Michael Arrington wonders about the wisdom of crowds in his reaction post to Facebook changing its redesign because of user backlash. He and other bloggers argue that many great products would never have been built if the designers had asked for customer input. Robert Scoble, for one, argues that a Porsche would be a Volvo if the company let its buyers decide the features. Says Arrington: "The bottom line is, when you listen to your users, you get vanilla. Feature creep. Boring. It takes a dictator to create the iPhone and change the course of an entire industry. Imagine …

Pixazza, a startup founded by Netscape veterans, wants to turn Web photos into cash. "It might just work," says BusinessWeek's Rob Hof. On Wednesday, the company unveiled a service that lets publishers apply tiny yellow-and-blue price tags to photos on their sites. Mouse over one of the price tags and a box appears that lists the product, like a coat or a pair of shoes, along with the price and the retailers that offer the product. Click on the box and you head directly to the retailer's site. Pixazza is basically an ad network, albeit a small one at …

Last year, TWiT.tv founder Leo Laporte quit Twitter. Soon, he found that "walking away from a megaphone that big" just wasn't good business, so he begrudgingly returned. "They kind of have you," Laporte tells the Los Angeles Times' David Sarno. "The same way that Facebook has you: because you have to go where the community is." Sarno argues that Twitter, which grew more than 1300% last year, has essentially become its own medium, "taking its place alongside Web pages, e-mail and maybe even television." And while the company may not exactly be Fortune 500 size, "one company shouldn't have a …

A new study from IBM says there's a "growing rift" between advertisers, consumers and content owners, fueled by media companies' struggle with new digital demands from users and advertisers. As such, report author Saul Berman, IBM's global leader for strategy and change consulting services, is calling on content owners to "fundamentally" change the way information is delivered to audiences. He writes: "To succeed -- especially in the current economic environment -- media companies will need to develop a new set of capabilities to support the industry's evolving demands which include micro targeting, real-time ROI measurement and cross-platform integration." Berman cites …

Facebook was forced to respond to widespread criticism over its latest redesign by saying it will make yet more changes in an attempt to appease angry users. As VentureBeat's Eric Eldon points out, the scale of the dissatisfaction with the redesign hasn't been clear, although more than 1 million users have expressed opposition. Facebook has nearly 200 million users worldwide. Yesterday's announcement doesn't mean that Facebook will revert back to the previous design, however. But, as Eldon says, the changes "should make some new features more accessible to most users." Significantly, Faceboook will refine what information appears in users' news …

Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney says that Google is having a weaker first quarter than Wall Street is currently estimating. The Street says Google revs will see a sequential drop of 2%, while Mahaney, following a talk with assorted search marketing execs, pegs the drop at closer to 7%. On hand were David Kidder, CEO of Clickable, Dema Zlotin, SVP of Strategic Services at Covario, Josh Styleman, Managing Partner at Reprise Media, and Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite. According to the execs, Q1 search spending is "materially weaker" than Q4. Mahaney pointed to Covario, in particular, which specializes in technology and …

At a time when marketers are slashing budgets and generally losing patience with campaigns that lack direct evidence of success, hopeful ad sellers and buyers are still trying to qualify and quantify "engagement," that nebulous term that can refer to just about anything that isn't a click or an impression. For example, Betawave, a network of virtual world, animation and social networking sites, is looking to strike deals with brands based on how much attention its publishers generate, rather than the number of impressions. "It's like going to a 3-D movie without the glasses," Matt Freeman, CEO of Betawave, tells …

Is imitation really the highest form of flattery? If so, Facebook and Twitter should feel honored (not threatened) that aging Web giants Yahoo and AOL are preparing news feed offerings for some of their more popular Web services. For those unfamiliar with the surging phenomenon, news feeds, also called "life streaming" services, allow users to broadcast their daily lives via status updates. According to GigaOm's Om Malik, Yahoo is working a life-streaming product called Yahoo Updates, while AOL is working on a product called "Site Social." However, unlike Facebook and Twitter, Yahoo is planning to integrate the new tools with …

Interestingly, Twitter's first real foray into advertising comes by way of Microsoft. But don't panic, says Peter Kafka: "You won't be getting come-ons for Vista in your Twitterstream" or anything like that -- the new Microsoft ad buy is relatively mild stuff. Via Federated Media, John Battelle's conversational marketing company, the software giant is sponsoring a new product called ExecTweets, which is basically a page that collects tweets from various noteworthy executives. Twitter gets an undisclosed payment for Microsoft's sponsorship and for promoting the site on its service. According to Kafka, this is the first of many programs FM will …