Continue reading Five Social Media Marketing Stats That Will Blow Your Mind

Five Social Media Marketing Stats That Will Blow Your Mind originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of the market's biggest criticisms of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is that it offers a large number of products that don't make the company money. To make matters worse, some of these offerings will probably never bring in a dime and that is a big drag on Google's margins.

The days of Google supporting odd projects that have no financial future may be over. Perhaps the recession has brought those times to an end, or it may be that the ability to keep track of dozens of unrelated engineering projects has become a burden to the firm's management. How many of these programs Google cuts will be a sign of how serious the company is about keeping its profits as high as possible.

Continue reading Google finally gets aggressive in closing loser products

Google finally gets aggressive in closing loser products originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) invited the press and analysts yesterday to see just how well it is doing. Most people who attended were left with the impression that growth and innovation at the company are not slowing at all.

On the advertising front, according to Reuters, "Tim Armstrong, president of North American advertising sales, said every one of its top 100 advertising accounts was increasing spending with Google."

Google also said it was getting increased penetration of its Gmail and Apps products, both of them aimed at Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) desktop Windows franchise.

One interesting observation made by an analyst from Reuters is that Google did not show off many new products. What it did do was demonstrate improvements to current ones.

This may be a change of direction for the big search company, which has hit the market with everything from Google Earth to its own social network Orkut. Google still maintains its own Finance site for investors and an online retail shopping network.

With the ranks of its employees growing by more than 2,000 people a quarter, Google may have decided to pause and improve what it has. That could be a better way to make money than putting out a new product every week.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Google shows off originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google (GOOG) chasing Facebook with open-source plans? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week I asked whether as an investor, a shareholder, you care about companies' business practices. I didn't get the feeling this was really a major concern to most shareholders, so let me ask a more specific question: As a Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) shareholder, would you care that Google serves ads on Orkut groups that are affiliated (at least in ideology) to terrorists group?

Last week this issue was buzzing all over the Internet, and Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal wrote a particularly interesting post about the subject. Baker posted several screen shots from the Al Qaida and JihadNet Orkut groups to name a few. Their ads can be clearly seen at the bottom of the page. Some of the advertisers include companies like eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY), AbeBooks, Harvard, BuildASign.com, Stanford and Caravan.com. (I wonder if they know where their ads are being placed).

I've checked for myself, despite my aversion, and actually went to these sites (where lovely members post their pictures with a back-splash of swastikas and other such symbols). From what I've seen, it appears that Google has removed the ads.

This raises a few interesting questions though. Should Google post ads in these groups? Should Google allow such groups to even exist? If not, isn't that censorship? If yes, couldn't that facilitate terrorist activities? And I'll end with where I started, as an investor, do you even care about Google's practices as long as it increases shareholder value?

Investors: Do you know where your GOOG has been? Do you care? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google turns over information on its Orkut users originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google has spat with Brazilian government over user data originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 25 Aug 2006 11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Should Google get into the social networking space more heavily?

Should Google get into the social networking space more heavily? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Are incredibly popular web destinations like MySpace and Facebook a fashionable trend, all-out fad, or a web power to be reckoned with?

It's pretty clear what Google thinks. So far it is staying out of the business for now -- even though it was passed last week by MySpace as the most popular web destination in the U.S. MySpace garnered 4.5% of all web visitors from the U.S. last week. But Google, never one to chase a possible fad, is staying away for now from all social networking, except for the Orkut service it runs which is very popular in Brazil, but nowhere else.

Does the very nature of a social network mean that people's propensity for a little self-destruction (flaming, fighting, threats, etc.) -- especially in the teen set where attitudes are fueled -- mean that social networks really are fads? Yes and no, most likely. There is genuine advantage in having a place where people of like minds can connect and share things just like being in person.

eBay is a commerce-related example of this. But, when it comes right down to it, is Google making the smart, headstrong choice to stay farther away from the phenomenon of social networking? What do you think? And, if you're a GOOG shareholder, do you think this is a good choice from Google?

Google not jumping on social networking bandwagon trend originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MySpace may be the space of the moment, receiving praise, aplomb and (most importantly) generating traffic to Google in ever-greater numbers, but it's not even the middle of the social network craze. Really, the whole social network effect, as a theory and a technological practicality, started with the personal web sites of the early nineties. Personal web sites beget blogs beget networking sites like Orkut and LinkedIn beget MySpace, AIM Pages, YouTube, and whatever's to come next.

Thanks to a effort by white shoe management consultancy McKinsey to get the great minds of YouTube, Yahoo! and the like together with the old garde of the gigantic media (and I'm asking myself, and Aaron Cohen of Bolt Media, who was interviewed as a person of knowledge for the Financial Times piece: whither side of the old/new divide does Time Warner fall?), social networking is now coming into the good graces of the giants of Wall Street and Hollywood and Madison Avenue and all those places where fashion and money meet the people.

Robert Young, writing for GigaOm, calls MySpace the "it girl," and describes the infatuation with "her" and her groupies this way: "nearly every media company and venture capital fund on the planet is out on the dance floor stumbling over one another to see if they can identify the next breathless social networking beauty."

Continue reading Social networks the new darling of media giants

Social networks the new darling of media giants originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 30 May 2006 13:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Can Google's social networking venture work outside South America? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 10 Apr 2006 18:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.