Facebook is quickly expanding into many world regions and this internationalisation strategy seems to pay off. According to figures released by comScore (SCOR) on Aug. 12. Facebook has overtaken Myspace and now counts 132 million users, nearly 63% are outside North America. The site, which had been translated into 20 languages including French, Spanish, and Mandarin, has recently added 69 more. “Now, through translations, we are seeing a lot of growth in international countries,” says Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook in a recent interview. Read more.
Tag Archive for 'Web2.0'
Former workers at the web giant Google have launched a rival search engine.
Called Cuil (pronounced “cool”), from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, its founders claim it does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online. The technology it uses to index the web can understand the context surrounding each page and the concepts driving search requests, say the founders. Rather than displaying results in a list, like Google, Cuil shows them on a page which has a more magazine-like feel.
Analysts believe the new search engine, like many others, will struggle to match and defeat Google. Read more on the goliath challenger Cuil here.
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Here a list of promising European startups in the sphere of mobile technology and innovation. The list compromises ideas in the range of social media, internet, video and voice technology.
The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. The Financial Times reports that Web 2.0 fails to produce cash.
Beyond Blogs, a BusinessWeek Cover Story by Stephen Baker and Heather Green
Sphere: Related ContentWe’ve spent years talking about the value of the water-cooler conversations,” he says. “Now we have the ability to actually understand what these relationships are, how information and decision-making migrate. We see how people really work.” Why does this matter? The company can spot teams that form organically, and then can place them on targeted projects. It can pinpoint the people who transmit ideas. These folks are golden. “A new class of supercommunicators has emerged,” he says.
Always been looking for the next big thing? Please keep an eye on The New Disruptors - A video series written and produced by Business 2.0 Editor-at-large Erick Schonfeld in conjunction with CNN.
When I first saw that Barack Obama “followed” more than 23.000 people’s Twitters and Hillary Clinton followed 0, I thought it was simply bad PR on Hillary’s part. Like Obama, she probably should pretend she’s listening to all those people, even though neither has the time for it.
Now I was left wondering if Obama’s thousands followers could be valuable data? Perhaps analytics companies could rake through those tweets and give the candidates charts about shifting attitudes and responses to speeches. Costly? Not much in comparison to TV ads at state television I assume. Is it worth it for candidates to mine Twitter?
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Did Google peak last November 6th, when its share price hit an all-time high of $742? Some people on Wall Street seem to think so. They now value the firm at around 40% less. Part of the blame belongs to the general turmoil in the stockmarket. But the bigger part, investors fear, is that Google, at the ripe old age of nine, might already be over the hill.
First, the company missed Wall Street revenue forecasts in the fourth quarter for the first time. Then a pair of reports from market researcher comScore (SCOR), the latest on Mar. 26, said U.S. growth in the number of clicks on the paid ads appearing next to Google’s search results essentially flatlined for two months running compared with a year ago. Six months ago, paid clicks were growing up to 40% annually.
However over the last couple of months Google is improving their add system in two ways. First, it offers fewer ads on each results page, and often none at all. This reduces visual clutter and pleases both users and any remaining advertisers. Second, Google seems to be trying harder to weed out those advertisers who bid low in the auctions it conducts for advertising slots linked to particular keywords. in short, with less space devoted to ads, and only higher-bidding advertisers getting through, there are fewer ads to click on.
If Google is really over the hill we will find out in the upcoming months. For now stay tuned.
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Web video. Some believe it’s all about low quality, edgy clips which you can graze on at your laptop - others see the internet as simply a way of delivering quality content in high definition to your plasma screen. Or perhaps you want to be able to click onscreen and get a wealth of information from the web about what you’re watching? That’s what Blinkx, a company launching a new online video service, is betting can make it stand out from an increasingly desperate crowd.
Its BBTV application promises to take a ragbag of content, from news clips to documentaries to independent films, and present it to you online with Blinkx’s added ingredient - clickability. The idea is that you are watching a news item about monks in Tibet, you click and get the entire commentary on screen, use that to navigate to the section which interests you, and then click again to draw down all that rich information that the web can provide.
While watching blinkx BBTV, viewers can access transcripts of a program’s audio track and background information on everything from actors and personalities to reviews and locations shown within the video (MediaPost, 2008)
But isn’t it too late for another video wannabe to enter this market? As far as I can see, the audience has decided that it wants either YouTube or mainstream television - and the likes of Blinkx may fall through the gap in the middle.
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Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later (Social Media Will Change Your Business, BusinessWeek Online)
“Blogs werethe heart of the story in 2005. But they’re just one of the tools millions can use today to lift their voices in electronic communities and create their own media. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace, video sites like YouTube, mini blog engines like Twitter—they’ve all emerged in the last three years, and all are nourished by users. “
A good primer for business executives that are just starting out in social media initiatives. We’re just standing at the beginning of the social media revolution. In the next three to five years the entire media world will be turned upside down and advertising, communications/PR, market research, etc will be performed in ways never seen before.
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