Yahoo Gets Stock Boost From “Outperform” Rating

Although this turned out to be a pretty "meh" day for the stock market as a whole - the Dow and S&P 500 slipped a little bit, while the Nasdaq didn't gain much - Yahoo investors should be feeling pleased.  Yahoo's stock rose by a significant amount as an analyst rated it "market outperform," up from "market perform."

Sameet Sinha of JMP Securities is the man who's responsible for making that change, and he attributed the move to Yahoo's relationship with Microsoft.  Sinha indicated that other experts will come to think better of the company, too, as additional financial models incorporate the deal.

Then here's another, more concrete, detail: Sinha set a price target of $21.  Since Yahoo's stock hasn't been that high since July of 2008, that would be a significant level.

As for the current price of Yahoo's stock, it's been very much on the move.  It rose 2.86 percent during the trading day, taking it from $16.06 to $16.52.

Again, then, this was a good day for Yahoo's shareholders.  Google's shareholders lost a small amount of money, meanwhile (its stock decreased 0.31 percent), and Microsoft's shareholders made an even smaller amount (its stock rose 0.15 percent).

YouTube Advertises Presence Of New Iran Protest Clips

Yesterday, Iranian authorities enacted a ban on Gmail, saying they'd introduce a government-sponsored (and presumably government-monitored) email service to replace it.  Now, as YouTube's seeing an influx of protest videos, Google's taken a moment to mark the Iranian government's lack of control.

To be clear: these videos are not all specifically related to the Gmail development.  Some Iranians are instead using today, which is the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, to protest the presidential election and the subsequent crackdowns on free speech.

Google just helped to put a spotlight on the clips and the deteriorating situation.  Olivia Ma wrote on the YouTube Blog, "[T]hese extraordinary videos provide an exclusive window into what's taking place on the ground, as foreign press have been banned from the country.  YouTube remains blocked in Iran, but dissidents are passing videos to friends out of the country and using Internet circumvention technologies to post the footage, according to news reports and correspondence with those on the ground."

She then added, "We're tracking the videos on Citizentube . . . .  A playlist can be found here."

Free speech advocates will no doubt find it reassuring that Google hasn't tried to make nice with Iran's government following the Gmail ban.

Apple’s Store Is Back Up, Aperture 3 Added

UPDATE: The Apple store is finally back online and it looks like the only thing added was the recently announced photography software package, Aperture 3.

To say people aren't pleased with Apple would be an understatment... as many were hoping for the new Core i5 and i7 MacBooks.

Are you let down that nothing else was added to the Apple Store? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends....

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Sometimes when the Apple store goes down it’s nothing, while other times new products are added once the store finally comes back online. One good sign that it could be a new product is that the Apple Store is down globally.

What do you think Apple will unveil when the store comes back? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends....

We’re not sure what to expect once the store does come back… but this hasn’t stopped Twitter users from speculating on what is to come. It appears that most Twitterers are hoping for a new MacBook Pro while others think that the iPad will be added to the store. No one really knows what is coming, well I guess it's safe to say that a "Fail Whale" might be coming once the Apple Store comes back online.

At this time, all we can do is speculate on what Apple is currently doing. In any case, be sure to check back later as we’ll update this article on the Apple Store additions.

Is Google Bad at Social Media or Really, Really Good at it?

Google often takes a lot of flack for not being incredibly successful with its social media efforts. Most recently, Caroline McCarthy and Tom Krazit tackled this subject in a CNET article claiming that "Google struggles with social skills." I would not go so far as to say that I completely disagree with them. They make plenty of factual points that are simply undeniable. Orkut hasn't set the world afire. Jaiku and Dodgeball didn't work out. YouTube was pretty much established by the time Google bought it, and even since it has not been the financial success many would have assumes it would be, despite its enormous popularity.

Is it that Google doesn't do well with social media or is it that Google is doing better at it than most people even consider. First, you have to ask yourself: what is a social network anyway? What is social media? Is it Facebook? MySpace? Twitter? Is it a network of connected people? Google Profile users can look at their "social circles" and quickly realize that Google has them connected to people.

If you look at the definitions for social media, you get things like "content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies," "a category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content." I think Google has done pretty well at indexing and monetizing user-generated content (that is if user means user of Google, which essentially makes the majority of all content user-generated).

When you compare Google to Facebook, wouldn't it be fairer to break down Google by its various offerings? Wouldn't it be fairer to compare Google itself to Facebook? You can say, well, Google Friend Connect isn't as successful as Facebook. Jaiku wasn't as successful as Facebook. Wouldn't it make more sense to chalk each of these offerings within Google as features of the broader Google network, for all intents and pruposes?

Most of Google's products require one account. You log in to your Google account and there are a lot of different things you are able to do, and it's all because of that one account. You can email people, chat, write documents and spreadsheets, use webmaster tools, etc., etc., etc. Is Google not just a social network with a lot more features than most others (not to mention what many would consider to be a better search tool than most other social networks)?

Is Google's "failure" at social media due to not having a proper Twitter-like stream (which Facebook essentially took and ran with by the way)? Maybe Google doesn't have the best feature in every social media category, but I think they've pretty much taken the cake in some categories, and last I checked, Google is pretty successful.

I write this not as some kind of Google fanboy, but each day, I see Google launching new products and features, finding new things for users to do, and particularly for those who have a Google account. A lot of what you can do with various Google products requires you to be logged in. A lot of it is very social (profiles, social search, real-time search, document sharing, Google reader sharing and commenting, emailing, chatting, Google latitude...just to name a few). Maybe we should consider the sum of all users across all of the company’s products to determine just how successful it is at this so-called “social media”. Google makes money. Crazy money.  I wonder how many people have Google accounts.

Note: For the record, I understand that nobody's saying Google itself isn't succesful.

Is Google really not good at social media? I'll ask again, what is social media really? We tend to put these labels on things, but I don't think it's so black and white.
 

Have You Read This?

> Google Luring More Account Users with New News Feature?

> Integration - The Key to Google as a Social Network

> Is Gmail Google's Real Social Network?

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