Microsoft adCenter has opened up a new thread on the adCenter Blog that allows its faithful users the ability to post suggestions for future product upgrades. The full story can be viewed here. There are a few posts that are actually going into consideration for the next update but hopefully someone will ask for longer idle session times and browser back button integration.
Technorati Tags: MSN, SEM, Search Engines
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I’ve been out of high school for only five years, but every so often I wonder what my old classmates are up to. What ever happened to that weird kid in shop class? Where did the captain of the football team end up? Is that cute girl from homeroom still single? Reunion.com is the latest site aimed at helping you answer these and other burning questions. As befits a newer site, it has more of a social-networking feel than the older sites in the space. It’s got a bunch of nifty tools (it can tell you who’s looking for you, for example), But its search results are less reliable than Classmates.com’s, and the older site offers many more ways to network. Reunion.com makes up for these shortcomings, however, with its cool Outlook toolbar.
Site of the Week: Reunion.com: Full Review - Review by PC Magazine
Word about social network Hi5’s $20 million financing leaked earlier today. But that isn’t it for social networking funding news. We hear it from a good source, but without confirmation by the company, that Tagged has raised its own $15 million round, on a $102 million pre-money valuation.
We do not know who made the investment. This is Tagged’s third round of financing. They previously raised two rounds - $1.5 from angel investors in September 2005, and $7 million from Mayfield three months later.
50 Cent has sued Traffix Inc, an internet advertising firm, for a cool million for an online promotion which allegedly showed the world-famous rapper getting shot. 50 Cent filed court papers in New York and the BBC reports that the rapper felt targeted himself after viewers were encouraged to target him with a successful shot resulting in a cloud of red. Seven years ago, 50 Cent was shot nine times in a rap feud and, while the advertisement never uses the name 50 Cent or Curtis Jackson, his attorney claims that its pretty clearly supposed to be him. Peter Raymond, the attorney for 50 Cent, argues that Traffix used his clients likeness without his permission, suggesting he endorses the game and whats marketed with it.
Celebrity News - 50 Cent sues online advertising firm for $1 million
Google recently announced they are offering an ad free search service to small businesses for as little as $100 a year. They are also rumored to be working on creating a mobile search offering to search for ringtones, cell phone games, and other high margin cell phone services:
The Bakers over at Google have changed their cookie recipe to shorten its life span to 2 years.
In regards to the heated pressure that Google has received concerning user privacy they have announced that their PREF cookie will now have a much shorter life span. The full story can be found here at the Official Google Blog.
In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that
will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the
cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users
who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2
years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that
their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be
able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.
But with more than half of internet searches done through Google it doesn’t seem like 2 years would be short enough for the cookie to expire before auto-renewed. Tricky Google… very tricky.
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Beijing Guge wants Google to change their corporate name to something else. Beijing Guge says that they get tons of phone calls with people confusing Guge for Google. They said people are constantly disturbing them over this mistake. Guge and Google sound the same in Chinese. The case has been accepted into the Beijings Haidian district court.
Compete.com released their monthly search percentage numbers and has Microsoft making the biggest gains year over year and Yahoo showing the largest drop.Microsoft had more than a 67% increase over their search share from last month and more than 48% from June numbers in 2006.
Yahoo has lost 16% since the same month last year and failed to improve on last month’s numbers. Google increased its 55% share from last year to 62% this June, but dropped from May’s 67%.
Part of Microsoft’s increase has been attributed to their online gaming requirements of coming through their Live Search Club. The games involve using search to gain points for products, Compete noted.
Social networks are spawning a generation of internet tarts, research suggests: online consumers with little brand loyalty and no qualms about keeping several sites on the go at once.Users of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are “chronically unfaithful”, a survey by Parks Associates, the analysts, has found. Half of users regularly use more than one site, most of which are free. One in six actively uses three or more.
This phenomenon of “network promiscuity” extends across web commerce. Analysts say that it is symptomatic of a new consumer scepticism over traditional branding.
After having to keep redoing my profile from Friendster, to Myspace, to Facebook, to every single other site out there that’s rebranding as a social network, marketers will face a difficult challenge in keeping and attracting users.
[Read: Websites betrayed by unfaithful users - Times Online]
