Google Unveils its 10th Anniversary Logo

This is the best image I was able to find of Google's upcoming 10th anniversary logo.

Happy Birthday Google!

For more information check out this post on Vnunet.com - Google Unveils 10th Anniversary Logo

BrainTrack University Index - Google PR 9 Web Directory For Sale!

As unbelievable as it may sound, there is a Google PageRank (PR) 9 Web directory for sale on SitePoint. It is going for $300,000 and the reserve has not been met (yet). It currently, as of today has 29 days left in the auction. This one will be interesting to follow.

Check it out here:
- BrainTrack University Index Hompage
- BrainTrack University Index Auction on SitePoint

Steve Ballmer is Beautiful!

I think we have a candidate for next years - People Magazines 'Sexiest Man Alive' contest! Enjoy...:-)

Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media

Interesting new research has recently been released from Cone that says:

According to the survey, 93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of American consumers feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

What does this mean to average businesses? It means that consumers are not requesting, but expecting businesses to communciate and be involved in online communities if they wish to better communciate with them. The winners will be the businesses that best embrace this concept.

A great example of this was recently discussed on National Public Radio (NPR) when a consumer bought an expensive flat screen LCD TV to watch a specific sports game, but when he went to plug it in it would not configure properly to his cable service. It was after hours for customer service, so he jumped on Twitter to deperately ask friends for help and low and behold someone from his cable company responded within minutes and he later had someone show up for onsite installation help. This example of rapid response and being where the customer is, is the future of communciations if your company wants to be a player in the new media world.

Check out the full research report here - Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media

Monitor Keywords Beyond the Search Engines

SiteVolume is a free new online service that allows you to enter one to five keywords (or phrases) into its interface and see, with a click of a button how many mentions of that keyword appear on any of these sites:

- Flickr
- Facebook
- MySpace
- Digg
- YouTube

This is a great tool to allow you to easily gather insight into keywords beyond the search engines.

You can check it out here - SiteVolume

Google Launches New Website to Help Get Your Content Out to the World (or at Least Google's World)

Google recently announced a new website that allows you a centralized place to upload your content to Google Web Search, Maps, Product Search and iGoogle. Below is a list of what you are able to currently upload:

- Submit a URL for inclusion in Google's index
- Submit a Sitemap through Webmaster tools
- List your business in the Local Business Center
- Upload your products for sale in Product Search


The site is located here - Submit Your Content Website.

In addition, they have also released a new Blog in conjunction with this new site and it is located here - Content Central Blog

Yahoo + AOL = YahAOL?

On Tuesday, Yahoo's new board cleared the way for a new round of talks with Time Warner over the future of AOL, potentially restarting negotiations for a combination of the two businesses that stalled out earlier this year.

This combination would make sense for the two as Yahoo is trying to strengthen its display ad platform and AOL has been in trouble and in need of direction for some time. Early indications say that Yahoo shareholders also agree with the possible merger as the stock has been slightly increasing today.

Yahoo Stock Tracking