Mashable reports that YouTube will be adding a download option to some videos, which will include the option to add payments via the Google Checkout service. This opens up the possiblity, notes Mashable, that YouTube could become a competitor to iTunes, especially in the mobile space. Interesting.
Separately, Google has pulled out of selling radio ads, a decision which follows an earlier pull-out from print ad sales. Digital all the way, then…
It’s a real sign of the times – Techcrunch reports that Google has bought a paper mill. The disused mill is in Finland and apparently cost €40m.
Tools of Change Twitter tidbits is Teleread’s account of how Twitter is changing the way real world events work (in this case at TOC), from a back channel of conversation going on in parallel to the one of the stage, to the phenomenon of people changing conference tracks based on which look more interesting on Twitter. Interesting.
Great advice here on how to scale website so they show up properly on an iPhone. Easy really.
Interesting editorial in the FT about the changing role of Private Equity in a world where easy, cheap debt is much harder to find and where the old tactics of cost reduction and sell-on no longer look tenable. Worth a read.
This one passed me by – Google is offering diy display advertising. Simply select a template, customise it with your words and images, choose your targets and you’re ready to go – on the Google Content Network which is “1 million sites reaching over 75% of unique internet users in more than 20 languages and over 100 countries.” And, as Google says, if you already have your own display ads, don’t worry: “AdWords accepts image, Flash, video and other supported ad formats.”
Why haven’t content owners made it this simple to develop and traffic ads?
Technorati Tags: advertising, Google
There’s a great post by Fred Wilson, a New York-based VC, who writes about internet business models. He says the obsession with revenue isn’t the only – or even the best – way for internet start ups to build success. Focussing on costs can be more rewarding, since valuations are based on future profit streams. He cites Craig’s List as a great case of lean business with great margins – perhaps $100m of revenue and only 30 employees. The risk always is that firms become tempted to grow ever larger and this is what causes the real problems.
Technorati Tags: business models , internet
About eight years ago I went with a bunch of colleagues from Reed Elsevier to visit the Microsoft campus in Redmond and was treated to a presentation from Rick Rashid, the head of Microsoft Research. The most striking thing I heard him say was that they knew exactly what to build, it was just that it was very hard to achieve. That “thing” was the Star Trek Computer – a pervasive, all-knowing computer with a simple interface always there to help bemused humans. (He’s still trying…).
Recently there have been leaps forward in pervasive computing which bring that future tangibly closer. The Google App for the iPhone is one such; pick up the phone, speak into it and search results come back based on your location and what you searched for.
This post points to another giant leap forward. Bring on the Star Trek future.
Technorati Tags: computing, future, iPhone, Microsoft, research
Smashingmagazine has a feature on 404 error pages which really work, reflecting the site’s character and helping disgruntled users to find what they are looking for, even when the site navigation lets them down. The gallery has lots of great examples. Really worth a look.
There has been a sudden upsurge in public discussion of Twitter prompted by celebrity Twitterers such as @wossy (Jonathan Ross) and @stephenfry (guess who). This has deflected attention away from the hugely imaginative and creative developments which are taking place in the Twitter ecosystem.
There has been an explosion of apps allow access to Twitter and add functionality to the basic web service – Tweetdeck and Twhirl are two such.
But there are much more ambitious things going on: LibraryThing is turning Twitter into a kind of command line for the internet (tweet a book, ISBN and some tags and it automatically adds it to your personal library filling in the blanks with an Amazon search).
The Twitter story is far from over.