Alliance Blog Reviews

Yahoo (moves toward the little blue bird, the center of attention at the party): Well, hello there, baby. You sure are popular here. Twitter (BIG SMILE): Yep! And I have #friends @overthere and @overthere and— Yahoo (slips an arm around the bird): How would you like to come back to my place for a little . . . integration? Twitter: Whoa, buddy—this is why I carry an API at all times! Back in July, Twitter was popping up everywhere: first a deal with Bing , then a deal with Google . Not to be left out, Yahoo made a real-time foray with OneRiot , but apparently they still had their eyes on the life of the party: Twitter. Last month, Yahoo News integrated Twitter into its results for breaking news via a tabbed shortcut: Apparently this went well, because now more of these Tweet results will be directly integrated into the SERPs—and they just might be doing this right: However, Yahoo won’t be adding Twitter to all its results. According to the Yahoo Search blog, So how does this work? We continuously keep track of queries searched on Yahoo!, and when there is a spike in interest in a topic, our search algorithm selects relevant tweets to show on the search results page, either as a part of the Yahoo! News shortcut or in a Twitter section, like in the examples above. The age of the tweets will vary – some will be a minute old, while others may be hours old. Our goal is to feature interesting Twitter content that is relevant to your query and complements the other results you find on the search page. And if they do that, that might be just the way to integrate Twitter into SERPs: filtered for relevance, used only for topics generating a lot of discussion, and sequestered in a section of the SERP. What do you think? Is this too little, too late for Yahoo? Or is this more than you want to see of Twitter in your SERPs?

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Yahoo Moving in on Twitter

It’s been a long time doming, but now it’s officially, truly, official: AOL is part of Time Warner no more. (Technically, actually, AOL bought Time Warner—isn’t that weird?—and now they’re the ones being spun off.) And with its newly-single status, AOL is eyeing every woman in the room—especially old flame Yahoo. They were flirting (or at least rumors have been flying) heavily last year , with reports resurfacing periodically . But now the love has turned to rivalry, with AOL and Yahoo both focusing on their Internet display advertising businesses . AOL is also looking to take on other Internet behemoths like Citysearch, Yelp and Google in a local effort : The initiative — which he characterized as “digitizing towns” — will grow to 100 municipalities in 2010, [AOL CEO and ex-Googler Tim] Armstrong said. Providing a turn-key platform where schools, government departments, local businesses, and classified listings firms can create or update Web sites will be at the heart of the effort. AOL is also focusing on an API-intensive ad platform to allow users to interface directly with their data. That’s cool. But the heart of their plan is their content. AOL will be heavily focusing its advertising sales upon its own properties, where 80% of the content is original. Yahoo, by contrast, has about 20% original content. What do you think? Can AOL be turned around, or is it too late?

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AOL vs Yahoo–Again

Yahoo’s taking ad targeting to a whole new level with its new Ad Interest Manager . Now advertisers aren’t the only ones who can target you—you can target yourself, too! The new AIM system enables users to select their interests and block ads outside of those interest areas. According to the press release , the tool: Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater control over their online experience. Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to deliver interest-based advertising. Shows the visitor both Yahoo!’s educated guesses about their interests and a summary of observations, along with other information they have provided. Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed a user into and lets people turn those categories off. Allows people who don’t want to see interest-based ads to turn them off entirely. As the quote indicates, the system gives you a list of ad categories Yahoo believes you’re interested in, based on your activity on the site, including search history, and properties including Yahoo Answers, Flickr and Yahoo Groups. You can then switch off each individual category. Switch off seven categories, and the system prompts you, asking if you want to switch off all behavioral targeting. Overall, this is a smart move—allowing users to target ads to themselves insures greater value for advertisers. But the system will only work as well as its implementation—both the targeting and the promotion of the system must be good enough for the system to gain widespread use. Yahoo will have to use fairly prominent, probably front-page, promotion to not only show that are they behind this system, but to make their every day users aware of the improvements. What do you think? Will you use the AIM targeting system? As a user or an advertiser, are you excited about this?

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Yahoo Lets Users Customize Ads

At the rate Yahoo is dumping its own technology and partnering with others, the only thing left that will be “Yahoo built” will be these bloody big pens: A little over a year since Yahoo announced the expansion of Yahoo Profiles, the search engine, portal, social network , we-don’t-know-what-we-are company is apparently ready to ditch its own social network aspirations and jump into bed with Facebook : It will enable them to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo!, view a feed of their friends’ related activity on Yahoo!, and share content—such as photos from Flickr or comments on news stories—with all of their friends on Facebook. The content that consumers share with Facebook friends will then create a loop that drives visitors back to Yahoo!. OK, so you can’t blame Yahoo for making this move. After all, social networking is Facebook’s strength, and not Yahoo’s. But, I’m starting to worry what Yahoo has left to call it’s “strength.” When your business is supported by the strength of other companies, it becomes very easy for your foundation to be undermined by them.

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Yahoo Partners with Facebook, Plans to Focus on Selling Big Pens?

Yesterday, Andy took a look at the top searches for bing in 2009 (am I supposed to capitalize bing or not, someone PLEASE clear that up for me). Today, courtesy of Digital Beat we look at the top searches for Yahoo for 2009. Whether they are playing follow their new leader or they want to still be known as a search engine, honestly I don’t know. One thing for sure is, as Anthony Ha, wonders aloud While we’re on the subject of “year in review” lists, I’ll add that I’m baffled that these lists are coming out now. I understand why some publications feel comfortable doing a list of the best movies or books or whatever (since critics have often received advanced copies or screenings of what’s coming out before the end of the year), but search terms? Really? Don’t we have another month to go? Gotta agree with Anthony on that one but let’s not nitpick when there’s a silly list to dissect! Yahoo’s top searches read like a referendum on just how shallow we are in this world (social commentary is a freebie for you today) 1. Michael Jackson 2. Twilight 3. WWE 4. Megan Fox 5. Britney Spears 6. Naruto 7. American Idol 8. Kim Kardashian 9. NASCAR 10. Runescape So to prove just how shallow I am, I recognized 80% of the top 10 and I have to ask this: “How the heck did NASCAR make the list?!” Is there wifi at stills now? I have to admit I have no clue about Naruto or Runescape. I’m back because I did a quick search for each of those on Yahoo to goose their numbers and I have determined that I was better off not knowing about them but now I’m in. Now when talking about business related searches we have the classic showdown between Facebook and Twitter and ……..drum roll please……… 1. Facebook 2. Twitter 3. Hulu 4. Bing 5. iPhone 6. LinkedIn 7. Dollar Stores 8. Palm Pre 9. Rosetta Stone 10. Kindle Well, while it still baffles me that people do searches for these terms at least Google didn’t make the list. So now the question remains if Google will hold out and wait for 2009 to actually end before reporting their top searches for the year. Not much to look forward to, I agree, but it’s a slow news day.

Link:
Yahoo Announces Top 2009 Searches (December, Deschember)

Facebook just keeps chuggin’ along doesn’t it? While everyone talks about the latest in this or that, the next greatest innovation in the next greatest thing since sliced bread and all the other fixings that go with Internet marketing and social media hype Facebook just gets results. Sure there are the occasional misfires on how they handle making changes in policies but in the end there is little or no effect on a few pretty important factors: the number of people actively using the tool AND the increasing number of people coming on board. One of the results of this continued growth and maturation is the fact that Facebook is now the third most popular place to view video on the web as reported by cnet based on the latest Nielsen VideoCensus numbers. Considering how much video is ingested by Internet users, that is saying something that is actually pretty astounding. Here’s a pretty chart for you While not a threat to YouTube (it’s actually a bump to YouTube since much of the video is from there to begin with) Facebook is basically cleaning the clock of major media outlets on pure volume of vides viewed. Now what is not considered in these numbers are the types of video viewed. Many folks on Facebook are not there for hard news so if the content of these videos was sliced and diced I am sure these numbers would look different. For Internet marketers that targeting will mean more about where dollars are spent than just shear volume. Nonetheless, Facebook is becoming more and more of a force while avoiding the drama of other Internet players like Google, Yahoo et al. The numbers speak for themselves. According to Nielsen, the “total time spent viewing video on Facebook” grew by 1,840 percent year over year. The number of unique viewers grew 548 percent over the same period. Total streams increased by 987 percent year over year. “Facebook’s rapid growth in online video during the last year illustrates the site’s evolution from simply a communications focused tool to a media portal,” Nielsen Vice President of Media Analytics Jon Gibs said. “Social networking sites are evolving from a venue for catching up with friends to a platform for personal expression, allowing consumers to share their experiences in the full variety of content formats available online.” Enjoy your weekend watching video. We know Facebook will love it.

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Facebook Is a Video Powerhouse As Well

In a word: branding. As a brand, both through their own efforts and through sheer luck, Google has been able to position itself as the #1 online brand in the US according to Forrester Research . Others among the top ten, including Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, have generated some of the same emotional responses from their fans. The top ten brands (note that respondents selected two from a list): Since 2007, MySpace suffered a precipitous fall in brand favoritism. Yahoo and eBay also suffered. Amazon saw sufficient growth to move from distant third to nearly tied for second; Google grew significantly in its #1 spot. Facebook and YouTube (and what the crap, Sony?) joined the list. Interestingly, both Microsoft and Apple saw small growth over that time. So what qualities made these online brands stand out in respondents’ minds? Forrester points out that we might expect attributes like prestige, popularity, speed and “the social.” And we’d be wrong. Interestingly, some of the same characteristics that associate well with offline brands: trustworthiness, helpfulness and relevance to the consumer were the top-named attributes of these brands. (In case you’re wondering, Amazon was voted most trustworthy, Google most helpful and Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, eBay and Microsoft most relevant.) There is one point that the report makes that I don’t know if I buy: Yahoo! gets it right with “Y!ou” re-positioning. Yahoo!’s brand revitalization strategy is right on target, taking rivals on directly and clarifying its fuzzy image. Its core focus is on “relevance,” a top-tier attribute that currently doesn’t have a clear online leader. Yahoo! rivals Facebook and Microsoft show some traction here, but relevance is a relative weakness for Google. Yahoo!’s new $100-million advertising effort also highlights “fun,” another critical attribute where Google comes up short. To drive its global revitalization, Yahoo!’s new CMO brought in Landor Associates and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to work with its main agency, Ogilvy & Mather. It launched its campaign with big TV and outdoor buys to “root the brand position.” It is following this with multichannel messaging — including explainers on its own site — around product proof points. I agree that Yahoo’s image had grown fuzzy and that taking on its rivals directly would be helpful, but are we thinking about the same campaign? Has there been more to the campaign than that one cringe-worthy commercial? (Because seriously, I wince every time I come across it on a Yahoo property.) It didn’t say “fun” to me (well, I guess it did, just not that “fun” had anything to do with online) and it definitely didn’t clarify their brand image. (How is emphasizing that “we’re as diverse as every single human on the earth—I mean, we’re just like you!” clarifying anything?) I guess we’ll have to see the “explainers” and “product proof points” to see if the rest of the campaign is effective. But so far, I’m not buying it—especially not when Yahoo’s brand has taken a hit in not only this survey, but others that correlate directly with the campaign timeline . What do you think? How have these brands acquired these attributes? Is Yahoo repositioning itself to take on more favorable attributes?

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Why People Love Google