Robert Scoble has a note on how invisible influencers can drive interest in products. As I just started reading Malcom Gladwell's Tipping Point (four years after all connected people I imagine), I look forward to re-read Scoble's article when I've finished the book. But I think that one thing that makes the online world different with regards to influencers is the ability for a person to turn

Umair at bubblegenrations comments on the Yahoo Mail and resources comment I made a couple of days ago. Sometimes I wonder if he isn't a bit too into strategy (in a good way, though) for me to truly understand his reasoning, but still I have some comments. I don't agree with the notion that Google has a significantly more trustworthy consumer brand than Yahoo, especially not among American

Over at the excellent Searchblog John Battelle seems to have fallen for 24/7 Media's FUD campaign about AdSense and image ads. Just because the payment isn't based on CPM (pay per impression), doesn't mean that the advertising is free. Especially when Google will drop any image advertisment that yields less than a text-AdSense ad. CPM or performance-based (CPC/CPA) is about risk allocation

Umair over at the excellent bubblegeneration writes that Yahoo hasn't got the resources to compete with Gmail's 1GB of storage and its upping of the limit to 100 MB for free users of Yahoo Mail is done to please analysts. I disagree with the notion that Yahoo hasn't got the resources to make it work, as Overture's ContentMatch technology would only need minor tweaking to be an AdSense clone.

Four marketing tips for the entreprenuer who doesn't want to spend a fortune on advertising. You can always exchange time for money, paying a high rent is often a cheap form of advertising, giving away free samples is a cheap form of advertising and what you say to customers actually matter.

According to an article in Financial Times more CEOs of big, public companies are thinking of taking their companies private. The cite the new Sarbanes-Oxley regulations as the prime motivation of going private. This could lead to interesting times for private equity firms and the likes of Berkshire Hathaway, as primarily mid-sized companies will have the ability to go private. But companies

Convincing Electronic Arts to develop games for Xbox Live is no doubt a huge win for Microsoft. I assume EA was the real winner in the negotiations, as Microsoft had everything to lose by not having EA onboard. When I worked in the games industry I developed a basic rule for estimating the success of a console. If EA is supporting the platform, it will have a chance of survival. If EA is not

Lots of smart people have noticed this, but Google is clearly marching in the direction of becoming a portal. Or more specifically a new Yahoo. Search, mail, communities and news for the B2C-market is what makes a portal. The healthy ($500 million+ in annual sales) B2B-business as a advertising network and technology provider also mimics Yahoo. How Google will keep its brand as strong and