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Posts Tagged ‘Yahoo’

You know that you are a major force in business when you go from a fun, social networking company to huge valuations and finally to Washington. Google has shown that they understand the importance of being in the US capital and working the lobbying angle. When there’s enough talk about antitrust and monopoly you need to do that. Facebook’s involvement in DC though goes even further as they talk to the intelligence community. SocialBeat tells us more Facebook has been gradually boosting its profile in Washington D.C. over the past year and is on the hunt for a second senior lobbyist to add to its office of four. Disclosures released a few days ago show that, on top of lobbying the usual suspects Internet companies reach out to like the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. senators and representatives, the fast-growing social network has also been busy deepening ties to government intelligence and homeland security agencies. Facebook spent $41,390 on lobbying in the first quarter of 2010. That’s on top of the $207,878 it spent last year — the first year Facebook began releasing such disclosures. Although these numbers are tiny compared to the $4.3 million Google spent on lobbying last year, expect them to grow with the company’s influence and ambitions. So let’s take a look here. Facebook is a company that raises privacy concerns just by showing up every day. Now they are talking to intelligence agencies on the federal level. That kind of talk leaves plenty of room for speculation. It is the only Internet company amongst the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple who is reaching out to the Office of the Director of National Security which is an umbrella organization established after 9/11. This agency advises the President and works with the CIA. So what are they talking about? Privacy and federal cyber-security policy are the focus over the last three quarters. Facebook’s take? Andrew Noyes, the company’s manager of public policy communications, says most of Facebook’s work in D.C. consists of basic education — helping legislators and agencies understand how to use the social network for campaigning, reaching out to their constituencies and in their regular line of work. The U.S. Navy used Facebook to alert Hawaiians of a possible tsunami from the Chilean earthquake earlier this year, while the company says 35 government agencies are using social media for governance. It also doesn’t hurt to start to “grease the skids” for future interactions with the government does it? Considering the kind of data that could possible flow through Facebook there is likely to be more than less interest in what is being said from a legal / criminal aspect. We have already seen that criminals aren’t always the sharpest knives in the drawer . So how private do you think your information is on Facebook? If Facebook is “building relationships” in Washington and is the only big Internet player talking to intelligence agencies what could that mean? It’s Friday so let us know what you think before you check out for the weekend.

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Facebook Goes to Washington to Deepen Intelligence Ties

Yahoo’s earnings are looking up already from the MicroHoo deal. Microsoft and Yahoo have managed to remind investors by “ finalizing ” the deal every quarter since its announcement. This time, however, it was the DoJ that gave them that boost when it finally approved the deal in February . Along with the beginning of reimbursement payments, it looks like the deal was enough to persuade investors and advertisers alike. Reports CNET : Revenue in the first quarter was $1.6 billion, up just 1 percent from the first quarter of last year. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, net revenue was $1.13 billion, or roughly flat with analyst expectations of $1.17 billion. Revenue from display advertising on Yahoo’s site grew 20 percent compared to the prior year. Net income was $310 million during the quarter, but that included several unexpected benefits, such as the sale of Zimbra and the beginning of reimbursement payments from Microsoft under the terms of the search deal finalized in February. Excluding those items, Yahoo’s earnings per share during the quarter were still 15 cents, ahead of estimates of 11 cents. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz agrees—”Large advertisers came back,” she said in the conference call. She also said they finally recovered—well, stabilized—from the decline in their stocks that began when the deal was announced in July. CNET also reports on the long-term benefits of the deal vs. the short-term gains: Yahoo provided some clarity during the earnings call on how the Microsoft deal will affect its bottom line this year. The company saw a one-time benefit during the quarter of about $43 million related to transition costs, but will also see cost reimbursements from Microsoft for continuing to operate Yahoo’s back-end search organization during the transition, said Tim Morse, Yahoo’s chief financial officer. These operating cost reimbursements totaled just $35 million in the first quarter, but are expected to fall between $75 million and $85 million a quarter over the remainder of the year, he said. What do you think? Will Bingahoo save Yahoo? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

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Yahoo Earnings Up On Search Deal Hopes

Yahoo is adding a whole new layer to real time. Yesterday, they announced the Updates Firehose for developers , “a web service for accessing and searching the full, real-time index of Yahoo! Updates.” And that includes all Yahoo properties—from Flickr to Delicious to comments on news stories. All public information posted on the service goes into the Firehose. Naturally, developers can filter the information and manipulate it using Yahoo’s own Yahoo Query Language (YQL), an SQL-like query language. Developers can use it to call common keywords used across all updates or restrict the info to updates from a specific application, location, language, URL or type (e.g., status updates, ratings, comments, and reviews). The updates included in the Firehose make it apparent the service is appropriately named: 750,000+ ratings a day (including those from Yahoo! News, Buzz, Movies, Travel, TV and more), 8,000+ reviews a day (including Yahoo! Local, Shopping, Cricket, Travel and more), 150,000+ comments/day (including Yahoo! News, Buzz, Sports, OMG stories and more), status updates, Flickr uploads, Delicious bookmarking, Open App activity, YouTube favoriting, Last.fm listening, and many, many others. And like I said before, this is just for the information marked as “public” (set to viewable by anyone). This can be a huge opportunity for lots of things—but the first thing that springs to mind around here is what a great tool this could be for monitoring all Yahoo properties as part of reputation management. What do you think? What kind of applications would you like to see for Yahoo’s public update data? Photo by Julie Falk

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Yahoo Lets Developers Drink from the Update Firehose

New research from Brightcove and TubeMogul ’s joint video analytics venture suggests that Twitter may be a magic bullet for online video consumption. While Twitter’s 140-characters aren’t exactly designed to cure adult ADD, Twitter’s referral traffic to video sites shows that those visitors actually watch videos longer than the average user, and especially the average user from search. This research focused specifically on music videos from the four big music labels (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI Music). And they found that: consumers that find online music videos via Twitter watch an average of 2:30 minutes per stream compared to the 1:30 minutes viewed on average by consumers discovering online music videos via search engines like Yahoo!. However, 76% of online music videos viewed on artist and label sites are found through Google searches. So it’s also possible that a smaller sample size is affecting the amount of time spent on a video, too. Perhaps Twitter’s audience isn’t the same as Yahoo’s (gasp!). TubeMogul released research last year that showed that more than half of all online video watchers moved on by about 60 seconds into a video. So either things are already looking up for average video consumption, or search is better than pure average, but not nearly as good as Twitter average. AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka gives a logical explanation : “A search result may get you something you think you want. But a recommendation from a Twitter pal means even more — if they like it, and you like them, you’re probably more likely to invest more time.” What do you think? Do you watch videos recommended by your Tweeple longer than Yahoo’s? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Twitter + Video = Magic! (And Engagement!)

In January, Google reported a coordinated hack attack targeting Chinese human rights activists’ Gmail accounts. In response, Google (eventually) pulled their search engine from China . And now the hackers are at it again. The Yahoo “e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders” last month, according to the New York Times . NYT reporter Andrew Jacobs, one of the targeted journalists, said the “hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.” Several of the affected users received messages from Yahoo after problems accessing their accounts, according to the AP . Yahoo hasn’t yet decided to respond, as Agence France Presse reports. Yesterday, the side stepped the news agency’s questions on the matter, only stating Yahoo! condemns all cyberattacks regardless of origin or purpose. We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach. However, Yahoo doesn’t really have a whole of options. They left their Chinese business in 2005, selling their interests to Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba (which later had an IPO larger than Google ’s). They still own 39% of Alibaba, but don’t have operational control of the company. They may be able to shut down their email offerings, which are routed through Chinese servers. There’s no indication that these are the same hackers (or not), although the targets are substantially similar. Victims this time included “a law professor in the United States, an analyst who writes about China’s security apparatus and several print journalists based in Beijing and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan,” the NYT reports. What do you think? Should Yahoo shut down its Chinese email? via

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Yahoo Hacked in China (Still Waiting for Other Shoe)