Microsoft has officialy announced about the half-billion dollar deal with media-giant Viacom. This new deal is very prestigious as it shows a positive sign that online advertising and content distribution offerings are getting more matured.
Microsoft
Jason Shellen who has previously worked for Google’s New Business Development team will take up the responsibility of managing the product development for LiveJournal, Inc. During his time at Google he was the founding product manager for Google Reader which is one of the most popular blog readers available online.
Tafiti has been released as a Windows Live Quick Application via CodePlex. It was announced by the Windows Live Platform team. Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, is a search visualization website by Microsoft which brings a new user experience to researching in the field of searching and storing results. It was originally developed to demonstrate Silverlight and the Windows Live Search APIs.
The Guardian.co.uk story reports that the Redmond giant has bought Multimap. They say that "Microsoft said that Multimap will complement offerings such as Virtual Earth, Live Search, Windows Live services, MSN and its new $6.5bn (£3.2bn) acquisition aQuantive."
This acquisition is "an attempt by Microsoft to compete with Google, whose Google Maps and Earth tools dominate the global online mapping and location market."
According to Reuters "Microsoft Corp. began on Monday to place advertisements on its U.S. MSN Mobile page, moving into the nascent mobile phone advertising business."
Further, that the biggies Microsoft, Google and Yahoo see the mobile advertising market as being more lucrative than the online advertising market which is worth $40 Billion.
To begin with Microsoft would advertise for "from Bank of America, Paramount Pictures and Jaguar."
Microsoft launched Windows Live Community Builder without any fan-fare or hoopla. This comes shortly after launching Live Search Webmaster Tools For Business.
Some of the features include:
- E-mail on your own domain.
- Admin tools to help you add and manage member accounts.
- Create and share a photo album in minutes.
Microsoft aims to be one of "top two" in Web advertising, reports a Reuters article.
At the UBS investor conference, Kevin Johnson, Prez of Microsoft's platforms and services division laid down the company's plan to become a leader in the growing online advertising industry with a "10, 20, 30, 40" plan. These are the company's aspirations and these aims include:
As soon as news leaked, we reported back in September on how Microsoft Corp wanted to buy a minority stake in Facebook.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft has pumped in $240 million as investment in Facebook Inc. Now, Microsoft owns 1.6% stake of the leading social networking site.
Just days after saying Google receives too much undeserved credit, Brian McAndrews, the Sr VP of Microsoft's Advertiser Publisher Solutions Group is back saying the company's search ads will shift to other forms of online advertising, reports Bloomberg.
McAndrews said, "Search has been a significant driver of growth. In the next several years, it will not be as much of a driver. Some of the emphasis will shift more toward display ads, toward video, toward rich media."
According to Brian McAndrews, the Sr VP of Microsoft's Advertiser Publisher Solutions Group, Google receives too much credit or ad conversions. This was what he stated during a panel discussion at the San Francisco summit of the Web 2.0 Summit.
As Frank Watson reports, "McAndrews was talking about Microsoft's plan to launch conversion attribution tracking – where the user's previous ad exposure etc. is attached to longer tailed tracking."
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