GOOG
In-depth analysis and expert insight into Google’s products and services.Google+ Now in Gmail
Yesterday, Google added Google+ hangouts to Youtube. Now Gmail is showing recent Google+ activity. This is a clever way to convince people to update their own Google+ profiles regularly. (Or to convince them to do a one-time “I don’t use this account” update.)
Inside Google’s Search Updates
Google has posted a
Facebook Pages and SEO
According to PageLever, Facebook pages get about a third of their referring traffic from search. This could be a good reason to focus on SEO for those pages, but there are some caveats:
Many of these searches are likely to be navigational. Big brand advertisers often direct people to their brands’…
Statistical Errors and Lifetime Value
Custora, a churn analysis and lifetime value calculation company, notes the results of not segmenting customers by churn rate. This is usually a bigger hypothetical than real problem, since different user categories aren’t usually quite so differentiated. But the hypothetical does illustrate the risks of simplistic user retention analysis.
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Skype Buys GroupMe
Skype has purchased group-texting service GroupMe for about $85mm, a nice exit for the year-and-a-half-old firm. It’s also an interesting combination: one of Skype’s big strengths is its peer-to-peer structure, which basically coopts users’ computers to keep things running smoothly. GroupMe uses Twilio, which is basically an API for anything a standard…
HP’s Immaterial Move
HP is spinning off their hardware business and shutting down their WebOS products. It’s hard to interpret this in a way that matters to anyone not directly involved: for the web, Apple is still the macro situation. Everything else, including HP, is comparatively commoditized.
TechCrunch says that Apple beat them, but that’s…
Who Facebook Thinks Your Friends Are
A programmer has created a simple bookmarklet that reveals which users Facebook expects you to be searching for. This is notable in two respects: first, it’s a look into your Facebook preferences—not just who you’re looking for, but who you’d decide to be looking for given an ambiguous query. It’s also…
Google’s Intrinsically Boring Patent Deal
Google is buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn. There are three parts of this deal: the assets Google will immediately liquidate (low-margin phones, cash), the assets they’ll reluctantly liquidate (the set-top box business), and the assets they only bought in order to avoid being sued (the patents).
It’s unfortunate that Google’s…
Buddy Media Raises $54mm for Facebook Marketing
Buddy Media, provider of high-end Facebook pages to large brands, has raised another huge round to fund further expansion. Facebook seems eager to have companies raise money in order to expand on their platform. This, despite Facebook being ranked the worst API in a survey of developers.
Opt-In Privacy on…
Developers make more than they used to. Accounting for salaries, options, perks, and morale-boosting strategic decisions, developers are the most expensive part of most Internet companies. The cost of developers hasn’t just increased—the cost has become more of a variable cost than a fixed cost, and the increase is predominately in pay for the best,…
Quinstreet’s Earnings Beat
A few days after Demand Media beat their earnings estimates and saw their stock price promptly collapse, Quinstreet barely beat estimates and saw their stock rise as much as 22%. The lesson, of course, is to report earnings on a day when the market’s doing great.
Carbonite’s Daring IPO
Carbonite actually priced their IPO,…
Digital Due Diligence Weekly