December 2007 Archives
In my previous entry here I posted about the Open Web Awards for Favorite Social News and Bookmarking sites. I was rooting for Mixx both due to being a great service but also because they are local. Mixx took the early lead for the first few hours but then the Digg fans came out. When the polls closed on Sunday Mixx was in 5th place with 2.5% of the total votes.
Better luck next year Mixx!
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Here's the full results:
Better luck next year Mixx!
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Today Ask.com lived up to its July promise by releasing AskEraser, a service which will provide greater user privacy. It allows users to make their future searches private by deleting information from their servers within a matter of hours.
Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to a computer’s Internet address, and sometimes to the user. Prompted by Ask.com earlier this year, Google and Microsoft announced a policy to erase user associated data to queries after 18 months, Yahoo's is 13 months. While this is fine and dandy it does not address how this information is used during the retention period.
Ask.com is answering that question by allowing their users to opt for a retention period of hours vice months. When activated, AskEraser will delete all future search queries and associated cookie information from Ask.com servers, including IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete text of their queries. The service is activated right off their main page in an intuitive easy to use interface. Once activated it replaces your previous cookies with one for AskEraser which stays active for 24 months.
Ask.com has worked hard to increase their market share of the search domain this year. This is another initiative including launching their ad network, redesigning their homepage, implementing Ask3d, and their less than stellar "algorithm" commercials. For October Comscore reports that Ask.com held 4.7% of U.S. searches, up from 4.4% in July.
I do not think AskEraser will help increase their standing but can only hope that they can continue their success in setting privacy standards. If the actions taken by Google and other engines in June repeat then we may see similiar services released soon. I'm not holding my breath.
Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to a computer’s Internet address, and sometimes to the user. Prompted by Ask.com earlier this year, Google and Microsoft announced a policy to erase user associated data to queries after 18 months, Yahoo's is 13 months. While this is fine and dandy it does not address how this information is used during the retention period.
Ask.com is answering that question by allowing their users to opt for a retention period of hours vice months. When activated, AskEraser will delete all future search queries and associated cookie information from Ask.com servers, including IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete text of their queries. The service is activated right off their main page in an intuitive easy to use interface. Once activated it replaces your previous cookies with one for AskEraser which stays active for 24 months.
Ask.com has worked hard to increase their market share of the search domain this year. This is another initiative including launching their ad network, redesigning their homepage, implementing Ask3d, and their less than stellar "algorithm" commercials. For October Comscore reports that Ask.com held 4.7% of U.S. searches, up from 4.4% in July.
I do not think AskEraser will help increase their standing but can only hope that they can continue their success in setting privacy standards. If the actions taken by Google and other engines in June repeat then we may see similiar services released soon. I'm not holding my breath.
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With over 17 million members, LinkedIn was listed last month on Web Pro News as the fastest growing social network. Today they are announcing three initiatives designed to cement their position as the premiere professional social network.
As a software professional, LinkedIn is part of what I refer to as my triad of social applications, the other two being Facebook and Twitter. While LinkedIn was the first of these I used religiously it quickly took a back seat to the other two. Interactions with my connections were restricted due to a limited mechanism. Facebook provides multiple mechanisms for interaction including groups and multiple third party developed applications like SuperPoke, Visual Bookshelf and many others. Of course Twitter is the ultimate in interaction.
LinkedIn became more of a static application for me, used mainly to research companies and the people inside them. Obviously an application is only as good as what you put into it and many people have made LinkedIn their preference. To me it became an archive of connections to be brought up on occasion to see if anyone has changed their employment. Other services made it much easier to communicate with the people I wanted to keep in touch with. I mostly make connections with LinkedIn but grow and cultivate them with Twitter and Facebook.
Today's announcements may change the relevance of LinkedIn to me:
Redesigned Homepage
Current members have access to the beta version of a redesigned homepage. The current site provides extremely limited customization of a personal dashboard. The new site provides the mechanism for modules which paves the way for custom applications (a la Facebook). Current modules on the beta site include People, Jobs and Answers.
Company News
LinkedIn will provide a custom feed aggregated from around 10,000 sites and blogs that is tailored to a user's company, industry and competitors. Articles will be ranked by relevance and popularity within your company network. This feature is available to a limited number of users with full launch next year.
InApps
The Intelligent Applications Platform (InApps) was designed to allow for development of productivity applications and widgets along with a code base for implementing LinkedIn functionality in external sites.
I'm looking forward to the implementations of LinkedIn's social graph in external sites. Imagine logging into a job board such as Jobmatchbox.com and having access to a company's key contacts on individual job listings. LinkedIn has announced a partnership with Business Week magazine that will provide contact data on companies and individuals within their news articles. Links will be provided to readers over keywords such as company names that will trigger a pop-up box detailing how many of their LinkedIn contacts are related to the company or keyword.
I had a concern about module's being developed for use inside LinkedIn. There is a risk of creating chaff and time sink applications that are best seen at Facebook. LinkedIn seems to have the same concern and has reserved approval status of all deployed applications. Lucian Beebe of LinkedIn's Product Management team stated the following on their blog:
"Its going to be very different I think from what you see on other social networks. Other social networks have very entertainment oriented applications or sometimes communication oriented applications. These will be very business oriented. We'll maintain focus on business, on productivity. So LinkedIn will always be a place you can come to get clear business utility. But we'll be able to open up to lots of people providing applications into LinkedIn so that now you'll have a greater range of things you can do."
Anyone interested in developing applications or just learning more about the InApps API set can contact LinkedIn at developer@linkedin.com.
LinkedIn continues to be a key application for professional networking. The improvements will go a long way to turning it from a static application to more of an interactive usable social network. After Facebook's Beacon fiasco I have to wonder if we would have seen a migration to LinkedIn if these improvements were already in place.
As a software professional, LinkedIn is part of what I refer to as my triad of social applications, the other two being Facebook and Twitter. While LinkedIn was the first of these I used religiously it quickly took a back seat to the other two. Interactions with my connections were restricted due to a limited mechanism. Facebook provides multiple mechanisms for interaction including groups and multiple third party developed applications like SuperPoke, Visual Bookshelf and many others. Of course Twitter is the ultimate in interaction.
LinkedIn became more of a static application for me, used mainly to research companies and the people inside them. Obviously an application is only as good as what you put into it and many people have made LinkedIn their preference. To me it became an archive of connections to be brought up on occasion to see if anyone has changed their employment. Other services made it much easier to communicate with the people I wanted to keep in touch with. I mostly make connections with LinkedIn but grow and cultivate them with Twitter and Facebook.
Today's announcements may change the relevance of LinkedIn to me:
Redesigned Homepage
Current members have access to the beta version of a redesigned homepage. The current site provides extremely limited customization of a personal dashboard. The new site provides the mechanism for modules which paves the way for custom applications (a la Facebook). Current modules on the beta site include People, Jobs and Answers.
Company News
LinkedIn will provide a custom feed aggregated from around 10,000 sites and blogs that is tailored to a user's company, industry and competitors. Articles will be ranked by relevance and popularity within your company network. This feature is available to a limited number of users with full launch next year.InApps
The Intelligent Applications Platform (InApps) was designed to allow for development of productivity applications and widgets along with a code base for implementing LinkedIn functionality in external sites.
I'm looking forward to the implementations of LinkedIn's social graph in external sites. Imagine logging into a job board such as Jobmatchbox.com and having access to a company's key contacts on individual job listings. LinkedIn has announced a partnership with Business Week magazine that will provide contact data on companies and individuals within their news articles. Links will be provided to readers over keywords such as company names that will trigger a pop-up box detailing how many of their LinkedIn contacts are related to the company or keyword.
I had a concern about module's being developed for use inside LinkedIn. There is a risk of creating chaff and time sink applications that are best seen at Facebook. LinkedIn seems to have the same concern and has reserved approval status of all deployed applications. Lucian Beebe of LinkedIn's Product Management team stated the following on their blog:
"Its going to be very different I think from what you see on other social networks. Other social networks have very entertainment oriented applications or sometimes communication oriented applications. These will be very business oriented. We'll maintain focus on business, on productivity. So LinkedIn will always be a place you can come to get clear business utility. But we'll be able to open up to lots of people providing applications into LinkedIn so that now you'll have a greater range of things you can do."
Anyone interested in developing applications or just learning more about the InApps API set can contact LinkedIn at developer@linkedin.com.
LinkedIn continues to be a key application for professional networking. The improvements will go a long way to turning it from a static application to more of an interactive usable social network. After Facebook's Beacon fiasco I have to wonder if we would have seen a migration to LinkedIn if these improvements were already in place.
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Mashable has closed nominations and is in the first round of voting for the Open Web Awards for Social Networking sites.
Voting for this round will last until Sunday December 16th at 11:59
PST. The top 3 vote getters will move on with the awards ceremony to
be held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on January 10th.
There are 10 nominees: Blinklist, del.icio.us, Digg, Mixx, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Wikio.com, and Wish Done.
While I wish all of them the best of luck I hope those of you reading this will support Mixx. Sujoy Singha posted a review of Mixx for those of you that have not looked at it yet. If you have not I suggest you do, chances are you'll drop your current service for it.
There are 10 nominees: Blinklist, del.icio.us, Digg, Mixx, Newsvine, Propeller, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Wikio.com, and Wish Done.
While I wish all of them the best of luck I hope those of you reading this will support Mixx. Sujoy Singha posted a review of Mixx for those of you that have not looked at it yet. If you have not I suggest you do, chances are you'll drop your current service for it.
Edit: Bill Kocik just twittered about a cool Mixx fan video on YouTube.
Enjoy:
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Its the first snow of the year but Fairfax County decided it was not enough to keep the school bus's off the road.
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Cyber Monday unofficially marks the start of the online holiday season
where consumers hit the online markets, normally from the comfort of
their offices, to purchase what they were unable to obtain on Black
Friday. The accuracy of Cyber Monday's boast are under contention but
there is no doubt it marks a major day for online retailers with this
years numbers reaching a record $733 million.During this year's Cyber Monday, Yahoo Small Business experienced an approximately 12 hour outage. To be fair their services were down for 7 hours with another 5 hours of degraded functionality. Here's a timeline of the issues from Yahoo's status page:
- On Monday at 6:00AM PT, the systems that power our merchant stores experienced outages, and shoppers of those stores were met with either error messages or they were unable to complete the checkout process.
- These issues lasted until about 1:00PM PT when, despite slow performance, transactions began going through at a much higher rate.
- By 6:00 PM PT things were back to normal and the performance of our systems was at 100%.
On the following Wednesday, Rich Riley (SVP, Online Channel Division) posted a mea culpa.
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We have apologized to our merchant partners for the impact that this service interruption had on their business and their customers at this busy time of year. As a token of our commitment to them, we have communicated with them our intent to waive all sales transaction fees for the month of November.
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The success of our merchants’ business is extremely important to us, and we are committed to work as hard as we can, over and above the efforts already underway, to avoid such issues in the future.
I waited to post this for a week to see if this was going to be the extent of Yahoo's response. It was. Their idea of recompense for a complete day's loss of revenue on one of the busiest shopping days of the year is to refund one month of sales transaction fees.
Does this remind anyone else of the Capital One commercials with the old school corporate banker trying not to be bothered by the minuscule small business owner? Should we not expect one of the internet's leading provider of services to be more responsive and caring toward their own customers? With over $13 billion spent online so far this holiday season, how confident should a small business be that Yahoo will allow their uninterrupted participation in the marketplace?
Yahoo should realize that this small gesture and words expressing their priority of this service is not enough. It goes beyond recompense, they need to rebuild confidence in their current and future customers. This can best be done with open and honest communications and then following through on their commitment.
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I saw this while perusing the Craigslist employment listings for NOVA:
Its good to see local companies moving this way.
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Help the enviroment AND make money!
Think driving a TAXI isn't glamorous? Think again. DRIVE YOUR OWN PRIUS HYBRID and make a REAL difference in the reduction of CO2 gases in the air, while having a flexible work schedule. New taxi company locacted in Arlington seeks 5 more individuals who want to help the environment while running a business of their own.
Think driving a TAXI isn't glamorous? Think again. DRIVE YOUR OWN PRIUS HYBRID and make a REAL difference in the reduction of CO2 gases in the air, while having a flexible work schedule. New taxi company locacted in Arlington seeks 5 more individuals who want to help the environment while running a business of their own.
Its good to see local companies moving this way.
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