Entertainment Weekly and TVGuide Go with the Meebo Bar

Meebo announced today that it has added EW.com and TVGuide.com to its list of publishers implementing the Meebo Bar. The Meebo bar is designed to let readers easily connect with the people they're friends with on social networks. 

"Social connections are an increasingly important traffic source; it’s crucial for websites to take advantage of that," says Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg. "The Meebo Bar makes it easy for publishers to add social functionality to their sites, and provide a persistent, open experience on multiple networks that makes sharing and chat simple, fun and engaging for users."

"The introduction of the Meebo Bar has added value for both our audience and advertisers," says Tom Kirwan, EW's National Director of Digital Sales. "The functionality increases users' engagement and interactivity with our content, while simultaneously allowing advertisers a unique opportunity to be front and center."

In the fall, Meebo plans to introduce new advertising and branding products, including an interactive ad placement with customized skins and sponsored buttons.

Meebo claims to reach a quarter of the U.S. Internet population with 52 million unique monthly visitors and 110 million worldwide. Monthly visitors have increased nearly 300% over the last 10 months, the company says.source: webpronews.com

Google launched a new version of its image search today (as well as a new ad format) and in the announcement, Google dropped a few interesting stats about its image search growth.

Google Image Search first came out in 2001. Back then, Google says it indexed around 250 million images. By 2005, the company says it indexed over a billion. As of today, it's over 10 billion.

 

"When you think about 'information,' what probably comes to mind are streams of words and numbers," says Google Images Product Manager Nate Smith. "Google’s pretty good at organizing these types of information, but consider all the things you can’t express with words: what does it look like in the middle of a sandstorm? What are some great examples of Art Nouveau architecture? Should I consider wedding cupcakes instead of a traditional cake?"

"This is why we built Google Images in 2001," adds Smith. "We realized that for many searches, the best answer wasn’t text—it was an image or a set of images. The service has grown quite a bit since then."

Google has released numerous features to Image Search over the years, and is always experimenting with design tweaks. This will likely continue.

The new version of Google's Image Search is in the process of rolling out.

Hulu Plus Makes It To PS3

Although a fair number of people have hooked computers up to televisions, and a few folks might be willing to stare at their monitors for hours on end, a new development should help Hulu reach a much larger crowd.  Hulu's now available through the PS3.

A couple of quick notes regarding the current state of things: only PS3 Plus subscribers are allowed access to Hulu Plus (meaning there are two fees involved), and this is still considered a "limited preview," so even among PS3 Plus subscribers, not everyone will allowed to participate.

 Hold your boos, though.  Susan Panico, Senior Director of the PlayStation Network, promised on the PlayStation Blog that a more inclusive experience is in the works.

Panico wrote, "As Hulu Plus becomes generally available in the coming months, all PlayStation 3 users in the United States will be able to download and subscribe to the full Hulu Plus service and it will also be available on wide range of Sony Electronics Internet-connected entertainment devices, including select BRAVIA TVs and Blu-ray Disc players."

So lots and lots of people should soon be able to enjoy Hulu Plus on a big screen from the comfort of their couch, which should result in a lot of new interest in the service.  After all, however you feel about the commercials, the content selection, and the price of Hulu Plus, at least a folks who have already paid for those entertainment devices will probably opt for a pay service, as well.

Now we just have to wait and see whether their numbers are large enough to make Hulu Plus a genuine success.

RIM Unveils BlackBerry Protect Security App

Research in Motion (RIM) has unveiled a new security application for BlackBerry called BlackBerry Protect. The product allows users to wirelessly backup, restore, and locate their BlackBerry smartphones.

BlackBerry Protect comes equipped with remote device wipe, remote device lock, a "lost and found" screen, the ability to locate the device on a map, remote activation of the loud ringer.



BlackBerry Protect is currently in beta status, and will be launched in limited beta later this week through the BlackBerry Beta Zone and invite codes.

RIM has more screenshots, as well as a walkthrough of how to use the product here. You can sign up for Beta Zone here.

Bing Captures Bigger Share Of U.S. Search Market

Bing had the most search growth for the month of June, growing 7 percent month- over-month to capture 9.85 percent of the U.S. search market, according to the latest figures released by Hitwise.

Google accounted for 71.65 percent of the search market, but saw a one percent drop in growth month-over-month. Yahoo's search growth was flat, accounting for 14.37 percent of the market and Ask captured 2.19 percent of the search market, with 2 percent growth month-over-month.



Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing May 2010 with June 2010, automotive, business and finance, entertainment, news and media, shopping and social networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Yahoo Loses VP Of Engineering To Skype

Considering that laws prevent kids from working much, and that many people try to retire by age 65, it's a big deal when a person spends 10 years with a company. Unfortunately for Yahoo, that means it's also a big deal that Madhu Yarlagadda, a vice president of engineering, is leaving for Skype after more than 11 years.

Yarlagadda got his start at Yahoo when the company acquired MyQuest (which he founded) in 1999. Since then, he's worked on different global homepages, Yahoo Communities, Yahoo Messenger, and Yahoo Mobile, among other things. His latest duties covered "Integrated Customer Experiences."

Starting sometime this month, he'll begin to handle "global oversight of Skype's engineering and development initiatives," however.

Yarlagadda explained the move by saying in a statement, "I am excited to be joining Skype at this critical stage in the company's evolution. It will be a real privilege to build on the many core strengths of Skype's global portfolio as the company continues to deliver groundbreaking customer experiences on new platforms and devices." source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

5 Tips for Marketing Through Content

Content has always been "where it's at", and that holds true as much as ever these days. Gather CEO Tom Gerace, who is also founder of the Social Media Advertising Consortium (SMAC), a non-profit organization working on the creation of standards for social media engagement campaigns, offered some tips on marketing through content to share with WebProNews readers. These tips are:

1. Start with Search. There are 15.9 billion searches run every month and a small percentage are customers looking for you and your competitors. Figure out your market opportunity by understanding how many searches, keywords and keyword phrases are related to what you do.

2. Think holistically about your budget. What do you spend today per customer? What is your average SEM spend? Content-based programs can help lower cost/customer acquisition because fewer people are doing it and competition, so far, is less intense. Plan to shift some budget dollars from SEM and other acquisition marketing efforts to content marketing - it delivers results with an improved cost structure.

3. Target your content creation. Content needs to be targeted to areas that align directly with your brand; where sufficient demand for your content will make content marketing worthwhile.

4. Make lots and lots and lots of content at a low cost. Search engines weigh recency heavily when organizing content. There is always fresh content at the top of search results pages, so 1,000 posts on a topic will capture more customers than a competitor with 5 – 10 posts.

5. Don't go it alone. Managing dozens of writers, achieving top search engine placement, and establishing content creation costs to make content marketing make sense requires specialized knowledge and training. Find a partner and make them put their money where their mouth is on the numbers they promise.

Those are Gerace's tips, but I'll add that quality makes a difference. Not only does Google continually try to put more emphasis on quality with algorithm updates, but it also goes a long way when you're talking about reputation, and obviously you don't want to do something that will hurt your brand. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/