In response to my last post, “Magikplp” asked what I thought might happen with Google in 2009.  I suspect that Google will have a good year in 2009 but not a *great* year.  Google will continue to be a force to reckon with and will remain the leader in most things web, but this will be a year of building new technologies and investing in the future, while navigating a tough economic climate – not necessarily a year for exponential profit growth (though I don’t think profits will be bad in 2009).

Google is making a huge investment in Android, which won’t pay off in the near future because mobile advertising hasn’t taken off yet.  Google doesn’t expect to make money on their 30% cut off off apps, once they start allowing paid-apps on the Android Market.  Here’s what Eric Chu (Android Mobile Platform Program Manager) said about it in a recent blog post:

Starting in early Q1 [2009], developers will also be able to distribute paid apps in addition to free apps. Developers will get 70% of the revenue from each purchase; the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees—Google does not take a percentage. We believe this revenue model creates a fair and positive experience for users, developers, and carriers.

Read More…

Here are a handful of my predictions for mobile and social media in 2009, moving into 2010… For the record, I’ve left off everything I know will happen in 2009 and limited this list to things I *think* will happen:

• Smartphones and feature phones will continue to converge in iPhone-esque fashion.
  • Mobile Internet will drive usage of smartphones, and with it, more robust experiments with mobile advertising and payments will begin.
  • Mobile advertising and payments will gain some momentum in 2009 but won’t really take off until 2010 and beyond.
• A few thoughts on Android:
  • Android will struggle to gain momentum until there is infrastructure to distribute paid apps and an iTunes-esque web or client-based interface for PC & Mac.
  • Ultimately, Android will do well, but it’s going to take longer than many anticipate. Read More…

For those of you that disconnected during Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year, etc…  Welcome back. Here’s a summary of the most interesting social media and mobile news I read in the last few weeks: Read More…

I took a blogging break for Turkey, so this social media and mobile round-up includes the most interesting news in mobile and social media since November 21: Read More…

I’m helping get the word out about a contest that the MOTODEV team at Motorola (one of my clients) is running.

If you’re a widget developer, give mobile a whirl and join the MOTODEV Widget Developer Challenge for the opportunity to win up to $200,000 in great prizes and gain unprecedented global exposure.

SUBMIT your widget NOW –  Be one of the first 100 unique submissions received by December 18, 2008, and win a $250 gift card to Amazon.com.  Click here to learn more.

Apple:

• iPhone 2.2 Firmware was released. MobileCrunch’s review is here.  Excerpted summary of the article: “Safari’s address bar/search … tweaked a bit, apps now request a rating upon deletion, over-the-air podcast downloads …, various video and audio quality tweaks, and assorted bug fixes throughout… Google Maps has been upgraded to include Street View and directions for public transit and walking – if you have an iPhone rather than an iPod Touch…According to early reports, 2.2 for the iPod Touch brings everything but the Google Maps upgrade.”

Google:

• Google Mobile: John Gruber reports that Google seems to be using an undocumented API for the voice search feature in its recently updated Google Mobile iPhone application.  Read More…

Apple

• Apple is now the #2 smartphone manufacturer. Nokia remains #1, RIM is now#3, and Motorola is #4. More here.
• The iPhone surpassed the Motorola Razr as the top selling consumer phone.

Facebook

• TechCrunch reports that Facebook violated its own privacy policy to give Microsoft access to user emails: “Microsoft’s Invite2Messenger appears to violate that policy. Messenger users are asked to log in to Facebook, and then the names and email addresses of all that user’s Facebook friends are then sent to Microsoft and displayed in clear text on a page they control (Facebook itself only shows friend’s emails as images to prevent scraping). You check off which friends you want to invite to use Messenger, and then Microsoft sends each of them an email to install the client and become friends with you. Screenshots of the process (with emails removed) are below.“
  
• Facebook launched an app that allows users to vote for their favorite FBFund apps.  There are 25 finalists, five of which will receive $225,000 FBfund grants. Add the app here.

Google

• YouTube launched a “new advertising program that enables all video creators — from the everyday user to a Fortune 500 advertiser — to reach people who are interested in their content, products, or services, with relevant videos.”

Motorola

• Interesting article on the perception of Motorola’s recent announcements regarding changes to the org: “Motorola’s Turnaround Plans Meet with Skepticism”

Nokia

• Nokia cut its 4th quarter outlook on handset sales from the 1.26 billion it forecast in October to 1.24 billion handsets. It also forecast a decrease in the global market for fixed and mobile network infrastructure. More here.
  

Sony Ericsson

• Sony Ericsson ranks highest among customer satisfaction for the 3rd time in a row.
  
• Mobility Today is calling the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 the “ultimate Windows Mobile phone anyone can ask for”:

Twitter

• Twitter surpassed its 1 Billionth tweet this week.
  

Misc:

• Recent Layoffs:
  • TechCrunch reports 58,709 tech layoffs over the past two and a half months. Check out the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker to see the latest Layoff news.
    
• Technology announcements:
  • Loopt:
    • Loopt has become more popular than the MySpace and Facebook mobile apps on iPhone.
    • Loopt has reportedly hired Allen&Co to represent them in a financing transaction or sale
    • To cut costs, Loopt is partnering with a Qualcomm subsidiary, SnapTrack, which provides GPS data for a monthly fee.
  • OpenSocial celebrates its one-year anniversary. You can see the presentation from the press and developer event here.
  • Soocial launched its public beta.  They say that they “aim to link all currently disconnected address books to each other. A change in one of these address books will result in a change in all your connected devices.”  It’s getting good reviews. Check it out.
  • European events search engine Happener just launched after a year in development. Check it out.
  • You can now make your own customized guide book at Offbeatguides.com, which was founded by Technorati founder Dave Sifry.
    

AOL:

• AOL announced its earnings this week.  The most interesting part of the report: “Revenues decreased 17% ($207 million) to $1.0 billion, due to a 26% decline ($165 million) in Subscription revenues and a 6% decrease ($33 million) in Advertising revenues. The decline in Subscription revenues reflects mainly a decrease in domestic AOL brand subscribers, related primarily to AOL’s strategy to offer its e-mail and other products free of charge to Internet consumers. Driving the decrease in Advertising revenues were declines in display advertising on AOL Network sites and sales of advertising on third-party Internet sites, offset partially by an increase in paid-search advertising.”
  

Apple:

• According to a recent report by SquareTrade, The iPhone is more reliable than Blackberry and Treo after one year of ownership.  This doesn’t surprise me since there are less externally moving parts on the iPhone than a Blackberry or Treo.  The study is summarized by MobileCrunch here.

Facebook:

• Rumor has it… Will Facebook buy Twitter?

Google:

• Google ends it’s Advertising Agreement with Yahoo because “government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement”
• According to CrunchGear, Steve Ballmer says Google is behind the competition and is questioning Android’s financial strategy.

LinkedIn:

• According to an Anderson Analytics’ study, LinkedIn users are high income.  You can see a good summary of the review here.  Among the findings: LinkedIn users that make between $200,000 and $350,000 were around seven times to have more than 150 LinkedIn connections than those who made less money. 66% of LinkedIn users are identified as “decision makers”.
  • TechCrunch reports that LinkedIn cut 10% of its staff, some of which will be re-assigned to other roles:

MySpace:

• MySpace launched with Auditude, an online video tracking platform.  Auditude fingerprints user posted videos to determine who the “content owner” is. It then inserts advertising into the video and tells the user whose content they’re watching.

• TechCrunch reports that  less than 1 month after it’s launch, MySpace MyAds is making a load of money: “Demand for the product was immediate and significant, we’ve heard from multiple sources close to the company. Average daily revenue, say our sources, is $140,000 – $180,000, which means MyAds is at least a $50 million/year business for MySpace already.”

Nokia:

• Nokia laid off around 600 workers in “follow-up” to its earlier 2008 layoffs.  Nokia Research Center is also going to “sharpen its focus on fewer but stronger research areas.” You can read the announcement here.
• Nokia launched the beta of “FriendView”, “a location and micro-blogging service that helps you stay in touch with your close friends. It let’s you share where you are and how you feel from home, work, or on the go. With Friend View it is easy to meet up at only a moment’s notice. “

RIM:

• CrunchGear reviewed the Blackberry Bold saying, “The Bold is unequivocally the best piece of hardware that RIM has ever put out.”

Samsung:

• Samsung reportedly surpassed Motorola in US Mobile market.

Twitter:

• Twitter is contemplating corporate accounts as a way to make money.
• Twitter is now hiring a Director of Strategic Partnerships. This is the company’s first business development hire… At last, the answer to “How do those guys plan to make money?!” question will likely soon be answered.
• TechCrunch reports that “Digital Garage, Twitter’s partner with Twitter Japan, launched Twicco, a site that lets Twitter users create groups and then subscribe to them.”
• <Repeated from above> Rumors are swirling… Will Facebook buy Twitter?

Yahoo:

• Flickr: The 3 Billionth photo was uploaded to Flickr this week.

Misc:

• Rumor has it…
  • <repeat from above> Rumors are swirling… Will Facebook buy Twitter?
• Recent Layoffs:
  • <repeat from above> LinkedIn 10% layoff
• M&A:
  • Wink & Reunion.com are merging and will launch a new site next year: “Through this merger, we’re redefining the people search space by bridging existing social networks and providing consumers with the tools they need to find, be found, and stay connected,” said Michael Tanne, chief executive officer of Wink. “We’re aiming to create an entirely new online experience that simplifies people’s lives by making it easy to find and keep up with everyone they know. There will be exciting developments in the coming months as we integrate our strengths and push our business forward.”
• Technology announcements:
  • PerfSpot: Perfspot will be rolling out “Friendvouch” to its 25M members in 3 million member segments over the coming months.  Friendvouch enables users to sign up for advertising offers, which they can send to heir friends.  When those friends indicate interest, Perfspot then sells those details back to advertisers and rewards the referring user.   Here’s how the Friendvouch website describes it: “Make great recommendations and earn cash with friendvouch. friendvouch is a community of people created to connect you directly to your favorite brands. Become a brand ambassador while earning money in the process.”
  • Barak Obama & Joe Biden: The office of the President Elect launched a transition website, where people can learn about what they’re planning. There’s a blog, newsroom, job application submission, agenda information, and more. Citizens are encouraged to submit their ideas to the future administration on all agenda items including technology.
    
  • MobileCrunch did a nice summary of the “Mobile Market View” study by The Kelsey Group.  The most interesting point from my perspective: “18.9% of mobile consumers in the United States are now toting smartphones, with 49.2% planning to pick one up within the next two years.”
    
  • Though not released this week, I learned about the Pico Pocket Projector by Optoma, which is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while.  For all of you mobile geeks, this pocket-sized projector seems to solve the problem of needing an Elmo to showcase the latest and greatest app on your phone AND makes it easy to project the videos you store on your ipod or mobile phone on a wall… Very cool.
    

I’m starting do to a quick weekly round-up of the Social Media and Mobile news that I find most interesting.  Enjoy

AOL:

• AOL Journals and AOL Hometown are shutting down (joining Xdrive and BlueString)
  

Apple:

• Apple announces retroactive improvements to “MobileMe”. The following improvements were silently launched in Sept. : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3182
• iPhone users in the US now get free wi-fi at all AT&T hotspots.
  
• Ralph Lauren launched an iPhone app.  I agree with TechCrunch… They’re better off focusing their mobile marketing dollars and efforts elsewhere…Like ShoZu. 😉 Read More…

Yelp burned a bridge with me this week, and I’m defecting to the Rummble beta.  Rummble is London-based mobile + web 2.0 start-up that provides geographically relevant recommendations and reviews from likeminded people.

My frustration with Yelp started when I got an email from my dentists’ office… Earlier this year, I wrote a glowing review of my dentists, a fantastic couple who took over the practice from my former dentist when he retired.  Noticing that mine was the first Yelp review anyone had written of the new practice, I emailed my dentists to thank them for their great work and let them know about my review.  They replied thanking me for my review.  After my latest visit, I got an email from one of my dentists, checking in to make sure that I was happy because they noticed that my positive Yelp review was no longer posted on Yelp.com.  I went online to look, and sure enough, while I could see the review on my page, it didn’t appear in the public view.  There was only one other review listed – also a 5 star positive review.

Bewildered by why my review was removed, I re-posted it again, and it appeared in public view. I then emailed Yelp to ask what happened.  In the note, I explained that I wasn’t a spammer, but rather a social media blogger with a positive track record of contributing to online communities.  I received the following response:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for contacting Yelp about your reviews.

Yelp has a system that automatically determines which reviews show for a given business. Just as your Yahoo or Gmail email account doesn’t deliver every email (spam, etc.), we don’t show every review. This protects both business owners (by suppressing reviews that may have been written by a malicious competitor, for example) and consumers (by suppressing reviews that may have a definitive bias, having been written by owners or their friends). It’s important to note that these reviews are not deleted (they are always shown on the user’s public profile) and may reappear on the business-listing page in the future.

I wondered how my review could have been “automatically” removed by Yelp. I am not a spammer.  I have only written a handful of carefully written Yelp reviews, and none of them feature spam-worthy words like “lumberjack”, “rolex”, or “viagra”.  If someone like me (thoughtful reviewer with a track record of social media involvement) was ‘automatically’ screened out by their system, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of reviews I was missing out on when I used Yelp to discover new places.  I was also frustrated because I took the time to write a review to help the ‘Yelp’ community, and yet, no one in the community could see it.   The worst part is that I felt like my relationship with one of my favorite service providers was compromised by Yelp’s “automatic” screening system, when my dentist was left wondering whether I’d removed the review on purpose.

I wanted to keep liking and using Yelp, so I replied asking what would have ‘flagged’ my reviews to their spam filter.   I asked if was possible to get my review re-instated to Yelp at large.  Here’s their response:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for taking the time to write us again.

While we can’t evaluate individual cases or re-instate specific reviews, we certainly appreciate your feedback and are continually striving to improve the user experience.

We recognize that this explanation may prove frustrating, but we hope you understand that our efforts and actions are geared toward increasing the overall trustworthiness of Yelp as a place for people to share local knowledge.

Thanks again for caring enough to contact us and for trying to make Yelp better for everyone.

I was disappointed by Yelp’s refusal to evaluate individual cases or explain their filtering criteria.  Yelp acknowledged using an unreliable system to screen out ‘spam’.  Yet, they wouldn’t explain how their filtering ‘system’ worked.  At the end of the day, I was more annoyed by Yelp’s explanation than their removal of my review.

Isn’t the whole point of an online community to allow every user to provide their input and have others flag abuses of the system?!  Wikipedia has a vibrant community and manages to keep its users relatively honest through community policing.

Reading Yelp’s response, I couldn’t help but imagine the customer service agent shrugging her shoulders, sticking out her tongue and making a facetious “I dunno” face.  The image inspired me to do a little research about other’s experiences with Yelp.  So, I Googled “Yelp complaints” to see what came up.  Here are a couple of  interesting articles on the subject:

• On September 19, 2008, CBS 5 reported, “Business Owners Raise More Complaints About Yelp”
• On August 13, 2008, The Register wrote, “Yelp ‘Pay to Play’ Pitch Makes Shops Scream for Help” claiming, “Over the last year, five San Francisco Bay Area businesses have told The Register that the company has offered to “push bad reviews to the bottom” of their Yelp pages if they paid to advertise on the site.”
• In July, 2008, TechCrunch wrote, “Angry Businesses Organize Anti-Yelp Websites. This Is A Sure Sign Of Their Success”:
  

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said recently in the NY Times, “We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses third.” Their goal is clearly to make businesses need Yelp, but not to expect a lot of help when it comes to disputes. Complain all you want, you’re just proving that you need Yelp more than they need you.

My recent experience makes me doubt Yelp’s assertion that it puts community first.  Until I have a reason to change my mind, I’m boycotting Yelp.  Instead, I’ll be using Rummble, and encouraging others to turn it into a vibrant and unfettered online community that allows users to share geographically relevant recommendations from likeminded people.  One of the coolest parts is that it allows you to get not only local recommendations but national and international recommendations from your network – a useful bonus for frequent travellers.  If you want to join in, add me as a friend on Rummble.

I’m curious to hear about your experiences with Yelp.  If you’re not a Vox member, feel free to email me your comments, and I’ll post them manually.