IDC found that only advertising scaled well enough to make social networks attractive for portals and major media companies. In contrast, subscriptions and ecommerce were not likely to contribute much to social network revenue.

"Social networks cannot guarantee a brand-safe environment," said IDC program director Karsten Weide. "Advertisers don’t want to see their ads displayed alongside illicit content, for example.

"The dilemma for social networks is if they start to control what content users can post, they will lose popularity, which is what attracted advertisers in the first place."

The report said that underlying slow ad sales may be solved, some social networking services might never be able to attract brand advertisers on a large scale.

Google has attempted to gently request and chastise writers who use their brand name as a verb. The company fears the time when Google becomes google, a generic term meaning ‘to search’. The Washington Post has been dinged by Google for doing this, as has our Jason Lee Miller.

Google, meet the real world. They’re googling all the time out here, and it’s happening in all kinds of media.

During the afternoon airing of ESPN Radio’s Dan Patrick show yesterday, the conversation turned away from sports to one of Dan’s favorite topics: Jessica Alba and the possibility of her appearing on the show.

During his banter with producer Phil ‘The Showkiller,’ Dan said he’s heard that an Alba appearance would also entail bringing along her Fantastic Four co-star, Chris Evans.

Dan wanted to know more about Evans, so he casually asked Phil to google the actor. Phil managed to pull that off without wrecking the show, and no one thought anything of the request. If Google cared we haven’t heard about it.

The world of print has no problem googling either. In Esquire‘s May 2007 print issue, a comment from Brian Frazer, author of Hyper-Chondriac, included the G word. The comment was part of a broader health feature on weight loss:

I never linked my inability to relax with my diet. Then I visited an Ayurveda specialist (the ancient science of wellness through "balanced" living; Google it – I have only 200 words here.)

Those are just a couple of examples, observed about an hour apart in the most unscientific setting possible – the afternoon commute. Add them up over the course of a day, overhearing other people subject Google the brand to google the transitive verb in various places, and it’s pretty clear. Google is going the way of Kleenex and Xerox as a brand name.

Security company Sophos’ senior technology consultant Graham Cluely blamed the problem on hijacked websites being exploited by spammers. But Michael Brown, president of HealthPricer.com, says it’s lack of policing that’s to blame.

"The Internet really is the Wild West," he said in an interview with WebProNews. "If you did a search on Viagra, I’ll be you’d find at least 50% that were illegal."

Brown’s estimation matches the Canadian Pharmacist’s Association’s revelation that up to 50% of the drugs bought on the Internet come from online pharmacies that can be counterfeit or substandard.

Adding to the problem, says Brown, are second tier comparison shopping engines like eBay’s Shopping.com, BizRate, Shopzilla, TheFind.com, and Comparison.com. These sites are powered by feed submissions from retailers who also buy sponsored links.

A Viagra search on Shopping.com, for example, brings up (pun not intended) three hits for generic Viagra. "That’s illegal," says Brown, noting that the sale of generic Viagra is against the law in the US.

Brown believes the comparison shopping sites aren’t selling bogus pills purposefully. It may be they aren’t policing well enough, putting them at risk of being perceived as participating in illegal practices. 

With 80% of American Internet users, or 113 million adults, searching for health-related information (comScore), there’s a lot of room for false perceptions. Buying prescription medicine online is rarer than information-seeking though, with online drug sales only making up 1% of $250 billion American prescription market.

Brown takes the opportunity to tout his own company, HealthPricer.com, a site that requires all merchants to have a brick-and-mortar presence, accreditation, and to be a licensed pharmacy with a pharmacist on staff.

"A merchant will contact us and the first thing we’ll do is we’ll go through their website, not with a spider, but personally, to make sure its structured in a way that’s easy for the consumer to use. [We look at] their license, their shipping policy, [the safety of] the transaction process, and their customer service policy."

That’s more, he says than Google or Yahoo do, whom Brown criticizes for having too open an application process for pharmaceutical sales and advertising. "The consumer thinks that Google endorses the seller, but it was a spider. Google and others don’t know it’s going on. They have no way to police."

Google, at least, disagrees with that statement. Google spokesperson Michael Mayzel told WebProNews that Google has a longstanding policy regarding advertising prescription drugs, and also requires third-party verification.

Mayzel cites Google’s AdWords content policy:

Pharmacies advertising prescription drugs or using prescription drug keywords may only target the U.S. or Canada, and must be PharmacyChecker approved. Ads will not run until a valid PharmacyChecker identification number is provided. AdWords only accepts advertising from pharmacies that are based in the U.S. or Canada.

Google’s AdWords policing also came under fire this week after malicious code found its way into Google’s sponsored links. Our David Utter reported on this topic earlier. Mayzel says, in both instances, Google works hard to enforce its policies.

"We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware to our users both in our ad network and in our search results," he said. 

"We have manual and automatic processes in place to detect and enforce these policies.  In short, we take this issue very seriously.  We also encourage our advertisers to contact Google directly if they have concerns or detect suspicious malware.  Lastly, we encourage users to educate themselves on preventive measures to keep safe."

Frank Schilling, a well known domainer, recently blogged about how to unseat Google, and is using wiki content to seed community driven sites on generic domains. Two ways Google is fighting off the automated content generation that domainers will explore is through duplicate content detection and minimum PageRank requirements on a per URL basis.

Domain names are trusted because they are an expensive commodity largely controlled by a few people, and most of those people are not developing the names. Once those people start turning parking pages into content sites I think search engines are going to need to look for other relevancy signals. Many VCs and domainers have been looking at automated or low cost development ever since Paul Sloan’s 2005 article Masters of their Domains, but a search engine full of sites like eHow, WeHow, and WikiHow is not a search engine that is useful to searchers.

Comments

The site by ED Choice, which sells generic versions of drugs like Viagra, Levitra and Cialis (none of which exist in what I like to call “the real world”), features a Google logo with the “o”s replaced by two li’l Viagra pills, as well as this text:

We’ve just launched a pharmaceutical interface for Google, as well as several new features that will improve the Google experience for people buying pills and using pharmaceutical interfaces.

We are really pleased to have worked on a launch that will help people use pharmacy and surgery.

We are currently working to make it available to even more users with more language interfaces.

Visit Google’s accredited pharmacy.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many businesses rely entirely on just how freakin’ stupid people are. An intelligent person would never fall for this; and yet, people make money.

(via The Raw Feed > Digg)

Add to Del.icio.us | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

One thing I’ve enjoyed recently is just reading feeds and staying away from the Memetrackers (although, I’ll be honest, I’ve peeked at Memeorandum a few times, it’s a very hard addiction to break).

Link: Overwhelmed with pitches, Dave, say it isn’t so!

Pete Cashmore also says that he has “eased off on [his] Memeorandum usage.”

There’s a growing trend in the blogosphere – a detection of indignance towards the meme. Scoble and Pete aren’t the only ones who are paying less attention to it. I’ve largely been off it and others like it for quite some time. And it’s not because the technology is bad. It’s not. In fact, generic’ memetrackers are quite useful – for a certain audience and in certain cases.

Scoble and Pete, as well as others like them don’t need a tech snapshot of the blogosphere. Their OPML files are already fully developed. Like me, I’m sure that they find the same content and more in their RSS readers without even checking the tech memetrackers. The result is that the memetrackers just become noise.

As experts’, as knowledgeable blog readers, these guys and others aren’t looking for the topics that everyone else is reading or blogging about. They’d rather be creating the headlines themselves or reading posts that no one else is. That’s why they and others like them are rejecting generic’ memetrackers.

Two components make the generic memetracker somewhat less useful: 1) Expertise in a particular area. 2) Knowing the sources (blogs or otherwise) to find content relevant to their area of expertise. Society has a decent number of people who fall into that first category but that doesn’t necessarily hold true in the second case, especially with blogs.

Thus, generic memetrackers have their place. They can reach out to those who want a snapshot of the blogosphere for a predefined space (like politics). They can teach potential bloggers about the content and style that seems to resonate in the blogosphere. They can introduce non-blogosphere experts (within a limited number of verticals) to the sources they might want to track.

For experts who know the blogosphere, personalized memetrackers like Findory or Megite make much more sense. The expert gets a view into the memes of their selected sources. Information is filtered but the filtering that takes place is personalized. That’s why I believe personalization will win out in the long term, especially once blogs truly become part of the media mix. What I mean there is that in the coming months and years, people will more easily be able to find blogs on the topics they like.

I think others might agree with my premise about personalization – especially since Fox Interactive just acquired NewRoo – a vertical personalized memetracker that allows users to track news items of their choice. To my knowledge, it is the first memetracker (personalized or generic) to be acquired to date.

Reader Comments…

Ken Yarmosh is a consultant who helps organizations get the most out of their technology investments. He works with technology users and creators across various industries, focusing on technology education and strategy. With over 7 years IT experience, Ken has worked with small businesses, non-profits, federal agencies, and multi-million dollar companies.

His online efforts include acting as the Editor for the Corante Technology Hub and authoring the TECHNOSIGHT blog.

More recently he wrote:

One thing I’ve enjoyed recently is just reading feeds and staying away from the Memetrackers (although, I’ll be honest, I’ve peeked at Memeorandum a few times, it’s a very hard addiction to break).

Pete Cashmore also says that he has “eased off on [his] Memeorandum usage.”

There’s a growing trend in the blogosphere – a detection of indignance towards the meme. Scoble and Pete aren’t the only ones who are paying less attention to it. I’ve largely been off it and others like it for quite some time. And it’s not because the technology is bad. It’s not. In fact, generic’ memetrackers are quite useful – for a certain audience and in certain cases.

Scoble and Pete, as well as others like them don’t need a tech snapshot of the blogosphere. Their OPML files are already fully developed. Like me, I’m sure that they find the same content and more in their RSS readers without even checking the tech memetrackers. The result is that the memetrackers just become noise.

As experts’, as knowledgeable blog readers, these guys and others aren’t looking for the topics that everyone else is reading or blogging about. They’d rather be creating the headlines themselves or reading posts that no one else is. That’s why they and others like them are rejecting generic’ memetrackers.

Two components make the generic memetracker somewhat less useful: 1) Expertise in a particular area. 2) Knowing the sources (blogs or otherwise) to find content relevant to their area of expertise. Society has a decent number of people who fall into that first category but that doesn’t necessarily hold true in the second case, especially with blogs.

Thus, generic memetrackers have their place. They can reach out to those who want a snapshot of the blogosphere for a predefined space (like politics). They can teach potential bloggers about the content and style that seems to resonate in the blogosphere. They can introduce non-blogosphere experts (within a limited number of verticals) to the sources they might want to track.

For experts who know the blogosphere, personalized memetrackers like Findory or Megite make much more sense. The expert gets a view into the memes of their selected sources. Information is filtered but the filtering that takes place is personalized. That’s why I believe personalization will win out in the long term, especially once blogs truly become part of the media mix. What I mean there is that in the coming months and years, people will more easily be able to find blogs on the topics they like.

I think others might agree with my premise about personalization – especially since Fox Interactive just acquired NewRoo – a vertical personalized memetracker that allows users to track news items of their choice. To my knowledge, it is the first memetracker (personalized or generic) to be acquired to date.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

Technorati:

Ken Yarmosh is a consultant who helps organizations get the most out of their technology investments. He works with technology users and creators across various industries, focusing on technology education and strategy. With over 7 years IT experience, Ken has worked with small businesses, non-profits, federal agencies, and multi-million dollar companies.

His online efforts include acting as the Editor for the Corante Technology Hub and authoring the TECHNOSIGHT blog.

In a decision issued yesterday, Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise of the U.S. District Court of New Jersey ordered Teva and Ranbaxy to immediately stop marketing the product which Teva had launched in December 2004 under its own label as part of an agreement with Ranbaxy.

The Court held that Pfizer was likely to prevail in its patent infringement suit filed on January 28, 2005 against Teva and Ranbaxy, and ordered the preliminary injunction to prevent further sales of the Teva-marketed product while Pfizer seeks a permanent injunction. The judge has also denied Ranbaxy’s and Teva’s request to stay the injunction.

As a result of the ruling, Pfizer will seek damages resulting from lost sales.

WebProNews | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.

This will make Novartis the largest maker of generic medecines in the world.

According to a Bloomberg News article,

“Novartis, Europe’s fourth-biggest pharmaceutical company, will pay 5.65 billion euros ($7.4 billion) for closely held Hexal and a 67.7 percent stake in Eon. The Basel, Switzerland-based company will start a tender offer to acquire the rest of Eon for $31 a share, or about $1 billion.

Chief Executive Daniel Vasella is seeking 10 percent of the generics market with the purchase, Novartis’ biggest since the firm was created in a 1996 merger, he said. Novartis’ Sandoz generics unit, its slowest-growing division last year, will surpass Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in a market Vasella expects to grow to $100 billion in sales by 2010.”

“The generics area was a problem for Novartis, and with this acquisition they have resolved that problem with a quantum leap,” said Swisscanto Asset Management portfolio manager Dieter Winet.

WebProNews | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.

Definitive agreements have been signed to acquire 100% of Hexal AG, the privately-held No. 2 generics company in Germany with a strong European presence, and a 67.7% stake (65.4% fully diluted) in Eon Labs, a fast-growing U.S. generics company that has a strategic partnership with Hexal AG, for a total of EUR 5.65 billion in cash. In addition, pursuant to a merger agreement unanimously approved by the Eon Board of Directors and the Special Committee of independent directors of the Eon Board, Novartis will launch a tender offer to acquire the remaining 31.9 million fully diluted shares (34.6%) in Eon Labs for USD 31.00 per share.

Sandoz, after the closing of these transactions, will be the global leader in generics with combined pro forma 2004 sales of USD 5.1 billion, a portfolio of over 600 active ingredients in more than 5,000 dosage forms and more than 20,000 employees.

“Generic drugs are crucial to meeting the health-care needs of patients in industrialized and developing countries as cost pressures continue to mount due to the ever-increasing demand of an aging population. As such, generic medicines are a critical complement to innovative medicines, freeing up resources and also providing an indirect stimulus to continued innovation. The acquisitions of Hexal AG and Eon Labs will significantly strengthen our geographic presence and product portfolio, our development and registration capabilities, and increase our scale to rapidly bring a broad array of generic products to patients. These acquisitions expand our medicine-based business portfolio, providing synergies with our branded medicines in dealing with large purchasers and in manufacturing. They underscore our commitment to being the industry leader in offering innovative prescription medicines, high-quality generics and self-medication products,” said Dr. Daniel Vasella, Chairman and CEO of Novartis.

Annual cost synergies totaling USD 200 million are anticipated within three years after closing, with 50% in the first 18 months. Synergies will be driven mainly by savings in production, especially in sourcing, lower processing costs and reduced Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) through vertical integration; Marketing & Sales through consolidation of back-office operations and distribution; Development through the streamlining of the project portfolio and less need for in-licensed products; and General & Administrative expenses due to the consolidation of administration and management structures. The strong growth outlook for Sandoz, which will create jobs, is expected to partially compensate for necessary reductions in the workforce.

Dr. Andreas Rummelt, CEO of Sandoz, commented, “The combination of Sandoz with Hexal and Eon Labs offers an outstanding opportunity to capitalize on the unique strengths of each company. Together, we will create a highly competitive leader with a comprehensive global presence and the expertise necessary for success in the rapidly changing generics market.”

WebProNews | Breaking eBusiness News
Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.