LinkedIn’s New “Company Profiles” Feature is Pretty Lame

I know that LinkedIn Company Profiles is in beta but seriously, they should have fine-tuned it a bit more before announcing it to the world. In a March 20th announcement, LinkedIn informed us that we would now be able to see over 160,000 company profiles in the same manner that you can see individual profiles. These include Fortune 500 companies such as eBay to philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Open Letter Asking Google To Do the Right Thing Regarding Performics

Now that Google officially owns DoubleClick, there is another dilemma at hand and that is they also own a SEO company. Is this a conflict of interest? Absolutely! Let’s face it – Google is now in the SEO business – selling services through DoubleClick’s Performics to people who want to rank well on search engines, including Google. This also places Google in the paid inclusion business, something it called evil back in 2004, when it went public.

Danny Sullivan has written an open letter to Google asking them to do the right thing – namely to spin off Performics as they should not own such a company.

YouTube Offers a New Set of APIs

Mashable reports that YouTube has answered the call of making sure you can see your favorite videos just about anywhere. The popular video site has announced they are launching several new APIs that will let you be even more interactive with their service from just about anywhere.

Should Twitter Be Used For Serious Stuff?

Stan Schroeder wrote a piece on Mashable questioning whether the popular micro-blogging service, Twitter should be used for anything important. He writes, “Here’s a simple rule: if it’s important, don’t say it on Twitter. If it requires a response, don’t say it on Twitter. If you actually care whether anyone will see what you’ve just written, don’t say it on Twitter. Twitter, however fun it may be, simply isn’t designed for it.” Sorry, I don’t agree.

SMX West 2008 Photos Up on Flickr

SMX West 2008 Photos Up on Flickr

I finally got my photos from the SMX West conference in Santa Clara up on Flickr. Sorry it has taken so long but last week I spent the majority of time digging out and keeping up with blogs and social media stuff. There is just under 90 photos there, some of which were taken from the sessions I live blogged while others are more related to the night life and people we hung out with all week.

Is Ask Giving Up Battle for Search or Staying the Course? Which is True?

Lot’s of talk related to search engine Ask lately. First there were rumors that Ask would be laying off some of its workforce and abandoning the Teoma technology they had worked so hard on the last few years. Then Ask responds and calls the rumors false. Those of us who are cheering Ask on in the battle for search market share breathed a sign of relief… but not for long.

6 Gadgets That Are Sure To Enhance the Twitter Experience

6 Gadgets That Are Sure To Enhance the Twitter Experience

For you Twitteraholics, I’d like to point out some gadgets that may help to simplify and enhance the experience of using Twitter. They range from browser plug-ins, desktop applications and even mash-ups that turn the Twitter experience into a three dimensional geographical event.

SMX West Session Coverage – Key Takeaways

Besides speaking in a session entitled “Reputation Monitoring & Management Through Search” at this week’s SMX West conference, I also helped in the live blogging efforts for Search Engine Roundtable. I stuck to a pretty light schedule seeing that I have my lovely wife, daughter and new grandson with me on this trip. I was able to attend all three keynotes (although I didn’t cover them) and live-blogged four sessions in total.

Yahoo Making Noise at SMX – Yahoo! Buzz & Search Monkey

Yahoo is making some noise at the current SMX West conference in Santa Clara. They have officially launched Yahoo! Buzz, a Digg style social news site and at the same time are unveiling a project code-named “Search Monkey” which consists of a set of open-source tools that allow users and publishers to annotate and enhance search results associated with specific web sites.