Posts tagged could
Google Plus SEO could equal profit for companies with smart social media strategy – Toronto Star
Feb 9th
|
Google Plus SEO could equal profit for companies with smart social media strategy
Toronto Star … including key link to al Qaeda Air Canada loses $60M in fourth quarter Tooba Yahya to appeal murder convictions Google Plus SEO could equal profit for companies with smart social media strategy Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, social media and. |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Search Ad Spending Could Hit $19.51 Billion in 2012 [Report]
Feb 1st
Led by Google and aided by the Summer Olympics and national elections, search ad spending will grow 27 percent to $19.51 billion in 2012, according to a new eMarketer report. By 2016, U.S. search spending could approach $30 billion.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
AdWords, Plus Your World – 7 Examples of How SPYW Could Impact SEM
Jan 30th
When Google+ first hit the scene this past summer, I couldn’t help but think about how the fledgling social network could eventually be monetized by Google. I do a lot of SEM work and know how powerful Google’s AdWords platform is, as well as how much revenue it generates for Google. The AdWords platform generates [...]
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Facebook Could be the Biggest Tech IPO in History
Jan 27th
People familiar with the matter say that Facebook could file for its initial public offering as soon as next week, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal. The source also says that Facebook is close to picking Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter. The filing could happen next Wednesday, and the company is aiming for a $75-$100 billion valuation. It is looking to raise $10 billion in stock.
Facebook started in 2004 as a college-only social network. It opened to the public in September 2006, dropping the minimum age requirement from 18-years-old to 13-years-old. In little over seven years, it has grown to a userbase of 800 million people across the globe.
Sponsor
Reports say that the IPO will have two active managers; Goldman Sachs Group will most likely play an important role.
Morgan Stanley was a lead underwriter for both the 2011 Zynga and Groupon IPOs last year. To put this in perspective, Groupon went public with a $12.7 billion valuation, the highest tech valuation since Google’s $23.1 billion. Google sold $1.7 billion in stock.
Facebook will go public under the symbol “FB,” according to reports from BusinessInsider. Right now it’s unclear whether Facebook will list on NYSE or Nasdaq.
Facebook has been on a roll these past few weeks, pushing out Timeline to all of its users, releasing 60 new social apps. It also halted its trading on secondary markets for three days earlier this week, hinting at an IPO.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
How Google+ Could Threaten Google’s Core Search Business
Jan 26th
Social is an important part of how online users will consume and spread quality content, but it has to be integrated in a manner that doesn’t degrade core search functionality or sully searcher trust in what is the most utilized search engine.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Legal Analysis: How the Megaupload Defense Could Proceed
Jan 26th
There will be two battles fought simultaneously in defense of Megaupload, the cyberlocker site accused by the U.S. of hosting and publicizing illicit copyrighted material. One is in the public arena, where we can expect the defendant to portray itself as Robin Hood, not so much stealing content from the rich as repurposing it for the poor, the meek, the 99 percent. It may even get some traction in that arena, but those same tactics may not play so well to a jury. That will be a separate battle whose defense strategy may not be so populist.
With the help of technology industry attorney Richard Santalesa and a team of researchers at New York City-based Information Law Group, ReadWriteWeb has examined the possible strategies a Megaupload defense may adopt, and analyzed their chances of success.
Sponsor
The Robin Hood defense
The case for Megaupload acting on behalf of the everyday consumer, the average Joe, is already being assembled – in fact, defense attorneys could perhaps sit tight, relax, and watch the Web build their case for them.
Just after Megaupload first came under scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Dept., it pursued a business relationship of some sort with Universal Music Group. The subject was a prospective music download service called MegaBox. The indictment last week refers specifically to a November 2010 e-mail sent to one Megaupload proprietor from a UMG executive, listing the terms which MegaBox would have to meet in order for it to host music tracks copyrighted by UMG. For example, as the indictment quotes from the e-mail: “proactive fingerprint filtering to ensure that there is no infringing music content hosted on its service; proactive text filtering for pre-release titles that may not appear in fingerprint databases at an early stage; terminate the accounts of users that repeatedly infringe copyright; limit the number of possible downloads from each file; process right holder take down notices faster and more efficiently.”
The receipt of this e-mail could be cited as evidence that Megaupload was, at the very least, communicating with music industry executives about apparently legitimate business arrangements. Fast-forward to last month, when Megaupload announced it would launch MegaBox as a commercial site that would enable artists to distribute their music directly to listeners, while paying only a 10% distribution fee to Megaupload.
That started a wave of “question-mark” articles including this one from TechCrunch on Tuesday, plus this one from Digital Music News yesterday, and this one from Broadband DSLReports.com early this morning. Could the Justice Dept. have been serving as the stooge, the errand boy, for the music industry, stopping a competitive service from coming into being in revenge for the anti-SOPA demonstrations, question-mark? We’re just saying, we’re only the messenger. (We present both the facts and the innuendo, and let you sort them out as a public service.)
Missing amid all of the question-mark speculation was any recognition of the obvious connotation from this widely circulated screenshot, which features not some generally unknown, independent music artist seeking 90¢ from every dollar, but an album by The Black Eyed Peas – artists whose music is signed by, and who are promoted by, UMG. Regular RWW readers will recall UMG had successfully, if temporarily, used a DMCA petition to have YouTube take down a Megaupload promotional video featuring musical contributions by well-known artists, some of whom were UMG stars. A DMCA petition is normally used for claiming copyright violation, although the tracks these artists contributed – singing the Megaupload catch-phrase and theme tune – was not under UMG copyright.
So one potential Megaupload defense, which could be beta-tested in the public arena before generally released to a jury, is that principal representatives of the music industry were leveraging the power of the justice system for anti-competitive purposes. For a judge to uphold any jury verdict in Megaupload’s favor arising from that defense, however, some type of direct conspiracy between the music industry and the government would need to be established beyond just sticking a question mark at the end of speculation. Here is where the bubble of question-mark would would need to be pierced, and speculation would have to give way to reality.
The existence of the one e-mail cited in the Justice Dept. indictment indicates that investigators would have plenty of other Megaupload e-mails which may speak to the true intent of MegaBox, and the legitimacy – or lack thereof – of their intended business model, and their relationship with music publishers.
(Information Law Group, not unlike many smart vendors, declined comment on speculation.)
Next page: “Obviously infringing content”
Could You Ever Love An Ad?
Jan 25th
Today, ads are something we skip. They coat everything we watch, read and listen to like a sticky film, blinking and shouting and shocking us into paying attention. Their value is measured in “impressions,” how many people’s eyeballs scan past them, and on the Web, a click on an ad is the holy grail. That’s what passes for “engagement.”
Have you ever seen an ad that made you say, “My daughter would love this ad!” Cooliris builds ad technology that elicits that response. “Our vision is to make every single pixel in the ad interactive and living,” says Aneesh Karve, product manager of Cooliris’ ad technology, AdJitsu. So far, it has pushed mobile and desktop ads into three dimensions, creating ads you can go into and look around. Today, it’s offering a first look at “high-interaction” ads, which unlock the laws of physics in touch-controlled ads.
Sponsor
The Crack of Dawn
When I first met Cooliris, it was making 3D AdJitsu ads. These got noticed by the market, but the team began to realize that advertisers were fixating on the 3D tricks itself, the trees, rather than the forest of immersive ads Cooliris wants to build.
“We were talking immersive, but the market was hearing ’3D,’” says CEO Soujanya Bhumkar. Aneesh Karve says the most common question they get about their product is, “Do I need 3D glasses?” But the 3D stuff was just an example. “This is the future of how you do display advertising.”
“Whatever is available on the technology stack that we’re deploying to, we’re going to pull out the bag of tricks available to us and make something cool out of that.”
The 3D ads use WebGL in browsers, and they run natively on iOS. This is a technology for which the market isn’t quite ready. Phones will have blazing-fast graphics soon, but they don’t yet. “3D is awesome, but right now 3D penetration on mobile is just at the crack of dawn,” Karve says. “What we wanted to do was reach more people on today’s technology.”
High Interaction
Today, Cooliris has a demo that steps back from the 3D cliffs and canyons they’ve been showing around so far. It’s a simple game with real physics. You tap the screen, and round pieces of candy appear. They roll down, in the direction of gravity, and they bounce off each other like real objects.
The engine was designed by a physicist. The existing software development kit contains the full physics engine, so they can reach more people whether or not they have WebGL.
Objects feel as real as possible. They’re aware of each other, they respond naturally to the forces of the user’s input. Gravity is dynamic to the accelerometer. Whichever way is down is the way the candy falls. Coming up next for AdJitsu is realistic momentum and friction. The point is not to make something loud noticeable. It’s to make an ad that you want to play with as though it’s a real object.
When demoing high-interaction ads, a partner told the team, “My daughter would love this ad.” That’s a pretty good sign.
You Don’t Have to Be A Physicist
AdJitsu ads can be built using PageKit, its own set of tools that allows developers to write ads in 3D and with real physics without having to know how. When approaching 3D ads, Cooliris knew they had to build something more democratic. Not everyone is an OpenGL graphics programmer. Karve says the goal of PageKit is to enable any artist with Photoshop, HTML and CSS skills to make something immersive and high-fidelity. “Now, you don’t have to be a physicist to write a miniature game with real-life dynamics.”
Since its a format any HTML developer will recognize, the ads also support normal rich media content like embed video. The output supports browsers or the native iOS environment. Here’s a video of Max, a 13 year-old up-and-coming programmer, demonstrating how PageKit works. Don’t worry; he’ll walk you through it.
Ads You Want To See
To Cooliris, the value of ads is not about impressions anymore. It’s about time spent in the ad. These are ads you can go into and play with. But this isn’t “gamification.” It’s not a gimmick to trick users into clicking more. It’s just there, it feels real, and it piques your interest. You’ll never remember the brand if you don’t enjoy the ad experience. Cooliris thinks that experience is the most important part.
What do you think? Does this ad look fun? Would you stick around and play?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Could Jailbreaking Your iPhone Become a Crime Soon?
Jan 25th
Whether or not jailbreaking or rooting one’s smartphone is a legal act isn’t something most of us in the U.S. have had to think about for some time. That’s because, in 2010, the U.S. Copyright Office declared that jailbreaking devices is not a violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Fine, said Apple, but it will still void your warranty and we bet it will screw up your phone.
Despite the company’s official disapproval, jailbreaking iOS is still big among a certain subset of users, as evidenced by the popularity of the A5 Absinthe tool that was released last Friday. But should people in the jailbreak community continue to rest easy, assured that freeing their devices will forever remain legal? Probably not.
Sponsor
That’s because the notion that jailbreaking is legally acceptable wasn’t established by, say, a Supreme Court ruling and all of the weight of legal authority that that would entail. Instead, it was a directive from the U.S. Copyright Office. So the thing can expire. That could happen soon, warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The only way to ensure that this doesn’t happen, says the EFF, is for everyone to let the Copyright Office know that they would prefer to see jailbreaking remain legal, and why. There’s a comment form that lets them do that.
In addition to smartphones, the EFF wants the Copyright Office to add exemptions for tablets and video game consoles as well. Two years ago, the tablet market simply wasn’t what it is today, let alone the jailbreak community around it.
Video game consoles have been hacked and modded for years, but more recent tinkering with Microsoft’s Kinect in particular has brought the true potential of the technology to the forefront. Even though Microsoft itself has embraced Kinect-hacking, the EFF doesn’t want to let this kind of user-modification of game consoles slip through the legal cracks.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SEO expert warns G+ integration into search could hurt quality – ZDNet (blog)
Jan 17th
 ZDNet (blog) |
SEO expert warns G+ integration into search could hurt quality
ZDNet (blog) I predicted that this strategy would attract legions of marketers hoping to boost traffic to their client sites through new forms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. A torrent of spam on G+ could risk alienating early users of the social … Amping Up Small Business SEO with New Pay for Performance Ranking Service Advantages of Ethical SEO Basic SEO Tips Every Blogger Should Know |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Could Facebook Become The Internet’s Top Video Site?
Jan 17th
Facebook wants to win the race for the Internet. But one frontier that it hasn’t yet mastered is video. If Facebook can capture the video-viewing Web audience, its users will stay on the site longer, sharing more with each other and to their Walls.
As the concept of social TV continues growing, Facebook has an opportunity to reinvent social sharing around frictionlessly sharing full-length television shows and movies rather than just YouTube channels and clips.
Sponsor
Currently, Facebook is not the Internet’s top video site. A new report from ComScore report confirms that as of December 2011, Google Sites, driven mostly by video views on YouTube, are still the top destination for online video watching. Google sites are closely followed by VEVO, Viacom Digital and then Facebook. What would it take for Facebook to be number one?
The majority of user-generated content videos begin on YouTube, eventually ending up on Facebook. When a video maker thinks about creating content, they’ll create a video, upload it to YouTube and then share it to Facebook. Videos rarely go to Facebook first. To truly surpass YouTube, Facebook would have to create a reason for users to make videos for it.
YouTube also partners with outside networks, hosting videos from music and other types of channels. The ComScore report shows VEVO @ YouTube as the channel with the most total unique viewers, followed by Warner Music and gaming channel Machinima. The partnering aspect of the report does not include any user-generated content.
Facebook recently announced social sharing apps that would allow users to share what they’re watching when they’re watching it, but this is just the beginning. To become the Internet’s top video site, Facebook will have to convince users that frictionless sharing is not wrong. And that’s no easy feat.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
