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AOL Wants To Be Your Local Reporter

posted on February 19, 2010

AOL has gotten some heat about their plan to overrun the Internet and in effect, the search engines, with waves of content. Many people are not keen on this plan hatched by Tim Armstrong and company to generate content at break neck speed. While it may not be popular that’s not going to stop it from happening.

Now, AOL has another content that is getting a “no comment” from AOL officially but is being reported by The Business Insider as part of the plan to bring the troubled Internet company up from the ashes. Interestingly it is going to be centered on AOL’s Patch service that Armstrong had a vested interest in at one point. Hmmmm.

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Facebook Fan Pages May Actually Be Effective Marketing (For Facebook Users)

posted on February 18, 2010

Last month, Facebook announced a conversion tracker tool to help marketers determine the value of their efforts on the world’s most popular social network. The tool would help marketers track conversions (obviously) and determine the value of brand fans. And now researchers at Rice University have examined the real-world value of Facebook fans.

They surveyed customers at a local restaurant chain, Dessert Gallery, that had no Facebook presence before the study. Naturally, as part of the study, they created a Facebook Page for their fans. Over the next three months, they surveyed 1700 customers at the chain and found that FB fans:

  • Made 36 percent more visits to DG’s stores each month.
  • Spent 45 percent more of their eating-out dollars at DG.

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Holy 1999: MySpace in Google Search (Oh, with Real Time)

posted on February 18, 2010

Buzzy buzz buzz. Google would really like to keep us from thinking about PAY NO ATTENTION Buzz TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, and old pal MySpace is here to help: the real time search deal the two discussed in December is now live. Oh boy, oh boy, real time updates from that cutting edge social MySpace right in Google!

Hm? What’s that? Is 2010 and Google’s had real-time results from social networks including Twitter and Facebook for months?

Oh. Much less cool ;) .

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Google Earns $500M in Typo-Squatting Ads…Says Researcher With No Bias Whatsoever!

posted on February 18, 2010

Despite criticism, Google’s AdSense for Domains program still exists, and now we know why.

It’s earning close to $500 million a year for the search engine!

According to New Scientist, two researchers at Harvard University have conducted some simple calculations to come up with the estimate:

Moore and Edelman…estimate that each of the 3264 top sites is targeted by around 280 typo domains…up to 68 million people a day could visit a typo site, they say. They estimate that almost 60 per cent of typo sites could have adverts supplied by Google.

When you mix and heat at 390F for 20 minutes, you end up with a typo-squatting cake worth $497 million a year in revenue!

All done! Nothing else to discuss, right?

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Google Buzz Facing Lawsuit from 31 Million Users?

posted on February 18, 2010

This took a little longer than I thought, but a Florida woman has filed a class action complaint in San Jose federal court alleging that Google Buzz shared personal data without consent.

The legal complaint accuses Google of breaking various electronic communications laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The plaintiff is seeking injunctions to prevent the company from taking similar actions in the future, and unspecified monetary relief.

Eva Hibnick and her legal team–who we won’t name, because clearly they agreed to help her for the glory of suing Google–wants to enjoin the 31.2 million U.S. Gmail users that were duped into revealing their most personal contacts.

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Continuing Its Anti-Apple Crusade, Google Buys reMail

posted on February 18, 2010

Who says you can’t go home again? Just ask Gabor Cselle, the founder of the successful iPhone application reMail. Cselle started as an engineering intern at Google way back in ’04 (I’m trying to make it sound like a long time ago) but since moved on and in the process founded reMail. Now, Google has come along and said that the door remains open and they would like him back.

Sounds nice right? Well, on many levels it is but the interesting part of this play is what Google is doing with the iPhone app that many people love. They are pulling it out of Apple’s app store. As for the app moving forward? Let’s let Gabor tell that story.

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Facebook Offers More Control Over Information Shared Through Apps

posted on February 18, 2010

It’s been just recently that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google both gave their own versions of how the idea of privacy on the Internet was so 20th century. Facebook has faced the music of some serious backlash to their “everything is public stance and just in the past week there has been a considerable amount of controversy surrounding Google Buzz and its own privacy concerns. Google got the official word that they pushed the envelope just far enough to generate the first class action lawsuit about the service by some circling buzzard or a lawyer (Get it? Buzz-ard.)

Since Facebook has been under the microscope longer they are getting more advanced in their “return to privacy”. The Facebook blog announced yesterday that there are new controls that are much more granular as it relates to how you share information through Facebook applications.