Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. clashed Wednesday, as the two giants traded barbs over a new Google software offering.
Microsoft said Google's new Apps Sync software disables the search capabilities of Microsoft's popular Outlook email program.
Google acknowledged an issue with its software, which it released last week. But Google disputed the severity of the problem, and said it is working to improve its software.
Apps Sync, which is aimed at businesses, allows users to merge data between Google's email and calendar service and Outlook.
The dispute illustrates the potential for tension between the two giants as Google seeks to encroach on the software turf of Microsoft while Microsoft attacks Google's search business.
In a post on a company blog, Microsoft's Outlook product manager, Dev Balasubramanian, said Apps Sync includes a "serious bug/flaw" that disables Outlook's ability to search data like emails and contacts.
Google product manager Chris Vander Mey said in a blog post that Apps Sync disables Windows Desktop Search, a separate piece of software, because it doesn't work properly with Google's software.
A Google spokesman said users can still use the search function within Outlook to search their emails and contacts.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124526980217124483.html]
Showing posts with label microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label microsoft. Show all posts
Friday, June 19, 2009
Facebook to Begin Mediating Intractable Web Name Disputes
As has been widely noted in the blogosphere this week, Friday night Facebook will begin allowing users to register their own plain-language Facebook domain names, like facebook.com/bits.
Until now, Facebook’s profile pages were delineated by an awkward string of letters and numbers (”http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500019730&”), which isn’t handily printed on business cards and doesn’t play well in search engines like Google.
Anticipating a frenetic land rush for the best names, Facebook says it will assign the new addresses on a first-come, first-serve basis, starting Friday at midnight, Eastern time. It is allowing trademark holders to fill out forms protecting their marks and says it will internally mediate all disputes.
Which may not stop things from getting ugly.
Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has been in the thick of quarrels over Web site names for more than a decade and has watched companies and lawyers generate waves of lawsuits over coveted URLs. Things became so ugly that in 1999, it began requiring Web site registrants to agree to participate in binding arbitration if any third party asserted a claim over the Web address in question.
Discussing the challenges ahead for Facebook, Tim Cole, Icann’s chief registrar liaison, said that even careful mediation processes will not prevent skirmishes from breaking out, and wondered if Facebook knew what it was getting itself into.
“This sounds like the early days when Network Solutions started doing domain registrations, and they didn’t anticipate the nature of the trademark issues that started arising and weren’t prepared for the flurry of lawsuits they started receiving,” Mr. Cole said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing happened here.”
The creativity of Facebook users, said Mr. Cole (a member of Facebook himself), should not be underestimated. “When someone registers something like ‘Facebook.com/MicrosoftSucks,’ what happens then?” He added that Facebook itself could come under legal fire by an aggrieved party who is not interested in waiting for a perceived trademark infringement to be resolved.
“Unless they have a really distinctive way to prevent abuses from arising, I have to believe disputes will arise fairly quickly as soon as people start registering names,” he said.
(the article was oringinally published at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/facebook-to-begin-mediating-intractable-web-name-disputes/)
Until now, Facebook’s profile pages were delineated by an awkward string of letters and numbers (”http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500019730&”), which isn’t handily printed on business cards and doesn’t play well in search engines like Google.
Anticipating a frenetic land rush for the best names, Facebook says it will assign the new addresses on a first-come, first-serve basis, starting Friday at midnight, Eastern time. It is allowing trademark holders to fill out forms protecting their marks and says it will internally mediate all disputes.
Which may not stop things from getting ugly.
Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has been in the thick of quarrels over Web site names for more than a decade and has watched companies and lawyers generate waves of lawsuits over coveted URLs. Things became so ugly that in 1999, it began requiring Web site registrants to agree to participate in binding arbitration if any third party asserted a claim over the Web address in question.
Discussing the challenges ahead for Facebook, Tim Cole, Icann’s chief registrar liaison, said that even careful mediation processes will not prevent skirmishes from breaking out, and wondered if Facebook knew what it was getting itself into.
“This sounds like the early days when Network Solutions started doing domain registrations, and they didn’t anticipate the nature of the trademark issues that started arising and weren’t prepared for the flurry of lawsuits they started receiving,” Mr. Cole said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing happened here.”
The creativity of Facebook users, said Mr. Cole (a member of Facebook himself), should not be underestimated. “When someone registers something like ‘Facebook.com/MicrosoftSucks,’ what happens then?” He added that Facebook itself could come under legal fire by an aggrieved party who is not interested in waiting for a perceived trademark infringement to be resolved.
“Unless they have a really distinctive way to prevent abuses from arising, I have to believe disputes will arise fairly quickly as soon as people start registering names,” he said.
(the article was oringinally published at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/facebook-to-begin-mediating-intractable-web-name-disputes/)
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Microsoft’s Search for a Name Ends With a Bing
“Why don’t you Bing it?”
A year from now, if you hear someone say that — and actually understand what it means — Bill Gates will be a happy billionaire.
That is because it will be a sign that Microsoft is finally making progress in its quest to challenge Google in the Internet search business.
Bing, the name Microsoft gave to the new search service it unveiled Thursday, is its answer to Google — a noun that once meant little but has become part of the language as a verb that is a synonym for executing a Web search. After months of, uh, searching, Microsoft settled on Bing to replace the all-too-forgettable Live Search, which itself replaced MSN Search.
Microsoft invested billions of dollars in those services and failed to slow Google’s rise, so a new name certainly can’t hurt.
Microsoft’s marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on “The Sopranos” but rather a sound — the ringing of a bell that signals the “aha” moment when a search leads to an answer.
The name is meant to conjure “the sound of found” as Bing helps people with complex tasks like shopping for a camera, said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business group.
And if Bing turns into a verb like, say, Xerox, TiVo or, well, Google, that would be nice too. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said Thursday that he liked Bing’s potential to “verb up.” Plus, he said, “it works globally, and doesn’t have negative, unusual connotations.”
Some branding experts said choosing the name Bing was a good start, but also the easiest part of the challenge facing the company, since most people turn to Google without even thinking about it.
Michael Cronan, whose consulting firm helped come up with brands like TiVo and Amazon’s Kindle, said Bing’s sound, brevity and “ing” ending were all positives.
“It has a promise that you are going to find what you are looking for, and that’s great,” Mr. Cronan said. “But its success is entirely wrapped up in the quality of the experience that Microsoft can deliver.”
Peter Sealey, a former chief marketing officer at the Coca-Cola Company, said Microsoft should have picked a name that more directly connotes search.
“Bing has no equity; it signals nothing,” Mr. Sealey said. “It is going to be an enormous expense to create an image for this thing called Bing.”
Google’s name is a play on the word googol, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The company has said the name speaks to its ambitious mission to organize all the world’s information.
Asked about Microsoft’s choice of name at a press conference on Wednesday, Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, said he did not know enough about the new service to comment on it. Then he deadpanned: “We’ve been pretty happy with the name Google.”
Meanwhile, some tech people were already noting that Bing is also an unfortunate acronym: “But It’s Not Google.”
(the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/technology/internet/29bing.html?ref=technology)
A year from now, if you hear someone say that — and actually understand what it means — Bill Gates will be a happy billionaire.
That is because it will be a sign that Microsoft is finally making progress in its quest to challenge Google in the Internet search business.
Bing, the name Microsoft gave to the new search service it unveiled Thursday, is its answer to Google — a noun that once meant little but has become part of the language as a verb that is a synonym for executing a Web search. After months of, uh, searching, Microsoft settled on Bing to replace the all-too-forgettable Live Search, which itself replaced MSN Search.
Microsoft invested billions of dollars in those services and failed to slow Google’s rise, so a new name certainly can’t hurt.
Microsoft’s marketing gurus hope that Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on “The Sopranos” but rather a sound — the ringing of a bell that signals the “aha” moment when a search leads to an answer.
The name is meant to conjure “the sound of found” as Bing helps people with complex tasks like shopping for a camera, said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business group.
And if Bing turns into a verb like, say, Xerox, TiVo or, well, Google, that would be nice too. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said Thursday that he liked Bing’s potential to “verb up.” Plus, he said, “it works globally, and doesn’t have negative, unusual connotations.”
Some branding experts said choosing the name Bing was a good start, but also the easiest part of the challenge facing the company, since most people turn to Google without even thinking about it.
Michael Cronan, whose consulting firm helped come up with brands like TiVo and Amazon’s Kindle, said Bing’s sound, brevity and “ing” ending were all positives.
“It has a promise that you are going to find what you are looking for, and that’s great,” Mr. Cronan said. “But its success is entirely wrapped up in the quality of the experience that Microsoft can deliver.”
Peter Sealey, a former chief marketing officer at the Coca-Cola Company, said Microsoft should have picked a name that more directly connotes search.
“Bing has no equity; it signals nothing,” Mr. Sealey said. “It is going to be an enormous expense to create an image for this thing called Bing.”
Google’s name is a play on the word googol, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The company has said the name speaks to its ambitious mission to organize all the world’s information.
Asked about Microsoft’s choice of name at a press conference on Wednesday, Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, said he did not know enough about the new service to comment on it. Then he deadpanned: “We’ve been pretty happy with the name Google.”
Meanwhile, some tech people were already noting that Bing is also an unfortunate acronym: “But It’s Not Google.”
(the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/technology/internet/29bing.html?ref=technology)
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Facebook Lands $200 Million in Funding
Ending months of fevered speculation over whether it would raise more money, social network Facebook said on May 26 that it will take a $200 million investment from Russia's Digital Sky Technologies.
In return, DST is getting preferred stock worth 1.96% of Facebook, valuing the social network at $10 billion. This is the first time Facebook has raised major equity funding since late 2007, when Microsoft (MSFT) invested $240 million in exchange for a 1.6% stake that valued the site at $15 billion.
In a move that will help Facebook employees unlock some of the value of their shares before the company goes public or is sold, DST will purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from current or former Facebook employees. DST co-founder Yuri Milner tells BusinessWeek that the agreement to buy common stock was not a precondition of the equity investment. "These are two separate transactions," Milner says in an interview. DST and Facebook say they will release details of the plan this summer.
Zuckerberg: No shift in strategy
Facebook considers the investment a "good buffer" and will use it for expansion, rather than to fund existing operations, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says in an interview. "It might come in handy if we want to expand," Zuckerberg says. "We felt the valuation was good. Having additional money will allow us to explore new things, such as building data centers or acquiring companies." Sales are rising, and the company has no concrete plans to spend the cash, he adds. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said as recently as April that the company did not need additional financing.
Over the past year, while most companies have grown cautious and cut back on expansion, the social networking Web site has pressed ahead with aggressive growth plans. However, Zuckerberg says, the investment does not portend a strategic change. "This doesn't signal any shift in strategy," he says.
Zuckerberg also reiterated that Facebook has no plans to sell shares to the public soon. "For a lot of start-ups, you get the feeling that the IPO is really the end goal," he says. "That's really not the case for us. We view that as one milestone along the way. We don't see it happening in the immediate horizon. It's not something we're rushing toward. We'll do it when it's the right thing for the company."
DST: dozens of Web investments
On a conference call following the announcement, Zuckerberg also reiterated the company's forecast for sales to rise 70% this year. Some analysts remain skeptical that the company can achieve such growth during a recession. For instance, eMarketer speculates that Facebook's main source of revenue—global advertising—will increase 20%, to $300 million, from $250 million. "Where is that [70%] going to come from?" says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst. "I can't see it coming solely from advertising. Either he has some new revenue stream up his sleeve or he is crazy."
On the call, Zuckerberg said Facebook was drawn by DST's expertise in developing business models that help social networks make money. Based in London and Moscow, DST is a four-year-old investment group. According to its Web site, DST has raised and invested more than $1 billion in over 30 companies, including Russian Web portal Mail.ru, Russian social network Vkontakte.ru, and Forticom Group, which owns and operates other social networks in Russia and Eastern Europe.
While other private investors have offered to buy Facebook shares for valuations in the range of $4 billion to $6 billion, DST co-founder Yuri Milner expressed confidence in the company's ability to make money on its Facebook stake. Although Facebook and other U.S.-based social networks have had a hard time making money from their growing number of users, Milner said the social networks he has invested in are making much more money per user than Facebook is now. Milner said Facebook would be able to generate more money from advertising and forms of e-commerce, such as micropayments for virtual gifts given to a person's friends. "We see monetization patterns that will be very applicable to Facebook going forward," he said. "For us it was almost a no-brainer."
A Soviet at Wharton in 1990
Milner says he does not need to use only traditional metrics, such as price-to-earnings multiples, in valuing his Internet investments. "That's not how we look at it," said Milner. "We see things that others don't see."
Milner, who received part of his education in America, founded DST in 2005 along with fellow Russian businessman Gregory Finger. A 1990 article in the Daily Pennsylvanian, the newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania, said Milner was "the first Soviet citizen ever to study at Wharton," Penn's prestigious business school.
In the story, Milner said his goal was to return with his degree to the Soviet Union to take advantage of the developing free markets and serve as a bridge between his native country and the West. "My idea is to be in the most useful place in the proper time," Milner said.
Almost two decades later, Milner is hoping he has found that place in Facebook.
(the article was originally published at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2009/tc20090526_070168.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story)
In return, DST is getting preferred stock worth 1.96% of Facebook, valuing the social network at $10 billion. This is the first time Facebook has raised major equity funding since late 2007, when Microsoft (MSFT) invested $240 million in exchange for a 1.6% stake that valued the site at $15 billion.
In a move that will help Facebook employees unlock some of the value of their shares before the company goes public or is sold, DST will purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from current or former Facebook employees. DST co-founder Yuri Milner tells BusinessWeek that the agreement to buy common stock was not a precondition of the equity investment. "These are two separate transactions," Milner says in an interview. DST and Facebook say they will release details of the plan this summer.
Zuckerberg: No shift in strategy
Facebook considers the investment a "good buffer" and will use it for expansion, rather than to fund existing operations, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says in an interview. "It might come in handy if we want to expand," Zuckerberg says. "We felt the valuation was good. Having additional money will allow us to explore new things, such as building data centers or acquiring companies." Sales are rising, and the company has no concrete plans to spend the cash, he adds. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said as recently as April that the company did not need additional financing.
Over the past year, while most companies have grown cautious and cut back on expansion, the social networking Web site has pressed ahead with aggressive growth plans. However, Zuckerberg says, the investment does not portend a strategic change. "This doesn't signal any shift in strategy," he says.
Zuckerberg also reiterated that Facebook has no plans to sell shares to the public soon. "For a lot of start-ups, you get the feeling that the IPO is really the end goal," he says. "That's really not the case for us. We view that as one milestone along the way. We don't see it happening in the immediate horizon. It's not something we're rushing toward. We'll do it when it's the right thing for the company."
DST: dozens of Web investments
On a conference call following the announcement, Zuckerberg also reiterated the company's forecast for sales to rise 70% this year. Some analysts remain skeptical that the company can achieve such growth during a recession. For instance, eMarketer speculates that Facebook's main source of revenue—global advertising—will increase 20%, to $300 million, from $250 million. "Where is that [70%] going to come from?" says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst. "I can't see it coming solely from advertising. Either he has some new revenue stream up his sleeve or he is crazy."
On the call, Zuckerberg said Facebook was drawn by DST's expertise in developing business models that help social networks make money. Based in London and Moscow, DST is a four-year-old investment group. According to its Web site, DST has raised and invested more than $1 billion in over 30 companies, including Russian Web portal Mail.ru, Russian social network Vkontakte.ru, and Forticom Group, which owns and operates other social networks in Russia and Eastern Europe.
While other private investors have offered to buy Facebook shares for valuations in the range of $4 billion to $6 billion, DST co-founder Yuri Milner expressed confidence in the company's ability to make money on its Facebook stake. Although Facebook and other U.S.-based social networks have had a hard time making money from their growing number of users, Milner said the social networks he has invested in are making much more money per user than Facebook is now. Milner said Facebook would be able to generate more money from advertising and forms of e-commerce, such as micropayments for virtual gifts given to a person's friends. "We see monetization patterns that will be very applicable to Facebook going forward," he said. "For us it was almost a no-brainer."
A Soviet at Wharton in 1990
Milner says he does not need to use only traditional metrics, such as price-to-earnings multiples, in valuing his Internet investments. "That's not how we look at it," said Milner. "We see things that others don't see."
Milner, who received part of his education in America, founded DST in 2005 along with fellow Russian businessman Gregory Finger. A 1990 article in the Daily Pennsylvanian, the newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania, said Milner was "the first Soviet citizen ever to study at Wharton," Penn's prestigious business school.
In the story, Milner said his goal was to return with his degree to the Soviet Union to take advantage of the developing free markets and serve as a bridge between his native country and the West. "My idea is to be in the most useful place in the proper time," Milner said.
Almost two decades later, Milner is hoping he has found that place in Facebook.
(the article was originally published at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2009/tc20090526_070168.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story)
Microsoft Aims Big Guns at Google, Asks Consumers to Rethink Search
Microsoft has used attack ads to go after Apple, and now it has Google in its sights.
The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That's a big campaign -- big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.
JWT has been tapped for the push, which will include online, TV, print and radio. Another sign of the campaign's size: At a time when most agencies are laying people off, JWT added creatives on the Microsoft business last week.
People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won't go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they'll focus on planting the idea that today's search engines don't work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems. That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing's biggest challenges.
"If you grab the average user off the street and ask them, 'Does search suck?' I think they'd say no. They don't know what else can be done," said Shashi Seth, a former Google executive who is now chief revenue officer at Cooliris. "They think search does a pretty good job, and if you could prove otherwise with a product that's differentiated, people will sit up and take notice."
Case for refinement
Indeed, data show that about 65% of people are satisfied or very satisfied with online search. But Microsoft sees an opening on its own proprietary search data: 42% of searches require refinement, and 25% of clicks are the back button.
That's why Mr. Seth likens the Bing marketing challenge to that of the Apple iPhone before it was introduced. Most people, pre-iPhone, didn't know they were missing a multi-touch screen, or an application that would enable them to detect what song was playing wherever they were. But Apple, through its ads, showed how markedly different the experience was and created a new de facto standard for phones.
Many will argue that no amount of advertising Microsoft throws at the product will make a difference -- the quality of search results is the only thing that matters. And that may have once been true; after all, Google built its brand on the back of a great user experience, results that were markedly better and zero ad support.
But that's not necessarily true anymore, as the quality of search engines has approached parity. Sure, there are no switching costs, and it's easy to simply type in a new web address should a better engine come along, but the psychological pull of the leading brand in the space overrides those factors for many consumers.
Consider that Google has conducted internal tests, according to people familiar with them, in which the company put its logo and treatment on another engine's search results. Users still prefer the results with the Google logo, even if they're not Google results. Or consider that a revamped Ask.com made its debut in 2007 to a glowing review from The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, who said it "holds its own with Google, and even beats the champ on some searches." Two years later? Ask's share of search is down 28%.
'Better mousetrap'
"I don't think they can win this game with a better mousetrap," said Allen Adamson, managing director of Landor Associates, New York. "They have to compete with Google on a brand front -- there's no other way to skin this but go head on against the Google brand."
Obviously Microsoft has not shied away from "going head on" in its Windows campaign. Its chief attack on Apple -- that it's too expensive and not worth the high price -- is showing some signs of working. Apple's value perception among 18- to 34-year-olds has dropped significantly since the campaign launched in late March, which might be a testament to the right message at the right time.
Still, advertising isn't a panacea, as even the most self-absorbed ad man knows, especially when it's not the right advertising. Ask.com famously spent $57 million in 2007 to market its engine, and another $22 million last year, according to TNS. The 2007 campaign was an oddball execution from Crispin Porter & Bogusky that touted "the algorithm" -- a concept unlikely to grab anyone not already entrenched in the world of digital marketing. What Microsoft needs to do is go after people who don't know and probably don't care what an algorithm is.
And all the advertising in the world only works if the product backs it up. People who've seen the Microsoft product suggest it's useful and has some nifty filtering tools, even though it's not a markedly different-looking interface, at least for text search (some of the multimedia search results, however, do look quite different from how Google currently displays them).
"It doesn't take a lot to switch people from one type to another and usually it's a unique feature that gets people excited," said David Karnstedt, CEO of Efficient Frontier and former head of sales for Yahoo. He reflected on his days at AltaVista, which Google supplanted. "Google got people excited because it got people and places right early on. That got people to really start to switch, and once developed the habit of using Google, it was hard to get them to switch back."
(you can read more at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136847)
The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. That's a big campaign -- big compared with consumer-product launches ($50 million is considered a sizable budget for a national rollout) and very big when you consider that Google spent about $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, with about $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting. Microsoft, by comparison, spent $361 million. Certainly Google has never faced an ad assault of anything like this magnitude.
JWT has been tapped for the push, which will include online, TV, print and radio. Another sign of the campaign's size: At a time when most agencies are laying people off, JWT added creatives on the Microsoft business last week.
People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won't go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they'll focus on planting the idea that today's search engines don't work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems. That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing's biggest challenges.
"If you grab the average user off the street and ask them, 'Does search suck?' I think they'd say no. They don't know what else can be done," said Shashi Seth, a former Google executive who is now chief revenue officer at Cooliris. "They think search does a pretty good job, and if you could prove otherwise with a product that's differentiated, people will sit up and take notice."
Case for refinement
Indeed, data show that about 65% of people are satisfied or very satisfied with online search. But Microsoft sees an opening on its own proprietary search data: 42% of searches require refinement, and 25% of clicks are the back button.
That's why Mr. Seth likens the Bing marketing challenge to that of the Apple iPhone before it was introduced. Most people, pre-iPhone, didn't know they were missing a multi-touch screen, or an application that would enable them to detect what song was playing wherever they were. But Apple, through its ads, showed how markedly different the experience was and created a new de facto standard for phones.
Many will argue that no amount of advertising Microsoft throws at the product will make a difference -- the quality of search results is the only thing that matters. And that may have once been true; after all, Google built its brand on the back of a great user experience, results that were markedly better and zero ad support.
But that's not necessarily true anymore, as the quality of search engines has approached parity. Sure, there are no switching costs, and it's easy to simply type in a new web address should a better engine come along, but the psychological pull of the leading brand in the space overrides those factors for many consumers.
Consider that Google has conducted internal tests, according to people familiar with them, in which the company put its logo and treatment on another engine's search results. Users still prefer the results with the Google logo, even if they're not Google results. Or consider that a revamped Ask.com made its debut in 2007 to a glowing review from The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, who said it "holds its own with Google, and even beats the champ on some searches." Two years later? Ask's share of search is down 28%.
'Better mousetrap'
"I don't think they can win this game with a better mousetrap," said Allen Adamson, managing director of Landor Associates, New York. "They have to compete with Google on a brand front -- there's no other way to skin this but go head on against the Google brand."
Obviously Microsoft has not shied away from "going head on" in its Windows campaign. Its chief attack on Apple -- that it's too expensive and not worth the high price -- is showing some signs of working. Apple's value perception among 18- to 34-year-olds has dropped significantly since the campaign launched in late March, which might be a testament to the right message at the right time.
Still, advertising isn't a panacea, as even the most self-absorbed ad man knows, especially when it's not the right advertising. Ask.com famously spent $57 million in 2007 to market its engine, and another $22 million last year, according to TNS. The 2007 campaign was an oddball execution from Crispin Porter & Bogusky that touted "the algorithm" -- a concept unlikely to grab anyone not already entrenched in the world of digital marketing. What Microsoft needs to do is go after people who don't know and probably don't care what an algorithm is.
And all the advertising in the world only works if the product backs it up. People who've seen the Microsoft product suggest it's useful and has some nifty filtering tools, even though it's not a markedly different-looking interface, at least for text search (some of the multimedia search results, however, do look quite different from how Google currently displays them).
"It doesn't take a lot to switch people from one type to another and usually it's a unique feature that gets people excited," said David Karnstedt, CEO of Efficient Frontier and former head of sales for Yahoo. He reflected on his days at AltaVista, which Google supplanted. "Google got people excited because it got people and places right early on. That got people to really start to switch, and once developed the habit of using Google, it was hard to get them to switch back."
(you can read more at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136847)
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Microsoft Buys another Start-Up
Microsoft Corp. agreed to acquire a videogame start-up co-founded and partly owned by Don Mattrick, the executive who runs Microsoft's videogame business.
The Redmond, Wash., company said the purchase of BigPark Inc., a Vancouver-based company that is staffed by veterans from Electronic Arts Inc., will give Microsoft control of a new game that BigPark is developing exclusively for the company's Xbox 360 game console. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
The deal is complicated by the role of Mr. Mattrick, who leads Microsoft's videogame efforts as senior vice president of the company's interactive-entertainment business. He is also chairman and co-founder of BigPark and remains a minority shareholder in the company.
David Dennis, a Microsoft spokesman, said Mr. Mattrick wasn't involved in the discussions to acquire BigPark and that the impetus to do the deal came from other Microsoft executives, including Phil Spencer, general manager of Microsoft game studios, and Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft's entertainment-and-devices division.
"The team was blown away by the creativity and talent of folks at the studio," Mr. Dennis said. "We think the game they're working on is going to be a hit."
Mr. Mattrick co-founded BigPark several years ago after leaving Electronic Arts. Microsoft said Mr. Mattrick disclosed his investment in BigPark to the company before they hired him to run Microsoft's videogame business two years ago. His position as chairman of BigPark was approved by the company pursuant to Microsoft's standard of business conduct, Microsoft said in a statement.
[the article was orginally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124172618297397483.html]
The Redmond, Wash., company said the purchase of BigPark Inc., a Vancouver-based company that is staffed by veterans from Electronic Arts Inc., will give Microsoft control of a new game that BigPark is developing exclusively for the company's Xbox 360 game console. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
The deal is complicated by the role of Mr. Mattrick, who leads Microsoft's videogame efforts as senior vice president of the company's interactive-entertainment business. He is also chairman and co-founder of BigPark and remains a minority shareholder in the company.
David Dennis, a Microsoft spokesman, said Mr. Mattrick wasn't involved in the discussions to acquire BigPark and that the impetus to do the deal came from other Microsoft executives, including Phil Spencer, general manager of Microsoft game studios, and Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft's entertainment-and-devices division.
"The team was blown away by the creativity and talent of folks at the studio," Mr. Dennis said. "We think the game they're working on is going to be a hit."
Mr. Mattrick co-founded BigPark several years ago after leaving Electronic Arts. Microsoft said Mr. Mattrick disclosed his investment in BigPark to the company before they hired him to run Microsoft's videogame business two years ago. His position as chairman of BigPark was approved by the company pursuant to Microsoft's standard of business conduct, Microsoft said in a statement.
[the article was orginally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124172618297397483.html]
Friday, May 8, 2009
Microsoft to buy game maker BigPark Inc
Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it will buy computer game designer BigPark Inc for an undisclosed amount, as it pushes its strategy of producing exclusive games for its Xbox entertainment system.
Microsoft has already been working with Vancouver, Canada-based BigPark over the past year on a game for the Xbox, but has so far announced no details. More information is expected at the video game industry's annual E3 Expo in June.
BigPark, founded in 2007 by former executives of Electronic Arts Inc and Distinctive Software Inc, will become part of Microsoft Game Studios.
One of BigPark's co-founders, Don Mattrick, became senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business in July 2007.
[the article was originally published at http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5460AW20090507]
Microsoft has already been working with Vancouver, Canada-based BigPark over the past year on a game for the Xbox, but has so far announced no details. More information is expected at the video game industry's annual E3 Expo in June.
BigPark, founded in 2007 by former executives of Electronic Arts Inc and Distinctive Software Inc, will become part of Microsoft Game Studios.
One of BigPark's co-founders, Don Mattrick, became senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business in July 2007.
[the article was originally published at http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5460AW20090507]
Biz Stone says Twitter's not for sale
Twitter Inc. co-founder Biz Stone said today the company is not for sale despite reports that Apple Inc. is in late-stage negotiations to buy the microblogging site.
Stone and co-founder Evan Williams were making an appearance on the morning talk show The View when host Barbara Walters asked about the recent flood of rumors that the likes of Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. all are vying to buy Twitter. Stone said, "No. We are not for sale."
Echoing his previous statements about sale rumors, Stone added that right now, Twitter is focused on developing new features on its Web site and on remaining independent.
Stone's comments come just a day after rumors flared on the blogosphere that Apple was laying down a $700 million offer for Twitter. This latest round of speculation comes on the heels of last fall's failed bid by Facebook Inc. to scoop up Twitter, which was followed by rumors that had both Google and Microsoft both casting an eye on the microblogging site.
Blog site Gawker.com reported on Tuesday that an unnamed source, who reportedly has been recruited for a senior-level position at Apple, said the company is in "serious negotiations" with Twitter. The story noted that Apple is trying to hash out a deal quickly so an announcement could be made on June 8, during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch also reported that a "normally reliable source" said that Apple is in late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter. However, that story also noted that other sources said they have no knowledge of any talks between the two.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said yesterday that if the rumors about Apple's interest are true, it could make for an interesting combination.
"Apple has the right 'attitude' to run something like Twitter, plus the ability to monetize it with advertising," Olds said. "I can see where Twitter might fit quite nicely into the Apple empire. It would give Apple a strong entry into the social networking market and also a very solid advertising vehicle."
[the article was originally published at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132602]
Stone and co-founder Evan Williams were making an appearance on the morning talk show The View when host Barbara Walters asked about the recent flood of rumors that the likes of Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. all are vying to buy Twitter. Stone said, "No. We are not for sale."
Echoing his previous statements about sale rumors, Stone added that right now, Twitter is focused on developing new features on its Web site and on remaining independent.
Stone's comments come just a day after rumors flared on the blogosphere that Apple was laying down a $700 million offer for Twitter. This latest round of speculation comes on the heels of last fall's failed bid by Facebook Inc. to scoop up Twitter, which was followed by rumors that had both Google and Microsoft both casting an eye on the microblogging site.
Blog site Gawker.com reported on Tuesday that an unnamed source, who reportedly has been recruited for a senior-level position at Apple, said the company is in "serious negotiations" with Twitter. The story noted that Apple is trying to hash out a deal quickly so an announcement could be made on June 8, during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch also reported that a "normally reliable source" said that Apple is in late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter. However, that story also noted that other sources said they have no knowledge of any talks between the two.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said yesterday that if the rumors about Apple's interest are true, it could make for an interesting combination.
"Apple has the right 'attitude' to run something like Twitter, plus the ability to monetize it with advertising," Olds said. "I can see where Twitter might fit quite nicely into the Apple empire. It would give Apple a strong entry into the social networking market and also a very solid advertising vehicle."
[the article was originally published at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132602]
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Google Tries Viral Campaign to Goose Interest in Chrome
Why would Google take on Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla in the web-browser war and not try to win it? That question has been asked since Google ambled into the Safari-Explorer-Firefox derby last fall with its own entry called Chrome, but took a remarkably low-key approach to marketing it.
Well, Google is about to turn up the heat, a little. The search giant is releasing 11 short films on YouTube today that extol Chrome's various virtues, in hopes it can turn them into the kind of viral hits YouTube is famous for. (It doesn't hurt that Google owns YouTube.)
The videos take pains not to mention or to directly attack the competition; rather, their goal is to get people to start thinking about what they want out of an appliance most thinks works just fine.
'Featured videos'
Initially, the videos will get promotion as "featured videos" on YouTube's home page, but Google may combine that with a media buy across the content network that would see the videos placed as display ads across the web. Tagline: a new way to get online.
"There's a teeny group of people who obsess and care browsers, but most people don't really think about it," said Google Creative Director Robert Wong. "But imagine if a browser was a car and people didn't know what they were driving or that they had a choice?"
The videos are Google's latest effort to market Chrome, which has been limited largely to keyword and display ads on Google's ad network, a download button on YouTube and for a few days after its launch a link on Google's search page. But after a flurry of early-adopters, market share for Chrome has settled at 1.23% compared to Explorer's 66.8%, Firefox's 22% and Safari's 8.2% according to Net Applications.
Adoption has been abysmal largely because Google hasn't promoted the software or signed any expensive deals to have PCs shipped with Chrome pre-installed (which reports say it has considered). Google also hasn't yet released a Mac version, eliminating a small but potentially enthusiastic group of early adopters.
Marketing on the cheap
Google is still trying to market Chrome on the cheap: Budgets for the videos were $10,000, according to a person who bid on the project. In using YouTube to market Chrome, Google is using the video service in much the same way mass marketers tend to, as an opportunity for free, earned publicity rather than a medium on which to purchase advertising.
The videos were produced by a diverse array of designers, illustrators and mostly small creative shops such as Motion Theory, Go Robot and Hunter Gatherer. Christoph Niemann, a frequent illustrator for The New Yorker and the New York Times, created an animated short called "You and Your Browser," which depicts the difference between a "Bad Browser!" and the various attributes (speed, power, sophistication) of a "Good Browser."
The campaign is similar to Chrome Experiments, a site launched in March where Google commissioned web designers to create web pages and applications that take advantage of the speed of the browser.
Google got into the browser business as a defensive move: All of its products and services from search to e-mail to YouTube are experienced through a browser, software that Google does not control. By launching an open-source browser, Google can push development in the space, even if it never wins in market share. A video of Google engineers explaining the strategy has been viewed nearly 1 million times on YouTube.
[the article was originally published at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136340]
Well, Google is about to turn up the heat, a little. The search giant is releasing 11 short films on YouTube today that extol Chrome's various virtues, in hopes it can turn them into the kind of viral hits YouTube is famous for. (It doesn't hurt that Google owns YouTube.)
The videos take pains not to mention or to directly attack the competition; rather, their goal is to get people to start thinking about what they want out of an appliance most thinks works just fine.
'Featured videos'
Initially, the videos will get promotion as "featured videos" on YouTube's home page, but Google may combine that with a media buy across the content network that would see the videos placed as display ads across the web. Tagline: a new way to get online.
"There's a teeny group of people who obsess and care browsers, but most people don't really think about it," said Google Creative Director Robert Wong. "But imagine if a browser was a car and people didn't know what they were driving or that they had a choice?"
The videos are Google's latest effort to market Chrome, which has been limited largely to keyword and display ads on Google's ad network, a download button on YouTube and for a few days after its launch a link on Google's search page. But after a flurry of early-adopters, market share for Chrome has settled at 1.23% compared to Explorer's 66.8%, Firefox's 22% and Safari's 8.2% according to Net Applications.
Adoption has been abysmal largely because Google hasn't promoted the software or signed any expensive deals to have PCs shipped with Chrome pre-installed (which reports say it has considered). Google also hasn't yet released a Mac version, eliminating a small but potentially enthusiastic group of early adopters.
Marketing on the cheap
Google is still trying to market Chrome on the cheap: Budgets for the videos were $10,000, according to a person who bid on the project. In using YouTube to market Chrome, Google is using the video service in much the same way mass marketers tend to, as an opportunity for free, earned publicity rather than a medium on which to purchase advertising.
The videos were produced by a diverse array of designers, illustrators and mostly small creative shops such as Motion Theory, Go Robot and Hunter Gatherer. Christoph Niemann, a frequent illustrator for The New Yorker and the New York Times, created an animated short called "You and Your Browser," which depicts the difference between a "Bad Browser!" and the various attributes (speed, power, sophistication) of a "Good Browser."
The campaign is similar to Chrome Experiments, a site launched in March where Google commissioned web designers to create web pages and applications that take advantage of the speed of the browser.
Google got into the browser business as a defensive move: All of its products and services from search to e-mail to YouTube are experienced through a browser, software that Google does not control. By launching an open-source browser, Google can push development in the space, even if it never wins in market share. A video of Google engineers explaining the strategy has been viewed nearly 1 million times on YouTube.
[the article was originally published at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136340]
Friday, April 24, 2009
MySpace founders step aside
The founders of MySpace are leaving the helm of the pioneering Web site that made social-networking a mainstream phenomenon, as owner News Corp. seeks to reinvigorate the once-hot property it scooped up four years ago.
The pushing aside of Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, whose contracts weren't due to expire until October, represents a pivotal test for the viability of social-networking sites. While social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have exploded in popularity in recent years, they have struggled to generate the kind of revenue and earnings prospects that can sustain them as businesses over the long haul.
News Corp. now aims to show that a large conglomerate, with a portfolio that includes many old-media properties including newspapers, can succeed at that task.
People familiar with the situation said News Corp. was completing a deal to name former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Owen Van Natta as chief executive to succeed Mr. DeWolfe. He would report to Jon Miller, the former AOL chief executive who was recruited to join News Corp. this month in a newly created position of chief digital officer. Charged with all News Corp.'s stand-alone digital properties, he was particularly given the mission of shoring up MySpace.
Spokeswomen for News Corp. and MySpace both declined to comment beyond a news release. Messrs. DeWolfe, Anderson and Van Natta couldn't be reached for comment.
News Corp. sees MySpace as critical in its transformation from a conglomerate of traditional television, movie and newspaper businesses to a new-media titan. But while MySpace grew quickly following News Corp.'s purchase, last year its revenue fell short of executives' targets. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
MySpace is still the dominant social-networking site in the U.S. But its U.S. audience has fallen this year. In March, MySpace attracted 70.1 million unique visitors, down 3.6% from a year ago, according to comScore Media Metrix. Meanwhile, Facebook is nipping at its heels. Facebook surpassed MySpace's world-wide audience a year ago, and is growing fast in the U.S., with 61.2 million unique visitors in March, up 72% from a year earlier.
More broadly, MySpace, like other social-networking sites, still must overcome doubts about the medium's viability. Advertisers, for one, remain leery. "Advertising doesn't fit so neatly into a conversation that people are having among themselves," says Tom Bedecarre, chief executive of independent digital-ad firm AKQA. "The interruptive model of advertising hasn't been successful."
MySpace was founded in 2003 by Messrs. DeWolfe and Anderson. Their email marketing division of a Los Angeles company called eUniverse, which later renamed itself Intermix, was floundering, so they imitated a popular site at the time, Friendster.
They made two key improvements on Friendster: They allowed users to customize their profile pages, and they allowed users to create any identity they liked. Friendster, like Facebook today, encouraged members to use their real names.
But just as MySpace was taking off, fueled in large part by its popularity with musicians, it was sold to News Corp. MySpace's parent company, Intermix, negotiated the $650 million deal directly with News Corp., leaving the MySpace founders out of the loop until the last minute.
News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch immediately sought to mollify the founders with lucrative two-year pay packages of $30 million each, but Messrs. DeWolfe and Anderson still chafed at the fact that MySpace ad sales were taken over by executives at Fox Interactive Media, according to people familiar with the situation.
The rank and file of MySpace were also angry that their stock options were canceled after the acquisition and that they were forced to move from Santa Monica, Calif., to Beverly Hills, the people said.
Relations fell apart further. Mr. DeWolfe ignored suggestions from Fox Interactive Media President Ross Levinsohn about ways to improve the site. Mr. DeWolfe sought to amend a $900 million advertising deal News Corp. cut with Google Inc. -- delaying its implementation, the people said. That deal is due to expire next year.
Mr. Levinsohn also clashed with Mr. Anderson, who is president of the site. Mr. Anderson controlled the product development and was criticized for not moving fast. In April 2006, MySpace bought the online karaoke service kSolo. MySpace launched the karaoke feature on its site in April 2008 -- two years later.
The tension between the MySpace founders and News Corp. eventually led to Mr. Levinsohn's dismissal in November 2006. He was succeeded by his distant cousin, Peter Levinsohn, who eventually gave Mr. DeWolfe control of the advertising sales at MySpace that he had sought.
All this time, Facebook was steadily gaining on MySpace. Founded by Silicon Valley computer programmers as a social network for Harvard students in 2004, Facebook expanded to other college campuses and opened to everybody in 2006.
Facebook focused on building innovative features and encouraging third-party software developers to write applications to run on Facebook.
Meanwhile, MySpace, with its marketing and music background, fought back with entertainment, such as a celebrity news site and an expensive music joint venture.
Three top MySpace executives, including Amit Kapur, former chief operating officer, left the company in March to work on a start-up. MySpace has yet to name successors for those positions.
Mr. Miller began discussing the job with potential candidates including Mr. Van Natta, but hadn't finalized anything when the news of the talks leaked, according to people familiar with the situation. Mr. Van Natta helped expand Facebook but stepped into a less prominent role as chief revenue officer as the site grew, ultimately leaving the company in February 2008. At MySpace, he could serve as a bridge between Silicon Valley and MySpace, which has struggled to match Facebook's technology prowess.
Hearing of the talks, Mr. DeWolfe called Mr. Miller to discuss his future, these people said.
In the statement News Corp. released Wednesday announcing the move, it said Mr. Anderson would take on a new role in the organization. It said Mr. DeWolfe will continue to serve on the board of MySpace China and will be a strategic adviser to the company.
[credit : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124043324710044929.html]
Microsoft answer to Google AdSense
Microsoft on Wednesday opened its PubCenter advertising service up for public beta testing, providing more of an alternative to Google's AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network technology that places ads on publishers' sites.
All the services scrutinize the content on a Web site and place advertisements the service deems to be relevant to that content. As with ads on search sites, the advertiser pays only when a reader clicks on one of the ads, and revenue is shared with the publisher and the company operating the ad service.
Kevin McCabe, senior product manager of PubCenter, announced the move at the AdSpace conference Wednesday. People can sign up for the beta service at the PubCenter site, though it's only open to people in the United States at present.
Click-through rates on such services typically are far lower than for ads on search engines. But the technology still is significant, particularly during the recession, in part because advertisers can bid for keywords and limit their investments only to areas where they see a return.
[credit : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10224959-93.html]
All the services scrutinize the content on a Web site and place advertisements the service deems to be relevant to that content. As with ads on search sites, the advertiser pays only when a reader clicks on one of the ads, and revenue is shared with the publisher and the company operating the ad service.
Kevin McCabe, senior product manager of PubCenter, announced the move at the AdSpace conference Wednesday. People can sign up for the beta service at the PubCenter site, though it's only open to people in the United States at present.
Click-through rates on such services typically are far lower than for ads on search engines. But the technology still is significant, particularly during the recession, in part because advertisers can bid for keywords and limit their investments only to areas where they see a return.
[credit : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10224959-93.html]
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Yahoo Posts 78% Profit dip, job cuts again
Yahoo Inc. posted a 78% quarterly profit decline as the recession hit its slumping advertising business and the Internet company said it would eliminate about 675 more jobs, or 5% of its work force.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company was hurt across the board as companies scaled back their marketing budgets and flocked to cheaper alternatives. In particular, search-ad revenue, which had been a bright spot for Yahoo, declined 3% after several quarters of double-digit growth.
The results did little to alleviate the pressure on Chief Executive Carol Bartz to make big changes at Yahoo. While she has cut costs, Ms. Bartz is still working through strategic options, including possible sales of business units and a search-ad pact with Microsoft Corp. Yahoo executives declined Tuesday to discuss any talks with Microsoft.
Yahoo's display-ad business, which historically has been fed by spending from major brands such as car companies and telecommunications providers, dropped more quickly during the quarter. Revenue from display ads on sites Yahoo owns, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail fell 13%, compared with a 2% decline in the fourth quarter.
Ms. Bartz, who joined Yahoo two weeks into the quarter, said the company was being pressured by the economy but that "brand advertising will grow in an economic recovery," allowing Yahoo to "take meaningful share." She said that some companies, such as non-U.S. auto makers, have increased their spending with Yahoo.
Overall, Yahoo's revenue fell 13% in the first quarter to $1.58 billion, from $1.81 billion a year earlier. Net income declined to $118 million, or eight cents a share, from $537 million, or 37 cents a share, in the 2008 first quarter, when Yahoo recorded a $401 million noncash gain.
Yahoo and Microsoft are still discussing an agreement that would enable the two companies to combine search-ad assets, with Microsoft taking over the business of selling search ads on Yahoo pages, people familiar with the matter said. But no deal appears imminent, said a person familiar with the situation, adding that it appears both sides "are still talking conceptually."
Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen in an interview said he was pleased with the company's quarterly results given the "headwind in the economy."
He added that Yahoo would continue to pay close attention to costs, beyond the fresh layoffs. The company laid off roughly 1,500 employees in December and about 1,000 people in the first quarter of 2008.
Ms. Bartz said the latest cuts would be targeted at certain businesses rather than across the board. She added that the cuts were designed to give Yahoo "flexibility to accelerate hiring in other areas" and said she is continuing to focus resources on larger products that are performing well, such as Yahoo Mail.
Shares of Yahoo, which reported earnings after the market's close, rose 3.8% in after-hours trading to $14.92, after rising 5.3% to $14.38 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq composite trading.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124034487471340099.html]
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company was hurt across the board as companies scaled back their marketing budgets and flocked to cheaper alternatives. In particular, search-ad revenue, which had been a bright spot for Yahoo, declined 3% after several quarters of double-digit growth.
The results did little to alleviate the pressure on Chief Executive Carol Bartz to make big changes at Yahoo. While she has cut costs, Ms. Bartz is still working through strategic options, including possible sales of business units and a search-ad pact with Microsoft Corp. Yahoo executives declined Tuesday to discuss any talks with Microsoft.
Yahoo's display-ad business, which historically has been fed by spending from major brands such as car companies and telecommunications providers, dropped more quickly during the quarter. Revenue from display ads on sites Yahoo owns, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail fell 13%, compared with a 2% decline in the fourth quarter.
Ms. Bartz, who joined Yahoo two weeks into the quarter, said the company was being pressured by the economy but that "brand advertising will grow in an economic recovery," allowing Yahoo to "take meaningful share." She said that some companies, such as non-U.S. auto makers, have increased their spending with Yahoo.
Overall, Yahoo's revenue fell 13% in the first quarter to $1.58 billion, from $1.81 billion a year earlier. Net income declined to $118 million, or eight cents a share, from $537 million, or 37 cents a share, in the 2008 first quarter, when Yahoo recorded a $401 million noncash gain.
Yahoo and Microsoft are still discussing an agreement that would enable the two companies to combine search-ad assets, with Microsoft taking over the business of selling search ads on Yahoo pages, people familiar with the matter said. But no deal appears imminent, said a person familiar with the situation, adding that it appears both sides "are still talking conceptually."
Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen in an interview said he was pleased with the company's quarterly results given the "headwind in the economy."
He added that Yahoo would continue to pay close attention to costs, beyond the fresh layoffs. The company laid off roughly 1,500 employees in December and about 1,000 people in the first quarter of 2008.
Ms. Bartz said the latest cuts would be targeted at certain businesses rather than across the board. She added that the cuts were designed to give Yahoo "flexibility to accelerate hiring in other areas" and said she is continuing to focus resources on larger products that are performing well, such as Yahoo Mail.
Shares of Yahoo, which reported earnings after the market's close, rose 3.8% in after-hours trading to $14.92, after rising 5.3% to $14.38 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq composite trading.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124034487471340099.html]
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Bloggers for Hire - A profession in America
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.
Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's. And that's nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: "It's my work he'd say, I do it for pay."
This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth. The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.
What started as a discussion forum for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion, dentistry -- and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby and an outlet for volunteers is becoming big business for newly emerging sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry.
All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.
The barriers to entry couldn't be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.
Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.
As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.
Almost no blogging is by subscription; rather, it owes it economic model to on-line advertising. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed.
The United Kingdom has just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. But all of it was to be made up, and the friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an "absolutely brilliant" idea. Someone blew the whistle, but had the plot gone through, this blogstorm could have played a major role in the upcoming election.
As a political pollster, I always observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or whether the pollster had any track record. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn't seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.
The implications of bloggers for hire are substantial. While many bloggers probably support unionization in general, they have no union of their own. Most have no benefits, yet they work long hours in front of computer screens which could cause a variety of health ailments. And the owners of the big sites most often pay their bloggers as freelancers, avoiding all of those taxes and benefits that newspapers have to pay for their writers.
For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession.
It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can't be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.
And with millions of human-hours now going into writing and recording opinion, we have to wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy. Maybe all this self-criticism will propel us forward by putting us on the right track and helping us choose the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis. But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the "Wild West" eventually became just the "West."
[The article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html]
Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's. And that's nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: "It's my work he'd say, I do it for pay."
This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth. The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.
What started as a discussion forum for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion, dentistry -- and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby and an outlet for volunteers is becoming big business for newly emerging sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry.
All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.
The barriers to entry couldn't be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.
Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.
As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.
Almost no blogging is by subscription; rather, it owes it economic model to on-line advertising. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed.
The United Kingdom has just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. But all of it was to be made up, and the friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an "absolutely brilliant" idea. Someone blew the whistle, but had the plot gone through, this blogstorm could have played a major role in the upcoming election.
As a political pollster, I always observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or whether the pollster had any track record. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn't seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.
The implications of bloggers for hire are substantial. While many bloggers probably support unionization in general, they have no union of their own. Most have no benefits, yet they work long hours in front of computer screens which could cause a variety of health ailments. And the owners of the big sites most often pay their bloggers as freelancers, avoiding all of those taxes and benefits that newspapers have to pay for their writers.
For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession.
It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can't be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.
And with millions of human-hours now going into writing and recording opinion, we have to wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy. Maybe all this self-criticism will propel us forward by putting us on the right track and helping us choose the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis. But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the "Wild West" eventually became just the "West."
[The article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html]
Monday, April 20, 2009
Digg Ends Exclusive Advertisement deal with Microsoft
Digg is ending its two-year-old exclusive ad selling relationship with Microsoft, one year earlier than the deal was set to expire.
The two will continue working together on remnant and so-called "network reserve" inventory. Microsoft's network reserve ads represent high visibility placements sold to advertisers on a blind basis.
But beginning in July, Digg will be solely responsible for all custom ad deals and a significant portion of its own Interactive Advertising Bureau standard ad inventory.
The partnership initially was supposed to last until summer 2010, but the two always had an understanding that Digg would at some point step up to rep the bulk of its own ads, according to Mike Maser, Digg chief revenue and strategy officer. He said the company's internal sales efforts will focus on custom, non-IAB inventory combined with standardized banner ads.
"We've had a great relationship with Microsoft over the last year and a half," said Maser.
Digg hired its first ad sales executive, former Yahoo sales exec Thomas Shin, in January, and is now recruiting a national sales force. The company said it would soon make regional sales appointments for the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast. By the end of the year it hopes to hire a total of five to seven reps in San Francisco, the Los Angeles area, Chicago and New York.
Even though it will work with Digg on remnant inventory, Microsoft remains dedicated to high-engagement ad deals, according to Robin Domeniconi, VP U.S., Microsoft Advertising.
"We want to do custom," said Domeniconi, who was appointed in December to oversee a dizzying array of ad products at Microsoft. Those products -- represented by over 1,100 sellers -- include MSN, Microsoft Media Network, Live Search, partner deals like those with Facebook and Digg, and game products like Massive and Xbox Live, among others.
Under her leadership, Microsoft is moving away from pitching those products individually. Rather, reps are proposing custom ad packages that combine non-standard advertising, premium display placements, and remnant ads across all its channels.
For instance, Discovery Channel recently graced Microsoft with its entire online ad budget for the fifth-season debut of "Deadliest Catch." High-engagement placements spanned mobile, Web, gaming and other channels.
"I don't believe [IAB standard ads] are the only thing the Internet is good for," she said. "These types of packages let us get out of an ROI conversation."
[read more : http://www.clickz.com/3633453]
The two will continue working together on remnant and so-called "network reserve" inventory. Microsoft's network reserve ads represent high visibility placements sold to advertisers on a blind basis.
But beginning in July, Digg will be solely responsible for all custom ad deals and a significant portion of its own Interactive Advertising Bureau standard ad inventory.
The partnership initially was supposed to last until summer 2010, but the two always had an understanding that Digg would at some point step up to rep the bulk of its own ads, according to Mike Maser, Digg chief revenue and strategy officer. He said the company's internal sales efforts will focus on custom, non-IAB inventory combined with standardized banner ads.
"We've had a great relationship with Microsoft over the last year and a half," said Maser.
Digg hired its first ad sales executive, former Yahoo sales exec Thomas Shin, in January, and is now recruiting a national sales force. The company said it would soon make regional sales appointments for the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast. By the end of the year it hopes to hire a total of five to seven reps in San Francisco, the Los Angeles area, Chicago and New York.
Even though it will work with Digg on remnant inventory, Microsoft remains dedicated to high-engagement ad deals, according to Robin Domeniconi, VP U.S., Microsoft Advertising.
"We want to do custom," said Domeniconi, who was appointed in December to oversee a dizzying array of ad products at Microsoft. Those products -- represented by over 1,100 sellers -- include MSN, Microsoft Media Network, Live Search, partner deals like those with Facebook and Digg, and game products like Massive and Xbox Live, among others.
Under her leadership, Microsoft is moving away from pitching those products individually. Rather, reps are proposing custom ad packages that combine non-standard advertising, premium display placements, and remnant ads across all its channels.
For instance, Discovery Channel recently graced Microsoft with its entire online ad budget for the fifth-season debut of "Deadliest Catch." High-engagement placements spanned mobile, Web, gaming and other channels.
"I don't believe [IAB standard ads] are the only thing the Internet is good for," she said. "These types of packages let us get out of an ROI conversation."
[read more : http://www.clickz.com/3633453]
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Yahoo Is Said to Plan More Layoffs
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo is planning a new round of layoffs, the first since Carol Bartz became chief executive in January, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.
Skip to next paragraph
The layoffs could affect several hundred employees and may be announced as early as Tuesday when Yahoo reports first-quarter financial results, said these people, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because the plan is confidential.
A Yahoo spokesman, Brad Williams, declined to comment, citing a company policy not to discuss rumors and speculation.
The cuts would be the third round of layoffs at Yahoo in little more than a year. The Internet company, which has been struggling for more than two years, laid off about 1,000 workers early in 2008. It cut 1,400 or so in the fourth quarter of last year, in continuing efforts to prune its sprawling online business and bring down expenses. It ended the year with 13,600 employees.
In recent years, Yahoo has seen its growth slow and has lost ground to Google in online search. Despite its huge online audience of roughly 500 million people worldwide, it also missed the opportunity to acquire fast growing social Web sites, like YouTube or Facebook, which have become a magnet, especially with younger users.
And its display advertising business, which was concentrated on high-priced ads, has been undercut by the proliferation of sites that offer marketers a way to reach audiences at lower prices. The company has suffered from a continuing exodus of executives and a series of revampings that have damaged employee morale.
Late last year, Yahoo was hit with the deepening recession, which took a further bite out of the company’s online advertising business.
“If you look at the changing economic environment and the changing leadership, it is not surprising that you would see further cuts at the company,” said Scott Kessler, a stock analyst with Standard & Poor’s.
Under Ms. Bartz, Yahoo has also been trying to sell some business units that it doesn’t consider core to its mission, including Hotjobs, the online recruiting service, according to several people familiar with the plans.
Ms. Bartz has been reviewing Yahoo’s businesses. In recent weeks, she renewed discussions with Microsoft, which attempted to buy Yahoo early last year, and later tried to acquire the company’s search business. The new round of talks center around a possible advertising partnership, not an outright acquisition or a sale of Yahoo’s search business, according to people familiar with the discussions.
[credit : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/technology/companies/15yahoo.html?_r=1&ref=technology]
Skip to next paragraph
The layoffs could affect several hundred employees and may be announced as early as Tuesday when Yahoo reports first-quarter financial results, said these people, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because the plan is confidential.
A Yahoo spokesman, Brad Williams, declined to comment, citing a company policy not to discuss rumors and speculation.
The cuts would be the third round of layoffs at Yahoo in little more than a year. The Internet company, which has been struggling for more than two years, laid off about 1,000 workers early in 2008. It cut 1,400 or so in the fourth quarter of last year, in continuing efforts to prune its sprawling online business and bring down expenses. It ended the year with 13,600 employees.
In recent years, Yahoo has seen its growth slow and has lost ground to Google in online search. Despite its huge online audience of roughly 500 million people worldwide, it also missed the opportunity to acquire fast growing social Web sites, like YouTube or Facebook, which have become a magnet, especially with younger users.
And its display advertising business, which was concentrated on high-priced ads, has been undercut by the proliferation of sites that offer marketers a way to reach audiences at lower prices. The company has suffered from a continuing exodus of executives and a series of revampings that have damaged employee morale.
Late last year, Yahoo was hit with the deepening recession, which took a further bite out of the company’s online advertising business.
“If you look at the changing economic environment and the changing leadership, it is not surprising that you would see further cuts at the company,” said Scott Kessler, a stock analyst with Standard & Poor’s.
Under Ms. Bartz, Yahoo has also been trying to sell some business units that it doesn’t consider core to its mission, including Hotjobs, the online recruiting service, according to several people familiar with the plans.
Ms. Bartz has been reviewing Yahoo’s businesses. In recent weeks, she renewed discussions with Microsoft, which attempted to buy Yahoo early last year, and later tried to acquire the company’s search business. The new round of talks center around a possible advertising partnership, not an outright acquisition or a sale of Yahoo’s search business, according to people familiar with the discussions.
[credit : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/technology/companies/15yahoo.html?_r=1&ref=technology]
Monday, April 13, 2009
Twitter’s Bestest Search Friend? Google and Microsoft Engage in Yet Another Pick-Me Face-Off
In this digital era’s version of “Spy Vs. Spy,” Microsoft and Google find themselves in yet another sharp-elbowed battle to be the one to strike some kind of commercial search deal or product partnership with Twitter, many sources with knowledge of the situation said, as they also jockey for position to evaluate the potential of the much-hyped microblogging start-up.
After last week’s explosive rumor that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which BoomTown reported was wildly premature, I set out to try to sort out exactly what was going on.
As I found out, there was a lot–mostly much talking related to possible product and distribution partnerships, centered around Google or Microsoft, especially around a deal to become the one to exclusively deliver search or other similar services to Twitter properties.
The reason for the interest? Many think Twitter’s real-time search of its 140-character “tweets” posted by users on the service will become the next great battlefield in search. Google currently dominates the general search market, with third-place Microsoft struggling to get more share.
But how to do that is in flux, as past efforts at various third-party search arrangements have had mixed success for both Google and Microsoft. Both companies and also Twitter are trying to figure out new ways to do such deals.
On top of that, it is also unclear if Twitter wants to strike a deal purely to get a payment from either Microsoft or Google, as others have done. Twitter management has indicated that they are much more interested in growth and distribution over a revenue focus.
Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone said as much on the start-up’s Web site recently, as well as in many media interviews, noting that it will begin experimenting with its own business ideas this year.
In other words, the talks Twitter is having with both Google and Microsoft could also lead exactly nowhere too.
Along with the commercial talks, both Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) are also trying to figure out if Twitter is simply one of the many shooting stars that are far more typical in Silicon Valley or if it is sea-change start-up worth pursuing and paying up big-time to acquire.
“As impressive as what Twitter has done, we are all overexcited,” said one source. “And so it’s hard to figure out the right thing to do with all the pressure to do something.”
Thus, while an offer for Twitter from Microsoft, Google or a plethora of other players–from News Corp. (NWS) to Yahoo (YHOO) to Cisco (CSCO) to Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL to big telcos–could come at any time, said many sources, only a huge price would lead to an acquisition, especially since the growth of the service has been accelerating more rapidly in recent months than has been reported publicly.
This all makes for dicey times at Twitter, which sits at the center of all this noise, trying to build a company, while also being fully cognizant that trying to engineer a massive buyout could be its best outcome.
Further complicating the situation: The fact that Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams–who has already sold one company, Blogger, to Google and eventually left after a lackluster experience, a common one of many entrepreneurs who sell out early to large companies–is less interested in selling out than in growing the company.
But without the kind of control of the company’s fate–which allowed Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to effectively block similar buyout pressures early in its history–Twitter’s founders also might not get the last word in the event of an unusually attractive offer.
While a $500 million stock-and-cash one from Facebook last fall was turned away by Twitter due to worry about the social-networking site’s market valuation, the massing interest is overwhelming and forcing it to make some clear decisions about it path.
“When you are in a situation like Twitter is in, you have to wonder if this is the high-water mark and it is time to sell out or if you are underestimating yourself badly by even considering that,” said one Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been in a similar spot in the past. “It can be very hard to think straight.”
Indeed, all the attention is both distracting and slightly surreal for its top execs and small 30-person staff in San Francisco, said many sources close to the situation, especially the mass of media that resulted due to that now-discounted rumor that Twitter was poised to be sold off for a giant pile of money.
In fact, Twitter has its hands full enough scaling its recent surge in growth and keeping the service humming along (it has had tech snafus in the past).
But for Google and Microsoft, this geopolitical one-upsmanship by the Internet’s two most important companies is quite familiar, and they have not hesitated to jump into the Twitter tempest.
fire-drill
If that sounds a lot like the two-month fire drill in 2007 that resulted when Microsoft and Google competed to see who could sidle up closest to then-belle-of-the-Silicon-Valley-ball Facebook, you are exactly right.
After much huffing and puffing back and forth and this way and that way, it resulted in a Microsoft “win,” which gave it the distinct honor of forking over $240 million to own 1.6 percent of Facebook at an astonishing $15 billion valuation.
Even as Facebook has grown quickly in size since then–to 200 million users, as announced yesterday–its valuation has dropped to $3 billion to $5 billion.
Microsoft had previously struck an search ad deal in the U.S. with Facebook in which it paid a guaranteed revenue to Facebook and later also did a deal to do some of the search on the site.
Such kinds of deals have become common for both Google and Microsoft in recent years. Google struck one with News Corp. social-networking site MySpace, as well as with AOL (which will also soon come up for renewal).
And Microsoft grabbed the right to pay Digg a guaranteed fee in another online ad deal. And the pair also fought more recently over a mobile search distribution deal with the wireless unit of Verizon (VZ).
And so it goes now with Twitter.
No partnership deal has been made as yet, of course, since such a thing would say a lot about Twitter’s future, since the prospect of marriage overhangs such a choice, which is also–in essence, a declaration of allegiance in the cold war between Google and Microsoft.
If that also sounds like a plot of a James Bond movie, with geeks armed with algorithms instead of gadgety weaponry, you’re also exactly right.
[read more : http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090409/who-will-be-twitters-bestest-search-friend-google-and-microsoft-engage-in-yet-another-pick-me-face-off]
After last week’s explosive rumor that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which BoomTown reported was wildly premature, I set out to try to sort out exactly what was going on.
As I found out, there was a lot–mostly much talking related to possible product and distribution partnerships, centered around Google or Microsoft, especially around a deal to become the one to exclusively deliver search or other similar services to Twitter properties.
The reason for the interest? Many think Twitter’s real-time search of its 140-character “tweets” posted by users on the service will become the next great battlefield in search. Google currently dominates the general search market, with third-place Microsoft struggling to get more share.
But how to do that is in flux, as past efforts at various third-party search arrangements have had mixed success for both Google and Microsoft. Both companies and also Twitter are trying to figure out new ways to do such deals.
On top of that, it is also unclear if Twitter wants to strike a deal purely to get a payment from either Microsoft or Google, as others have done. Twitter management has indicated that they are much more interested in growth and distribution over a revenue focus.
Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone said as much on the start-up’s Web site recently, as well as in many media interviews, noting that it will begin experimenting with its own business ideas this year.
In other words, the talks Twitter is having with both Google and Microsoft could also lead exactly nowhere too.
Along with the commercial talks, both Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) are also trying to figure out if Twitter is simply one of the many shooting stars that are far more typical in Silicon Valley or if it is sea-change start-up worth pursuing and paying up big-time to acquire.
“As impressive as what Twitter has done, we are all overexcited,” said one source. “And so it’s hard to figure out the right thing to do with all the pressure to do something.”
Thus, while an offer for Twitter from Microsoft, Google or a plethora of other players–from News Corp. (NWS) to Yahoo (YHOO) to Cisco (CSCO) to Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL to big telcos–could come at any time, said many sources, only a huge price would lead to an acquisition, especially since the growth of the service has been accelerating more rapidly in recent months than has been reported publicly.
This all makes for dicey times at Twitter, which sits at the center of all this noise, trying to build a company, while also being fully cognizant that trying to engineer a massive buyout could be its best outcome.
Further complicating the situation: The fact that Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams–who has already sold one company, Blogger, to Google and eventually left after a lackluster experience, a common one of many entrepreneurs who sell out early to large companies–is less interested in selling out than in growing the company.
But without the kind of control of the company’s fate–which allowed Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to effectively block similar buyout pressures early in its history–Twitter’s founders also might not get the last word in the event of an unusually attractive offer.
While a $500 million stock-and-cash one from Facebook last fall was turned away by Twitter due to worry about the social-networking site’s market valuation, the massing interest is overwhelming and forcing it to make some clear decisions about it path.
“When you are in a situation like Twitter is in, you have to wonder if this is the high-water mark and it is time to sell out or if you are underestimating yourself badly by even considering that,” said one Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been in a similar spot in the past. “It can be very hard to think straight.”
Indeed, all the attention is both distracting and slightly surreal for its top execs and small 30-person staff in San Francisco, said many sources close to the situation, especially the mass of media that resulted due to that now-discounted rumor that Twitter was poised to be sold off for a giant pile of money.
In fact, Twitter has its hands full enough scaling its recent surge in growth and keeping the service humming along (it has had tech snafus in the past).
But for Google and Microsoft, this geopolitical one-upsmanship by the Internet’s two most important companies is quite familiar, and they have not hesitated to jump into the Twitter tempest.
fire-drill
If that sounds a lot like the two-month fire drill in 2007 that resulted when Microsoft and Google competed to see who could sidle up closest to then-belle-of-the-Silicon-Valley-ball Facebook, you are exactly right.
After much huffing and puffing back and forth and this way and that way, it resulted in a Microsoft “win,” which gave it the distinct honor of forking over $240 million to own 1.6 percent of Facebook at an astonishing $15 billion valuation.
Even as Facebook has grown quickly in size since then–to 200 million users, as announced yesterday–its valuation has dropped to $3 billion to $5 billion.
Microsoft had previously struck an search ad deal in the U.S. with Facebook in which it paid a guaranteed revenue to Facebook and later also did a deal to do some of the search on the site.
Such kinds of deals have become common for both Google and Microsoft in recent years. Google struck one with News Corp. social-networking site MySpace, as well as with AOL (which will also soon come up for renewal).
And Microsoft grabbed the right to pay Digg a guaranteed fee in another online ad deal. And the pair also fought more recently over a mobile search distribution deal with the wireless unit of Verizon (VZ).
And so it goes now with Twitter.
No partnership deal has been made as yet, of course, since such a thing would say a lot about Twitter’s future, since the prospect of marriage overhangs such a choice, which is also–in essence, a declaration of allegiance in the cold war between Google and Microsoft.
If that also sounds like a plot of a James Bond movie, with geeks armed with algorithms instead of gadgety weaponry, you’re also exactly right.
[read more : http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090409/who-will-be-twitters-bestest-search-friend-google-and-microsoft-engage-in-yet-another-pick-me-face-off]
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Microsoft Enlists Public to Create Latest Ads
For all those who love UGC (user generated content) there is good news for you and your friends...Microsoft is introducing another star as part of its new consumer ad campaign: you.
Microsoft: I'm a PC
In its newest iteration, Microsoft's 'I'm a PC' campaign has gone user-generated.
Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaign -- part of Crispin Porter & Bogusky's $300 million marketing ploy to help the computer maker regain some positive buzz lost to competitor Apple -- has launched yet another iteration, this time, going user-generated.
Keeping it real
The latest spots are a compendium of consumer-generated content based on "I'm a PC," which began airing last month. The new ads, which began running yesterday, string together what Microsoft calls "real PC users" from around the world who uploaded a video to Windows.com. Additional spots will be created using user-generated content from the site, Microsoft said, meaning that anyone who visits Windows.com and uploads a video has the chance to star in a future ad.
Submitting a video entails recording five seconds of footage using a webcam; simply state "I'm a PC," followed by something (non-obscene, naturally) you love to do. Individuals are then asked to choose a PC name, which will be displayed with the video.
Imaginations run wild
The end result features folks making mundane, sarcastic or downright bizarre pronouncements, from "I'm a PC and I like the slimming effect of a purple striped shirt" to "I'm a PC and by that I don't mean politically correct."
One spot groups together a number of user-created videos themed around food: "I'm a PC and I cook dinner every night" and "I'm a PC and I eat pancakes."
According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, in the first few weeks following the launch of "I'm a PC," more than 17,000 photos and videos were uploaded by consumers hoping to become part of the campaign, and "I'm a PC" videos have been viewed on the site almost 1.5 million times.
Microsoft hasn't set a timeline for creating and airing the next round of user-generated ads but said it is "fully committed to putting more on the air." Additionally, some user videos will be shown on digital billboards in New York's Times Square.
So are the people uploading pictures and videos actually real PC users, or are they merely looking for 15 seconds of fame? For its part, Microsoft doesn't really care.
Mac users welcome
In the frequently asked questions section of the site, it says: "I have a Mac, can I participate?" Microsoft's answer: "Of course you can. A Mac can be a PC too, most notably when it runs Windows Vista."
That's a friendlier stance than Apple took in one of the latest ads last week in its long-running and popular "Mac vs. PC" campaign. In a spot dubbed "Bean Counter," again featuring Justin Long as Mac and John Hodgman as PC, Apple snubs Microsoft's new ad campaign -- criticizing the company for investing more money on ads instead of fixing glitches in its Vista operating systems.
Incidentally, according to Visible Measures, which aggregates data on online viral videos, the first seven days of the new Apple ads notched 70% of the reach the PC ads snared in their first seven days. But Apple had double the number of unique placements -- sites that posted the video -- than Microsoft had, perhaps indicating Apple ads have more viral potential.
[credit : http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=132094]
Microsoft: I'm a PC
In its newest iteration, Microsoft's 'I'm a PC' campaign has gone user-generated.
Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaign -- part of Crispin Porter & Bogusky's $300 million marketing ploy to help the computer maker regain some positive buzz lost to competitor Apple -- has launched yet another iteration, this time, going user-generated.
Keeping it real
The latest spots are a compendium of consumer-generated content based on "I'm a PC," which began airing last month. The new ads, which began running yesterday, string together what Microsoft calls "real PC users" from around the world who uploaded a video to Windows.com. Additional spots will be created using user-generated content from the site, Microsoft said, meaning that anyone who visits Windows.com and uploads a video has the chance to star in a future ad.
Submitting a video entails recording five seconds of footage using a webcam; simply state "I'm a PC," followed by something (non-obscene, naturally) you love to do. Individuals are then asked to choose a PC name, which will be displayed with the video.
Imaginations run wild
The end result features folks making mundane, sarcastic or downright bizarre pronouncements, from "I'm a PC and I like the slimming effect of a purple striped shirt" to "I'm a PC and by that I don't mean politically correct."
One spot groups together a number of user-created videos themed around food: "I'm a PC and I cook dinner every night" and "I'm a PC and I eat pancakes."
According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, in the first few weeks following the launch of "I'm a PC," more than 17,000 photos and videos were uploaded by consumers hoping to become part of the campaign, and "I'm a PC" videos have been viewed on the site almost 1.5 million times.
Microsoft hasn't set a timeline for creating and airing the next round of user-generated ads but said it is "fully committed to putting more on the air." Additionally, some user videos will be shown on digital billboards in New York's Times Square.
So are the people uploading pictures and videos actually real PC users, or are they merely looking for 15 seconds of fame? For its part, Microsoft doesn't really care.
Mac users welcome
In the frequently asked questions section of the site, it says: "I have a Mac, can I participate?" Microsoft's answer: "Of course you can. A Mac can be a PC too, most notably when it runs Windows Vista."
That's a friendlier stance than Apple took in one of the latest ads last week in its long-running and popular "Mac vs. PC" campaign. In a spot dubbed "Bean Counter," again featuring Justin Long as Mac and John Hodgman as PC, Apple snubs Microsoft's new ad campaign -- criticizing the company for investing more money on ads instead of fixing glitches in its Vista operating systems.
Incidentally, according to Visible Measures, which aggregates data on online viral videos, the first seven days of the new Apple ads notched 70% of the reach the PC ads snared in their first seven days. But Apple had double the number of unique placements -- sites that posted the video -- than Microsoft had, perhaps indicating Apple ads have more viral potential.
[credit : http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=132094]
Sunday, May 11, 2008
"Plan C" - Microsofts New Strategy
I wonder how many of us remember the Eskimo ad on TV, where they travel all the way to reach a small town in India... I think it was brilliant and yes without batting an eyelid, I can recall it was for Live.com search on Hutch.
How many of us actually use Live.com for search or know that it belongs to Microsoft... Does anyone say " Yahoo it or Live (live.com) it and the first link is my website" but yes you find people saying "Google it". Infact, I remember a Pontiac TVC (in the US) which spoke about the Pontiac G6 and ended with a line "Don't take our word for it, Google 'Pontiac' to find out!”. This ad not only resulted in a high number of searches for Pontiac but also, kind of closed the loop between offline and online advertising. The reason I say this, is cos, increasingly the laptop is becoming a part of the couch, in different parts of the world. Not to forget the ad did become a case study too.
Coming back to the topic, what is it, that’s different with Google and Live.com (Microsoft search)...
Besides, the obvious volumes, it’s the way the product has been positioned and advertised. Did you know, Live search has a lot of different features e.g. its image search results keep growing as users scroll, thus you don't need to click to see the next page. Its Video search thumbnails start playing when the user does a mouse over them. Microsoft has also launched specialized searches for health and medical information and added some fun features like for those who are celebrity-obsessed.
After, Microsoft withdrew its bid of $47.5 billion for Yahoo, its been working on something called "Plan C" which according to many is nothing but re-building and re-positioning itself or as Bill Gates mentioned (In Japan, last Wednesday) in a statement "at this point Microsoft is focused on its independent strategy."
For those who came in late, "Plan A" was about going solo, which was beaten even after a lot of effort and advertising on billboards and ads in magazines. Also, not to forget it acquiring an online advertising company "aQuantive" for $6 billion.
"Plan B" was a desperate effort to acquire a chunk in the search pie, by bidding for Yahoo, which sadly fell through.
Just two days before Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer walked away from the Yahoo bid; he outlined to employees a four-part plan to "build the most interesting position in the world in online advertising, media, and the kind of social connected search and media experiences that go along with that."
First, Microsoft must do the basics - a huge search index, lots of storage in the cloud for users, very well.
It must innovate in "quick waves" that force Google to play catch-up.
It must "change the basic experiences" of communication and search.
And it must gain scale.
"We have a strategy and we have ideas in each one of those categories," Ballmer told the employees. The promise fell flat with analysts who had heard it so recently before.
I really wonder and I’m just too curious to see the bigger picture of what "Plan C" is all about. In one of the interesting articles I read, Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, also believes Microsoft should look beyond search and perhaps push ahead with plans to deploy software over the Internet and to get marketers to use a Microsoft platform for mobile and display advertising.
"The problem with a definition of success (is that) when this whole acquisition thing began, it was beating Google, and I think that's the wrong battle to fight," Li said. "I'd rather see them hit Google where it's weak."
I personally think, that it all comes down to the way a company positions its product and the way it markets it. Google, on the other hand seems to "just grow" and for those who remember seeing the Google Epic (a few years back) would recall and recognize its developments over these years.
How many of us actually use Live.com for search or know that it belongs to Microsoft... Does anyone say " Yahoo it or Live (live.com) it and the first link is my website" but yes you find people saying "Google it". Infact, I remember a Pontiac TVC (in the US) which spoke about the Pontiac G6 and ended with a line "Don't take our word for it, Google 'Pontiac' to find out!”. This ad not only resulted in a high number of searches for Pontiac but also, kind of closed the loop between offline and online advertising. The reason I say this, is cos, increasingly the laptop is becoming a part of the couch, in different parts of the world. Not to forget the ad did become a case study too.
Coming back to the topic, what is it, that’s different with Google and Live.com (Microsoft search)...
Besides, the obvious volumes, it’s the way the product has been positioned and advertised. Did you know, Live search has a lot of different features e.g. its image search results keep growing as users scroll, thus you don't need to click to see the next page. Its Video search thumbnails start playing when the user does a mouse over them. Microsoft has also launched specialized searches for health and medical information and added some fun features like for those who are celebrity-obsessed.
After, Microsoft withdrew its bid of $47.5 billion for Yahoo, its been working on something called "Plan C" which according to many is nothing but re-building and re-positioning itself or as Bill Gates mentioned (In Japan, last Wednesday) in a statement "at this point Microsoft is focused on its independent strategy."
For those who came in late, "Plan A" was about going solo, which was beaten even after a lot of effort and advertising on billboards and ads in magazines. Also, not to forget it acquiring an online advertising company "aQuantive" for $6 billion.
"Plan B" was a desperate effort to acquire a chunk in the search pie, by bidding for Yahoo, which sadly fell through.
Just two days before Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer walked away from the Yahoo bid; he outlined to employees a four-part plan to "build the most interesting position in the world in online advertising, media, and the kind of social connected search and media experiences that go along with that."
First, Microsoft must do the basics - a huge search index, lots of storage in the cloud for users, very well.
It must innovate in "quick waves" that force Google to play catch-up.
It must "change the basic experiences" of communication and search.
And it must gain scale.
"We have a strategy and we have ideas in each one of those categories," Ballmer told the employees. The promise fell flat with analysts who had heard it so recently before.
I really wonder and I’m just too curious to see the bigger picture of what "Plan C" is all about. In one of the interesting articles I read, Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, also believes Microsoft should look beyond search and perhaps push ahead with plans to deploy software over the Internet and to get marketers to use a Microsoft platform for mobile and display advertising.
"The problem with a definition of success (is that) when this whole acquisition thing began, it was beating Google, and I think that's the wrong battle to fight," Li said. "I'd rather see them hit Google where it's weak."
I personally think, that it all comes down to the way a company positions its product and the way it markets it. Google, on the other hand seems to "just grow" and for those who remember seeing the Google Epic (a few years back) would recall and recognize its developments over these years.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Facebook - New target for Microsoft
After talks with Yahoo failed, the news is that Microsoft Corp. informally approached social-networking Web site Facebook Inc. to gauge its interest in selling itself to Microsoft.
Microsoft's investment bankers recently contacted Facebook as it looked likely the Redmond, Wash., software company might back away from buying Yahoo. Though there is no active discussions between the two, it is unclear if closely held Facebook would consider selling. The approach was previously reported on the AllThingsD.com Web site, owned by News Corp.'s Dow Jones unit, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo however continues to face challenges of its own. It is said tha Google Inc. executives are now thinking whether to pursue a search-advertising deal with Yahoo.
Separate discussions between Yahoo and Time Warner Inc. also continue. However, they say there is less urgency to reach a deal now that Microsoft has exited the stage. The two sides are discussing combining AOL and Yahoo.
In a letter to Microsoft employees (after failed talks), Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the company would explore acquisitions and increased investment in its own online services.
Facebook is a fast growing Web service that has become a hub for all kind of consumers. Last year, Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in the portal, valued at $240 million. It then valued Facebook at $15 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has resisted the idea of selling his whole company. He recently made several high-level hires like Chamath Palihapitiya: VP-marketing & operation, Gideon Yu - CFO etc. that suggest he intends the company to remain independent. Facebook would still faces possible fallout from the weak broader economy, which could pressure online ad based ventures.
Facebook's main attraction for Microsoft is its rapid growth and popularity. In March 08, Facebook had 109.2 million visitors which is a 240% increase from March 2007, according to comScore Inc and expects revenue of $300 million to $350 million this calendar year (which is approx $150 million last year). By comparison, Microsoft's Web sites attracted 563.2 million visitors world-wide in March which is just a 7% increase from the year ago.
The big question for Microsoft is whether Facebook can become a major source of online advertising. Facebook has tried to expand online advertising, but half of its revenue last year came from a partnership with Microsoft. After its investment last year and a deal struck in 2006, Microsoft has an exclusive arrangement to sell display ads on Facebook through 2011. Acquiring Facebook might not significantly add to Microsoft's inventory of space in which to show ads across the Web.
Microsoft's investment bankers recently contacted Facebook as it looked likely the Redmond, Wash., software company might back away from buying Yahoo. Though there is no active discussions between the two, it is unclear if closely held Facebook would consider selling. The approach was previously reported on the AllThingsD.com Web site, owned by News Corp.'s Dow Jones unit, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo however continues to face challenges of its own. It is said tha Google Inc. executives are now thinking whether to pursue a search-advertising deal with Yahoo.
Separate discussions between Yahoo and Time Warner Inc. also continue. However, they say there is less urgency to reach a deal now that Microsoft has exited the stage. The two sides are discussing combining AOL and Yahoo.
In a letter to Microsoft employees (after failed talks), Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the company would explore acquisitions and increased investment in its own online services.
Facebook is a fast growing Web service that has become a hub for all kind of consumers. Last year, Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in the portal, valued at $240 million. It then valued Facebook at $15 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has resisted the idea of selling his whole company. He recently made several high-level hires like Chamath Palihapitiya: VP-marketing & operation, Gideon Yu - CFO etc. that suggest he intends the company to remain independent. Facebook would still faces possible fallout from the weak broader economy, which could pressure online ad based ventures.
Facebook's main attraction for Microsoft is its rapid growth and popularity. In March 08, Facebook had 109.2 million visitors which is a 240% increase from March 2007, according to comScore Inc and expects revenue of $300 million to $350 million this calendar year (which is approx $150 million last year). By comparison, Microsoft's Web sites attracted 563.2 million visitors world-wide in March which is just a 7% increase from the year ago.
The big question for Microsoft is whether Facebook can become a major source of online advertising. Facebook has tried to expand online advertising, but half of its revenue last year came from a partnership with Microsoft. After its investment last year and a deal struck in 2006, Microsoft has an exclusive arrangement to sell display ads on Facebook through 2011. Acquiring Facebook might not significantly add to Microsoft's inventory of space in which to show ads across the Web.
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