VentureBeat

Open data is the future of web discovery

Twitter cofounders have talked about the importance of discovery in interviews and at conferences over the last several months. This week a new design for Twitter.com went live featuring top tweets and a search box to find more of what you want, but Twitter and many other web companies could improve discovery much more by incorporating other players’ data.

Also, a year and a half ago, Google vice president Marissa Mayer said that social search is… Continue Reading

IM aggregator eBuddy catches up to Meebo in popularity, claims nearly 10x more revenue

Web-based instant message services — whether AIM, MSN, Yahoo or Gtalk — are some of the most popular forms of online communication. There are a couple startups that have taken advantage of this; most people in Silicon Valley will know locally-based startup Meebo, which lets you chat with friends across any of these networks.

But Meebo has a European rival, Amsterdam-based eBuddy, that may be less familiar. That’s about to change: eBuddy is opening up an… Continue Reading

Google’s Marissa Mayer: Social search is the future

At an event in August, Marissa Mayer, Google’s leading VP in search, said social search hasn’t shown much promise, but if it does, Google would be in a good position to incorporate it. I wrote about that here.

In a recent interview with VentureBeat (see Q&A below), she says she considers social search to be an essential part of the leading search engine in coming years.

She hints Gmail may be used to identify your friends, using… Continue Reading

Meebo introduces real-time chat in Facebook applications

Meebo, the cross-platform instant messaging company, has built a Meebo Rooms widget especially for Facebook applications, which it makes available today.

It is significant because it could help make applications on Facebook more social, thanks to real-time communication. However, it will also let people chat using their real names, and these conversations can be found by search engines — and so will test anew the Facebook community’s tolerance of such things (privacy, in case you haven’t… Continue Reading

Meebo partners with VideoEgg to help app developers make money

Meebo, the Silicon Valley company that lets you message across multiple IM services from a single Web site, is taking significant pains to make money from its millions of users.

Last month, it launched a way for outside developers to produce games and other content to be offered on the site, allowing them to keep half the revenue. A few weeks later, the Mountain View company gave the developers an option to run their own advertising… Continue Reading

Google’s first social search step — your vote, please

We’ve been discussing how Facebook could enhance web search through using social data. Google has seemingly responded with — for now — an experiment.

Google is letting you vote on search results in order to influence which search results you will see in the future.

Your vote only applies to what Google search results you will see, so it’s not currently “social.” This may prove valuable as a stand-alone service.

However, In August, Marissa Mayer, Google’s leading executive… Continue Reading

Facebook ending Flyers, replacing with Ads

Facebook will officially phase out its old advertising program, called Facebook Flyers, on December 3rd, and replace it with its new advertising program, we’ve learned from a company’s email to us, below.

Called Facebook Ads, the new program includes Social Ads, which a service for advertisers to more precisely target Facebook users, and Facebook Pages, essentially user profiles for companies (more on those efforts here).

Social Ads are ads that Facebook targets within the site, based on… Continue Reading

Facebook applications get email opt-out option

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Facebook is letting users decide whether they want to receive emails from Facebook applications they subscribe to, similar to the opt-out option on other Facebook applications.

By default, the checkbox is selected so that users receive emails.

Now, email spam can be controlled by the user: If emails aren’t wanted, then simply turn off emails from that application.

An application may have legitimate needs, such as sending time sensitive reminders to a user.

For a deeper dive into Facebook’s… Continue Reading

Meebo aims big, introduces games

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Meebo, the online instant messaging company, has been picking up users at a rapid rate, breezing along with high-profile backing by VC firm Sequoia Capital.

But its move today to deliver games on its platform is its most ambitious move yet to take it from a comfortable, small startup into the big-leagues where “the rest of us” will finally hear about it. It is also allowing game makers to insert ads, and make money from them.

Today… Continue Reading

115,000 social networks created on Ning: a meaningless stat?

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Ning, a service that lets users create their own social networks, has passed a new milestone: Users have created more than 115,000 social networks, the company said.

But Ning’s efforts to build a real audience and retain it faces some serious challenges, and it’s not clear how it will ever get big enough to justify the massive $44 million investment it received earlier this year, which gave it a $214 million post-money valuation.

First, here’s what… Continue Reading

Facebook search expands — will it take on Google?

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Facebook has added a new option for its search bar, allowing users to search for advertising pages.

This continues a steady creep in search options, which already includes tabs to search for people, groups, events and applications.

It raises a new question about Facebook’s ambitions, as it finds itself the David against the Google Goliath. Will it pull out the ultimate slingshot: a full-fledged search engine for the web, not just the Facebook site?

This question is… Continue Reading

Real estate site Trulia showing momentum; Is Zillow in trouble?

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Trulia, a web site that lets you search for homes, today launches a way for real estate agents to pay to to reach you with their listings.

The feature comes at a time when Trulia is showing traffic momentum, even as a competitor Zillow is struggling with stagnating traffic.

For $50 per month, agents can pick up to ten of their home listings to be featured in Trulia’s results when people search for homes. Better yet,… Continue Reading

Meebo introduces developer platform, third party voice and video apps

Instant messaging service Meebo has opened its platform to third party developers, which will put it in competition with Facebook, Google and other communications platforms. The new applications on Meebo already include voice and video services.

We wrote last week, here, that Meebo had a great opportunity to become a platform. It’s an instant messaging service that lets people IM across multiple protocols, including AIM, Yahoo, Gtalk and MSN. It’s web-based, requiring no download. It has… Continue Reading

Microsoft invests $240M in Facebook, as Facebook develops ad product

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Microsoft has snagged a deal to invest $240 million into popular social network Facebook, valuing the company at $15 billion — a 1.6 percent stake. Microsoft has also agreed to advertise on Facebook in international markets.

We listened in on a well-staged official press conference call that the two companies did this afternoon — you can read most of the same information in the press release. Here are some highlights: Microsoft needs the international ad agreement… Continue Reading

Rich ads now, Meebo platform next?

The browser-based instant messenger, Meebo, has new ads. Similar to Pandora’s, Meebo’s ads cover unused screen space and let users add background themes, listen to music and watch videos.

The move is a first step towards monetizing like Pandora, which has used branded ads for over a year. Video ads in Meebo Rooms are a second revenue source. Launched in May, Rooms gets 15 million messages back and forth each day, equal to 11.9% of all… Continue Reading