August 21/22 roundup

On Web Strategy, a post about Facebook’s new “Engagement Advertising” program. It’s based on an interview with Tim Kendall, Director of Monetization at Facebook (which, by the way, is the worst job title in the history of job titles;  the word “monetization” always makes me cringe).  What the new program does is allow for users […]

Is this a Social Revolution?

Great post on Social Media Today by Brian Solis entitled The Social Revolution is our Industrial Revolution.  We need to start thinking about things differently and our direction with the social usage of the Web is a major shift. This NY Times piece discussed some of the legal implications of blogging, subpeona’s being delivered to […]

Lively, iPhone and Congress on Twitter

The Silicon Valley Insider details the differences between Google’s Lively and Second Life.  Mainly, no sex in Lively.  It’s the PG virtual world. This Yahoo/Microsoft/Icahn just won’t go away, and it gets uglier by the minute. NY Times had two views of Apple on the same page. One was very complimentary about the efficiency of […]

Lively, Vista, iPhone, and YouTube Ads

At the beginning of class today, I relayed the story of one of my students from last semester and her quest for a job.  I hope she’ll be blogging about it soon on WebPubNET, but basically she was successful in securing employment for working a personal network. She made a point to come to a […]

Search and Social

Gee, I hate that Microsoft is one of my most prominent tags, but they are just in the news so much lately.  They announced yesterday a cash back plan for purchases made via their Live Search site.  Paying people is a nice idea.  I’ll take any money Microsoft has to give me, but is that […]

Microsoft's Days are Numbered – Naturally

Today’s New York Times had a good article about the natural decline of Microsoft entitled The Computer Industry Comes With Built-In Term Limits (Randall Stross). Defining a phenomenon called the Single-Era Conjecture, Stross talks about the “invisible law that makes it impossible for a company in the computer business to enjoy pre-eminence that spans two […]

WSJ Blog interprets Ballmer letter

I knew it was just a matter of time before someone tried to read between the lines. This WSJ Blog post does a great job. I was definitely getting the “thanks for nothing” vibe, imagining Ballmer gritting his teeth as he wrote it.

Microsoft Withdraws Bid for Yahoo

Talks broke down between Microsoft and Yahoo today. Microsoft, after increasing their bid to $33 per share or $47.5 billion and still being rejected, decided to withdraw the offer. Read the TechCrunch coverage, press release, and letter from Steve Ballmer to Jerry Yang. It appears that Yahoo wanted something more like $37/share. And, it looks […]