Gmail, Google’s email service started in April Fool’s Day in 2004 as the first to offer one gigabytes storage for its users. Major email services such as Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail soon followed with the fear of losing out in the market. Gmail remains an invitation-only email service since then. You couldn’t simply sign up for the service by filling in a form, there wasn’t one.
On Wednesday, Google has decided to lift the restriction to join the nearly 3-year-old service in North America and a swath of Asian and South American countries. The primary reason for the restriction was to give away time for Google to build up the infrastructure to accommodate the generous amount of free storage provided by the e-mail service. Google has built enough of them now. However, Gmail is retaining its “beta,” or test, status, signaling that Google still considers the service to be a work in progress.
In December, Gmail attracted 60 million unique visitors which is far behind Yahoo!’s 249 million and Hotmail’s 236 million. Advertising revenues remain a heavy weight in the revenue structure of companies like Google and Yahoo!. Advertisements are usually priced in proportion to the daily traffic of a site.
64% of U.S. Internet Users Watch Videos Online
1 Comment Published October 25th, 2006 in Technology.
comScore Media Metrix, a leader in digital media measurement, has released its August rankings of the top U.S. streaming video properties last Thursday.
The report shows the U.S streaming audience has steadily increased each month to reach 110.3 million. About 64 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience is streaming audience (or streamer) now.
In August, 6.98 billion video streams were initiated by U.S. Internet users. The average U.S. streamer consumed 63.3 streams during August, or approximately 2 streams per day. Streamers at Fox Interactive showed the highest levels of video consumption per person at 35.5 streams per streamer, followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.6 streams per streamer) and YouTube (19.4 streams per streamer).
Continue reading ‘64% of U.S. Internet Users Watch Videos Online’
The decision for Google to acquire YouTube is largely undisclosed. However, we can still get a sneak peek of the milestones that YouTube has gone through to generate 1.65 billion dollars.
The popularity of Google Video over YouTube remained until the beginning of the second quarter of 2006 according to Google Trends. The news references in the media that increased dramatically in the first quarter help to push YouTube traffic to a series of record highs.
Continue reading ‘YouTube: 6 Critical Steps to Generate $1.65b’
Top 5 Risks to Use Public IM Within an Organization
1 Comment Published September 28th, 2006 in Technology.
As instant messaging technology is embraced by information workers and their organizations, it is important that system administrators and information technology (IT) professionals within these organizations recognize both the value and the potential risks posed by this new technology.
For some organizations, the use of public IM clients is an acceptable, low-cost alternative to traditional forms of communication. However, reliance on public or consumer-class IM applications creates some unique obstacles:
Risk 1
The organization has little or no control over how IM applications are used and implemented. Public IM applications cannot be easily “locked” to constrain the types of messages sent or with whom they may be exchanged.
Risk 2
The lack of interoperability between major IM applications makes standardization difficult. Users may have to install multiple IM clients to communicate with all of their intended parties.
Continue reading ‘Top 5 Risks to Use Public IM Within an Organization’