Google, Facebook Tempt Scrutiny with New Offerings

Tech giants Google and Facebook are implementing changes aimed at chasing more advertising revenue. Google will track users across its services at computers and mobile devices, while Facebook said it will make Timeline and Open Graph part of the default user interface. Critics worry the changes will open fresh opportunities for cybercrooks.
Google on Tuesday said it will begin tracking people as they use Google search and Gmail, watch YouTube videos and use other Google services -- at their computers and on their mobile  devices.
That announcement came hours after Facebook said it will make Timeline and Open Graph part of the default user interface. These new services chronologically assemble and make more easily accessible the preferences, acquaintances and activities of its 800 million members.


The two changes will become effective over the next few weeks, the tech giants said. "It's clear that they're doing this to chase more advertising revenue," says P.J. McNealy, analyst at Digital World Research.


The $32 billion U.S. market for online advertising in 2011, as estimated by eMarketer, is expected to grow at a robust clip. Apple, Microsoft , Twitter, Yahoo, Adobe and a flock of Internet-based companies are part of this gold rush.


Google and Facebook have been sanctioned by U.S. regulators for privacy violations. The moves disclosed on Tuesday are sure to draw scrutiny.


"Google's plan to change its privacy policy raises important questions about how much control Google users will have over their personal information ," said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. Critics worry the tech giants will open fresh opportunities for cybercrooks to prey on users of the sites.


"Both are racing to monetize our private information and in doing so creating collateral damage," says Alisdair Faulkner, chief product officer at security firm ThreatMetrix. "They are essentially indexing more and more private information and, in doing so, serving it up on a platter to cybercriminals."


Previously, any trace of a user's search or surfing activities on a Google product was used to generate ads only on that particular product. After March 1, when the new policy change becomes effective, a Google account holder's search and surfing activities will be tracked and used to generate ads and search results across all of Google's products.


For instance, a search for "2011 Honda Accord" on YouTube may result in a Honda ad flashed on the user's Gmail. "In short, we'll treat you as a single user across all our products," the company said on its blog.

SAP Ready To Tackle Oracle in the Cloud and Database Market

SAP Ready To Tackle Oracle in the Cloud and Database Market

Coming off a great 2011, with a 25 percent jump in software  revenue, SAP is ready to set the bar even higher for the year ahead. The German-based enterprise -software maker plans to focus aggressively in the database and cloud  computing market for business users, competing head on with Oracle.
On Wednesday, the company held a news conference in Frankfurt to outline a plan building on its success and targeting new opportunities.

ERP for HANA

SAP said it will support an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) module for its HANA in-memory  database platform by the end of this year. The new module will include programs for financials, human resources, and operations. It will be offered as part of SAP's Business Suite product family, which is also being developed for HANA.

HANA, which uses memory to store data  instead of disks, has been an instrumental part of the company's successful 2011 year. The HANA acronym stands for High-performance ANalytic Appliance, and refers to a system of hardware from third-party vendors that is optimized to work with SAP's advanced HANA technology. SAP reports that HANA's high-performance capabilities enable companies to crunch data faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Going Head to Head

Traditionally, SAP has been the king of ERP, with 24 percent of the market in 2010, followed by Oracle at 18 percent. From this position of strength, SAP said that it will use ERP on HANA as a key driver in its goal to become the leading database company.

But that is, indeed, an ambitious goal. According to industry research firm Gartner , Oracle had 48 percent of the 2010 database market, while SAP had only about 2 percent.

SAP's co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe told news media that in-memory database technology -- like that used in SAP's HANA appliance -- is changing the database market, and will spearhead SAP's effort to eclipse Oracle.

SAP has been a leader in Enterprise Resource Planning since its early years. In contrast, Oracle moved into the world of enterprise apps  more recently from its database origins, largely driven by acquisitions of other software providers including Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, over the past several years.
SAP's acquisitions of database provider Sybase in 2010 and business-intelligence software vendor Business Objects back in 2007 are helping level the playing field, enabling SAP to become more competitive with Oracle.

SAP has targeted small-to-medium businesses, with several product lines tailored for SMB  needs, while Oracle has provided fewer efforts focused at that segment. Otherwise, there are few differentiators in many overlapping product areas between the two in terms of price, system integration  or functionality.

The Acquisitions Continue

Last month, SAP announced it was acquiring SuccessFactors, which provides cloud-based human capital management. Industry observers saw the move as an effort by SAP to shore up its position in cloud-based solutions, especially as Oracle moves more aggressively into the cloud.

Other SAP cloud apps include Business ByDesign for ERP, Sales OnDemand for CRM , Carbon Impact OnDemand for sustainability, and Travel OnDemand for expense reporting.

In October, Oracle announced it would acquire RightNow Technologies, a cloud-based customer -service software provider, best known for its CRM (customer relationship management) programs. Oracle is also providing cloud-based solutions for sales force automation, human resources, talent management, and social networking, in addition to databases and Java.

Oracle has said it will make RightNow a complete platform for customer service for B2C and B2B markets, with analytics, CRM, e-commerce, marketing, supply chain, and other functions.

Unusual Google Ad Blitz Tackles Online Privacy

Google is focusing on the importance of protecting personal information  in an unusual marketing campaign for a company that has been blasted for its own online privacy lapses and practices.
The educational ads will start appearing Tuesday in dozens of U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and magazines, including Time and the New Yorker. Google Inc. also will splash its message across billboards within the subways of New York and Washington, as well as various Web sites.

Google will address some of the basics of online privacy and security  in the "Good To Know" ads, which will all include referrals to a Web site for additional information.

Initial topics to be covered include the steps that can be taken to protect online account passwords and the use of computer  coding to locate and identify Web surfers. Google will also try to explain why its widely used search engine can produce more helpful results if it knows more about the past interests of the person making the request.

While Google views the campaign as a public service, it may come across as disingenuous to critics who say the Internet search leader compiles too much personal information about its users and then isn't careful enough about protecting the sensitive data .

In a major gaffe, Google exposed the personal contacts of its email users in 2010 when it launched a new social service called Buzz. That breakdown led to a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission requiring the company to submit to external audits of its privacy policies every other year.

wireless  networks set up in homes and small businesses.

"This campaign should be nominated for some kind of award for fiction," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "If grades were given out for privacy protection, Google would get a D plus."

Google's ads are coming out at a time when lawmakers and regulators in the U.S. and Europe have been examining whether to mandate changes on how much information that Web sites can gather about visitors without giving them more controls to prevent the surveillance.
Gathering digital dossiers of personal data helps target Internet ads at people more likely to buy the products and services being peddled. Google has an incentive to ensure online ads remain as effective as possible because those commercial messages generate most of its revenue, which totaled $27 billion through the first nine months of last year. The company's full-year figures are due out Thursday.

The ad campaign is "really just a PR offensive to help dim the increased scrutiny of Google's privacy practices," Chester said.

Not so, says Alma Whitten, who was named Google's director of privacy for product and engineering after the company acknowledged its 2010 missteps.

"We all have family and friends that ask us for advice on privacy and security all the time," Whitten said. Those recurring questions, she said, made Google realize it should do something to give everyone a better grasp on the fundamentals of online privacy.

The total bill for the multi-week bli

Google+ Pages Are Open for Businesses

Google+ Pages Are Open for Businesses

If you're a business that uses social networking, it's time to add Google+ to your campaigns. The software  giant said commercially oriented Web pages on its service were open for business.
Using Google+ Pages, companies can deliver content, build a community and reinforce a brand. Google said 20 businesses, including Macy's and Pepsi, have set up company pages in its trial period, and the service is now being made available to other businesses. Previously only individuals could set up a page.

The  + Brand Badge

Other business based pages currently include CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Angry Birds, Burberry, Dallas Cowboys, Good Morning America, The Muppets, Toyota, and Zen Bikes.

On the Official Google Blog, Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra wrote that Google+ Pages now allow members to "hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour."

Customers and fans visiting a company's or product's page can recommend it with a +1, or add the page to his or her circle. A +1 is the Google equivalent of Facebook's Like button, and a circle is a user's own set of relationships, enabling direct conversation between circle members.

Bradley Horowitz, Google+ vice president for products, told The New York Times Monday that he expects to see a "+ brand" badge in corporate advertising and products. This would include, he said, a + Pepsi on every one of its soda cans and in its TV spots, along with other social media references, such as the Twitter hashtag, plus, of course, the old-fashioned Web site address. As with Facebook's corporate pages, Google will be able to provide the demographics of visitors to + Pages.

Direct Connect

Gundotra also noted that potential customers can reach company pages on Google+ via its search engine, and then add them to their networking circle. One way to promote that, of course, is to make those pages available to Google search, and they will come up as part of the results when the brand is searched.

The other is through a new feature called Direct Connect. A user searches for a company or a band, but with a + before the name. Thus, + Angry Birds takes the user directly to that game's Google+ page, and lets a user add it to their circles. Currently, Direct Connect is still being rolled out, and doesn't yet work for every Google+ page, nor can every user access  Direct Connect. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said it would add these capabilities over time.

Businesses started using Google+ from the beginning in June, but the software giant removed businesses from regular accounts until now, when it could set up pages designed for businesses.

Google+ opened its social network  to any user in September, following a field trial of less than 90 days. To date, the company said, more than 40 million users have signed up for the service -- a huge wave of membership, but one that is still small compared with Facebook's membership of more than 800 million users.

Low Facebook Customer Satisfaction May Boost Google

Low Facebook Customer Satisfaction May Boost Google

Are users satisfied with e-business  on the web? A new survey tries to answer that question -- and discovered that Google+ may be in a position to overtake Facebook.
According to the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, conducted in association with customer -experience analytics firm ForeSee Results, Facebook has the lowest score of any company measured. The score, 66, is three percent over last year's survey, while Google is one of the highest-scoring companies.

'No Longer a Safety Net'

ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed said that, while it's not possible to project how Google's new social -networking service, Google+, will do in the marketplace, he noted that Facebook is vulnerable. "An existing dominance of market share like Facebook has," he said, "is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience."

The top rung for customer satisfaction with social media is occupied by Wikipedia, whose 78 percent score is one percent higher than in last year's survey. Second place went to YouTube at 74 percent. But it's a tough job satisfying customers in this category. The report described social media in general as "one of the lowest-scoring industries," with only airlines, newspapers and subscription-television services scoring lower.

Social media is only one area of e-business covered by the survey. It also measures customer satisfaction with portals and search engines, and online news.

In portals and search engines, Google has an 83 percent satisfaction rate, an increase of four percent, but Microsoft's Bing is moving up fast. Bing now has an 82 percent score, a substantial seven percent increase from last year. ForeSee said 80 or higher is considered "excellent." It also noted that Bing's market share has nearly doubled in the last year, to 17 percent from nine percent.

'Anybody Is Vulnerable'

So while Facebook's users could be open to a new social-networking service such as Google+, Google's search engine needs to keep a wary eye on the approaching Bing. According to Freed, Google's customer-satisfaction score last year was three points higher than Bing's. "Bing is showing it can challenge Google in terms of revenue, market share, and customer experience," he said.

Among news sites, News Corp.'s increasing troubles haven't yet impacted its FOXNews.com site, which showed an 82 percent customer-satisfaction rate. The second highest is ABCNews.com, which increased three percent this year to 77 percent. HuffingtonPost.com makes its first entry into the survey at 69 percent, and NYTimes.com comes in a 73 percent, a four percent drop. The survey noted that it measured satisfaction with the Times at the same time the company was implementing its pay wall.

Information Technology Intelligence Corp.'s Laura DiDio said it's not just Google or Facebook that have to keep a constant eye on their competitors. "Anybody is vulnerable in this market," she said, adding that, "no matter how successful, there is always a competitor coming up."

CEO Followed Two Loves to Success

No matter how hard Dave Alberga trained, he'd routinely be "thrown a beating" whenever he entered a mountain biking race.
Frustrated, the CEO of Active Network, who at the time in the 1990s was working at a technology company, asked a friend what to do. His friend's advice? "Give up."
That wasn't exactly what Alberga, a 48-year-old graduate from West Point and Stanford, had in mind. Alberga had tried to balance his passion for competitive sports like biking with his desire to succeed at business. But Alberga's friend told him he wasn't wired to multitask and do both and should focus on one thing that combined his love of sports and business.
The chance came in 1999, when Alberga got a call from a venture-capital firm looking for an executive to head up a small but fast-growing business that processed athletic competition registrations. Alberga knew this was exactly the kind of company that could blend his interests in athletics and online commerce. "This is the closest ever to get, as I can't be a professional athlete," to integrate sports in his life and career, he says.
Growing Fast
Now Alberga and Active Network are turning into small-business winners. Just 12 years after being founded, Active Network is the fast-growing leader in the push to take registrations of mainly outdoor events online. The San Diego-based company, which generated revenue of $289 million over the past year, launched an initial public offering last week and now has a market value of $180 million.
Active Network also has some big-time corporate backers: Walt Disney's ESPN and Barry Diller's IAC/InterActive own stakes.
The company is best known for providing the electronic back-office systems used by race organizers to allow competitors to sign up, pay and receive updates on competitions ranging from 5k's and 10k's to marathons and other endurance sports. Active Network handles the registrations of some of the nation's best-known races, including the Marine Corps Marathon, the Chicago Marathon and San Francisco's Bay to Breakers race.
Organizers say Active Network is the answer to their nightmare situations of receiving thousands of crumpled registrations forms, loose checks and wads of cash and trying to keep track of it all.
The Bay to Breakers race has used Active.com for more than 10 years. The latest race, completed in May, sold out its registration with more than 55,000 registrants, says race organizer Angela Fang. Using Active.com allowed her to process the thousands of payments, something that would have been much more costly and cumbersome to deal with otherwise, she says. While the race added a $5 service fee for the Active service, runners appreciate the convenience and think the charge is reasonable.

Salesforce Buys Radian for monitoring social networks.

More emphasis is being placed on social CRM by Salesforce as it buys Radian, which monitors hundreds of millions of social-media conversations. Radian6 monitors Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other sites, and Salesforce expects the acquisition to extend the value of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com offerings Salesforce is increasing its position in social CRM  by buying social-media monitoring firm Radian6. Radian6 monitors hundreds of millions of social-media conversations every day on behalf of such companies as Dell, GE, Kodak, Molson Coors, PepsiCo and UPS . The acquisition involves about $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock.
The environments monitored in real time by Radian6 include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other online communities. Salesforce said the acquisition will extend the value of its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com offerings by providing business  intelligence and capabilities related to social media.
'New Norm of Customer Engagement'
Radian6 CEO Marcel LeBrun told news media that his company's technology is "built for the new norm of customer engagement -- real time, two-way conversations that include social channels."
The company's products include a monitoring platform that helps analyze social-media campaigns and an engagement platform to help companies connect  with online community members. These are intended to improve marketing and selling products, maintain customer service, and manage online reputations.
Radian6 said more than half of the Fortune 100 companies use its products. In its announcement, Salesforce pointed to a shift to what it calls Cloud 2. In Cloud 1, according to Salesforce, technologies were leveraged to be inexpensive, fast, easy to use, and available on the desktop. In Cloud 2, the company said, technologies are "social, mobile  and open."
Among other utilizations, Salesforce plans to use Radian6 to help create a bridge between public social networks, such as Facebook, and its private Chatter social network for enterprises. Chatter feeds will now contain information that reflects comments on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other environments.
For Force.com, Salesforce sees Radian6 as offering an opportunity for developers to build the social web into apps.
Integration with New Service Cloud
Social media for the enterprise has emerged as a major emphasis for Salesforce's new products. Earlier this month, for instance, it announced "the next generation of social contact centers," Service Cloud 3. It positioned the updated software -as-a-service platform as "customer service for the social era."
Service Cloud 3 was designed to let organizations more completely engage with customers in social communities such as Twitter or Facebook. To facilitate that, the platform included integration with a Radian6 app.
A key selling point of the new Service Cloud upgrade  is that it allows companies to scale up quickly to analyze millions of conversations that involve their products or service. Real-time reports and customizable dashboards offer social-channel analyses, customer-conversation  analyses, and social dashboards for identifying trends.
Comments in Facebook, for instance, can be filtered by the number of friends a commenter has, assumedly indicating how influential that person is. Facebook names can also be tied into customer records.
Facebook wall posts and comments can be converted into cases with Service Cloud 3, and Twitter conversations can similarly become cases -- with agents joining in the conversation.