Not too long ago, the infamous Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported a rumor where he stated that Google was ( or maybe still is ) in talks to acquire Twitter. For a starter, it may be worthwhile to revisit his argument as to why Twitter is so valuable to acquire these days :

“More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about it, whether to respond individually (The W Hotel pestered me until I told them to just leave me alone), or simply gather the information to see what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.

And all of it is discoverable at search.twitter.com, the search engine that Twitter acquired last summer.

People searching for news. Brands searching for feedback. That’s valuable stuff.

Twitter knows it, too. They’re going to build their business model on it. Forget small time payments from users for pro accounts and other features, all they have to do is keep growing the base and gather more and more of those emotional grunts. In aggregate it’s extremely valuable. And as Google has shown, search is vastly monetizable – somewhere around 40% of all online advertising revenue goes to ads on search listings today.”

In other words, if left alone, Twitter will surely emerge as the new giant in the search industry, – complete with its abundant advertising dollars. The only question is, can Twitter sustain its current operation and mature to be a major player it seems destined to be ? Financially and technically, maintaining its operation as probably one of the strongest social media today must be a very complicated issue. Yet I don’t want to dwell on that.

What I want to talk about is Google’s take on this issue. If the rumor is true, it seems to me that it signals that they want to be the lone, solitary giant in the search engine realm of business. Not that there is anything wrong about that. We all know that as per today, they are the best in terms of skills and resources to serve the biggest search engine in the world.

What makes it more interesting is that Google actually proceeded to make its move by holding talks and discussions with Twitter before the other giant of the industry, Microsoft. Compared to the non-committal and complacent Microsoft, this implies that they again have a better sense of direction as to where the world Internet trends are shifting. And a good business forecasting ability is a crucial pre-requisite if one is to stand on the shoulder of giants.

It is now fascinating time as we wait in suspense whether Google and Twitter made progress in their discussions. On the one hand, Twitter CEO Evan Williams has already sold a successful product he made in the past to Google ( Blogspot ). On the other hand, there is this antitrust issues that put some constraints, – at least categorically, which dictates that Google should proceed carefully here. Again, Arrington noted about this too.

As we wait on any updates on this matter, I’ll just state that Google is showing that it is still going strong as a major giant here. And mind you, it is not a sleeping giant; but rather a very alert and sensible one.

Online Reputation Management is something you and your company can not do without these days. It’s because the need for brand and reputation management continues to increase in importance as consumer time spent on the social web replaces traditional media. Furthermore, let’s not forget the fact that :

· Customers are online – Customers who find products and services via internet channels have various experiences. Many consumers blog, write reviews, make comments and share opinions on social networks. It’s important to have a good handle on customers that are publishing both negative and positive information so the brand can monitor and engage in the right way.

· Journalists are online – Public and media relations is an effective marketing/communications channel for merchants, networks and in some cases, affiliates. Journalists are increasingly researching stories online and the way companies represent brands can influence whether a particular one is considered for a story or not.

· Competitors are online - Brand monitoring online and within digital media provides companies a real opportunity for competitive research. Discover what other brands are doing to be effective and whether they publish negative information about your brand in order to attract sales from products and services.

However you choose to look at it, it means one thing and one thing only : that the future of your brands are also online. It does not necessarily mean that you will kill your brand if you don’t engage in these activities, – but rather that you may hurt your real-world business if you neglect to nurture your online reputation management. Take some time to study it. As usual, followings are a couple of good articles about it for you to dig further :

· Basics of Online Reputation Management

· PubCon : Online Reputation Management

Introduction :

Lifeware is a post series that will tell you how some certain softwares / applications have changed my life. It was meant to be a regular feature of NET blog, but I still can’t say how regular. I hope you like it !

First of all, some disclaimer :

NET is not affiliated with any of the software / application company. While I am helped by certain features of these programs, in no way I can guarantee that they will give the readers the same results. Always back-up your file before doing major changes to your computer.

If somebody would ask me : What software, – once tried -, has become my first choice in its department ?; – the first answer that comes to my mind would probably be PDF Xchange viewer. An excellent alternative to view PDF files, it was produced by a company called Tracker Software.

I tried it when I got increasingly annoyed by a resource hog that is Acrobat Reader. On the contrary, the Xchange Viewer is so fast that I was almost blinded by the change ( I know, I am exaggerating a bit here ). In fact, when I opened my Task Manager, it only leaves a memory footprint of a mere 3,2 MB ! And that’s when I already keep it running for almost 48 hours, meaning it does not have any apparent memory leak either.

The interface is sleek and nice, as seen in my screenshot of a page with thumbnail view in the left column here :

But what impressed me the most is its set of features. Fully customizable to your heart’s content, it will even allow you to use the commenting features and overwrite the original PDF files, – thus functioning almost as a PDF file writer in itself. Following is a screenshot when I try to made a note :

I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s enough to induce me to switch to it for good. That, and the fact that it regularly updates to the newest version. Oh, it’s not a powerhouse-supermodel as Adobe Acrobat, but for your sweet-girl-next-door, she will maybe change your life as mine.. You can download the software from its site here