SearchEngineUpdate with Vanessa Zamora - 01-30-2008
Abstract: 1. Yahoo Layoff Speculation Confirmed, 2. Microsoft to Provide Ads to WSJ Sites, 3. MySpace Open for Developer Applications, 4. Google Experiments With Search Results, 5. WSJ’s Web Site Adds “Seen This?” Facebook Function
Vanessa Zamora
Video Content Producer, SearchEngineWorld
9:39 pm on Jan. 30, 2008 (utc 0)
Transcript
Wednesday January 30, 2008
Yahoo Layoff Speculation Confirmed
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang had bad news Tuesday with the announcement that Yahoo will lay off 1,000 jobs by mid-February as part of its efforts to revive falling profits, confirming fears circulating over the past week. Fourth quarter profits fell 23% while revenue saw an 8% increase. Additionally, Yahoo hinted to investors that a turnaround probably won’t happen until 2009. Yahoo plans to continue to narrow its focus to certain areas, including efforts toward capturing a larger share of online ad dollars, making improvements to the portal homepage and encouraging consumers to use it as a starting point on the Web, and opening Yahoo’s technology infrastructure to third-party programmers and publishers. Despite Yahoo shares trading at their lowest level in more than four years, Yang will push forward as he insists that this sort of transformation takes time.
Microsoft will become the exclusive new provider of paid search and contextual advertising on Web sites run by The Wall Street Journal, which previously used Pulse 360 and Business.com to provide advertising links. The Wall Street Digital Network is expected to offer increased reach to Microsoft AdCenter customers bidding on financial keywords and will soon reach 20 million unique users on Web properties including WSJ.com, Barrons.com, Marketwatch.com, allthingsd.com along with other sites. DoubleClick will continue to provide display advertising to the Journal.
In an effort to remain ahead of quickly approaching rival Facebook in social networking Web site traffic, Myspace will allow outside software developers to monetize and promote their applications within Myspace starting with the ability to create and test programs next Tuesday. The ability to integrate the applications has yet to be announced. The developer program will roll out globally in about 28 territories. More details about the program are expected to be announced at a kickoff event to be held in the new Myspace San Francisco office on February 5th.
Google is experimenting with three new alternatives to the standard vertical list of links to Web pages returned as search results. The three experimental layouts include a map view, which accompanies search results along a visible mapped location, timeline view, which reveals a timeline of events related to the search term, and an information view, which gives a person the option of expanding results of a search term to more specific results related to dates, locations, measurements, or images. Anyone with a Google account can join the experiment and view the latest additions through the Google Labs site.
WSJ’s Web Site Adds “Seen This?” Facebook Function
Now when readers visit the Wall Street Journal web site, they’ll see a feature called “Seen This?” that makes it possible for readers to see which stories are popular among that user’s Facebook friends. The Journal hopes the new feature will help by highlighting the stories that those friends who most likely share similar interests, are reading. Interested users can opt in to the service that launched early this morning. The feature does not collect or identify personal information, but rather aggregates information on articles that are read most by a readers group of Facebook friends or networks. NBC and Universal have also signed up to use the feature.
9:39 pm on Jan. 30, 2008 (utc 0)