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Twitter’s New Mistake: Don’t Let Them See You Watc...

Twitter, in all its technically un-savvy ways, has just now realized that they should be tracking their users’ clicks.

It may sound a little creepy, but tracking clicks is a great way for a popular sight (like Twitter) to see where most of their traffic is coming from and where they are lacking in successful advertising. Their only mistake was allowing this “click tracking” to be seen. People do not want to know when you’re watching them! It freaks them out!

Twitter was redirecting links to a click tracking service that would allow them to keep stats on all these clicks. The redirection URL looked something like, “http://twitter.com/link_click_count…” Then Twitter had a little break in functionality (surprise, surprise) and when it came back up, the redirects were nowhere to be seen. Tracking clicks would definitely be a smart move on Twitter’s part, but then again shouldn’t they be able to go a week without having a temporary shut down?

Posted by Jeremy Scott | 1 Comment

Don’t Call People Mean Names On Your Blog

A model has won a victory in her lawsuit against an anonymous blogger who called her a mean word (if you must know, he called her a “skank”).  She took offense to being called that name, as I guess most people would, and sued to have the identity of the author revealed.

A judge has agreed with her, ordering the identity to be made public–actually, the judge ordered Google to reveal the name (they own the blogging service, Blogger, on which the author published his rant). The defendant argued that blogs serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting, and should not be treated as factual assertions–an opinion I would largely agree with–but the judge disagreed.  The ruling means that he’s essentially guilty of slander.  It’s not clear from the article if the blogger’s anonymity is part of the problem… I wonder if there would be as big a deal made of it if they had simply published their thoughts under their real byline.

I guess I could see the ruling making sense in more overt and obvious cases of slander, where accusations without basis are leveled against a public figure.  But calling someone a name?  I have a hard time buying that as slander.  And if you disagree with me, you’re a big nerd!  (I hope that’s not slander.  Is it slander if you say it about an unknown person and a future event that is only a possibility?  Hope not.)

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Yahoo Mail Still King, But Google’s Gmail Ri...

Google has long been the king of search, holding a market share that usually hovers around 65%.

But Yahoo–the former champion in the search engine races–still holds a commanding lead over Google in one key area:  email.

Yahoo mail is the most-used email service in the world, with over 100 Million people using it last month (July 2009).  Microsoft’s Hotmail service is second, with a number closer to 50 Million.  Google is in third, at 42 Million.

But taking a closer look at the month-to-month numbers, it’s clear that Yahoo’s stranglehold won’t last long.  Gmail is the fastest-growing email service on the planet, rising over 40% from June to July of this year.

That has to kill Yahoo’s spirits.  Just one more thing that Google has been late to the party on but still besting the rest of the pack.  Oh well… there’s at least one thing that Yahoo will always do better than Google… fantasy sports!  I kid… I kid.  Yahoo still has a lot they offer that Google isn’t even trying to compete with, from news to home-page services–in fact, Yahoo’s homepage still gets more unique visits on a given day than Google’s does.

Of course, we at Keystone would be remiss if we didn’t point out what a good idea it is to avoid using Yahoo Mail, Gmail, or Hotmail for your business correspondence.  Yes… the allure of “free” can be powerful, but the benefits from branding your email with your own domain name outnumber the stars.

Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments

Texas Judge Orders Microsoft To Stop Selling Word

Wow.  A judge in Texas has ruled that Microsoft is infringing on another company’s patent and that, as a result, they’re not allowed to sell Microsoft Word anymore.  i4i is the name of a company that holds the patent in question, and the court case hinges on Microsoft’s customization of the XML coding language.

The company has been given 60 days to comply with this ruling, which also carries the additional penalty of a $40 Million fine.  Ouch.

Like most surprising court rulings… this one will be appealed.  Besides, it’s not likely that Microsoft would start giving Word away for free, even if the ruling stuck.  It’s much more likely that they would simply develop a new way to code the program that doesn’t infringe on i4i’s copyright.

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Kids Search The Web Like Adults Do

OnlineFamily.Norton is a free service from Symantec that parents can use to track what their kids are doing online.

Over the past several months, they’ve been gathering data on 3.5 Million web searches by kids, and now they’ve released the top 100 search phrases from that data.  It’s important to note that this study only tracked the actions of kids whose families were using the OnlineFamily.Norton software.  There is no “margin of error” given and they aren’t suggesting this is a scientific representation of the entire country… they’re merely reporting the data gathered on their users.

Turns out kids search the web much the same way adults do–yes, even searching for “sex”.  In fact, the words “sex” and “porn” are both in the top ten.  That’s obviously not a good thing, but it’s also not terribly surprising.

Kids also search the web for other websites–something adults do as well that continues to baffle me.  In the top ten are search phrases such as “youtube,” “myspace,” “google,” and “facebook.”  Do we need to have some remedial training for Americans on the difference between the web address field and the search box in a toolbar?

You can see the entire list of the top 100 childrens’ web searches here.