TechCrunch today has no treats—and no joy, no, not even Almond Joy—for Facebook in reporting about its projected financial woes. For a company once valued at $15 billion, things are looking grim as the cash supplies may dwindle long before Facebook is ready or willing to go to IPO.
Google Upgrades Apps APIs
Yesterday Google guaranteed 99.9% reliability for Google Apps like Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk. This stemmed from a similar guarantee the company made for Gmail.
Google and Others Provide Halloween Fun
For those of you sitting around this evening either avoiding trick-or-treaters, or just simply looking for some ghostly entertainment to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, Google has some special content set aside for you. Not only are they featuring some Halloween Books on the front page of Google Book Search:
Nielsen: Yahoo Video Jumps To Near-Lead
It’s not April Fools’ Day, and some sort of mathematical miscalculation doesn’t seem to have occurred. Instead, surprising as the situation may be, Yahoo’s video property appears to have become more popular than the ones owned by Fox, Microsoft, and Nickelodeon.
Google: We’ll Take The AOL Journals Users
AOL has recently decided to go for a more open and social approach, not unlike Yahoo. They’ve opened up their homepage to third party content, and are allowing users to update social network profiles right from there as well.
Video Search To Use Internal Content
Today the WSJ profiles a number of video search engines that actually seem to be getting smarter. Instead of relying on external meta data to determine the content of a clip, these engines are looking to data internal to the clip itself—including dialogue and people (or characters) appearing in the clip. And yep, one day YouTube might not be the #1 video search engine (although they may still be the #1 video hosting site).
GPS Lingerie Resurrected In Brazil
Back 2005, much of the press was fooled by the emergence of GPS panties—underwear with secret tracking devices and even pulse monitors jealous husbands and concerned fathers could plant in target underwear drawers. Panchira’s (Japanese slang for “show me your panties") controversial undies turned out to be part of a web-traffic contest.
Local is As Local Does
It looks like search engines have officially trumped the Yellow Pages when it comes to customers looking for local businesses. Data from comScore and TMP Directional Marketing shows that this year more people are turning to search engines after last year’s showed that Yellow Pages were on top. What the Data Shows
MTVmusic.com Censors Weird Al
MTV, which recently made a super smart and exciting YouTube-combating move by making its music video collection available online, just ruined it. They’ve censored Weird Al.
Big Celebrities: Use Google to Find Voting Info
Google has a site where you can find your local voting information through Google Maps by searching for your home address. In an effort to get as many people to take advantage of this as possible (and ultimately vote), a lot of big stars have come together in a public service announcement video to encourage viewers to do so.