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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has responded to Jerry Yang’s comments about being open to a Microsoft acquisition. Speaking to a group of developers in Sydney, he dismissed the option of an outright acquisition, but remained open to a search deal. Though, even that didn’t sound particularly promising:

We made an offer… We made another offer. It was clear that [Yahoo] doesn’t want to sell the business to us and we moved on. We tried at one point to do a partnership around search, not an acquisition. And that didn’t work either, and we moved on… and they moved on… We are not interested in going back and relooking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share … I’m sure there are still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search.

Of course, all of this has been a game of poker from the start. So, whether Ballmer is truly saying no or simply just waiting to see if Yahoo’s stock drops so low that Microsoft becomes the JP Morgan (Yahoo being the Bear Stearns, of course) remains to be seen.

And why not wait for a merger of Yahoo and AOL and then scoop up 2 competitors for the price of 1 (and a reduced price at that!)?

Microsoft is smart to hold on to its stash of cash while the economy hangs out in the pooper. Sorry, Jerry, but you had your chance.

When I read that AOL.com launched a new homepage, I naturally hopped on over there to see what the new look, um, looked like. It looked the same, except with dark blue trim and web 2.0 stripes in the background for good measure.

Otherwise, it still holds the same basic design as….Yahoo. I then came across a story by Reuters which says Yahoo and AOL are conducting “due diligence” on a possible (probable?) merger by the two web companies. I was not at all surprised.

Something else to know about the new AOL is that it incorporates a new social element.
What the new feature allows you to do is sign into social networks like Facebook and Bebo directly from the homepage.This is a smart move and will blend nicely with Yahoo’s push toward open source should the merger occur.

“As the Web becomes more fragmented, consumers want choice and relevance in their Web experiences. AOL.com is the first traditional big portal to offer access to popular social networking sites all in one place,” said Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President, AOL Programming. “Now consumers can connect with their numerous networks and information sources all from AOL.com. We have already seen success by opening up AOL.com to other e-mail providers. We will continue to enhance the appeal of our portal with the changes we are making today by adding more relevant programming, customization opportunities, greater integration of third party content, improved design and access to social networks directly from AOL.com.”

There was much buzz over the weekend about a military report suggesting the popular mass Instant Messaging tool Twitter could be used by terrorists. They cited as an example the protestors at the Republican National Convention using Twitter to inform about police actions and movement.

In that case, Twitter becomes a better counterterrorism tool than it does the next training exercise for Hamas and Al Quaida. Tweets are public and searchable which kind of kills (no pun intended) the element of surprise that terrorists crave.

In fact, Twitter has been a great source of information during earthquakes and other crisis. It’s far more likely that Twitter would be a great asset to emergency response agencies and law-abiding citizens during a terrorist attack than it would be an aid to the terrorists themselves.

Related Reading:
Zappos + Twitter = Innovative Success!
Using Twitter as an Education Tool
FriendFeed Adds Duplicate Detection! And Twitter Tweaks Interface Design

Read the news and it quickly becomes obvious how complex this world is. So, it’s no wonder that what’s popular in social media and electronics is simple.

MySpace (IMHO) was easier than Friendster. But Facebook took the best of both and now reigns.

LinkedIn makes it easy to network professionally, and YouTube makes it easy to be entertained - and quickly.

Twitter makes a bunch of things easy - from breaking news to gathering feedback about a product you’re considering.

In electronics, the Flip Video has revolutionized camcorders (I am a proud owner of one myself). And now, smaller, more affordable laptops are all the rage. Plus, Apple threw its iPod on a mobile phone, inserted the internet and simplified mobile communications.

So why are these services and gadgets so popular but companies like Microsoft are watching their market share slowly fade?

Dan Kimerling at TechCrunch thinks its all about motivation. Microsoft is motivated by features, while Facebook, et al, are motivated by the user experience.

He has a point. Microsoft considers Google a major rival, and Google is almost always talking about the user experience.

Steve Ballmer might want to take a cue, because he talks an awful lot about catching Google via advertising. And while advertising revenues are most certainly a key to Microsoft’s long term success, it will only prove profitable if the customer is happy.

Google should also watch out to avoid the pitfalls that plagued Microsoft. But a Google failure would not automatically equal Microsoft success. It would only leave the door open for a Facebook-esque startup to come along and steal the show.

Web analytics provider Omniture today launched Omniture SiteSearch, a hosted site search product it picked up in its Visual Sciences acquisition, which closed in January 2008.

The SiteSearch product was an early entry in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space. It was originally launched in 1999 as Atomz Search, part of its content management suite. Atomz was later acquired by analytics provider WebSideStory, which later acquired Visual Sciences. The entire company changed its name to Visual Sciences, and was then acquired by Omniture.

A few clients, including Verizon and BusinessWeek have been using SiteSearch as a standalone product, according to Jeff Minich, senior product marketing manager at Omniture. Today, it becomes an integrated part of the Omniture online marketing suite.

The biggest effect of this is the ability to impact site search results using data from Omniture’s SiteCatalyst analytics package. So on an e-commerce site, for example, a search for “shirts” could be made to return the most popular shirts of the season, or those that return the highest margin, or those that are converting highest, Minich said.

“You can set business rules to break ties, or to push a page higher in the results,” he said. “You can also combine metrics, and weight them relative to each other, and relative to the natural relevancy ranking in SiteSearch.”

Most of the time when discussions arise about yellow pages advertisers shifting from print to online, the talk is in generalities. But not all markets are the same. Certainly, some have shifted online in greater numbers than others.

An Oregon search marketing company seeks to aid companies in managing their yellow pages across different markets with a new analytics tool.

G5 Search Marketing today launched their Yellow Pages Analytics Tool, which is added to their Local Marketing Platform. The tool provides analysis showing how many customers would be lost by cutting print yellow pages or offset by engaging an online campaign.

“We have clients looking to cut millions of dollars per year in print yellow page advertising,” said G5 CEO Dan Hobin. “The issue becomes when to cut as you don’t want to cut too soon. For businesses with multiple locations, every market is different. Our tool enables our clients to cut advertising in major metros while keeping the smaller markets where yellow pages still perform.”

Projections from Borrell Associates have local advertisers shifting $13.1 billion to online advertising from various offline media. A look at average CPMs explains why. The average internet CPM is $3.65 while the average yellow pages CPM is $9.29.

What do you think about this new tool? Let us know in the comments.

Related Reading
Top 10 Yellow Pages Searches According to Yellow Pages Association

Building an in-house SEO team can be a daunting task, especially for large organizations. With proper planning, the experience becomes more manageable, and success becomes more likely. In today’s enterprise search marketing column, “Weapons of Mass Optimization,” Aaron Shear reminds us that when planning such a big project, the key is to start small, and pay attention to the smaller details within the larger project.

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Two days ago, we brought you news that Ex-Googler Ben Ling was leaving Facebook. Now, we know where he’s headed - back to Google.

Ling will be taking on the difficult task of monetizing YouTube, Google’s popular online video sharing site (acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion).

via BoomTown

If you’re looking for drama, go watch the Olympics or an episode of the Hills. Ex-Googler Ben Ling is leaving Facebook, but it’s not for any rumored internal squabbles.

Instead, he’s got a new opportunity on deck that is apparently great enough to leave the hottest social network in the world right now.

I don’t know what opportunity is out there for a guy with Google and Facebook experience, but it had better be a doozy.

via AllThingsD