It’s not easy to predict changes in the search industry on even a month-to-month basis; divisions get closed, new products are launched, and market shares waver constantly. But at SMX West, John Battelle discussed the much more distant future and made some interesting forecasts.
Netflix Reaches More Than 10 Million Subscribers
Netflix said today its online movie rental service has reached over 10 million subscribers, reflecting its widespread and growing popularity among movie fans.
The company says it has added more than 600,000 net subscribers since January 1. It surpassed nine million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2008 and ended the year with 9.4 million subscribers.
Google Introduces Social Bar
The Google Friend Connect Team has introduced a new feature to the service – a social bar. You can set the bar to appear at the top or bottom of you page.
Q&A With Founder of Q&A Search Engine SnappyFingers
SnappyFingers is a Question/Answer search engine that has been on the web since last July. It is currently still in beta. I had a chat with Chirayu Patel, the founder of SnappyFingers to find out a little more about it.
Google To Pay Copyright Holders $60 Per Scanned Book
Google has started paying authors of out-of-print books under a $125 million copyright settlement agreement reached in October concerning Google Book Search.
Authors and publishers around the world are receiving detailed information about their legal rights and options by email and postal mail. Class members can visit this Web site for complete information about the settlement.
The Secret to Getting More Diggs?
Every content site wants its stories to reach the front page of Digg. And why wouldn’t they? It can be a tremendous source of traffic. How do you do this though?
You encourage your users to Digg your content.
A Look At Search Behavior At SMX West
How people search and interact with search engines was the subject of the session "Just Behave, A look At Searcher Behavior."
(Coverage of SMX West continues at Murdok Videos. Keep an eye on Murdok for more notes and videos from the event this week.)
Social Media Marketing Tips From SMX West
Social media marketing can be extremely effective. Compared to other advertising options, it can be extremely cheap, too, which is perhaps more important than ever. So a session at SMX West focused on what’s new and how to succeed in this field.
Gmail Makes Changes to Contacts
Google has announced four changes to Gmail’s contact manager. Each change is a feature to enhance the service’s usability.
Super Bowl Gives Hulu Big Brand Awareness Boost
Hulu is making quite the name for itself. Super Bowl ads will do that. According to Brandon Eshman with Nielsen online, from November 1 to February 1, 2009, Hulu averaged about 300 mentions per day in the online community.