Topic: Second Life

SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 17, 2010

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Makes Deal To Scan Some French Books While a US court is still deciding the fate of the Google book scanning settlement, the company has announced a deal with the […]

Would Gaming Fuel A Google Social Network?

Based on unnamed “sources,” yesterday TechCrunch reported that Google had “secretly” invested more than $100 million in social gaming platform Zynga and is launching “Google Games,” built partly on Zynga. Let’s establish all the usual qualifiers; this is an unconfirmed story and so on. And there are plenty of times when these TechCrunch-surfaced rumors turn […]

Lively New Virtual World From Google

In a way, it’s very un-Google. The new Lively 3D “virtual world” that launched today is perhaps another run at social networking after the mixed experience of Orkut (popular in Brazil and India, among a few other places). Apparently aimed at teens and even tweens cutting their virtual teeth on sites like Webkinz and Club […]

Coke Opens CC Metro, A Virtual Island In Virtual World There.com

Beverage maker and uber-brand Coke has had a few false starts in “social media.” Not long ago it ended “The Coke Show,” a video-centric platform that was intended to engage consumers and support user-generated content. Most recently, the company opted out of Facebook’s Beacon program amid the controversy surrounding involuntary tracking of user behavior on […]

Facebook Opens Application Pages to Indexing By Search Engines

Last month Facebook made user profiles available to everyone — including anyone not logged in to Facebook and search engines. Today it announced it was opening up the application directory and application “about” pages. In terms of privacy, this means that if you comment on an application anyone can see that comment, although anyone not […]

Google Earth And 3D Warehouse Opened Up To ‘Game Developers’

On the cusp of the Virtual World Conference, starting today in California, a company called Multiverse Nework has announced a partnership with Google that opens up Google’s 3D Warehouse — terrain and metadata from Google Earth — to third party use. According to CNet, Multiverse Nework offers a platform for game developers. However, the implications […]

SEO

Building Ask’s Traffic: It’s The Toolbar, Stupid!

Can Zwinky Save Ask? from the New York Times reports that the real winner in growing Ask.com’s search volume growth is their FunWebProducts division. The division launched a product named Zwinky.com that enables people to create avatars of themselves online. They then place these avatars throughout their social network pages. The thing is, the only […]

Ask’s Michael Ferguson: Optimize For Content Rich SERPs

This week kicks off the first of our guest writers on Just Behave. This week, I’m pleased to welcome Michael Ferguson from Ask.com. Michael is senior user experience analyst for Ask.com, looking at how people seek, acquire, and act on information. He informs product development with user context and design recommendations. Michael has analyzed search […]

SEO

Everyscape: Google StreetView Meets Micosoft Photosynth Meets Yahoo’s Flickr

Brady Forrest at O’Reilly Radar writes about a new startup, Everyscape, which is seeking to take ordinary photographs and knit them into a “3D” image display for cities. According to Forrest, the company has been around since 2002 and received funding in 2004. Using a mixture of proprietary technology, professionals and community the site hopes […]

Microsoft Virtual Earth Expands 3-D Coverage To Include New York

When Microsoft debuted Live Search Maps/Virtual Earth in 3-D last November there were many “oohs” and “aahs” but there was also the question: “Where’s New York?” It was not among the original 3-D cities that the Virtual Earth team rolled out. Now that omission has been rectified with the launch this morning of New York […]

Google Game Ads Patent Sets Off Privacy Debate

Google may use games to analyse net users from The Guardian reports that Google is considering the idea of using gaming behavior to display targeted ads to that user. Privacy advocates are already voicing their distaste for the idea of gleaning information on users based on their gaming behaviors. To me, this is just like […]

Vutool: Virtual Map Of Streets Being Developed?

TechCrunch has a provocative post about a “stealth startup” called Vutool. According to the post, the company was/is seeking to create a 3-D street-level view of the entire country by having people take multiple images from cars. The post suggests that the company failed to get series A funding and was acquired by Google.

PPC

Happy Anniversary, ResearchBuzz!

Tara Calishain’s wonderful ResearchBuzz, tagged as “news about search engines, databases, and other information collections,” marked a major milestone yesterday, with 400 “issues” having appeared in nearly nine years of publication. If you’re not familiar with ResearchBuzz, you should be. Many search marketers aren’t familiar with the “other side” of the search universe, populated by […]

Google To Build Second Life Metaverse On Google Earth In China?

Over the past week, there were many rumors that Google is pondering building out a Second Life like application. Michael Eisenberg’s Google Earth as a Virtual World kicked it off, stating, that heard a rumor “through the PhD grapevine” that Google is working on such an application. Techcrunch quickly picked up on this rumor, summarizing […]