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Psychologist: Facebook Makes You Smarter, Twitter Makes You Dumber

December 6th, 2009 by admin No comments »

Of course, it’s not that simple; but if you believe Dr Tracy Alloway from the University of Stirling in Scotland, Twitter and Facebook are very different beasts when it comes to improve your “working memory“, which relates to “the structures and processes used for temporarily storing and manipulating information in short-term memory.”

Dr. Alloway has developed a working memory training programme for slow-learning children aged 11 to 14 at a school in Durham, and she found out that FacebookFacebookFacebook did wonders for working memory, improving the kids’ IQ scores, while YouTubeYouTubeYouTube and Twitter’sTwitterTwitter steady stream of information was not healthy for working memory. Also, playing video games, especially those that involve planning and strategy, can also be beneficial.

As with any such study, one needs to take the results with a grain of salt. Without going into the benefits of training working memory for improving your IQ results, it’s obvious that Facebook and Twitter are hard to compare. Facebook is extremely versatile: you can play games there, chat with your friends, view photos and videos; you can even take IQ tests.

Twitter is a much simpler, more streamlined service. Does that fact alone makes it detrimental to your working memory? Dr. Alloway claims: “On Twitter you receive an endless stream of information, but it’s also very succinct. You don’t have to process that information. Your attention span is being reduced and you’re not engaging your brain and improving nerve connections.” That may be true, and while looking at Twitter like a zombie for the better part of the day is probably bad for you, if you mix it up with other online activities – such as Facebook – I doubt you’ll see any negative effects.

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Bing: Microsoft and Yahoo Deal

December 6th, 2009 by admin No comments »

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The on-off relationship between Microsoft and Yahoo has been consummated. A new 10-year deal will bind the two companies as they seek to compete with Google.

In January 2008, Microsoft originally offered $47.5 billion to buy Yahoo outright. Despite Yahoo’s ongoing financial difficulties, the deal was rejected because co-founder and then director Jerry Yang demanded more money.

The latest deal is a revenue-share agreement that involves no money changing hands:

* Bing will become the search engine used by both Microsoft and Yahoo.
* Microsoft AdCenter will become the single search advertising platform.
* Yahoo will focus on media, marketing services, and sales.

Bing usage has been growing at an average of 25% per week. However, this has primarily been at the expense of Yahoo Search and it is yet to dent Google’s market share. The deal will instantly provide Bing with almost 30% of US internet queries and save Yahoo $200 million in search engine technology development costs.

Advertising prospects for the combined systems should also improve. Yahoo and Microsoft both offer effective search advertising platforms, but advertisers often choose Google because it receives significantly more traffic.

However, the link up will not be easy and both companies expect scrutiny from the US Department of Justice. The Google-Yahoo advertising alliance failed in November 2008 partly because of DoJ opposition. Ironically, Microsoft was the biggest and loudest complainer about that deal.

Assuming the legal, technical, and structural details can be overcome, the Microsoft-Yahoo collaboration creates a far more powerful competitor for Google. That will be welcomed throughout the industry, but can the companies work together effectively and beat Google in a market it dominates?

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Posted in Microsoft, Yahoo

Tags: bing yahoo deal

Michelle Obama Picture in Google Image Results Creates Controversy

November 27th, 2009 by admin No comments »

Search for Michelle Obama’s name via Google’s image search and you’ll likely find an image that has been characterized as a racist caricature of the first lady of the US in the top results.

The image is offensive to many and while some are demanding it be removed, Google (Google) is holding firm and yet still apologizing. The Washington Post has uncovered a formal apology from Google in the form of an ad displayed above the offensive image that directs visitors to a page explaining how Google’s search results algorithm works.

In short, while Google apologizes for upsetting searchers, it’s standing by the algorithm. The full text of the statement reads:

“Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google.

Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.

The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.

We apologize if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results.

Sincerely,
The Google Team

”

As the statement implies, Google will pull a photo should the site hosting it serve malware, which was apparently the case with the image in question at one point, as it was temporarily removed from search results. In any event, it is now back in the top spot.

Despite the inappropriateness of the image, we understand why Google would stand by their algorithm rather than play the role of censor. But do you? Let us know where you side on the heated image controversy in the comments.

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Tags: google image search michelle obama

Mystery Buyer Coughs Up $1.5 Million For Russia.com

November 27th, 2009 by admin No comments »

The domain name russia.com has been purchased by an undisclosed buyer for $1.5 million through marketplace Sedo, reports Yakov Sadchikov over on the Quintura blog.

Currently an online guide for travelers who would like to visit the country, Russia.com is an operation of Paley Media, a Seattle, WA-based consultancy firm that runs the show for many a country domain name, including Algeria.com, Scotland.com, Nepal.com and Ukraine.com. The domain names are themselves owned by NewMedia Holdings, a company that registered the domain name russia.com back in 1995.

It’s unclear why NewMedia / Paley Media decided to offload the high-value domain name, but I reckon one million and a half dollars is a fair price for a website that currently attracts a mere 9,000 unique visitors per month according to Compete. On the other hand, Korea.com was sold earlier this year for a reported $5 million.

We recently wrote about dominance of number of .com domains and also noted that .com domain registrations were starting to turn around again after a poor 2008. It looks like values of .com domains may be rising again: insurance broker Insure.com just sold its name and corresponding website for a whopping $16 million last month.

Other large domain purchases this year include the sale of Candy.com for $3 million, Toys-R-Us’ acquisition of Toys.com for $5.1 million, the sale of Fly.com to Travelzoo for $1.8 million, and the sale of Ad.com for $1.4 million.

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Tags: domain Mystery Buyer

Online Advertising In The U.S Begins To Stabilize

November 27th, 2009 by admin No comments »

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Online advertising revenues in the U.S. seem to be stabilizing. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers released third-quarter figures showing that online advertising in the U.S. approached $5.5 billion, up 1.7 percent from the second quarter of 2009, but still down 5.4 percent from the same quarter a year ago (which is in line with the losses during the first half of the year). As you can see in the chart, there was a big drop-off after the fourth quarter of last year, and the first three quarters of this year have been flat.

On a global basis, we might already be seeing a recovery, at least for search advertising. The online advertising revenues of the four largest Web advertising companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL) increased 1.2 percent in the fourth quarter. Google accounted for all of that growth, however, so we are still waiting for display advertising to find its footing.

It is likely that in the U.S. alone, search advertising is also leading the recovery. But now that Google is mixing more visual elements into search ads (are those display or search ads?), perhaps display ads will see a boost as well.

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Posted in Advertising

Tags: Advertising Bureau Online advertising U.S

Yahoo Loses The Brains Behind Boss

November 27th, 2009 by admin No comments »

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The brains behind Yahoo Boss, a young engineer named Vik Singh, is leaving Yahoo to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. Earlier this year, Singh was named to Technology Review’s 35 Under 35 list at the age of 24. Singh is exactly the kind of talent Yahoo should be trying to hold onto, but that is hard to do now that it is ceding search to Microsoft.

Singh is more diplomatic. Contacted for comment he confirms, “I’ll be starting next week actually. I’m really pumped but I’m going to definitely miss Yahoo! It’s been such a great company to work at but I just got this really bad case of the entrepreneurial bug.”

Yahoo Boss, which was largely Singh’s idea, is one of Yahoo’s most successful projects among developers. It “>opens up the power of Yahoo’s search index and algorithms to other sites. Yahoo Boss is a set of APIs and Web services which let people build their own customized search engines. (We use it for our search engine here at TechCrunch). Since it launched a year and a half ago, upwards of one billion search queries a month are powered through the service.

Prior to Yahoo, Singh cut his teeth at Microsoft Research in the lab of computer scientist Jim Gray, who was tragically lost at sea two years ago.

Singh already has some ideas about what he wants to work on at Sutter Hill, but he is keeping them close to his vest at this point. He does offer this: “There’s a line my mentor Jim Gray used to say to me all the time: ‘We gotta party on the data!’ I know it’s vague, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Party on, dude.

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Tags: Vik Singh Yahoo Boss

Twitter growth flattening out?

November 27th, 2009 by admin No comments »

Only a year ago, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were dead and microblogging would soon replace them. Twitter was supposed to kill blogs because it’s so much simpler to publish one sentence fragment at a time rather than whole thoughts bunched together into what is known in the trade as “paragraphs.”

Today, blogs are doing fine, while Twitter is struggling with flattening growth, at least to its Website Twitter.com (clients like Seesmic and TweetDeck have seen no slowdown). The weakness Twitter has been experiencing in the U.S. since last summer is now finally hitting its worldwide visitor growth as well.

In October, comScore estimates that Twitter had 58.3 million unique visitors worldwide, down from 58.4 million in September. Meanwhile, Wordpress.com gained 10 million unique visitors to end the month at 151.8 million—this is after going pretty much nowhere since March, 2009.

Of course, I am using Wordpress.com as a proxy for all blogging here (I could have just as easily used Blogger, which is actually bigger with 291.7 million visitors worldwide. And Blogger saw a similar holding pattern since March, with a huge sudden jump of 18.2 million visitors in October

So is blogging back, while microblogging is on the skids? A one-month spike in the popularity of blogs doesn’t tell you much of anything, but in any case it’s the wrong question. Blogging never really went away, and was in fact helped by Twitter, which is becoming the preferred feed reader for many people (thanks to services like Twitterfeed).

And don’t count out microblogging just yet. Twitter is finally rolling out improvements to its site such as Lists and the new Retweet button. Once geo-location features kick in, Twitter’s growth could come back with a vengeance.

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Tags: Twitter Twitterfeed

Breaking: eBay Completes Skype Sale At $2.75 Billion Valuation

November 22nd, 2009 by admin No comments »

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eBay has just announced that it has completed the sale of Skype, valuing the company at $2.75 billion. The investor consortium who is the buying party and will control an approximately 70 percent stake is a group led by Silver Lake Partners and includes Joltid (i.e. the company founded by Skype’s original founders) and “certain affiliated parties”, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

As previously announced, eBay received approximately $1.9 billion in cash and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. The company also retained an approximately 30 percent equity investment in Skype.

The company also purchased senior debt securities with a face value of $50 million as part of a Skype debt financing.

The news of the completion of the sale of the successful Internet communication company comes two weeks after Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis announced that they had reached a settlement with eBay in return for a 14% stake and board seats, clearing the way for the deal to close after some very public legal quarrels.

As you may remember, Andreessen Horowitz partner Marc Andreessen swiftly deemed Skype one of the most important companies on the Internet after the settlement was reached and announced (and made quite a strong case for it).

TechCrunch was first to report the imminent sale of Skype to the investor group back in August 2009 and shortly after confirmed that the deal would value the company at $2.75 billion. As a reminder and just for reference, eBay bought Skype in 2005 for $2.6 billion, although eBay has since written Skype down to $1.7 billion.

You won’t hear me say it was the smartest acquisition eBay ever made – not buying the actual core IP was downright idiotic – but they did kinda ok with it in hindsight. Let’s not forget eBay still owns a little less than one third of the new Skype either.

In the words of Skype CEO Josh Silverman: say hello to the future.

How much bigger can Skype get on its own two feet?

(Thanks to @YarinHochman for the tip)

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Tags: ebay skype

Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever. And Hasn’t Tried Google Wave.

November 22nd, 2009 by admin No comments »

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“Email is not going to disappear. Possibly ever. Until the robots kill us all.”

– Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, co-founder of FriendFeed, currently doing vague infrastructure things at Facebook.

Today, at our RealTime CrunchUp event in San Francisco, Buchheit and Threadsy founder Rob Goldman sat down for a chat with our own Steve Gillmor and Erick Schonfeld. The topic was: Can We Kill Email Already? All Aboard The Micro-Message Bus.

So can we kill email?

Well if Buchheit’s quote didn’t tip you off, the consensus was “no.” Though there are some interesting things coming out that are helping to expand our communication, we’re just not at the point now where we can live without email. And in fact, for many of these services like Twitter and Facebook, you still need email to be notified about new followers or new messages.

Threadsy (which launched at TechCrunch50 this year) is trying to help the transition away from email by integrating it with other services like Twitter, but even Goldman acknowledges that the email notification problem remains an issue because people keep relying on it. At one point, a question from the audience asked about Google Wave, another would be “email-killer,” and Schonfeld noted that he was having a hard time getting into it because he wasn’t getting notified via email when there is a new Wave message. So you can see the problem.

Speaking of Wave, when asked about his thoughts on it, Buchheit noted that he hadn’t actually tried it yet, while laughing. “The invite is sitting in my inbox.” This is significant because Buchheit was instrumental in creating Gmail for Google. But Buchheit doesn’t consider Google Wave as a replacement of email or even Twitter or Facebook. Both him and Goldman agreed that it seemed more of a collaboration tool. And both felt that despite some great technology it was still a few years away from having a polished experience.

When asked if there would be a mashup of social and private streams, such as email and Facebook with Twitter, Buchheit said that he felt rather than one thing killing off another that we would just keep layering on new things. Goldman noted that the next step for Threadsy is to provide better context about the messages you’re getting and who you are talking to. He also noted that being able to search across all your messages is key.

So, no. Email isn’t dead yet, but it may be changing.

[photo: (cc) Kenneth Yeung - www.thelettertwo.com]

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