Google is placing a great deal of emphasis on check-in services, with regards to Google Places. This could mean some interesting things for businesses.
"We have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have seen for the Places API, and the innovative ways in which developers would like to use it," says Google Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell. "We have seen applications that offer check-in to places and need to identify an individual place at which a user is currently located, applications looking to show a user Places around them, and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps."
"We are going to focus initially on check-in applications," says Mitchell. "These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience."
 Google says it has been reaching out to developers who have expressed interest in building check-in apps using the Places API. This includes developers working on client apps for the Buzz API.
Check-in services are gaining a lot of attention, and are creating new and interesting opportunities for brick and mortar businesses that just weren't available before. Combine that with the power of Google Maps and Google's increasingly heavy push of Google Places, and this has the potential to be very powerful. With Google's APIs, the consumers are going to have many more access points, particularly from their mobile devices.
It would also not be surprising if this was heavily tied to that "Google Me" project that has been speculated on so heavily in recent weeks.
Earlier this week, Google updated its Maps for Mobile on Android devices, making a Places icon available. This essentially turns Places into its own app for all intents and purposes.
ApartmentGuide.com has introduced a search tab on its Facebook page.
To find an apartment, visitors to ApartmentGuide's Facebook page can click on the search tab and enter the city, state or zip code. Price range and number of bedrooms is also an option to narrow the search. Users are offered apartment listings that match search criteria on the Facebook page.
"A significant portion of ApartmentGuide.com users are between the ages of 18-35, aligning nicely with Facebook's demographics," said Arlene Mayfield, president, Apartment Guide. "Further, Facebook had over 150 million U.S. users in July 2010 with that number expected to grow considerably."
"With roughly 54% of all Internet users projected to be on Facebook as of February 2010, we wanted to make sure that consumers had the means to easily search for an apartment and communicate with their friends and family regarding their apartment search experience on this industry leading social site."
Other new features added to the Facebook page include:
*Share button: Users can share favorite properties with their Facebook friends.
*Like button: Users can like a specific property.
*Facepile: Users who have clicked the Like button on a property details page and are logged into Facebook will have their Facebook profile photo added to the Page's Facepile.
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Facebook's new Questions product, launched in beta earlier this week, has a great deal of potential for answering the questions of half a billion people (the most recent number of Facebook users reported by the company).
Will you use Facebook Questions to seek answers? Let us know.
As competition between Facebook and Google over Internet user time and attention continues to increase, this may be yet another area where Facebook has a bit of leverage over the search giant. Q&A is becoming a big area of focus throughout the industry with many smaller players fighting for a piece of the pie (not that all of the players are small).
Google has Aardvark, which it has yet to really do anything incredibly significant with (at least related to Google search). Yahoo, of course, has Yahoo Answers. Ask just reinvented itself with a focus on community and web-driven Q&A. That's just a few examples. Facebook has a major advantage, however, with that half a billion users, and the simple fact that many of those users spend a great deal of time using Facebook.
Facebook Questions data could be very useful to search engines and their users, if the product itself lives up to its own potential, but it remains to be seen if Facebook will be willing to share that information. The company is already notorious for being stingy with its data, from the open web perspective, despite its own "open" graph initiative.
Facebook told Search Engine Land that it doesn't have plans to give search engines access to its questions and answers, though they didn't rule out future consideration. The decision could be an important one strategically for the company in the future, particularly as Google continues to move toward trying to steal some of Facebook's thunder (the key word there being "trying"...I should mention this notion has been downplayed by the company).
Microsoft has to be pretty interested as well, as it is frequently looking for new ways to compete with Google and it already provides Facebook with its own web search results.
Q&A is becoming an increasingly interesting segment of the search industry, and one where there is distinct possibility of shaking up Google's share, thanks to an increasing number of players, the diversification of how people actually do their searching/information gathering, and blossoming mobile application ecosystems.
Facebook, Google, and increasingly Bing all have their places in these ecosystems, and Facebook Questions could conceivably play a powerful role in tipping x amount of searches in one direction or another.
Do you see Facebook Questions as a potential disruption to the search industry? Share your thoughts in the comments.
So-called content farms draw a lot of criticism for a supposed lack of quality and some consider them a threat to quality on the web in general. We're talking about entities like Demand Media, Associated Content, the new AOL, etc. (the definition of the term content farm itself is also debated).
I would argue that content quality is not in jeopardy. Hear me out. For one, while these sites may or may not produce a large amount of sub-par content, that's not to say that they don't have quality content too. There's no question that quantity is the driving force behind these sites, but quantity in content producers (AKA: the writers, video producers) also means a wider range of minds contributing. There is good among the bad. It's a mix.
 Furthermore, as competition among these content farms heats up (and you can bet that will increase), quality is going go play more of a role in setting one apart from the next. Low-quality content will inspire higher quality competition. If a how-to article on roofing isn't adequate, someone will want to trump it with a better one. Users will flock to the higher quality pieces when the lower quality ones don't meet their requirements. If those pieces do meet their requirements, how low quality are they really? Quality is in the eye of the beholder. If the reader/viewer doesn't like what they see, they'll look elsewhere.
Richard MacManus spoke with Howcast Chief Product Officer Sanjay Raman. Here's an excerpt from that article:
Who is the top YouTube provider, measured by views? You guessed it, Demand Media. This is because it produces far more video content per month than Howcast (Demand competes directly with Howcast with its property eHow). While Sanjay Raman didn't have exact figures, he estimated that Demand Media produces about 10 times more videos every month than Howcast. However he implied that this resulted in lower quality videos.
"Demand Media takes tasks and makes them smaller than they need to be," said Raman.
He also claimed that Howcast's playbacks per video are higher than Demand Media's. Howcast averages 44-50,000 playbacks per video, he told me, whereas Demand is around 7,000 per video.
Case in point.
Now, that's also not to say that all of Demand Media's content is low quality, though many will be quick to tell you that it is. The company has already made moves this year aimed at increasing quality. See the following articles for a few examples:
- Demand Media Aims to Sort Out eHow Content Confusion
- Demand Media Adds New "Talent & Expert Network" to Content Mix
- MerchantCircle, Demand Media Provide New Local Search Opportunities
DM is still adjusting to a new model that it has become the poster child for. There may be a lot of work to do, and just how much it improves remains to be seen. That said, increased competition in this space is likely to fuel increased quality, and if not, the users will go elsewhere. Bounce rates will increase. Someone else will get the traffic.
Furthermore, search engines will continue to compete to deliver the best results, and people will be more inclined to share higher quality articles. That should provide further motivation.
What do you think? Comment here.
OneRiot says it has made some changes that will "propel the company to the future faster." The changes they're referring to are that Kimbal Musk, formerly CEO, is now the Chairman of the company, while Tobias Peggs (formerly President in charge of Strategy, Sales, Distribution and Marketing) is now CEO.
Citing, a list of accomplishments that includes the launches of OneRiot itself, its APIs, its ad platform, its Trending Topics Engine, integration with Facebook's Open Graph, and the fact that its on pace to serve 1 billion ad impressions a month, OneRiot's Jennifer Hodges says, "As it’s clear to see, OneRiot emerged as the authority on realtime search and is now hurtling along a highway towards monetizing the wider realtime and social web. It’s time to crank that up another gear, and really go for it."
The changes, unfortunately, also include letting some workers go. "Now, being agile also necessitates making some tough decisions too, if they are the right thing for the company right now," says Hodges. "Unfortunately, today, we have had to let a handful of well respected colleagues go. This is a pragmatic decision based on a strategically focused go-forward plan for the company. It’s in no way a reflection of the talent of the people concerned. One of the folks moving on is Robert Reich, our co-founder. Robert has had immeasurable influence on the OneRiot vision and product - helping us get to where we are today. We’re sure that whatever he turns to next will be equally as visionary, and we wish him well."
OneRiot says Peggs will work closely with Ron Benson (VP Engineering) and Merle Waterman (CFO) to drive the day-to-day business operations. The plan includes the monetization of the realtime web. 
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