Twitter Puts Retweet Roll-Out on Hold

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:42:05 -0500

Update 2: Twitter says on the Twitter Status blog, "We’re working on a few problems related to the ongoing rollout. These should be resolved quickly and it will be back on for those who had the Retweet feature previously. And we’ll then continue the incremental rollout of this feature to everyone."

Update: There is an interesting post here from Twitter CEO Evan Williams, which talks about how the retweet button works, and why Twitter is doing it the way it is.

Original Article: Back in the summer time, Twitter announced that it intended to add a retweet option to its service and the API. Twitter is now rolling out the feature to a small percentage of Twitter users.

"You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps," says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone on the company blog. "Now we're ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we'll know right away. If things look good, we'll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%."

If you are a regular Twitter user, it's pretty much a given that you know what retweeting is, but Stone describes what the button does to those in the dark. "Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy," he says. "In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know."

The Impact of Retweets

Retweets have already been a great way for content and updates to go viral. Now as the actual feature rolls out, that should only increase. Read this article for a look at the pros and cons of retweets (there are more pros).

Now that retweeting is becoming an actual feature of Twitter, you're going to want to keep in mind the tweetability of your content. Shéa Bennett, who writes the blog Twittercism, came up with a helpful equation for maximizing retweet potential. We talked about that here, but basically what it boils down to is leaving enough room in a tweet to accommodate what others will add to it as they retweet it.

This means keep titles short (at least in the tweet). For example, if you use some form of "tweet this" button on an article that automatically fills out the Twitter form with the article info, make sure there are not too many characters taken up. As you're probably aware, Twitter only allows for 140, and that's not very many. Keep in mind the "RT," hashtags, usernames, etc.

Tweaking Twitter Trends

In another piece of Twitter-related news, the company also announced that it is experimenting with improvements to trends that will help users find more relevant tweets. They say they're working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful.

"The improvement won't be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results," says @JennaDawn.

This means you will probably see less spammy trending topics popping up, which should benefit anyone who follows the trends.

Related Articles:

> An Equation for Getting More Traffic from Twitter

> Wonder What Percentage of Tweets are Retweets?

> More to Retweeting Than Meets the Eye for Businesses?

Yahoo Launches Spanish Version of Mobile Home Page

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:31:50 -0500

Yahoo has launched Yahoo Mobile in Spanish. This is a Spanish-language version of the Yahoo Mobile home page, which is customized specifically for U.S. Hispanic consumers, and is available on over 1,900 devices.

"By bringing together U.S. Hispanic consumers' favorite content and services from across the Internet, Yahoo! Mobile en Español enables users to create both culturally and personally relevant mobile experiences," a spokesperson for Yahoo tells WebPronews.

"Yahoo! Mobile en Español targets a significant addressable set of influential and increasingly mobile U.S. Hispanic consumers," she says. "According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 46 million U.S. Hispanics, making it equivalent in population to the second largest country in Latin America behind Brazil. According to comScore, mobile Internet usage among Hispanics is outpacing that of all other groups, with 88% of Hispanics consuming content on their mobile phones."

Yahoo says Yahoo! Mobile en Español will give users the ability to:

- Discover via results from Yahoo!'s award-winning mobile Search, editor-selected content, and U.S. and global news content presented in Spanish, including the “América Latina” news section, which provides relevant content from the Latin American region.

- Stay connected through access to email and social networking accounts from the most popular Web providers, as well as instant messaging, address book, and calendar functions.

- Stay informed by bringing favorite Web content —sports, news, local information, RSS feeds, weather, stocks, horoscopes, and more — to a single location.

Users can find Yahoo Mobile en Español at espanol.yahoo.com. There are more details in Spanish in this blog post from Yahoo.

Related Articles:

> Yahoo Adopts Mobile Advertising Guidelines

> Twitter Expands Into More Than Just 2 Languages

Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:18:57 -0500

Microsoft has announced the addition of a number of new features to its Bing search engine. The company says it has been examining the trends in search and in feedback, and is working to accommodate these. Microsoft is referring to trends like the demand for faster access to knowledge, offering different user interfaces for different kinds of results, and an increased focus on "getting things done" with search.

Would you use Bing more if it added the right features? Tell us what it's missing.

Bing is rolling out a new "task-focused" version of its home page. It looks relatively the same as before, but when you mouse over different categories, you will get more search options. For example, if you mouse over "Travel," you will get links like "find flights" and "find hotels," and you can conduct your search from there.

"There is also an interactive Instant Answer that allows you to enter your origin, destination, travel dates and…click…you are in Bing travel," says Bing Product Manager Henry Hall. "Within Bing travel you have fast access to flight purchase recommendations via the price predictor that tells you the least expensive times to fly. In addition to money, you’ll save time as well with Bing travel’s comprehensive flight listing results and links to top travel sites and airlines."

Bing is also enhancing local information for hundreds of cities looking for things like local attractions, points of interest, neighborhoods and other local information sources like newspaper web sites. Bing has developed enhanced city results, which include links to key information and high-resolution slide shows.

Bing is making it easier to find the preview feature. "We're doing a better job mining things like contact phone numbers and email addresses from web pages and displaying them clearly under a Contact banner, and generally cleaning up the interface to make it easier to decide if this a site you want to visit," says Hall. "Last, we're also integrating images in some preview results. We believe that all these features will allow for a faster decision about whether a site is right for your needs, which means less clicking on your browser’s back button."

Bing has also added a new Event Search feature, which gives users a summary of events for major cities, which can be filtered by things like performances, food & dining, fairs & festivals, music, etc.

Bing has also made it easy to share results for shopping searches on Facebook, a feature Hall deems ideal for passing on holiday gift ideas. There are also better results for health-related searches, including, conditions, medications, and hospitals. Each type of query will return more info and a more organized set of results.

Perhaps the biggest addition to Bing is that of Wolfram Alpha's algorithms and "expertly curated data". Wolfram Alpha will help power Bing's results for nutritional information and math searches.

When users search Bing for specific food items, they will get a nutrition quick tab that shows more information about it and a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page.

"Another helpful tool is the body mass index that tracks your workout progress," the Bing Team says. "We have introduced Wolfram|Alpha’s body mass index interactive form on our results page. If you search for ‘bmi’ you’ll get the option to enter your height and weight. Click ‘Calculate’ and you’ll get a detailed Body Mass Index analysis directly on Bing."

Bing will also rely on Wolfraph Alpha's ability to solve complex math functions.

Bing says there will be more new features highlighted on the Bing Search Blog over the next few days. The features are just starting to roll out in the US, so it could be a while before you actually see them.

More on the newly announced features, read this post. For more on Bing's integration with Wolfram Alpha specifically, read here.

Will the addition of new search capabilities increase Bing's market share? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Bing Maps Gets an Upgrade

> Wolfram Alpha Hasn't Exactly Set the World on Fire

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Emails With Coupons Achieve Higher Open Rates

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:18:26 -0500

The majority (80%) of emails sent with coupons received higher open rates and transaction rates than non-coupon campaigns, according to a new report from Experian Marketing Services.

Seventy percent of coupons-using households get their coupons from newspapers. However, the Internet is a growing coupon resource. Over the last three years, the number of households that get their coupons online has increased by 46 percent.

Click rates trended higher for coupon emails, with an average of 17 percent for coupons redeemable online and 24 percent for coupons redeemable in-store.

"For marketers, the data behind our coupon study further validates how email coupons can and should be used to engage customers and drive traffic and sales to other channels," said Matt Seeley, president of Experian Marketing Services' .

"Understanding the purchase drivers and triggers along with the channel preferences of unique customers is an essential element in building loyalty and engagement. Today's consumers are multi-channel and marketers that acknowledge this will see greater return on their marketing spend."

Other highlights from the study include:

Two-thirds of American households use coupons, with the vast majority of them (87 percent) used to save money and 30 percent used to try a new product or service.

Eighty percent of online coupon mailings garnered higher transaction-to-click rates and transaction rates than the non-coupon campaigns. Of this group, 78 percent also had higher revenue per email.

More households are now using coupons at restaurants/fast food chains. Compared to 2006, there are now 9 percent more households redeeming coupons at restaurants.

Related Articles:

>10 Reasons Social Media Isn't Replacing Email

>Holiday Shoppers Want Deals Even More Than They Did Last Year

>Majority Of Consumers Want To Interact With Brands Online

Compete Builds "Twitter Down" Case

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:55:45 -0500

According to the latest stats from Compete, Twitter didn't fare too well in October. In fact, rather than pull in more unique visitors compared to the previous month, Twitter may have lost some and turned a one-time anomaly into a two-time streak.

As the below graph shows, Twitter's growth rate slowed quite a bit starting in June. Compete then recorded that its unique visitor count peaked in August. September didn't play out at all in the site's favor, and in October, both visits and unique visitors dropped by about 2.1 percent.

This left Twitter only slight ahead of where it stood in June.

Meanwhile, Compete stats show that Facebook saw a month-to-month surge of 3.50 percent in terms of unique visitors. LinkedIn saw a bump of 3.29 percent, too. Even MySpace, which suffered a hit, only experienced a small drop of 0.65 percent. So Twitter seems to be on its own here.

Nonetheless, after writing up a similar report from Hitwise late last month, a quote from Evan Williams seemed appropriate, and it may fit here, too. Williams told Adam Lashinsky, "It's grown a little bit slower lately, but we have some things in the works that we think will change that."

Related Articles:

> Twitter Continues Retweet Roll-Out

> Twitter Analytics Service Gets Off To Great Start

> New Hitwise Report Exposes Twitter Trouble

How Important is Archiving the Real-Time Web?

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:48:51 -0500

You may recall earlier this year when URL-shortening service Tr.im announced it was going to shut down and sparked a big discussion about what happens to all of these links if such a service just decides it doesn't want to exist anymore. It is an interesting discussion, and it ultimately led to Tr.im having a change of heart and deciding to remain functional.

Now, the Internet Archive has announced the launch of 301Works.org, a service, which archives shortened URLs. The organization sums up the need for such a service pretty well:

The use of shortened URLs has grown dramatically due to the popularity of Twitter and similar micro-streaming services where posts are limited to a small number of characters. Millions of shortened URLs are generated for users every day by a wide variety of companies.

But when a URL shortening service shuts down, the shortened URLs people put in their blogs, tweets, emails and web sites break. Unless users have kept a record of each shortened URL and where it was supposed to redirect to, it’s not possible to fix them.

Over 20 URL shortening services have gotten involved with 301Workds.org, and Bit.ly (Twitter's service of choice) has already begun donating archives.

"Short URL providers have in the space of eighteen months become a corner stone of the real time web — 301Works.org was conceived to provide redundancy so that users and services could resolve a URL mapping regardless of availability. The Internet Archive is a perfect host organization to run and manage this for all providers," said Bit.ly CEO John Borthwick.

"The Internet Archive is honored to play this role to help make the Web more robust," added Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive.

The issue of archiving the web of course touches a much broader spectrum than that of URL-shorteners. 301Works should go a long way for maintaining shortened URLs, but what about Facebook updates? Tweets? What if Facebook or Twitter decided to shut down one day? According to Twitter's terms of service, you own your content, but Twitter does host it and they have control over it regardless of whether or not you own it. Jesse Stay talked about this with WebProNews in a recent interview:

The concept of Twitter or Facebook shutting down seems far-fetched, but the same thing probably could've been said about Geocities 12 years ago. Now Yahoo has shut it down. It's just something to think about. Given the speed of the real-time web, it seems that archiving could become a concept of growing importance.

Do you agree that archiving is growing in importance? Share your thoughts here.

Related Articles:

>Ushering In a Whole New Era of Linking Questions

>R.I.P. GeoCities: A Community is Killed

>Who Really Owns Your Tweets?

Intel Pays AMD $1.25 Billion, Following That $1.5 Billion Fine

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:27:42 -0500

Update: Intel has now updated its Fourth-quarter financial expectations:

As a result of the legal settlement announced today with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel Corporation adjusted its fourth-quarter financial expectations to reflect the impact of the $1.25 billion settlement payment. Intel now expects spending (R&D plus MG&A) in the fourth quarter to be approximately $4.2 billion, up from $2.9 billion. In addition, the effective tax rate is expected to be approximately 20 percent, down from 26 percent. All other expectations are unchanged.

Original Article: According to reports, technology giant Intel has agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle multiple disputes with rival chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices or AMD. These two companies have been feuding for years. Actually, decades. The Wall Street Journal notes that the two companies have had disputes as far back as the 1980s.

In 2005, AMD filed a suit against Intel, claiming that Intel was engaging in unfair competition by offering rebates to Japanese PC makers, who in turn would eliminate or limit purchases of microprocessors made by AMD or Transmeta. Here's a little more history about the current dispute (via Wikipedia):

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware in June 2005. The court date, originally scheduled for April 2009, has been pushed back to February 2010. One delay was due to the Korea Fair Trade Commission issuing Intel a fine of US$25.4 million. Some of the manufacturers involved in the case are Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi.

In February 2009 it was reported that Intel had spent at least US$116 million to date on legal representation on the antitrust suit. This was inferred from a US$50 million lawsuit filed by Intel against one of its insurers; the lawsuit disclosed that Intel had already exhausted US$66 million in coverage from two other insurers while fighting the antitrust lawsuit.

It appears that everything is now square between Intel and AMD, at least financially. The New York Times reports that the $1.25 billion settlement will resolve all of AMD's regulatory complaints worldwide as well as suits in Delaware and Japan. In addition to the hefty sum of money, Intel has also agreed to abide by certain terms with regards to business practices.

Earlier this year, the EU fined Intel a record $1.5 billion. According to the NYT, the EU's commissioner says the company's settlement with AMD will not affect the EU's decision on that fine.

Ouch.

Related Articles:

> EU Fines Intel A Record $1.45 Billion

> NY AG Hits Intel With Antitrust Suit

> Intel Apparently A Google Chrome OS Partner, Too

Churchill Downs Buys Youbet.com For $126 Million

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:18:36 -0500

Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI), home of the Kentucky Derby, has agreed to buy online horse wagering firm Youbet.com in a cash-and- stock deal valued at $126.8 million.

The deal would give Churchill Downs over $700 million worth of the $1.4 billion online horse wagering market. Churchill Downs already owns online horse betting site TwinSpires.com.

The deal will give Youbet shareholders 97 cents a share in cash for each Youbet.com share, plus 0.0598 shares of Churchill Downs stock. Based on the closing price of Churchill stock on Tuesday, the transaction represents a per-share value of Youbet stock of about $2.84. Once the deal closes, Youbet shareholders will own 16 percent of Churchill stock.

Churchill says less than 14 percent of all wagering on U.S. Thoroughbred racing is estimated to be placed online, but it anticipates that percentage will continue to grow.

"We believe this combination should enable us to accelerate the development of new technology-enabled features and services that horse racing customers who wager via the Advanced Deposit Wagering channel want, and that can attract new customers to racing, said Robert L. Evans, Churchill President and Chief Executive Officer.

"While we expect to make many exciting improvements for customers, our existing TwinSpires.com customers will be able to continue to access their accounts and make wagers, deposits and withdrawals in the same manner they do today."

Churchill said the deal will result in annual saving of $10 million. The transaction is scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2010.

Related Articles:

>Legalized Online Gambling Would Bring In Billions

>Kentucky Supreme Court Hears Online Gambling Case

>Appeals Court Upholds Online Gambling Ban

Google Makes Improvements to Movie Showtime Searches

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:02:43 -0500

Google has launched some new improvements to its movie showtimes search feature. These include more movie pages, genre filters, and a new map view.

If you search for a movie and click the "more theaters" link in the showtimes listing, you will be taken to a more thorough page about that movie, including more showtimes, reviews, trailers, photos, etc. You can also see a list of new genre filters to search by on the left-hand side of the screen.

If you go to google.com/movies, you can find a list of all the theaters and showtimes in your area. The map view feature lets you see nearby theaters playing specific films.

It is worth noting that Microsoft's Bing search engine already has very similar features when you search for movies on there. It utilizes MSN movies, and has movie pages with trailers, reviews, photos, etc. It also has a map view feature. Google appears to have it beat on the genre listings feature, however.

Do you use Google (or Bing) to find movie showtimes when you go out? Do you find the new features helpful? Comment here.

Related Articles:

> Bing Maps Gets an Upgrade

> YouTube Scopes Out Concept Of Movie Rentals

> Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

Google Chrome For Mac May Hit Beta In December

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:47:09 -0500

Mac users who've been feeling left out since the introduction of Google Chrome (which occurred way back in September of 2008) may finally be set to receive a sort of nod of inclusion. A Mountain View-based product manager has indicated that a beta version of Chrome for Mac will launch in December.

Nick Baum wrote yesterday in a Google Groups post, "The extensions team has been working hard to get BrowserActions ready, and they're already working great on Windows and Linux. We've noticed that many of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We'd like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well!"

Then Baum got to the Mac-related heart of the matter, continuing, "Why make the switch now? The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December. We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that. If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we'll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!"

And since it took Google about three months to remove the beta tag from the first version of Chrome, that may mean that a finalized Chrome for Mac will available before February.

This isn't a firm timeline, of course, but it at least looks almost certain that Google is going to ramp up its efforts. Hat tip goes to Stephen Shankland.

Related Articles:

> New Google Chrome Release Includes Bookmark Sync

> Google Releases Latest Version Of Chrome

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Google Announces Details of New Product Listing Ads

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:12:10 -0500

Google product listing ads have been spotted every now and then for a while now. The company has been testing them, but now the they have announced that US users will start seeing them more frequently on shopping related queries.

"Each day we see many users come to Google.com to research products and find where to buy them," says Google's Dan Friedman. "To better serve these users, we've been testing a new feature of AdWords called Product Listing Ads. Product Listing Ads works with an advertiser's Google Merchant Center account to serve highly targeted ads that include richer product information directly in the ad itself - including product image, price, and merchant name."

Friedman highlights the following features of Product Listing Ads:

- Pay only for results: Product Listing Ads are charged on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad and completes a purchase on your site. Because Product Listing Ads is charged on a CPA basis, it offers a risk-free way for you to reach a larger audience on Google.com.

- List your entire inventory: Product Listing Ads requires no keywords or additional ad text. Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item in your Google Merchant Center account, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name. Product Listing Ads makes it easy for you to promote your entire product inventory on Google.com.

These ads could go a long way for increasing interest in using Google's Merchant Center. When they show up for any given product-related search, they are going to be highly coveted spots for anyone selling those products online.

Currently, the ads are still considered a beta feature, and are only available to a limited number of retail advertisers. In time, however, they will be opened up to more merchants, and the number of Google users who will see the ads will be increased.

Related Articles:

> Google Gives AdWords Advertisers New Comparison Option

> AdWords Opportunities Expanded to More Advertisers

> Google Splits Up Google Base

"Time Spent Online" Report Puts Microsoft Way Ahead

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:20:22 -0500

Despite all the gains other companies (Google, Facebook) have made, it's still Microsoft's world, according to new statistics from comScore. comScore found that, in terms of time spent on sites, the Redmond-based corporation continues to maintain a huge lead over its competitors.

People spent about 3.920 billion hours on Microsoft's sites in September, which equates to about 14.5 percent of the total time spent online. Meanwhile, people only spent about 2.512 hours on Google-owned sites, which works out to 9.3 percent of the total. And Google barely logged more growth than Microsoft (48 percent versus 44 percent).

Things looked even more depressing for Yahoo, as the chart below shows. The real surprise, though, relates to Facebook, the social network that doesn't "do" much of anything compared to three companies that offer search engines, email, maps, and all other sorts of stuff.

comScore determined that individuals spent about 5.1 percent of their online time on Facebook in September, and that represents an impressive 2.9 percent year-over-year increase. If Facebook can sustain this rate of growth, it might not be long before Yahoo's forced to eat its dust.

Oddly, Lycos sites experienced a lot of growth in the last year, too, so they may bear watching.

Related Articles:

> Google Top Search Engine In The Asia-Pacific Region

> U.K. Social Networking Accounts For 25% Of Display Ads

> Bing Gains Ground In August

More on Google's Caffeine Update

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:26:32 -0500

Update: Out at PubCon in Las Vegas, Mike McDonald of WebProNews discussed the rolling out of the Caffeine update further with popular search enthusiast Barry Schwartz:

Original Article: It appears that the effects of Google's Caffeine update may be felt sooner rather than later. That is if you really do feel the effects at all.

What are your thoughts on Google's Caffeine update? Discuss here.

If you are unfamiliar with Caffeine, it is an algorithm update that Google announced in the summer. Upon the announcement, Google's Matt Cutts said, "The Caffeine update isn't about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won't notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we're rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure." Cutts told WebProNews about Caffeine in the following interview:

When Caffeine was introduced, so was a sandbox, where people could play around with Caffeine based search results, and get a look at how rankings were altered (if at all), and try to get a feel for how it was going to go. Now that sandbox has closed up shop, it looks like the Caffeine update will be live in Google search before too long. It will start after the holidays at least though.

"I know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays," says Cutts on his blog. "Caffeine will go live at one data center so that we can continue to collect data and improve the technology, but I don’t expect Caffeine to go live at additional data centers until after the holidays are over. Most searchers wouldn’t immediately notice any changes with Caffeine, but going slowly not only gives us time to collect feedback and improve, but will also minimize the stress on webmasters during the holidays."

The announcement at what used to be the Caffeine sandbox reads:

We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

Of course as people tested Caffeine via the sandbox, many of them blogged about their results and findings. The general consensus seemed to be that Caffeine is fast and utilizes real-time search a great deal. Given Google's frequent announcements related to speed, and a recently announced deal with Twitter, speed and real-time search seem like logical updates to Google search results.

When SEOBook's Aaron Wall tested Caffeine, he said he thought there was:

- an increased weighting on domain authority & some authoritative tag type pages ranking (like Technorati tag pages + Facebook tag pages), as well as pages on sites like Scribd ranking for some long tail queries based mostly on domain authority and sorta spammy on page text

- perhaps slightly more weight on exact match domain names

- perhaps a bit better understanding of related words / synonyms

- tuning down some of the exposure for video & some universal search results

This stuff should not necessarily be taken as gospel. These are just the results and speculations of individuals from tests of a product that was only introduced (for testing purposes), let alone finalized. It is what it is.

As the Caffeine update rolls out, there will no doubt be more and more mystery unraveled as search industry professionals scramble to stay ahead of the game, and Google drops subtle hints from time to time. It's going to be interesting to see where Caffeine takes the world's most popular search engine.

Have you tested Caffeine? What do you think about the update? Share your findings here.

Related Articles:

> Matt Cutts Talks Google Caffeine Update

> Where's Bing's Real-Time Search?

> Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

Bing Managed Big Gain In October

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:18:26 -0500

According to new data from Experian Hitwise, October was the month of the underdog with respect to the search market. The two search companies that usually dominate lost a bit of share, while Bing (and to a lesser degree, Ask) gained ground.

Let's start with the success stories. Bing's market share rose from 8.96 percent in September to 9.57 percent in October, which represents an increase of 6.8 percent. That's nothing to sneer at, even if Bing remains solidly in third place.

Fourth-place Ask also made a small amount of progress as its share increased from 2.56 percent to 2.62 percent - a jump of 2.3 percent that's far better than a dip.

Meanwhile, Google came sort of close to losing its grasp on the 70 percent mark, slipping from 71.08 percent to 70.60 percent on a month-to-month basis. And Yahoo fared about the same, moving from a market share of 16.38 percent to 16.14 percent.

As always, it's not smart to read too far into a single month's search report. Still, Experian Hitwise also recorded a Yahoo loss (and Ask gain) in September, so a trend may be starting to emerge.

Related Articles:

> Bing Gets A Bunch Of New Search Features

> Watch: Bing Goes The Bloodsucker Route

> New Bing Commercial Inspired By The Shining

Google Tries To Save You From Swine Flu

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:27:45 -0500

The media frenzy over swine flu may have died down a little since earlier this year; it's no longer a top headline on every other news site, at least. But people remain extremely concerned about it (anyone care to guess how many tons of hand sanitizer have been sold?), and Google's trying to help out by pointing them towards flu shots.

A post on the Official Google Blog announced this afternoon, "We've been working with [the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services], the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine . . . . At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting."

The post then added, "We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you'll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle."

The new feature seems to work quite well. If you intend to follow through on its suggestions and receive a shot, just call ahead to play it safe. Unless you need to buy some more hand sanitizer, anyway, that is, or perhaps want to pick up a few surgical masks from the corner market.

Related Articles:

> Google India Closes Office Due To Swine Flu

> YouTube Highlights Global Leaders' Response To Swine Flu

> Swine Flu Fears Overrun Web

YouTube Talks Up Social Side

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:27:06 -0500

YouTube wants you to know that it's not just a place for individuals to watch videos. This afternoon, the site released some stats (and used the word "social" about six times) to show that users are interacting with each other and with different sites in all sorts of ways.

As usual, YouTube kept a bunch of numbers to itself; don't go looking for either a whole lot of data or many specific digits (think "1.63 million" as opposed to rounded-off descriptive words). Still, the first fact that a post on the YouTube Blog shared was that "[o]ver one million people are AutoSharing videos to Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader," which is an interesting detail.

Then here's another one: "Each AutoShared Tweet you send out from YouTube turns into an average of seven new sessions on YouTube.com." So it's not like a bunch of people are just spewing out clips into a void.

Finally, "Over a million people have found and subscribed to at least one friend on YouTube based on our Friend Suggest feature."

YouTube's turning into quite the little community, then. And since it plans to keep introducing new social features (and probably reminding us about the existing ones), this aspect of the site is liable to grow.

Related Articles:

> Yahoo Challenges YouTube On Music Video Front

> Watch: Will Ferrell And Adam McKay Talk YouTube

> 35 Ways To Improve Your Online Video Performance

Holiday Shoppers Want Deals Even More Than They Did Last Year

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:23:18 -0500

Google has used its Insights for Search tool to provide some data about consumers' searching behavior when it comes to things like discounts, free shipping for the holidays, coupons, and promotional codes.

Unsurprisingly, there is an uptick in searches for all of these things, indicating that this is the stuff consumers are after for their holiday shopping. Such data serves as a great indicator that e-commerce businesses should be providing this stuff if at all possible. Without such deals, online businesses stand to lose out on sales to competitors that do offer them.

According to Google, 87% of consumers plan to take advantage of price discounts or sales this holiday season and 73% plan to take advantage of free shipping.

"Though not all retailers offer free shipping, discounts, or other rebates, know that these value propositions resonate with consumers so begin thinking about how your company or product is providing value and incorporate that messaging into your online marketing campaigns," says Eric Lopez of Google's Retail team. "Consumers are eagerly looking for a reason to buy from you."

Searches for coupons have been growing this year, even more so than last year when the recession was at its worst level. According to Google, 68% of consumers report that they plan on taking advantage of coupons this season. The same goes for promotional codes, which has increased (as a query) by as much as 55% year-over-year.

"With growing interest, ensure you are advertising your coupons, coupon codes, and promo codes to capture increased search volume," says Lopez.

Google's data reflects that of Deloitte's, which found that about a quarter of consumers will shop primarily online this year and many are using the Internet to find special offers, with 44% expecting to use a coupon they get online.

In fact, that study had a lot of interesting statistics that online retailers may want to consider before it's too late. Read here.

Related Articles:

> Holiday Shoppers Turning To Social Media And Internet

> Google Gears Up For The Holidays

> More People Plan To Shop Online During The Holidays

Fox Launches iPhone DVD Trivia App

Mike Sachoff — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:17:43 -0500

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has launched an iPhone and computer application called FoxPop, aimed at offering users a more interactive experience while they watch DVDs or Blu-ray Disc.

The FoxPop app is free and works by "listening" and syncing to an exact moment in a movie, using real-time audio recognition technology. As events happen in the movie, facts and trivia automatically "pop up" on the iPhone or computer offering viewers new information each time they watch a movie. From am actor on the screen, a location, or song, FoxPop provides users with information about the scene.

FoxPop will launch with the DVD release of "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" on December 1. Other films slated to receive the FoxPop treatment include "500 Days of Summer" and "Jennifer's Body."

Additional application features include the ability for users to share and chat with friends while watching a movie via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. A collapsible dashboard "Now Playing" feature provides users with a large space to see information about characters, places and trivia related to the film.

"By providing interesting movie-related information and the ability to engage with fellow Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian audiences, the application creates a powerful new connection between the movie and its viewers," said Mary Daily, EVP North America Marketing of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Related Articles:

>News Corp Posts Disappointing Financial Results

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Google May Change Your Page Titles

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:43:52 -0500

In case you were not aware, Google "reserves the right" to change the titles of your pages in search results. Google's Matt Cutts has released a video discussing why and how they go about doing this.

Cutts says Google wants to show the titles that it thinks are most useful. "For example, suppose the title of your page is 'Untitled' or if there is no title. If that's the case, we try to show a relevant, useful title."

"We reserve the right to try to figure out what's a better title, what's a more descriptive title or snippet to show the users," he continues.

According to Cutts, if you have a title that's really long, they may still use that in their scoring, but in the snippet, they might try to find a "better title." This is presumably based on what the user is looking for.

As Cutts has said in the past, sometimes Google will use snippets right from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Sometimes, they'll simply use snippets from the page or the meta description tag. "We do a bunch of different things to find the best description that we can," he says.

"If you have a bad title or a title that we don't think helps users as much, we can try to find a better title, and one we think will be an informative result so that users will know whether that's a good result for them to click on," he says.

Have you noticed Google changing your titles? Did they find better ones? Discuss here.

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> Why Your Email Address May Show up in Google Search Results

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Google Integrates World Bank Data

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:18:36 -0500

Students and statistics hounds now have even more reason to love Google. Today, the search giant announced that it's made information related to 17 World Development Indicators available through standard search results pages.

The stats come courtesy of the World Bank, and a post on the Official Google Blog explained, "Search should be intuitive, so we've done the work to think through queries where public data will be most relevant to you. To see the new data, try queries like [gdp of indonesia], [children per woman in brazil], [rwanda's population growth], [energy use of iceland], [co2 emissions of iceland] and [gdp growth rate argentina]."

At that point, you'll get something like the screenshot below:

Then, if you click on the graph, Google will take you to an interactive page where you can put together a more informative diagram.

Have fun finding out a little bit more about our world. And here's one last dollop of info so that you don't waste a bunch of time: the available World Development Indicators are CO2 emissions per capita, Electricity consumption per capita, Energy use per capita, Exports as percentage of GDP, Fertility rate, GDP deflator change, GDP growth rate, GNI per capita in PPP dollars, Gross Domestic Product, Gross National Income in PPP dollars, Imports as percentage of GDP, Internet users as percentage of population, Life expectancy, Military expenditure as percentage of GDP, Mortality rate (under 5), Population, and Population growth rate.

Related Articles:

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IAB Releases New Guidelines for Email Monetization

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:05:02 -0500

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released a list of "best practices" for marketers and publishers who want to monetize their email efforts. The best practices come in a document appropriately titled "Email Monetization Strategies."

The IAB considers this part of its ongoing efforts to establish a "solid foundation" of guidance and tools for the email marketplace. It provides publishers, agencies and marketers with recommendations and best practices for the successful execution of email marketing campaigns.

The document covers:

- The use of email newsletters to reach valuable audiences

- Stand-alone email advertising to drive sales and site registration

- Revenue opportunities and pricing models for email newsletters and stand-alone email advertising

- Descriptions of emerging trends such as video in email campaigns

"The email channel offers a unique opportunity to reach consumers with relevant, differentiated and personalized content and messaging," said Sherrill Mane, SVP, Industry Services, IAB. "Email Monetization Strategies provides an in-depth assessment and guide to maximizing the success of email marketing."

"Email is one of the most effective direct and brand marketing mediums," said Sean O’Neal, Chief Revenue Officer, Datran Media, and co-chair of the IAB’s Email Committee. "These best practices provide the latest information and strategies to marketers and publishers so that they can maximize their email communications with their customers."

In case you think email is on the way out due to spam or social media, read the reasons why we don't believe that is the case here and here.

Related Articles:

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> IAB Rolls Out Click Measurement Guidelines

> IAB Releases Definitions for Social Media Ad Metrics

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Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:47:26 -0500

There's a chance that the content produced by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a number of other important organizations will soon become impossible to find using Google. Rupert Murdoch indicated in a recent interview that News Corp. may block search engines.

News Corp. is the world's second largest media group. It owns enough stuff that even hitting the highlights would take far too much time. (Wikipedia has an 861-word entry titled "List of assets owned by News Corporation" if you're feeling adventurous.)

Murdoch's interview with Sky News editor David Speers could be of huge significance, then. In it (the relevant part of the conversation starts around the 3:10 mark), Murdoch said, "We'd rather have fewer people coming to our website, but paying." In reference to "search people," he next added, "They don't suddenly become loyal readers of our content."

Finally, in response to a question regarding why News Corp. doesn't just block search engines, Murdoch said, "Well, I think we will . . ."

But here's the tricky part: Murdoch cited the Wall Street Journal's current approach to pay walls and subscriptions as an example of what he'd like to implement on a larger scale, and it's actually possible to access WSJ stories using Google. It's only when clicking around within the WSJ that you run into truncated articles.

So we - and a lot of industry decision-makers - will see what happens. Whichever way Murdoch leans, he definitely has the power to start a trend.

Related Articles:

> MySpace To Miss $100 Million From Google Search Deal

> Murdoch Says Newspapers Must Charge For Online Content

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Research Scientist Heads From Yahoo To Twitter

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:04:18 -0500

Today, as is often the case, one tech company's loss became another's gain. Utkarsh Srivastava has left Yahoo after spending more than three years as a senior research scientist there, and Srivastava confirmed (in well under 140 characters) that he'll land at Twitter.

Srivastava's background is quite impressive. On the educational front, he earned degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology and Stanford, and happened to receive the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, too.

Around the same time, he acted as a research intern at Microsoft and then IBM, and was awarded the Microsoft Graduate Fellowship. Not bad.

Next, Srivastava headed to Yahoo, where according to his LinkedIn profile, he became "one of the original designers and developers of Pig, a high-level language for data processing over Hadoop. Pig is open-sourced as a subproject of Hadoop, and is routinely used in production for large data processing both within, and outside of Yahoo!."

Which more or less brings us back to the present day. Louis Gray noticed that Srivastava had been added to a list of Twitter employees, and Srivastava confirmed it on Twitter a little later.

Yahoo hasn't named any sort of replacement or, as far as we can tell, chained its remaining employees to their desks.

Related Articles:

> More Microsoft Layoffs On The Way

> YouTube's Director Of Content Partnerships To Leave

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20 Goals for Business Social Media Use

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:30:18 -0500

I probably don't have to tell you that many businesses are still struggling with the concept of using social media. Many simply can't find a good reason to use it at all, and many more find themselves using it but struggling to validate that use. They can't find the ROI. They feel that too much time is being wasted. Basically, they're just using social networks because they feel like they're supposed to. They just want to keep up.

Many businesses are even banning social media from the workplace entirely. In fact, a great deal of our readers have expressed that they feel that social media doesn't belong in the workplace because employees are there to "work," not "goof off."

Well, that may be the case, and perhaps social media doesn't fit into your business at all, but considering your general business goals can help you decide whether or not there is a place for social media, and whether or not your employees can fit into that puzzle.

As social media enthusiast Chris Brogan told WebProNews in a recent interview, it's time to get over the touristy part of social media and start getting down to business.

He says it's not "Gee whiz, it's cool" anymore. It's "What are we gonna do with it?"

"Great you can type. Now what?" he says.

Here are some sample goals a business owner or manager might set for social media use. Once the goal is considered, then you can look at the tools that are out there and evaluate which ones will give you the best shot of achieving those goals.

20 Possible Goals

1. I'm a content provider, and I want to expand my reach.

2. I want my customers to be able to stay updated with news about my company.

3. I want to get to know my customers.

4. I want to promote my product.

5. I want to stay abreast of current news and trends.

6. I want to share my ideas with likeminded individuals.

7. I want to increase brand awareness.

8. I want to provide customer service and support easily.

9. I want to find a job.

10. I want to recruit.

11. I want people to like my brand.

12. I want to collaborate on business projects.

13. I want to directly sell a product.

14. I want to earn respect within my industry.

15. I am getting information overload, and I want to get organized.

16. I want to drive traffic to my site.

17. I want to attract advertisers and make money.

18. I want to get more involved with local prospects.

19. I want to get more involved with people on an international and global level.

20. I want to keep up with my competitors.

There are certainly more possible goals for business social media use out there. I've probably not even scratched the surface. What goals do you set for your social media efforts? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> How Big Brands Use Social Media

> Some Brands Have Good Ideas For Social Media. Do You?

> Using Facebook Traffic to Drive Brand Loyalty

Google Seeking Not To Cross The Creepy Line

Rich Ord — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:26:05 -0500

Google CEO Eric Schmidt while appearing on Fox Business made some interesting comments about Google's emergence as a huge Microsoft-like business power. I thought most interesting was Schmidt's statement about Google becoming like Microsoft, "Hopefully, we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsot made ten years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened with them".

Schmidt elaborated:

"In our case we see ourselves as a disruptor, and a disruptor because we are using new technology to solve real consumer problems, that in some cases people didn't even realize could be solved. We are also a company that operates at scale using computers globally. And of course, we are in the information business and people have a lot of opinions on how information should be organized."

Fox Business' Neil Cavuto asked Schmidt in reference to Google's new Dashboard product how we really knew if Google deleted our personal data when we pressed delete via Dashboard. Schmidt's response:

"Because we say so and we would be sued (if we didn't)."

Cavuto joked: "It's like ... come in peace to serve man."

Watch the whole interview below:

Holiday Shoppers Turning To Social Media And Internet

Mike Sachoff — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:33:30 -0500

Digital technologies continue to drive a new approach to shopping, with social media and mobile phones becoming key influencers this holiday season, according to a new survey of holiday retail spending and trends by Deloitte.

Social media is gaining traction with 17 percent of consumers planning to use social media during their holiday shopping, and 60 percent plan to use it to find discounts, coupons and sales information, More than half (53%) plans to use social media to research gift ideas, while 52 percent plan to check the gift wish lists of friends and family.

Consumers in all age groups plan to embrace social media over the holidays. While more than half (52%) of those who expect to use social media during the shopping process are in the 18-29 years old age group, 33 percent are in the 30-44 years old age group and 12 percent are in the 45-60 years old age group.

The mobile phone is another digital tool for the holidays that is on track to be used by 19 percent of consumers to help with their holiday shopping. Those consumers plan to find store locations (55%), research prices (45%), find product information (40%), get discounts and coupons (32%) and read reviews (31%). A quarter plan to make a holiday purchase with their phone.

The Internet ranks as a top shopping destination and continues to see steady growth. Nearly a quarter (22%) of consumers indicate they will shop primarily online this year and many are using the Internet to find special offers, with 44 percent of shoppers expecting to use a coupon they get online.

Reviews have become another key online source of information, with 39 percent of consumers indicating they often read consumer-generated reviews of stores or products online, and one-quarter (25 percent) saying they will likely purchase a product this holiday season based on an online recommendation. More than a third (34 percent) say that online consumer reviews and ratings influence their buying decisions more than advertising.

"Consumers are turning to mobile, online and social media during their entire holiday shopping experience," said Stacy Janiak, vice chairman and Deloitte's U.S. Retail leader. "Retailers should consider harnessing this activity to turn browsers into buyers with one-click access to coupons, promotions and purchasing tools."

"This year's leaner in-store inventories may also open the door for retailers to lure customers to their online channels where it is easier to access inventory, no matter where it is located."

The Internet is also changing the traditional store-based purchase process. Almost half of consumers (48%) say they like the convenience of shopping with multi-channel retailers, and 78 percent indicate they have purchased an item in a retailer's store after viewing or researching the product online. In addition 65 percent have done the opposite and purchased an item on retailer's website after viewing it in the store or catalog.

Related Articles:

>Online Retailers To Have Better Holiday Season

>Amazon And Walmart Engage In Price War Over Holiday Book Shoppers

>Consumer Online Spending To Grow 24%

Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:26:35 -0500

In a recent interview we wrote about this morning, Rupert Murdoch indicated that News Corp. may block search engines from indexing its sites. Now, it doesn't exactly look like Google's going to offer money to him (or throw a fit) in response, as the search giant's more or less replied by saying "fine."

Actually, depending on what sort of tone you attribute to them, some of the comments made to Emma Barnett came closer to "it's your funeral." A spokesman told her, "Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute."

And later, there was something approaching "make my day." The spokesman said, "If publishers want their content to be removed from Google News specifically all they need to do is tell us."

So it should be interesting to see what happens. Judging solely by the comments on our earlier piece and Barnett's article, it seems that Murdoch might wind up missing "search people" (as he referred to them) a lot more than searchers would miss News Corp.'s content.

Pay walls have worked in some specific instances, though, and since any disappearing act News Corp. pulled would almost certainly receive tons of mainstream media coverage, the publicity-generating value of the unprecedented move is interesting to consider.

Related Articles:

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> MySpace To Miss $100 Million From Google Search Deal

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MySpace Losing $1 Million Per Month On Empty Offices

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:07:11 -0500

Don't be shocked if ads for 420,000 square feet of office space start popping up all over MySpace. It seems that the social networking company no longer intends to use a particular facility, but until it can unload the space, has gotten stuck paying over $1 million per month.

Matthew Garrahan reported late yesterday, "The company is locked into a 12-year lease worth about $350m that it signed in August 2008, when the number of people using MySpace was increasing and the social network was running out of space in its Beverly Hills offices."

The economy in general has taken a big hit since then, however, and MySpace in particular decided in June to lay off about 400 employees. Hence the decision not to go ahead with the expansion.

So MySpace has been saddled with a lot of office space in Playa Vista, California that no one (as of yet) seems interested in subleasing. And that space will in fact become more costly to MySpace over time, since payments are scheduled to increase. (If you do the math, $350 million over the space of 12 years averages out to $2.43 million per month.)

Maybe this snafu will result in an interesting resolution, at least. If not the office ads on MySpace, perhaps realtors could get offered the chance to have their profiles swapped with Tom Anderson's for a day.

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Google Gives Users a Way to Lock SafeSearch

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:03:49 -0500

Google has launched a new way to lock SafeSearch. What this accomplishes is, users will have to enter their password to change the setting, and Google Search results will be visibly different than when SafeSearch is not locked.

Google demonstrates how to to lock SafeSearch with the following short clip:

When SafeSearch is locked, there is a big image in the top right-hand corner of Google that shows colored balls. This makes it easy to tell whether or not SafeSearch is locked. "Even from across the room, the colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked," Google says. "And if you don't see them, it's quick and easy to verify and re-lock SafeSearch."

You can lock SafeSearch by simply going to Search Settings from the Google home page. There is a "SafeSearch filtering" section there, where you can adjust the settings and lock them if you choose. When you lock SafeSearch, you are automatically choosing the "strict" setting (as opposed to moderate).

Can Certain Words Get My Content Blocked?

People have often wondered if their content is being blocked in SafeSearch if they have certain words on an otherwise family-friendly site. In fact, Google's Matt Cutts recently addressed such concerns in a video at Google's Webmaster Central YouTube channel.

"We try to write our algorithm such that just having a single word mentioned here or there really won't have that much of an impact," says Cutts. "Now, of course some words are worse than others. If you've got some slang or something that's misspelled and really is not a word that you can repeat in polite company, that makes it more likely that that page will get flagged. But in most cases you should be in relatively good shape as long as most of your content or most of the words on your page are family-friendly."

It stands to reason that if you are producing content that you are hoping that families and children will view, it's in your best interest to keep your language family-friendly. That's pretty much common sense, but Google has put it into a search engine visibility light as well.

Related Articles:

> Google's Safe Search Filters

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10 Reasons Social Media isn't Replacing Email

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:54:53 -0500

Update: VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick has written a separate piece adding 10 more reasons.

Original Article: The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about the evolution of communication technology, chronicling the rise and alleged fall of email to social media. "Email no longer rules," the title reads.

Do you agree that email no longer rules? Tell us why or why not.

"We all still use email, of course," says Jessica E. Vascellaro, the author of the piece. "But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all social networks also require logging on to use? Sure, you can set them up to remember your info so you don't have to log-in every time, but the same could be said for most email services. That's beside the point though.

It's fun to look at how communication has evolved, and it's easy to declare the old medium dead (although to be fair, Vascellaro didn't exactly go that far). It's just not the case.

WebProNews recently ran an article about how social media will not replace search, despite plenty of mutterings to the contrary. I will go ahead and declare the same thing about email. Social media will not replace email. Just as it did with search, it may replace it in some (even many) instances, but there is room for both forms of communication. In fact, they do a pretty good job of complimenting each other (for better or for worse).

Reasons Email Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon

1. People still send hand-written letters via snail mail, even though they could instead make a phone call, send an email, text message, or status update.

2. Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address. Some are starting to integrate social media into this process (through things like Facebook Connect), but that is still a very small fraction, and they typically still allow for email information as well.

3. Email notifies you of updates from all social networks you are a part of (provided your settings are set up that way).

4. We haven't seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really is the next big thing and will catch on on a large scale.

5. Email is universal, and social networks are not. Nearly everybody on the web (while there are no doubt some exceptions) has an email address. Many places of employment give employees email addresses when they begin working there. Meanwhile, a great deal of them are banning workers from even accessing social networks.

6. There are plenty of people who have no interest in joining social networks. Frequent news stories about security, privacy, and reputation issues do not help convince them.

7. Email is still improving. It hasn't screeched to a halt with the rise of social media. There is still innovation going on, and integration with social media. Look at how Google is constantly adding new features to Gmail. Look at the new Yahoo Mail.

8. Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email. Never mind that they update users about community-driven happenings via email. MySpace (still one of the biggest social networks) even launched its own email service recently.

9. More social media use means more email use. Look at these recent findings from Nielsen. The people consuming the largest amount of social media are also the people consuming the largest amount of email.

10. As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well, as many companies continue to struggle to find the right social media strategy to suit their needs.

Email Marketing

Let's expand on that last one a bit. There have been a significant number of studies released in recent memory, indicating that email marketing is doing quite well. Epsilon shared some findings about how email marketing is driving offline purchases. The same firm also found that email open rates increased for the fourth quarter in a row (up 18% YoY according to the most recent study). Forrester Consulting and ExactTarget found that email marketing is the most popular channel for consumers. Earlier this year, Forrester Research reported that email marketing in the U.S. alone was expected to reach $2 billion by 2014.

Is the email landscape changing? Yes, without a doubt. Social media has become a very large part of the online lives for many Internet users. Earlier this year, social sites were even said to have surpassed email in usage. That said, Facebook has come significantly close to matching Google in terms of unique visitors, but that doesn't make Google any less important does it? The two can co-exist, and so can email and social media. They are co-existing.

Email marketers are facing new challenges with an increasingly social and mobile web. For tips on embracing this, check out our coverage of a related session from the recent Shop.org summit.

Related Articles:

> People 18-24 Would Rather Give Up Social Networks Than Email

> Social Networks Blamed For $2.25B In Lost Productivity

> Some Brands Have Good Ideas For Social Media. Do You?

> Making Money With Social Media Marketing

> Report: Online Video the Top Priority in Marketing

Do you think social networks will replace email? Share your thoughts here.

Has YouTube Found the Right Ad Solution?

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:07:25 -0500

YouTube has begun testing a new kind of ad format on some of its videos - skippable pre-rolls. These ads let users choose whether or not they want to watch the ad as it appears at the beginning of a video.

YouTube says that when it first began testing in-stream ads a couple years ago, abandonment rates on videos were as high as 70%. They found that users were much more likely to view and engage with overlay ads.

"But over time we found that different kinds of content provide different experiences for viewers, and that in-stream ads work pretty well on certain videos, like clips from TV shows or full-length movies," says YouTube. "We first launched in-stream ads last year, and we've continued to innovate and test different in-stream formats on YouTube (like user-choice pre-rolls)."

Users may find the skippable pre-rolls slightly annoying but tolerable, since they are still in control of whether they have to watch it or not. They may come off as a bit intrusive, similar to pop-up ads, but if they are easy to skip, people will probably be willing to continue on with the video.

Chances are, they will see enough of the ad to begin with to at least gain some kind of brand awareness. That's really going to be all up to the ad though. Advertisers looking at this kind of spot may want to strongly consider getting the meat of the message in as early as possible.

"We know what you're thinking: who would choose to watch an ad when they can skip it?" says YouTube. "Well, that's what we're trying to find out. In our previous research, we've actually seen that lots of users will watch pre-rolls. Abandonment rates are affected by several factors, notably length and creative. When a pre-roll is only 15 seconds, we see completion rates as high as 85%. Also, creative matters a lot: the quality and relevance of the ad itself seems to have 3x the influence on abandonment online as it does on TV. Viewers online tend to be much more active in making choices about what they watch."

Remember that these new ads are only being tested at this point, but YouTube seems quite optimistic that it may have found its best advertising solution yet. We'll see if the tests confirm this, and if this becomes a normal ad-type for the world's most popular video site (and 2nd largest search engine).

Related Articles:

> Watch: Will Ferrell and Adam McKay Talk YouTube

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Mozilla Celebrates The Fifth Birthday Of Firefox

Mike Sachoff — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:26:22 -0500

Mozilla is celebrating the fifth birthday of its Firefox browser today.

Mozilla says in the first four days of launch, more than 1 million people had downloaded Firefox 1.0 Now that number is at 330 million users globally, accounting for almost a quarter of all Internet users.

Currently Firefox is available in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to customize their browsing experience.

The Mozilla Blog provides more details. "From your desktop to your mobile device, Mozilla is committed to building an open and participatory Internet. We've come so far in the past five years and we're incredibly excited about the next five."

"To celebrate this milestone, Mozilla communities are hosting parties all over the globe in a special campaign called 'Light the World with Firefox' - shining the Firefox logo from Tokyo to Rome, from Paris to San Francisco, and more. For full details on parties in your area or to check out other ways to join in the celebration, head to http://www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/."

Related Articles:

>Internet Explorer Losing Market Share In Europe

>Mozilla Aims To Integrate Social Media And Email Into One Inbox

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Google Latitude Introduces Location History, Smart Alerts

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:00:57 -0500

A quick, but important, note: the stuff we're about to discuss is only available on an opt-in basis. So there's no need to stop halfway through this article and drown your phone or tape it to a neighbor's car. Now, with that out of the way, let's move on to the news that Google Latitude's gained two features called Google Location History and Google Location Alerts (which is in beta).

Google Location History may be either the less cool or the less creepy offering, depending on one's point of view. A post on the Google Mobile Blog explained that, with it, you can "store, view, and manage your past Latitude locations." Then, "You can visualize your history on Google Maps and Earth or play back a recent trip in order."

In another nod to personal privacy, it's possible to delete part or all of your location history, too.

As for the second feature, it builds on the first and tries to intelligently connect you with acquaintances. According to the post, "Location Alerts can recognize your regular, routine locations and not create alerts when you're at places like home or work. Alerts will only be sent to you and any nearby friends when you're either at an unusual place or at a routine place at an unusual time."

You can enable these offerings here if they suit your style. And should you later change your mind, Google promises that you can disable them rather than head for the nearest sink or roll of duct tape.

Related Articles:

> Google Puts All Of Your Personal Info In One Place

> Google Tracks User Data To Monitor Load Times

> iPhone Finally Gets A Google Latitude App

Google Programming Language on the "Go"

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:53:26 -0500

Update: Philipp Lenssen notes that someone has already developed a language called Go! (with an exclamation point). There is a book on it here. The author wants Google to change the name. This could get confusing for developers looking to use Go, although, it could also help sales of the Go! book. It wouldn't make for very happy customers, however.

Original Article: Google has open sourced its own programming language, which it simply calls "Go." The company still calls Go experimental. Google's Go Team describes the language:

Go combines the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++. Typical builds feel instantaneous; even large binaries compile in just a few seconds. And the compiled code runs close to the speed of C. Go lets you move fast.

Go is a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing, a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, plus some cool features like true closures and reflection.

Go comes with built-in support for concurrency, what Google calls a "novel" type system, and as mentioned above, it is apparently really fast. Google says most builds take well under a second.

The following clip provides some more info about the language:

The Go site offers a number of documents, such as a tutorial, a FAQ page, a tech talk, language specification, memory model, and more. There are how-tos for installing Go and contributing code. There is command documentation, package documentation, and source files. If you're a developer itching to mess around with a new language, go dig in.

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> Google Developers Produce New Programming Language

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Google Wave Simplified: How it Basically Works

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:46:53 -0500

As you may know, Google has been sending out Google Wave invitations for a little while now. Many people are still finding these hard to come by, but others have been lucky enough to be selected and get their hands dirty.

Those who have been granted access to Google Wave have the ability to nominate people for invitation, but not directly invite people themselves. So in other words, you're not getting in unless Google wants you to. They have to approve your nomination.

Unfortunately, that means those outside of the tech-savvy developer crowd and those who can actually access Google Wave, there is still a lot of mystery around the service. People want to know how it works.

The preview comes with a wave featuring a video from "Dr. Wave," or Product Manager Greg. The video is embedded below, but he points to different features within the interface, so imagine that it is placed as it is in the above screenshot.

Google Wave brings its own terminology to the table. For one, a wave itself is a collection of messages. Those messages within a wave are "blips." Blips can be edited and replied to. Anyone that is in the wave at the same time can see replies and blips being typed live in real time. That's live. You can see the characters appear as they are typed.

If you really want to see how Google Wave works, watch this series of videos that Google provides in the preview (they're all very short):

There are other videos that appear in the preview, but these are probably the most useful ones for showing how Wave works.

Now the version of Google Wave that people have access to is just a "preview." It doesn't even come with a beta tag. It's still quite early. Even parts within the preview version are clearly marked as under construction (things like key settings).

The videos provided do not begin to scratch the surface of the potential of Google Wave. With Google allowing developers to create apps or "gadgets" for it, the possibilities will likely be limitless. But as a general "getting to know you" for the common user, the videos provided pretty much explain the core of Google Wave.

Have you used Google Wave yet? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Wave Shape the Future of Online Communication?

> Is Google Wave Getting An App Store?

> Google Wave Invitations Roll Out/span>

Buy A Blackberry From Walmart Get A $100 Gift Card

Mike Sachoff — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:37:33 -0500

Walmart has introduced yet another holiday promotion, this time the retailer is offering a $100 gift card with the purchase of any Blackberry device, both in stores and online.

Staring Saturday, November 14 at 8 am through November 20, shoppers will receive a $100 Walmart Gift Card with the purchase of Blackberry devices with a two-year contract.

Walmart’s one-week promotion includes the following Blackberry devices:

AT&T Curve 8310
AT&T Bold 9000
Sprint Curve 8330 (Red & Titanium colors)
T-Mobile 8520 (Black, White, and Frost)
T-Mobile Pearl 8120 (Emerald)
Verizon Storm
Verizon Storm II

“We know customers are very focused on value, and we have promised each week to deliver new savings to help them stretch their dollars this holiday season,” said Greg Hall, vice president Media Services, Walmart U.S.

Shoppers who order a Blackberry online will have their $100 gift card emailed to them in four to six weeks.

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Google Makes the Cloud Cheaper

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:11:03 -0500

Gmail used to offer a gigabyte of storage to new users, but now it offers at least seven gigs. Picasa comes with a gig. Sometimes that's not enough. While Google has offered the ability to pay for additional storage, the company has now reduced the prices for it.

"You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year — that's twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera," says Google Software Engineer Elvin Lee. "Since most people have less than 10 GB of photos, chances are you can now save all your memories online for a year for the cost of a triple mocha. If you need more than 20 GB, plans range all the way up to 16 TB, which is enough room for 8 million full resolution photos! And Google paid storage offers an extra level of security, protection and accessibility that you can't get with an external drive — at a similar cost per gigabyte."

The entire price list is as follows:

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)

80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)

200 GB ($50.00 USD per year)

400 GB ($100.00 USD per year)

1 TB ($256.00 USD per year)

2 TB ($512.00 USD per year)

4 TB ($1,024.00 USD per year)

8 TB ($2,048.00 USD per year)

16 TB ($4,096.00 USD per year)

"While today's announcement is exciting from a practical standpoint, it's also indicative of one of the strongest computing trends of the year: cloud computing going mainstream," a Google representative tells WebProNews. "A number of factors are helping the average user move to 'the cloud.' First, the technology continually increases in efficiency, so that, as in this case, we can store data ever more cheaply and pass on those savings to our users. Second, a new breed of net-centric hardware is giving consumers faster, easier, more comprehensive access to the cloud --netbooks and smartphones are among the hottest gadgets this holiday season."

When a user purchases an additional storage plan, that plan will be automatically renewed each year. However, if a user wants to, they can disable auto-renewal by going to the purchase page and choosing the free plan. Google will contact users 30 days before renewal. It takes about 24 hours for new storage to appear.

Related Articles:

> Gmail Users Experience Another Hiccup

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> Google: IT Departments Moving Toward the Cloud

Apple Fans Respond To The "Droid Does" Advertising Campaign

Jeremy Muncy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:30:27 -0500

The Motorola Droid advertising campaign is in full swing, and I'm sure by now you've seen the commercials, if not you can see the commercial below. Basically, the campaign is all about taking digs at the iPhone while showing Motorola's support for the Android OS.

If you're un-familiar with the Droid, it's the first Android-based smartphone that will be sold exclusively by Verizon Wireless. Why is this fact important? Verizon currently has more than 86 million wireless subscribers, and will be the largest wireless carrier to date to support an Android-based device.

Is Motorola's Droid an iPhone killer? Let us know your thoughts

Some Apple fans aren't taking the "Droid Does" campaign very well, as they've created their own take/spoof of the commercial, you can see it below.

Can the Droid succeed, by knocking off the iPhone, where so many other smartphones have failed (I'm looking at you Blackberry Storm and Palm Pre)? Let us know what you think.

Related Articles:

> iPhone Vs. gPhone

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Consumers Are Looking for Offers on Social Networks

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:59:50 -0500

Razorfish has released a wealth of interesting data about consumer online behavior, and a good deal has to do with social media and brand interaction. For those struggling to find the right use of social networks for their business, the data is worth paying attention to.

The data is based on a survey of 1,000 consumers in the US, about half male and half female. They cover four major age groups and 10 major cities.

"To avoid duplicating the more broad-based work of Pew, Forrester, and other research firms, our goal was to survey what we call "connected consumers,'" Razorfish explains. These connected consumers have broadband access, have spent at least $150 online in the past six months, have visited a "community site" (MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Yelp, etc.), and have consumed or created some form of digital media like photos, videos, music, or news.

"Based on previous Razorfish consumer research, we have found that these 'connected consumers' roughly mirror the U.S. population with broadband access. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, about 63% of all Americans today have a high-speed Internet connection, up from only 55% in 2008. This translates to roughly 200 million people, based on a July 2009 population estimate from the CIA World Factbook (total population 307,212,123, July 2009 estimate)."

In other words, pay attention to the results. You can find them all here. I wanted to highlight a few of the particularly interesting ones here, which pertain to social media use. They paint a pretty good picture of what consumers are looking for from brands on social networks (although these are certainly not the limits of what companies can do with them).

Beyond the data in the above graphs, another point worth mentioning derived from the research is that for Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, those who follow brands are mostly looking for exclusive deals or offers. This mentality will likely increase moving forward as deals get more personalized as well.

Like Jeremiah Owyang recently discussed with WebProNews, sites can connect with existing networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc. (think Facebook Connect and similar services), and in the future, people may be able to log-in to corporate sites with their Facebook (or whatever) account, which will bring up their profile information for companies to serve personalized content (or perhaps personalized deals).

The point is, consumers are clearly more than willing to interact with brands through social media, and this will likely become increasingly true as social networks themselves gain more users. It's not only about pushing your offers out there and hoping people bite. People are becoming friends/fans of brands hoping you do give them special offers.

Interesting new marketing opportunities are going to continue to present themselves moving forward as networks get more advanced and more brands figure out new ways to use them.

Related Articles:

> How Big Brands Use Social Media

> Some Brands Have Good Ideas For Social Media. Do You?

> Forums Are Relevant in Social Media Marketing

> Using Facebook Traffic to Drive Brand Loyalty

Spam Will Not Keep You Away from Email

Chris Crum — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:29:35 -0500

With all of the spam out there and the increasing amount of malice that comes with it, it's easy to look at the situation and think that email must be dying. Combine the overwhelming amounts of inbox spam and the ever-increasing popularity of communication tools like Twitter and Facebook, and you may ask yourself why you even need email.

Well, I've got ten answers for you here.

Don't get me wrong. Email will evolve. In fact, it's already begun to. But email as a utility is currently in no danger of going away. This is a view that Pro Blogger Darren Rowse appears to have in common with me, as he implied in a recent interview with WebProNews.

Rowse notes that email is simply a familiar way to get information, and it's still one of the most popular ways. He offers his blog content via email as a weekly newsletter, and it gets twice as many subscribers as his RSS feeds do. Furthermore, the people getting those email newsletters are even clicking on the ads.

As Rowse says, people rely on email. That's not just the old folk either. A recent study found that people between 18 and 24 years of age would rather give up social networks than email. In fact, according to that study, they'd be more likely to give up television.

For all of the unwanted marketing messages and spam out there flooding inboxes, email is still the preferred channel of communication by consumers for receiving marketing messages, according to a different survey.

Spam is going to flood every channel that achieves the usage of the masses. It's been going on longer than we've had a name for it. As long as I've been alive, I've been forced to sit through commercials I had no interest in seeing, while trying to watch television. Granted, they couldn't give my television a virus, but they have always been intrusive to some extent.

Now that social networks are rising to popularity, the spam is sure following there. It's unavoidable. People will spam you no matter what you're using. But you'll still use it.

Related Articles:

> Spam is Getting More Malicious

> 10 Reasons Social Media isn't Replacing Email

> People 18-24 Would Rather Give Up Social Networks Than Email

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