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Google Wants To Be Your 3G/Wimax Provider
2009-10-28 05:21:00
While 3G/Wimax might have been delayed for the nth time the interest its generating from all parts of the world for India is something else. Now it seems that even Google is looking at broadband wireless access (BWA) in the country and may participate in the upcoming 3G/WiMAX auction with an Indian partner. Google’s interest may stem from the fact that India’s broadband penetration is dismal at a paltry 6-7 million which means that majority of the growth would be driven by 3G and Wimax as far as internet penetration is concerned. Given how big the google products and brands are in India it makes sense for google to participate and evangelize the internet penetration story in this country. The next 50-100 million users in India would be first time users of internet and this segment would be quite different from the one that already uses the internet currently. This makes the role of an ISP important in providing services that encourage these users to log on and use the i...

Guy Kawasaki On Entrepreneurship & Twitter Marketing @ Nasscom Product
2009-10-28 04:47:00
Guy Kawasaki who was part of Apple and later founded Garage Technology Ventures a venture capital firm and is well known as the author of the best seller ‘The Art of the Start’. He currently is the Founder of Alltop a news/content aggregator and spends most of his time tweeting and marketing alltop.com, He was present at the Nasscom Product Conclave happening in Bangalore on the 27th – 28th of October. Pic Credit – Renie Ravin Guy spoke about a range of topics. His morning take was on entrepreneurship and the following slides are the ones he presented: Later in the day he also spoke about Twitter as a tool for marketing and how he uses it. Here are some excerpts on his talk on twitter. Guy’s Marketing tactics using twitter Guys stated that he uses twitter as a pureplay marketing tool. His objective is to gain as many followers as possible and then to tweet interesting stories to attract more followers. He also pointed out that much like TV where there...
More About: Entrepreneurship , Guy Kawasaki

Content Sharing Deal Between Facebook And MySpace – Can They Make It
2009-10-27 13:31:00
Just in the morning, we covered as to how Google stopped the migration of email-id’s from Orkut to Facebook by excluding the email-id’s from the CSV file, in order to preserve the privacy of their consumers. All that meant was that Google doesn’t want its users to go away with Orkut completely. As the statistics speak for themselves, Orkut isn’t doing any good recently and Facebook is on a high. With Orkut trying to block Facebook in every possible way to emerge as the best social networking site, it has become difficult for MySpace to compete in an already tough market. Amidst such circumstances, Facebook and MySpace found a new way to handle things. It has been reported that Facebook is in talks with MySpace in a content partnership deal. Now, this is simply big. If the deal works out fine, it could just be the end of Orkut. From the Facebook’s point of view, Twitter has been a big big problem for them and with the search engine giants – Google...
More About: Myspace , Content , Deal , Make

Idea Cellular Q2 Results: Net Profits Grow, Hints At Pricing Pressure
2009-10-27 12:12:00
Idea Cellular seems to be riding high on Indian telecom growth story as it has reported a 52 per cent rise in the consolidated net profit to Rs 220.1 crore against Rs 144 crore in corresponding quarter. The revenues have also seen a similar surge by 29% at Rs 2973.9 crore against Rs. 2303.3 crores reported last year. The number might look impressive on Y-o-Y basis but are lackluster if compared on a sequential basis as revenues has been flat and profits down severely. The company has also witnessed erosion in operating margins as it is down by 140 basis points at 25.3 per cent. Mr Aga, Idea MD has also hinted at pricing pressures in short term and emphasized the fact that around 20% of all Indian subscribers are using multiple SIMs causing Telcos to realign their tariffs. Subscriber Count & Other Stats: The company’s subscriber tally stands at 51 million with a rise of 50% Y-o-Y. The company along with its subsidiaries operates commercially in 18 circles but ho...
More About: Results , Idea , Profits , Hints

Web URLs Go Local: Coming Soon In Hindi!
2009-10-27 09:48:00
I am sure that most of you would be surprised to know that a non-profit corporation called ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) exists with the sole responsibility of managing top-level domain name systems and IP addresses. So was I. But the cool part here is not what they have been doing, rather what they are gonna do now. This week, international domain names that can be written in languages other than English, are going to be approved by members of ICANN. This means you will be able to see web addresses in Arabic, Korean and Hindi etc. More than half of world’s internet users have been known to use other scripts except Latin (ever seen a blog in Devnagari script?). And India, which has 50+ million internet users, has more than hundreds of languages. ICANN’s new president and CEO is meeting representatives from all over the world this week in Seoul. He said that the first entries into the system would likely come sometime in mid 2010. Challenges to ...
More About: Local

Q2 Results Roundup: Tata Communications, Mindtree
2009-10-27 09:31:00
Tata Communications has registered a 30 per cent decline in standalone revenues at Rs. 759 crores compared to Rs.992 crores in the same quarter last year. The bottom line also took a serious hit and came in lower by 68 per cent at Rs 10.45 Crs against Rs 33 Crs. The major reason for decline in revenues was lesser demand for wholesale voice services in telecommunication services segment which contributed only Rs 300 crore in this quarter compared to Rs 461 Crores contribution in corresponding quarter. The enterprise and corporate data segment contributed Rs. 300 Crores to the revenues whereas other services contributed Rs. 159 Crores. Tata Communications was formed by merger of VSNL, its international subsidiaries. They seem to be focusing on servicing enterprise clients. The main cause of worry for TATACOM  is the entry of telcos in the enterprise segment to derive higher margins and volume. Mindtree Q2 results: MindTree has reported 34 per cent growth in the botto...
More About: Roundup , Results

Orkut Stops Migration To Facebook – Contradicts Google’s Policies
2009-10-27 09:13:00
The mission statement of the Google data liberation front reads as follows: “Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products. Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.” However it seems that all this was nothing in the prospect of losing consumers. Sometime back ago face book launched their export tool, which enabled users of Orkut to export their contact information including their email ids to facebook, however as soon as this happened, the feature developed a bug, which according to Goggle happened as they were upgrading the feature to offer enhanced security . When the feature came back, users were in for a surprise, the feature had everything but the email ids, i.e. You could export a plethora of information but not the email ids, hence making the tool completely useless. The official stand of Google on this is - “Mass exportation of email is not standard on most social networks — when ...
More About: Policies , Facebook , Stops

3G India – 5th International Conference – A First Look Review
2009-10-27 06:22:00
The 3G India International Conference kicked off with the speakers and the chairperson lighting the Diya to mark a sanctum start. The first session was based upon the road ahead for telecom landscape in India from the service providers’ point of view majorly highlighting the opportunities for 3G in India. P. Balaji, Ericsson’s Vice President for marketing and strategy in India spoke at the Conference, during which he shared some persepectives revolving around the need for 3G in India. Beginning with, the survey conducted by Ericsson in metros and Tier I and Tier II cities showed results that most of the 3G subscribers across each segment use it mainly for music and imagery. Some points that he raised - Why mobile broadband? Since a user faces problems with his/her internet connection, 2 out of 5 were interested in 3G getting rolled out, after the survey results. Mobile Broadband has a strong pull from the consumer perspective. The early adopters of 3G in India - Youth Me...
More About: Review

Brand Positioning Online In The Age Of Consumer Driven Media
2009-10-26 19:15:00
I landed up on a blog post about advertising and communications, about how they are different from one another and their overall impact on brand positioning. In essence the post revolved around the idea that advertising is brand positioning and not communicating product details. My immediate reaction, whether right or wrong, was that this idea doesn’t hold true online. So I set myself up on finding resources on the web that might prove me right. Blame my morbid luck these days, I only found well SEO’d and utterly useless articles in my search. It basically left me with no reference to create a hypothesis at the least on why I found the post perhaps not applicable to the web. And given my lack of any strong technical background of marketing and branding, I perhaps shouldn’t be speculating on the same. However, this did give me enough thought on how a brand and its positioning efforts need to take in to account social media. Clearly it wasn’t just about where y...
More About: Media , Consumer , Online , Brand

Sify Q2 Results: Revenues Boost By 12% At $38.28 Million, To Focus More On
2009-10-26 12:34:00
Sify has reported 12 per cent increase in quarterly revenues to $38.28 million compared to $ 34.32 Million in preceding quarter (Q1). The bottom line shown signs of improvement although it still reported a net loss of $ 2.36 million against a Net Loss of $3.35 million (including tax adjustments) in the June quarter. Mr. Raju Vegesna, Board Chairman and CEO & MD, Sify Technologies, said, “We continue to grow our revenues with significant growth in Enterprise services revenues. Enterprises are engaging us to help create new business capabilities and significantly advance their business objectives over the short, medium and long term. We continue to experience demand across data center services, managed network services and managed voice services. On the consumer front, we are seeing traction in the online advertising space and expect it to continue going forward. We continue our initiatives to consolidate and rationalize access services through cyber cafes and expect to exp...
More About: Results , Focus

Cyber Media Q2 Results: Top Line Sees 18% Jump, Bottom Line Continues To Bl
2009-10-26 11:36:00
Cyber Media , the owner of various media publications like DataQuest, PCQuest, Voice & Data and Living Digital has reported 18% jump in quarterly consolidated revenues at Rs. 26 Crores (Q-o-Q). The bottom-line was still in red and came in at Rs. 0.35 Crores compared to Rs 1.82 Crores in June quarter. The standalone revenues although was down 40.74% to Rs 10.56 Crores as compared to September ‘08 quarter. The consolidated revenue for half year was 48 Crores and recorded net loss of 2.8 Crores. The segmented revenues for media and media services were 14.4 Crs and 12.7 Crs respectively. The company is present into various media businesses and as such has media services subsidiaries like IDC India, ICT Research Company and Content Matrix, USA which provides through its subsidiaries, custom publishing and content management services. The company in light of serious business turmoil had to undertake major cost-control and organizational restructuring to mitigate operational cos...
More About: Results , Cyber , Jump

Indian Telecoms Expanding Fibre Optic Cable Network – Is The Competit
2009-10-26 10:54:00
Some of the major Indian Telecom companies are finally seeing some action on the expansion of their fibre optic cable network. Idea Cellular, Aircel and Powertel (The telecom focused BU of PoweGrid) have rolled out massive expansion plans. The currents stats of fibre optic network for these 3 are - S.no. Company Existing Network Proposed expansion to 1. Aditya Birla Group (Idea Cellular) 38,000kms 45,000kms 2. Aircel (Maxis) 10,000kms 25,000kms 3. Powergrid (Powertel) 20,000kms 31,000kms The companies hope that besides satisfying their own communication needs they would also be able to cater to overseas telecom operators such as British Telecom and SingTel who provide enterprise telephony services to corporate customers by offering connectivity between India and other countries through undersea cable networks. However the intercity network is dominated by the biggies such as BSNL, Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel and PowerGrid. The foreign companies ha...
More About: Telecoms

3G Auction Possible On January 14 – The Despair Continues!
2009-10-26 07:36:00
At the 3G India 5th International Conference held in Mumbai, gags were cracked about the 3G auction delays and business drivers for 3G in India were also discussed. Later the Department of Telecom (DoT) announced yet another date for the auctions to take place i.e. January 14, two days after which the auction for broadband wireless access (BWA) and CDMA spectrum will be commenced. However in the retooled information memorandum released by the DoT a precise frequency band to be be auctioned has not been defined, that’s due to the discrepancy with the defence services. At WATBlog, we’d mentioned that the defence services needed more time for testing and security clearances before they vacate the spectrum i.e., 20 MHz for 3G and 25 MHz for 2G services and shift to an optical fibre network that has been developed for them by BSNL. The DoT said the External Commercial Borrowing guidelines have been relaxed to permit External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) up to $500 million to f...
More About: Auction

Gift Music On Facebook – Virtual Gifts Extravaganza
2009-10-26 05:34:00
We recently wrote about Google launching Music Search and I admit, I added that little cliffhanger about Facebook at the end for kicks. The news was out long before. Facebook will also be tying up with Lala.com. Now, Facebook users can gift music to each other. The Music Industry is drowning. Piracy and Digital Media are ripping out the profits with album sales declining. On the other hand, the virtual goods industry is skyrocketing with a potential of being a $1 billion market. Facebook announced it’s new and revamped Gift Shop on its blog. Now users can purchase gifts, and the gift shop is expanding. The list extends to : (from their blog:) Music Gifts (U.S. only) You now will be able to purchase songs as gifts for your friends. The “Music and MP3s” section of the Gift Shop, powered by LaLa.com, offers over 8 million songs for any music lover from artists such as Beyonce, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Imogen Heap and even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Web song...
More About: Virtual

Airtel Advertises Its TweetSms Service – Twitter Benefits With Free P
2009-10-26 05:00:00
In India one can clearly say that telecom players are the best friends of social network sites but make no mistake this friendship isn’t with Indian social networking sites. Well why do I say so? If one remembers Aircel which launched its marketing campaign on TV and spent crores of rupees on TV advertising was actually inturn marketing facebook. Don’t remember the ad? Check the Video below: As you can see facebook was the beneficiary of an Ad which had Mahendra Singh Dhoni (India’s most expensive cricket celebrity endorser) propagating its services! Now it seems the time has come for Twitter to enjoy the same luxury in India i.e. get free TV advertising from its partner Airtel with whom they tied up for a measly 4 weeks as an exclusive deal. Check the twitter ads below (via labnol): As you can see from above these ads will not only help airtel which they are intended for they would also help get twitter eyeballs and new users in India. This also points towards...
More About: Service , Free

WWW: WAT Weekly WrapUp 18th-25th October
2009-10-26 04:10:00
Last week we saw some big announcements and some big launches as well. Among the launches the biggest one was the launch of Kindle For India follow by launch of Windows 7. There were also some important service launches like Mobile Comics service by airtel and wordpress Mobile Friendly launch. Last week was also a financial results week and we covered the following financial results stories: Web18 Financial Results Yahoo Financial Results Infoedge (Naukri) Financial Results We asked showcased some important statistics too on Twitter conversations and VC Investments in India. The Big news on the VC investment side was the launch of a VC fund by Narayana Murthy apparently named Catamaran Venture Fund. Posts Via WATBlog.com Facebook Adjusts Your Home Page Again: Now Jump Between News Feed and Live View Feed Google Music Service to Launch (Apparently) – Impact on India? Timesjobs Goes One Up On Naukri – Launches GlobalConnect Narayan Murthy Turns VC – Sells Infy Stock To Lau...
More About: Weekly

Timesjobs Goes One Up On Naukri – Launches GlobalConnect
2009-10-23 09:53:00
Just a few hours ago we reported on Naukri’s quarterly results and blogged about how they need to rethink their model and add social features to their site inorder to appeal to the growing social nature of the web today vs that of ten years ago. Well it seems as I said it Timesjobs had already rolled out a similar feature called Globalconnect. Globalconnect allows you to add various social media tools and information alongwith your resume. It covers tools right from all IM (instant messenger) clients to your professional profile on wordpress and blogger i.e. your blog or on linkedin or the times group owned peerpower. It also allows you to put in your work i.e. your presentations and videos as well via youtube and slideshare integration. Another heartening shift that I really liked was the use of slideshare to showcase their new feature. Check their presentation here. This just shows that they are not only adding these features but also using it themselves. Full marks for no...

Narayan Murthy Turns VC – Sells Infy Stock To Launch VC Fund
2009-10-23 07:41:00
We reported how the VC investments in India had nose dived in the last quarter and though it was slightly better on quarter on quarter growth no of VC invetsments were dismal. If one went deeper they were very dismal in seed and early stage investments. Well now all that might improve for sure as one of India’s leading icons of IT Services industry Mr.Narayan Murthy has just sold stocks he held in Infosys to launch a VC fund. Murthy has offloaded 800,000 shares from his personal holding, to raise about Rs 177 crore. This offloading led to a decrease in Murthy’s holding in Infosys from 0.41 per cent from 0.55 per cent. Though overall Murthy and his family still own about 4.83 per cent valued close to Rs 6,200 crore. What kind of companies will this fund invest in? The Fund will invest in young entrepreneurs and would be focused on India. No specific vertical has been specified yet. Great news for Tech entrepreneurs? Given Mr.Murthy’s tech background and also his or...
More About: Stock , Launch

Pricebolo Ties Up With Ixigo – Price Comparison Comes To Travel Ticke
2009-10-23 07:27:00
I am sure you’ve done this before while street shopping – Bargain. Russell Peters once said that it’s in the blood of all Indians to bargain wherever they go shopping. Regardless of the country, irrespective of what they’re buying, getting the best deal becomes their eternal right. Well, that’s Peters’ opinion. But, to some extent it holds some truth, doesn’t it? And, why not flaunt it, yeah? If not bargaining, we at least compare the prices to make sure we’re not being harassed by our friends after spending extra money for something, unknowingly. Even travel tickets for that matter differ from airlines to airlines, travel agencies and so on. One such site allowing users to compare prices of commodities before buying them, tied up with a travel portal that aims at making travel related search easier. That’s right, we’re talking about the recent tie up between Price sBolo.com and iXiGO.com. Their mutual consolidation will ad...
More About: Travel , Comparison

Twitter – The Most Active Platform For Technology Brand Conversations
2009-10-23 06:03:00
74,452 online conversations pertaining to 96 large technology brands, contained within 423 influential channels were monitored between July and September 2009 – Averaging at one brand mention every two minutes. Google and Microsoft topped the rankings by way of volume of conversations, securing approximately 20% and 12% of all monitored conversations, respectively. Yahoo!, Intel and Sony complete the Top 5 list, securing 14% of the overall conversation amongst them. While Internet & Software brands lead the conversations online, Mobile & Telecommunications brands like Nokia and BlackBerry, as well as Consumer Electronic Brand s like Dell, Samsung and LG also feature in the Top 10. Twitter emerged as the “buzziest” channel in India with almost 60% of the overall conversation share. Select online forums, including the Chip India Forum, TechArena Community Forum, Digit’s Technology Discussion Forum and DigitalPoint Forum, emerged as other key hubs where technology relate...

Q2 2009-10 – Infoedge (Naukri) Results – Revenues Dip by 10%
2009-10-23 05:51:00
Infoedge which runs Naukri.com, Jeevansaathi.com and 99acres.com has announced its Q2 results. Highlights of the Quarter are: Total Income in Q2 of FY 09-10 at Rs.645.11 mn, a 10.8% drop over the corresponding quarter in FY 08-09. Operating income is 561.61 mn, which is 14% lower compared to last year. EBITDA is at Rs 235.15 mn compared to 223.99 mn being 5% higher as compared to last year. Operating EBITDA is at Rs 151.65 mn which is 2.17% lower as compared to last year. Profit after tax was Rs. 147.36 mn compared to 156.72 mn last year. On a quarter on quarter basis there has been improvement in the topline as Q1 had reported a topline revenue of Rs.529 mn Commenting on the results, Ambarish Raghuvanshi, CFO and Director, Info Edge (India) Limited said, “The hiring environment continues to improve, albeit gradually. The drop in topline revenues and operating income reflects the changed scenario from the last year and is in line with expectations. However, the improvement is ...
More About: Results

Windows 7 Launched – The Wait Is Over!
2009-10-22 13:20:00
So here it comes, the much anticipated pepped up operating system from Microsoft. The company has launched its new OS, Windows 7 in India. Microsoft has also launched a Social Hub to gather public opinion about Windows 7 through various social media. Testers and early users have rated it as by far the best operating system created by Windows in its history (and future included?) The latest version has an upgraded taskbar with one click multimedia access. By including features like Remote Media Streaming and multimedia control programs, Windows 7 seems to prepare a counter-attack Google’s  Chrome OS. We had already covered the system requirements necessary for Windows 7. There are six editions available for Windows, with two standard versions Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional for SMEs. A stripped down version Windows 7 Home Basic is also available in emerging markets. Other three editions are Windows 7 Starter, Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate...

Pranab Raises A Stink Against Anymore 3G Auction Delays
2009-10-22 12:51:00
3G (3rd Generation) which is expected to bring in another telecom revolution in India is still manifestly facing hurdles. After many delays, the auction of 3G spectrum was attired for August-September 2009. Then again it was delayed, and the tentative dates were set at the end of calendar year. Recently, communication minister A Raja said, it might get delayed due to the Christmas holidays, but surely would be done before the end of financial year (March-2010). Indian Government which is expected to earn anywhere between 25,000 to 30,000 crores is not happy with all the delays. A major part of fiscal deficits can be closed with this earning. Finance minister, Pranab Mukharjee has told A Raja, in a strongly worded letter dated 15th October to ‘quickly resolve all outstanding issues’. He has told, that there cannot be any further slippage and under no circumstances can the auction be pushed over to the next calendar year. India is the only major telecom market not to have launche...
More About: Auction

Amazon Kindle Launches For India With International Wireless From AT&T
2009-10-22 12:50:00
We had blogged last time as to how it might be smarter to wait and watch the kindle launch and eventual progress rather than jump out and buy one! Well maybe we got it wrong. Amazon has gone on a very aggressive note in India to promote the kindle. As per our source who attended the press conference Amazon is providing Kindle with AT&T’s US and International wireless services and this is at no monthly wireless bills and no yearly contracts as of now. There is also no software to install and no syncing required. The debatable point here is that is this wireless connection 3G or is it edge/gprs available on phones in India? Also who is AT&T’s partner operator here in India? Is AT&T entering India markets soon? AT&T was once a 2G player in India and exited the Indian markets in 2005 by selling its stake to IDEA Cellular. There is also news that AT&T now wants to enter the Indian market and will do so by buying the 3G spectrum at the upcoming 3G Auctions...
More About: Wireless

Flickr Adds Facebook Like People Tagging – Which One’s Better?
2009-10-22 11:40:00
Flickr, which for some years was the undisputed champ in photo sharing, recently lost the crown to the social networking giant Facebook . And now Facebook is the biggest photo sharing platform in the world. Some say that Flickr has become a more niche service with only serious photographers enrolling for it. But now, it looks as if Flickr is waking up and they have launched a new feature that has been at the forefront of photo sharing features on Facebook. This new feature which is called People in Photos lets you add a member to a photo, find photos of people you know, and manage which photos you’re in. For me, that’s two main verticals of any social network covered. To add someone to a photo, you type in the member’s name just like Facebook. One thing which is different and better from Facebook here is the fact that people can opt in and out of tagging. Also you can draw an outline around the person’s face to show clearly who the person is. The notification for being tagge...
More About: Flickr

Google Launches A New Product: Social Search
2009-10-22 09:46:00
You can always expect great things out of a Web 2.0 Summit, and it looks as if this one was the mother of all. We have already covered in details the exclusive deals between search engines Google and Bing to index real time results from Twitter and Facebook to display on their platform. Google will only be indexing Twitter though. But one more announcement which seems to be dying down because of the noise is the arrival of a new Google Labs product: Social Search . Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search announced this during her talk in the summit. The product aims at importing news and feeds from your various social profiles into one place. It will allow you to search for queries from people in your social network. And obviously, this works using the still not very popular Google Profiles service. If you fill it out with the social networks you have a presence on, Google will scan your network and give you results from those people. It will also be able to show rich media like news...
More About: Product

Debate: A Need For Freedom From Restrictions On Social Media’s Use At
2009-10-22 07:43:00
Lets face it, majority of the companies block social media sites, especially social networking sites in the offices. On the other hand, same companies want to publicize themselves / their products through the same social media. So what is the main reason for companies to avoid using their workforce as their social media publicity team and not leverage the extended networks of their employees? Let us drill down on the reasons from the perspective of employers on blocking the social media sites. As they say, “With great power comes greater responsibility” and according to most of the companies, the responsibility part is more often than not ignored 1) Procrastination – This is by far the most important reason for companies to block all the social networking websites in the offices. When people start abusing instead of using the facility, the work planning suffers and the companies are not yet willing to pay you for chatting with 10 friends at the same time. 2) Perce...
More About: Freedom , Social , Media , Debate

Google Does A Me Too – Announces Inclusion Of Twitter Updates In Sear
2009-10-22 06:04:00
Just a few hours ago we reported that Microsoft is soon to announce a deal with both Facebook and twitter to include their search updates within search results for Bing. It seems google has followed the move in just a matter of hours and Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience has posted a post on the official Google blog announcing the agreement with twitter to include its updates in Google’s search results. Marrisa also spoke about search being improved by the inclusion of tweets. She stated “we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months”. She also gave an example of how tweets would make search better ” next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information” The above does point to a M...
More About: Updates , Twitter , Inclusion

Your Status Will Now Be Binged: Microsoft to Tie Up With Facebook and Twitt
2009-10-21 20:14:00
350 million users and billions of real time updates, that’s what Microsoft is looking to tap into through deals with Facebook and Twitter. According to All Things Digital, Microsoft will announce separate nonexclusive deals today with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate their real-time feed of status updates into the Bing search service. ATD fittingly called this a one-two punch. Who took this Punch? Google of course. While Big G has been in talks with both the social media powerhouses for a similar deal, Microsoft has cleverly leveraged on pre-existing relationships to get it first. Microsoft as almost everyone knows was an early investor in Facebook (probably a move just to keep Google off ..which is no doubt paying off now) and has also shared commercial relations with Twitter before (remember the first speculation of monetization – Exectweets). Bing had earlier bean indexing Twitter to some extent in its search results. It was nowhere near the real time indexing ...
More About: Status

Wordpress.com Becomes Mobile Friendly
2009-10-21 12:37:00
Finally! Wordpress has launched two mobile themes that will be automatically rendered when someone accesses the Wordpress blogs with a “compatible mobile phone“. These themes will be independent of the themes rendered on web browsers. It will only depend on the type of mobile phone used. According to the Official Wordpress blog, mobile devices account for over 60 million page views per month on Wordpress.com blogs. The main reason for the launch of these mobile themes is said to be the inability of the older phones to render the widget and theme heavy blogs on their browsers using ancient technology. For the advanced phones (iPhone and Android) having latest browsers, they have launched the modified version of WPtouch theme. For all other phones they have launched the advanced version of their stripped down WordPress Mobile Edition theme. Both these themes do not have a huge difference between the design and quality. The main focus is on displaying the main content as...
More About: Friendly