And mind you, these are real-time search from all Twitter updates.

Microsoft came out first with the announcement and has already implemented the search via http://bing.com/twitter:

However, upon inspection, the Twitter search on Bing doesn’t seen to be working. Now, that’s an epic fail on launch date.

On the other hand, Google’s announcement of the Twitter search integration is just an announcement. No specific date when this will be implemented and how the integration will be done.

So, why would Twitter want to give the search data to Bing and Google when they can do it on their own (which they’ve been actually doing already):

• Computing Power – search requires a huge amount of computing power (just ask administrators of very large forums on how their internal search is choking the servers). Google and Microsoft already has that technology so it spares Twitter from spending more on servers.
• Search Discovery – Twitter is already mainstream but it looks like its growth has plateaued (stagnant) for the last 3 months (according to Compete). Getting more traffic from search engines could help boost its growth.
• Monetization – Twitter could be developing a much better API and selling it as a premium to 3rd parties like Google and Microsoft. The search engines, in turn, can monetize the search traffic. It’s a win-win deal.

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This acquisition will open up FriendFeed to over 250 million Facebook users and hopefully catapult them to the same level as where Twitter is now.

“FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team.” according to Bret Taylor over at the FriendFeed blog.

The sales is said to be in the $50 Million range in cash and stocks. It’s still unknown how FriendFeed will integrate with Facebook but my guess is that FF could replace the FB Status messages.

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This unlimited WAP Data Plan, called Friendster Surf All Day, is available to all Globe prepaid subscribers. Not sure if postpaid subscribers are also included. The Php20 one-time charge will enable users to access m.friendster.com for 24 hours.

Friendster users must have their mobile phones configured to access cellular data using the myGlobe Connect APN to register and use the ‘Friendster Surf All Day’ data plan.

Users that do not have the correct myGlobe APN settings can text GO to 2951 or call Globe Customer Service via 730-1000 or toll free via 211.

Looks like a good deal to the millions of Filipinos still hooked up on Friendster. Instead of spending Php20 an hour in an internet cafe, you get 24 hours access on your mobile phone.

Hopefully, more sites will also be included in this type of service plan (like Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

Update: Turns out Smart Comm is also doing the same service plan to Friendster Mobile to its subscribers (as confirmed by Friendster PR). Only difference is that Smart is charging Php25/24hours.

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Though there’s practically zero growth from the previous month, the Philippines still surpassed the United Kingdom taking 3.9% of the total ad requests delivered by AdMob.

We’re still pretty far behind Indonesia and India though. Still, this is a good sign that mobile consumers in the Philippines are surfing the web thru their mobile phones.

On the same report, the top 20 handsets list is dominated by Nokia, taking in 19 out of the 20 with Sony PSP at #12. The iPhone/iPod Touch got dropped off the list.

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From April 16 to 23, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced it will open to the public the voting for site governance.

With over 200 million Facebook members, and being the most active and fastest growing social networking site, one would expect an avalanche of participation. Didn’t turn out to be that way,

Facebook’s own statistics suggest that around 589,000 people have voiced their opinions so far. Those individuals support the proposed, user-sourced documents by an almost overwhelming margin, 74.48 percent to 25.52 percent. {source}

Zuckerberg needed 30% (60 million) for the vote to take effect but only about 600,000 voted.

The first ever user vote on Facebook got a participation rate of under 0.25%. Big numbers are great but this one doesn’t look good in terms of user activity.

So to my fellow Facebook users, did you vote?

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Okay, it used to be #2 until Taiwan took that spot from us. On the other hand, we’re nowhere in the top 10 for Twitter.com.

Then again, between Plurk and Twitter, Plurk seems to be the more preferred choice among Filipinos. It’s yet unknown why this is so but if you look at the average profile of a Plurk user and a Twitter user, you will see the age range is much lower with Plurk.

The Philippines doesn’t normally follow the social networking trends in the US. We’re into Friendster more than Facebook, into Plurk more than Twitter, into LiveJournal and Multiply than WordPress and Blogger.

So our poll this week aims to answers some of these questions — Which micro-blogging tool do you favor? Plurk or Twitter?

Please send your answers to the poll section on the right and leave a comment here if you want to add something.

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Over at GigaOm, Om shares his view on why it was shut down:

Nokia, the Finnish cell phone maker and wanna-be web power, will shut down Mosh, its wildly popular service that makes it easy for people to post and share content with others. Why? Too much illegal stuff like music and pornography was being shared on the service. Nokia’s record label partners didn’t like that.

I sent a quick question to Nokia Philippines and their corporate communications manager explained:

The Ovi Store will consolidate the best experiences from the current content services including Download!, MOSH and WidSets to a single channel, and expands upon Ovi Services to deliver media influenced by the people and places that matter to consumers.

It will amplify content provider and developer opportunities and simplify the consumer content discovery process by offering personally relevant, up-to-the-minute media for their devices. The content will range from applications, games and videos to widgets, podcasts, location-based applications and personalization content for Nokia Series 40 and S60 devices.

Looks more like an integration and Nokia’s pushing the Ovi brand/service real hard. I have yet to clarify though if member accounts will be migrated along with their uploaded/shared files.

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Friendster users will still need to be a Globe or TM user in order to process money remittances on Friendster.

GXI and Friendster introduced the online money transfer feature to provide a more convenient and reliable way of transferring GCash within Friendster. For just a minimal amount of P2.50 per transaction, a Friendster member can already send GCash to anyone in his friends list by simply viewing the profile of the intended recipient and clicking the GCash button after specifying the amount involved.

To ensure the security and authenticity of the funds transfer, a confirmation request is forwarded to the sender’s Globe or TM SIM then GCash is transferred as simple as a text message. Money remittances will still be charged the normal Php2.50 GCash transaction fee.

This move could help Friendster position itself as a micro-ecommerce platform, the same way Multiply has evolved among Filipino users.

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PixLink can be used in different ways:

• Allows you to upload pictures from your phone and upload it to PixLink and then republishes them on other photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa Web as well as social networking sites like Facebook and Friendster. You can do the same with videos too (which is automatically republished to YouTube).
• PixLink can also be an online backup site where you can store unlimited number of photos and videos for free.
• Share photos/videos with friends who are on PixLink. All uploaded files can be automatically synched with other mobile phones on your friend’s list.

To download the PixLink mobile app to your phone, just text “PIXLINK” to 2988 or you can register online here.

The service is still in beta stage and is free to use until March 5, 2009 (when they decide the final price for the time-based subscription). The web component will always be free but the mobile part will have some sort of time-based subscription (similar to UnliTxt) instead of standard 3G rates.

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TiltShift Maker converts your ordinary digital photos and make them look like miniaturized objects.

It doesn’t always work but it’s best to use photos that are angled downwards (below the horizon) to better effect. Here are some old photos I tried that turned out really nice.

Here’s a photo of a Koi Pond & Garden inside Changi Airport, Singapore.

A photo of the neighboring houses in Gummersbach, Germany taken from my hotel room on the 11th floor.

Photo taken from the top of the memorial cross at the Shrine of Valor (Dambana ng Kagitingan) in Mt. Samat, Bataan.

A very old picture from taken from a boat about to dock at White Beach, Puerto Galera.

You may need to do some adjusting of the photos before you upload them to TiltShift Maker. A little tweak in brightness/contrast as well as Hue/Saturation could help highlight the effect.

Try it out here.

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Burger King’s pitch — drop ten (10) of your Facebook friends and get a free Whooper.  You can only get one free Whooper so even if you dropped 50 friends, you still get one burger.

What would you do for a free WHOPPER? Would you insult an elected official? Would you do a naked handstand? Would you go so far as to turn your back on friendship? Install WHOPPER Sacrifice on your Facebook profile and we’ll reward you with a free flame-broiled WHOPPER Sandwich when you sacrifice 10 of your friends.

Still, the app got 86,655 monthly active users and a total of 233,906 friendships were dropped just before it officially closed.

What prompted the sudden closure was that Facebook didn’t like the app sending notices to users they’ve been dropped in exchange of a burger.

Facebook has disabled WHOPPER Sacrifice after your love for the WHOPPER Sandwich proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships.

Facebook just wanted to tweak that part of the app but Burger King thought it wouldn’t be fun anymore so they conceded to Facebook closing it down.

It’s a shame, really. The Whooper Sacrifice showed us how much friendship costs these days. *heh*

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The purchase was for 5% of Multiply which costs $5 million or close to Php250 million.

A year ago this month, ABS-CBN first went into an advertising deal with Multiply. It looks like that deal got a lot of traction and the media giant saw great potential.

ABS-CBN will continue to monetize the social networking site thru traditional CPM-based advertising and offering mobile service. They’ve even added a clause that will enable ABS-CBN to buy as much as 10% of Multiply. I think they’d be able to recover that investment in less than 5 years.

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What this basically does is track all your movements via GPS and tags them along with all the photos and videos you take throughout the day.

What I usually do is activate the LifeVine software in the Nokia phone every time I go out of the house. It will then plot every movement I make unto Google Maps and take note of all the photos and videos (tag them with the exact coordinates where I took them) I shoot a long the way.

I can then upload all the media via 3G or wait until I get back home and use my WiFi connection to do so. The Sport Tracker will show me some relevant stats about my “journeys” including distance traveled, duration, max speed, average speed, etc.

The GPS data isn’t that accurate (between 20 – 50 meters) so the trail sometimes goes into a zigzag (Happens every time I’m on a stand-still in the middle of a traffic jam; the satellite’s positioning wobbles a bit.) but if you drill down to the building level, it pretty much gives you a good idea of your travel path from the top-view.

You can share these data to the public or just friends via the Nokia Sports Website or you can grab a widget you can display on your blog (mine’s at the bottom right side).

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What it does is basically allow you to send SMS updates to your Twitter account and receive personal alerts via SMS as well. This ahs been live since August 26, but only a few have been using it.

To register your phone number to your Twitter account, type “TWITREG ” and send it to 2370. To send Twit updates, just type “TWIT ” to 2370.

All sent SMS are charged Php2.50 each (like InfoText) and are available to all Globe & TM subscribers.

For more details and keyword commands, follow this site.

However, if you’re doing multiple successive Tweets, I think it would be cheaper to access Twitter Mobile via 3G and pay Php5 per 15 minutes.

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Ever since Digg went live it has become the primary source of breaking news and great content for a lot of people. However, the audience is skewed towards the west and male demographics (it started out with tech) — a profile that made it famous but at the same time was its greatest weakness.

So what could Yahoo! Buzz do that Digg couldn’t do? Not much really, but let me draw the line where Yahoo! Buzz could make better progress than Digg.

• Yahoo! is mainstream so there’s no skew or favored topics. Every single story or news have the same footing in terms of audience preference. Digg had a hard time moving away from tech and the geek crowd. In fact, Digg still has 98+% male demographics.
• Digg is easily gamed because it’s purely democratic voting (though unequal voting powers) and the Digg management maintains there will be no editorial interference or moderation. Yahoo! is open about its moderation policy. They have an editorial team which promotes stories voted upon by the community (this system was originally introduced by Jason Calacanis on Netscape, now Propeller). That means now amount of friends or paid votes can get you featured unless it has been veted by an editor.
• Digg is an SEO magnet. Need backlinks? Submit to Digg. Even if you don’t get any votes, you still get the link value. In Yahoo! Buzz, this is totally eliminated. Now readers are guaranteed that stories have better quality and stories are not just linkbaits or some viral marketing stunt.
• Localization is the more exciting opportunity Yahoo! Buzz can get involve in. Imagine a blogger/publisher story being featured on a local Yahoo! portal (e.g. yahoo.com.ph)? That’s a lot of value added to Yahoo’s localization efforts.

Of course, this would all be up to Yahoo! and if they have enough manpower to implement this on a country-per-country basis. Still, IMO, Yahoo is in a better position to execute this than Digg.

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Feedburner hacked! from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

I guess that’s the way Feedburner counts RSS subscription. Anything is possible nowadays.

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Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, Twitter — Does your company encourage its employees to use Social Networking sites?

It may be a stretch but yesterday, I saw Petron XCS added me on MyBlogLog. I checked them out and looks like they’re also on Pownce, FriendFeed, BlogCatalog, Twitter and Delicious.

It’s a step forward but other companies are more careful. It might be good for Public Relations but might hit them in the productivity department. Transparency is also a double-edged sword — do you really want your boss being able to read your Twitter updates?

If your company allows you to use social networking site, which one would you think it would be? My bet is on LinkedIn — not to time consuming but very informative.

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Twitter is basically a blogging service (on a micro scale, that is). If you place it side by side with mainstream blog platforms such as WordPress.com, Blogger and TypePad, there’s actually not much difference. So, if people are willing to buy credits on WordPress.com or pay monthly subscriptions on TypePad, why not Twitter?

TypePad starts at $4.95, WordPress.com feature upgrades cost $1 a credit and regular hosting and domain will set you back a couple of dollars a month. Technically, people are willing to pay to be able to blog. Twitter could follow a similar business model.

Option A: Flat Payments. Once Twitter reaches critical numbers (and can no longer get additional funding), they can switch all account to paid accounts (30 days notice). Annual subscriptions can start at $25 (similar to fee as Flickr Pro) with unlimited features. That’s just about $2 a month.

Option B: Tiered Plans. Basic plans will be free but number of messages will be limited to say 100 tweets a day (according to stats, active Tweeters send 105 messages a day). You can then upgrade to 500 tweets per day for $2/month or unlimited for $5 a month.

Option C: Free, Ad-Supported Credits. Tweeters receive one (1) Twitter ad for every 10 sent. I’m sure advertiser take-up will grow once they know they can insert their brands into the conversation. There’s more exposure and it’s more effective so a 10:1 tweet to ad ratio might be enough to support it.

Option D: Feature Upgrades. Just like WordPress.com, Twitter can offer premium upgrades to paying users. This would also include dedicated tech support, ability to change themes or edit design, guaranteed uptime and use of domains names, etc. Maybe twitter can offer a Friend Feed feature to premium users too.

The sooner Twitter can find ways to monetize itself, the sooner it can fix some of its growth/scaling problems. When competitor Pownce enter the same market, it wasn’t able to gather much attention (Kevin Rose once hinted there are over 100k Pownce users) but they were still able to figure out monetization from day one. There’s also Google’s Jaiku which nobody seems to be taking notice.

Question is, how much of the over 1 million subscriber base of Twitter are willing to pay up for the service?

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