Yahoo! Directory shuts down! A historic monument has been taken down!

Yahoo! Directory (formerly at http://dir.yahoo.com) the starting of Yahoo! what it originally was, a hand curated list of websites, the first search engine since 1995 has finally been taken down after 20 years!

Yahoo! originally started as a directory, a hand curated list of authentic websites. Later the company evolved into an internet conglomerate with business & services ranging from Yahoo! Mail to Yahoo! Small Business Center to acquiring Tumblr & what not!

But finally, the original Yahoo! directory has been taken taken down. It is like a historic monument from the world of internet being taken down.

Google Authorship : The End

Google has withdrawn its authorship program from showing into the Search Results

Google had started the authorship program 3 years back when it started supporting the rel='author' tag & later started showing author photos in the search results. Now, since June 2014 Google stopped showing the author photos & later in August 2014 stopped supporting the rel='author' tag altogether.
Reasons stated were :

1. Low adoption rates by authors & webmasters.
2. Low value for searchers.
3. Minute difference in clickthrough rates

Orkut to Shut Down on September 30, 2014

Orkut, the original social media network by Google, will be permanently shut down on September 30, 2014.

Why Quora rocks!

This Answer tell you all - Why Quora Rocks!

Facebook launches Admin Roles for business Pages

Facebook Pages for Businesses

Iphone app sold for 1 Billion Dollars!

Forget about diamonds, rubies & fine jewelry, mobile apps is where the money is! Instagram, the sensational fastest growing iPhone app was acquired by facebook today for 1 Billion Dollars!

"Don't be evil (Google)" tool

Haha! This is amazing! Exactly what I pointed out in my post, Real reason why Google Plus exists
outlined in this post by Danny Sullivan.

I’ve written that Google has plenty of public data to allow parts its new Search Plus Your World feature to be inclusive of rival social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now, those networks are proving that true, through a new “Don’t Be Evil” tool that lets anyone leverage Google’s own results to see this.
The tool — a bookmarklet that works in your browser — changes three parts of Search Plus Your World that currently shows information only from Google Plus. These are:

• People & Pages results
• Google+ Sitelinks
• Google+ Suggestions In Autocomplete

Real Reason why Google Plus exists

It has nothing to do with Social Media or competing with facebook. Not even closely.

What I think the real reason for existence of Google Plus is not social media but social searching. Think of it, where do you see the Google Plus button or icon most often, on the Google Search results page.

Google Blogger v/s Wordpress

Blogger v/s Wordpress

The grand battle between Blogger & Wordpress is something heavy on every new blogger's mind, including my own, when I had decided to start blogging. This is not one of those posts where I will list out merits of both, there are already a lot of posts on the internet that describe & compare features, merits & de-merits of both, wordpress & blogger, & other blogging platforms too, for that matter.

For me, I will tell you the reasons why I chose Blogger over Wordpress (both wordpress.org & wordpress.com)

1. Advanced Customization : The most crucial reason was the ability to tweak with the HTML in blogger. By editing the HTML & the design elements of blogger, I could design a blog as I wanted.
2. Javascript : Ability to add Javascript, even wordpress gives you the ability to add HTML, but no javascript on wordpress, whereas on blogger you can add as much Javascript as you want!
3. Hosting : A lot of people like to host their own blogs, I don't, that is one less task for me. On blogger, I can simply pay attention to the content part rather than the hosting part as I'd have to do otherwise on wordpress.org blogs, even with the "1 click installs" that many web hosts offer. For wordpress.com, it made no sense as I'd have had to buy a custom domain package & other advanced features, why pay for something that is available for free! ;)
4. Multiple Blogs : I operate multiple blog, Official Jewelove Fine Jewelry Blog, The Ruby King Blog & My Personal Blog. I don't know how it goes on wordpress, but I knew that it was very easy to do, using one interface, on Blogger.

Those were the reasons for me, I don't know what are your requirements, if you want to discuss, feel free to post in the comments below!

P.S. For people obsessed with stats, there are about 150 million public blogs on the internet (courtesy : wikipedia) & exactly 55,956,313 of them are hosted on wordpress.com i.e. about a third. Blogger does not publish similar stats.

Vote for your favorite platform below!

Your favorite blogging platform
	Blogger
	Wordpress
	TypePad
	Tumblr
	Others
pollcode.com free polls

Facebook versus Google +

The Grand battle between facebook & google has begun again! Again, because the earlier battles were lost by Google, namely orkut, google me (which was never launched full fledgedly)

A lot of excitement has been around google plus, but it all seems to be dying out already. According to the stats, close to 20 Million people are already on Google + (remarkable given the amount of time they've been online) but the visitor stats & time spent by users on google plus is already falling, especially since the Facebook Skype collaboration! With the facebook & the skype user base, it totally roots out hangouts (where anyway just 10 people can "hang out" at a time)

Besides that, facebook enjoys the patronage of the whole web! Especially, with all the open social & web apps developed using facebook APIs, facebook has become an integral part of the web!

Another critical factor is, Brands & Businesses! Google Plus still hasn't rolled out anything comparable to Facebook Pages,whereas facebook is already planning to go to the next level this fall.

Though nobody is sure what the next level for facebook is going to be, but experts have speculated some tremendous changes coming up that might totally root out competition for facebook!

Faceboo or Google, whom do you think will be the Lord of Social Media?