In case you’ve been . . . I don’t know, asleep for the last two years, you probably realize that the Internet is changing the way people get their news. Newspapers are having a notoriously hard time adapting. But Google, in partnership with the New York Times and the Washington Post, is trying to change that—and change the way we use news on the Internet (and, from the sounds of it, possibly the Internet altogether).
If you have spent any time around the social media circles discussing business success stories you have heard a lot about Dell. In fact, you have probably heard so much about Dell that you know that the have claimed to have generated around $3 million in sales through their Twitter efforts. Of course, this is of interest because measuring success in social media is one of the most important topics that the industry can take on.
Well, now Dell has updated their data so it’s time to spruce up those decks touting Dell’s social media success. Bloomberg reports
Dell Inc., relying on social- networking sites to drum up sales of personal computers, said its promotions on Twitter have helped generate more than $6.5 million in orders for PCs, accessories and software.
Google sure knows how to make an announcement. In the past 48 hours or so there have been updates to how personalization of search occurs, the unveiling of several new real-time / social / mobile features but that isn’t all the Google has decided to unleash on the market.
Yesterday’s event at the Computer History Museum was the site of the real-time search announcement that pretty much took the wind out of the sails (and sales?) of other competitors’ efforts to beat Google to the real-time punch. Honestly that would have been enough to have everyone reminded of who the big dog is in the search marketing house but Google didn’t stop there. ReadWriteWeb covered the event and tells us of 5 more areas that Google announced innovations including some Android specific apps that are pretty cool. Looks like everyone including Apple has been put on warning.
While Google’s CEO is experimenting with the wonders of Twitter (which by the way has been switched to @ericschmidt and has over 10k followers so adjust accordingly) the mothership, Google, is announcing some new search additions that are, well, timely.
Today Google made the announcements from the Computer History Museum in Mountain view. The official Google blog tells us Be sure to check out the video there as well.
First, we’re introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
Yahoo’s taking ad targeting to a whole new level with its new Ad Interest Manager. Now advertisers aren’t the only ones who can target you—you can target yourself, too! The new AIM system enables users to select their interests and block ads outside of those interest areas.
According to the press release, the tool:
- Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater control over their online experience.
- Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to deliver interest-based advertising.
- Shows the visitor both Yahoo!’s educated guesses about their interests and a summary of observations, along with other information they have provided.
- Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed a user into and lets people turn those categories off.
Friday brought Microsoft and Yahoo one step closer to the search deal they announced in July. The terms of the deal received final approval from two very important groups—Microsoft and Yahoo.
Although the two were supposed to have the details hammered out by late October, they took a few extra weeks to refine their agreement. This agreement still needs regulatory approval, and such agencies as the US Department of Justice are on the record as saying they will scrutinize the deal closely.
Meanwhile, the deal isn’t projected to warrant much concern from the European Commission—but the DOJ is probably the bigger concern. Not only are both companies headquartered in the US, but also scrutiny from the Department of Justice—and threats of anti-trust action—ultimately killed a search ad deal between Yahoo and Google last year—will the Bingahoo deal suffer the same fate?
Personalization of search results has long been a point of great interest and contention in the search world. The battle has raged on, particularly regarding Google’s personalization efforts, about privacy for the Google user and how it will affect the search engine optimization industry.
One of the ways that Google’s personalization efforts have been ‘limited’ is that the only people that have any personalization measures applied to them were those who were logged into their Google account. That was the case at least until last Friday when Google announced that their personalization efforts now apply to everyone regardless of whether you have a Google account or not.
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