Is Google the new Microsoft?

October 31, 2007 at 11:59 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Not yet, at least in terms of market capitalization. By that measure Google now ranks as the 5th largest company in the United States. Microsoft is the only other tech-centric company in the top 8, and ranks third with a market cap of $333 billion.

Source: Silicon Insider

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How to get feedback on your Facebook App

October 25, 2007 at 2:59 pm · Filed under Web Applications, Events, Online Marketing, Programming

Do you have a Facebook application you are working on?  Do you have something compelling to say about Facebook development? Want some feedback? There is a soap box waiting for you.

I briefly blogged about the Facebook Developer Garage Phoenix a ways back (it’s coming up on November 14th). One of the traditions of the Facebook Developer Garage is to open up the mic for anyone who is developing or conceptualizing a Facebook App who would like to get some feedback from the collection of Facebook minds at the Garage.

It’s a unique opportunity—it’s not often that you get have the ear of a group of Facebook App developers and marketers (including the likes of Dave Morin, an incredible mind from Facebook).

That mic is also open for those who would like to speak about Facebook applications from a marketing perspective, what’s happening with social networking, etc.

If you’re interested in speaking, let me know-I’ll put you in the right hands.

And, of course, if this sounds like something you’d like to experience come to the event!

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Screw your competitors. Google will help you.

October 24, 2007 at 10:57 pm · Filed under Online Marketing

As Google ponders how to apply relevance where relevance is now for sale and barter, they have stepped up and fired their first salvo: Dinging the Page Rank of link farms and sites which promote heavy cross-linking activity.

Situationally, they’re in a can of worms here. For their strategy to be effective, they’d really need to check sites by hand to decide if they should be put on their demotion list. On the flip side, if they do nothing at all, the burgeoning text link ad business will run amok, adding false positives to Google’s view of all things meta.

What to do, Google… what to do. Clearly this is the safe route, and one that is hard to challenge at face value: Kick the link farms in the stomach. But, many sites of a different caliber have reported negative repercussions (read the SEOmoz article below). Forbes? The Washington Post? I had heard rumors that there were a good number of highly respected sites that have stealth pages (that users never see) where they sell text links for top dollar. Maybe it is true.

Regardless, Google policing in this manner when looked at from a slightly different perspective is unsettling. Want to get a leg up on your competition? Buy them a nice present. Hook them up with involvement in some highly visible link farms. Get them some text link ads from a really visible source, too. Google will help you screw them over.

Read more on TechCrunch:
Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms

SEOmoz is also providing commentary and the effect on more mainstream web sites:
Google Toolbar PageRank Losses For Hundreds of Websites

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Twine beta invite

October 19, 2007 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Web 2.0, Beta, Social Networking

InviteShare, my new go-to source for beta invites doesn’t have a line on anything for Twine. If anyone out there has an invite to the beta they’d be willing to share, I’d love to be able to check it out.

What’s is it? Twine, the product of Radar Networks, is one of the more promising semantic search engine efforts to date. Yes, the phrase “Google killer” is being used. Venture Beat did a great write-up on Twine yesterday if you want to learn more about it. The post on VentureBeat does a great job explaining not only Twine, but the concept of semantic search. There is also a more concise post about Twine on TechCrunch.

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Microsoft Popfly goes beta

October 18, 2007 at 10:02 am · Filed under RIA, Web Applications, Programming

Microsoft has moved Popfly from Alpha to Beta. What’s Popfly? It is a web-based, Silverlight environment which allows coders and non-coders alike to create and share web mash-ups (think along the lines of Yahoo Pipes), gadgets, applications and web pages.

From Microsoft’s press release:

Popfly goes public. Microsoft today announced the public beta release of Popfly, a tool built on Microsoft Silverlight, which provides a fun and easy way for anyone to build and share “mashups,” gadgets, Web pages and applications. Popfly provides anyone — even those with no programming experience — with a simple way to make creations without code and share them on social networks such as Windows Live Spaces and Facebook. Popfly enables users to do the following:

• Add some pizazz to their Facebook profile, blog or personal Web page by adding games, slide shows, “Halo® 3” stats or eBay auctions.
• Build a Web page for a club or organization, such as a soccer team page that would include a schedule, photos and videos from past games, directions to upcoming matches, and more.
• Leverage blocks from Popfly partners, such as Twitter, Facebook and Dapper, to drive site awareness and traffic.

Initially saw this mentioned in Erick Schonfield’s post on TechCrunch.

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