Home » Archives for February 2008
What is the biggest dilemma we face in the 21st Century?
I think there are many smart people trying to solve the big issues we face. But here are the dilemmas I face every day.
These always seem to be no-win situations for me as I continually get them wrong!
1. When a woman gets on a train and I am not sure whether she is fat or pregnant. Should I offer my seat?
2. When I am going on a first date am I supposed to get the check?
3. I have just been on a fantastic first date. Should I call her the next day or just play it cool?
4. At the shop I was handed back more change than I was due, should I speak up or just keep it?
5. When someone serves you a horrible meal and then asks for feedback should you be honest or lie?
6. After spending a long day in the office should I go to the gym or to the pub?
7. The invite says ‘smart casual’, do I wear trousers or jeans?
8. My boss asks me to lie about why some work hasn’t been done. Should I lie for him?
9. Should I try and climb the corporate ladder or live a simpler life in the country?
10. I notice a co-worker has some toilet paper stuck to their leg. Should I tell them about it or laugh silently?
11. I want to take a 3 month holiday but I have a pet dog ‘Duke’ that is very old. Is it ok for me to put him down so I can get on with my life?
12. Friends arrive at my house with a Christmas present and I have nothing to give them in return. What should I do?
13. My grandma sent me a birthday card but she is soooo boring to talk to. Do I really need to call to say thankyou?
14. I damaged the left side of my car in a car park. Should I lie and get the insurance company to fix some of the existing damage?
15. My neighbour is a benefit cheat and it really frustrates me. Should I tell the government?
16. I see some kids vandalising a bus stop. Should I intervene or just mind my own business?
17. In a social setting when introduced to a woman for the first time, am I supposed to kiss her cheek, shake her hand or what?
18. I promised a friend I would help them move house, but since got a better offer to go and see a ball game. Should I lie and go to the game?
19. When in the bathroom I can hear my friend in the next cubicle. Is it ok to start up a conversation?
20. I drank way too much last night and have a severe hangover. Is it ok to call in sick or since it was self inflicted should I go to work?
These always seem to be no-win situations for me as I continually get them wrong!
1. When a woman gets on a train and I am not sure whether she is fat or pregnant. Should I offer my seat?
2. When I am going on a first date am I supposed to get the check?
3. I have just been on a fantastic first date. Should I call her the next day or just play it cool?
4. At the shop I was handed back more change than I was due, should I speak up or just keep it?
5. When someone serves you a horrible meal and then asks for feedback should you be honest or lie?
6. After spending a long day in the office should I go to the gym or to the pub?
7. The invite says ‘smart casual’, do I wear trousers or jeans?
8. My boss asks me to lie about why some work hasn’t been done. Should I lie for him?
9. Should I try and climb the corporate ladder or live a simpler life in the country?
10. I notice a co-worker has some toilet paper stuck to their leg. Should I tell them about it or laugh silently?
11. I want to take a 3 month holiday but I have a pet dog ‘Duke’ that is very old. Is it ok for me to put him down so I can get on with my life?
12. Friends arrive at my house with a Christmas present and I have nothing to give them in return. What should I do?
13. My grandma sent me a birthday card but she is soooo boring to talk to. Do I really need to call to say thankyou?
14. I damaged the left side of my car in a car park. Should I lie and get the insurance company to fix some of the existing damage?
15. My neighbour is a benefit cheat and it really frustrates me. Should I tell the government?
16. I see some kids vandalising a bus stop. Should I intervene or just mind my own business?
17. In a social setting when introduced to a woman for the first time, am I supposed to kiss her cheek, shake her hand or what?
18. I promised a friend I would help them move house, but since got a better offer to go and see a ball game. Should I lie and go to the game?
19. When in the bathroom I can hear my friend in the next cubicle. Is it ok to start up a conversation?
20. I drank way too much last night and have a severe hangover. Is it ok to call in sick or since it was self inflicted should I go to work?
Will There Be A (Successful) iPhone-Only Social Network?
iPhone owners, like users of most Apple products, are a fairly passionate, elitist group of people.I think an iPhone-only social network, if it had the right features, would be a huge hit with these users. Actually, I think any mobile social network would be a big hit, if it had presence awareness and was able to tell you both where your friends are and what they are up to. And also let you meet new people around you who were open to it.
I wrote about some of the early experiments with mobile social networks last September (see our more recent coverage of LimeJuice as well). The big social networks, of course, aren’t ignoring mobile, either. But even Facebook’s iPhone app is just the desktop version optimized for that phone. It doesn’t leverage the device itself to tell you when friends are close.
The goal here isn’t just to let users see where their friends are and what they are up to. The killer app is to facilitate meeting new people - either for dating (see a picture of everyone around you who’s single and looking, along with their basic bio), or business (see the professional bio and picture of everyone at the cocktail party). Subject to privacy controls, of course.
Once a network has critical mass users will, depending on privacy settings, be able to walk into any gathering and see information on the people in the room. Whoever gets there first will have a far more valuable asset than the existing networks at MySpace and Facebook today. Social networks are about being social. And social implies being around other people. The device they have with them when they’re doing that, and which can enhance those social gatherings, is their mobile phone. The key to doing that is through GPS or cell phone triangulation (which the iPhone now has).
None of the mobile social networks we’ve covered have even come close to establishing a critical mass. The key to winning is getting users on devices that have GPS or triangulation for presence and location, and having software on the phone instead of just accessing it from a website. Getting java apps on phones in Europe is much easier than in the U.S., which is why most of the mobile social network startups are located there.
The iPhone, though, has both. Or rather, soon will have both (the SDK to allow third party apps on the phone may have been delayed). As soon as that SDK is released, look for a flurry of third party applications to try and create a social network on the iPhone.
The front runners will be Facebook and MySpace, who, I assume, will get their users to install software on the phone as quickly as possible and try to add location information for users who choose to share it.
But new startups will try as well. And one way to differentiate themselves may be to offer a social network that is open only to iPhone users, and no one else. The exclusivity factor may be exactly what will draw enough iPhone users to kick start the service.Fon11 - Giving It A Shot
Berkeley-based Fon11 is one startup that we’re tracking that plans to do this. The service works already through the web browser on the iPhone. In fact, you have to use it from an iPhone - it’s the only way you can register for an account, add friends or do anything else. The website, when accessed from any where but an iPhone, just shows information about the service (note - that isn’t entirely true - you can go to testiphone.com and enter fon11.com/home and see it just like it would appear on the iPhone - but only from the Safari browser).
The service is fairly limited right now to setting presence/status information. They can’t use the iPhone triangulation feature, so they set up a separate service called OpenLandmark to let people set their location information (it works well for places you visit frequently). The service caught the eye of the iPhone team, who made it a Staff Pick earlier this month.
Blackberry has a true GPS and allows third party apps on their phone. And Google’s Android will also do all of this as well. But something tells me that iPhone users might be the first group of people to jump on mobile social networks, and wouldn’t mind letting other iPhone users in the room know they’re part of the cult.Update: Must-read discussion of this post here
SYNCY That Phone
Companies are starting to figure out that the contact information on your mobile phone may be the most important social network you have - perhaps even better than the email inbox that Yahoo is targeting.
Danish startup ZYB started offering a service that simply backed up your mobile phone contacts to the web in mid-2006. A year later they turned all that data into a mobile social network. They’re one of the small startups with a real shot at mobile social network with critical mass. As of August 2007 they had 200,000 active users.
It’s no surprise, then, that ZYB is being emulated. Israeli startup NewACT, with $6.5 million in funding over two rounds from Cedar Fund, are launching a new service called SYNCY into beta today. The service lets users migrate contacts, calendars and media from a mobile phone to the web. It’s part ZYB, part Sharpcast.
While Syncy supports over 700 handset models, the iPhone isn’t one, so I took it out for a spin by installing it on a SonyEricsson phone. The feature that won me over was the ability to get immediate Web access to the photos and videos I’ve takes of our kids using the phone. Incidentally, the last time I had digital copies of such files was when I switched handsets. That’s when I had no choice but borrow a cable and install Nokia’s phone management application—by far, not a user-friendly proposition to access “everyday media”.
Syncy’s handset client is simple to operate and once syncing is configured to run automatically, it’s smooth sailing from there onwards. There’s also an Outlook plug-in which synchronizes contacts and events (Exchange is not required). Google calendar integration will be available shortly.
NewACT claims that Syncy is the only service to offer cross-phone synchronization. Meaning, you can sync a Nokia phone then stick the SIM in a Motorola phone and Syncy’s server will reformat and readapt the data to fit the exact data structures of your new phone.
Danish startup ZYB started offering a service that simply backed up your mobile phone contacts to the web in mid-2006. A year later they turned all that data into a mobile social network. They’re one of the small startups with a real shot at mobile social network with critical mass. As of August 2007 they had 200,000 active users.
It’s no surprise, then, that ZYB is being emulated. Israeli startup NewACT, with $6.5 million in funding over two rounds from Cedar Fund, are launching a new service called SYNCY into beta today. The service lets users migrate contacts, calendars and media from a mobile phone to the web. It’s part ZYB, part Sharpcast.
While Syncy supports over 700 handset models, the iPhone isn’t one, so I took it out for a spin by installing it on a SonyEricsson phone. The feature that won me over was the ability to get immediate Web access to the photos and videos I’ve takes of our kids using the phone. Incidentally, the last time I had digital copies of such files was when I switched handsets. That’s when I had no choice but borrow a cable and install Nokia’s phone management application—by far, not a user-friendly proposition to access “everyday media”.
Syncy’s handset client is simple to operate and once syncing is configured to run automatically, it’s smooth sailing from there onwards. There’s also an Outlook plug-in which synchronizes contacts and events (Exchange is not required). Google calendar integration will be available shortly.
NewACT claims that Syncy is the only service to offer cross-phone synchronization. Meaning, you can sync a Nokia phone then stick the SIM in a Motorola phone and Syncy’s server will reformat and readapt the data to fit the exact data structures of your new phone.
Ecommerce Design Tips
A while ago, frustrated at writing the same things over and over when doing an Expert Review usability document I decided I was going to create a pattern of design tips using a wiki.
I thought at very least, if I worked on the content long enough then rather than having to explain what I meant by Design One, Two, Three or Primary Actions or Web Sites Are Journeys Not Structures, then I’d be able to, boiler-plate-style, slap together the relevant concepts and be able to:
Explain a concept to do with usability or information architecture
Have links to the relevant research
Have images that showed what I meant
The plan was that all I’d have to do is describe why something was relevant to their site. The plan was to make writing usability reports much less arduous.
So What Went Wrong?
The first thing that went wrong was a classic and all my fault. I started by listing everything I thought was important and then failed to write up the content. How many times has a project failed because of this tendency, to want everything in?! Hell, I even have a tip called DeathByHierarchyAndGoodIntentions that points out just this problem of over-ambition… I am an idiot (please quote me). Guy calls this the Magic of the Content Fairy, which is a better name by far.
The second thing that went wrong was the tool. You knew this was coming didn’t you? Well, the tool I used was Wikka Wiki, which although adequate has a terrible editor, making adding images a pain and little to no spam protection.
The third thing that went wrong was spam. Megabytes of it.
The fourth thing that went wrong was to do with motivation. Whilst I really needed a large library of connected usability tips, nobody else did and so participation was slim to none. I didn’t design how I expected to engage a creative audience and lull them into contributing.
This is often the worst aspect of most wikis, it’s the “Why should I contribute?” factor that if you don’t have an answer to then why is your wiki even online?
In conclusion…
After removing the spam with a blunderbuss and some tweezers I still want to flesh out the pages. Lots of the ideas still stand (for me at least) in the sense that lots of people are still making the same fundamental usability cock-ups.
Although my attempt at using a wiki to create a design pattern crashed and burned, I still think it’s a good idea™.
After struggling with MediaWiki (you can’t grow to love PHP you know), I’ve rediscovered MoinMoin which is python powered (I’ve already fixed a few bugs) and I’m delighted with what it can do. A new wiki is on it’s way and this time I’m not going to kill it with good intentions, I’m just going to let it evolve like germs on a chopping board.
I thought at very least, if I worked on the content long enough then rather than having to explain what I meant by Design One, Two, Three or Primary Actions or Web Sites Are Journeys Not Structures, then I’d be able to, boiler-plate-style, slap together the relevant concepts and be able to:
Explain a concept to do with usability or information architecture
Have links to the relevant research
Have images that showed what I meant
The plan was that all I’d have to do is describe why something was relevant to their site. The plan was to make writing usability reports much less arduous.
So What Went Wrong?
The first thing that went wrong was a classic and all my fault. I started by listing everything I thought was important and then failed to write up the content. How many times has a project failed because of this tendency, to want everything in?! Hell, I even have a tip called DeathByHierarchyAndGoodIntentions that points out just this problem of over-ambition… I am an idiot (please quote me). Guy calls this the Magic of the Content Fairy, which is a better name by far.
The second thing that went wrong was the tool. You knew this was coming didn’t you? Well, the tool I used was Wikka Wiki, which although adequate has a terrible editor, making adding images a pain and little to no spam protection.
The third thing that went wrong was spam. Megabytes of it.
The fourth thing that went wrong was to do with motivation. Whilst I really needed a large library of connected usability tips, nobody else did and so participation was slim to none. I didn’t design how I expected to engage a creative audience and lull them into contributing.
This is often the worst aspect of most wikis, it’s the “Why should I contribute?” factor that if you don’t have an answer to then why is your wiki even online?
In conclusion…
After removing the spam with a blunderbuss and some tweezers I still want to flesh out the pages. Lots of the ideas still stand (for me at least) in the sense that lots of people are still making the same fundamental usability cock-ups.
Although my attempt at using a wiki to create a design pattern crashed and burned, I still think it’s a good idea™.
After struggling with MediaWiki (you can’t grow to love PHP you know), I’ve rediscovered MoinMoin which is python powered (I’ve already fixed a few bugs) and I’m delighted with what it can do. A new wiki is on it’s way and this time I’m not going to kill it with good intentions, I’m just going to let it evolve like germs on a chopping board.
Helping others understand web accessibility
When I hold workshops for people who want to learn more about web standards and accessibility, I often notice that the attendants really have tried to improve their accessibility knowledge. But they get overwhelmed when they go to the official documentation from the W3C and try to understand it.
Mike Cherim brings this up in Making Web Accessibility Accessible, an article that is over a year old but still just as relevant. He notes that accessibility is harder to get into than it should be for several reasons, one of which being that the documentation (WCAG 1.0) is hard to understand. And it doesn’t look like things will get much easier when WCAG 2.0 is released and becomes the norm.
In addition to the documentation problem, Mike also mentions the unhelpful attitude held by some people who seem like they don’t want to help the less experienced, the misguided or the misinformed, and instead choose to criticise them. I see it too sometimes, and I have probably been guilty of doing that myself. But I really try to help where I can by sharing what I’ve learned about web accessibility so far. And I’m still learning, so I really appreciate when other people share their knowledge.
Over the years I’ve spent countless hours writing articles, responding to email and comments, and participating on discussion forums. No matter how much I would like to, there is no time for me to do more unless I quit my dayjob. And since my dayjob is how I pay the mortgage, well, that’s not very likely. Writing articles takes lots of time, for me anyway.
Going back to Mike’s article, he suggests a few things to think about when you talk about accessibility with other people who work in the fields of web design and development:
Be a translator: Learn the specs and translate them into English.
Be willing to give back: If somebody asks for your help, try to find time to respond.
Accessibility is happy: Give accessibility a smiling face.
Encourage don’t admonish: When somebody makes progress, acknowledge that instead of criticising what they do wrong.
Good suggestions, Mike. I will try to get better at each of them. For instance, I guess I could be a little less grumpy sometimes when I come across bad examples or implementations. But not always… ;-)
Mike Cherim brings this up in Making Web Accessibility Accessible, an article that is over a year old but still just as relevant. He notes that accessibility is harder to get into than it should be for several reasons, one of which being that the documentation (WCAG 1.0) is hard to understand. And it doesn’t look like things will get much easier when WCAG 2.0 is released and becomes the norm.
In addition to the documentation problem, Mike also mentions the unhelpful attitude held by some people who seem like they don’t want to help the less experienced, the misguided or the misinformed, and instead choose to criticise them. I see it too sometimes, and I have probably been guilty of doing that myself. But I really try to help where I can by sharing what I’ve learned about web accessibility so far. And I’m still learning, so I really appreciate when other people share their knowledge.
Over the years I’ve spent countless hours writing articles, responding to email and comments, and participating on discussion forums. No matter how much I would like to, there is no time for me to do more unless I quit my dayjob. And since my dayjob is how I pay the mortgage, well, that’s not very likely. Writing articles takes lots of time, for me anyway.
Going back to Mike’s article, he suggests a few things to think about when you talk about accessibility with other people who work in the fields of web design and development:
Be a translator: Learn the specs and translate them into English.
Be willing to give back: If somebody asks for your help, try to find time to respond.
Accessibility is happy: Give accessibility a smiling face.
Encourage don’t admonish: When somebody makes progress, acknowledge that instead of criticising what they do wrong.
Good suggestions, Mike. I will try to get better at each of them. For instance, I guess I could be a little less grumpy sometimes when I come across bad examples or implementations. But not always… ;-)
Looking for open source CMS and portal software options
Over the past year or so we’ve seen a definite increase in the number of questions we get about open source content management and portal software at NetRelations. I’m not quite sure of the reason for this trend, but nevertheless it’s refreshing to see people beginning to “think different” in the otherwise very Microsoft-dominated country that Sweden is.
It may be a welcome change, but I find choosing a CMS incredibly difficult, and evaluating them is very time consuming and often frustrating. There are hundreds of options, one worse than the other. To date I have never come across a CMS that doesn’t have serious flaws. Even if a CMS looks good at a glance, once you start digging deeper you will always encounter problems with usability, accessibility, and front-end code.
Content Management Systems
A couple of times in the past I have asked my readers for CMS suggestions, but it’s been a while now. Last time we ended up using Plone, which was a real pain to work with. I don’t know if the situation has improved by now (it’s been three years), but just thinking about working with it gives me a stomach ache. So we want to look at other options, and I’d like to ask what you all think.
A couple of times in the past I have asked my readers for CMS suggestions, but it’s been a while now. Last time we ended up using Plone, which was a real pain to work with. I don’t know if the situation has improved by now (it’s been three years), but just thinking about working with it gives me a stomach ache. So we want to look at other options, and I’d like to ask what you all think.
We’ve been looking around for a while and two of the very few systems that look like they could be worth spending more time with are ModX and Drupal. Their approaches to content handling are quite different, so they would most likely suit different kinds of clients.
The first thing I would like to get some input on is how good ModX and Drupal really are. I’m thinking both for developers who will need to customise the CMS to fit the clients’ needs and for the end users who will work with the admin interfaces to create content and structure sites. I’m looking for answers to the following questions:
How easy (or hard) are ModX and Drupal to develop for?
How easy (or hard) is using them to create content and administer websites?
Are there any problems creating fully standards compliant and accessible websites with either system? Do they allow full (and I really mean full) control of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript or do they contain uncustomisable black boxes?
Are their admin interfaces reasonably accessible? If not, can they be made accessible?
That’s one bunch of questions. Next, the vague topic of “portals”.
Portal Software
Some large organisations are asking about open source portal software to use instead of commercial solutions like IBM WebSphere (WPS) or Microsoft Sharepoint (MOSS). I have some experience with both WPS and MOSS, and while making a public-facing website based on either system standards compliant and accessible is achievable with a bit of work, fixing the interface presented to a logged-in user seems more or less impossible. In other words, to be better than either of those two in the web standards, accessibility and usability departments should be really easy.
It seems that most open source portal platforms are Java based. Liferay, JBoss Portal, and Apache Jetspeed are some. They all seem like incredibly complicated pieces of software that are beyond my capability to understand. That has got me thinking… would it be possible to use Plone or Drupal as a portal? Yes, I know I complained about Plone being hard to develop for earlier, but compared to others it is pretty good at web standards and accessibility.
Does anyone reading this have experience from open source portal software? The questions I’m looking for answers to are the same as for the content management systems.
Their standards aren’t our standards
As a sidenote it’s pretty fascinating to note that when CMS and portal software vendors boast about “Standards compliance”, “Open standards”, and “Interoperability” they do not mean what you might think they mean.
To them, those terms have little to do with the front-end, so having a “Standards compliant, interoperable” portal solution does not mean that it outputs valid HTML and CSS and will work in any browser. Instead, it means it will run on any server that means the requirements. Huge difference.
To summarise this little call for input: any suggestions, hints, and recommendations on open source content management and portal software are welcome.
The first thing I would like to get some input on is how good ModX and Drupal really are. I’m thinking both for developers who will need to customise the CMS to fit the clients’ needs and for the end users who will work with the admin interfaces to create content and structure sites. I’m looking for answers to the following questions:
How easy (or hard) are ModX and Drupal to develop for?
How easy (or hard) is using them to create content and administer websites?
Are there any problems creating fully standards compliant and accessible websites with either system? Do they allow full (and I really mean full) control of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript or do they contain uncustomisable black boxes?
Are their admin interfaces reasonably accessible? If not, can they be made accessible?
That’s one bunch of questions. Next, the vague topic of “portals”.
Portal Software
Some large organisations are asking about open source portal software to use instead of commercial solutions like IBM WebSphere (WPS) or Microsoft Sharepoint (MOSS). I have some experience with both WPS and MOSS, and while making a public-facing website based on either system standards compliant and accessible is achievable with a bit of work, fixing the interface presented to a logged-in user seems more or less impossible. In other words, to be better than either of those two in the web standards, accessibility and usability departments should be really easy.
It seems that most open source portal platforms are Java based. Liferay, JBoss Portal, and Apache Jetspeed are some. They all seem like incredibly complicated pieces of software that are beyond my capability to understand. That has got me thinking… would it be possible to use Plone or Drupal as a portal? Yes, I know I complained about Plone being hard to develop for earlier, but compared to others it is pretty good at web standards and accessibility.
Does anyone reading this have experience from open source portal software? The questions I’m looking for answers to are the same as for the content management systems.
Their standards aren’t our standards
As a sidenote it’s pretty fascinating to note that when CMS and portal software vendors boast about “Standards compliance”, “Open standards”, and “Interoperability” they do not mean what you might think they mean.
To them, those terms have little to do with the front-end, so having a “Standards compliant, interoperable” portal solution does not mean that it outputs valid HTML and CSS and will work in any browser. Instead, it means it will run on any server that means the requirements. Huge difference.
To summarise this little call for input: any suggestions, hints, and recommendations on open source content management and portal software are welcome.
Make sure your website works with or without www
Being a little lazy at times, I tend to skip typing “www.” before the domain name when I enter a URL in my web browser. No, it doesn’t save me a whole lot of typing, but bear with me here. Most of the time it works fine and I end up on the site I expect.
But it really surprises me how often typing in a domain name without “www.” in front results in one of the following:
My browser displays an error message such as “Safari can’t open the page “http://example.com/” because it can’t find the server “example.com”.”
My browser finds a server but nothing happens because there is no website configured.
I am redirected to a parked domain.
I get a “Directory listing denied” message.
This happens with all sorts of organisations, from the tiniest single-page websites to huge online presences of multi-national corporations.
You can add “www.” in front of the domain name and all is fine. But should you really have to do that? What I think should happen is that the web server either responds on the address I entered or redirects me to the www host. Unlike the no-www and yes-www folks I’m “www-agnostic” in that I don’t really care if the preferred host is the bare domain name or “www.” + domain name. Just make both work and redirect all traffic to one of them, I don’t care which. I do however think that it makes a really bad impression when any of the above happens when you try to access an organisation’s website without typing “www.”.
I’m no DNS or web hosting expert, so there may well be technical reasons that I am unaware of that make it hard or impossible to configure all web servers to work with or without the “www.”. But when this sort of thing has happened to clients, it usually turns out that whoever is hosting the site has simply forgotten about it.
Considering how many use their bare domain name in advertising, and looking at colleagues and relatives, I know I’m far from the only one who skips “www.” when manually typing in a URL. And do you really want to risk your clients losing visitors due to a misconfigured web server? I thought not, so remember to check this with the persons or companies responsible for the servers your clients’ sites are hosted on.
But it really surprises me how often typing in a domain name without “www.” in front results in one of the following:
My browser displays an error message such as “Safari can’t open the page “http://example.com/” because it can’t find the server “example.com”.”
My browser finds a server but nothing happens because there is no website configured.
I am redirected to a parked domain.
I get a “Directory listing denied” message.
This happens with all sorts of organisations, from the tiniest single-page websites to huge online presences of multi-national corporations.
You can add “www.” in front of the domain name and all is fine. But should you really have to do that? What I think should happen is that the web server either responds on the address I entered or redirects me to the www host. Unlike the no-www and yes-www folks I’m “www-agnostic” in that I don’t really care if the preferred host is the bare domain name or “www.” + domain name. Just make both work and redirect all traffic to one of them, I don’t care which. I do however think that it makes a really bad impression when any of the above happens when you try to access an organisation’s website without typing “www.”.
I’m no DNS or web hosting expert, so there may well be technical reasons that I am unaware of that make it hard or impossible to configure all web servers to work with or without the “www.”. But when this sort of thing has happened to clients, it usually turns out that whoever is hosting the site has simply forgotten about it.
Considering how many use their bare domain name in advertising, and looking at colleagues and relatives, I know I’m far from the only one who skips “www.” when manually typing in a URL. And do you really want to risk your clients losing visitors due to a misconfigured web server? I thought not, so remember to check this with the persons or companies responsible for the servers your clients’ sites are hosted on.
Yahoo outlines golden parachutes for employees
Yahoo laid out its golden parachute plans for all of its full-time employees Tuesday, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing outlines two change-in-control severance plans, should the Internet search pioneer find itself under new ownership, aka Microsoft.
Yahoo, which is facing an unsolicited buyout bid from Microsoft, will offer both full-time employees and executives anywhere from four months to two years of severance pay, depending on their job title.
The parachute, or cushion, will kick into effect should that employee lose his job within two years after a new owner takes over, should she get terminated without cause, or if the employee decides it's time to leave for "good reason."
Jerry Yang, Yahoo chief executive and co-founder, is also eligible for the severance package. But for Yang, his golden parachute would only net him $2 at the most, given he only earns an annual salary of $1, according to PaidContent.
Yahoo said the severance packages are designed to accomplish several things: "help retain the employees, help maintain a stable work environment and provide certain economic benefits to the employees in the event their employment is terminated (under certain circumstances)."
The golden parachute also includes health and dental coverage for the length of employees' severance awards, as well as reimbursement of outplacement services up to two years, or a maximum of $15,000, depending on job title.
This bodes well for both Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo wants to retain its workforce, whether it prevails over any hostile takeover attempt, or whether it walks down the aisle to a friendly merger with a desired suitor.
Microsoft, as well, would hope to retain key Yahoo employees to aid the software giant in any integration plans.
Yahoo, which is facing an unsolicited buyout bid from Microsoft, will offer both full-time employees and executives anywhere from four months to two years of severance pay, depending on their job title.
The parachute, or cushion, will kick into effect should that employee lose his job within two years after a new owner takes over, should she get terminated without cause, or if the employee decides it's time to leave for "good reason."
Jerry Yang, Yahoo chief executive and co-founder, is also eligible for the severance package. But for Yang, his golden parachute would only net him $2 at the most, given he only earns an annual salary of $1, according to PaidContent.
Yahoo said the severance packages are designed to accomplish several things: "help retain the employees, help maintain a stable work environment and provide certain economic benefits to the employees in the event their employment is terminated (under certain circumstances)."
The golden parachute also includes health and dental coverage for the length of employees' severance awards, as well as reimbursement of outplacement services up to two years, or a maximum of $15,000, depending on job title.
This bodes well for both Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo wants to retain its workforce, whether it prevails over any hostile takeover attempt, or whether it walks down the aisle to a friendly merger with a desired suitor.
Microsoft, as well, would hope to retain key Yahoo employees to aid the software giant in any integration plans.
Common Reasons a Website is Unsuccessful
If you are planning or building a new website, you are obviously hoping for some type of success. Of course, success can mean any number of things, and each website’s success should be determined by the needs and desires of its owners and creators. Some websites exist strictly to provide information to visitors. Others aim to sell products. Some exist solely to provide information about the services of a business. As you can see, there is no one equation for success online, but there are a number of common causes for failure with a website. Here is a look at ten possible things that can keep you from achieving anything significant with a website.
1. Lack of a Purpose
Whether your website represents your business, or whether your business is a website, it needs a purpose. Websites that represent brick and mortar business will typically exist to support and aid the business in meeting its objectives, and hopefully that business already has a clearly defined purpose.
Whatever the situation may be, a website must have a clear purpose for which it exists. A website with no direction will go nowhere. If you hope to build a successful internet presence, be sure to dedicate adequate time to plan and define what you want from your website.
2. Lack of Focus on the User
In order to achieve success, however it may be measured, a website and its creators must maintain focus on the users of the website. Without satisfied users, no website will be successful. Sometimes it is easy to lose focus on those who will be visiting a website. It may be easier or more fun to build the site how you like it or how you want it to be, but the users’ opinions are much more important.
Any website that does a great job of meeting the needs of users will be well on its way to success. At every stage of the website development process, user needs and wants should be of primary concern.
3. Little or No Significant Content
The internet is a vast source of information, and the typical website now needs to have some type of valuable content for visitors. Of course blogs are an example of this as they provide extensive amounts of written content, but there are other options as well. Video, audio, news, tutorials, pictures, online tools, etc. All of these things attract visitors and make a website more valuable. Very few websites today will continually draw crowds of visitors without significant content.
4. Poor Marketing Strategy
Regardless of how great your website is, people need to find it in order for it to be successful. A marketing strategy may involve spending thousands or even millions of dollars in advertising, or it could include spending only a few dollars on targeted pay-per-click ads. A marketing strategy could also include optimization for social media and/or search engines.
There is really no limit to what you can do to market a website, but you do need to have a strategy that will help you to get the right people to visit the site. A great website with no marketing strategy is taking a huge chance that people will somehow find the site.
5. Bad Choice of Niche or Industry
Before launching a new website, choosing the right niche or industry is a crucial decision. Of course, some niches are overly crowded, and others have too small a number of potential visitors. Somewhere in the middle will usually be the best choice.
What caused you to choose the niche for your website? Is it a topic that you enjoy, is it one that you think has income potential, or did you base your decision on research? For more information on this subject, see Researching a Niche: Tools and Techniques.
6. Infrequent Updates
One of the keys to successful websites is repeat visitors, and one of the keys to attracting repeat visitors is to continually add new content. If a website stays the same for long periods of time, what makes visitors want to keep coming back?
This is a huge advantage that blogs have, assuming new posts are added at least somewhat frequently. With new articles being published, visitors will always have a reason to come back again. Each time visitors return to the website, their connection to the site becomes a little bit stronger.
7. Lack of Commitment
Many website owners get excited for the launch of a new website with the potential that exists. But over time that interest and commitment often fades. Without committment to success, no website will go very far.
This doesn’t only apply to an individual website owner trying to make money online. This can also apply to large businesses that simply don’t give a website the attention or priority that it deserves. A website can be an invaluable asset to a business, or it can produce next to nothing if there is no commitment by the business to make it something special.
8. No Call to Action
Whether the goal of a website is to sell products, gain subscribers, draw clicks to PPC ads, or to provide information about the services of a business, a call to action for visitors is needed. Many websites are not successful because they simply do not encourage or instruct visitors to do what they want them to do. In order to have an effective call to action, you must first know precisely what it is that you want visitors to do after arriving at your website. Knowing what you want from them, you can now build the website to lead them to that action.
9. Ineffective Monetization Choices
Every website should create some type of value for its owner(s). However, each website should be evaluating on an individual basis to see how it can most effectively create value. Should you use the site to sell products, to promote your services, to sell ad space? The wrong choice can have serious negative impacts on the success of the site.
10. Poor Design
The design and attractiveness of a website is also important to success. Most visitors will base their first impression of the site at least partially on looks and appearance. Although design is important, different websites can be successful with different design strategies. Not every successful website needs to have a fancy design that is full of exciting features. A clean, attractive minimal design can be effective for many websites.
The design should never take priority over usability. If a particular design interferes with visitors being able to access and use the site, it is not an effective design. Designing for user expectations is more important than trying to create the most impressive looking website.
What Would You Add?
I know there are other things out there that would it on this list, so please share your thoughts. What else can hold a website back from success? Are there items on this list that you do not think are important?
1. Lack of a Purpose
Whether your website represents your business, or whether your business is a website, it needs a purpose. Websites that represent brick and mortar business will typically exist to support and aid the business in meeting its objectives, and hopefully that business already has a clearly defined purpose.
Whatever the situation may be, a website must have a clear purpose for which it exists. A website with no direction will go nowhere. If you hope to build a successful internet presence, be sure to dedicate adequate time to plan and define what you want from your website.
2. Lack of Focus on the User
In order to achieve success, however it may be measured, a website and its creators must maintain focus on the users of the website. Without satisfied users, no website will be successful. Sometimes it is easy to lose focus on those who will be visiting a website. It may be easier or more fun to build the site how you like it or how you want it to be, but the users’ opinions are much more important.
Any website that does a great job of meeting the needs of users will be well on its way to success. At every stage of the website development process, user needs and wants should be of primary concern.
3. Little or No Significant Content
The internet is a vast source of information, and the typical website now needs to have some type of valuable content for visitors. Of course blogs are an example of this as they provide extensive amounts of written content, but there are other options as well. Video, audio, news, tutorials, pictures, online tools, etc. All of these things attract visitors and make a website more valuable. Very few websites today will continually draw crowds of visitors without significant content.
4. Poor Marketing Strategy
Regardless of how great your website is, people need to find it in order for it to be successful. A marketing strategy may involve spending thousands or even millions of dollars in advertising, or it could include spending only a few dollars on targeted pay-per-click ads. A marketing strategy could also include optimization for social media and/or search engines.
There is really no limit to what you can do to market a website, but you do need to have a strategy that will help you to get the right people to visit the site. A great website with no marketing strategy is taking a huge chance that people will somehow find the site.
5. Bad Choice of Niche or Industry
Before launching a new website, choosing the right niche or industry is a crucial decision. Of course, some niches are overly crowded, and others have too small a number of potential visitors. Somewhere in the middle will usually be the best choice.
What caused you to choose the niche for your website? Is it a topic that you enjoy, is it one that you think has income potential, or did you base your decision on research? For more information on this subject, see Researching a Niche: Tools and Techniques.
6. Infrequent Updates
One of the keys to successful websites is repeat visitors, and one of the keys to attracting repeat visitors is to continually add new content. If a website stays the same for long periods of time, what makes visitors want to keep coming back?
This is a huge advantage that blogs have, assuming new posts are added at least somewhat frequently. With new articles being published, visitors will always have a reason to come back again. Each time visitors return to the website, their connection to the site becomes a little bit stronger.
7. Lack of Commitment
Many website owners get excited for the launch of a new website with the potential that exists. But over time that interest and commitment often fades. Without committment to success, no website will go very far.
This doesn’t only apply to an individual website owner trying to make money online. This can also apply to large businesses that simply don’t give a website the attention or priority that it deserves. A website can be an invaluable asset to a business, or it can produce next to nothing if there is no commitment by the business to make it something special.
8. No Call to Action
Whether the goal of a website is to sell products, gain subscribers, draw clicks to PPC ads, or to provide information about the services of a business, a call to action for visitors is needed. Many websites are not successful because they simply do not encourage or instruct visitors to do what they want them to do. In order to have an effective call to action, you must first know precisely what it is that you want visitors to do after arriving at your website. Knowing what you want from them, you can now build the website to lead them to that action.
9. Ineffective Monetization Choices
Every website should create some type of value for its owner(s). However, each website should be evaluating on an individual basis to see how it can most effectively create value. Should you use the site to sell products, to promote your services, to sell ad space? The wrong choice can have serious negative impacts on the success of the site.
10. Poor Design
The design and attractiveness of a website is also important to success. Most visitors will base their first impression of the site at least partially on looks and appearance. Although design is important, different websites can be successful with different design strategies. Not every successful website needs to have a fancy design that is full of exciting features. A clean, attractive minimal design can be effective for many websites.
The design should never take priority over usability. If a particular design interferes with visitors being able to access and use the site, it is not an effective design. Designing for user expectations is more important than trying to create the most impressive looking website.
What Would You Add?
I know there are other things out there that would it on this list, so please share your thoughts. What else can hold a website back from success? Are there items on this list that you do not think are important?
Yahoo’s oneConnect: One Mobile App to Rule Them All
Today at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, Yahoo announced a mobile app called oneConnect that will be available in the second quarter as part of the upcoming release of Yahoo Go 3.0. I have not seen a demo of this myself, but it sounds like a much-needed integration of messaging and social apps. OneConnect will pull together contacts from your mobile phone, Yahoo address book, and social networks, including:
Bebo
Dopplr
Flickr
Friendster
Hi5
Last.fm
Myspace
You will be able to see whether your contacts are online, recent messages, status updates, uploaded photos, and other activity streams for each one. Of course, you will also be able to send them messages via e-mail, IM, and SMS. The mobile app will save SMS and IM conversations as a single thread, even if you are texting and the other person is using Yahoo Messenger. The app also supports AIM, MSN Messenger, and Google Talk.A feature called “Pulse” will give you the most recent updates of all your contacts across all the social networks it monitors. You’d see, for instance, that your girlfriend just added a photo to Flickr, your business partner just updated his Facebook page to say he landed in London, and your brother just sent out a Twitter. It is like Friendfeed or Spokeo on your mobile phone, tied to your address book so that you can message your friends based on what they are doing.
Yahoo didn’t invent anything here, but simply integrating all of these services is powerful stuff. If you think about it, oneConnect is a mobile portal for the social Web. It connects you to your friends online and then gets out of the way.
One app that can pull together all your friends’ activities from social sites across the Web and present it in a consistent way should strengthen Yahoo’s position on mobile phones. Except on a few advanced handsets like the iPhone, the browser is not yet the ideal user interface for interacting with the Web on your mobile phone. A dedicated mobile app like oneConnect, which itself will be part of Yahoo Go, makes much more sense. But there are only so many apps you can launch on your phone before feeling overwhelmed. This fits in nicely with Yang’s “starting point” strategy. There can only be a few starting points on the mobile Web, and Yahoo is well on its way to being one of them.
Firefox 3 Beta 3 Released - Try It If You Dare
The current production release of Firefox is version 2, but developer releases of version 3 have been available since November 2007. Today Firefox released the beta 3 version of Firefox 3. You can download it here.I love version 3 of Firefox since most of the memory leak issues on Macs seem to have been fixed (I added it to my list of top applications in December based on that). But a lot of key plugins don’t work yet on Firefox 3, and a lot of sites break when viewed through it as well. Because of that, I’ve switched back to version 2 for now. A list of known issues is here.
Firefox currently has around 17% market share among browsers, second only to Internet Explorer.
Ask and Digg Team Up for Big News
Silicon Alley Insider reports that Ask has just 
launched a news site called Big News in partnership with Digg that, from the looks of things, only partially incorporates social news functionality.
There were rumors just earlier this week that Digg was white labeling its technology for Ask. However, Big News is more akin to Google News or TechMeme than to Digg. The bulk of the news items collected and displayed from around the web are identified algorithmically, not socially.
Digg’s only clear influence on Big News shows up in the footer of the site, where you can view the current top five Diggs and five stories collected by Big News algorithmically that haven’t been Dugg yet. This real estate will help drive traffic to Digg and encourage the identification of interesting news stories. What does Ask get in return? That’s not altogether clear, although SAI hears that “Digg ratings factor into the site’s algorithm.”
launched a news site called Big News in partnership with Digg that, from the looks of things, only partially incorporates social news functionality.There were rumors just earlier this week that Digg was white labeling its technology for Ask. However, Big News is more akin to Google News or TechMeme than to Digg. The bulk of the news items collected and displayed from around the web are identified algorithmically, not socially.
Digg’s only clear influence on Big News shows up in the footer of the site, where you can view the current top five Diggs and five stories collected by Big News algorithmically that haven’t been Dugg yet. This real estate will help drive traffic to Digg and encourage the identification of interesting news stories. What does Ask get in return? That’s not altogether clear, although SAI hears that “Digg ratings factor into the site’s algorithm.”
AOL acquires affiliate network to boost ad platform
AOL has acquired buy.at, a leading affiliate marketing network backed by VC house DFJ Esprit, reports TechCrunch UK. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but well-placed sources say the deal is worth in the region of $150 million (£75 million). Although launched in the UK in 2002, buy.at now has a much bigger US operation, which is what attracted AOL’s interest. buy.at will now operate as a wholly-owned business unit of Advertising.com, part of AOL’s Platform-A organization, to which it added four other companies in the last year including Tacoda, AdTech, Third Screen Media and Quigo. Unlike previous deals which were more about ad serving, the buy.at deal is about getting closer relationships with retailers. AOL is understood to have tried to buy another affiliate network, Tradedoubler, a year ago but the deal foundered with the latter’s shareholders, who couldn’t agree on price.
Internet radio hits the mainstream
More than 8 million people in the UK listen to web-based radio services every week and nearly 2 million download podcasts on a weekly basis, according to a survey that suggests internet radio has hit the mainstream.
Commissioned by the industry's audience research body Rajar, the Ipsos Mori survey last autumn found that more than 12 million people have listened to the radio online and 8.1 million listen every week either through live streaming or "listen again" services.
Ipsos Mori found that 75% of users do not listen to less live radio as a result of listening again online, with 50% tuning into new shows as a result.
The same was true of podcasting, with one-fifth of respondents saying they now listen to more live radio and nearly one-third saying they listen to new radio shows after sampling them via podcasts.
Only 8% of those surveyed said they listened to less radio because of the availability of podcasts.
Of the 4.3 million who have downloaded podcasts, around 1.87 million people listen to at least one podcast each week.
Two-thirds of podcast listeners subscribe to their favourite shows through iTunes, with nearly half tuning in during the evening.
Of these, 80% listen through their computers and 61% copy the podcasts to their MP3 players.
Music and comedy are the most popular genres, with each user subscribing to more than three podcasts, on average, and listening to 53 minutes each week.
"This survey is very much a toe in the water," said the Rajar research director, Paul Kennedy.
"Although we already knew that listen again, personalised online radio and podcasting had many advocates, we knew nothing of their standing in the mainstream.
"This survey tells us and our subscribers, who are actively involved in these areas, more about them."
Although podcasts are popular with listeners, media organisations have struggled to turn them into significant money spinners.
Producers have so far focused on building an audience and encouraging listeners to get used to the podcast format.
The Rajar survey indicates that a free, advertising-supported format would be accepted by most listeners, with 58% expressing interest, but less than one-third said they would subscribe to a paid-for service without adverts.
Commissioned by the industry's audience research body Rajar, the Ipsos Mori survey last autumn found that more than 12 million people have listened to the radio online and 8.1 million listen every week either through live streaming or "listen again" services.
Ipsos Mori found that 75% of users do not listen to less live radio as a result of listening again online, with 50% tuning into new shows as a result.
The same was true of podcasting, with one-fifth of respondents saying they now listen to more live radio and nearly one-third saying they listen to new radio shows after sampling them via podcasts.
Only 8% of those surveyed said they listened to less radio because of the availability of podcasts.
Of the 4.3 million who have downloaded podcasts, around 1.87 million people listen to at least one podcast each week.
Two-thirds of podcast listeners subscribe to their favourite shows through iTunes, with nearly half tuning in during the evening.
Of these, 80% listen through their computers and 61% copy the podcasts to their MP3 players.
Music and comedy are the most popular genres, with each user subscribing to more than three podcasts, on average, and listening to 53 minutes each week.
"This survey is very much a toe in the water," said the Rajar research director, Paul Kennedy.
"Although we already knew that listen again, personalised online radio and podcasting had many advocates, we knew nothing of their standing in the mainstream.
"This survey tells us and our subscribers, who are actively involved in these areas, more about them."
Although podcasts are popular with listeners, media organisations have struggled to turn them into significant money spinners.
Producers have so far focused on building an audience and encouraging listeners to get used to the podcast format.
The Rajar survey indicates that a free, advertising-supported format would be accepted by most listeners, with 58% expressing interest, but less than one-third said they would subscribe to a paid-for service without adverts.
Web 3.0 is all about rank and recommendation
We had a real-life web-lebrity in the Guardian's offices last week: Martin Stiksel, one third of the brains behind the music recommendation site Last.fm. He's laidback and rather unassuming, but has the kind of enthusiasm and insight about his company that is often missing in serial executives. He'd probably say that's because he always did it for the music not the money, but seems to have ended up doing rather well with both.
Last.fm has just signed Universal - the last of the four major music labels to partner - so the site can offer live streaming of full-length music on the site. It's the latest and most logical part of the Last.fm pie, and a rare example of a site that has legally, and successfully, combined music sharing with discussion and community.
Being bought by the firm last year was an enormous boost to the start-up community in the UK. (Let's remind ourselves the purchase price was £140m, lest we soon decline into an economic abyss and have to wait another six years for the internet to get hot again.) That deal not only cemented the reputation of British start-ups and our awesome music scene, but also reinforced the power of recommendation as a business model. And it's recommendation that is the secret source of Last.fm's success.
If web 2.0 could be summarised as interaction, web 3.0 must be about recommendation and personalisation. While the Tim Berners-Lees of this world work out how to make the language of the web function more effectively behind the scenes, our front-of-house task is to get stuck in and intelligently work these technologies into our businesses. It is not enough to understand the strategy behind these new applications, such as Twitter and Reddit - they rely on participation. Tokenism won't do.
Recommendation is nothing new, of course. Amazon has been pushing "people who bought this also bought this" for years, and tools like eBay's trader ratings system are staple. Things get more interesting as the technology gets cleverer; hence we get automated recommendation and personal recommendation.
So Last.fm uses "scrobbling" to tally up every song you play every time you play it, and then processes that data from all its users to work out what's musically hot, and what's not. What are the implications for editorial? It's no longer about what one half-cut muso recommends, it's about what several hundred thousand music obsessives have actually listened to. The rising stars chart on Last.fm lifts the lid on discovering new music - it's the new A&R.
Also in the technology camp we have Facebook. Facebook is fascinating because it is pushing in these new areas that will become critical to our businesses. It got a lot of stick for its Beacon ads programme because of concerns that it would share too much user data outside the site; your Facebook friends might get a targeted ad showing what you bought on Amazon, for example.
Perhaps I should be more concerned over how my data is used, but to me the road bumps in Facebook's development just prove how experimental the site is being. It's doing R&D for all of us. If we're honest, we'd surely all rather have adverts that are relevant to us.
And among our social networks, comment and opinion are being more efficiently aggregated than ever before. There's a swathe of local reviews sites such as welovelocal.com, which mixes listings with reviews; recruitment sites such as Zubka that pay out if you recommend a good candidate for a job; and bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us that help rank online news.
Above all, the most reassuring trend is that the values of credibility and trust are more important than ever in the ocean of information we have to navigate every day. The technology is not enough on its own, and that should be a comfort to editors everywhere.
Last.fm has just signed Universal - the last of the four major music labels to partner - so the site can offer live streaming of full-length music on the site. It's the latest and most logical part of the Last.fm pie, and a rare example of a site that has legally, and successfully, combined music sharing with discussion and community.
Being bought by the firm last year was an enormous boost to the start-up community in the UK. (Let's remind ourselves the purchase price was £140m, lest we soon decline into an economic abyss and have to wait another six years for the internet to get hot again.) That deal not only cemented the reputation of British start-ups and our awesome music scene, but also reinforced the power of recommendation as a business model. And it's recommendation that is the secret source of Last.fm's success.
If web 2.0 could be summarised as interaction, web 3.0 must be about recommendation and personalisation. While the Tim Berners-Lees of this world work out how to make the language of the web function more effectively behind the scenes, our front-of-house task is to get stuck in and intelligently work these technologies into our businesses. It is not enough to understand the strategy behind these new applications, such as Twitter and Reddit - they rely on participation. Tokenism won't do.
Recommendation is nothing new, of course. Amazon has been pushing "people who bought this also bought this" for years, and tools like eBay's trader ratings system are staple. Things get more interesting as the technology gets cleverer; hence we get automated recommendation and personal recommendation.
So Last.fm uses "scrobbling" to tally up every song you play every time you play it, and then processes that data from all its users to work out what's musically hot, and what's not. What are the implications for editorial? It's no longer about what one half-cut muso recommends, it's about what several hundred thousand music obsessives have actually listened to. The rising stars chart on Last.fm lifts the lid on discovering new music - it's the new A&R.
Also in the technology camp we have Facebook. Facebook is fascinating because it is pushing in these new areas that will become critical to our businesses. It got a lot of stick for its Beacon ads programme because of concerns that it would share too much user data outside the site; your Facebook friends might get a targeted ad showing what you bought on Amazon, for example.
Perhaps I should be more concerned over how my data is used, but to me the road bumps in Facebook's development just prove how experimental the site is being. It's doing R&D for all of us. If we're honest, we'd surely all rather have adverts that are relevant to us.
And among our social networks, comment and opinion are being more efficiently aggregated than ever before. There's a swathe of local reviews sites such as welovelocal.com, which mixes listings with reviews; recruitment sites such as Zubka that pay out if you recommend a good candidate for a job; and bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us that help rank online news.
Above all, the most reassuring trend is that the values of credibility and trust are more important than ever in the ocean of information we have to navigate every day. The technology is not enough on its own, and that should be a comfort to editors everywhere.
Yahoo’s Zimbra Releases v5.0 with BlackBerry Support, New Ajax Features
Zimbra, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server that was acquired by Yahoo this past September, has released version 5.0 of its collaboration suite. The upgrades are various and wide-reaching, with support finally here for the BlackBerry and several improvements made to Zimbra’s browser-based email client.
In addition to managing their email, calendars and contacts, customers can now use Zimbra’s browser-based client to instant message, collaborate on documents via wiki, and share files. Yahoo search functionality, and local search in particular, has been integrated into the browser-based client as well, enabling users to search Yahoo Maps from within their email interface.
Zimbra’s desktop client, which was soft launched last March and emulates much of the browser-based client, now supports non-Zimbra email accounts (like Yahoo Mail and Gmail, or any POP/IMAP account). However, desktop support for instant messaging, document collaboration, and file sharing has yet to be added.
While versions of Zimbra have existed for Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, iPhone and other mobile devices, only now has Zimbra released a version of its server that can work with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and, therefore, BlackBerry devices. Zimbra is only the fourth company, behind Microsoft, Novell, and IBM, to develop compatibility with the BlackBerry server, and the only one to do it without direct assistance from RIM, producer of the BlackBerry. John Robb of Zimbra says that BlackBerry support required a lot of development so that the Zimbra server could emulate Exchange Server and communicate with the BlackBerry server.
Zimbra has passed the 20,000 customers and 11M+ mailboxes marks. Companies can choose to run Zimbra by installing the company’s server package locally or paying a third party to host the software remotely. While Robb says that Zimbra is not focused on providing any hosted solutions soon, it is something that they plan to do in the longer term.
In addition to managing their email, calendars and contacts, customers can now use Zimbra’s browser-based client to instant message, collaborate on documents via wiki, and share files. Yahoo search functionality, and local search in particular, has been integrated into the browser-based client as well, enabling users to search Yahoo Maps from within their email interface.Zimbra’s desktop client, which was soft launched last March and emulates much of the browser-based client, now supports non-Zimbra email accounts (like Yahoo Mail and Gmail, or any POP/IMAP account). However, desktop support for instant messaging, document collaboration, and file sharing has yet to be added.
While versions of Zimbra have existed for Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, iPhone and other mobile devices, only now has Zimbra released a version of its server that can work with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and, therefore, BlackBerry devices. Zimbra is only the fourth company, behind Microsoft, Novell, and IBM, to develop compatibility with the BlackBerry server, and the only one to do it without direct assistance from RIM, producer of the BlackBerry. John Robb of Zimbra says that BlackBerry support required a lot of development so that the Zimbra server could emulate Exchange Server and communicate with the BlackBerry server.
Zimbra has passed the 20,000 customers and 11M+ mailboxes marks. Companies can choose to run Zimbra by installing the company’s server package locally or paying a third party to host the software remotely. While Robb says that Zimbra is not focused on providing any hosted solutions soon, it is something that they plan to do in the longer term.
Technology And Time Management
“We have neither the means nor the desire to stop the march of technological progress.”-Charles Tillinghast, Jr.
There are two parameters for doing any activity: the quality of the activity and the time that you take to complete the activity. There is an important parameter called ‘cycle time’, which is the minimum time that you need to successfully complete a task with out sacrificing the quality. In the context of the growing competition, you need to compress the time that you take to complete any task. We cannot take the same time that we took a few years ago.
Time being a very limited resource we need to do lot more things with in less time. We may not have the time that we had at our disposal a few years ago. Just think how much time we took to construct a house; what was the length of a movie film, the time we took to prepare our lunch, etc! Do we have that much time now?
Hence there is no other alternative except to reduce the time duration for completing any activity. This is possible only when we have the latest technology in our chosen field. Some examples are as follows:
Manual writing > typewriting with a manual type writer > typewriting with electronic typewriter > typing on a computer.
Manual accounting > accounting on excel > accounting through software.
Writing an article ourselves > dictating to a scribe > using a Dictaphone > using voice recognition software.
Sending a mail through courier/post > faxing > emailing > image scanning.
We are much ahead of the above examples. I would suggest that we brainstorm for our own businesses on many other technological improvements in our organization which can cut short many of our manual activities.
There are two parameters for doing any activity: the quality of the activity and the time that you take to complete the activity. There is an important parameter called ‘cycle time’, which is the minimum time that you need to successfully complete a task with out sacrificing the quality. In the context of the growing competition, you need to compress the time that you take to complete any task. We cannot take the same time that we took a few years ago.
Time being a very limited resource we need to do lot more things with in less time. We may not have the time that we had at our disposal a few years ago. Just think how much time we took to construct a house; what was the length of a movie film, the time we took to prepare our lunch, etc! Do we have that much time now?
Hence there is no other alternative except to reduce the time duration for completing any activity. This is possible only when we have the latest technology in our chosen field. Some examples are as follows:
Manual writing > typewriting with a manual type writer > typewriting with electronic typewriter > typing on a computer.
Manual accounting > accounting on excel > accounting through software.
Writing an article ourselves > dictating to a scribe > using a Dictaphone > using voice recognition software.
Sending a mail through courier/post > faxing > emailing > image scanning.
We are much ahead of the above examples. I would suggest that we brainstorm for our own businesses on many other technological improvements in our organization which can cut short many of our manual activities.
Podcasts Taking Off (Again): eMarketer
Some interesting new figures have been released by eMarketer today that shows that podcasts are taking off in both traffic and revenue, and the outlook is even better again.
The general view on podcasting is that it had been passed by as video became the hot vertical, particularly as earlier iPod’s gave way to new players that supported video as well as audio.
These figures would suggest that there’s a lot of growth still to be had in the podcasting sector.
According to eMarketer, the total podcast audience in the United States was 18.5 million in 2007 and will rise to 65 million in 2012. “Active listeners” (defined as people who download more than one podcast) were 6.5 million in 2007 and expected to be 25 million in 2012.
The revenue figures will bring a smile to any VC firm with investments in the sector. Advertising in 2007 hit $165 million and is expected to grow to $435 million in 2012.
One interesting aside was eMarketer attributing the growth to podcasts being promoted by the mainstream media. What they didn’t add is that many of the top lists globally on iTunes today also have a strong presence from those very sources; while greater awareness of podcasting is growing the overall market for podcasts, the mainstream media is taking a big slice of the pie.
The general view on podcasting is that it had been passed by as video became the hot vertical, particularly as earlier iPod’s gave way to new players that supported video as well as audio.
These figures would suggest that there’s a lot of growth still to be had in the podcasting sector.
According to eMarketer, the total podcast audience in the United States was 18.5 million in 2007 and will rise to 65 million in 2012. “Active listeners” (defined as people who download more than one podcast) were 6.5 million in 2007 and expected to be 25 million in 2012.The revenue figures will bring a smile to any VC firm with investments in the sector. Advertising in 2007 hit $165 million and is expected to grow to $435 million in 2012.
One interesting aside was eMarketer attributing the growth to podcasts being promoted by the mainstream media. What they didn’t add is that many of the top lists globally on iTunes today also have a strong presence from those very sources; while greater awareness of podcasting is growing the overall market for podcasts, the mainstream media is taking a big slice of the pie.
Google reaction regarding Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Yahoo
Here’s what’s really going on:
1. Google doesn’t mind this deal going through at all. Google knows they will be able to outrun a “Microhoo.” Why do they know that? Because they’ve been able to outrun them both separately. As I said on Channel 5 news on Friday night: put two turkeys together and you don’t get an eagle.
2. Google stands to gain HUGE by slowing down this deal. Every month longer that
this deal takes is tens of millions in Google’s pockets. Why? Well, the real race today isn’t for search. Isn’t for email. Isn’t for IM. It’s for ownership of your mobile phone. I met the guy who runs China’s telecom last week in Davos. He’s seeing six million new people get a cell phone in China every month. So, every month that Microsoft and Yahoo will be stuck in some courtroom arguing out why this is a good deal means money in the bank for Google as they close mobile phone deal after mobile phone deal.
3. Email is not where the money is. Google knows this. So, who cares that Microsoft and Yahoo have a monopoly there? There’s only one way to make money with the 600 million who are on either Microsoft’s Hotmail or Yahoo’s email: get them to join other services where there ARE ways to make money. Danny Sullivan told me that this deal is all about search. He’s right. But you gotta be able to get those 600 million people to not just use your email, but come over and use your search. Google is trying to slow down these teams from doing that. But Google knows that even if Microsoft and Yahoo join email and do a pretty decent job of integrating search into there that Google will still see more growth in both email and search than Microsoft and Yahoo together will see. Why? Have you compared Google’s offerings to the others? I have (I am a Hotmail user). Even though I am locked into Hotmail cause my email address is all over the Web I’d rather be on Gmail and Google’s offerings are better integrated and better designed.
4. IM is harder to monetize than email is. Do we really think Google is concerned about either email or IM? If they were they’d be pouring lots of resources into Gmail and Google Talk. Hint: Google isn’t doing that. Why not? Because they aren’t taking their eye off the mobile ball. They are hoping that everyone else does, though, by sending this note. It sure did work, too. Damn the bloggers all took the bait and either called Google arrogant or hypocritical or annoying. Google is all of those things here, for sure, but they are damn smart and are doing this for their own purposes.
Now, we can argue about whether this deal is good or not, or whether it’ll work out for Microsoft or not, but people, don’t take your eye off of what Google is really up to here. Google is having fun by causing Microsoft to react, not to mention that if its little note is taken seriously this deal will be slowed down by six months or more while government regulators look it over. Even in the best of situations it’s going to take a year for these two huge companies to integrate and figure out how to work with each other. So, every month that this gets delayed is gold in Google’s pockets.
1. Google doesn’t mind this deal going through at all. Google knows they will be able to outrun a “Microhoo.” Why do they know that? Because they’ve been able to outrun them both separately. As I said on Channel 5 news on Friday night: put two turkeys together and you don’t get an eagle.
2. Google stands to gain HUGE by slowing down this deal. Every month longer that
this deal takes is tens of millions in Google’s pockets. Why? Well, the real race today isn’t for search. Isn’t for email. Isn’t for IM. It’s for ownership of your mobile phone. I met the guy who runs China’s telecom last week in Davos. He’s seeing six million new people get a cell phone in China every month. So, every month that Microsoft and Yahoo will be stuck in some courtroom arguing out why this is a good deal means money in the bank for Google as they close mobile phone deal after mobile phone deal.3. Email is not where the money is. Google knows this. So, who cares that Microsoft and Yahoo have a monopoly there? There’s only one way to make money with the 600 million who are on either Microsoft’s Hotmail or Yahoo’s email: get them to join other services where there ARE ways to make money. Danny Sullivan told me that this deal is all about search. He’s right. But you gotta be able to get those 600 million people to not just use your email, but come over and use your search. Google is trying to slow down these teams from doing that. But Google knows that even if Microsoft and Yahoo join email and do a pretty decent job of integrating search into there that Google will still see more growth in both email and search than Microsoft and Yahoo together will see. Why? Have you compared Google’s offerings to the others? I have (I am a Hotmail user). Even though I am locked into Hotmail cause my email address is all over the Web I’d rather be on Gmail and Google’s offerings are better integrated and better designed.
4. IM is harder to monetize than email is. Do we really think Google is concerned about either email or IM? If they were they’d be pouring lots of resources into Gmail and Google Talk. Hint: Google isn’t doing that. Why not? Because they aren’t taking their eye off the mobile ball. They are hoping that everyone else does, though, by sending this note. It sure did work, too. Damn the bloggers all took the bait and either called Google arrogant or hypocritical or annoying. Google is all of those things here, for sure, but they are damn smart and are doing this for their own purposes.
Now, we can argue about whether this deal is good or not, or whether it’ll work out for Microsoft or not, but people, don’t take your eye off of what Google is really up to here. Google is having fun by causing Microsoft to react, not to mention that if its little note is taken seriously this deal will be slowed down by six months or more while government regulators look it over. Even in the best of situations it’s going to take a year for these two huge companies to integrate and figure out how to work with each other. So, every month that this gets delayed is gold in Google’s pockets.
Microsoft bid is better than stagnating, say Yahoo insiders
Sometimes change--any change--is good.
For a company hobbled by cultural and management problems, a $44.6 billion hostile takeover bid from Microsoft may be just the kick in the pants Yahoo needs to rejoin the fight against Google--and potentially Microsoft.
That's at least some of the sentiment inside Yahoo in the days following Microsoft's unsolicited buyout offer. Many Yahoo employees don't want to join Microsoft's workforce, but they see the bid as a catalyst for change, one way or another. As a result, the mood is surprisingly buoyant and business as usual among some Yahoo executives, according to one source familiar with the company.
"Most people want to win and something bold needs to happen, so this could be the catalyst to make that happen sooner one way or another," said a source inside the company. "Either Yahoo steps up and does something bold, or Microsoft takes over. If Jerry's smart he could use this as a rallying cry."
Still, you could say the mood at Yahoo is mixed. For some who fear that they will be laid off in the coming 7 percent cutbacks (or about 1,000 employees), Microsoft's proposed takeover bid just gums up the works even more. Engineers and product managers who would like to see the company rally on new products say the thought of a drawn-out acquisition that raises more cultural and management questions than answers them is distracting.
"With the pending layoff...plus this acquisition stuff, it's hard to focus on anything," said one Yahoo employee who asked to remain anonymous.
The concern, specifically for some employees, is that if Yahoo management can't pose enough of a challenge to Google--and neither can Microsoft management--how can a combined entity with the same management mix best the search leader? "There's a need for a powerful rival to Google, but which management is finally going to do the job?" asked one Yahoo employee.
Some within Yahoo are just frustrated that the company has found itself in the situation.
"Everybody I work with is pretty disillusioned with Yahoo," said a Yahoo engineer, who asked not to be identified.
He predicted Yahoo will do anything it can to fight a Microsoft takeover, even if it means turning to Google for help. "I would assume having Microsoft take over would be Jerry's worst nightmare."
(CNET News.com's Elinor Mills contributed to this report.)
For a company hobbled by cultural and management problems, a $44.6 billion hostile takeover bid from Microsoft may be just the kick in the pants Yahoo needs to rejoin the fight against Google--and potentially Microsoft.
That's at least some of the sentiment inside Yahoo in the days following Microsoft's unsolicited buyout offer. Many Yahoo employees don't want to join Microsoft's workforce, but they see the bid as a catalyst for change, one way or another. As a result, the mood is surprisingly buoyant and business as usual among some Yahoo executives, according to one source familiar with the company."Most people want to win and something bold needs to happen, so this could be the catalyst to make that happen sooner one way or another," said a source inside the company. "Either Yahoo steps up and does something bold, or Microsoft takes over. If Jerry's smart he could use this as a rallying cry."
Still, you could say the mood at Yahoo is mixed. For some who fear that they will be laid off in the coming 7 percent cutbacks (or about 1,000 employees), Microsoft's proposed takeover bid just gums up the works even more. Engineers and product managers who would like to see the company rally on new products say the thought of a drawn-out acquisition that raises more cultural and management questions than answers them is distracting.
"With the pending layoff...plus this acquisition stuff, it's hard to focus on anything," said one Yahoo employee who asked to remain anonymous.
The concern, specifically for some employees, is that if Yahoo management can't pose enough of a challenge to Google--and neither can Microsoft management--how can a combined entity with the same management mix best the search leader? "There's a need for a powerful rival to Google, but which management is finally going to do the job?" asked one Yahoo employee.
Some within Yahoo are just frustrated that the company has found itself in the situation.
"Everybody I work with is pretty disillusioned with Yahoo," said a Yahoo engineer, who asked not to be identified.
He predicted Yahoo will do anything it can to fight a Microsoft takeover, even if it means turning to Google for help. "I would assume having Microsoft take over would be Jerry's worst nightmare."
(CNET News.com's Elinor Mills contributed to this report.)
Best Way To Estimate Daily Keyword Volume With Wordze
One of the hardest thing to estimate with any keyword tool is the actual keyword volume that you’re going to be able to get if you achieve a #1 ranking in Google for that keyword. During the past few weeks, I have been trying to take a close look at traffic I get on my sites against what Wordze is saying, and I think that I have a pretty good formula that you can use to estimate this.
To be 100% honest, as I have looked closely at the numbers, the count column in Wordze isn’t giving me the consistency I would like to see. Luckily, the estimated column is.
Ok here’s what you need to do to get a pretty good estimate of traffic levels. You will take what’s in the estimated column and divide it by 30. This is because the estimated column is monthly, and we want to calculate daily.
After that, you are going to take the new number and divide it by 4. This is because Wordze is trying to estimate traffic across a bunch of different search engines, including all of the different versions and languages of Google. Note: This will only work with keywords that are in English. If you are using keywords in another language, you will have to divide by a much larger number here.
Ok now simple math tells you that if you take a number and divide by 30, and then divide it by 4, you will get a number equal to the original number divided by 120.
The Bottom Line
So what’s the best way to estimate daily keyword volume with Wordze? Take the number in the estimated column, and divide it by 120.
Feel free to Comment...
To be 100% honest, as I have looked closely at the numbers, the count column in Wordze isn’t giving me the consistency I would like to see. Luckily, the estimated column is.
Ok here’s what you need to do to get a pretty good estimate of traffic levels. You will take what’s in the estimated column and divide it by 30. This is because the estimated column is monthly, and we want to calculate daily.
After that, you are going to take the new number and divide it by 4. This is because Wordze is trying to estimate traffic across a bunch of different search engines, including all of the different versions and languages of Google. Note: This will only work with keywords that are in English. If you are using keywords in another language, you will have to divide by a much larger number here.
Ok now simple math tells you that if you take a number and divide by 30, and then divide it by 4, you will get a number equal to the original number divided by 120.
The Bottom Line
So what’s the best way to estimate daily keyword volume with Wordze? Take the number in the estimated column, and divide it by 120.
Feel free to Comment...
Social Search is Coming
In a recent interview with VentureBeat, Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of Search Products & User Experience, spoke of Google's interest in social search and their future plans in that area. Social search, which may be the defining quality of Google's next generation of search products, is any search that is aided by a social interactions or connections. Offline, social search happens everyday. For example, when you ask a friend for a recommendation on a movie to see or a good restaurant, you're essentially doing a verbal social search. Online, social search has not been incorporated in Google's search results yet, but Mayer says that will change in time.Privacy Issues
Integrating social search into search results is tricky, says Mayer, because people view search as a private activity. Most people just aren't that comfortable letting their whole network of friends know what they have been searching for. Google knows that they must respect that privacy, so they would want the user to explicitly approve any friend connections that would be used to add social elements to the search results. (In other words, you won't just log on one day and find your Google search results re-ranked based on what your MySpace friends are doing.)
How Will It Work?
When asked how Google is planning on implementing social search, Mayer mentions a few different ideas they have which include labeling, identifying users like you, social network integration, and a social-influenced PageRank.
Labeling: With labeling, Google users could annotate the search results and those notes could then be shared with friends on their social network or with others like them. She mentions that this has worked to some extent in Google Co-Op in certain areas, like health, but overall annotation is not a model that works well in its current state. However, the benefit of annotation is that it avoids the privacy issues because someone who is labeling search results presumably does not mind that others would see those notations.
Users Like You: Another option might involve Google taking a page from Amazon's book, and adding "others like you searched for ..." or "other people who did this search also did searches..." to Google's search results. Although useful, these related queries don't truly integrate results from your friends, nor do they influence the search result rankings, so they are not the best example of pure social search.
Social Network Integration: To identify your friends and allow them to influence search results, Google may even try social network integration with search. Using aggregate statistics on your friends' searches would allow privacy to be maintained, but you would also be able to see trends that are important to you. Initially Google would leverage the Google user base and the connections that exist within it. However, 3rd party social network integration may come in time as well. Mayer uses the example of how you could see that several of your Facebook friends had searched for a particular topic one day - a stat that would be provided without user names. If a large number of your friends are searching for something, it's likely that you may be interested in that topic, too.
Social-Influenced PageRank: With today's version of PageRank, it's the link structure of the web that determines the most authoritative pages. However, Google believes that people would naturally give more authority to pages their friends visit. To bring in this influence, Google could take web history and then allow that data to influence rankings, so that pages that your friends visit would rank higher in search results. Today, Google web history is still an opt-in option and if it was going to be used to influence rankings, that would hopefully be an opt-in choice as well, but Mayer does not go into that level of detail.
The Future
So, what is the future of search? Mayer responds, "I think one way it will be better is in understanding more about you and understanding more about your social context: Who your friends are, what you like to do, where you are. It’s hard to imagine that the search engine ten years from now isn’t advised by those things."
In most industries, a merger of two major companies would cause everyone else to panic over a decline in competition.
In most industries, a merger of two major companies would cause everyone else to panic over a decline in competition.
But in the case of the online advertising market, advertising and media executives said on Friday that they liked the prospect of a combined Microsoft and Yahoo. Google, they said, has become so dominant in its grip over the online audience that the merger might be the only way to produce a competitor strong enough to face off with it.
“It’s so reductive to say ‘Google is evil’ or ‘Google owns everyone,’ ” said Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet, the digital arm of Condé Nast. “But what it comes down to is, competition is good for everyone in the marketplace.”
And competition, Ms. Chubb and other executives said, would surely be increased if Google’s foes bulk up. Despite more than a year of courting advertisers and media companies, Microsoft continues to lag Google in online ad sales and in its share of the consumer search market. Yahoo, once a prime competitor to Google, has been slipping since the departure last summer of several ad sales executives who had deep relationships with ad agencies, the executives said.
Google, on the other hand, continues to expand its ad revenues at rates nearing 30 percent a year, and it owns the sites with the most total worldwide traffic. Google also received good news last month when the Federal Trade Commission cleared its merger with DoubleClick. That company delivers display advertisements for Web sites and has deep relationships with many media companies. (Google is still waiting for clearance from the European Commission.)
Many people in traditional media companies and ad agencies had started thinking that Google had simply won the battle. Just two weeks ago, the Publicis Groupe, one of the largest ad holding companies, announced that it had been working closely with Google to develop advertising technologies — becoming the first major player in traditional advertising to publicly embrace Google.
Other ad executives have been more cautious in their involvement with Google. Martin Sorrell, chief of the WPP Group, another advertising conglomerate, labeled Google the “frenemy” in 2006.
A WPP Group executive said Friday that Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo was great news.
“It has to be good to have more than one strong company,” said Mark Read, director of strategy for the company, which owns ad agencies like JWT and Ogilvy & Mather. “It is good for investment. It is good for competition.”
A combined Microsoft and Yahoo would beat Google in Web traffic and come closer in ad revenues. Most importantly, the pair would give Google a greater challenge as it tried to enter display advertising, because Yahoo has the largest share of that market.
Google made most of its fortune through small text ads that are tied to Web searches or other content on a page. But media companies expect much of the growth in online advertising to come from display ads — flashy pictures and videos that are purchased by companies like Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble.
There are companies that would not be happy with a deal for Yahoo. Time Warner, for example, is expected to try to spin off its AOL unit, and Microsoft and Yahoo were widely considered to be possible bidders.
“AOL missed its chance,” said Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst at Forrester Research. “I’ve been thinking: would Google have any reason to buy AOL? I just don’t think they need it.”
Consumers also may not like the idea that data about more of their Web meanderings would end up under the same roof.
Part of the allure of the Internet for advertisers is the potential to use consumer data to deliver different ads to different people, based on their interests. Google has long told investors that it aims to be a pipeline for all advertising in the future, on the Internet and elsewhere, and the company is experimenting with ways to use data about consumers to deliver targeted television and cellphone ads. A postdeal Microsoft would have a bigger trove of data about Web users and could take advantage of it across more sites.
In the short run, a stronger Microsoft might force Google to lower the cut of revenue it takes from media companies when it places ads on their sites. But in the long term, traditional media companies may find themselves more beholden to the technology that Google and the combined Microsoft-Yahoo develop. Ms. VanBoskirk went so far as to suggest that media companies should stop trying to sell ads on their own and, instead, license their content to the technology companies.
Advertising executives said they expected more shakeouts.
“Whoever the players are, they need to be strong,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief executive of Denuo, a unit of the Publicis Groupe that focuses on emerging and future technologies. “While Google might be one player and Yahoo-Microsoft another player, the other global players might be Nokia, China Mobile, Apple plus Disney.”
By LOUISE STORY
Published: February 2, 2008
But in the case of the online advertising market, advertising and media executives said on Friday that they liked the prospect of a combined Microsoft and Yahoo. Google, they said, has become so dominant in its grip over the online audience that the merger might be the only way to produce a competitor strong enough to face off with it.“It’s so reductive to say ‘Google is evil’ or ‘Google owns everyone,’ ” said Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet, the digital arm of Condé Nast. “But what it comes down to is, competition is good for everyone in the marketplace.”
And competition, Ms. Chubb and other executives said, would surely be increased if Google’s foes bulk up. Despite more than a year of courting advertisers and media companies, Microsoft continues to lag Google in online ad sales and in its share of the consumer search market. Yahoo, once a prime competitor to Google, has been slipping since the departure last summer of several ad sales executives who had deep relationships with ad agencies, the executives said.
Google, on the other hand, continues to expand its ad revenues at rates nearing 30 percent a year, and it owns the sites with the most total worldwide traffic. Google also received good news last month when the Federal Trade Commission cleared its merger with DoubleClick. That company delivers display advertisements for Web sites and has deep relationships with many media companies. (Google is still waiting for clearance from the European Commission.)
Many people in traditional media companies and ad agencies had started thinking that Google had simply won the battle. Just two weeks ago, the Publicis Groupe, one of the largest ad holding companies, announced that it had been working closely with Google to develop advertising technologies — becoming the first major player in traditional advertising to publicly embrace Google.
Other ad executives have been more cautious in their involvement with Google. Martin Sorrell, chief of the WPP Group, another advertising conglomerate, labeled Google the “frenemy” in 2006.
A WPP Group executive said Friday that Microsoft’s $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo was great news.
“It has to be good to have more than one strong company,” said Mark Read, director of strategy for the company, which owns ad agencies like JWT and Ogilvy & Mather. “It is good for investment. It is good for competition.”
A combined Microsoft and Yahoo would beat Google in Web traffic and come closer in ad revenues. Most importantly, the pair would give Google a greater challenge as it tried to enter display advertising, because Yahoo has the largest share of that market.
Google made most of its fortune through small text ads that are tied to Web searches or other content on a page. But media companies expect much of the growth in online advertising to come from display ads — flashy pictures and videos that are purchased by companies like Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble.There are companies that would not be happy with a deal for Yahoo. Time Warner, for example, is expected to try to spin off its AOL unit, and Microsoft and Yahoo were widely considered to be possible bidders.
“AOL missed its chance,” said Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst at Forrester Research. “I’ve been thinking: would Google have any reason to buy AOL? I just don’t think they need it.”
Consumers also may not like the idea that data about more of their Web meanderings would end up under the same roof.
Part of the allure of the Internet for advertisers is the potential to use consumer data to deliver different ads to different people, based on their interests. Google has long told investors that it aims to be a pipeline for all advertising in the future, on the Internet and elsewhere, and the company is experimenting with ways to use data about consumers to deliver targeted television and cellphone ads. A postdeal Microsoft would have a bigger trove of data about Web users and could take advantage of it across more sites.
In the short run, a stronger Microsoft might force Google to lower the cut of revenue it takes from media companies when it places ads on their sites. But in the long term, traditional media companies may find themselves more beholden to the technology that Google and the combined Microsoft-Yahoo develop. Ms. VanBoskirk went so far as to suggest that media companies should stop trying to sell ads on their own and, instead, license their content to the technology companies.
Advertising executives said they expected more shakeouts.
“Whoever the players are, they need to be strong,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief executive of Denuo, a unit of the Publicis Groupe that focuses on emerging and future technologies. “While Google might be one player and Yahoo-Microsoft another player, the other global players might be Nokia, China Mobile, Apple plus Disney.”
By LOUISE STORY
Published: February 2, 2008
