Facebook has put a new service into beta: Facebook Questions. Broadly speaking, it’s a way of crowd-sourcing answers to your queries, no matter how specific (or inane). Pose a question in much the same way as you’d update your status, and it’ll be displayed to your friends, their friends, and any other Facebook users who’ve declared an interest in that topic.
Take it away blog.facebook.com:
“To help us show your question to the most relevant people and ensure the best answers, you can tag it with a specific topic. For instance, if you have a question about what type of camera you should buy, you could tag it with “Photography.” If you want to find the best bike routes in the area, you might tag it with “Cycling.”… The questions you ask will be shown to people who have expressed interest in the particular topics you tag.”
It’s a user-generated development; Facebook have spotted a pattern in usage – “Millions of people ask their friends questions on Facebook every day” says Blake Ross on the official Facebook blog – and have developed a feature reflecting that pattern.
Here are some Facebook Questions questions:
Has Yahoo! Answers come to mind yet? It’s a good example of the shortfalls of expecting answers from the internet. Wikipedia works because it’s moderated; will Facebook Answers be compromised by its open nature? Only time will tell. There’s been some discussion of Facebook Questions as a replacement for Google as the go-to for quick answers. Can the massed expertise of Facebook users rival Google’s algorithim? Answers in the comments please…
August 9th, 2010 - No Comments »
Posted in Social Media | Tags: crowdsourcing, facebook questions, google, wikipedia, yahoo
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has had a good first year. Comscore reckon it’s taken 12.7% of the US core search market since its inception. That’s getting near Yahoo’s 18.9%, (NB: most of Yahoo’s search is now powered by Bing, although Yahoo Japan have, in a surprising move, gone for Google ), though still pretty far away from Google’s massive share. Other reports from other net-research bodies have differing figures, but the consensus puts Bing a respectable third place behind Google and Yahoo.
So, what happens next? What scope is there for expansion in Bing’s market share? Microsoft appear to be taking opportunities where they’re available – helped of course by a healthy amount of investment – and have been targeting mobile web users. With 23 million mobile web users accessing Bing (and 4.3 million downloads of Bing’s iPhone app) it seems to be paying off.
According to Erik Jorgensen, senior vice-president for mobile at Microsoft : “People drive themselves crazy trying to type on these mobile devices so the more we can understand what they are trying to do and provide an easier way to get to it through visual, voice and touch is a key insight into how mobile search is going to evolve.”
How much bigger can Bing grow before they hit the brick wall that is Google’s market dominance? Or could Bing be the legendary Google-killer? Give us your thoughts in the comments.
August 5th, 2010 - No Comments »
Posted in Search Engine Marketing | Tags: bing, comscore, microsoft, search, yahoo
The spat between Google and Louis Vuitton continues, and at the moment it looks to be going in Vuitton’s favour. Despite a ruling back in march that Google had not infringed trademark rights by allowing Adwords users to bid on the Vuitton brand name, the French Supreme Court has decided that Google are liable. Next stop: the Paris Court of Appeals.
What are the potential repercussions of Louis Vuitton’s campaign to have exclusive rights to “Louis Vuitton” as keywords? Google said this back in March:
“We believe that user interest is best served by maximizing the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts,”
They’re clearly of the opinion that limiting certain keywords to the use of those who’ve trademarked them could compromise AdWords as a whole:
“Some companies want to limit choice for users by extending trademark law to encompass the use of keywords in online advertising. Ultimately they want to be able to exercise greater control over the information available to users by preventing other companies from advertising”
And they’re confident that their AdWords anti-counterfeit-goods policies are enough to deal with the problem of knock-off goods being advertised as genuine on Google. At the moment, trademark owners can report individual sites for infringing trademarks, and it seems that as far as Google are concerned, that’s enough. This is bolstered by a mid-July update to AdWords policy, extending the prohibition of implying affiliation through deceptive business names.
Since the French Supreme Court’s decision, however, it seems that the argument is going to continue for a while yet.
Louis Vuitton claims the judgement will “ensure greater legal certainty to the benefit of both businesses and consumers operating online”.
August 4th, 2010 - No Comments »
Posted in PPC Management | Tags: adwords, google, google adwords, louis vuitton, trademarks
