Facebook Redesigns Site, Looks to 400M Users

By Kenneth Corbin from internetnews

As it nears another major milestone, social networking giant Facebook has begun rolling out a set of changes to its home page designed to simplify the site.

Facebook has begun rolling out a site-wide redesign, shuffling the layout of its home page in an effort to simplify the navigation and give prominent placement to some of the most popular features.

The company also marked its sixth anniversary on Thursday, marking the occasion with the announcement that it expects to sign up its 400 millionth user, extending its runaway lead in the social networking space.

The redesign comes after several months of testing various iterations of the home page, Facebook said.

Facebook has a checkered history with its site redesigns and policy adjustments, often drawing the ire of its large and vocal community of users. But the new changes in large measure aim to address one of the primary complaints previous designs, namely that the site was too confusing and cluttered.

The new home page highlights several content-oriented features such as photos, applications and games with links to dashboards in a column on the left side of the page.

The applications and games dashboards will display the content users have interacted with the most recently, and showcase the recent activities of people’s friends.

“You will also start to see counters next to the applications you have bookmarked on your home page,” Facebook engineer Jing Chen said in a blog post. “Counters will notify you when you have a specific action to take, so that you never miss your turn in a game or an update from a friend in an application.”

In a nod to the privacy concerns that have arisen about third-party applications on the site, Facebook has created a new setting that allows users to prevent their activities in games and other apps from showing up on friends’ pages.

“We’re also working on a more granular set of controls for specific applications, so that you can turn off activity for certain applications while leaving it on for others,” Chen said. “We’ll have more information to share on this soon.”

Facebook’s instant messaging product is also getting more exposure. Now, a partial list of a user’s friends who are online appears on the left side of the page. That list is selective, displaying the people the user communicates with the most frequently. The full list of online friends is still available as a pop-up in the chat bar at the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

Alerts about notifications, requests and messages are now consolidated in the top menu, which displays a red bubble that expands to a drop-down menu displaying the information. That information was previously scattered throughout the right side of the screen.

Like clockwork, the more than 4,000 comments appended to the Facebook blog post announcing the changes contain a mixture of enthusiasm for the new look and invective against the company, both for its design choices and the unilateral decision to impose the redesign on its users.

Yahoo Revenue Dips in Q4, But Shows Signs of Life

Embattled Web firm posts sequential advertising increases as recession woes fade.

By Kenneth Corbin: from internetnews

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) today reported financial results for the fourth quarter of 2009, posting an overall decline in revenue from the comparable period in 2008, but still meeting Wall Street’s expectations and showing signs that the company’s slumping advertising business is on the upswing.

Yahoo posted earnings of $119 million, or 11 cents per share, in line with analysts’ expectations and reversing a $278 million loss, or 22 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Fourth-quarter net revenue dipped to $1.26 billion from $1.38 billion, but that was slightly ahead of analysts’ expectation of $1.23 billion, according to polling by Thomson Reuters. That figure that excludes the commissions paid to Yahoo’s advertising partners.

In the meantime, Yahoo posted overall revenue for the quarter of $1.73 billion, down 4 percent from the same period in 2008, but still an improvement over the 12 percent annual decline Yahoo has posted over the first three quarters of 2009.

Display revenues on Yahoo properties increased 26 percent over the third quarter, while search revenues were up 4 percent, giving the embattled company hope that the recession is abating and its turnaround strategy is beginning to bear fruit.

“The fourth quarter marked a strong finish to 2009, which was a transformative year for Yahoo,” CEO Carol Bartz said in a statement. “We beat the high end of our revenue guidance, saw demand for premium display advertising improve significantly, and grew owned and operated search advertising revenue sequentially for the first time since the third quarter of 2008.”

Yahoo reported overall revenues for 2009 of $6.46 billion, a decline of 10 percent from 2008 driven in large part by the recession.

But for some analysts, Yahoo was in line to bounce back the strongest as the recession appears to ebb.

“We continue to like Yahoo shares and it remains our top pick for 2010,” Doug Anmuth, an analyst who tracks Internet companies for Barclays Capital, wrote in a research note earlier this week.

“Yahoo is well leveraged to an ad rebound in both display and search, and we believe that display in particular will show stronger trends in 4Q and into 2010.”

In the meantime, Yahoo’s ad mix is in a bit of a limbo as it continues to await approval from the Justice Department, which is conducting an antitrust review of its search-advertising pact with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), a deal the companies brokered in an attempt to better compete with search leader Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Yahoo executives have said they expect the deal to close in the first quarter of this year.

Speaking on a conference call with financial analysts, Bartz said that Yahoo does not expect to begin netting money from the revenue share through the Microsoft deal until 2011, after the companies’ advertising and engineering operations have been integrated.

She reiterated the company’s commitment to continue to compete in search irrespective of the deal, both in terms of growing query volume and improving the monetization rates per search.

But Yahoo may be even more bullish on its fortunes in display.

“While many of you didn’t believe me, I kept saying through 2009 that brand advertising would come back. It always has,” Bartz said on today’s conference call. “You can’t position a brand with keywords.”

She added, “We have some of the best, if not the best, premium inventory on the Internet.”

Over the past year under Bartz’s tenure, Yahoo has redesigned some of its major properties, including its home page, which she said has sold out of inventory on several occasions, and its search and e-mail services.

Last year, Yahoo launched a major global ad campaign that was in large part aimed at advertisers in an effort to remind them that after all the turmoil the company has been through in recent years, it remains one of the most popular destinations on the Web.

Bartz said that the domestic portion of that campaign is now shifting gears to focus more on individual products that the company offers, with less emphasis on re-energizing the Yahoo brand.

As much effort as Yahoo has spent building out its content portfolio, Bartz said the company continues to grapple with the challenge of targeting ads based on users’ interests and preferences.

“Truth be told, no one has uncovered the holy grail of making advertising as relevant as content is 100 percent of the time,” she said. “If we can do this, we can create a better experience for both the advertiser and the user.”

Looking ahead to 2010, she said Yahoo is on a path of investment and growth, seeking to tamp down speculation that she plans to jettison numerous properties that don’t fit with the company’s vision.

Earlier this month, Yahoo unloaded the open source e-mail provider Zimbra to VMware, and Bartz acknowledged that there could be a few more such deals over the coming year, but that Yahoo is not headed for a firesale.

“2010 is not about divestitures for Yahoo,” she said. “For us, 2010 is about acquisition and investments,” she added, though she was quick to caution that Yahoo is not planning any large-scale purchases, but rather smaller, more targeted properties that could fill a niche.

Google’s Display-Ad Sales Should Top $1 Billion

As analysts say rising demand for Internet display ads will begin paying off for Google in 2010, one asks: “Is this a $10 billion business?” Douglas MacMillan

Douglas MacMillan from Businessweek

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in July that display advertising would probably be the next of his company’s businesses to generate $1 billion in sales. Analysts say 2010 is the year he’ll deliver on that prediction.

Display ads are likely to contribute a little more than $1 billion, or about 4% of Google’s (GOOG) total sales this year—an increase of as much 40% over last year—say analysts, including Doug Anmuth at Barclays Capital. That marks an important threshold for Mountain View (Calif.)-based Google, which makes most of its sales from ads placed alongside search results and which has been criticized for not getting more revenue from other businesses. Demand for display ads, which include marketing messages in videos and banner ads adorning Web pages, may rise faster this year than for search-related ads, according to eMarketer. “You have to go somewhere else to get the next legs of growth,” says Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co.

In display advertising, Google lags behind Yahoo! (YHOO), which had revenue of $6.5 billion in 2009 that was generated largely from its display ads. Google has tried to catch up in part through acquisitions. Two of the biggest were aimed at the display ad market: The company paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2005 and $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2007.

Sales of video and banner ads on YouTube, the world’s most popular video site, are expected by analysts at Barclays to contribute the bulk of Google’s display revenue this year, about $700 million. And with DoubleClick, Google acquired a technology that handles the placement of display ads on sites across the Web. “Display is now a key business for us,” says Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice-president of product management and one of the company’s earliest employees.

Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google’s display business, says Google will draw on its strength in search-related advertising to expand in display. It became the leader in search by using algorithms to help it know which ads to place where. “Our goal is to bring the science of search to the art of display,” Mohan says.

TV and print ads shift to Web display

Mohan says the company is developing tools to help marketers create more effective banner ads and automate their placement. To that end, Google in December bought Teracent, which customizes colors, language, and other elements of a banner ad, depending on who is viewing it. Soon, Google will pair Teracent’s technology with DoubleClick’s ad-placement expertise and its own flagship search ad program, AdWords. Mohan is also trying to expand DoubleClick Ad Exchange—a kind of stock market launched last fall for buying and trading display advertising space on the Web—and offer further options for advertisers on YouTube.

Companies tend to use online display advertising to raise awareness of a brand or product while they deploy search ads to encourage customers to take a specific action—for instance, click on a Web site or make a purchase. Because search ads are often cheaper and their effectiveness easier to measure, budget-conscious advertisers flocked to them during the recession. Now, however, display is getting a boost as big advertisers that have traditionally focused branding efforts on TV and print are shifting more ad dollars to the Web. “There’s a lot of money to be tapped that otherwise would be allocated to TV, that will be moved online,” says technology analyst Greg Sterling. This year, online display advertising may grow 8.2% to $7.9 billion in the U.S., from $7.3 billion in 2009, eMarketer says. Search advertising is expected to rise 5.6% to $11.4 billion.

Google is trying to help advertisers better measure the effectiveness of display ads. “One of the challenges we put to ourselves was: ‘What are the ways a brand advertiser would look to measure [ad impact]?’,” Mohan says. The result: Campaign Insights, a tool developed over a year by dozens of Google engineering teams around the world before it was released in December.

Hair-care company Regis was one of the first to test Campaign Insights. It ran banner ads for Hair Club For Men across hundreds of Google’s partner sites while Campaign Insights tracked the number of people who had seen the ads and then performed related Web searches. “Display [advertising] drives searches and Web site visits,” says Luke Hubbard, vice-president of Beverly Hills (Calif.)-based Integrated Media Solutions, the ad agency that coordinated the campaign for Regis. “We knew that effect was there before, but now we are able to quantify it.” Impressed by the results, Regis increased spending on display ads for the brand in 2010, and Integrated Media Solutions has signed up seven other clients eager to tap the analytics.

Yahoo pitching display-ad strengths

Google offers Campaign Insights free to advertisers that spend above a certain amount on other products. It’s inexpensive and easy for Google to comb through search data, compared to the effort required for Yahoo to offer such a service, says eMarketer analyst David Hallerman. “Google has a lot of potential opportunity in that they can add a lot of these analytics that usually cost companies more,” he says.

Competitors say they’re bracing for a fight. During Yahoo’s Jan. 26 earnings call with analysts, CEO Carol Bartz talked up brand advertisers’ increasing interest in getting their ads placed on professional content sites—a strength for Yahoo. “As these marketers look to position new products and brands in the marketplace, they will need display ads to tell their story,” she said.

To succeed in display, Google has also had to hone its ability to market products through a people-friendly sales force. In search, Google has tended to rely more on the technical effectiveness of its products, analysts say. “Advertising is a lot of hand-holding and schmoozing,” says analyst Sterling. “Historically, Google has not been good on managing the people side.”

That’s changing, says Amy Curtis-McIntyre, senior vice-president of brand communications for hotel chain Hyatt. She says Google has begun regularly sending sales reps to her Chicago offices. “When they develop new search tools or new advertising tools, they bring them to us and present them in a usable way,” says Curtis-McIntyre.

With $1 billion in sight, how big can Google’s display business get? “Google is incredibly well-positioned to be a winner here,” Friedland says. The question he’s now asking: “Is this a $10 billion business?”

How to make money with Amazon

How to make money on EBAY

There is a lot of money to be made as a seller on eBay. Thousands and thousands of sales are made each day, resulting in a lot of income for a lot of sellers. And there is still room for you if you want to get involved – whether you want to earn some part time cash or set up a whole new full time business on the side.

But where do you get your stock from? How do you get started? And how can you build a business that gives you PowerSeller status? Relax – you’re about to find out.

It’s easy work to get started earning money on eBay. Once you’ve signed up for your free account the best way to get a feel for what selling is like is to auction off some of your personal items that you no longer want. If you are going to start buying stock to resell, you’ll do better by getting some basic selling experience first.

While we are on the subject of stock, you’ll need to decide what kind of business you are going to set up on EBAY. Of course you can sell anything you like, but if you want to make a name for yourself it helps to become known for selling a specific type of product.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean your product area needs to be a small one; on the contrary it could be quite large. You could sell toys for example – there’s plenty there to keep any seller going for months on end without selling the same thing twice. You do need to pick a popular product though, and it’s worth doing some research using eBay’s advanced search feature to find out what is selling and how much it’s selling for.

So let’s say you want to sell computer games, for example. There are hundreds of games you could buy to sell here, but if you don’t know which ones will sell you could lose a lot of money buying the wrong stock. By searching the ended listings you can see which titles consistently sell well, and which ones will produce the best profit for you.

Okay – so you know how to figure out what to buy. Now you need to know where to get it from. It stands to reason that no seller is going to tell you where they get their stock; that would be like giving away the keys to their business. In order to find the best sources for stock you need to do a bit of legwork.

We should mention here that there are two main sources for stock – wholesalers and dropshippers. Both have their pros and cons; it just depends on which method you personally prefer.

Dropshippers hold all the stock for you, so you only actually pay for an item once you’ve received payment from the customer. You may have to pay a fee to join the scheme in the first place though. If you choose to go with one or more wholesalers you will need to have the room to buy the stock, and the money to buy it in advance. This comes with more risk since you could buy stock that doesn’t sell, but with the tactic we’ve already covered for checking completed listings before you order anything, the risk here should be kept to a minimum.

So – back to where to find these sources. If you have a particular product in mind that you want to sell, the simple act of looking at the packaging can often reveal the name of the supplier. You can then check out their website to see what else they do.

Another method is to search for what you want on Google. This sounds deceptively simple and in fact many people don’t think of doing this. It can be a bit hit or miss, but it’s possible to find some excellent wholesalers through this method. Over time you will go from having one wholesaler to a handful of sources to get your stock from, and you can build up your product range as you start to grow.

Building your feedback is an important part of being a good seller and the higher you can get your score the better. It sets you apart as being a dedicated seller. And the faster your score climbs, the closer you get to attaining PowerSeller status.

The PowerSeller symbol is highly prized among serious eBay sellers, and there are five levels to strive for. The first is Bronze, and it’s a lot easier to reach than you might think. While you might set a goal for yourself to reach PowerSeller, you will find that if you build up your product range and gradually increase your sales, you will reach it in no time. And if you get off to a great start you might just do it in three months – the minimum time you can actually do it in.

Many sellers have their own shop on eBay, but it’s not necessary when you first get started. In fact you are often better off waiting until you have a good range of stock before opening a shop, since it can look rather empty if you only have a handful of items.

The final thing to think about is the price of the items you are selling. It stands to reason that if you sell a hundred different products in the $5 to $10 price range, you won’t make as much cash as you would selling a hundred in the $50 to $100 price range.

But you need to work out what you enjoy selling and what you can sell lots of to experience real success on eBay. Don’t go for expensive products just because they might bring a bigger profit. Go for your calling – that’s where you will experience the biggest success.

Above all, remember that it can take time to build a successful business – but if you’re determined to achieve real success on eBay you should be enjoying the journey.

If you have any questions or comments about making money on eBay, please leave your comments below.

How to make money with CraigList

Just in case you haven’t stumbled across this website yet, Craigslist is the basic looking but extremely popular website that has classified adverts for virtually everything you could think of.

As such it offers a number of ways that you can make money – all you need to do is get your thinking cap on and decide what way would work best for you. The vast majority of adverts are free to post, making this a great way to get in touch with people and offer services and products for sale.

With a little creative thinking you could soon join the band of people who are making a nice income from advertising on Craigslist.

One of the best ways to make money with this website is to think about what services you can offer to other people. The beauty of Craigslist is that there are separate parts of the website for each country and area, so you are sure to find one near you that would be ideal for posting your advert to.

You can often make money quite easily by offering a service related to one of your hobbies. For example, if you love gardening why not hire yourself out to do light gardening jobs for other people? This could be as simple as a lawn mowing service, or as complex as a complete garden makeover. The sky is the limit here, but be sure you have a list of prices and you know exactly what you are offering before you place your advert.

You can also use Craigslist to search for items that other people are looking to get rid of. Once you have something worthwhile you can sell it to someone else using everyone’s favorite website eBay. For some reason there are a lot of people who don’t think of using Craigslist in this way, which means there are a lot of bargains to be had – and a lot of money to be made once you sell them via this or any other auction site.

If you are currently selling items from your own website or via any other means you can also make money by selling them directly through classifieds on Craigslist. So long as you list them in the right section and describe them accurately (including relevant keywords wherever you can) you should get a good response and more sales just from doing this.

If you are thinking of making money via Craigslist in any way, it’s well worth spending some time browsing round the site to get an idea of the sheer scale of what it is all about. This activity alone should give you several ideas for making money that you might not previously have thought of.

Before you post an advert, make sure you read the help pages to ensure you don’t unwittingly break any rules. The help pages can be accessed via the top left hand corner of the home page. They are reasonably straight forward but you will want to use this site for many months to come, so it pays to look through them first to make sure you understand everything.

In short, Craigslist offers plenty of ways to make money from home; all you need to do is figure out the best way for you. But make sure you start with that research first. A search online will also reveal some blogs where other people share their own ways of bringing in an income from this site.

Sell something.

Dig out that old guitar you never play, those CDs you don’t listen to anymore, or your antique toy collection. Go to the pawnshop, put an ad on local internet classifieds, or hold a yard sale in front of your house or on a busy street corner (just display the item with a big sign announcing the ridiculously low price). Price items at half of what somebody would be able to buy them for anywhere else, and you may be able to sell them within an hour or two. You can also sell items online at web sites like eBay, Amazon and Craig`s list.

Enter sweepstakes.

By choosing sweepstakes carefully, you can increase your likelihood of hitting the jackpot (or at least getting a few useful freebies that you can sell, as mentioned above). Search the internet– there are even internet databases, some free and some by subscription only, that can clue you in to hundreds or thousands of sweepstakes. Sweepstakes with smaller prizes can be great because you generally have a more realistic chance of winning. Don’t, however, waste your time entering a sweepstakes for a prize you don’t want and can’t easily sell for a good profit. Enter as many times as possible. The more times you enter, the better your odds. It’s as simple as that. Before you send in a million entries, however, make sure you know how many entries the rules allow you.

Saving Money with Coupon Codes and Rebates

Another great way to make money is by saving it and use coupon codes and rebates for just about everything that you buy online. Here’s a round up of m bargain hunting sites:

• Ben’s Bargains
  The godfather of all coupon code sites. This is my Firefox homepage. Ben updates his site all day long with amazing coupons, many of them exclusive, with comments from other bargain hunters. It is also well organized and easy to read. Looking to buy a large electronic item? Keep an eye on Ben’s for a few days and you’re bound to see it.
• Fat Wallet
  Fat Wallet has become more and more professional in the past few months, but its forums are still rocking with great deals. FW usually has a lot of the early bargains before the other sites, but you have to weed through the forums to get to them.
• Slick Deals
  SD has a lot more consumer products and less tech than the other sites. It certainly isn’t as extensive as Ben’s, but a good site to check out, nonetheless.
• Tech Deals
  Again, not as extensive as Ben’s, but a good site for tech-oriented coupon codes and rebates.
• Anand Tech
  Anand Tech’s forums have a number of active discussions with a variety of coupons and other deals.

Sometimes with rebates and coupon codes you can even make money on items that you buy. Smart bargain hunters resell their items as well. Thanks to my bargain hunting buddies for introductions to shopping cheaply.

Complete Online Surveys. Companies who want to know what’s on the minds of their customers are willing to pay for your opinion. Online surveys won’t make you rich, and won’t allow you to quit your day job, but you can make a little extra cash. You may have to pay a fee to have access to these survey sites.