First, Google purchased DoubleClick, next it was Microsoft that bought aQuantive and now it’s Yahoo’s time to get its own online advertising company.
Yahoo has just acquired BlueLithium, the #6 ad network in the US, for $300 million, far from $3.1 billion Google paid for DoubleClick and just 5% of the amount of money Microsoft spent on aQuantive.
Just a few days from being launched and Yahoo Pipes is putting lots of minds to work:
- five cool ways to use Yahoo! Pipes
- del.icio.us flavored web search
Lots else. What comes next? Only time will tell.
Yahoo! has just launched a new service called Yahoo Pipes which offers users the ability to easily create data mashups from remixing popular feed types, including Yahoo! Search, Google Base, Flickr photos and any RSS feed on the web. Yahoo! describes it as an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator that allows you to create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.
Pipes also provides a set of functional modules to let users manipulate and transform data in oder to get the desired output. This set includes a powerful content analyzer, several data formatters, sorting modules and even translating services using BabelFish translating engine.
All these modules are integrated in an easy-to-use visual drag and drop editor that simplifies the job of building a mashup without writing a single line of code. The resulting feed can be for private use or shared with the Internet community. As Tim O’Reilly has defined it:
Yahoo!’s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It’s a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output.
According to Google, their mission is to organize the information. In this case Yahoo! has won a battle letting the users create more organized, filtered and useful information by theirselves. Could it be a step towards Web3.0 in which users not only contribute but can take advantage of the rest of information their own way and share it? What comes next? Only time will tell.
Chinese online population hit 136 million people by the end of 2006 becoming the world’s second largest behind the U.S. with a total online spending of $35,5 billion (47% more than the previous year).
Average Chinese Internet user spends $22 a month online, including payment to online services providers as well as shopping ang gaming. Still, the most popular Internet services in China are search engines (dominated by Baidu and Google and, to a lesser degree, by Yahoo!) followed by Internet portals (led by Sina.com, Netease.com and qq.com) and e-mail services.
But the most rapid growth in usage last year came from blogging. China now has 20.8 million bloggers. Top blogging sites are hosted by Sina, Qzone and MSN. Other new Internet services that are gaining particularly wide acceptance are personal Web pages similar to those on MySpace and video-sharing based on the Web 2.0 standards similar to YouTube. What comes next? Only time will tell.
Looks like the mergers & acquisitions market is really hot these days. Following yesterday’s MyBlogLog acquisition by Yahoo! and StudiVZ a few days ago, today we find that eBay has agreed to buy StubHub, an online ticket reseller, for $310 million in cash.
StubHub was founded in 2000 and made more than $400 million in gross ticket sales last year. It offers a secure way for buyers and sellers to exchange tickets as StubHub acts as a middleman and includes money-back guarantee. According to Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America Marketplaces, it’s a perfect complement to eBay’s tickets business. What comes next? Only time will tell.
Recently we saw the acquisition of StudiVZ, an online german student community (facebook clone), bought by a german media giant. Now it’s turn for MyBlogLog that has been acquired by Yahoo!, as stated in MyBlogLog official blog. The unofficial numbers are around $10 million.
MyBlogLog is an online service that creates communities among blog readers who like to read the same blogs and so far it the latest step in the so-called Yahoo!’s “social media” expansion that began in 2005 with the acquisition of flickr, a photo sharing site, and continued with del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, and Upcoming a calendaring site with, of course, capabilities to share events in the purest web2.0 style. Who comes next? Only time will tell.
Tons have been said about the new product launchings Apple will announce in current MacWorld Expo. Everybody is expecting Steve Jobs to show the new iPhone, a gadget which is been widely thought of being a mixture between a digital music player and a smart phone.
Well, I don’t know if Steve (no last name is needed) is going to show the world the iTV (Apple’s thought device to compete against TiVo) or a new music player able to make phonecalls, but what I am really sure is that the latter is not going to be named iPhone anyway.
Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, registered “iPhone” as a mark back in late nineties, but it has not been but till now that they have launched the iPhone product, which is, as Linksys says, more than a phone as it is able to connect to Skype network or to send instant messages via Yahoo! Messenger but no mp3 player at all (just access multimedia content from the Internet).
The question is: why now? Has Linksys taken advantage from all the branding campaing to launch their product or is it just a coincidence? The choice is yours but if I were a Microsoft guy I would prepare the launching of the “Zune Phone” as soon as possible! What comes next? Only time will tell.
Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, is planning to start a wiki-based search engine that will probably be launched in early 2007 with Amazon as partner.
The main idea behind this project is to build a human-based search engine over computer-based algorithms like the ones that Google and Yahoo! work with. According to Mr. Wales this kind of systems is no match for the editorial judgment of humans. So this new concept of search engine will rely on human intelligence to do what algorithms cannot.
The search engine has widely and wrongly been reported as being called “Wikiasari” which, as Wales has stated, that name refers to a former similar project, Wikia search engine, not affiliated with Amazon, A9, or Wikipedia.
Like its potential competitors, the revenue model for this new search engine will be advertising, though Mr. Wales himself thinks that catching up with Google, Yahoo!, MSN or even smaller players like Ask.com will be a difficult challenge. What comes next? Only time will tell.
Another world’s #1 Internet company bites the dust. After spending more than $250 million since 2002 and losing more than $8 million in 2005 (doubling 2004’s loses), eBay has thrown the towel and, remembering that old motto “if you can’t beat them, join them”, eBay has announced a joint venture with a local mobile Internet company called Tom Online.
Tom Online, Beijing-based and owned by the millionaire Li Ka-Shing, will contribute $20 million and provide the local management and market knowledge, taking a 51% stake in the new company. On the other side, eBay will contribute $40 million taking a 49% stake.
Similar steps were taken by other Internet giants like Google and Yahoo. Looks like you cannot win in China without Chinese partners. Who comes next? Only time will tell.