As Twitter continues to take steps to execute on its business plan, the company has announced two important hires today: Dan Coughlin as Director of Sales for the Eastern Region, and Amanda Levy as Director of Sales for the Western Region. Coughlin comes to Twitter from Facebook, where he worked for four years and was […]
As early as Fall 2008, Microsoft set off on a crusade to openly evangelize what would become “Bing Cashback” with strategic agency partners and retail advertisers alike. The consumer rewards program was built to incent online shoppers with the purpose of influencing search behavior to gain repeat visitors and generate loyalty. Microsoft’s goal would ultimately […]
After a protracted set of M&A discussions with Yahoo and Facebook (and perhaps others), Foursquare announced that it had secured $20 million in funding from several VCs: Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. CEO Dennis Crowley discussed the funding and how it would be used in his blog post: With this new […]
Your local newspaper may soon offer SEO services. Heck, maybe it already is. Two of the three biggest newspaper publishers in the U.S. have recently announced that they’re selling marketing services to small/local businesses … and those services include things like SEO, local search marketing, and more. Gannett Newspapers is the latest to hop on […]
Twitter’s rumored Promoted Tweets are now official, launching only a day after the very similar TweetUp launched (will that be DOA?). Promoted Tweets has two phases, which might be described as an AdWords phase and an AdSense phase. The AdWords part is what is launching first. Marketers buy keywords (for now on a CPM basis) […]
SEOmoz, the well-known, Seattle-based SEO agency, is getting out of the agency business. In a blog post today, CEO Rand Fishkin says the company will focus instead on SEO-related software and tools. SEOmoz recently launched Open Site Explorer and has offered a variety of SEO tools for several years now. SEOmoz also says it’s strengthening […]
A post by Ashim Chhabra from the Yahoo Boss team in the Tech Group adds some details to how Yahoo BOSS will survive under the Yahoo-Microsoft deal. It appears that Yahoo is allowed to continue operating BOSS under the Microsoft deal. Some of the results will be powered by Yahoo, while the search results in […]
The 1950s classic Japanese film Rashômon by Akira Kurosawa is an exploration of human perception, truth and how there can be widely differing accounts of the same event. The film’s plot revolves around the rape of a woman and murder of her husband and is told through dramatically differing accounts of four witnesses. The stories […]
As everyone knows by now the weekend saw an explosion of interest, speculation and posting around the “Nexus One,” the so-called “Google Phone” predicted first in an article by TheStreet in October and then further exposed by TechCrunch. I wrote two posts this weekend as the story evolved:
Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, is speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The following is a live blog of her appearance, which is scheduled less than an hour after she announced a Google/Twitter partnership to include real-time tweets in Google’s search results. This is a four-person […]
Co-opitition is a fairly common occurrence in the local search biz. A lot of the big yellow pages publishers have access to a lot of advertisers but they don’t always have the right mix of traffic. While it’s no small feat to sign up a dentist in Pleasanton, CA, it’s just as hard to get […]
Ambivalent is word that best describes newspaper publishers’ relationship with Google and Google News in particular. Some publishers see Google as a partner or potential partner and some consider Google to be the devil incarnate, responsible for virtually all their woes. For its part Google sees itself as a supporter of newspapers, helping them by […]
Yesterday at the EconSM conference in San Francisco, Kevin Thau, director of mobile biz dev for Twitter, suggested that the company is currently exploring and/or working on several revenue streams: search, content partnerships and mobile carrier-based deals (sharing in data revenues). There are probably others on the “white board” as well including fees for premium […]
CNET reports on testimony provided by Google VP Marissa Mayer on the “Future of Journalism” during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. Defending against claims that Google “parasitically” makes money off the backs of print newspaper content, Mayer said: Google connects Internet users […]
Another publisher is complaining that Google isn’t giving them their “fair share” — this time Forbes CEO Jim Spanfeller. Google makes $60 million off the Forbes brand, he claims (with no proof), and boosting “quality publishers” like Forbes would help Eric Schmidt’s web sewage problem. This is from the publication that sells paid links that […]
Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed the Newspaper Association of America conference in San Diego this morning. It comes against the backdrop of the AP copyright controversy, rising tension between Google and newspapers and publisher frustrations with their own declining revenues. Some have accused Google of devaluing their content. Schmidt’s talk was generally sunny and upbeat […]
The Associated Press announced an aggressive new policy whereby it is going to try and get more money for newspaper content online or take legal action against “copyright violators” and those that won’t pay. From the AP’s own press release: The Associated Press Board of Directors today announced it would launch an industry initiative to […]
Nielsen Research came out with interesting statistics on overall video consumption last week indicating that total TV consumption reached record levels when considering traditional broadcast video, time shifted video, web video and mobile video. This seems to fly in the face of the predictions that online video is cannibalizing the traditional business model. The web […]
It wasn’t too long ago that YouTube was mostly a haven for the video expressions of teens and young adults; popular clips often showed skateboard crashes, air guitar contests, and bedroom renditions of Numa Numa. But now, as the site continues to grow in popularity, it seems YouTube is finally turning into a serious business […]
Microsoft’s GM of search product management (on the marketing side), Brad Goldberg, is leaving the company to become CEO of online business at investment firm Peak6. This doesn’t impact the technical side of search at Microsoft, which just hired former Yahoo search exec Qi Lu to head up its overall online business unit. There’s also […]
Here’s our lead story in 140 characters: Facebook buying Twitter=fail. Allthingsd.com says $500m stock offer too low. Twitter unsure about selling. Talks over, but FB may try again. The longer version for those not active in microblogging: Facebook recently came up short in a serious bid to buy Twitter. Kara Swisher at allthingsd.com says Facebook […]
To build, or not to build, that is the question (with apologies to Shakespeare): Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous SEM Tools, Or to take arms against a sea of in-house engineers…… I know more than a few in-house SEMers. Many of them insist on building in-house […]
In my last post, I discussed the state of the union for newspapers. As we all know, newspapers have struggled to move their businesses and revenue online, and they have struggled to do it in a way that does not cause massive disruption. This has been discussed and agonized over by a number of writers […]
Have you noticed the number of layoffs being announced by newspapers of late? When the New York Times announced in February 2008 that they were cutting 100 positions from their newsroom, it was a sad moment. A prominent national paper that informs our opinion and dialogue was announcing a cutback. Then the San Francisco Chronicle […]
Wow. Earlier this month, I heard Microsoft execs highlight Live Search Books as a key advance they were doing in search. Today, news that the site along with Live Search Academic are being closed next week, since they lack the “high consumer intent” that Microsoft is now focusing on. So much for trying to seem […]
It is no secret that human review has been playing a bigger role at Google over the past couple years. And we are emotional beings… no matter how logical the guidelines may be, emotions cause human errors. But not all sites that get penalized are penalized in error. Many deserve it. Sadly, Google’s guidelines for […]
The New York Times on Sunday covered mapping site EveryScape and its effort to create 3-D maps of urban environments, but also store and business interiors. (Here’s our post from when the site formally launched in October.) The Times’ piece focuses on the interior mapping dimension of what EveryScape is doing, which helps differentiate it […]
Three dimensional mapping company Everyscape has been busy building its product out for the last several months. This morning it finally launched, with four US cities to show for its effort: Aspen, CO, New York, Miami, FL, and Boston. And while Google and Microsoft have been battling it out in public and the press with […]
Kara Swisher reports on a layoff notice from AOL CEO Randy Falco. The bottom line, literally and figuratively, is that the company is trimming (or slashing) 20 percent of its workforce. The letter outlines the company’s new focus on three business segments: “We refocused the business around three core areas–Platform-A, Publishing, and Access–and are now […]
Yesterday’s Economics of Social Media (EconSM) conference in LA, the first event from the team at PaidContent, was an impressive debut, both in terms of attendance and the range and “quality” of speakers on the stage. I’m not going to attempt to summarize all the individual sessions; rather, I have some general observations and interesting […]
Google quashes mobile phone talk from The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Google is pushing back on earlier reports of building its own cell phone.
Google Steps Into Microsoft’s Office from BusinessWeek covers how Google appears ready to begin charging corporations for use of Google Apps, which is free at this time. I suspect the “subscription fee amounting to a few dollars per person per month” described in the article is to allow Google to offer support for these products, […]