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In-depth analysis and expert insight into the 140-character real-time information network.Why do Car Comparison Sites Have So Much Pricing Power?
Digiday notes that car comparison sites are price setters, unlike nearly everyone else in the online ad world. This seems counterintuitive, especially since it doesn’t apply to sites one level downstream (e.g. eBay Motors) or one level upstream (like auto blogs).
Turntable.fm Signs Record Deals…
Google Updates Google is already using their new privacy policy to offer search across devices; a desktop search (for a restaurant, for example) will be connected to the mobile search experience (giving users a shortcut to the restaurant’s location and hours, for example). This shouldn’t have a measurable revenue impact in the short term, but…
Google Updates SEOmoz analyzes how Google handles local results. In most cases, Google puts Places results ahead of local organic results, but generally behind at least a few national results. This is something worth tracking over time, though; Google has shifted their local-versus-national and Google-owned-versus-web leanings several times in the past. Google is truncating results…
Bing Hates Santorum, Too
Danny Sullivan notes that Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” is a “Bing problem,” too. The standard argument here is that the “Spreading Santorum” site is obviously and explicitly an attempt to manipulate search engines. The whole point of such campaigns is to create links and online activity that make the manipulated…
A hardy band of Google competitors—engineers at Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace—have built “Don’t be Evil,” a tool that basically recreates the Search+ experience with social media sites other than Google+. This concretely illustrates one of the lurking problems with Google’s search and social integration: it’s really bad for the search experience. There are a…
Google Updates Danny Sullivan has much more information on the “Don’t be Evil” tool. He actually makes a pretty good case for the bookmarklet as a genuinely useful piece of software: if it weren’t for the life-or-death struggle search and social companies, this kind of thing would be an obvious feature to add. Google may be
Is Online Advertising Just Good for Direct Response?
Seth Godin notes that easily-analyzed, numbers-driven direct response ads are the dominant form of online ads, which has some negative side effects. But a Vizu survey indicates that advertisers will spend more online dollars on branding than direct response in the coming year.
What gives? First, there’s sampling: Vizu…
Gowalla Update: Talent Acquisitions and Fiduciary Responsibility
Last week’s Gowalla acquisition illustrated another weird facet of talent acquisitions: the potential conflict that arises when a talent acquisition gives founders a good job, and investors a low payout. A Gowalla investor chimes in to say that, basically, he’s not upset enough to do…
Imagine a portfolio that consisted of Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, and SecondMarket. That would be a spectacular portfolio, even if it included some later rounds. And it’s a portfolio you’d get if you invested solely in companies that cash out their founders. AirBNB just joined that group.
But in the process, they faced a barage of…
Netflix Splits DVDs and Streaming
Netflix has split its DVD business from its streaming business, perhaps in anticipation of spinning off one or the other. In the announcement, Netflix’s CEO specifically calls out AOL, which is facing exactly what he wants to avoid: half of the business belongs in some kind of asset-stripping private equity…
Digital Due Diligence Weekly