I've written before how much I love SlimStat and Mint before. They provide real-time insight's to how users interact with your website... and user behaviors in general. I can watch and refresh the logs for minutes on end. It's fascinating (especially for bigger sites with large amounts of content). How else would I know that the last visitor to this site searched on Google for: "spoon barack obama"?
Press "Get Widget" to see the new menu. I'm obviously biased - but I love the new UI, functionality and menu interactions. Play around with it and give feedback!
Over the last couple years, NCAA Football's National Signing Day has become a big business. ESPN aired all-day coverage on ESPNU and ESPN2. Online, ESPN simulcast the entire broadcast on ESPN Video and reported real-time via ESPN.com and ESPN Insider (have I mentioned enough properties?!). This was the perfect day for beRecruited to team up with ESPN - after all, our goal is to connect athletes, coaches and colleges.
Throughout the day and on ESPN's properties, beRecruited was featured in various placements - from ESPN.com's recruiting classes to ESPN2's "Who's Your Daddy Segment" (my personal favorite).
It was also exciting to see some of beRecruited's most prominent football players be mentioned nationally and see significant online traffic today due to the ESPN broadcast.
video footage:
photo:
The New York Times remains the most web savvy newspaper and their coverage of Super Tuesday is phenomenal. Simple, direct and easy to digest. It updates every couple minutes and visually is a mix between Facebook and Digg.
I love it.
The search box is often overlooked despite being such a critical launching point for the user experience. The search box shouldn't necessarily be an afterthought. Whether it is in the header or footer, it should be inviting, large enough to house a full query, and be visually enticing. There are a lot of ways to make a search box interactive:
* The Look: Ask.com sets it boldly atop a rich background. * In the Box: beRecruited.com fills the search box with the message "Search beRecruited" that, when clicked, disappears. * Before the Submission: Snap.com reveals search results as the query is entered.
Here are some of my favorite search boxes and interactions:
* Yahoo. Fills in results as you type. Looks terrific. Allows you turn 'search assist' on and off.
* Chickipedia. Not sure what to say about the rest of their site, but the search box is terrific.
* Boxxet. The search box is ordinary, but the pre-rolled interaction is brilliant and inviting.
* ESPN. As you type, it fills matching results with key data like team, school, position.
I've written before about Twitter and how I wonder about their longevity considering that I NEVER visit Twitter.com. A couple thoughts since that post:
1) Twitter has been down a lot recently (and it's gotten a ton of blog coverage). Twitter is still not working with Gtalk and I therefore haven't gotten any updates for several days... and you know what? I've existed just fine, haven't once logged in to Twitter.com, and will patiently wait until it starts working on my blackberry again.
2) I was excited to use the new Google / Twitter MashUp for Super Tuesday precisely because it leverages what Twitter knows best: cultural trending according to their 1,000s of users. Frankly, I am very disappointed with the integration though as it is nothing more than an open search for candidate names. The results are 1,000s of tweets with such insightful commentary as "I'm down with Obama."
That's not useful.
For this to be successful, it must be insightful.
For it to be insightful, it would have to assign weight or credence to certain power users or power tweets... just as Google did when it created their search algorithm and assigned PageRank values.
For better options on tracking Super Tuesday, read Read Write Web's list of options.
... And it makes me even more depressed.
After last night's horrible Super Bowl, I received the below email from iTunes:
"Because you've downloaded sports videos, audiobooks, or podcasts from iTunes in the past, we thought you'd like to know that you can now download highlights, analysis, and more from Super Bowl XLII."
If they know me as well as they claim, they'd know that:
1) I purchased Patriots videos 2) Subscribe to multiple Boston podcasts
Put those together and there is NO way that I want to buy highlights of SuperBowl 42.
I've written before about how innovative and useful Xobni is (and can be).I've also written a great deal about how important the mobile net and connectivity are to me.
Apparently the two don't coexist very well (as of now). My Blackberry has been unable to connect and sync via the Blackberry Desktop software (version 4.3). I tried numerous times to fully uninstall and reinstall the software, but to no avail. Considering that the sync always crashed on the calendar function, I decided to try removing Xobni from my system (running Outlook 2007)... and everything ran smoothly.
And with that, an important point is raised: A plugin built on email usage and social connectivity - however awesome it may be - relies on the system that enables those connections.
vs. 
I spoke too soon. Last night I posted about the plight of big tech stocks in 2008. I left off Microsoft from the Tech stocks and also from the video games sites - not expecting that they would potentially change the tech landscape in a matter of hours.
After a long night in the office (4am), I awoke late to news that Yahoo's stock surged 50% on an unsolicited buy-out offer from Microsoft. Fascinating considering:
* Microsoft has been publicly rumored to court Yahoo and eBay for months (or longer) * Yahoo was set to announce a $150mm video acquisition of Maven Networks - just yesterday * Yahoo has had a tumultuous year... would this have happened if Semel were still at the helm? Will it happen now?
Microsoft is clearly attracted to Yahoo's traffic, community, and platforms. Together, the two companies have two of the three biggest start pages on the web: Live.com and Yahoo.com. They have three of the biggest social networks: Live, Yahoo and Facebook. Combined, that's more users than anyone can boast (or get even close to) and more pageviews that are potentially monetizable (of course, Y! and MS can't monetize as effectively as Google...)
Ultimately, the potential success of an acquisition here depends on the ability to create an effective organization that leverages and integrates the several platforms and properties these two massive companies share. After all, we haven't seen either Yahoo or Microsoft effectively leverage their *own* platforms or traffic.
More good reading:
- Microsoft: Official announcement - Fred Wilson part 1: The price offered is an ~70% premium to the closing price last night. This deal will happen unless another strategic wants it (News Corp?). Because at that price, no financial buyer can make the deal work, particularly in this financing environment. - Fred Wilson part 2: A combined Microsoft/Yahoo will have 30% market share in search and maybe they can do something with that. Clearly there are big synergies in merging Yahoo! and Microsoft's online businesses. The merged entity will be dominant in email which is an important category that isn't going away. - TechCrunch: What the combination looks like