news (while crediting sources), based on a quick glance of its most recent content.  But if the Chocomize story on that blog doesn't credit its source, that is a problem. Maybe this is a “garbage” site, maybe it’s not. From Google's standpoint, determining that can’t be easy in all cases.

Looking beyond the credit issue for a moment, when it comes to topic-spam, who’s to say what a publication would find of interest to its audience? I’m not sure that I agree that a blog mainly focused on horror movies, for example, should not be able to blog about chocolate or another off-topic subject every now and then. That’s up to the publication and whether they want to risk alienating their own audience, if you ask me. Again, I’m not saying Sullivan is wrong about this particular site’s practices. I’m just looking at the bigger picture.

Maybe Google could do more to look at story sources, but that's got to be a difficult task across all publications, and there would no doubt be plenty of room for debate between publications about who broke a story first.

I'm not saying this is what happened either, but hypothetically, what if the horror movies blog actually talked to the Chocomize people first and had the story first, and CNN just happened to find it and find it newsworthy themselves, and do their own piece. Now, that's an unlikely scenario in this particular example, but it's not outside of the realm of possibility in other examples, such as the one Sullivan experienced recently himself.

Regardless of that even, it's hard to say "you can't have content about this topic because we posted it as a trending topic."

There is clearly a problem with Google Trends. Sullivan is right in that the result doesn't help explain why the topic was trending. He's also right in that the original source (CNN) should be more visible. However, cleaning up the "pollution" might not be such an easy problem to conquer. It’s hard to say if Google is allowing such pollution to go on so it can make more money or if the problem is just too difficult for the search giant. It could be a combination of the two.

What do you think? Comment here.

Report: Google Has Twice the Malware of Bing, Yahoo, and Twitter Put Together

According to a report released by Barracuda Labs, Google has twice as much malware than Bing, Yahoo, and Twitter put together. The study was conducted across these web properties over a two-month period.

Barracuda says it reviewed over 25,000 trending topics and nearly 5.5 million search results, analyzing them to identify the types of topics used by malware distributors. The firm will be presenting its findings at DefCON 18 this weekend, but the report is available here (pdf). Barracuda lists the following as highlights from its findings:

- Overall, Google takes the crown for malware distribution -- turning up more than twice the amount of malware as Bing, Twitter and Yahoo! combined when searches on popular trending topics were performed. Google presents at 69 percent; Yahoo! at 18 percent; Bing at 12 percent; and Twitter at one percent.

- The average amount of time for a trending topic to appear on one of the major search engines after appearing on Twitter varies tremendously: 1.2 days for Google, 4.3 days for Bing, and 4.8 days for Yahoo!

- Over half of the malware found was between the hours of 4:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. GMT.

- The top 10 terms used by malware distributors include the name of a NFL player, three actresses, a Playboy Playmate and a college student who faked his way into Harvard.

- In general, activity is increasing on Twitter: more users are coming online; True Twitter Users are tweeting more often, and even casual users are becoming more active. As users become more active, the malicious activity also increases.

- Only 28.87 percent of Twitter users are actual True Twitter Users.

- Half of Twitter users tweet less than once a day, yet one in 10 users tweet five or more times a day and 30 percent of Twitter accounts have never tweeted.

-  One in every eight Twitter users has at least 10 times more followers than they are following.

-  Only one in 10 users is following more than 100 users, and almost half are following less than five.

- The Twitter Crime Rate for the first half of 2010 was 1.67 percent.

"Our study shows that attackers have serious efforts devoted towards getting in front of the billions of eyeballs that are using search engines everyday and the millions of users that are connecting on social networks like Twitter," said Dr. Paul Judge, chief research officer and VP at Barracuda Networks. "Therefore, we continue to analyze their approaches and build new techniques to find them and protect users."

NetworkWorld points to some market share numbers, which seem to mirror the malware percentages presented by Barracuda.

Microsoft Will Have Answers to the iPad. Will They Be the Right Answers?

Microsoft feels threatened by the iPad. That was made clear by the words of CEO Steve Ballmer at Microsoft's financial analysts meeting. Microsoft intends to come out swinging with Windows-based iPad rivals. It's just a matter of when, and if customers will have anywhere near the same enthusiasm they have had for the ipad.

Of course, Microsoft isn't the only company that has to worry about winning that enthusiasm. Any other player in the tablet market has a lot to live up to after the iPad's phenomenal sales. However, whereas Google, for example, may be able to ride on some of the building enthusiasm for the Android operating system, Microsoft is hoping familiarity with Windows will be the ticket.

Here are some of the things that Ballmer said (based on a transcript provided by Fortune). "There is a category that we've had Windows on for actually a long time.  We've had Windows 7 on, tablets and slate machines now for a number of years, and Apple has done an interesting job of putting together a synthesis and putting a product out, and in which they've -- they sold certainly more than I'd like them to sell, let me just be clear about that.  We think about that.  We think about that in competitive sense."

"Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks, we've got to make things happen with Windows 7 on slates.  And we are in the process of doing that as we speak.  We're working with our hardware partners, we're tuning Windows 7 to new slate hardware designs that they're bringing them to market. And, yeah, you're going to get a lot of cacophony.  There will be people who do things with other operating systems.  But we've got the application base, we've got the user familiarity.  We've got everything on our side if we do things really right."

Microsoft also appears to be relying on Intel to help boost consumer enthusiasm for whatever products it launches. "We'll get a boost sometime after the new year when Intel brings its new Oak Trail processor to market," Ballmer said. "Oak Trail is designed to be lower power.  Lower power is good in a lot of ways.  It leads to longer battery life, no fan, lower kind of noise levels, a lot of less weight -- a lot of things that people like."

It will be interesting to see how Windows Phone 7 does, and if it is able to drum up further enthusiasm as well. Either way, look for Microsoft to bring Windows to a variety of new mobile computing devices.

Would You Pay for Twitter if You Had to?

The USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism has released a study (pdf) this week looking at the impact the web has on Americans, and among the nearly 200 issues explored is that of paying for online services and content.

Believe it or not, most don't want to pay. For example, the study found that 49% of respondents have used free micro-blogs like Twitter, but "zero percent" said they would be willing to pay to use them.

Would you pay to use Twitter if it charged a fee? Let us know.

"Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free," said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the school.

"Twitter has no plans to charge its users, but this result illustrates, beyond any doubt, the tremendous problem of transforming free users into paying users," added Cole. "Online providers face major challenges to get customers to pay for services they now receive for free."

Obviously this is an obstacle some newspaper publishers are hoping to overcome. Last week, reports surfaced that News Corp's The Times' site visits fell to a third of what they were when it began requiring users to pay.

"Internet users can obtain content in three ways: they can steal it, or pay for it, or accept advertising on the Web pages they view," said Cole. "Users express strong negative views about online advertising, but they still prefer seeing ads as an alternative to paying for content. Consumers really want free content without advertising, but ultimately they understand that content has to be paid for -- one way or another."

WikiLeaks has also shown how far the web can go when it comes to free, important content. By making over 90,000 Afghanistan war-related documents available to the public, readers are treated to an escalating plethora of free analysis to choose from (not to mention the raw source material).

What content is worth paying for? Tell us what you think.

Google Focusing On Check-In Services with Google Places API

Google is placing a great deal of emphasis on check-in services, with regards to Google Places. This could mean some interesting things for businesses.

"We have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have seen for the Places API, and the innovative ways in which developers would like to use it," says Google Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell. "We have seen applications that offer check-in to places and need to identify an individual place at which a user is currently located, applications looking to show a user Places around them, and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps."

"We are going to focus initially on check-in applications," says Mitchell. "These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience."

Google says it has been reaching out to developers who have expressed interest in building check-in apps using the Places API. This includes developers working on client apps for the Buzz API.

Check-in services are gaining a lot of attention, and are creating new and interesting opportunities for brick and mortar businesses that just weren't available before. Combine that with the power of Google Maps and Google's increasingly heavy push of Google Places, and this has the potential to be very powerful. With Google's APIs, the consumers are going to have many more access points, particularly from their mobile devices.

It would also not be surprising if this was heavily tied to that "Google Me" project that has been speculated on so heavily in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, Google updated its Maps for Mobile on Android devices, making a Places icon available. This essentially turns Places into its own app for all intents and purposes.
 

Worldwide Mobile Phone Demand Gains Significantly (Not Just Smartphones)

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has released its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker study, which finds a 14.5% increase in mobile phone demand, as the market fragments.

Mobile phone vendors shipped 317.5 million units during the second quarter, an increase of 14.5% from the 277.2 million units shipped during the second quarter of 2009. For the first half of 2010, vendors shipped a total of 620.6 million units, up 18.5% from 523.5 million units for the same period last year.

"That worldwide growth was driven primarily by vendors outside the top vendors is particularly noteworthy," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. "Directly contributing to this is growth in the smartphone category. Companies with a strict focus on the smartphone market, like RIM, Apple, and HTC have clearly benefited from steadily increasing user interest. But it's not just smartphone vendors that have driven the market forward – it's also the companies with a presence among entry-level handsets and mid-range devices, which have long been the domain of the worldwide leaders.

"To dismiss the worldwide leaders would be a mistake," added Llamas. "Each currently enjoys broad distribution, a deep portfolio, and brand recognition. Moreover, each is in the midst of refreshing its respective product portfolio, with greater emphasis on smartphones during the second half of this year. Still, the upward pressure from vendors outside the current top five vendors, particularly Apple and Motorola, will provide tough competition in the quarters to come."

IDC analyst Kevin Restivo says some traditional mobile phone makers and brand owners have gained share due to higher volumes of lower-cost models, which are increasingly popular with wireless service providers.

Another recent study found an up-tick in cheap knockoff phones.
 

Redbox Now Offering $1.50 Blu-ray Rentals

Coinstar's Redbox announced today that it is has started rolling out Blu-ray rentals. The company says titles will be available at 13,300 kiosks nationwide.

"Offering Blu-ray rentals is an exciting opportunity for redbox to expand our product offerings and build on the relationships that we've established with millions of consumers nationwide," said Mitch Lowe, president, redbox.  "Redbox is a convenient, affordable home entertainment provider and we're delighted to offer consumers their favorite movies on the increasingly popular Blu-ray Disc format." 



"According to a recent report by the Digital Entertainment Group, sales of Blu-ray players increased 103 percent in the first half of this year," the company noted in its announcement. "The sale of almost two million set-top players during this time has increased the total number of Blu-ray players sold to an estimated 19.4 million, resulting in more consumers entering the Blu-ray rental market."

Redbox Blu-ray rentals will cost $1.50. Regular DVDs are only $1.00.

Redbox recently made public intentions to use a web service to expand its library, which would make it a much bigger competitor to Netflix. That appeared to be mostly forward-looking, however. It's hard to say when that will happen, and what its offerings will be exactly.

Google Earth Starts To Depict Rain, Snow

Google Earth is meant to give its users a realistic view of the world, and the program by and large accomplishes that.  A new upgrade will make it even more accurate, though, by showing users whether or not they'd be getting wet if they were to visit certain parts of the globe.

Yes, Google Earth 5.2 is now supposed to account for both rain and snow - everything "from light drizzle and snow to hurricanes and blizzards," in fact - at least in some regions of North America and Europe. 

As for how a person can take advantage of the new feature, it's not at all complicated.  Software engineer Quarup Barreirinhas explained on the LatLong Blog, "First enable the clouds layer, then zoom in to a particular location where it might be raining or snowing."  (You check out the radar layer to see what's covered if guesswork isn't your thing.)

Zoom in far enough, and you'll be able to see something like the image below, which was captured/generated around the time Hurricane Alex was passing into Texas.

Travelers and people who are weighing a move - along with folks who just enjoy interesting graphics - are sure to appreciate this information.

Maybe only weathermen will object to the development, since Google Earth is starting to represent a pretty decent alternative to watching the local forecast.

Google Launches New Product Search Ad Format with Product Extensions

Google has announced a new advertising format for Google Merchant Center users. The format is based on the product extensions AdWords format that lets advertisers add specific product listings.

There is a difference with this new format, however. The format, which runs on Google Product Search, will show users products and prices without them having to click on a "plusbox" to expand the ad.

"These ads are a great opportunity to market the breadth of your product catalog and highlight any promotional messages directly to conversion-ready shoppers on Google Product Search," says Google Product Search Product Manager Andrew Poon.

Poon also notes that to take advantage of the new format, you should make sure your product extensions ad campaigns are being served on "search partner" sites.

This isn't the only new ad format from Google. The company also announced a new location extensions format with map features today. More on that here.

Report Shows Google *Is* Mobile Search Market

To a person with poor eyesight, Yahoo, Bing, and just about every other organization trying to compete in the mobile search market might as well not exist.  New stats indicate that Google has an overwhelming lead, allowing it to dwarf competitors by comparison.

The graph below, which was constructed by Pingdom's bloggers using data from StatCounter, pretty much speaks for itself.  The bars corresponding to the mobile market shares of "Yahoo," "Bing," and "Other" just peek above the x-axis, and would be almost impossible to discern if not for the orange-on-black color scheme.

A post on the Royal Pingdom blog concluded, "If Google firmly believes that mobile is the future (which is the opinion of CEO Eric Schmidt), they are making all the right moves."

Indeed, according to StatCounter's records, "One year ago, [Google's] share of the mobile search market was 95.58%.  That's significantly less than today's 98.29%.  Who knows, in a few months, perhaps they will pass 99%.  At this point this actually seems plausible."

But it should also be interesting to see if the launch of the Windows 7 Phone mobile operating system is able to in any way affect Google's dominance.  Bing is supposed to be the sole default search option, after all.

Microsoft - and maybe every other company trying to compete in this field - can hope, at least.

Playdom (Fresh off Disney Acquisition News) Launches World Series of Poker Facebook App

Playdom has been in the news a lot over the week as Disney announced its agreement to acquire the social gaming company. Today, Playdom announced a partnership with Harrah's Interactive Entertainment to launch the Official World Series of Poker game on Facebook and other social networks.

"We are very excited to bring the thrill and excitement of the World Series of Poker to the social
gaming space with Playdom," says WSOP VP Craig Abrahams. "We will immediately start to work on enhancing the game, bringing unique WSOP promotions and sweepstakes into the offering and ensuring that the battle for WSOP virtual championship bracelets can become a
Facebook-friendly endeavor."

"There is only one brand in poker that stands out and that is the World Series of Poker," said Sean
Phinney, VP of Business Development for Playdom. "We think big brands will win on social networks and we are excited to start working together to create a unique and fun social gaming experience."

The app is also available on MySpace, with other social networks following soon.

Playdom currently boasts over 46 million active monthly users across its network of games. Disney is paying $563.2 Million plus an earn-out of up to $200 Million.

In other online poker news, the New York Times reports that the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would effectively legalize online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban. The publicatno also reports,  "Two of the biggest European operators of Internet betting sites, PartyGaming and Bwin Interactive Entertainment, said Thursday that they planned to merge, forming the world’s largest publicly traded online gambling company."

I would imagine that we'll be seeing a lot more happening with this industry.

NetChoice Voices Opposition To Online Retail Tax

Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH) introduced today a bipartisan resolution to protect online out-of-state sellers from having to collect taxes in states where they have no physical presence.

The resolution (H.R. 1570) "Supporting the Preservation of Internet Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses," says that Congress should not impose unfair tax collection burdens that would hurt the U.S. economy and consumers.

The resolution is a response to legislation introduced in July 2010 by Representative Bill Delahunt (D, Mass.) which would force all U.S. online retailers across the nation to become tax collectors for states that have joined the Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP).

"Don't believe it when tax collectors say their software makes it trivial for tiny sellers to collect everyone's sales tax," said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice.

"Small sellers will spend thousands of dollars making changes to their website software, plus endless time and accounting fees to handle exceptions, customer questions, and state tax audits."

Under the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court Quill v. North Dakota decision, the court found that the 45 state and 7,600 local sales tax systems across the country were too complicated for a retailer realistically to know how much tax to collect and remit.

Currently online retailers are only required to collect sales tax from out-of-state customers if they have a physical presence, such as a brick-and-mortar store.

"Representative Hodes and his colleagues are to be commended for standing against a national tax system that would saddle small retailers with new collection and compliance burdens," said DelBianco.

"We all support a simpler tax system, but the streamlined sales tax project has become the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing." 
 

Google Launches New Mobile Ad Format with Location Extensions

Google has announced a new location extensions ad format with map features. Businesses can feature their locations and phone numbers on an expandable map ad that can appear on mobile sites and apps in the Google Display Network.

This format shows up as a banner text ad with a business icon that expands to show the business location on a Google map, including ad creative, a click-to-call phone number and an option to get directions.

"Since ads can be served based on the user's location, a potential customer will see the phone number and map of the store location that’s nearest to them," explains Dai Pham of Google's Mobile Ads Marketing Team. "By providing mobile consumers more options to connect with your business you can drive more traffic to your store, visits to your website or calls to your business."

"This new ad format is available on mobile devices with full Internet browsers and allows you to expand your advertising campaigns to reach highly engaged mobile users with relevant local information as they use their favorite apps or websites to check the weather, read the news, play games or pursue other mobile interests," adds Pham. "Advertising with location extensions on mobile devices is also great value because you’re only charged when a user clicks to call the business or clicks to visit your website.  You are not charged when users click to expand the map or gets directions. The cost of a click to call your business will be the same as the cost of a click to visit your website."

To utilize the new format, campaigns must be opted into the Google Display Network, and Google suggests setting up separate location extensions campaigns for search and display networks.

YouTube Ups Upload Limit to 15 Minutes Per Video

YouTube announced today that it has extended the upload limit to 15 minutes for all users. It was 10 minutes before. If you've tried to upload one in the past that was rejected for length, but would qualify now, you'll have delete it from "My Videos" and do it again.

"We want YouTube to be the best place to upload video," says YouTube upload and video management product manager Joshua Siegel. "Without question, the number one requested feature by our creators is to upload videos longer than 10 minutes."

Additionally, he says YouTube has spent significant resources on creating and improving its ContentID system and other tools for copyright owners.

"Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube," says Siegel. "Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today. We will continue our strong commitment to provide advanced technology and tools to protect the rights of small and large copyright owners worldwide. We’ll also do everything we can to release incremental improvements like this one that benefit our video creators."

If you tag your videos with "yt15minutes" and upload it by August 4, YouTube may select it to feature on the YouTube homepage.

Which Sites Drive the Most Referral Traffic?

John Pozadzides of the Web analytics company Woopra wrote a guest post for ReadWriteWeb looking at the web's top sources of referral traffic. He breaks it down in to the following categories: social network, social bookmark, search, and media.

Six versions of Google top the list for search before Bing makes an appearance. Facebook takes the cake in social networks, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn. In the social bookmark category, StumbleUpon leads, and in media, it's YouTube.

Mashable's Jolie O'Dell reports that a court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia has demanded a Russian ISP block access to YouTube because it hosted what it says is an extremist video. The Internet Archive and three online libraries were also reportedly blocked. As O'Dell points out, a number of other countries have also blocked access to YouTube at different times.

The New York Times reports that the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would effectively legalize online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban.

Pocket-lint reports that Amazon claims ebook sales will overtake paperbacks next year. It's a pretty astonishing notion, but not too hard to believe considering that Amazon recently announced that ebook sales have overtaken hardback sales.

Mobile Crunch has pointed out that RIM has purchased the domain BlackPad.com, speculating that a long-rumored BlackBerry tablet could be called the BlackPad.

News surfaced yesterday that a directory containing personal details of over 100 million Facebook users has surfaced on a file-sharing site. BBC News spoke to the man responsible who says he harvested the info for a security tool.

Back in early May, it was discovered that Google had invested in something called Recorded Future. Now Wired reports that the CIA is involved as well, in the company that monitors the web predicts the future.

Facebook launched the long-awaited Questions feature yesterday (in beta). Search Engine Land has a detailed walkthrough of the feature.

According to Ben Patterson at Yahoo News, citing information from Courant.com, U.S. libraries are loaning more DVDs on a daily basis than Netflix and Redbox are renting them. This make sense given that many libraries offer free DVD loans, and cheap prices on new releases.

Buick Taps Facebook, Twitter And YouTube To Promote Regal

GM is working on a campaign to promote its 2011 Buick Regal and has launched a website called "Moment of Truth."

GM promises its Moment of Truth site will include all reviews and consumer opinions no matter if they are negative or positive.

"We are inviting consumers to find out on their own that Regal is a true performance sedan and worthy of their consideration," said Craig Bierley, Buick advertising director. 

 

 

"We are making it easy for the consumer to get unbiased opinions in one online location."

Moment of Truth will pull in content from a variety of social media sources and give users the ability to share via social networks.  It includes YouTube videos, Flickr photos, comments from Buick's Regal tab on Facebook, tweets from Twitter, as well as automotive reviews and blogs. Anyone can be a contributor to Moment of Truth by sharing their stories related to the Regal and posting them online.

Other elements of the Buick Regal advertising campaign started earlier this month in unconventional and traditional outlets. The campaign continues to build on advertising outreach that Buick started with the LaCrosse launch last year.
 

 

Groupon Personalized Deals Will Be Huge for Customers, Businesses

Groupon, the service that provides daily deals that save customers money, is getting a lot of attention these days. Now, they'll be getting much more. Late yesterday, the company announced a big feature in Personalized Deals. Today, they have released an FAQ for those.

"Personalized Deals is the biggest thing we’ve done since we launched Groupon," the company says. "While Groupon won't look much different, sending different deals to different users transforms Groupon in four big ways."

If you thought Groupon was getting big, this feature might be the ticket to making it a household name. Along with the launch of an Android app last week, Personalized Deals is likely going to put Groupon on a lot more people's mobile devices.

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

As a result of the Personalized Deals feature, users will start getting offers from a growing number of businesses, which are tailored to their location, preferences, and buying patterns.

"Groupon has become so popular with merchants that we can’t keep up with demand," Groupon says. "Over 35,000 merchants are queued to be featured on Groupon, and with 97% of our merchants wanting to be featured again, that list is only going to get longer. As a response to unmet demand, Groupon has become one of the most prolifically copied websites in the history of the Internet, with over 500 worldwide Groupon knockoffs appearing in the last 12 months."

There's no question that the Personalized Deals feature is going to continue to attract businesses to Groupon. Customers have more of a reason than ever to use the service.

Microsoft Names Impressive New Cloud Customers

Microsoft's cloud computing division has scored a significant victory.  Three of them, even, as this morning, the company was able to announce that Dow Chemical, Hyatt Hotels, and the University of Georgia will use Microsoft cloud computing solutions.

A Dow VP indicated in an official statement that Microsoft's experience and expertise contributed to his corporation's decision.  That's arguably a bit of a snub to Google, which is making every effort to catch up to and overtake Microsoft in this field.

Meanwhile, the CIO of Hyatt Hotels complimented Microsoft's flexibility.  Also, if anyone's counting, Hyatt said this development will affect around 40,000 deskbound employees, plus perhaps another 17,000 workers who don't have full-time access to a computer.

Finally, the CIO of the University of Georgia said, "With Live@edu, we believe we will have a best-in-class communications and collaboration infrastructure . . ."  And for the record, something like 85,000 University of Georgia faculty, students, and staff should be using of that.

Again, then, Microsoft has scored some big wins, and Google - with the delay in L.A. representing its most recent cloud-related headline - seems to have lost this round.

Microsoft's stock is down 0.06 percent at the moment, a little behind the Dow (which is up 0.07 percent), but ahead of the Nasdaq (which is down 0.28 percent).

Motorola Announces Second Quarter Sales of $5.4 Billion

Motorola announced its Q2 financial results today. These include sales of $5.4 billion. The company shipped 2.7 million smartphones during the quarter, but mobile device sales were down 6% from the previous year.

Other highlights include:

- Second-quarter GAAP earnings of $0.07 per share, compared to GAAP earnings of $0.01 per share in second quarter 2009; non-GAAP earnings per share* of $0.09 compared to earnings of $0.03 per share in second quarter 2009

- Total cash** of $8.3 billion; completed $500 million debt tender offer

- Enterprise Mobility Solutions sales of $1.9 billion; GAAP operating earnings of $181 million; non-GAAP operating earnings of $292 million

- Mobile Devices sales of $1.7 billion; shipped 8.3 million handsets, including 2.7 million smartphones; GAAP operating earnings of $87 million; non-GAAP operating loss of $109 million

- Networks sales of $967 million; GAAP operating earnings of $178 million; non-GAAP operating earnings of $191 million

- Home sales of $886 million; GAAP operating earnings of $29 million; non-GAAP operating earnings of $57 million

- Announced sale of majority of Networks business to Nokia Siemens Networks

"In the second quarter, our Enterprise Mobility Solutions and Networks businesses continued to deliver best-in-class market leadership and financial returns, with strong operating earnings and excellent cash generation," said Greg Brown, Motorola co-CEO and CEO of Motorola Solutions.

"In addition, last week, we announced that Nokia Siemens Networks will acquire the majority of our Networks business. We are very proud of the operational and financial performance of our Networks business and are excited to have reached this agreement to combine our Networks team with such an industry leader," Brown continued. "This is great news for our customers, our investors and our people and will allow us to sharpen our strategic focus on providing mission-and business-critical solutions for our government, public safety and enterprise customers."

"The Droid X launch has been very well received and is seen as one of the best smartphones in the market today with a 4.3 inch high-resolution display, Adobe flash and an 8 megapixel camera. As we continue to execute on our business strategy, we are in a strong position to continue improving our share in the rapidly growing smartphone market and improving our operating performance," added Sanjay Jha, Motorola co-CEO and CEO of Motorola Mobility. "The Mobile Devices and Home businesses remain focused on developing next-generation products to capitalize on the convergence of mobile experiences and home entertainment."

More details about Motorola's second quarter can be found here.

Wallpaper App Causes Android Security Scare

Android device owners can perhaps stop frantically deleting apps from their phones.  An app that appeared to represent a serious security risk - supposedly transmitting users' passwords, browsing histories, and text messages to someone in China - has been found to mine much less data than early reports indicated.

The scare started when, at the Black Hat Security Conference, representatives of mobile security firm Lookout talked about an app called Jackeey Wallpaper.  They either misspoke or were misquoted, and word spread that the app transmitted far too much personal information.

That created something of an uproar, since Jackeey Wallpaper has been downloaded more than a million times.

But later, Quentyn Kennemer was able to write, "MyLookout chimed in with us to clarify some details . . . .  Specifically, the app does collect data from your phone, but only the device's phone number, subscriber identifier, and voicemail number fields are retrieved.  SMS and browsing history are not touched by any of the apps they analyzed throughout their Blackhat conference."

Kennemer then continued, "Your voicemail's password is also not transmitted unless you included the password in your phone's voicemail number field."

So Android users should remain cautious about what apps they download, always researching the developers behind them, but it doesn't look like any massive security breach has occurred.

Gamerang Launches New Game Rental Site with Social and API Features

Gamerang is launching a new site (currently in beta) with "the ever-important social media aspect of games" . If you're unfamiliar with Gamerang, it's been renting video games since 2003, with four distribution centers across the United States. Gamerang boasts over 9,000 titles for every major platform. It works essentially like a Netflix for video games, or a Gamefly if you will.

"While many sectors of the video games industry continue to grow, one niche area has shrunken to only a few companies – video games rental services," a representative for the company tells WebProNews.

Gamerang CEO and founder Greg Gentling shared some viewpoints with us on topics such as why it's important to have both rental and sales in this space, the impact of social media on rental activity, etc.

"Rental is try before you buy," says Gentling. "Our model is rentals AND sales. Some publishers are charging $10 for their exclusive content, for example Tiger Woods 11 which has a code giving you access to downloadable content if you buy it outright. Gamers use their copy and sell it and the next person that buys it doesn't get that content. When it comes to used game pricing, we will factor that into the price."

"Netflix is making a lot on the streaming side," he says. "Sony/Microsoft have built platforms. It's really video games vs movies and there's some crossover, but they're targeting different audiences with different usage patterns leading to a very different business proposition."



Gamerang's new offering places a great deal of emphasis on social media and APIs. The company highlights the following features:

Gamerang 2.0 Beta: Social, community and news features have been added to give members all the information they need in one destination. It's about getting the maximum content and value out of a service people can enjoy.

Gamerang Rewards : Members earn points towards Gamerang subscriptions or purchases by posting news, reviews or videos to our social community. The more gamers do what they already love doing, the more points they earn.

Gamerang QuickReturn: Members with accounts in good standing for two months or longer can simply notify Gamerang that they are sending back outstanding rentals and their next available rentals will be shipped, cutting down the turnaround time of sending back and receiving games.

Gamerang API: Now it is easy for individual sites to write a widget and grab Gamerang's extensive social and news content to incorporate into their site.

"We're trying to give people more info about a game and attracting people to certain games, creating community, facilitating relationships with other people, expanding the conversation," says Gentling. "We're pulling and aggregating information via our infrastructure. This involves catering to our consumer demand and increasing the upsell of games, which is why partners want to work with us."

"It's easy for individual sites to write a widget and grab Gamerang's extensive social and news content for their site, [and] thus provide depth to their own opinions."

Gamerang says it will soon offer more developments as it goes mobile and integrates deeper API features.

House Panel Approves Bill To Legalize Online Gambling

A House committee yesterday voted on legislation that would legalize and regulate online gambling in the United States.

The Internet Gambling Regulation and Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267), legislation introduced by Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, passed by a 41-22 vote.

Michael Waxman, spokesperson for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, told WebProNews "This historic vote clears the way for Chairman Frank's online gambling regulatory bill to move forward."

"With Congress bitterly divided and only a handful of bi-partisan bills coming out of the Financial Services Committee, we're pleased Committee members from both sides of the aisle were able to come together to advance this important legislation," said Waxman.

Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) offered, and the Committee approved, an amendment that would further strengthen the legislation's already strict consumer protections, including a requirement for licensed operators to have each customer choose his or her loss limits before being able to play on-line.  Rep. Campbell's amendment also requires licensees to protect customers by ensuring the customer privacy and security and protecting against fraud and money laundering.

The legislation reinforces the rights of each state to determine whether or not to allow Internet gambling activity for people accessing the Internet within the state and to apply other restrictions on the activity as determined necessary.

According to a Joint Committee on Taxation tax revenue analysis, regulated Internet gambling is expected to generate as much as $42 billion in federal government revenue over its first 10 years.  Additionally, a recent analysis by H2 Gambling Capital predicts that Internet gambling regulation would create as many as 32,000 jobs over its first five years.

"The momentum of today's vote and growing bi-partisan support for online gambling regulation demonstrates to congressional leaders in the House and Senate that this issue is a priority and should be addressed," said Waxman. 

"Leaving in place a failed prohibition should no longer be the government's misguided policy approach, leaving millions of Americans vulnerable as they continue to find a way to gamble online in a thriving underground marketplace."

The legislation has the support of 69 bi-partisan co-sponsors. Support for the legislation was also announced last week by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Financial Services Roundtable and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions.

 

Another Reason for Murdoch Not to Like Google

News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has had a lot of issues with search engines - most notably, Google. He has repeatedly threatened to block News Corp. content from search engines, but content from the Wall Street Journal, for example, still populates a significant amount of Google search results to this day.

Interestingly, while Google has been the apparent focal point of Murdoch's woes, News Corp. has blocked other news aggregators in the past, but not Google. 

This week, News Corp.'s New York Post got a story wrong and pulled it down, but it's still available in Google's cache. It sounds like he's pretty angry about the whole fiasco, and one can only imagine that Google still providing access to the story (with people able to link to it) probably doesn't sit too well with him.

Foster Kamer at the Village Voice reports on the "hot water" the Post's newsroom found itself in:

We received a tip earlier this afternoon: "heads might roll" by the end of the day at the New York Post's Metro desk, as they're in crisis mode after a humiliating correction was published this morning in the paper. Even more, that The Rage of (Post-owner) Rupert Murdoch is fueling it. What's going on over there?

On Monday, the New York Post published a story about "Bronx wife-killer" Johnny Concepcion, who reportedly confessed to the crime of killing his wife via text message, and then took rat poison in an attempted suicide. The crux of the Post's story was that Concepcion was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital and given a liver transplant. The story has since been scrubbed from the Post's site, though it's still available to read thanks to Google Cache.

According to Politico, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has jacked up the rate it will charge the White House's news clipping service by $600,000. The publication quotes an unnamed administration official as saying they might have to drop the Journal.

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