WebProNews Feed

Google Exec: Docs Can Supplant Office In One Year

Doug Caverly — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:38:18 -0500

Dave Girouard, the president of Google's enterprise division, made an interesting admission earlier today, acknowledging that Google Docs isn't right for the average person. But Girouard also made an interesting prediction, putting Google Docs about a year away from seriously challenging Microsoft Office.

Let's look at the current state of things first. According to Victoria Ho, Girouard said that Google Docs is "much less mature" than other Google products, and he later continued, "We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet."

You can almost imagine a marketing team trying to tackle Girouard right then; such honesty probably won't do Google Docs much good in the short term.

Still, the fact that Girouard (who's spent almost six years with Google) was willing to face reality makes his forecast more noteworthy. And Girouard indicated that a number of Google Docs updates will land next year, at which point businesses should be able to "get rid of Office if they chose to."

That's more the sort of message Google's marketing team could (and quite possibly will) get behind.

Related Articles:

> Google Adds Google Docs Previews To Gmail

> Google Docs Gets New And Old Features

> Google To Start Crawling Google Docs Documents

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

Doug Caverly — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:47:26 -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.

UPDATE: Danny Sullivan has pointed out a sort of middle ground at which Murdoch might arrive: "Publishers can have Google News index the entire text of their articles but NOT show the full story to visitors who come from Google (for Google's web search, that's not an option - but you can provide summary pages). They can also, if they choose, have only a small summary of their content indexed."

That would allow News Corp.'s properties to by and large stick to the WSJ model without sacrificing loads of search traffic and becoming less visible to potential ad-clickers and paying customers. A smart compromise, perhaps.

As for when a change might go through, Jon Miller, News Corp.'s Chief Digital Officer, gave a rough deadline by talking about "months and quarters - not weeks" at a conference yesterday. But according to Emma Barnett, he also indicated that News Corp. wouldn't do anything drastic on its own, which may either be a polite way of contradicting Murdoch's statements or a hint that the industry really is about to change.

Related Articles:

> MySpace To Miss $100 Million From Google Search Deal

> Murdoch Says Newspapers Must Charge For Online Content

> News Corp. Posts Disappointing Financial Results

Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:40:57 -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

> How Does Bing Rank Tweets?

Google May Change Your Page Titles

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 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.

Related Articles:

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

> Why Your Robots.txt Blocked URLs May Show up in Google

> Does Google Recognize the Name of Your Business?

Who Owns Your Content?

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:30:51 -0500

Have you ever wondered what would happen to your content on third-party sites if those sites ceased to exist? You may own your content on them as it stands now, but what if they went away?

Would you be ok if your tweets or your status updates disappeared? Discuss here.

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 301Works.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?

Google Chrome OS May Be Here Very Soon

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:57:49 -0500

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch claims to have heard from "a reliable source" that Google will be launching the much-anticipated Chrome OS within a week. The tech industry media has been punked on Chrome OS in the past, but as Arrington notes, Google has said to expect it in the fall, and fall is running out.

Chrome OS is Google's attempt to "rethink what operating systems should be." It's an open source, "lightweight" operating system to be initially targeted at netbooks.

"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS," Google said upon the Chrome OS announcement. "We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

"The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform," the company continued. "All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

Arrington says he thinks driver support will be an issue with Chrome OS. "...Having a robust set of functioning drivers is extremely important to Chrome OS’s success. People will want to download this to whatever computer they use and have it just work," he says. "We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one."

If Arrington's source truly is reliable, then we should see how the launch of Chrome OS pans out very soon. It's going to be very interesting to see how Google competes with Microsoft in the operating system space, as it is doing in both search and web browsers.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Chrome OS Challenge Windows?

> Fake Chrome OS Screenshots Punk Tech Media

> Steve Ballmer Skeptical Of Chrome OS

Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:19:25 -0500

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google?

Don't worry, it hasn't had an impact...yet. In an interview with WebProNews, Google's Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor.

"Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," says Cutts. "It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much."

>> Site speed ranking comments starts at the 02:35 point in the video...

"I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about 'how do I have my site be fast,' how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?'" he says.

I would say that based on Matt's comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn't come right out and say that they definitely will. That said, making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so you might as well start optimizing it for speed anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings.

Google has generally been pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites and potentially boost rankings and conversions. Google recently announced a Site Speed site, which provides webmasters with even more resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages. Some of these, such as Page Speed and Closure tools come from Google itself. But there are a number of tools Google points you to from other developers as well.

If you're serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven't given much thought to load times and such, it's time to readjust your way of thinking. Caffeine increases the speed at which Google can index content. Wouldn't it make sense if your site helped the process along?

Have you given much thought to site speed? Is your site up to snuff? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Google Wants the Web to Function Like a Magazine

> Google Provides Tool for Speeding Up Web Pages

> Google Lets Businesses Speed Up Videos

New Details on Google Caffeine Update

Chris Crum — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:05:32 -0500

Update 2: Matt Cutts gave WebProNews another exclusive interview, in which he gave some more details about Caffeine (among other things. It's only hitting one data center before the holidays, and it isn't even live quite yet. Google will roll it out to more data centers in January.

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

Google Integrates AdSense For Feeds, FeedBurner, Analytics

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:27:54 -0500

The desire to integrate products is strong at Google; it’s not hard to imagine that the company would eventually like to offer one great, big search/video/email/advertising ball. And today, it took a tiny step along that path by rolling together some analytics products.

A post on the AdSense for Feeds blog announced, “If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site.”

The post then continued, “Specifically, we will help you classify your links by tagging the Source as ‘feedburner,’ the Medium as the channel in which we sent out your feed such as ‘feed’ or ‘email,’ and the Content as the actual endpoint application in which the user viewed your feed content such as ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Yahoo! Mail.’”

More distribution endpoint labels are on the way, too.

Hopefully this update will help people earn a little extra money heading into the holidays. At the least, it may simplify FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds users’ lives a little, which would also represent a nice treat this time of year.

Related Articles:

> Google Launches Analytics For Mobile Apps

> Correcting Your Web Analytics Mistakes

> FeedBurner/Google Alum Goes To Twitter

Smartphone Sales Up 12% In Q3

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:11:32 -0500

Global mobile phone sales reached 308.9 million units in the third quarter of 2009, a slight increase of 0.1 percent from the third quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Gartner.

Smartphone sales showed solid growth with more than 41 million units sold for a 12.8 percent increase from the same period last year.

"The third quarter of 2009 saw the announcement of many new mobile devices, including several Android smartphones ready for the holiday season in the fourth quarter, but hardware commoditisation and the growth in open platforms will make it harder for them to stand out," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner.

"Many devices will reach the market in time for Christmas, and mobile carriers will run incentives for consumers during the holidays. We expect sales of mobile devices in the fourth quarter of 2009 to show year-over-year growth," said Ms Milanesi.

"As many vendors and industry watchers call for a decrease in sales into the channel, our sell through data is showing that 2009 performance will be flat rather than down over 2008."

Nokia led the mobile market in Q3 with 36.7 percent of the share, followed by Samsung at 19.6 percent and LG with 10.3 percent market share.

Nokia also ranked at the top in smartphone sales with 39.3 percent of the market, followed by Blackberry maker Research in Motion with 20.8 percent and Apple with 17.1 percent.

"Smartphones continued to represent the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market and we remain confident about the potential for smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009 and in 2010," said Ms Milanesi.

Related Articles:

>Google Launches Custom Search For Smartphones

>Buy A Blackberry From Walmart Get A $100 Gift Card

>Apple And LG Rank High In Consumer Satisfaction

Tweeting Habits Parsed By Time, Day

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:24:04 -0500

A new report has shed some light on the habits of Twitter users. The good people of Pingdom tracked the number of tweets sent over the course of three weeks, and today, released their statistics regarding what days and times folks most like to send messages in under 140 characters.

Some broader facts may be in order first, though. A Royal Pingdom blog post stated, "[T]he average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million. The average number of tweets per hour was 1,138,772."

Also, "The highest number of tweets per hour we measured was 1,841,289," and "the lowest number of tweets measured during the period was 566,854 per hour . . ."

Now, as for the specifics. In one sense, there's no surprise on the time front; people don't tweet as much during traditional sleeping hours. Otherwise, Pingdom recorded steady activity throughout the day. Which could signal good things for Twitter, since individuals aren't just playing around with it when they're already stuck in front of a computer.

Interestingly, users don't exactly abandon it on weekends, either (although the number of tweets does decline a little). And at the rate things are going, the Royal Pingdom blog post noted that it shouldn't be long before Twitter is processing one billion tweets per month.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Puts Retweet Roll-Out On Hold

> Compete Builds "Twitter Down" Case

> Research Scientist Heads From Yahoo To Twitter

iTunes Lets You See Previews Without the Download

Chris Crum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:03:01 -0500

Apple has launched iTunes Preview, which is a means of showing what music is available on iTunes right in the web browser. This seems like an incredibly obvious way to do it, and one that many have been waiting for way too long, but now if you want to look at the iTunes catalog, without having to install iTunes, you can do so.

You can't listen to song previews without installing iTunes, but at least you can see what they have. You do still have to download iTunes to purchase music.

According to MacWorld, the feature only works for music, but could probably be applied to video at some point. The feature can be accessed at the iTunes Charts page or clicking on a link from the music store.

When you go to a preview page, you can see information for the album like the track listing, the length, and the price. There are also reviews that you can read through.

If you go to the Charts page, you can search for other artists and songs and get to preview pages for those results. However, if you click on the link on the search results page that says "view more results in iTunes," it will take you to the iTunes download page (assuming you don't have it installed).

Related Articles:

>iTunes 9 Improves Sharing and Syncing

>Sony To Offer eMusic Its Older Catalog

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The Boston Globe Launches Digital Newspaper

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:35:38 -0500

The Boston Globe has launched a digital version of its newspaper called GlobeReader, which can be read online or offline.

GlobeReader replaces the preview edition that launched over the summers and was available to subscribers for free. The GlobeReader is still available for free to Boston Globe's seven-day newspaper subscribers.

For non-subscribers the GlobeReader is offered for $4.98 per week. A bundle including home delivery of the Sunday Globe along with 7-day access to the Globe Reader is offered at the same price.

The GlobeReader can be downloaded daily to a subscribers desktop, laptop or netbook in a style aimed at mirroring the look and feel of the print version of The Boston Globe.

Improvements to the new version of the GlobeReader include the addition of comics, sports scores, weather and the daily crossword puzzle.

Key features include:

Articles are set in the same type font as the paper, and the page design is understated and clean.
The navigation is easy and clear.
Scanning for stories or photos is fast.
Readability features include adjustable type size and screen size.

"Reader response to the preview edition of the GlobeReader has been very encouraging. Now we're pleased to offer GlobeReader to the public at large," said Chris Mayer, senior vice president, circulation and operations, The Boston Globe.

"It is important for our business to offer Globe news and information on a variety of platforms that appeal to a variety of market segments."

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October Marked First Decline For Twitter Visitors In A Year

Frank Reed — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:32:53 -0500

Before you read any further just lean back and take a deep breath. You are about to enter the “Research Zone”. You know the place well. It’s where we give you shocking numbers that someone has come up with using their “methodology” and it is then used to create shocking headlines around the Internet for your reading enjoyment. It’s almost like having an informant who whispers something in your ear then you get to blab it all over the place and set the masses running. It’s fun!

Today’s “OMG stat” is brought to you by comScore via TechCrunch. Apparently, Twitter had a rough October.

Ever since last summer, Twitter’s growth in the U.S. has been stalling. But in October, the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month. Estimates released today by comScore put Twitter’s domestic unique visitors at 19.2 million, down from 20.9 million in September.

On an annual basis, Twitter is still going gangbusters with 1,271 percent growth from 1.4 million visitors in October, 2008. And on a global basis, it still seems to be chugging away with 58.4 million visitors in September. But a hypergrowth company like Twitter cannot afford to slow down in its home market.

Things to consider:

Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO, has acknowledged the slowdown so there must be some validity to it. His hope is new features will help slow or stop this trend
These results do not measure those accessing Twitter via third party clients. Only Twitter knows how many actual accounts they have and which are showing activity. Of course, I challenge them to present a number of accounts that are real users and not spammers. What would the numbers look like then?
This could be a hiccup
Facebook is possibly cleaning their clock
US growth is one piece, albeit a very important one, to the grand Twitterscheme of things

Here’s the pretty picture for you to look at wonder over.

So what’s your take? Twitter – thumbs up or thumbs down? Can adding new features attract more users or are they just tools that “preach to the choir” meaning only helping those already on board? Should anyone be worried about this?

Comments

Dell To Launch Android-Based Smartphone

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:26:06 -0500

Dell said today it plans to introduce smartphones based on Google's Android platform in Brazil and China.

The company said it plans to sell its new Mini 3 smartphones through China Mobile, the largest telecommunications firm in the world with more than 500 million customers, and Claro, which has more than 42 million customers in Brazil as part of the America Movil network.

"Our entry into the smart phone category is a logical extension of Dell's consumer product evolution over the past two years," said Ron Garriques, President, Dell Global Consumer Group.

"We are developing smaller and smarter mobile products that enable our customers to take their internet experience out of the home and do the things they want to do whenever and wherever they want."

Details of the phone models will be released when the devices are available in store, which will be late November for China Mobile and around the end of the year for Claro.

The move by Dell will help Google's Android platform become more widely available. Other companies that are backing the Android platform include Motorola, HTC, Verizon, Garmin, LG and Samsung.

Related Articles:

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>Google Delivers GPS For Android 2.0 Devices

Google Eases Retrieval of Sidewiki Entries for Entire Sites

Chris Crum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:36:30 -0500

Google has announced the release of a new feature for the Sidewiki API, which the company says makes it easier to retrieve all Sidewiki entries for an entire domain. It allows you to look for new entries created on any page of a site, and subscribe to them via RSS.

If you are unfamiliar with Sidewiki, it is available as part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer or as a bookmarklet for Chrome, Safari, or other browsers that don't support the Google Toolbar.

When using Sidewiki, an expandable window can be viewed on the left-hand side of the web page. When expanded, you can see comments by users or contribute your own. This works for any web page. There is a good chance that your site has been commented on via Sidewiki, and you don't even know about it.

This actually brings up a pretty good reputation management point. If you are a webmaster, you may want to at least install the bookmarklet in your browser if you don't use the Google Toolbar. This will allow you to keep tabs on what is being written about your site.

These comments are out there for other Sidewiki users to view. More information about how Sidewiki works can be found here. Google has created a top ten list of ways that people are already using Sidewiki. It may give you some ideas:

Jason Young speaks from personal experience and gives detailed insight into tuning a bass guitar on EMG's Bass Tips site.
Antony Carthy, a programmer in South Africa, wrote tips on how to find latitude and longitude coordinates on Google Maps.
Google's own Matt Cutts warns visitors about a deceptive website.
Shalin Gala of PETA calls on readers to sign a petition next to an article about animal mistreatment.
Ron Burk suggests a missing reference for a medical article.
The Mayo Clinic uses Sidewiki to welcome visitors with a special webmaster entry on its homepage (this one requires Sidewiki to view).
Jesse Poe from New York offers up great insights in a review of an iPhone app by Daniel Johnston, one of his favorite musicians.
Alfonso Grandis from Italy talks about his eye-witness account of a recent earthquake.
David Davis, a software engineer from California, improves a snippet of code in a programming tutorial.
Michael Roizen from the Cleveland clinic adds his advice about H1N1 vaccinations.

Google recommends commenters contribute expert insight, helpful tips, background information, and added perspective when using SideWiki. The company has said in the past that it uses "multiple signals" based on the "quality of the entry," what they know about the author, and other user-contributed signals like voting and flagging. They say they want to only keep the most relevant entries appearing in the sidebar.

Related Articles:

> Google Turning the Web Into an Exclusive Social Network?

> You No Longer Need the Google Toolbar to Use Sidewiki

> Want to Get Your Google Profile Verified?

Google Headed To Swiss Court Over Street View

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:05:37 -0500

The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner of Switzerland, Hanspeter Thür , still isn't happy with Google. Thür has argued that the Street View program doesn't do enough to protect individuals' identities, and despite receiving a concession or two, is now taking Google to court.

Street View was introduced in Switzerland about three months ago. Roughly one week later, Thür complained that certain faces and license plates weren't indistinct enough. He met with Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, Google agreed to make portions of its photos blurrier, and the problem was resolved. Or so we thought.

It turns out that Thür also objected to the height from which images had been taken, arguing that a normal person wouldn't have the same vantage point. He felt that people in more rural areas could be identified even if their faces weren't visible, too.

So, as announced in a formal statement, Thür "has decided to take the matter further and to take legal action before the Federal Administrative Court." According to the BBC, Thür wants a tribunal to make Google immediately take down all Swiss Street View images, as well (since the case won't start or end soon).

This situation could have a big impact on how other countries respond to Street View in the future.

Related Articles:

> Google Street View Hits Hawaii, Mexico

> Street View Coverage Of Two More Countries Goes Live

> Street View: Soon With More Blurriness

Microsoft Bing Goes Live In The UK

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:56:16 -0500

Microsoft has officially launched the UK version of its search engine Bing, taking it out of beta where it has been since late May.

During the past several months of beta testing, the Bing team has been working on making its search features more relevant for UK users.

"Bing is ready for the UK consumer, with our revolutionary way of searching the Internet proving very popular," said Ashley Highfield, vice president of Microsoft UK's Consumer and Online Business.

"Features such as Categorized Search, Twitter and Visual Search are providing a different and intuitive experience, and are enabling us all to make informed decisions and discover more of the web - faster."

Key features of Bing UK include:

A localized UK homepage, with unique imagery and 'hotspots' - click through information boxes provide users with a wealth of information. A tool for discovery and inspiration.
Visual Search, helps users search (maybe for a new purchase) using visual images and meta data without having to type in keywords.
More Instant Answers, created to give users a quick response options to a search question, such as how is Liverpool doing in the premiership or which tourist attraction should I take my in-laws to at the weekend
See who or what is being chatted about with global live Twitter feed searching, pulling up Tweets in Bing searches in real-time.
Looking for the best deals? - an integrated shopping experience with Ciao UK searches the Internet to find the best prices, reviews and local availability. Bing supports making the best shopping decisions based on community feedback - not just advertising.
Not sure how to get there? Bing Maps is based on insights from our Multimap users. Bing Maps now offers new map styles, imagery and transit integration as well as draggable routes.
Bing has been built for the UK to help consumers get to key local sites and services in fewer links by including popular links, search boxes and suggestions within best match.

"We will continue to innovate and introduce new features on an ongoing basis by listening and responding to what UK search users find relevant," said Highfield.

"Removing our beta tag is merely the first step to signal Bing is here and already has features that are superior to those provided by other search engines."

Related Articles:

>Bing Gets A Bunch Of New Search Features

>Bing Maps Gets An Upgrade

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YouTube On Verge Of Supporting 1080p Video

Doug Caverly — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:49:27 -0500

YouTube will soon put even more distance between itself and its old reputation for being a repository of crummy-looking, user-generated content. Support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is due to be introduced on Monday.

1080p is, in case you didn't know, the picture type associated with Blu-ray. It makes very minute details visible (hair and makeup teams were none too happy about its creation), and on YouTube, should simply allow for larger images, too.

Unfortunately, creating and displaying 1080p clips requires enough stuff that not everyone will be able to take part. Content creators who don't have fairly new cameras will be left out. Then, viewers who don't have fast Internet connections, fast computers, and large monitors should probably just stick to what was already available for the sake of not having clips stutter.

Still, YouTube's trying to make the switch easy on people. A post on the YouTube Blog stated, "[T]hose of you who have already uploaded in 1080p, don't worry. We're in the process of re-encoding your videos so we can show them the way you intended."

And the introduction of support for 1080p is important. In the long run, it'll provide an attractive option to professional content creators and advertisers, along with the obvious eye candy benefits for YouTube users.

Related Articles:

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Google Voice Gets New Free VoIP Service

Chris Crum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:03:08 -0500

Earlier this week, reports surfaced indicating that Google had bought Gizmo5, a VoIP firm. The news came just on the heels of Google's AdMob acquisition. Google has now officially announced that it has indeed acquired Gizmo5.

"While we don't have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience," Google says. "Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number."

"We've acquired a number of small companies over the past five years, and the people and technology that have come to Google from other places have contributed in many ways, large and small, to all kinds of Google products," the company adds. "Since the GrandCentral team joined Google in 2007, they've done incredible things with Google's technology and resources to launch and improve Google Voice."

In a previous report, Doug Caverly of WebProNews noted that Gizmo5 is a good fit for Google. For one, Gizmo5 is free, and Google offers a great deal of free services as it is. It is also available in nine languages, and Google is frequently expanding its reach in this regard with most of its products.

A couple weeks ago Google announced that Google Voice users can now use their own existing mobile numbers. They no longer have to have a separate Google number. This should be a great way to attract new users. However, at this point, Google Voice is still only available on an invitation basis.

Related Articles:

> Report Indicates Google Bought Gizmo5

> You Don't Need a Google Number to Use Google Voice

> AT&T Goes On The Offensive Against Google Voice

Google Ad Planner Gets Several New Enhancements

Chris Crum — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:39:59 -0500

Google has released several new features for Google Ad Planner. Google says these are aimed at providing a more granular view of where your audience can be found. Features include subdomain data, ad placements, and reach and relevance at a glance.

When Google says reach and relevance at a glance, it is referring to a new interactive graph feature, which lets advertisers see which sites in their plan provide the best reach and relevance.

"In its default setting, the graph will compare sites in your search results by audience reach and composition index," explains Google's Katrina Kurnit. "Sites with the most reach will appear in the top-left quadrant. Sites with the most relevance will appear in the bottom-right quadrant. Sites near the top-right quadrant will have the best combination of both reach and relevance."

Users can customize the graph in a number of different ways. The feature is discussed in more detail on this page.

Google has added subdomain data that gives you more detailed views of sites. It can help users refine their media plan by providing more info on specific pages. It lets usres search for subdomains, view the top subdomains based on total domain traffic for a site, view traffic, demographics and other data for the subdomain itself, and add subdomains to their media plan.

The Ad Placements feature consists of specific sections of a site where advertising can be purchased. This feature allows advertisers to review placement data for sites in the Google Content Network, and beta test publishers using Google Ad Manager. Google says more placement data will be coming soon.

Google says publishers and site owners can now use Google Ad Planner to share more Google Analytics data points like page views, unique visitors, total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site.

Related Articles:

> New Google Tool Benefits Both AdWords and AdSense Users

> Google Improves Traffic Estimation with Ad Planner

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Yahoo Hires Editor For Homepage News

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:26:29 -0500

It looks like Yahoo is quite serious about using its homepage to display news that people actually want to see. Rather than assign someone to tinker with algorithms, the company's hired a 25-year veteran of the news industry to assemble a team of editors.

Anthony Moor is currently working as the deputy managing editor for interactive news at the Dallas Morning News (he'll stay on through Thanksgiving). During his two years there, traffic to DallasNews.com has increased by 186 percent, and DallasNews.com was also given the Edward R. Murrow Award for best non-broadcast affiliated website in 2008.

The man seems to know what he's doing, then.

As for what he'll do at Yahoo, Moor is supposed to act as lead editor of Yahoo's local news effort, according to a memo Joe Strupp obtained. Moor also added in a tweet that he's been asked to "build staff of editors around US who will improve the local news experience on frontpage."

It's hard to say when (or if) this project might pay off, but Yahoo definitely gets high marks for effort. And taken together with the rest of Yahoo's successful-so-far homepage overhaul, this could turn out quite well.

Related Articles:

> Yahoo Launches Spanish Version Of Mobile Home Page

> Research Scientist Heads From Yahoo To Twitter

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The Majority Of Nonprofits Embrace Social Media

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:12:55 -0500

The majority (88%) of nonprofit organizations are experimenting with social media to engage audiences, but 79 percent are not sure of its value for their organizations, according to a new survey by Weber Shandwick's Social Impact team and KRC Research.

"We know from our work with nonprofits that most realize the potential of social media and are experimenting with it, but many are not maximizing the full opportunity," said Paul Massey, Social Impact co-lead.

"This survey validates that there is widespread experimentation, and suggests that, in the future, nonprofits that fully participate in the two-way conversations that make this medium so powerful will reap the greatest benefit."

Social Impact Nonprofit Social Media Survey

View more presentations from Weber Shandwick Social Impact.

The majority of nonprofits believe their online presence helps raise awareness (92%), keeps audiences engaged (86%) and reduces costs compared to traditional media (77%). Social media is viewed as being successful in helping nonprofits reach broad audiences (67%). Sixty-one percent say the rewards outweigh the risks. For these reasons eighty-five percent plan to make greater use of social media in the next two years and (78%) most require more social media expertise to keep communicating and receiving support for their work.

While social media is viewed positively among nonprofits, there are still a number of challenges. Sixty-seven percent of nonprofits feel that traditional media, including coverage in newspapers, magazine, television and radio are more effective at supporting fundraising efforts than social media (67% vs.22%).

Executives in nonprofits are more skeptical about social media's ability to help them with hard-to-reach audiences such as donors (45%), media (39%) and policy makers (31%).

"While two-thirds of nonprofit executives believe social media has a positive impact on their communications with external audiences, they are less convinced about social media's resonance with donors, journalists and policy makers," said Social Impact co-lead Stephanie Bluma.

"What these results imply is that organizations need to develop more targeted and sustainable digital connections with these critical yet narrower audiences. In the months ahead, digital engagement strategies will need to show value on multiple fronts from brand-building to advocacy to fundraising."

The one area where social media is widely believed to have more impact than traditional media is in mobilizing supporters (58%), an important audience for nonprofits.

Related Articles:

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Flickr Partners With Snapfish To Offer Better Printing Options

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:37:15 -0500

Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site so many people love, announced an important deal today as it named HP's Snapfish its preferred photo printing and gift creation partner. Thanks to the arrangement, printing pictures is about to become a lot easier for some folks, and for others, this will even be the first time a certain printing option has been available at all.

Flickr's international members are set to get their first opportunity to print photos directly from photostreams due to this partnership. That represents a significant step in making Flickr more user-friendly, and should pay off in terms of time spent on the site. Perhaps, once word spreads a little, in terms of unique visitors, too.

As for what else is going on, a formal statement outlined lots of perks. "Flickr and Snapfish have worked closely to develop a fully integrated and intuitive experience, combining Snapfish's printing capabilities with Flickr's online photo organization features, such as Organizr, Sets and Photo Page," according to the release.

Furthermore, "Flickr's partnership with Snapfish will allow members more flexibility in shipping photos - not only can members print photos from anywhere in the world, they can also ship photos to anywhere in the world." And "members in the U.S. can opt for local pick-up of their prints in-store at any of Snapfish's retail partners, including Walmart, Walgreens, Staples, Duane Reade, and others."

Flickr users have been pushing for something like this for quite a while - check out a 21-post discussion started in May of 2008 if you want evidence. Count on more than a few people applauding Yahoo and HP for sealing the deal.

Related Articles:

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Google Wave Gets a Feature for "Following"

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:50:09 -0500

Google has added a "follow" feature to Google Wave. The feature is designed to let users stay up to date on public waves of interest. In other words, if there are waves out there that are available to everybody, and you want to follow it, simply click the follow button for that particular wave.

When a user adds you to a Wave, or if you contribute to one, you will automatically be "following" that wave. You can remove waves from your inbox by hitting the "archive" button, but they will come back when they are updated. Users can switch between unfollowing and following waves as often as they like.

"Public waves that are in your inbox simply because you opened them at some point in the past will start to leave your inbox as they get updated," says Google Wave engineering tech lead Casey Whitelaw. "You can also manually remove them with the 'archive' feature, and they will no longer return. We hope this will help with clearing a backlog of unwanted waves."

The "unfollow" feature takes the place of the "mute" feature, which has been part of Google Wave. If you don't want a Wave anymore, just unfollow it. If you need to find a particular wave in the future, you can still search for it, even if you aren't following it.

"Following is the first step towards a set of new tools for managing waves in your inbox," says Whitelaw. "In the future, there will be more control over what kinds of changes will cause a wave to appear in your inbox, and we will soon introduce better support for groups of wave users. We're also thinking of expanding the following concept to let you follow people, groups, and searches."

If you have not yet had an opportunity to use Google Wave, there is a good chance that none of this makes much sense to you. However, you can get an idea of how Wave basically works by reading this.

Related Articles:

> Google Wave Simplified: How it Basically Works

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Google Announces SPDY Application-Layer Protocol

Doug Caverly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:13:31 -0500

Except, perhaps, for multitasking techies and the last few people using dialup connections, load times aren't a huge deal from a user perspective; the average page appears before most folks think to click on anything else. Still, Google looks set to make a lot of friends with the introduction of a research project dubbed SPDY ("speedy").

A post on Google's Research Blog gave a little background by stating, "SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression."

As for how that translates into a measurable effect, the post later tied in the "speedy" name and relayed a key point by adding, "[W]hen we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster."

A savings of 55 percent is huge, of course - something that every user would notice. And site owners might be able to take advantage of the SPDY boost by packing more interesting stuff onto every page.

So, per the SPDY team's request, look its documentation, inspect its code, and provide feedback if you can. SPDY's not ready to make a mainstream debut, but bringing it to that point is almost certainly in everybody's best interest.

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> Google Makes Improvements To Movie Showtime Searches

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HP Buys 3Com for $2.7 Billion

Chris Crum — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:33:25 -0500

HP announced today that it is acquiring 3Com, makers of network switching, routing, and security solutions, for $2.7 billion in cash (at 7.90 per share). Both boards have already approved the transaction.

HP says the combination of these two companies will transform the networking industry and "underscore HP's next-generation data center strategy." The company believes this will help customers simplify networks and improve IT service delivery capabilities.

"Companies are looking for ways to break free from the business limitations imposed by a networking paradigm that has been dominated by a single vendor," said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers and Networking, HP. "By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center."

HP's Ethernet switching offerings will see a significant expansion as a result from the acquisition. It will also add routing solutions, and greatly strengthen HP's position in China. They will also be adding a large research and development team in that country.

"Our extensive product line and innovative technology together with HP’s breadth and scale will expand our global opportunity," said 3Com CEO Bob Mao. "3Com's networking products are based on a modern architecture which has been designed to offer better performance, require less power and eliminate administrative complexity when compared against current network offerings. Our products are enterprise proven and widely deployed in the world’s largest banks, manufacturers, Internet service providers, public utilities and retailers."

HP will be getting 3Com's security solutions, which include its TippingPoint line, which is apparently used among 30% of Fortune 1000 companies.

The deal is still subject to domestic and foreign regulatory approval, as well as approval from 3Com's stockholders. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of next year.

Related Articles:

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

> Cisco Announces $3 Billion Starent Networks Acquisition

> Cisco Says It's Building a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry

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

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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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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