| OMG Someone Just Found An Embeddable Google +1 Button – And It Works! | Top |
| A day after Google unveiled its “+1″ product , someone has already taken a close enough look at the code to track down an embeddable +1 Button . Said button wasn’t supposed to be public yet – they essentially let people recommend any online content on Google search. Indeed, for now the button appears only next to search results once you’ve switched +1 on , but Yvo Schaap, after some sleuthing, “in a stray piece of JavaScript” found what appears to be buttons that can be embedded on any site just like a Facebook Like, Tweet This or, well, Add to Google Buzz button. Google in a blog post said they were still working on such a button: But the +1 button isn't just for search results. We're working on a +1 button that you can put on your pages too, making it easy for people to recommend your content on Google search without leaving your site. If you want to be notified when the +1 button is available for your website, you can sign up for email updates at our +1 webmaster site . A couple of caveats: +1 not only has to be switched on but you also need an active Google Profile and be logged into it. Schaap says you need to be located in the United States, too, but it – occasionally – works for me and I’m in Belgium. According to Schaap, the button as such actually functions fine, and interestingly its layout can be modified to be positioned horizontally or vertically. Clicking it makes recommended pages appear in the appropriate tab on your Google Profile page. There are some live buttons on Schaap’s blog or in the side bar of Fanity . Here’s an example of a direct URL . For interesting takes on +1 outside of the TechCrunch network: Search Engine Land: Meet +1: Google's Answer To The Facebook Like Button NewsGrange: Why Google's +1 Can't Compete With Facebook's Like GigaOm: Sure, I Could Join a Google-Based Social Network — But Why? CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase |
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| Why Salesforce Overpaid For Radian6 | Top |
| As you may have heard, yesterday Salesforce announced the $326 million purchase of social media monitoring company Radian6, the CRM company’s largest acquisition to date. While we know that Salesforce has been actively pushing its social strategy with the debut of a Twitter and Facebook-like Chatter and the Service Cloud 3 , $300-million plus is a lot of money for the CRM giant to shell out for a single company. In a press call with Salesforce executives and analysts yesterday, the company’s CEO and founder Marc Benioff said that Radian6 currently has a revenue run rate of $35 million and is expected to add $40 to $50 million in revenue to Salesforce’s top line this year. At $326 million, Salesforce paid nearly ten times Radian6′s revenues, which is rare. So why did Salesforce want Radian6 so badly? First, Salesforce is aggressively pushing a social strategy and it’s a dog eat dog world in the social enterprise space with a massive number of companies trying to capture marketshare for social applications. Salesforce is actively marketing Chatter but the Yammer and Jive competitor isn’t a clear cut leader in the space. Radian6 boosts the company’s footprint in social, and provides an established set of well-known clients, such as Dell, GE, Kodak and UPS. Salesforce has already stated its intention to integrate the two applications to ‘create the bridge between public social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and online communities, and Salesforce Chatter, the private, secure social network for the enterprise.’ According the company, ‘Chatter feeds will no longer just contain the activity happening within the walls of a company, but will be filled with real time insights from fans on Facebook pages, followers on Twitter, comments on blog posts and more.’ Another reason why Salesforce bought Radian6 (and paid through the nose) was that it was in a rush to add social media monitoring to its family of products. When an analyst asked Benioff why Salesforce didn’t just develop the technology in house, he said that he needed to move quickly as more competitors move into the world of social enterprise. Salesforce CMO Kendall Collins said it would have taken at least three years for Salesforce to build the technology in-house. Collins tells us that the company looked at entire space of social media monitoring companies, but narrowed it down to a few select companies. In the end, he says, Radian6 was the leader in terms of technology, clients and talent. Clearly, Salesforce is making it known that it is willing to pay the big bucks for social. Even the company’s latest investments, including Seesmic and HubSpot, have been made in social applications for businesses. And for social media monitoring, this exit is probably the largest acquisition to date. Lithium bought ScoutLabs for $20 million to $25 million last year and Jive bought Filtrbox for an undisclosed (and probably small) amount. It’s unclear if Salesforce’s massive bet will pay off in the end. Yes, it will have a social media monitoring application within its comprehensive portfolio of products. But what’s to stop a competitor (i.e. Microsoft or IBM) from buying a smaller (and less expensive) but equally as feature rich app like HootSuite or ViralHeat? Photo credit/ Flickr/blatantnews CrunchBase Information Salesforce Information provided by CrunchBase |
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| Skype Challenger Releases Viber 2.0: Free Text Messages And More | Top |
| Exclusive - Viber Media , the Israeli startup behind the Viber service, which lets iPhone users make free calls to each other , has released version 2.0 of its app in the App Store. The company’s still gearing up for the launch of their Android application , but in the meantime the update to the iPhone app brings a couple of goodies, in particular the ability to text message other Viber users free of charge. Sure, there isn’t exactly a shortage of free messaging apps for the iPhone these days, but it’s always nice to have a free app that supports both voice calls and text messages. Viber 2.0 comes with a new tab dedicated to ‘Messages’, where users can see all of their messages and from which they can send new ones to their contacts. Viber sends push notifications to users when they receive a text, so it’s potentially a replacement for SMS. In addition, the ‘Contacts’ interface has been redesigned to let users filter their contacts and easily see which ones are already on on Viber, or just their favorites if they prefer. Viber’s calling mechanism has also been improved. When users place a call, the app will first enter a ‘Calling’ state. Once the other party’s Viber app has been contacted and it begins ringing, Viber will enter a ‘Ringing’ state, letting the user know that there’s a connection. Viber has already been downloaded by over 10 million users to date. CrunchBase Information Viber Media Information provided by CrunchBase |
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| Attention Gold-Digging Women of Silicon Valley: I'm On To You | Top |
| So, there I was, sitting at TCHQ, discussing the recent Vanity Fair article about Jack Dorsey — and the ridiculous bluebird-on-the-shoulder picture that accompanied it. Keen to track down the image itself, I typed Dorsey’s name into Google’s predictive image search box. Here’s what came up… “Huh,” I thought. “‘Jack Dorsey girlfriend’ – that’s an odd thing to come up as the second suggested search term.” Unless… Google bases its prediction on what the majority of other users have previously searched for — and certainly there could be numerous reasons why large numbers of people are interested in the relationship status of paper-centimillionaire Dorsey. Still, I tried some other famously wealthy and eligible names in tech… Uh huh. Right. Yep. Sure. And, last but not least, let’s not forget Twitter’s resident superstar Biz Stone. After numerous high-profile appearances on Howard Stern , Conan and then vodka advertising campaign , surely his romantic currency is… Awww. … Image: Vanity Fair, April 2011 |
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