Website Hype

Oh, the rivalry, the jealousy, between Google and Microsoft. Viacom generally keeps itself aloof from these two giants, but, surprise, surprise, it now seems that Microsoft and Viacom have announced a deal that the pundits reckon will be worth about $500 million.

The minutiae of the arrangement is that Microsoft will get video from Viacom and all the related properties such as Comedy Central, and all this will be available on MSN and XBox 360. No surprise there maybe, as Microsoft already distributes a lot of content from Viacom. Additionally, Microsoft will get casual games from Viacom, and Microsoft’s Atlas will be the ad server for Viacom, so Viacom will provide unsold display advertising inventory on its digital sites for Microsoft to sell and serve.

So what does Viacom get in return for all this largesse? Money, it seems. Microsoft is going to buy advertising on Viacom broadcast and online networks over a period of five years, and the two companies are planning to work together on promotions and sponsorships for MTV and BET.

It looks as though this deal is actually going to work very well for Viacom – they don’t actually need to spend anything, and they will be getting really good money for the advertising, plus much wider distribution for their content.

It is possible that this deal, and others like it which may follow, will now force Google to start doing similar with other content providers.

Like most machinations of the world of IT, it is great to sit back and see what will happen next. It will be interesting to see how Google ultimately responds to deals such as this.

Social networks are always intriguing, both within and outside cyberspace. It seems at the moment that online social networks are all launching platforms – LinkedIn has done so this week, and Friendster also. Then yesterday Bebo announced that it is going to launch an application platform of its own, similar to and compatible with that of Facebook. Not only this, but Bebo CEO Michael Birch has suggested that his company is also going to work with Google’s OpenSocial.

Bebo, with around 40 million users, is somewhat behind social network giants Facebook and MySpace. Bebo tends to have more of a following in the UK, with somewhat less of an appeal in the US.

MySpace has started including widgets from outside developers, and Bebo is now following suit. It seems that Bebo may be trying to combine the functionality of Facebook, with the freedom of expression afforded by MySpace.

Bebo’s platform is very similar to Facebook’s - users can rate applications using a star system, developers can skin their app pages with their own design. It looks like Bebo and Facebook will be working closely together in the future, and if Bebo is compatible with Facebook, then apps can just be ported from one to the other.

Some people in the business are saying that the OpenSocial vs Facebook issue could be a bit like Windows vs Mac, and a lot of people are not keen to see two competing standards.

It will be interesting to see how the situation vis-a-vis the social networking sites develops over the next few months – there seems to be a lot at stake.

It seems that there is considerable competition between Facebook and Google of late, with the two falling over themselves to sign up the best and the brightest in terms of developer talent, and the two virtually neck and neck in terms of the online advertising race. And when it comes down to it, it seems that it is Facebook that can’t really do without Google, indeed Facebook is now advertising on Google - to get advertising.

Facebook will soon be announcing that some of their pages that don’t require login will become indexable by search engines such as Google, so information that normally you would have to be logged in to get, will now become more publicly available. This follows on from the fact that recently Facebook launched a public listings search, whereby anyone can now search for a specific person.

It is argued by some that social networking sites, though extremely popular, have an inherent difficulty in making money, people don’t really go to them to search for information or look at ads, but to communicate with other users, so Facebook is perhaps having to work hard to monetize the site effectively.

Back in the summer Facebook signed an advertising deal with Microsoft to put Microsoft adCenter sponsored links and other ads on the Facebook site, right through to 2009. This news raised eyebrows because it was Microsoft that was chosen for the ad deal and not Google, which is surprising given that Google has been going all out for the big advertising deals, even offering 90% or more of total revenue to certain big name partners, such as AOL and Ask.

So what does the future hold for Facebook in terms of its relationship with Google? Let’s see.

Heard the latest? Rumour has it that Facebook has made an offer of $85 million to buy Zhanzuo.com, which is China’s largest social networking site. And it’s no surprise that Facebook is after a piece of the action in ever fast growing China, where the economy has been booming for some considerable time, and demand for modern goods and services continues apace.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, there are some 162 million internet users in China, a figure which has grown by around 140 million users in the past seven years, despite some efforts on the part of the government to restrict or control use of the internet. And it seems that the current trend for social networking online, which has taken off exponentially in recent years, is by no means confined to the West, as around seven million Chinese internet users are on Zhanzuo.com.

It seems that the news of the $85 million offer has come from The Times, (that’s the UK Times), and now the word is out all over the web. The Times also reports that Zhanzuo.com CEO Jack Zhang, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, have had talks, but that no deal has actually been completed. It is intriguing that Facebook is denying all these reports.

So what will come of this? It will be interesting to see if Facebook eventually do acquire Zhanzuo.com, and how this might alter the site. The acquisition, if it does go ahead, will certainly give Facebook’s already strong international credentials an added dimension.