A study conducted by About.com and Latitude revealed that users searching on the Internet displays any of these three distinct human behavior: “Answer Me”, “Educate Me” and “Inspire Me.”

In giving importance to the study, Tracy Raiser, senior vice president for sales at About.com, said:

“These findings offer advertisers and marketers a better understanding and valuable insight into the way consumers search online. The Three Mindsets of Search study aims to improve the understanding of how consumers search. It’s a real opportunity for marketers to think about campaigns in a whole new light.”

By understanding these three search types, marketers can better connect with people in all three mindsets. Marketers can capitalize on an Answer Me (46%) moment by featuring product benefits front and center, in addition to aligning content that presents quick, easy-to-find answers. For the Educate Me (26%) search mindset, it is essential to create messaging that is informative, in addition to providing a way to learn more about the topic from multiple angles and aligning with content that presents in-depth information and resources. For the Inspire Me (28%) mindset, marketers should align with content that inspires creativity and offers endless choices. Too many ideas are never enough – people consume inspirational content in multiple formats on the same topic as long as it excites their imagination.

In addition to the identified three mindsets, respondents to the study also revealed that when it comes to advertising:

64% agreed that ads helped them find great options, deals or discounts;
77% agreed that ads can be useful when they are very relevant to their search;
88% felt the best ads are the ones that work with the information source to help you get what you need; and
86% noticed and enjoy when brands stop trying to sell you something and focus on teaching you something

How about you? What mindset do you have when searching on the Internet?

What’s on Your Mind When You Search on the Internet? is a post from: The Inquisitr

What do AOL, Inc., Google. Inc., IAC Search & Media, Inc., Gannett Company, Inc. and Target Corporation have in common? They were all named today in a patent infringement lawsuit filed by I/P Engine, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for unlawfully using systems that incorporate features claimed in two patents owned by I/P Engine, Inc.

I/P Engine’s patents are directed to relevance filtering technology used in the search engine industry in producing better search results. It is also the dominant technology used in search advertising to position high quality advertisements.

In standing his ground, Andrew K. Lang, Chief Executive Officer of I/P Engine and co-inventor of the patents, argued:

“These patents, which we own, apply to relevance filtering techniques that are fundamental to the technology employed by the defendants in their highly profitable search business.  The defendants have infringed on our patents.  We are committed to upholding our rights with respect to these patents.  We have the resources and focus to assert our intellectual property.”

The patents were actually part of a portfolio of 8 patents that I/P Engine purchased from Lycos, Inc. which they bought as well from WiseWire Corporation. The latter is an entitiy founded by Lang together with Donald Kosak. As part of the acquisition, Lang and Kosak both joined Lycos. They are now shareholders and members of I/P Engine’s executive team.

In the meantime, the battle for search supremacy continues.

AOL, Google, IAC, Gannett Sued for Infringement of Search Patents is a post from: The Inquisitr

With talk constantly surrounding social media sharing, semantic searches and other ways to browse the web without the need for search engine use, Google and their counterparts are still dominating how internet users find information on the web. A recent Pew Internet study found that search engines are still used by 92% of internet users.

The Pew Internet study regarding search engine use started in 2002 and the biggest difference in 2011 is that more users are taking advantage of search engines to find information.

According to the study 92 percent of users take advantage of search engines, while 59% of users take advantage of search engines on a regular basis. Even older internet users have taken to searches with the 65+ crowd using search engines 87 percent of the time with 37% of users doing so on a regular basis.

Here’s a quick look at the search engine use trending discovered by Pew Internet:

Directly beside search engine use is Email with the same 92% of users also using the service with no statistical differences based on demographics among email users.

The survey included 2,277 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.

The survey didn’t leave social out of the mix, since the group started examining the field in 2004 social site searching has risen by 11 percent with 65% of users now using social media sources to find information.

How do you prefer to search the internet? I find myself still gravitating towards Google when I perform information searches, however many of the interesting story’s I read these days come from friends on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ which are posted on their profiles or shared directly with me.

Search Engines Used By 92% Of Internet Users [Study] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Before I get into this I need to make a bit of a disclaimer. I am not a Facebook fan. I have a Facebook account, a fan page (or whatever they are calling it these days) for my WinExtra blog, and I am a member of the Inquisitr page.

That said I have a growing dread about Facebook and its apparent intention to suck everything, and everyone, into that black hole where we have become nothing more that data points used to make money from advertisers and marketers.

The really big problem though, from a content producer’s point of view especially is that Facebook has become a major force for driving traffic. Here on Inquisitr I have watched the live stats as they roll by and without a doubt Facebook accounts for a huge amount of traffic.

This of course is largely due to the incredible proliferation of the Facebook ‘Like’ buttons and now Facebook is looking to capitalize by rolling out an improvement to their Commenting plugin for blogs.

We have seen a number of big name tech blogs start using the Facebook Comments in place of the built in commenting system for their blogging platform or using one of the third party commenting systems like Disqus.

A couple of things that those blogs are reporting as a result of using Facebook Comments is a reduction in the number of comments as well as a visible vanilla-ization of the comments.

However there is one other thing about using Facebook Comments that the majority of content producers, and commenter’s as well but to a lesser degree, are missing. Those comments now being left are for all intents and purposes invisible. By this I mean, they are no longer being indexed by search engines.

On the surface this might not seem all that important but if you stop and consider for a moment that comments add value to your content, and for commenter’s it adds to their reputation and identity. By removing these comments from being able to be indexed by search engines you are removing another important way for your content to be discovered.

As A.J. Kohn wrote in a post about this black holing of comments, which if you haven’t read yet you are missing a great post:

Search engines won’t see Facebook Comments.That is a big deal. Comments reflect the user syntax. They capture how people are really talking about a topic or product. Comments help search engines to create keyword clusters and deliver long-tail searches. Comments may signal that the content is still fresh, important and popular. All that goes by the wayside.

It’s no secret that search engines crave text. Depriving Google of this valuable source of text is an aggressive move by Facebook.

Is this on purpose? I have to believe it is. I can’t know for sure but it’s curious that my Quora question has gone unanswered by Facebook, even when I’ve asked a specific Facebook Engineer to answer.

I agree totally with A.J. that this is a totally intentional move by Facebook. In one simple move Facebook succeeds on multiple levels with the most important being the removing of content that Google would normally be able to index. Secondary is the fact that not only are they locking content producers even further in to the Facebook world but now it is locking in the readers of those blogs.

There is no doubt that Facebook Comments will start showing up on more and more blogs, mainly because of the decrease of trolls, but one has to wonder if that inconvenience is worth the price of bland comments that are replacing a vibrant comment community.

Then add on the fact that an integral part of your blog is no longer discoverable outside of Facebook and one really should be thinking long and hard as to whether the convenience offered by Facebook Comments is worth the cost.

Facebook Comments – your comments are no longer yours is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the most worrisome things is happening on the web right now and with increasing frequency. Domains are being seized by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security under the auspices of ICE. Not only are they being seized but it is happening without any notification but also apparently with the assistance of ICANN.

In a story that doesn’t seem to be getting any press from any of the major tech blogs ICE has gone on a warpath against any an all torrent types sites regardless of the fact that some of these sites don’t even list or store torrent files themselves.

TorrentFreak has the story of the newest domain seizure where Torrent-Finder.com suddenly started displaying the seizure notice from the U.S. Government and this is where it gets really bothersome. You see Torrent-Finder doesn’t provide any tracker services, carries no torrents, and lists no copyright works unless an individual intentionally searches for them. Even then the results are not displayed direct by the site but rather as in an iframe which means Torrent-Finder doesn’t touch any of the results.

The second really scary part of this is that the seizure was down without the participation of GoDaddy, the actual host of Torrent-Finder.

“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning.

“I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN,” he explained.

via TorrentFreak

So in other words ICANN totally bypassed GoDaddy and assisted the U.S. Government in the seizure of the site.

Now you still might be wondering about the title of this post but the fact is that Google can produce the same results that Torrent-Finder, or any torrent search engine out there, as you can see by this very simple search (instant as well) for Mad Men torrents on Google:

Or how about Hey Jude by the Beatles:

The fact that Google can perform exactly the same types of searches and probably return even better results why are the sites doing the same thing being seized?

By the reasoning currently being used then Google should have its domain seized.

Why has there been no outrage over this obvious outrageous abuse of the legal system?

Where are the major news sources like TechCrunch, Mashable, New York Times or any of the other powerful media voices?

Where is the Electronic Freedom Foundation and this case obviously deserves to be hauled before the courts.

What has been done here is wrong and is proven to be wrong every time Google is used to perform a search.

If it is this easy for the U.S. Government, and ICANN, to totally bypass due process in this way who is next? Your site, my site, or some site that might piss off a government?

Where is the outrage because that is exactly what this is – an outrage.

So, when is the U.S. Government going to seize the Google domain? is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of my first encounters with the Internet was through using Yahoo to track down interesting website that were acting as gateways to FIDOnet (old school international network that connected bulletin board services). From a time when they were the biggest thing on the web to now, where they haven’t seen the upside of $20 a share in a very long time, Yahoo has had more than its share of ups and down.

Well mostly down these days it seems according to this infographic from Scores

The downward spiral of Yahoo, now an infographic is a post from: The Inquisitr

So how do you waste $1.85 billion? Well if you are Barry Diller you acquire Ask.com, the little known and little used search engine, and then years later after failing to compete with Google you close up shop.

Bloomberg is reporting today that IAC, Diller’s company, will be cutting 130 jobs and in the process conceding what little search business it has to its competitors.

Ask.com, a unit of Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, is dismissing engineers based in Edison, New Jersey, and in Hangzhou, China, and ceasing work on its algorithmic search technology, according to Ask.com President Doug Leeds.

The search unit will consolidate its engineering operations at its headquarters in Oakland, California, and focus its resources on developing its online question-and-answer service. Twenty of the engineers currently working in New Jersey will be asked to relocate to Oakland, the company said.

Leeds said that Google has become too powerful a competitor to justify Ask.com’s continued pursuit of those search users.

“It’s become this huge juggernaut of a company that we really thought we could compete against by innovating,” Leeds said in an interview. “We did a great job of holding our market share but it wasn’t enough to grow the way IAC had hoped we would grow when it bought us.”

So how do you waste $1.85 Billion? is a post from: The Inquisitr

In our modern Internet world we seem to have this obsession with search engines. Who’s the biggest, who’s the riches, and who’s an also ran. The thing is that Google hasn’t always been the powerhouse it is today, or will be tomorrow – or not.

In fact there have been a lot of search engines that came before Google. Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot  and even right back to the very beginning with Archie. Even today there seems to be a new search engine starting up every other week so it’s interesting to take a look, with the help of this infographic put together by Infographic Labs as to just how we got here.

via SiliconAngle

History of Search Engines Infographic style is a post from: The Inquisitr

After a long courtship and an expensive dowry Yahoo is finally sporting a nice new Bing tramp stamp on its bottom. According to Nick Eaton at The Microsoft Blog it is showing up on the US Yahoo pages and I can attest to the fact that you will find it so far on the Yahoo English version pages.

I imagine that this branding will start showing up on the other Yahoo sites around the globe in pretty short order.

Yes, it’s finally official – Yahoo is sporting a Bing stamp is a post from: The Inquisitr

Personally I wouldn’t have known about this if it wasn’t being written about by every single tech blog in the whole tech blogosphere since I am more than happy with Bing Image search for my needs; but appears that Google has decided the time had finally arrived to refresh that part of search.

As you can see from the top image I’m still getting the standard image search results but this is what the new results are suppose to look like once they rollout everywhere.

some of the features we are supposed to expect with the rollout are

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.
• Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
• Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
• Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

As well Google will be rolling out a new feature that you will only see when doing images searches. Called Image Search Ads it will allow advertisers to include a thumbnail image along with your lines of ad text.

That should make for some interesting ads once the spammers and other low-life’s catch on.

Oh lookie – Google Images gets a re-vamp is a post from: The Inquisitr

Back in January of this year when the news that Google was thumbing its nose at China under the pretense of some fight against censorship I wrote here

This is all a game between Google and China. China stole some property. Google notices and after digging up some additional juicy garbage puts the spotlight on China. Google and China begin talking in the back room and chances are some money (a lot of money) will change hands. Google will go back to censoring filtering search results. Everyone is happy.

Well as everyone now knows Google, with a whole lotta spin doctoring, announced that they were returning to China. It turns out that their plan to subvert China’s censorship laws by redirecting mainland Chinese users to the Google search page on their Hong Kong site didn’t go over well with the Chinese government – well DUH!

So with their Internet Content Provider License (ICP), a requirement of the Chinese government, in possible jeopardy if they kept up with this ploy Google has backtracked and is now serving up content hosted from within China (another requirement to keep their ICP) and just offering a link to the uncensored version on their Hong Kong site.

This is pretty much what I figured would happen when Google made a big show of their pull out after all their is just way too much money at stake. So as usual money trumps ethics but that as well should come as no surprise.

Google returning to China – please don’t tell me you are surprised is a post from: The Inquisitr

In light of Google’s presumed move to take on Facebook in a head to head social battle the pundits are out in full force (I had my say yesterday) and the common consensus is that the reason for the upcoming battle of the giants has to do with Social Search. The premise here is that Facebook though the power of its Like button is creating the basis of a social search engine that is based on the power of the Like and Google is scared shitless that their 97% of the search market could be in danger.

Now this is probably some pretty smart prognostication on all the pundits part but why does everyone think that this Social Search is the cat’s ass?

First off what do we use search for on the web but to discover information that we want to find based on keywords we supply. Using everything from single keywords to carefully crafted search strings we scour the web looking for the best and most current information, and in the process making Google very rich. It is a process that is all based on algorithms that Google has spent years refining and is shrouded in secrecy, as it should be.

But now in this new social world we are being led to believe that the power of the algorithm is dated and so Web 1.0 and that the best search is going to be based around what all your friends like.

Really?

Let’s take a minute and look at this idea.

I mean really, do you even have a clue about all those people on Facebook that are your friends? Do you have any idea of what their political affiliations are? Or how about their sexual orientation?

How about their tastes? Are they schlock horror movie lovers in contrast to your artsy fartsy foreign film addiction? Are they a Pabst’s drinker where you like the best wines from France?

The fact is that all those friends could be the total opposite of you and yet they are going to affect what kind of results you will see in this new world of Social Search.

This move to Social Search has nothing to do with search but it does have everything to do with advertising and marketing. It is an effort to try and convince us that people we really don’t know, and probably wouldn’t if we bumped into them on the street, play some sort of important role in finding things we want.

Social Search .. yeah, that is going to work out well.

A few thoughts on Social Search – it’ll suck is a post from: The Inquisitr

Earlier I posted about how some credit card numbers of Blippy users were discovered using nothing more than a simple Google search. Well Paul Boutin over at VentureBeat has some updated news and according to Philip Kaplan, Blippy co-founder, it’s not as bad as it seems.

Below is the email Paul received from Philip on the matter

“Today someone discovered a Google search that displays the credit card numbers of 4 Blippy users.

“We take security seriously and want to assure Blippy users that this was an isolated incident from many months ago in our beta test, and doesn’t affect current users.

“While it looks super-scary and certainly sucks for those few people who were affected, and is embarrassing to us, it’s a lot less bad than it looks.

“Here are the details:

• Say you buy lunch at Quiznos.  Your credit card statement shows a complex entry like “Quiznos Inc Store #1234 San Francisco.”  But Blippy cleans this up to only show “Quiznos.”  We refer to these as the “raw data” vs the “cleaned up data.”
• Raw data is typically harmless.  But it turns out that some credit cards (4 out of thousands in this case) show the credit card number in the raw data.  For example, “Quiznos Inc Store #1234 from card 4444….”
• Many months ago when we were first building Blippy, some raw (not cleaned up, but typically harmless) data could be viewed in the HTML source of a Blippy web page.  The average user would see nothing, but a determined person could see “raw” line items.  Still, this was mostly harmless — stuff like store numbers and such.  And it was all removed and fixed quickly.
• Enter Google’s cache.  Turns out Google indexed some of this HTML, even though it wasn’t visible on the Blippy website.  And exposed 4 credit card numbers (but a scary 196 search results).
• We’re working with Google now to remove Blippy from their cache, and they inform us it will be completed within a couple of hours.

“While we take this very seriously and it is a headache for those involved, it’s important to remember that you’re never responsible if someone uses your credit card without your permission.  That’s why it’s okay to hand your credit card over to waiters, store clerks, and hundreds of other people who all have access to your credit card numbers.

“We’re making efforts to bolster our security to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.  That includes third-party security audits, and in general being a lot more careful before new features are released, even if it’s during a small, limited beta test period.

“Thank you for reading.”

While it is great that Blippy is on top of this and working with Google to get that information out of their search index it doesn’t change my opinion of the service one iota.

Blippy credit card snafu – UPDATED is a post from: The Inquisitr

Twitter has figured out how it is going to make money.

It’s called Promoted Tweets and is an awful lot like every other ad system out there. To top it off they are using all the same cute buzzwords like conversation and consumer relationship that will help bring you closer together with all those advertisers wanting to just have a really nice chat with you.

The way it apparently will work is that for now these Promoted Tweets will only show up when you do a search on Twitter for something.

When a Twitter user searches for a word an advertiser bought, the promoted message will show up at the top of the results, even if it was written much earlier. The posts say they are promoted by the company in small type, and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow.

The ads will also be a way for companies to enter the conversation when it turns negative. Several companies have created tools to measure sentiment on Twitter, but until now, businesses can do little with that information. Even if they write a post in response, it also quickly gets lost in a sea of complaints.

Companies will “be able to increase awareness in that instance when the iron is most malleable,” said Anamitra Banerji, who manages commercial products at Twitter.

If a new movie is getting negative reaction, the studio could use the ads to link to a positive review, for example.

Source: The New York Times

As I said above the ads are suppose to only show up in search results but not much is being said about them possibly showing up in our personal Twitter streams at some point in the future. I’m betting it will be sooner rather than later.

In the meantime it would seem that our cute little Twitter is growing up and taking it’s place beside all the other ad supported businesses out there. Whether it will prove to be worth the valuation that has been placed on the company is still to be seen.

Aww .. Twitter gets all grown up with Promoted Tweets is a post from: The Inquisitr

Not even a few months the idea if incorporating Twitter results real-time in your searches on both google and Bing were all the rage. People pontificated on how this was going to change the whole search landscape. Even Marissa Mayer one of the head honchos at Google raved on about how this was a changing moment.

“We think the real-time search is incredibly important, and the real-time data that’s coming online can be super-useful in terms of finding out whether – something like, is this conference today any good? Is it warmer in San Francisco than it is in Silicon Valley? You can actually look at tweets and see those types of patterns emerge, so there’s a lot of useful information about real-time interactions that we think ultimately will really affect search.”

Well it turns out that maybe the enthusiasm might have been more than a little overblown if what some recent eye-tracking studies have discovered is true. It appears that people are ignoring those Twitter results that are being included with search results on both Google and Bing.

Personally I have never understood the reasoning behind the so-called importance of real-time Twitter searches. When people are search for stuff it is typically for stuff that they don’t know anything about not about the news of the last minute.

Turns out that real-time Twitter search in Google isn’t such a big thing is a post from: The Inquisitr

In the technology and Internet world things can change before even the first ripples begin to spread through the Web. For almost as long as most of us can remember Google has been the leader in search. Where all its competitors could barely muster enough eyeballs to get them even close to the double digit mark Google has ruled supreme.

However a couple of things that have happened over the past couple of weeks could very well change the balance of power in the search engine world. The first clue of the coming change was overshadowed by the announcement by Apple of their iPad but during that time it also came out that Apple and Microsoft were in talks for Bing to take over Google’s spot as the preferred search engine on the iPhone.

This follows on the heels of the deal that Bing cut with Verizon to become the default search engine on all non-Android phones. Those two things alone should be enough to make those interested in the search business to stand up and take notice.

But the real kicker came today as Facebook and Microsoft announced that while Facebook would be taking over the ad sales on the social network Bing was going to become the search engine of choice for Facebook worldwide. This means that Bing will now be serving up search results to some 400 million people worldwide.

Combine all those numbers together, Verizon, Apple’s iPhone, and now Facebook and suddenly Bing has the chance of becoming a formidable force in search. Sure that might not be enough to threaten Google’s dominance but it sure is enough to make a severe dent in the company’s percentages.

As Shoemoney said in a post the other day

Microsoft is a lion and they are relentless. They are the only company who have any shot at dethroning Google’s massive market share. They have the patients, money, and resources to do it.

And now it looks like they might be getting the numbers as well.

Are we in for a shift in the search engine biz? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google has been pretty lucky so far but that luck is soon going to run out. They almost brushed with fate when they released Google Apps for the enterprise but even there they get a pass for the most part. For the rest of their software it has always been a case of beta deniability and the attitude that “it’s free so don’t come crying to us if something doesn’t work right“.

This of course is in reference to their customer support or rather the total lack of it, unless of course you are some famous blogger or you know someone in the company. The problem is that while it might have been fine in the web application business it isn’t going to be okay now that Google is in the hardware businesses.

The funny thing is that when people start forking out hundreds of dollars of their hard earned money on something they want it to work. If it doesn’t they you had better make damn sure that there is someone on the other end of that support phone call.

For Google this is something totally new – responsibility to make sure the customer is happy. They have been insulated from the real world of technology because of their normal business model of giving away shit for free and ignoring people when they complain that something doesn’t work.

But as they are finding out when you start selling something like a smartphone customer support isn’t something that you can ignore.

But Google is selling the phone directly to end-users. That means many users are turning to it first, and the search giant doesn’t have the kind of customer support that mobile-phone users are accustomed to.

Google appears to be only accepting e-mail customer queries, to which it pledges to reply in one to two days — far too long, say most people who are complaining online.

Many people are also turning to T-Mobile and HTC, but getting little help there. T-Mobile is often referring people back to either Google or HTC for answers to questions. HTC is often referring people back to T-Mobile, according to complaints online.

One customer going by the name Roland78 said he was transferred between T-Mobile and HTC four times, spending a total of one-and-a-half hours on the phone with customer service. “T-Mobile also said Google hasn’t provided them with any support documents for the phone. Welcome to direct sales Google!” he wrote.

Source: Infoworld

As much as Google might like to think it can be a disruptive force in any business that it sticks its nose into but it is going to discover that law one in the consumer goods businesses is that when you take their money you had better be listening when they say “Fix it”.

Hey Google, customer support needed on line 1, line 2, line 3 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Up until near the end of 2009 much of the web spent its time speculating about Twitter and how it was ever going to make the kind of money to justify the massive $1 billion valuation that it has. Even after Google and Microsoft signed up to the Twitter fire hose for $15 and $10 million respectively it was pointed out that this really come close to justifying the valuation.

In fact using those disclosed figures and the number of messages that have supposedly been sent through Twitter some point out that those Twitter messages are pretty cheap at 3¢ each. Then we have the whole discussion started by Anil Dash the other day that called into question the validity of anyone claiming to have a million followers or more.

I think the reality is obvious: Nobody has a million followers on Twitter.

Does that mean Twitter’s follower counts are lying? No. Instead, Twitter accounts that have over half a million followers listed actually represent (at most) a few hundred thousand people who’ve chosen to become organic followers of someone, along with millions who are passively along for the ride. Some of them are inactive users, some are spammers, some just ignore the noise of the accounts that don’t interest them, like spam in an email inbox. But they can’t count as “followers” in any meaningful sense.

The whole problem with this follower/following sham is that there is a lot of money being passed around based on those numbers. So if there is any validity to Anil’s supposition what does that say about the true value of anyone’s Twitterstream - especially in the eyes of advertisers and of course search companies like Google and Microsoft.

Or is more of a case, as Business Week suggests, that these companies are placing more of a bet on the future value of Twitter messages:

Truth is, no one has figured out how to make real money off of tweets yet. Google and Microsoft are paying $15 million and $10 million, respectively, as a bet on the future. By laying out what are relatively tiny sums, they get first crack at experimenting with Twitter data. Both are already including tweets in search results. Sean Suchter, general manager of Microsoft’s Search Technology Center, predicts the company will end up profiting. “Many times in history when you amass the attention of users, that has proven to be a moneymaking endeavor,” he says.

In the end though we will just have to be happy armchair quarterbacking when it comes to Twitter and its search for a longterm revenue stream.

Twitter’s never-ending guessing game – numbers and value is a post from: The Inquisitr

Since the very beginnings of blogs there has been this concept of bloggers freely linking out to other blogger’s posts when referenced in some way. The idea behind this is that besides adding substance to one’s own work we also gave value to the blogs that we linked to.

That value, now referred to in the most part as the Link Economy, came in several ways but primarily it was via the Google PageRank juice that linking out provided to other blogs and then back to you when other bloggers would link to things you might have written. The obvious thing here is that the more juice you acquired the better you would place in search results which helped bring in new readers.

It was a beneficial system for everyone all around but slowly as the blogosphere matured and blogs became a big business we began to see more deep linking (linking to your own material previously posted) and less linking out. Pageviews became the new value system where all that mattered is how many views you can get for each new post.

Sure Google juice still mattered but that could be achieved with carefully crafted SEO headlines and the constant pumping out of content regardless of it having any real inherent value of its own. So now we have blogs, or whole blog networks, whose whole intent is to increase the pageview cycle as much as they can and keep the deep linking going as much as they can per post.

Now the big discussion point is around the quality of content and how it is more like a meal at a fast food restaurant. I first wrote about one of the principal companies being blamed as being the MacDonalds of this emerging trend back in October. Then in the last week several of the big bloggers in the space have continued on and expanded on the subject.

One of those bloggers, Richard MacManus the driving force behind ReadWriteWeb chimed in today with another post where he talked about these content farms of content. However his point of view in the post was more oriented to following a previous thought he had raised about Google’s place, and responsibility, in all this.

He points to the aspect of the Link economy and how others seem to think that Google is doing just fine and that good content will always rise to the top – the mantra of all bloggers who seem to be blind to the changes happening. Richard’s take is that Google isn’t doing enough and that it really has a short window of time to make sure that the Link Economy – which it is in part responsible for creating – doesn’t head into a permanent depression.

While I agree that there are things that Google should be doing, I also feel that some of the responsibility for the current state of content lies with us – the bloggers – and especially with the big blogs who are quite happy to be spreading the grease that we are slipping and sliding in.

It all comes back to the dynamic and powerful economy that we all help create. The economy of links. The economy that gave us the power to make sure our voices could be heard above the white noise of traditional media no matter how big, or how small we were.

The moment we stop sharing our mutual wealth that we create organically through the power of the Link Economy we are in danger of losing everything that every single blogger, famous of not, has worked hard for over the last ten years since the birth of the blogosphere.

The more we relinquish the simple power that each and every single hyperlinked piece of text gives us as a whole; while we try desperately the models being set forth as success to follow, the quicker we transfer the power to new and old media that cares more about the dollar than the power of a unified voice.

As it stand right now the Link Economy is in danger of collapsing and with it the major part of the potential for Social Media to be a vehicle of real change. It is instead becoming a case of the same old business for the same old reasons. Money over people and the improvement of society.

In other words – the same ol’ same ol’ just a new set of players.

The fallacy of the Link Economy is a post from: The Inquisitr

Even though the US is heading into turkey weekend the discussion around Microsoft cutting deals to de-list from Google and go strictly with Bing with any newspaper organization willing to listen continues unabated.

In two past posts here at The Inquisitr I have written about how stupid this idea is and could end up hurting Microsoft far more than any bonus of having Google frozen out could bring. Not only would it hurt Microsoft but it would also hurt us the consumers as well with any damage to Google being next to negligible.

The one thing that has been growing though is the call for a boycott of Microsoft and Bing if they should go ahead with the idea and actually cut some deals. As understandable, and justified, as a boycott might be why is the idea just being confined to action against Microsoft?

Should also the other parties involved in deals like this be punished the same way – which would further increase the effect of any boycott by the way. IF we are willing to entertain the idea of boycotting Microsoft then we should be just as willing to include any media company, and their various properties spread around the web – and off of the web as well.

This would mean that all of News Corp properties including things like Wall Street Journal and MySpace should be boycotted the same way that Bing or the sale of Windows 7 is. After all what is fair for the goose should also be just as fair for the gander.

Microsoft & News Corp – what is good for the goose should be good for the gander is a post from: The Inquisitr