最近正好有个朋友问这个方面的问题，如何规划一个SharePoint系统的磁盘容量？如果不能在前期做系统规划（Planning）的时候，确定好所需的磁盘容量，那么就很可能遇到系统上线3个月之后，发现服务器磁盘不够用的尴尬情况发生。

在微软TechNet网站上，有一些相关的文档和白皮书，比如《Capacity Planning and Sizing for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies》。但是如果你懒得阅读白皮书，那么我可以给出一些简要的参数，根据这些参数，你可以快速的估算出一个SharePoint系统所需要的大致磁盘容量。

1、首先，你需要估算出整个系统中将要存放的内容的总容量。如果整个系统的总容量会随着系统的运行而不断增加（很多时候确实如此），那么你就想想你希望整个系统在上线后多长时间之内不想再进行磁盘容量上的升级，然后估算出这段时间之内，系统所存放的内容的总容量。

比如，每个月，所有用户会上传大概10GB文档到SharePoint服务器上。如果你希望SharePoint系统在未来两年之内，不用考虑容量升级的问题，那么这两年内，SharePoint系统中将存放总共240GB的文档。

由于SharePoint 2007文档管理会有“版本控制”和“回收站”的功能，所以在你估算的时候，不要忘记估算这两个功能将要占用的磁盘容量。

比如，在整个系统中，如果你估算大概会有5%的文件会存放到启用了版本控制功能的文档库中（提示：通常，并非所有文件都会需要版本控制的功能，很多文件都是一次性完成，或是无需保留历史版本的，对于这个文件所在的文档库，应该谨慎的使用版本控制功能），并且通过文档库的设置，限制了最多只保留10个主要版本，每个主要版本最多只保留5个次要版本（提示：对于启用了文档版本的文档库，同样需要设置好最多的主要版本的次要版本，避免版本数量无谓的增加太多），那么对于上面算出的240GB文档，你就需要还要加上240GB * 5% * 10 * 5 = 600GB的容量。

这样，我们计算出来的总容量空间将是：240GB + 600 GB = 840GB。

2、由于SharePoint会将所有的网站内容都存储到SQL Server数据库中，对于整个系统的数据库，你要准备所有内容总容量再乘上1.2-1.5倍的空间，给到SQL Server数据库。

比如，对于在第一个步骤里面计算出来的内容总容量840GB，我们就要给SQL Server数据库准备840GB * 1.5 = 1.3TB的磁盘空间。

3、由于SharePoint里面的索引服务（Index Services）会为所有的内容创建索引文件，所以你还需要注意为索引文件准备足够的磁盘空间。索引文件会占用的磁盘空间，可以按照(内容总容量 * (5-12%)) * 3倍这个公式进行计算。

对于5-12%这个比例，需要按照SharePonit中所存储的内容类型来进行适当的调整。例如，对于文档类型的内容（.doc、.docx、.xls、.xlsx、.pdf等），索引文件所占用空间的比例肯定会要比图片文件要高。如果你的SharePoint系统中主要是存放文档类别的内容，那么你就要将这个比例适当的加大，也就是更接近12%。

比如，对于840GB的内容，如果这些只有一部分是文档类型，那么我们要为索引文件准备840GB * 8% * 3 = 200GB的空间。

注意，如果在你的SharePoint服务器场中，索引服务是运行在一台单独的索引服务器（Index Server）上，那么就要在索引服务器上准备这么大的磁盘空间。

4、如果在SharePoint服务器场中，查询服务（Query Services）不是与索引服务运行在同一台服务器上，由于SharePoint会自动将索引文件从索引服务器上复制到运行查询服务的服务器上，所以在所有运行了查询服务的服务器上，同样需要准备足够的磁盘空间，留给索引文件。要准备的磁盘空间容量，计算方法与索引文件的容量相同。

5、最后，为了防止在估算的时候过于乐观，而且你也有足够的预算，那么不妨将上面的所有计算结果再乘上1.5 - 3倍（倍数可以按照您手里的预算来决定，呵呵）。比如，为SQL Server数据库准备2TB的磁盘空间，为索引文件准备300GB的磁盘空间。

最后，介绍两个SharePoint容量规划工具。第一个是微软的SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool，这个工具依赖于System Center Capacity Planner 2007。根据我的使用经验，个人认为这个工具过于花哨，实用价值不太高。:)

第二个工具是HP ProLiant Sizer for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007，它是HP公司发布的一个工具。我对此工具没有什么使用经验。

Posted by RobOusbey

• lifehacker.com/5105267/programmers-notepad-2-helps-you-code-wrangle (mozRank: 0*, mozTrust: 2.5)

• www.Blogged.com,
• dir.Blogflux.com,

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Posted by randfish

My good friend, Aaron Kahlow, posed an interesting question during the Online Marketing Summit yesterday afternoon in Portland, OR. Aaron asked:

If a client came to you with $1 million to invest in a single Internet marketing channel, which one would you choose?

Obviously, the question is a bit ridiculous (given that there"s no additional detail provided), but it"s designed to elicit an "off-the-cuff" response to a challenging scenario. The answer, of course, is "it depends" - and therein lies the rub. On what does it depend? Well... That"s what I hope to answer with this blog post. My goal is not to solve the issue for an individual campaign, but from a very strategic level - asking questions like "where is the company today and where does it want to get to?" then applying those answers to the selection of marketing opportunities. Let"s start by defining the macro-level channels themselves, then examine how we"d reach the right conclusions.

Internet Marketing Channels

• Display Advertising
  • The process of placing ads on third-party websites with the goal of creating branding awareness and/or generating traffic
  • Examples: Banner ads, video ads, interactive ads, overlays, interstitials, etc.
• Email Marketing
  • The process of collecting email addresses from potential leads and marketing to them via email messages
  • Examples: Email newsletters, brand building emails, conversion-focused emails, etc.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) 
  • The process of bidding for placement at search engines (major or niche) to earn visibility and traffic when relevant queries are performed
  • Examples: Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Business.com Advertising, etc.
• Online Public Relations
  • The process of generating media from primarily online outlets in order to earn branding and traffic
  • Examples: PRNewswire, PRWeb, Internet media focused PR agency work, etc.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • The process of earning rankings in the "organic" results of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing)
  • Examples: Keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, etc.
• Affiliate Marketing
  • The process of incentivizing other sites to push your product in exchange for a share of the revenue they drive
  • Examples: Commission Junction, in-house affiliate programs, etc.
• Social Media Marketing (SMM) 
  • The process of leveraging social media platforms (small and large) to earn visibility and traffic
  • Examples: Facebook Group pages, Twitter marketing, pushing content on Digg, etc.
• Viral Content Campaigns
  • The process of generating creative content that will help spread your branding/marketing message and earn traffic
  • Examples: Linkbait production, viral videos, guerrilla marketing, etc.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) 
  • The process of improving the path from landing to conversion to get more leads/signups/customers
  • Examples: Split & multivariate testing, click-through-rate improvements, purchase-process simplification, etc.

Some of these may overlap - for example, viral content campaigns may simply be a means to an end of better search engine optimization - but as they can all be separate entities, engaged in for their own purposes, I"ve made them distinct.

Primary Variables to Use in the Selection Process

Although other factors should certainly play into the decision making, these three elements are excellent for narrowing down the options:

• Company Goals - What are the top priorities for the business to achieve?
  • Brand Awareness - the current marketplace doesn"t have enough familiarity/comfort with your brand to visit, engage or purchase from you.
  • Education - the market for your product/service needs to be created; potential customers don"t yet realize the problem they need you to solve.
  • Raw Traffic - your business is monetized with advertising and needs more traffic/page views.
  • Sales - your business has clear market demand on the web that needs to be drawn to your site and converted into leads/sales
• Budget - How much do you have to spend on your marketing effort(s)?
  • Very High: in excess of $1 million
  • High: $100K - $1 million
  • Moderate: $25K - $100K
  • Low: $5K - $25K
  • Tiny: <$5K
• Available Talent - What personnel with free bandwidth or trustworthy, outsourced vendors do you have available? 
  • Strong Dev Resources - you have technology staff ready and able to make changes to your site to support marketing goals
  • Strong Creative Resources - you have writers/artists/brainstormers poised for action
  • Strong Search Resources - you have search marketing talent prepared for battle in the results
  • Strong Social Resources - you have strong online networkers set to engage the Twit-Face-Digg-o-Sphere

General Tiers of ROI, Effort & Cost by Channel

These are based on my personal opinions (though, based on conversations, they appear to reflect the experiences of many web marketers and internal marketing departments). 

I suspect there will be lots of contention about these, particularly from marketers who specialize in non-tier 1 activities. I do think that over time, activities like social media marketing and viral may move to tier 1, but as yet, I believe that companies haven"t seen the same consistency or trackability in ROI from these as Tier 1 channels. The eMarketer research I showed this weekend certainly suggests that these newer investments may have a chance to prove themselves fairly quickly.

Formulas for Choosing the Right Channel

Once again, I"m using my own opinions and experiences, but you can use this same format to help with your own decisions, even if the ordering is somewhat different:

And of course, last, but not least, there"s the strengths of your organization to consider. If you have amazing talent in these fields, that might sway you to lean more towards particular activities as shown below:

• Strong Dev Resources - lean towards:
  • CRO
  • SEO
  • Viral Content (particularly dev intensive stuff like tools, widgets, etc.)
• Strong Creative Resources - lean towards:
  • Viral Content (particularly written/graphic content that can be produced in a standard CMS)
  • Email (great copywriters write great emails)
  • Display (great designers make great ads)
• Strong Search Marketing Resources - lean towards:
  • SEO
  • PPC
• Strong Social Resources - lean towards:
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Viral Content
  • Online PR

That wraps up my brief, high level summation of this tough question, and hopefully it can help some marketers and marketing departments to find the right paths for their organizations/clients.

I"d, of course, love to hear your feedback and ideas as well.

p.s. OMS Seattle is tomorrow, and I"ll be speaking there in the afternoon - hope to see some of you there!

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    互联网公司大凡可以分三代： 

第一代为门户网站，当年以新浪、搜狐、网易、腾讯等为代表，均在美国纳斯达克或香港上市，仍未上市并日子过得还可以的，是行业里领先的垂直网站（与媒体），做大而全“门户”而未上市的，迄今所剩无几，大多由政府支持。在美国，雅虎是典型代表。除此之外，还有电子商务公司，国内是阿里巴巴，美国有EBay和Amazon。

第二代为互联网搜索引擎技术与服务公司，国内是百度，美国是谷歌。

第三代为Web2.0公司，其中目前看来可能最有戏唱的，有两个“派别”，一个是SNS（社交网络），国内有若干家，美国有Twitter

（09），Facebook（08），MySpace（06-07）（括号里年份注明它

的各自最“红火”的年份）。

另外一派，就是网络视频。

其实，网络视频从06年火红一阵子之后，已开始“分家”：一支是UGC（用户上传短视频），美国以YouTube为代表，国内有优酷、土豆、酷六等。此路不通（我在从前博客中已分析过），且越走越难。另一支是Hulu模式的网络电视，国内有PPLive，PPS等。网络电视是

大势所趋，但各家是否能跑到IPO的起跑线上，还有待各自的努力和

运气，与下面分析的赢利模式相关。

互联网的奇妙之处，在于“长江后浪推前浪”，第一代成功的互联网公司很有可能被“后生”追上并赶超，美国的雅虎与谷歌只是其中的序曲，所以，伟大的互联网公司，都朝“平台型”发展，希望在自己的平台上，能不断通过并购、兼容新的互联网“杀手级”的应用，否则就会大势已去。

                                           【待续】

                                           2009.7.1

3月份从Windows Live转到Windows Embedded后，越来越多地需要与C/C++相依为命了。以前在C#里写点字符串处理的东西基本不用动什么脑子，现在单单是把两个字符串连起来，就要调用一个有4个参数的API。

最近在做的一个项目顶层的用户界面(UI, User Interface)还是选择用C#/WinForm写了，毕竟再用MFC之类的东西，身心受不了那个摧残。不过底层真正实现功能的API还是必须要用C/C++来写（有很多客观的原因必须如此），所以一个必然需要解决的问题就是如何让用托管代码写成的UI层来调用用非托管代码写成的API层里的函数/类。也不知这样的事大家现在是否还经常需要做，不知会用COM/ATL的还有多少人，不过既然就此做了一些调查，我想还是把结果整理一下，写下来，也许对一些朋友会有用呢。

本文只讨论如何从托管代码调用非托管代码，其实反向操作（非托管代码调用托管代码）也有很多类似的技术，大家可以自己查一下资料。

基本上从托管代码调用非托管代码的函数/类型有一下几类方法：

1. 通过Platform Invoke (P/Invoke)

这个在托管代码需要调用Windows API的时候是很常见的，比如要调用kernel32.dll里的SetDllDirectory这个native API，只要这样做就可以了：

using System.Runtime.Interopservices

public MyClass

{

  [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true)]

  static extern bool SetDllDirectory(string lpPathName);

   ...

   public static void CallSetDllDirectory(string path)

   {

       ...

       SetDllDirectory(path);

       ...

   }

}

利用P/Invoke最大的麻烦可能就在于这个native函数的P/Invoke的签名应该如何申明。最常见的一种方法叫做google，就是你把TheAPIYouWantToCall和P/Invoke这两个关键字放在一起google一把，基本就应该找到了，第一个连接十有八九是来自www.pinvoke.net这个网站。

不过如果你要是说你不喜欢Google怎么办？Google上找不到怎么办？要是Google当掉了怎么办？要是Google因为传播色情信息被封锁了怎么办？当然你可以说：我没有Google我有Bing，那也是可行的。不过其实还有更直接的方法，在2008年1月的MSDN杂志上的CLR Inside Out的专栏里就有这么一篇文章：Marshaling between Managed and Unmanaged Code，其中介绍了P/Invoke Interop Assistant这个工具。你不但可以通过这个工具来查找绝大多数公开的Windows API的P/Invoke的签名，而且也可以用它来产生你自己写的native API的P/Invoke签名，很方便。你可以在这里下载这个工具。

2. 通过C++/CLI wrapper class

这个方法主要是利用Managed C++来写一个封装函数/类，并以此来调用非托管的函数/类，而在另一边，用Managed C++写成的封装类的dll又可以直接被C#等托管代码来调用。

假设你有如下的C++类：

class __declspec(dllexport) NativeClass

{

public:

    static void Func(LPTCSTR);

    ...

};

你可以在Visual Studio中建立一个Visual C++的CLR空项目：

记得调整配置的类型：

然后编写如下的Managed C++类：

public ref class MCppClass

{

  public:

    static void Func(String^ str)

    {

        NativeClass::Func((LPTSTR)Marshal::StringToHGlobalUni(str).ToPointer());

    }

    ...

};

编译后生成的dll就可以直接被托管代码调用了。当然，关于托管代码变量和非托管代码变量之间marshaling的问题也是很头疼的，不过这个不是本文的讨论内容。

3. 通过CALLI instruction以及Reflection.Emit直接调用非托管代码

CALLI是Intermediate Language (IL)的一个指令。老实说我也不太清楚这个东东怎么用，只是看有的文章提到说可以如此做，但没有深入地研究一下，有兴趣的同学可以参考一下David Broman的这篇文章。

4. 通过COM interop

这个就留待明天的Part II再讲吧，因为我还想顺带提一下COM里的一些相关内容，篇幅可能有些长，并且时间也不早了…

【原文地址】Writing A Page To A String

【原文发表日期】 Mar 5, 2009

ASP.NET页面通常是将它们内容直接输出到一个请求响应流（response stream）中。这对比较大型的页面来说应该是一个巨大的效率优化，因为这样做就不需要为页面显示而建立很大的缓冲区或者分配很大的字符串。而分配大型字符串的操作经常会在“大型对象堆栈”（Large Object Heap）上获取所需的内存，而这也意味着这些内存块不会被很快地资源回收。

然而，很多情况下你可能确实需要将一个页面的内容输出到一个字符串里以便进行一些后处理工作。关于这点，我N久之前也曾经写过一篇blog介绍了一个方法：就是使用response filter。

不过，最近我学到了Page类中的一个我从没有注意到过的方法，这个方法提供了以上问题的一个更轻量级的解决方案。

我所说的就是CreateHtmlTextWriter这个方法，它是一个保护(protected)成员函数的，而且也是一个虚(virtual)函数的。

以下是一个页面code-behind的代码示例，其中利用了这个函数来对页面的输出内容进行过滤，经此处理后的内容才最终显示在浏览器中。

public partial class FilterDemo : System.Web.UI.Page

{

  HtmlTextWriter _oldWriter = null;

  StringWriter _stringWriter = new StringWriter();

  protected override HtmlTextWriter CreateHtmlTextWriter(TextWriter tw)

  {

    _oldWriter = base.CreateHtmlTextWriter(tw);

    return base.CreateHtmlTextWriter(_stringWriter);

  }

  protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)

  {

    base.Render(writer);

    string html = _stringWriter.ToString();

    html = html.Replace("REPLACE ME!", "IT WAS REPLACED!");

    _oldWriter.Write(html);

  }

}

在CreateHtmlTextWriter方法中，我们首先是调用基类的该函数来创建一个原来的HtmlTextWriter，然后将它暂时存放在一个成员变量中。

然后我们还是调用基类的函数来创建一个新的HtmlTextWriter，不过这个对象实例会使用我们自己的StringWrtier作为底层的TextWriter。被传入到Render函数中的HtmlTextWriter就是这个新创建的实例。（在Render函数中）我们首先对这个新的HtmlTextWriter实例调用基类的方法，然后将底层StringWriter的输出内容取出，这样就可以对该部分内容进行所需的处理了。我们最后将最终的输出内容写到原先的HtmlTextWriter中去，因为原先的这个HtmlTextWriter是真正负责将结果写到请求响应中去的。

使用这个技巧的时候有很多值得特别注意的地方。首先，如我先前所提到的，对于大型的页面，以上所做的这些事可能会大大地影响你网页的运行效率和可伸缩性。而且，我也没有针对输出缓存、异步页面等等的情况下测试过上面的技巧，所以你很可能会遇到意想不到的实际结果。

注意，如果你是需要从一个页面调用另一个页面，然后在第一个页面中得到后者的输出内容，那么你可以将你自己的TextWriter实例传到Server.Execute函数中并得到结果，所以这种情况下你无需借助上面所介绍的这个技巧。

Get out your cameras, it"s time for a couple of search-related contests. If you enjoy the large images Bing features everday on its homepage, now you have the chance to see one of your images featured on the brand spankin" new decision engine. Bing is holding a photo contest where the winner"s image will be featured on Bing.com for a 24 hour period.

Photos are submitted via Facebook. You have until July 16 to submit your photos. The winner will be determined by public voting, via the Facebook application. The winning image will appear on Bing.com on August 3 and will include "hot spots" created by the Bing team, just like you see with the daily images.

Meanwhile, ChaCha has launched a video contest. The theme of the contest is "Life with ChaCha." The deadline for submissions is August 10. Judges will pick 5 finalists and the winner will be chosen by a public vote.

There are three criteria that the judges will use to choose the 5 finalists. They are:

• Showing ChaCha to be a "smart friend" (50 percent)
• Originality (25 percent)
• Humor (25 percent)

The prizes here are worth moolah. The grand prize winner will receive $5,000 in cash as well as an Apple Final Cut Studio 2 and a Sony HDR-XR500V 120GB High Def Handycam Camcorder. The runner up gets $1,000 and third place gets $500.

Overstock is the next company to drop affiliate programs in states considering or having passed affiliate nexus bills. While North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Hawaii affiliates are already seeing programs dropped by Amazon and Blue Nile, this time California affiliates are also getting the boot.

"It"s painful to have to terminate these relationships with affiliates, simply because they live in states where counterproductive (and likely unconstitutional) laws are being passed," said Patrick Byrne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Overstock.com. "However, politicians have to remember that a tax is a price that government charges for a service, and when they raise their prices, we"re going to buy less of their services."

Last year, Overstock was one of over 200 companies to drop their affiliate program in New York, which was the first state to enact an affiliate tax. The cancellation affected 3,400 affiliates, 200 of which were active.

StatCounter made news fast and furious in Bing"s first week when they offered up data showing Bing had surpassed Yahoo! in search. And now they"re making a splash again by quickly releasing data for the whole month of June.

Overall, things are relatively steady, but there"s an ever-so-slight increase in Microsoft search share.

The data shows Bing gaining .5% search share in June compared to May. But Live Search had gained about .5% in May over April.

One percent growth over the last two months may not seem significant, but it could be the beginning of momentum.

"At first sight, a 1% increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date."

Plus, the 1% growth has come at the expense of Google. The search mammoth saw its search engine share according to StatCounter decline by 79.07% in April to 78.48% in June.

By the way, despite that first week of traffic for Bing, Yahoo! still retained its second place status for the entire month of June. Yahoo!"s traffic has remained fairly steady over the past three months in StatCounter data.

Google has updated their Toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser to make language translation easier. Instead of manually copying and pasting text into Google Translate, the Toolbar now automatically detects if a language is different from the one set as your default.

Google will then serve up a message saying it has detected a language foreign to your own and asking if you would like it translated. Simply click the "Tranlate" button in order to receive the translation.

The new feature is available for all languages of the Toolbar (but again, just for Internet Explorer). The languages include: English, and the translation service supports 41 different languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

YouTube is now allowing advertisers to incorporate a "Call-to-Action overlay" on their videos. With the overlay, advertisers can drive traffic to their sites where they can make purchases, sign up for email newsletters or whichever action an advertiser wishes.

The Call-to-Action overlays are available for Promoted Videos only. Promoted Videos, you may remember, are essentially the paid search of YouTube. They were once called Sponsored Videos, similar to paid search listings called Sponsored Listings.

In order to set up the overlay:

1. Set up your Promoted Video campaign like you normally would in YouTube
2. Under My Videos, go to the Video Details page
3. Fill out the fields for the Call-to-Action overlay section

You"re all set. Once the campaign is in full swing, you can check YouTube Insight to see how many people are clicking on the Call-to-Action overlay.

What do you think of this new option for YouTube advertisers? Share your thoughts in the comments.

I"ve been attending SES San Jose every year since 2003. And each year a healthy proportion of attendees are attending their first search engine marketing conference ever.

This is healthy because it expands the number of marketers who "get it."

I can"t tell you the number of times when prospective clients mistakenly assume that search engine marketing (SEM) isn"t rocket science. Or they mistakenly believe that search engine optimization (SEO) is something their information technology (IT) department took care of years ago. Or they mistakenly think that a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign takes 15 minutes to set up. Or they mistakenly hope that their public relations (PR) people have a good handle on social media marketing.

So, I"m delighted to see the large number of first time attendees at Search Engine Strategies conferences -- because after they"ve sat in on a dozen sessions over three days they come away knowing how much more there is to learn.

Hey, if it were easy, we"d all rank #1.

So, with SES San Jose 2009 coming up August 10-14, I thought I"d highlight some of the conference sessions that I"d recommend to first time attendees. I"ve been doing this for several years -- and even spoke along with Matt Bailey of SiteLogic in a few "First Timer"s Guide to SES and SEM" sessions at some events.

But, most marketers like to plan ahead. So, look over the SES conference agenda and check out some of the sessions that address your needs and your organization"s issues.

If you want some suggestions, here are sessions specially focused on search fundamentals for first time attendees:
• Introduction to Search Engine Marketing provides a clear and concise overview of the concepts involved in search engine marketing.
• Successful Site Architecture offers a fresh look at topics on how to successfully design a site for search engines, including JavaScript, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage and much more.
• Turn Brain Science into Bucks: Incorporating Persuasive Messaging into Your Content Strategy showcases current online content campaigns and explains the best content strategies to help persuade buyers, build trust, and get great search engine listings using Twitter, white papers, optimized web pages and more.
• SEO Tools of the Trade: What"s in YOUR Toolbox? describes the tools that will help accomplish tasks, including indexing, competitive analysis, site ranking, diagnosing and remedying problems and much more.
• Search Advertising 101 describes the basic principles and applications of paid placement.
• Keywords & Content: Search Marketing Foundations presents an overview of the important keywords customers are searching for and how to target the right terms in paid and organic search marketing.
• Discover the Power of Linking: Link Building Basics focuses on the role of link analysis in search engine site rankings and how to increase site traffic by building quality links.
• The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to SEM features search engine guru Heather Lutze taking a fresh look at how search engines find content and what steps to take to ensure a successful online marketing campaign.
• Extreme Makeover is a series of four sessions held throughout day three of the conference. Volunteers are taken from the audience, their websites are examined and feedback is provided. Sessions include:
Extreme Makeover: Live Site Clinic provides general feedback about improving websites and gaining more traffic from search engines.
Extreme Makeover: Live Twitter & Blogging Clinic provides general feedback about how to improve your website"s use of Twitter and blogging.
Extreme Makeover: Live Landing Page Clinic provides feedback on how to improve landing pages.
Extreme Makeover Live! Why Am I Not Making Enough Sales? covers the most common reasons many sites have low conversion rates and gives tips on how to turn more site visitors into paying customers.

I think you can see from the suggestions above that there is more to SEM, SEO, PPC and social media than a handful of tricks that you can pick up by reading a blog post. Oh, and if the folks over in finance are still cutting travel budgets these days, ask them this rhetorical question: "If I don"t learn how to improve our search engine marketing, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or social media marketing, then how will the company be able to pay your salaries next year?"

Okay, so maybe you don"t want to actually say that to their faces. And you don"t want to start calling finance the "department of sales prevention." They are just doing their job.

But you can show them the SES conference agenda and let them know that you"ve picked out sessions to attend that will provide your company with a return on its investment (ROI) in marketing. Finance folks love it when you talk about ROI. Your talking their language.

Or, ask them to watch the video below. Yes, yes, it makes the case for going to Search Engine Strategies. But it also demonstrates visually that SES San Jose, which is the largest search engine marketing expo on the West Coast, will be packed with more than 70 sessions, multiple keynotes, and Orion panels, over 150 exhibitors, networking events, and more.

Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo

Bing is something of a rarity for Microsoft these days: It"s a product that actually has good natural buzz. And for good reason too, it"s a solid product. For certain queries, it seems more useful than even, yes, Google. (And not just porn queries.) And Microsoft isn"t squandering away this opportunity, it"s keeping its foot on the gas, today attacking what is perceived to be Google"s weakness: Real-time search results. While that"s a little misleading — Google actually does have plenty of data that gets into its system almost immediately — what everyone seems to mean by real-time results these days is Twitter results. And that"s exactly what Bing is adding. Kind of. As it notes on its blog:

With the news surrounding the implosion of Joost and the startup"s move towards providing white label video platforms for companies, we thought it would be a good idea to check in with one of Joost"s new competitors. As we wrote in our post about Joost"s prospects as a white label video community provider, there is already plenty of competition, including Brightcove, Magnify, and Ooyala. Brightcove is perhaps the best-known player in the space. But another one which has been relatively successful in creating interactive video sites for brands is Magnify.net. The video hosting and sharing platform, which launched in 2007, is rapidly growing its white label service and is expected to be cash-flow positive by the end of the year, according to co-founder Steve Rosenbaum.

It may sound kind of silly, but when I talk to people outside of the tech world about Bing, the first thing brought up is usually how they like the pictures. And now Microsoft has created a contest on Facebook to let one user get their own picture featured on Bing. The Bing Summer Travel Photo Contest is asking Facebook users to submit their best summer vacation photos. The community will then vote on them, and the winner will get its day in the sun, so to speak, on Monday, August 3 — appearing to the millions who visit Bing on that day. Naturally, there are some rules for these photos as Microsoft probably doesn"t want kickass keg party pictures on the Bing homepage. Obviously, no alcohol, smoking, guns, violence or nudity will be allowed. But Microsoft also doesn"t want any pictures with recognizable people or any third party trademarked images, so they don"t get sued.

Wiimbledon 2009 has come and gone and I’m happy to report that it was a great success! We had 98 tournament participants and everything went off without a hitch. With the help of generous eBayers, tournament attendees and Barcade, we’ve raised somewhere in the vicinity of $5,000 for the Child’s Play Charity. On behalf of CrunchGear, Wiimbledon and Child’s Play, I’d like to thank the following sponsors for hooking us up.

It"s been a big day for Facebook, with news earlier this morning that the social network will soon be totally revamping its privacy settings and making it easier to share with the entire web. Now developer Joe Hewitt, who is responsible for Facebook"s massively popular iPhone application, has posted a note to the site describing some of the new features we can expect from the latest iteration of the app, which he says is "98% done". Hewitt doesn"t give an exact release date, but we can likely expect it very soon.

Facebook"s privacy conference call just ended, and it"s clear some major changes are going to be coming to the social network soon. Some of these, like a totally revamped privacy control page, are both long overdue and very welcome. But others, like the Transition Tool, seem ripe for disaster. Facebook clearly wants its users to become more comfortable sharing their content across the web, because that"s what needs to happen if the site is going to take Twitter head-on with real-time search capabilities. Unfortunately that"s far easier said than done for the social network, which has for years trumpeted its granular privacy settings as one of its greatest assets. Now, those settings are turning into problematic obstacles.

There"s been quite a bit of controversy over the past several hours over words and images related to Twitter being used by third-party developers. Yesterday, Twitter seemed to threaten one party over the use of the word "tweet" and some UI elements that were similar to Twitter"s own. This morning, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone clarified Twitter"s position on this a bit for us, stating that, "As part of this support, we encourage developers of new applications and services built using Twitter APIs to invent original branding for their projects rather than use our marks, logos, or look and feel." But there was still some confusion about what Twitter was actually saying, and more importantly, what it was planning to do with violators of this. So now Stone has written a blog post further clarifying things.

Last summer we broke the news that Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block would team with former editor-in-chief Peter Rojas to create a new gadget startup. Today that new startup, GDGT, launches. Gadget lovers rejoice - this is a social site where you can obsess over those tiny bundles of tech joy among others just as geeky as you. GDGT (pronounced "g-d-g-t," but I like to just say "gadget") is a highly structured wiki that centers on tech gadgets. Like our own Crunchbase, anyone can edit any information on the site, but everything is structured which allows for lots of slicing and dicing of the data. Users select gadgets that they own, used to own, or want, and can add reviews and ratings. Blog reviews are threaded into the discussion as well:

This morning Facebook is holding a conference call/web share for press outlining changes the site is making to its privacy options. Facebook hasn"t given us much of a heads up as to exactly what they"ll be changing, but there"s a good chance it will have something to do with the "Everyone" sharing settings the site has recently been toying around with, which takes the social network one step closer to mimicking Twitter"s functionality. There"s also a chance Facebook will be overhauling its convoluted privacy control pages. The call begins at 10 AM PST.

In the first 24 hours since its release yesterday, Firefox 3.5 has been downloaded more than 5 million times. (It took only a few hours to pass a million). That is certainly respectable, but doesn"t quite measure up to the mania that Firefox 3.0 set off last summer, when it achieved a "world record" 8.3 million downloads in a single day. Maybe we"ll have to wait for Firefox 4.0 to beat that record. But Firefox 3.5 might still beat the 11 million downloads Safari 4 got over its first three days of availability.

Gmail is constantly adding features to help people become more organized. Today, Google has tweaked its Labels feature to add more functionality to the labels toolkit, helping users implement labels in a more organized way. Your labels will now be located in a new area on your Gmail interface, above your chat list and grouped together with Inbox, Drafts, Chats and other system labels. You can also now control which labels you"d like to show on your UI and you can hide the rest under a "more" tab. Of of the more innovative features that has been added is the ability to drag and drop messages into labels, just like you can with folders. You can also drag labels onto messages too. It"s also possible to drag labels into the "more" menu to hide them, making it easier to change labels than going to the Settings function. This feature is huge for those people who complain about Gmail not having some of the drag and drop features of Outlook.

Interactive fashion community StyleCaster has raised $4 million in Series A round of financing from investor Dan Gilbert, the chairman and founder of Quicken Loans. Launched in February 2009, StyleCaster is a platform that hopes to be the future of online fashion. The site features style tips optimized for each individual, news and content on the latest fashion trends, a niche social network based around style, and a large online retail catalog of brand-name clothing. And the site isn"t just geared towards women—StyleCaster will soon include a community around men"s fashion.

Public voting in the The Europas, the tech startup awards from TechCrunch Europe, will close today, Wednesday July 1 at 11.59pm London time (GMT/BST). So best get voting. This public vote will be mixed with voting from our advisory board of European tech luminaries to produce the final shortlist. The awards will take place on July 9 next Thursday, with over 300 people attending from all over the European tech scene. There is more information about the awards here. You can also get breaking news about the European tech startup scene by subscribing to our RSS and Twitter feeds. A huge thanks to our sponsors for supporting this inaugural event: Thanks to the UKTI for sponsoring the pitches; Viadeo for sponsoring the Best Design category; Bootlaw for sponsoring Best Bootstrapped Startup; Quick.tv for sponsoring Best European Investor; Zendesk for sponsoring Best New Startup; Latitude and Parklane Champagne for the Awards Prizes; oneDrum for sponsoring the drinks party and Mixcloud for sponsoring the DJ.

According to MediaPost, The Online Publishers Association yesterday announced that 37 of its members, including juggernauts like The New York Times, Forbes, ESPN, CNN and MSNBC.com are (or are soon going to start) running the new, larger ad units the organization introduced last March. Since the members who are running these campaigns for brands like Bank of America and Mercedes-Benz reach about 68% of the total U.S. Internet audience, there"s a good chance you will soon see them, too. There"s also a good chance you"ll hate them.

Did you know you can switch tabs in Firefox by making a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface? I did. Turns out I"ve been doing it for months — I thought I was late to the party and was too ashamed to mention it to anybody for fear of an epic internet ribbing ("What, you just figured that out?"). But no, apparently it was top secret and highly experimental. That was in the beta, though; it looks like the official version has reduced it to a hack. Fortunately, mastering this multi-touch-enabling technique will allow you to tweak your gestures, resulting in everlasting glory.

Fifty-seven percent. That"s how much overall venture-backed liquidity decreased in the second quarter of 2009 compared to that of last year: from $6.48 billion to $2.8 billion, if you want the hard numbers. Looking at the chart, I"d say the drop compared to the second quarter of 2007 ($14.6 billion) is even more telling. It"s the bad news from this just-released Dow Jones VentureSource report, with the only positive nugget the fact that three VC-backed companies have been able to complete IPOs (raising a total of $232 million), ending a nine-month drought. Just half an hour ago, we reported separately that the National Venture Capital Association actually counted five IPOs during the quarter in which a total of $721 million was raised (including DigitalGlobe-$279, SolarWinds-$152 million and OpenTable-$60 million). Also, while the NVCA pegged the number of venture-backed acquisitions at 58 in the second quarter, generating $2.6 billion, the Dow Jones VentureSource report says $2.8 billion was reached through M&As of 67 portfolio companies instead.

After four quarters in which venture-backed IPOs have been dead in the water, a handful finally poked their heads up in the second quarter. The National Venture Capital Association counted five IPOs during the quarter, including DigitalGlobe ($279 million raised), SolarWinds ($152 million), and OpenTable ($60 million). A total of $721 million was raised. Just for a little context, two years ago during the same period, there were 25 IPOs which raised $4.15 billion. So don"t call it a comeback just yet. But any activity is a sign of hope. And this was the most active period since the fourth quarter of 2007. Will it keep building, or will IPO candidates duck their heads back under water?

The wave of investments in "realtime" is continuing with today"s announcement from Cognitive Match that it has raised Series A investment from Dawn Capital. Terms were undisclosed but it"s understood the figure was in the £1m+ ballpark, in tranches. The UK company applies artificial intelligence, learning mathematics, psychology and semantic technologies to match content to individuals in, you guessed it, realtime. This content can be product, offers, editorial or advertising of course, making it a very interesting prospect for an outfit like Twitter.

We were just forwarded an e-mail conversation between a Twitter API team member and a third-party developer because the latter was using a UI for its web-based service that was admittedly very similar to Twitter"s web application. The startup of course has the right to protect its assets and do its utmost to avoid confusion with users who might think they"re using a Twitter product rather than that of a developer making use of its API. But something else caught our attention in the thread:

Hi, Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own? Thanks,

It"s sad to see a company that we were all so excited about fade further into oblivion. Today Joost, one of the most anticipated startups in 2006/2007, is just an also ran in a sea of big online video sites like YouTube and Hulu. Today CEO Mike Volpi stepped down, the company is laying off most of staff, and refocusing the business to "white label online video platforms for media companies." Om has a good monday morning quarterback overview of why they failed, but to me it comes down to just a few things. They over funded ($45 million before they even launched) and they ignored the fact that users were quite willing to sacrifice quality in online video for the convenience of Flash in the browser. Joost waited until late last year to go all Flash - until then users had to use the downloadable Joost software and allow P2P streaming of shows. In the meantime there was no linking to Joost videos. YouTube and Hulu got all that social media and SEO juice that could have gone to Joost. Founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who founded Skype and Kazaa, see the world in terms of P2P and downloadable clients. The joke about how everything looks like a nail if you"re a hammer is very true with Joost. But what worked with Kazaa and Skype a decade ago doesn"t work with online video in today"s world, obviously.

This guest post is written by Mary Hodder, the founder Dabble. Prior to Dabble, Hodder consulted for a number of startups, did research at Technorati and wrote her masters thesis at Berkeley focusing on live web search looking at blog data. Real time search is nothing new. It is a problem we"ve been working on for at least ten years, and we likely will still be trying to solve it ten years from now. It"s a really hard problem which we used to call "live web search," which was coined by Allen Searls (Doc"s son) and refers to the web that is alive, with time as an element, in all factors including search. The name change to "real time search" seems a way to refocus attention toward the issue of time as an important element of filters. We are still presented with the same set of problems we"ve had at least the past ten years. None of the companies that Erick Schonfeld pointed to the other day seem to be doing anything differently from the live web search / discovery companies that came before. The new ones all seem to be fumbling around at the beginning of the problem, and in fact seem to be doing "recent search," not really real time search. While I"m sure they"ve worked really hard on their systems, they are no closer than the older live web search systems got with the problem. All the new ones give a reverse chron view, with most mixing Twitter with something: blog data, other microblog data, photos, creating some kind of top list of recent trends. Some have context, like a count of activity over a period of time, or how long a trend has gone on or a histogram (Crowdeye) which both Technorati and Sphere experimented with in the early years. Or they show how many links there are to something or the number of tweets. All seem susceptible to spam and other activities degrading to the user experience and none seem to really provide the context and quality filters that one would like to see if this were to really work. All seem to suffer from needing to learn the lessons we already learned in blog search and topic discovery.

Bet you didn"t see this one coming. Back in 2007 we wrote about a service called Dial Directions which lets you call a special phone number and verbally ask for directions, which are immediately sent to you via SMS. Today comes news that the company has been acquired by Sakhr Software, a development house specializing in Arabic natural language processing (NLP). And with their powers combined, they"re building a real-time voice translation service that will allow users to translate phrases from their mobile phones on the fly. It"s a better fit than it sounds. Dial Directions has spent the last few years building mobile applications (it has an app for the iPhone on the App Store), and has also built out the technology required to efficently transfer voice input to servers, where it can then be processed (this server-side processing is also used by Google Voice Search and a number of other apps). Once it makes it to the cloud, this speech will be routed through Sakhr"s software, which is capable of translating English to Arabic and vice-versa. Translated audio and text are then sent back to the mobile phone, all within a matter of seconds.

Facebook held a conference call today about changes being made to the website"s privacy features but we were left feeling a little confused. A long list of settings are being collapsed into a much more manageable privacy interface and users who want to keep sharing messages only with friends and family they have approved will be able to continue doing so. But it is pretty clear that Facebook would like you to share a lot more information publicly than you are right now, with the whole wide open internet.

Why? I asked the company if they really were trying to nudge users into being more public on Facebook and if outside developers would then get access to more user data. Two out of three of the Facebook staff members on the call have now confirmed that yes, they are aiming for users to be more public. Leah Pearlman is a Facebook Product Manager and author of the forthcoming book Facebook for Dummies but her explanation for why the company wants more public sharing to happen was pretty hard to believe.

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We pointed out that the new Facebook publishing interface has "everyone" as the privacy setting at the top of the list and the most realistic option, sharing specific things with specific people in appropriate context, is at the very bottom under "custom." (Most users of any system stay away from custom settings.)

Pearlman said that yes, Facebook does want people to share more information publicly than they are today. Her explanation? She said that it"s hard for people to tell the difference between users with similar names when looking for their friends. More publicly shared information would make your friends with common names easier to identify.

That"s not a credible reason to change the fundamentally private nature of Facebook that millions of people have long considered the best reason to use the site.

So why does Facebook want you to share more information publicly? Here are some other explanations we"ve heard so far.

Greater Control

Other Facebook execs say these new privacy changes are all about increasing a user"s control over their privacy - letting them be "as public or as private as they want to be." Why then is the least controlled privacy setting at the top of the list and the most controlled version buried?

Furthermore, in our testing so far - the new privacy controls are actually quite a challenge to control. Changed defaults don"t stick and we shared several messages further than we intended to.

We do believe the arguement that more control over privacy will help people feel comfortable sharing more information on the site, but we"re not sure this really is more control. If Facebook really wanted to give users more control over their privacy when posting messages, it would prompt you each time you share something like this:

Who is this message for? 1. One or more of your lists [select], 2. all your friends, 3. your friends and their friends or 4. everyone.

That list of options goes from most controlled to least controlled, from the most familiar option to the least familiar. That"s not what Facebook is doing, though. The company has an agenda to get people to share more publicly than we are today.

"More control" was Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly"s explanation, when Pearlman said what she did about duplicate names. So Perlman and Director of Communications Brandee Barker (see quote below) acknowledge that the company is trying to move users in a more open public direction, but the Chief Privacy Officer makes an obtuse arguement that it"s all about user control. That doesn"t inspire confidence in the company"s official privacy policies.

Traffic and Advertising

It"s possible that Facebook wants to increase publicly visible real estate (your conversations with friends) so that it can bring in search traffic and sell ads. The company said today though that even "everyone" public messages will not be indexed by Google yet. ("We"re talking about it," they said, "but not at this time.")

Facebook also said there would be no increase in the amount of information given to advertisers.

Facebook Director of Communications Brandee Barker told us this in response to our "why" question:

Sharing is at the core of our product. Finding people you know, learning about people you don"t know, searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you can generally only happen when people are open and choose to share. By recommending more open defaults, more people will be able to connect on the site. [emphasis added by us]

Is that really true? Facebook is about learning about people you don"t know and searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you? Far more often, we"ve heard the saying "Facebook is about people you know, Twitter is about people you want to know and MySpace is about people you used to know." (Or that you don"t want to know! We don"t make "em up folks, we just repeat the jokes.) The point is, turning Facebook into a place where people meet new people and learn new things about a topic actually represents a radical change in the Facebook user experience. Facebook has always been about connecting with the people you already know.

To Be a Twitter Killer

Finally we get to the explanation that I"ve been most hesitant to accept but is looking more credible all the time. Facebook may be nudging people towards more public sharing because it is afraid of Twitter stealing its crown.

Twitter is the apple of the media"s eye, it"s the Western connection to uprising in Iran and it"s more fun to talk about than Facebook. It"s more interesting for geeks because the data is open.

But Facebook is so much bigger than Twitter! One report, admittedly six months ago, estimated that at current growth rates it would take 36 years for Twitter to pass Facebook in number of users and said that right now Facebook grows a Twitter"s-worth of users every eight days!

More importantly, Facebook is not Twitter and Facebook"s users most likely don"t want it to be. Twitter is confusing, spam ridden and seems pointless to many, many people.

But if Facebook is to become more like Twitter, it"s going to need to adopt a radically different stance with regard to outside developers getting access to user data. That part of my question in today"s call didn"t get answered. It is a very exciting idea and if anyone could pull off both privacy and data availability, we"d have thought it could be Facebook. Time will tell.

Perhaps there"s some other explanation. Making Facebook like Twitter doesn"t sound like the best idea in the world, but it"s just about the only credible explanation we can think of for the increasingly clear push towards more public sharing on the site. Privacy settings have been confusing and today"s move to simplify them is great. But Facebook is a small-group method of communication for the vast majority of its users and emphasizing list-specific messaging instead of "everyone" would be a more honest way to give users more control over their privacy.

Facebook is holding a press webcast and phone call this morning regarding upcoming changes to its privacy policies and features. It"s an ongoing story we"ve been following closely but as we wrote on Monday in our in-depth coverage of changes underway: Given the change underway and the company"s move to lobby governments around the world in favor of its privacy philosophy, we think it would be a good idea to have a more thorough public conversation about what that philosophy is.

This morning"s call could be an important chapter in that conversation. We"ll be live blogging it below starting at 10am PST but we begin by laying out what we think the big questions are. Please feel free to contribute your questions in comments; we"ll likely get a chance to ask the company one question on the call. It could be yours.

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These are complicated and important matters. We"ll be live blogging the official presentation when it begins below these short discussions of what we think are the big questions. You can skip to the live blogged updates using this link.

What Is Facebook"s Definition of Privacy?

Facebook"s official privacy policy has long stated that you are in control of the information you chose to share. What does that mean, though? Until last week all users really only had two big choices about the visibility of their content: it was either public to everyone or visible to all their friends. Visibility to networks, like your school or city, was one of many complicating factors in a situation that confused most people. Saying that users have control over their information on Facebook has seemed like a stretch. It is very important to many Facebook users that at the very least, people not be given access to their information without approval.

As we discussed earlier this week, though, real life doesn"t work like that - all public or all private. Our contemporary understanding of privacy in the real world supports the idea that some information can be shared with certain people in certain circumstances and remain private as long as that context is maintained.

Facebook"s latest privacy option, so far rolled out only to users who have their default profile privacy set to public, is to allow shared updates and content to be visible only to certain people a user is connected to on Facebook. "This is my status update, but only let friends from work see this one, or don"t let family see this one." It"s a radical change but one that makes a lot of sense. It"s not well implemented so far but it indicates a more sophisticated understanding of privacy on the part of Facebook.

Right: Chris Kelly is Chief Privacy Officer & Head of Global Public Policy at Facebook and a candidate for the California Attorney General"s Office.

Facebook has recently hired lobbyists in the US and the EU to advance its privacy philosophy. We hope to get more clarification on today"s call.

How Will Facebook Resolve the Tension Between Open and Closed?

We interviewed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in March 2008 and asked him about Data Portability, the movement calling for online information to be made transferable from site to site so that features and customization can be built on past activity and so users can truly own the data they created through that activity.

Some people see data portability as functioning like the ability to move money from one bank to another based on quality of competing services. Your information is like your cash deposits. Other people see data portability as a threat to privacy; they are more concerned about being able to limit visibility of their information and they are willing to keep that information locked in to a particular website that does a good job protecting it.

Zuckerberg said then that privacy is an essential pre-condition to data portability. Unless users know their wishes for keeping information private will be respected, they are unlikely to produce much information online that could be made portable. That makes sense. Zuckerberg also made statements in that interview a year and a half ago that foreshadowed last week"s changes to support more granular sharing.

In the end, he told us that: "We are philosophically aligned [with the data portability movement]. We are pushing in our own way to make the world a more open place. It"s going to be good when it happens."

As Facebook has extended its grasp on user data around the web through Facebook Connect, the company"s system that lets you sign into other sites using your Facebook credentials, it has become clear that the company wants to be a full-service stop that users will not withdraw their data from. Unfortunately, that lock-in makes it even more important that users" privacy wishes are respected - there"s no where else they can go without going social-history bankrupt.

Some amount of increased openness is in Facebook"s best interest though, even in the short term. From global public search on the site (ala Twitter) to giving advertisers and application developers more access to user data in order to continue innovating - there is reason for Facebook to open up some. There are probably far more people in Iran using Facebook to publish information about the conflict there than there are Iranians using Twitter, for example, but outsiders can"t see those Facebook messages so Twitter is getting all the attention.

How will Facebok resolve the tension between the pull towards openness and the importance of letting users hold their information close to themselves?

How Can Users Trust Facebook?

After the addition of the newsfeed angered a huge number of Facebook users on privacy grounds (it was kept, wisely, anyway) and after the Beacon advertising debacle sent news of Facebook users" retail activities out to their friends (that was cut way back) - how can Facebook users trust that changes to the labyrinthine privacy texture of the site will be made in their