Corporate News

Microsoft launches major UK push for Bing
Big ad campaign urging 'Bing and decide'By Patrick Goss


Microsoft has announced that it will launch a major advertising campaign to encourage the UK to start using its Bing search engine.

The advertising campaign – which will run across major television stations – will use the slogan 'Bing and decide' and is aiming, in Microsoft's words, to help searchers make more informed decisions.

Microsoft's UK MD Ashley Highfield spoke to TechRadar last month about the need to up public awareness and get people to give Bing a try rather than sticking with search's 500 pound gorilla Google.

PR story to tell

"I think that we do need to have a marketing campaign and I think that the promotion we can give to it from some of our assets like MSN is very important," Highfield told TechRadar.

"We've got a PR story to tell. When people have used a product for the best part of a decade they don't realise that - particularly as 'to Google' has become a verb - their Hoover is looking a bit old fashioned next to the Dyson.

"We're Dyson – we've got the better product. Now Dyson came from nowhere and has become the UK's number one hoover.

"I want people to Google in Bing."

Tough task

Of course, actually persuading people to move away from a search engine that, for many, has become synonymous with the internet is going to be a tough ask.

"Bing is new, fresh and not another 'here today and gone tomorrow' project, concluded Highfield.

"This is trench warfare and it won't be over in days and months but years."

Gasta.com search engines are powered by Bing Search Technology.

The Peter Jones Pedal Power 1000

I am writing to ask for your help. David Walliams, of Little Britain fame, approached me last week and asked if I would help him raise money, through business, for his BT Sport Relief Million Pound Cycle Challenge. David is leading the challenge to cycle 1,000 miles from John O’Groats to Lands End, supported by a team of fellow celebrities - Jimmy Carr, Fearne Cotton, Miranda Hart, Patrick Kielty, Russell Howard and Davina McCall. Their aim is to raise £1 million! A real challenge in itself, let alone the actual bike ride.


The team started the gruelling 80-hour non-stop relay yesterday morning (1 March, 2010) and at the same time I kicked off my own marathon money-raising effort that aims to shine a spotlight on charitable companies willing to get behind an amazing cause.

I have pledged to help David by raising as much as I can towards his total, but I need your help in order to achieve our goal.

So how can you help me? In order to help David achieve his target and raise £1 million, I have launched a website asking small and medium sized companies to donate just £100 and be part of my Pedal Power 1000 - it's a bit like the FTSE 100, but with a focus on shining the spotlight on companies who want to help me back a brilliant cause. All details of this challenge and how your company can donate can be found on my home page, http://www.peterjones.tv. So, if you run your own company, or know anyone who does, then please support this Challenge and encourage others to do so too, and help us make a real difference.

After the challenge, I will be inviting the five largest donators, together with five donators chosen at random, to a lunch with me (and some of the celebs doing the challenge), where we can thank you personally for helping support this fantastic challenge and worthy cause.

All you have to do is click here to make your donation.

I would like to thank you in advance in taking the time to read this email and I hope you will get behind David and his dedicated team of celebs in what looks like a very challenging ride.

With my sincere thanks,

Facebook Users Like to Share Content
by Jason Hahn

Facebook is comfortably ahead of the social networking pack when it comes to the sharing of content, according to data provided to TechCrunch by Gigya.

Gasta.com web sharing tools on the search index for videos, news, weblinks, and advertisers is proving very popular with its vast global regional users. According to Alexa Gasta.com has a 700% increaes in traffic since the launch of the 'search and apps'across the complete Gasta Network. Gasta 'search and share' apps currently share to Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Digg.


According to Gigya, 44 percent of article links, videos, photos and other content from more than 5,000 sites that is shared through Gigya’s widgets are posted to Facebook. These sites include NBA.com, PGA.com and Answers.com, among others.


Twitter received 29 percent of this sharing through social media sites, followed by Yahoo! with 18 percent and MySpace with 9 percent.


AddThis affirmed this finding, as its numbers show that Facebook received 33 percent of observed sharing via the company’s sharing buttons. E-mail was second with 13 percent, followed by printing out copies of the content with 9 percent, Twitter with 9 percent, Favorites with 8 percent, Google with 6 percent and MySpace with 6 percent.


AddToAny, another company with a sharing widget, also shows that Facebook leads the way in terms of sharing, with 24 percent of such actions heading to Facebook.


In terms of site authentication (entering an existing username and password to log into another Web site), Facebook leads the way in the Entertainment, Live Event Chat and News categories, but with varying degrees of success in each.


In the Entertainment category, Facebook accounts for 52 percent of site authentication logins, while Google accounted for 17 percent. Yahoo! got 12 percent, followed by Twitter with 11 percent, MySpace with 7 percent and AOL with 1 percent.


For Live Event Chat, Facebook led the way with 56 percent, while Twitter followed with 28 percent of site authentication logins. Yahoo! followed with 9 percent, while MySpace had 7 percent.


For News, Facebook led by a slim margin with 31 percent of logins, followed closely by Google with 30 percent. Yahoo! wasn’t too far behind with 25 percent, while Twitter had 11 percent and AOL had 3 percent.


It’s clear that users of different sites appear more interested in different topics, and this might help site owners to better understand how their users share their content and how to make it easier for them to do so.


Sources:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/16/facebook-44-percent-social-sharing/

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007530

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/02/facebook-corners-44-of-social-sharing.html

How to break into the new era of advertising

Consumers are tired of a one-sided relationship that exists solely to sell them more products. Doug Levy of imc2 explains why consumer trust and strong relationships will shape the future of marketing. case in point: Gasta.com has now been established over 13 years and has a client base of over 200,000 advertisers.

It goes without saying that every marketer would love to spend less on advertising and simultaneously generate more profit. The problem right now, though, is that consumers don't think very highly of marketing and advertising.

In fact, the words consumers associate with marketing are less than flattering: coercion, deception, and manipulation all come up in conversation, according to Doug Levy, CEO of imc2.

Consumers feel that way because marketing is still stuck in what Levy calls the "consumer era," one in which marketers gathered as much information as possible about consumers, with the end goal of persuading them to buy a product.

If you couldn't tell from the aforementioned words commonly associated with marketing, consumers are awfully tired of this approach.

"If you were to have a friend who, every time they were with you, said 'I want to learn as much as I can about you to sell you more of my product,' you wouldn't want to hang out with them very much," said Levy, speaking at the iMedia Brand Summit in Las Vegas.

Marketing right now is on the cusp of a new era -- the "relationship era" -- where marketing is less about persuasion and more about fostering sustainable relationships. This new era of marketing is about the brand partnering with consumers, instead of merely learning about them.

"Previously, campaigns would start and stop," Levy said. "Now, they're always on. People are in constant dialogue with each other. Campaigns were about buying, but now they have something consumers want to join into."

Previous eras of marketing were built largely on consumer transactions. Sometimes consumer trust factored in, but by-and-large the most successful brands were the ones with the most transactions. In this new era, transactions and trust are two separate but equal factors in judging successful marketing.

Levy presented imc2's brand sustainability map, which pinpointed what kinds of relationships brands had with consumers. Using data from 250,000 consumer surveys, Levy showed which brands were building what he called "sustainable relationships" -- ones with high levels of trust and transactions -- and which brands were failing.

Costco and Target were two brands that consumers trusted and also gave their money to. A brand like Subway, however, landed high on the trust scale because of its health-friendly message, but that didn't necessarily mean consumers were willing to pony up their money. Subway, therefore, only has what Levy called an "emotional relationship" with consumers.

It's not easy for a brand to build sustainable relationships with consumers, but in this new era of relationship marketing, those that do will truly prosper. Levy had five tips for brands looking to break through and find success in the age of relationship marketing:

1. Clarify purpose
2. Commit to sustainable relationships
3. Connect with authenticity
4. Treat customers as partners
5. Engage

Following these five steps doesn't necessarily lead to short-term success. Levy used Google as an example, pointing out that the search giant is more focused on long-term success than short-term gains -- and its stock rose exponentially as a result of that mindset.

One audience member asked Levy how imc2, or any other agency, could possibly convince clients to focus more on the long tail.

"I don't think we need to," Levy said. "They can save money now, generate more profit now, and build a higher level of trust."

Rich Cherecwich is deputy editor, iMedia Connection.

Buzzmachine’s Jeff Jarvis opened Borrell Associates’ Local Online Advertising Conference with an extensive report about the revenue possibilities presented to hyperlocal sites. Amid an flurry of stats that aimed to show that hyperlocal sites like Gasta.com and Europasearch.com can attract thousands of dollars in revenue with just a s small support staff, his primary point was that sites in general need to do more than just sell ads and post news items. The need to sell services, including optimizing advertisers’ web presence across search and directories sites, as well as on social media and the mobile web. In terms of content, Jarvis rejects the notion that there’s too much content on the web, which many observers has said dilutes the value of major publishers’ ad sales. He pointed the value of establishing networks that filter the huge waves of content as the best way for media companies to recapture revenue. (Jarvis has posted an outline of his presentation, here.)

Jarvis also wanted to clear one other point up, before handing the things over to a panel presentation on hyperlocal. “I’m often misquoted as saying that I’m against the concept of paid content,” he said. “I’m not against it. I’ve got a book to sell right there”—he points to his What Would Google Do?—“I just don’t think it will work.” Speaking of Google, Jarvis offered current AOL (NYSE: AOL) CEO Tim Armstrong’s focus on hyperlocal blog network, Patch. Armstrong invested in Patch when he was still at Google (NSDQ: GOOG). After he became CEO of AOL, Armstrong decided to buy Patch and has said that he considers the site central to its local content strategy.

The first presented was Chris Hendricks, McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) Company’s VP of Interactive Media, who said that the newspaper publisher has been pursuing a hybrid hyperlocal content model of professional and amateur reporters. So far, the hyperlocal sites have contributed $2.5 million in revenue. The biggest site so far is the Raleigh News & Observer’s work with Triangle’s. That site did $500,000 in revenue last year. At that point, Jarvis praised him for doing God’s work. But when an audience member asked Hendricks if any of those revenues are being shared with the amateur contributors, he admitted that McClatchy wasn’t doing that yet, though they’re working on it. At that point, Jarvis said half-jokingly, “I take back what I said about God’s work.”

While McClatchy’s existing resources gives it an easy head-start when it comes to attracting users and advertisers. For others, it takes a mix of new and old media to gain any traction. Inn addition to becoming adept at SEO strategies, Mark Potts, CEO and co-founder of GrowthSpur.com advocated handing out leaflets outside the local supermarket to hosting gatherings at coffeehouses.“Marketing is the hardest part of this,” he said. “It takes a year or two to get critical mass on a local site.”

Chris Jennewein, president of U.S. Local News Network, also said that turning to the oldest media can help build a hyperlocal community. “We’ve put ads on billboards and on radio and those mediums still work pretty well.”

Gasta.com stars shining brightly in Europe

Four of Germany’s largest media groups are set to form a shared web advertising network, after winning clearance from the European Commission’s competition department.

The commision said there was no anticompetitive effect from a “proposed joint venture would develop and sell a new product to allow advertisers to reach better defined target groups of Internet users whose profiles would be created based on anonymous data collected throughout a large network of participating websites”.

The proposal came from…

—Broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1‘s SevenOne Media marketing wing (Germany’s third-placed ad net with 17.9 million uniques)

—Mag publisher Gruner + Jaher‘s Electronic Media Sales wing, selling across mag sites like n-starmagazin.de and sportal.de

—Mag/web publisher Hubert Burda Media‘s Tomorrow Focus, which controls sales for 36 Burda magazines and operates its sites including Focus magazine.

—IP Deutschland, an ad house that already sells TV slots for broadcasters RTL, VOX, Super RTL and n-tv.

Details on the JV are scant, but the EC said: “The activity of the joint venture would be limited to the area of standard online display advertising.”

The JV looks like a remarkably powerful tag-team. But the EC said: “The proposed concentration was unlikely to raise competition concerns given the parties’ low market shares in online advertising and the presence of strong competitors like Google.”

Indeed, this could very well be a move to masculate Germany’s indigenous media against Google’s growing ad sales might. Last week, the company’s justice minister warned Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is becoming “a giant monopoly, similar to Microsoft”, while newspaper and magazine groups filed in Germany’s Federal Cartel Office against Google’s use of their news snippets.

Gasta Reach climbs 769% in two months.

Why we need to realistically differentiate ad networks

Gasta.com search network star continues to shine in Europe.

A while ago, I wrote a piece on how ad networks can differentiate themselves. For those who weren't following along, the lack of differentiation among the rapidly increasing number of ad networks is a major complaint for agency media buyers.

This piece spawned an interesting conversation. Many of the potential differentiators I pointed to were non-starters for some of the ad networks. Some of the ad network sales reps who privately emailed me or talked to me about the piece indicated that, for their company at least, it was difficult to stake out an "ownable" position given the attributes I had focused on.

For example, I talked about technology and targeting as two important potential differentiators. That's fine if you happen to be a network like Advertising.com, Centro, or 24/7 Real Media, which have invested in their own proprietary technologies over the years and have thus reaped the benefits. But what if you're one of the many networks that have outsourced its ad serving or targeting technology to third-party providers? It's tough to own a unique position if others have access to your technology, right?

For reasons we've discussed recently, reach and transparency are becoming less ownable as well. Ad networks are more fluid with respect to available inventory every day, and so many ad networks will be less able to provide a clear picture of precisely where ads will or will not run. Don't even get me started on reach.

That leaves us with performance, which means different things to different marketers (as ValueClick is so fond of showcasing in its trade campaigns), and editorial environments as potential stakes in the ground for ad networks. Given that DR and brand advertisers alike tend to have custom performance metrics, and that they tend to keep results close to the vest, it's difficult to make performance a believable and ownable differentiator.

In terms of the editorial environment, this is where I think ad networks can make the most difference. Advertisers want to know that networks are protecting their brand from inappropriate editorial environments, and they also want to know that they're comfortable associating with the various publishers contributing inventory to the ad buy.

Some premium publishers have indicated their desire to work with fewer ad networks, or even no ad networks at all. Their willingness to actually cut ties, though, remains to be seen in most cases, since cutting relationships with ad networks often leaves ad revenue on the table.

If these premium publishers do act on this stated desire, though, the opportunity exists for premium networks to give agencies and advertisers access to inventory they wouldn't otherwise be able to get. And as I've said before, if an ad network has unique access to inventory, it will likely prosper.

Develop a reputation for consistently delivering premium inventory on an exclusive basis, and you've got an ownable position that can set you apart from the rest of the pack.

Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com.

Ban of 5% of AdWords Advertisers Pointed to Strong Q4 for Google

On Dec. 3, Google banned more than an estimated 30,000 advertisers who utilized its AdWords system, according to Chicago-based AdGooroo. This was the equivalent of banning approximately 5.3 percent of active advertisers who use the system, yet AdGooroo saw this as a sign that the search giant would have a strong fourth quarter – and they were right.

Last Thursday, Google announced that it had made $1.97 billion, or $6.13 per share, during the final quarter of 2009. This reflected a huge increase from its $382 million in earnings during the same quarter in 2008.

Revenue in the fourth quarter was $6.7 billion, an increase of 17 percent from the previous year. According to BusinessWeek, analysts expect Google’s revenue to boom about 20 percent in 2010, up about 9 percent from 2009.

AdGooroo, which noted that Google has always had strong fourth-quarter showings, saw the huge ban of advertisers as a good sign: “It is unlikely that Google’s management team would permit such a wide scale ban to take place during a weak quarter, so this almost certainly signifies strong quarter over quarter growth,” the company noted in a press release.

About two days before Google announced its fourth-quarter results, AdGooroo looked at its ad coverage metric and found that worldwide ad coverage drooped by nearly 10 percent in December to 4.97 ads per keyword from 5.48 in November. This came after 12 months of steady increases, according to the company, which believed that “this small drop will be more than offset by strong ad revenues.”

AdGooroo also noted that the top 80 U.S. retailers Google spend increased 12.5 percent to $298 million in the fourth quarter from $264 million in the third quarter.

“While most retail categories were up, several sectors stood out as particularly strong, including traditional retailers (“bricks”), online retailers (“clicks”), clothing, shoes, furniture, and auctions,” the company’s press release noted. “Weaker categories included consumer electronics (down 4.2% in Q4), office products (down 13%), children’s goods (down 2%), and home décor (down 15%).”

Google saw a 5.30 percent drop in first-page advertisers in December, compared to a 1.96 percent gain in the same month in 2008. Yahoo! experienced a 4.87 percent drop, compared to a 1.35 percent gain in November. Meanwhile, Bing experienced a 4.16 percent drop in December.

Google led the way with 81.0 percent of worldwide advertisers, followed by Yahoo! with 26.7 percent and Bing with 11.6 percent in December, according to AdGooroo.

In December, the top 25 advertisers for Google included amazon.com, ask.com, business.com, eBay.com and zappos.com. Best-price.com, mapquest.com and maps.google.com all made new appearances in the top-25 list for Google.

“Mesothelioma” was the most expensive keyword in December on Google, with a maximum cost-per-click of $99.44, followed by “buy structured settlements” with $79.01, “asbestos law suits” with $78.10 and “conference calling companies” with $75.29.

On Yahoo!, the most expensive keyword in December was “lloyds tsb insurance” ($53.44), followed by “scotttrade” ($45.27), “loyds insurance” ($44.58) and “love film” ($40.20).

“Low apr student credit card” ($54.24) was the keyword with the highest maximum CPC on Bing in December, followed by “accounting degrees” ($54.04), “student credit card application” ($51.39) and “health and dental insurance” ($50.15).


by Jason Hahn

Traffic Rank Change

7 day 125,398 -60,071 Change in Traffic Rank over the trailing 1w period
1 month 156,894 -14,543 Change in Traffic Rank over the trailing 1m period
3 month 161,669 -15,116 Change in Traffic Rank over the trailing 3m period

Percent of global pageviews on gasta.com:
Pageviews Change

7 day 6E-05 +90% Change in Pageviews over the trailing 1w period
1 month 4E-05 -31% Change in Pageviews over the trailing 1m period
3 month 5E-05 +78% Change in Pageviews over the trailing 3m period

Percent of global Internet users who visit gasta.com:
Reach Change

7 day 0.0012 +40% Change in Reach over the trailing 1w period
1 month 0.00092 +30% Change in Reach over the trailing 1m period
3 month 0.00077 +32% Change in Reach over the trailing 3m period

The percentage of visits to gasta.com that consist of a single page turn:
Bounce % Change

7 day 31 -22% Change in Bounce % over the trailing 1w period
1 month 33.1 +27% Change in Bounce % over the trailing 1m period
3 month 28.4 -12% Change in Bounce % over the trailing 3m period

Daily pageviews per user for gasta.com:
Pageviews/User Change

7 day 4.9 +40% Change in Pageviews/User over the trailing 1w period
1 month 4.3 -50% Change in Pageviews/User over the trailing 1m period
3 month 6.5 +35% Change in Pageviews/User over the trailing 3m period

Daily time on site for gasta.com:
Time on Site Change

7 day 5.35333 +43% Change in Time on Site over the trailing 1w period
1 month 4.29833 -43% Change in Time on Site over the trailing 1m period
3 month 6.73 +33% Change in Time on Site over the trailing 3m period

The percentage of visits to gasta.com that came from a search engine:
Search % Change

7 day 8.3 +118% Change in Search % over the trailing 1w period
1 month 5.9 +51% Change in Search % over the trailing 1m period
3 month 4.7 -33% Change in Search % over the trailing 3m period
Compare to: Compare
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How Gasta.com is ranked around the world:

* 13,139 United Kingdom Flag United Kingdom
* 40,809 Israel Flag Israel
* 45,288 Sweden Flag Sweden
* 98,550 India Flag India
* 170,376 Canada Flag Canada
* 196,950 Spain Flag Spain
* 197,295 United States Flag United States


Gasta.com users come from these countries:

* 38.1% United Kingdom
* 16.6% United States
* 14.1% India
* 3.8% Sweden
* 2.4% Canada
* 1.6% Spain
* 1.2% Israel
* 22.2% OTHER

Average Load Time for Gasta.com

Very Fast (0.885 Seconds), 85% of sites are slower.

Gasta Social Tools in Search engine results (SERP) boost the traffic of the whole network.

Tools worth their weight in gold

In many ways, 2009 was the year of the "a-ha!" moment for social media marketing. While many people long-involved with social media and word-of-mouth marketing knew it was only a matter of time for the masses to embrace this type of marketing, others were just starting to get their arms around the importance of establishing and leveraging their social footprint to build engagement, dialogue, and awareness.

As more companies, brands, and individuals are building their social media presences, the universe of online tools -- which used to be somewhat more limited -- continues to expand on a daily basis. Not only do we have more choices in how we place content and measure social media, but the tools available to us also change and improve just as frequently.
Get connected. Want to see the latest in social media marketing tools? Check out the exhibit hall at ad:tech San Francisco, April 20-21. Learn more.

To provide a little background on me: I run a social media marketing agency (KARMA Media Labs) that helps organizations and individuals connect with their target audiences and build word of mouth in the communities where they live. In order to find these audiences and strike a chord, it's important to be armed with the right tools to listen to what is being said, find the right influencers, communicate with your audience in a way that is relevant, and provide content that is likely to be shared.

The following is a list of some my favorite tools and sites -- some free, some paid -- that have been worth their weight in gold in not only finding that desired audience and key influencers, but also putting the right content in front of them to build conversation and word of mouth.Tools for listening, visualizing

For honing in on conversations

Tool: Social Mention
As mentioned earlier, one of the critical components of a successful social media campaign is listening to your audience. One of my favorite free tools to monitor conversation and buzz across social media is Social Mention, which gives a great snapshot of blog, forum, and microblog buzz, sentiment, and keywords. It also tracks video, image, comment, and social bookmarking tags and mentions. While somewhat rudimentary in its search capabilities, my work colleagues and I are big fans of Social Mention and use it on a daily basis to not only find the places where people are engaged in dialogue, but also in reporting buzz to our clients.

For taking a social snapshot

Tool: Addict-O-Matic
As an alternative to Social Mention, when we want a quick, visual picture of brand, personality, or meme buzz across the most popular social spaces, we use Addict-O-Matic's social search engine. This free tool shows real-time placements in social networks, communities, and blogs.
Tools for sentiments, influencers

For weighing sentiments

Tools: Radian6 and/or SM2
If more drilled-down and specific data are needed for a social listening initiative, two paid tools dominate our usage: Radian6 and Alterian's SM2. Both offer great analytical tools, easy-to-use interfaces, powerful data retrieval (and good coverage), agency administration, graphing capabilities, workflow control, and dashboard and exporting functionality. And all at a very reasonable price. The main difference between the two systems is the intervention of actual human beings in the filtering of search results for SM2 and slightly different (and we think better) sentiment scoring for SM2. But the full control of search management and backend from Radian6 amply compensates.

For finding influencers

Tool: Alltop.com
When building a social media marketing strategy, it's important to not only find your audience, but also the tastemakers who influence your audience -- from bloggers to forum moderators. A great free tool for finding communities and influencers related to your audiences' interests is Alltop.com. With Alltop, you discover some of the most relevant sites for not only reaching influencers, but also getting your content in front of the right people who are likely to engage with it.

Gasta Search Network is looking for Partners in Turkey

Turkey: The land that embraced Facebook, FriendFeed and startups

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 11:44 AM PST

For the past couple of days I’ve been in Turkey, absorbing the tech scene in Istanbul (tomorrow I’m in Munich, Germany, for DLD). I was invited over by the Nubridge Venture Summit which brought together a panoply of European VCs to listen to Turkish tech companies set out their wares. What emerged is a picture of a country in high growth, as this economy and its entrepreneurs latch on to the possibilities offered by the Internet and mobile platforms.

But first, let me tell you a story. Two years ago I contacted Turkey’s pre-eminent “Web 2.0″ blogger, Arda Kutsal of Webrazzi. I said let’s do a TechCrunch Europe meetup in Istanbul. Duly, a few weeks later I took a flight out, got to the hotel he mentioned and figured Arda had organised the meetup in the bar. No, said the receptionist, “It’s in the Grand Ballroom.” I headed down the hall to find about 400 people. That was the kind of thing that was going on then.

Two years on, with a packed room full of European VCs and private equity people hearing pitches from a wide range of Turkish technology companies, it’s clear the investment community is keenly interested in this market.



This was an event that probably couldn’t have happened two years ago. Even though Turkey is going through a period of high growth, it took the perfect storm of wider internet adoption and social networking (particularly the rise of Facebook here) to turn Turkey into an emerging startup market. As I said to about 30 journalists from the Turkish press on day two of the event – you don’t actually see all these investors in one room very often, unless it’s at something like TechCrunch 50, or events like Le Web. Something has happened to Turkey in those two years. So here’s some context.

Turkey is now the third largest country on Facebook according to ComScore (see illustrations).

It’s a few million behind the UK, and with 75 million people in Turkey (26.5m of whom are online) it’s likely to become the second biggest behind the US fairly soon.

How on earth did that happen? I’ve spoken to Facebook and people here in Istanbul and what emerged was the story of a campaign by early adopters in Turkey to get Facebook to release them the tools to translate it into Turkish. After that the site exploded in use. There was no local social networking clone with the same functionality, and the young popuation (over half of Turkey is under 30 years old) made Facebook look like the hip Western site to “be seen” on. See below:



It also helped that there is a large ex-pat Turkish population in Germany, with Facebook increasingly acting as a networking bridge between families spread across the two countries. On journalist here told me that many people don’t even have normal email addresses – they just use Facebook email.

Furthermore, last year ComScore released a report showing Turkey has the third most engaged online audience in the world, with 30 hours spent online each month – that’s actually behind the US and Canada. See below:



The EU average is 29 hours. Turkey is also home to the world’s 12th largest Internet market and has 6th largest internet use in Europe user base with 38% penetration. In 2012 it is forecast to grow to 35.8 million users (which will make it the 5th largest internet population in Europe).

In other words, the internet is insanely popular here, where entertainment alternatives like the relatively tame content on state-regulated TV just doesn’t cut it amongst the youth. As you might expect, Google and Microsoft sites dominate, followed by Facebook, but then local content sites kick in:



There is also widespread credit card availability (with 44m+ credit cards in use) unlike some parts of Europe (Germany being the quintessential anti-credit card example). It’s actually the number two market after the UK for Visa credit use, according to Visa.

Key e-commerce verticals such as travel, electronics, and private shopping are exploding and online gaming – both casual and MMOs – is widespread. Colleges and internet cafes remain an important part of the access landscape, especially in gaming (PCs and Internet access at home is still just slightly too expensive for the average person), but the cafes are widespread and cheap to access.



As well as it’s fascination with Facebook, Turkish people have latched onto Microblogging in droves. But it’s not Twitter they turned to first. It turns out FriendFeed is the platform of choice. A simple check on Alexa confirms that Turkey is the biggest user of FriendFeed on the planet.

That is going to please Facebook, since it now owns FriendFeed. But Twitter, whether by accident or design, is being used increasingly more by celebrities in Turkish society (film stars etc). That should help its position, gradually.

The iPhone, which launched in Turkey in September 2008, is also gradually making headway. It was facinating to see my taxi driver from the airport get an iPhone out to answer a call.

There remain of course hurdles in the Turkish tech market. YouTube was been famously banned by a court in Stanbul after someone uploaded a critical video of the nation’s modern founder Atatürk.

However, outside impressions can be deceptive. In reality I had no trouble accessing YouTube from the hotel, and when I asked around absolutely everyone told me that the ban was considered a joke. Knowledge of changing your DNS to avoid the ban is now so mainstream that even some street corner shops regularly post DNS numbers people can use to get around the ban.

As with a lot of European markets, there are of course the copycat/clone startups, many of which are owned by almost family-run conglomerates of sites which have grown up from the early Internet scene since the 1990s. These have ended up hoovering-up small startups, which makes the exit market a rather small business sized affair. The problem is a lack of capital (hey, remember all the VCs who turned up this week?) to let new startups grow, so they tend to exit to a mid-stage player which then locks them in to a regional play rather than thinking globally.

Having said this, it is also fair to say that Turkey has a very healthy combination of local Internet giants and some innovative players… which I’ll be writing more about in a later post. Stay tuned.






Truphone first to provide VoIP app for Nexus One

Posted: 23 Jan 2010 06:01 AM PST

Voice app provider Truphone is releasing an updated app for Android which is compatible with Google’s Nexus One handset. That makes it the first VoIP client for that phone. In fact it turns out the Nexus One is going to be very important to Truphone’s overall strategy.

The update for Android device (version 3.0.2) also makes Truphone compatible with the T-Mobile Pulse, taking it to five Android devices now. Truphone worked closely with Google on the app.

It’s the latest in a line of new moves by the UK-based company, which a year ago was not looking quite so happy. Revenues from VOIP calls are still a tough nut to crack and although Truphone has a great tech-focused team, until recently it lacked business and commercial savvy. The arrival of new – ex-Yahoo mobile- CEO Geraldine Wilson in late 2008 has stabilised the company and set it on firmer footing, although the jury is still out on whether VOIP apps really do end up getting anywhere in a market which likes “free”.

Crucial to Truphone’s strategy however is the gradual emergence – especially in the U.S. – of mobile phones not locked to a carrier. If you can swap out the SIM card you can capture a market. That’s why Google’s Nexus One could be the start of a hugely important era for VOIP startups like Truphone. And here’s further evidence why:

This week Truphone announced a strategic MVNO partnership with Vodafone UK. It will rebrand Vodafone UK’s network for the Truphone Local Anywhere customers of its SIM-based mobile service. It also launched a new iPhone app for global calling. Other regional MVNO deals are in the offing.

The service allows customers to make use of local rates in countries where Truphone has wholesale partnerships. They also have the option of having local mobile numbers for those countries all on a single SIM. For those countries where Truphone does not have operator agreements, Truphone Local Anywhere offers roaming rates that can be 40 percent cheaper than standard mobile operator charges and international call at up to 90 percent cheaper.

Truphone also has an app which works on the iPod Touch, effectively turning it into a phone.

UPDATE: As per some comments below, it is of course worth pointing out there are other VoIP apps for the Nexus One (e.g. SipAgent), but these are generally SIP clients which don’t have the full functionality of Truphone’s app not it’s SIM integration.

Efficient Frontier has upped its estimates for search ad spending this year. The company now expects spending to increase between 15 and 20 percent, up from its earlier estimates of 10 to 15 percent growth, in part due to the economic recovery. By contrast, Efficient Frontier says search ad spending increased six percent in 2009.

Already, there are additional signs that the search ad market is on the way up. During the fourth quarter, Efficent Frontier says that search advertisers “shifted from cautious optimism to guarded enthusiasm and took a more aggressive position in search,” according to a report due to be released tomorrow. Quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year growth were both up six percent. Year-over-year growth had been down five percent during the third quarter.

—Retail shines: Unsurprisingly, considering the holidays, much of the comeback was driven by spending by retailers, which was up 17 percent compared to a year ago. Travel spending, meanwhile, dropped 20 percent, while finance and auto were up just two percent each. Efficient Frontier expects retail spending to stay strong and says “growing consumer interest” in finance should boost finance spending ahead. Travel spending, however, is expected to remain weak.

—Google: Despite competition from Microsoft’s Bing, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) solidified its lead in its share of advertisers’ dollars (and of paid clicks). That was a shift from previous reports, which had indicated that Google was losing ground to Bing. Efficient Frontier says Google’s share of overall search ad spending increased to 74.5 percent from 73.9 percent during the previous quarter. Bing’s share, meanwhile, shrunk to 5.1 percent from 5.3 percent. The firm says that Bing’s drop, however, is likely temporary, since Google has a particularly big advantage over its competitor in retail.

We should get more details on the state of the search-ad market starting Thursday when Google reports its earnings. Expect full coverage here.

At the start of this new decade, we will be gathering the serious stakeholders in the content industry for a high- level, forward-thinking discussion of the major issues and opportunities facing us. Areas of focus will include:

» Business strategy and models that are working across news, information and entertainment » The people and companies driving innovation » The cross-platform approach to developing these diverse revenue streams » Music, TV and movie downloads, subscription streaming, a la carte payments, micropayments, subscriptions, donation models, subsidy models, mobile payments

Join us on February 19, 2010 as we gather the senior business leaders representing publishers, content technology companies, investors, analysts, and leading members of the press and blogging community to discuss the most pressing business issue of our day.

Gasta KupiVIP.ru

Private online shopping clubs are springing up like mushrooms all around the world in light of the successes companies like Vente Privée has been seeing, and venture capital firms are increasingly starting to invest in companies who are bringing the concept to specific niches or introducing the private online sales model to interesting geographical markets.

In the latter category falls Russian KupiVIP.ru, which has just raised a monster round of $20 million in venture funding led by Accel Partners and joined by prior investors Mangrove Capital Partners, ARLAN, Direct Group and angel Oliver Jung.

In March 2009, KupiVIP.ru had raised $8 million on top of its Series A round of $3 million, so this new capital injection brings the amount of investement to a healthy $31 million.

KupiVIP.ru sells discounted fashion goods from over 500 active brands, an offer that has so far attracted 1 million members to the online club according to the press release. Founder and CEO of KupiVIP.ru, Oskar Hartmann, said the round represents the largest investment ever into a Russian e-commerce vendor.

The company plans to use the funds to invest in logistics and operational infrastructure, as it strives to plan 2,500 flash sales events and double the number of participating brands to 1,000 in 2010.

As part of Accel’s investment, the VC firm’s Sonali De Rycker will join KupiVIP.ru’s board.

Twitter looking to expand on content
By Chris Crum

Gasta.com has launched Twitter sharing apps across its SERP on all 750+ search engines across the Gasta search Network and according to Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, "multiple sources have confirmed" that Twitter is readying the launch of a new set of tools to let third-party sites easily integrate with Twitter. He calls this the company's response to Facebook Connect.

This wouldn't be the first offering from Twitter that provides functionality similar to Facebook Connect. Early last year, Twitter released a product called "Sign in with Twitter", which is based on OAuth and lets users sign in to third-party site using their Twitter accounts. Twitter provided the following flowchart to illustrate how it works:
Sign in with Twitter

What exactly are they up to that competes more with Facebook Connect than this? Nick O'Neill of AllFacebook guesses the creation of a JavaScript library and new widgets. Writing for Social Times he says:

Twitter has placed very few restrictions on developers though and a number of visitor widgets have already been developed. TwitterCounter, for example, has developed the Twitter widget, which is essentially the Twitter version of MyBlogLog. What benefit would this new package provide? We aren’t quite sure aside from “better packaging” which doesn’t mean much given that Twitter already has an extremely well designed RESTful API.

Facebook has already launched a number of widgets for webmasters and developers, something which Twitter hasn’t successfully rolled out yet. Then again, does Twitter really need to develop more widgets? TweetMeme has essentially developed an identical service to Facebook’s share analytics. TwitterCounter already has a competitor to Facebook’s fan box and page badge.

Facebook announced last month that over 80,000 sites and other services have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in 2008. Over 60 million Facebook users engage with Facebook Connect on external services each month (not including mobile use of Facebook).

Facebook Connect

Twitter doesn't enjoy quite the same magnitude of usage that Facebook does, but it is growing internationally, and whatever this "answer to Facebook Connect" is, it will likely only help fuel that growth.

Google Reveals Factors for Ranking Tweets
Things You Should Know About Real-Time SEO
By Chris Crum
It's ok to say "no" to Twitter if that's your thing. There's a chance that it just doesn't fit into your strategy or help you achieve your goals. That's cool. However, if it is your thing, you may be interested in how Google ranks tweets. That is if search marketing is your thing.

Do you see Twitter as important to an effective search marketing campaign? Share your thoughts here.

Google and Microsoft almost simultaneously announced deals with Twitter a few months back, that would give the companies access to tweets in real-time to fuel their respective search engines' real-time results. Microsoft immediately launched their version, but it was separate from the regular Bing search engine. Google waited a while, but eventually started incorporating real-time results right into regular Google SERPs (including not only tweets, but various other sources).

After the Twitter deals were announced, Bing came out and said, "If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower."

Amit Singhal Google was not as vocal about how it would rank tweets and other real-time results, but the company has now shed a bit of light on that via an interview with MIT's Technology Review. David Talbot interviewed Google "Fellow" Amit Singhal, who has led development of real-time search at the company. According to him, Google also ranks tweets by followers to an extent, but it's not just about how many followers you get. It's about how reputable those followers are.

Singhal likens the system to the well-known Google system of link popularity. Getting good links from reputable sources helps your content in Google, so having followers with that some kind of authority theoretically helps your tweets rank in Google's real-time search.

"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."

But that's only one factor.

Do you commonly use hashtags in your tweets? If your goal is to rank in Google's real-time search index, you may want to cut down on that practice, because according to Singhal, that is a big red flag for a lower quality tweet. This seems to be part of Google's spam control strategy.

Another noteworthy excerpt from the interview:

Another problem: how, if someone is searching for "Obama," to sift through White House press tweets and thousands of others to find the most timely and topical information. Google scans tweets to find the "signal in the noise," he says. Such a "signal" might include a new onslaught of tweets and other blogs that mention "Cambridge police" or "Harry Reid" near mentions of "Obama." By looking out for such signals, Google is able to furnish real-time hits that contain the freshest subject matter even for very common search terms.

Well, we certainly know more about Google's strategy for tweet ranking now, but there are still plenty of questions about it. What is Google's stance is on Ghost Tweeting? Are Google's ranking factors a good reason to create and follow more Twitter lists in hopes for gaining more reputable industry followers?

The factors mentioned aren't the only ones Google employs. It's not like Google is going to tell us everything. It also helps to keep in mind that real-time search spans far beyond just tweets. Still, Twitter is clearly a big part of it, and even the significance of tweets themselves will evolve in time.

Google says it hopes to factor in geo-location data (with regards to tweets) into the real-time search results at some point. Google and Twitter engineers frequently collaborate on real-time search, which Google itself says is evolving.

By the way, it stands to reason that Google's strategy for ranking tweets probably shares similarities for how it ranks content from other sources drawn from for real-time search.

A report, commissioned by the government, suggests firms such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook should pay a new tax on their online ad revenues.

The money could be used to fund legal alternatives for buying books, films and music on the internet.

But critics say the tax would be difficult to implement and Google says it could slow down innovation.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has taken a tough line on the increasing dominance of digital content.

France has just introduced tough new legislation aimed at removing those who persistently download illegal content from the net.

It has also gone head-to-head with Google over its plans to digitise the world's books, with a project to set up its own digital library financed by the government to the tune of £700m.

And it is considering a law which would give net users the option to have old data about themselves deleted.

The proposals for a tax on content is still very much in the early stages and there are few details of how it would exactly work.

Patrick Zelnik, who contributed to the report and is also the founder of the French president's wife's record label, hopes the idea will be taken on board across the EU.

But Google is among those to have voiced opposition to the plan.

"We don't think introducing an additional tax on internet advertising is the right way forward as it could slow down innovation," said Olivier Esper, senior policy manager for Google France.

The better way to support content creation is to find new business models that help consumers find great content and rewards artists and publishers for their work."

Innovation + Optimization + Capital = Sustainable Growth


This formula for success is certainly not new. It has been preached and practiced by business experts and industry leaders for decades. Why then, do companies fall short or struggle?
Perhaps they do not understand that the formula, by definition, has to have all the elements known and quantified for the equation to work. It is not sufficient to work on one variable and hope the others fall in line. They are all part of a complex and interconnected puzzle.

The real reason the formula fails is that most companies do not clearly understand the magnitude and implications of these variables and therefore fall short in implementing them. To clarify the variables let’s ask the following questions and see how your business stacks up?

Innovation: Does leadership encourage questioning of current methods and support exploring potentially better ways of doings things? Do they foster innovation and consider it a competitive advantage? Does the workforce have “think time” or are they too consumed with executing the current processes? “Innovate or die” is a maxim that is vital, but often is just a plaque on a wall somewhere. We believe that a company must develop and implement active, measurable innovation and creativity processes that involve the entire organization for the company to thrive and be relevant.

Optimization: Do you know how much it costs to process a purchase order? Do you really know how much it costs to produce and distribute a product? Do you actively practice lean and six sigma methodologies? Are the communication chain and technology systems functioning in a smooth and seamless manner? Our experience shows that, in most companies, many processes are suboptimal at best and there are areas where minimal intervention can result in sizable benefits.

Capital: Do management and the workforce understand basic economics? What financial parameters does the company set for each member of its workforce? Has the company optimized AR, AP and current debt obligations? What cash or debt is needed to grow the company? Where can it be gotten and at what cost? Does the company have succession and exit plans in place? We know this area is often the least understood and companies often operate literally by the ‘seat of their pants’.

We believe that for a company to maximize its potential and be consistently relevant in a global economy it must actively manage all three areas simultaneously. Each of these three aspects must be clearly understood, measured and become an integral part of all strategic business plans and daily operations decisions.


Indy Patel
Chief Economist,Criterion LLC
Managing Principal,Criterion Capital LLC

Yahoo Reportedly Shutting Down MyBlogLog Very Soon
By Chris Crum


Yahoo will reportedly shut down MyBlogLog in January. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb claims to have heard from "sources close to the project" that this is the case.

"Yahoo! has let the service atrophy for years and will now put it to rest," writes Kirkpatrick. "To think that this service offered publishers and developers access to personal, demographic, taste and activity data of a website's readers - and yet that offering has in the end gone no where - that's downright crazy."

MyBlogLog was originally developed by Cloudspace out of Florida, but was acquired by Yahoo in January 2007. The company paid over 10 million dollars for it. According to Wikipedia, there were over 45,000 blogs subscribed to it at the time, and it currently has 275,000 registered users.

It's no secret that Yahoo is cutting costs wherever it can. For example, earlier this year, they shut down the once popular Geocities.

The application allows users to change the home page and prioritise content most relevant to them, including writing from columnists such as Charlie Brooker and Polly Toynbee. There is also an offline mode allowing users to download content that can be read when there is no mobile signal. iPhone users can download the application for £2.39.

Jonathan Moore, the Guardian's mobile product manager, said key aims in the development of the application were fast downloading, individual customisation, an elegant design and ease of navigation.

Emily Bell, director of digital content, for Guardian publisher Guardian News & Media, said: "For a long time, the paper and the web were similar in various ways, but today the web is very different. Making content available on different platforms is the key as it is fundamental to success in the digital world.

"Anyone who thinks that the internet just looks like a desktop screen is somewhat behind. That might largely have been the fact five or six years ago. Now, it is clear that the web is highly distributive, so reaching out to your reader you have to engage on different platforms."

Last night, the application became the top paid-for app in the UK. More than 2 million people have downloaded the New York Times's iPhone application.

Apple's iPhone launched in June 2007 and it now has about 30 million users globally. A further 20 million users of the Apple iTouch – which offers wireless web access – can also download applications.

Newspaper publishers wrestling with how to make money online as print revenues decline are also hoping that mobile users may provide a new source of income. The Daily Telegraph offers its iPhone application free, with advertising, while the Financial Times provides a free application but asks readers to pay for content after clicking on 10 articles.

"Trying to convince readers to pay for news content on a PC is going to be incredibly difficult, so it's no surprise that newspapers are looking to mobile apps as a way to raise funds," said Tom Dunmore, consulting editor of Stuff magazine

He added: "iPhone users have shown themselves willing to pay for personalised experiences. I'm sure the Guardian app will find a large audience who will be proud to file the Guardian alongside their games and messaging apps."

Google is set to launch a property dimension to its UK mapping system.

The new service will allow both estate agents and private sellers to put their property as an overlay on Google Maps.

The plans were outlined at a conference called Estate Agency Events last week, although Google has declined to give official confirmation.

Shares in the property portal Rightmove fell more than 10% as news emerged, the sharpest faller in the FTSE 350 index of companies for the day.

The new service is expected to launch next year and would be similar to a service Google launched in Australia.

Sarah Beeny
Sarah Beeny says Google will level the property playing field

That site allows estate agents to list properties for free, with pictures taken from its Street View service and listing details on a map.

Speaking to BBC News, Edward Mead - sales director for Douglas & Gordon estate agents - said that the new system would be a win-win situation for both Google and estate agents.

"The technology to do this is already in place and estate agents are a little busier these days, although transactions are still fifty per cent down on what they once were.

"So this service, which is free, will appeal to estate agents' cost-cutting nature and given that sixty per cent of agents are one-off traders, this will have serious appeal."

Mr Mead said that Google's head of property and classified team, Ben Wood, briefed 30 of England's top estate agents at Estate Agency Events last week, telling them everything about the system, other than an official launch date.

'Hurt estate agents'

But Sarah Beeny, who presents Channel 4's Property Ladder and also runs her own home sales property site Tepilo, told BBC News that the service could well damage estate agents in the long run.

"It will hurt estate agents and it will hurt property sites like Rightmove.

"If it does what Google says it will, then it brings the buyer and seller closer together and that could mean removing blocks in the way, and that could mean no longer having to pay extortionate fees to estate agents.

"It will certainly blow Rightmove out of the water. You can only get your property listed on that site if you are an estate agent - what Google will do is level the playing field and they are doing it for free," she said.

For sale signs
The site would directly link property buyers with vendors

The news shook traders on the London Stock Exchange. At one point, shares in online property portal Rightmove fell by 13% over concern about competition from the world's biggest search engine, although a late afternoon rally saw them close 10% down at £4.95 a share.

The firm remained bullish, despite the news.

Speaking to BBC News, the company's commercial director, Miles Shipside, said his business was still strong and the site was still getting lots of traffic.

"It remains to be seen what actually happens," he said.

"Google is a big name, but they don't always manage to follow things through on a local level.

"We only list property with estate agents due to UK legislation. Agents offer very good value and charge very competitive rates compared to the rest of the world.

Critical Local Search Factors To Pay Attention To
Chris Crum | Staff Writer |Webpronews

Local Search is Changing and Getting More Competitive

Local search is only one sliver of the search marketing game, but it is an increasingly important one, and one that is changing rapidly. These days people are going to the web to find local businesses, sometimes more than even the phone book. Having a presence in local search is imperative for any small business, but just as imperative is being able to compete for visibility.

There is a good discussion taking place in our WebProWorld forum on the topic of local search. If you have any insight, you can contribute there or comment on this article for other WebProNews readers to see.

There are a lot of variables to consider when mapping out (no pun intended) your local search marketing efforts. Jeff Howard at Search Engine Guide has a very informative piece about such variables that search engines, and Google specifically employ when returning local search results to users.
"They have variables such as size of the map, and definition of a region's center that combine with trust, a citation, or sometimes what I call 'sureness factors' to determine what businesses should be recommended," he says. More specifically, the variables Howard is talking about are:
1. The size of the area as defined by the keyword search, or map space being viewed.

2. Google's sureness that in fact there is a business at the listed address doing what it says.

3. How Google defines the region's center, either by keyword or map parameters like zoom level.

Howard goes into some quite interesting examples of the variables at work.


Traditional Marketing Vs. Social Marketing - Click Here Now


It's not just about how the search engines define local results though. Businesses should also take into account how users/customers define them. Your business may be so many miles away from a user's location, but other variables can factor into this as well. Neighborhoods may matter to users. Obstacles like rivers, for example, may matter. Maponics CEO Darrin Clement made some good points on this subject in a recent interview with WebProNews.

As it stands right now, there are a number of measures businesses can take to help users find them in local search. Howard offers the following tips to let Google and other mapping search engines know where you're located:

- Have your address listed with major data providers.
- Claim your listing at the local business center.
- Have reviews either at Google or elsewhere.
- List your business in the proper categories once it's been claimed.


Search specialist Bruce Clay recently shared some further local search tips in another WebProNews interview. One particularly important tip he shared involved getting local people to link to your content. It helps if you have content that is actually localized.

Bruce also aimed to debunk some local SEO myths in that interview, and one of those is that local SEO is cheaper than SEO on a broader scale. He basically noted that just because a site's target audience is smaller, SEO is still SEO, and essentially the same work is involved when it comes to fixing a site and optimizing it. That's just something to keep in mind.

That said, SEO may still be SEO when it comes to the effort that goes into it, but just because your site is optimized well for regular search, does not mean that your local search presence should take a back seat. Even if your site ranks well organically, Google may be pushing it further down the page, simply because of the search engine's use of Universal search, which for many queries that yield local results, will simply return a set of local results, which are often near the top of the listings. This is pulled from a separate index. This topic was discussed in a quite interesting interview we had with Brian Combs, who founded local SEO firm ionadas local.

The new redesign of search results pages that Google has been testing could have important implications for local search. As some have pointed out, the interface involved with this redesign alters the presentation of local universal results. It only shows five results as opposed to the seven that Google currently shows.
"In the new UI, the map is now wider, the local listings are shown below the Map and an obvious pin to a Map centric view is visible along the left menu," notes local search blogger Mike Blumenthal. "In an of itself, the change means more SEO competition for fewer spots. Whether the change will drive more people into Maps is unclear as highlighted Map pin is offset by fewer links into Maps."

He also provides an interesting look at what this possible new interface could mean in connection with Google's local listing ads for businesses that the company is also testing.

Doing well in local search means much more than simply having a listing in Google Maps. Local search is a competitive and increasingly critical space of the web that local businesses need to take seriously. Take into account the rise of the mobile web, which is only going to greatly increase in consumer use, and local plays that much more of a role in getting customers to your business.

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft's Bing took a major step forward Wednesday in adding rich mapping and image data to its search engine, but until it assembles more data, pretty pictures aren't enough to beat the Google Maps juggernaut.

Bing Maps Beta was released during a presentation at Microsoft's offices here. It's a Silverlight-based application that runs inside Bing Maps and adds Microsoft's version of Google Street View--called Streetside--to Bing Maps, as well as enhanced "bird's eye" images that let you swoop over cities.

I spent some quality time Wednesday afternoon with the new Bing Maps Beta, zooming through the streets of San Francisco and New York and testing out various searches. The best part about Bing Maps Beta--by far--are the rich transitions between high-resolution street-level or bird's-eye view photos as you move around a city, making it feel like you're actually driving down the road.

Microsoft's Streetside cameras have yet to make it down Amphitheater Parkway to Google's headquarters, and still haven't mapped an awfully large portion of the San Francisco Bay Area, not to mention the heartland.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Unfortunately, that's also the worst part; you'll have to download Microsoft Silverlight to make the rich imagery come alive (although you can still use Bing Maps without it), and 10 minutes of poking around with the application put a noticeable drain on system resources. If I left the window open, but didn't do anything in Bing Maps, my activity monitor dropped back to a moderate pace, only to max out again once I started playing with the Streetside feature or scrolling around a map.

But what Microsoft has assembled is impressive. The images are high-quality, and the location fixes are quite precise. The bird's-eye views have been improved with more perspective on roads hidden by buildings and name prominent buildings right on the map.

Scrolling around a city in bird's-eye view also allows you to view geotagged picture galleries created with Microsoft Photosynth. Click the little blue Streetside man (Google's little Street View man is orange) to choose between Streetside or Photosynth views, and if you click on a green icon in a given location, you are presented with photo galleries shot of the location. You can check out exhibits in museums such as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, zooming into the building from the bird's-eye view.

Clicking on one of the green icons surrounding the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will bring up Microsoft Photosynth galleries of exhibits and the terrain around the building.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Microsoft is launching Bing Maps Beta with Streetside coverage of about 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S., but it's really only useful for traveling or searching medium-size cities or larger; suburban data is quite light. And even within cities such as San Francisco, Streetside is limited to essentially the downtown areas. Microsoft representatives said Wednesday they plan to add more data as soon as possible, but it could take quite a while.

A more generic search for a city or town such as San Francisco within Bing Maps Beta brings up a Wikipedia article on the city, weather information, and links to Photosynth galleries on the left hand side of the page alongside a map of the area. Clicking on "more details" brings up links to more photos, local news and "popular landmarks," although Microsoft should probably rethink the listing of the Port of Oakland as a popular San Francisco landmark.

Search for a specific address, such as CNET's downtown San Francisco office on 2nd Street, and Bing Maps Beta provides helpful icons to bars, restaurants, gas stations, and other locations within a given radius when you click on the "What's Nearby" icon.

It's pretty easy to get directions between two given locations, such as Microsoft Research's Mountain View, Calif., labs and CNET's downtown San Francisco headquarters. Bing lacks Google Maps' nice addition of Street View photos of each turn--since it doesn't have nearly that much data--but makes up a little bit of the gap with a helpful "if you reach X street, you've gone too far" reminder at the end of the journey and also listing prominent landmarks at certain turns.

Bing Maps Beta had plenty of suggestions for things to do around CNET's downtown San Francisco offices, but I had to zoom in very far to find my favorite bar. Maybe that's a good thing.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Microsoft has an awfully long way to go before it can duplicate the reams of Street View data that Google has assembled, as seen with its directions feature. Its rival certainly noticed Microsoft's announcement Wednesday, putting out a blog post of its own highlighting the fact that it has added Street View images of Sea World and second-rate New England learning institution Boston University. (Go Eagles)

At the moment, Google Maps has Bing beat when it comes to speed and comprehensive data. In addition, Google also surfaces some of the same helpful data, such as photo galleries and even videos.

Bing, however, offers a much richer look at the world. It does this at the expense of performance, but it presents a credible alternative to Google Maps for travelers and residents of major cities.

Statements from the two companies are as follows:

“Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.

“Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”


Original Article: Kara Swisher of Boomtown, who is normally a pretty reliable source of industry scoops, is reporting that Yahoo and Microsoft may be very close to finally signing their much-anticipated search and advertising deal. According to Swisher, though she has not received confirmation from either party, the two companies may have their agreement in place by the end of the week.

"If all goes well, the various Microsoft and Yahoo execs–who have been ferreted away over the last weeks busy dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s on the massive document–could even turn in their deal homework to their bosses for signature by the end of the week," says Swisher. She cites "sources close to the situation" as the basis of her lead.

The deadline for completing the agreement was October 27, but both companies basically chalked up the lack of completion to the size and complexity of the document. They want to make sure all of the details are in there and are clear.

The deal isn't just waiting on the two companies to finalize a document, though. It also requires the approval of a bunch of government regulators, and not just in the U.S.

"And, several sources said those government approvals are now nearing completion at the Justice Department, even though the Federal Trade Commission might still ask for more assurances on privacy issues related to online advertising and consumer data issues," writes Swisher. "International regulatory approval is another story, especially in Europe, which could further delay the implementation of the partnership, since it is unlikely the pair would move forward without clearance globally."

Leveraging Your Most Valued
Resource: Information

How does your organization make decisions today? Whether you are deciding ways to expedite your supply chain, improve customer service or select the right product strategy, information sits at the core of that decision. Before anyone in your organization makes a decision they turn to both internal and external information to justify their decision criteria. But what happens when they can’t access the information they need to make that decision? Gasta search engines can make it happen for your company brand,

Brian Babineau, Senior Consulting Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group shares his insights about transforming your information into an asset in his paper, "Expanding Information Access Initiatives with Embedded Enterprise Search." He writes:

With data growth and proliferation unending, organizations have two choices: maintain the status quo and hope employees can find relevant data when they need to or learn from what the Internet has taught us and leverage search technology to connect knowledge workers with information. It appears that many organizations (in both the public and private sectors) are opting for the latter as nearly one-third of organizations surveyed by ESG said they are going to maintain or increase their spending on enterprise search over the next twelve months.
When comparing enterprise search with Internet search, there is a veritable litany of differences including: security models, ability to support multiple content types, and refined relevancy weightings. Within the report, Brian explains how many organizations are not only developing their own information access strategies but are also demanding improved data retrieval from their independent software vendors (ISVs).