Complicating Demand Media, Yahoo!/Associated Content and potentially Aol/Seed’s algorithms and content milling plans, Google has a patent in play to harvest users’ searches for publishers.

Via FT: Google obtained a patent this year for a system that would help it identify “inadequate content” on the internet, based on comparisons of what people search for and what they find, executives who have reviewed the filing, said. The filing said data from the Google system could be sold to online publishers or given away for free[.]

The thrust of new acquisitions has been increasing interest in what many believe is a next wave of tech acquisitions - primarily around cloud computing and mobile, some might argue - yet as this trends, it promotes another wave of utility offerings.

With FourSquare walking away from Yahoo (or the converse), Zynga walking away from Facebook and other start-ups looking at sales instead of IPOs, it appears a good time to look at the big tech players and see where there is complementary utility or opportunity.

I.e., if Cisco can go after ad-based social networks (Eos) and flash video devices (Flip cams) and HP can go after mobile handsets (Palm), what does this portend for other big tech players looking to diversify their tech offerings?

Per GigaOm: Technology companies over the last few years cut costs to the point that they now have cash surpluses — which they haven’t been shy about spending to acquire venture-backed startups. The Wall Street Journal has picked up on this trend with a story this morning that cites data from Venture Source showing that 15 startups were acquired in the last week alone, and another 14 have gone public in the last year.

If the era of select IPOs - with musings on Facebook, Demand Media, Groupon or Zynga - creates volition for a round of quick M&A sales, all the better for the industry. As we’ll report, venture capitalists (like big tech co’s) are feeling the heat of not making investments in new companies over the past two years.

Now that LPs are putting pressure on VCs to show some ROI, it will be interesting to watch the force of M&A that feeds the “vicious capital” cycle.

Venture Capitalists and their LPs will push for a lot of M&A sales which will ultimately feed the bigger tech companies need for snap/strap-on investments and company growth. Consolidation, M&A and diversification will service all parties.  

Back to the basics of the the Ten Spot - quick, relevant New Medici reads with an exact dose of interpretation.

1. For Web’s New Wave, Sharing Details Is the Point - NYT DealBook

The transparency brought about by Google search and Facebook community/beacon/(end of) privacy has created a slew of startups who cater to ripping open the social graph and letting everyone peek in, follow and link to your daily activities and habits.

From the likes of DailyBooth.com, Blippy.com and Groupon.com, the concept of “socially challenging” others to share interests in online creation and consumption is trending. The next logical step will be a return to a new and improved Facebook Beacon that extends the group mentality while providing multi-level marketing incentives to the individuals who create interest in new items, i.e., transactions (think ThisNext.com meets Groupon). This allows group rewards and either revshare or ranking points for the individual curators or arbiters of taste.

Blippy, which opened last fall, was the first site to introduce the notion of publishing credit card and other purchases. Last month it attracted around 125,000 visitors and closed an investment round of $11 million from venture capitalists. It hopes to one day to make money by, among other things, taking a commission when people are inspired to imitate their friends’ purchases posted on the site.

To Silicon Valley’s deep thinkers, this is all part of one big trend: People are becoming more relaxed about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces of information about themselves can result in serendipitous conversations — and little jolts of ego gratification.

2. Mac & the iPad

Steve Jobs defies the odds (recovering Apple), the gods (surviving cancer) and yet his consumer design “sculpting” and management fearlessness are really the two definitions he will be known by. In this above must-read link, an insider opens up about the mindset and fearset of the leading Designer CEO out there.

From secrecy to ordering the best-of-the-brainstorms (in terms of his managed teams), Jobs is building a line of devices that separate the chaos, the noise and the hacks of more open systems to bring its users a little hardware clarity (and style)…  

If the social or virtual goods market is exploding, expect it to also affect content online. Find a way to commoditize virtual content. So forget the Zygna virtual goodsvilles for a second, and start seeing 2010 as the  year of ubiquitous “content farming” - where all of the serious digital publishers start long-term planning. Writers and journalists will be told by their editors to create articles that - unless tabloid topical in nature - hold future or lifetime value. I.e., articles that stand the test of time, they don’t rest after a week, but gain continued readings  culminating in a heady 50,000 and up read count. Writers will be paid on ultimates: initial viewings, repeat viewings, sharing via social outlets,

The value of these lifetime posts? Well, to a Demand Media/Studios, AOL, Mahalo or similar, it’s a matter of quality (and quantity), think of it as quality based on what people are organically searching on Google, and quantity in terms of creating enough of a base of content that the YouTube’s of the world treat you as regulars. As YouTube’s video search is becoming a natural extension of text search, the ability to create posts in text and video is rapidly changing the landscape of content consumption. Users will start with the 10-step best of written articles, then graduate to video tutorials leading eventually to the user referring the post to others, include religious comment reading and the potential original user comment.

Sites like Huffington Post, the Gawker Network and other blog networks (blog nets) have been built on aggregated editorials - e.g., taking original posts from other relatively well funded or traditional media outlets and adding a little personal spin. That approach, while it’s worked out to a recent $300M valuation for Gawker’s templated Movable Type-hacked sites, may be changing as advertisers and publishers start jumping on the long tailed horse.  

Last day of the year, and pulling out those excerpts that have been gathering dust in the draft box. Stay tuned for the New Medici network to go live in Q1 2010, as well as a  breakdown of media companies for last year and going forward into the new year.

via How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions - WSJ.com

It is no secret that the odds against keeping a New Year’s resolution are steep. Only about 19% of people who make them actually stick to their vows for two years, according to research led by John Norcross, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

But those discouraging statistics mask an important truth: The simple act of making a New Year’s resolution sharply improves your chances of accomplishing a positive change—by a factor of 10. Among those people who make resolutions in a typical year, 46% keep them for at least six months. That compares with only 4% of a comparable group of people who wanted to make specific changes and thought about doing so, but stopped short of making an actual resolution, says a 2002 study of 282 people, led by Dr. Norcross and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

via How Google Can Combat Content Farms

• Neutralize the link dilution; A.J. Kohn, who further wrote that “the introduction of SearchWiki, their measurement of short-clicks versus long-clicks, the new domain/brand SERP listing, snippet links, and use of breadcrumbs all point to a gathering movement to help determine quality without such a reliance on an ever diluted link ecosystem.”
• Do a better job ranking authority; for more on this read Clay Shirky’s post on “Algorithmic Authority.”
• Introduce a user rating system; Tony Masinelli.
• Leverage sharing networks to determine where the quality is; Alex Kessinger.