Business
Google Invests $200M in Farmville? Is Search Over?
Jul 11th
Can pretend farming save Google?
According to ReadWriteWeb, Google has invested over $100 million and possibly as much as $200 million in Zynga, bringing the total investment in Zynga to somewhere around half a billion dollars. You might not know the name Zynga, but if you spend any time on Facebook, you have probably heard of some of the games they have created, such as Farmville and Mafia Wars. Believe it or not, according to TechCrunch, Zynga’s social games were worth $350 million in revenue in the first half of 2010, with half of that being operating profit.
What Does It Mean?
Those numbers are impressive, but mainly for what they signify. Read the rest of this entry »
Blippy Breach Puts Credit Cards Numbers on Google
Apr 23rd
I thought that number was between us!
Not too worried about how you share your personal information online? Well, VentureBeat has reported on an incident that should make you rethink your position. Blippy, the purchase sharing social site that I covered in January, has had a security breach. As a result, they exposed the credit card numbers of some of their users to Google search. Initial reports state that only Citibank issued MasterCards were affected.
This is a huge black eye for a company that needed to show that they had rock solid control of user data. I would think twice before I used a service like theirs, especially after a breach like this. I really don’t think knowing what your friends are buying is worth the risk of giving up your credit card information to the whole internet. If you desperately need to tell everyone what you bought, why not just mention it on Facebook or Twitter?
KnowEm: Do You Control Your Name?
Mar 16th
KnowEm: Check, check, check that name!
People constantly talk about how important a name is to a business. They usually follow that declaration up by emphasizing that a good domain name is just as important. What people often forget is how important it is to register the name of your business on all the major social media sites. Now some of you might be saying, “Whoa, there! I’m not interested in putting in the time to maintain a bunch of social media sites. I have my hands full just running my business.”
Fair enough. One day though you might want to use one of those social media sites for your business. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the name already and not have it occupied by some squatter? Read the rest of this entry »
DoGooders DoEvil?
Mar 7th
DoGood? Not so much.
DoGood Headquarters recently released a plugin for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari that replaces ads on websites with “green related initiatives, philanthropic calls for action and health and wellness ideas.” Before I get critical of this new service, because I will, I just want to say that I sympathize with part of what they are trying to do. Almost everyone has a favorite cause that they support and that they wish could raise more money. Doing something on the internet to help those causes raise more money or awareness is a good thing. There is no doubt about that. And it is done at the expense of advertising. Heck, most of us don’t enjoy advertising. So, what’s the problem, right? Read the rest of this entry »
BetterMe.com: Honest Feedback, Anonymously
Feb 22nd
Give or get honest feedback anonymously with BetterMe.com.
One common problem in businesses is not knowing what coworkers or employees think about a subject. Sometimes the subject is fairly mundane, so you can just ask. When the subject is more sensitive though, either you or the people you intend to ask might be hesitant about discussing the subject openly. In the past, you might have asked people to write anonymous comments and put them in a comment box, but that still left many ways that you might find out who said what. Luckily, we now have a new online service that we can use instead: BetterMe.com.
BetterMe.com addresses these uncomfortable situations from both sides of the issue. It allows people to provide unsolicited, anonymous feedback and it allows people to solicit feedback from groups of people, who can then provide feedback anonymously. Read the rest of this entry »
