Simply Everything

By Peter K. Lam

Twitter and Facebook

As many of you are probably already aware of, both Twitter and Facebook were attacked by hacker who distributed “denial of service” to the popular social networking sites. Twitter was shut down for several hours and Facebook was slowed by the attacks. The attacks probably happened early on the east coast time zone because I woke up this morning and was able to access Facebook with no problem at all. I’m in the Pacific time zone . It probably was fixed relatively quickly.

As for Twitter, I was absolutely estatic to hear it was silenced even if it was for a few hours. Twitter is a very interesting phenomenon since it allows users to have instant access to bits of information. Initially it was used to network friends together. Now it has expanded to include celebrities, polictians, media personalities, and more. Twitter is useful when used correctly but too often do I see just a bunch of random bullshit posts that just pisses me off. I really don’t give a shit if you are are eating breakfast and have something stuck in your teeth. Who the Hell really needs to know about that?

Why do people need to know when you are going to the bath room or if you are scratching your head? Is anybody’s life THAT interesting that you need to know what they’re doing at all times? It’s seriously ridiculous and I’m so happy that the hacker was able to shut up these chatter boxes if only for a few hours.

I subscribe to a few RSS feeds of a few people who use Twitter. I use it to find out about new music the person is releasing or perhaps just instant breaking news. Using Twitter to inform people about news and latest developments about things is what Twitter is made for. It wasn’t really meant for people to dish out weird random details about their life to a bunch of “followers” who I’m sure don’t even know the person they are following…

I’m sure the attack was very bad but for those who simply loathe Twitter, it was blissful peace for a short time. Hacking in general is never a good thing but in this case I’ll make an exception.

By Peter K. Lam

Microsoft and Yahoo! Team Up

It was announced today that Microsoft and Yahoo! are teaming up to improve the new Microsof search technology, Bing, and hopefully be a tough contender to the dominant Google. Google has remained the most popular and powerful search engine favored by the general public. Yahoo! remains the second most popular but they are still not playing on the same level as Google. The new partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo! could very well spell the end of Google’s dominance in online advertising and search results.

I haven’t used Bing yet so I don’t know how well it works. Microsoft claims it’s just as good as Google, if not better. Yahoo! is ok but is also somewhat lacking in terms of its searching capability. Microsoft and Yahoo! together are far stronger and have a good chance in taking down Google. I personally like Google simply because their search engine is very simple and is very powerful. It usually returns the best results even with very specific keywords whereas Yahoo! search returns some irrelevant results back.

I guess time will tell how successful this business venture will be for Microsoft and Yahoo!. Google still remains a force to be reckoned with but the new partnership will truly give Google a formidable challenge.

By Peter K. Lam

SyFy - Imagine Greater

When I first heard about NBC Universal’s Sci Fi was planning to rebrand, I was very skeptical of it’s success. I was looking at the rebranding from an internet marketing perspective and not as the business as a whole. In terms of internet marketing, NBC Universal owns a very rich and hard to obtain keyword as their brand. They always get the highest traffic and many hits whenever anybody searches using the keyword “sci fi.” Their shows appear on page one of most search results and people who are just looking for general sci fi may also stumble upon their site. As an internet marketer, having the domain “scifi.com” is SEO gold!! So for me I wonder why NBC would want to rebrand? They’ve had so much success with their current business model. Changing the brand could be a huge mistake.

A day after Sci Fi evolved into SyFy, CNNMoney.com release an article talking about the financial and business implications of the rebranding. Turns out that the executives over at NBC Universal actually knew what they were doing. They were expanding their program base to be more than just sci fi oriented programming. Sci Fi as a brand was missing out on so many potential advertisers because advertisers were not willing to be on a network that’s just sci fi. Rebranding and expanding the program base for the network allowed more possibilities to increase revenue with potential advertisers who may have passed if the network remain as “Sci Fi.” Today Sci Fi Wire, the news site powered by SyFy, broke the news of SyFy’s record-breaking July.

Having operated for the past month, I look back and see that NBC Universal made a very smart business decision. The brand “SyFy” is very unique and can truly exist as a brand. The phrase “sci fi” cannot really be trademark since it’s such a generic term that’s used to describe all types of media, not just sci fi televison. Rebranding would not only make the network more identifiable but also more profitable with bigger advertising opportunities. So all in all, SyFy is pretty successful. They’ve already built a lot of SEO with “sci fi” so it will take some work to regain the lead with the most hits for “sci fi” keyword searches but I don’t think it will take too long. The new brand is already becoming wildly popular and pretty soon those keyword searches for “sci fi” will start bringing up content from SyFy again in no time.