Kaiyzen Group

Adobe and Yahoo! are extending their commercial relationship into a new program that will bring advertising to PDF’s.

This will be an interesting next step into the monitization of content through advertising instead of directly paying for content.  This space is still in its infancy and I think can go a long way to create models and frameworks where content producers can get their content out there with minimal to no cost while also providing some income to support their work.

Whereas slapping adsense on your site and throwing up some pages this will be a next step.  One feature I would like to see would be some way of programatically being able to tell if there is advertising in the PDF.  Nowadays with all the search engines indexing PDF’s it would be nice to allow them to detect if their is advertising and flag it and show some icon to let the user know that its ad-supported content before they download.

Yahoo! and Adobe say this is initially a trial and will act as just another advertising channel in Yahoo!’s current offering.  The program is supposed to be expanded over the next year.

Thats right.., $240 million was not enough for facebook.





TechCrunch is reporting that facebook has taken $60 Million more in investment from a wealthy businessman from Hong Kong.


As TechCrunch points out…, its one thing to make up an evaluation and have one person standing at your side saying that you are not completely out of your gord…, but once there are two or more…, things start to be a bit more “real”.


I have to hand it to facebook for riding this wave, more like a tsunami, that they are on right now.  The market is absolutely primed to accept all of their hype.  I am still not sold on the evaluation, just out of principal alone when you look at their projected revenue this year of around $150 Million.


They have flip-flopped…, thank god…, on their new beacon service, and switched to more of an opt-in style after all of the outcry.  Personally I think the service is completely stoopid.  In my opinion the service is either worthless…, or embarrassing…, depending on how risque your purchasing habits might be.


“Bob just bought black dress socks from J. Crew”
“Sally just bought edible undies (watermelon) from Amazon”


Facebook will be hard at work over the next 3-5 years trying to really earn that evaluation.  It kind of sucks for all new employees…, with the company having such a high evaluation they are going to have to stick around for an eternity in internet time (around the same as dog years), and some how facebook is going to have to find a way to multiply their revenue 50 fold or more.  They will be probably approaching a saturation period here by the end of ‘08 a-la MySpace, whoz still numero uno in the social networking ranks, but growth has slowed.


Latest Social Networking Stats Here:

In closing…, WWFD?


What the hell IS Facebook going to do with all that cashish?  They have declared war on Google HQ for the best and brightest as they plan to double…, or more…, their headcount.., but $300 Million wont just be for that.  I have no doubt they will try to protect their turf from any small up and comers and fork over some dough in a handful of acquisitions. But what else? Maybe some healthy R&D with some strategic new relationships. Maybe building out a crawling/search infrastructure? Most likely not on the search one, but they must have something in mind.

From the New York Post

Microsoft has supposedly put out to bid a $300 million ad campaign to focus on their Windows Live offerings and their interaction with Vista and Windows mobile.

In case anyone is doubting their desire to compete in the online services world MS is throwing some weight behind the latest update of their services.  Slightly higher that a rounding error on the books the campaign looks like it will be launched in pre summer.

This will give the MS gang another 4-6 months to keep pushing their new Live products and trying to break through that glass ceiling and take market share from Yahoo! and Google in search.

Ballmer has stated he wants a significant % of their revenue in the near future to come from advertising.  Although most of the MS haters will say they are wasting their $$$ on advertising, a $300 Million campaign sure as hell wont hurt exposure…, all they need to do is deliver on the technology side of things.

Got an email from Amazon to check out their service they launched last year…, http://askville.com

This is part three parts Yahoo! Answers…, 1 part social network and widget…, a dash of a role playing game, 10 parts consumerism.

They have this concept called “Quest Gold”.  It is basically a point system where you get rewarded for asking and answering questions.  Point rewards go up on “correct” answers based on the rating of your answer.  A 5 star rating gets you 10 points…, where a 1 star rating results in a -10.

They have also have this concept similar to role playing games where you gain experience points for each topic you ask/answer questions in.  The more experience you gain.., the more levels you move up…, and ultimately more gold you obtain.  Right now there is levels 0-6.

Overall pretty cool…, something new for the holidays.  I am a huge fan of Amazon and how they conduct business.  I dont think this will add much to their bottom line for the holidays…, but at least they are continually trying new things.

There is supposed to be an accompanying site…, Amazon Questville launching sometime this year.  Given the fact they initially launched askville last year and I just got an email telling me to check it out, my guess it will launch sometime before xmas.  Questville aims to put you on “quests”, use your gold and most likely some sort of rewards program.

During random bar conversation the subject came up about baby pigeons.

How come you only see full size pigeons?  Are they sequestered away until meeting certain height/weight requirements…, or are they hatched full size.

Anyone with pics of a baby send it my way.

Came across this wooden deck chair…, strikingly similar to our DWR Champagne chair from last year.

Theirs:

Ours (Large image sow only showing thumb nail, click link to see full size):

The DWR Champagne Chair contest should be starting up again pretty soon.  We are going to place this year with two chairs…, a new one…, and a redux of this one from this past year.

We were “disqualified” this past year on account that our chair was about 1/16th of an inch too wide.  Basically they have the equivalent of what the airlines have for carry on luggage to measure whether or not your chair is sized right.

Luckily between being located in the bay area, and Pete’s persistence the chair was recovered and remains in his SF dwelling place awaiting its revenge this year.

And in case you were wondering…, the answer is YES.., the chair does actually recline…, there are two positions, and that is a nickel next to the chair to show scale.

Our chair was actually modeled after the chairs they set out and “rent” at Hyde Park in London…, aptly named Jeckl & Hyde with its two reclining positions.

Marketers are still looking to the mobile space to be the new frontier for reaching and engaging with the consumer.  The space has heated up a bunch this year with pretty good growth, several purchases of mobile ad-networks from bigger players like AOL and Yahoo!, and indie players like AdMob picking up great accounts like ESPN.

This post from AdWeek talks about how marketers are not only looking to directly adveritise on the handset, but are also going the extra distance to get a little more creative and provide consumers with branded applications and services.  The article sites Vicks cough medicine providing weather alerts to the phone.

Its great to see this type of developement in the mobile space.  Consumers are still warming up to mobile…, especially here in the U.S., and havent shown too much inthusiasm towards direct advertising on the handset.  You can be sure the tide is turning when some of the big players start putting some their uber-budgets into the mobile space…, even if only a couple % points.