TraderWise

When advertising a product, especially an online one, advertising or marketing it usually goes one of two ways; paid or viral. Paid advertising, the more known method, is the one Microsoft is currently using to promote Bing, paying millions of dollars to have advertisements in magazines, on tv, on websites, paying other websites to use its brand, etc. It is a method that can work very well of course, but can prove very costly. The major challenge is having a good enough product for users to end up using it even when the paid promotions cool off.

Microsoft (MSFT) added entertainment oages to Bing to help users watch videos and listen to music
Monster Worldwide (MWW) was raised to Outperform by Oppenheimer
The Knot (KNOT) was raised to “Positive” by Susquehanna
Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC that 160,000 new Android users were added every day

Google’s (GOOG) Youtube will start introducing “skippable” ads later this year
Verizon (VZ) will finally offer the Apple (AAPL) Iphone starting in January
Apple’s (AAPL) Iads service might miss its July 1st deadline to open
CTrip (CTRP) was cut to “Hold” by RBS
Google (GOOG) says it will no longer redirect Google.cn users to its Hong Kong website within a few days

Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google Inc., talks about his role as an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, global advertising spending and the company’s decision to abandon its advertising partnership with Yahoo! Inc.

click for video

00:00 Role as economic, energy adviser to Obama
03:46 Ad spending; abandoned Yahoo deal

Running time 07:47

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The following comment by Joe Weisenthal via Twitter got us thinking about just who is the “smart money” these days.

With the junk bonds rallying, you don’t hear as much about how “smart” the bond market is, and how it leads stocks.  

Pardon the sensational title, but I wanted to take you inside the 30-minute chart on the DIA and the S&P 500, which I will describe as “Trader Hell.”  I’ll also show you the key levels to watch as we near the end of our consolidation and expect a breakout move very soon.

DIA 30-minute chart:

I’ve drawn a bit more than I normally do on this chart so let’s take it step-by-step.

Google (GOOG) acquired social gaming website “Slide” for $228M
Google (GOOG) announced it was putting an end to it’s social experiment “Google Wave”
Apple (AAPL) is rumored to prepare Iphone 5G launch in 2011
Facebook COO said advertisers were spending 10x more than last year
Valueclick (VCLK) acquired Investopedia from Forbes for $42 million

Google vs Microsoft… hundreds and hundreds of stories have been written about this great rivalry between the two giants, the “Good vs Evil” which Google certainly helped promote when it started promoting its “Do no evil” policy. It started out a long time ago when Google was a much smaller company that did not have power nor influence. Google became one of the main institutes to complain of Microsoft’s excessive use of its operating system monopoly and how it was using its power to illegally prevent innovation and take out competition.

Last summer, news broke that Google (GOOG) had complained to the FTC because its “Google Voice” application had been rejected by Apple. Why reject it? There are many reasons. But the main thing is that Google Voice gives users a way to “bypass” many of the advantages of a traditional carrier.