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Posted by Triston McIntyre on July 18th, 2008
Perhaps the one thing I advocate more than the advancement of technology and the internet is using the success of one idea to slingshot ahead to the bigger picture; after all, isn't that the only way advancement really occurs anyway? Meebo, known as being a successful instant messaging aggregator, just announced a new project called "Meebo Community Instant Messaging," a service that is designed to take the instant messaging platforms which are now very popular on social networking sites, and unify them on one single meta-platform.
This shouldn't really come as any surprise — you'd have to figure that Facebook and other social networking site's success with their own individual instant messaging programs would inevitably lead to someone or someones trying to make a buck off everyone's little community. Meebo saw that opportunity and capitalized. The concept is quite genius and should be very profitable…if social networking sites all go the instant messaging route, and Meebo can convince them its meta-platform is worth their time and money.
So far, quite a few reputable platforms have already signed on to the new project. Venture Beat reports that Flixter, Piczo, Dance Jam, Addict Games, Sugar Publishing, Tagged and mYearbook are on board and all those platforms will now share their messaging communities. One of the problems with Facebook's messaging service is that it has obvious limitations — I cannot chat with friends on any other platform, which means I would still have to have multiple social sites open to do what Meebo intends to do with Meebo Community Instant Messaging.
There are drawbacks. Part of selling a whole gaggle of networks on unifying under one large instant messaging flag comes at a price. Meebo was already known (for better or worse) for running advertisements on its platform. The new plan will share the revenue from the advertisements between the involved parties.
Some believe that Google still has potential to be the outright winner in the messaging game. Web Social is still in the works, but when the almighty Google titan finally debuts the project, it will most certainly be a threat to smaller communities (even those with as many users as the aforementioned social companies). Money and politics are the name of the game, so you can probably forget the big social players picking any side until a clear winner steps forward, or someone lesser coughs up a lot of cash.
Hopefully Meebo's platform will succeed. If it does, then non-participant platforms will be forced to devise similar advances, lest they be left in the dust. If I know Zuckerburg and Facebook, I would bet that Meebo's move to unify lesser social networks will spark some similar creation in the Facebook labs. Or maybe Zuckerburg could just offer to write the code for Meebo and take it back to Facebook. Either way works with me.
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Posted by Leslie Poston on July 18th, 2008
PodCamp has been growing in popularity as the nationwide "un-conference". The theory behind PodCamp is that you take the best part of other conventions, the hallway discussions and sidebars, and make them the conference itself.
PodCamp3 Boston is this weekend, and I'll be there attending sessions, learning from my peers and networking. Please come find me if you are going to attend. If you want to know where I am just Twitter me @geechee_girl to ask and I'll let you know. (If Tweeting to the public timeline about the event in general, be sure to use hashtag #pcb3.)
I'm also honored to be hosting a session myself called Breaking Into the Social Media Conversation, Busting the Clique at 4:00 PM on Sunday, July 20th. I hope to see many of you there as I share the techniques I've learned to be heard in this noisy Social Media webiverse.
There are so many new media and technology rock stars presenting sessions at this PodCamp that I'm having trouble choosing which ones I'd like to attend most. Luckily PodCamp works on what they call the Law of Two Feet, so if I choose poorly I can just move on. This also makes me want to bring my A Game to the session on Sunday so that I give people good value for their time.
In the spirit of PodCamp being the un-conference, I'm planning a bit of an un-session. It will be a bit different than the usual boring "look at these slides or this video and talk or ask questions later" format. I hope if you attend that you enjoy it and that it helps you fill your space in the social media world with more great conversations and more valuable connections.
There are also networking opportunities outside of the sessions, including the after party at Tequila Rain. This is free for attendees to enter, but if you want to crash the party (and that is encouraged) it will cost you $10 at the door. Tequila Rain is located in the Fenway. If you aren't an after party type, join someone you just met at a session for lunch or dinner - take charge of your PodCamp experience.
If you plan to attend PodCamp, I recommend making a "people I want to meet" list. You don't have to follow it to the letter, but I've found that if you don't write it down and commit to it, it is easy to miss people. Writing down who you want to connect with helps make the connection happen. You're in charge of your social media destiny - come to my session and find out more about how that outlook can be put to work for you.
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Posted by Svetlana Gladkova on July 18th, 2008
Today we have another proof that Google intends to control internet advertising in any way that it can. Today we are witnessing another acquisition by the global search giant - this time it's the largest contextual advertising company in Russia, Begun.
Begun is currently owned by Rambler, one of the major providers of various internet services to Russian users. Rambler is also one of the best known search engines in Russia as well with its third position in the market (with Yandex leading the game and Google on the 2nd position).
Graph of search engines' market shares courtesy of Liveinternet
It is rather well known that Google is having a hard time breaking into the Russian search market and it looks like they have realized that even trying to compete in online ads market in Russia is not realistic at all. I think the major problem is that while many webmasters and bloggers are willing to adopt Google's Adsense to monetize their traffic, all the procedures related to actually been paid are too complicated for a normal user to want to deal with them (in fact, after you get the check from Google in your mail box, you will spend at least a month - and usually much longer - before you can turn it into real cash). So many users simply have no choice but choose the local analogue - Begun. Logically, Google decided to buy into the market instead of trying to promote its own contextual advertising service.
Begun is the largest player in the contextual ads market in Russia: it serves 40 thousand advertisers and 143 thousand publishers and has all the procedures required to ensure efficient cooperation between them. Now that the company is acquired by Google, the service will obviously receive more advertisers that are willing to target fast-growing Russian market. The amount of the deal is $140 million and the acquisition will be completed by September. The agreement also stipulates for the ads by Google-owned Begun to continue to monetize Rambler websites, including the search engine (together with Google's Adsense for search and for content so Google got itself quite a large additional publisher as well).
This deal clearly makes Google a monopoly in the Russian contextual advertising market as there are virtually no other significant players in the market. I am very uncomfortable about monopolies myself but this one has good chances to succeed here since Google definitely knows how to make contextual ads a standard and commonly-used solution for online marketing and websites monetization - and this is what the Russian market definitely needs.
Moreover, after the acquisition was announced, the Russian bloggers started to discuss heavily if Google has any further plans for Russian internet companies, like buying Rambler itself to significantly increase its market share in the Russian search market. I think this step could be very probable if the advertising deal proves to be a success for Google - in this case Google will be monetizing its own search traffic instead of someone else's. But we'll have to wait and see since it is the first major buy into the Russian internet market by Google and negative opinions are already heard here.
UPDATE: I may have been wrong naming Begun the largest contextual ads company in Russia. Unfortunately there is no authentic stats here, the only information that rings true is that two leaders (Begun and Yandex Direct) together hold about 90% of the market with each of them claiming the leading position (Begun clearly states its leadership position in today's press release and in its research of the state of the Russian internet advertising market while Yandex Direct claims its own top position in an analytical document of its own - all the documents in Russian only). Unfortunately I have not found any independent studies but clearly Google has good chances of monopolizing the market by adding its existing share to Begun's one and grow them together - and we all know that Google is very good in growing advertising-related businesses.
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Posted by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira on July 17th, 2008
Against our better judgment, we are back at Talkshoe tonight for the third-ish installment of Things You Can't Say on the Internet, with me, Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr, and Steven Hodson of WinExtra and Mashable.
Tentative topics for this evening include:
Of course, once Steven Hodson gets started on his Apple rant, we may not have time for anything else, but tune it at 11 PM Eastern, 8 PM Pacific tonight.
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Posted by Leslie Poston on July 17th, 2008
One of my favorite tables at Web Innovators this week was the one run by the folks at LuckyCal. It's hard not to like a site that offers a way for your calendar to help you get lucky.
LuckyCal is a simple idea with decent execution. It assumes that when you are out and about at an event, you might like to meet anyone else you know who might be in the area. If you have set the settings of the event to do so, LuckyCal will send both you and friends who match notifications that you are near each other.
It seemed invasive when I first heard about it. After all if LuckyCal is notifying people where you are it could be abused, right? Wrong, actually. The creators of LuckyCal have taken a few steps to keep you in control of who you are matched with and how.
For one thing, when you add the LuckyCal FaceBook application or import your friends from Gmail or Outlook, LuckyCal gives you ways to select which friends to invite. This means that from the start you have control over your connections and who is notified when you match. You only invite people you really want to connect with into your circle of friends.
The whole process starts by sharing calendars. You can grab your existing calendar from nearly any calendar that uses iCal technology. I grabbed mine from iCal on my MacBook, but I could have also chosen my Google Calendar or any similar one to import and link. Adding the calendar took no time at all.
Once you add the calendar and your friends, a simple process that took about five minutes total for me (I have a lot of Gmail contacts and FaceBook friends to weed through), you can move to adding interests. The easiest way to add interests is to add the FaceBook application. LuckyCal then scans your profile page for interests, concentrating on the interests section.
Once you have added a few interests, LuckyCal uses your location and interests to generate a list of events happening in your area that you might find interesting or useful. If you like the groups or events it puts up, you can add them, or you can skip this part until later. You also have the opportunity to add interests manually if you find your results less than comprehensive.
Once everything is in place and your friends have gotten on board with LuckyCal, you'll start to notice your calendar become more dynamic. Each time you add an event you are given a chance to leave it publicly viewable by all of your friends who match with you for that event, to skip matching altogether, or to only show you the matches. The last option allows you to pick and choose who you notify manually, great for conventions and larger events where there are too many people to get together with at once.
How does the matching work? LuckyCal assumes that if an event is one your calendar, you will be in that area at that time. It then looks for friends on your list who will also be in that area at the same time. For public events it automatically lets both of you know. For events set to private it ignores any matches, and if an event is set to semi private it only notifies you, freeing you to contact the suggested person or not, at your leisure, without them knowing about the match. This goes far in avoiding potential hurt feelings if you don't have time to connect.
I really like this application, and I'll get to put it through its paces in a big way during PodCamp3 Boston this weekend. I'll be there to present a session on Sunday and to participate in sessions both Saturday and Sunday, and I'm excited to use LuckyCal to find and connect with my friends in the area during my off time. It already has been fun to play with locally, and has suggested some great events near me I hadn't heard about as well. Overall, this sit gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from me, though I'd like to see it integrate with Upcoming in addition to its current calendar roster of Ticketmaster, FaceBook, Sunbird, Outlook, Google and iCal.
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