You’ve probably heard by now that eBay unloaded Skype today to a consortium led by Silver Lake Partners and a bunch of other people including Marc Andreesen for mumblety-billion dollars. Dan Hoffman, CEO of hosted VoIP provider M5 Networks, very intelligently points out that Silver Lake is also invested in Avaya (telecom equipment), and IPC […]
Continue reading... August 27, 2009
Porcine Aviation! Now Software Ships!
In April 2007, I bought an upgrade to the formidable contact manager Now Up-to-Date and Contact. I’d used it off and on for some years and was looking for something a bit more powerful than Apple’s Address Book and iCal. It had gotten old, and wasn’t really happy with OS X. What Now was promising […]
Continue reading... August 26, 2009
Google and Bing as a threat to content
Bing has now been around long enough for people to start looking for referrers in their server logs. Most people aren’t seeing a ton of traffic from Bing so they think it’s not a big deal. It’s a dangerous and possibly self-deluding conclusion for any content provider. Remember: you — the content provider — are […]
Continue reading... August 14, 2009
Is Google shrinking?
There’s a remarkably clueless post on ZDNet today, wherein someone who should know better says that Google’s index is 25 percent smaller than it used to be. His evidence: when he checks his own name, he found only 102,000 instances, down from 135,000 in March. (Bing.com, he says, has 157,000 results.) The technological Onanism of […]
Continue reading... August 13, 2009
Optimizing press releases
PR distribution services are a fine way to start building backlinks. But if the only sites that are linking back to you are news distribution sites, you need to rethink the way you’re addressing the public. For one thing, it’s a good indication that no one cares about the news you’re putting out.
Continue reading... July 1, 2009
What’s new about Bing?
Not long ago, I gave an interview to Betanews, which (who?) wanted to know what Microsoft’s new Bing search engine was up to. A white paper from Microsoft didn’t provide much detail about Bing’s algorithm, but was forthcoming about why and how its user interface got that way. Interesting stuff. But what’s even more important […]
Continue reading... June 15, 2009
Dan on SEO
Rob Kelly, as best as we can put it together, is a guy I didn’t quite get to work with CMP. He was a senior adviser to the SEO out on the West Coast while I was editing NetGuide in New York. Now, he’s off building building a bunch of interesting sounding new companies. Rob […]
Continue reading... June 12, 2009
SEO is where marketers should start
If you want to sell something, tweaking your organic search is a great place to start. That’s the conclusion of a new study (PDF) published by Forbes. The study found that: The tools seen as most effective for generating conversions were SEO (48 percent) email and e-newsletter marketing (46 percent), and pay-per-click/search marketing (32 percent). […]
Continue reading... May 28, 2009
Media cabal meets secretly to discuss charging for online content
Top newspaper execs closeted themselves in an O’Hare airport hotel meeting room today, trying to figure out how to charge for their online content. Note: antitrust counsel was in the room; no word about whether he was bound and gagged. As a consumer, I like free. As a content pro, I know that “free” has […]
Continue reading... May 28, 2009
Why the Verizon deal for Palm Pre is bad for Palm
It may seem counter-intuitive, but today’s announcement that the Palm Pre will become available on Verizon after its six-month exclusive with Sprint is pretty bad news for Palm. Sprint has had six-month exclusives with Palm smartphones since the first Treo, so a post-exclusive deal is surprising only if you haven’t been paying attention. But usually, […]
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