The Google Twitter Facebook goat rodeo is getting more interesting. At its Searchology event this week, (TC/Post coverage), Google unveiled a suite of new offerings that feel reactive to various competitors, including "Google Squared," a Google Labs response to Wolframs' new Alpha (more on that soon). Reuters bills it this…
Reuters bills it this way:
Google also showed off a new feature, available immediately, that lets users view only the most timely search results, narrowing the results for a topic to the past 24 hours or the past week.
Read MoreIn its often overly clever way, Google became a brand television advertiser this month. Here's the ad: Now, why do I say backed into? Well, this video was created by some Google employees in Japan (so it's not an effort by the main company, see?!), and it was an promotion…
Now, why do I say backed into? Well, this video was created by some Google employees in Japan (so it’s not an effort by the main company, see?!), and it was an promotion to show off how cool Chrome was (not designed to be an ad, see?!). It was released on the web first (see, not debuted on silly old school TV!), and when the ad got some pickup, Google decided to run it on its fledgling Google TV Ads service, the sole remaining attempt by the company to do Adsensify old media (see, we’re not really doing a traditional media buy!).
But none of this really matters. At all.
Read More(image) The way some folks' numbers are blowing up on Twitter, it seems to me perhaps we might create two types of Twitterati – those who have purely "earned" audience base, and those whose base has been wildly inflated due to their inclusion in Twitter's suggested users feature, which…
(image) The way some folks’ numbers are blowing up on Twitter, it seems to me perhaps we might create two types of Twitterati – those who have purely “earned” audience base, and those whose base has been wildly inflated due to their inclusion in Twitter’s suggested users feature, which I wrote about earlier last week.
I’m not usually one to talk about this stuff, but for whatever reason, it’s been bugging me. I remember when I started this site, and it started to get noticed by people whose opinion I respected. Then concentric circles of folks found out about it, and it built organically, to the point of being one of the largest blog sites focused on tech and media (that was 04-05, before I abandoned covering news and started pointing folks to Danny and Mike). That felt good – I had earned the respect of an important audience, and my numbers showed it. The same is true of Fred at A/VC, Mike at TC, and many, many others.
Read MoreFirst two headines from IWantMedia today: Here are the actual stories: Google May Add Twitter-Like Features Twitter to Expand Search Functionality…
Yesterday the Senate held hearings about the sorry state of the news biz, and Marissa Mayer from Google, Arianna Huffington from the Huffpo, and various others held forth. This in context of a building chorus of press voices saying that 1/ Google is stealing what is rightfully ours and 2/consumers…
This in context of a building chorus of press voices saying that 1/ Google is stealing what is rightfully ours and 2/consumers must pay for content on the web (Murdoch, Belo). And in the context of a scramble to figure out whether or not the new big screen Kindle is a good thing, or a bad thing for newspapers (Murdoch is not a fan, the NYT is.)
I can’t imagine a more interesting time to be in the news business. Note I didn’t say “fun.” But interesting, yes, very interesting.
Read MoreI dunno, do you jump the shark when the venue used to deny you're for sale is The View? A couple of years ago, I'd have said yes. But honestly, why not go on The View right when your product is breaking mainstream? And I like what @biz had to…
“We’re just getting started…. The company is two years old, we have so much to do, so much product stuff to fix, and so much growing to do.”
Predictable? Sure. Possibly disingenuous if a large cash offer is put on the table? OK. But it rings true to me.
The speculations about a rumored sale of Twitter are getting pretty loud. The funniest one is Apple might buy the company. Newscorp makes a lot more sense to me, as I've said before. I just don't get the Apple rumors, the companies couldn't be further from each other in culture…
I just don’t get the Apple rumors, the companies couldn’t be further from each other in culture and approach. Most of the folks I know at Twitter use Macs, but…not sure that makes for a $700mm deal. Newscorp, on the other hand, has a real issue with Myspace, which missed the real time train and needs to get back on track.
And Google, well, we all know why Google (or Microsoft) would be interested. Both, however, are wondering whether the monetization efforts they currently have for HTML search would scale to real time search, and both are surely testing that first, with uncertain results, from what my sources tell me. The build/buy calculators are out in force over at each of these company’s corp dev departments.
Read MoreI missed this, but after some detective work with sources inside Facebook, I’ve confirmed that Facebook now lets third party applications create live links inside Facebook. This has been one of my principal complaints about how Facebook interacts with the “rest of the web” – and now it’s resolved. For…
I missed this, but after some detective work with sources inside Facebook, I’ve confirmed that Facebook now lets third party applications create live links inside Facebook. This has been one of my principal complaints about how Facebook interacts with the “rest of the web” – and now it’s resolved.
For example, I use the Twitter application on Facebook to update my Facebook status. Everything I tweet ends up as a Facebook status update. There’s certainly no love lost between these two companies, and I’ve pointed out in the past that links in my Tweets are not live in Facebook, so my Facebook friends can’t click on them and see what I’m talking about.
As of sometime a month or so ago, Facebook now makes those links live. As this populates the service, there’s a huge search opportunity (all those links can be crawled, FaceRank can be calculated, etc…)
Read More…seen as arrogant. Regardless of whether that charge is true, or sticks, or is fair, this is what will end up in our national "paper of record." The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties between the boards of two of technology’s most prominent companies,…
The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties between the boards of two of technology’s most prominent companies, Apple and Google, amount to a violation of antitrust laws, according to several people briefed on the inquiry.
At the end of my book, and the beginning of a new phase of this site, I suggested that Google’s largest issue will be its “failure to fail.” I also compared, and continue to compare, the company to Microsoft in the late 90s, when it struggled with anti-trust investigations that ultimately proved hobbling, if not in profits, at least in its quest to be the most innovative and fastest growing company in the technology sector.
Read MoreI've spent a bit of time going back in time lately, at least as far as Twitter is concerned. In short, I created a new account, as if I had never used the service before. Why? Well, as Twitter hits inflection, it struck me that there was something really, really…
Why? Well, as Twitter hits inflection, it struck me that there was something really, really important that had to happen, in terms of how the service works. As millions of new users try the service, it’s crucial that they find something useful when they arrive. If they don’t, well, they’ll leave.
And leaving they are, if this report from Nielsen is to be believed. Widely picked up last week in the Twitterverse, the report does the math and finds that 60 percent of those who try Twitter abandon the service within a month. That means no matter how steep the inflection, Twitter will soon burn through its available fuel (new user attention) and could fail to hit escape velocity (where escape velocity = a scaled platform at the level of Facebook, Google, or Yahoo).
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