Yahoo’s Product Runway: Are You In or Out?

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.
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Federated Media Snaps Up BigTent

Federated Media, the San Francisco-based advertising and publishing network, has acquired BigTent, a platform hosting more than 15,000 communities, mostly made up of parenting groups, especially moms. Terms of the deal with BigTent, also located in San Francisco, were not disclosed. In an interview, FM CEO John Battelle said the move was to further strengthen its tools for both the advertisers and publishers it serves, especially to create better “content conversations.”

While Microsoft Is Talking to Publishers, Paying Up to "Rent" Content for Bing to Thwart Google Is Unlikely

While it might be a dream of publishers–hard hit by the digital tsunami and blaming Google for the crisis–Microsoft is not likely to fork over the big bucks they’d need for exclusive indexing of their content. “Microsoft isn’t the monopoly guy anymore,” joked one source close to ongoing talks between Microsoft and publishers, especially News Corp. and Associated Press. “So, it’s not going to be the bank for publishers.” That’s because many inside the software giant don’t think such pricey deals will move the search market share needle nearly enough.
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Microsoft Adds Some Twitter Real-Time Data to Bing (And Stalks BoomTown in the Process)

Microsoft just announced in a blog post that it was “integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.” Microsoft said it is not indexing all of Twitter in its new Bing search service–not yet, that is–nor has it made any kind of exclusive deal with Twitter to add this real-time feed. The software giant is the first major search service to do this on a regular basis, using public APIs from Twitter–and it is an aggressive move, which seems to be part of its major push by Bing.
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Microsoft Outlook Team Still Cracking "Google Apps Stink" Jokes

A week after launching Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook with great swagger and pomp, Google is taking heat for unwittingly disabling one of the mail client’s key functions. Seems the service, which allows enterprise to use Outlook without shouldering the costs of running an Exchange server, doesn’t play well with Windows Desktop Search.
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Microsoft Outlook Team Still Cracking “Google Apps Stink” Jokes

A week after launching Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook with great swagger and pomp, Google is taking heat for unwittingly disabling one of the mail client’s key functions. Seems the service, which allows enterprise to use Outlook without shouldering the costs of running an Exchange server, doesn’t play well with Windows Desktop Search.
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