A consumer review site that aggregates opinions about a large range of devices, TestFreaks recently launched their South Africa website.
Developed by Kristofer Arwin, Magnus Wiberg and Martin Alexanderson (founders of PriceRunner.com in 1999), TestFreaks raised $3mn in October 2008 and aims at creating the world’s largest product review database. Both in terms of completeness (number of reviews) and audience. Today they’re present in 27 countries and receive an aggregated traffic that exceeds 4 million monthly users.
One thing that sets TestFreaks apart from our competitors is our global perspective. We are currently present in 13 different languages and markets, and gather information from more than 50 different markets. This makes as unique and has a positive impact on many things.
Although I don’t understand why there’s a need for local reviews other than language constrains (which is not the case with South Africa), TestFreaks is probably going to capitalize on the domain extension that will bring them better search results in local markets.
Was it a good job? Probably, but only time will tell if TestFreaks can compete with the traditional shopping sites that have their own reviews. What do you think?
Google Squared is the latest product to come out of the Google labs. Supposedly threatened by Wolfram Alpha — some sort of a new search engine that parses information in their own databases and offer the exact answer to what is being asked (like “how many km from Jozy to Cape Town”), Google is trying to get to a whole new level with search. Maybe Search 3.0?
Announced at the Searchology summit yesterday, the new service will add an extra layer of semantic search to Google’s research efforts. That means that they’re going to try and gather as much unstructured information as possible about a subject, and then turn it into a nice, structured database, where everything is labeled, stamped and categorized. But to structure the whole web is something unimaginable. Well that’s what they want to do …
Google Squared is going to present you the search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. “So a search for Small Dogs returns results with names, description, size, weight, origin, etc., in columns and rows.”
Will they succeed? Probably! Meanwhile take a look at this amazing video that will show you what a search for “camera” or “rollercoasters” would look like on Google Squared.
The print business is not doing so well and Playboy knows it. For the first quarter of 2009 the “Bunny” reported a $13.7 million loss (includes $8.7 million of “impairment and restructuring charges”) and even after last year’s layoffs, things are not looking well on their part. And given the state of the economy, it could be worse in the near future, right?
But they’re considering radical changes.
Apparently Playboy has a “brilliant” plan to save the print business. How? They’re going to raise prices and reduce the frequency (combine two months into one?) their magazines appear at the news stands.
However what interim CEO Jerome Kern is not considering is that less and less people are reading Playboy. With all the free images and videos you get when browsing the Internet, it’s not worth paying the money, since someone will eventually leak them online. And although the Internet is not doing great either (when it comes to advertising budges for example), Playboy would probably do better by just focusing on their online business.
Anyone to bet how long the print magazine is going to last? [via Folio]
The print business is not doing so well and Playboy knows it. For the first quarter of 2009 the “Bunny” reported a $13.7 million loss (includes $8.7 million of “impairment and restructuring charges”) and even after last year’s layoffs, things are not looking well on their part. And given the state of the economy, it could be worse in the near future, right?
