If many who were expecting a blockbuster acquisition in the tech industry were disappointed with the recent Google-Groupon deal that never happened, well – a bigger deal just came through – to the tune of $8.5 billion in cash. In a definitive agreement announced Tuesday, software giant Microsoft Corporation has acquired Luxembourg-based Internet phone service and communications company Skype. The investor group, Silver Lake, which bought Skype from eBay in 2009, oversaw the transaction. The deal represents one of the highest-valued acquisitions in years, and is expected by both companies to soon increase market opportunity as well as benefit individual consumers and businesses. It will, in particular, integrate the Skype platform and connect its 170-plus million users to a portfolio of Microsoft products, including Lync, Outlook, Xbox LIVE, and Kinect. “Microsoft and Skype share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers,” said Skype CEO Tony Bates, who will now become the president of the new Microsoft – Read the full article
The search engine wars are heating up, and Microsoft has once again boosted its Bing search engine to compete with Google. In the latest series of enhancements to its own search experience, Microsoft is expanding the HTML5 version of its Bing search engine to include an “instant search” feature similar to Google Instant. The HTML5 version – which had been previewed at www.bing.com/peek before the site was pulled down in the wake of unwanted publicity – offered a peek of what else the new Bing might have in store, such as “search previews as you type,” smoother “animations that make search come alive,” better search history interaction, pop-over windows for easy in-site navigation, and slideshows that appear for certain kinds of search results. Bing’s HTML5 site is being timed to correspond with the launch of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9, the upcoming version of its Web browser, designed to maximize the use of HTML5 browser technology. While Google remains at the – Read the full article
We all know that E-mail is one of the most potent tools for Internet marketing. And, thanks to the growth of mobile Web browsing, E-mail marketing is now bigger than ever. We’ve written about E-mail marketing before, focusing on things like: Starting your E-mail campaign How to write irresistible subject lines And E-mail marketing etiquette in the time of social media …but there’s something we haven’t yet touched on: video. That’s right. The Web has evolved well enough to more fully enable E-mails with videos – and we’re not just talking about 25 GB WMV attachments that take forever to download. There are a number of E-mail marketing-related products out there today that allow you, for example, to embed your YouTube videos so that recipients can watch it from inside the E-mail message. E-mails with videos significantly boost your click-through rates Not only does video E-mail marketing introduce new creative possibilities (no longer will marketers be limited to text and – Read the full article
Tumblr is easy to fall in love with – especially if you’re looking for a light (and awesome) blogging platform. It’s going to be even easier once you’ve read the reasons why you should “Tum-blog” and taken note of the fact that the company has significant plans to expand next year. If you’re big on SEO, however… umm. Okay. So here’s the thing: Tumblr isn’t exactly the best blogging platform to support your SEO (search engine optimization) campaign. Unlike WordPress sites or even blogs hosted by Google’s own product, Blogger, Tumblr sites don’t rank well on search results. Which isn’t to say that Tumblr never ranks well – because with a few tweaks, tips, and tricks, you can position your Tumblr blog in a way that gives you an edge in the search rankings. Optimize your page titles: Here’s one good thing about Tumblr: it allows you to modify the HTML of your posts. HTML! Isn’t that a form of – Read the full article
Are you ready for 2011? As the Internet transforms, so should you. The rate at which technology evolves only means that, no matter how far along you’ve come with your Internet marketing program, there will always be something new to explore. There’ll always be something new to add to the mix. It is in this light that Lakeshore Branding takes a look at a number of online marketing trends expected to take off next year. We present this hoping that you’ll turn these expectations into opportunities – and the opportunities into tools to drive your business. HTML5: As the next major revision of the HTML standard, HTML5 is expected to emerge next year – and beyond – as that which will change the chemistry of the World Wide Web. Under development for much of the last few years, HTML5 will nonetheless continue to usher in the next generation of web development and programming. It will be supported by more browsers, – Read the full article
Do you know that Lady Gaga has the most viewed YouTube video of all time? Yup – her “Bad Romance” music video is right on top of the list, beating hugely successful viral clips like “Charlie Bit My Finger” and Justin Bieber’s “Baby”. One can only dream of getting half as much as – or even a quarter of – the 212 million views that she has so far notched. And why not? Companies, brands, retailers, aspiring artists, ad agencies, and Internet marketers know very well how viral marketing – and YouTube – can spell instant success and bring new opportunities to their business. So let’s take a look at what Lady Gaga is doing right. Her barely three-months-old video, “Telephone”, already has close to 50 million views, so it might be a good idea to break that down a little bit and see for ourselves how we can make our own online video content more viral. Use the power – Read the full article
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or haven’t touched a computer at all for two years, you would know by now that Microsoft has rebranded their MSN search engine to a product called Bing. It’s the company’s answer to Google, the search giant that owns a large part of the market share and which continues to lead over Bing, Yahoo, and its other search competitors. Microsoft has shown, however, that it is willing to invest and make Bing a better search product for its users. It has also spent a huge amount of money in heavy marketing spending in order to gain a bit of Google’s portion of the search space – a move that has helped Bing consistently inch upward every month. While comScore recently reported that Google still has 64.4 percent share of core searches, Bing continued to gain in April 2010 and upped its search share to 11.8 percent. Which leads to the question: should search – Read the full article
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry continues to evolve. More and more experts are finding out ways and thinking up new strategies to make their websites – and their content – friendlier to the search engines. Nowadays, it’s no longer such a mystery to figure out how to rank higher, find faster, and optimize better. For the most part, SEO covers just text and image content. That’s because search engine robots understand only text. But times are changing, and we’re seeing new innovations in video SEO that bring us closer to being able to rank published video content more systematically in search. Why is this important? Well, it’s important for the simple fact that people are publishing videos on the Web more than ever. On YouTube, the well-established leader in this industry, users upload 20 hours of video every minute – and 10.5 million hours, or 120 decades, every year. More videos are uploaded using other platforms, which include Vimeo, – Read the full article
