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New Media News Every Morning

Yahoo! Welcomes Its Bing! Overlords (Search)

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After previously announcing plans to assimilate Google’s former rival, Bing! has confirmed that they are now powering Yahoo! search, ushering a new age of search duopoly for all.

Today I am happy to share that Bing is powering Yahoo!’s search results in the US and Canada (English only for now, the other languages will come in the weeks and months ahead).

So what’s next?  We continue to work hard on the migration to adCenter, and are optimistic about completing this phase later this fall.  As we have said all along, our primary goal is to provide advertisers with a quality transition experience in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season. (Bing Community Blog)

While taking over Yahoo! will help benefit Bing! (who is trailing Google badly, especially in the mobile search department), users will now be forced to choose between two search engines backed by two powerful companies.

Although Bing! is overjoyed about its new conquest, Yahoo! seems to be ashamed at forfeiting its number 2 position as evidenced by the “powered by Bing” text at the bottom of the screen.

With Yahoo! losing its search soul in the US and Japan, it looks as if one of the mightiest tech companies known to the geek-kind is slowly fading away into irrelevancy (despite the companies awesome portfolio).

Originally posted on August 24, 2010 @ 3:52 pm

Bing Begins Yahoo! Assimilation

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Bing

After quiting the search engine wars, it looks as if Yahoo! has finally begun handing over its beloved search bar, dignity and any silver medals to Microsoft’s Bing, who (as shown below) eagerly awaits the opportunity to take on Google.

When we announced our intention to enter into a search and advertising relationship with Yahoo! almost a year ago, we began a journey that will help us build a scale search advertising marketplace and provide a real competitive alternative for consumers, publishers and advertisers.

Beginning just a few days ago, we began some important testing across both our systems designed to verify our joint work and make sure we are ready to deliver a quality transition for customers, which we are on track to complete in the US and Canada over the next few months. (Bing Community Blog) [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 22, 2010 @ 5:12 pm

Yahoo’s Latest Game Plan with Farmville Maker, Zynga

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Yahoo might have scored big time with its recent deal with Zynga, the company responsible for popular Facebook games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars. The two companies have reached an agreement that will see the integration of Zynga’s social games through Yahoo’s global network.

For Zynga, this could be a viable alternative to its Facebook presence, especially since Yahoo claims of more than 600 million users worldwide across all Yahoo sites. But the question is would users be open to the idea of getting their game on via the Yahoo platform?

Most of those users who play Farmville and Mafia Wars are into these games while at the same time maintaining their social networking profiles and connections on Facebook. Most of them play these games to while away time as they wait for their friends to go online, post updates and links. In short, Zynga games on Facebook are added functionalities for a site which has social networking as the main purpose.

Comparing these to Yahoo which doesn’t have a social networking site. Users go to Yahoo to find/search for information not to socialize. So, I don’t really see these Zynga games easily fitting into the demographics of  Yahoo users.

Still, Yahoo is pretty positive that this deal would be both beneficial to both companies. Hilary Schneider, Yahoo America’s Executive Vice President tells us:

“Zynga will bring top notch social game experiences to Yahoo!, including through our open platforms such as Yahoo! Application Platform and Yahoo! Updates. Yahoo! will also continue to work with other partners, developers and publishers to bring compelling innovations and experiences from across the web to our users.”

And with this deal, Yahoo have finally laid down its social strategy and adds up to its previous partnership with both Facebook and Twitter. Would this finally bring some good tidings to Yahoo as a whole? That we will have to wait and see.

Originally posted on May 26, 2010 @ 8:10 pm

Once Upon a Time, StumbleUpon Beats Facebook In Generating Site Traffic

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We all know how formidable Facebook is,  as a social media site capable of generating traffic to websites and in terms of userbase as well. Next to Facebook, we always think of Twitter.  We never really thought about other sites, such as StumbleUpon perhaps? Now here’s an interesting statistics published by StatCounter covering the amount of traffic generated by social media sites that leads to website page views. The statistics cover Mar 2009 to Mar 2010. And guess what in 2009?  StumbleUpon use to bring more traffic to websites than Facebook does.

From March 2009 to July 2009, StumbleUpon was actually the number one social media sites that drives the most traffic to websites. Overall, from Mar 09 to Mar 10, StumbleUpon was second to Facebook in generating traffic to websites with 25% of social media hits, while Facebook had 48%. Twitter had 10% of social media hits.  The rest include – YouTube (6%), reddit (4%), Digg (2%) and MySpace (2%).

So, what’s the importance of these statistics? From a business perspective this only goes to show that social media sites could be a good tool for driving traffic to business sites. Hence, we now see more brands having their Facebook pages linked to their individual corporate websites.

Mr. Aodhan Cullen, CEO of Statcounter remarks:

“Social Media market share fluctuates a lot more than browser or search statistics. For example, Facebook peaked over Christmas and the New Year with almost three quarters of the total, perhaps reflecting its important role in communications between families and friends.”

In case you’re wondering StatCounter’s data was based on 13 billion page views across the globel StatCounter network of member sites.

So there, if your  company does not have a social media presence yet, you might want to start creating one on Facebook, especially now that there are many things happening with Facebook in terms of features and functionality.

Originally posted on April 22, 2010 @ 9:58 am

MLB.com Names Yahoo Sports Fantasy Baseball ’10 as Official Fantasy Game

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For those of you who are into fantasy sports league, specifically Fantasy Baseball, you might be interested to know that Yahoo Sports Fantasy Baseball ’10 has just been chosen as the official fantasy baseball game of MLB.com. This means that Yahoo Sports Fantasy Baseball ’10 will now be promoted on MLB.com as well as on its online properties.

With the support of MLB.com, Yahoo’s fantasy league hopes to deliver the most compelling experience for fantasy baseball players, or gamers seem to be the more appropriate term.  The deal would incude integrated in-game and post-game video highlights of the action on the Major League Baseball directly from the player’s homepage.

Yahoo Sports Fantasy Baseball ’10 gamers can now purchase MLB.com’s new Fantasy Highlights package which would give them an opportunity to watch customized, in-game and post-game video highlights direct from their homepage.  MLB.com’s fantasy highlights package will be available for free-trial during the first two weeks of the MLB regular season.  The full season of MLB will be available for $9.95.

In addition, Yahoo Sports Fantasy Baseball ’10 will provide new live online auction draft application and free live scoring as well.  This will give MLB fans the ability to view live stats as well as instant scoring for teams or match ups. Users will also get real-time league standings straight to their homepage.

MLB.com senior vice president for business development, Kenny Gersh said that this product will suit fantasy baseball players’ growing appetites.

“Integrating this new highlights package with Yahoo!’s industry-leading fantasy baseball game will take fans beyond the box score to watch the performance of their fantasy roster as it unfolds on the field,” said Kenny Gersh.

With MLB.com’s support, Yahoo now has three fantasy sports game which have been blessed by the game’s official league administrators.  Yahoo also has fantasy games for NHL and PGA.

Via Yahoo PR

Originally posted on March 8, 2010 @ 10:58 am