Tuesday December 9

• Facebook may finally be getting serious about search - launches personalized keyword search today: Two years after debuting semantic “My friends who…” search for people, places, and photos on the web, Graph Search is rolling out on iOS in the US along with a new keyword search option for dredging up old News Feed posts by friends. Product manager Rousseau Kazi tells me Facebook’s personalized search results are focused first on helping people rediscover thoughts, experiences, and memories they saw in feed. Still, queries for “dentist” or “burrito” could surface recommendations from friends that compete with Google results. Meanwhile, a search for “Michael Brown” or “101 traffic” could surface a feed of recent mentions or news articles by friends, similar to Twitter. There will be no ads on Facebook’s mobile search or any new keyword ads. But since keywords can carry lucrative purchase intent, I’d bet Facebook experiments with ads here eventually to see if they could become real revenue generators. Businesses would surely be willing to pay to insert themselves into results for “restaurant” or “lawyer”.

• Chinese provider of free public wifi in exchange for ads gets $49M investment from Tencent, Dianpin: WiWide, a Chinese startup that provides public wifi networks to stores and restaurants, has received an RMB 300 million (US$49 million) series C funding round from Tencent and Dianping, according to TechNode. Over 500 domestic and international franchises use WiWide in China, including Starbucks, Burger King, and several airports. Its advertising clients include Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Nokia, Lenovo, and HTC, whose ads get pushed to customers once they connect. Altogether, the company runs over 30,000 hotspots. WiWide offers an end-to-end solution, meaning it provides the routers and other hardware, network architecture, professional installation, and a dashboard application for businesses to keep track of connected customers.

• A respected commentator asks - How many people really care about Google Services? "I ask these questions because when looking at the future of Android and of Google, Gmail, maps, calendar, Google Now and all the other Google Services come up a lot. They come up both as indicators of Google's strength and as levers for Google to retain power of Android OEMs, since it can withhold these services from a device more or less at will. I, and the kind of people who spend time thinking about these issues, tend to assume that, well, maps and calendars and email and so on are very important, because we use them all day, and that the tight integration of Google services is a good reason to buy an Android phone and their absence would make it unsalable. What I wonder, then, is how much one can say that these Google services are very broad but very shallow. They address a need that a small number of people feel very deeply but that many more people may feel only occasionally, if ever. We know, for example, that the typical Gmail user gets five emails a day, 'mostly commercial'. How committed are they to Google? The obvious exception here is an app store - but this is one area where it might be possible to make an alternative without having Google's vast machine learning engine as a back-end - Amazon has tried, and in China (where Google is effectively absent) there are at least half a dozen."

• Creative agencies maybe feeling the squeeze as brands opt for web video shops to "just get stuff done": Increasingly, marketers are going directly to online production houses to produce Web video content. "The Internet has changed everything in terms of how consumers find, curate and watch branded content, and this is putting tremendous pressure on traditional ad agencies," noted ShareAbility CEO Tim Staples. "Succeeding at YouTube requires an expertise that most general ad agencies don’t have, and the smart ones are not willing to risk a $50 million account for a $500,000 piece of content." Typically, these simple concept ideas are not related to a broader campaign, meaning they don’t need the full strategy and cost of hiring a traditional agency, explained Altimeter analyst Rebecca Lieb. As an added bonus, digital studios are adept in turning things around quickly and know what’s viral. "It's about hiring execution," she said. "Agencies do a lot of strategy and ideation, which is sometimes not what you need. Sometimes, you just need to get stuff done."

• Banned in Delhi, sued 4 days after launch by the city of Portland, Uber fights on: [Delhi] Delhi Police investigators have been scathing in describing their dealings with Uber. Mr. Verma said he was unable to find any contact number or email address for Uber on its web pages and finally located its headquarters by booking an Uber cab and asking to be taken to the company's head office, which turned out to be several rooms in a hotel. He said he was not able to get any information about Friday's bookings for five hours because the database was located in New York. Mr. Verma also said that Uber had failed to demand that Mr. Yadav show a badge, which can only be acquired by submitting to a criminal background check. He said Uber had registered Mr. Yadav under an inaccurate residential address, had not registered his vehicle as a cab, and had not installed a global positioning system in the vehicle, which is mandatory for commercial taxis. Uber, which has been valued by investors at more than $40 billion, is running into similar problems in cities in other countries. A Dutch court on Monday prohibited the UberPop service, which links clients with drivers who do not have professional licenses, from operating in the Netherlands. The UberPop service has been banned in the German cities of Berlin and Hamburg, and London's main taxi association has brought lawsuits against Uber and a number of its drivers. Lawmakers in Thailand and Vietnam have banned the service, and the city government in Seoul has said it plans to do the same. Uber just launched in Portland on Friday, but the City’s Transportation Bureau has already sued, alleging Uber violates licensing laws