Zillow.com Reducing Staff By 25%
Online real estate Web site, Zillow.com has announced it is cutting 25 percent of its staff, which amounts to 40 employees in order to "securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm," the company’s chief executive officer, Rich Barton wrote on the Zillow Blog.
Yahoo Flushing More Jobs
Yahoo is expected to announce some job cuts tomorrow as they announce their third quarter earnings. The number of cuts has been rumored to be anywhere between 1,000 and 3,500. The company is no stranger to letting go chunks of employees, and with current economic conditions, it is no surprise that they are at it again. Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org writes:
Yahoo Tries Social Media From a New Angle
Last month, Yahoo Mash was shut down before ever leaving beta form. If you’ve never heard of Yahoo Mash, you’re not alone. It didn’t really catch on – hence the shut down. It was Yahoo’s attempt at a social network, presumably made to compete with MySpace, Facebook, and the like. That didn’t quite pan out.
Google Actively Seeking Testimonials From Advertisers?
Search Giant Google is apparently doing a little searching of its own – for support of it’s proposed advertising deal with Yahoo that is. TechCrunch tells about one of their readers (who advertises with both Google and Yahoo) getting a call from a lawyer representing Google and asking them to provide a public testimonial as to why they think the Google-Yahoo deal would be a good idea.
YouTube’s Search Ads – Will You Buy Them?
Google will announce its third quarter financial results on Thursday, and in the meantime, the company seems to be looking for revenue under every rock… and YouTube may be the biggest rock of all.Searches for all sorts of terms on YouTube are turning up links to one or more "promoted videos" on the right-hand side of results pages. Each ad consists of one small image and Google Adwords-style text ad.
Google Helps Find Missing Links
It’s been said links are the currency of the Web, and an honest-gotten inbound link is like a tip for good work. Locating broken inbound links, then—links attempted but because of an error don’t connect with a page on your site—is like an opportunity to locate missing money.
Father of the Internet Backs Obama
Often called the Father of the Internet (though he calls himself a “cofounder”), Vint Cerf these days works for Google being, as Valleywag’s Own Thomas puts it, “vice president in charge of being the guy who created the Internet.” So that’s what “Internet Evangelist” means! Whatever his title, he’s using throwing some of the clout onto YouTube to endorse Senator Barack Obama as President. The wedge issue for Cerf? The one that protects his baby of course: Net Neutrality.
Google Up, Up and Away
For another straight month, Google has gained in search share. At this point you wonder why one bothers measuring by the month. How about for the 15th (at least) straight quarter Google has gained in search share? How about for the fourth straight year, Google has gained in search share? I’m not sure about that last statement. I’ve only been covering search for three and a half years. You know how many months during that time Yahoo has beaten Google in search share? Not a one. Microsoft? Ha!
Pandora Cuts Staff, But Still Growing
Layoffs at Internet companies continue to be announced, with the latest coming from Internet radio site Pandora. Pandora’s fate itself was in question not too long ago, but has recently found new hope and expects to survive after all.
Google Offers First Click Free
There are few things more frustrating, from a user’s perspective, than searching and finding what looks like the desired result only to click and meet a log-in page. Give us your money or all your information or go away! Personally, I usually go away, fairly confident I can find the same information elsewhere.