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links for 2005-12-10

December 9th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Bookmarks, Search Optimization, Search | 2 comments



Holy Crap! Yahoo Buys Del.icio.us!

Yahoo just won. I’m not sure what it is they won, but they won.

Yahoo has bought Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking service. Together with Flickr, they now have a powerhouse engine of… something, with a rabid userbase. I guess the best way to describe it is that Yahoo now owns an enormous social web, owning two of the three social kings (the other being Skype, which as an eBay property is no longer competitive and Yahoo recently undercut).

Look at it this way: Yahoo owns the social web, Google owns the information web, and Microsoft is slowly working to own RSS. The winner will be the one that holds onto their piece and makes it the most important piece on the board.

Links:
Yahoo’s del.icio.us Acquisition - BetaNews
Yahoo! bought del.icio.us! - BoingBoing
y.ah.oo! - Del.icio.us blog
Great Tastes That Go Great Together - Yahoo blog
del.icio.us bought by Yahoo! - Download Squad

Hat-tip: Matt Walters

By the way, excellent embargo. Seems like half a million blogs hit “Post” at the same instant :-)

December 9th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Yahoo, General | 3 comments

Hosting sponsored by GoDaddy

Can Anyone Stop Google Kong?

CNN/Money has an article about investor speculation as to whether any company can topple Google. Much of it is devoted to speculation about a pending AOL/MSN deal and MSN’s AdCenter, and there was one excellent point made:

“AOL moving to MSN would have an effect, but Google is not a one-trick pony,” said Gregg Stewart, a senior vice president with Fathom Online, another privately held online advertising firm. He added that the only way Google could really stumble is if it did something that hurt its brand image.

Very true. Google’s Wall Street success is based entirely on good karma and the belief that they will eventually back it up with world class products.

Of course, the true highlight of the article is the accompanying image of Google Kong:

Hat-tip: Greg Linden

December 9th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Stock Market, Microsoft, AOL, General | no comments

Have A Holly, Jolly Google

Well, this is different…

Google has replaced the vertical line that seperates ads and search results with a nice Christmas decoration, and only on a search for, you guessed it, “Christmas“.

Killjoy me, my first thought was, “This will kill CTR”, but when I saw that it was only on that search, I guess it’ll be so unusual that ad clicks might increase slightly.

Enough! Enjoy it…
(via Biz Stone)

UPDATE: Philipp says that it also shows up for “peppermint“. I have found it on a search for “candy cane“.

December 9th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Culture, Doodles, PPC, Humor, Advertising, AdWords, General | 8 comments

Yahoo Undercuts eBay By $2.6 Billion

Yahoo has announced that they will be adding VOIP features to Y!Messenger, including communication to regular phones. The cost: About $2.6 billion less than eBay paid for Skype. While Skype may be very “hot”, they don’t do anything that a hundred other companies could be doing, and will be doing within five years. Microsoft will make the same announcement sometime in 2006, I’d put money down, and Google’s wifi network will eliminate the need entirely in some areas.

December 9th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Yahoo, General | 3 comments

Finally! Web Clips!

It has been eight months since Evan Williams first saw Web Clips in his Gmail account, and Google has finally rolled out the service to the rest of us. You should see them in your Gmail, and if you don’t, logging out and back in again should do the trick.

Web Clips

So, what are Web Clips? Basically, its a simple RSS ticker, showing headlines from RSS feeds above your Gmail inbox (or Spam folder, as it were). Clicking a “Customize” button on the right of the Web Clip bar lets you change options for it, or turn it off if it annoys you.

Web Clips Settings

Web Clips comes preloaded with 22 feeds. They are:

You can remove any feed, and add any feed. There are also six categories (News, Business, Lifestyle, Sports, Tech, Fun) you can look through, each containing a few feeds. There isn’t one feed that’ll surprise you, just big media sites like CNet, and big blogs like Slashdot. Google kept their choices safe.

Web Clips Spam

Web Clips Trash

Hilariously, Google has subscribed the Spam and Trash folder to spam recipe and recycling feeds, respectively. Nothing like learning about how to make spam fajitas every time you check your junk, and that alone might convince some people to use Web Clips.

Web Clips Ad

Conversly, sometimes you see sponsored links (ads), and that alone might convince some people to turn off Web Clips.

You can’t turn off the ads, or the Gmail tips you occasionally get, unless you turn off Web Clips, so that’s a decision every Gmail user will have to weight. Google says the feeds are displayed randomly, not based at all on your email content, but they don’t say anything about the ads, which seems to suggest they’re like any other Gmail ad.

The biggest shame is probably that Web Clips don’t draw from your Google Reader. Considering both Gmail and Reader draw from the Google Accounts system, you’d think that a simple amount of code would link the two. The hardest thing to determine with a new Google launch is whether or not Google is serious about the development of the service. Ask me again in a year.

Anyway, Web Clips have been a really long time coming. Here are all the posts I’ve written that discuss them:

Gmail Adds Feed Reading - April 14
Where Are My Web Clips? - April 25
Gmail Clips Roll Out Slowly - May 2
Google Releases Desktop 2 - August 22
Still No Web Clips - August 25

December 9th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Services, Gmail, Email, General | 5 comments