Was Google Caught in a Sting Operation in Kenya?
Last Updated on Friday, 13 January 2012 02:05 Written by External Post Friday, 13 January 2012 02:05
Read The Rest Of This...AT&T wins regulatory approval to buy Qualcomm spectrum
Last Updated on Friday, 23 December 2011 09:05 Written by External Post Friday, 23 December 2011 09:05
Read The Rest Of This...The Walmartization of the Web (Literally)
Last Updated on Monday, 12 December 2011 01:11 Written by a2e Monday, 12 December 2011 01:11
Walmart is getting much more aggressive with their online strategy:
With some 1.4 million employees on its U.S. payroll, Walmart’s world is about as large as the state of Maine. That’s massive by any standard, but when you consider how social media amplifies that number, it’s not simply a huge group but an influential one. No small wonder, then, that the earth’s largest employer is taking greater measures to motivate and mobilize its people — and opening up more opportunities for consumer brands to also reach them along the way.
These brands can not only leverage internal resources to further build off the boost Google offers them, but they can then take that attention and sell it back off to the highest bidder:
It’s not clear how much ad revenue Walmart World has made or whether MyWalmart.com will become a profit center. But the former already takes in millions of dollars annually in ads from vendors seeking an audience with Walmart employees, according to people familiar with the matter.
If Google consolidates markets too aggressively then ultimately they create competition for themselves through vertical ad networks. In some cases (say travel) Google can buy out the market plumbing & then reassert control:
Wertheimer drew some criticism when he explained that “our airline partners were very clear” that they wouldn’t participate in Google Flight Search if online travel agency booking links were included in the core flight-search results.
But Google doesn’t have that same influence over retail & each time they put the big brands front and center the more they reinforce that 3rd party dominance.
In addition to leveraging their workforce, it is also quite easy for these brands to use customer incentives to dominate social media.
Amazon.com is also carrying far more ads these days & they sell ads on 3rd party sites.
The above is another reason why Google is pushing so hard to control the second click. If they can taste the traffic again they add efficiency to their own model while introducing another layer of friction to other retailers.
When users finally manage to leave the Google click circus, Google tries to pull them back into Google with the Google Related toolbar
In the above quoted AdAge article there is some skepticism around how much a company like Walmart can get out of underpaid wage slaves:
“It’s really hard when you’re a person making poverty-level wages, just had your health-care premiums raised 60%, and you can only get part-time hours, to be a good ambassador for the brand, no matter how much you love it,” said Jennifer Stapleton, spokeswoman for Making Change at Walmart.
However I think that skepticism is misplaced, as the less a person has the more thankful they tend to be for the little bits they do have. Most people who have nothing do not realize how systems are engineered to screw them over.
It is only when you have free time to think & are not clouded by arbitrary short-term stress that you can ponder the bigger & more uncomfortable questions in life. As long as you don’t consider those uncomfortable questions it is far easier to push anything, because you don’t know any better.
“The entire web has become full of garbage. The web has become almost a digital Detroit.” – Roger McNamee.
If Walmart’s strategy works then this ultimately will be why Google’s brand-only approach to search will fall flat on its face. If this is successful I would then expect Google to put out some public relations drivel about celebrating the diversity of the web & move away from brand in the next 2 or 3 years.
In the meantime, I expect Google to keep increasing search complexity such that it’s prohibitively expensive to make & market a small independent commercial website. That will force many smaller companies to live inside the Google ecosystem, with Google ranking the Google-hosted pages/products/locations for those companies, so that they can serve ads against them and get a bigger slice of the revenues.
Google’s ad network is far more profitable than even the lowest waged employee, as it doesn’t need to be fed & is designed to be an agnostic & amoral yield optimization tool. And it is effective enough that the biggest retailers are now becoming ad networks.
Average products for average people – with ads everywhere.
Welcome to the WorldWideMart. ;)
Stamp of approval as move completed – Article Lynn News
Last Updated on Friday, 9 December 2011 03:15 Written by External Post Friday, 9 December 2011 03:15
Stamp enthusiasts were given the chance to see a rare Penny Black used on a letter posted to Fakenham solicitors Kent and Watson in 1841. It was part of a display by postal historian Patrick Pearson, a past president of the Royal Philatelic society, who once lived in Burnham Overy town, and focused on the postal history of Norfolk up to the issue of the first postage stamps 170 years ago. the display was last seen publicly at an international stamp exhibition in Monaco. the event marked the official opening of James and sons, auctioneers, at their new premises in Norwich street, Fakenham, on Friday. single penny blacks are rare but not prohibitively expensive, and collectors spend a lifetime trying to reconstruct complete sheets of the stamps. Mr Pearson, who now lives in suffolk, founded the Norfolk Postal History society in the 1960s and is a worldrenowned expert in stamps and an avid collector of postal memorabilia from Fakenham and surrounding villages. He traced the history of letters in the local area back to the pre-adhesive days before stamps, when the recipient rather than the sender was charged with the cost which depended on the number of miles the letter had travelled. the mileage was clearly shown on the letter for each stage of its journey from sender to recipient. the earliest letter on show was sent to Fakenham in 1776 and the first stamped letter was a 2d blue sent from Castle Rising to Fakenham in 1840. One letter Mr Pearson treasures is from the pre-adhesive days. It was penned by Admiral Lord Nelson whilst living on half pay at nearby Burnham thorpe and was written with his right hand. It was posted shortly before he was recalled to naval duty where he lost part of his right arm at the Battle of santa Cruz de tenerife in the Canary Islands in July, 1797. At the opening were members of the Fakenham Historical society, stamp dealers and serious collectors. James and sons recently relocated from syderstone Business Park and supplies stamps and other collectables. Mr James said that at any time they have up to 500 items on eBay, hold monthly auctions and fairs and sell up to a tonne of stamp albums in the eastern region of the country in a month.
Taken from the Lynn News – www.lynnnews.co.uk – 6th December 2011 – Picture Peter Bird
Bonhams Auctioneers & Appraisers Expands Its Reach To Washington DC
Last Updated on Wednesday, 9 November 2011 11:05 Written by External Post Wednesday, 9 November 2011 11:05
Bonhams Auctioneers & Appraisers, one of the three largest international auction houses, is pleased to announce the opening of its new office in Washington DC on October 28; a move that will allow Bonhams to better serve its clients in the Mid-Atlantic region. Strategically located in the heart of Georgetown, at 2902 M Street, the new office will be headed by Bonhams Dr. Martin Gammon and will serve as the East Coast headquarters for the Museum Services Department, working closely with…
Go to Source
Security concerns hasten Google’s move off Windows
Last Updated on Tuesday, 1 June 2010 01:01 Written by External Post Tuesday, 1 June 2010 01:01
Extract not available.
Go to Source
Yahoo to lift editorial with Associate Content buy
Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 May 2010 07:00 Written by External Post Wednesday, 19 May 2010 07:00
Yahoo on Tuesday announced that it would acquire Associated Content, in a move to go ahead of AOL and Demand Media in the race for content. In Associated Content, Yahoo finds about 380,000 content contributors, which Yahoo says fits with its established
Go to Source
Twitter and the Rise of Data Platforms
Last Updated on Saturday, 24 April 2010 09:40 Written by External Post Saturday, 24 April 2010 09:40
snydeq writes ‘Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister sees Twitter’s latest move to develop ‘analytical products’ based on Twitter data and to encourage third-party developers to do the same as part of a growing trend toward a new kind of software platform.
Go to Source
Judge Chin Says He Will Cut the Google Book Settle
Last Updated on Friday, 2 April 2010 02:40 Written by External Post Friday, 2 April 2010 02:40
Miracle Jones writes ‘In a move that has shocked the publishing world, Judge Denny Chin has filed a brief saying that he has decided to cut the Google Book Settlement in half, letting Google host the first half of every book the company has scanned, and
Go to Source
Google tests hotel rates service on Google Maps
Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 March 2010 02:20 Written by External Post Tuesday, 23 March 2010 02:20
Google has begun testing a service that enables users of Google Maps to search for hotels and see price listings for subscribed establishments. The move indicates that Google may be about to increase the revenue generation potential of the local business
Go to Source
