What if Google were a UNIX shell…
Well, it’d be like this: www.goosh.org.
Once again, it’s the simple things…
Tags: Google, On the Web, Programming, UI, User InterfacePosts Tagged with Google
Er. Where’d the posts about Mac’s and online marketing go?
Since the middle of last year, all posts about the Mac/Apple have been published directly on my new(er) Macintosh-specific blog, On a Mac.
I also recently started a new online marketing blog - Online Marketing Performance.
These blogs were started as they held two of the main themes on this blog which were intertwined with a lot of posts of a fairly random nature. I’ll continue to post to this blog, but both of the aforementioned blogs will likely bet getting more and more attention as time goes on.
Tags: AdSense, Advertising, AdWords, Affilliate Programs, Analytics, Apple, Apple TV, Beacon, Black Hat SEO, Blog Promotion, Blogging, Branding, Design of Experiments, Facebook, Facebook Applications, Facebook Platform, Facebook Platform Architecture, FBML, Google, Google Analytics, Google Labs, Google Website Optimizer, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, Mac, MacBook Pro, Macintosh, Make Money Online, Monetization, Multi level Marketing, Multivariate Testing, Online Marketing, Page Rank, PageRank, Paid Content, Semantic Search, Social Media, Social Networking, User Generated Content, viral, Viral Marketing, YahooQuick Hit: Facebook and Google this… Facebook and Google that…
Googling Facebook
Facebook previously announced the availability of limited profile data to search engines. I’ve checked here and there and hadn’t seen any evidence, but Facebook profile data is now definitely being returned (by Google at least). A search for “Scott McAndrew” (yeah, that’s vain, I know) shows the Google result to be a standard search result listing.
When not logged-in to Facebook, a click-through to the Facebook site displays the limited profile data as shown in the screen-capture below. Although not logged in, and likely not an acquaintance of mine, you are still taunted with the offer to Poke me (please don’t).
More eyesight into the walled garden
Part of the excitement about Facebook Applications, lies in the ability to reach Facebook’s every growing, engaged user-base. That’s nice, but if you’re looking to launch on Facebook, you likely have grandiose visions for your application. A week or go or so the lack of visibility outside Facebook’s gates was addressed by Justin Mitchell in a Facebook blog posting entitled “Public Canvas Pages”.
In broad strokes: Facebook’s firewall quietly invited Googlebot to take a closer look at Facebook applications earlier this month. Depending on new settings controlled by the application developer Facebook applications can be fully functional to the casual browser (not require logging in to Facebook whatsoever), require login to be in any way functional, or (the most likely) fall somewhere in between the two extremes. Developers can find more information in Facebook’s Developer Wiki.
Per an October blog entry, applications that are in the Facebook Application directory are also automatically showing up in Google search results regardless of their stance on non-Facebook user functionality. If you search on “Apple Student Gallery” you’ll find a Terralever-built application’s directory listing in Google’s search results.
Did you say Open? How’s this for Open:
In the (relatively calm) wake of last month’s MySpace/Google Open Social announcement, Facebook quietly blogged their counter-punch today: Facebook’s platform is that open, too. If you want to leverage Facebook’s innards to push out your own social networking site, have at it. As Open Social has yet to launch, the question has to be one of relevance (or lack thereof) at this point. An excerpt from the aforementioned blog entry by Facebook’s Ami Vora (emphasis and footnoting mine):
[…]we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins* — users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications.
This is just another step toward the vision of easy, open sharing of information. We look forward to supporting other social sites as they release their own platforms, and look forward most of all to the added benefit for developers and users.
* I’m relatively certain that Google, MySpace, and the rest of the Open Social club don’t include themselves as a part of the ‘everyone’ cited in the Facebook blog entry.
Tags: Facebook, Facebook Applications, Facebook Platform, Facebook Platform Architecture, Google, MySpace, Online Marketing, Open Social, Peer to Peer, Privacy, Programming, Quick Hits, Social Media, Social Networking, Web ApplicationsIs Google the new Microsoft?
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.
| Rank | Company | Market Cap (in Billions) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exxon Mobile | $505 |
| 2 | General Electric | $415 |
| 3 | Microsoft | $333 |
| 4 | AT&T | $251 |
| 5 | $217 | |
| 6 | Procter & Gamble | $215 |
| 7 | Bank of America | $213 |
| 8 | Citigroup | $209 |
Source: Silicon Insider
Tags: Google, Microsoft, UncategorizedScrew your competitors. Google will help you.
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
