The Associated Press has revealed some new guidelines for its reporters with regards to credit and attribution. The guidelines come in the form of a letter from AP Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes. Is the AP asking its reporters to do what it has frowned upon in the past? Share your thoughts. The guidelines apply to AP reports in print,...

I have some great news! On Wednesday, my sister gave birth to my third niece! Now with three nieces and one nephew I have the job of spoiling them cut out for me! But don’t worry I am up to the challenge. While visiting my new niece in the hospital on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but think of the amazing amount of potential that lay...

Kelvin Newman writes on Econsultancy that that the public relations firms could have done more to get into search engine optimisation but he continues by saying that despite this reticence to get going he thinks there’s a scary truth that the search firms need to wake up to: if and when the PR industry gets its act together a lot of the link...

ABC and CafePress have introduced a new ABC Online Store where of fans of the TV networks shows will be able to buy official merchandise along with merchandise designed by other fans. CafePress technology will allow visitors to the site to design their own t-shirts, posters, water bottles and other custom products. These fan-designed products...

In a recent survey about holiday shopping, 64% of the people said they’ll be spending less on everyone this holiday season, so that means marketers will have to work a little harder to make sure it’s their company that gets the cash and not their competitor. The trick is paying attention to how and why people are spending and customizing...

Part two of this three part series focuses on corporate links.  ..."These are links placed on pages because they provide some tangible business value to the linker: they cookie a user for an affiliate program, or boost a target page’s Google rank, or aim to increase a site’s “stickiness” by getting the reader to click through to another...

AllFacebook has discovered that Facebook is now testing showing all liked news articles in its search results. This would obviously be a significant move as the company competes with Google. Nick O'Neill writes: Additionally, the results for searches now shows the results from all around the web based on two things: the number of likes and the...

Inflection.com who operates Archives, a family history website, and PeopleSmart, its search engine for people, raised $30 million in its first round of venture capital financing this week. Inflection.com owns Archives.com, and PeopleSmart.com, which aggregate public records and data from past and present, and turns those results into useable, and...

Apple's Ping social network, which the company launched as part of the new iTunes 10, has drawn a big mix of excitement and criticism. While most seem to agree that the concept beind Ping is a pretty good idea (social network-meets-music-buying) it's not exactly the seamless experience one might hope for.   Let's take a look at some points...

Besides hinting at new features and talking about user stats, Twitter also made a couple announcements this week. One is that all Twitter apps use OAuth. The other is that it will start tracking every t.co link users click. This is Twitter's own default URL-shortener.  Twitter sent an email to users saying, "In the coming weeks, we will...

Consumer Watchdog has created a new anti-Google video portraying Google CEO Eric Schmidt has some kind of evil ice cream man. The video is a commentary on what the group perceives to be Google's lack of regard for consumer privacy.  Google and Facebook are two of the biggest companies on the web, whatever you think about the privacy...

Google announced that mobile advertisers can now use multiple addresses in local extensions This way, customers can get the right address for businesses with multiple locations.    The feature is available on Google Maps for Mobile versions 4.4 and above on Android devices.    "Featuring your business location alongside...

It's been nearly a month since Demand filed its S1, and I promised you all a longer look after my initial posting. Here are some thoughts now that I've had a chance to digest the document. A caveat: I know Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt well, and consider him a friend. And one of his investors, Oak, is an investor in my company, Federated Media....

Back in the day, it was news when Google used its massive home page distribution to push its new Chrome browser. Google putting ads on its home page?! A big deal, even if they were for Google's own products. It spoke to an ongoing creep inside the company of leveraging its position in search to help it win in other markets, and to some, it felt...

Google announced that it is updating its privacy policies to make them simpler. They don't appear to have any changes involving CEO Eric Schmidt driving around neighborhoods in an ice cream truck, luckily. Google isn't actually changing any of its privacy practices. It's just trying to make the language more understandable. Google Associate...

Location-based advertising is still in its early stages, but according to ABI Research, businesses will spend $1.8 billion on it in 2015 as part of their overall mobile marketing budgets. “It’s still early days and there’s no single ‘right’ approach to location-based advertising,” says practice director Neil...

Fred points out apps and services that are "Mobile First Web Second." I don't like the distinction. To me, it's all the web. It's this kind of thinking that leads to Wired's ill-considered proclamation that "the Web is dead." (I debate that in the second half of this thread here). What, after all, is the web, really? To me, it's a set of...

Google has given an update on its immediate plans for Google Wave. As you probably know, the company recently announced that it would be shutting down Google Wave as a standalone product, thought Google said it would preserve the technology behind Wave for future use and integration with other Google products. Google announced that it will...

It seems that bedbugs can be found everywhere these days, and the New York office of a certain search giant is no exception.  Late yesterday, a Googler reportedly tweeted that her workplace had been invaded. According to Nicholas Carlson, the pammy5 Twitter account belonging to "a Googler in marketing" just sent the message,...

As I noted in my other post today, Twitter is reporting some serious numbers. 145 million registered users and 300,000 registered apps for those users just to name a few. In the end though it’s just noise unless people are actually using the service. According to research from Royal Pingdom the increase in number of accounts is translating to...

I used to be a keyword research freak. Seriously! If you found me at one of the big conferences in the early 2000s you would have likely heard me discussing the importance of keyword research. “Keyword research is the most important aspect of SEO,” I would say. “Target the wrong keywords and it won’t matter if you are #1 on...

Google is planning to launch a mobile music download service that would allow users to access songs wherever they have access to an Internet connection. According to Reuters, Google has been in discussions with the major labels about reaching licensing agreements.  Google has not yet signed any licensing deals but the major labels are...

As SEO's we view links as a form of digital currency, that can be bought, sold, bartered, or gained through attention manipulation. However for the rest of internet this isn't always the case. Scott Rosenberg makes the argument that for many people links are the updated modern version of footnotes, where an author can provide reference or back up...

Twitter CEO Evan Williams revealed some numbers about Twitter usage on the company blog, while talking about how the Twitter ecosystem (of third-party developers and apps) continues to play an important role in the company's success. Twitter has over 145 million registered users, he says.   Not that this is a surprise by any means, but mobile...

After wisely letting the air clear following the big Apple TV announcement (and all the comparisons to Google TV), Yahoo's stepped forward to remind everyone that it also intends to compete in the connected TV space.  Yahoo announced a partnership with a major TV manufacturer this morning. Vestel, the TV manufacturer in question, is Europe's...

Twitter has made some strides to get the mobile experience working better as of late. They have been very successful in this area which is critical since the geo-location movement promises to make mobile even more important in the not so distant future. Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, gave some telling stats on the Twitter blog Mobile users...

Facebook is testing a feature that lets users "subscribe" to other users. Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook shares an official statement from Facebook: "This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they've subscribed to updates their...

Consumer Watchdog’s InsideGoogle.com has something to say about Google’s disrespect for people’s privacy and they’re saying it at one of the busiest intersections in the world. The group has purchased advertising space on a 540 sq ft Jumbotron in Times Square and they’re using it to blast Google’s CEO Eric...

PeopleBrowsr shared a rather interesting report with us this week, looking at privacy related tweets during the center of this year's Facebook "privacy storm." The firm studied the public's reaction to Facebook's open graph-related announcements that set off the majority of the Facebook privacy controversy back in April. Are you...

Skype released an update to Skype for Windows, which allows you to make group video calls with up to ten people. This is in beta.    There is also a new design. Skype's Peter Parkes writes, "You'll notice that the new-look Skype is sleeker, neater and crisper than before, and we're proud of the work our interface designers have done...

At least once a week, my husband laments the loss of a mom & pop record store we had near our home. They carried mostly used albums and rock and roll memorabilia and a visit there was like hunting for treasure on the beach. If we go to eBay, we can find all those same albums and more but it simply isn’t the same as flipping through...

You may have heard about Diaspora, a Kickstarter project that aims to be an open replacement for Facebook users that don't like Facebook's dealings with privacy. There is another interesting Kickstarter project called MusOpen, which aims to buy and release rights to a large amount of music, or in other words, open source it.    A...

Update 2: Swisher reports that Facebook blocked API access to Ping after failing to strike an agreement with Apple, so Apple removed the feature after launch. She credits "sources familiar with Facebook's platform" with this information.  Update: With regards to Facebook and Ping, Dan Frommer points out that the screenshots...

When it comes to Street View and the collection of sensitive WiFi data, Google is, at least to some degree, safe from serious penalties in New Zealand.  A police investigation has determined that the company didn't violate any laws. Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff referred the matter to police in June, which seemed to put Google in a...

If they aren't now, they certainly should be held accountable given the vast majority of the market they control. And the amount of damage this can do to individual and businesses.