Eric Schmidt whips out mystery Android. High performance access to file storage 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. " But then he pulled out the handset, which he called an unannounced product that used Google software. Schmidt demonstrated the "tap-and-pay" bit, "checking in" to The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, which is hosting this week's conference — i.e., touching a pad that tells the phone it's at the hotel.
Zuckerberg admits fallibility over Gmail block. High performance access to file storage 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. " Using the Google API, Facebook had offered its users the option of importing their contact names and email addresses from Gmail. "Email is a little bit different from social networks," he said.
Will Facebook target ads across the interwebs? High performance access to file storage 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. "I have no idea when or if it would make sense to do something like it.
" Apparently, Facebook is now making billions of dollars via targeted ads on its site. That's a bit of an overstatement. Twitter man: Tweet ad demand exceeds supply. High performance access to file storage 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. Asked if the company had a "strong" revenue model, Williams said: "The math looks good. " Naturally. Asked how much it relied on Tweet-sharing partnerships for revenue, Williams indicated this isn't all that important. "We've got way more demand than we can service for that data," he said. Yahoo! Connected TV to open paid app store. High performance access to file storage 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. The store's developer program is now open to coders, and widgets can be build with Yahoo! ' Yahoo! ' The platform layers an internet-connected software interface atop your broadcast TV feed. A software dock at the bottom of the screen offers access to various web services, and you can open these services onto a sidebar interface or open them to full screen. Developers will be able sell their applications for between $0.99 and $99. Google charges feds $25 a head for user surveillance. 3 Big data security analytics techniques you can apply now to catch advanced persistent threats 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. In 2010, the document shows, the DEA paid ISPs, telcos, and other communication providers $6.7 million for pen registers and $6.5 million for wiretaps. The documents confirm that Microsoft does not charge for surveillance. As Soghoain points out, Google and Yahoo!
On the one hand, Microsoft could be commended for choosing not to make a single penny from government surveillance. Netizens now Facebook more than they Google. Google robo cars drive selves on public streets. High performance access to file storage 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.
Google says it has briefed the local police on the cars. Restaurant Chains Launch Interactive Facebook Menus. Christopher Heine | November 17, 2010 | 1 Comment inShare25 Exit41 has signed BBQ restaurant brand Famous Dave's and regional chains to a system that makes ordering food on Facebook a matter of a few clicks. 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. " Yahoo's 'Local Offers' Aggregates Biggest Daily Deal Services. Christopher Heine | November 16, 2010 | 0 Comments inShare9 Yahoo amasses deals and specials from 16 of the biggest daily deals marketers. The move throws cold water on rumors of a Groupon acquisition. 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. All told, those partners include Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City, BloomSpot, BuyWithMe, DealOn, Zozi, CrowdSavings, Lifebooker, FreshGuide, Scoop St, Goldstar, HomeRun, Tippr, Coupons.com, and Valpak. "It's a revenue share model that is mutually beneficial," a Yahoo spokesperson explained via e-mail.
"We're testing in various areas of the home page, and you can imagine these offers appearing in other areas across Yahoo" such as Mail. The move to aggregate deals from various platforms seems to throw cold water on a recent rumor that Yahoo may buy Groupon. Facebook's Social Inbox Increases Value of 'Likers' Christopher Heine | November 15, 2010 | 0 Comments inShare27 With the advent of Facebook as an e-mail client, brands will want to convert 'likers' to e-mail lists. 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. " Agencies Expect Ad Spending Will Increase on Facebook And Bing. Christopher Heine | October 18, 2010 | 2 Comments inShare24 Agency executives expect more advertising dollars will flow to Facebook and Microsoft's Bing under the social-and-search partnership.
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. " Fast-Food Chains Bypass Foursquare With Branded App.
Christopher Heine | November 11, 2010 | 4 Comments inShare19 Carl's Jr. and Hardee's have built a geo-social app from scratch and plan to unveil it to customers soon. 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. "I cannot comment on the cost specifically," she said. Jefferis said the app will be available for iPhone and Android users and has been designed to serve up either Carl's Jr. or Hardee's rewards, depending on which brand the user is closest to.
Facebook Serves Nearly a Fourth of U.S. Display Ads. Christopher Heine | November 8, 2010 | 0 Comments inShare20 Facebook doubled its display ad share in the last year, ComScore finds. Q3 impressions were almost 300 billion. Facebook's share of U.S. display ad impressions has grown from 9.2 percent last year in Q3 to 23.1 percent this year, easily placing the social site first in sheer volume among online ad sellers. With that remarkable growth accomplishment, any remaining doubters about Facebook's ability to monetize its platform should probably say "uncle.
" According to new research from comScore, the Palo Alto, CA-based Facebook garnered 297 billion display ad impressions during July, August, and September in the U.S. alone. "We’ve been reporting display ads for about 3-plus years, and this is the most rapid growth I’ve seen from a top publisher in that time period," Lipsman said. Yahoo properties came in second with almost 141 billion display ad impressions, or 11 percent of the market.
Google Opens AdMob to a Torrent of AdSense Ads. Jack Marshall | November 4, 2010 | 1 Comment inShare10 Move is Google's first integration with the mobile ad network it bought in May. A year after it agreed to buy mobile ad network AdMob for $750, Google has taken its first step to integrate the unit with its own ad business. AdMob's Android and iPhone application publishers will soon be able to fill their unsold inventory with Google AdSense ads, letting advertisers extend their mobile campaigns across AdMob’s network. Writing on Google’s mobile advertising blog, Jason Morse, Google mobile ads product manager, described the move as “the first of many exciting things to come with the integration of AdMob and Google.” Google's deal to buy AdMob, signed in November 2009, triggered a competition-related FTC investigation that delayed the deal's closinguntil May.
Last week AdMob also announced it was introducing new video ad formats for Google’s Android mobile operating system, further aligning the two companies. Google Adds Standardized Call Tracking Metric. Jack Marshall | November 3, 2010 | 0 Comments inShare7 Call metrics will accurately track calls in search ad campaigns, search giant says. Correction: A previous version of this story suggested call metrics will only apply to click-to-call mobile ads. The metrics will actually apply to both click-to-call ads on mobile devices and to desktop search ads incorporating phone numbers through the product. In a further attempt to demonstrate the potential of its search advertising products to marketers, Google has announced trials of a system that links unique phone numbers in search ads directly with the phone leads and offline actions it generates.
The program, dubbed call metrics, assigns each mobile ad with a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into pay-per-click ads displayed on mobile devices and in search ads on desktop machines. Google says the product will help marketers more accurately attribute offline actions such as in-store purchases with online search ad campaigns. Google phasing out the organic search results for local queries. Privacy and Security Fanatic: Microsoft Spying on Users For Free | Network World. Will Google (And MSFT, And HP, And BAC) Be The Biggest Loser From The Irish Bailout? | zero hedge.
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