Alert Blog Reviews

Reading Biz Stone’s op-ed in the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper almost had me snoozing. Not that Biz is boring–he’s actually quite fascinating–but the article was just a recap of stuff we already knew. Then I saw these closing statements: ..It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news… In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world… (Emphasis added) Er, did he just say billion? With a “b”? Does Google know about this? You don’t need to answer that, I know it knows. But seriously, Twitter’s serving 1 billion search queries a day–and it’s not even a search engine? No wonder Google and Bing rushed to sign partnership deals with the micro-blogging site. No wonder neither of them could find the right price to acquire the company! According to recent estimates , Google is handling around 300,000 to 500,000 million searches a day–about half of what Biz boasts Twitter is seeing. And, let’s not forget, Google IS a search engine. I can’t make up my mind the exact reason Biz slipped that into the piece. I’ve narrowed it down to two reasons. One: Twitter just wanted to fire a warning shot across the bow of traditional search engines. Put them on notice, if you will. Two: We’ll see a Twitter IPO in the next 12-18 months . Twitter has far more users than Google had when it went public. If it can reveal revenues anywhere close to $100 million a year, then I think investors will be tripping over themselves to buy in. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Twitter’s New Year Resolutions: 1 Billion Searches a Day & an IPO?

It’s a slow news day so we’ll just enter into the realm of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybe, kinda, sortas’ for a minute and imagine a world without barriers. Sounds nice doesn’t it? Imagine a place where you would be able to have the best possible smart phone device for you personally regardless of who your carrier is or is not partnered with. Imagine there’s no dropped calls …. it’s easy of you try. I think I may be channeling John Lennon …… Anyway, what I am imagining based on a report from All Things D is the ability to possibly have an iPhone even though I am a Verizon customer for the foreseeable future. That’s an interesting prospect for sure but one I will have to do a ‘wait and see’ on. Apple has a lot to gain by ending iPhone carrier exclusivity in the U.S. and signing up Verizon as a second carrier partner. ….such a deal could more than double U.S. iPhone sales in the near term. That said, it does have some noteworthy downsides, top among them, the end of the estimated $450-per-iPhone carrier subsidy AT&T (T) has been paying. That’s the word from Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall, who believes Apple (AAPL) will bring the iPhone to Verizon (VZ) in the second half of 2010 and forfeit AT&T’s “sweetheart” carrier subsidy as a result. With the number of iPhone apps growing at the current rate of ‘really fast’ and the B to B marketing crowd seeing the value of building apps for branding purposes this is a great bit of speculation that I hope comes to fruition. While I have thought that going “droid’ may allow for me to have the best of both worlds I have to admit that having two devices now (BB Storm or phone, e-mail etc and iPod Touch for music, apps etc.) is a pain. I am not so convinced now that having a droid device and the iPhone is a good thing because carrying two separate devices is just not a good thing. As this plays out marketers are going to have to make some hard choices as to which platforms they tie their marketing budgets to. While many look at the number of devices that Apple will sell if they were out from under the AT&T deal as weighed against the smaller subsidy the real money is in the apps. If twice as many people have an iPhone then the app sales go through the roof and Apple has a license to print money. Well, one thing this whole aura of uncertainly has created is one less droid device sale. I’m holding out to see if this Verizon and iPhone thing happens. Until then I’ll just suffer. Actually, I can’t seem to make up my mind on this one. Maybe I’m channeling Brett Favre ……

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Verizon and iPhone in 2010?

No, seriously, they added magic. As you’ve probably noticed today, Google Reader has added a few new features. The first is the Explore section, just below the People you follow section. Here, Google shows off two sources of new feeds: Popular Items and Recommended Sources. As you might guess, the Recommended Sources feature analyzes your feeds (via Reader Trends) and Web History to find feeds you might like. (This is the old Recommendations feature.) Popular Items highlights “top-rising images, videos and pages from anywhere (not just your subscriptions).” It identifies these items algorithmically (how else?) and sorts them in the order they think you’ll like them. The magic isn’t just in the mind reading, however. It’s also in the feed settings: now we can order items by newest, oldest or . . . magic . The Magic setting orders items by our Reader activities and preferences Reader has observed. The more we like or share items in our feeds, the better the magic gets. Like al of Google’s personalization features, these are based on our usage history. But how long until privacy advocates speak out against these developments? What do you think? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google Reader Adds More Suggestions and MAGIC!