I took a look at some of the tasks and they included tasks like rating search results, categorizing web sites, categorizing articles, or even answering questions. Offerpal Tasks are available right now throughout Offerpal’s network of more than 2,000 web sites and applications.

Offerpal Tasks allows online gamers to select from 1000s of what they call “Human Intelligence Tasks”. These are chores you can do whenever it’s convenient. You can then convert what you earn into virtual currency that can be spent in online games and virtual worlds.

Offerpal Tasks are accessible as a tab within the Offerpal I-Frame, next to several other options for earning virtual currency, such as completing targeted advertising offers, filling out online surveys and shopping at brand name retailers. You can browse through the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace and select a task based on the type of work, how long it is estimated to take to complete, and how much it pays. Payment is made after you finish the task and it is authorized by the requester.

Other types of chores that are regularly available through Amazon Mechanical Turk include:

— Tagging photos
— Moderating user generated content
— Editing content
— Data cleansing (cleaning up data)
— Transcribing (like transcribing a video)
— Proofreading internet content

Offerpal Media delivers the highest Revenue Per User for online games and social networks. Offerpal Media combines more than 4,000 surveys, free trials, big brand discounts and other top ad offers with global payment options like credit cards, micro-transactions, mobile billing, offline stored-value cards and more – all in a simple, plug-and-play platform. Monetizing virtual currency couldn’t be any easier.

Offerpal Media is the leader in virtual currency monetization for online games, virtual worlds and social networks. The company’s turnkey payment platform gives consumers the opportunity to earn virtual currency for free by taking part in targeted advertising offers, shopping at big-brand retailers, completing online surveys, watching videos or otherwise engaging with brands. Since its launch in 2007, Offerpal has issued more than 725 billion virtual points to over 160 million consumers across 2,000 publishers. The company is headquartered in Fremont, California. Investors include Interwest Capital, North Bridge Venture Partners, and D. E. Shaw Ventures.

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Marketers online have always wondered: How much would it have cost to attract the same media exposure through traditional advertising? Many of the answers have been released in a new report called The General Sentiment Media Value Report™. This report attempts to calculates the dollar value of the buzz, content, and conversation taking place online.

General Sentiment has published its 4th Quarter 2009 Media Value Report, a breakdown of the top performing brands across news and social media web sites for October through December 2009. Generated using General Sentiment’s core media measurement and sentiment analysis infrastructure, the report ascribes attempts to assign an advertising dollar value to a brand’s media exposure.

General Sentiment uses patent-pending technology based on 5 years of research directed at Stony Brook University. The system automatically determines the volume of mentions and sentiment value regarding a brand, company or person. Blending this data with website traffic and online news readership figures, the MVR determines the purchase-equivalent dollar value of the brand exposure across more than 30 million sources.

The technology sector has dominated once again with significant social media value generated over coverage of new product releases and innovations. One surprise was Ford rising to the seventh position, as the company benefited in the media from strong sales reports while competitors suffered from lingering bankruptcy discussion.

The top two brands in the survey, Microsoft and Google, together generated about $1.3 billion in purchase-equivalent advertising value from news providers and social media. Other notable brands in the top 20 included Citigroup, McDonald’s, Disney, and American Express. Including Ford, those five companies were mentioned frequently and favorably enough to earn the equivalent of more than $1.2 billion in paid advertising.

1. GOOGLE $669,629,305
Google topped the rankings of the Q4 Media Value Report, with multiple products and innovations creating buzz in the marketplace. Google made a big push into the smartphone space with their Droid and Nexus One handsets. The company’s recent acquisition of AdMob, a mobile ad service, further highlights their strategy going forward. The new Chrome OS, which boasts a fast, simple and secure platform, was announced last quarter, generating considerable discussion on Google’s entry into the PC market.

2. MICROSOFT $648,732,726
Microsoft’s success with its earlier launch of Windows 7 continues to create buzz, particularly in News Media. However, the new Google Chrome OS raised a potential threat to Microsoft as it will be a cloud-based operating system. Also creating news exposure was Microsoft’s announcement of its plan to layoff 5,000 employees. On a more positive note, in December, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they finalized their planned Internet search and advertising partnership agreement.

3. SONY $294,308,077
In the 4th Quarter, Sony announced the launch of its new online store, Sony Online Services, which sells videos, books, games and movies to compete against Apple’s iTunes store. However, 3D television has been the big story for Sony as they push these units out the door. This initiative has been put in place to bolster revenue as Sony perceives 3D television will be the answer to their woes.

4. APPLE $293,237,918
This December saw rumors of Apple’s latest high-tech gadget, the tablet computer, planned for a roll out in early 2010. Apple made a further move into the internet music market when it purchased one of the market leaders, Lala. Lala allows users to listen to a song once before purchasing and storing online. In other news, Nokia filed suit against Apple claiming the iPhone infringed on 10 patents held by Nokia.

5. YAHOO $291,766,667
Yahoo announced a world wide shutdown of operations from December 25th to January 1st to find new ways to cut costs in the recession. In early December, Yahoo and Microsoft announced the execution of their partnership plan mentioned above. The move is perceived as a positive one for both companies as Microsoft looks to better compete against Google and Yahoo seeks to cut costs further.

6. INTEL $285,685,964
Intel has been in the news frequently in the past few months, mainly due to the recent antitrust cases that led to a billion dollar settlement with rival chip maker AMD. Intel, which has battled anti-trust cases for years in Asia, Europe, and the State of New York, settled with AMG for $1.25 billion after offering large rebates and co-marketing arrangements to keep partners from switching to competitors.

7. FORD $185,905,704
Ford made the Top 10 list again as it continues to report strong results while other American car producers struggle. Reaction was positive when Ford announced further capital investment in its Brazil operations as it plans to invest $2.3 billion over the next five years to improve factories and increase production in the country. United Auto Workers (UAW) and Ford have been in talks over new contracts.

8. IBM $150,381,178
Blue Insight has been all over the news media in the 4th Quarter as IBM announced the rollout of its internal cloud environment with over a petabyte of information. IBM plans to make this cloud service available to customers as well, dubbed IBM Smart Cloud Analytics. Also of note in Q4, IBM acquired Guardium, a market leader in real-time enterprise database monitoring and protection.

9. CITIGROUP $131,326,011
Citigroup announced a planned $15 billion stock offering to repay its TARP bailout funds and was the last Wall Street giant to finalize the Government repayment. Amidst Citigroup’s plans to raise equity, Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund sold its stake in Citigroup at a $1.1 billion profit. The question remains as to what will happen with the US government’s equity stake in Citigroup.

10. HEWLETT-PACKARD $115,896,188
Rounding out the top 10, Hewlett-Packard made big moves in the M&A market. HP announced the acquisition of 3Com, a provider of competitive network and data center products, for $2.7 billion. Analysts lauded the acquisition as a way for HP to bolster its business in China.

The Fourth Quarter Media Value Report was created using General Sentiment’s proprietary software, which “listens” to more than 30 million online sources. To see the report in its entirety, visit www.generalsentiment.com

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Individuals have various groups of friends or connections on different social networks they use on a regular basis. Being able to see mutual connections across lots of networks steps-up the chance you will find common linkages. MashedIn provides a key value to companies and business professionals. You can visit a business web presence or profile and be able to learn if anyone they know is connected. For the business, it is like obtaining a close introduction to someone who is otherwise completely anonymous. Each connection you uncover offers more context for the visitor.

The MashedIn team overcame significant technological obstructions to make the application. “MashedIn is deployed entirely in the cloud on Google App Engine,” notes CTO Jason Collins. “This framework, combined with MashedIn’s parallel processing extensions, allows us to query social networks in a massively parallel manner and traverse large graphs of social connections. This approach allows for relevant, meaningful social connections and recommendations to be presented to the user almost instantaneously, despite having to gather and process large amounts of data from a number of third-party sources.”

Social Connections, based in Saskatoon, Canada, produces software to leverage social networks and improve trust. The foremost solution released by the company in early 2009 was a reputation management toolkit for small businesses called StepRep. MashedIn is designed to have deeper applicability for people to improve trust and identity through social connections.

Social Connections is a wholly owned subsidiary of VendAsta Technologies, which raised $3 million in the summer of 2008.

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So, if you are unlike me and don’t think you have the ability to just sit down and write blog post after blog post and article after article all day long, then you’re probably going to need some inspiration. Some reason for sitting down and writing, some reason for sitting down and writing a blog post (you do have a blog on your website, right?).

There are a few places where you could get articles for website content:
- hire a writer (good writers are paid well)
- sit down and write it yourself (not good if you’re not a writer)
- search for a keyword at Google, find good website content, and copy/paste it onto your website (not recommended)
- search the news and write about current events and relate them to your industry or topic (good idea, but then again there’s a time issue or maybe you’re not really a writer)
- find something like articles for website content and read up on your subject; get ideas for articles or blog posts that you could write.

Researching your topic thoroughly on the web and then reading articles that have already been written for websites is a good idea; if you don’t have a lot of money to spend right now on website content, you could consider reading through Donna Mahony’s huge list of articles that’s she’s put together. Donna is doing us all a favor by making this content available to all of us on the “honor system” (if you use any of these articles for your own use or if they inspire you to write more content for your own website), then feel free to ‘give back’ to her.

I don’t recommend that you use the “copy paste” method and literally copy these articles and let them get indexed by the search engines. You would need to rewrite them somehow or use snippets of them in order to please the search engines (Google especially doesn’t like duplicate content). So, take a look at this massive collection of ideas for website content and let me know what you think.

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The Bay Area Search Engine Academy will start the SEO training by teaching a six-step process that apparently will help their students get started rapidly without having to know a lot of technological code. “Anyone can learn our six-step process and get results,” Petty adds. The rest of the week is spent learning techniques that can get a business listed on the search engines many different ways.

Each student is encouraged to bring a wireless-enabled laptop and work on either their own Web site or their client’s web site during the search engine optimization training class. All SEO training students are given class time to show problems to the other students, get affirmative feedback, and help the other search engine marketing training students taking the course.

The Bay Area Search Engine Academy is part of the larger Search Engine Academy, started by John Alexander and Robin Nobles many years ago. They teach a standardised curriculum at all their academies around the world.

Once a student has finished the workshop and passed the exam, they receive a certificate showing they have have a thorough understanding in search engine optimization. In addition, pupils can request nationally-recognized continuing education units (CEUs) through the University of Southern Mississippi (an additional $60 fee covers the cost of the paperwork).

Here are the upcoming dates:

* San Ramon – February 22-26, 2010
* San Jose/Santa Clara – March 22-26, 2010
* San Francisco – Coming Spring 2010
* Sacramento – Coming Summer 2010

Interested students can register online at the Bay Area Search Engine Academy’s registration page or contact them directly toll-free at (888) 807-5658.

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comScore, Inc. has recently updated its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the United States search marketplace. In December 2009, Americans conducted 14.7 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.7 percent search market share, virtually unchanged from 65.6 percent in November. Microsoft Sites grabbed 10.7 percent market share, up 0.4 percentage points versus November.

Here’s the actual numbers as released by comScore:

December 2009 U.S. Core Search Rankings

  comScore Core Search Report*
  December 2009 vs. November 2009
  Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
  Source: comScore qSearch
  ------------------------
  Core Search Entity              Share of Searches (%)
  ------------------              ---------------------
                           Nov-09       Dec-09    Point Change
                           ------       ------    ------------
                                                   Dec-09 vs.
                                                      Nov-09
                                                   ----------
  Total Core Search           100.0%       100.0%          N/A
  -----------------           -----        -----           ---
  Google Sites                 65.6%        65.7%          0.1
  ------------                 ----         ----           ---
  Yahoo! Sites                 17.5%        17.3%         -0.2
  ------------                 ----         ----          ----
  Microsoft Sites              10.3%        10.7%          0.4
  ---------------              ----         ----           ---
  Ask Network                   3.8%         3.7%         -0.1
  -----------                   ---          ---          ----
  AOL LLC Network               2.8%         2.6%         -0.2
  ---------------               ---          ---          ----

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

Here’s the comScore comparison between December 2009 and November 2009:

  comScore Core Search Report*
  December 2009 vs. November 2009
  Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
  Source: comScore qSearch
  ------------------------
  Core Search Entity               Search Queries (MM)
  ------------------               -------------------
                                                     Percent
                           Nov-09       Dec-09        Change
                           ------       ------       -------
                                                   Dec-09 vs.
                                                      Nov-09
                                                   ----------
  Total Core Search          14,445       14,737             2%
  -----------------          ------       ------           ---
  Google Sites                9,479        9,688             2%
  ------------                -----        -----           ---
  Yahoo! Sites                2,534        2,544             0%
  ------------                -----        -----           ---
  Microsoft Sites             1,483        1,576             6%
  ---------------             -----        -----           ---
  Ask Network                   548          545            -1%
  -----------                   ---          ---           ---
  AOL LLC                       401          383            -4%
  -------                       ---          ---           ---

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

In the December 2009, Google had the most searches overall, with more than 14.0 billion search queries. Yahoo! had 2.6 billion queries, and Microsoft’s sites, including Bing.com, had 1.6 billion searches. According to comScore, “Bing experienced large growth during the month with a 6-percent increase in query volume to nearly 1.4 billion searches. eBay and Amazon Sites experienced gains in December as retail search activity picked up during the holiday season.”

  comScore Expanded Search Query Report
  December 2009 vs. November 2009
  Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations
  Source: comScore qSearch
  ------------------------
                                        Search Queries (MM)
                                        -------------------
                                                           Percent
                                                           Change
                                                           Dec-09
                                                           vs. Nov-
  Expanded Search Entity           Nov-09       Dec-09       09
  ----------------------           ------       ------     --------
  Total Internet                   22,280       22,741           2%
  --------------                   ------       ------         ---
  Google Sites                     13,751       14,019           2%
  ------------                     ------       ------         ---
      Google                        9,878       10,101           2%
      ------                        -----       ------         ---
      YouTube/All Other             3,873        3,918           1%
      -----------------             -----        -----         ---
  Yahoo! Sites                      2,622        2,629           0%
  ------------                      -----        -----         ---
      Yahoo!                        2,599        2,605           0%
      ------                        -----        -----         ---
      All Other                        23           24           4%
      ---------                       ---          ---         ---
  Microsoft Sites                   1,521        1,620           7%
  ---------------                   -----        -----         ---
      Bing                          1,324        1,399           6%
      ----                          -----        -----         ---
      Microsoft/All Other             197          221          12%
  -------------------                 ---          ---         ---
  Ask Network                         715          696          -3%
  -----------                         ---          ---         ---
      ASK.COM                         348          332          -5%
      -------                         ---          ---         ---
      MyWebSearch.com/ All
       Other                          367          364          -1%
      --------------------            ---          ---         ---
  eBay                                635          680           7%
  ----                                ---          ---         ---
  AOL LLC                             611          588          -4%
  -------                             ---          ---         ---
      AOL Search Network              349          325          -7%
      ------------------              ---          ---         ---
      MapQuest/All Other              262          263           0%
      ------------------              ---          ---         ---
  craigslist, inc.                    568          583           3%
  ----------------                    ---          ---         ---
  Fox Interactive Media               447          424          -5%
  ---------------------               ---          ---         ---
      MySpace Sites                   439          416          -5%
      -------------                   ---          ---         ---
      All Other                         8            8           0%
      ---------                       ---          ---         ---
  Facebook.com                        354          351          -1%
  ------------                        ---          ---         ---
  Amazon Sites                        250          302          21%
  ------------                        ---          ---         ---

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Hi Duane,

There are a few problems with how the 301 Permanent Redirect is set up. Here is what I found:

While the redirect is set up, it’s only set up for the site’s home page. If you go to http://www.photoshop-forums.com/ it DOES redirect. However, the majority of the links to that domain name are links to pages on the site (to pages other than the home page). And when you go to one of those pages, there’s a problem: the pages other than the home page don’t redirect.

Here’s an example: http://www.photoshopcafe.com/cafe/viewthread.php?tid=10604&page=1

That link does not redirect properly. You’ll need to set up those redirects properly. Most likely you’ll need to get another web host where you have more control over the redirects and the type of redirects (Godaddy’s redirect “service” isn’t really a proper 301 Permanent Redirect, it does a 302 redirect to another URL and then a 301 Permanent Redirect). There’s also a way to set it up so that every page on the other domain (even pages that you didn’t know existed) get redirected properly, kind of a “catch all” for everything.

The other issue is that I don’t think you’ve waited long enough. One week is usually not long enough for the site to get crawled and the search engines to give you “credit” for the redirect. One tell-tale sign that Google, for example, may not see the redirect yet is the fact that when you search Google for the domain name (photoshop-forums.com), Google is showing the old home page in their search results. Until they show the other domain that you’re redirecting it to Google may not be giving you the full credit you deserve. The key here is patience, some times it just takes some time, I would give it a full month to make sure that all of the search engines recognize the 301 Permanent Redirects, and some search engines like Yahoo!, may still have some issues with it, as Yahoo! just doesn’t deal with redirects the way Google does.

For future reference, I would have done the following to make sure that you get the proper “link credit” for the 301 Permanent Redirect:

Check the backlinks. Do a “link domain:domain.com -site:domain.com” search at Yahoo! and physically check the backlinks. Make sure that those links are pointing to the domain you own (or the one you want to buy). There are programs and scripts that will crawl the links to make sure they are still there (like OptiLink), which may be helpful to you or at least speed up the process. Make sure that the domain you’re buying (or domain you’re going to redirect) wasn’t itself redirected. That’s important, because the backlinks you’re seeing might actually be the backlinks of another domain name. Make note of any important links that are linking so pages other than the home page.

Get ahold of the domain name and put the old content back up on the site (if you have access to it). Some people might go as far as taking the old content from the Wayback Machine or a search engine’s cached copy of it. There may be issues with using the content, though, so just make sure that you have the proper permission before you do that.

Set up web hosting for the domain. Don’t use a ‘free’ or other “cheap” web hosting, as you may not have access to the site’s log files (which I’ll get to later) and you may not have access to edit the site’s .htaccess file (which is very important to make sure that you can do the proper redirects).

After you have content on the domain that you want to redirect, wait at least a week or two in order to make sure that the search engines are indexing the domain name’s new content. At this point, you may even want to get a few new links to the domain name in order to “help out” the search engines’ crawling and indexing process.

Since you now have ahold of the domain name, watch the website’s stats (based on the log files, not some JavaScript counter like Google Analytics) and make not of any URLs that have 404 errors, as there may be traffic and links pointing to those URLs. You might want to put content on those old URLs, as well, even if it’s not the old content. If there’s a link pointing to an interior page on the site (an interior page is a page other than the home page), then you’ll want to make sure that that URL is indexed again by the search engines. Make note of the URLs on the site that have traffic (you can find them by watching for 404 errors).

Once you’re confident that the site you’re going to redirect has been ‘revived’ in the search engines’ indexes and the pages are showing Google PageRank again, you’ll want to wait another week or two. I prefer to wait at least a month two. Perhaps even longer than that. I usually will spend some time getting a few new links to the site, as well.

Set up the redirects. If there are URLs that you’ve noted before that have important links (like links to pages other than the home page), you’ll want to set up a 301 Permanent Redirect from those URLs to wherever you’re redirecting the traffic. If at all possible, look at the former content of the page that you’re redirecting and redirect that page to another page on another site that has similar content. Don’t redirect everything to the site’s home page. There is a limit to how many pages you can redirect, and I try to keep it under 100 if possible. I prefer only to set up redirects that are “catch all” redirects (like redirecting every page request on a domain to another site) if we’re dealing with a LOT of domains. Otherwise, it’s best to target the traffic as best as you can when you’re redirecting a URL.

It’s important to note that using a “service” like Godaddy’s redirect service is not preferred. Currently, as of this writing, Godaddy does a redirect that’s a 302 redirect to another URL and then they redirect it again with a 301 Permanent Redirect. In this case, it appears that Godaddy is only redirecting traffic from the old site’s home page, and not other URLs that are requested. Those are resulting in 404 errors. Therefore, the site you’re redirecting to is not getting credit for those other URLs, where the majority of the links are pointing to on the site. In this case, I would not use Godaddy’s redirection, I would set up the proper web hosting with another web host and use the .htaccess file to do the redirects.

Duane, I hope this answers your question as to why you’re not getting the proper “credit” for the links. While you’re redirecting, you’re not getting the proper “link credit” because the links are pointing to pages other than the home page (and those pages aren’t getting redirected) and you haven’t waited long enough: Google, for example, is still currently showing indexing of the old home page.

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1. Military’s Flop of a Photo Op
A “furious” President Obama was forced to order an internal review to determine why on April 27 a near-empty Air Force One VC-25 was allowed to fly at low altitude through Manhattan, seemingly pursued by an F-16 jet. The photo-op flyover to allow for iconic photography of Air Force One over the Statue of Liberty was arranged by the Defense Department and authorized by White House Military Office Director Louis Caldera. For people on the ground, though, it vividly recalled fears related to the 9/11 terror attacks and sent workers streaming out of office buildings and running through the streets in panic. ABC News reported that N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was also not informed, said that “poor judgment” would have been a nice way to describe the flyover. Caldera resigned and was replaced by deputy director George Mulligan.

2. “It’s a Fork, It’s a Spoon, It’s a… Weapon?” (The New York Times)
An enthusiastic six-year-old Zachary Christie, excited about having just joined the Cub Scouts, brought his Scout-style eating utensil, a combination fork-knife-spoon-can opener, to school specifically so he could eat lunch with it on September 29. Not only did officials at Delaware’s Christina School District confiscate the utensil, they suspended Zachary and sentenced the A-student to 45 days in reform school in compliance with the District’s “zero-tolerance” policy on “weapons” despite ample character evidence that the child acted naively and was not a danger. Mother Deborah Christie organized activist website helpzachary.com, sparking national media attention and sympathy for the innocent casualties of “zero-tolerance” policies, with The New York Times and other prominent publications reporting on numerous such cases. The District did allow the boy to return to school after an emergency school board meeting… that was prompted by the situation being featured on NBC’s Today.

3. “Goldman Sucks,” blogs Financial Post editor
After taking a severe media drubbing, it makes sense for the big banks to conduct public outreach demonstrating some level of humility. But many have criticized Goldman Sachs CEO and spokesperson Lloyd Blankfein for statements published in the November 8 edition of the UK’s Sunday Times in which Blankfein claimed the company was “doing God’s work.” Diane Francis, editor-at-large for Canada’s Financial Post, blogged that “Goldman Sucks” and derided its new small business support plan, noting that “if [the promised US $500 million] was a tip it would be an insult, particularly in New York. Goldman has set aside US $16.7 billion for year-end bonuses, equivalent to the total economic output of Bolivia or Iceland.” Huffington Post blogger Charles Gasparino blasted Blankfein, writing that “what makes Goldman so contemptible is that its level of spin has almost no basis in reality.”

4. “My God, they’re throwing guitars out there.”
Musician Dave Carroll was frustrated by United Airlines’ nine-month refusal to compensate him for $1,200 in repairs after he witnessed United baggage handlers literally tossing guitars, including his own $3,500 Taylor, during a transfer at O’Hare International Airport. In what Nielsen Online’s Joshua Hammond termed “a true ‘David vs. Goliath’ moment,” Carroll vowed that he would write and record songs about the experience – complete with music videos – and publish them online. The first YouTube video amassed over three million views in a single week. Within two days, United was in touch with Carroll, offering the long-awaited compensation, which he asked to be contributed to a charity of the airline’s choice. Ben Mutzabaugh of USA Today described Carroll’s success as demonstrating “just how quickly the Internet can help a disgruntled customer turn the tables on a company and its effort to manage its public image.” Unbelievably, United let Carroll down again in late October, losing his bags while he was “en route to deliver a speech about customer service,” according to CBC News.

5. Domino’s Recipe for Disaster
When footage of Domino’s Pizza employees fouling food was posted to YouTube in April, the company did not move quickly enough to counter the damage in today’s online world. Videos showing two employees performing unsanitary acts quickly amassed over one million views within 48 hours. After two painful days, Domino’s finally reacted, launching its first corporate Twitter account and posting a public apology on YouTube. According to BusinessWeek, Domino’s had become “the latest company to learn how quickly a brand can be tainted in a Web 2.0 world – and how important it is to monitor social media.”

6. Kanye West…Wanted – Chief Reality Check Officer
Storming the stage in protest at a nationally televised awards show is practically an annual event for Kanye West, but his “performance” at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards was particularly ill-advised. When an allegedly inebriated West took the microphone from teenage country artist and Best Female Video winner Taylor Swift, claiming that Beyoncé – not Swift – deserved the award, he crossed a critical line. According to Linda Holmes of NPR’s “Monkey See” blog, “when you’re a big-mouth and you get in a tangle with another big-mouth, nobody necessarily thinks the less of either one of you. You get in trouble, however, when you’re picking on people who aren’t even old enough to drink – unlike you.” Later in an interview with Jay Leno, Kanye apologized and ashamedly acknowledged that his mother would have been disappointed.

7. “Kentucky Fried Fiasco,” reports Advertising Age
Fast food bastion KFC launched its new Kentucky GRILLED Chicken offering on May 4 by working with the “Oprah Winfrey Show” to announce a two-day internet coupon for a free meal. It seems like a marketer’s dream, but Advertising Age reported it as “an unmitigated disaster” when millions downloaded the coupon, and the company could not fulfill consumer demand and “actually had to rescind the offer.” While KFC did indeed accumulate a “sea of buzz” for its efforts, it failed to fulfill its promise, leaving many consumers empty-handed… and angry. Linda Holmes of NPR referred to the incident as “a massive customer-service failure,” adding that “if you throw in with Oprah, you have to be prepared to serve America – all of it, at the same time.”

8. We “Expect More” from Target
Human rights and immigration activists took aim at national chain Target for its pre-Halloween online promotion of an “Illegal Alien” costume that came complete with orange jumpsuit, extraterrestrial mask and, most controversially, a “green card” accessory. Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, called the costume “distasteful, mean-spirited, and ignorant of social stigmas and current debate on immigration reform.” Target spokespeople said the costumes were included in Halloween offerings “by mistake,” and pulled them from its website.

9. Housing Crisis Solved… the Malibu Way
Retreats for bailed out execs may be last year’s AIG Blunder, but the major banks still party on at home… or at someone else’s foreclosed home. A Wells Fargo executive liked a foreclosed $12-milion Malibu property so much that she allegedly took up semi-permanent residence, using it to stage “eye-catching parties,” according to the L.A. Times. What’s more, real estate agent Irene Dazzan-Palmer told the Associated Press that Wells Fargo repeatedly refused to show the beachfront Malibu Colony home to potential buyers. “[Wells Fargo’s allowing] this to happen in today’s ethically charged climate is quite suicidal,” W. Michael Hoffman, executive director of Bentley University’s Center for Business Ethics, told the Times.

10. Squawking over Tweets
Watch what you tweet or you may be the next person sued for online defamation via social media. Chicago renter Amanda Bonnen was sued by her landlord, Horizon Group Management, when she posted, “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it’s okay,” on May 12 after disputes with the company. The company insisted that Bonnen’s tweet somehow damaged Horizon because it was published “throughout the world.” Bonnen had a meager 22 followers on Twitter by the time she terminated her account. But Horizon’s suit was covered by major traditional and online media, including The New York Times, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, TechDirt and the Inquisitor. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that according to a Horizon spokesperson, “the company has a good reputation it wants to preserve.” Disconnect.

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Search Engine Academy is an organization of professional search engine optimizers committed to the education of individuals, businesses and web site owners in ethical ways to optimize the searchability of their web and blog sites. The Search Engine Academy – DC brings the basics of search engine optimization through hands-on experience with in-class guided instruction to students in the Washington, area. Search Engine Academy – DC also provides a mentoring program for Academy graduates for six months following completion of classes.

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Some of these well-known speakers include:

Jamie Turner, Director of Consumer Insight for direct response and interactive agency BKV, and Chief Content Officer for The 60 Second Marketer

Ekaterina Walter, Social Media Strategist, Intel Corporation and best practices expert

Mike Pranikoff, Director of New Media, PR Newswire, on the New World of Social PR

Bill Hunt, Board member of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and leading expert in Enterprise and International Search Engine Marketing Strategy

Jeff Klein of Oracle, on getting the most from CRM systems

The luncheon featured speaker is Steven Woods, national thought leader on lead generation and marketing automation technologies. Woods is CTO and co-founder of Eloqua and author of the Amazon.com best-seller, “Digital Body Language.”

Fifteen sessions and 2 keynotes will cover revenue-driving topics for marketers and sales professionals, including: demand generation; public relations and social media; brand experience and brand awareness; sales and marketing alignment and CRM; tracking return on marketing and sales investment; and integrated marketing solutions.

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The Integrated Marketing Summit (IMS) is premised on the core belief that the single most important role of marketing, like sales, is to drive revenue rapidly. The business of marketing is changing – reflected by the fact that customers and prospects now interact with products, services, brands and each other across an increasing number of channels. IMS was created to provide marketing and sales professionals with an event and a community for sharing the best practices, technologies and expertise they need to Drive Revenue Rapidly. Visit www.IntegratedMarketingSummit.com for details and registration information.

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