-
-
Network With Randall
Google as Venture Capitalists?
Today Google announced their intention to launch a venture capital arm led by David Dummer, senior vice president. The question why is answered by what does Google have to gain, and why now.
Google has several things to gain. The most prominent is the current credit crunch and the effect it is having on many start-ups. The market is currently in the favor of those willing to supply, this gives Google the ability to pick and choose the best new start-ups to fund, or spread their capital around and have a better chance at a stake in the winner. The second thing Google has to gain is the ability to diversify their profit center. With the uncertainty about how Google’s deal concerning the Overture Patent usage went down Google may be looking for an alternate ad serving platform that a start-up is developing. The third thing Google is hoping to gain is the goodwill of the industry.
Google’s motto is “do no evil.” It looks like Google is looking to be more than just “not evil” in a time where venture capital and economic stimulus aimed at innovation is greatly needed to grow our economy.
Google to Display ads from Third-Party Vendors
Google sent out an Email this morning to it’s AdSense advertisers letting them know that they could have even more ads to choose from soon. After poking around in their Blogspot post I figured out what will actually be accomplished by this move. Not surprising, it has to do with user experience, but this time the user who’s experience they are improving is advertisers already using the content network.
Content Network campaigns can have one major drawback, your ads get served on less than desirable websites, and you don’t realize it until after-the-fact. The other option is a Site-Targeted campaign. This allows much more control over exactly where your ads are placed. The drawback has been that all the best sites in the content network have not all been optimized to allow site-targeting.
This move by Google will motivate websites serving Google content ads to want to be able to serve these new third-party ads, and they will complete the required steps to do so:
1. Opt into image ads
2. Enable advertisers to target their AdSense channels
3. Opt into placement targeting
In the process, every advertiser who is using the content network will see an increase in control over how site-targeted ads are delivered.
Microsoft - the Underdog on the Web?
At Microsoft’s MIX conference Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft CEO, really let the questions fly, and handled himself the way one would expect the CEO of Microsoft, with audible playfulness, jokes, and a little dancing. However, the crowd wasn’t all drinking the cool-aid. Former Apple Evangelical turned info product salesman Guy Kawasaki, blogger Rafael Rivera were among those pushing Ballmer while he attempted to show off Microsoft’s latest web wares.
When interviewed by Guy, Ballmer broke the news as gently as he could We’re in the game, and we’re the little engine that could, just working away, working away, working away. In online, yeah, it’s Google, Google, Google. I’d say were the underdog.”
One year ago at last years MIX conference Steve and Microsoft were singing a different tune of calling Google “a one trick pony” and “cute.” That would explain the court documents that Guy dug up alleging that Ballmer once threw a chair across a room when an employee let him know he was leaving for Google.
Hopefully Microsoft’s CEO has more than just the one trick of being able to slip out of that question by Kawasaki up his sleeve, because…
Microsoft = Underdog
Seems like one heck of a trick to me.
In an effort to be more myself
I’ve always had the dilemma when writing for the Marketing Curve blog that I can only add content when it’s about 70% or more about marketing.
As such the posts have been few and far between.
So, it has been decided (here in the Marketing Curve Ivory Tower) that a blog is supposed to be more personal than that! In order to extend my brand effectively I need to be myself. The best way to do that is an offsite blog with separate branding.
There will still be oodles on marketing and sales, but now if I want to put a post out there about social media not being very social, or how it’s common for job seekers to suffer from depression I should be able to. It’s not like I’m fighting my brand to tell you what I had for breakfast or what errands I ran that day.
But making this change yesterday yielded three somewhat interesting blog posts, when usually I sit at an empty notepad file thinking about what to write and which blog to write it for almost daily.
It has gone from being difficult to being joyous and exciting - and I think you’ll notice.
So keep up with me, keep up with the blog, and feel free to contact me and make suggestions or let me know about you and what you do and I can talk about it! Two quick and easy ways to remember I’m here and writing for your enjoyment…
- Subscribe to subscribe to the Beyond Mom RSS Feed.
- Or bookmark it if you would like, by going directly to Beyond Mom and adding it to your favorites.
I’m still deciding if I want to go all Feedburner style and offer an RSS to email option. Would you like to receive the blog posts in a daily email rather than subscribe in an RSS reader? Let me know!
w00t the he11?
Mirriam-Webster has chosen their Word of the Year.
The word is w00t.
I’m watching CNN Headline News explain the meaning right now.
John Morse, president of Merriam-Webster, told the Associated Press that the selection of "w00t" "shows a really interesting thing that’s going on in language. It’s a term that’s arrived only because we’re now communicating electronically with each other."
Do you find it a little odd that the dictionary company is choosing an obscure word as the word of the year? I mean, I know what it means and so do most of my friends…but that’s because I’m a computer geek!
Did w00t hit the MySpace kiddie scene and I missed it? They’re already typing LiKe ThIs wITh ThE CaPs (how do they do that with any speed? I type 92wpm and doing the upper/lowercase thing kills my speed.) But if the 106 million and counting people of MySpace embraced w00t while I wasn’t looking that could explain it.
All I know for sure is if I had my say, the word would have been l33t (also spelled 133+)- it’s long overdue.* It’s even mentioned in Merriam-Webster’s article on the 2007 word of the year. The entry can be found HERE.
Do you have a favorite nonsensical word that you think should have made it as the coveted Word of the Year? If so, let me know in the comments section. Please also give me a definition. I don’t want to spend the next year on www.urbandictionary.com trying to find it.
*For those of you that don’t want to go over to the Merriam-Webser site - 133t = leet = elite (more geek talk from back in the day. Maybe I should just get a walker now and start learning how to play shuffleboard. I am gettin OLD!)
Some other words from the top ten that didn’t get chosen:
- facebook (as a VERB?!)
- conundrum
- quixotic
- blamestorm
- sardoodledom
- apathetic
- Pecksniffian
- hypocrite
- charlatan
Come on baby, Kindle my fire…
Ok, so I keep hearing about Amazon’s amazing new electronic book reader, the Kindle. Today it’s in the New York Times, even.
But what’s a dyed-in-the-wool book lover to do? Sure the white, sleek holder looks like something I could keep in my purse and happily pull out for a quick few page break. But it’s plastic, and I don’t know about you but for me the thought of replacing my paperback with a plasticback is disgraceful.
And, the free wireless broadband access alone makes it nifty for checking web based email and (of course) downloading MORE books. Free wireless broadband. That’s a heck of an offering, even if the price tag of the Kindle is $400, that will pay for itself pretty quickly if you use the Internet.
Every report I’ve heard says almost the same thing about the technology involved for actually reading books:
The screen uses the same astonishing E Ink technology that Sony’s Reader uses. It looks like black ink on light gray paper: no backlight, no glare, no eyestrain — and no need to turn it off, ever….The “ink” is so close to the surface of the screen, it looks like it’s been printed there, so reading is satisfying, immersive and natural. At page turns, only a distracting black-white flash reminds you that you’re not viewing paper anymore. (excerpt from article by David Pogue)
I know, you’re thinking…don’t turn it off?? I thought the same thing, but of course there is a simple answer, it only uses power when you turn a page. Kind of like a human expending energy to turn a page. Interesting and vaguely disturbing.
That’s because E Ink draws power only when you turn a page. At that point, millions of particles are drawn into a pattern of letters (or four-shade gray-scale images) by a brief electronic charge — and there they can stay forever, even if you take the battery out. You don’t turn this thing off; you just set it down, like a book. (excerpt from article by David Pogue)
So free internet forever, books cost half of what hardcovers do, can be downloaded in 60 seconds…and you never have to turn it off.
Books are the one area of my life where I am old fashioned. I like the way books smell, the way they feel, they way they look. The pages of a paperback are a very distinctive color that only looks good for the pages of aforementioned paperback. Anywhere else in nature the color of those pages would be downright ugly, but when you’re reading, that color just reinforces the comforting experience of reading.
Yet, I feel a slight shift in my defiant denial of even entertaining the thought of procuring a Kindle. Now I find myself saying, “No way, but I’d like to see one in person before making a final judgment…” - that first crack in the armor.
That’s what buzz does for a product.
-
Recommend Resources
