All A Twitter

But the big news, at least as far as the social media world is concerned, is Twitter. You know, that 140 character micro-blogging site that has suddenly emerged as one of the chief platforms by which businesses and individuals send out pithy messages to all who would read them. Twitter is far behind Facebook in size, but they aren’t really competing with each other – lots of folks use both. Still, with some 50 million users, Twitter has emerged as a force to be reckoned with, something that hasn’t escaped the eyes of big tech companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Twitter has been rumored to be on the auction block despite receiving more than one billion dollars in funding recently. Notable names such as Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, and Benchmark Capital are now standing behind Twitter, pouring vast amounts of cash into a scheme that doesn’t yet make any money. In fact, Twitter is losing millions as it tries to maintain its creaky presence online – we’ve all experienced those brief down times and extended outages, minor annoyances that are easily corrected with a refreshening of the browser.

Licensing Deals

Rumors that Google, Microsoft or even Amazon might buy Twitter have been spread for many months now. Though avid Twitter users would prefer that the microblogger provider remain independent, we all know that consolidation is the name of the game in any industry. You can go it alone for just so long, but the economies of scale require at least some form of outside help if your enterprise is to continue to grow and prosper.

Well, there isn’t a deal in place, but Twitter did sign a pair of licensing agreements with Google and Microsoft that are worth taking note of. Specifically, both companies inked their own agreements where they will gain access to Twitter’s real time data (tweets) and include those with their search engines. Though search engine data is typically fairly current, they lack the real time data that attracts people to Twitter in the first place.

What this means is that the next time you use Google Search or Bing (Microsoft’s search engine) you’ll find some real time tweets included with the results. Google says that these results will appear within the next few months, while Microsoft is mum about their plans. How all of this will work out is a mystery too – there are plenty of tweets of little value and aren’t worthy of inclusion in my opinion.

Long Term Survival

Long term, ensuring Twitter’s independence may depend on two things – licensing deals with the search engines and some way to harness businesses by charging them a fee for them to access Twitter under their real name. The way things are currently set up if you want to hijack a business name or brand you can do so by sending tweets under the guise of someone else. With a new business model in the works, that won’t be possible because Twitter will step up its verification of certain users and eliminate that scourge completely.

Lastly, how will Facebook respond to these Twitter happenings? Rumors that it will come out with its own microblogging feature have surfaced from time to time. With more than 300 million users, Facebook is a force to be reckoned with, one that could over run Twitter if they find some way to blend their current business model with microblogging.

I must admit that I haven’t embraced Bing yet, the new search engine from Microsoft. Then again, I haven’t forgotten about it, making the occasional foray over there to see what is new or different. I’m still finding that some results served are off, including photos attributed to me that really aren’t mine. No matter, I was intrigued when I discovered that Long Zheng had developed an API (application programming interface) that puts Bing on steroids, one of the niftiest I’ve seen to date.

The Real Live Search

Dubbed, “The Real Live Search” by Zheng, this API delivers search results almost as fast as you can type them. For example, as I was typing in “New York Giants” the results quickly narrowed to the city and finally to the team. I should say “lastly” as there wasn’t anything slow about how the results were “finally” served – the moment I was done I received a list of links, several photographs and additional links to related searches including “New York Giants Logo” and “New York Giants schedule” among others.

Zheng must be some sort of wonder kid as I have at least two pairs of shoes that have been around longer than he has. At the ripe young age of 21, Zheng runs the istartedsomething.com website which is is where he demonstrates his technological prowess.

Born in mainland China, Zheng moved to Australia when he was nine and is currently majoring in Marketing Communications and Multimedia Systems Enterprise at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to his studies, Zheng works for a software development firm in Sydney and takes on other “obscure” projects with friends.

Up & Running Fast

In his blog post describing The Real Live Search, Zheng mentions that the tool took him just a few hours to build which also means that it could prove buggy. Moreover, with tech sites picking up the news about Zheng’s project, there is a good chance that the site will crash by the time that you look it over.

Me thinks that this kid has a bright future ahead of him. I’m checking out some of his other blog posts to see what he is discussing.

Bing Still Bouncing

Speaking of Bing, the new search engine’s share of the marketplace is now up to 8.9 percent, in the US market. Bing still trails Google who controls 64.7 percent of the market and Yahoo which has 19.3 percent of all searches, which means that if Bing and Yahoo were one right now, the Bing would control just over 28 percent of the search engine market.

Microsoft may want to consider hiring Zheng; his Bing API truly rocks!

See Also – Bing, Bong Yahoo Search Is Dead!

Microsoft Wins Big

Microsoft clearly comes out ahead in this ten year business agreement as the technology company doesn’t have to fork over any cash to complete the deal as Yahoo once hoped would happen. Even though it has only been in operation for two months, Bing has received high marks as a search engine and is considered to be better than Yahoo Search which currently controls 20% of the US search market, well behind first place Google Search who has 65%. By replacing Yahoo Search, Bing will suddenly have 28% of the market, positioning itself to chip away at Google market share.

Since it got started, Bing has been grabbing market share from Yahoo, not Google. At the same time, Google’s share has been increasing at the expense of Yahoo, not Bing. Getting squeezed from both sides, Yahoo probably figured that Bing would one day eventually pass Yahoo Search so why not monetize the situation in exchange for getting out?

Surrender, Yahoo Search!

In exchange for surrendering to Microsoft, Yahoo will get to keep 88% of revenue generated from all ads that run alongside search requests on its website for the first five years of the deal. In addition, Yahoo will have the right to sell search ads on as yet to be determined Microsoft sites. If Microsoft is smart, they’ll turn over the ad space for the unpopular Windows Vista microsite to Yahoo, the worst operating system in the world! Just kidding.

Yahoo has been rocked by bad management decisions and an unfortunate economy, turning down a bid a few years back to sell itself to Microsoft for $47.5 billion. With a current value of $22 billion, Yahoo is struggling to find its place on the internet, steadily falling behind Google and struggling with its stock which is trading at just over $15 a share. You have to wonder if some Yahoo heads will roll over the deal too as Bing absorbs what was once the number two search engine.

Sources: TechCrunch, Microsoft, Yahoo

See Also — Bada BING, Bada Boom: Microsoft’s New Search Engine Emerges

Say that again?

Gmail has long past AOL mail in the number of worldwide users and should soon overtake AOL in the US market alone. Hotmail and Yahoo mail are still out of reach, but Hotmail’s numbers are declining at least in the US. Yahoo seems to have its top position secured for right now, but as we all know Google will do whatever it can to increase its market share at the expense of everyone else.

Bye, Bye Microsoft Office

I long ago quit using Microsoft Office products, having embraced OpenOffice a few years back. Along with Gmail, the suite of Google apps being touted make Google a worthy Microsoft competitor especially if you like to share files and documents. Currently, Google’s apps include Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Calendar and other stuff, something Google charges businesses just $50 per year per user which is about one-third the price of Microsoft.

Lots of businesses have gotten rid of in-house email, choosing to sign up their employees to Gmail which means that they can outsource some of their Information Technology needs. I once used Hotmail (got banned for spamming so they locked down my account….grrr) and I still used Yahoo Mail for one or two back up email addresses. Honestly, I think Gmail is the best email product hands down especially since I can use it as an email aggregation where I can pull in mail from various accounts. Oh, by the way, Outlook has failed me miserably too on several occasions.

A Beta Label Freaks Some People Out

Tech Crunch reported that Google removed the beta label for its customers who may have viewed it as a stumbling block to Google Apps. Some business folks freak out when they see the word “beta” used, thinking that they’re getting a test product that is flawed and certain to crash. Believe me, I can relate to this as I have customers who aren’t particularly web savvy, but see beta as an obstacle worth avoiding.

Of course, if you miss seeing the beta label with Gmail you can get it back by visiting Google Labs, click on settings where you can enable the beta label.

Photo Credit:  Svilen Mushkatov

Bing Goes Live

Whispers of a new Microsoft search engine have been heard for some time with a full scale announcement and preview offered late last week. Today is the date that Bing officially goes live, but if you’re like most of the other curious folks who have a passion for search, then you’ve already checked it out in preview. Often too.

Until now, we’ve had to endure Live Search, the most recent version of the Microsoft search engine prior to Bing. Admittedly, I use Google Search almost exclusively, heading over to Yahoo Search only when I need to check Yahoo Site Explorer out to see how my websites are performing. MSN is usually a non-thought, never getting a chance to prove itself simply because it has failed to prove itself so often in the past.

Giving Other Search Engines A Chance

Hey, don’t blame me — I gave Cuil a chance but quickly abandoned it when it turned out to be a miserable failure. On the other hand, I’ll continue to play around with Wolfram Alpha if and when I want to be entertained. Heck, Twitter Search is probably the funnest one of them all, offering up real time returns on what other people are tweeting about which sometimes can come in handy.

But, when it comes to searching for what you want to find on the internet, Google still rules, controlling about two-thirds of the market and not about to cede its place to a young upstart especially one operated by its bitter rival, Microsoft.

Relevant? Not Quite.

Naturally, when I go to a search engine I enter in my name to see how often it is returned and what sort of returns are served. By taking my full legal name in quotes — “Matthew C. Keegan” — I come up with more than one million results, at least ten times the number I typically find on Google Search. Hmmm….

Okay, I know that I am famous, but I doubt that every single one of those results is accurate. Perhaps more telling is that when I click on the Image tab associated with my name, I find three actual pictures of me with several others being of unrelated photos I’ve used on my many different sites and a handful of other pictures of various objects I’ve never seen before. I may write about car engines, but I resent being associated with a diesel engine!

Playing Around With Bing

I’m not very scientific when it comes to trying out a new search engine, rather I use many of the same tactics I employ on Google Search to give Bing a whirl. Usually, I know almost immediately if a search engine holds promise based on what it does versus what I already know what Google can do.

Bing, even with some results for certain search terms not being all that relevant, still offered up some accurate and informative results for other terms I like to use. In fact, I managed to find some Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) parallels with Google. I do like Bing’s clean interface and the preview information about each result that appears when you hover over it is certainly handy.

Not yet cluttered with a bunch of ads, the Bing “surface” is easy on the eyes, simple to navigate and doesn’t have that “thrown together” feel of Cuil. I like clicking on the Maps tab to find a location which shows how to get there from here while also revealing an aerial view, bird’s eye look and more. I will happily toss Mapquest for the chance to use Bing Maps, what may end up being an important pull to get me binging the ‘net.

Binging The ‘Net

All that said, I liked previewing Bing and plan to spend more quality time with the web’s newest search engine in the days and weeks ahead. Cuil failed out of the box, but Bing appears to have enough going for it to make a serious run as a search engine.

Will Bing challenge Google? It may, especially given Microsoft’s plan to throw $80-100 million dollars in advertising at it. Of course, Google won’t roll over without a fight which means that the winner of this battle will ultimately prove to be you, the web user.

See Also – Wolfram Alpha, The Only Search Engine You Need?

The Many Brands of Ebay

Ebay, Inc., which is best known for its online auction site bearing the same name, has ventured well beyond its base since being founded in 1995. Like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other big internet names, Ebay has acquired quite a few companies over the years including Half.com, Paypal, a portion of Craiglist, StubHub, Shopping.com and others. Some of the acquisitions have been a very good fit, such as Paypal, while others have been nothing but trouble. Skype falls into the latter category.

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Ebay is selling Skype in response to investor demands to rid itself of the unprofitable business. Ebay purchased Skype for $2.6 billion in cash in stock in 2005, but took a $1.4 billion write off in 2007 to reflect the unit’s diminished value. When John Donahue took over Ebay in 2008, he announced that Skype seemed to be a poor fit with the rest of the company’s business, signaling that its sale was forthcoming.

Goldman Sachs to Oversee IPO

Ebay has hired the prestigious Goldman Sachs Group to handle the public offering which is expected to be held in early 2010. Skye’s founders – Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis – have attempted to buy Skype back from Ebay, but their price was well below what Ebay wanted for the unit. When the IPO is held next year, Ebay says that it will remain a shareholder in the new company.

The WSJ says that waiting until next year to hold an IPO for Skype may work to Ebay’s advantage, especially given the current state of the economy where the IPO market has largely been dormant since last summer. But, the newspaper also says that investors may be leery about investing in Skype given the bad experience many had when Clearwire Corp. had their own IPO in 2007. Back then, Clearwire fetched $25 a share, but was later merged with a Sprint unit.  Clearwire investors were clearly burned in the transaction as their stock values dropped to about $20 per share when all was said and done.

As for Skype, the unit continues to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars annually in revenue, charging just 2.1 cents per minute for users to call landlines while offering free calls to other Skype users in most instances. Perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of Skype is that the service now claims more than 400 million users worldwide.

Related Reading:  Skype, the Britney Spears of Telecommunication?

Sphinn, the Digg-like internet marketing news and discussion forum, is one site that everyone even remotely interested in online marketing should acquaint themselves with. You don’t need to be an SEO expert to benefit from Sphinn, in fact I have found the site to be full of great articles that can help anyone who wants to maximize their impact online — sort of like an online tutorial where you can glean vital information from many of the articles featured.

Sphinn, Search Engine People, Danny Sullivan, and Third Door Media

For those of you who aren’t familiar with how Sphinn came about, there are two names you’ll want to remember: Danny Sullivan, who is the content manager for Third Door Media, and Search Engine Land, which is probably the most well known of the Third Door Media brands. The company registered Sphinn.com in April 2007 and launched it soon thereafter.  Almost overnight, Sphinn has become the site where nearly all of the movers and shakers in the SEO/SEM world congregate — which is the purpose of Sphinn fulfilled.

Unlike Digg, Sphinn has a much more community feel to it, a level of professionalism not apparent on Digg. Certainly, there are those who post articles simply to benefit themselves, but then we’re talking about marketing and that shouldn’t be a surprise, nor is that wrong.

A Level Of Professionalism Not Found On Digg

What really separates Sphinn from the pack is that the participants are careful to only select (Sphinn It!) articles that meet their approval. Though there aren’t official gatekeepers to Sphinn, you aren’t likely to find 20 people who would be willing to click on your poorly written article for no reason — the all-important threshold to push your article into “hot” territory and linked under Sphinn’s “Hot Topic” tab (Hot Topic is the default home page for Sphinn too).

How To Use Sphinn As Your SEO Tutorial

Now for the main reason for this article: Sphinn can teach you many things about online marketing thanks to the high quality of contributions made to the site. Specifically, if you want to learn more about how three major search engines work — Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft — and how to maximize search, search marketing, social media, and online marketing, then Sphinn has that information neatly categorized for you.

Of course, given Sphinn’s democratic nature it is still possible to read an article that isn’t entirely accurate or contains some information that is absolutely incorrect. Thanks to a commenting system provided with each article excerpt, you can read what others have to say about the article and usually find those challenges prominently listed. One way to avoid uncertainty about content quality is to restrict your research to the site’s “Greatest Hits” tabs to find those articles which have received the most approvals. Of course, there are a handful of articles (including the all time most “sphunn” article) that are just for the fun of it, but the instructional (tutorial) articles seem to rise to the top as well.

Among the top reads on Sphinn are:

Sphinn – The Social News Site Every Search Marketer Should Be Using: Written by Seomoz CEO and cofounder, Rand Fishkin, the article lists ten reasons why you should use Sphinn, especially if you are an internet marketer.

How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes — Matt McGee wrote this article, but Tamar Weinberg “sphinned” it. No matter, both people are reliable and trusted authorities in the SEO community. This article makes for a good primer on how to make your site SEO-friendly, offering tips any webmaster should follow.

Yes, Virginia, Google Will Hurt Your Site For Selling Links — Danny Sullivan himself was one of the first to spot the crackdown Google made when it began punishing link sellers in 2007. Lest you be tempted to take up this practice in 2008, you may want to read what Sullivan has to say about it. The penalties Google is dispensing are still far reaching, including complete loss of PageRank.

The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t — It is easy to overlook the little things, especially when it comes to promoting your site. We often think of that wonderful backlink we got when our article was mentioned by an internet guru like Jeff Quipp or from Marty Weintraub, excellent sources in their own right, but not having an XML Sitemap in place, skipping press releases, and not taking advantage of MySpace and Facebook, are some of the smaller tasks which when added together can have an even greater (and adverse) impact on your site.

No, Advanced SEO Does Not Mean Spamming — Again, Danny Sullivan weighs in on an important issue — advanced SEO. Sullivan discusses the highlights from this year’s SMX Advanced conference and comes to the conclusion that there is a lot of misinformation about which advanced SEO techniques are legitimate while covering those Blackhat methods that can land the site owner in trouble.

Link Building Secrets Revealed — Dazzlin’ Donna found Stoney G. DeGeyter’s article about link building and sphinned it for all of the SEO world to read. What Stoney did was to interview some of the top minds in the SEO world asking them to share one of their top link building secrets. Contributors included Hamlet Batista, Peter da Vanzo, Jim Boykin, Deborah Mastaler, and Bob Gladstein. 11 highly respected people sharing valuable tips you’ll want to study!

Regular Sphinn Visits, Recommended

To get the most out of Sphinn, I recommend the following:

Visit the site on a regular basis. Even if you don’t have anything relevant to contribute article wise, you’ll want to get a feel for how the community operates.

Read, review, and bookmark. Sometimes the information on Sphinn can get overwhelming. Other times it seems that everyone is talking about the same topic. While discussing link building practices can be beneficial, I like to look for something original and I don’t always depend on the most notable names to provide that information for me. If you like an article, make sure you Sphinn It! — you have to register in order to do that. Lastly, bookmark your favorite reads and why not reward the author by stumbling or digging the page too?

Snag a Feed — If you don’t have time to visit Sphinn regularly, why not add one or more feeds to your feed reader? I subscribe to their “Hot Topics” and “New Topics” feeds and there is also a comment feed you can choose. Additional feeds are in the works including a nifty All In One Super Feedmaker which might be worth using when it becomes available.

That’s it! My primer on Sphinn and why you should use it. Spend a few hours a week gleaning information from the articles submitted and you’ll be the wiser for it. I’ve cross paths with many wonderful folks on Sphinn, professionals in every sense of the word, people who willingly impart their knowledge and can point you in the right direction.

My most recent post mentioned that Yahoo! was giving one thousand workers the heave in a bid to maximize profits. They aren’t losing money — they just aren’t making as much of it as they want. What a pity — tsk tsk!

Turns out that my rant may have caught the attention of some folks in Redmond, WA who decided to offer the internet giant $44.6 billion for their business. Yes, Bill Gates and company are avid The Article Writer readers and have decided to step in and allow Microsoft to snag Yahoo! thanks to me.

I want a referral fee!

Sure, let me dream or have my fifteen seconds of delirium — but the fact remains this: Microsoft wants the Big Y!

I’m not too surprised to see this offer come forth, though I would have preferred to have learned that it is was the other way around: the Big Y! buying the Big M. Somehow, a internet juggernaut controlled by the same people who brought to us Windows VISTA, Internet Explorer and MS Outlook doesn’t tickle my fancy. Rather, it makes me think that this whole internet thing will soon be run by a small group of corporate titans who care not for the little guy.

My utopian dreaming aside, the earlier days of the modern internet era were kind of fun, but since Google intervened everything is getting, well, organized that I am envisioning some sort of toll road appearing down the line. In order to continue using these wonderful innovations which are now currently free (for the most part), we’ll be expected to pony up some cash.

Will Yahoo! accept Microsoft’s offer? By every indication they’ll give it their full consideration. My best guess is that the answer to this question will be yes.

…Is A Repressed Capitalist!

Seeing Red In The People’s Republic Of China

I’m about to violate at least two precepts related to blogging today: I’m going to be a bit “off topic” and I will cross the great political divide. As this is the most personal of my blogs, I am hoping that you will indulge me just this once. At least for the next five minutes or so.

Search Engine Redirects — Government Retaliation?

In the news today there are reports that three U.S.-based search engines — Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft — are currently being hijacked in China and users there are being redirected to Baidu, a search engine owned by the Chinese government. According to a published report, this activity began soon after President Bush awarded the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award offered by lawmakers.

Calling For An End To Religious Repression

In a highly symbolic ceremony held in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building, President Bush praised the Dalai Lama while calling for an end to religious repression. Certainly, the meeting with the Dalai Lama and the words the president used were considered provocative by the Chinese government, thus the apparent retaliation against the search engines.

What Is Really Going On

I’m certain that many people are dismissing what President Bush did as yet another of his political missteps. This isn’t about Iraq, the war on terror, or illegal immigration, rather the president’s action underscores two things related to China:

1. We in the west are highly ignorant to what is going on in China. Thousands of people are imprisoned even executed for their religious beliefs, whether they are called Buddhist, Falun Gong1, Christian, or Muslim. Religious intolerance is unwritten government policy and has been in place since the communists took power in 1949.
2. Doing business with China means doing business on their terms. You may gain the right to offer your products or services in China, but it must be done according to their laws.2 I’m not saying that a company shouldn’t do business in and with the People’s Republic of China, but it is clear that you are expected to behave in a way you wouldn’t in a democratic society.

Am I being anti-Chinese? No, but as a Christian I am against religious persecution no matter what the belief. I know that the “little red book” pictured above isn’t the backbone of Chinese politics today, but state control is.

My Google Analytic stats for this site are telling — while the number of visitors from Pacific Rim countries is good, e.g. the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Japan, I receive no traffic from mainland China. Other webmasters have observed the same giving support to what is widely known, but rarely discussed: China continues to repress her people.

Photo Credit: Meghan Anderson-Colangelo; Albuquerque, New Mexico