A few days after the launching of Powerset, the semantic search engine for Wikipedia (but not only) we interviewed Lorenzo Thione, co-founder and product architect of Powerset, the Californian company which has achieved this important technological innovation in the field of Semantic Search Engines.

Before going into the  interview in which Lorenzo Thione explains in detail the work behind Powerset, how it runs and how it can improve the experience of online search users, I would like to briefly introduce his compelling career,  for  very specific reasons.

First of all, Lorenzo Thione, as you can guess from the name, is Italian and therefore doubly deserves our attention, because it shows what our compatriots

The time is almost here: in just a few days Qbr will become Ciao People.

What are we doing during the anxious wait?  Letting our community know about this change, or at least making them aware that something is about to happen.

And we’ve decided to do so in a unique way: Starting from today,  on www.qbr.it, every subscribor will be able to  to watch a short video that anticipates “the disappearance of Qbr. A video   created by “the jackall”, a young group of neapolitans, best known on the web for their parodies of famous movies. The intriguing and  exciting video  mimics Hollywood horror film previews.

Qbr is about to change its identity

Qbr.it changes. In form and in substance. Together with a new platform that will give our users new and more entertaining  features, the social network gets a new name and logo, specially designed for us by Sergio Esposito, art director of Nascar (the  Neapolitan Communication Company than ran the portal until 2007) and of infamous creativity.
It is in this context that Ciao People arises, the new identity of a community that already exists but will live through  extraordinary changes that make it more appealing, comfortable, and most of all bigger and more engaging.
We chose a name that was able to represent  the typical values that emphasize the concept of social network (socializing, friendship, community)

How do you conquer the 2.0 generation? This is the challenge that the team of editors of Qbr magazine face daily with appealing new objectives and proposals. Understanding  how to reach the  2.0 generation, how to interact with them and get their  interest is not an easy task, because their world is always suspended between the virtual and reality, varied and therefore complicated.

The great challenge that my colleagues and I tackle continuously, is to get  the community  involved with the contents of the Qbr magazine. The so called 2.0 generation is a target  of 15-30 year olds who live on the edge of both reality and the virtual world, and therefore represent a 

Web advertising and viral marketing: this is “MyBid on Qbr.” Four weeks of promotional campaigning on qbr.it, ur most successful social network. Objective: To launch through an exclusive use of the platform the new e-auction site.

On April 20th, Qbr.it launches ” Asta da Urlo“, a traditional web advertising stunt but technically designed to reach the hearts of the young men and women of Qbr, so absolutely unique. On pop ups and banners, in fact, appear zanzarina and lucamorris, two of the very first Qbr users and certainly the best known and most loved. Two young and fresh faces that identify our community, appealing to users with an amusing outlook and

Thanks to blogs and social networking, Web 2.0 has made a two-fold transformation: not only has it changed the relationship between the media and the public which went from being  mere users to  active contributers but also,  it has allowed companies to have a more direct approach with customers. The newest frontier of marketing, conversational marketing represents the right tool for companies to take advantage of the “social” characteristics of the web and start a dialogue with consumers. The interview with Lois Kelly, author of the book “Beyond Buzz… The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” enlightens us on the enormous opportunities that conversational marketing offers companies allowing them to speak with

The most recent one was Ethan Beard. The others are Sheryl Sandberg, Justin Rosenstein, Gideon and Benjamin Yu Ling. The Director of the Department Social Media is the latest illustrious ex employee  of Google now sitting behind a Facebook desk.
 
Five super managers, an unknown number of employees and a single action: bid farewell to the Mountain View Company and a embark on brand new start at the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg.

The situation  appears awkward  and consistent and some are talking   about Google  suffering from a ” Facebook problem“. Ironically, a few years ago Google itself had been the protagonist of a similar ordeal, but on the opposite side,

A large scale diffusion of search engines, essential tools for surfing the Internet, makes SEO (search engine optimization) a core activity for the growth of any web business.
In view of this simple observation the Qbr.it staff has assessed SEO activities as  a concrete opportunity to expand our community.
However, it is no secret that the engine behind just one plain white page containing a “text box”, a “search” bottom and the word GOOGLE, is anything but simple.
 Each individual research, even the most trivial request for information, is backed by  complex mechanisms that allow to retrieve almost instantly  a list (SERP), that may even  contain millions of results,  ordered on the basis of