Jim Lanzone, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clicker Media Inc., has been named President of CBS Interactive, it was announced today by Leslie Moonves, President and Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corporation.  In this role, Lanzone will oversee all of CBS Interactive’s operations worldwide.

In the past 15 months, the company also has released apps for theiPhone, iPad, Android, Boxee, Google TV and the web. In December, the site introduced personalized recommendations and tight integration with Facebook.

"In just over a year, Jim has created one of the leading navigation and discovery tools for video programming on the Internet," added Moonves.  "Clicker’s products and proprietary technologies add firepower to our existing portfolio of entertainment properties, and if we can help grow Clicker to its full potential in the years ahead, the strategic value could be tremendous."

"This is such an incredible opportunity," said Lanzone.  "Leslie and the CBS Interactive team have created an unrivaled arsenal of Internet properties – properties that have unlimited potential for expansion.  I look forward to beginning my new role and working with the team to help lead CBS into the future of online information and entertainment."

As president of CBS Interactive, Lanzone will oversee CBS’s web properties, including CNET, CBS.com, TV.com, CBSSports.com, CBSNews.com, Gamespot.com and more.

“We’ll figure it out as we go along,” Lanzone said.

Launched in November 2009, Clicker is the first comprehensive and structured guide to legal broadcast programming on the Web, indexing more than 1 million online TV shows, movies and videos, from free and paid services alike.  Clicker’s proprietary recommendation engine, Clicker Predict, and its social integration with Facebook, bring its 2.5 million monthly users an instantly personalized guide to what’s worth watching online.  Clicker was recently named one of the Top 100 Sites of 2010 byPC Magazine, "Top 10 Companies to Watch" in 2011 by Mashable and the #1 technology development in television for 2010 by the Writer’s Guild of America.  

Prior to his work at Clicker, Lanzone was the former CEO of Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves), a top 10 global Web property acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) in 2005.  From 2001 to 2008, Lanzone held various executive roles at Ask ranging from SVP of Product Management, to General Manager of Ask Jeeves U.S., and finally CEO.  He is considered to be one of the executives most responsible for turning around Ask Jeeves prior to its sale to IAC, and establishing Ask as an innovation leader.  After leaving Ask, Lanzone joined Redpoint Ventures as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and raised $8 million to develop Clicker in October 2008.  Jim was recently named one of Forbes Magazine’s "Names You Need to Know in 2011."  Lanzone holds a B.A. from UCLA and a J.D./M.B.A. from Emory University.

If CBS Interactive can successfully fuse the community and delivery engine of TV.com with the recommendation engine, interface and usability of Clicker, the company could have a very compelling web video destination product. We would love to see the greater Clicker vision expand to helping get more CBS content on more types of connected devices.

The fourth quarter of 2010 closed with a base of 205.3 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), or a 1.7 percent increase over the third quarter. Registrations have grown by 12.1 million, or 6.3 percent year over year.

Verisign’s combined base of .com and .net domain names ended the quarter with approximately 105.2 million. New .com and .net registrations totaled 7.6 million during the fourth quarter, an increase of 4 percent from a year ago. The .com/.net renewal rate for the fourth quarter was 72.7 percent, down from 72.8 percent for the third quarter.¹

The base of Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) was 80.1 million domain names, a 0.3 percent increase from a year ago.

Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during fourth quarter 2010 was 61 billion, with a peak of 72 billion. Compared to the same timeframe in 2009, the daily query average and the peak both grew by 17 percent.

The Dawn of the IPv6 Era
The Domain Name Industry Brief also highlighted two major changes to the Internet’s addressing system – the introduction of new generic top-level domains and the ramp up to IPv6.

The launch of the process that will introduce potentially hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) to the naming system is incredibly significant. Although the precise date of the launch remains uncertain, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is nearing completion of its gTLD launch plan, and could start reviewing applications by summer. Within months of the launch – perhaps by early 2012 – Internet users may very well have their choice of an unprecedented array of top-level domains, from consumer domains like .shop and .bank to geographic ones like .nyc and .london.

The second change will be less visible to ordinary Internet users, but has the potential to be every bit as profound.  Throughout the Internet, access and infrastructure providers, service operators and content providers are ramping up preparedness for the deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). IPv6 is designed to replace the longstanding Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4). Internet stakeholders must clear the way for that process by preparing for the transitional coexistence of both protocols on their networks and systems.

Technologists have been working on the protocol that would become IPv6 for nearly two decades. Well before the standard for IPv6 was published in 1998, infrastructure operators knew that the clock was ticking on IPv4, since its 32-bit addressing technology would be insufficient to accommodate continuing, exponential Internet expansion.

This year, though, the clock has finally reached zero, with the last available IPv4 addresses within the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) pool being allocated in February, effectively exhausting the master pool of “new” IPv4 addresses. While the Regional Internet Registries (RIR s) that provide IP addresses to ISPs still have IPv4 addresses in their inventory (an inventory that, in some cases, could last for a couple more years) no “new” IPv4 addresses can be created.

For Verisign, that means ensuring that the critical Internet infrastructure under its stewardship is fully prepared for rapid wide scale IPv6 adoption, to include all aspects of full feature and capability parity with IPv4, and expected coexistence with IPv4 into the foreseeable future. To that end Verisign has invested heavily to ensure that its network is ready to support IPv6. Verisign has been capable of servicing IPv6 queries at the network layer, and supporting IPv6 extensions in the DNS itself, for several years now and is committed to continually expanding its IPv6 capacity and capabilities to meet and exceed the global need. Verisign now looks to share that experience with other infrastructure operators as they ready their networks for IPv6. Working together, 2011 will be a historic year for ensuring the stability, security and growth of the Internet.

Verisign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide Internet users throughout the world with significant statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry and the Internet as a whole. Copies of the 2010 fourth quarter Domain Name Industry Brief, as well as previous reports, can be obtained at: http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/why-verisign/research-trends/domain-name-industry-brief/index.xhtml

About Verisign
VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) is the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world. Billions of times each day, VeriSign helps companies and consumers all over the world to connect online with confidence. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisigninc.com.

In a volatile situation similar to that which brought down formerEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Algerian government has dispatched 30,000 riot police in Algiers, and is resorting to tear gas and plastic bullets to try to discourage dissent, according to The Telegraph.

Algerians are calling this uprising the “February 12 Revolution,” as they protest government corruption, massive unemployment, housing problems and poverty. They would like to oust Algerian President Abdelaziz Boutifleka, whose police forces are also trying to silence journalists, according to The Telegraph.

There were also reports of journalists being targeted by state-sponsored thugs to stop reports of the disturbances being broadcast to the outside world.

But it was the government attack on the internet which was of particular significance to those calling for an end to President Abdelaziz Boutifleka’s repressive regime.

Protesters mobilising through the internet were largely credited with bringing about revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

Photo courtesy The Telegraph/EPA

With this update, Evernote introduces a Snippet note list view. The Snippet View is designed to be more dynamic, giving users the most useful information about their note in the smallest amount of space.

If a note contains an image, then Evernote will show the note title, some text and a thumbnail. If the note is text-only, then instead of having a thumbnail, Evernote will use the full width to display as much of the text as it can fit. It’s all meant to give users maximum at-a-glance information. In many cases, users won’t even need to open the note – they will get all they need from the snippet. [There are other views available; users can switch to them from the view options menu.]

Notebook Stacks

Recently, Evernote for Windows and Mac added Notebook Stacks, a feature which lets users visually group their notebooks. Now, users can see stacks that they created on the desktop from Evernote for Android. If there are specific notebooks that are most useful when accessed from the users phone–trip itineraries or shopping lists – users could consider creating a stack called Mobile for those notebooks. This will make it easier to find what users are looking for, while on-the-go.

Edit styled notes from your Android device

Now, users can edit any note in their account, whether a text notes, web clip, snapshot, or audio note. Users won’t see that pesky “Append or Copy” popup ever again. This feature works by maintaining the styling of whatever element they decide to edit. For example, if a user edits a bulleted list, the next line they create will also be a bullet; if they edit a section of bold text, then the content they add will also have bold text; and so on. They can also now edit web clips, notes with images, and any other note that’s already in their account.

A note on this feature: Evernote for Android now supports editing existing styled text, but it does not yet allow users to create new styled text or re-style existing text. Evernote is still working on that; also to bring these features to other mobile versions of Evernote.

And there’s more…

• Improved sync performance: Notes sync around 6 times faster than in previous versions
• Edit Saved Searches before running them by tapping and holding the search name
• Improved image scaling
• Faster note loading and application performance
• Many additional bug fixes throughout

There’s more great stuff for Android on the way. Users will also start to see some of the features in this update appear in other versions of Evernote soon.

Evernote allows users to easily capture information in any environment, using the computers and phones they find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Evernote is available for download for most major desktop and mobile platforms. For more information, please visit: www.evernote.com

Happy reading

M

The founder of the  whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks that turned the political and media world upside-down with its timed releases of confidential government information. His organization is responsible for releasing the Afghan war reports, the Iraqi war logs and most recently the U.S. diplomatic cables. Julian is not only famous for his website, he was recently accused of committing sexual crimes with two women in Sweden. He was released on bail last month.

CBS News “60 Minutes” team and correspondent Steve Kroft spent two days with him in Great Britain where he is under house arrest, while fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning in two sexual assault cases, which he’s called part of a smear campaign against him. In his most extensive television interview to date,

The interview was so long that you have to watch it in two different clips.

Cross posted on mohitvermablog

Cheers!

M

Last week Facebook announced that users personal information will be made available to Facebook third party application developers. Postal addresses and mobile phone numbers will now be requested after updating the Social Graph API. To access such personal information considered as sensitive, the users will have to explicitly agree that they allow access, with a dialogue box to appear asking if they agree when they try and install an application. Facebook states that friend’s addresses and phone numbers are not provided if a user gives permission to the sharing of their information. Not surprisingly, this new information had raised eyebrows with most of its users.

Even if this has been raised as an issue due to Social Graph, a simple “phone number” search on Facebook demonstrates that there are many users who publically share their telephone numbers which clearly indicated people are not very well informed about the security issues.

Faced with overwhelmingly negative feedback on the “social graph” amendment, Facebook backpedaled, its plan. It still sees value in providing developers with access to addresses and phone numbers, which after all are useful for shipping goods ordered online. But the company plans to revise its request process to make sure that even the most click-happy user understands what he or she is agreeing to when presented with a request for address and phone data.

Facebook’s director of developer relations Douglas Purdy in a blog post wrote:

Improvements to Permissions for Address and Mobile Number

On Friday, we expanded the information you are able to share with external websites and applications to include your address and mobile number. With this change, you could, for example, easily share your address and mobile phone with a shopping site to streamline the checkout process, or sign up for up-to-the-minute alerts on special deals directly to your mobile phone.

As with the other information you share through our permissions process, you need to explicitly choose to share this data before any application or website can access it, and you can not share your friends’ address or mobile number with applications. Also, like other data you make available to third party apps and websites, you can always clearly see and control the ways your information is being used in the Application Dashboard.

Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data. We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so. We’ll be working to launch these updates as soon as possible, and will be temporarily disabling this feature until those changes are ready. We look forward to re-enabling this improved feature in the next few weeks.

This development clearly shows that Facebook listens to feedback….and it also shows they’re willing to roll out changes with massive privacy implications without taking into consideration the different categories of its users and with majority of them not aware enough on privacy and security elements. Before they make such amendments in the rule of game they need to spend some time educating its users on this. I hope someone is listening.

Cross posted at Mblog

Happy reading

M

Aircel, a leading telecom player with pan-India operations and a subscriber base of over 50 million, introduces an innovative way to connect to your family and friends on Facebook, a social site with over 500 million users around the world, through the new Facebook Voice Updates on Aircel.

For the first time, Facebook Voice Updates on Aircel lets people connect to their family and friends on Facebook in their own voice, even without internet access on their mobile phones, which makes it an easy access for a large audience anytime anywhere. Moreover there is nothing like connecting in your very own voice which can express volumes where sometimes words fail…. One can now easily find and connect with new friends using Facebook Voice Updates on Aircel – creating a much richer Facebook experience on their mobile phones.

Right now only Aircel customers can use Facebook Voice Updates, but the social network might forge similar partnerships with other cellular service providers, according to Wireless Federation.

Aircel subscribers can use the service by dialing 51555 and then speaking the status update into the handset. The system transcribes the recording into text that posts on the caller’s Facebook profile.

If you’ve ever tried using dictation software, you’ll appreciate my wondering how accurately Aircel’s service can render audio recordings into text. It’s no small feat, and even the best voice recognition systems make mistakes. It’s one thing to have typos or other mishaps show up on content you’re using privately, but posting glitches publicly might be humiliating.

And even if you haven’t used a voice-activated mobile status update tool yet, perhaps you could offer an opinion about what it might be like, or whether you think your own cellular service provider will offer such a service soon.

(Aircel, a part of Maxis Communications Berhad, Malaysia, is India’s fifth largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 50 million and is the fastest growing mobile operator in the country. It is the market leader in Tamil Nadu, Assam, North-East and Chennai. . Aircel is now present in 23 Telecom Circles and is a Pan India operator (Mumbai, Pune, Uttar Pradesh East, Uttar Pradesh West, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, Assam, Bihar, Chennai, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, North-East , Orissa, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, MP & Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat & Rajasthan).For more information, please log on to www.aircel.com)

Cross posted on MVblog

Free tools:

Blog Search Engines: (There are many tools but these two are my favourite)

• TECHNORATI Search**– Technorati’s new search interface. Use it to find top blogs based upon inbound links only.
• Google Blog Search** – Google’s index of blog posts. The advanced search tab allows you to search based on additional criteria. Very good for searching between specific dates.

Message Board Readers

• BoardTracker** – tracks words in forums
• BoardReader** – Search multiple message boards and forums.
• Omgili – Omgili is a specialized search engine that focuses on “many to many” user generated content platforms.
• Google Groups – Searches usenet [def] groups.
• Yahoo! Groups** – Searches all Yahoo! Groups.

Twitter Search Tools

• Twitter Search** – Search keywords on Twitter which “self-refreshes”. See what’s happening — ‘right now’.
• Twit(url)y** – see what people are talking about on Twitter
• Twitstat** – Twitter Tweitgeist – Tag cloud for last 500 Tweets
• Hashtags** – Realtime Tracking of Twitter Hashtags
• TweetBeep** – Track mentions of your brand on Twitter in real time.
• TweetScan – search for words on Twitter
• TweetMeme** – View the most popular Twitter threads occurring now.
• TwitScoop – Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentioned more often than usual and creates a tag cloud.

Buzz Tracking

• Google Trends** – shows amount of searches and Google news stories
• Trendpedia – Create charts showing the volume of discussion around multiple topics. Generates cool graphs.
• BlogPulse Trends** – Compare the mentions of specific keywords and phrases in blog posts (LEFT vs. RIGHT)

Brand Watch

• socialmention** – A social media search engine offering searches across individual platforms (eg blogs, microblogs) or all, together with a ‘social rank’ score.
• HowSociable? – A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand.
• Addict-o-matic** – A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas you brand need improvement

Search Data

• Google Trends** – Search trends and see search volume by country and region.
• Google Insights** – Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.
• Yahoo! Keyword Tool – Displays search volumes for specific keywords and phrases for previous month’s search data.
• Google Keyword Tool** – Generate keyword ideas for related keywords and search volumes.

Social Bookmarking

• Digg** – Social Bookmarking, mainly for news, images and videos
• StumbleUpon** – Social bookmarking – general cool stuff
• Delicious** – Social bookmarking

Feed Aggregator

• Yahoo Pipes** – an awesome feed aggregator and manipulator.

Web Site Traffic

• Compete** – Competitor site traffic reports. Estimates only of monthly visitor data. Best used on large high-traffic Web sites.
• Quantcast – Use this on large high-traffic Websites. It allows you to compare multiple web sites in one handy chart. Estimates only of monthly visitor data.
• Alexa** – Comparative site traffic reports. Includes estimated reach, rank and page views.
• BlogFlux Page Rank – Tells you Google Page Rank for a web page. Use this to compare different websites.

Specific Social Network Tracking

• Adonomics – Facebook analytics and developer application tracking and graphing.

Paid tools:

Nielsen BuzzMetrics**

• Nielsen BuzzMetrics delivers a market leading listening platform that includes sophisticated sentiment analysis capabilities, strong international coverage, and multilingual support.

Cymfony

• TNS Cymfony offers a strong technology platform, Orchestra, that delivers comprehensive reporting and analysis capabilities. Orchestra is well complemented by a strategic and consulting services organization that offers advanced support for understanding sentiment and influence.

Dow Jones Insight

• Dow Jones Insight, a division of Dow Jones, has made great strides in its data coverage capabilities since the previous Brand Monitoring Wave. Automated sentiment analysis coupled with strong multilingual capabilities makes Dow Jones a good choice for PR professionals and marketing communications specialists for large global organizations.

Visible Technologies

• Visible Technologies\offers an impressive technology stack. Visible Technologies delivers strong reporting capabilities and is the vendor best positioned to extend social media analysis data and attributes into CRM systems. Visible Technologies is a good fit for the self-sufficient and socially aware marketer.

Attensity360**

• Biz360  which is being acquired by Attensity and now it’s called Attensity360 is a solid solution that offers good data coverage, strong reporting, and crossmedia comparison capabilities.

Radian6**

• Radian6 is an easy-to-use tool that allows the PR professional or other social media analyst to set up and define topics is an asset when combined with the ability to easily define custom influence metrics and reports. But to deliver full-fledged listening capabilities

Alterian SM2**

• Very similar to Radian 6, has managed to rapidly add a growing group of clients and partners. It’s a quick, easy-to-use tool that allows the PR and Marketing professional to set up and define topics is an asset when combined with the ability to easily define custom influence metrics and reports.

Note: ** are the tools that I have tried at some point.

This is just scratching the surface of social media listening tools. But it’s a good place to start!

Happy Reading

Mohit Verma

As per the Facebook Blog,

Since October, we’ve been working to make this process easier for you. First we added group tagging, so you could type one name and apply it to multiple photos of the same person. Now we’re announcing tag suggestions, which will make tagging multiple photos even more convenient.

If for any reason you don’t want your name to be suggested, you will be able to disable suggested tags in your Privacy Settings. Just click "Customize Settings" and "Suggest photos of me to friends." Your name will no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually. You can learn more about this feature in our Help Center.

Facebook will be launching the tag suggestions to users in the United States over the next few weeks. Look for tags suggestions when you upload groups of photos that feature the same friends, and see how they can help you share life’s occasions—large and small—every day.

Cross posted on mohitvermablog.com 

Happy Reading

M

Sunsilk, FMCG
Gang of Girls
Gang of Girls
A community for young girls and women
Active and conversational
The community was promoted heavily through television advertising

Airtel, Telecom
Delhi Half Marathon
ADHM
Community built around the joy of running
Not very active
The community showed a spike in traffic during the event but then the traffic came down

Tata Indicom, Telecom
Customer Support Community

Support community
Discussion forums and blogs for support
Active and conversational
A vbulletin based support forum

Barista Lavazza, Food
Community

Community

Ideas and experiences by users
Not many conversations happening

Royal Challenger, Spirits
RCB community
RCB
A community built around the passion for cricket
Active and conversational
The platform is currently being used to recruit team players

Titan Fastrack, Watches
Move On
Move On
A youth focussed community platform
Active

Airtel Broadband, Telecom
Impatient Ones
Impatient Ones
Youth focussed community
Active

Microsoft India, Software
Mera Windows
Mera Windows
Support and discussion community for Microsoft windows
Active and conversational
The community organizes offline events. They organized the Windows 7 launch party in various Indian cities

Pfizer, pharma
Champ’s Club
Champ’s club
Community focussing on quitting smoking
Active

Toyota/NDTV
Greener Future
Greener Future
Community built around the cause of a greener environment
Active

Castol, Lubricants
Castrol Cricket
Castrol Cricket
A community built around cricke and ranking index
Active
Running expert blogs by Harsha Bhogle, Arvind Iyenger, Shrinivas etc

Whisper, FMCG
Beinggirl
Beinggirl
A community platform focussing on growing up
Active

Infosys, software
Campus Connect
Campus Connect
A student and faculty community to discuss campus related issues
Active

Bindass Channel, UTV, entertainment
Bindass
Bindass
A youth focussed community talking about campus, movies, entertainment etc
Active and conversational
Currently running the college hotties contest

Hindustan Times
Talk to HT
Talk to HT
An ideation platform for generating and implementing new ideas for the brand
Not very active

Jam Magazine
Community
Community
A youth focussed community
Active

Sap India
Business Network
Forum
A business and customer value network
Active

CNBC TV18
Money control
Forum
Stock related discussion forum
Active and conversational