Google adds new social search functions for users

Internet search giant Google has been working on adding more features in its search domain for making it easy for the users to easily find blogs and twitter feeds.

Users need to open a profile with Google and services can be accessed from Google labs.

Google Germany spokesman Stefan Keuchel said that friend finding on internet would become very easy with the help of new facility. He added that Twitter feed's new searches and the recently introduced search functions are different. The function would initially be made available in English.

The new social graph can be readjusted as per user's preferences. The feature would allow only close friends to be highlighted in the searches, leaving postings from others.

Agencies

Can Yahoo take on Twitter with its new Meme?

After closing the social network platform SpotM, Yahoo has launched Meme, in English, to take on microblogging site Twitter. The company had launched this service in Spanish and Portuguese languages earlier this month.

Meme is currently in an invite-only mode, similar to few microblogging services like Tumblr, Twitter, Pownce and others. After creating the account, users get a blank blog for micro-sharing text, images, music, videos or mash up of all these things.

It also offers the facility to add new friends by searching the internet, which is quite similar to Tumblr and Twitter.

The company's previous efforts to capitalize on the social networking domain kept failing in spite of repeated attempts. The recently launched 'Know Your Mojo' also failed along with the Indian social network, SpotM, which was closed down less than a year after its launch.

Meme does not allow much in terms of customization. The users cannot customize the themes with background images and custom CSS to style the text, as this facility is available with Twitter and Tumblr. Both these services have a rich faux-cabulary, which defines how a person uses the service. Meme does not lend on a particular vocabulary. The setting panel has minimal options like Meme title, 100 character description, avatar/photo and notifications. It also shows the comments posted by the users recently.

Yahoo Meme can have a big advantage over Twitter in terms of reliability. Twitter's image has suffered for frequent service outages, with its "Fail Whale" graphic appearing whenever the site is overloaded, emerging as the company's unofficial logo.

Several technology sites like TechCrunch and paidContent are not pleased with Yahoo's move, they said, "Meme seems to lack in its features and in potential to surpass its competitors." They also pointed out that the company has a spotty record with Mash and SpotM.

Agencies

Indian CEOs better than their western counterparts

Despite the grappling impact of the global meltdown, Indian firms are in a more favorable position as against other countries like the U.S. Over last few years, Indian business houses have come into focus for their international competitiveness that sets them apart from their western counterparts, as per a survey.

Professor Harbir Singh said, "Our very unique difference is that Indian leaders think in English, thanks to the Western education. But, act in an Indian context. They internalize Western best practices and adapt them to India." The findings are based on a study titled 'The DNA of Indian Leadership: The Governance, Management and Leadership of Leading Indian Firms'. It was conducted by Singh along with his three other Management Professors from the University of Pennsylvania, named Peter Cappelli, Jitendra Singh and Michael Useem. In the study, each India CEO was asked asset of questions about the leadership skills, competitive advantage and corporate governance.

According to R.Gopalakrishnan, the Executive Director at Tata Sons, the Indian executives' strategic thinking, risk taking abilities, flexibility as well as the setting of the shared architecture of the firm were some of the important leadership capacities. They are occupied with long-term strategic vision, talent nurturing and maintaining the organizational culture.

Also, the Indian leaders perceive the role of their firms in the society, rather than prioritizing the investors in the company. But, for the Western CEOs, the shareholders emerge at the top of the priority list.

However, as per the report, some of the Indians CEOs carry a unique management trait- the "jugaad" factor, which is the tendency to resort to an unplanned makeshift in the company. "While this can be perceived negatively, it can also be a positive trait because of its inherent inventiveness and survival instinct," concluded Singh.

Agencies

Now get your Mobile Web report from Opera

Opera’s popular mobile browser Opera Mini claims to enhance the mobile internet experience. The software organization has now broadcasted its State of the Mobile Web report that further ascends the browser. This report presents some fascinating data that offers a detailed description about the evolution of Web browsing on mobile phones.

Opera conducted a study of vital factors that influence the mobile Web globally and publishes it as the State of the Mobile Web, monthly. The report provides information about the most regularly visited sites. Moreover it also includes key data metrics from Opera Mini and a picture of a particular development selected by the analysis team for that month.

The company had introduced the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile which are premium software for mobile Web browsing on both feature phones and smartphones. Opera Mini offers faster Web services on the handset. Moreover even the page is viewed just as it appears on the desktop browser. The Opera Zoom feature articulates the contents so as to enhance the readability and interaction. Additionally, it also incorporates Opera Link that facilitates users to synchronize their bookmarks for free. It also offers a Speed Dial option and personal bar between all the Web browsers.

The report reveals that 25.4 million Opera Mini users have browsed over 9.6 billion pages, as per the records in the month of May, 2009. Further it claims that since April, 2009, page-views have risen by 11.0% and increased by a remarkable 227% from May, 2008. It also illustrates that users generated almost 160 million MB of data for global operators in May, 2009.

The content analysis is based on an assessment of the top 100 sites ranked based on page views in every country. The designation of sites to particular kind was devised by local content professionals by following Opera’s guidelines to exemplify each site.

Additionally, demographic data was also gathered from voluntary user surveys. The data was then provided to a random subset of Opera Mini users through their handsets, in English, Russian, Chinese, German and Polish. Survey responses were accumulated between February to June, 2008.

Agencies

Do Internet users want more languages?

Which is the one language that the people of India aspire to learn? Which is the one language that most Indians use while communicating on the Internet?

The answer is English. But you obviously knew that.

At the Internet Governance Forum being held in Hyderabad, Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of Rediff.com, said that there is no evidence from the last ten years of the Internet business that users want Indian languages. Rediff has email in 11 languages, and 99% of the users prefer to use email in English, says a report.

Balakrishnan believes that a majority of Indians use the Internet for non- or little language skill associated activities like sending send messages, download music, view pictures or videos. These activities hardly require text input/usage.

Interesting comment from the Rediff CEO so is he trying to say that the investment he made to make those 11 languages available for its users was futile?

Not really; in fact, it could be called future-ready. In the coming years when Internet penetrates into large sections of rural India, that's when the regional languages will come handy, perhaps?

Source: Techtree

Guruji to take on Google, Yahoo in the search engines space

Guruji.com, Indian’s Internet search engine, focused on providing better search results to the Indian consumers is eyeing to emerge among the ‘Top 3’ search engines by 2011. The search engine major is presently growing at 20-30 percent per month and is eyeing one million searches in the future.

According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI), the search engine market in India is presently worth $50 million in 2007 and is expected to grow to $100-$200 in the next 5-6 years time. However, China is far ahead of India and has already touched the $100 million mark.

Anurag Dod, founder and CEO of Guruji says, “we want to emerge as a dominant player in the search engine space and for this we are leveraging on proprietary algorithms and content for the Indian consumers.”

Guruji.com was founded by Anurag Dod and Gaurav Mishra, two Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi graduates in 2006 by the backing of venture capitalists Sequoia Capital. “It is the first time that India is seeing a "desi" search engine,” he said.

As per the latest Commscope report, the English search engine market is dominated by basically by six players namely – Google, Yahoo, ASK, MSN, and Guruji among others. In fact, Aaidu.com, a search engine in Chinese and Daum and Naver are the dominant search players (Korea) and are more prominant than Yahoo, Google in these countries. So is Yandex in Russia. “We are now focusing on the Indian consumers and so have extensive searches on cricket, music, images, city focussed seaches like movie tickets,” says Dod.

Even though, we are catering to the English speaking market, still 80 percent of the traffic comes from India while the rest 20 percent is spread across US, Middle East, UK etc.Dod says Yahoo was initially a portal site and in December 2003, that bought Inktom followed by three more companies Overture, which has bought Alta vista followed by Fast. So Yahoo’s search engine is a combination of these three companies. MSN is mainly a portal site player and less of search engine, ASK acquired Teoma, while Google that has a 80 percent market share in the search engine space is the only pure search engine player.

We initially started with web search, city search in 2006 and moved to local laungages –Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam in 2007. Later on we added cricket and music that has a large customer base in India. So will be offering live match scores updates and historic cricket database that is good for data mining, says Dod.

. “We are looking at raising funds but are presently adequately funded and will sail through this global recession.” Guruji secured an investment of $7 million from Sequoia Capital that is the same venture capitalist firm that initially funded Google as well.

The company claims that they remain unaffected by this global recession. “Our organization the attrition level is 0 percent for the past two years and will grow from the present employee strenght of 63 to 100 over the next 1.5 years. Besides we have also opened an office in Mumbai.”

The salaries we offer is very competitive to any product design company like Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Sun, Cisco and much above service companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys, Dod claims.

Earlier search engine companies like khoj.com focused on subscription based unlike Guruji that is focused on news, features, e-commerce, education, music, cricket, technology that are free.

Over the next few years, the company shall focus on entertainment, which is a big category besides music, images tickets by enhancing the capabilities. The company has invested majorly in the web crawlers software that was locally developed,” Dod adds.