Tag | existing
Google’s Brand Debacle Backfires
As Google reached the limits of returns in direct marketing they started pushing the value of branding (because, hey, if you can chalk it up to latent branding value there is no cap on your max bid). Surprisingly, they even got many big brands to buy their own brands AND buy sitelinks on the AdWords ads. Some went so far as providing case studies for how much of their own brand traffic they were now willing to pay for, which they previously got free. 
Sure that can make sense for seasonal promotions, but you could do the same thing by having subdomains and sister websites. Dell.com can be the main site, Dell.net (or deals.dell.com) can be the deals & promotions website, and Dell.org can be the good karma charity site. No paying someone else for brand you already spent to build. Beautiful. But I digress… In October of 2008 Google’s CEO revealed which ad Dollars they were chasing , and what loophole they were opening up in their relevancy algorithms “Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.” That led to the brand update , and now Google even recommends specific brand modifiers when you search for words like “digital cameras.” …and here is the problem… Less than 2 years after Mr. Schmidt’s prophetic brand drivel, the Financial Times is doing a series on Google, in which Google’s Amit Singhal is blaming brands as being a major issue : Companies with a high page rank are in a strong position to move into new markets. By “pointing” to this new information from their existing sites they can pass on some of their existing search engine aura, guaranteeing them more prominence. … Google’s Mr Singhal calls this the problem of “brand recognition” : where companies whose standing is based on their success in one area use this to “venture out into another class of information which they may not be as rich at”. Google uses human raters to assess the quality of individual sites in order to counter this effect , he adds. No mention (of course) that it was Google which put excessive emphasis on domain authority, or how Google gutted the link graph , or how Google funds most of the content mills with AdSense . Those are all irrelevant details, just beyond Google’s omniscient view. The other thing which is absurd, is that if you listen to Google’s SEO tips, they will tell you to dominate a small niche then expand. Quoting Matt Cutts : “In general, I’ve found that starting with a small niche and building your way up is great practice.” And now brand extension is somehow a big deal worth another layer of arbitrary manual inspection and intervention? Meanwhile scraper sites are still clogging up Google , and they claim they need to write better algorithms to detect them. It isn’t hard to see the sun at noon! If sites which expand in scope deserve more scrutiny then why is there so much scrape & mash flotsam in the search results? What makes remixed chunks of content better than the original source? A premium AdSense feed? Brand?
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Google’s Brand Debacle Backfires
Zynga’s FarmVille Now Rolling Out To The App Store
Earlier this month at Apple’s WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs invited Zynga CEO Mark Pincus to show off a new iPhone application: FarmVille. The smash hit, which until now has been available exclusively on the web (mostly Facebook) is finally coming to the iPhone, and it’s going to make a killing. As MacStories first noticed , the game is now available in the New Zealand App Store, and appears to be propagating to other countries worldwide — expect it to go live in the US later this evening. Upon launching the game, users are asked to enter their email address to join FarmVille Mobile. You’re then asked to log in via Facebook Connect (so you can access your existing farm and friends), and whether or not you want to enable push notifications so you can get immediate alerts whenever you have crops ready to harvest (addicts will love this). The game seems to have made the transition to the iPhone pretty seamlessly — navigating your farm using the iPhone app is easy, and you can use pinch-to-zoom to hone in on a particular area. Executing an action usually just involves tapping on a patch of land. The game is free, and will probably make a killing on in-app purchases. I give it 24, tops, until it’s the number one app on the App Store. CrunchBase Information Zynga Information provided by CrunchBase
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Zynga’s FarmVille Now Rolling Out To The App Store
Finally, Google TV Explained In A Clear, Concise Manner [Video]
When Google TV was announced at Google I/O there was a lot of excitement surrounding it. Unfortunately, there were also a lot of questions. And the glitchy demo they did on stage certainly didn’t help matters. Today, Google has released a simple two and a half minute video to explain the service and show exactly how it works. This video makes the value proposition of Google TV much more clear. They probably should have just shown this at I/O. It’s really about having the Internet (and Android apps) in your living room alongside your existing television set-up. (Though unstated, it’s also obviously about ad-reach .) This differentiates it from competitors like Apple TV and Xbox 360 (though they all will battle for the living room). Watch the video below. CrunchBase Information Google TV Information provided by CrunchBase
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Finally, Google TV Explained In A Clear, Concise Manner [Video]
Late Night Fanboys Bring The iPhone 4 Pre-Order System To Its Knees
You’d think 1 AM PT (4 AM ET) would be a pretty safe time to put something up for pre-sale. You’d think that — and you’d be wrong. As we’re seeing tonight with the iPhone 4 pre-sale , there doesn’t appear to be a safe time to avoid Apple fanboys . Apple and AT&T’s online purchasing system for the new phone has been a complete and utter failure for the past hour. Judging from comments, tips coming in, and personal experience, most people don’t even seem to be getting past the first step of entering their existing AT&T information when the system simply times out. But there’s hope. I’m told that if you order the phone through AT&T’s website, it appears to be working. The downside there is that rather than having the option to pick it up in-store, you’ll have to have it delivered to you on the 24th. This is all a bit reminiscent of the iPhone 3G launch two years ago when an AT&T activation failure prevented people from walking away on launch day with working iPhone (and delayed others by hours in some cases). You’d think they’d have this system down by now. Who knows, maybe either AT&T or Apple caught a bit of whatever Twitter had earlier . And just imagine if they white version was actually available to pre-order too! CrunchBase Information iPhone 4 Apple Information provided by CrunchBase
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Late Night Fanboys Bring The iPhone 4 Pre-Order System To Its Knees
Invites to Let’s Annotate – Real-Time Annotation On The iPad
Let’s annotate just released their iPad version for real-time collaboration for PDFs. The service is still in alpha and takes full advantage of the iPad’s HTML5 capabilities. The app practially runs within the iPads browser and also let’s you make use of native iPad elements such as multi-touch. The iPad version was built upon their existing Web application, that comes in three different pricing models depending on the number of collaborators and storage space. It’s also fully built with HTML5 and aims to take out the hassle of sending large junks of PDFs over the web. Sounds familiar? Indeed there are various apps out there, most notably Scribd, Issuu or Google Docs.
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Invites to Let’s Annotate – Real-Time Annotation On The iPad
Report: Apple Prepping Cheap, Cloud-Based Apple TV For War With Google
The idea of putting iPhone apps on the Apple TV has been something some of us have been thinking about since at least 2008, when the original App Store launched. When rumors were swirling about Google TV, it became an even better idea as the living room was likely to be a new battleground for Apple/Google. And with the unveiling of Google TV last week, it became clear that this would be a next major fight — provided Apple started taking it seriously. Soon, they will be, if Engadget’s sources are correct. The gadget blog says that a tip they’ve since confirmed with “a source very close to Apple” suggests that Apple has been working on the next version of the Apple TV. The goods according to them: it will be a very small box (smaller than the current one) with perhaps only outputs for power and TV-out cables. It will run on Apple’s new A4 chip (the one found in the iPad and soon the new iPhone). It will still do 1080p video, but may have as little as 16GB of flash memory. That’s because the thing will be based around streaming over the cloud (or from other computers in your home) rather than local storage. Most significantly, it will run the iPhone OS. Basically, it’s an “iPhone without a screen,” is how Engadget hears it. Oh — and it will cost only $99, supposedly. A product update may seem obvious from Apple, considering the steady pace at which they iterate devices. But the Apple TV hasn’t received a major hardware upgrade in its entire lifespan — almost exactly 3 years. The reason is that Apple still considered the device a “hobby.” The likely reason for that is because they haven’t figured out a way to make money from it yet . But Google’s announcement of Google TV — a platform which will run on the mobile Android OS — changes everything. Apple needs to take the Apple TV seriously now, or it runs the risk of losing what should be an important battle with Google. While Engadget notes this product has been in development before Google’s announcement, you can probably bet that the announcement put it on the fast-track. Still, it seems hopeful at best that we’ll hear about it at Apple’s WWDC event next week in San Francisco. The new iPhone is expected to be the centerpiece there. But, if this new device really does run iPhone OS, might Apple hint at it considering the event will be iPhone-centric? Remember, Apple first showed off the original Apple TV a full 6 months before it launched (when it was still tentatively called “iTV”). Also consider that getting the iPhone OS on to the Apple TV will require some work as developers will yet again (just as with the iPad) have to work on scaling apps to correct resolutions. And that may be a big issue since people have all kinds of different TVs with all kinds of different resolutions. It’s possible that Apple could pull an iPhone and release the device as a closed system first (maybe in the Fall), and then later open it up to third-party apps. It all depends on how threatened they feel by Google TV — which will also be out in the Fall. But, again, Google TV will run Android apps out of the box, so if Apple released an Apple TV that doesn’t, it will disappoint a lot of people. Engadget notes that there’s no word on if apps will be included with the product or not. But it makes little sense to use the iPhone OS for this device and not includes apps (at least eventually). As I noted, the reason Apple hasn’t been taking the Apple TV seriously up until now is because they hadn’t figured out the best way to make money from it. That’s largely because Apple makes money off of hardware sales, and for devices like the iPod, those are driven by the availability of content at a good price. That’s the reason the Apple TV has failed to catch on: not enough content at a good price. The reason there’s not enough content is likely because Hollywood is giving Apple much more push-back than the music industry did. For example, they won’t yet agree to Apple’s idea of subscription-based iTunes TV show packages. But apps could change all of that. Apps are content, and they would immediately vault the Apple TV into must-own status. Imagine playing all those thousands of cheap games on your TV. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony must be shitting themselves. And if something like the Netflix app or the ABC app for the iPad worked on the Apple TV, the bitching about a lack of content would simmer down quickly. Of course, there’s the issue of how you would control those apps — since you’re not about to walk up and touch your giant screen TV anytime soon. But there’s an easy solution for that: make iPhone, iPod touches, and iPads the controllers for the apps on the TV. They already have a Remote app you can use on your iPhone to control the Apple TV. The $99 price is interesting to me because it suggests that Apple may not make a lot of money off of the device. It’s not clear if that price is just wrong, or if Apple would do something like that because it’s that concerned about Google owning the space. With no glass touch screen needed, it is possible that Apple could produce these things cheaply, but that cheaply? Assuming these details are right, this Apple TV/Google TV battle should be a good one. Yes, it’s iPhone OS vs. Android in a new battlefield , but the devices would also have their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Apple TV would have access to all of your existing iTunes content (and possibly over the cloud). Google TV, meanwhile, would work with your existing cable television, and would simply overlay the Android OS on top of it. My only hope is that this battle will lead to a transformation of the existing cable television ecosystem in the U.S . For too long it has absolutely sucked . CrunchBase Information Apple TV Google TV Information provided by CrunchBase
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Report: Apple Prepping Cheap, Cloud-Based Apple TV For War With Google
Bump’s Data Exchange API Goes Cross-Platform, Launches For Android And iPad
Bump , the service that lets you tap two phones together to easily swap contact information, photos, or other data, is launching a new API for Android and the iPad. The API will allow developers to integrate Bump’s data exchange technology into their own applications with a minimal amount of work. Initially the Android API will only be available to a limited number of developers as part of a private beta (you can request an invite here ), while the iPad API is open to everyone (it’s an extension of the existing Bump iPhone API). One of the best parts of the Bump API is that it works between platforms — if you’ve designed a photo application for both iPhone and Android, users of either OS will be able to tap their phones together to exchange data (Bump notes that Apple’s GameKit Bluetooth framework doesn’t allow for this). CEO David Lieb says that since launching the iPhone Bump API last December, the company has distributed 800 developer keys, and that over thirty Bump-enabled applications have been deployed onto the App Store. And while Bump initially established itself as a service for swapping contact information, Lieb says that the amount of traffic the service sees from swapping photos has surpassed that of swapping contacts. As I’ve pointed out before, this kind of flexibility will be key to Bump’s long term growth — it wants to become the platform used for sharing any kind of data between two nearby devices. Also worth pointing out: PayPal, which recently integrated Bump into its revamped iPhone application, is planning on releasing an Android app that will also feature Bump. CrunchBase Information Bump Technologies Information provided by CrunchBase
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Bump’s Data Exchange API Goes Cross-Platform, Launches For Android And iPad
