When the new search decision engine, Bing, was launched by Microsoft at the beginning of the month, I wrote an article introducing the newest Microsoft flavour of search. I highlighted the fact that Microsoft had made many different attempts to grow in the search market, including their Facebook search deal, but had little success, and I also noted that Bing had some advantages that might give it more chance for success than previous efforts. However, I finished the article with a simple question - Is it enough to make users switch from Google?

We’re now well in to week 2 with Bing, and according to recent reports, Bing has shown continued growth. This isn’t a surprise considering the rumoured budget is $80 - $100 million. Both comScore and Compete agree that Bing has increased their share of search, but it doesn’t seem to keep its users. Unfortunately, people are programmed to use Google. Are you looking for something on the web? Google it. Simple, effective, and as common as venti-sized coffees. While I’m supportive of an alternative to Google and have gone as far as to change one search box (but only on one browser on one computer), I’m still not sure Bing has done enough to make users switch.

For more information, I recommend reading the following articles:
Bing keeps growing
Bing attracts (trial) searchers

The site has been described by some as “the best update of Hot Or Not of all time,” runs on a completely Web 2.0 platform, and has the potential to feed the beast with a MySpace et al Widget that has been submitted to TagWorldWidgets.com for approval. The site was released on May 31st, 2006 with about 100 images of females (taken from a randomly selected “100 Hottest Women” list) and has a lot of potential growth avenues.

Going back to the comparison to ‘Hot or Not,’ one of the original and most popularÂ? rating sites, it is quite a bit different. There is no actual rating given to the images, and images are not rated individually. Instead, the user is given three different images, and from those images, one must be selected to be ‘Killed,’ one must be selected to ‘Marry,’ and one must be selected to, well, ‘F*ck.’ The site is that simple. There is a game-of-the-day (called ‘Today’s Game‘), random games, and there are some custom games provided by the devlopers, and some of the games are actually pretty tough to make a choice on - check out this game and this game that have been pre-programmed in.

There are a couple different areas the site can be improved on, and the developers indicate that they will be continuing to work on the site. There are only women available, at the moment, new images (of celebrities or just regular people) cannot be submitted, and something that has become a regular feature on sites is tags, which could be interesting to help filter the images available for the game. A simple idea, could have some potential, and if nothing else, it’s good for a couple minutes to get away from it all, so to speak.

So today we review Google Page Creator. The application is great, very simple to use, very fast, and its all Web 2.0. Here are some features we liked:

• 100MB of Storage
• An ‘undo’ feature
• The ability to add images, pages, and links very easily
• Testing and previewing while in edit mode.
• Copy and Paste from any HTML Source
• Auto saving your work - like Gmail
• An easy to remember URL

The list could go on, but lets stop right there for a second. Check out the page we put together for this review at kazoomer.googlepages.com.

Google states: â€?”The pages you create can be crawled by Google within a few hours of publication.â€?Â? This is great for people who want to increase inbound links to their site.

Is this service for you? The serviceÂ? was said to compete with the MySpace giant, however it lacks any sort of social features. Google Page Creator is pefect for the Geocities crowd or people who used their ISP’s included storage space.Â? Google PageÂ? Creator isÂ? a little late in the game. The market is very crowded with new image hosting and video hosting players. In order to get the most out of the service you actually need to put up more then just your wedding pictures. It’s not for the Professional web developer or small business owner as you don’t have any control over the domain name with just ‘username.googlepages.com’. This brings me to my next point, Google just puts your email address out there, yikes! Thats all I need is more spam.

We feel the product is relatively good, but again, is it too late for this to be effective? This does fall into Google’s 10%, and will probably remain a Beta version for months, if not years. It’s probably a service that they should offer for the average user, and the average user should have no problem creating SOMETHING. And really, I’m sure we need more websites with black backgrounds, flashing text, and a plethora of emoticons and family reunion photos - which seems to be what this service will host.

To go through, sign-up for, and review the major players in the world of social networking is a major undertaking, and it seemed to only make sense to start with the golden child of the group, MySpace. Since it’s release in 2005, MySpace has been the biggest thing on the Internet. With it’s sale to News Corp. for $580 million, MySpace became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, websites sold since the bubble burst in the late 90’s, and has continued its unprecedented growth since then. Despite it’s obvious appeal to the masses, MySpace is hardly the answer to everyone’s online needs, and although users are drawn to the site, it seems quite obvious they would be just as quick to jump onto the next big thing. I hope you enjoy our MySpace pageÂ? and our review of the site.

(more…)