GeoCities’ traffic has been falling over the past year. According to ComScore, GeoCities unique visitors in the U.S. fell 24 percent in March to 11.5 million unique visitors from 15.1 million in March of 2008. Back in October, 2006, it had 18.9 million uniques.

There are plenty of other Website creation and hosting services out there, including blog platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad, as well as Website creation and hosting services such as Ning, Webs, Jimdo, Snapages, Weebly, and countless more. GeoCities never really kept up with the times, but always remained a decent pageview generator.

One of the pioneers of web-hosting sites, GeoCities gave users personal publishing tools and created “neighborhoods” within its web platform for users to be able to create pages, add a picture, text, a guest book and a website counter. Long before MySpace, Geocities was known as a place where teenagers, college students, and eventually others could impose their own garish taste upon the rest of the world.

Original URL: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/23/yahoo-quietly-pulls-the-plug-on-geocities/

If you’re a Gmail user, what you’ll want to do after a few more unsuccessful, increasingly frantic attempts is to speak with a Google customer support representative, post haste. But that’s not an option. Google doesn’t offer a toll-free number and a live person to resolve the ordinary user’s problems.

Discussion forums abound with tales of woe from Gmail customers who have found themselves locked out of their account for days or even weeks. They were innocent victims of security measures, which automatically suspend access if someone tries unsuccessfully to log on repeatedly to an account. The customers express frustration that they can’t speak with anyone at Google after filling out the company’s online forms and waiting in vain for Google to restore access to their accounts.

Tom Lynch, a software entrepreneur who lives near Austin, Tex., discovered early last month that he had been locked out of both Gmail accounts he used; he had no idea why. He received boilerplate instructions for recovering his accounts that did not apply to his particular circumstances, which included his failing to maintain a non-Gmail e-mail account as a back-up. He said it took him four weeks, including the use of a business directory and talking with anyone he could find at Google, before he succeeded in having service restored.

A Google spokesman placed the blame on Mr. Lynch, saying he did not follow Google’s guidelines. The spokesman characterized Mr. Lynch’s ordeal as a praiseworthy illustration of Google’s tough security: “We have had no cases of falsely recovered accounts.”

Google does provide phone support to Gmail customers who subscribe to Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 annually and includes larger storage quotas and other benefits. Customers who use the advertising-supported version of Gmail, however, must rely solely on what Google calls “self-service online support.”

Microsoft and Yahoo similarly offer phone support only to their premium e-mail customers. (Yahoo says it offers phone support for its free e-mail service “in some cases,” but it does not publish the phone number; it is revealed to the user in distress only after e-mail communication fails to resolve the problem.)

Last month, Google’s official blog dispensed advice for those unfortunate souls who find themselves locked out. The post, “What to do if you can’t access your Webmail,” scolded users about not sharing passwords with anyone, pointed customers to a form to reset the password and, if that doesn’t solve the problem, to another form to start the “account recovery process.”

As customers, we bring the same expectations to Google’s personalized information services, like Gmail or Google Docs, its word-processing service, as we do to our bank’s Web site. These are places that hold information very dear to us. My bank recognizes that losing access for days at a time is unacceptable. It provides me with round-the-clock phone support for account problems. So, too, should Google, even if I pay the company not in the form of a monthly account fee, but with my attention, which Google commercializes by selling slices to its advertisers.

Last month, with cases like Mr. Lynch’s in mind, I contacted Google to see what the company had to say about my suggestion that it add phone support for its customers with account-related problems. The company returned with a debate team of three to argue the negative position: Matthew Glotzbach, who works with Google’s business customers; Roy Gilbert, who handles consumers; and Greg Badros, who is an engineering director.

Mr. Glotzbach began by saying that “one-to-one support isn’t always the best answer” because it would take Google too long to collect lots of data about a problem that is affecting many users simultaneously.

For systemic problems, data collection is important. But not for other categories. Account recovery could be slow for a locked-out customer who doesn’t have a backup e-mail account, and who declined to provide a security question and answer because of concerns that someone else could use it to get in (which is what someone did to Gov. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail account).

Mr. Badros argued that Google asks so little personal information of a new Gmail customer that it’s hard to determine identity when the genuine user and the impostor both present themselves to claim the account, and neither can produce the verification. He said more information could be asked of users when they sign up, but the inconvenience would dissuade them from trying the service.

Mr. Gilbert added that proving identity with only minimal information is a problem, whatever form of communication is used to reach customer support. He said, “Even if they were standing right in front of us, it wouldn’t help.”

THIS makes sorting out competing claims seem permanently hopeless, when, of course, this is not the case; it simply means that standard security questions will not suffice. But if Google were to use real people to sort out identity problems over the phone, the only remaining consideration would be the one that Google’s panel of experts didn’t mention in our talk: cost.

Google says it has “tens of millions” of Gmail customers. (It declines to be more specific.) If it’s willing to consider phone support for account-access emergencies, it can take heart in the example of Netflix, which last year adopted phone support with enthusiasm, replacing online support completely. For all customers. For all problems. And without resorting to an offshore call center.

It turns out that a staff of 375 customer service representatives are enough to handle calls from Netflix’s 8.4 million customers, answering most calls within a minute. Netflix says with justifiable pride that it has received the top ratings in online retail customer satisfaction by both Nielsen Online and ForeSee Results.

A Netflix spokesman explained the complete switch to phone support: “Most people don’t need customer service,” he said, “but when they do, they want it now.”

Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05digi.html

The first phase went live tonight with an e-mail module allowing users to check on AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail accounts from the top right-hand of AOL.com and expanded left-hand navigation to various points within AOL. Over the next few weeks, AOL will add an innovative global status update for major social services—write your status once and it shows up on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Twitter at the same time—and the ability to follow multiple social net activity through one module from AOL’s front page. Bill Wilson, AOL’s EVP of programming, walked me through the new front page.

The changes don’t stop with e-mail and social nets. Some are skin deep as AOL introduces new color schemes and a more stylish approach, swapping muted pastels for options that include black backgrounds. (Screenshot here.) It may sound purely cosmetic but it gives the portal a new look and feel even tough the basic structure remains the same. On the top left, people can add their own links. AOL Radio will get a top spot. AOL.com also will incorporate “engagement modules” or pop-up players for video, photo galleries, polls and the like that can be moved to other locations on the page to watch video while reading email or the like.

It is an insanely long page but Wilson insists that their click maps show users scroll “if you provide value in the middle of the page as well as the bottom.” Much more detail after the jump.

More on e-mail
Hovering over an e-mail service after login shows the latest messages; composing messages or viewing all mail in an account takes the user off the page. Microsoft’s Hotmail poses a problem though; it can’t be accessed or previewed through AOL.com so AOL is providing a link that can be inserted in one of the module email slots—and a link to Microsoft feedback so people can ask for the feature. In addition to being more open, AOL hopes the e-mail aggregation will help recapture some of the user attention it lost before people leaving the ISP were allowed to keep their AOL addresses. Make it possible for Yahoo e-mail users to scan their inbox from AOL.com and they may stick around.

Leveraging acquisitions
Some of the new content on the front page comes from integrating AOL’s acquisitions. For instance, local news, something AOL hasn’t highlighted before, will be powered by Relegence, the financial news and info technology firm acquired by AOL in late 2006. Relegence, which pulls news and info from more than 3,000 sources, is already powering AOL’s finance, sports and entertainment coverage. Wilson says the portal avoided local news until now because news from nearby big cities tended to overwhelm the result. AOL will use Relegence to provide real-time news pegged to zip codes: “We’re really going to lean into local here.”

– An RSS reader in a module at the bottom will start default categories but can be supplemented by user choices. Recent acquisition Sphere will provide related content from the web; it was integrated quietly into AOL News last week and will be launched across AOL’s network.

Personalization not the goal
Wilson: “We’re not trying to create a replacement for myAOL or iGoogle or My Yahoo. … Based on our experience, personalized sites range usually to under 20 percent of the mainstream. If you look at My Yahoo, it does 20 million where My Yahoo does 90 millions; myAOL is roughly 8 million where our portal is about 48 million. Here, we’re trying to create an experience of great scale for the masses.” Beginning in Q109, though, the front page will start to respond to use. “If you as a user never click on finance news, we would swap that module out and provide you a different module based on things you do click on.” For instance, someone who clicks on style but not finance might get a style feed.

– The e-mail aggregator, social net module and other new features will be available eventually for myAOL.

Advertising
AOL is keeping the 300×600 display ad introduced for the Olympics and is testing placement for sponsored link ads from another acquisition, Quigo. The ads currently are integrated in various modules but the new look has them bundled together on the bottom left. “We’re constantly working with Quigo to determine the best placement for monetization but also leveraging that with the consumer experience.” The engagement modules “are all going to be highly customized from a sponsorship standpoint with rich media. We’ve been sharing that with TV networks and movie studios and some of the CPG as well as retailers.” That’s new advertising in the middle of the screen that doesn’t exist today. Will it pay off in revenue? The inventory being added should provide a boost.

Original URL: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-redesigned-aolcom-front-page-will-feature-third-party-content-cross-soc/

SearchScan uses security firm McAfee’s SiteAdvisor technology to warn users about “potentially risky sites”.

The service, which is switched on by default, produces an on-screen alert.

“Our goal is to protect users by allowing them to make a more informed decision about the sites they visit,” said Yahoo’s Priyank Garg.

Rival firm Google introduced similar technology in 2006.

Yahoo’s service will warn users about three types of risk:

• Browser exploits: Sites that can harm a user’s computer or install malware simply by visiting the site. Any such sites or pages included in McAfee’s data will be removed from search results automatically.
• Dangerous downloads: SearchScan will display warnings next to search results for sites that offer potentially dangerous software, such as viruses, spyware or adware.
• Unsolicited e-mail: SearchScan will alert users to scanned sites that send unsolicited e-mails or inappropriately share e-mail addresses with third parties.

Viruses, spyware and adware programs are often “hidden” inside innocuous-looking programs such as screensavers and toolbars.

Industry analysts IDC estimate that 67% of all computers have some form of spyware installed without a user’s knowledge.

Original URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7385285.stm

This announcement has been a long time coming, as Flash developers have been wishing for ways to make their content searchable for close to a decade. Adobe acknowledges this in its announcement, saying that although search engines are able to index static text and links within Flash SWF files, “[Rich Internet Applications] and dynamic Web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states—a problem also inherent in other RIA technologies.”

This announcement may also result in some major usability changes (for the better) for Flash on the web. In a post to its Webmaster Central Blog, Google wrote that it can now index all kinds of textual content in SWF files, like that included in Flash gadgets, buttons, menus, entirely self-contained Flash web sites, “and everything in between.” Google can now also follow URLs embedded within Flash files to add to the crawling pipeline. This new indexing technology does not, however, include FLV files (video files that are found on sites like YouTube) because those are generated as videos and don’t contain any text elements like an SWF file does.

Google says it’s able to do this by developing an algorithm that “explores Flash files in the same way that a person would,” by clicking buttons and manually going through Flash content. “Our algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way, and that content is then available to be indexed,” wrote the company. “We can’t tell you all of the proprietary details, but we can tell you that the algorithm’s effectiveness was improved by utilizing Adobe’s new Searchable SWF library.”

Of course, Google (and eventually Yahoo) won’t be able to index everything embedded within a Flash file—at least not yet. Anything that is image-related, including text that is embedded into images, will be invisible to the search engines for the time being. Google also noted that it can’t execute certain JavaScripts that may be embedded into a Flash file, and that while it indexes content that is contained in a separate HTML or XML file, it won’t be counted as part of the content in the Flash file. These are all issues that are being worked on, however, and are likely to change in the future.

Yahoo is also working with Adobe to index SWF files, but doesn’t appear to be as far along as Google just yet. One player that is noticeably missing is Microsoft, though. From Adobe’s announcement and the language used by Google, it appears as if each search engine has to work with Adobe to make this possible—meaning that Microsoft has either been excluded by Adobe for this round or has decided to voluntarily sit this one out. Either way, with searchable SWF files down, usability experts can now focus all of their attention on other Flash-related concerns, like blatant design perversion and excessive animation abuse.

Original URL: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-google-yahoo-spiders-can-now-crawl-through-flash-sites.html

The offer, contained in a letter to Yahoo’s board, is 62% above Yahoo’s closing share price on Thursday.

Yahoo cut its revenue forecasts earlier this week and said it would have to spend an additional $300m this year trying to revive the company.

It has been struggling in recent years to compete with Google, which has also been a competitor to Microsoft.

“We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said.

Chairman quit
There has not yet been any comment from Yahoo.

Its chief executive, Jerry Yang, announced on Tuesday that he intended to lay off 1,000 staff as part of a restructuring plan.

Terry Semel, who stepped down as chief executive last June, also quit as non-executive chairman on Thursday.

Microsoft said that Yahoo shareholders could choose to receive either cash or shares.

Yahoo shares have fallen 46% since reaching a year-high of $34.08 in October. They rose 54% in pre-market trading.

“Ultimately this corporate marriage was forced by the rise of Google, which has grown into a serious competitor for both Microsoft as a software company and Yahoo as an internet portal,” said Tim Weber, business editor of the BBC News website.

“It is a shotgun marriage, but the person holding the shotgun is Google.”

‘Exorbitant premium’
According to its letter to Yahoo, Microsoft attempted to enter talks about a deal a year ago, but was rebuffed because Yahoo was confident about the “potential upside” presented by the reorganisation and operational activities that were being put in place at the time.

“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” Microsoft’s letter said.

But there has been some concern about the price that Microsoft is offering.

“To me, the premium seems exorbitant, for what is a dwindling business,” said Tim Smalls from the brokerage firm Execution LLC.

“I personally don’t see how the synergies of Microsoft-Yahoo is going to take on Google.”

Other analysts were more enthusiastic about the offer.

“It is a fantastic offer. It is game on,” said Colin Gillis from Canaccord Adams.

“This consolidates the marketplace down to Google versus Microsoft. These two companies will be going head to head.”

Original URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7222114.stm

The new features have been designed keeping the needs of Yahoo’s existing users in mind. Apparently, Yahoo messenger users spend approx. an hour daily which exceeds the time spent on any other IM service. The power-packed connectivity options include IM, Voice and SMS support.

So what’s new in this Beta version?
For a start, the friends list interface is revamped. Now a user can easily see the online presence indicator, display image and status all in one go. All it takes is a single-click to connect with users via voice, text message or instant messages.

In-line Media Player: The media player enables users to send image,video and map URLs to their friends and family members. File transfer becomes safe and secure than ever with scan support being provide by Symantec Norton AntiVirus.

The call forwarding option (similar to VOIP giant Skype’s) allows users to stay connected while they’re are away from their desktops. Moreover, all voice mails are sent as email attachments in MP3 format. Extensive personalization empowers users to add their personal touch to the way Yahoo Messenger appears. So they can play around with skins customize their designs and do more. In line with web2.0 the new beta comes with Flickr integration so users can share their Flickr photos with IM buddies.

On the occasion of news announcement, Sabrina Ellis, Yahoo’s Vice President said, “We’ve punched up Yahoo! Messenger to make keeping in touch with friends and family even more fun, with features like the in-line media player that helps people easily share their favorite videos, images and photos right in the IM window”.

Yahoo Messenger is the default communication tool which connects over 94 million users across the globe. Don’t waste your time go and grab the beta of the new Yahoo! Messenger can at http://beta.messenger.yahoo.com.

Original URL: http://www.rev2.org/2007/10/30/breaking-news-yahoo-messenger-90-is-out/

Last week, Performance Pricing filed a lawsuit against AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, charging the four companies with infringing upon its patent, “Systems and methods for transacting business over a global communications network such as the Internet.”

The suit was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, where a large number of patent cases have been filed in recent years due to the district’s perceived friendliness to ostensibly wronged inventors.

According to the Coalition for Patent Fairness, a group that counts Google and Microsoft as members, there were 218 infringement lawsuits filed in Marshall, Texas, from January 2004 through April 2006.

At the end of August, AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo were sued in the same district by Texas-based Polaris IP for violating a patented method of automated e-mail routing.

Illinois Computer Research sued Google in Illinois’ Northern District Court in mid-September for violating a patented method of navigating through online books.

Performance Pricing alleges that Google AdWords, AOL Search Marketplace, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing all violate its patent, which was filed in 1999 and granted in 2005.

The patent describes a system for competitive bidding.

“The present invention comprises a business model used to determine the price of goods and/or services to be provided from a seller or sellers to a buyer or buyers,” the patent explains. “Various forms of electronic competition and/or entertainment are used as intermediary activities between said buyers and sellers to ultimately determine a contract price.”

The patent claims to cover a wide variety of activities: video games, electronic board games, crossword puzzles or other word games, sports betting, card games, or any other activity or combination of activities.

Presumably, the plaintiff believes the patent covers Internet ad auctions, too.

In a September 4th blog post, Google policy counsel and legislative strategist Johanna Shelton and Michelle Lee, head of patents and patent strategy, urged Congress to pass patent reform legislation.

“Google and other technology companies increasingly face mounting legal costs to defend against frivolous patent claims from parties gaming the system to forestall competition or reap windfall profits,” Shelton and Lee said.

Three days later, on Friday, September 7th, the House of Representatives passed the Patent Reform Act of 2007. The Senate is expected to vote on a version of the bill shortly.

If the Patent Reform Act passes the Senate and is signed by the President in its current form, monetary damage awards for patent infringement are likely to decline and venue shopping will be curtailed.

“Certain district courts have become notorious for rarely invalidating a patent, and have tilted the balance too often in favor of plaintiffs,” said Shelton and Lee. “We support judicial venue provisions to ensure that patent lawsuits are brought only in district courts with a reasonable connection to the case.”

Original URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202200345

The company said the new features it announced on Monday were aimed at better understanding the intention of users conducting particular types of searches and to get them to the information they desire within a single search.

Yahoo said it was trying to combat what it calls “Web search fatigue.” Research conducted by Harris Interactive for Yahoo found that roughly 15 per cent of online adults find what want on their first search while most need three to four searches.

Yahoo is seeking to stem the steady gains Google, the dominant supplier of Web search, has made in market share for most of the past two years. Market research firm ComScore said Google’s share grew to 56.5 percent of the U.S. Web search market in August, up 1.3 percent from July.

Yahoo Search Assist suggests related concepts to instantly refine a search, drawing on the wealth of information Yahoo has about what users across its sites are saying when they comment upon Web links, photos, video or the like.

Search Assist is designed to be especially helpful when a person is searching for information on an unfamiliar topic. The feature senses when a searcher needs help with a search and it appears as a drop-down menu under the main search results box.

For example, a user seeking information on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown might see suggestions about Gordon Brown and Scotland, Gordon Brown and budget or Gordon Brown and Iraq.

In addition to the new Search Assist feature, Yahoo Search has also combined searching for links to video, audio and photos with traditional text links it has long offered.

Google Inc, IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Ask.com and Microsoft Corp introduced similar features earlier this year on their rival search services.

Yahoo is tapping the millions of tags users contribute on its properties such as photo-sharing site Flickr to improve the relevance of its general search service.

The company is looking to take advantage of sites it has acquired in recent years including Flickr, bookmark categorization site Del.icio.us and the internally created Yahoo Answers to enhance Yahoo’s general search.

“We hope the data in those Web sites will help make Web search better,” Vish Makhijani, general manager and senior vice president of Yahoo! Search, said in an interview.

A third feature Yahoo is introducing is Search Shortcuts which are designed to help consumers save time when searching for popular categories such as events, music, movies, travel, sports, health, shopping, businesses and restaurants.

Yahoo Search Shortcuts weave in ratings and reviews, photos, official Web sites and other potentially useful information to augment a consumer’s search on these topics.

Original URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN0135694420071002

Mash, to which a limited number of public users began being invited as testers on Friday, was described by a spokeswoman as a new, next-generation service that is independent from the company’s 2- year-old Yahoo 360 degree profile service.

While Yahoo was early among Internet companies to embrace the trend toward sharing media with friends by purchasing start-ups like photo site Flickr.com, it has struggled to catch up with the Web’s biggest new trend: Social networking.

Mash amounts to a new stab at competing with the likes of News Corp’s MySpace, Facebook, Bebo or Google’s Orkut, which have attracted tens of millions of users worldwide.

The Silicon Valley company emphasized it is in the early stages of testing the new service. One aspect of the service is the power it gives users to edit their friends profiles and add personal blurbs, subject to approval by the profile owner.

“Ongoing product innovation is important to Yahoo and we continue to test various products and services to gain feedback from our users. Mash, an experimental profile service, is an example of this ongoing testing,” a company statement said.

Eventually, Mash could connect to a variety of existing Yahoo services and mini-applications known as Widgets, acting as a personal profile both on the public Internet or among a private group of friends, depending on individual preference. Yahoo has more than 500 million monthly users of its various services including a quarter million Yahoo Mail e-mail users.

Separately, Yahoo said on Friday it had acquired for undisclosed terms a company called BuzzTracker.com.

The two-year-old start-up is an online news service that monitors 110,000 different sources — both traditional media and blogs — to identify hot topics.

On its site, BuzzTracker promises to offer users a way to create customized news feeds around a limitless number of topics of their own choosing. It gives Yahoo an alternative to rival Google News, which aggregates together news on various topics from a variety of conventional media sources.

The company’s Chief Executive Alan Warms will run Yahoo News as its general manager, according to Warms blog.

Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070917/wr_nm/yahoo_mash_dc