Posted by Charlotte Bousser
August 2009
08/26/2009
08/25/2009
MySpace social network will launch its own webmail in the following weeks which may concern its 130 billion users.
No, the return to work doesn’t make you hallucinate, and yes, you have well read: MySpace social network -enabling music bands, singers and DJs to show their musical compositions – is about to become the second supplier of e-mail services in the United States and the fourth in the world.
Today the social network, created in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, gathers more than 130 billion users around the world and is among the most visited websites in the world along with Yahoo, Google and Facebook. Its new service (get-at-able for the following weeks) will increase this success, even if MySpace will have to face strong competition due to the existing services on the Internet, such as Google with Gmail, Yahoo with Yahoo Mail or Hotmail (Microsoft).
The users will get an e-mail address with the extension "@myspace.com". Here are screenshots from the American website TechCrunch:
"The new service enables you to see what people you are talking to are doing on the website;and the stocking capacity is unlimited" reports TechCrunch after having tested it.
Will you, modern geeks, subscribe?
08/20/2009
Jeff Jarvis'book: The Google Method
Only one company is getting away from the crisis and has been dramatically growing since its creation: Google. This growth is due to a very new and unique approach. What would Google do if it applied this method to other fields of activity? Media, restaurants, energy, real estate, banks... What would it be like if there were a Google Café; a Google car; a Google Cola, or a Google university?
Jeff Jarvis (the founder of "Entertainment Weekly" and the coordinator of buzzmachine.com ) tries to answer these questions in the book: deciphering the "Google laws". This book is both a survival manual and a manifest for innovation, which makes the reader rethink his activities, firm conception and job.
As Franck Riboud comments in the preface, "Google reminds us that if we want to change the rules, we have to build our success on the experimentation risk.".
This 400 page book costs about €22.
08/19/2009
Google versus Apple...
(from the Time, 17 August 2009)
08/17/2009
Caffeine makes Google younger
Google is at least launching the beta version of its new search engine. Apparently, it is similar to the previous one. The home page, the typography, the functionalities... nothing has changed. The user feels totally at home. ...but at the level of algorithm, "Caffeine" (the code word of the new application) makes the difference. According to Sitaram Iyer and Matt Cutts, the tow engineers in charge of the project, "Most of users will not see a real difference in the searchresults, but the new version will make it possible to increase the size, the speed and the precision of Google". The indexation speed and the relevance of results will be significantly improved.
The site Mashable.com wanted to test the efficiency of the most used search engine in the world (with 65% of the market in June 2009). Related to this site, with the example of a classical key word such as "holiday", Caffeine is nearly twice as fast as the previous version.
"Participative technology"
Since August 11, users have been invited to test the new version via a dedicated site (which is not finalised yet) and then share their opinion. Google is surfing on the fashion of "participative technology", leading the minds of Internet users to fill in the failures or to develop computer programs. This technology is widely used by Mozilla and has recently been settled by tow Microsoft employees. For the moment, on Caffeine, you can find many more praises than critics.
Stakes are huge for Google, which has to keep ahead of Bing (the new Microsoft search engine, associated to Yahoo!)...
Esther
08/11/2009
What about Twitter?
Twitter is a free social networking and microbloging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets aretext-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website,Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet" since the use of Twitter's application programming interface for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter.
Today, Twitter is used as a full fledged marketing tool, even if the phenomenon is still nascent.
The Gartner Institute has recently published a study about the use of Twitter in companies: "4 ways to use Twitter in companies". The background question is "How to integrate the Web and the relations between companies and consumers?". Blogs; social networks (such as Facebook) and Digg-like platforms (which enable expressions of proposals from the consumers to improve services) are changing the deal.
The Twitter micro-blogging is all the more underlining the question. On Twitter, companies can insert advertising banners and personalise their Twitter page background.
The main uses of Twitter in companies, distinguished by the Gartner study are:
-Direct use: Twitter can be used as a marketing public relations channel;
-Indirect use: employees use Twitter to improve their personal reputation, promoting in parallel their society's image. Moreover, they become more familiar with these kinds of tools, and will use it more easily in their marketing and communication projects.
-In-house use: Twitter is used as a diffusion of information tool for projects and ideas shared in the company. It is very convenient to spread messages quickly to a team (above all for geographically dispersed teams).
-Vigil: fluxes of status updates on Twitter provide a rich and unseen source of information about what consumers and also competitors think about you. As a blog, it can also be an excellent tool to forestall a crisis situation, by communicating directly with the community created around the brand.
The fact remains that companies will have to reorganize the way they communicate, integrating Twitter and other social networks, as supports of many...
Esther
08/10/2009
Paris 2.0 Event in September
After a long relaxing period for geeks in August
…the resumption comes in September.
From September 22 to 25 “Paris 2.0”will take place; a four days symposium about the impact of new media on firms’ strategies.
The conferences will happen at La Bellevilloise (Paris) and will cost 10€ a day (the spoken language in the conferences is French).
Here is the program:
First day:
2.0 trends: new consumption
2.0 creation: digital creativity ON/OFF
Second day:
2.0 innovation: personalised services
2.0 media: media as interaction sites
Third day:
2.0 targeting: action and reputation
2.0 social nets: the community planning
Fourth day:
2.0 companies: the web brand
2.0 agencies: strategic brand content
For more information and memberships, please click on the link below:
http://fr.amiando.com/strategies2.html
Esther