How Will Personalized Search Affect Niche Engines?
As I was writing a piece on RushmoreDrive, the search engine (and more) that was created as a way to provide relevant results from the black community, I started thinking about how the future of search could impact its use and the use of niche search engines in general. Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers on this topic, but it raises some interesting questions nonetheless.
LinkedIn’s Exec Lineup Changes
Recession-triggered personnel shuffles are causing all sorts of people to turn to LinkedIn. Somewhat ironically, big changes are now taking place inside that company, too, with the current CEO leaving, the old one regaining his title, and a former Yahoo joining the picture.
Relevancy by Race?
Murray Dick and Mark Ward have an article up at BBC News looking at Rushmore Drive and minority-based web searching. They look specifically at a search engine called RushmoreDrive, which we pointed to back in April upon its launch.
Spammers Turning To Targeted Attacks
Spammers are now taking their cue from search engines and advertisers by making their emails more personalized in attempts to steal users information, according to a new security report from Cisco.The report found there was a 90 percent growth in threats coming from legitimate domains, nearly double what was seen in 2007. While targeted spear-phishing represents about 1 percent of all phishing attacks it is on track to become more widespread as savvy criminals personalize spam and make messages appear more credible.
LinkedIn Sets Up Shop in Chicago
LinkedIn has opened a new data center in Chicago. A post at the LinkedIn Blog says:LinkedIn has grown by leaps and bounds this past year and currently we are adding professionals to our site at the rate of one user per second. The primary goal for the LinkedIn Operations organization is for our site and partner applications to be available 24/7.
Free Shipping Offers Lead To More Online Holiday Spending
Online holiday shopping continues to be on par with last year, with spending through December 14, totaling $20.17 billion, according to comScore.For the first fourteen days beginning December 1 (Cyber Monday), sales totaled $9 billion, up 2 percent compared to a year ago. The most recent week saw ecommerce sales slipping 2 percent.
Future Dim For Yahoo’s Jumpcut, Kickstart
You can almost hear the "snip-snip" of cost-cutting scissors at work. Following the forced departure of 1,500 employees last Wednesday, Jumpcut and Kickstart, two of Yahoo’s more experimental and less popular sites, are facing similar fates.
Google Makes New AdWords Editor Available
Google has released AdWords Editor version 7.0, a mere two months after 6.5 came out as Barry Schwartz points out at Search Engine Land. Google did not make any major announcements about the release, but just kind of put it out there, and we have not yet seen much in the way of user reactions.
Canadians Can Now Find Their Neighbors on Twitter
Last week we launched TwellowHood, part of our popular Twellow service, and a way to find people who are on Twitter by the cities they live in. This lets you find out who close to you is using Twitter, and can lead to you making some connections with locals that you may not have otherwise.
ESPN.com Rolls Out Redesign
ESPN has launched a redesign of ESPN.com in beta that offers a simpler design and navigation for its users.The new site had been in a closed beta test phase for 10 days to ESPN Insider subscribers and will now run along side the current ESPN.com for the rest of December. The redesigned site will launch fulltime on Monday, January 5 and replace the current site.