Bing – Slowly gaining ground

So some of you might have seen the commercials recently for Bing, the search engine formerly known as MSN Live? Hang on, did I say search engine? I meant to say ‘decision engine’. That’s what they call it and want us to think of it as. Kind of reminds me of when Prince changed his name. Regardless, why should we pay attention to Bing as search engine optimizers? You can call us search engine optimists, since we like to hear the positives!

I have been using Google as my go-to search engine for years and that probably won’t change, certainly until Bing can provide as accurate and fast results as Google. These days, we the web user, want to be in control of the experience and drive the narrative. A couple of my favorite sites out there are Amazon and Netflix, because you can control the experience so much. I can add movies or products to wish lists and queues and be provided with a seemingly intelligent website that knows me and my tastes. It’s a back and forth with the site, almost like a video game, with the Nintendo Wii an example of the ultimate extension of user interaction.

The Dark Horse

The cues that I think Microsoft has taken from Google and Yahoo are to find that middle ground between simplicity (Google) and providing easy decisions for you (Yahoo).

Over the last month, the Union Street Media web development team has been hard at work launching a wide variety of sites for new and existing clients.  After putting in hundreds of hours of our time and our clients’ time, we are pleased to add the following sites to our portfolio.

Author Stephen P. Kiernan came to Union Street looking to develop a website for his recent books as well as his B1 Campaign focused on community-based selfless action.  With clean design, a blog with frequent updates, and user-friendly action items, Stephen is set to bring his message of change to a much wider audience.

Longtime USM client Omni Medical Systems needed a new website for their innovative bladder management system, Urincare.  We put together an appealing site with e-commerce functionality so the could continue to grow their business online.

Andy Vota, vice president of Union Street Media

In case any of you missed it, our very own Andy Vota was interviewed on WPTZ channel 5 here at Union Street Media. Burlington Vermont has recently begun the application process to Google’s fiber network pilot program. This network would be ultra high speed, providing bandwidth of up to 1GB/second to homes and businesses.

Andy is quoted as saying “We want to be on the cutting edge of technology in Burlington, and this would be a great opportunity to do that. We want to be associated with a great brand like Google that’s known worldwide as a leader in technology.”

Watch the segment and Andy’s interview here

Go for Bronze!

Pop Quiz: What is the 3rd biggest search engine?

Yahoo, Bing, AOL, MSN, ASK?

None of the above. It’s YouTube.

Ten years ago today, after a long lunch at a cafe in SOHO with my then business partners, I called The Company Corporation in Delaware and officially incorporated a start-up that had launched out of my Middlebury College dorm room the previous fall.

The spring of 2000 were heady times.  Everyone was full of optimism.  The NASDAQ was less then a month away from it’s all time high. Twenty-somethings like me were becoming multi-millionaires overnight on The-Emperor-Has-No-Clothes business models and we were going to be the next ones.  A Doonsbury Cartoon from that spring summed up the times, as one character said to the other “Just finished the business plan.  I’m off to get a Mercedes.  Want one?”

Ten years later, the story didn’t play out that way for CollegeXTRA.com, Inc., but that’s just fine with me.  As a celebration of our tenth birthday, I’d like share a few things I’ve learned along the way, but first, a little history on how I got here.  If you want to fast forward through the “how we got here” part, my next post covers some of the things I’ve learned over the past ten years.

The business you start is not the one you end up in. So how did we go from creating “for students, by students” web sites at college campuses to developing web sites for REALTORS?