Thursday, April 12, 2007

And Some Still Think of Google As Just a Search Engine Company…

Most people know Google as a search engine company. As such, it is a gargantuan content finder, aggregator, and routing machine. Some of that content is of their own making or repackaging (Google News and Blog). Some of it is a mashup (Google Maps, Google Earth). But most of the initial success of Google can be attributed to finding and distributing the relevant content of others to an interested, inquiring audience (Google, Google Blog Search, Google Book Search, etc.). However, according to a Wired interview with Eric Schmidt, their CEO, Google is first and foremost an advertising operating system (see more on John Battelle’s post).

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Universities Tackle Student-Athlete Use of Social Networking Sites

In the high-stakes world of college sports, new scandals and public relations nightmares continually emerge. Now a new online twist has surfaced: how to address less-than-flattering posts from student-athletes on social networking sites. One Minnesota university has taken a bold step by banning student-athlete use of Facebook, MySpace and other sites after disciplining students for online posts last year.

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Pet Food Scare Gets Uglier

A Monday ABC News story said the Menu Foods pet food contamination may have “sickened or killed 39,000 pets.” And a CNN story this morning said the recall of pet food was being expanded to include products made at a Canadian factory. Even though Menu Foods is a Canadian company, all the previously recalled products had been limited to pet foods produced at the company’s plants in New Jersey and Kansas.

The expanded recall affects some products made by Royal Canin Canada. The story quotes Royal Canin Canada’s CEO, “After being repeatedly reassured by Menu Foods, as reinforced by FDA public statements, that none of the contaminated wheat gluten had made its way to Canada, we were completely shocked to learn yesterday that this was not the case.”

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Banking “On The Go” Accelerates

Coming on the virtual heels of the launch of the MasterCard Nearby mobile banking service, Citibank just unveiled Citi Mobile, an “on-the-go” banking cell-phone application offering similar services to its online bank offering. 

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Imus and The Blog Factor

An interesting observation I heard yesterday on CNN by one of the people being interviewed about the Imus controversy was the role blogs played by quickly intensifying the issue over the weekend. Imus made his remarks about the Rutger’s womens’ basketball team last Thursday on his show. As offensive as the message was, Imus after all is a shock jock, and the impact of yet another hurtful utterance at someone else’s expense might not have reached the tipping point had it been left to the more languid pace of mainstream media’s weekend reporting.

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