Facebook Moving to Answer the Quora Question

Facebook is beta-testing a product in the same space that so many giants have attacked and fallen short-a curated question-answer, which has stumped the biggest of bigs. Has it been about social scale all along?

I just clicked on an innocent-looking Facebook ad asking for beta testers. What followed was a page explaining how Facebook is launching a new product that involves getting users to ask and answer questions that will be published to Facebook as a whole.

Note: I've copied and pasted the beta user offer from Facebook at the bottom of this post. Decide for yourself if I'm reading this right.

For those with only a moderate level of tech obsession, the service I'm talking about is one in which users interact with one other, posing and answering questions that are available to all users. Sort of what user forums are for software.

Google has tried it, Yahoo has tried it, and Quora, a tech darling of the moment-which just happens to be run by former Facebook CTO Adam D'Angelo, with guidance from original Facebooker Matt Cohler-is trying it. I'm a beta tester for Quora, and have used several ask-answer type services online. A weakness has always been the scale of the user community.

We've all heard the "if Facebook were a country" statistics-or, if you haven't, here's a handy infographic, which is already two months old (click to enlarge).

I include the table above only to illustrate that if Facebook has anything, it has scale. Even considering the recent privacy hullabaloo, 80 percent of Facebook users who couldn't care less still add up to a ferociously huge user population for an ask-answer service.

Okay, okay. Yes. Google (GOOG) has scale. Yahoo (YHOO)-well, it once had scale. But both sites boast core services based on moving freely in and out of their pages. Nothing keeps users in like a walled garden.

Additionally, there is something inherently social about asking questions that early ask-answer crowd seems to have missed.

Yes, I want an expert to answer my question about how a catalytic converter works (or Wikipedia), but if I want to know how to throw the best dinner party, I am just as likely to take notes on an answer from a friend of mine who throws great parties as I am from Paula Dean. Maybe more so.

Quora realizes this. It has built out a whole social networking component to its service, and encourages you to connect the other networks you are already a part of.

But what's harder? Getting people to know one another or getting wannabe pundits to pontificate about something they are interested in-on the Internet? I know I'm an easy sell on the latter. Just ask me

Below is the copy and pasted text from Facebook's "so you wanna be a beta tester" questionnaire. Decide for yourself what it's up to.

Help us build the future of Facebook.

We at Facebook are preparing to launch a brand new product to the world. We think it will be as exciting as Facebook Photos and Facebook Events, but we need your help to make it great.

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It's up to you. You'll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people-including job recruiters. And we'll bring our best beta testers out to California to tour Facebook headquarters and meet the team.

Ready to get started?
Before we can give you exclusive beta access, we'd like you to submit three great sample questions and answers. We're looking for evidence that you can write clearly and authoritatively on familiar subject matter.

Here are some guidelines to follow when submitting your questions and answers:

Choose provocative questions. Write about things you know. Some examples:
How can I get over my fear of flying?
What are some fun family activities to do with two small children on the weekend?
What caused the U.S. stock market to crash in 2009?
What's the secret to throwing a great housewarming party?
What are the main differences between Google Chrome and Internet Explorer?
What are women looking for in a relationship?
What methods has BP tried to clean up the oil spill?
What should I do to prepare for the Bar exam?
How did The Beatles find success?
Write detailed, articulate answers.
Where relevant, cite and link to third-party sources such as Wikipedia.
Your answer must be original. Plagiarism is unacceptable.

Infographic of the Day: We're Drowning in Green Label Glut

BY Suzanne LaBarreTue May 4, 2010

The Washington Post has an infographic on the incredible number of green labels flooding the marketplace in recent years. Fair Trade, Certified Naturally Grown, Energy Star, FSC, LEED, OTCO, EPEAT.... How do you keep it all straight?

You don't. Based on a survey by the World Resources Institute, Duke University and the green analyst Big Room Inc., 600 labels worldwide dispatch some sort of eco -benchmark; 80 of those are in the United States. As the chart shows, topping the list are food (90); retail (74); buildings (64); and miscellaneous industry (79), including things like pest control. This has spawned all sorts of turf wars between environmentalists about whose label reigns supreme.

More importantly, we no longer have any easy way to tell between honest intent and greenwashing. Most certification systems aren't regulated at all, so unless you have a lot of time on your hands, it's impossible to determine which are best. Coffee that's USDA Organic or Fair Trade? Wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council or the Sustainable Forestry Initiative? Even if something has a green cert, how do you know it actually meets the standard? And with so many different labels on the books, how could you possibly keep track? Systems that were supposed to make it easier for us to consume responsibly have actually made it harder. And while rating groups like the Good Guide cut through all the B.S., there's still no obvious solution for the store shelf, where decisions are actually being made.

More on green-rating problems here and here.

For Earth Day 2010, we wanted to give you an article and a perspective that you wouldn't get anywhere else. There is no doubt that we were all bombarded today with messages to be greener, to use less, to be more eco-conscious, and to respect our Earth. But what is the underlying effect of advertising that collectively promotes The Green Brand? And has the Green Brand started to overshadow the very evil-environmental devastation-it was meant to fight to begin with? What impact does this have on the future of the Green movement and the advertising agencies and media that are its vocal advocates? These are questions we are interested in answering. So when we recently met Matthew Phillips, a Los Angeles-based writer, social media and branding expert, and the founder of a new urban microliving movement called Threshing, we were delighted to give him center stage for Earth Day to offer his insights.

What results is an intelligent, esoteric and thoughtful article entitled "Plastic Beads and Sugar Water," sure to make you re-evaluate everything you thought you knew about going green.

Earthday 40th

"Access to land provides access to food, clothing, and shelter-which means access to land provides the possibility of self-sufficiency-if anyone wants to maintain a dependent (and therefore somewhat dependable) workforce, it's crucial for you to sever their access to land. It's also crucial that you destroy wild foodstocks: why would I buy salmon from the grocery store if I could catch my dinner from the river? Now, with people having been effectively denied access to free food, clothing, and shelter, which means having been effectively denied access to self-sufficiency, if they are going to eat, they're gong to have to buy their food, which means they're going to have to go to work to get the cash to buy what they need to survive. If you're a corporation, you've got them where you want them." -What We Leave Behind.

"We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization."
Al Gore

The central orgainizing principle for civilization is love among its people, not rescuing the environment. The environment will follow, not the other way around.

I have a great deal of admiration for our original permaculture engineers, the American Indians, all grass fed bison advocates. Looking back, we can't imagine how naive or gullible they were to accept fire-water, plastic beads and useless trinkets in exchange for their healthy animals, fresh fruits and vegetables, consulting knowledge, and land-whose value is incalculable. Interestingly, here we are 518 years later, and we've all been duped into giving up our valuables for well marketed sugar water, and filtered tap… in plastic bottles.

Too Many Plastic Bottles

After 1492 the American colonization effort was dominated by the European nations. In the 19th century alone, 50 million people left Europe for the Americas with 'old world' diseases, and a manifesto to massacre, obliterating 42 million American Indians. Everything changed; the landscape, population, plant and animal life. A few pioneers with rebel attitudes proved they could kill, conquer, and dominate an entire people and their land. What have we learned? When you deprive a group of people access to their land, you dominate and control their self-sufficiency, and ultimately their sustainability.

Earth Day was designed from its inception, April 22, 1970, to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. Like all successful grassroots movements, Earth Day continues to self-organize and experiences annual growth. Over the years, it has propagated thousands of related causes or brands. This celebration gives us the opportunity to contemplate how to purchase food and drink that are produced locally through natural, sustainable methods. Whether we graze together, or barbecue grass-fed bison, I anticipate that many foodborne conversations will thresh organic ideas that seed new urban backyard businesses, and energize sustainable causes.

In fact, in this past year, we have witnessed local production and sustainable social causes grab the wheel from the generic "Green" brand. 'Local and sustainable' terms have the potential to drive significant impact in helping redefine a movement whose banding terminology is arguably out-of-focus. The Green goal has not achieved our Garden of Eden fantasy. Many generic Green causes have become distracted watching, and often joining, the fight against their 'evil,' instead of cultivating community and encouraging positive purposeful action. We've seen new Green causes sprout through PR dusting designed to crowd out similar already established causes. There's nothing wrong with competition, seeking a bigger audience, news, press, and ultimately funding, but often the next new Green cause articulates greater Green evils in an attempt to further establish its reason to rally. This problem is churned up further with traditional reports broadcasting emotionally charged sound bites. Reporters often don't take the effort to dig past the easy emotional approach, and into the rich cream of the cause itself. It is much easier to philosophize about the negative, which can feed our illusion of intellectual superiority, but it's really keeping our callus-free hands from getting dirty planting GM-free maze in the garden and producing oxygen. "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves," said Carl Jung.

A great brand seeks to unify in a cyclical system: Magnetizing believers, educating, generating action, and finally producing evangelists, who then magnetize new believers and so on. Memorable brands are most effective when they are communicating their power and concept through story. At its most basic, a brand's story is made up of the hero, (relating to the brand's reputation and hopefully positive recognition), and its evil, (the perception of what hinders recognition of the brand). Clarifying the adversaries of the brand can help to 'rally the troops,' codifying their cause and movement. Without an adversary, it's often difficult to get enough of a rouse from fellow partners to get anything started.

Every great brand needs an evil to fight, but Green's evil has metastasized into the most unimaginable catastrophe that no cause could ever compete against-an over heating planet. Since it doesn't get much worse than a gooey globe due to our ongoing abuse, this heat enemy seemed guaranteed to become THE unifying force, an evil that we could all fight together to overcome. The problem is the scope is too large to control or confine. It has mutated. Proving global warming has the potential to fracture the green community, and along the way has produced a number of serious critics. Terms like 'climategate,' and climate skeptics like Doug Keenan, continue to look at research they say is embellished to promote climate change. Maybe worshiping the over heating demon has made the 'Green' brand seem boring compared to the excitement of the fight. Google never defined its "Don't be Evil," last minute tag, which is part of the reason it continues to generate conversations across the board. Google has essentially allowed all of us to insert our own definitions of evil, which in effect has unified greater numbers to their brand. A very novel approach.

GOOGLE Dont be Evil

If the evil of a brand consistently gains more press than the cause, then the evil assumes and replicates the identity of the brand. When this happens, the brand is no longer the host. When the evil forcefully sucks all the nourishment from the brand's beating heart, then the evil we were fighting becomes the cause. We feel more comfortable with our fingers on the keyboard dealing intellectually with evil, which in effect, removes our foot from the shovel of physical, sweaty action. Do we want to get back to the heart of the brand, the original cause? Harley Davidson, once perceived as the brand of choice for rebels and tattooed ex-cons, re-branded itself and become the hog of choice for everyone who could scrape together enough money, regardless of prison experience, body type, tattoo placement, or gender. Even our kids wear official HD branded fashion with pride.

If we stop promoting the evils, real or manufactured, and start encouraging positive actions and solutions, (often positive action is the best offense against perceived evil anyway) we'll find passionate people that want to join us in healing our people and planet. The strategic approach to refresh a brand is extremely important if it is to succeed. Digitally empowered consumers want to punish those that don't behave in a socially responsible way and reward those that do. Social media has given people real power to act, and also to be negative. "Social media is inherently more negative than a positive medium on many levels," said David Jones, the global chief executive of Havas Worldwide. "Lots of stuff that is passed around is negative. If you are a brand or a company today you should be far less worried about broadcast regulations than digitally empowered consumers."

Many will continue to base their directive on creating new enemies, using 'the fight' to impassion those around them to rally their cause. "Stop depleting the ozone layer, reduce your carbon footprint, global warming. All grand Green, but terminology that is technically fear-focused. We've heard the pitch: "It is your investment of $59.95 that allows us to partner together to fight this injustice." The fear based, negative approach is almost always wrong, (unfortunately, it can be effective) . It's a slippery slope, and those who don't fully embrace the creed, are either stamped 'stupid,' or ostracized. But sustainability should be positive at its core. There is a time to debate, and we've debated ourselves into the greatest recession any of us have ever experienced. It's time to stop debating.

Let's begin by forming communities that build sustainable ventures together. If we are fighting, or politicking, we are not building. "We have become divided into so-called red and blue states, an outcome directly traceable to the urban-rural division of our society. This is something of a simplification, but food producers and their social allies tend to vote red and food consumers and their social allies tend to vote blue. The division is thought to be between conservative and liberal philosophies, but it much more reflects the difference between rural and urban values," said Gene Logsdon.

There are two real challenges within the sustainability movement:

1) Consumers' decisions (especially with food) are splintered by: A) Convenience, B) Tradition, C) Bias, and D) Beliefs.
2) Industry's "manufactured demand" is affecting consumers with: A) Deceptive advertising, B) Ambiguous terminology, C) Perfectly designed plastic convenience packaging sealing our addictive lifestyles.

The minute we wake up we are subjected to an eco-plastic, part of this complete breakfast, 100% edible, industrialized high fructose corn syrup, brand campaign. Industrialized conveyor belts are pumping out a marketing product of starch coated with refined sugar. We can reignite our camaraderie by producing fruits, vegetables, animals and vehicles that not only compete, but surpass, our current available choices; all sponsored of course by our very green desire for sustainability. Incidentally, the average number of 'green' products per store almost doubled between 2007 and 2008. Green advertising almost tripled between 2006 and 2008. Does this necessarily mean we are heading in the right direction?

Governmental regulations for consumer protection in industrial food processing plants have only added to an already over stressed food system. This industrialized hyper-efficiency has caused diseases in animals and bugs on crops that have been taken so far out of their natural ecosystem that they can no longer produce without heavy use of antibiotics and pesticides. These measures, of course, were designed to keep us safe, but instead have become another major concern since "packaged nourishment" comes from the industrialized, often treated, food system.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, is largely considered to be the first creative activist endeavor within the food production industry. Its revelations of horrors and regulatory failures in Chicago's meatpacking plants resulted in direct laws that govern food processing in the United States to this day.

Creatives are beginning to find and tell the stories concerning the overly subsidized and industrialized food and distribution system which favors use of pesticides and antibiotics. Since the government historically is not very good at spearheading movements, artists (media pioneers, authors) and social entrepreneurs will continue to fill this leadership role. We don't have to look far to see powerful results. Thank the documentary filmmakers of Food Inc., Supersize Me, HomeGrown, The Future of Food, Story of Stuff Bottled Water, for helping us become visually aware of how industries have been deceiving consumers and themselves in their interest of greed and everyone's desire for convenience. But there is hope, and it's simple. Consumers are communicating online like never before, this leads to uniting together to strategically direct where we spend our hard earned bread and where we plant or raise our own food.

Jamie OliverJamie Oliver's new TV series, The Food Revolution, has exposed the frozen fat underbelly of pre-packaged (brown and gold) foods, and government charts that officially dictate the clogging of our kids in school. Local and "real" food production and consumption has become a legitimate genre, with universities, and high schools requiring reading of titles like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, Bill McKibben's Deep Economy, among others. These authors are helping us move past intellectual reasoning and into action. Since Timothy Ferriss taught us how to achieve a four hour work week, some of us among the fortunate now have the extra time to plant some seeds, water, and grow great big vegetables, and share them with our friends and neighbors.

I believe that in the next decade we will see less of an emphasis on extrinsic, materialistic values and more on intrinsic, spiritual values. This shift in emphasis will begin to bear fruit with the collaborative grafting between creative media pioneers and social entrepreneurs who seek to disrupt the status-quo. Research from San Francisco State University has shown that experiences bring people more happiness than material possessions. Experiences shared with others continue to provide even greater happiness through memories long after the event occurred. I believe many social entrepreneurs and creative media pioneers, in their hearts, believe their core purpose is to encourage our return to a sustainable world ecosystem. In other words, many will forgo Hummer-sized riches in order to nurture the successful adoption of their creations into society. There remains however ambiguity in the complexity that lies between the producer and the consumer. The ancient system of distribution gives middlemen the leverage to manipulate both producers and consumers. This too is evolving, as producers return to their roots and begin to distribute locally. There is change in the air, spring is coming.

We are at such a nascent stage in the evolution of the sustainable movement. The infrastructure necessary for the modern city to relocate to the farm is exorbitant, but the farm is beginning to integrate into the metropolis, one yard at a time. 'Off the grid' produces many wonderful connotations. It is an adventurous subject, one that I'm convinced will help propel this branding conversation forward. I wonder who else is discussing the connections of the ideas from this article, and from the authors and media pioneers mentioned? Who are the artisans, and social entrepreneurs that are working on this? Very curious about your thoughts. Please don't hesitate to email me, and please act.

Let's continue to find new ways to unify this brand with wonderful heart felt stories about the adventures of locally produced products, urban farms, and sustainability.

Writing this has given me a renewed appreciation for early American Indian cave drawn stories of food: adventure, and victory. There is more there than I had imagined.

Matthew Phillips is a media producer, writer and technologist working in Los Angeles, CA. He is the producer of social media for social good Threshing.

Published ScriptPHD

Published Purple State of Mind

The concept of Q&A (questions and answers) on the web is nothing new. Although it probably started on IRC - one of the first 'chat' concepts, it quickly evolved into a more specialized concept, molding into forums, and evolving towards the still relatively new Question and Answer sites.

Websites like Yahoo! Answers and Blurtit have filled a market niche, where the clueless are paired with amateur professionals.

But the creators of Blurtit believed the potential of Q&A was still being underestimated. Rather than just a single niche - the mainstream audience targeted by Answers and Blurtit - they saw a need for more specialized groups. Especially the most wayward and atypical communities could make use of such a Q&A platform.

Qhub

Qhub, developed by the Blurtit guys, is such a platform. It can be used by anyone to create their own highly customized Q&A sites to handle visitor questions and answers. Even you can, and in a matter of minutes. Right now, those sites are still hosted locally by Qhub, but even so, they can be easily integrated with other, existing sites.

In general, Qhub looks a lot like the mainstream Q&A sites, with a few remarkable differences. For starters, Qhub lets you choose between a public, or private community. For the more tech-savvy amongst us, Qhub also features a developer API.

How To Create Your Own Q&A Site

So how do you create a Q&A site like that? It's very easy, and hardly takes longer than creating an email address. We'll walk you through the process.

On the Qhub site, start by naming your hub, and picking a suitable URL. You'll be redirected to the page pictured above. If necessary, you can change the name, but also supply relevant tags and a tagline.

Remember we talked about a private option? Here you'll be able to choose between community- or personal Q&A. The latter one ensures that you can only answer questions yourself. Next, you can make your hub public or private, where only invited people can join in.

These hubs are highly customizable, and it isn't too hard to make them fit in with an existing site or brand identity. There are four main themes, and you can specify the color scheme of each. More importantly, you can also upload custom background and header pictures.

Adding questions at this stage is optional, but it gets your site running and looks a lot better than lorem ipsum. With the tags specified at the start, Qhub will look for matching existing questions, which you can add with a flick of the mouse. Adjust the tags to look for better matching questions. Surprisingly, I was even able to find a number of questions for my dummy Q&A concept.

The last step, also optional, allows you to invite people from your email address book, and pair your hub with Facebook and Twitter.

You can proceed by adding more questions, aggregate an audience, or work on your website integration.

http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation/

Carnegie Mellon assistant professor of entertainment and technology, Jesse Schell, presented at the DICE Summit. His topic addressed the issue of where games are heading, beyond consoles and beyond even the current gaming phenomenon, Facebook's FarmVille.

Authenticity is the hook behind FarmVille and others. The leading trend is games "busting through reality."

Since I'm in Park City, a day before the 2010 Sundance Film Festival officially begins, I thought I'd do a round-up of the films I'm most looking forward to this year at the festival. Attending Sundance, you have to put a list together of the movies you want to see the most. Sometimes you're lucky and you pick something that becomes the buzz of the fest - Super Size Me, Little Miss Sunshine, Rocket Science

Read more: Peter's 18 Most Anticipated Films of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival | /Film http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/01/21/peters-18-most-anticipated-films-of-the-2010-sundance-film-festival/#ixzz0dGnWLb8n

Swoopo Rakes it in - but does its Users?

Review & Guide to Swoopo.Com - an Auction Website

How it Works - For a user to bid on Swoopo, they must first pre-purchase their bids. They come at a price of $0.75 a pop. On a given item auction, users may place one of their bids and the auction price of the item will increase by $0.15, or, in the case of a penny auction, increase by $0.01. Once an additional bid is tacked to an item, the timer on the item will increase up to a maximum of 20 seconds. However, once an item reaches the final seconds of an auction, the timer will max out at 10 or 15 seconds no matter how many bids are made in the final time frame (though, this does imply that an item could be in its 'last 10 seconds' for over 24 hours).

Swoopo Rakes it in - but does its Users? Swoopo is indeed, for its owners, a simple profit-machine which nearly always will generate revenue. So long as the winning bid on a given item is one-sixth its retail price, Swoopo will net a profit. The calculation is simple: Say an item costs $1050 retail, and bidding will end at $175. Every time an item is bid on at Swoopo the price of the auction increases by $0.15. Dividing $175 by $0.15 means 1167 bids were made. Each of these bids cost a user $0.75. This means Swoopo will receive 1167 x $0.75 from bids ($875), and $175 from the user who won the auction.

This calculation, however, assumes Swoopo sells the item for 1/6 retail price. This is rarely the case as items typically will almost always surpass or come close to 50% retail.

Swoopo has in the past even sold Cash as an auction item, where users would bid on a lump sum of money. For a user, the benefits of Swoopo are questionable. Certainly, some users will get off lucky, only making a few bids at an item and snagging it at well under retail price. Unfortunately, the vast majority of bidders will end up losing an item, with some using upwards of a few hundred bids. Even in the case that a user wins an item a savings may not have been had. After totaling the cost of bids, the cost of the final auction price, and the cost of shipping the item, some bidders end up spending more on the item than if they walked into their local Best Buy or Game Stop and purchased it on the spot. Though I have never "Swoopo'd " personally, I do personally know friends who have, and I would like to give a word of advice to readers: Friends don't let friends Swoopo. Though there are deals to be had, the only people I see really raking in the big bucks are the owners of Swoopo: Entertainment Shopping EG.

Entertainment shopping sure is gaining in popularity. (source pennyauctionwatch)

Winnit International, Inc.
Suite 1, Mec Complex
Avenue D'Ahora
Providence, Mahe
Seychelles

Congratulations to the winner "chazza" of Winnit's lowest unique bid auction for a 2010 Porsche Cayman, the winning bid was $17.10. This would mean that there were at least 1,710 bids (at $4 per bid) placed on the auction.

There are now testimonials posted http://www.winnit.com/testimonial.php.

Once members have placed a bid, Winnit will inform them whether their bid is (1) unique and/or (2) the lowest. Based on this, Winnit will provide hints for the next bid in order to help users guess the lowest, unmatched amount on the same product. Each auction has a set fee-per-bid ranging from $1 to $4 depending on the product. Members may bid multiple times in any auction, but please note that the bid fee applies to each individual bid.

If a single Lowest Unique Bid has not been received by the close of an auction then the winner is determined by the lowest bid amount that has been placed by exactly two members. The member that placed this bid amount first will be deemed the winner. If an auction does not have a bid amount that exactly two members have placed then Winnit will find the bid amount that three users have bid and apply the same rules.

Winnit winners are notified of their prize within 12 hours of an auction's close in order to account for the reconciliation of bids and the auditing of results when necessary.

How to get started:

• Create a user account
• Select an auction to bid on
• Place your bid (bid fees are listed by product)
• Winnit will immediately inform you of the status of your bid and let you know whether or not you have guessed the lowest, unique amount. Remember to press the refresh button to update the status on your bids
• You will be updated on the status of your bids by e-mail and may also view auction status on your "My Account" page
• At the close of an auction, if your bid remains tagged as the Lowest Unique Bid, you will be notified of your win by email with instructions on how to proceed!

Note from WINNIT on facebook: ouch.

Winnit.com Hi guys! We are truly sorry about the delays in shipping! Due to sickness we are behind on deliveries. We are working around the clock to get items out before the 16th of december so you will have them before christmas! Again, we are truly sorry about this, but please do no worry about the legitimacy of Winnit. Everyon...

Looking for lists of the new auctions, I found this blog. Most refer to these as Penny Auctions.

The sites started in Europe years ago: Bidster.com in the UK and Fiksuhuuto in Finland, along with Swoopo and http://telebid.wordpress.com

Another article is listed at: Associated Content Penny Auction Sites - Deal of the Century or Scam of the Century?

http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com/

Here is a big list: http://www.pennyauctiontraffic.com/

Penny Auctions are a new type of auction where users can get fantastic deals on brand new items. The catch is that each bid costs a little bit of money - typically under $1.00. You have to be the last bidder on the auction when the time runs out. Each bid that is placed raises the price of the auction by a penny and extends the time by a few seconds. Hence the name, penny auction.

Penny auctions are fun and exciting, and it is possible to sometimes score a great deal. However, you have to be careful because there are many sites which are dishonest or simply fraudulent. This list contains penny auction sites which have been checked out and are legitimate.

http://www.swoopo.com/
One of the oldest sites around. Hard to win anything, but lots of products. Slow. Same auctions run in multiple countries, which means you are competing with people from all over the world.

http://www.bidrodeo.com/
A well designed and professionally run penny auction site. Fast with fantastic customer support. Not too bid, Not as many users means less competition and higher chances of winning.

http://www.rockybids.com/ Founded in New York City
Lots of free bids and a few products. Kind of slow, but one of the leaders. Good customer support.

http://www.zoozle.com/
A crazy name and descent product selection. Not too pretty, but honest and professional.

http://www.bidcactus.com/
A promising site but it seems all that they sell is small items, bid packs, and low-value gift cards.

http://www.gobid.com/
Not as quick or pretty as some of the others, but worth a look. They sell mostly small items but are known to be legit, which is a lot to say compared to other sites not on this list.

http://www.bidstick.com/
bidstick focuses exclusively on high end Electronics, luxury goods and high ticket items. "We're in the process of adding convertible cars, jewelry and even vacation packages" says Keven Moore marketing director.
BidStick is a mid-sized auction site and does offer an varied product selection. It is one of the quicker sites on this list. Based in Miami, Florida.

http://www.bidray.com/
One of the biggest problems with this site is the annoying guy who walks onto your screen whenever you visit. Besides that, a descent site with a nice products.

http://www.junglecents.com/
This is slightly different take on the penny auction model. Instead of paying per bid, you pay per seat. Once all the seats are full, the auction runs and the last person to bid wins. Unfortunately, the auctions do not run very often.

http://www.prestigebids.com

http://www.bidntime.com

http://www.bidito.com

http://www.pennypurses.com/

A niche penny auction site dedicated to what women love most - purses. Designer bags can be yours for only a few bucks, if you can bid smarter than the competition.
Penny auctions are fun and exciting, and it is possible to sometimes score a great deal.
However, you have to be careful because there are many sites which are dishonest or simply fraudulent. This list contains penny auction sites which have been checked out and are legitimate.

by Andrew Roos

http://bigdeal.com seems to be the newest entry that hopes to avoid upsetting auction losers too much.

http://www.dfwbid.com

Noticed that Swoopo.com has also changed it's policy as well.

Bidzilla was taken down, and should be back up soon.

Wisedeal the wildcard.

http://www.quibids.com the guys from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Bidfire in Los Angeles

www.bidraptor.com

http://www.gobid.com winners a choice between receiving the item they won or receiving the full retail value in additional bids.

http://www.zoozle.com/ Rocky Point, NY

TechDirt

Turning The Dollar Auction Into A Profit Center

from the human-psychology-at-work dept

On my very first day of econ 101 as a freshman in college many, many years ago, my professor played a "game" with two students in the class in order to demonstrate how incentives can lead to bad outcomes for everyone. He held up a dollar, and told each student that they were competing to "buy" the dollar. However, rather than a standard auction, both parties had to pay whatever their final bid was. Thus, even the loser has to pay. This leads to screwed up incentives, where things quickly spiral out of control. At first, one student will bid a penny, and of course the other student will bid 2 pennies. In both of their minds, it makes sense to bid up to $1 to get $1 back. Except... once you hit $1, the other student doesn't want to lose, knowing he's going to pay out without getting anything back -- so the bidding zooms past $1, with both participants knowing that they're going to lose money, but wanting to "win" in order to make sure they don't lose as much as the other one. In the end, the only one who makes out well is the econ professor who collects the money from both students and only has to pay back one dollar. I think in my year, he ended up making $3 or $4 before the students gave up, realizing things were only going to get worse. This is apparently a popular exercise in a number of econ classes, called the Dollar Auction.

However, it looks like some enterprising or evil students who played (or observed) that game have decided to build a startup on the same principle, where they (of course) play the role of the econ professor, and everyone else becomes the suckers who are eventually forced to overbid to minimize their losses. Tom sends in a link to a description of how swoopo works, and it sounds very much like the dollar auction. Basically, you purchase "bids" and each bid you place increases the purchase price of an auction and extends the auction a little longer. In other words, everyone keeps paying, hoping that they'll eventually get the "good" offered for sale at lower than face price. But, of course, like the dollar auction, because of the competition, the incentives get set so that people are likely to keep spending to get something back for their bids, rather than nothing at all. Swoopo is slightly more insidious in that the "price" of the item increases at less than the cost per bid, such that the price of the item stays lower than its list price for a long time, even though many people bid on it. That creates a scenario, as described in the post, where users of the site end up shelling out a grand total of $1,125.90 to the company, for an 8GB iPod Touch that lists at $229. Most of the bidders end up with nothing... and only one got the Touch for $187.65 plus whatever money he spent on bids.

While you have to be impressed with the sheer obnoxiousness of the business model, you have to wonder how long it can last, once people start to realize that the only winner is the company itself, and most of the "buyers" turn out to be big, big losers. The dollar auction works great if you play it once... or if you can keep finding suckers. If the suckers recognize that they're suckers, things dry up quickly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SssNmt0vQyI&feature=player_embedded

http://augmentedr3pt0.wordpress.com/category/thesis-research-basis/

augmented reality & branding

The Branded World:

Brand development is about how to exploit timed strategies in order to optimize awareness, based on impactful presentation and experiential impressions.

Tools in technology such as the Internet are only a reflection of a brand's growth. Such an immediate and simple feed of information is vital in showing the influence of marketing moves, and provide businesses with the room to go back and think about their position in the market to better plan their next move. A website and its traffic is a reflection of how effective the brand is in terms of generating curiosity among population, for people to visit and find out more about the brand.

We are in an era that is integrated with technology. Thus, it makes sense to intuitively tap into new generation method and strategies, which are more in tune with current, urban city events/movements as well as moving forward with web based information.

Also due to the global shift in the fundamental ways we communicate. Major companies are all attempting to fit the web 2.0 cultures to their business. Changing their brand image by creating a persona on the web, which is friendlier and more approachable, for people to follow up on the company activities. This shift ultimately marks a new beginning for in our social dynamics. Since web technologies revolutionized the oldest and most trusted ways of spreading news and information, which is by word of mouth, As 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, it means that the role of "mavens" as suggested in "The Tipping Point" will evolve to a new form through applications in digital social media. Instead of finding news, news will come to you. Thus, looking back at the current platform for augmented reality, the technologies have yet to include the social media and real-time networking capabilities.

In today's world, the online and real time events must run parallel with each other in order to optimize real-time awareness and "follow ups" on the business. Looking in parallel with the emerging trends in technologies. The world is moving towards digital live feed/conversation on a p2p level. Google wave is one of such development, which will revolutionize communication between a person and his/her social network. The concept of Identity 2.0 on the other hand, helps legitimize an individual's identity between organization and individuals, and would enable personalized assistance, transaction, and many applicable services.

What this all means is that, in the near future. The relationship between corporations and individuals should evolve around the user, possibly adding to the idea of a personalized friend's list, where the user is given the choice of "who" to connect with in selective locations and time zones. Information is then fed through and edited live, while simultaneously organized by location, which causes a reverse of the current model in service consumption. The brand or service should follow and bombard the user with information and assistance, only at the user's own will to be susceptible to the bombardment. By doing so it would maximize the brand/service mavens potential to promote services and assist others. Therefore, other than being able to view a listing of location based information overlaying reality vision such as wikitude and yelp reviews. The user can chose to appear online to an organization whenever they are in need. For instance, if a person is looking for real estate, they can choose to connect with a trusted real estate company or agent in a location that interest their buying and would be able to get real time recommendation and listings based on their whereabouts and criteria; they would also be guided to exact locations using augmented reality. Similarly, the user can get taxi cab, delivery, and participate in meetings more easily simply because the person/organization at the other end of the connection is sharing your whereabouts and current status. On the other hand, people may also seek medical help in times of emergency and connect with doctors real time to assess the best possible action to take. In a sense it is about creating an instance of common mind, or shared vision between a person and another person on the network, or between a person and an organization on a network. This development should also translate the online experience to real life, and improve the overall service experience in many ways.

During the days when most people were not as active on the Internet, magazines and books were the main source. READ MORE.

The Irony of the Video Business -

Has anyone else noticed the irony that Redbox, a company that rents DVDs for a dollar from a kiosk that people have to drive to, is the most disruptive force in the video business ?

Or the irony that the most successful video delivery business, Netflix, makes almost all of their money shipping DVDs in red envelopes from distribution centers across the country ?

Or that even with the dominance of Apple's Itunes, they only account for about 1/3 of music sales, in an industry that is becoming less dependent on music sales.

I'm not suggesting anyone run out and start a video sales and rental store, or open up a record store. But then again, I never would have agreed that opening up kiosks in 7-11s and Grocery Stores to rent DVDs for a dollar would be a good idea either.

On the flipside, conventional wisdom says that the most disruptive and dominant force in video is youtube.com . In reality, they are just a very large online media company doing business in the most old fashioned of means. They license and aggregate content and then sell advertisers their viewers. They are big, which by definition makes them a force. However, there is absolutely nothing disruptive about what they do. They are no different than Broadcast Networkz on Television.

They have the same problem as Networks like NBC, ABC, CBS.

At some point, when online video consumption reaches 100pct penetration, like Broadcast TV before it, Youtube will have to find a way to license hit shows so that they can build or just retain viewership. With advertising as their single revenue stream (as opposed to subscription revenue like cable networks have ), they may find themselves once again being subsidized by Google just a few short years after they reach the profitability they covet.

The sweet irony in comparing Google/Youtube to Broadcast Network TV, is that despite being online, Google has no idea who their viewers are any more than NBC, CBS, ABC do. Could Facebook Connect be in Google's future ?

The point is that when everyone is looking in one direction, sometimes industry change and profits can come from where everyone is telling you not to look

ShareThis

[Mark Cuban]

Check Twitter for Bargains

By JONNELLE MARTE

Businesses from your preferred airline to your favorite cafe are using Twitter to trumpet last-minute discounts and giveaways. You, too, can get looped in to these immediate and often exclusive deals.

Users of the social network (Twitter.com) can sign up to "follow" stores or clubs they like. Messages, or "tweets," from businesses, like those from individual users, are limited to 140 characters.

The best bargains, such as free meals at your local diner or cross-country flights for less than $20, may be gone in a few hours.

"For people that are on the go all the time, this is a great way to find the deal and it might be the only way to find a deal," said Hillary Mendelsohn, who uses Twitter to find bargains for her Web site, thepurplebook.com, an online shopping guide.

Find your favorite businesses by using the search or "Find People" tools on Twitter.com. A quick search for a key phrase like "deals to Vegas" or "cheap laptops" will also yield a stream of messages, which you can then re-post to share with other users or keep to yourself -- you don't have to post tweets to take advantage of these deals.

Stick to brands and names you trust to avoid scams and be wary of imposters, since Twitter is still developing a verification process for users who register well-known names.

LivingSocial Takes Top Spot Among Facebook Apps

After months of being the top Facebook application, Causes, which lets individuals and tiny groups raise money for charities and non-profits, has been bumped to the No. 2 spot.

if ( show_doubleclick_ad && ( adTemplate & SKY_LEFT ) == SKY_LEFT ) { placeAd('ARTICLE',commercialNode,3,'',true) ; }

Couple of years back, around this same time when Twitter was launched, most of the major search engines have started to think about the idea of 'real-time' results and include a 'freshness' factor to the results returned for some of the queries that are performed on their search engines. Twitter is both more and less than a search engine, but there are lots of third parties doing search-like things around the Twitter data. Especially because Twitter search seems to be returning real time search results.

Real Time Search Engines:

Real-time searches are more valuable because it lets you know what's happening right now on any given topic. Companies use it to handle customer services. News junkies use it to follow political events. With this increase in demand for real time searches many new real time search engines like collecta, crowdeye have been launched over the last few months.

This new generation of emerging search engines are ready to compete with the big boys to tap into the torrent of tweets, blog postings and online photos that can be captured by cell phones. Below are some of the real-time search engines that allow you to take a deep look as what's going right now.

• Collecta - scours the net for the most recent blog posts, news stories, tweets and comments and displays them in a continuous waterfall. It's a torrent of information to keep track of.

• Crowdeye - currently a twitter only search engine, it gives you results from tweets and retweets including graphs, charts and relevant third party links.

• OneRiot - is a bookmarking site for twitter. Users share tweets that contain URLs to web pages and this site keeps track and returns search results based on topics. This is a really great way to discover some new sites related to subjects and you can interact with the twitter shares right from the site by replying to or retweeting good stuff you find.

• Topsy - lots of stats when you search including the a collection of authors by volume for each topic you are trending. Really like this to find people who are very active around a topic or who are your best retweeters.

• Scoopler - aggregates and organizes content shared on the Internet instantaneously, similar to eye-witness reports of breaking news, with photos and videos from the events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. Indexing live updates from Twitter, Flickr, Digg and Delicious, they are able to surface some of the most relevant results, updated in real-time.

Users needs Realtime Searches

As the current trend on the web is towards more and more real-time information, the race is on to collect, organize, and filter the data so that people can actually may sense of it. Real-time search is one of the hottest mini Web trend out there right now, promising new ways to help users tease out current information they want from the digital information glut. The ability to seek out what everyone is discussing or looking for in the moment captures the imagination.

Even Google made its counter-move to real time search, by coming out with a new set of feature called 'Search Options', which gives users the option to filter out certain results and only see content that is only a particular number of days old, ie. 1 day, 1 week, 1 year. This has been clearly reflected from the words of Google's co-founder Larry Page:

"I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real time search. At first, my team laughed and did not believe me. Now they know they have to do it. Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about realtime."

And as you all know when the news broke that Michael Jackson had died Twitter was able to deliver better relevant results. On the other hand, Google thought MJ died at age 65 in 2007 and sometimes later it was able to show only the "We are Sorry Page"!

Google Results showing Michael Jackson died at age 65

So I conclude saying that unless Google take actions on this real time search issues(which was at one time a laughable concept), it will be hard for them to with stand their position, so I hope soon Google will overcome this issue. And I can also sense the launches of more real time search engines in the future with this growing demand for it.

Update:

Hmmm not to much of my surprise, now the Microsoft's new release Bing also have joined the race for real time searches. Sources from Bing said as follows:

"There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We've been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space. Today we're unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres. This includes Tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest.

Starting later today, when you search for these folks names in association with Twitter, you'll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing's search results. For example, if you type "Kara Swisher Twitter" or "Kara Swisher Tweets" or even "@karaswisher" as your search query, you'll see something like the below. (Note this feature will be rolling out gradually over the course of the next few hours so you may not see it right away.)"

By Scott Collins
June 16, 2008

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/16/entertainment/et-channel16

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/11/business/fi-ct-hulu11

Hulu's tug of war with TV

As online TV viewership surges, media companies reconsider the wisdom of sharing their content for free.

By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Meg James

Online video site Hulu trumpeted its ascension to the media big time a few months back with a dash of sardonic humor. In its debut TV commercial, in which Alec Baldwin mocks the audience's addiction to the very shows he creates as a fictional network executive, the site calls itself "an evil plot to destroy the world."

The joke is uneasily close to the truth for some in the television business.

Once dismissed as "Clown Co." by Silicon Valley critics who scoffed at the notion that old media giants could ever harness the Internet, the website with a name that sounds like a Hawaiian dance has quickly upset the status quo. Hulu's traction with users has entrenched entertainment companies worried that the video site's runaway success could undercut the financial underpinnings of the industry.

Those companies are fighting back, and the result could mean no more free passes for many signature cable programs that appear on Hulu.

NBC Universal and News Corp. publicly launched Hulu a little more than a year ago as a gamble on television's digital future. The website allows viewers to watch thousands of episodes of TV shows for free, from current hits like "Family Guy" and "The Office" to old favorites like "WKRP in Cincinnati" and "I Dream of Jeannie." Hulu's simple design, expansive catalog and no cover charge have elevated it to one of the most popular websites for watching video.

With 42 million viewers in March -- an audience nearly twice the size of TV's most popular show, Fox's "American Idol" -- Hulu whizzed past Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, and is now nipping at the heels of Google's YouTube.

"Hulu has certainly exceeded all of our expectations," said Jean-Briac Perrette, NBC Universal's president of digital distribution. "We've come a long way from Clown Co."

Late last month, Walt Disney Co. overcame its initial skepticism and signed on as an equity owner of Hulu, which has nearly 150 content partners. That gives the video site even more star power with the addition of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," and cable hits such as ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and Disney Channel's "Wizards of Waverly Place."

"Our feeling is that -- and some of this is instinct, by the way -- media consumption online is growing and will continue to grow," Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger said in a call last week with analysts who grilled him about Hulu. "It is really important for us to establish ourselves there."

But in making a bid for the next generation of Internet- attuned viewers, Hulu's owners have strained their lucrative relationships with cable and satellite operators. Companies like Time Warner Cable Inc. and DirecTV Group Inc. pay cable networks billions of dollars each year to carry programming. Believing that they should have exclusivity because their payments support the enormous cost of producing TV shows, such companies have been pushing back against the Hulu freebies.

Investors also are wary that the media companies' embrace of the Internet-content-should-be-

I've seen a few CRAZY media pitches over the years....
I would be inclinded to create a TV show where would be creatives attempt to pitch their MEDIA PROPERTIES (FILM, TV, BOOKS, WEB SITES, GAMES) etc. The follow-up would be fascinating. Was the concept shelved, did it get picked up by a few stars, who is attaching themselves to it?

Matthew Phillips

By Hillary Canada

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/05/22/oh-the-shark-has-pretty-t...

It's hard enough to pitch a business plan to hurried venture capitalists. Try doing it on camera in front of millions of people to five wealthy business people who aren't afraid to show their pointy teeth.

That's the premise behind Shark Tank, a new reality television series from Mark Burnett coming this fall, ABC announced this week.

The concept of pitching a business to potential investors isn't all that new for reality TV. ABC ran two seasons of American Inventor, which gave entrepreneurs $50,000 to improve their products, with the shot of winning "$1,000,000 worth of business support, entrepreneurial counsel, physical resources, and prize money." And last year, VentureWire covered the launch of a whole mess of these TV shows including Wall Street Warriors, Bobby G: Adventure Capitalist, and Start-Up Junkies, all of which sought to capture the drama behind high-stakes investing. AOL even got in on the action, creating an on-line series called The StartUp.

In fact the concept for Shark Tank, like all craze-inducing franchises (think American Idol, The Office and The Beatles), originally debuted in the U.K. under the moniker Dragons' Den.

But either way, we're interested to see what Burnett, who gave the world Survivor and The Apprentice, has in store for us. If Shark Tank follows the Dragons' Den model, we're eager to see the kind of pitches fledgling business owners can give in three minutes or less. We're also looking forward to the investors fighting one another for the right to fund top-tier ideas. Would it be too much to hope for another Omarosa?

The five "Sharks" are entrepreneurs-turned multi-millionaires: Barbara Corcoran, a Manhattan real estate titan; Kevin Harrington, an infomercials producer (think Flobee and Magic Saw); Robert Herjavec, a Canadian technology executive; Daymond John, owner of clothing company FUBU The Collection; and Kevin O'Leary, a Canadian entrepreneur and investor.

Here's the link to the casting call if you want to appear on the show.

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Tuesdays get going with Burnett's "Shark Tank" reality series, where budding entrepreneurs try to talk millionaires (billionaires?) out of their money to finance bright ideas. The "Dancing" results show follows at 9 p.m. and a Jerry Bruckheimer drama about amateur detectives who try to solve the deaths of unknown victims, "The Forgotten," airs at 10 p.m.

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UK version Dragons Den:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzcQtXA5Gc8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu0QifxOGvs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tc6-vSYIMk SPOOF

ABC orders Mark Burnett pilot

September 04, 2008 The network has handed out a pilot order to the unscripted project, an adaptation of the Japanese reality format "Dragon's Den." Sony Pictures TV is producing the show, which features aspiring entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to moguls, aka the "Sharks," in hopes of landing investment funds. The arena of business-themed reality shows is a familiar one for Burnett, who also created and is executive producing "The Apprentice," which returns with a second celebrity edition in January.
_____________________________________________________________________________

March 29, 2009

ABC greenlights Burnett's 'Shark Tank'

http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/03/abc-mark-burnett-shark-tank.html

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Enter the Sharks of "Shark Tank" -- Barbara Corcoran (Manhattan real estate titan), Kevin Harrington (king of infomercials), Robert Herjavec (technology tycoon), Daymond John (fashion mogul) and Kevin O'Leary (venture capitalist) -- five multi-millionaires who lifted themselves up by their bootstraps to make their own entrepreneurial dreams come true and turned their ideas into empires.

Each week ambitious entrepreneurs from across the country will present their breakthrough business concepts, products, properties and services to the panel of ruthless investors. Their goal is to convince these merciless moguls to invest their own dollars in the concept. Convincing real-life millionaires to part with their own money is no easy task, because when the idea is poor, the Sharks will tear into the illprepared presenters and pass on the idea with a simple, "I'm out!" -- sending them running for the exit.

But these Sharks aren't just out for blood, they too have a goal: to own a piece of the next big idea. Entrepreneurs will be asked to give up a percentage of their companies' equity to the Sharks in order to get the investment they need. But when the Sharks hear a really top-notch idea, and more than one of them wants to sink their teeth into it, a war between them will erupt. Then the once-desperate entrepreneur can rejoice when the Sharks reveal their true interest in the product and bid up the price of the investment.

Shark Tank
TERMS for SIGNUP:

DO YOU HAVE THE NEXT GREAT MONEYMAKING IDEA? We are currently on the search for entrepreneurs, inventors, businesspersons, dreamers, promoters, creators, innovators, etc. If you feel you have a lucrative business idea but just can't seem to secure the financial backing to get it off the ground then Shark Tank is just the show for you. Each episode features aspiring entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to moguls in hopes of landing investment funds. Apply now for your chance to enter the "Shark Tank" and see if your idea survives.

IMPORTANT NOTICE - IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THE FOLLOWING DO NOT APPLY:

By making an email submission, you acknowledge and agree that you are making a submission solely for purposes of being considered by Mark Burnett Productions, Inc., Sony Pictures Television, Inc., American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. and their respective affiliated or related entities (collectively "Shark Tank Entities") to be a participant on "Shark Tank" and will not receive any compensation or credit for making a submission. BY MAKING AN EMAIL SUBMISSION, YOU ARE ACCEPTING AND AGREEING TO THE ABC.COM TERMS OF USE . You understand that your email submission is not confidential nor submitted in confidence or trust and no confidential or fiduciary relationship is intended or created by making an email submission. You understand that the Shark Tank Entities are diversified companies who may possess or come to possess information similar or identical to information contained in your email submission, and you agree that any such similarity or identity shall not give rise to any claim or entitlement, whether for compensation, credit or otherwise. By making an email submission, you hereby release the Shark Tank Entities and their respective directors, officers, shareholders, employees, and licensees from any and all claims relating to your email submission, including without limitation arising from the risk of misdirection or misdelivery of your email.

Yesterday, our CEO sent me an article from Lifehacker that announced a new Google experiment, the Google Wonder Wheel. The experiment didn't actually work on my desktop but the video on YouTube demonstrated the capabilities. It's just like a mind map that allows you to drill down into deeper search results. The future is getting cooler, right?

I like how wonderwheel is starting to make search not only more 'fun but also more connected.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtirDMfcOKE&feature=player_embedded

Microsoft Decides It Has No Answer For The Answers Market

By Joseph Tartakoff - Mon 11 May 2009 01:59 PM PST

MSN QnA, Microsoft's rival to Yahoo Answers, is shutting down. A spokeswoman says MSN QnA is being closed "as part of our overall investment in updating and re-aligning our online services to provide customers with new ways to share their opinions and ideas." It's the latest MSN-branded service to be cut. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) announced it was closing its MSN Encarta site in late March. But as recently as mid-February, Microsoft still seemed dedicated to the QnA service, rebranding it as MSN QnA from Live QnA and moving into the MSN organization.

The answers market has been tough for big companies to break into, with the notable exception of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). Microsoft launched QnA in August 2006, four months before Google (NSDQ: GOOG) decided to shut down Google Answers, which charged users to have their questions answered. In its three years in existence, Microsoft's QnA appears to have attracted about 3 million questions. Yahoo Answers measures itself not by questions but by answers-it has attracted more than 750 million answers-but it's clear that Yahoo is far more popular. LiveSide first reported the news Monday.

What if the ads we saw when watching TV were always just what we wanted to see? Well, we believe it is possible to make TV ads more relevant to viewers and to deliver more value to advertisers. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/tuning-in-to-tv-data.html

Television is becoming more like the web. Just as users click with their mouse to choose what's most relevant to them on the web, viewers send signals about what they want to see on television with clicks of the remote control.

Each week, Google analyzes data from millions of anonymized set-top boxes (STBs) to see which channels they were tuned to second by second. This data is provided by our partner, EchoStar. We're then able to use tuning metrics to provide our advertisers with next-day reports of how many televisions showed their ads nationwide and how the audience responded with their remotes.

We look at the various tuning metrics as signals from the audience about what they want to see and when. One of the metrics we've been exploring is the % Initial Audience Retained (%IAR). This is the percentage of the audience that was present at the beginning of the ad and then stayed tuned-in through the entire ad. If most viewers see an ad they like and decide to stay tuned-in, that ad would have a high %IAR.

Many factors affect audience behavior, including the nature of the programming, the time of day, the day of week, and, of course, the personality of each viewer. But ads themselves also have an impact. By identifying which factors affect tune-away, we can focus in on how the audience reacted to the ad itself.

Check out this video to learn what we found:



The chart below shows all TV commercials that aired on the Google TV Ads platform August through November 2008. Each dot represents an ad, and they are lined up from left to right in order of their %IAR as compared to what we'd expect given other factors (e.g., time of day, network, etc). The red dots on the left represent ads where more audience tuned away than expected. The green dots on the right represent ads where more of the audience stayed tuned than expected. The black dots in the middle are "normal," meaning there was no significant difference between the audience retention for those ads versus what you would expect based on historical data.

The next question we wanted to answer was how well this historical data could predict the future audience reaction. If we can use the past to predict the future, then we can get closer to putting relevant ads in front of TV viewers. So we selected one ad with relatively high audience tune-away (red dot) and one ad with relatively low tune-away (green dot) to run side-by-side on national television to test our findings. In the graph below, the diagonal line shows where audiences reacted the same to both ads. The points above that line represent airings when more of the audience stayed tuned to the ad that had previously retained audiences better. We learned audiences reacted predictably to the two ads.

Through our analysis of tuning data from millions of set-top boxes, we're getting closer to matching the right ads to the right television audience. It takes a lot of processing power to make sense of the enormous amount of data, but the insights to be gleaned are very powerful. Not only are we able to offer advertisers better measurement and more accountability for their TV campaigns, our goal is to also create a better viewing experience for TV audiences by showing viewers what they want to see.