Already wrote about the real-time web at this post. Now Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s search service are preparing real-time searches of Twitter and Facebook posts. Targeted ads could follow.
Naver (The popular Korean search engine) already incorporated this functionality a long time ago. Naver displays its search results in various categories, such as results found on blogs.
Nonetheless, in a bid to stay relevant in the face of these shifts, Google and Microsoft said on 21 October that they will incorporate information culled from social media sites into search pages. Microsoft said its Bing search engine will let users search for Twitter posts known as tweets and, later, for status updates posted to Facebook pages. The same day, Google said it too will include Twitter updates in search results and that it will begin offering a social search tool that delivers information posted by a searcher’s friends on social sites [Source]. We live in again in exciting times: Real-Time web. =)
BusinessWeek reported on how Michael Dell is trying to change almost everything about the computer company he founded. In previous post I already wrote about Dell’s corporate culture and its direct selling business model.
Things at Dell seems to be changing in an upward spiral and its about to get increased momentum. Amongst others, Dell revitalised the top management team, restructured its organisational structure around customer segments and customer focused and broadened the scope of its product portfolio to move beyond building PCs [Source].
A brash new generation of traders is making a fortune by remaking financial markets. An outgrowth of Chicago’s derivatives markets, they go by wonky names like Global Electronic Trading Co., Tradebot and Infinium. Personnel include mathematicians, engineers and gamers. They bet their own capital on sophisticated software algorithms that spit out thousands of orders a second. Big Wall Street brokerages and hedge funds pursue similar strategies.
E.g. from the get-go the strategy was to trade fast, furiously and electronically. Getco’s first point of attack was futures, which went electronic early. Tierney and Schuler programmed their computers, and the people manning them, to offer quotes and execute trades more quickly than rivals. Then, when the market moves, to do it again. By posting bids and offers for the same securities simultaneously, they are able to scoop up a spread of a tenth or a hundredth of a penny per share thousands of times a day while limiting the capital at risk. What Getco gives up by capping its risk it makes up for in volume. The company currently trades an estimated 1.5 billion shares a day with 220 employees and offices in Chicago, New York, London and Singapore.
[Source]
Are online jobs the next big thing? For Maria Summers it sure is. Maria, a mother from is thriving, in the middle of an economic recession working in the comfort of her own home.
From her website: “I get paid about $25 for every link I post on Google and I get paid every week… I make around $5500 a month right now” [Source].
That’s how big Google’s vision is for its Wave social-networking/search service, which will have apps created by independent developers who sell them at a Google app store.
Google has big plans for Google Wave, its new online communication service—and they won’t all come from Google.
Combining instant messaging, e-mail, and real-time collaboration, Wave is an early form of so-called real-time communication designed to make it easier for people to work together or interact socially over the Internet. Google started letting developers tinker with Wave at midyear and then introduced the tool on a trial basis to about 100,000 invited users starting on Sept. 30. Invitations were such a hot commodity that they were being sold on eBay (EBAY). For Google the hope is that Wave, once it’s more widely available, will replace competing communications services such as e-mail, instant messaging, and possibly even social networks such as Facebook [Source].
The 40 names making the list, compiled by A.T. Kearney for BusinessWeek, are thriving in the recession and preparing for beyond. The ranking can be found here.
What are some traits of the World’s Best Companies? A commitment to innovation, diversified portfolios, aggressive expansion, strong leadership, and a clear vision for the future. “In an environment of continuous disruptive change, companies that have rigorous strategic planning initiatives that allow them to see over the horizon…are far more likely to win than those that make it up as they go along,” says Paul Laudicina, chairman of A.T. Kearney.
To create the list, A.T. Kearney examined the 2,500 largest publicly listed companies in the world. Kearney’s team singled out those with a minimum of $10 billion in sales in 2008, at least 25% of which came from outside the company’s home region. It then ranked the companies on their sales growth and value creation—the rise of market capitalization after subtracting any increase in capital—over the past five years.
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