Business Issues Blog

Update 4 :

TwitVid has announced the launch of its own real-time video search and video analytics features, as well as virtual gifting. In case you are not familiar with TwitVid, it is a service commonly used by Twitterers for uploading videos that can be viewed from Twitter. The real-time search feature is pretty much what it sounds like. It aggregates all TwitVid, as well as YouTube video links that are currently being shared on Twitter. According to TwitVid, the proprietary real-time ranking algorithm then ranks the videos based on their relevancy to the search term, current popularity and buzz on Twitter, as well as by their freshness, with the newest videos ranking highest. The analytics tool lets users track tweeted videos by day, week, month, or total number. Users can see how many times videos were viewed, as well as the locations of clicks and the top people linking others to the videos. “The social web is constantly changing, and there is a growing demand for new tools that help to enrich the Twitter video experience by letting you share in a smarter way,” says Mo Adham, Co-Founder of TwitVid.com. “Now, for the first time, Twitter video users can evaluate the success of their videos based on the information our analytics tool gathers about the performance of their TwitVids around the web. This is incredibly valuable for musicians, celebrities, publicists, marketers, bloggers, and others as a way to evaluate the success of their online video campaigns.” The Virtual Gift feature lets users give each other gifts, simply as another form of engaging with one another. This is not unlike features offered on other social networks. TwitVid’s video-stats and gifts are up and running, but the search feature won’t be available until Wednesday. Related Articles: > TwitVid Delivers First Twitter Video Upload App for Blackberry > Twitter Search Far From Perfect > TweetMeme Bringing Analytics to the Retweet Table

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Real-Time Search and Analytics for Tweeted Videos

Leading publishers are getting together for what is widely being considered something of a “Hulu for magazines.” Publishers involved include Conde Nast , Hearst , Meredith , News Corporation and Time Inc . These companies released a joint announcement today saying that they have entered into an independent venture to develop open standards for a new digital storefront and related technology that will “allow consumers to enjoy their favorite media content on portable digital devices.” The idea is that publishers can boost online revenue in a similar fashion to what the companies behind Hulu are doing with online television The publishers say the goal is to create a highly featured common reading application capable of rendering the distinctive look and feel of each publication, a publishing platform optimized for multiple devices, operating systems and screen sizes, a consumer storefront with an extensive selection of publications, and a rich array of advertising opportunities. The selection of publications will not be limited to just those from the companies involved. They are saying that the venture will welcome other publishers to offer their content as well. Publishers will get their revenue from content and advertising sales, as well as print subscriptions. “For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice, including smartphones, e-readers and laptops,” explained John Squires, the venture’s interim managing director. “Once purchased, this content will be ‘unlocked’ for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform.” The storefront will of course offer magazine and newspaper publications, but will also include books, comic books, blogs, and other media. The venture does not yet have a name. It will be interesting to see what they come up with and if consumers jump on board with the model. Is this a step in the right direction for publishers? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends… what you think . Related Articles: >

Google has begun including geographical region information on some search results. The information is used when supplied by webmasters, and appears in the green address line on the results that include it. “Country-code top-level domains (or ccTLDs) can provide people with a quick and valuable clue about the location of a website—for example, “.fr” for France or “.co.jp” for Japan,” explains Google software engineer Piyush Prahladka. “However, for certain top level domains like .com, .info and .org, it’s not as easy to figure out the location.” “With the new display, you no longer need to refine your search or click through the results to figure out which page is the one you’re looking for,” says Prahladka. “In general, our hope is that these region tags will help searchers more quickly identify which results are most relevant to their queries.” If you wish to provide Google with the information required for getting your site’s region to show up in search results, you will need to log in to Webmaster Tools and go to Site configuration > Settings > Geographic Target . There you will be able to associate a country/region with your site. Webmasters have been able to utilize the feature that lets them associate their sites with regions for quite some time, but that information hasn’t appeared in search results in the past. Right now, Google is only showing region tags in results for certain domains like .com and .net. They don’t show them at all for sites that have location-specific ccTLDs (.br, .co.uk, etc.). The feature is designed to help users figure out where a site is based if that is not already clear. It is also worth noting that Google will only show the region tags when the region associated with the site is different than the region the searcher’s query originates from . So if I search from here in the US, I will not see results that say “US”, but I might see results that say “Canada”. Related Articles: > Get More Links in Your Actual Google Results > Google Gives Forums More Links on SERPs > Google Improves Universal Results for Locations

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Google Makes it Easier to Tell Where Results Originate From

We’ve been looking at Twitter’s growth on a monthly basis, in terms of new user registrations and number of tweets. In October, new Twitterers were down, but tweets were up. November’s numbers paint a similar picture. Matthew Daines, the lead developer of Twellow, has shared a couple of new graphs for last month. “It looks like new registrations continue to decline, yet tweets continue to increase,” he says. “If you take the number of tweets sent divided by the number of users registered, November saw 9.5 tweets per registered user. This is up from 9.3 in October, and continues an upward trend for the entire year, except July which saw 10.5 tweets per user.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a 2-day workshop on “Journalism and the Internet Age” today and tomorrow. Featured at the event are a number of high profile media executives and gurus. The cast ranges from News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington. The event appears to be designed to present all possible angles regarding the state of the news industry and the web’s role, as well as the government’s role, if any. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, who is appearing on a panel at the event himself, has a liveblog running, covering much of the discussion (and there is a lot of it), providing a good source for actual quotes. The newspaper industry is obviously struggling right now, and a common theme discussed throughout the workshop has been that the effects of the recession may be skewing the long term view. In other words, maybe it’s not really as bad as it seems right now. That said, publications clearly have to adapt to the online lifestyles of readers, whether that means the death of print newspapers or not. Let’s look at comments made by Murdoch and Huffington, because they basically represent opposing sides of the spectrum on a number of sub-topics to this discussion (Although to be fair, it’s probably not as black and white as that. There is certainly a lot of gray area in the discussion, which has been going on for years). Murdoch says three things have to happen: media companies have to deliver the news consumers want in ways that meet their lifestyles and must innovate like never before, they have to convince consumers that good journalism isn’t free, and the government needs to “clear obstacles.” Murdoch goes on to discuss other related topics, including that of fair use. He rips aggregators, calling aggregation “wholesale theft.” Huffington , whose site is largely known for aggregating content, says Murdoch is confusing aggregation with theft, but says they link to the Wall Street Journal every day and never get a complaint. She says that if it was wrong, they’d have heard about it. She also says aggregation is part of the web’s “DNA” and that Murdoch plays both sides, noting that some of Murdoch’s own sites also aggregate or “steal” content. Huffington also discusses things like social and collaborative news, and the concept of citizen journalism. There are many other speakers and opinions being voiced at the FTC’s event, and Sullivan’s liveblog captures a great deal of them. It will be interesting to see if the event leads to any significant progress in the ongoing discussion. On a related note, Google has posted about the ways it is focusing on helping news publishers gain traffic, engage audiences, and increase revenue. Related Articles: >

The Tiger Woods car accident has had the web abuzz over the weekend. Like nearly anything else that creates such buzz, cyber-criminals will find a way to exploit it. This incident is no exception. According to security company Symantec , interest in Tiger’s accident and rumors surrounding its cause has given scareware peddlers “ripe opportunity” to “poison web search engines.” Because the story has generated such a swell in web traffic and searches, malicious entities surely couldn’t resist. The story has appeared frequently in the top Google searches since the news broke. Symantec says it has observed that some search results redirect users to different malicious domains, such as: – vir-curemypc-now.com – egafuki.cn – online-scanner-free.net “From an IT security point of view, this unfortunate incident is just another fruit ripe for the picking as far as malware writers are concerned,” says Symantec’s Hon Lau. “It comes as no surprise that the creators of rogue antivirus or misleading application software have already jumped on the bandwagon and attempted to poison web search engine results to take advantage of this spike in web search activity.” Naturally, the company is advising web searchers and those interested in the Tiger Woods story to be on guard. Symantec reminds us that when you search for info on the web, it is best to make sure your computer is secure. In addition, stay away from online sources that seem to “strong-arm” you into buying anti-virus software. On a related note, Tech Blorge notes that the Tiger Woods story was broken on Twitter, as opposed to traditional media. These cases always provide for an interesting look at how new media is changing in the era of social media. Related Articles: