Archive for June, 2009
Koogle: The Kosher Search Engine
There is now an Israeli search engine – Koogle, developed for Jewish searchers that keeps kosher – well it shuts down on the Sabbath.
USAToday reported: “In their mission statement, Koogle administrators said the site’s goal is to “filter the appropriate information from different websites that are relevant to our target audience in a way that does not contradict the values of our traditional Jewish audience.”
Did Email Hacker Bring About Gov. Sanford’s Fall?
Seems the emails from the Argentine mistress of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford were distributed by a hacker, or so Sanford’s mistress claims according to a report by FoxNews.
The emails were obtained by The State – the South Carolina newspaper – in December, the Huffington Post reported. The State said they did not inially publish the emails as they could not authenticate them.
Sanford went missing last week and initial reports said he “had gone hiking” until he admitted thr affair a few days ago.
People are now calling for Sanford to resign, news reports are stating.
Gmail Increases Attachment Size To Entice Signups?
Last weekend Gmail increased the size of allowable attachments from 20 MG to 25 MG. One has to wonder if this was done mainly to garner more people to sign up for Google email service since they suggest changing from any service that will not accept attachments of that size.
“With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 25 megabytes (MB) in size.
Please note that you may not be able to send larger attachments to contacts who use other email services with smaller attachment limits. If your attachment bounces, you should invite them to Gmail,” the mail FAQ recommends.
Gmail is a dsitant third to Yhaoo Mail and Microsoft Mail/Hotmail, but by offering bigger attachments they can entice people to change. Given they monetize their email through ads inside the interface and that Google wants to monopolize as many aspects of the web this current move is a clever one.
Will Jackson Record Visits Change Bartz Attitude To Entertainment Stories?
During the Yahoo stockholders meeting which included yodelers, Regis Phelbin and a statement from CEO Carol Bartz “If I see another Britney Spears thing, I’m gonna throw up.”, Michael Jackson was driving a record number of visitors to the site.
Maybe the “fluff-o-metter” Bartz said she had in store for the redesign may be put on hold, following the 16.4 million uniques it got on Thursday for the Michael Jackson news.
The stockholders report can be heard here.
Bartz had some interesting comments to make during the meeting.
- It is unfair to Google to compare the two companies – yeah why tie Google to a shrinking company.
- She was there to get Yahoo’s mojo back – guess cursing like a sailor and saying Britney Spears stories make her puke is some powerful mojo.
- Products like Yahoo 360 and GeoCities that they are shutting down are mere “space debris” – nice way to describe products her employees spent major effort to build and develop despite their lack of success.
- Yahoo’s business in China and self censorship elicited her comment “Yahoo was not incorporated to fix China” and “You can’t hold us as the bad boys forever.”- but giving information on reporters that are then but in prison should be glossed over with time. Maybe she forgot about how people’s corporate protests in the US eventually helped get apartheid abolished..
The last two annual shareholders meetings saw the stepdown of both CEOs at the time, Terry Semel in 2007 and Jerry Wang last year. Despite no major protests at this meeting, we will have to wait to see if Ms Bartz makes it to next year’s shareholders meeting.
Google Thought Michael Jackson Search Surge Was Malware Attack
Twitter may have broke the story, but the increase in search traffic at Google Thursday was first seen as a malware attack Google admitted.
The Google News site had to shut down briefly leaving a message that read: “We’re sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.”
Yahoo saw a record number of unique visitors for a day with 16.4 million visitors. It was also their single most visited story in their history.
Aaron Wall Calls Out Google For Allowing Scam Marketing On PPC
Aaron Wall, author and founder of the SEOBook website, called out Google today for accepting PPC ads promoting bogus Google money making schemes.
“Google gives webmasters this guideline “Your site’s reputation can be affected by who you link to.” Why shouldn’t it apply to Google as well?
As long as Google has 30%+ profit margins they are making a BUSINESS DECISION to run these fraudulent ads. They could spend 1% of revenue on cleaning up this issue (if they wanted to), but they are making a choice not to. Hal Varian (a Google consultant and UC Berkeley microeconomics professor) has probably done the math, and the offers stay after repeated media exposure of the issue,” Wall blogged.
Perhaps it is time for people to start adding Google to RipOffReports instead of just the companies that create the scam websites that run Google Adwords. It would be fun to see if Google dropped those listings while allowing competitors run malice stories that get well ranked.
I am sure there are tons of these sites that are getting bad press from RipOffReports and are well ranked as a warning to people – the reason Google refuses to drop any of the RoR listings – yet Google is allowing them to run ads to entice people to be swindled out of their money.
If it is a matter of money, perhaps Google could enlist the help of volunteers from their newly launched volunteer site. Afterall that site is called GoodForAll – something Google may not be doing in this case.
China Blocks Google, YouTube This Week, Could It Become Permanent
Seems the Chinese government used the “Great Firewall” to block Google, YouTube and Gmail for a couple of days this week, Fox News reported.
Seems access to Google both in English and Chinese was blocked for part of Wednesday and Thursday in parts of China. Fox News stated, “The outages occurred after China accused the Internet behemoth of spreading pornography among its citizens. Google was said to be investigating the service disruptions.”
Given China has its own internal search engines and the government has strict control, Google has acknowledged it is censoring search results in the country.
Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang said Google China “is a company operating within China to provide Internet search services, and it should strictly abide by Chinese laws and regulations,” Fox News reported.
As Britain’s Telegraph reports, Google established the localized search engine Google.cn four years ago, agreeing to filter results based on government censorship restrictions and content requirements, but Chinese officials say that has not been the case due to its links with Google.com.
“Google China’s website has not installed filters to block pornography in accordance with the laws and regulations of our nation,” said the CIIRC – the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre, according to the U.K. Guardian. “A lot of overseas Internet pornographic information has spread into our nation by way of this website.”
Given nearly half the world’s population lives in China Google could be losing a major market which is just now starting to become an active consumer online. Google had said they would address China’s requests but with the 60th anniversary of the Communisy regime coming, it seems they did not do it quickly enough.
TechCrunch asked commenters in one of their blog posts to help clarify what was happening in China and received information from “a person seemingly located in Xiamen, China” that , “says Google Books, Google Talk and Image Search have also been blocked in the comment section of this post. Other services like Blog Search, Translate, Maps and Analytics are reportedly borked as well. YouTube has been blocked in the country for quite some time already”.
Google Thinks Michael Jackson Died At Age 65 In 2007
Oops. Bad, Google. Occasionally the service inserts direct answers to searches at the top of its results. It makes guesses at this, and in the case of michael jackson died, it’s making the wrong guess. Henry Elliss tipped us that Google’s showing that Michael Jackson died in 2007, at age 65.
The problem? Google’s drawing on [...]
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The Bogus Google Give-Away
Here’s a new one on me. I just got an email telling me that I’ve won nearly million from a “drawing” randomly selected from those searching on Google. Suffice to say, it’s a scam. I can assure you that Google’s done no drawing like this. Add the spam to those about missing fortunes in [...]
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Tips for Social Media Success – A Panel Discussion
by David Carberry
A few weeks ago I attended the Maryland Chamber of Commerce session on Social Media and Online Marketing with guest host Mario Armstrong from XM radio. The panel consisted of Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory, Matt Goddard, CEO of r2integrated and Leah Messina, CEO of Sinuate Media.
The
panelists spoke about various topics such as; online tools, social
marketing and challenges their clients face. Some good points were made
throughout the session however, as most panels go, they were all
intertwined and scattered. I have highlighted some of the main items
that are beneficial to all businesses either as a refresher or as new
information.
Communities
How are your customers
currently buying items or services? Social media outlets such as
Twitter don’t work for everyone or every business. Let’s take a
business such as a local plumber or heating specialist. When do you
need a plumber? Typically when something is wrong! Most people will
more than likely pick up a phone book or do an online directory search.
It’s doubtful that anyone will follow a plumber’s business on Twitter.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a recommendation for a
plumber, Twitter or Facebook might be the perfect place for you.
According to Goddard, “Social media is really about reducing a risk by
reaching out to like-minded peers. It’s our way of saying, how do I not
make a bad decision?” We go get advice and it’s sitting inside these
communities, we are getting the information when the conversation is
happening and it’s all about reducing the risk. The social tools that
exist are about streamlining the process.
LinkedIn.com has been
around longer than Twitter and it isn’t getting as much hype. LinkedIn
is a risk reduction and helps members make better decisions on how to
build relationships. It’s Quality over Quantity. Your business should
be tied to your area of expertise, local community or industry
specialty. If you are a local business in a specific trade industry try
to focus on what you do and important topics that are relevant.
The Clutter
There’s
really no need to tweet about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you
just ate. According to Cangialosi , “THERE’S A LOT OF A LOT! ” There is
no way we are paying attention to everything you have written. There is
so much white noise that it is crucial for businesses to stay focused.
Try to use important keywords or tags that can be searched for easily.
Blue Sky Factory leverages social media technology by using Hubspot.
The Hubspot tool looks at web analytics and takes all the keywords you
want to optimize and ranks the conversations that are really important.
Blue Sky’s goal is to engage the community, cut through the clutter,
and sharpen the focus.
Tools and Tracking
Messina
recommended several different tools which keep a watchful eye on what
people are saying about your product or who might be interested.
Search.twitter.com – Twitter’s basic search tool
Google alerts – a great way to have information pushed instead of searching with the other tools
icerocket.com – a social and search tool
radian6 – a monitoring source for your brand across the web
Chi.mp – helps steam line across multiple accounts
Dragon Search – social media calculator
One tool that was not mentioned was Twitter Analyzer, which is a tool that is fun to explore.
Rule of Thumb to Execute Social Media
Mario’s
last question to the panel was, “How much time do you have for all of
your social responsibilities? We all know that owning a dog can be
free, but don’t you have to nurture it?”
Leah recommends before
you update your Twitter account to spend 2 hours researching and
compile a list of daily social media updates. Update once in the
morning and at the end of the day. Leah typically puts aside 1 hour a
day for updates.
Greg doesn’t use Twitter to update his Facebook
account. The Twitter stream is primarily used for business and he
separates his personal account from corporate account. He does his
tweets in spurts. He recommends that your conversations grow into one
on one dialog. You should pick and choose from one platform to another
because it is not relevant between the two socials. Try not to use hash
marks in your Facebook account – it may be Greek to many of your
friends.
Final Words
Matt states, “The Internet is
a buying engine – not a selling engine. You have to be a part of the
buying process.” You can’t force the buying moment. Experiment with the
tools available to you and evaluate the outcome.
Leah – “When
you reach out you can tease out the most important people that are the
influencers. They can help you be a bridge to the community. Be genuine
and use it methodically.”
Greg – “The influencer in today’s
social world has a very wide footprint so you need to be very
authentic, transparent and methodical.” The long term strategy for
social messaging is making sure your messaging is exact. What’s the
right story to tell your audience; is it compelling and why?
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