This week, one of the most interesting bits came from Charlene Li’s Graphing Social Patterns talk. Here’s her follow-up blog post about the future of social media. And in other news:
- Google rolled out a secondary search box in organic search results and released an API for contacts.
- Ask.com will cut some employees, and initial reports (from reputable sources, like Reuters) said that the company would refocus their search engine to target married women/moms. But apparently early reports were a little off.
- Google Gears launched for mobile. Yahoo launched a private beta of a Twitter+location-based social network that relies on mobile users, Fire Eagle. But the biggest mobile news was Apple’s long-awaited iPhone SDK announcement.
- Market info firm TNS bought web analytics/traffic company Compete. Expect better integrated online-offline marketing data in the near future.
- Wal-Mart figures out that effective corporate blogging requires humans who are allowed to be human.
