A Social Network for Cars? Toyota, Salesforce.com, and Microsoft Say Yes!
May 24, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Japanese automaker Toyota and Salesforce.com are in the midst of perfecting a car-focused social networking platform that will enable users to, for example, get the car started in the morning or turn its seat-warming mechanism on with a few finger jabs to an iPhone, instead of the usual going outside. Microsoft, though apparently staying at the sidelines through the initial developmental stages, represents one of heaviest investors in the project. So far, Microsoft has forked out $4.1 million dollars, Toyota $5.5 million, and Salesforce.com $2.8 million. Reportedly, Microsoft will be constructing a “global cloud platform” with the popular automaker.
The in-development social network currently goes by the handle “Toyota Friend,” and responsible for its most current progress is Salesforce.com, a cloud computing company from San Francisco. Next year, drivers in Japan of Toyota plug-in hybrids and electric cars will be the first to make use of the evolving social network, which will be accessible from any gadget connected to the internet.
Users will be able to interact with the new network through Facebook and Twitter, but it will nonetheless remain a private network and run on Salesforce.com’s Chatter service. Benefits of joining the network will include receiving tweets about one’s car running low on battery power and finding out the status of tire pressure from a Facebook feed.
Akio Toyoda, President of Toyota Motor Corp., in a released statement commented: “Social networking services are transforming human interaction and modes of communication. The automobile needs to evolve in step with that transformation.”
Read More:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/23/autos/toyota_friend_social_network/?section=money_latest
Bing Goes Deeper into Social Search
May 17, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
It seems Microsoft may be in for a much-delayed social media breakthrough with a more socially searchable Bing. Reaping some of the rewards of its recent partnership with Facebook, Bing’s search results will be featuring a searcher’s Facebook friends’ Likes and Shares. The people at Bing are describing the new search layers as “conversational,” and adding, in the words of Bing director, Stephan Weitz, that “it’s a first step in the evolution of how search can become more human.”
Bing is en route to “humanization” by way of special highlights in its results alerting searchers to social media friends’ recommendations that coincide with one’s latest topic of inquiry. For example, as Weitz was helpfully paraphrased in the New York Times, if someone searches for a website “like NYTimes.com or Cooks.com, Bing will” produce “news articles or recipes deep inside those sites that … friends have recommended.” Moreover, the folks over at Microsoft not being ones to forget the ever-growing importance of location-based sociability, they are also piling on Bing a feature that will make note of which of a searcher’s friends live in a given city or other locale if it’s a destination being searched for. Microsoft may be, indeed, gaining some steam.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=89057#ixzz1Mdz4qWW3
Microsoft to Pay $8.5 Billion in Cash for Skype
May 10, 2011 by admin · Comments Off
Big money, to the tune of $8.5 billion, was on the table and Skype took it all, from Microsoft. With the deep pockets that come from being a company named Microsoft Corp., the amount paid is astounding, but not unimaginable. In fact, Microsoft paid $6 billion in 2007 to buy aQuantive, an online advertising company. And that’s to say nothing of Microsoft’s “withdrawn” $48 billion offer to buy Yahoo in 2008. The current all-cash deal will likely be finalized before the end of the year; the buy’s currently awaiting regulatory approval.
Tony Bates, Skype Global’s sitting chief of staff, will continue to be at the helm of Skype as it transforms into the new Microsoft Skype Division. He had the following to say about the deal: “Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype’s plans to extend our global community and introduce new ways for everyone to communicate and collaborate.” Silver Lake Partners leads the investment group that owns Skype.
The buy comes after years of Microsoft trying to become “a verb” as Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, most pointedly said recently. Without mentioning verb-y Google, Mr. Ballmer let it be known that Microsoft was very pleased to be able to acquire a platform that comes joined to millions of dedicated and active users. He’s right about that — on average, Skype has 107 million users per month whose connection time totals more than 100 minutes.
Finally, Steven Ballmer also said that his company’s consumers should soon expect to see Skype’s technology for voice and video make an appearance in well-known Microsoft products. Plans for expanding Skype’s business and revenue are clearly in the works.
Read More:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-for-85-billion-.html
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/microsoft-to-buy-skype-for-8-5-billion/?ref=technology
Bing adds Real-Time Twitter to Search Results
June 7, 2009 by admin · Comments Off
As part of an effort to integrate real-time data into search results, Microsoft has announced that its one-month-old search engine Bing now includes the latest tweets of Twitter users. While Bing will not feature all of Twitter at this time, it will index a few thousand of the more prominent Twitterers based on their follower count and volume of Tweets. The list of Twitter users includes everyone from search technology journalist Danny Sullivan to people like Al Gore and Ashton Kutcher.
In a blog post about the announcement, general manager of Microsoft’s search technology center Sean Suchter wrote, “There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We’ve been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space.”
When Bing users search for people in association with Twitter, the search results will bring up their latest Tweets along with a quick link to more tweets. Users can type in queries such as “Ashton Kutcher Twitter” or “Ashton Kutcher tweets.”
This is a major step for Bing in terms of competing with search giant Google. The New York Times reported that while all major search engines index Twitter profiles and some older tweets, “Bing is the first major search engine that is integrating with Twitter in this way.”
-Melanie Saxe
