As it is the tradition at this time of year, business blogs everywhere start posting forecasts and predictions for the year to come. Here are, without further ado, my 2008 predictions for local and social media:

The year of Identity. One of the big challenges of social media is having to sign-up and add your friends in a multitude of web sites. Expect 2008 to be the year where this problem becomes a major issue and gets potentially solved through identity interoperability initiatives like OpenID.

Social is now everywhere and open. The last few months of More»

Labels: Facebook, google, Search, social networks

Every year end, Google puts together a “Year-End Zeitgeist“, a look at the most popular and fastest-rising search terms. Not surprising, 2007 was a big year for politics and celebrity shaninigans. There were also some timeless themes that surfaced: what is love, who is god, and how to kiss, etc.
Here is the Complete list for 2007.

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Labels: google, Search

Mahalo, the human-powered search engine where users submit links, and whose Chief Technology Office, Mark Jeffrey, will be presenting tonite at the WebGuild, has announced today that they have launched a social networking component to their search service. Called “Mahalo Social“, it offers features which foster community building amongst users who submit links allowing them to make friends and share links with each other.

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Labels: Search, social graph, Social Search

Ask.com is looking out for its users’ privacy. The search engine currently completely disassociates search history from a user’s IP address and User ID information after 18 months. Well now, Ask.com has enabled a privacy feature called “AskEraser” that allows its users to exercise greater control over their search query history. Users can turn on AskEraser at the top right hand corner of the Ask.com site from either the homepage or a SERP page to prevent their search activity data, which includes search terms, clicks, IP address and any user/session IDs assigned to users, from being saved and to More»

Labels: Privacy, Search, search engine

Google is reporting that they have now doubled the number of Sitelinks that lets you jump directly to specific pages deeper in a site. Sitelinks are basically a set of deeplinks or jumplinks that appear below certain search results on a Google SERP page. They have apparently been so popular that Google has tweaked their algorithm to start displaying up to eight Sitelinks per site instead of just four allowing users to get a good snapshot of a site’s content and more easily access additional areas of a site. Sounds like something you as a site owner and user More»

Labels: google, Search

In case anyone missed it, Ask.com also released their “Top Searches for 2007″. Topping the list for the second year in a row was ‘MySpace’, followed by Dictionary, and ironically Google. Top presidential candidate searches were Barack Obama followed by Hillary Clinton. I am not a sports buff but for those of you who are, the top sports team searches were the Red Sox and Cowboys. Top TV show searches were Hannah Montana and Family Guy. And, this is a different one, the “Top Celebrity Search of Pregnant Stars” (not just of celebrities :)) was Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek. More»

Labels: Ask.com, Search

We will be hoding our next event on the “Social Graph and Search - Impact of the Social Graph on Search and Discovery” on Wednesday, December 12. Headlining the panel discussion will be heavy hitters: Shawn Gold, Former SVP of Marketing & Content at MySpace, Steven Marder, CEO & Co-Founder of Eurekster, Mark Jeffrey, CTO of Mahalo, and Levy Cohen, CEO & Founder of Collarity. Don’t miss it!
Get more details here >>.
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Labels: Search, social graph

Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience at Google announced yesterday on the Today Show, the fastest rising search terms on Google in 2007.
Here they are:1. iphone2. webkinz3. tmz4. transformers5. youtube6. club penguin7. myspace8. heroes9. facebook10. anna nicole smith
Yahoo also released their “Top Trends in Search” list yesterday for 2007.
News Stories - top 10 news stories:1. Saddam Hussein 2. Iran 3. Iraq 4. President George W. Bush 5. Oil and Gas prices 6. Barack Obama 7. Hillary Rodham More»

Labels: google, Search, Yahoo, YHOO

Microsoft unveiled new tools and an accreditation program to help advertisers improve the quality of their search advertising campaigns and help optimize web sites for Live Search.
1) adCenter which is similar to Google Adwords now has a Add-in for Excel 2007. It will enable adCenter customers to easily research keywords to help them reach and capture the right audience with their paid search advertising campaigns. Users of the adCenter can now rapidly build keyword lists and plan keyword strategy based on a variety of attributes including relevance, historical cost information and projected More»

Labels: Microsoft, Online Advertising, Search

Network Solutions has come up with a clever way to promote your web site to 30 million visitors a month for a $1.
The service enables you to place an ad inside your own whois record. Instead of just displaying contact information and your address you can now place whatever text you want inside the record. The service called “Enhanced Business Listing” allows website owners to place more descriptive text inside their whois record. When anyone looked up the whois record they would see your opening sales pitch before they even approach you about buying your domain.
Enhanced Business Listing is More»

Labels: Online Advertising, online security, online services, Search