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Eric Schmidt whips out mystery Android • The Register
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has demonstrated a mystery Android phone that uses a near field communication (NFC) chip that could effectively turn the handset into a credit card, offering the ability to "tap and pay." Chatting today at the Web 2.0 Summit mini-conference in San Francisco, Schmidt would not say who would offer the phone, but it's rumored that American retailer Best Buy is set to sell a Google-branded phone known as the Nexus S. Asked whether Google is developing a new device as rumored, Schmidt said "We don't build devices."
Zuckerberg admits fallibility over Gmail block • The Register
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg isn't sure that Facebook is "100 per cent right" in preventing Google's Gmail and other third-party apps from automatically importing email addresses from the social-networking service. He says that the company is still weighing the possibilities — and that it believes in openness. "We're trying to think through these things and be respectful of all the forces that are at play," Zuckerberg said on Tuesday evening at the Web 2.0 Summit in downtown San Francisco. "One thing that we do care a lot about: our value system errs very strong on the side of openness and portability. That's why we built [Facebook] Connect, the single largest system that allows people to bring data from one system to another that's ever been created."
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is downplaying the possibility of the social networking giant rolling out a web-wide advertising network that targets ads based on your behavior and the behavior of your Facebook friends. On Wednesday evening, during an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in downtown San Francisco, Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook was on the verge of unleashing such an ad network, and if the company had reached a point in its history analogous to the moment when Google took its on-site ad expertise and rolled it out to the web-at-large in the form of its AdSense network. He hemed and hawed a bit, but he eventually indicated that such network isn't coming any time soon. "I think it's [at an] earlier stage than when Google did that," he said.
Will Facebook target ads across the interwebs? • The Register
Twitter man: Tweet ad demand exceeds supply • The Register
Twitter founder Evan Williams says that demand is far outstripping supply on the company's fledgling ad platforms . "Our biggest challenge right now is that there's way too much demand for the supply," he said – predictably – on Wednesday evening at the Web 2.0 Summit in downtown San Francisco. "We've been ramping up our sales team to get more people in the door. We've kept it small, and we've purposely kept it small, so we can test very throughly and learn from what's happening and get feedback from the advertisers." He said that the company is serving about 40 advertisers at the moment, but that this will grow to "hundreds" by the end of the year. The company now sells "promoted tweets," which turn up in Twitter search results; "promoted trends," which pop up in the site's "trending topics," a list of the most popular subjects on the micro-blogging service; and "promoted accounts," which appear in the list of Twitter accounts the site suggests you should follow.
Developers can now build for-pay widgets for Yahoo!'s Connected TV platform. Yahoo! will distribute these third-party mini apps through its Yahoo! Connected TV Store, due to launch in March of next year.
Yahoo! Connected TV to open paid app store • The Register
Microsoft does not charge for government surveillance of its users, whereas Google charges $25 per user, according to a US Drug Enforcement Admission document turned up by security and privacy guru Christopher Soghoian. With a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Soghoian has exposed four years of DEA spending on wiretaps and pen registers . A wiretap grabs actual telephone or Internet conversations, whereas a pen register merely grabs numbers and addresses that show who's doing the communicating.
Google charges feds $25 a head for user surveillance • The Register
Netizens now Facebook more than they Google • The Register
US netizens are now spending more time on Facebook than on all of Google's sites combined, according to the latest data from online research outfit comScore. As the AP reports , comScore says that US net users spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, or about 9.9 per cent of their total web surfing. By comparison, they spent 39.8 million minutes on Google sites, or 9.6 per cent of their total time. This includes not only Google's search engine, its Gmail web-based email service, and other Google-branded sites but YouTube as well.
Google has built a fleet of cars that drive themselves, and over the past several months, these robotic vehicles have driven over 140,000 miles on public roads, from the Pacific Coast Highway to the famous twists and turns of San Francisco's Lombard Street. As the company revealed on Saturday morning with a blog post , each car is equipped with video cameras, radar sensors, and a laser range finder that alerts the vehicle to other traffic, and they navigate using maps previously collected by cars that were driven by good old fashioned human beings. The self-driving cars, Google says, are never unmanned. A human sits in the driver seat and can take control of the car at anytime, and according to a New York Times story that coincided with Google's blog post, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has deemed the cars legal because a human can override the automated controls. But a staff counsel for the department also says that the cars are "ahead of the law" in many areas.
Google robo cars drive selves on public streets • The Register
Restaurant Chains Launch Interactive Facebook Menus | ClickZ
Now that you might be checking your e-mail on Facebook in the near future, you may as well order lunch there, too. Exit41 has announced today an ordering system for restaurants' Facebook pages, including regional launch partners Silver Diner, Wow Bao, Hello Pasta, and Bailey and Sage. National chains like Famous Dave's will soon implement the system on their Facebook pages, said Joe Gagnon, CEO for Exit41. "Most restaurants have already figured out that Facebook is a great way for them to interact with their customers and have gotten quite good at it," he said. "[We help them] close the loop by turning interactions into sales with campaigns linked to ordering, feedback from customers linked to product, and ordering linked to needs, desires and wants." After clicking an "Order Online" tab on a restaurant's Facebook page, visitors can browse an interactive menu.
Yahoo's 'Local Offers' Aggregates Biggest Daily Deal Services | ClickZ
Christopher Heine | November 16, 2010 Yahoo today launched a beta version of a daily deals channel called "Local Offers," which will give further distribution to most of the niche's biggest names.
Facebook's Social Inbox Increases Value of 'Likers' | ClickZ
Facebook announced its Facebook Messages platform today, which, among other things, will allow the site's 500 million users to establish @Facebook.com e-mail addresses. And it appears that the platform's "Social Inbox" will significantly reward marketers who are spending ad budget on accruing "likers" for their pages on the social site. The Social Inbox will include regular Facebook messages, e-mail sent to @Facebook.com addresses, mobile phone messages (SMS), and Facebook Chat discussions. When a brand sends an e-mail or direct message to a "liker" on the Facebook Messages platform, it will appear in an "Other Messages" section that sits directly below a "Messages" folder. In simple terms, the "Messages" folder will house conversations with friends while "Other Messages" will hold messages from entities that users have "liked." There are a number of intriguing potential manifestations for marketers with the development.Christopher Heine | October 18, 2010 Marketers agreed that the Facebook-Bing deal should make the phones ring a bit more often in the companies' ad sales department. ClickZ reached out to agencies last week to gauge their reactions to the social-and-search marriage forged Oct. 13. Two immediate consensus opinions: Brands will want to increase their "likers" via Facebook.com ads or other measures, as such Facebook users will be appearing in socially contextualized Bing search results. And companies with large Facebook presences - such as Coca-Cola (14.2 million "likers"), Red Bull (9.6 million), and Wal-Mart (1.7 million) - will be inclined to increase their Bing paid and organic search efforts. Reggie Bradford is CEO of Vitrue, a social media company that made waves in April when it valued the earned media $3.60 per Facebook "liker."
Agencies Expect Ad Spending Will Increase on Facebook And Bing | ClickZ
Reports of relatively slow adoption rates for location-based services are not stopping Carl's Jr. and Hardee's from launching a branded Foursquare-like app before the end of the year. And according to the CKE Restaurant brands' digital agency, 72andSunny, the initiative has been no small measure to put together. Rebekah Jefferis, director of interactive production for the Los Angeles-based 72andSunny, explained that her team was charged with integrating the brands' new "Happy Star Rewards" program with the point-of-sales software for their 3,000 stores.
Fast-Food Chains Bypass Foursquare With Branded App | ClickZ
Facebook Serves Nearly a Fourth of U.S. Display Ads | ClickZ
Christopher Heine | November 8, 2010Jack Marshall | November 4, 2010