IMVironments - the little background themes for Yahoo Messenger - have gotten Yahoo in a lot of trouble.  The company's lost a patent infringement case that concerns them, and as a result, is supposed to pay a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation $12.4 million.

With no offense intended to Yahoo's lawyers, it's safe to say that the odds never favored a Yahoo victory; a few details strongly imply that Acacia's a patent troll.  Take, for example, the fact that the case was tried in the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas - a spot known for favoring plaintiffs.

Acacia's homepage also says a lot, since ten of the eleven "Recent News" items relate to patents and litigation.

Then here's one very telling fact that Rachael King recently discovered while researching the company: "Acacia has filed at least 337 patent-related lawsuits in its 18 years."

Anyway, Yahoo now has to fork over $12.4 million, and Acacia should also benefit from an ongoing royalty rate of 23 percent for all Yahoo IMVironments sales.

On the bright side, Yahoo's stock is up a tiny bit this morning, even as the Dow and Nasdaq are heading down.  Hat tip goes to Robin Wauters.

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Fri Feb 05, 2010 13:55 pm

When you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle that wasn’t available to the public yet. At the same time, it inspired a community to engage, create content and continue discussions about the Fiesta with over 7 million video views.

While in Dearborn, Ford’s Head of Social Media, Scott Monty, extended to me an invitation to The Henry Ford Museum, The Rouge Factory and a visit to Ford’s World Headquarters where we did a short interview. In this interview, Scott talks about the place for social media with Ford’s new product lines, local social media work with Chapter 2 of the Fiesta movement and advice for companies on empowering communities.

Being able to take a learn about the history of this 100+ year old company through experiences at The Henry Ford and Rouge factory tours was very informative. Then being able to sit down with Bob Kreipke, Ford’s full time historian and hear stories about Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, company history and evolution was priceless.

Fast forward over 100 years and Ford is a very different company, as is the automotive industry. It’s not enough to be innovative but to be able to actually connect with customers in more meaningful ways. Based on my dis/> [...]

Tue Mar 09, 2010 08:05 am

The online space grows more competitive each and every day and the importance of finding niches and certain areas to be visible in is becoming even more evident and important. If you are targeting a space that clearly has a great deal of competition it will be very important to go after the long tail keywords as well as the broad to be able to achieve some sort of rankings fairly quickly. Being a new website in a competitive environment requires a great deal of time, patience and experience. Don’t expect to rank quickly going after the broader search terms. Long tail keyword phrases will be your friend so you have to use them.

The most important advise that I can provide for a new website or new business owner is to spend the time doing your keyword research! Keyword research should be based on the existing content of each page of your website, so conduct the keyword research after you write your content. This is a big mistake that I see many people make that are new to the search world. They sometimes write content to rank well in the search engines, your content should always be written with your audience(s) and visitors in mind.

Continuing on and about the long tail track here…The mindset of many websites is to try and rank for the broad keyword phrases to pull in the largest amount of search volume. When first getting involved in search with a new website you have to be realistic. Don’t be in denial when you first launch your website because you could potentially short change your business. Try to go after some of the low hanging fruit in your industry to get some new business and sales. This will allow you to pull in some new clients and build some quick credibility in the industry for yourself by wowing some new clients. As you build your reputation in /> [...]

Wed Apr 21, 2010 22:30 pm

The new version of Digg has changed the playing field for two of its biggest constituents: power users and publishers. We discuss this with a long-time Digg power user.

The latest version of social news site Digg is currently in restricted beta, with a further 20,000 users added at the beginning of July. The new version adds the ability to 'follow' people or publishers, via a feature called "My News." This will be the default Digg homepage and it's prompted many to compare the new Digg to Twitter and Facebook. Another big change is that publishers may now automatically submit their content. This changes the game for both power users and publishers, because previously the secret to getting onto the Digg front page was for a power user to submit the story. That's no longer the case.

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Power Users on Digg

Up till now, the definition of a 'power user' on Digg has been someone with the ability to make stories popular simply by submitting content or 'digging' it up. There was also a lot of back scratching that happened behind the scenes, among both power users and/> [...]

Wed Jul 14, 2010 06:08 am