June 30, 2008
Mike Moran Exits IBM, Joins Converseon
Mike Moran is leaving IBM after 30 years to take a position in the newly created role of Chief Strategist at social media marketing agency, Converseon. Moran will be involved in the development of Conversation Miner as well as provide consulting to Converseon clients.
“We're thrilled to have Mike join us,” said Rob Key, Converseon CEO. “He brings to the table the perfect combination of industry-leading expertise with hands-on knowledge of how to internally adopt and promote these practices within complex, enterprise environments. As we often say, social media can be technically relatively simple, but culturally quite difficult. His experience will be invaluable as we help leading brands develop and execute innovative social media campaigns. He will also play a key role in consolidating Converseon's position as a leading social media marketing and consulting agency offering end-to-end services, from listening to engaging to measuring.”
While at IBM, Moran led several search technology projects including IBM's OmniFind search and text analytics products, the first commercial linguistic search engine, and automatic categorization technology for business search at ibm.com. He has been granted multiple patents and is the author of Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules.
“With their focus on pushing the edges of innovation in reputation management, search marketing and social media, Converseon is the ideal fit for me,” said Mike Moran. “I look forward to working with their standout team and clients.”
Posted by Nathania Johnson on June 30, 2008, 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google Maps Inks 5 Year Deal with Tele Atlas
Google Maps has signed a five year agreement with Netherlands-based digital mapping company, Tele Atlas. Google will now have access to Tele Atlas' content for over 200 countries for current and future projects, including Google Earth and mobile applications.
"Google's innovation and leadership is undisputed, and we are proud to have the opportunity to be the map foundation for one of the world's most progressive web companies," said Bill Henry, CEO of Tele Atlas. "This agreement is important too because it gives us access to input from a significant online community of map users, whose feedback can help us keep our maps fresh and accurate."
"Geospatial data enhances global search significantly by organizing data and delivering results based on location," said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps. "Tele Atlas' map quality and the company's innovative approach to business were the key drivers for our decision."
Related Reading:
Google Maps Adds Richer Data to Search
Google Launches Google Map Maker
Google Opens Location-Aware Application to 3rd Party Developers
Google Maps for Mobile Adds Public Transportation Directions
Google Launches Google Earth API and Browser Plug-in
Posted by Nathania Johnson on June 30, 2008, 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
SLI Rolls Out Learning Search Update with New Auto Complete Feature
On-demand search provider, SLI Systems has upgraded Learning Search, a hosted site search solution. The update will include:
- Faster generation of results. Search queries will return results up to 50% faster.
- Redesigned merchandising console. SLI says the new design will help customers more easily change the order of search results, create banner ads, and customize landing pages.
- Auto Complete. This is a new feature which provides search suggestions.
Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems had this to say about the announcement:
"We're always looking for new ways to improve our search solutions, and to give our customers more flexibility in how they can maximize the functionality of our offerings. The newest enhancements help everyone, regardless of their technical ability, to make decisions about merchandising, and make changes themselves -- without having to rely on their IT departments."
Posted by Nathania Johnson on June 30, 2008, 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Another Year, Another Reorganization for MIVA
Yahoo is known for its (in)famous reorganizations, but they now face a contender for the title of "Most Likely to Shake Things Up." Just over a year after its last reorganization, MIVA has headed back to the drawing board in the hopes of revising the struggling digital ad company.
On the chopping block is 15% of its workforce as well as the MIVA Media operations in Italy. MIVA says this will save them $4 million a year plus a one time savings of $1.4 million.
The recent reorganizations are just the latest of what ails MIVA. In 2006, Craig Pisaris-Henderson and Phillip Thune resigned as CEO and President respectively. And in 2005, the company agreed to an $8 million patent settlement with Yahoo.
As a result, MIVA dropped their partnership with Yahoo and made one with Google. Boy, that sounds familiar.
MIVA licensed FAST technology in 2005. FAST was recently acquired by Microsoft. Since MIVA has such an admiration for the way Yahoo does things, we offer the following words of advice: If Ballmer offers to buy, say YES.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on June 30, 2008, 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
AOL's Platform-A to Offer Guaranteed CPM to Facebook, Bebo Developers
AOL has announced that its online advertising solution, Platform-A, will offer a guaranteed CPM to third party developers creating Bebo and Facebook applications. But the guarantee comes with a catch: it's only good for the first three impressions for each unique U.S. visitor who visits an approved developer's application.
Boasting one of the highest CPMs in the industry, AOL says the offer is part of WIDGNET™ publisher network launched earlier this year by Platform-A's Advertising.com. WIDGNET brings advertisers and third party developers of widgets and social networking applications together.
“This announcement reinforces Platform-A's commitment to helping developers generate revenue and monetize their Bebo and Facebook applications in the rapidly evolving social networking space. Advertiser interest in social networks is rising at a steady rate, and Platform-A is making an unprecedented flat-fee commitment to help application developers generate revenue and guarantee monetization of their applications,” said Dave Jacobs, Senior Vice President of Publisher Services, Platform-A Advertising.com Networks. “Platform-A views social networking applications as an area where we can add significant value by letting developers focus on expanding their install base, without worrying about monetization of applications.”
Earlier this year, AOL acquired Bebo for $850 million.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on June 30, 2008, 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
EveryScape Goes Where Google Maps Does Not
Going where no man - or search engine - has gone before, Everyscape has launched an online mapping feature that allows people to go inside shops and restaurants.
Users can navigate through neighborhoods and tourist sites. A special icon next to a building invites users to enter and have a look around.
"While Google has focused their technology on building a better map, we wanted to do more and replicate the experience of actually being somewhere," Everyscape chief executive Jim Schoonmaker told ABC News.
Everyscape employs independent contractors to operate specialized equipment. "Destination ambassadors" are assigned regions and are paid per mile to map. By getting locals involved, Schoonmaker hopes to "enable the world to build the world."
On top of earning $10 for every street mile, destination ambassadors receive a commission whenever they convince a business to have its interiors photographed.
Joe Ryan, owner of the Press Box Sports Bar in Manhattan, was quickly sold on the idea when he was approached with an offer to lease his locale on the interactive map.
"It's absolutely worth the price of the lease," Ryan said. "We have a very nice private party room upstairs and whenever people call to see if they can have a party there, it was very hard for me to describe it. Now I just tell them to go to the site, and they can take a look around. It's a big help."
Everyscape has secured $7 million in investment from venture capital firms. Some experts say to cut into Google's market, the company would need to extend its mapping capabilities abroad to popular destinations like Sydney and London, where the legality of such technology has been challenged.
Posted by Kevin Heisler on June 30, 2008, 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Cutts Talks Spam While Obama Supporters Flag Blogspot Blogs
Matt Cutts is addressing the ever-present topic of spam again, only this time it's on the Official Google Blog. Cutts wrote about coming across spam links in the search results. He says this doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to, thanks to Google's anti-spam metrics.
One of those metrics is data from search logs. Many have worried what Google does with the data collects, and Cutts assures that data such as IP and cookie information is used to help improve the search results.
"The IP and cookie information is important for helping us apply this method only to searches that are from legitimate users as opposed to those that were generated by bots and other false searches. For example, if a bot sends the same queries to Google over and over again, those queries should really be discarded before we measure how much spam our users see. All of this--log data, IP addresses, and cookie information--makes your search results cleaner and more relevant."
But Cutts is also aware that the war against spam continues on:
"If you think webspam is a solved problem, think again. Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases. Savvy users may remember reading a few blogs about it, but most regular users never even noticed. The reason that a typical searcher didn't notice the odd results is that Google identified the .cn spam and responded with a fast-tracked engineering project to counteract that type of spam attack. Without our logs data to help identify the speed and scope of the problem, many more Google users might have been affected by this attack."
Another unsolved webspam problem - that was not addressed by Cutts - is letting humans in on the reporting of spam. Over at Blogspot, supporters of Presidential candidate Barack Obama have reportedly been flagging anti-obama blogs as "spam." As a result, several of the blogs, including ones created by Hilary Clinton supporters, have been frozen.
Of course, this problem is experienced in the 'paid links debate' as well. Google accepts anonymous reports about paid links, which is an easy way for competitors to attempt to flag each other out of the results.
What do you think of Cutts comments? Do they reduce your fears about Google's data collection? Should Google let third parties flag sites? Let us know in the comments.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on June 30, 2008, 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
If Google Gives You Comics...
While the announcement of the Seth "Family Guy" MacFarlane link to Google was not new, the way in which Google has announced it will distribute and monetize reflects a deeper reach for the online media behemoth. Google is going into the content production space.
The caveat about this is the actual information given for advertisers about publishers and their audience.
As NYT reports: "The innovative part involves the distribution plan. Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane's target audience, typically young men."
The question is how are they determining the target audience? Topic-based decision or cookie-based?
Is Google making an across-the-board push to present as many of the new methods that they want to use to track, distribute and develop traffic? Are they headed for a period of controversy and legal challenges?
Hey, they have weathered them so far in numerous continents, so maybe they have it written into their growth program.
The creation of an online-only broadcast of popular content is interesting for the US, where over-the-air television goes digital early next year. The use of the Family Guy creator, popular with a large number of internet users and online spenders, is a smart move, if when the smoke clears they can monetize it in acceptable ways.
I am waiting for the day when Google and Yahoo are bidding for online presentation of the Olympics. Right now, it seems NBC is starting their Olympic online connection.
Bob Costas was pushing people off the TV and onto the NBC Olympics sites to follow the rest of the Swimming Olympic trials Sunday night. His closing was " Bob Costas telling people to turn off TV and watch online live Olympic trials. "if you are not online already online, fire up those computers and start watching."
In the meantime, I look forward to the new characters from MacFarlane.
Posted by Frank Watson on June 30, 2008, 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
