Surprise…surprise…Yahoo’s troubles aren’t over. Although not enough for Microsoft, they’ve rallied around Carl Icahn to lead the charge to acquire the number two search engine. But while this theoretically could create a powerful competitor to Google, Yahoo’s board of directors are claiming that they might be better off trying to survive on their own. So far they seem to be making some major plays in the Internet world with the most recent reported in a New York Times article that listed an interesting partnership between Yahoo and WPP.
I’m not saying that all of the decisions made by Yahoo have been the smartest, in my opinion, but this one might give them some leverage in raising their profitability and market share when it comes to advertising. Google’s big strength is allowing the average Joe the capability to run their own campaigns and why Google AdWords is a widely used tool. However, Panama was rumored to be really good for Yahoo, but seems to have failed to make a dent in the search engine advertising market. But, the partnership between Yahoo and WPP may make up for it.
Basically, WPP (a huge advertising conglomerate in the world) is doing most of the work in measuring and selling. They will tag their client’s site with a cookie that will monitor the activity of what the user searches when reaching similar sites. Now before you start screaming “Big Brother”, this has the potential of being much more accurate in figuring out what keywords to select. WPP’s online media arm, 24/7 Real Media, will measure the activity. Benefit to Yahoo?
Under the deal, the thousands of Web publishers that use Yahoo’s advertising auction service to sell space on their sites will get more direct access to WPP’s clients. Those clients, in turn, will be able to funnel their messages to Web site visitors who might be particularly receptive, using technology from an ad-targeting division of WPP called 24/7 Real Media.
WPP’s clients will also benefit from the extra information the agency will be able to collect about the behavior and demographic profile of people who visit sites on the Yahoo auction service, which is called Right Media. Those details will enhance the database that GroupM, which is WPP’s flagship planning and buying agency, collects about customer behavior.
Can Yahoo continue to survive using these means? I sure think so. They are going after where the advertisers are. Unfortunately, they didn’t disclose the financial terms, but I think that Yahoo needs to also re-examine its capabilities for small businesses to utilize their network. It also seems to me that they’re always one step behind everyone else. Just today, Yahoo announced as well that they’ve release SearchMonkey that will allow developers to create more semantic information when it comes to rankings. I’m sure that’s great for users, but isn’t that what OpenSocial and Google are doing to help evolve web 2.0 to 3.0?
Like I said, not all the ideas from Yahoo will be good, but I’m glad that they’re not giving up without a fight.
So I’m back from a pretty awesome time at SocialDevCamp East at the University of Baltimore. I think it was pretty well organized and had a great turnout - over 100 attendees that gathered to learn all about what issues are surrounding the social web. The issues were thought-provoking and I managed to get some good video coverage (hopefully they turned out well…but the size is causing me to load them online slowly) .
I enjoyed the different sessions that went on and met a few people…unfortunately I think at these types of things I’m a little bit technology insufficient. Yes, I DID capture a few sessions using my webcam, but unfortunately I think I need to load up on some other fancy equipment to reach the perfection to which I so desire.
Nevertheless, the one thing that I’ve realized after attending Podcamp DC, WidgetDevCamp, and now SocialDevCamp East is that the true audience of these events are primarily enthusiasts, evangalists, and plenty of startups. Yes, I guess you could say that startups can be considered developers, but when I hear that there’s a “DevCamp”, I’m under the assumption that there will be hands on development or some sort of development projects being undertaken. How I thought wrong. But you know, that’s alright. I enjoyed this being a time where all those enthusiasts and folks who have a desire to be in this industry gather together and discuss. There are people from all different types of companies and the benefit of being especially at SocialDevCamp is the capability of learning from others in an informal discussion. There’s no structured environment or spreading of any propaganda. You can freely come and go as you wish and have the ability to network and form a real-life network to take advantage of.
Having these interactions at SocialDevCamp is what’s great about attending these BarCamp style. I don’t know what else to mention about this event, but it was done successfully and what helped create a true “unconference” was allowing the attendees to set the agenda. The organizers were pretty liberal in allowing folks to vote on their session topics and they were led by a variety of people, even those that didn’t even propose the topic idea in the first place!
So I’ve spent nearly several hours here at SocialDevCamp East here at the University of Baltimore and I must say that I’m quite impressed with what’s been going on. Thank you to the organizers (David Troy, Ann Bernard, Keith Casey, and anyone else I forgot) for arranging really cool sessions. I think that I’ve got some good video to post on my Viddler account and even some videos. I was a little conflicted about whether to bring my “professional camera”, but figured I’d tone it down (a little bit).
Anyways, SocialDevCamp East is pretty informative. While I seem to be oblivious to the fact that I’m learning anything, I found the discussions quite entertaining and kept my attention. I found out that the guy in charge of infrastructure at Seesmic is here and discovered that programming for the semantic web is quite complex and prefer the designer view of creating websites and applications. Unfortunately this barcamp-style unconference has fallen into the same plight as Podcamp DC - there are sessions that I wanted to attend, but did not want to adhere to the “two feet” policy. It seems that there was a session on microblogging et al and unfortunately (?) I was enthralled by the open-discussion that took place with Dr. Henry Chen on semantic web - which I thought was very related to how search engines are probably approaching web 3.0.
I’m having to deal with some technical issues as well…while good that there are more electrical ports to charge my laptop, the Internet is spotty at best, especially with hundreds of folks trying to get online at the same time. Luckily I have a Sprint wireless Internet card that is keeping me somewhat connected. I guess I can’t totally be satisfied, but I’m pretty happy with the conference to date.
If you want to see photos from SocialDevCamp East, then they’re on Flickr (tag: SocialDevCamp East), or on Twitter (#socialdevcamp).
In the past couple of months, there have been several big developments on video blogging. Perhaps most important is that two big applications have offered their services to allow people to post comments on blog posts. But not just any comment…these are video comments (I’ll wait for the “oohs” and “ahhs”).
The two that I know that offer these services are Seesmic and Viddler and they’ve successfully incorporated themselves into the top two social media sites out there: Seesmic with TechCrunch and Viddler with Mashable. I am all for reinventing the wheel and creating something much better, but for me, I don’t see how video commenting will become the wave of the future. Have we become that lazy that we aren’t able to simply type in our thoughts? I’m probably thinking about this the wrong way and only on a microscopic level…so perhaps it’s not to take over the commenting, but rather be an amendment to it. Obviously there are things that only comes across better by verbalizing it as opposed to resorting to the keyboard to accentuate your thoughts and that’s probably where video commenting performs best.
But why not in the mobile arena? That’s probably a more strategic move for having video commenting on blogs. Practically everyone has a smartphone or Blackberry or some data plan on their cell phone. In those instances, that is a cause for having video feeds and a lot more applications are being created specifically for use on mobile technology (Qik, Utterz, Evernote, Twitter, etc.) so why not exploit the blogging area? If you’re on the road and using an iPhone, pull up the latest article on SocialTimes.com or TechCrunch and find it absolutely moving (which often times can be), you might be so inclined to post your thoughts or maybe a rebuttal. Instead of walking along and looking down & typing, you could simply activate your camera, record your video on Seesmic or Viddler and post right away. It’ll save you more time and energy than the minutes you’ll waste by typing in a comment with perhaps typos and grammatical errors.
But yes, there are perhaps more logistical downsides to this issue. I tried adding Seesmic to this blog, but unfortunately it doesn’t play nicely with Disqus so I’ve been forced to deactivate the Seesmic WordPress plug-in. Now Disqus has their own video comment feature which I haven’t downloaded. However, what’s the point if all that will happen is posting a simple conversation? ReadWriteWeb came across their own thoughts that I found interesting, but troubling since they seemed to all but rule this feature out - I still find some measure of hope that video commenting will work. The article makes good points about load time, link issues, moderation, etc. In the future I’m sure these things will be addressed so I say think long-term and the applicabilty of this power that bloggers and social media folks will be able to take advantage of. It’s still in its infancy so let’s continue the conversation.
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