This week: Google turns up the heat, Yahoo burns to be a media bigco, Microsoft’s 64-bit light at the end of the tunnel, blogging media empires warm their hands by the advertising fire, Craigslist – GoogleMaps make a combustible combo.
Google’s Preemptive Strike
In the Mojo Cold War, Yahoo took the initiative from Google at the start of 2005 and the propaganda machine has been in full force since then (backed up by solid products, it has to be said!). This week Google released two major updates to their online advertising services, which account for 97% of Google’s revenue. This no doubt launched a rocket up Yahoo!
i) Firstly Google gave advertisers more control over their ads. Advertisers can now select which sites get to carry their ads (Google calls this “site targeting”) and advertisers can make better use of graphics. Some punters took the latter to mean Google is becoming a banner advertising company. Google is also introducing an auction-style system for determining what advertisers pay to have their ads shown.
While the changes obviously benefit advertisers the most, small niche-focused Web publishers may find it increases their revenue too. Probably the group with the most to lose is big publishing and media companies, because advertisers can now bypass the bigco sales reps and buy site-specific adverts direct from Google.
ii) The second big Adsense news of the week was that some sites are now testing Google Adsense in RSS feeds. Ironically a Microsoft Longhorn blog was the first on board, but blog-publishing company Weblogs Inc wasn’t far behind.
Advertising in RSS feeds is a contentious issue. Some people don’t want RSS feeds to be sullied by capitalism, while others think RSS Aggregators will enable users to filter out ads anyway. My own view is that RSS feeds are a first-class content citizen on the Web, like HTML, and so essentially there’s no difference between putting ads in RSS and putting them on a webpage.
Yahoo Eyes Media Market
As well as competing with Google for online advertising business, Yahoo is busy on another front – Hollywood. In a recent interview with MediaPost, ex-Microsoft MSN honcho and now VP of “content operations” for Yahoo, Scott Moore, outlined his vision for Yahoo Media. His job is to develop content strategies for Yahoo, under Lloyd Braun, so what he says is a good indication of where Yahoo is headed. Moore pinpointed storytelling and user-generated content (e.g. blogs) as two key areas of Internet media.
Moore talked about harnessing such content “in a way that allows the highest-quality content to rise to the top.” That’s consistent with my own (market) view of blogs and user-generated content, so I’m encouraged to hear this coming from a media executive!
Microsoft Hypes 64-bit Computing, Longhorn
Lately the Microsoft PR corps has been wheeling out its big tech guns, Bill Gates and Jim Allchin, in order to hype up Longhorn – the next generation Windows OS. Allchin mingled with bloggers a couple of weeks ago to preview Longhorn. And he recently fronted a press release that waxed lyrical about 64-bit computing, Longhorn, and the history of Windows.
If you’re curious what 64-bit computing is… don’t be. It basically translates to enhanced computing performance, which according to Jim Allchin “makes a big difference for digital content creation and editing scenarios.”
Media Empires
I feel a bit guilty for focusing so much on the Big Internet Companies (Google, Yahoo, MS). There’s so much great innovation happening in Web 2.0 currently. From now on I will try and pick a ‘niche’ in Web 2.0 and highlight it in my Weekly Wrap-Up. I’ll start with an easy one… blogging media empires. PaidContent.org mentioned a slew of them in a recent post – and not just the usual suspects (weblogs inc, gawker, etc).
One thing PaidContent.org didn’t mention though was the humble individual Blogger, many of whom are making a decent living (usually via online advertising) and building their own solitary brand of “media empire”. Darren Rowse from Australia is one of the more successful of that breed. It’s similar to the Stand Alone Journalist concept that Chris Nolan wrote about recently in PressThink, which Pressthink owner Jay Rosen defined as “the self-sufficiency of the individual provider, made plausible by the Web.” If that isn’t Web 2.0 (Web as Platform), I don’t know what is…
Techie Post of the Week: Craigslist – GoogleMaps combo
You’ve gotta love the enthusiasm in Josh Porter’s post about Paul Rademacher’s Google Maps and Craigslist Combination (which btw needs a funky name).
Waxed Josh:
“This could be the most important interface we’ve yet seen in the early Web 2.0. While the APIs created by Amazon, Google, and eBay are cool in and of themselves, it’s combinatory interfaces like this that really shine. Note that anybody could have done this!”
All I can add to that is: Holy Remix Culture, Batman – you’re right! 😉
One More Thing
Happy 50th birthday to Dave Winer! Dave was probably my biggest inspiration when I started Read/Write Web, his Two-Way Web theory in particular. So enjoy today Dave 🙂
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)