How Will Twitter Show Users Ads?
February 24, 2010
Twitter is testing an ad platform, which is expected to be released next month, possibly at the South By Southwest event in Austin. Though the timing of the release has not been confirmed, Twitter's head of product management and monetization, Anamitra Banerji, told MediaPost that they "are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase."
According to Banerji, when Twitter does launch the product, it will make it clear when sponsors have paid for ads, and the ads themselves will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of it as an ad." This strategy seems to have been working well for Digg, which launched Digg Ads last year, to generally positive feedback from users (users can participate by voting ads up and down, which makes the more interesting ones more likely to be seen).
Twitter doesn't exactly operate like Digg though, but Twitterers do contribute to trending topics. On a recent panel, Banerji showed off a chart that looked at peaks and total tweets throughout the Super Bowl, with one line representing tweets about the actual game, and another representing tweets about specific advertisers.
It is possible that Twitter's ad platform would tie into this "what people are already talking about" kind of thing, but that would seemingly make it much more difficult for a lesser-known brand to have any kind of advertising success.
The truth is, nobody knows exactly how Twitter is going to present its ads yet. The question is, how can they do it in a way that users won't think of it as an ad? It's probably going to involve some real-time engagement on the part of the advertiser, which leads one to wonder how they will be different than any other unpaid, branded tweet.
"People are constantly talking and engaging with brands, sharing their feedback," MediaPost quotes Banerji as saying. "What if brands start to participate? What would the chart look like then?" I thought brands already did that.
It's going to be about how Twitter presents it. That could be a difficult problem to address, given that Twitter users use the service through many different third-party apps and devices, and often not the site itself. This is not a concept Twitter is likely to have ignored though, so if they're planning on launch next month, they must have a pretty good solution.
How would you like to see ads displayed on Twitter? Discuss here.
Who’s Got The Buzz: Yahoo or Google?
February 11, 2010
UPDATE: Google's Victoria Katsarou tells WebProNews...
"We chose the name Buzz because of the word's connotations of activity, conversations, sharing of information... Buzz' is not a trademarked term."
For further details, read the full article: Google: "Buzz" Is Not a Trademarked Term
ORIGINIAL ARTICLE: Recently, Google officially announced their latest product, Google Buzz, during a live press event. If you’re not familiar with Google Buzz, it’s a way to share updates, photos, videos, and more. (You can read an extensive writeup of Google Buzz here).
Wait a minute; doesn't the name Buzz sound familiar? Well, there’s a good reason for that. Let me re-introduce you to Yahoo! Buzz.
Should Google have picked a different name for their service? Share your thoughts.
For those of you who don’t know what Yahoo! Buzz is, or for those of you who forgot it even existed, it’s a Digg-esque social bookmarking service that launched back in 2008.
The first thing that came to this writers mind was, “how can two rivals in the search industry each have a product with the same name?” Granted, they’re two separate services, but both reside in the social media realm.
Another thing that should be noted is the Yahoo! Buzz logo features a trademark. That trademark only applies apparently to the the word Yahoo, not "Yahoo Buzz".
What do you think will happen between Google & Yahoo? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... what you think.
UPDATE: Looks like Yahoo! finally caught wind of Google Buzz, they recently tweeted the following...
Google Chrome Extensions Not Limited to Gallery
February 2, 2010
Google recently launched its extensions Gallery for Chrome, but today the company is reminding users of the browser (which continues to gain popularity) that there are a lot more things you can do with it beyond just what's in the gallery. Google Chrome 4 supports Greasemonkey user scripts.
Chrome users can use Greasemonkey, which is a Firefox extension that allows developers to customize web pages using javascript, to install any user script with a single click.
"Ever since the beginning of the Chromium project, friends and coworkers have been asking me to add support for user scripts in Google Chrome," says software engineer Aaron Boodman. "I'm happy to report that as of the last Google Chrome release, you can install any user script with a single click. So, now you can use emoticons on blogger. Or, you can browse Google Image Search with a fancy lightbox. In fact, there's over 40,000 scripts on userscripts.org alone."
"Installation is quick and easy, just like installing an extension," adds Boodman. "That's because under the covers, the user script is actually converted into an extension. This means that management tasks like disabling and uninstalling work just like they do with extensions."
Boodman notes that scripts have full access to private data on sites, so you would want to be careful about what you install, and use caution when trusting them. Not all of the scripts work with Chrome yet (Boodman estimates 15% - 25%).
According to data from NetMarketShare, Chrome made market share gains in January, taking share away from both IE and Firefox. The browser gained .6% for the month.
Have You Read This?
> Chrome Ad Campaign Nets Positive Results
> Digg Launches New Extensions for Firefox and Chrome
Internet Explorer Losing its Luster in Europe?
January 26, 2010
According to data released by the AT Internet Institute, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has fallen to under 60% of visits in Europe. The firm suggests that with widely publicized news of a major security flaw and moves being made by competing browsers, IE's fall may not be reversed in the very near future.
"Out of the 23 countries that were studied, Internet Explorer experienced the largest decline in visit shares for websites in Ireland, United Kingdom, Greece and Czech Republic," the firm notes.
Additional findings from the AT Internet Institute include:
- Google Chrome exceeded 4% of visit shares with a gain of 2 points in 6 months
- attained 29.4% of traffic to a website in a European country in December 2009
- gained almost 1 point and exceeded 5% of visit shares
- On average 2.3% of visits to a European website through Opera in December 2009 compared to 2.2% in June 2009.
"It is interesting to note that the growth of Safari coincided with the growth of Google Chrome," says the firm. "Based on the same engine Webkit, would Google Chrome indirectly encourage the use of Safari?"
Last week, Mozilla launched the latest version of Firefox, and Google has just released the latest version of Chrome for Windows, complete with extensions and Bookmark Sync.
Have You Read This?
> Chrome Ad Campaign Nets Positive Results
> Digg Launches New Extensions for Firefox and Chrome
