Whether you think Twitter is good or bad, you’re bound to be amazed and/or a bit stunned by Twitterholic.com. It’s a top 100 list on the most followed Twitter users, with hotshots like Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, Jason Calacanis and more.

At the moment, 15 of these 100 twits are actually from BBC, as in BBC News, BBC One, BBC Sports and various local stations. That makes me all warm and fuzzy, BBC is great at adopting new technology and this is putting Twitter to good use, right?

Our own David Krug is on Twitter of course. He tries to convince me to join. I will, when I’ve redesigned my own blog and actually gotten back to regular updating. In other words, not likely happening anytime soon.

Are you on Twitter?

Originally posted on March 19, 2007 @ 12:15 pm

Adscape Media is a company doing ads for games, as in in-game advertising. And now they’re owned by Google. This has been rumored for some time, but now it seems official.

So what does it mean? Adwords for online gaming? Living billboards in Counter-Strike showing perfume ads? Could be, but it seems Google haven’t decided yet themselves. Some sort of video ads seem likely, and Counter-Strike is a good example of a game where they could easily be implemented. It would be a lot harder to launch a cell phone ad campaign in World of Warcraft since it’s just out of place…

We’ll see. Google jumping into the in-game ads business is an expected move, and although they’re not talking about how this will work out, they are likely to have a plan. After all, the concept isn’t that new.

Originally posted on March 19, 2007 @ 6:15 am

Ars Technica reports that PC manufacturer Lenovo will pre-load their computers with a Live.com search bar. This is of course a result of a deal between the Chinese company and Microsoft, just like Google and Dell are doing.

While this is not a craplet (a piece of unnecessary software forced onto the user by the manufacturer) it might be annoying enough to have to change your default search engine and perhaps start page on your brand new computer. It’s easy enough, but the idea is that users won’t bother with it, or just be as happy with Live.com search as they were with Google or whatever they previously used.

Expect more embedded online services in your computer. Vista gadgets and OSX widgets, stuff like that will be pushed on us with our OEM operating systems. The way out of it, of course, is to buy a stand-alone system, format your brand new pre-installed computer and install a clean system without all this crap. I’ve been doing that for years and won’t change the tactics.

Still, the majority of users won’t bother, or even consider, reinstalling. They accept the craplets and pre-loads because they don’t know they can remove them.

Originally posted on March 16, 2007 @ 4:15 am

As I predicted yesterday, the deal between AOL and affiliate network TradeDoubler fell through. AOL have not raised its bid, and withdrew the neglected one of course.

The TradeDoubler stock holders wanted more per share than the 215 SEK (just over $30) offered.

“We made a full and fair offer, and we always said we didn’t plan to raise it,” an AOL spokesman said. “Our Advertising.com business in Europe is growing rapidly, and this will not affect our plans to aggressively expand it.”

TradeDoubler is a big player European player in the affiliate market so AOL is in for quite a fight with Advertising.com, even though they are somewhat targeting different niches for now.

Originally posted on March 15, 2007 @ 2:05 am

Yahoo is set to launch Flickr across China this year, starting with a version focusing on Hong Kong.

The new Web site will target Hong Kong users and will offer all the core features currently available on the English platform, spokeswoman Pauline Wong said, without elaborating.

While the traditional version of written Chinese is widely used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the simplified version of the script is the standard in mainland China. However, most mainland Chinese are able to read traditional Chinese, and vice versa.

Flickr is of course already available (and uncensored) in China, but this will widen the reach of the site. According to the Reuters report, China will have around 10 million new users sharing photos online, and Yahoo wants to dominate that of course.

The details regarding how the localization is still a bit sketchy, but it sounds like they’ll just do translations for various regions in China. Which makes sense of course, the service is solid by itself.

Originally posted on March 16, 2007 @ 10:17 am