Google TV Not A Hit With Major Networks

When Google TV launches, don't look for all - or maybe any - of the major networks to throw parties or send fruit baskets.  A new report indicates that Google's had little luck convincing the networks to partner with it.

Jessica E. Vascellaro wrote earlier this morning, "In recent weeks, Google has met with officials of TV networks including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC to encourage them to work with the service, according to people familiar with the matter."  Which is kind of good news, since it at least shows a dialogue is taking place.

But Vascellaro then continued, "Content owners . . . are skeptical that Google can provide a business model that would compensate for potentially cannibalizing TV owners' existing broadcast businesses."

And obviously, we haven't seen any deals announced as a result of the meetings.
So Google seems to remain set when it comes to hardware partners (the list includes names like Intel, Logitech, and Sony), and a little light with respect to content.  That's something consumers are almost sure to notice if the situation isn't remedied prior to Google TV's launch.

Of course, some consumers might just turn to pirated video, which wouldn't do the networks a lot of good.source: webpronews.com/topnews/

5 Social Media Stories For Your Business

There are too many happenings everyday in the social media space for any single business owner to keep up with. Today's web is fast, and very, very innovative. The production never slows down. New tools and integrations are launched seemingly every other minute.

While I'd encourage you to sift through the headlines and social media app directories on a regular basis, I've put together a few currently unfolding storylines with big implications for business owners.



1. Why the Google Buzz Firehose Will Benefit You

Google Buzz launched to a lot of hype, but that kind of died down to some extent after a while. The privacy-related issues that it launched with didn't help. However, Google Buzz has steadily been making more moves to become more relevant to the social media universe. It already has a solid user base, and we've likely only seen the service's infancy.

A couple months ago, Google launched the Buzz API, which was a big step in the right direction. This gave developers tools to build applications around Buzz, or integrate Buzz into their existing applications, hence making Buzz more useful. Just as Twitter became more useful when more apps were built for it, Buzz has similar potential.

That potential has now increased greatly, as Google has launched the firehose for the Buzz API. This means that all public information from Buzz users is accessible by developers for use with their apps, which opens the door for many more opportunities. See how some are already using it here.

From the business owner's perspective, simply think of Buzz as another group of potential customers, in addition to Facebook and Twitter users, which will probably be integrated into many of the same apps that are already utilizing these other groups. So any promotional benefits you are seeing from said apps should increase with the addition of Buzz data, not to mention the fact that this and other factors will likely lead to the growth of Buzz itself. That brings me to the next point.


2. Google Me

For weeks, Google has been rumored to be working on a new big social network to rival Facebook. The company of course does not comment on rumors, but has not denied the concept. Details are scarce, but "Google Me" as it's commonly being referred to, will likely utilize existing Google profile pages, which are tied to Google Buzz. As I discussed in a recent article, Google is making all YouTube users connect their accounts to a Google account, which could mean that all of these Google account holders become part of Google's massive social network by default.

Without knowing Google's exact plans, it's hard to say exactly what benefits will become available that aren't already there, but you can bet that the implications will be big, and it might make all of Google's social properties more beneficial to businesses. YouTube is one of the most popular sites in the world. Add that to everyone else with a Google account.



3. Virtual Goods Increase Purchase Intent

Virtual goods are becoming more popular within social networks, and businesses are already finding ways to utilize them to not only increase brand awareness and influence positive opinions about their products, but drive purchase intent.

In fact, new study from Appssavvy found that they can do all of these things, while increasing all brand metrics. More about this here.

 4. Customers Are Checking In, and This Will Become Searchable

Another hot trend in social media is checking in. You know, all of these geo-location services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Booyah, etc. More and more of them will continue to pop up, and let's not forget the really big names. Google has Google latitude, Twitter has Twitter Places, and Facebook will be launching something location-based one of these days soon.

Foursquare is already in talks with all of the major search engines. We don't know exactly will come of this, but it seems clear that search engines are interested in indexing this kind of data, and why wouldn't they be? Imagine if you as, as a business, could search for all of the people sharing their location in your area. That could be pretty powerful.


5. Social Media Hasn't Plateaued.

During the world cup, Twitter was breaking records for tweets. While this is related to a large-scale event, it just shows that a massive amount of people still care about Twitter, and that isn't changing anytime soon.

It was only earlier this year that Facebook announced it had surpassed 400 million users. The company is widely expected to announce that it's reached 500 million this week. I probably don't have to tell you that between these numbers, Facebook faced a huge amount of criticism in the media over privacy issues, with a lot of people talking about deleting their accounts. Facebook just kept on growing. That's not going to change anytime soon either. Facebook is becoming integrated into the very fiber of the web more and more each day (through social plug-ins, apps, etc.). There are more access points all the time (see Microsoft's new Outlook integration). It's getting harder to ignore if you're not already a user.

If that wasn't good enough news for businesses placing their fatih in social media, more consumers are actively using Facebook and Twitter to engage with brands. They're making email marketing campaigns (an already effective marketing channel) more effective. sorce: www.webpronews.com

Google Apps Goes To India

A country that's known for its fast-developing tech industry - and for its enormous population - should soon have improved access to Google Apps. Google and Tata Communications announced a deal today that involves both Google Apps and India (for starters).

A Tata Communications representative explained in an email to WebProNews, "Tata Communications is partnering with Google to deliver the Google Apps portfolio of web-based office productivity applications to businesses in India."

That sounds promising. Google won't exactly have to overcome a lack of awareness, since the spokesperson cited Springboard Research's 2009 finding that 95 percent of Asian organizations are familiar with SaaS and Saas-based apps. India is supposed to be the fastest-growing market for SaaS in the Asia-Pacific region, as well.source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Then here's another benefit of the arrangement: the representative wrote, "Tata Communications will eventually extend this partnership into other emerging markets around the world," perhaps including parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

And a major selling point of Google Apps is of course that it's supposed to represent a low-cost alternative to traditional IT solutions, making it more appealing in markets where money is an especially important factor.

Unfortunately, Google and Tata Communications didn't provide any sort of timeframe for the expansion, or disclose the details of the current partnership.

Bing Takes Users to Mars

Microsoft has added Mars imagery to Bing Maps and to its WorldWide Telescope project. The imagery comes straight from NASA itself.

"Microsoft Research and NASA are providing an entirely new experience to users of the WorldWide Telescope, which will allow visitors to interact with and explore our solar system like never before," says Bing's Chris Pendleton. "Viewers can now take exclusive interactive tours of the Red Planet, hear directly from NASA scientists, and view and explore the most complete, highest-resolution coverage of Mars available."



"The beauty of this is that the Bing WorldWide Telescope Map App has been updated with the new imagery, as well," adds Pendleton. "This means users of Bing Maps can immediately enjoy the new imagery of the Red Planet from within their browser via our Silverlight site."

The Worldwide Telescope Mars experience can be downloaded here. On the Bing Maps Silverlight site, users can simply click the "Map Apps" button, select "WorldWide Telescope", and select "Mars" from the Collections list.

More Businesses Using Social Media To Gain Customers

More than one-third (35%) of U.S. businesses have had success using social media to attract new business, according to a new survey from Regus.

The U.S. lags slightly behind the global average, with 40 percent of businesses globally having successfully used social media for business development.

Globally, social networks are still used for their original purposes. The most popular use of social networks is staying in touch with business contacts, with 58 percent of respondents globally indicating they use networks in this way. Joining special interest groups is also popular (54 percent).

Although a number of skeptics (34 percent) believe social networking will never become a significant method of connecting to customers and prospects, 51 percent of companies globally organize, connect to or manage customer groups via social networks. Fifty four percent of firms use social networks to find useful business information. Only 22 percent of respondents had found new employment through social networking, in spite of the specific job search functions of networks such as LinkedIn.

In the U.S. specifically 28 percent of businesses have set aside a proportion of marketing budget for social networking activities. Fifty four percent of respondents used social networking to keep in touch with contacts, slightly lower than the global average. Notably, 44 percent of U.S. companies use social networking to join special interest groups, well below the global average of 54 percent. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Google Sets Forum-Like Goals For Wave

Google Wave may soon make some significant strides towards winning over people who don't see the need for a new form of communication. This week, Google semi-officially endorsed an open source project that would see Wave imitate several aspects of traditional online forums.

David Crane, the founder of Debatewise, is the developer behind the push, and he was asked to write about it on the Google Wave Developer Blog. Crane argued, "A forum could be a killer app for Wave. It's a tool that people already use in huge numbers for specific purposes, are used to keeping separate to their email, and will dip in and out of as required."

Crane then continued, "Wave is similar enough for them to jump in quickly and different enough for them to get, and be hooked by, the benefits. . . . Wave could enhance and improve upon some of the most important features of a forum and through acclimatisation, will encourage them to use it for a world of other purposes."

So Crane - and/or Google - is looking for developers to help realize three goals. First, he'd like to see a way of grouping waves around subject matters. The second objective is to encourage participation using things like karma levels and trophies. Finally, he's interested in implementing trust mechanisms to distinguish between helpful and useless individuals.

It should be interesting to see how this project progresses. Google Wave still doesn't seem to have found an audience in its original form, so perhaps Google will lend Crane some additional support in order to speed up the process.

Google Sets Date Of Second Quarter Financial Report

Any of Google's investors who feel that the company has some explaining to do need only wait another nine days. Google's announced that it will report its second quarter financial results on Wednesday, July 15th.

Things could get ugly for a couple of reasons. As the graph below shows, Google's stock hasn't done at all well since March 31st, which is the last day covered by its previous report. And in fact, the graph would look even worse if we'd messied it with lines representing Microsoft and Yahoo, because their stocks lost just 20.60 percent and 14.88 percent, respectively, in the same period.


Then it's necessary to consider that Google's relationship with China appears to be deteriorating (again), jeopardizing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue.

On the bright side, Google's maintained its dominance in the search market, and Android continues to make inroads against the iPhone. Google TV and Google Music have people excited and don't appear to be far off, either.

Also, to be quite simplistic about this, Google just has a habit of presenting impressive numbers during its earnings reports, regardless of how bad things look.

Anyway, if you're interested in learning about the financial results in real time, Google's conference call is supposed to occur at 4:30 PM New York time (so as not to mess with the stock market) and will be accessible here.

Chinese Government Denies Involvement in Google Cyberattacks

The Chinese government has officially denied any involvement in the sophisticated cyberattacks that breached Google’s security. The statements come 11 days after Google threatened to pull out of China unless it’s allowed to run its search engine uncensored.

The statement, aired during two interviews on the Chinese state’s news agency, came out strong against accusations that China itself had involvement in the attacks against Google and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Here’s what a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said:

“Accusation that the Chinese government participated in (any) cyberattack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China.”

The spokesperson also stated that “China’s policy on Internet safety is transparent and consistent.” This was followed by a second interview with a spokesperson from China’s State Council (the equivalent of the U.S. Cabinet), saying that the government’s regulation of the Internet is legitimate and should be free of external influences. Most likely, this refers to recent U.S. statements calling for China to “conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions” of the Google attacks.

It’s no surprise that the government would deny involvement, although it has taken over a week for China to come out and say it. Regardless of today’s new developments though, the pressure on China by both Google and the U.S. government isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

source: http://mashable.com/2010/01/24/china-google-involvement-denial/

Bing Might Replace Google As iPhone Search Engine

Allow us to save you a couple of moments by verifying that today isn't April 1st and that pigs haven't taken to the sky. Now, there's little left to do aside from break the news: Apple and Microsoft are supposed to be in talks to make Bing the iPhone's default search engine.


BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows and Cliff Edwards spoke to "two people familiar with the matter," and found out that Google might get bumped from its position as default provider.

The pair reported, "The talks have been under way for weeks, say the people, who asked not to be named because the details have not been made public."

Assuming this is true, it's likely that the increasing popularity of Android is one of the biggest factors to influence Apple's decision. Microsoft, which spent at least $100 million launching Bing and has Google beat by $90 billion in terms of market caps, probably offered Apple more money, too.

Still, even the unnamed sources of this rumor haven't declared that a new arrangement is far from a sure thing. So for the time being, we'll just have to watch, wait, and hope that a deal between Apple and Microsoft wouldn't be a sign of the apocalypse.
source: http://www.webpronews.com

Google Cancels Nexus One Phone Launch in China

Amidst the issues that’s happening right now between Google and China, Google decided to cancel the scheduled launch of its Nexus One phone in the country this week. Citing a reliable source, AP is reporting that Google’s decision to cancel the launch of the mobile phone was indeed related to Google’s recent threat of shutting down its Chinese-based search engine since China refused to scale down it’s restriction on the search engine.

If you may have read last week, Google announced that it is lifting the censorship imposed upon their search engine due to security threat caused by it. The Chinese government kept mum about the issue and even played hard ball with Google. China issued a warning that it is ready to shut down Google’s Chinese search engine if the company would not abide by China’s rules and restrictions. Google was equally playing hard ball as well.

Although a spokeswoman for Google, Marsha Wang claimed that the launch was only postponed and will be reschedule, she however declined to give a reason for the postponement.

So, what do you think guys? Is Google’s decision to cancel the launch of the Nexus One in China part of its retaliation to the Chinese government? Is it wise for Google to cancel the launch knowing fully well that it stands to lose a huge prospective market for its not so well performing Nexus One sale in the four countries where it decided to sell the smartphone initially?

Apple Wants to Ban Nokia Imports to the US

Nokia and Apple are in the middle of an intense patent war. Apple’s latest counter-strike is a complaint filed with the International Trade Commission (ITC) seeking to block US imports of Nokia mobile devices. This comes on the heels of Nokia’s own complaint seeking to ban imports of iPhones, iPods, and MacBooks.

Bloomberg reports that Apple’s efforts to block the import of Nokia devices are tied to yet another patent infringement complaint, and that notice of the complaint appeared yesterday on the ITC’s website.

The suit, countersuit back-and-forth between Nokia and Apple began in late October of 2009 with Nokia’s original lawsuit, filed in a Delaware District Court, against Apple for wireless technology patent infringement. Apple, of course, filed a countersuit. Then in December Nokia continued on the warpath with a complaint to the ITC and followed that up with a second complaint requesting the ITC block imports of Apple products.

Given that Apple’s mobile market share continues to grow while Nokia’s is declining, we can certainly understand why Nokia would feel threatened enough to take action, and why Apple would be compelled to respond. Both companies are facing harsh penalties that could severely affect their bottom lines and stock prices.

In a statement made via text message, Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant said, “Nokia will study the complaint when it is received and continue to defend itself vigorously … However this does not alter the fact that Apple has failed to agree appropriate terms for using Nokia technology and has been seeking a free ride on Nokia’s innovation since it shipped the first iPhone in 2007.”

Bloomberg also writes that:

“The ITC is a government agency whose job is to protect the U.S. market from unfair trade practices, including patent infringement. If it agrees to consider Apple’s complaint, it could complete the investigation in about 15 months. A copy of the Apple complaint wasn’t immediately available.

The agency hasn’t yet agreed to investigate the complaint filed Dec. 29 by Espoo, Finland-based Nokia, although the ITC typically grants such requests.”

Something tells us that we haven’t seen the end of this mobile mêlée.

source: http://mashable.com/2010/01/16/apple-itc-complaint/

Work-From-Home scammers sued by Google

Google is all set to sue Pacific WebWorks, the company alleged to have created the scam ads that have fooled thousands of job hunters into thinking they were applying for work with the internet giant.

The Google-branded ads promised “up to $978 a day working from home”, but all job seekers got in return for their application was a recurring bill on their credit cards.

The scam directs applicants to pay shipping and handling costs for a free kit that will show them how to make money from home with Google. Credit cards are then charged with substantial ongoing fees, while the job seeker receives nothing.

Because the logo is displayed prominently on the ads, Google claims the unaffiliated websites are misusing its trademark to deceive unsuspecting consumers, many of whom have turned to Google to lodge complaints and ask for refunds.

The lawsuit for trademark infringement, unfair business practices and cyber piracy has been lodged against Utah-based Pacific WebWorks as well as several other unnamed defendants in the US.

Pacific WebWorks insisted Wednesday it was taken unaware by a Google Inc. lawsuit accusing the Salt Lake City company of running an elaborate scam that roped in hundreds of consumers and millions of dollars by trading on Google’s name.

“We have always cooperated with Google,” CEO Kenneth W. Bell said in a statement distributed Wednesday. “As we review this lawsuit with our counsel, we find questionable claims that the company will vigorously and responsibly defend.”

Bell and Chief Financial Officer Brett Bell did not return messages seeking further comment.

source: http://socialmedia.globalthoughtz.com/index.php/work-from-home-scammers-sued-by-google/

How to Quickly Check Tweets Related to Any Web Page

The idea of giving the opportunity to leave off-site comments to any page has been hot for a long time: that’s how many social bookmarking / sharing sites work (like StumbleUpon where people “review” and tag pages within the system), that’s what Google Sidewiki concept is based on and that’s how Tweeting any page works…

Why it has been popular is quite clear: people are saved from the trouble to log in or filling the comment form and are given the opportunity to use their favorite web environment and instantly share their comments with their online friends.

The question is how we, bloggers and Internet marketers, can keep track of those comments and utilize that off-site conversations around our web pages.

This post looks at one part of the question: possible ways to keep track of Twitter conversations related to any web page:

	Type	Instant notifications	Additional tracking tools
Kutano	Browser addon	Yes	No
BackTweets	Browser bookmarklet	No	RSS feed, email alerts
AddATweet	Browser addon	Yes	No

Kutano

Kutano works as a browser addons (supported browsers: FireFox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome) that hides behind a handy sidebar and notifies you of recent Tweets around any page you are landing on. In short, it works as follows:

1. Install the addon (and restart your browser). Kutano sidebar should appear;
2. Navigate to any web page and notice a number that appears right on the sidebar (when it is closed). This number indicates how many Tweets have been found for the current page):
3. Click on it and see the actual Tweets in the opened sidebar:
   

Best features:

• Instantly see Twitter comments on any page you are currently viewing (the sidebar is open);
• See Tweets to the page or to the site;
• See “Discussions” – i.e. recent web updates that do not link to the page directly but use a related hashtag or keyword (useful for tools, brand names, etc):

BackTweets

BackTweets is a popular tool that tracks and aggregates tweets linking to a particular page. It supports a number of URL-shorteners which makes the tool one of the most complete.

It can be added to your browser with help of a bookmarklet which allows to quickly find Tweets linking to the current page.

Best features:

• Create an email alert for new Tweets linking to any page;
• Grab an RSS feed to follow Tweets commenting on any page.

AddATweet

AddATweet is more about commenting using your Twitter identity than aggregating all Twitter buzz around one specific page – that is you won’t see all the Tweets related to any specific page but you will be able to track comments left using the tool.

Best features:

• Instantly see if the page has comments by the color of the addon button;
• Easily leave your own comments using the tool and your Twitter identity.