Web Archives - Page 11 of 16

Microsoft Wants to Buy Yahoo!

Microsoft + Yahoo! Wow! (Which apparently has been the reaction all over the blogosphere.) Microsoft (MSFT) just made a bid to purchase Yahoo! (YHOO) at $31/share, or about $44.6 billion in cash and stock.

This has been in the rumor mill for some time now, once even jumping the price of YHOO to around $33. Now that Microsoft has made a public bid, the price has been hovering between $27-29. Some analysts expect that this is only the first bid by Microsoft, and that they may raise their bid $3-4 to sweeten the deal.

“It’s unusual to put your best bid out the first time,” said Tom Burnett, the Director of Research for the merger research firm Wall Street Access. He also added that the possibility of a Democrat winning the US presidential election could make the acquisition tricky. “A lot of this is driven by the political impact of the Dems going into the White House, and being more vigorous. The Dems have a history of being more aggressive and anti-big business.” This means Microsoft may have to sweeten the deal soon.

Oh, and here’s an interesting take on Microsoft’s bid, by Peter Van Dijck (found via the comments of A VC). Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land also has a good analysis of the bid, including a mention of Yahoo!’s response: “[The] Board of Directors will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo!’s strategic plans and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders.”

This could be a real historical moment, at least in the Internet world. Wow indeed!

Don’t Post Naked Photos of Yourself on Facebook!

This just in from Caroline McCarthy of Webware: “Report: Facebook threatens to ban Gawker’s Denton“!

So here’s what went down. Just this past Tuesday, Nick Denton, founder of the blog network Gawker Media, published the article “Emily Brill: The Second Generation“, where he featured some very unflattering screenshots taken from a Facebook member’s profile page. This is after Denton “took over as managing editor of Gawker.com this month after several staff departures,” reports McCarthy.

The victim is 25-year-old Emily Brill, daughter of Steven Brill, the founder of ~~CourtTV~~ (I mean truTV), American Lawyer Magazine, and numerous other companies. The screenshots included a set of photos comparing Emily in a bikini against an older college photo where she was “significantly heavier,” adds McCarthy.

Sam Gustin of Portfolio.com writes in his article “Blogger Bullying Draws a Website Warning” that Denton “has violated Facebook’s terms of use… and the social network’s honchos are not amused.”

Facebook’s Terms of Use make it clear that, “Except for your own User Content, you may not upload or republish Site Content on any Internet, Intranet or Extranet site or incorporate the information in any other database or compilation, and any other use of the Site Content is strictly prohibited.”

This could result in Denton being banned from Facebook.

Not surprisingly, this isn’t the first time information from someone’s Facebook profile has been used against them. Back in August 2007, Lucy Morrow Caldwell of Slate Magazine published the article “Daddy Dearest: Rudy Giuliani’s daughter is supporting Barack Obama“. Since both Caldwell and the 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani are both part of the Harvard network, Caldwell was able to see that Giuliani listed her political view as “liberal” and joined the Facebook group “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack).” She has since withdrawn from the group.

Also, back in October 2007, Owen Thomas of Valleywag published the article “Confirmed: Facebook and Microsoft flacks make friends before deal announcement” after noticing that Brandee Barker, head of PR at Facebook, added Adam Sohn, head of marketing PR at Microsoft (MSFT), as a friend. “Just buddies?” wrote Thomas. “I think not. But I’m sure writing up the press release announcing Microsoft’s investment and ad deal will make them fast friends, indeed.”

This almost led to Thomas being banned from Facebook too, his insiders told him.

What’s this mean for you and I? Well, for one, don’t post any naked photos of yourself on Facebook, or anywhere else online for that matter. “Well, duh Mike, that’s a no-brainer,” you say? Sorry kids, practicing safe Facebooking still means you could catch a case of public crabs. (Only abstinence is the true protection, but what’s the fun in that?) Let me explain.

Someone else could upload photos of you
And if that person tags you in the photos, the photo is now linked to you. Fortunately, you can remove your tag from photos (and videos too). Whew.
Strangers may be able to see your profile
McCarthy notes that it’s not clear whether Denton and Brill are friends on Facebook, but since both are members of the New York regional network, there’s a chance he could have seen her profile without being directly connected. For instance, if someone pokes you, you can see their profile. So if you poke back, they can see your profile. Fortunately, you can control what they see by altering your Poke, Message and Friend Request Settings.
Strangers could see your photos if they have your album’s URL
According to Thomas, Facebook privacy is an illusion. Someone gave him the exact URL to a photo album of Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, despite not being directly connected to him. This allowed Thomas (and any of us) to view the entire album. Unfortunately, there’s no way to counter this at the moment, though I’m guessing Facebook’s engineers are working on this.

How does Denton feel about being banned from a potentially plump source of stories? As Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider writes in “Nick Denton’s Gawker Takes On Scientologists, Facebook, Wins“:

Denton tells us he doesn’t care if Facebook boots him off the social network: “I was getting bored of Facebook, anyway.” (Note to Gawker Media employees: Yes, we know Denton forced you all to join Facebook last spring. We don’t know whether this means you’re off the hook, though.)

And for the curious stalkers out there, sorry to dash your hopes, but “perhaps due to the Gawker incident, Emily Brill’s Facebook profile is no longer publicly searchable,” says McCarthy. Which is for the best; this Paris-Hilton-esque spotlight must’ve been Hell for her.

Facebook Scrabulous vs Hasbro Scrabble

Hello, my name is Mike and I’m a Scrabuholic.

Yes, I’m one of them. I’m one of those people who logs on to Facebook everyday just to play Scrabulous. While I only have six games going (as opposed to hundreds by true hardcore Scrabuholics), it’s become quite an addiction. And I know I’m not alone.

Which is why I’m sad to hear that Hasbro (HAS), creator of the board game Scrabble, is trying to shut down Scrabulous. Hearing this makes me a sad panda.

In his article, “Will someone please start a Facebook group to save Scrabulous?” Josh Quittner of Fortune Magazine writes:

I can’t tell if Hasbro… is the smartest company in the world or the dumbest. Over 100 million sets of the game have been sold in 121 countries, in 29 different languages, according to everyone’s favorite source. What a cash cow. …

But all good things must come to an end, which is bad news for Scrabulous fans, and even worse for the [Scrabulous creators]: Hasbro’s trying to shut the site down. “They sent a notice to Facebook about two weeks ago,” Jayant confirmed to me. “The lawyers are working on it.” …

As a tech writer and life-long student of what passes for Internet economics, I’m baffled. Is Hasbro just a stupid Potato Head? Or is this a brilliant game of Stratego?

Jayant, of course, is part of the duo that created Scrabulous, along with his brother Rajat Agarwalla. They were just two rabid Scrabble fans who used to play on Quadplex until it started charging its users. “I’m not sure why Hasbro actually picked on this” Jayant added as he pointed out all the other free online Scrabble clones out there (like gazillions!).

“Because, dude, you’re the best,” added Quittner. Dawww.

These two brothers first built a site called Scrabulous in 2006 that earned about 600,000 registered users in a year. So when Facebook opened up its platform, the brothers launched their Facebook app in June 2007. Six months later, they earned about 2.3 million users. Holy Scrabble Batman! It’s currently the most popular Facebook game out there too (check it out under the “Most Active Users” tab).

So an obvious thought for most people in the web industry is: Why doesn’t Hasbro just purchase the Scrabulous Facebook app? Perhaps they are… “We’re trying to work out some kind of deal,” Jayant added. TechCrunch also picked up this story (“Hasbro Tries To Shut Down Scrabulous“) and one commenter suggested that “just acquiring the app might be cheaper (AND strategically [more] meaningful) than throwing their lawyers at this.”

What would Scrabulous be worth if it was for sale? Jayant said it makes “over $25,000 a month.” Adonomics, an open analytics and advertising platform for Facebook, values Scrabulous at just under $3M. Hmmm.

So say Hasbro purchased Scrabulous. They’d get a major presence on Facebook, some marketing exposure (especially among Facebook users) and a new revenue stream—though it would be a tiny one, compared to their other profit makers, like Cranium or Monopoly.

And what’s the potential downside for them? As another TechCrunch commenter wrote, “Sure, buying them would be an option, but then in some ways you’re rewarding people for stealing trademarks and brand names.” That would certainly set a precedent in the industry for other potential copycats hoping to score big by selling out. Hasbro may not even have the operational capacity or knowledge to support Facebook apps either. They have their Flash-based Monkeybar TV HasbroGames, but it may not have been built in-house. Also, perhaps they simply doesn’t see the gains in marketing and revenue worth the risks of buying Scrabulous.

Being Scrabuholic that I am really makes me hope they don’t shut down Scrabulous. Though if they did, they’d free me of my addiction and give me back oodles of free time. But then, I wouldn’t have Scrabulous. And that would make me a sad panda.

SEO for Newspapers and Magazines

Remember the long bet between Dave Winer and Martin Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times?

In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site.

Rogers Cadenhead of Workbench tallied the results and discovered that he was sorta right. For 2007’s top stories, some blogs did rank higher than newspapers in a Google search.

Read/WriteWeb took a look at this and correctly hinted that the test isn’t an accurate conclusion of the popularity of blogs vs newspapers—it’s really a test on the SEO effectiveness of the two groups of sites. And the blogs in these results are more search engine-friendly than the newspaper websites. (Also, this test doesn’t measure how many people read the actual printed newspapers.)

This made me wonder. What would the newspaper (and magazine) websites have to do to increase their SEO?

Use proper heading tags (H1, H2…) for article headlines and subtitles
Improve the URLs by replacing those cryptic numbers they oftentimes use the article headline
Don’t require user authentication, or create a non-signed-in blurb of the article, though that’s not as SEO-friendly
Archive all previous articles publically, perhaps with a disclaimer that it’s an old article (some news sites delete old stories)
Update the Google sitemap regularly (some do this already)
Encourage links to the article by adding related content or features to important articles that add value
Include a link back to the web article in the emailed version
Use web standards markup so search engines have less code to crawl and index
Create an RSS feed for all articles & articles by category (most do this already, though I’ve seen a few who don’t)

Guy Kawasaki on the Blogosphere

Last month, Entrepreneur magazine did an article about Guy Kawasaki and Truemors. Entitled, “Truthfully Speaking“, it was a case study on Truemors, short for “true rumors.”

With only $12,000, the managing director of the VC fund Garage Technology Ventures launched Truemors with a partner in a true boot-strapping experience. So far, they’re reportedly breaking even by revenue earned from advertising and sponsorships.

But that’s not why I’m writing about this. I’m writing about this because of Kawasaki’s awesome & hilarious answer to the question, “What lessons did you learn from the launch?” (which is related to how some called his site “the worst website ever“):

The blogosphere is full of angry nay-sayers who are good at tearing things down but not at innovating. They should move out of their mothers’ houses and start dating.

Hahaha! That almost made milk shoot out of my nose.

Here Comes Another Bubble

Now for some Friday fun.

And now, the lyrics to “Here Comes Another Bubble”, from the Richter Scales (though admittedly, the lyrics are all in the video already…)

got me a cs degree
honor roll, MIT
moved to palo alto
opportunity knocked

thought i had the perfect plan
took a job at webvan
traded in my twenties
for a worthless pile of tech stock

suffered through the market crash
lost a giant wad of cash
pink slips, burger flips
would you like some fries?

happy days are here again
larry page, sergey brin
time to write a business plan
so i can be like those guys!

Chorus:
here comes another bubble
it’s a monster rally
all around the valley

first you need a buzzword
then a second and a third
pick at least two industries
you’ll revolutionize

find yourself an engineer
feed him pizza, buy him a beer
give him just a fraction
of a fraction of the pie

need a good domain name
must be cheap, can’t be lame
something cool like
flickr, meebo, wikiyou, mahalo, bebo

“telephone” without the “t”
“digg” but with triple “g”
make your elevator pitch
code it up and flip the switch

Chorus:
here comes another bubble
the VCs are backing
baby let’s get cracking

blog blog blog it all
blog it if it’s big or small
blog at the cineplex
blog while you’re having sex

blog in the locker room
babies blogging in the womb
blog even if you’re wrong
won’t you blog about this song?

launch party, nicely dressed
what’s the point? sausage fest
blue shirts, khaki pants
looking like a line of ants

need to get a facebook page
all these guys are half my age
twenty nine, past my prime
i feel so behind the times

Chorus:
here comes another bubble
in a year we swear
we’ll all be billionaires

make yourself a million bucks
partly skill, mostly luck
now you can afford a down payment
on a small house

if you want a bigger one
hillsborough, atherton
better hope the same thing
happens to your spouse

IPO… lucky you
have your cake and eat it too
private yacht, party jet
why not buy a matching set?

build yourself a rocket ship
blast off on an ego trip
can this really be the end?
back to work you go again

Chorus:
here comes another bubble
and when we are gone
this will still go on
and on and on and on and on
and on and on and
POP!

The 1977 JC Penny Catalog

Were you born in the 60s or 70s? Then perhaps you are guilty of wearing clothes like these.

Ha Ha! (That’s me laughing at you.)

Johnny Virgil is the insane mastermind behind this hilarity. Started back in January 2005 on a dare from coworkers, Virgil’s funny blog 15 Minute Lunch sadly isn’t all that profitable. In an interview with BlogInterviewer.com, he said, “I actually got a check for a hundred bucks after about 2 years.”

However, his entry on the 1977 JC Penny’s catalog turned out to be quite a delicious piece of linkbait.

Linkbait is a controversial method of marketing; some think it’s okay, others, not so much. Basically, linkbait is any method (blog post, blog comment, etc) done to generate a link back to one’s own site. Some social media marketers do this intentionally by tailoring their blog entries to be interesting/catchy/sensational/controversial enough to inspire other bloggers to link to them. Others, like Virgil, did so unintentionally.

He even provides a quick summary on the traffic impact the 1977 JC Penny post had. Most of his traffic came from webmail servers, meaning his entry is now one of those emails that get forwarded around. That’s how I found out about it too.

Most social media marketers aim at writing serious and insightful pieces for linkbait. Virgil’s piece is a great case study on using humor to attract traffic. So what’s that mean for businesses?

Write hilarious content; people love funny stuff and will enthusiastically send it to all their friends.
Consider an “email this entry” feature to help readers send the entry around; this will help you control the email’s content too.
Be prepared for other bloggers who may steal and appropriate your content as their own; include links back to your site.
Make sure the content is related to your business in some way; a funny story about rabbits isn’t going to help you sell toner cartridges, for example.

Friend Groups within Social Networks

There’s been some chit-chat in the blogosphere about how online social networks have “built-in self-destructs.” This was started when InformationWeek columnist Cory Doctorow wrote the article “How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook“. In it, he coined the term, boyd’s Law (which is sort of a homage to danah boyd, a PhD student most known for her research on social networks):

Adding more users to a social network increases the probability that it will put you in an awkward social circumstance.

This is best explained by an example cited by Doctorow, and taken from one of danah’s articles:

A young woman, an elementary school teacher, joins Friendster after some of her Burning Man buddies send her an invite. All is well until her students sign up and notice that all the friends in her profile are sunburnt, drug-addled techno-pagans whose own profiles are adorned with digital photos of their painted genitals flapping over the Playa.

What Doctorow doesn’t cite (or maybe not realize?) is that there’s an easy solution to this. Online social networks need to add the ability to create groups of friends, then allow each group different viewing permissions of the information in your profile. For example, your Coworkers Group sees only your work information and professional associations, your Family Group sees only your family photos and family-oriented blog entries, and your S&M Group sees only your naughty photos and dominatrix blog entries.

So why haven’t online social networks implemented this yet? Technically, can be extremely complex. What they’d need to do is give every single piece of content multiple levels of permissions. That particular photo of your cats may allow “anyone” while that blog entry about your vacation allows both your “Coworkers” and “Family.” It’s not impossible to build, just highly complex. I know because I’ve worked with a team who tried to implement these features.

Some existing social networks already have the beginnings of friend groups and varying viewing permissions too. Let’s take a look:

Social Network	Friend Group Features
Facebook	Can create a Limited Profile for friends who aren’t really friends. Can limit pieces of profile info to be viewable only by certain networks. Can’t limit views of photos.
MySpace	Can limit blog posts to friends or a preferred list. Can’t limit views of profile or photos.
Friendster	Can password-protect your blog (for a fee). Can’t limit views of profile or photos.
Bebo	Can limit some portions of profile info to direct friends. Can’t limit views of other some portions of profile, photos, and blog.
Yahoo! 360	Can limit pieces of profile info and entire blog to be viewable only by degrees of friends. Can’t limit views of photos.
Orkut	Can limit pieces of profile info to be viewable only by degrees of friends. Can create friend groups, but doesn’t allow permissions to be set for them. Can’t limit views of photos.

I’ve heard the idea of friend groups with varying levels of viewing permissions many, many times, since the early days of Friendster. So these social networks are no doubt aware of it. Perhaps it just hasn’t ranked very high on their priority list yet, or perhaps they’ve been building it, but, because of its complexity, it’s not ready for deployment yet. Either way, I wonder who’s going to be the first to implement it; it sure is a highly-sought after feature!