How Bing Will Rank Your Tweets
I blogged a few days ago about Microsoft Bing and Google’s announcement that they were both going to start incorporating our Tweets into their search results. There has been a lot of speculation as to how these Tweets are gong to show up in their search results. I have been following all of this pretty closely as it is going to directly impact our industry. I blogged earlier today about how Google’s new Social Search is going to work but I think Bing might be a slightly different animal…
Apparently Bing is going to weigh tweets according to follower counts. For instance, if you and I both tweet similar things, and I have 1000+ followers and you have 300 followers, my tweet is going to have a higher ranking. Granted, this is not the best method imaginable, but for the time being I think that is how it’s going to be. Of course, these search algorithm’s get tweaked a lot and all of this is subject to change before you even realize it, but that’s the word that I am getting right now.
I think that all of us are anxious to see how Bing and Google both are able to weigh what’s good content versus what’s bad content using only 140 characters…
Microsoft Social Bookmarks
Looks like Microsoft is going to launch a social bookmark service that is very similar to delicious in the next few weeks. From what I have gathered it is going to operate very similarly to delicious but will have some features and similarities to other popular social bookmarking services as well.
I am an avid user of delicious (click here to see my delicious account) and have been for a while now, I absolutely love the concept of social bookmarking. I have accounts on Digg, Magnolia, and a few other places around the net but I keep coming back to Delicious to tag my links out. I am probably one of only a few power-users out there that really likes the new delicious interface too. Since no one else in our organization uses social bookmarking I am more or less a standalone user, although I hope one day I can get my partners turned onto this cool concept and actually utilize the social aspect.
Hopefully Microsoft can pull another rabbit out of their hat with this service offering kind of like they did with Windows Live Writer. It’s going to be cool to see how this is embraced. I am not completely sure how they are going to roll out the service but I do know that it will be release first in their MSDN and Expression communities.
Also, in what little bit of information I have gathered anyone who already uses a service like delicious will have the ability to import their existing links and tags into the new solution, that should be pretty nice. Here is a preview to the beta of the service, Social Bookmarks – Preview.
AOL to Yahoo? Microsoft?
In a move that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Time Warner is poised to sell off AOL in separate pieces and will reportedly separate its advertising and content platforms with its dial-up business to get the most out of the poor sucker that acquires it.
According to those close to the move, Time Warner believes AOL may be more valuable to them once it’s separated and it believes that it can make about $10 billion off the sale of its parts. But as most analysts correctly point out, that’s probably not going to happen.
“The Yahoo discussions have valued AOL at around $10 billion, excluding the dial-up business,” The Wall Street Journal is reporting. “In contrast, Time Warner’s current stock price — around $14 — suggests a value of no more than $3 billion to $4 billion for the ad-sales and content businesses, some analysts say.”
Wishful thinking or an attempt to capitalize on the Yahoo malaise? Most reports suggest both Microsoft and Yahoo are looking to acquire AOL, but Microsoft, obviously in no danger of worrying about money anytime soon, knows that AOL isn’t worth the $10 billion valuation Time Warner is trying to place on it.
But for Yahoo, a company that has been rocked by more controversy than any other tech company in the past year, an AOL acquisition may be just the right move to allay some shareholder fears and keep Carl Icahn off Jerry Yang’s back. And perhaps that’s what Time Warner is banking on.
AOL may look like an attractive target for some companies that are trying to expand their presence online, but what does Yahoo have to gain through an acquisition of Time Warner’s stepchild? It’ll acquire a company that’s having serious trouble on the Weblogs, Inc. front and is desperately trying to find its way as a dial-up company in a broadband world. And although it is profitable, it has been held back by declining growth and revenue over the past few years and its prospects for growth are all but lost.
This is nothing more than another desperate plea by two companies with two totally different strategies. Time Warner is desperate to do away with AOL and finally put that problem behind it and Yahoo is desperate to acquire AOL to make its shareholders believe its management knows what it’s doing. And if that happens, only one company will lose: Yahoo.
If any company acquires AOL, it’ll be Yahoo. And not because Yahoo has grand plans for the future of this dilapidated firm, but because of its desperation to satisfy shareholders. I think Microsoft is too smart for this acquisition; at that price, AOL simply isn’t worth it. But Yahoo doesn’t have the luxury to simply walk away that easily. And in no time whatsoever, the company will be paying too much for too little.
Time Warner Sets the AOL Hook, Yahoo Bites
Microsoft makes $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo
I have been kind of expecting this one to play out for a while now and I’m not real surprised. (Microsoft stock should be rock bottom by now but it’s not, and I am shocked by that.) The search engines wars have all but been over for years now, with Yahoo being a distant second to Google. Microsoft has not released a product that I know of in the past 2 years that has worked well and not sucked. (on a personal note, I am going to be going to a mac sometime in 2008 after a lifetime of windows). If Yahoo decides to accept this offer I am not for sure what it will do to the search engine wars, Yahoo, as you know owns a couple of “app” sites that compete with some of “google’s apps” as well. Flickr is Yahoo’s photo sharing site and Del.icio.us is their social bookmarking product that I enjoy quite a bit. I can see a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo possibly tightening up the search engine wars but probably not ever making it close enough for Google to worry…
Microsoft makes unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo – Feb. 1, 2008
Microsoft Cuts Another Open Source Deal
Another story where Microsoft is embracing Commercial Open Source software. This is related to XANDROS an open sourced desktop OS that is becoming more and more popular, my business partner is currently running it and has had nothing but good things to say about it so far. I have researched it as an option for my development testing machine and it is a viable option, it even has emulators that allow it to run Microsoft applications.
Link to Linux News: Business: Microsoft Cuts Another Open Source Deal
