Google Bags Friendster Deal at the Expense of Yahoo

Friendster has announced (pdf file) an exclusive search and ad deal with Google. Its a win for Google (they bagged another social network after MySpace) , a win for Friendster (getting in bed with Google who could generate more money for them) and a loss for Yahoo (showed the door, so much for the hype surrounding Panama’s launch). Friendster has already integrated the text and display advertising components of the deal. The Google search box would be integrated by the mid of 2007.

The real question remains answered: How can you make the once hot celeb (Friendster) hip again in the face of competition from the likes of MySpace, facebook, Bebo and so on.

Turkey Bans Youtube

ABC News is reporting that Youtube has been banned in Turkey after a Turkish Court ordered the ban of the site. This has resulted from uploading of videos insulting the founder of modern day Turkey, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. Turkey’s largest Telecom provider, Turk Telecom, has already enforced the ban.

Over the past few weeks a virtual war has been taking place on Youtube between Greeks and Turks, with both sides belittling each other. The alleged video claimed that Ataturk and Turkish are homosexuals. Insulting Ataturk is a crime punishable by prison in Turkey. Last year a publisher was jailed for publishing Noam Chomsky´s book in Turkey. He was later released on Chomsky´s intervention.

Previously Youtube evaded a ban in India after a controversial video of Mahatma Gandhi was posted on the site. The site was banned and then cleared in Brazil after Ronaldo´s ex-wive´s sex video with her boyfriend got online.

While we are at it, it would be interesting to note that blogger and wordpress are banned in Pakistan.

Snapshot courtesy Cem Sertoglu

My.Netscape Clones Netvibes

MyNetscape relaunched yesterday as a customizable Ajax start page, which is verbatim as the popular Netvibes. This is yet another attempt to keep up with the fast moving world of startups, where cool new products and services are being launched every now and then. Previously the Netscape.com portal was transformed into a Digg clone.

This is an entrenched battleground with Netvibes, Pageflakes, Live.com, Google Personalized Home Page, My Yahoo etc competing against each other.

The startup page is quiet usable and i did not encountered any GUI bloppers.Users have the ability to choose from 91 different modules of customized content and add RSS feed modules for favorite feeds.

Startups are usually cutting edge because the early adopter crowd is tech savvy. If they aren’t innovative no one will shift and people would continue to use Netscape Portal like home pages instead of Netvibes. However the traditional Netscape crowd is from the old days and is by now quiet comfortable with the bloated, ad cluttered Netscape.

It would be interesting to see how the Netscape user base digests this cloning experiment. Experience tells us that the previous one didn’t rolled out as planned.

See Techcrunch and ReadWriteWeb for more.