I read this very interesting article on Read/Write Web about how Compete.com will be taking on Alexa in the web analytics market.  Compete has recently opened up a new search engine and web analytics tools for its users.  Compete used to provide web analytics privately.

The name of the web analytics software is called SnapShot and it collects data using a toolbar, ISPs, Opt-in Panels, and other Application Providers.  Alexa just uses its toolbar to collect visitor information and assign rankings.  Read/Write Web states, “As with Alexa, there is ranking, pages/visit, avg stay and comparisons (up to 3 domains in total). There’s also a People metric – an estimate of unique visitors to a site.”

Some of the limitations that Read/Write Web has listed is that the rankings are only U.S. based for Compete.com thus leading to inaccuracy and that Compete does not cater to blogs and other small websites.  Read/Write Web tested their own website along with TechCrunch and found that the estimations were defective.

Compete.com was created by Bill Gross in 2000.  Bill Gross is known for his involvement in goto.com and overture.com.

According to Reuters, SideStep Inc. should be set today to announce that they will be acquiring TravelPost.com.  SideStep is a traveler’s search engine that searches over 150 websites to find travel bargains.  Every month, SideStep services are used by 5 million consumers.  TravelPost is a website for consumers to read and review hotels and other resorts.  “SideStep plans to combine TravelPost’s reviews with its own site in the coming months, matching travelers with hotels based on advice from people with similar interests [source].”

By synergizing TravelPost reviews into their own services, SideStep (#10 Travel website) is geared towards competing hyperactively against Expedia, Travelocity, Cheap Tickets, Orbitz, and Yahoo! 

Private company, SideStep Inc. was founded in 1999 and is based in Santa Clara, CA.  TravelPost.com was founded in San Mateo, CA and has generated over 250,000 reviews by users on 50,000 hotels.  SideStep has previously raised over $17 million in funding from Trident Capital and other investors.  Rob Solomon a former general manager of Yahoo! Travel took over as President and CEO of SideStep.
[Article Source: paidContent]

Yesterday, SaySwap.com had launched its services.  This is the first social network that promotes trading videogames.  SaySwap also has blogging features, contains game cheats, and allows gamers to communicate with other gamers across the world.  “To swap games, users must purchase tokens for $4.95 and accumulate points by interacting with other users. The site is backed by LiveUniverse, founded by MySpace creator Brad Greenspan [source].”

The consoles that games are available for on SaySwap includes Sony Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 and PSP, Microsoft XBox and XBox 360, Wii, Nintendo Gamecube and DS and Game Boy Advance.  I do not think that games for older consoles such as Atari Super Nintendo are available, but based on demand, they could be added.  Game searches are filtered by consoles, game titles, and game categories.

In order to trade games and maintain credibility, you need to build purchase points (similar to Feedback on eBay).  Currently SaySwap is offering 30 Purchase Points for free which is a $30 value.  “Games require 10, 20 or 30 Purchase Points to get. You receive Purchase Points every time you mail a game. You might think of Purchase Points as a form of money. The Purchase Points value for every game has been set by us based on the current suggested retail price (SRP). The transfer of Purchase Points is made automatically between Gamers by us when you get a game or mail a game [source].” 

One of the testimonials I read on the SaySwap site was:
“I unloaded like 30+ games by swapping and generated a ton of trade points to get a giant library of all the games I actually wanted, Thanks for creating the great site!” by Richard W. of San Diego.  It looks like the model works.  Not only does this website save you money, SaySwap also saves you the trip of going to video game stores and bargaining with dealers for game trading.

When it all comes down to it, video games sitting in your house collecting dust can now be sent to a more appreciative owner.  Its about time a video game trading social network came out and who would have thought that it would be backed by MySpace.

Expert Village, the fast-growing producer of How-To videos on the Internet today announced that they would be adding several more key features to their line of services.  These features include embedding capabilities for bloggers and web designers, a social network, bookmarking, and user-enabled tagging of videos.

“Expert Village will add 2500 new how-to videos each month, produced by its network of over 1000 freelance filmmakers and videographers [BusinessWire].”  There is a plethora of categories that users can select ranging from Automotive to Home & Gardening to Pets and to Sports.  These How-To videos are created by a large number of experts.

ExpertVillage.com is based in Austin, TX and is published by PageWise Inc.  PageWise Inc. also publishes on HappyNews.com.  PageWise also has over 80,000 How-To and other informative articles that brings in over 50,000,000 hits per year.

Google Book Search:
Google has centralized a location for Scary Stories that were digitized as part of the Google Book Search project.  “What would Halloween be without a little trick-or-treating? This year, make exploring some of these classic spooky tales part of your treat. Discover who famously uttered ‘nevermore,’ why Van Helsing was forced to behead the ‘bloofer lady’ and how Ichabod Crane met his untimely end in a tranquil glen called Sleepy Hollow [source].”  Google had digitized numerous full texts of Halloween-related books such as Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Tell-Tale Heart.

NetVibes: 
Netvibes also decided to keep up with the Halloween spirit by providing a Halloween theme.  Providing this theme is another reason why I have been sticking with NetVibes as my homepage.  The thought that these programmers went to the extent of keeping up with the Halloween spirit is commendable.

[Picture Source: NetVibes Blog]

“Spot Runner today announced that WPP (NASDAQ:WPPGY), CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A and CBS), Interpublic Group (NYSE:IPG) and other institutions have made equity investments in the company [source].”  Spot Runner makes it easier to produce TV commercials for local TV channels by allowing users to personalize TV ads, select TV channels, and launch your campaign.

“There is a powerful trend in the advertising arena in which agencies need to focus on creative, but also identify the best vehicles to distribute their creative and reach people wherever they live, work and play,” stated Sir Martin Sorrell, the CEO of WPP. “Spot Runner’s practical and cost-effective solutions are a great complement to our national capabilities and will help our clients market at the most local level.”

On the homepage of Spot Runner, one interesting feature is that if you move your mouse over the U.S. map, it will display the channel and the cost of placing a 30 second TV advertisement on that channel.  Below is the cost for Comedy Central in Ann Arbor, MI:

According to the Spot Runner press release, “WPP plans to use Spot Runner’s web-based platform to help clients target ads across all media channels more effectively at the local level, while maintaining a consistent brand message.”

What makes Spot Runner an interesting company is that it provides a service to people that may not necessarily feel that they had the capability to get their advertisements on TV.  For $99, Spot Runner even has an Express Launch.  There are sample commercials on the Express Launch page as well. 

Spot Runner is based in Los Angeles, California and is a private company.  The company was founded by Nick Grouf and David Waxman who had also created PeoplePC and Firefly Network, two companies that were acquired by Earthlink and Microsoft.

[Article source: Venture Beat]

I’ve been using Facebook for the last 3 years and have seen it constantly evolve.  For this post, I will discuss 2 ways that I could see the popular social networking company improve its services: Slideshows and Videos. 

Slideshow:
The first way I could see Facebook improve is by taking a similar approach to photo browsing as Shutterfly.  I came up with this when my uncle sent me pictures on Shutterfly of a Diwali celebration that my family had back in Michigan.  I just sat back, relaxed, and did not have to do much work to go through all of the pictures.

As you may be able to see.  Using Shutterfly, you can adjust slideshow speed, picture size, and control fading as the pictures appear.  Whereas the Facebook approach is more manual-intensive:

On Facebook, to go to the next picture in a photo album, you have to either click on the picture or click on ‘Next.’  The maximum number of photos that any given album contained on Facebook is 60, which means that it takes 60 clicks to get through the album.  This is inefficient and strenuous.  If Facebook implements a slideshow option, I am sure that millions of users would be grateful.

Video:
From my point-of-view, the difference between MySpace and YouTube versus Facebook is that MySpace and YouTube encourages users to express their creativity through means of video creation and profile customization whereas Facebook regulates user capabilities for profiles which may not necessarily be a bad thing for Facebook.  However, if this barrier is broken in an organized fashion, I strongly believe that Facebook could take away a large amount of market-share away from MySpace if somehow they integrate video features.

MySpace claims that a lot of YouTube’s growth is accounted by the fact that many YouTube videos are embedded in MySpace user profiles.  If this is true, this could be problematic for YouTube if MySpace disallows the embedding of YouTube videos into MySpace user profiles.  Facebook could learn from this mistake and create a video upload system called Facebook Videos rather than allowing users to embed videos from YouTube.  This could potentially take marketshare away from YouTube as well.

One of the cool features that Facebook has right now is the ability to tag people in photo stills, but just imagine if you could tag friends in videos as well.  That would be a guaranteed hit.  Although the back-end programming of such a system would be very complex, I could see it as being possible.

Thus far, Facebook has been adapting to demanding web technologies such as ‘bookmarking’ and allowing users to import their blogs via RSS, but these types of features could help take Facebook to the next level.  I strongly believe in that.

Amazon.com’s Internet Movie Database Inc. had recently released a resume feature which I accidentally discovered when I was looking for information about the Old School sequel.  The name of the service is called IMDb Resume.  The selling point of the service is that it gives users “maximum exposure to IMDb’s 38 million visitors, including key industry decision-makers [IMDb].” 

This service is geared towards potential actors, actresses, directors, and general movie crew looking to get their foot in the door.  The service costs $2.50 per month, but there is a free trial available.  I decided to give the free trial a shot.

The first step is to enter your “professional name” to see if you already exist in the database:

If you are not found, you can have IMDb create a new page for you.  After that you can build a resume or upload one.  There are two resume styles.  One that accomodates an included photo and the other is designed for a resume that does not have a photo.  If you decide to build a resume, there are several recommended sections that you are to fill out in the screenshot below:

Credits include information about what TV commercials, films, modeling, hosting, music, dance, video game, etc. projects you may have had a role in.
Performer Profile includes checkboxes of your physical attributes, ethnicity, voice type, and unique traits (such as amputee, twin, little person, wheelchair, etc).
Performer Skills includes hidden talents such as juggling, athletic skills, accents, spoken languages, musical instruments, and dance.
Representation is where you fill out the contact information your agent or manager.
Direct Contact is your contact information.
Guild Affiliations has a few checkboxes for selecting guilds that you are associated with such as the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers).
Education is quite obvious.  You are expected to type in your school, degree, year, city/state, and other optional details.
Training is almost the same as Education, but allows you to fill in other additional training details.
Awards represents the section where you fill in the awards you have won at certain events and the year.
References is the contact information for those who believe you have what it takes to make it in show business.
Employment Details indicates your previous work history, and work authorization.
After all this is done, you are ready to move to the next step.

Next you are ready to Publish it.  Once you click on this, you are redirected to the billing page:

At this point, you enter your credit card information and find yourself having your own IMDb profile.  From that point on, I’m not sure exactly how effective your profile may be in attracting movie offers, but it is definetely a step up.  I am just surprised about why IMDb did not promote this feature as much as I would expect them to.

Google now has a market cap of around $145 billion. The only technology company with a higher market cap is Microsoft at $282.5 billion. Google’s market cap soared after it announced surprisingly strong third-quarter financial results last week. Google’s profits soared past analyst expectations by nearly doubling.

Yahoo on the other hand saw a 38% drop in profits primarily due to slowing ad sales and problems rolling out its own contextual ad network. According to comScore, Google held 45% of the online USA search market in September as opposed to Yahoo’s 28%. Yahoo’s share of the online search market is steadily dipping.

Google’s phenomenal growth is something very few technology companies see. Its surprising how fast Google blew past some of the oldest and most respectable technology companies around.

As you can see, Google continues to dominate Silicon Valley and eat small competitors alive. But everything good comes to an end. And eventually, some new startup will wow millions of Internet users and become the next Google.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition has filed a complaint with the FTC against Zillow stating that the company is misleading consumers and real estate professionals that rely on the accuracy of its home valuation service.

Zillow has created a lot of buzz around its home value estimation tool. I know a number of real estate agents that use Zillow’s valuation tool on a regular basis. And nearly all those agents heavily rely on the accuracy of the valuation. Therefore, if Zillow is in fact misleading people, this could become a major issue.

You can check out the complaint PDF here. [link]

In the complaint, the NCRC states that Zillow misrepresents itself as the Kelly Blue Book for homes. It also states that  Zillow misrepresents the accuracy percentage of its home estimates. According to Zillow, its estimates are with-in 10% of a home’s selling price. Unfortunately, many consumers do not realize that they should take any online home valuation tool’s estimate with a grain of salt. Zillow should maybe add a disclaimer for real estate professionals stating that its estimates may be inaccurate.

I do hope that Zillow gets out of this complaint. I really like Zillow’s website. It’s intuitive and easy to use. And even if the estimates are not completely accurate, at least it’s a place to start.

 

According to the Wall Street Journal, unique September visits to Facebook fell 12% and MySpace to 4% from August. The reason for the decline in visitors may be due to the prevalence of spam and fake profiles on these social networks. Marketers are now using MySpace and Facebook more then ever to promote their businesses and products. Hundreds of thousands of fake profiles are being created each month by spammers.

I think spam is a much bigger issue on MySpace then Facebook. Although we may start seeing more fake profiles on Facebook now that it’s publicly open.

Many users of these social networks are starting to get annoyed by spam, fake profiles and random friend requests from unknown people. This is most likely driving away users. In the beginning, its exciting to connect with a large number of friends, leave comments on people’s profiles, and even support businesses that have profiles online.

Eventually, users get sick of this routine. I know a few people that got sick of getting MySpace friend requests from profiles that linked to pornographic websites.

Even with all the spam and fake profiles, I am sure Facebook and MySpace will continue to see growth. Unfortunately, their steadily growing user-base and “cool factor” will keep attracting advertisers and spammers. However, a majority of users could probably care less at this point. Afterall, leaving a network that connects you to all your friends is not easy.

I read this interesting article on Fortune about how one source claims that Yahoo! is talking to Time Warner about acquiring America Online from them and another source that says that Yahoo! is not talking with them at all.  Fortune reported that if these talks were actually taking place, then it would be a “face-saver” for Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel since Yahoo! competitor, Google has been making some big moves lately, including plugging in $1 billion into AOL and becoming the exclusive search provider for them.

Fortune reported that if a Yahoo!-AOL deal does not take place, then there are several other options in order to push things forward for the #1 search engine such as acquiring Facebook for $1 billion.  One other possibility that Fortune reported that surprised me was putting themselves up for sale.  Comparatively speaking, Microsoft’s market cap is close to $283 billion, Google is close to $145 billion, and Yahoo! is $35 billion.

Fortune reported that the likeliest moves that Yahoo! will make is to Buy AOL, Sell to Microsoft, Merge with eBay, or Stay the Course.  The fact that Yahoo! is expected to make such moves is definetely interesting.

Naukri.com, the Indian job portal is gearing towards having an initial public offering on Monday, October 30.  “Naukri” is the Hindi word for “job.”  Naukri could be seen as the “Monster.com” of India.  Of course, now Naukri is competing against Monster India.

Naukri.com is owned by Info Edge (India) Ltd. and plans on raising $37 million (Rs. 1.7 billion) at a price of $6.40-$7.10 (Rs. 290-320).  This makes the market value of the company at $188 million at the best case scenario of this prediction.  Info Edge Ltd. would be selling 5.32 million shares.  You may think that this may not be a strong IPO based on dollar amounts, but just consider the Rupee-USA Dollar conversion (1 USD = 45.2536 as of right now according to XE.com).  The cost-of-living in India is a fraction of what it is in the U.S.  If you want more information, go to the contact section and drop me an e-mail.  I’m in India as we speak and could discuss with you how far U.S. dollars go here.

Info Edge also owns 99acres.com and Jeevansathi.com.  Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures own almost 5 percent of Info Edge for $6 million.  In 2000, according to Content Sutra, ICICI Venture “invested 7.29 Crore [72.9 million rupees or roughly around $1.5 million].”  The ContentSutra article also stated that another venture capital firm, Sherpalo invested $6 million into Info Edge.

Six Apart Ltd. has released the much-awaited Vox today.  Six Apart owns popular blogging websites, Live Journal, TypePad, and Movable Type.  Six Apart hopes to encourage more people to use blogs who are not tech-savvy. 

Vox is entering the blogging industry with numerous competitors.  Vox will be facing off against other easy-to-setup blog tools such as Google’s Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, and Xanga.  Not only that, but Vox will also be taking on social networks with blog features such as Facebook Notes, MySpace blogs, Friendster blogs, and countless other websites.

According to ITworld.com, “Mena Trott, Six Apart’s president and co-founder, maintains that each service appeals to a different type of person. TypePad, which requires a fee, is aimed at bloggers with a certain degree of technical savvy and an interest in drawing large audiences to their sites. Meanwhile, LiveJournal, which has free and fee-based levels of service, is more of a social network that generally appeals to people under 25, she said.”  Vox is likely to appeal to a blog audience for users looking for a small-scale number of visitors. 

Vox will allow users to have similar capabilities as MySpace profiles.  Users will be able to embed audio, video, and pictures from providers such as Flickr, YouTube, and Google Video. Vox will also allow blogs to deliver feeds via RSS. 

The success that Movable Type, Live Journal, and TypePad has had thus far is evidence that Six Apart’s Vox will be a definete hit as well.  According to Alexa traffic, Vox is currently the #2309 ranked website according to its 3 month average and according to Today’s hits, it is ranked #1725. 

MailFriends, a community penpal website that had started in 1998, has improved its interface recently to stay ahead with the times.  Now users can access forums, country-specific forums, chat, photo albums, and other features that promotes interacting with users from all over the world.  Other tuned up features include improved search, navigation, and a more likable appearance.  Since I have not heard of MailFriends before I read the press release, I wanted to compare the difference between the website now and previously, but Archive.org stated that “access to http://www.mailfriends.com has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.”

MailFriends has more plans for its evolution.  MailFriends is planning on launching improved messaging, chat room, channels, penpal listings, blogging, photo galleries, e-cards, and spam control features.

The difference between MailFriends and other social networking websites is that MailFriends promotes interacting with people around the world that may not know each other directly whereas social networks promote staying in touch with people that you may already know to a certain extent.

MailFriends is owned by I01 Limited who purchased the website from a some anonymous school students.  I01 Limited was was created in 2005 to provide support for unique Internet businesses.  Io1 Limited is known for developing and fine-tuning social network and travel-related Internet businesses.  MailFriends was bought by IO1 Limited in July 2006 for its growth potential.  MailFriends is known as “The oldest penpal Site on the web.”  This reincarnation from a Web 1.0 company to a Web 2.0 is definetely inspirational.