La firma de análisis comScore arrojó que por primera vez los estadounidenses pasaron más tiempo visitando los perfiles de sus amigos en Facebook que buscando información para la tarea o revisando su mail en Google.

Durante agosto los internautas norteamericanos pasaron 685.000 horas, o 41,1 millones de minutos navegando por la red social usurpada creada por Mark Zuckerberg, mientras que la combinación de servicios de Google (Gmail, Google search, Youtube y Google News, entre otros) acumularon un total de 39,8 millones de minutos. En tercer lugar permanece Yahoo!, con 37,7 millones de minutos.

Del total, los estadounidenses pasaron un 9,9% de su tiempo online visitando Facebook durante agosto, contra un 9,6% que se llevaron los distintos espacios de Google y un 9,1% para Yahoo!, según los resultados basados en una combinación de reportes de dos millones de usuarios y los servidores de sitios.

En julio, Google lideró por un estrecho margen con 40,5 millones de minutos, contra 39,9 millones de minutos registrados por Facebook y 38,7 millones para Yahoo! Un año antes el panorama era bastante distinto, con Yahoo! En el primer lugar con 41,7 millones de minutos, seguido de Google con 34 millones, en tanto que Facebook recién marcaba 16,8 millones.

Link: Facebook Overtakes Google As Top Online Destination (InformationWeek)

Aparecer primero en los resultados de Google es un bien muy, muy preciado. De hecho, muchos se encargan de hacer SEO y modificar el código de sitios para lograrlo. Desde hace tiempo hay rumores que rezan que la compañía comenzaría a tener en cuenta la velocidad de carga del sitio como uno de los tantos factores de importancia.

Ahora reveló a través de un post en el blog oficial que agregará este criterio que afectará los resultados de sus búsquedas. De hecho para eso presentó hace un tiempo una aplicación que forma parte de su Webmaster Tools, llamada Site Performance tool, que permite saber el desempeño de tu sitio y las estadísticas para poder mejorarlas.

Además en el post recomienda una serie de aplicaciones para poder medir la carga. Entre ellas el Page Speed, que es una extensión para Firefox, el YSlow de Yahoo! y el WebPageTest.

Eso sí, por ahora esto fue implementado solamente en la versión en inglés de Google pero igualmente en el post aconsejan que vayan viendo cómo mejorar la carga porque, eventualmente, se podrá ver en todo el mundo.

Google no deja de sorprendernos y siempre va un paso por delante del resto del mundo.  Hace ya unas semanas leíamos la noticia de que Google está trabajando en un traductor simultáneo para el teléfono.  Con este traductor podemos hablar con cualquier persona del mundo en su idioma y el mismo terminal nos irá traduciendo simultáneamente el idioma de nuestro interlocutor al nuestro y viceversa, suena alucinante, ¡¿verdad?

Pues si esto os parece increíble mirad el vídeo que os dejo a continuación y veréis como eso no es nada comparado con el proyecto que tienen entre las manos Google, o ¿deberíamos decir entra las patas?

Esto es lo que la humanidad ha estado intentando durante siglos y Google lo está consiguiendo. Todos los que tengáis una mascota os ha llegado el momento de la comunicación directa con ella, no más malentendidos sobre si le gusta al gato más el pienso o las latas de comida, preguntádselo directamente y si veis que el perrito está triste ponedle el terminal android al lado y que os cuente, igual tiene mal de amores.

Se me olvidaba decir que está en fase beta por lo que si el animalito al que os ponéis a traducir os suelta algún taco, puede ser debido a fallo de implementación. Recordad, primero tenéis que hablarle vosotros y después la mascota os contesta.

Visto aquí

• Orkut para Android disponible en Android Market (3)
• GOOGLE VOICE EN ANDROID YA ES OFICIAL (8)
• GOOGLE MAPS 4.0 PARA ANDROID PROXIMAMENTE (5)
• ANDROID Y FACEBOOK JUNTOS DE NUEVO (2)
• Zumodrive, almacenamiento online para Android (4)

After a long 7 years Google rang the victory bell over a trademark lawsuit with LMVH (responsible for the Louis Vuitton brand) this past Tuesday, March 23. Ever since this lawsuit caught my eye a while back I have been pondering why they decided to take this approach instead of doing the obvious: online reputation management.

In case you’re not up-to-speed on the case, here’s a quick overview.

In 2003 LMVH sued Google in French courts and eventually won in 2005. This led to Google paying over $400,000 USD for trademark infringement. LMVH’s beef was with ads selling Louis Vuitton replicas being shown when someone Googled “Louis Vuitton”. They were choked that Google would be selling the Louis Vuitton trademark to third parties – specifically websites selling counterfeits.

Google then took the case to the European Union’s highest courts where the battle continued for another 5 years until the ruling was made this past Tuesday, March 23 in Google’s favor. The courts stated that Google had not infringed trademark law by allowing advertisers to purchase keywords matching competitors’ trademarks.

Will the Real LV Please Stand Up

When I search for Loius Vuitton on Google (in British Columbia, Canada), one search result is for the authentic Louis Vuitton site, one is a Wikipedia entry for Louis Vuitton, and the other 8 are selling Louis Vuitton replicas.

So why is LMVH getting their knickers in a twist over ads when the search results are clearly dominated by people selling replicas? If anything, these search results most likely have a higher clickthrough rate then any AdWords campaign.

Money Well Spent?

How much do you think LMVH has paid in legal fees these past 7 years? Wouldn't they have been better off tackling an aggressive online reputation management campaign with that money? There are professionals out there that specialize in this type of thing you know.

Yes a lot of people sell Louis Vuitton replicas. But a lot of people also sell Chanel knockoffs and they seem to be doing pretty well in the SERPs. When I Googled "Chanel" only one knockoff company showed up in the results. So it is possible for the Louis Vuitton brand to do the same thing. Yes it can be costly, but it can’t be more than they’ve paid for a 7 year battle with Google in the courts.

What They Should Do

The following are some online reputation tactics that Louis Vuitton can benefit from. Since they can not control AdWords results, they can at least try to reclaim back organic search results for their name.

Subdomains

Only two pages from a domain can rank in the search results, however, search engines treat subdomains as unique websites. By developing content on subdomains, Louis Vuitton can have multiple sites that rank for their domain name. A blog, for example, can be one example of a subdomain.

New Domains

Louis Vuitton has a couple of options for new domains they can build up through link building methods. They are involved with nautical events and hold the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series and the Louis Vuitton Cup. They also hold the Louis Vuitton Classic for automobile collectors every year. Those are two separate sites that would work well.

Then there is Espace Louis Vuitton. It produces and hosts three exhibitions per year, around the themes of travel, heritage, art and fashion. It is a popular attraction that attracts more than 10 000 visitors for each exhibition. Once again, they have another opportunity here to create a branded website.

Affiliations & Distribution

Currently only Louis Vuitton stores are authorized to sell their products. What if they follow suit with other successful luxury brands and find high-end stores to officially sell their brand?

With this method they can create landing pages on sites that distribute their products and help along with link building. Although it may take away from their exclusivity, it will also prevent them from being overtaken by replicas in search results. They have proven that they obviously care about their online presence by taking Google to court in the first place.

Social Media

Louis Vuitton can also benefit from doing a little social networking. Like creating a Twitter account (and hiring someone to run it properly), or putting some of their fashion show clips up on YouTube. Outspoken Media has a thorough Online Reputation Management Guide that covers all the angles of the social media approach.

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it is. But it is a small price to pay for Louis Vuitton to take over search results currently dominated by fakes. It will also most likely have a better ROI then taking Google to court.

———————————————————————————————————

Stephanie Woods is an internet marketer living in Kelowna, BC with over 10 years experience with advertising and marketing. You can reach Steph at her internet marketing blog or on Twitter.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Louis Vuitton VS. Google: The Importance of Online Reputation Management

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere, any time, from any Internet connection.

At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even adding the free versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can keep your employees coordinated.

For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business.

Gmail

---

The many advanced features of Gmail really make it a leap forward in the web-based e-mail space, and a lot of these are ideal for business.

If you’re not ready to take the full plunge into the paid Google Apps suite, you can still configure Gmail to function as your business e-mail client through your existing domain name by following the steps outlined in my post, “How to Set Up Gmail as Your Business E-mail Client.”

The first big advantage of Gmail, like all the apps discussed here, is that it functions in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about downloading messages to multiple locations or syncing various devices. Your inbox will look the same from any web or mobile connection. And with 25 gigs of e-mail storage per user (with a paid apps account), it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to clean your inbox or delete old messages.

Gmail works a bit differently than traditional desktop clients and webmail services in that conversations are “threaded.” This means that e-mails with the same or related subject lines are grouped together in a thread so you can see all the messages sent and received on a topic in one place. When a new message is received, the entire thread is bumped to the top of your inbox, making tracking complex and multi-party conversations easy.

Gmail also has a chat feature built right into the interface that lets you send a quick update or discuss a project with an employee if you’re not in the same office. Chats are also stored in Gmail so that you can search and refer to them later.

Google search, the asset that started it all for the company, is of course built right into Gmail, which makes finding information from e-mail conversations (even very old ones) extremely efficient.

Additionally, Gmail Labs offers some extra settings for your inbox that can be extremely valuable for business use:

• Signature Tweaks puts your e-mail signature before the quoted text in a reply the way that Outlook would.
• Default ‘Reply to All’ allows you to reply to group e-mails with one click, instead of from a drop-down menu.
• Forgotten Attachment Detector will notify you if you’ve mentioned an attachment in an e-mail, but forgotten to add one.
• Undo Send gives you a few seconds after sending a message to click “undo” in case you forgot something, or sent it to the wrong party by mistake.
• Title Tweaks is a great feature that puts your unread message count first in the title of the inbox web page. If you have many windows open while you’re working, you’ll still be able to see when new messages arrive.

Google Docs

---

Google Docs is a web-based suite for word processing, presentation building (similar to PowerPoint), spreadsheets, and web forms. All the work is done in a web browser, and all the data is saved in the cloud.

The software can be a bit quirky at times, which may frustrate users of more stable products like Microsoft Office, but the payoff in online storage, shareability, and collaboration options may be worth the adjustment for many small businesses.

Because the data is online, streamlined document sharing and collaboration are big perks with Google Docs. Any file you’re working on can be shared with individual team members, or the entire group within the apps system. You can also set permissions for specific users to view and edit documents. And, multiple users can simultaneously view and edit documents, which can be useful for real-time collaborative projects or presentations during conference calls. You can also grant permission for those outside your office network to view and edit documents, which can be especially useful for sharing information and presentations with clients or colleagues.

As you create and share documents, your Google Docs dashboard may start to get a little messy. Be sure to create folders to keep your work organized just as you would on your desktop. You can also share entire folders if you need to collaborate on multiple documents related to the same project.

Calendar

---

Google Calendar provides an efficient and intuitive way to keep appointments and events synced across your entire business. With calendar sharing and permissions (similar to those in Docs), you can add other employees’ calendars to your own, and vice versa, in order to see and manage the big picture of your team’s time.

For example, if an executive has an assistant, their calendars may be shared so that the assistant could manage his boss’s appointments remotely from his own account. It’s also a smart tool for coordinating meetings, calls, and shift staffing for multiple employees to avoid scheduling conflicts. Sharing multiple calendars with one “master calendar” creates a color-coded scheduling table for the coordinator that updates automatically when users make changes or additions.

The Calendar app can also be used to create events through Gmail. By adding your employees’ e-mail addresses to an event, they will receive an invitation to respond. Responding ‘yes’ automatically adds a shared event to your calendar that each invitee can view and add notes to. It’s a smart way to coordinate meetings and keep everyone in the loop.

Google Sites

---

Google Sites is a drag-and-drop web development tool that you can use within your business’s apps to create online information hubs for employees. The websites you create exist within your Google Apps domain, can be public or private, and permissions for employees to add, change, and contribute information can be set from the main account.

Beyond simply being a WYSIWYG web editor, Sites makes it easy to integrate data from other Google Apps into dynamic pages that team members can use to collaborate on projects. Integrating spreadsheets or data charts from Docs, a deadline schedule from Calendar, and team-specific messages from Gmail could essentially create a one-stop project dashboard full of dynamically updating information.

Sites here can be purely functional or informational, or with the aid of some built-in templates or a good designer, a full-fledged dynamic public website for your business that team members have easy access to.

Google Groups

---

Google Groups have long been public forums where users across the web gather to discuss specific interests or get technical support. Groups for business brings that same functionality into your private internal network.

E-mail can sometimes be cumbersome when coordinating a team. When you need a central space to collect ideas and share documents (but you’re not interested in building a web page in Sites), Groups offers a solution.

Employees can create discussion groups on their own and subscribe, either by e-mail or via a Groups dashboard, which lists new posts like a news reader.

Rather than e-mails going out to individual inboxes, a group thread remains visible to all of your subscribed team members, and users can go back to it for reference, to add more information, and even share docs and calendars.

Using Groups for business discussions and project management creates a communal and searchable database of information that employees can go back to whenever needed.

Google Apps Marketplace

---

Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace allows developers of other business web apps to integrate their offerings with Google and sell software directly to Google Apps users. The marketplace currently has over 50 partners, including Intuit, Zoho, and Aviary. This additional space for third-party software means that Apps users will have even more options to tailor their suite for specific business purposes.

Smart Integration Across the Board

---

While each app has worthwhile features, perhaps one of the best advantages is the way that they all integrate with one another. Documents and appointments can be easily shared via e-mail, and your inbox can be used as a portal for productivity via embeddable widgets, chat, and other notifications.

If your small business is ready for a web-based, collaboration-minded IT solution, Google Apps is certainly a cost-effective way to go, and you can investigate the free versions simply by signing up for a Gmail account to determine if the suite is right for your workflow.

More business resources from Mashable:

– HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
– 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
– HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
– HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
– HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, CostinT

Tags: business, gmail, Google, google apps, Google Calendar, google docs, google labs, List, Lists, productivity, small business

Not everyone can afford a personal assistant to reschedule their meetings, but we can all use Smart Rescheduler. The new Google Calendar Lab gadget automatically works to suggest the best times to reschedule a calendar event.

The experimental addition was added to Google Calendar today and can be enabled via the Labs section. Upon installation, the feature will appear alongside users’ calendars and allow them to select individual events to reschedule.

Here’s how it works: Clicking “Find a new time” prompts the gadget to check the calendars of scheduled attendees, allowing it to recommend the best dates and times to reschedule based on Google’s search ranking algorithms. Users can select from any of the returned results or fine-tune the suggested options by adjusting event parameters around date and time, or by marking attendees as optional.

The Smart Rescheduler is a simple utility that should make the busy day-to-day lives of Google Calendar users more organized and less chaotic.

Tags: Google, Google Calendar

In a blog post today, Google essentially reminds its enterprise customers that Google Apps provides an alternative to expensive, complex solutions as far as data disaster recovery goes.

Synchronous replication is a system that Google Apps uses to store customer’s info in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google says it nearly instantly transfers data over to the other one that’s also been reflecting the actions taken by the customer all along.

On the practical side this means that thanks to the cloud-based storage solution, Google customers won’t lose any data in a data center failure. Just as crucially, they are theoretically back up and running straight away — although the online giant does acknowledge that no backup solution is perfect.

This synchronous replication is applied to the entire Apps suite as well as Gmail (Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites), with the sales angle being enterprise-class back-up for all at a much lower cost than if companies were to provide or contract separately for their own data redundancy systems.

Google, ever keen to push its Apps suite to new corporate clients of all sizes, estimates that this kind of backup could cost up to $500 for 25GB of data from other providers, but says it can bundle it in because it’s already running large, fast data centers.

This is essentially Google reminding enterprise customers (and potential customers) about one of the significant benefits of cloud computing over traditional in-house server farm data storage. How does your business handle data backup and redundancy issues? Do you think cloud computing is the ideal solution to hardware failure?

Tags: cloud computing, Google, google apps

“So it can benefit everyone.”

That’s what a Google employee said today as he tried to explain Google’s recent push to have websites use the ‘rel=”me”‘ meta HTML tags to identify pages a user owns on the web.  It’s not a bad strategy – index the entire web, know every single website out there, and when they change, and now the web is your network.  The thing is, since the “open” web hasn’t had a natural way of identifying websites owned by users, Google, the current controller of this network, needed a way to do it.  Why not make people identify their websites to Google’s SocialGraph network, and call it “open” so it benefits everyone?  I’m sorry, but the “open” web that we all grew up in is dead now that 2 or 3 entities have indexed it all.  This is now their network.

Let’s contrast that to Facebook, the “Walled Garden”, criticized for being closed due to tight privacy controls and not willing to open up to the outside web.  Of course, all that is a myth – Facebook too has provided ways for website owners to identify themselves to Facebook on the “open” web, making Facebook itself the controller of that social graph data, thereby giving Facebook a new role in who “owns” the “open” web.  Facebook has even made known in its developer roadmap its intention to build an “OpenGraph API”, making every website owner’s site a Facebook Fan Page in the Facebook network.  Don’t kid yourself that Facebook wants a role in this as well.  They’re a major threat to Google, too because of this.

Then there’s Twitter, just starting to realize how to play in this game, now starting to collect user data for search in their own network.  Don’t count them out just yet, as they too will soon be trying to find ways to get you to identify your website on their network.

So we’ll soon have 3 ways of identifying our websites on the “open” web.  I can identify my site through Facebook, as you see by the Facebook Connect login buttons scattered around.  I can identify myself in the Google SocialGraph APIs, which, if you view the source of this site you’ll see a ‘rel=”me”‘ meta tag identifying my site so Google can search it.  Who knows what Twitter will provide to bring my site into its network.  Each network is providing its easiest ways of identifying your site within their own Social Graph, and calling it “open” so other developers can bring their stuff into their networks easily, without rewriting code.

I think it’s time we stop tricking ourselves into thinking the web is open at all.  Google is in control of the web – they have it all indexed.  Now that we are seeing that he who owns the Social Graph has a new way of controlling and indexing the web, which we are seeing by Facebook’s massive growth (400+ million users!), I think Google feels threatened.  They’ll play every “open” term in the book to gain that control back.  Of course the new meta tags are beneficial – is it really beneficial to “everybody” though?  I argue the one entity it benefits most is Google.  Yeah, it benefits developers if we can get everyone to agree on what “open” is, but that will never happen.  I think it’s time we accept that now that the web is controlled and indexed by only a few large corporations, it is far from “open”.  ”Open” is nothing more than a marketing term, and I think we can thank Google for that.  No, that’s not a bad thing – it’s just reality.

Do these technologies really “benefit everyone” when no other search startup has a remote chance of competing with owning the “open web” network?

Further note:

How do we solve this?  I truly believe the only solution to giving the user control of the web again is via client-side, truly user-controlled technologies like what Kynetx offers.  Action Cards, Information Cards, Selectors, and browser-side technologies that bring context back in the user’s hands are the only way we’re going to make the web “open” again.  The future will be the battle for the client – I hope the user wins that battle.

Image courtesy Leo Reynolds

UPDATE: DeWitt Clinton of Google, who wrote the quote above this post is in response to, issued his own response here.  The comments there are interesting, albeit a lot of current and former Google employees trying to defend their case.  I still hold that no matter what Google does now, due to the size of their index, any promotion of the “open web” is still to their benefit.  I don’t think Google should be denying that.

UPDATE 2: My response to DeWitt’s response is here – why didn’t Google just clone Facebook’s APIs if their intention was to benefit the developer and end-user?