CNN President “Really Afraid Of” Social Networks
March 14, 2010
Over the years, there have been more than a few arguments about whether online news sites are killing newspapers. Now, due to some almost startling comments made by the president of CNN, it looks like the next round of old media-new media disputes might concern social networks and cable news organizations.
According to the AFP, Jonathan Klein's remarks on this subject were in no way ambiguous. He said at Bloomberg BusinessWeek's 2010 Media Summit New York, "The competition I'm really afraid of are social networking sites. That's an alternative that threatens to pull people away from us."
Klein then explained, "The people you're friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information. . . . Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news. We don't want the 1,000 people you follow in Twitter to be the most trusted sources for you. . . . So I'm far more worried about the 500 million people on Facebook than I am about two million people watching Fox."
That's an interesting take on the power of social networks. It implies - at the very least - that CNN anchors are going to spend a whole lot more time referencing Facebook and Twitter from now on. An ad campaign and new apps could follow, too.
On a broader scale, Klein seems to be saying that social networks' users can easily - even unwittingly - make or break major corporations.
Google Improves Click-To-Call Ads With Phone Extensions
March 3, 2010
A little more than a month ago, Google introduced click-to-call phone numbers in local ads on smartphones. Now, the popular program's undergoing an expansion as Google's made it easier for large companies to take advantage of the offering.
A post on the Inside AdWords blog explained today, "[W]e're bringing the same click-to-call benefits to national advertisers through phone extensions. Phone extensions allow you to add a phone number that will be displayed whenever your ad is triggered, regardless of the user's location."
Here's the upshot, then: "This enables customers to connect with your business by phone directly from the ad and can be especially useful if you have a call center to handle customer inquiries."
Advertisers should profit as a result of this development, considering that phone calls are more likely than clicks to lead to purchases. Google looks set to make a lot of money, too, since this move will encourage corporations with big advertising budgets to give click-to-call ads a shot.
Perhaps the only losers will be the companies that don't adapt quickly. They'll risk losing sales to competitors with more eye-catching and actionable ads.
Sony Ericsson CEO Admits Nexus One Snub
February 19, 2010
As interesting alternate timelines go, the idea of a cell phone having been built by a different company doesn't exactly rank up there with JFK surviving his trip to Dallas. Still, the CEO of Sony Ericsson raised more than a few eyebrows by admitting that his company declined the opportunity to manufacture the Nexus One.
If you speak Swedish, feel free to proceed to Sydsvenskan.se and read Bert Nordberg's comments for yourself. We're stuck with Google's best attempt at a translation, and it implies that the CEO thought Sony Ericsson didn't need Google's help.
"It would be in itself an alternative way out to the market, but we'd rather by their own efforts on the important U.S. market," Nordberg supposedly said. Meanwhile, the title of the whole Sydsvenskan.se article is translated as "Sony Ericsson refused to build the Google Phone."
This may be a sign that Android doesn't have quite the appeal many people thought it did; perhaps Google has to convince more corporations of the operating system's worth before it can even attempt to woo consumers on a large scale.
Or this may simply be a sign of wackiness within Sony Ericsson. Vladislav Savov, who deserves a hat tip for the whole story, pointed out that HTC has gotten a lot of compliments due to its part in bringing the Nexus One to market, and also that Sony Ericsson recently arranged to lay off 2,000 employees.
Things to Consider if Page Speed is to Become a Ranking Factor
December 28, 2009
About a month ago, WebProNews interviewed Google's Matt Cutts, who suggested that page speed may soon become a ranking factor in the world's most popular search engine. Speed has been a consistent theme with the company over the past year or so, with the release of various tools and announcements. It has become quite evident that Google places a great deal of importance on speeding up the web. With that in mind, it's not hard to see why Cutts' suggestion could soon become a reality. Google has always maintained that it is trying to deliver the best user experience, and by delivering results that load quickly users should get just that.
Do you think it's a good idea for Google to use speed as a ranking factor? Share your thoughts here.
While many webmasters are embracing the notion of speed as a ranking factor as a welcome change, there are also plenty of people who do take issue with it for a variety of reasons. We've had some interesting comments from readers on the subject. Here are some of them:
So, we all have to pay for the most expensive hosting now or we won’t get found in search engines. I won’t be able to host on my own servers at work now. It went from paying for backlinks with huge advertising corporations to get sites PageRank up, Now we have to go with even bigger corporations that can afford to have a massive pipe connecting to the Internet. I don’t think Google mean to, but they are squeesing the poor people of the World out from search results and glorifying huge corporations – Be careful Google!
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Page speed is going to be a big political issue. Apart from concerns about net neutrality, what about countries who’s internet infrastructure is vastly inferior to the technology rich countries. Regions like south east asia and central china have much better connections than east africa. Even some parts of Scotland have poor internet links based on the ageing BT networks. Also the people who can afford dedicated servers and high quality bandwidth have a big advantage over the common Joe who has to rely on shared hosting. Does this make google less democratic? or are they just following what they think people want, ie faster loading sites?
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What do you think will happen to the sites that are mainly using rich media like video blogs? Can they really accelerate their load time? If not, are they doomed to drop from the SERP?
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The speed thing concerns me. Next to a tiered internet its the biggest slam agains the small time net player. Corporations will take over fast and knock out anyone who can’t afford a lightning fast server.
Those are just a few reader comments that were left on the video interview. You can read them all here. You can read quite a few more on this related article as well. Voice your own concerns here.
Regardless of how you feel about the possibility of Google using page speed as a ranking factor, it's probably going to happen, and it's something you're more than likely going to have to deal with. Besides this even being a factor for regular organic results, consider Google's recently introduced real-time results. The quicker Google can crawl you, the quicker you can potentially appear in this section.
As far as speeding up your site in general, Bill Hartzer recently shared a few tips on the subject in an interview with WebProNews: