As always Rustybrick has a great holiday logo summary.
My only add on is the following. Take a minute to read the full history of the holiday – it’s not about a day off and football.
The Meaning of is is
Michael Arrington ‘is contemplating the meaning of “is”.‘ As per a recent Facebook message change (that has now been changed back).
This issue of the meaning of “is” seems to be a recurring problem in our society. You might recall this statement by former President Clinton:
“It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.” –Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair
Dictionary.com says it’s this:
–verb 1. 3rd pers. sing. pres. indic. of be.
—Idiom2. as is. as1 (def. 25).
[Origin: bef. 900; ME, OE; c. D is, ON es, er, G, Goth ist, L est, Gk estí, OCS jestĭ, Skt asti]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Why is the meaning of “is” such a frequent area of discussion?
The Future of Voice Broadcast and Voice Messaging
At the DMA conference a few weeks back, I met Dinesh Ravishanker. He runs a unique, effective voice broadcast offering called Callfire that allows micro-targeted opt-in outbound phone calls. It’s unique, user friendly and efficient in the demos he showed me. He was alot of fun to speak to and recently sent me the executive summary of the company that is seeking growth funding.
It seems like a collaborative offering that could be highly effective when utilized with other parts of the multi-channel ecosystem. Maybe one day I’ll get to utilize it in my toolbox! Many people in the Internet society have forgotten about the effectiveness of phone conversations to drive collaboration, interaction and create actions. I recently had a conversation with my 82 year old great aunt in this regard. She stated that, “I lived for 72 years without the Internet just fine. I’m not sure my life is truly better with it.” A non-mainstream view perhaps but one that elements of how to be a successful marketer in the multi-channel sense.
Ad Age Interviews IAC’s Barry Diller
Last week, I wrote about the breakup of IAC by Barry Diller. At the time I stated:
He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.
Today Adage released an interview with Mr. Diller. In it he adds some sensibility to the Facebook valuation discussions, confirms that the Google sponsored listings deal is for five years and discusses how he’d like to buy AOL. I’d love to pick his brain on the future of Ask in a more detailed interview. It’s clear that he is shaking up a lot of things and it will be interesting to watch this breakup as it progresses for clues as to how the company will be run going forward.
Ad Age: You in the past have had a pretty good grasp on speculation. What do you think of the valuations being thrown around about a site like Facebook?
Mr. Diller: Those are not valuations based on anything fundamental; those are valuations based upon rather enormous hopes and dreams. Not that they won’t necessarily come true, but at this point, that’s what they are in terms of revenue and profits getting to the level that would sustain a very high asset value. … The physics would demand that this becomes more rational at some point, I think maybe sooner rather than later. But again, that’s a prediction based on nothing but hot air, to mix many different metaphors.
Ad Age: I can’t let you go without asking about Ask. Are you happy with how Ask.com is doing?
Mr. Diller: We feel great. We’ve been able to grow queries second only to Google. We’ve increased retention, frequency. All the metrics for Ask are very good. Now we have a new five-year arrangement with Google on the sponsored listings that’s going to be very, very remunerative to us. Ask is going to be able to continue to innovate.
Email From Gmail Blocked As Spam on Many Networks
I’ve had three different people state that Gmail that I’ve sent has found it’s way into spam folders this week.
Since this is happening on multiple platforms now (Yahoo! Mail/Gmail), I have to ask the question, how is the email spam crisis going to resolve itself?
Death of Blog Search Part 3 – Technorati Cuts Data
You’ve seen me talk about this before. Now the new CEO not only hasn’t fixed the Typepad duplicate counting problems, there are dozens of links that aren’t being counted. It is cutting the most useful asset. Historical data. Nobody cares about the past 6 months worth of links – total links and the historical reference of long tail terms matter much, much more.
I’m not going to rant about it, others have quite well…
Kevin Burton
Deep Jive Interests
WinExtra
IAC Split Up Conference Call Summary
In the call it was stated that Barry Diller will continue as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC. There are a ton of other reports. I won’t repeat all of that, I’ll just point out the conference call highlights. He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.
– The new metric is query growth – I find that to a strong signal about ask.com and other properties
– On Video – there is so much runway ahead
– Mobile – nobody has really started yet
– Internet advertising is effective and trackable
This is an exciting change for IAC, look for good things in 2008.