AOL was finally set free today, years after it should have been. Congrats to the AOL team and Tim Armstrong, and I imagine, to the Time Warner folks who managed to destroy so much value by blaming everything on the merger in the first place (sure, it was a [...]
Twitter is rolling a ton of features and announcements this week, coinciding both with Le Web in Paris and its own ongoing development as a platform. A roundup:
- Twitter is opening up its "firehose" of tweets to all comers "in early" [...]
Google's real time search integration, announced at Web 2 in October, is rolling out (good coverage from SEL). It'll be integrated as "Latest results." I'll be watching how this effects the traffic referral ecosystem across the web - that's the key. Will Twitter grow? Will [...]
Google has launched a "Favorite Places" program to jumpstart its local search business. I like the moxy, but the ecosystem is lacking a clear dose of "Why Should I Do This," at least from the point of view of the business. Or the customer, for that [...]
AT&T today released an iPhone app that reports wireless issues. It's called Mark the Spot. Very cool. This is a step toward the crowdsourced, conversational, map-driven go to market strategy I outlined here....this app [...]
From the Google Social Web Blog (I have to admit it's hard for me to see those four words together without busting out a silly grin):
Today, we're bringing Twitter and Friend Connect even closer together. Now you can join one of' [...]
Google today announced a new policy in its ongoing attempt to reach detente with an increasingly querulous publishing industry. (For background, read Mashable's piece).
A key piece of the new policy has to do with changes to Google's "First Click Free" program. From Google's' [...]
I had a birthday a few weeks ago and to mark the occasion, my wife bought me a Kindle.
OK, yes, I'm a pretty digital guy, and despite writing my 1992 Berkeley Master's thesis on "The Future of'" [...]
Back when I was reporting the book, I remember a meeting I had with Gary Flake, then the lead technologist at Overture, now a Fellow at Microsoft running Live Labs, responsible for stuff like Seadragon, Photosynth, [...]
From Biz' post on Twitter's shift:
Twitter helps you share and discover what's happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. "What are you doing?" isn't the right question anymore—starting today, we've shortened' [...]
You imagine something out loud in a book, and then it starts to happen....
I am sure many of you have heard of RedLaser, but I hadn't until today. I love it!
Here's the text from my blog post, written in 2004 (pre iPhone, so I used a Treo...) which' [...]
Today I had quite an experience with United Airlines. It has very little to do with much of anything I usually write about here, save one key element: I have posited that to succeed in what I've been calling the Conversation' [...]
Look. Sure, it's a mobile ad platform, and sure, Google wants to play there, more than they already are. OK. Fine. But really. What's the play?
Droid.
Data.
Droid.
Iphone App Data.
Droid.
K?
Data. Just to be clear. Data. About what works, on iPhone apps, so they can leverage it...for Droid.
K.
Saw this greeting me whilst on Twitter.com today (gotta love WiFi on a plane):
Nice to see Twitter rolling out so many new things, like Lists, which seems to be taking off (though I find the lack of a discovery interface vexing, for [...]
Danny was kind enough to ping me about this story, which breaks the news about Google's new "Dashboard," which is, in essence, a first start toward realizing the "privacy dashboard" I asked for so long ago (and again here), back when I was [...]
The sphere is abuzz with today's news that AT&T is suing Verizon over those apparently quite effective ads which borrow heavily from Apple's tagline - "There's an App for that..." Verizon has created a map that compares AT&T 3G coverage to Verizon's, and then uses' [...]
There's much to say about Twitter's slow to roll out but much discussed Lists feature. I'm a fan of it, in short, for many reasons. Lists is a pretty simple idea - it lets anyone make' [...]
Last week was big for Twitter. After years of speculation about whether the company was going to have a business model, Twitter announced two deals at our Web2 conference - first with Microsoft's Bing, and second with Google. Details of the deals were [...]
The interview with Qi Lu and Microsoft's Bing - Twitter deal announced at Web 2 last week. I'm working on a wrap post coming soon.
Sergey made a surprise visit to Web 2 last week, just as he did six years ago for the first one.
Most of you probably know I'm at Web 2 this week, hence no posting. But follow the news on the #w2s hashtag, there's already been a ton, as this WSJ roundup shows....
Every month I look at Twitter's traffic, and for September, the trend continues to be flat to down. Has Twitter peaked, or is it time for the company to start showing us traffic through its API and via SMS, so we can really understand the service's growth?
Here [...]
Earnings are coming in that make for happy year over year comps, and hence, a happy time in tech land. Intel, Google, IBM all
beating expectations - welcome news for an economy that has felt pretty damn terrible [...]
Tim Armstrong didn't need the job, but he decided to accept Time Warner's offer to become the CEO of AOL anyway. Why?
That's the first question I have for Tim when he joins us at Web 2 next week. What do' [...]
Just got an email from an UBS analyst with an overview of search share data from Comscore for Sept. Summary:
Google increases Month/Month search share
Comscore’s September US search data suggests Google took some share lost over the last few months, which gives us confidence in our Q3 paid click growth ests. [...]
I met with Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, ten days ago - one week before the annual Adobe developer's conference. He told me there'd be a lot of news about Adobe coming, and the company certainly delivered' [...]
I'm very much looking forward to the tsunami of work slowing down - Web 2 is ten days away, and my partner is starting Monday at FM - because there's just so much stuff that I'd like the time to think through, and spending the weekend doing it [...]
During the late 1990s and through 2005, Carly Fiorina was one of the most powerful women in technology. As CEO of HP, she developed a reputation as a respected and effective manager, doubling HP's revenue, buying Compaq in the process, and [...]
...as pointed out in this WSJ Digits piece:
As part of the shift, Google is thinking up and tailoring more ad campaigns in close consultation with ad agencies. In May, the Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant altered its sales structure to work more closely with ad agencies and react more [...]
If ever there was a strong meme in search, it's the impact of social: Everyone is talking about how Facebook and Twitter are threatening Google for what I've called the "oxygen" of the web: distribution of attention.
A little background. Google rose to prominence as the absolute winner [...]
Jon Miller has graced the Web 2 stage several times, most memorably when he was CEO of AOL, and both Google and Microsoft were competing for his company's search deal (Google won, that deal is close to expiration, and now-CEO [...]
As I mentioned a couple of days back, one of the folks I get to interview on stage later this month is Sheryl Sandberg, who I met with earlier this week (this post was one result of [...]
Whoever is running these chattering teeth ads, cursing the Internet to another round of Punch The Monkey crap creative and all the consequences therein, STOP IT.
But it's really all our fault, isn't it? Premium sites run remnant ad networks, and crap like this' [...]
Today was a good day. I got to meet with serious leaders of the Internet economy, think Big Thoughts, and push my understanding of the world a bit. In short, I spent the day with folks I'll be interviewing onstage at Web 2 next month, but also, with people who' [...]
Thanks to the BingTweets program, I've been asked to opine on search and decision engines. I'm kind of proud of my third and final post, which riffs on the first two and goes a bit, well, meta. I'd love to know what you guys think' [...]
What more can be said about Carol Bartz? Her appearance at the helm of Yahoo has certainly energized the company and given both its supporters and detractors plenty to talk about. But beyond the colorful language and straight shooting demeanor lies [...] Jeff Immelt is the CEO of GE, one of the largest enterprises in the history of the world. Let that sink in for a moment, it's not a trivial concept. One of the largest enterprises ever devised by mankind - General Electric. The Microsoft, nay, the Google of the' [...]
Twitter is a fad! Google isn't American! We're in charge! Thank God there's Tyler Bruhle!
Please.
A spate of Google books coming out, including one from Ken Auletta and one already out from Jeff Jarvis, and another from Richard Brandt. Ken's book has dangling, draw-you-in quote, as usual: Apparently Eric Schmidt told him that Google will be the world's first $100billion media [...]
Thanks to those of you who chimed in, via email, Twitter, Facebook, and comments, on our first interview at Web 2 next month with Brian Roberts.
Next up on day one is Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter. [...]
Tim A. - who I will interview at Web 2 next month - says the future of AOL is in content. This is a drum he's been beating for some time, and I still find it intriguing that the man responsible for advertising at Google, a famously technology-driven company, [...]
We'll be opening this year's Web 2 Summit with an interview of Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast. I've asked Brian to come for the past three years, and he's always had a conflict. In those last few [...]
Just noting this for the record. It's never good to be seen as too big, too greedy, and too overreaching.
Justice Department urges court to reject Google book deal
As I wrote those words - "Display Market" - I sure wish we could get our nomenclature right. Because that term means a lot of things to a lot of people.
In any case, Google today announces its Doubleclick Ad Exchange, which it promises will "simplify the process of buying and" [...]
Alex Salkever has written a post on Facebok's self service CPC platform, which has been getting a lot of traction lately and is largely responsible for the company's recent boasting about being cash flow positive. From it:
I chatted with nearly two dozen people who [...]
SAI points to an interesting piece by Chris Dixon, founder of Hunch, in which he argues that Twitter will inevitably be competing with its core developers (complements to Twitter) at some point. This is always true for development ecosystems, however, and I don't think, in fact, it will be' [...]
Unemployment is up and continuing to rise, the recession, while possibly, maybe, sort of technically over, does not feel over at all, and while Murdoch says "things are better" in the advertising economy, "better" means "no longer totally crap."
So why on earth would I write a [...]
Danny Sullivan over at SEL has really teed off on Yahoo's search strategy, and any time he goes off, it's worth a read.
From it:
USER INTERFACE CHANGES WON’T LET YAHOO COMPETE IN SEARCH
Got it? Write it down, someone come check back on this in five years. If Yahoo’s moved up [...]
This is very interesting. We're interviewing Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen at Web 2 next month, man will we have things to talk about now. Why would Adobe want to get into the web analytics business (in short, supporting ecommerce and marketing)? Well, it makes sense given nearly all' [...]
This graph is a rough estimate, does not include use of Twitter apps, mobile, etc. It's just traffic to Twitter.com. But it has proven a reliable trending mechanism for Twitter. And it shows a leveling off. Now, I am going to go out on a limb and say the growth [...]
By now you probably know about the “Search Options” feature Google introduced in May. One of its features is to limit the search results by time frame. By default the available time frames are: Any time, Past year, Past week, Recent results and Past [...]
Good to see this happening:
Introducing DataLiberation.org: Liberate Your Data!
In short, Google is taking its commitment to allow data exporting seriously. This is a very, very good thing.
I had an extraordinary day yesterday, in terms of who I got to talk with. Not only did I meet with several of FM's partners - two Fortune 500 marketers, a major platform partner, and a major blogger - I also got to watch the
Today my company Federated Media announced a new ad format for a group of our publishing partners. We call this beta program "Ad Stamp", and those of you who've been watching the space closely, and reading my thoughts on marketing here, won't be too surprised by what you see.
Google is developing a micropayment platform that will be “available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year,” according to a document the company submitted to the Newspaper Association of America. The system, an extension of Google Checkout, would be a new and unexpected option for [...]
Nielsen's first half Y/Y comparison numbers came out for the ad industry yesterday, and as one might expect, they were not pretty. The Web did not escape unscathed. SAI has a nice chart, reproduced here.
I live in the Bay area, a place that has been, in the past 20 or so years, woefully underserved by what those in the quality news business call, well, quality news. I also am a graduate of a fine Bay area quality new journalism program, and [...]
My second post (of two) is up over at the BingTweets site, part of an FM partnership with Microsoft. In it I describe my frustration with search as it relates to helping me make a complicated decision: How to possibly buy a classic car. From it:
So first, how would [...]
Yesterday I got a chance to debrief with two leaders of Yahoo's search team (yes, I know how that sounds given the Bing deal, but bear with me here). Late last week Yahoo announced its intentions with regard to continuing its innovation in search, and I had noted [...]
Well, I knew this day would come. I've been ignoring friend requests on Facebook for a month or so because, well, my longstanding friending policy has backfired, and I'm now at my "friend limit" of 5000 (well, 5003, to be exact). This limit has been much [...]
I may have been "on vacation" over much of the past month, but as usual, I was working, and part of my work was framing out and filling in the program for the sixth annual Web 2 Summit. Tim O'Reilly and I had a' [...]
I'm getting psyched up for Outside Lands' second year, and the return of CrowdFire, an FM/Intel/Outside Lands joint back and better than ever. CrowdFire is a service that aggregates fan photos, videos, tweets, and more, and lets anyone play with the [...]
The NYT asks today: "Is Google Entering the Mortgage Quote Business?"
The story notes that in a lawsuit between two mortgage-lead businesses, Lending Tree and MorTech, Lending Tree claims that MorTech is providing its technology to Google, so that Google can compete with Lending Tree.
Does [...]
It feels a bit odd to be writing that headline - "Yahoo's New Search" - given the company's deal with Bing/Microsoft. But Yahoo seems intent on declaring its independence with regard to search, even as it sells its asset and audience away to its newfound partner.
Yahoo does retain, in the [...]
Very interesting news yesterday about Google Adsense and competing ad networks. From ClickZ:
Google plans to open its AdSense network to other ad networks, potentially giving the already huge ad net access to display ads flowing through countless other networks. The firm [...]
Regarding this story in the New York Times:
With Bloggers in the Bleachers, Leagues See a Threat to Profits(and related, my post on "Don't Be a Player Platform Hater"):
I have such a rant in me on this topic but I simply cannot write it now, I'm way too Supposed [...]
Today I was on my way back to our house after dropping my kids off to camp, and I decided to stop by a local cafe for a quick coffee-n-chat. Now, in August, "our house" means a [...]
Hey, I really like the soundtrack. And it's f*ing true as well.
My beef with this is this simple statement, about 3:42 in. "Social Media isn't a fad, it's a fundamental shift in how we communicate."
True, to a point. What it really is, is the release of how we already communicate,' [...]
I'm not going to grok this tonight, I'm too sea-addled (on vacation). But it seems a worthy read:
On the Predictability of Search Trends by Google Research.
For the best few days, I've been trying to edit the settings in my Feedburner account - the RSS feeds service that was once so useful, but since its purchase by Google, seems to have languished. Unfortunately, it seems I've forgotten my password (though I used the [...]
As part of BingTweets, an FM/Microsoft promotion blending the two services, I was asked to opine on the idea of how we use the web to make decisions. My first post has been up for a while but I managed to lose track of time and forgot to let [...]
Back when I predicted this in January, I recall worrying I was calling it too early. Now it appears the timing was about right. From Mashable:
...while Google grew from June to July, it still lost market share to its competitors – from 66.1% in June to 64.8% in [...]
Matt Cutts points to a video interview (embedded above) on Google's Caffeine infrastructure update.
"It's a pretty fundamentally big change" Matt says. What I'd like to know is why and in response to what changes on the web. Of course, the major changes in how the web works are clear:' [...]
Google's new iGoogle upgrades smacks of Facebook. Read this:
we're excited to introduce social gadgets for iGoogle. Social gadgets let you share, collaborate and play games with your friends on top of all the things you can already do on your homepage. The 19 social gadgets we're debuting today offer' [...]
A month ago I posted that Twitter was back to strong growth after a weak month of June. I just took at look at the numbers for August, which you can see in the screen shot here (I'm using
A month ago I posted that Twitter was back to strong growth after a weak month of June. I just took at look at the numbers for August, which you can see in the screen shot here (I'm using
Multiple sources are reporting Facebook is testing "Facebook Lite" - what some are calling a Twitter version of Facebook. Mashable, RWW have more, TC got an official response from Facebook, which makes it sound like it's not a Twitter competitor. Interesting. Reminds me of my
Multiple sources are reporting Facebook is testing "Facebook Lite" - what some are calling a Twitter version of Facebook. Mashable, RWW have more, TC got an official response from Facebook, which makes it sound like it's not a Twitter competitor. Interesting. Reminds me of my [...]
Facebook's previously announced realtime engine has been released, coverage from Mashable:
Fast forward to today: Facebook just announced that it is rolling out the new Facebook search. With realtime search and FriendFeed in its pocket, Facebook is gunning directly for Twitter.
Also' [...]
I've been meaning to post a long-ish rant on the importance of celebrities taking control of their own platforms, but never gotten to it, in part because I'm not that enamored with the incessant selling of celebrity that occurs in our culture. Yeah, I sound like a [...]
Sorry, it's late, and I just saw this piece in the NYT. But for Bartz to say that Yahoo was never a search company is simply not true.
Yahoo was the original search destination, and a place folks first learned to "search" for stuff on the Web. As the original' [...]
Google yesterday announced it is adding more information to Google Maps:
"(We've added) icons and labels of prominent businesses and places of interest directly on the map itself. We've found it super useful for checking out what's nearby a hotel we'll be staying at, orienting ourselves, getting the feel for" [...]
Early this year, well, January 1, to be exact, I made this prediction about our friends at Apple:
Apple will see a significant reversal of recent fortunes. I sense this will happen for a number of reasons ... but I think the main one will [...]
What a total surprise (kidding!).
In a statement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that "as Google enters more of Apple's core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric's effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions" [...]
The NYT has a good background piece from Carol Bartz's POV. Carol will be at Web 2 this Fall, so will Qi Lu, the man who will own the deal and the search fight with Google.
And they are opening an investigation into it.
According to a Dow Jones Newswire report, on Friday afternoon the FCC sent letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google. The federal inquiry asks Apple why the Google Voice application was rejected from its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and [...]
Yesterday I spent an illuminating hour with the folks behind Wowd, a still-private-beta search upstart that is taking a new approach to, well, just about everything in search as we traditionally understand it.
In a odd coincidence, this morning Venturebeat published a thoughtful piece on how search might shift [...]
