Twitter continues to explore and appraise long-term revenue models. For the time being, Twitter’s primary focus is to build and nurture a thriving and indispensable community. Equally critical is the company’s ability to steer engineering and marketing efforts towards developers to empower them to extend, evolve, and enhance the overall Twitter experience for the vast landscape of discerning users as well as those new members who have yet to realize its potential.
In July 2009, we were introduced to Twitter’s new monetization strategy. The company veered its attention and resources towards businesses, initially releasing a series of documents and use cases to help companies, large and small, embrace the capacity and techniques for connecting with customers, prospects, and peers directly in Twitter. Then in August, Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone revealed that the company’s initial revenue would funnel from businesses seeking a more meaningful return tied to performance metrics. Its developers would soon follow, creating dashboards and sCRM (or SRM) systems to scale engagement and monitor key performance indicators.
Now, we are starting to see the plan and the development come into focus. On December 14th, Twitter announced that it was testing features designed for businesses, starting with a service designed to humanize brands and organize team-driven conversations. The company also r/> [...]
Google has posted a video and an accompanying, printable guide for grandmothers to understand how to use Gmail's video chat feature.
Google wants you to be able to easily show your grandparents how to use Gmail video chat, because let's face it: a lot of grandparents aren't hip to all of the latest web trends (if you are a grandparent that is hip to them, than good for you!).
"Often when I tell people that I work on Google video chat, I hear stories about how they’ve used it to give a video tour of a new home to friends, introduce a baby to relatives, keep in touch with traveling loved ones... the list goes on," writes Google's Jason Toff. "This got me thinking about how convenient— and sometimes even magical — the experience of video chatting is."
"So when I saw that my grandma, who loves keeping in touch with family more than anyone, wasn’t set up to use video chat, I decided to help her get started," he adds. "While doing so, it occurred to me how many people there must be out there in similar situations. If only there were a simple way that any grandmother could use to get started on her own."
There is a link you can send to your grandparents if you can't show them what to do first hand. J/> [...]
Courtesy of Google, the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation has received a significant gift. Google donated $2 million to the organization, which is responsible for keeping Wikipedia up and running.
Mitch Kapor, who's on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, announced the contribution late yesterday on Twitter. Jimmy Wales followed up soon after with a tweet of his own soon after.
Unsurprisingly, both men seemed happy. In terms of what this should mean to the Wikimedia Foundation, $2 million is a big deal. The goal of the 2009/2010 Annual Fundraiser (which ended on January 5th) was only $7.5 million, so Google has supplied enough money to cover over three months' expenses.
Of course, the donation might not be entirely unselfish; Google and the Wikimedia Foundation have some common goals relating to "free and open information." Also, donations to the Wikimedia Foundation are tax-deductible.
Still, the Wikimedia Foundation is determined "to keep Wikipedia free of ads," and Wikipedia is in direct competition with Google Knol (if "competition" is a fair word when Wikipedia's winning by a huge margin). So it's hard to be too cynical about Google's gift.
It's a Friday morning and goodness knows we will be up to our eyeballs in discussions next week as the RSA Conference shovels out enough cloud security news for us all to groan just a bit.
So, let's lighten it up a bit with one of the funnier YouTube videos that spoofs Hitler. This time, the subject is cloud computing in "Der Führer in Cloud Computing," by Marcus Ranum and Gunnar Peterson.
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Hitler's generals have to deliver some bad news. Someone tampered with the The Third Reich's customer database and changed every last name to "pwnz0red."
This is really funny. I know the Hitler parodies get a bit overplayed but this one works. The cloud is so ripe for satire. And this one hits it right on the mark.
Copyright 2009 (c) Dylan Rosario - The founder of www.FleeQ.com a new semantic search and discover agent. Utilizing web 3.0 technology, fleeQ levels the playing field for small publishers and advertisers alike. www.fleeq.com and www.xyppy.com are based upon fleeQ technology.
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It's a Friday morning and goodness knows we will be up to our eyeballs in discussions next week as the RSA Conference shovels out enough cloud security news for us all to groan just a bit.
