For a bit of background first, Dan Webb, Engineering Manager at Twitter, explains that the last major update to Twitter back in 2010 pushed all of the rendering onto the user’s browser. It helped speed along some processes, but there are some things that only a server can accomplish. That’s why the new Twitter is moving rendering back to the server. The most immediate change is that initial page load times should be one-fifth of what they were.

Sure, Twitter is faster now, but that can’t be the only change, right? Of course not. Webb says that the new Twitter now runs on a new modular JavaScript application that will allow them to easily develop and add new features to Twitter. It also lets them take advantage of the explosive growth that we’re seeing in Web applications thanks to HTML5.

There’s more work going on under the hood over at Twitter besides performance upgrades and new JavaScript applications. You may have noticed that Tweet permalink pages no longer have the hashbang. The hashbang, which you may recognize as this little guy (#!), was a cornerstone of Tweet permalink pages everywhere. Turns out, however, that getting ride of the little rascal actually helped improve page-load speed.

The team at Twitter also looked at what they call “time to first Tweet.” This is a measure of time that looks at how long it takes from clicking a link to viewing the first Tweet on a user’s timeline. They found that people weren’t seeing anything until the JavaScript was downloaded and installed. That caused a problem for older machines and older browsers. Instead of fixing JavaScript, they just got rid of it. The page will now load all the way and then begin executing JavaScript well after the user has already seen the first Tweet.

Speaking of JavaScript, Twitter has completely overhauled how it executes its code. First they minimized the amount of JavaScript that was actually being used. They found that the page was loading code that it didn’t really need which only served to slow everything down. Now Twitter only loads up the code that it needs when it needs it dramatically decreasing the time it takes to load hilarious Twitter trends.

Twitter will continue working on improvements to make the site faster in the coming months. It’s an exciting time for Twitter from both a user and developer point of view. The user gets the increased speed and developers get to see some exciting work from one of the biggest friends of the open source community.

Take any claims by anyone promoting a new product with a grain of salt, but a new energy shot called “GungHo” promises that it’ll give you “faster reaction, no distractions.” It is being marketed as an alternative to other energy drinks like RedBull and 5-Hour Energy, as GungHo claims that they will produce that “crash and jitters” response after a few hours of gameplay. And who need their hands shaking when they have a n00b in their sights, right?

GungHo has a former Harvard professor on board, who said,

“GungHo is the only energy shot or drink that contains natural ingredients at proven effective doses to improve focus and concentration. Unlike other energy products that deal with short-term energy and no lasting impact on brain energy, GungHo will actually increase levels of critical neurotransmitters in the brain over time.”

Here’s how GungHo could turn you into a ninja. A snarky Ninja who isn’t a big fan of Ninja Gaiden III, apparently:

GungHo comes to you from Salt Lake City, and their list of claims are an “increase in focus, concentration, memory storage, and memory recall, while avoiding the harsh rush, jitters, and crash common with other energy products.”

According to site’s FAQ, GungHo takers could experience a loss of appetite and a period of hot flush, similar with other energy drinks.

One guy, indentified as a “professional gamer” had this to say:

“GungHo eliminates the delay between my wrist and my brain. Any FPS gamer knows keeping your cool and controlling your reactions is imperative. GungHo not only helps me plan my course of action but ups my reaction time exponentially.”

Is this the real deal? An energy drink specifically made for gamers? Any gamers out there have experience with various types of energy drinks? Let us know in the comments

First:

Your starting annual base salary will be at the rate of one million dollars ($1,000,000) per annum, less applicable taxes and withholdings…You will also be eligible to receive an annual target bonus of two hundred percent (200%) of your annual Base Salary…

My reaction? $1 million–maybe 2–to take over a company that is arguably in the sorriest state of its entire existence? I’d want at least $10 million on the table before I’d consider putting my good name alongside that mess.

Then I read:

Bartz, 60, could supplement her salary with a cash bonus up to $4 million, depending on Yahoo’s financial performance. She also is guaranteed a 2009 payment of $2.5 million in cash and $7.5 million in Yahoo stock…None of Bartz’s stock options will vest unless she can increase Yahoo’s stock price by at least 50 percent above the exercise price of her options.

All told, Bartz could earn a whopping $19 million, if she can come in and right the ship. This tells me two things.

1. The Yahoo board is smart enough to offer a package that only really rewards if Bartz excels as CEO.
2. Bartz is ultra confident that she can get Yahoo on track and its stock price back closer to $20.

Bartz may not be a big name–at least "not round these parts"–but clearly the signs are good that Yahoo’s not out for the count!

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In the United States, we have heard more murmurings of a shift away from cost per click to a more performance-oriented advertising approach. Such a move makes logical sense; paying for a conversion seems more reasonable than dishing out cash for clicks.

Advertisers could be thinking the same thing, at least in the US. Across the Atlantic, the idea of cost per action (CPA) exists more as a blade of newly sprouted grass than a deep-rooted tree. In our interview with AzoogleAds CMO Mike Sprouse, he noted gaining a foothold in Europe also involves some education for the publishers and advertisers they seek.

It’s a little bit of the classic chicken and egg question. Sprouse said by partnering initially with firms in Europe, Azoogle can work on both parts of the equation at once. One partnership connected Azoogle with AdsMarket, itself a partner of advertising giant McCann Erickson.

Europe holds appeal for a simple reason. They have ad growth to pursue, at a rate that is moving faster than the US market.

A weaker dollar likely makes the prospect of partnering and building Azoogle’s brand and advertiser/publisher base in the Euro area a compelling prospect. Sprouse said the CPA model is “poised for growth across Europe.” If Azoogle can convince its targeted customers of the joys of performance marketing, they might enjoy a portion of that growth as well.

Apparently, the staff in Yaho’s European division have been told to get their act together else the branch will shut down by 2008 Quarter 1. Yahoo! has already said that it might take up "strategic options", which includes a possible sale, for Kelkoo, the comparison shopping service it bought three years ago.

Toby Coppel, the new head Yahoo’s European business said, "If you make the content more relevant, people will come. If you make a great product, they will come." Mr Coppel said Yahoo’s problems in Europe stemmed from a historical lack of focus on the region. He admits, for example, that Yahoo has not always used its most advanced technology in Europe. "In rushing out to market, we built a lot of applications that didn’t speak to each other," he said. "We didn’t have the same resources. We were managing a larger number of legacy products with fewer people than in the States."

Yahoo’s sites across Europe include services such as greeting cards, horoscopes, and property, car and holiday listings.

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Why wouldn’t Microsoft take a stake in a fast-growing social network?

• 1. It gets to keep Google out, so that’s good.
• 2. It gets to serve ads to those millions of devoted users who check their Facebook every five minutes.
• 3. It has effectively bought a call option on the future of the company.

It’s not like Microsoft has to come up with the $15-billion. All it has to do is structure a deal that is worth $250-million or so, complete with performance clauses and so forth, and it gets a piece of something that could be worth substantially more at some point (nice to see that Jon Fine of BusinessWeek agrees with me). Not to hype the Google comparison, since they are completely different animals, but wouldn’t you have bought a small percentage of Google if you had had the chance, regardless of the implied valuation?

Anyway, the bottom line is that it’s only a 1.6-per-cent stake. And it looks like this face really is worth $15-billion after all. So anyone want to take bets on how long it will be until Mark Zuckerberg decides to buy a jumbo-jet party plane just like the Google boys? I guess it’s a good thing Mark turned down Yahoo’s $1-billion takeover last year.

Further reading:

– Mike Arrington has been live-blogging the conference call.

– Silicon Alley Insider did too, by way of writer Peter Kafka.

– Some analysis from Ashkan Karbasfrooshan at WatchMojo.

– John Paczkowski at All Things D leads with the Ballmer quote about Facebook being, well… no big deal.

– Rafat at PaidContent says there’s still room for others to invest.

– Erick Schonfeld says Facebook took the path of least resistance.

– Rob Enderle tells the NYT “this was almost personal.”

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The Spartan Internet Political Performance (SIPP) Index employs 650 quantitative factors focused on finding out the level of interest a candidate is generating online. Each factor comes from numeric values on the Internet such as social network outreach, Web site traffic, blog presence and search engine utilization. The score for each candidate indicates their overall ability to reach people online and connect on issues.

"This can be compared to counting the number of digital yard signs and bumper stickers posted for each candidate on the Web," said Ryan Vartoogian, President of Spartan Internet Consulting.

The index was created because of the growing influence of the Internet in the political process. According to a July study from iCrossing.com, 42 percent of voters will turn to the Internet for information on the 2008 presidential candidates.

"In the 2008 presidential election and beyond, the Internet will play a dramatic role in shaping the decision support mechanism for voters," said Vartoogian

Weekly updates of the index will be published every Thursday online, with charts comparing the position of each candidate.

On the positive side, broad matching means that ads will run for variations of your keywords without the need to specify what all these variations might be. So in the example given in the adwords help file, the keyword web hosting might trigger ads for the search phrases web host or web hosting company.

However broad matching incorporates expanded matching so not only will ads show for variations in word order, and queries with additional words to the keywords, but ads will potentially show for synonyms and other related variations.

This might not be what you want and there may be times when the expanded matching can be much broader than you might expect. In a campaign I recently set up, a broad match on a generic product name triggered ads for search queries for a manufacturer name, very specific model numbers (not relevant to my client) and other products sold by the manufacturer.

There are two main ways to deal with it.

1. Build up a list of negative keywords and add them to the campaign

• use the keyword tools (particularly the adwords keyword tool as this will indicate potential expanded matches); extract the words that are not relevant and including them as negatives in the campaign
• run searches and seeing which words and phrases come up in the search listings and ads to uncover potential negatives
• analyse your website logs to extract non-relevant search queries or words that can be input as negatives
• run the new search query performance report to see which search queries triggered ads and what negatives are necessary in the campaign

2. Opt out of expanded match by using phrase and exact matching

By doing this you know when the ads will be triggered and you eliminate the instances of unwanted expanded matching.

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However, at Marketing Pilgrim, Jeremy Luebke informs that Google will officially release the ‘Placement Performance’ report for all its AdWords advertisers as of today.

The press release said:

“In an ongoing effort to provide more transparency to advertisers, Google announced today the availability of a new AdWords report, called a Placement Performance report, which enables advertisers to see the exact sites on the Google content network where their ads appear. Placement Performance reports also provide site-by-site performance metrics – including domain, URL, impression, click, conversion and cost data – as well as aggregated metrics for traffic generated from AdSense for domain sites. With these reports, advertisers have much more visibility into their contextually targeted advertising spend and are able to leverage the information to more effectively optimize their campaigns and meet their objectives. Designed in response to advertisers’ requests, Placement Performance reports offer advertisers both increased transparency and greater control over their contextual advertising, which ultimately leads to more relevant ads for users.”

Simultaneously, if your site has high PPC terms you can anticipate high returns as and when advertisers "you as a good source of traffic".

Google AdWords’ writes, “Now with the Placement Performance report, you can gain greater transparency about your campaigns’ performance on the content network for the first time. This report is intended as a tool for you to make informed decisions on improving your campaign’s return on investment.”

To create a Placement Performance report, follow simple instructions given in the AdWords help center.

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“Lee understands that, at this point in Google China’s progress, Schmidt is concerned about ‘nothing but’ the growing head count,” reports Caijing.com.  “Then follows his second-year question about how much we’ve achieved in R&D development,’ Lee said.  ‘Data on Web page hits is after that.  And probably in our fourth year, we need to talk about our earnings.”

In the meantime, Schmidt was quoted as saying that he’s ninety-five percent satisfied with Google’s employees in China.  Never mind Baidu’s comparatively huge market share, or several embarrassing incidents (four of which Caijing.com outlines); “China is a nation with 5,000-year history.  That could indicate the duration for our patience,” Schmidt maintained.

Still, there are some indications that the CEO isn’t willing to wait forever.  Despite being “very proud of what Kai-fu has done,” he stated, “Google.cn will continue to get better and better – and more quickly.”  Put a little stress on the “more quickly” part of that sentence, and it becomes hard to believe that Schmidt will stand by Lee for too long if this improvement doesn’t take place.

Hat tip to Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped.