Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10-year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing Web search platforms. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ search advertisers.

Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.

Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force. Under the agreement, Yahoo! will innovate and ‘own’ the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology. Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites. Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.

Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88 per cent of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first five years of the agreement. Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.

The agreement does not cover each company’s Web properties and products, e-mail, instant messaging, display advertising, or any other aspect of the companies’ businesses. In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously.

At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million.

The transaction will be subject to regulatory review. The companies expect the deal to close in early 2010.

But Yotify offers much more than the search giants’ current alert tools, argues Ron Bouganim, CEO and cofounder of Branchnext, the San Francisco startup behind Yotify. Those alert tools, Bouganim says, are merely an afterthought for these huge companies, and they do not take into account important Web 2.0 developments, such as social networking.

“We want to create a richer experience,” Bouganim says.

When users sign up for an account, they are given a personal profile page that lists, stores, and displays what they’ve searched for and where. That information can be made public as well, so that friends can share the results and help refine the search. This could be particularly useful for group projects such as apartment hunting with roommates, for example.

Meanwhile, Yotify is making it a point to closely integrate with the major social-networking sites, most notably Facebook and LinkedIn. “If people want to search through Facebook using our technology, we want to let them do it,” claims Bouganim.

Another distinguishing characteristic of Yotify versus Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts is its focus on shopping. Whereas Google Alerts is primarily concerned with retrieving news and other hard information, Yotify is setting up as more of a sales tool for its partner sites, which include general retailers such as Shopping.com as well as a host of niche players.

In this respect, Yotify does go above and beyond what Google Alerts currently provides. Say a user wants to buy a black futon, for example. The important aspect of the search is not that the user obtain the futon immediately, but that it’s a certain price. Yotify will continually monitor its partner sites, then notify the user when a black futon is available at that particular price.

The main problem with Yotify is that, as of now, it only scans a small portion of the Web: users can only search among Yotify’s partner sites. While the search engine has partnered with many key websites, such as Craigslist, the New York Times, and eBay, it certainly does not have the breadth of a search giant such as Google or Yahoo.

Santabanta ads on Guruji's Ad Network

Well, yes Guruji is out with their own version of Adsense.

Now Guruji’s entrance in Advertisement is good, but it needs to be aggressive with the marketing strategy with Big fishes already in the market – Google & Yahoo! with their large client base will be a big competition to beat.I know publisher’s like me, must be eagerly waiting to get their hands on Guruji advertisement system. Well the bad news is Guruji’s Ad System is not open to everyone, you need to submit your website and then they will decide weather to give it to you or not!

Guruji’s is being considered as the “Google search for India”. Guruji’s USP in the market has been its target audience – the Indian market and It’s Music Search, that let’s its users listen to songs directly from various specific indexed websites.

Yahoo! web analytics is the result of acquisition of Tensa Kft., commonly known as IndexTools done in April 2008. Yahoo! needs metrics and campaign analysis tools for its Advertisement offering. Well what Yahoo! promises to give is “raw data” that means that you would be able to apply all kinds of analytics and get the answers what you want. Yahoo! also promises to give a nice drag-and-drop UI and I think that has always been a part of yahoo startegy to give glossy interfaces to customers, sometimes I feel they become to heavy on the browsers/clients/bandwidth. I personally like the Google’s UI – plain, clean and simple.

Currently the service is available to Yahoo’s small-business customers who have their sites hosted and advertisement partners, Yahoo! promises to deliver the tool by 2009 to the community at large. Till then keep guessing what’s in store for you?

Ever dream of running hundreds of thousands of blogs with a single install of WordPress?

WordPress MU, or multi-user, is designed to do exactly that. It is most famously used for WordPress.com where it serves tens of millions of hits on hundreds of thousands of blogs each day.

Who is WordPress MU ideal for?

• Newspapers and magazines, like Le Monde.
• Universities, like Harvard.
• Blog networks
• Niche-specific blog hosts, like Edublogs

This is what the wordpress mu website saying. Well If you are a professional web site developer or you are an organization looking forward to provide blogging platform to your users – wordpress mu is the ideal application for you guys!

• It’s free – Open Source (so no need of financial woes)
• A simple installation can support 10-20 thousand websites blogs (wordpress.com is running 2.3 million)
• Unlimited Blogs.. Unlimited authors
• Plugin.. Themes.. Support

Well what more could you ask for. A scenario that is self defining. A World renowed blogging platform that won’t cost you a thing!

Enjoy!

Yahoo! February Error!

So, you see It’s January, February March and March and..so on! See it for your self on Yahoo! Shine.