Adobe (NSDQ:ADBE) Flash has been a punching bag for Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs lately, but Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) wants Flash to run in Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 smartphones.
Although there's no time frame for when this will happen, the two companies are "working closely" on the effort, according to Mike Chambers, product manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe. "Adobe and Microsoft are working together to bring Flash Player 10.1 to Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Phone 7 Series," Chambers said in a Tuesday blog post.
Chambers didn't say anything about Flash being used for native application development in Windows Phone 7, and that's because Microsoft plans to use Silverlight for this purpose. This will enable Microsoft to get developers working on Windows Phone 7 apps using familiar tools, and supporting Flash in IE Mobile will maintain a bridge to other types of content and allow Microsoft to talk about its commitment to interoperability.
For Microsoft, which is looking up at the rest of the smartphone industry, it's a move that could yield dividends in the form of increased market share.
"It seems like a smart strategy for Microsoft," said Dave Meeker, director of emerging media and co-director of Roundarch Labs, a Chicago-based Web development firm. "Consumers don't care if it's Flash, HTML5, or Silverlight. They want a good experience -- bottom line," he said.
Microsoft wants consumers to get excited about Windows Phone 7 devices, and adding more functionality would help. But Windows Mobile is in the midst of a freefall, as its share of the smartphone market fell from 19.7 percent in October to 15.7 percent in January, while Android grew from 2.8 percent to 7.1 percent during the period, according to comScore figures released Wednesday.
If Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft's last chance to right the ship, it needs to ensure that devices offer a top notch user experience, says Meeker. "A lot of folks have counted Microsoft out of the mobile space, but they have a much better shot at gaining market share and moving smartphones out to consumers if the device is flexible and open," he said.
Apple, of course, doesn't support Flash on the iPhone or the iPad, and Jobs has been taking shots at Flash in recent months, reportedly deriding it as a "CPU hog" that's full of security holes. But Microsoft has set beefy minimum hardware specifications for Windows Phone 7 OEMs, which suggests that Flash may be able to run smoothly on these devices, Meeker said.
Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up, but by empowering developers and removing roadblocks to users that want to consume Flash content on mobile devices, Microsoft is making a shrewd move that could help it reach its goal of luring consumers away from the popular smartphone platforms du jour.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
14 Ways Microsoft Is Juicing Bing's Search Traffic
Microsoft's Bing search engine has gobbled up a pretty impressive share of the search market since launching last May.
In February, Bing accounted for 11.5% of the U.S. search market, according to comScore, up from 8% last May. Microsoft's success has largely come at Yahoo's expense: Yahoo fell down to an all-time low of 16.8% of the search market in February, down from 20.1% last May.
So, how is Microsoft doing it? In part, no doubt, by growing organically via a better search product. In particular, people seem to like Bing's shopping, travel, and maps products more than they used to.
But Microsoft is also employing a bunch of paid and non-paid measures to get people to make Bing searches that they may not have ordinarily made. These including buying up toolbar deals, advertising, and building Bing search queries into other products, such as the wildly popular MSN.com homepage.
Are we missing anything? Let us know in comments and we'll add to the list.
1.Organic search traffic growth is arguably most important: Making a more interesting, more pleasant search engine than Live or MSN search were
2.Installing Bing toolbars on PCs through companies like HP has been a big driver for Bing
3.Building Bing searches into word games at ClubBing.com, giving people prizes and other incentives to play games, which generate Bing searches
4.Flooding the popular MSN portal with links to Bing search queries is a big driver
5.If you click in the MSN homepage's "Popular Searches" box, for instance, it takes you to a Bing search results page
6.Clicking on one of the links on the MSN homepage's "Trend Watch" takes you to a Bing search results page of Twitter searches
7.Clicking on one of the Local Events links on the MSN homepage takes you to a Bing event search results page
8.Clicking one of the Shopping links on the MSN homepage takes you to a Bing shopping search page
9.Bing Cashback also gives people an incentive to do their shopping searches at Bing: A few percent cash back on purchases
10.Microsoft has been advertising Bing on TV, as part of an ad campaign estimated up to $100 million. Bing ads will start airing in the U.K. next.
11.It's also advertising on mobile apps, including Apple's iPhone
12.And it's advertising on social networks, in places like Farmville
13. Making mobile apps, including this one for the iPhone
14.Throwing parties, hoping people will remember to use Bing to research hangover cures the morning after too many "Bingtinis"
In February, Bing accounted for 11.5% of the U.S. search market, according to comScore, up from 8% last May. Microsoft's success has largely come at Yahoo's expense: Yahoo fell down to an all-time low of 16.8% of the search market in February, down from 20.1% last May.
So, how is Microsoft doing it? In part, no doubt, by growing organically via a better search product. In particular, people seem to like Bing's shopping, travel, and maps products more than they used to.
But Microsoft is also employing a bunch of paid and non-paid measures to get people to make Bing searches that they may not have ordinarily made. These including buying up toolbar deals, advertising, and building Bing search queries into other products, such as the wildly popular MSN.com homepage.
Are we missing anything? Let us know in comments and we'll add to the list.
1.Organic search traffic growth is arguably most important: Making a more interesting, more pleasant search engine than Live or MSN search were
2.Installing Bing toolbars on PCs through companies like HP has been a big driver for Bing
3.Building Bing searches into word games at ClubBing.com, giving people prizes and other incentives to play games, which generate Bing searches
4.Flooding the popular MSN portal with links to Bing search queries is a big driver
5.If you click in the MSN homepage's "Popular Searches" box, for instance, it takes you to a Bing search results page
6.Clicking on one of the links on the MSN homepage's "Trend Watch" takes you to a Bing search results page of Twitter searches
7.Clicking on one of the Local Events links on the MSN homepage takes you to a Bing event search results page
8.Clicking one of the Shopping links on the MSN homepage takes you to a Bing shopping search page
9.Bing Cashback also gives people an incentive to do their shopping searches at Bing: A few percent cash back on purchases
10.Microsoft has been advertising Bing on TV, as part of an ad campaign estimated up to $100 million. Bing ads will start airing in the U.K. next.
11.It's also advertising on mobile apps, including Apple's iPhone
12.And it's advertising on social networks, in places like Farmville
13. Making mobile apps, including this one for the iPhone
14.Throwing parties, hoping people will remember to use Bing to research hangover cures the morning after too many "Bingtinis"
Facebook To Announce Plans To Take Over The Internet With Facebook Pages
Mark Zuckerberg has long signaled that the future of Facebook will be off Facebook.com. His social network will take a big step toward that future at a developers conference in April.
That's when, according to a WSJ report, Facebook plans to launch a tool set for Web developers who want to make their off-Facebook Web sites look and work more like on-Facebook "pages."
On its site for Facebook developers, Facebook calls this toolset the "Open Graph API," and describes it this way:
This move to expand Facebook beyond the domain of Facebook.com has been under way since Fall 2007, when Mark came to New York, announced that advertising changes every 100 years, and launched Facebook Beacon. Facebook Beacon transmitted Facebook user activity from third-party sites back to Facebook. The product quickly flopped, mostly because it wasn't opt-in.
Facebook re-branded the technology behind Beacon as an opt-in service called Facebook Connect in fall 2008 and launched it as a tool that allows Facebook users to sign into third-party sites using their Facebook IDs. Facebook Connect has been a huge hit.
In the year since Facebook Connect launched, more and more major brands have begun driving traffic not to their own domains, but to their branded Facebook Pages. These pages are attractive brands because once Facebook users become fans of a page, that page is free to update that friend regularly. It has been the return of email marketing. The Open Graph API, which will take Facebook fan pages out of Facebook without sacrificing these marketing tools is the next logical step.
The other two big reasons Facebook wants to expand beyond Facebook.com and onto third-party sites is that…
That's when, according to a WSJ report, Facebook plans to launch a tool set for Web developers who want to make their off-Facebook Web sites look and work more like on-Facebook "pages."
On its site for Facebook developers, Facebook calls this toolset the "Open Graph API," and describes it this way:
The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page – users will be able to become a Fan of the page, it will show up on that user’s profile and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans.
Facebook also provides the following "details":The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page. Once implemented, developers can include a number of Facebook Widgets, like the Fan Box, or leverage any API, which enable the transformation of any Web page so it functions similar to a Facebook Page.
For example, AwesomeTees might decide that strategically they would like to locate their brand identity at www.awesometees.com. AwesomeTees will install the Fan Box widget, which will allow any Facebook user to "Become a Fan" of AwesomeTees, thereby establishing an official connection to AwesomeTees. The user will then have AwesomeTees listed in their list of connections on their profile as Pages are represented today. Additionally, any content that AwesomeTees publishes on AwesomeTees.com will show up in the stream on Facebook like it normally would. And, any time the user searches on Facebook, AwesomeTees will show up in the typeaheads and prominently in search results.
At the Wall Street Journal, Jessica Vascellero writes that Facebook's goal here is to "make it even easier for users to share information from the Web on Facebook and to have that information associated with their Facebook identity."This move to expand Facebook beyond the domain of Facebook.com has been under way since Fall 2007, when Mark came to New York, announced that advertising changes every 100 years, and launched Facebook Beacon. Facebook Beacon transmitted Facebook user activity from third-party sites back to Facebook. The product quickly flopped, mostly because it wasn't opt-in.
Facebook re-branded the technology behind Beacon as an opt-in service called Facebook Connect in fall 2008 and launched it as a tool that allows Facebook users to sign into third-party sites using their Facebook IDs. Facebook Connect has been a huge hit.
In the year since Facebook Connect launched, more and more major brands have begun driving traffic not to their own domains, but to their branded Facebook Pages. These pages are attractive brands because once Facebook users become fans of a page, that page is free to update that friend regularly. It has been the return of email marketing. The Open Graph API, which will take Facebook fan pages out of Facebook without sacrificing these marketing tools is the next logical step.
The other two big reasons Facebook wants to expand beyond Facebook.com and onto third-party sites is that…
- There is hope within Facebook's executive ranks that the company can someday launch an ad network
- Facebook would love to find itself in a position to offer e-commerce sites Facebook Connect-like "Pay With Facebook" one-click option. Some Facebook executives believe this business could eventually be larger than Facebook ads.
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