The "Weekly WassUp" is a brief weekly overview of what has been showing up in "the feeds" in the last week.
In this issue:
- Financial crisis hits the web
- Oct. 7 : Microsoft Live search on Facebook
- Oct. 7 : FireFox knows where you are
- Oct. 8 : YouTube's next monetizing plan
- Yahoo! beta-launches calendar and web analytics upgrade
Financial crisis hits the web
Even the big web companies nowadays can't avoid the worldwide financial crisis. Shares from Google, Yahoo! and Ebay dropped numerous percents over the last days and weeks and some companies even already started to let people go. But while it may be though for the big players, it's going to be even harder for all the startups that have thrown themselves on the web 2.0 market. Venture capitalists already announced crunch times ahead. And since a comparison with the bursting of the dot net bubble is quickly made, people are already talking about the end of web 2.0. They even have a soundtrack and video to go with the burial: while everything was collapsing at home, a group of Web 2.0 folks from a.o. Google and Facebook took a trip to Cyprus where they lip-synched to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin" and put it online. Bad timing.
Oct. 7 : Microsoft Live search on Facebook
Almost one year ago, Microsoft outlasted Google in a bidding war to garner a $240 million stake in Facebook. Today, the first sign of this investment is made visible: the integration of Microsoft's live search into Facebook. Aside from searching for friends, Facebookers can now search the web from within the platform. And of course, the results are 'enriched' with advertisement from Microsoft's Ad Center. Facebook puts the integration like this :
"For example, your friend may invite you to an event at a
new restaurant. Without leaving Facebook, you can check out the details
of the restaurant on the web. Or, say you see photos in your News Feed
about a friend's recent trip to Dubai. Inspired, you can search the web
for more information about travel without having to leave Facebook.
Along with your search results, you may also begin to see ads for
products, services or other things that are relevant to your query."
Oct. 7 : FireFox knows where you are
On October 7, Mozilla launched 'Geode', an add-on to its FireFox browser enabling websites to get your exact location (if you give the permission). The add-on is based on the W3C Geolocation specification and will be embedded into following FireFox releases. With the add-on, every website can get your location with varying levels of exactness, to be manually chosen by the user ('exact location', 'neighborhood' or 'city'). Until now, location mainly took place based on IP address. But since that only gives you an indication of the location of the provider of the IP address, it is far from perfect. Geode on the other hand uses Skyhook's Loki technology to map the WiFi signals in your area to your location with an astonishing precision (for laptops using a WiFi connection that is). This kind of technology will make it possible to deliver more context-aware content: home vs business content, weather information, search for restaurants in your vicinity, ...
Oct. 8 : YouTube's next monetizing plan
In WassUp #4 we talked about Google trying to monetize YouTube by adding post-roll advertising. Last week, they launched yet another attempt: 'click-to-buy'. Only available in the US and only for selected partner channels at this point, the feature allows you to buy products related to the video like songs or games via iTunes or Amazon. For YouTube, this is "just the beginning of building a broad, viable e-commerce platform for users and partners on YouTube".
Yahoo! beta-launches calendar and web analytics upgrade
Two closed betas last week were anounced by Yahoo!: an upgrade of the 10-year old Yahoo! Calendar, and an upgrade of its web analytics solution. Both upgrades have their roots in acquisitions: the new calendar is based on the Zimbra platform (acquired in 2007), whereas the web analytics tool grew from taking over IndexTools six months ago. The upgrades obviously will need to bridge the gap with competitor Google. Yahoo plans to roll out the Web Analytics service gradually to its Small Business
Customers through the end of the year and expand the offering to other
users in 2009. The new calendar will be rolled out slowly, starting as a closed
beta in the U.S., Brazil, India, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Over
time, Yahoo will roll it out to all Yahoo Mail users.
