Musings…
More proof Microsoft is heading in the right direction - Demand Media raised $120 million from investorsÂ? to capitalize on the Internet advertising boom. Richard Rosenblatt, former chairman of MySpace, has teamed up with Shawn Colo of Spectrum Equity Investors to create the company, Demand Media Inc, that will focus on creating a network of sites like flashgames.com. Flashgames.com doesn’t even have games, but because of the power of the URL and PPC ads from Google and Yahoo!, the site is said to generate over $150,000 a year. The duo will put a spin on these “empty” sites by sprinkling some content, some of which they hope will be generated by the public. The whole idea seems pretty unreal - but it shows the power of a name, whether it’s a person’s name or a URL.
An article by Mike Davidson, chief executive of Newsvine, suggests that MySpace has created a website that capitlizes on Internet advertising as well, with an unnecessary number of clicks. In our review of MySpace, we commented on the site flow being clumsy, and although we agree that what MySpace does isn’t illegal, we definitely would follow a Google-like scenario ourselves and make it easier on the users.
Both of these cases point to the incredible potential of Internet advertising, and supports the move of Microsoft towards an online, ad-rich company that capitalizes on the half a trillion dollar a year advertising industry.
Desktop websites - With the increasing speed of computers and the abundance of broadband users with 100% connectivity, more and more sites are emerging that will capitalize on “desktop websites.” Bubbles, a website I first read about on gigaom, allows users to create quicklinks for their favourite or commonly used websites that will run as programs on your toolbar. FilmLoop, a company that just raised $7 million, allows users to create and share photos from their desktop - no logging in to a website. The tour is pretty good, and the site is probably worthÂ? a closerÂ? look.
Fox acquisitions - Fox has acquired a couple different websites that should help them capitlize on the user generated content boom. kSoloÂ? is an online karaoke service that allows users to sing/record their favourite tracks, have them voted on, share them with friends, and almost any other aspect of the standard social networking website that you’d expect. From what I’ve read, the site has a few small problems that are easily fixed. The other recent acquisition is NewRoo, a memetracker. Memetrackers seem to be all the rage, suddenly - the sites themselves are almost memes, will they last?! Either way, Fox seems to be the latest Entertainment company increasing their online presence.
Google double-standard? - The newest release of IE7 will feature a search box that defaults to using MSN search. Google is complaining that this will give MSN an unfair advantage, and that users should be given the option of which search engine to use when the program is first installed. Google accepts that they have been the default search engine on Mozzilla, Firefox, and Safari platforms for years, and would be willing to have the same done on those platforms. Microsoft has made it possible to change the default search, and I’m sure most people access the site directly to do their searches. Regardless, the software giant has obviously hit a major sore spot with Google. For more information see this article on gigaom.