IBIS Search News: March 2014

IBIS Search News: March 2014

Facebook Buys WhatsApp; Privacy Groups Call Foul

In recent Search News: WhatsApp is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows users to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced an agreement to buy WhatsApp for $16 billion—$4 billion in cash and $12 billion in Facebook shares. Much like Instagram (another startup acquired by Facebook), WhatsApp will operate independently within Facebook.

In a February 19 Facebook post, Zuckerberg wrote: “I’m looking forward to what Facebook and WhatsApp can do together, and to developing great new mobile services that give people even more options for connecting.”

Privacy groups have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that reads (in part):

WhatsApp built a user base based on its commitment not to collect user data for advertising revenue. Acting in reliance on WhatsApp representations, Internet users provided detailed personal information to the company including private text to close friends. Facebook routinely makes use of user information for advertising purposes and has made clear that it intends to incorporate the data of WhatsApp users into the user profiling business model. The proposed acquisition will therefore violate WhatsApp users’ understanding of their exposure to online advertising.

Click here to read the entire complaint.

Where Technology Meets Fashion

The laptop freed us from the desktop computer. The smartphone and tablet took us mobile. If recent Google news (Google is Finally Getting Serious About Wearables) and popularity of SXSW conference sessions on the topic of wearable devices are any indicator, we’ll all soon be suited up with smart glasses, smartwatches and other tech devices.

The standing room only SXSW “Accelerator” event consisted of five-minute pitches by 16 new businesses selected from 500 companies that applied. Companies selected for the wearable technologies category were:

• BioNym – presented the Nymi, a wristband that uses an electrocardiogram as a means to connect people to devices and services without requiring passwords.
• Wearable Solar – showed off its clothing designs that feature cells that charge a phone when the clothes are worn for two hours in direct sunlight.
• Skully (winner in the category) – demonstrated the Skully motorcycle helmet with an advanced situational awareness system, showing navigation and blind spot data. The company has already partnered with Harley Davidson.

Imagine the marketing opportunities when wearable technology becomes ubiquitous!

How to Report Content Theft

When you develop and post unique content on your website and someone links to it, that’s great! That’s exactly what you want to happen.

But what if someone posts your content on another website and that other website ranks above yours on searches related to that scraped content?

Content scraping is spam and Google wants to know about it. On February 21, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, tweeted the link to this Google Scraper Report. It can’t hurt to file a report if someone outranks you with your own content.