Not too long ago, the most important things discussed on Facebook and Twitter related to people’s relationships and what was for lunch. Then we moved into job-loss and non-fatal-plane-crash territory. Now, a couple of stories with links to the criminal justice system have cropped up.
Congressman, Open Access Guru Spar Over Internet Publishing
US Representative John Conyers (D-MI) is on the defensive regarding legislation that would prevent the public posting of taxpayer funded scientific research on the Internet. Opponents argue the bill is a step back for science and that the powers that be behind it are shilling for the paper publishing industry.
The New Facebook Arrives
Last week Facebook announced that it would be rolling out changes to its home page sometime this week. That has now begun.
Enthusiasm has been building greatly over the past week. Within 20 minutes of an official Facebook blog post on the launch it had already received 98 comments, most of which were pretty positive.
Bloggers Battle Over Sponsored Conversations
A Forrester report released yesterday kicked off once again the debate over paying bloggers to write about products and companies. Blogging purists, new media marketing experts, and Google’s Matt Cutts have all weighed in, indicating this is hardly a debate that will soon be put to rest.
Google to Serve Ads Based on Browsing History
Google has announced the launch of "Interest-based" advertising as a beta test for the company’s partner sites and on YouTube. In other words, Google will be serving ads based on sites users visit.
eBay CEO Speaks, Says Done Apologizing for Skype
eBay held its 2009 Analyst Day today with CEO John Donahoe speaking on the company’s future. As anticipated, a great deal of focus was put on PayPal.
Democrats.org Becomes Parasite Host
Google’s trust of Democrats.org, the Democrat National Party’s official website, is being abused by cybercrooks to spread spam and malware via search results. Criminals are able to achieve high ranking for their sites in the search results simply by setting up a blog at the DNC website and passing on link juice from there.
Microsoft’s Kumo Will Only Come with Minor Tweaks
What can you expect from Microsoft’s rebranded search engine? A new name, and not a whole lot else from the sound of it. As you’ve probably read by now, Kumo is the name that is most commonly associated with the search engine, though Microsoft has not officially named it.
Google Begins Interest Based Ad Program
Today [Google is] launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest…so if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store’s upcoming sale.
Is Microsoft Going to Make Waves in Search This Year?
In a story we covered earlier this month, John Battelle accidentally typed livesearch.com into his address bar only to find a domain squatter. This of course led to speculation that Microsoft was close to rebranding its Live Search. They clearly were not too concerned about getting that domain (it’s still the same a couple weeks later).