The Race to a Million Twitter Followers
Who knew the race to be the first Twitter user with a million followers was so important? It’s not, but it is kind of fun to watch. Ashton Kutcher, CNN, and Britney Spears seem the most likely contenders, but one shadow organization lurks to manipulate while Oprah’s late entry could be an upset.
Google Adds Sitelinks for More Search Results
Using Google for searching the web, you’ve probably seen some results pages from time to time that have the top result displaying a number of secondary links underneath it. These links go to different pages within the site.
Simply referred to as "sitelinks," such pages might take you to an about page or a help page, or really anything deemed beneficial to the user by Google’s algorithm. The example below for a NASA search displays links for Gallery, Missions, Aeronautics, etc.
OpenX Launches Online Ad Platform
OpenX Technologies has launched an online ad marketplace aimed at smaller online publishers and designed to be an alternative to larger brands such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
OpenX Market is focused on helping publishers generate more revenue and to help advertisers more easily reach their target audiences across large numbers of publishers. Publishers have control over routing any or all of their ad impressions into the OpenX Market by using tools integrated into the company’s ad server.
eBay Getting Rid of Skype
Update: paidContent.org is reporting that eBay CEO John Donahoe says that the company is "still open to other offers" and that he will “maximize the value of Skype. Period." Any "reasonable offers" made between now and 2010 (when the proposed IPO is scheduled) will be evaluated.
Internet Major Resource For Political News
More than half of Americans used the Internet as a political resource during the 2008 election, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Some 55 percent of adults and 74 percent of all Internet users went online for news and information about the election or to communicate with others about the race.
Nearly half (45%) of Americans watched online videos related to politics or the election. Young adults led the way in their online video consumption, with close to half of all 18-29 year olds watching online political videos.
The Most Important Domains and Pages on the Web
SEOmoz has a couple of very interesting charts showing the top 500 domains and the top 500 pages being linked to from different places. This paints a pretty good picture of what sites are held in the highest regards by content producers.
Buying and Selling Twitter Accounts?
CNN has acquired "the services" of the creator of one of the most popular accounts on Twitter, which is "cnnbrk," an account that posts CNN breaking news. Currently, the account has just under a million followers.
Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch spoke with James Cox, the account holder and has confirmation from CNN that the account is now in their possession. But it’s not like they just bought "the account"…
Google Referral Change Linked to Faster Search Results Experiment
This week, it was announced that Google was making changes to search referral URLs. Basically, where URLs looked like this before:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search
They will start looking more like this:
Online-Only Newspapers Face Uphill Battle
Newspapers that make the move to online-only risk losing 75 percent of their revenue and a decline in Web traffic, according to researchers from City University in London.
Their study focused on the Finnish financial newspaper Taloussanomat, which stopped its print version and went online- only in December 2007. The move was made after the paper had suffered significant losses.
By going online-only the papers costs were reduced by 50 percent but its online traffic decreased by 22 percent and revenues fell by more than 75 percent.
Domino’s Pizza Deals With YouTube Nightmare
Yesterday was quite a day for Domino’s Pizza’s leadership and the communication team.