Global Broadband Continues Solid Growth
The number of household broadband connections continues to experience solid growth and one in five households globally will have a fixed broadband connection by the end of 2009, according to a new report from Gartner.
A total of 422 million households will have a fixed broadband connection in 2009, up from 382 million households in 2008, and the market will continue to grow with nearly 580 million connections by 2013.
"Consumers may be watching their household expenditure, but dropping their broadband connections is not on the top of their agendas as a way to reduce outgoings," said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner.
"Multiple motivations are conspiring to keep broadband growth strong, such as PCs being more affordable, migration from dial-up, affordably priced broadband subscriptions, aging populations requiring broadband connectivity, and even as a result of an economic boost from country-specific economic and broadband-specific stimulus plans."
At the end of 2008, 21 countries had broadband connections in at least 50 percent of homes. In many countries the rates are much higher. The highest penetration is in South Korea at 86 percent and lowest is Indonesia at less than 1 percent.
Gartner predicts over the next five years, the emerging markets (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Latin American countries, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will combined provide twice as many new consumer broadband connections as mature markets: 135 million vs. 62 million connections respectively.
Currently the U.S. the broadband household penetration rate is 60 percent and Gartner forecasts that to climb to 78 percent in 2013.
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Photo Inclusion Can Bring in Traffic
Hitwise has released some interesting data regarding photo-searching habits. The concept was conceived of as the firm noticed the popularity of the search "great north run photos".
"This made me curious about the popularity of searches for photos related to big events and news stories," says Hitwise’s Robin Goad.
Hitwise monitored 16,624 different UK search terms containing the word "photos" last week, and out of those, "flickr.com photos" accounted for 0.89% of all searches containing the word ‘photos’. "Great north run photos" was the second most popular photo search term. "Great north run 2009 photos" ranked fifth.
"Other topical photo searches in the top 20 included ‘good wood revival 2009 photos’, ‘marathon photos’ and ‘nurburgring photos’," says Goad.
Look at these additional charts from Hitwise, which show the sites getting the most traffic for the queries "great north run" and "great north run photos".
As you can see, much of the traffic is going to different places. The moral of the story is that including photos and optimizing content that includes photos when event-related can pay off in traffic. People are looking for visuals.
"Given the popularity of photos and other (often user-generated) rich media content, it will be interesting to see how larger and more mainstream sites adapt to plug this traffic gap," says Goad.
By adding photos to content when possible, you may find that you start getting some additional traffic from image searches as well.
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Former YouTube Monetization Guy Moves To AOL
The man to whom Google once entrusted YouTube’s financials is now going to see what he can do for AOL. Former YouTube head of monetization Shashi Seth has been hired as AOL’s senior vice president of global advertising products.
This sort of career path might look a little confusing at first, given that Google’s extremely successful and AOL, even by the most charitable standards, simply isn’t. But AOL’s been able to bring quite a few Googlers onto its payroll since Tim Armstrong, who was an SVP at the search giant, became its CEO.
Also, as more and more join up, it’s almost starting to look like a reasonable thing to do, too, since they might be able to turn the organization around.
Seth made a statement hinting at something along those lines, saying, "I’m grateful to have the opportunity to come to AOL as it moves toward becoming an independent company. The company already has an incredible combination of scale and a suite of great advertising products and technology, and I’m looking forward to working with AOL’s talented team to build on this strong foundation."
Seth comes to AOL most directly from Cooliris, where he served as its chief revenue officer.
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Will Google Eliminate the Need for Small Business Websites?
Google has people riled up with its latest local search effort Google Place Pages. Place Pages are a Google Maps feature launched last week, which serve the purpose of providing everything you want to know about a place (a city or a business) in one spot. For example, if you search for a specific restaurant, you should get web pages, directions, reviews, images, street view imagery, business hours, etc. Google lets businesses submit specific categories they want to include.
There is concern from some that Google is trying to eliminate the need for users to leave Google and even visit a small business’ web site. WebProNews reader Doug Stewart, who wonders if this is an "assault against the small business website," commented, "Google wants people to spend more time on Google. Yahoo wants people to spend more time on Yahoo. Facebook wants people to spend more time on Facebook. Several of these large online "media" [companies] are doing everything in their power to keep the eyeballs on their website (unless you pay them for an outbound link)."
Do you think Google’s Place Pages are good or bad for business? Tell us what you think.
Google has always claimed to do everything with the user’s experience in mind. Unfortunately for SEOs and webmasters, however, it also could mean that people have less reason to go to their sites.
To me, this would really depend on the information that the searcher is hoping to acquire. It’s going to be about finding the right balance of useful information and providing an incentive to still go to your site (if that is your goal). The Place Pages would certainly bring a new element to the online reputation management table. You’re going to want to keep an eye on what’s showing up on your Place Page, and address the situation accordingly. They can include user-generated content.
Another concern that has been voiced about Place Pages, is that Google could start ranking them in natural search results – outside of Google Maps. In fact, Erick Schonfeld points out that this is already occurring for at least the Burdick Chocolate Cafe (the example Google used when it announced the feature).
This could theoretically reduce clicks to actual sites, but again, this would just emphasize the need to manage your reputation on your Place Page. Your site is likely to be easily located from the Place Page anyway.
Blogger Eric Fredline says Google’s Place Pages are "designed for optimization," but that something is missing. "For one, Google would need local merchant’s to define some sort of ‘conversion event’. This is conceptually as easy as defining a new ‘block type’ that will appear on the landing page and be optimized," he says. "For example, a restaurant might view a phone call or an Open Table registration as a conversion event. If it’s a phone call, I imagine the merchant could be encouraged to use Google Voice to provide a closed loop analysis of the conversion event."
"Perhaps more likely than having individual merchants doing this (at least in all cases) would be a small army of SEO and SEM experts doing it on the businesses’ behalf – but within a closed looped system managed by Google," he adds. "Google could potentially create a whole new eco-system."
Another interesting factor of Google’s Place Pages is the fact that they have sponsored results on them. This could raise more concerns, such as competing ads showing up on a business’ place page. In Google’s chocolate Cafe example, the Page is showing ads for chocolate companies like Godiva and Ghirardelli.
There are a lot of questions about the Pages, and answers will likely come in due time. In fact, Google Place Pages will be discussed in more than one panel at next week’s Search Marketing Expo, which WebProNews will be attending. We should have more information on it then.
The Place Pages come with their own structured URL. The example Google gives is http://maps.google.com/places/us/cambridge/brattle-st/52/-burdick-chocolate-cafe. You can see how it is structured by places/country/city/street/address/business name. Google discusses the feature here.
Google says that while not all businesses have a place page yet, they will soon. Businesses can update their info through Google’s Local Business Center.
What is your take on the role of Google’s Place Pages? Share your thoughts.
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Record Label Launched for YouTube Stars
A couple of guys have gotten together and started a record label for musicians who became popular on YouTube. The label is called DFTBA Records.
The label was started by Alan Lastufka, author of YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts and Hank Green of VlogBrothers. Now they have caught the attention of YouTube itself, which is promoting the duo’s endeavor on the company blog.
The label runs as an independent distribution network, which presses CDs, and gets them onto iTunes to "put the music where the fans are." They manage digital sales, CD production and will soon also handle artists’ merchandise. In the following clip, the two talk about their label.
The label has so far released 10 CDs. Artists on the label include Dave Days, Alex Day, Dr. Noise, Venetian Princess, Rhett & Link, and Michael Buckley. The founders have their own projects as well.
"Our artists all made a name for themselves on YouTube, cultivating huge audiences based not on marketing or saturated radio play, but on talent," say Green and Lastufka. "We’ve taken these YouTube stars, and helped them reach a dedicated and large audience. Our debut album, So Jokes, landed the #22 spot on Billboard’s "Hits of the Web" chart… and we’re just getting started."
DFTBA is a good example of how the web is really changing the music industry. The web has been turning the recording industry on its ear for years now, but projects like this give lesser-known artists new ways of getting discovered and increasing exposure.
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Google’s Financials Praised Yet Again
Don’t be surprised if you get a sense of dj vu while reading this article; except for a few details, the development it covers is the same as something that happened last week. An RBC analyst has essentially followed in the footsteps of a Barclays analyst and improved his forecast for Google’s stock.
RBC’s Ross Sandler spoke to some industry sources, and Dan Frommer reports, "[H]e thinks Google’s overall net revenue could grow 5.5% quarter-over-quarter, up from his previous estimate of 3%." That’s a pretty significant increase of about 83 percent.
There’s a considerable amount of evidence to support the idea of a revision, too. For starters, you might just take a look at this Google Finance graph.
Sandler also indicated that the UK search market is at least holding steady, Germany’s market is up "mid single digits," and France is doing better still. Note: Google’s quite dominant in all three countries.
It’s shaping up to be an excellent third quarter for Google, then. And if the search giant pulls off what analysts consider to be a "win," the achievement will be all the more impressive given that the overall economy still isn’t in such great shape.
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Anyone Can Develop Apps for the Yahoo! Homepage
Today Yahoo! announced the integration of is Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP) with the new Yahoo! Homepage, which lets advertisers and publishers develop apps for the homepage. "In support of the Yahoo! Open Strategy, this integration offers a more customizable and personally relevant experience for over 118 million monthly homepage users across the U.S.," a Yahoo! spokesperson tells WebProNews.
"Migrating the homepage to YAP means that any developer can create apps once to be deployed across the Yahoo! network – for the new homepage as well as My Yahoo! for example," she adds. "This means faster delivery of new product rollouts; and the ability for global regions to customize apps for their markets."
Before, Yahoo! had over 75 apps available to U.S. users at Yahoo.com from partners like AOL Mail, Gmail, eBay, MySpace, and Facebook, plus publisher partner apps from publications like NPR and Glamour. This was in addition to Yahoo! apps. Now that the homepage is integrated with YAP, all publishers, advertisers, and developers have access to build apps for Yahoo!.
Those who create apps can also promote them on their own site with the use of an "Add to Yahoo" button that Yahoo is providing.
"Any app that meets our terms of service criteria, regardless of whether it is actively promoted in the Yahoo! homepage app gallery, can be added from a remote entry point," the spokesperson says. "People can continue to use our App Maker and create their own app on the fly by adding virtually any URL of their choice."
Yahoo! also announced 13 new featured apps in the homepage app gallery. These include Mint.com, Target, and Flixter to name a few. Developers at Open hack Day in New York City next week will be offered the first opportunity to build applications on YAP for availability on the new Yahoo! homepage.
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Videos: Watch Google Wave in Action
Google Wave gets unleashed tomorrow. Google is sending out over 100,000 preview invitations to developers who have been participating in the developer preview, the first users who signed up and offered feedback on wave.google.com, and select customers of Google Apps.
"Some of you have asked what we mean by preview," says Google. "This just means that Google Wave isn’t quite ready for prime time. Not yet, anyway. Since first unveiling the project back in May, we’ve focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability. Yet, you will still experience the occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky."
The company also says there are some key features that have yet to be fully implemented, such as removal of participants from waves, defining groups of users, and permissions configuration. These things will be rolled out in the coming months.
According to Google, over 27,000 developers have been prototyping with the Google Wave APIs since Google I/O where it was introduced. "Amazingly, these developers persevered, found work arounds, and advocated for new features when our APIs didn’t do what they needed," says Google Wave Product Manager Stephanie Hannon.
Google is featuring a few extensions that are ready to use today. These include extensions for Sudoku puzzles, telephone conferencing, real-time video chat, maps, and weather forecasts.
Google tells sandbox developers that they will get Wave accounts tomorrow at wave.google.com. They will get instructions for logging in from their sandbox accounts. They will also get invitations to bring on people they want to "wave" with. Below are some prototypes of extensions from SAP, Salesforce, and MediaWikiWave:
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Texas Tech Head Coach Outlaws Twitter from Team
Unless you are a college football fan (hang in there social media geeks, we’ll get to your stuff soon enough 
) you probably wouldn’t even have a clue what this post is about. Honestly, unless you are a Texas Tech student or fan or resident of Lubbock, TX you may not know what a Red Raider is. One thing for certain though that more folks in the social media world will know about them because their coach, Mike Lynch, has banned Twitter usage from his team completely. 
That’s right – banned. Not limited or restricted – just banned. Oh, you say, there can’t be any teeth in that policy. How could he possibly enforce that? Fear might work since he has already suspended one player indefinitely from the team because of breaking the rule. If there is any question, Mashable reports
Following a few suspect tweets by team members, Coach Mike Leach has announced that Texas Tech players are now banned from Twitter altogether. SportingNews also reports that one of the offending Twitterers, offensive lineman Brandon Carter, was “suspended indefinitely for violating team rules and his Twitter page was nowhere to be found.”
Honestly, I am at a loss on this one. Here is one of the tweets that Carter floated
My hope is that there is more than this tweet used to suspend someone like this kid indefinitely. There was no finger pointing except at himself so that seems to be harsh. I will say that there could be more to this since this was the only tweet from Carter that was shown.
All of this points back to the need for organizations from companies to sports teams and all stops in between to understand that the world has changed. Whether it’s for the better or not is not the debate. Right now, it is just a fact that it has. Everyone is going to have to be definitive in their stance but there may need to be a little flexibility moving forward like the SEC (Southeastern Conference) did recently regarding the use of social media in any form as it relates to the events that are in a college stadium in the league. I did a double take on that one because it is just asinine to even think it let alone say it.
We have seen social media in sports be addressed by the NFL and other colleges in other sports. We have seen social media addressed in a variety of ways by companies and organizations worldwide as well. My question is are we any closer to actually understanding what the implications of using or banning social media will be in the near and long term?
Go ahead, Pilgrims, take your shots (or your swings or –insert sports cliché here-).
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CNN Launches APP For The iPhone
CNN has released its new iPhone App and its hoping users will be willing to pay $1.99 to download it.
The CNN APP highlights news via text, video and photos. It features breaking news video, push notification, localization and personalization tools.
One of the more interesting features of the APP is that it provides access to CNN’s iReport. Users can upload photos and videos directly to iReport.com. They can also browse user-generated content and check on iReport’s latest "assignments" asking for contributions on news stories.
Other CNN App features include:
- Users can flick through news stories across categories. When the device is turned horizontally, stories can be flipped through quickly.
- Each story features bulleted highlights above the full article for scanning.
- Users can share stories via email, SMS, Twitter and Facebook Connect by posting a story directly to their wall.
- Local news, weather and traffic based on the user’s actual location or the ability to select a location.
- Users can follow a story or topic as CNN publishes breaking news alerts or new stories related to a chose topic, the app will automatically push the updates to the device.
- There is also a "Saved" content feature, which allows users to access text stories even when they’re offline.
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