STEVE WODA'S BLOG

Ask.Com Not Planning to Scrap Search: Source – New York Times Online search site Ask.com is not getting rid of its specialized search technology, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday, saying a blog report to that effect was incorrect. Analysts cited a report in Silicon Alley Insider on Friday as one of several factors that led shares 7 percent lower in Ask.com’s parent, IAC/InterActiveCorp. Executives Must Realize and Learn the Power of Social Media Senior marketi

Lessons in building a better widget By giving an audience widgets that provide a service and make their lives more interesting or convenient your brand will be on its way to far more free real estate than you ever expected. In helping brands develop widget presences, I can say that for brand managers and agencies alike, the first time through can be an emotional roller coaster. Early in the process, brainstorming sessions are filled with far-flung, fantastic ways to bring en

The Psychology Of Buying – Behavioral Insider The recently launched 7 Billion People is an intriguing application to e-commerce of the real-world psychology behind buying behaviors. As CEO Mark Nagaitis tells us, his new Web analytics system tries to discern in a site’s audience different "buying personalities" that marketers can talk with in very different ways. InternetNews Realtime IT News – Americans’ e-Commerce Conundrum A new study from the Pew Internet Project casts li

Google Muscles Further Into Business Software – Forbes.com Google is launching Web-based collaboration software that aims to make it easy for groups to share and edit materials such as documents, photos, video and spreadsheets on a single site. Easy enough, Google hopes, to make selling software applications to enterprises a bit harder for the likes of IBM and Microsoft. Use of Google for Data Triggers Fears It’s called "Google hacking" – a slick data-mining technique used by

New York Comes to Silicon Valley The relationship between the venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road and the securities firms and power investors of Wall Street has long been a cozy one. VCs hoping for a return on their investments will need banks eventually, while Wall Street needs VCs to nurture the most promising startups until they’re ready to go public. Or do they? Lately, some of New York’s biggest players have been cherry-picking the best pre-IPO investments for thems

A CEO Manning the Phones Each Day? When Alden Kellogg discovered a glitch on Wesabe, he went to the personal finance tracker’s home page, looking for a tech support number or e-mail. Instead, he found a link labeled "Talk to Jason, CEO of Wesabe." The page invites users to reach CEO Jason Knight by phone during a four-hour period seven days a week. Kellogg, a 35-year-old attorney in New Orleans, called the number in July, and Knight picked up. Amazon.com Tests Retailer Ads –

Microsoft’s Yahoo Bid Ruffles China’s Alibaba – WSJ.com Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet company part-owned by Yahoo Inc., has hired advisers to help it negotiate for expanded management independence in the event its U.S. partner is acquired by Microsoft Corp., a person familiar with the situation said. US Retail E-Commerce Set for Growth – eMarketer eMarketer predicts that online retailers in the US will ring up over $100 billion more in sales in 2012 than they did in 200

Would Microsoft-Yahoo! Mean More Competition? – eMarketer On the surface, Microsoft’s $44 billion offer to acquire Yahoo! seems to simplify the US search market share race. The combined firm would be second in online ad revenues to No.1 Google, and ahead of AOL. In 2007, Google rang up nearly $6 billion, while Yahoo! had about $3.4 billion and MSN had $1.4 billion net revenues. McAfee’s New Secure Web Platform Steers Millions of Consumers to the Secure Internet McAfee, Inc. t

It has been a big week of news related to Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo!. Today, I thought I would try to provide you with a link to series of articles and analysis on this big Internet development. Little Reason To Shout Yahoo! – Allan Sloan Most of the talk about Microsoft’s hostile offer for Yahoo has focused on whether the deal could tip the scales in the battle for Internet dominance. Today, I’d like to steer the conversation to something a little more basic tha

Microsoft Makes Grab for Yahoo – WSJ.com The battle for supremacy in the Internet era is entering a tumultuous new phase. Microsoft Corp. placed a bold $44.6 billion bet that buying Yahoo Inc. can transform both companies’ flagging efforts to catch Google Inc. The software giant’s unsolicited offer for Yahoo represents a 62% premium over the Internet company’s recent share price and is a sign of Microsoft’s determination to narrow Google’s growing lead in the online advertisi

Phishing Sites Proliferate, But Experts Say Help Is on the Way The population of Web sites dedicated to the crime of phishing jumped markedly in October after dipping late in the summer, according to the latest data from the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The good news, though, is that experts appear to be working out a new way to shut down these sites in a way that will keep fraudsters off the Internet. The group’s October report, released last week, shows the number of unique

eBay’s PayPal Unit Acquires Fraud Sciences Ltd. eBay’s online payment service PayPal agreed to acquire Fraud Sciences Ltd. in a cash transaction worth approximately $169 million. Fraud Sciences is a privately-held Israeli company with expertise in online risk tools. Save $11.6B with these click fraud safety nets – iMedia Connection As malware and other cyberfraud technologies become more insidious, marketers stand to lose not just money but consumer trust as well. ClickFacts’

How to Reduce Web ‘Purchase Anxiety’ – bMighty.com From proof of privacy protection to effective testimonials to constructive follow up, here are 8 tips to make visitors feel more comfortable buying from your site. You know that moment when you’re thinking about buying something, but you’re just not sure if you should pull out your wallet? That’s "purchase anxiety." Most people feel it at some point, especially when they’re buying a big-ticket item. Or when they’re buying som

How 30 minutes a day can result in 250 inbound links First, know that the 250 links will come over time – it’s not a one time event. It is actually a pretty simple strategy and will have more benefits than just getting inbound links. I am referring to the practice of strategically commenting on blogs. Buzz Monitoring: 26 Free Tools You Must Have There are a lot of companies that will happily relieve you of your dollars, in exchange for buzz monitoring services. While many lar

Online shoppers worrying about privacy – baltimoresun.com Privacy concerns stemming from online shopping rose in 2007, a new study finds, as the loss or theft of credit Privacy concerns stemming from online shopping rose in 2007, a new study finds, as the loss or theft of credit card information and other personal data soared to unprecedented levels. Sixty-one percent of adult Americans said they were very or extremely concerned about the privacy of personal information when

Online Privacy’s Call to Arms Web surfers aren’t just mad about online privacy violations. They’re getting even. Consumers are speaking out publicly against companies they say have gone too far in tracking their Web surfing patterns, creating public relations nightmares. New mass hack strikes sites, confounds researchers A massive hack of legitimate Web sites has been spreading malware to visitors’ PCs, using a new tactic that has made detection "extraordinarily difficult," s

Cheerleader and Taskmaster Bob Greene, co-founder of Contour Venture Partners in New York, wants you to know that venture capitalists aren’t half as tough as their reputations would have you believe. "A lot of entrepreneurs think VCs are haughty or arrogant," says Greene, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School in 1982. "All the VCs I know, we do it because we love it. We want to see entrepreneurs succeed. If the wrong impressions get cast, it’s because we ge

AuctionBytes Report on Online Buying Survey, Part 1 Why do people shop online? How do they find items, and what factors are important to them in making purchasing decisions? These are some of the questions we set out to explore in our December online-buying survey. Over 900 people took the survey. By aggre Scoble Finds Out Facebook Is the Jealous Sort – Advertising Age – Adages Robert Scoble, he of many thousand friends on Facebook, was suspended from the social network after

Product Blocks Click Fraud in Real Time Click Forensics, Inc., a provider of click fraud prevention solutions, recently announced the availability of Click Forensics for Publishers. The new product allows online publishers and ad networks to automatically block sources of click fraud and poor-quality traffic from hitting pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements running on their sites, according to the company. Similar to a spam filter, the product filters out click fraud and other

Should I pay my investor’s legal fees? – Venture Hacks Venture capitalists don’t want to pay their legal fees for financings. Don’t fight this term—that’s a “big move on a little issue.” Instead, cap your contribution to the investor’s legal bill. And watch the legal bills in small financings: don’t spend a large portion of the investment on lawyers or give up a lot of equity for the privilege of paying your investor’s legal bill. Santa Is Packing More Sofas and Less Jewelry