ArticleSnatch Blog

You are browsing the search results.

China Central Television (CCTV), the largest state-owned television network in China, recently ran a report accusing Baidu of questionable practices regarding medical search advertising. The accusations suggest that Baidu was allowing non-licensed medical companies to advertise while preventing some of the licensed ones from bidding on popular medical terms.

Baidu engaged in talks with CCTV to learn more about their accusations. They also removed paid search listings of medical companies who did not have proper licensing on file with Baidu.

Baidu maintains that they do not prevent the licensed companies from advertising. Advertising by medical companies makes up about 10-15% of Baidu’s revenue.

Of course, this is not the first time that state entities in China have caused unnecessary, undemocratic problems for Baidu.

Related Reading:
Baidu’s Profit Increases 91% in Third Quarter 2008

The new Yahoo! front page went into testing a couple months ago. The redesign effort also coincides with the new user interface, YUI 3.

Here’s a peek:

Nicholas Zakas of the Yahoo! User Interface team expanded on the UI efforts by explaining the goals for the framework of YUI 3:

1. Eliminate global dependencies. We wanted each part of the page to operate separately from all of the others. Each part should have no knowledge of what else is on the page and therefore can’t depend on objects to be globally available. The 2.x library is based on the global YAHOO object, which we would have had to abstract away; the 3.x concept of YUI instances that could be individually manipulated worked perfectly to achieve this goal.
2. Make it small, make it fast. The Front Page can’t afford to be slow, so we needed to have as little code as possible to get everything up and running. YUI 3 impressed us with its organization into small, atomic units that allowed us to specifically include parts of the library that we wanted while eliminating parts that were unnecessary. Further, one of the goals of YUI 3 was to optimize for runtime execution and make it faster than the 2.x version. Once again, YUI 3’s approach was directly in line with the Front Page’s goals.
3. Create version independence. From the start, we didn’t want to have dependencies on specific versions of YUI components as this can lead to maintenance issues. What we really wanted was for each part of the page to be able to use whatever version of the components that they wanted. The sandboxing feature of YUI 3 opened up the possibility of having two (or more) YUI instances each loading different versions of various components while not interfering with each other.
4. Allow code portability. Having worked at Yahoo! for a combined five years, Steve and I knew that anything we put on a Yahoo! property could be a candidate for porting to someplace else. We knew that this possibility meant the code had to stand on its own and not make assumptions about the environment in which it was placed. We thought about the most difficult environment possible: a locked-down browser environment where the JavaScript code has no direct access to the DOM. Since YUI 3 can abstract away the DOM through its Node interface, we had the entrypoint necessary to make this requirement a reality.
5. Be forward compatible. The project to create a new Front Page is an incredibly long one and we wanted to be as forward-looking as possible. We knew that if we created the framework on YUI 2.x that we’d be hard pressed to get time to upgrade later on. By building on YUI 3 from the start, we eliminated the need for developing an upgrade path later on.

Juniper Research is projecting social networking is expected to overtake dating in 2009 to become the largest revenue generating segment.

Social networks are projected to generate $7.3 billion in advertising revenues by 2013. That will amount to a steady rise in revenues over 2008’s projected $1.1 billion.

According to report author Dr. Windsor Holden, “It’s clear that we have seen an industry wide shift regarding the implementation of business models in this area. Whereas initially there was a perception that users would pay a small mobility premium to access social networks on their handsets, it rapidly became clear that to achieve truly mass adoption, it would be necessary to offer free membership and then to augment that with advertising and the sale of premium content.”

Meanwhile, Hitwise general manager of global research, Bill Tancer, is saying that searches for pornography are down about 50% due to increase in searches for social networking.

“My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don’t have time to look at adult sites,” Tancer told Reuters.

Tancer analyzes search behavior and its reflection on society in his new book, Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters.

What do you think of the rise in social networking? Is it changing societal behavior? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

Related Reading:
Social Networking and Employees: Where Do You Draw the Line?
AOL’s Platform-A to Offer Guaranteed CPM to Facebook, Bebo Developers

Some marketers are looking for a secret, step-by-step recipe to SEO success. But while a general framework is necessary to be effective, the search engine optimization process must be adaptable. In today’s SEM agency issues column, “There’s No Secret Recipe to SEO,” William Flaiz shares some tips for guiding you down the path to SEO success.

» Full story

New Blog Post - Rewriting text for essays, term papers and website content using syn.. http://tinyurl.com/6s4fts #
Philadelphia car accident lawyer can turn out to be a great support Posted By : Paul Justice: Auto .. http://tinyurl.com/5n9mpq #
New Article - My Rankings Lost SEO Nightmare Posted By : Suresh Kumar: It was a Monday.. http://tinyurl.com/5eetwg #
What [...]

New Article - Main points to see before you get into some joint venture Posted By : Vi.. http://tinyurl.com/5eh4vf #
New Article - Mentioning jointly in joint ventures Posted By : Prakash Singh: Talent i.. http://tinyurl.com/5qa8s9 #
New Article - Business Communication - Skyrocket Your Sales with PREselling Posted By .. http://tinyurl.com/6p4mhc #
Some Common Causes Of Cellulite [...]

This post is for bloggers out there who are using Wordpress. You would all know that there is a proliferation of plugins available for this blogging platform. Some of them are quite useful and fun while others may not be necessary. Here is one plugin that you would surely be interested in [...]

Google Translate is going live. The world’s most comprehensive set of translation technologies will now be aided by human beings translating documents upon request.

Google employees won’t be in the business of translating documents. Rather, Google will offer volunteer and professional translators the opportunity to use Google tools and technologies to translate. In previous columns, we’ve discussed the need for localization in translation. It looks as if Google will take the lead on using local translators to aid machine translation.

Google Translation Center will enable users to upload a document, choose a translation language, and select from Google’s registry of professional and volunteer translators. If a translator accepts, users will receive the translated content back as soon as it’s ready.

The potential for use by SEOs and Internet marketing managers is huge. The service may offer affordable ways to translate not only URLs but entire Web sites.

Google’s translation search feature matches a current translation with previous translations, so it won’t be necessary to translate a document more than once.
In short, Google could create the world’s largest repository of completed homework assignments for students taking a foreign language.

We’ll keep you posted as Google’s human-assisted translation service officially launches.

New Article - Different Information Lookups in Online White Pages Posted By : moniquew.. http://tinyurl.com/5urxsw #
Cleansing the Colon - is This Necessary Or Not? Posted By : Joe Stewart: Finding the best products .. http://tinyurl.com/5ul4n7 #
Choosing Your Asthma Physician Posted By : Robin: Many types of physicians administer treatment to .. http://tinyurl.com/5sspv5 #
New Devices and [...]

Yesteday, I reported that YouTube user viewing histories would not longer be handed over to Viacom by Google per an agreement by the two. I also wrote that User IDs, IP addresses, and Visitor IDs would still be handed over. What yours truly completely missed (i am afterall, only human) is that even that data will be scrambled. Here’s the legalese:

When producing data from the Logging Database pursuant to the Order, Defendants shall substitute values while preserving uniqueness for entries in the following fields: User ID, IP Address and Visitor ID. The parties shall agree as promptly as feasible on a specific protocol to govern this substitution whereby each unique value contained in these fields shall be assigned a correlative unique substituted value, and preexisting interdependencies shall be retained in the version of the data produced. Defendants shall promptly (no later than 7 business days after execution of this Stipulation) provide a proposed protocol for this substitution. Defendants agree to reasonably consult with Plaintiffs’ consultant if necessary to reach agreement on the protocol.