Scrabulous is the latest application to have been pulled off by FaceBook to avoid any legal troubles for the social media giant. Scrabulous was a very popular application on FaceBook, and apparently a few people were concerned they could not go on without Scrabulous on FaceBook. But since it’s not coming back, they can look elsewhere now. Scrabulous joins Shank on the sidelines, but for more legitimate reasons.
myspace is setting new standards when it comes to dealing with its employees. According to CNET, myspace has hired 5 VP/SVPs to ramp up their operations on multiple fronts (e.g. customer service, engineering). At the very same time, myspace is planning to lay off 5% of its workforce. myspace has been struggling for quite sometime and rumors were going around that News Corp tried really hard to get rid of myspace during the Yahoo! - Microsoft saga. But as far as their latest decision is concerned, I guess 5 new executives are getting paid much if not more than 5% of myspace’s workforce or maybe it’s just a coincidence.
YouTube’s trouble don’t seem to be close to ending anytime soon. Google must be really questioning their decision for having paid that much money (then $1.6b) for a site that is not generating enough revenue and brings a dozen of lawsuits against it every single day. Italy’s media set is the latest to sue YouTube for distributing propriertary video and audio files on the Internet. I personally don’t think YouTube can get a way from these lawsuits anytime soon. As long as Google own YouTube, it is a cash cow to people who wouldn’t care that much about their so-called “proprietory content.” But since Google affords to settle the suits, companies from around the world are suing YouTube to get some quick cash. Google and YouTube can make a deal with these content companies but that will only add to the $1-2m daily bandwidth cost that YouTube is burning right now.
This doesn’t happen often, but it’s happening more than before. First it was the employers checking what job candidates had to say on FaceBook. Now it’s the police checking MySpace pages to find clues on how to solve cases. I understand that people get cute on FaceBook and pay for it, but why would you put your last minutes on MySpace and not use that time to call the police. Maybe one reason for that would be the busy 911 lines. Maybe the police force needs to become more responsive to emergency calls, like those from people who are dying!
Not Kevin Rose but rather Owen. Owen Byrne has joined TravelPod to lead their technology lab. Here for the news. I believe this will provide Owen with the opportunity to grow another company and he says he is a fan of traveling around the world. It seems like a natural fit.
TrueKnowledge is another one of those startups that is trying to change the way people search for things. But unlike other search engines, it uses natural language processing, which makes it easier for people to search more conveniently. At the same time, it uses stocked knowledge to answer to some of the more obvious questions such as “the capital of Greenland?” I personally liked the idea of storing knowledge and not web pages. God knows how many pages are on the web that basically say the same thing over and over. Just like Cuil, this one is one to look out for.
Cuil search engine launched with a lot of hype yesterday. Whether it was Yahoo! or AOL, there was a piece of news on Cuil. A lot of hype that Cuil has got is due to the fact that ex-google engineers are behind it. I personally had a chance to play with Cuil yesterday, and I did not see anything that made me excited about the future of search.
Whether its Google or Cuil, there are fundemantal flaws in current search engine algorithms that will not be fixed in the near future. You still get totally irrevalent results on your searches, and the search engine gamers still get to push their sites to the top of search engines. There are numerous other issues that Google or Cuil will simply not solve in the next couple of years.
Does this mean Cuil is doomed? Absolutely not. I like the design and how the information is presented. The results still need a little work, and it’s not perfect yet, but you can certainly add Cuil to the long list of search engines that want to be different!
PC World just published top 10 reasons why Google - Digg deal fell through. I think the conflict issue could be a big part of why the deal fell through. Digg is a community and Kevin Rose understands that you cannot just go behind the community. Maybe Kevin felt that Google would be more controlling or maybe he thought that he could do better with Digg (more money). Either way, there is a good chance that Digg will be sold some time soon, maybe not to Google. But it doesn’t have to be Google. It could be to Microsoft, Yahoo or both. But once you are at the table, it means you are interested in selling!
I actually thought it was a great game. I don’t know if you are familiar with the knifing game, but this FaceBook App allowed users to knife each other. Shank was removed by FaceBook due to it being a violent form of poking. It’s true that “shanking” mayh not be appropriate for children, but I think it’s perfectly acceptable for adults who want to use it on FaceBook. FaceBook is no longer just for kids anymore, so I don’t understand why FaceBook would remove the application without asking the users first. I think for FaceBook to truly become a community, it needs to factor in what its users want. It’s all about the consumer, remember?
Kmart is at it on YouTube, asking YouTubers to come up with the best commercial for back to school promotions running at Kmarts around the nation. Kids of 13 or above can participate by posting 30 to 60 seconds videos of themselves demonstrating why people should shop at Kmart.
I personally believe it is a great idea to engage the community at YouTube. I admire Kmart for taking on this challenge. Some companies that I have worked for rather not try than fail, but that’s a sad approach to innovation.
