http://www.webpronews.com/blog_talk.xml Blog Talk Feed en-wpn http://webpronews.comhttp://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/WebProNews_106.gifThis is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/oV4W942Idwo/advertising-to-make-its-way-onto-amazon-kindles <p>Amazon apparently has some big plans for their Kindle e-reader and it involves advertising. That&rsquo;s right, advertising. After all, what would a good book be without advertising, right?<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Kindle.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10280884-93.html?part=rss&amp;subj=news&amp;tag=2547-1023_3-0-5">cnet news reports</a> about some patents that Amazon has filed in the not so distant past that point to a way or them to deliver an e-book with the traditional book. By putting together ad supported e-books and bundling them at little or no additional cost to the reader Amazon moves a step closer to changing the way people read in the future.</p> <p>The Kindle and other e-readers require a paradigm shift for those who are not inclined to try new technology just because it is new. Just like people who say that they always want to open a newspaper and get ink on their hands, there are folks who feel that reading one book at a time is just fine and there is no need to carry a library in their pocket. Those pesky traditionalists are the folks that Amazon needs to introduce to the e-book concept in a way that gently nudges them to a new behavior that they wouldn&rsquo;t otherwise try on their own.</p> <blockquote> <p>Amazon Technologies, a subsidiary of Amazon, filed for a patent (&rdquo;Method and system for access to electronic version of a physical work based on user ownership of the physical work&rdquo;) in December 2006. It was approved last month and makes it possible for buyers of a physical book to have an e-book bundled with it.</p> <p>But two additional patents, filed a year later by Amazon employees (and not yet approved), are the more interesting ones: these, <a href="http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&amp;art_aid=109243">according to MediaPost</a>, &ldquo;clearly note that Amazon would insert advertisements throughout the e-books, from the beginning to the end, between chapters or following every 10 pages, as well as in the margins.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>I have to admit that I really don&rsquo;t care if ads are inserted in books because I have developed such severe ad blindness that I might not even blink. Imagine the day though when the ad is actually part of the story, like product placement in the movies. That&rsquo;s when the real fun begins.</p> <p>So do you think having an ad in your book is too much? Have you made the switch yet or are you going to be OK with having a few trees die for your reading enjoyment? Now that wasn&rsquo;t fair was it?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/amazon-to-re-kindle-ad-revenue.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=oV4W942Idwo:6F46_pV8PVA:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=oV4W942Idwo:6F46_pV8PVA:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=oV4W942Idwo:6F46_pV8PVA:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=oV4W942Idwo:6F46_pV8PVA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=oV4W942Idwo:6F46_pV8PVA:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/oV4W942Idwo" height="1" width="1"/> Advertising Amazon Book Kindle Reader Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:49:51 -0400 Frank Reed 50931 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/08/advertising-to-make-its-way-onto-amazon-kindles http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/csFq0xW4wDk/best-buy-lists-twitter-followers-as-job-qualification <p>A recruitment ad for a <a href="http://www.bestbuy-jobs.com/job/Sr_-Manager-Emerging-Media-Marketing-Job/556744/">Sr. Manager &ndash; Emerging Media Marketing Job</a> at US retailer <a href="http://www.bestbuy.com/">Best Buy</a> includes an item under the &lsquo;Preferred Qualifications&rsquo; heading that applicants have &ldquo;250 plus followers on <a href="http://twitter.com/" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.&rdquo;<a href="http://www.bestbuy-jobs.com/job/Sr_-Manager-Emerging-Media-Marketing-Job/556744/"><br /> </a></p> <p>I guess it&rsquo;s one way of noting a preference that applicants are savvy, active and <em>connected</em> in the twittersphere and, by implication, might have a better understanding of how social media tools like this work in a business context.</p> <p>I&rsquo;m not surprised to see this in a recruitment ad by Best Buy.</p> <p>This is the company whose President and COO (<a href="http://www.bestbuyinc.com/news_center/06-24-09/brian-j-dunn-becomes-ceo-best-buy">now CEO</a>), <a href="http://www.bestbuyinc.com/news_center/leadership_bios/president-and-chief-operating-officer">Brian J. Dunn</a> &ndash; who, incidentally, <span class="aptureLink" id="apture_prvw1"><span style="background-position: right -1147px;" class="aptureLinkIcon">&nbsp;</span><a class="aptureLink snap_noshots" href="http://twitter.com/bjdsr">is on Twitter</a></span> &ndash; was <a href="http://news.iabc.com/index.php?s=43&amp;item=208">awarded the IABC EXCEL Award</a> this year and whose keynote address about communication at the <a href="http://www.iabc.com/wc">IABC conference</a> in San Francisco in early June was one of the most inspiring I&rsquo;ve ever heard from a senior corporate executive of any company (here&rsquo;s <span class="aptureLink" id="apture_prvw2"><span style="background-position: right -147px;" class="aptureLinkIcon">&nbsp;</span><a class="aptureLink snap_noshots" href="http://audioboo.fm/boos/28745-a-bit-of-brian-dunn.mp3">a taste of what Dunn said</a></span>, in a brief <a href="http://audioboo.fm/boos/28745-a-bit-of-brian-dunn">Audioboo</a> I recorded from my spot in the auditorium).</p> <p>The IABC EXCEL Award recognizes leaders who foster excellence in communication and contribute to the development and support of organizational communication.</p> <p>So, Twitter followers as a preferred &lsquo;qualification&rsquo; when recruiting. Is this a sign of the (coming) times?</p> <p>This has clearly captured many people&rsquo;s imaginations<strike> this morning</strike>, judging by <a href="http://backtweets.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Ffriendfeed.com%2Ffir%2F003d1d9b%2Fone-of-best-buy-preferred-qualifications-in-job">the number of retweets</a> of my <span class="aptureLink" id="apture_prvw3"><span style="background-position: right -1147px;" class="aptureLinkIcon">&nbsp;</span><a class="aptureLink snap_noshots" href="http://friendfeed.com/fir">original post on Friendfeed</a></span> about it, as well as <a href="http://tweetmeme.com/story.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nevillehobson.com%2F2009%2F07%2F08%2Fjob-requirement-twitter-followers%2F">retweets of this blog post</a>.</p> <p>(<a href="http://www.drivenmg.com/blog/2009/07/03/best-buy-vs-dell-twitter/">Via Nathan Driver</a>)</p> <p>[<strong>Later</strong>] <a href="http://www.nevillehobson.com/2009/07/08/job-requirement-twitter-followers/#comment-76871">A comment by Best Buy&rsquo;s Joshua Kahn</a> talked about a new development regarding this recruitment opening that would be posted today on <a href="http://www.barryjudge.com/">Barry Judge&rsquo;s blog</a>. He is Best Buy&rsquo;s CMO.</p> <p>Sure enough, <a href="http://barryjudge.com/help-us-write-the-job-description-sr-manager-emerging-media-marketing">there is now a post</a> that opens up an intriguing development in what I&rsquo;d call the co-creation of a job description in a way that would make a distinct connection with people who have an interest in the company, not only those looking for a job. There&rsquo;s also the huge buzz potential that gets Best Buy talked about.</p> <blockquote> <p>[&hellip;] In following the conversation around this job posting we discovered that many people had other ideas for how this job description should look, and what the qualifications should be.&nbsp; We realized that perhaps we hadn&rsquo;t thought of everything.&nbsp; Beyond that we thought perhaps we could find a way to enable a more pointed discussion about this relatively new job category of Emerging Media.</p> <p>It seemed to us to be a natural progression to get the community involved in crafting the job description and qualifications. So that&rsquo;s exactly what we&rsquo;re going to do.</p> <p>We&rsquo;d like you, (yes all of you), to help us write the job description for our Sr Manager of Emerging Media Marketing job.</p> <p>We&rsquo;d also like you all to help us pick the best description.</p> <p><strong>Here&rsquo;s How To Participate</strong></p> <p>1. Starting now, until Tuesday, July 14th, at 5pm central submit your job description idea to our <a href="http://bestbuyideax.com/">Best Buy IdeaX</a> site.&nbsp; IdeaX is a site where people like you can share your own ideas on how to make Best Buy better &ndash; through idea posts, popular vote and discussions with the rest of the IdeaX community.</p> </blockquote> <p>I do like the rationale Judge expresses, especially his number 2 point:</p> <blockquote> <p>This role is a new one for us as it likely is for other companies. We have a lot of smart and social media savvy people here and amongst our partners and friends.&nbsp; However, there are a larger number of smart and social media savvy people &ldquo;out there&rdquo;. So instead of thinking we know it all, we&rsquo;d like to increase our chances of getting it right by surveying the wisdom of the industry.</p> </blockquote> <p>Sort of an <a href="http://www.ideastorm.com/">Ideastorm</a> for HR.</p> <p>This should catch on.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nevillehobson.com/2009/07/08/job-requirement-twitter-followers/">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=csFq0xW4wDk:ZrshPyk92tM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=csFq0xW4wDk:ZrshPyk92tM:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=csFq0xW4wDk:ZrshPyk92tM:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=csFq0xW4wDk:ZrshPyk92tM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=csFq0xW4wDk:ZrshPyk92tM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/csFq0xW4wDk" height="1" width="1"/> Best Buy follower job qualification Twitter Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:45:05 -0400 Neville Hobson 50930 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/08/best-buy-lists-twitter-followers-as-job-qualification http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/8ZI8Aluq6nI/technorati-trying-to-make-a-comeback <p><img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/twrati.png" alt="" />How long has it been since we&rsquo;ve heard about Technorati? When did you last visit the erstwhile-preeminent blog tracking site? And even then, didn&rsquo;t you get the sense they were going downhill? While that may just be what happens to every media (or blog) sweetheart, Technorati has seen a decline. Many have attributed this to a lack of features, innovation, relevancy of results, etc.&nbsp;</p> <p>But Technorati is fighting back. With Twitter. Launching today, <a href="http://twittorati.com/">Twittorati</a> is Technorati&rsquo;s latest effort to make us think they&rsquo;re still relevant. The site aggregates the tweets of bloggers in the Technorati Top 100. (They don&rsquo;t, however, explain why you&rsquo;d want to do this. Too lazy to read their blogs?)</p> <p>Twittorati integrates with both Twitter and Technorati, but there&rsquo;s not a lot of crossover. For example, this pane of the right-most column of the site:</p> <p align="center"><img height="315" width="326" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-11573" title="twrati3" alt="twrati3" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/twrati3.png" /></p> <p>I expected the Technorati tags there would segment the Tweets shown by the genre of the blog author&mdash;but the tags led straight to the Technorati tag page. (Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/twittorati-will-show-you-how-awesomely-fascinating-bloggers-lives-are-or-not/">tells TechCrunch</a> that the capability I wanted is in the works.)</p> <p>While this might attract some attention for <a href="http://twitter.com/twittoratinews">@Twittorati</a>, ultimately I don&rsquo;t think this is going to help Technorati regain its popularity or find the following it once had.</p> <p>What do you think? Is Twittorati worth watching? Will it help bring Technorati back to the fore of social media?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/technorati-desperate-to-be-a-twit-relevant-again.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=8ZI8Aluq6nI:mt9EN6qa8pc:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=8ZI8Aluq6nI:mt9EN6qa8pc:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=8ZI8Aluq6nI:mt9EN6qa8pc:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=8ZI8Aluq6nI:mt9EN6qa8pc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=8ZI8Aluq6nI:mt9EN6qa8pc:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/8ZI8Aluq6nI" height="1" width="1"/> blog comeback relevant Technorati track Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:41:48 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50928 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/08/technorati-trying-to-make-a-comeback http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/7OsHipGOAgc/aardvark-turns-twitter-into-a-qa-engine <p>While we&rsquo;re tapping our feet&ndash;waiting for Twitter to come to our search results page&ndash;<a href="http://vark.com/">Aardvark</a> has been busy bringing its answer engine to Twitter.</p> <p>As you may (or <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090423_472874.htm">may not</a>), know, Aardvark allows you to ask questions and receive answers back from real people in your network. Well, TechCrunch is <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/you-put-your-aardvark-in-my-twitter-bonus-interview-with-founders/">reporting</a> that&nbsp; &lsquo;vark now lets you ask questions from within Twitter:</p> <blockquote> <p>For now, the integration only includes asking questions &ndash; if you add @vark to the end, Aardvark picks it up and adds it to your account. In future versions, they may try to integrate responses from Twitter directly into Aardvark as well.</p> </blockquote> <p>As of yet, Aardvark isn&rsquo;t tapping into Twitter to source the actual answers, but will get back to you via direct message with your answer. It looks something like this:</p> <p align="center"><img height="525" width="409" alt="" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/aardvark-twitter.jpg" style="margin: 5px;" /></p> <p>Actually, that&rsquo;s exactly how it looks! <img class="wp-smiley" alt=";-)" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" /></p> <p><object height="344" width="425" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"> <param value="true" name="allowFullScreen" /> <param value="always" name="allowScriptAccess" /> <param value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZPYNDAAqBOg&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;hl=en&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1" name="src" /><embed height="344" width="425" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZPYNDAAqBOg&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;hl=en&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></p> <p><em>Have you used Aardvark? Will this Twitter integration actually make the service more useful?</em></p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/what-happens-when-an-aardvark-twitter-bird-mate.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7OsHipGOAgc:uxUkQb1n3OY:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7OsHipGOAgc:uxUkQb1n3OY:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7OsHipGOAgc:uxUkQb1n3OY:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=7OsHipGOAgc:uxUkQb1n3OY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7OsHipGOAgc:uxUkQb1n3OY:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/7OsHipGOAgc" height="1" width="1"/> Aardvar announcement answer question Twitter Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:33:56 -0400 Andy Beal 50926 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/08/aardvark-turns-twitter-into-a-qa-engine http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/koNjFypzdxM/a-breakdown-of-trust-in-advertising <p>One of the core messages in my book <a href="http://www.radicallytransparent.com/"><em>Radically Transparent</em></a> came courtesy of Edelman data which demonstrated that consumers overwhelmingly trusted recommendations from &quot;a person like yourself.&quot;</p> <p>Two years after that data was released, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i0a5fa05df2f2bdcfe08f71da7df1e37a">new numbers from Nielsen</a> suggest that trust in others has increased dramatically. In fact, 90% of consumers now trust recommendations from people they know.</p> <p>The chart below demonstrates the Nielsen numbers from 2007 (in yellow) and the point difference in 2009.</p> <p align="center"><img height="423" width="523" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/97113-TRUST_chart2_large.jpg" alt="" style="margin: 5px;" /></p> <p>For example, in 2007, 78% trusted recommendations from people known. In 2009, that number grew by 12 percentage points to 90%.</p> <p>What&rsquo;s interesting is that brand sponsored/built content is making great improvements in trust. However, it&rsquo;s yet another nail in the coffin of traditional media&ndash;trust in newspaper opinions actually declined!</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/90-of-consumers-trust-opinions-of-friends-brand-trust-shows-improvement-too.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=koNjFypzdxM:P-FpfuZTtdA:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=koNjFypzdxM:P-FpfuZTtdA:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=koNjFypzdxM:P-FpfuZTtdA:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=koNjFypzdxM:P-FpfuZTtdA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=koNjFypzdxM:P-FpfuZTtdA:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/koNjFypzdxM" height="1" width="1"/> Advertising Ads Nielsen report trust Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:31:25 -0400 Andy Beal 50925 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/08/a-breakdown-of-trust-in-advertising http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/39-xYrvSfAk/smaller-circulation-newspapers-hanging-in-there <p>If you work for a smaller paper or you have a favorite local paper that you simply don&rsquo;t want to see fade into the sunset this is OK news. I can&rsquo;t honestly say that there is real good news. It&rsquo;s about the newspaper business after all. <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/small-newspapers-may-be-able-to-prolong-death-longer-than-large-counterparts/#comments">TechCrunch reports</a> that statistics gathered by the <a href="http://inlandpress.org/articles/2009/07/07/knowledge/current_stories/doc4a53ce729fc97677262186.txt">Inland Press Association</a> show that overall the average drop in profits for the industry as a whole was 77.6%, So how do you find a bright spot in that kind of number? You look at who is floundering the least and go from there.</p> <p>The sad thing is that even of the economy comes back strong at some point this century newspapers may not even see improvement because it&rsquo;s the medium, not the economy, which is the biggest culprit in the agonizing demise of a once vibrant industry. The chart below shows just how bad things are for the newspaper industry and there is little hope for recovery.</p> <p><img height="225" width="314" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11559" alt="Inland Press" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Inland-Press.jpg" /></p> <p>Only one category saw a revenue bump in over the 5 year span studied and that was the smallest of the small papers. There are many possible reasons for this including the lack of online hyperlocal content thus allowing the paper to still be relevant as well as the lower overhead. But is this just delaying the inevitable?</p> <p>One major reason for the little guys still holding some ground is the classifieds. I personally never look at the classifieds for much of anything so I am a little surprised by this</p> <blockquote> <p>Another sign of hope: small papers still have a hold on classifieds. Average classified sales for small papers have actually gone up, at a time when they have been declining for most papers. Inland cites an example of a daily newspaper with a circulation of less than 15,000, which posted a 210.4% increase in classified revenue from 2004 to 2008. But it didn&rsquo;t do much good. The paper&rsquo;s profits were down by almost 30%.</p> </blockquote> <p>Now the paper&rsquo;s profits were down 30% which still means that they were profitable. Now, we&rsquo;re getting somewhere. This data, however, is just like most where it can be a bit misleading. Considering the sources were the papers themselves and the information was offered voluntarily and with anonymity there may be room for some fudging. Also, there was no recognition of who suffered tremendous losses and who fared OK. The numbers can best be seen as an average.</p> <p>Who really knows the real deal but there is certainly not a lot of room for celebration. When you have to concentrate on who suffered the least then you have to figure that no matter where a paper is on the scale of size there is not a tremendous amount of hope for the future.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/11558.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=39-xYrvSfAk:neRH0Dsd4EY:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=39-xYrvSfAk:neRH0Dsd4EY:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=39-xYrvSfAk:neRH0Dsd4EY:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=39-xYrvSfAk:neRH0Dsd4EY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=39-xYrvSfAk:neRH0Dsd4EY:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/39-xYrvSfAk" height="1" width="1"/> Ad circulation Newspaper Revenue small Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:26:49 -0400 Frank Reed 50924 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/08/smaller-circulation-newspapers-hanging-in-there http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/Y04MP8NA7xc/the-older-demographic-makes-a-large-push-on-facebook <p>The demographic has <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_own_estimates_show_youth_flight_from_sit.php">shifted</a> dramatically over at Facebook and that change could lead to billions in revenue, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE56531X20090706">according</a> to one prominent board member.</p> <p><a href="http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009-facebook-demographics-and-statistics-report-513-growth-in-55-year-old-users-college-high-school-drop-20/">iStrategyLabs</a> spent the last six months collecting user demographic data and discovered the number of users over the age of 55 soared from 1 million to nearly 6 million. During the same 6 month period, high school and college users dropped by as much as 22%!</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s the breakdown:</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/istrategypic.jpg" alt="" style="margin: 5px; width: 385px; height: 345px;" /></p> <p>At the same time Facebook <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/03/facebook-grays-over-35-users-double-in-60-days.html">continues to gray</a>, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Andreessen&ndash;a Facebook board member&ndash;suggests the social network could realize revenue of $1 billion if it would only push harder with its advertising.</p> <blockquote> <p>&quot;This calendar year they&rsquo;ll do over $500 million..If they pushed the throttle forward on monetization they would be doing more than a billion this year&hellip;There&rsquo;s every reason to expect in my view that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now,&quot; Andreessen said.</p> </blockquote> <p>What&rsquo;s interesting is that the 15-24 year olds are the ones that helped Facebook become the juggernaut it is today, but <strong>when you have champagne revenue goals while your audience has a beer budget, you need those with established incomes to pay the bills</strong>&ndash;or in this case, click on the ads.</p> <p>Perhaps the key question is can Facebook continue to grow while losing its vocal youth? Arguably, high school and college users were the ones that evangelized Facebook to their older friends and family. Without them, will Facebook&rsquo;s growth&ndash;and revenue&ndash;stall?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/the-young-bail-on-facebook-but-over-55s-soar-500-and-bring-their-checkbooks.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y04MP8NA7xc:-5WHxiokZG0:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y04MP8NA7xc:-5WHxiokZG0:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y04MP8NA7xc:-5WHxiokZG0:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=Y04MP8NA7xc:-5WHxiokZG0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y04MP8NA7xc:-5WHxiokZG0:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/Y04MP8NA7xc" height="1" width="1"/> 55+ Data Demographic facebook old shift young Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:53:13 -0400 Andy Beal 50902 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/07/the-older-demographic-makes-a-large-push-on-facebook http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/64m46Ihe1J8/twitter-definitions-become-sponsored <p>Back in March, Twitter gave us all a head-fake when they started posting &ldquo;<a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/03/twitter-ads-make-an-appearance.html">sponsored definitions</a>,&rdquo; definitions in a the sidebar of Twitter homepages that looked like ads. Twitter was quick to correct the assumption that they were, in fact, ads&mdash;they were only definitions, just like you get free from dictionaries.<img align="right" alt="" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/twitter-logo.jpg" /></p> <p>Then, the boxes began carrying <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/03/twitter-serves-more-ads.html">info on Twitter apps</a>. Rather than paying for their placement, the featured apps were actually approached by Twitter. The apps being advertised didn&rsquo;t pay to get there, so despite the fact that they were still called &ldquo;sponsored definitions,&rdquo; they weren&rsquo;t ads. Nope, no way, nuh uh.</p> <p>Well, now they are, apparently. <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ads_spotted_on_twittercom_-_did_you_notice.php">Read Write Web reports</a> that two of the &ldquo;sponsored definitions,&rdquo; for Cinema Tweets and the <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/03/twitter-and-revenue-make-a-tweet-sound.html">infamous ExecTweets</a>, are really ads this time.</p> <p><img src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/twitads.png" alt="twitads" title="twitads" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-11513" style="width: 368px; height: 92px;" /></p> <p>As RWW notes, these ads appear only on your Twitter homepage when you&rsquo;re signed in, not on other Twitter users&rsquo; pages. However, since this ad format has been used since March, it&rsquo;s possible that Tweeple will either a.) completely ignore the ads, just like the did the previous definitions, or b.) not realize these are ads, despite the &ldquo;sponsored&rdquo; marking (though we&rsquo;ve seen that before <img src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> ).</p> <p>What do you think? Are these really ads, or are they just more of the same? Will Twitter users click on ads unwittingly, ignore them completely, or somewhere in between?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/twitter-gets-real-ads.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=64m46Ihe1J8:pAkoA9LYARY:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=64m46Ihe1J8:pAkoA9LYARY:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=64m46Ihe1J8:pAkoA9LYARY:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=64m46Ihe1J8:pAkoA9LYARY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=64m46Ihe1J8:pAkoA9LYARY:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/64m46Ihe1J8" height="1" width="1"/> Ad app definition Sponsor Twitter Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:29:36 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50900 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/07/twitter-definitions-become-sponsored http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/QEYGTbpzutQ/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-twitter <p>Last month a social media analytics provider named Sysomos released a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/">comprehensive report on Twitter usage</a>. The problem with most analysis on Twitter, though, is that it is limited by the minimal amount of data that Twitter collects. So, to fill the gaps, most reports do things like guessing gender based on real names or pulling data from keywords in people's biographic information. This often yields some questionable results - and the Sysomos report is not immune to this (for example, they find that 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25, but base this on only the 0.7% of users who actually disclose their age).</p> <p style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">Looking past these small points, the report does share some fairly interesting observations and stats as well if you dig a bit deeper. Here's my read on the 10 standout conclusions that the report offers to help you (and your brand) better understand the potential uses of Twitter:</p> <ol style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"> <li><strong>21% (One Fifth) of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders. </strong>These are the percentage of Twitter accounts that have never posted a single tweet. They may either be registered simply to hold a username for later use, or be experimental accounts started up but never used.</li> <li><strong>Nearly 94% of all Twitter accounts have less than 100 followers.</strong> In a finding perhaps consistent with the newness of the tool as well as the fact that many people may currently have an account simply to start experimenting with the tool, Sysomos found the vast majority of Twitter users have an extremely low followership.<img title="More..." src="http://blog.ogilvypr.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" mce_src="http://blog.ogilvypr.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" class="mceWPmore mceItemNoResize" alt="" /></li> <li><strong>March and April of 2009 were the tipping point for Twitter. </strong>During these months, Ashton Kutcher launched his quest to get to 1 million followers faster than CNN, Oprah started using Twitter, and the steady flow of new users to the site continued. For many, it offered a safer and easier way to get their feet wet with social media, 140 characters at a time.</li> <li><strong>150 followers is the magic number. </strong>In a particularly interesting data point from the survey, Sysomos found that Twitter users tended to &quot;follow back&quot; all their followers up until about 150 connections. Then the reciprocation rate fell off dramatically, which seems to indicate that this number may be the crossover point where people shift from using Twitter for more personal use to using it more for &quot;lifecasting&quot; their thoughts and actions to a community of people who they feel varying levels of connection to.</li> <li><strong>A small minority creates most of the activity. </strong>A steep curve of a small minority of actively engaged content creators generating most of the activity on a site is common among social networks, but it is steeper and more pronounced on Twitter. 5% of users account for 75% of all activity, and 10% of users account for 86%. This seems to suggest that the site has managed to engage a mass audience beyond those who typically engage with social media.</li> <li><strong>Half of all Twitter users are not &quot;active.&quot;</strong> If you take a general description of being &quot;active&quot; on Twitter to mean that you have posted a tweet at some point in the last 7 days (1 week), then the survey learned that 50.4% of all Twitter users fit this category. If you remove the 21% from point #1, this leaves about 30% of users who have an account and have tweeted before, but happen to be inactive now.</li> <li><strong>Tuesday is the most active Twitter day. </strong>One of the most useful data points from the report is that it clears up the common question of which day of the week is the best day to tweet something. Sysomos found that Tuesday stood out as the most popular day for tweets and retweets, followed by Wednesday and then Friday.</li> <li><strong>APIs have been the key to Twitter's growth &amp; utility.</strong> In terms of tools that people are using for Twitter, Sysomos found that more than half (55%) of all Twitter users use something other than Twitter.com to tweet, search and connect with others. This may, in part, be due to Twitter's notorious reputation of failing/crashing, but also is a credit to all the third party applications that have been built on top of Twitter and do their fair share to bring new users to the service.</li> <li><strong>English still dominates Twitter.</strong> When exploring Russia as part of a class that I am teaching this summer at Georgetown, one of the barriers we learned about was the difficulty of fitting some Russian language words into just 140 characters. Twitter is, however, extremely English-friendly. As the Sysomos report found, the top four countries on Twitter are all English speaking (US, UK, Canada, Australia). Of these, US makes up 62% of all Twitter users, followed by UK with nearly 8% and Canada and Australia with 5.7% and 2.8% respectively. The largest non-English speaking country on Twitter? Brazil with 2%.<a style="display: inline;" onclick="window.open( this.href, '_blank', 'width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0' ); return false" href="http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011571ca8e40970b-popup"><img border="0" align="middle" src="http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/.a/6a00d8341c4f1253ef011571ca8e40970b-550wi" class="at-xid-6a00d8341c4f1253ef011571ca8e40970b" alt="IMB_TwitterSysomos2" style="width: 423px; height: 162px;" /></a></li> <li><strong>Twitter is being led by the social media geeks. </strong>This particular finding should likely come as no surprise, but 15% of Twitter users who follow more than 2000 people identify themselves as social media marketers. These individuals are more likely to post updates every day (sometimes more than once per day) and also use Twitter more actively for direct communication.</li> </ol> <p style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><strong>Bonus Geographical Stat/Quote: </strong>&quot;The cities with the biggest Twitter populations are New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco, and Boston. Los Angeles is the fastest growing city on the list.&quot;</p> <p style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;"><a href="http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2009/07/10-stunning-and-useful-stats-about-twitter.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=QEYGTbpzutQ:V9ScwCys5J0:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=QEYGTbpzutQ:V9ScwCys5J0:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=QEYGTbpzutQ:V9ScwCys5J0:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=QEYGTbpzutQ:V9ScwCys5J0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=QEYGTbpzutQ:V9ScwCys5J0:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/QEYGTbpzutQ" height="1" width="1"/> Social Media 10 fact Interesting Twitter Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:26:14 -0400 Rohit Bhargava 50899 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/07/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-twitter http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/KSmGCL9TSKY/twitter-applying-to-have-tweet-trademarked <p>Twitter is attempting to gain some kind of control of the use of &quot;Twitter&quot; and &quot;Tweet&quot; in a way that reminds me of Google&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/10/if-you-google-you-must-be-spanked.html">attempt</a> back in 2006.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/2755v28-max-150x150.png" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/01/twitter-grows-uncomfortable-with-the-use-of-the-word-tweet-in-applications/">TechCrunch</a> got its hand on an email that was sent out to one Twitter app developer:</p> <blockquote> <p>Hi,</p> <p>Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?</p> <p>Thanks,</p> </blockquote> <p>That prompted an <a href="http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/may-tweets-be-with-you.html">official response</a> from Twitter&rsquo;s chief of damage control Biz Stone. The use of &quot;Twitter&quot; appears to be pretty much off limits, but his comments about using &quot;Tweet&quot; have me puzzled:</p> <blockquote> <p>We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of &quot;going after&quot; the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.</p> </blockquote> <p>I&rsquo;m not a trademark attorney&ndash;if you are, correct me if I am wrong&ndash;but if you register a trademark, aren&rsquo;t you obliged to police it? I was under the impression that if you didn&rsquo;t prevent others from using your trademark, you risked losing the protections granted by its registration.</p> <p>If that is the case, maybe third-party application developers should be worried after all.</p> <p>In addition, the above sentiment is how Twitter feels about the situation today, but what about in five years from now? What if it&rsquo;s acquired by Google or News Corp&ndash;and they have a more stringent policy on the use of their trademarks?</p> <p>One blog post does not make a legal exemption. I&rsquo;d be careful of your use of Twitter or Tweet if your product can in any way be confused as an official company offering.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/twitter-twademarking-tweets.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=KSmGCL9TSKY:7xrOcIjs0oo:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=KSmGCL9TSKY:7xrOcIjs0oo:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=KSmGCL9TSKY:7xrOcIjs0oo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=KSmGCL9TSKY:7xrOcIjs0oo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=KSmGCL9TSKY:7xrOcIjs0oo:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/KSmGCL9TSKY" height="1" width="1"/> app party third Trademark Tweet Twitter use Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:46:41 -0400 Andy Beal 50875 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/02/twitter-applying-to-have-tweet-trademarked http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/IrFVozltWGg/internet-marketing-trying-to-police-itself-on-privacy-issues <p>An important element (read: selling point) of Internet marketing is the ability to know more about consumers and their behaviors. Everything can be tracked on the Internet, for the most part, and there is obvious value to marketers and their efforts. The flip side of this ability to track people is the privacy issue and lately the US government has been raising it&rsquo;s regulatory eyebrows at the online world. In the past this may not have been such big news but with the current administration&rsquo;s bend toward a &lsquo;name it and claim it&rsquo; government style, web advertisers are looking to self police before they draw any more attention from the feds.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Government.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090702/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_online_advertising">Yahoo Tech reports</a> on the efforts of a group of advertising associations that have come together to build a set of rules and regulations that the industry can use to give the consumer the privacy they expect and let marketers keep the freedoms that government intervention would likely hinder.</p> <p>The centerpiece of these guidelines are the provision of transparency in tracking practices and easier opt-out for consumers. While it is certainly a big question as to how well these guidelines will actually work the hope is that the industry will be less of a focus of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and Congress.</p> <blockquote> <p>These guidelines are coming from trade associations that represent 5,000 companies. The consortium comprises the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Better Business Bureau. Their members are some of the nation&rsquo;s largest companies, including Google Inc., General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and Procter &amp; Gamble Co.</p> </blockquote> <p>These guidelines include recommendations that companies</p> <ol> <li>Tell consumers more clearly when they&rsquo;re being tracked</li> <li>Educate consumers on how Web tracking works</li> <li>Give consumers an easy way to opt out of being followed</li> <li>Provide &ldquo;reasonable&rdquo; security for the data they collect</li> <li>Limit how much data they retain</li> <li>Get consumer approval before making material changes that would erode privacy protections with specific areas such as children&rsquo;s personal information, financial data and medical records getting more protection.</li> </ol> <p>Anyone caught by this new group will be reported to the federal government. This plan should go into effect in 2010. Sounds reasonable enough but of course there are those who feel that this will not be enough.</p> <blockquote> <p>Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said the online ad industry&rsquo;s promise to regulate itself through the new guidelines is designed to undercut the federal government&rsquo;s increased interest in overseeing online behavioral advertising.</p> </blockquote> <p>He fears that the guidelines don&rsquo;t go far enough and that there needs to be fair rules passed by Congress that &lsquo;online marketing can thrive but consumers have greater control on how the information collected is being used.&rsquo;</p> <p>I am sure that the views of Pilgrim readers regarding government intervention in business are all over the map so we&rsquo;ll ask you the question: Should the industry police itself or should the federal government be involved? What are the pros and cons of both options? Here&rsquo;s your chance to form your own policy for people to see and show off your position on government&rsquo;s role in business. Sounds like a fun and light topic to consider while enjoying the holiday weekend, right?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/web-advertisers-try-to-avert-the-government%E2%80%99s-eyes-somewhere-else.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=IrFVozltWGg:k0phO3J8Ji8:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=IrFVozltWGg:k0phO3J8Ji8:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=IrFVozltWGg:k0phO3J8Ji8:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=IrFVozltWGg:k0phO3J8Ji8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=IrFVozltWGg:k0phO3J8Ji8:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/IrFVozltWGg" height="1" width="1"/> Federal Government guideline Internet marketing Privacy Tracking Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:41:03 -0400 Frank Reed 50874 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/02/internet-marketing-trying-to-police-itself-on-privacy-issues http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/4fruKrtNsHA/twitter-uncomfortable-with-tweet-being-used-in-third-party-apps <p>Looks like Twitter is not looking the other way as much these days. <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/01/twitter-grows-uncomfortable-with-the-use-of-the-word-tweet-in-applications/">TechCrunch reports</a> that there is some concern at the social networking company that developers are using the term &lsquo;Tweet&rsquo; too much. Twitter, in fact, is claiming that the use of that trademark in the naming of any third party app is something they are &lsquo;uncomfortable&rsquo; with. Here is an e-mail that was passed along to the TechCrunch folks relating to the subject.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/twitter-bird.jpg" alt="" /></p> <blockquote> <p>Hi,</p> <p>Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?</p> <p>Thanks,</p> </blockquote> <p>The original reason for the e-mail was apparently around a developers attempt to have a UI so similar to Twitter&rsquo;s that it may have been confused for the real deal. In the hashing out of that information the above e-mail was sent and the questions are starting to flow.</p> <p>Apparently Twitter has applied for a trademark . Commentor Rich Hill stated</p> <blockquote> <p>I just checked the US Patent Office and Trademark website and &ldquo;TWEET&rdquo; trademark has been applied for on April 14, 2009 but has not yet been finalized.</p> </blockquote> <p>The link that was given for the trademark application had expired so if you want to find the application visit the <a href="http://www.uspto.gov/">US Patents and Trademarks Office</a> and conduct the search.</p> <p>So what&rsquo;s in a name? For the people at TweetDeck, Tweetmeme and many others apparently there is a lot. How will this eventually affect them? Too early to tell and only Twitter can determine just how far they may go to protect the trademark once it is finalized.</p> <p>I have to wonder that if they thought the term was so valuable why did they wait until April of 2009 to trademark it? Seems that the more we learn about Twitter and it&rsquo;s business practices (or lack thereof) you wonder what other landmines are out there for them to step on?</p> <p>Well, we&rsquo;ll just sit back and keep tweeting while we can still use the term tweet without having to tweet the Twitter legal folks to see if our use of tweet is OK by them. Holy tweet.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/07/twitter-gets-tweet-itorial.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4fruKrtNsHA:n0pBASC_YdU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4fruKrtNsHA:n0pBASC_YdU:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4fruKrtNsHA:n0pBASC_YdU:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=4fruKrtNsHA:n0pBASC_YdU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4fruKrtNsHA:n0pBASC_YdU:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/4fruKrtNsHA" height="1" width="1"/> app Email party third Tweet Twitter Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:49:13 -0400 Frank Reed 50856 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/01/twitter-uncomfortable-with-tweet-being-used-in-third-party-apps http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/YEBuUstKMIU/flickr-just-now-allowing-connectivity-with-twitter <p><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2009/06/30/flickr-adds-direct-to-twitter-publishing/">VentureBeat reports</a> that Flickr is finally enabling its users to tweet their photos on the service.</p> <blockquote> <p>What took them so long? Flickr now has a built-in feature that lets members tweet their photos. &ldquo;You can upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flic.kr URL,&rdquo; says the company&rsquo;s FAQ. It also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr.</p> </blockquote> <p>Flickr spelled out the &ldquo;how to&rsquo;s&rdquo; in the following from their PR firm</p> <blockquote> <p>To use Flickr 2 Twitter, members need to first authorize Flickr to post to their Twitter accounts. Once authorized, members will be able to tweet photos from the &ldquo;Blog This&rdquo; button on their photo page or from their mobile devices.</p> <p>Mobile uploading is possible once members enable their Upload by Email settings (unique Flickr email upload address + &ldquo;2twitter&rdquo;). After you&rsquo;ve successfully tweeted your Flickr photo, it will look something like this.</p> </blockquote> <p><img height="239" width="300" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11383" alt="Flickr image" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Flickr-image-300x239.jpg" /></p> <p>Is there anything else out there that hasn&rsquo;t joined the Twitter trend?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/flickr-connects-to-twitter-better-late-than-never.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=YEBuUstKMIU:TpNJVlcNTr8:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=YEBuUstKMIU:TpNJVlcNTr8:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=YEBuUstKMIU:TpNJVlcNTr8:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=YEBuUstKMIU:TpNJVlcNTr8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=YEBuUstKMIU:TpNJVlcNTr8:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/YEBuUstKMIU" height="1" width="1"/> Connect Flickr Photo picture Twitter Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:27:18 -0400 Frank Reed 50855 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/07/01/flickr-just-now-allowing-connectivity-with-twitter http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/4KGiILJ_d5o/hulu-receives-good-news-concerning-their-online-ad-format <p>paidContent has two pieces of good news for Hulu in the past week&mdash;they&rsquo;re commanding not only <a href="http://paidcontent.org/article/419-hulu-tv.com-getting-higher-ad-rates-than-their-network-counterparts/">similar ad prices to broadcast television</a>, but also <a href="http://paidcontent.org/article/419-report-hulu-owns-10-percent-of-the-online-video-ad-market">10% of the online video ad market</a>.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hulu-logo.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>From a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&amp;sid=atKGiQOMco.Y">Bloomberg</a> report, paidContent shows that, for some shows, CPMs on Hulu are actually greater than they are for broadcast TV. And when I say broadcast TV, we&rsquo;re talking primetime, new episode, time-slot-leading network television. (None of that cable syndicated rerun stuff!) Bloomberg&rsquo;s example:</p> <blockquote> <p>Marketers typically pay $20 to $40 per thousand viewers for a prime-time ad. On Hulu, which began offering shows to the public in March 2008, an ad on the animated series &ldquo;The Simpsons&rdquo; costs $60 per thousand viewers, Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein &amp; Co. wrote in a June 18 report.</p> </blockquote> <p>How can the Internet, with demonstrably fewer viewers (another example, the NCAA basketball championship game, drew 17.6M TV viewers and 7.52 Internet viewers), command such high CPMs?</p> <p>A couple factors: first, that the Internet is so measurable. As CBS&rsquo;s chief research officer put it:</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;The reason people are paying such a high premium for these ads on the Internet is they do have a captive audience,&rdquo; Poltrack said. &ldquo;You know you have eyes on the screen.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Plus, Bloomberg says, there&rsquo;s an extremely scarce inventory. A typical Simpsons episode on Hulu carries only 37 seconds of advertising, versus nine minutes on television. But that also means that their overall revenues per-episode are far lower, even with more dedicated viewers. Many analysts and networks worry about television companies &ldquo;cannibalizing their core business.&rdquo; But maybe their core business <em>should</em> be shifting online.</p> <p>Justifying those high CPMs, Hulu commands 10% of the online video advertising market place. <a href="http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/6/Americans_Viewed_a_Record_16.8_Billion_Videos_Online_in_April">Hulu is a distant third</a> in online video viewership, after Google&rsquo;s properties and Fox&rsquo;s properties (including MySpace and Fox News). They have only 2.4% of the overall video market and 2.3% of the Internet&rsquo;s total unique video viewers. So 10% of the online video ad market is pretty impressive.</p> <p><img height="313" width="500" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-11373" title="chart-ad-supported-online-video-sites-m" alt="chart-ad-supported-online-video-sites-m" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/chart-ad-supported-online-video-sites-m.jpg" /></p> <p><a href="http://www.screendigest.com/press/releases/pr_28_06_2009/view.html">Screen Digest&rsquo;s report</a> states that broadcasters direct control 44% of the ad market, while cable operators command 22%. &ldquo;Other&rdquo; controls 15% of the market, Hulu 10%, and portals 9%.</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s look at that again&mdash;Hulu is the only website singled out there. It commands 10% of the market by itself, while the rest of the categories listed are just that&mdash;entire categories of sites.</p> <p>So where does YouTube fall in there? Screen Digest says:</p> <blockquote> <p>In contrast, third party platforms such as YouTube, Joost and other portals, which have no direct vertical affiliation with major rights holders, nor direct access to premium content rights, will struggle to aggregate ad-supported movies and TV shows. The Hollywood Studios and major rights holders will continue to limit such deals, instead preferring to build their own syndicated ad-supported online video services &ndash; such as Crackle, developed by Sony Pictures, and the CBS Audience Network.</p> </blockquote> <p>What do you think? Is the Internet, specifically Hulu, the future of television and video advertising? Will YouTube ever be able to catch up to Hulu in terms of monetization?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/hulu-commands-10-of-online-video-ads.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4KGiILJ_d5o:fsbGdZsYP8s:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4KGiILJ_d5o:fsbGdZsYP8s:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4KGiILJ_d5o:fsbGdZsYP8s:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=4KGiILJ_d5o:fsbGdZsYP8s:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=4KGiILJ_d5o:fsbGdZsYP8s:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/4KGiILJ_d5o" height="1" width="1"/> Ad Bloomberg format Hulu News Online report Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:48:56 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50844 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/30/hulu-receives-good-news-concerning-their-online-ad-format http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/PVK1UrwMXA8/global-gaming-factory-buys-up-pirate-bay <p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;<img align="right" src="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e201157099a332970c-100wi" alt="" />(UPDATED) News began to trickle out in the wee hours this morning that The Pirate Bay has been sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB for $4 US million in cash plus an equal amount in stock. GGF develops gaming software and operates internet cafes and gaming centers in Scandinavia.&nbsp; Details are vague, but the original team will still stay involved and promise to keep the site much the same.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Ownership of the Pirate Bay had been transferred away from the individuals being sued in 2006 according to an <a target="_blank" href="http://boombox.posterous.com/nya-tidens-intervjuer">interview</a> (translation via <a target="_blank" href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20090630/0104135410.shtml">Techdirt</a>) with co-founder Peter Sunde conducted on Twitter. Neither Sunde or his fellow pirates are the beneficiaries of the sale according to a PirateBay <a target="_blank" href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20090630/0104135410.shtml">blog post</a>, but rather&nbsp; &quot;into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openness of the nets.&quot;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/pirate-bay-sold-to-global-gaming-factory.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=PVK1UrwMXA8:6uex5lvY8oc:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=PVK1UrwMXA8:6uex5lvY8oc:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=PVK1UrwMXA8:6uex5lvY8oc:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=PVK1UrwMXA8:6uex5lvY8oc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=PVK1UrwMXA8:6uex5lvY8oc:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/PVK1UrwMXA8" height="1" width="1"/> buy Global Gaming Factory Pirate Bay sold Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:44:12 -0400 Bruce Houghton 50843 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/30/global-gaming-factory-buys-up-pirate-bay http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/0TnxGUpG2EY/pirate-bay-launches-the-video-bay <div class="entry-body"> <p style="text-align: justify;">Those tiring of the growing restrictions put by rightsholders on video on You Tube and elsewhere may eventually find a home at The Video Bay.&nbsp; Currently in &quot;beta extreme&quot;, the site is the latest brainchild of the folks behind the Pirate Bay; and if their mounting problems in Swedish courts weren't already enough, this is sure to add to their legal bills.</p> <div style="text-align: center;"><a style="display: inline;" href="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20115718e8eb8970b-pi"><img border="0" width="350" src="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20115718e8eb8970b-350wi" class="at-xid-6a00d83451b36c69e20115718e8eb8970b" alt="Videobay" /></a></div> <p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><span style="font-size: 15px;">&quot;Both Live And Drunk Coding&quot;</span></strong></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">&quot;Don't expect anything to work at all&quot;. reads the simple front page, and a test drive shows that almost nothing does. But the plans are ambitious.</p> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">&quot;To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology&trade;, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specificly the &lt;video&gt; and &lt;audio&gt; tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats. This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don't bug us too much if the site ain't working properly.&quot;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">One audio and one video demo are up on the site, but to view any audio or video clips on the site you need a browser that can handle the HTML5 &lt;video&gt; and/or &lt;audio&gt; tag including:</p> <ul style="text-align: justify;"> <li>Firefox 3.5 beta 4</li> <li>Opera 9.52 preview</li> <li>Google Chrome 3</li> <li>Safari 3.4 &amp; Safari 4</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/pirate-bay-readies-launch-of-the-video-bay.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=0TnxGUpG2EY:eQ--hUEyrgg:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=0TnxGUpG2EY:eQ--hUEyrgg:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=0TnxGUpG2EY:eQ--hUEyrgg:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=0TnxGUpG2EY:eQ--hUEyrgg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=0TnxGUpG2EY:eQ--hUEyrgg:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/0TnxGUpG2EY" height="1" width="1"/> Bay HTML5 Pirate Video Video Bay Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:31:41 -0400 Bruce Houghton 50842 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/30/pirate-bay-launches-the-video-bay http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/2AJK9gkzq08/a-twitter-rant-gone-bad <p>I am not an author. I&rsquo;m a blogger. If I say something that someone disagrees with they can let me have it in the comments section of the blog. At that point, the decision needs to be made how, or even better if, I should fire back. In most cases, I make the decision to let bygones be bygones because comment crossfire usually ends badly (or at the very least awkwardly) and it doesn&rsquo;t accomplish much in the end. As long as there are no off color comments regarding direct family members or my heritage, I can take it. Most online attacks come from people who are only exercising their Internet muscles anyway (meaning since they never actually have to face someone in person they can look like they have some nerve).<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Twitter-icon.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/author-apologizes-for-twitter-outburst-about-a-bad-review/">The New York Times covered an story</a> that turns out to be a &lsquo;how not to handle a situation online&rdquo; mini case study. It appears that the author, Alice Hoffman, apparently got a bad review of her new book &ldquo;The Story Sisters&rdquo; from Roberta Silman of the Boston Globe. Silman&rsquo;s review included the comment &ldquo;This new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired.&rdquo; Apparently Ms. Silman gave away the plot as well. It appears safe to say that this was a less than stellar review and a dwindling number of Boston Globe readers may or may not have seen it. We do know, however, that Ms. Hoffman did.</p> <p>So how did Ms.Hoffman respond? With a Twitter tirade, of course. (Note to self: If you feel slighted it may not be in your best interest to write something similar to the following)</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,&rdquo; she wrote. &ldquo;How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.&rdquo; Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman&rsquo;s phone number and email, inviting fans to &ldquo;Tell her what u think of snarky critics.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Fast forward to the new media version of the stockade; the written mea culpa (a fancy word for eating your mistake whole and in public for everyone to snicker at). Hoffman&rsquo;s statement through her publisher, Shaye Areheart, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group division of Random House included:</p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course, I was dismayed by Roberta Silman&rsquo;s review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn&rsquo;t. I&rsquo;m sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that&rsquo;s the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn&rsquo;t mean to hurt anyone and I&rsquo;m truly sorry if I did.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Oh, and she also took down her Twitter account. Hoffman is just another in a growing list of people who shouldn&rsquo;t be allowed to use social media. Heck, you need a license to drive a car, what about social media? Until it is recognized that no good rant goes unpunished on the Internet, these online reputation suicides will continue to occur with startling regularity and intensity.</p> <p>What is your technique for keeping your emotions in check in online environments? Ever hit the send button and regretted it? I would venture to say that you aren&rsquo;t truly involved in social media unless you have done that to some degree or another. What separates the online men from the boys is if you let it happen repeatedly and what level of intensity (or stupidity) you allow your emotions to take you to.</p> <p>If you remember the TV show &ldquo;Hill Street Blues&rdquo; the cops never left their morning briefing without the words of Sergeant Esterhaus saying &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s be careful out there&rdquo;. While not as dangerous as mean streets of some urban center, the Internet carries it&rsquo;s own set of risks so that people should heed the warning as well.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/bad-review-made-worse-by-twitter-tirade.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2AJK9gkzq08:btqdGRnLmv8:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2AJK9gkzq08:btqdGRnLmv8:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2AJK9gkzq08:btqdGRnLmv8:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=2AJK9gkzq08:btqdGRnLmv8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2AJK9gkzq08:btqdGRnLmv8:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/2AJK9gkzq08" height="1" width="1"/> author boston globe media rant social Twitter Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:28:20 -0400 Frank Reed 50841 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/30/a-twitter-rant-gone-bad http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/Y1IsCU3YGWU/reports-say-microsoft-could-be-selling-razorfish <p>When Microsoft <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/05/breaking-microsoft-to-acquire-aqauntive-for-6-billion.html">acquired</a> aQuantive in 2007, it wanted to bolster its ad network. Unfortunately, it also ended-up with a conflict of interest, as aQuantive came with Avenue A | Razorfish&ndash;an ad agency.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/ucm049032.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>Since then, you could argue that about the only good thing to come out of that particular acquisition was the re-branding from the awkward &quot;Avenue A | Razorfish&quot; to the more practical <a href="http://www.razorfish.com/">Razorfish</a>. Really, what did Microsoft want with an ad agency anyway?</p> <p>Well, the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/11be3c0e-641f-11de-a818-00144feabdc0.html">FT</a> has yet another rumor&ndash;in a <a href="http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=130521">long line of rumors</a>&ndash;that Microsoft plans to sell off Razorfish.</p> <blockquote> <p>Microsoft has appointed Morgan Stanley to find a potential buyer for Razorfish, its digital agency&hellip;In August, two years after the aQuantive deal, more favourable tax implications will provide an opportunity for Microsoft to sell an asset some view as a conflict of interest with Microsoft Advertising, which sells technology to rival agencies.</p> </blockquote> <p>So far French marketing firm Publicis appears to be the front runner&ndash;with barely a mention that WPP may once again be interested.</p> <p>So what&rsquo;s Razorfish worth? Back in 2008, AdAge slapped a $800 million valuation on the agency, but we&rsquo;re in a totally different economic climate right now, so FT&rsquo;s $600m-$700m might be more realistic. But, really, that&rsquo;s just a very small drop in an insanely large Microsoft bucket. Why bother either selling?</p> <p>Well, that brings us back to the conflict of interest issue again. Microsoft has a renewed focus on its own online advertising sales, and so the time might be right to get rid of any distractions.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/is-microsoft-ready-to-shave-off-razorfishs-conflict-of-interest.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y1IsCU3YGWU:ZG-kSl6ASzo:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y1IsCU3YGWU:ZG-kSl6ASzo:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y1IsCU3YGWU:ZG-kSl6ASzo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=Y1IsCU3YGWU:ZG-kSl6ASzo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Y1IsCU3YGWU:ZG-kSl6ASzo:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/Y1IsCU3YGWU" height="1" width="1"/> FT Microsoft Morgan Stanley Razorfish report rumor Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:05:39 -0400 Andy Beal 50825 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/29/reports-say-microsoft-could-be-selling-razorfish http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/WUkIHr_vfQw/important-bing-developer-leaves-for-ebay <p>It seems that Microsoft&rsquo;s taking <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/three-blind-mice-run-from-yahoo-to-microsoft.html">three steps forward</a> and one step back, with its hiring of other companies&rsquo; employees. It <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/172367.asp">just lost</a> Hugh Williams to eBay.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/2548f1a.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>He left Microsoft to become vice president of development for search for the auction site and, judging by Williams&rsquo; <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/hugh-williams/4/191/947">LinkedIn profile</a>, eBay gains the guy that helped created Bing:</p> <blockquote> <p>I was a Partner at Microsoft, and a development manager in the Bing team. I&rsquo;m proud to say that many of the features of the first Bing release were created by my team.</p> <p>I managed the development of all user-facing web search relevance features, including the left-rail explore pane (with its &quot;table of contents&quot;), navigational query treatments, query-biased summaries, &quot;deeplinks&quot;, related searches, and whole page results relevance. Additionally, I managed the Powerset team in San Francisco.</p> </blockquote> <p>He also played a key role in Microsoft&rsquo;s development of Internet Explorer 8.</p> <p>So, two questions. What damage does this do to Bing, if any? And, what the heck does eBay have up its sleeve?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/microsoft-loses-key-bing-developer-to-ebay.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=WUkIHr_vfQw:E-XLg9bUPQw:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=WUkIHr_vfQw:E-XLg9bUPQw:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=WUkIHr_vfQw:E-XLg9bUPQw:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=WUkIHr_vfQw:E-XLg9bUPQw:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=WUkIHr_vfQw:E-XLg9bUPQw:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/WUkIHr_vfQw" height="1" width="1"/> bing developer eBay leave Microsoft Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:45:54 -0400 Andy Beal 50824 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/29/important-bing-developer-leaves-for-ebay http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/FkQHgwqM9Y0/facebook-status-updates-going-public <p>This week, Facebook announced some coming <a href="http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=98499677130">changes to your status updates</a>. Soon, just like with Twitter, you&rsquo;ll have the option to make them public&mdash;but not just to everyone on the world&rsquo;s most popular social network, but everyone around the world. (You know, with Internet access.)</p> <p><img height="198" width="485" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11323" title="facebook status updates everyone" alt="facebook status updates everyone" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/facebook-status-updates-everyone.jpg" /></p> <p>Because this feature is being implemented on the Facebook Publisher, you can add more to your newsstream than just text updates and links. The buttons below the text area allow you to add photos, videos and announcements or other integrations from your apps that have integrated with the publisher.</p> <p>Facebook also gave an in-depth explanation of each level of access:</p> <blockquote> <ul> <li>Everyone: Anyone, on or off, of Facebook can see it.</li> <li>Friends and Networks: People you have confirmed as friends and people in any school or work networks that you&rsquo;ve joined can see it.</li> <li>Friends of Friends: Anyone who is friends with a friend of yours can see it.</li> <li>Friends: Only people you have confirmed as friends can see it.</li> <li>Custom: Choose any friend or Friend List to include or exclude from seeing that piece of content.</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>According to <a href="http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/06/24/facebook-takes-aim-at-twitter-launches-new-publisher-to-make-sharing-status-updates-publicly-easier/">Inside Facebook</a>, Facebook&rsquo;s Mark Zuckerberg promised more granular privacy controls recently, and this may have been exactly what he meant.</p> <p>Right now, this feature is being tested with users who have chosen to set their profile and status updates to &ldquo;Everyone,&rdquo; but for everyone else, the Publisher settings will remain the same.</p> <p>What do you think? Will multi-media, real-time updates on a site that already has widespread traction ever take the place of Twitter in your heart (and the media&rsquo;s)?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/facebook-status-updates-public-twitter.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FkQHgwqM9Y0:SB-Z4dQLLRg:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FkQHgwqM9Y0:SB-Z4dQLLRg:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FkQHgwqM9Y0:SB-Z4dQLLRg:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=FkQHgwqM9Y0:SB-Z4dQLLRg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FkQHgwqM9Y0:SB-Z4dQLLRg:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/FkQHgwqM9Y0" height="1" width="1"/> facebook social networks Status Updates Twitter Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:02:53 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50811 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/26/facebook-status-updates-going-public http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/aSf8noTqSrk/reasons-twitter-should-start-charging-for-their-service <p>I am going to write something that is likely to be unpopular. Today I experienced a &quot;perfect storm&quot; of sorts regarding the Internet and the idea of free is good. This apparent entitlement mentality that is pervasive among Internet users that everything should free is going to potentially ruin a lot of good opportunities. Of course, all of this is in my opinion so you can take it for what it's worth. At least reading it is free, right?<img align="right" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3115/2546487586_78b980caba_m.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>This week I have encountered SMB (small and medium business) people who love the idea of Internet marketing but they don't think that they should have to pay for it. I have read that free services suck because you can't get service when something breaks or fails. I have been doing free seminars for some folks for over a year but have closed nearly zero business from it (this last one may be because I just didn't do the right things to make them a customer which I can accept).</p> <p>So free is in but for how long? Two of the most prolific Internet properties that are currently getting a serious amount of attention from business are Twitter and Facebook. They are both free to use. I am beginning to think that Facebook has a better mousetrap due to a wider breadth of services it ties together, but that's for another post. One thing that Twitter has is a ton of hype. This hype appears to outpace reality on a consistent basis. I think any stumbling blocks that Twitter is encountering is due to one facet of the service: it's free.</p> <p>So should Twitter charge for the service? Here's a few things to mull over.</p> <ol> <li>If Twitter were getting more people who actually used the service rather than signing up and then not using it within a month it would have more value. It may have a lot less users but it would be the people who actually get it. So how to you separate the wheat from the chaff? Make the service a paid one. Not much. Let's just say $24.99 per year. Just over two bucks a month. I would spend that in a heartbeat for Twitter. Why? Because I see the value and I would think that 2 bucks a month is a steal. Some quick math for you. If 50% of the 18 or so million Twitter users decided they would pay for the service at $24.99 per year you now have revenue of just under, gulp, $225 million. With overhead being as small as it is for Twitter you have plenty of profit, plenty of cash for R&amp;D and even more for infrastructure. Oh and you also get 9 million users with skin in the game so they now become much more valuable to advertisers.</li> <li>If Twitter had revenue, it could quit wasting time with everyone speculating how they were going to make money to survive and then just develop very cool ways to apply the service to businesses for their benefit.</li> <li>If Twitter charged for use and could provide customer service. Nothing else needs to be said there.</li> <li>Back to the R&amp;D thought. If Twitter was making money it could work 24 / 7 to improve its search capabilities.&nbsp; Many believe search is the true potential value of Twitter anyway. Think of the paid search model around highly targeted and engaged Twitter users based on keyword. The cash registers would ring a lot.</li> <li>Twitter as a paid service would eliminate a lot of the noise. There would be less mundane reporting because users would have skin in the game.</li> </ol> <p>I say all this because, while it's not as sexy as Twitter, LinkedIn is looking to be profitable for its second year in a row. That's right. Profit. No matter how many characters you get to make that point it's something that Twitter may never realize. Sure that's a strong statement but why not? Twitter is burned into everyone's brain as a free service and I suspect it may be too late for them to get back to where they need to be.</p> <p>Look, I could be wrong here but one thing I am sure of. If anything is put out as free you will get what you pay for. To expect more and, even worse, to think that you shouldn't have to ever pay for any Internet services is ridiculous. Would you just give away your product or service? No, of course not. So why do you think that Twitter should?</p> <p><a href="http://www.mikemoran.com/biznology/archives/2009/06/i_am_going_to_write.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=aSf8noTqSrk:CQvaRg7uRMs:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=aSf8noTqSrk:CQvaRg7uRMs:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=aSf8noTqSrk:CQvaRg7uRMs:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=aSf8noTqSrk:CQvaRg7uRMs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=aSf8noTqSrk:CQvaRg7uRMs:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/aSf8noTqSrk" height="1" width="1"/> business charge model service Twitter Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:01:37 -0400 Frank Reed 50805 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/26/reasons-twitter-should-start-charging-for-their-service http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/2EoDe2AIiTM/yahoo-site-re-design-coming-in-fall <p>After years of poor performances and publicity turmoil, the powers that be at Yahoo! are embarking on one of the company&rsquo;s most import brand overhauls.<img align="right" src="http://blog.ineedhits.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/yahoo-logo.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p><a target="_blank" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/www.yahoo.com');" href="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!</a> already has a homepage redesign looming, which is scheduled for launch in Fall this year. The redesign was delayed by Carol Bartz back January when she took over the reigns. Perhaps she knew then what we&rsquo;re starting to see unfold.</p> <p>Kara Swisher, author of the <a target="_blank" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/kara.allthingsd.com');" href="http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090624/exclusive-yahoo-working-on-major-brand-overhaul-please-no-more-yodeling/">BoomTown blog</a> on All Things Digital, quizzed Carol about the rebrand plans at the D: All Things Digital conference back in May, and this is what she had to say:</p> <blockquote> <p>The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it&hellip;We just have to get our story out there; we have to continue to appeal to the people that come to us, and frankly, at some point people get sick of having us as the underdog and say, &lsquo;Thank God, Yahoo&rsquo;s back.&rsquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>There has been endless pressure on Yahoo! over the past few years with significant market share lost to Google and public perception of the company at an all time low.</p> <p>To make matters worse, last month saw the big unveil of Bing, Microsoft&rsquo;s re-emergence into the space. And with a shiny new brand and some new tech under the hood, Microsoft has reclaimed some of its lost lustre.</p> <p>So will Yahoo! be able to emulate the success of its foe with a relaunch of the Yahoo! brand.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s always difficult to predict the real impact of a rebrand, but I&rsquo;m sceptical it&rsquo;ll have the long term benefits they&rsquo;ll be hoping for. With out real substance (innovation, improved performance etc) &ndash; the bells and whistles will only impress for so long.</p> <p>That said, the marketer in me is keen to where they take the brand. Will the infamous yodel remain, or will they start a fresh? Who knows, but my money is on the Yodel being laid to rest!</p> <p>Well until we see the results of this major rebrand, here&rsquo;s one of the old Yahoo! adverts. If you want to see more &ndash; visit <a target="_blank" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outbound/article/kara.allthingsd.com');" href="http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090624/exclusive-yahoo-working-on-major-brand-overhaul-please-no-more-yodeling/">Kara&rsquo;s Boom Town blog</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://blog.ineedhits.com/search-news/a-yahoo-re-brand-is-coming-%E2%80%93-but-will-it-block-the-bing-onslaught-25216201.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2EoDe2AIiTM:OvjdM5RgKBU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2EoDe2AIiTM:OvjdM5RgKBU:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2EoDe2AIiTM:OvjdM5RgKBU:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=2EoDe2AIiTM:OvjdM5RgKBU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=2EoDe2AIiTM:OvjdM5RgKBU:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/2EoDe2AIiTM" height="1" width="1"/> Yahoo Fall rebrand site Website Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:58:19 -0400 Rene LeMerle 50804 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/26/yahoo-site-re-design-coming-in-fall http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/b7iuNJXAvuk/youtube-sees-massive-increase-in-mobile-video <div class="entry-body"> <p style="text-align: justify;"><a style="float: left;" href="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20115706c7156970c-pi"><img border="0" width="120" style="margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;" src="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20115706c7156970c-120wi" class="at-xid-6a00d83451b36c69e20115706c7156970c" alt="Youtube wide" /></a> YouTube is reporting that in the last six month uploads from mobile phones have jump 1700%; and since the iPhone 3GS with video came out last Friday uploads have increased by 400% every day.</p> <p>YouTube reports that the growth is being driven by three overlapping developments:</p> <ul> <li>new video-enabled phones</li> <li>improvements in upload flow when posting from a phone</li> <li>a new feature that allows videos to be easily shared on social networks.</li> </ul> <div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</div> </div> <div class="entry-more"> <p style="text-align: justify;">It takes just a minute to connect a YouTube account to Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts. Complete a simple, one-time connection on our upload page and followers get a real-time stream of your uploads to YouTube.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">The YouTube community is also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29GD0Z2G5EA" target="_blank">teaching each other how to use this technology</a>, doing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk_BGjRi9Qg" target="_blank">product reviews</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jG9TUV5v1s" target="_blank">comparisons</a>, and making test videos.</p> </div> <p><a href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/youtube-reports-1700-jump-in-mobile-video.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=b7iuNJXAvuk:XnNyvhXmkUs:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=b7iuNJXAvuk:XnNyvhXmkUs:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=b7iuNJXAvuk:XnNyvhXmkUs:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=b7iuNJXAvuk:XnNyvhXmkUs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=b7iuNJXAvuk:XnNyvhXmkUs:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/b7iuNJXAvuk" height="1" width="1"/> 3GS increase iPhone mobile Video YouTube Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:57:48 -0400 Bruce Houghton 50800 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/26/youtube-sees-massive-increase-in-mobile-video http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/pEpJ_nW5M_k/amazon-closes-nc-affiliate-program-before-vital-tax-legislation-vote <p>It appears as though Amazon&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/north-carolina-ready-enact-affiliate-taxes-amazon-first-to-pull-the-plug.html">email</a> to affiliates regarding North Carolina&rsquo;s pending taxes was not a bluff. I just received a follow-up email from the company saying it has decided to shut down its affiliate program in the state, as of today.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/top-logo._V11874419_.gif" alt="" /></p> <blockquote> <p>We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation&rsquo;s effective date.</p> <p>Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.</p> <p>In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.</p> <p>The North Carolina General Assembly&rsquo;s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.</p> <p>We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.</p> <p>Best Regards,</p> <p>The Amazon Associates Team</p> </blockquote> <p>It&rsquo;s interesting that Amazon has shut the program down before the legislation passes. Could it be that the NC lawmakers thought Amazon was bluffing too? Did Amazon close the program early so that affiliates would still have time to ramp up their complaints to the General Assembly.</p> <p>Of course, there are plenty of other companies that will keep their affiliate programs running in NC&ndash;though Commission Junction doesn&rsquo;t appear to be one of them&ndash;but will there be enough actual affiliate revenue to tax after this?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/amazon-calls-nc-lawmakers-bluff-cancels-affiliate-program-early.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pEpJ_nW5M_k:jabSn19UbAg:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pEpJ_nW5M_k:jabSn19UbAg:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pEpJ_nW5M_k:jabSn19UbAg:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=pEpJ_nW5M_k:jabSn19UbAg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pEpJ_nW5M_k:jabSn19UbAg:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/pEpJ_nW5M_k" height="1" width="1"/> Amazon close Legislation NC North Carolina program tax vote Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:52:23 -0400 Andy Beal 50799 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/26/amazon-closes-nc-affiliate-program-before-vital-tax-legislation-vote http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/vHPJk6A8BBc/mashable-and-techcrunch-get-their-own-twitter-apps <p>While I don&rsquo;t use third-party Twitter app <a target="_blank" href="http://tweetdeck.com/">Tweetdeck</a> myself (I switched to <a target="_blank" href="http://desktop.seesmic.com/">Seesmic Desktop</a> a while back), I noticed today that both <a target="_blank" href="http://mashable.com/2009/06/25/mashdeck/trackback/">Mashable</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/like-tweetdeck-like-techcrunch-then-youll-love-this/trackback/">TechCrunch</a> now have their own branded versions. <p>It&rsquo;s basically the same Tweetdeck application but now you can have a dedicated pre-set column for the latest news from both websites, as well as a shiny Mashable or TechCrunch logo on your Tweetdeck skin.</p> <p>But are they worth changing to?</p> <p>Personally, I can&rsquo;t see the major benefit at this time. Yes, it&rsquo;s great that now both Mashable and TechCrunch have their logo on Tweetdeck&rsquo;s interface. But will that really expand their brand?</p> <p>I&rsquo;m guessing that most users who already have Tweetdeck installed know about both websites. And you can always just set up your own preset column in the standard Tweetdeck to watch the Mashable and TechCrunch feeds.</p> <p>What about new users? Mashable promotes their version by saying it&rsquo;s great for new Twitter users to &ldquo;get up to speed&rdquo;. I&rsquo;m not so sure &ndash; new Twitter users might be better getting used to Twitter itself first before trying to control a multi-column app.</p> <p>Comments on both websites are mixed &ndash; some think it&rsquo;s great while others think it&rsquo;s a waste of time.</p> <p>I have to say that I&rsquo;m with the second camp at the minute. It&rsquo;s always interesting to see brands experiment with ways to get their name into people&rsquo;s collective. I&rsquo;m just not sure this is it.</p> <p>And with some Tweetdeck users still complaining about performance issues (the new iPhone app crashing, memory hog, etc), wouldn&rsquo;t it be better for Tweetdeck to concentrate on that first?</p> <p>What about you? What&rsquo;s your take on Mashable and TechCrunch&rsquo;s new Tweetdeck app?</p> <p>Would it make you question their bias when discussing third-party Twitter apps? How can they make real use of it down the line? Will you be downloading one of them?</p> <div style="border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;" id="TixyyLink"><a href="http://dannybrown.me/2009/06/25/branded-tweetdeck-great-idea-or-waste-of-time/">Comments</a></div> </p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=vHPJk6A8BBc:-sOtyMM8F5A:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=vHPJk6A8BBc:-sOtyMM8F5A:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=vHPJk6A8BBc:-sOtyMM8F5A:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=vHPJk6A8BBc:-sOtyMM8F5A:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=vHPJk6A8BBc:-sOtyMM8F5A:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/vHPJk6A8BBc" height="1" width="1"/> Mashable Seesmic Desktop TechCrunch TweetDeck Twitter Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:20:30 -0400 Danny Brown 50792 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/25/mashable-and-techcrunch-get-their-own-twitter-apps http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/lZO4U4OlI_4/dow-jones-exec-calls-google-a-vampire-to-the-newspaper-industry <p>Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton has been bitten by a vampire. He <a href="http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090624/FREE/906249985">claims</a> that Google is the &ldquo;digital vampire&rdquo; that has been &ldquo;sucking the blood&rdquo; out of the newspaper industry.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/vampire.jpg" style="width: 135px; height: 163px;" alt="" /></p> <p>I totally agree!</p> <p>Hinton must have been bitten by a vampire. How else do you explain such nonsense coming from the man responsible for one of the largest publishing companies&ndash;and owners of The Wall Street Journal.</p> <p>He continues his deluded rhetoric:</p> <blockquote> <p>[Google] didn&rsquo;t actually begin life in a cave as a digital vampire per se. The charitable view of Google is that the news business itself fed Google&rsquo;s taste for this kind of blood.&rdquo;</p> <p>By offering its content free on the Web, the newspaper industry &ldquo;gave Google&rsquo;s fangs a great place to bite,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;We will never know what might have happened had newspapers taken a different approach.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>I tell you what would have happened. <strong>Without Google sending millions of daily visitors to newspaper web sites&ndash;for FREE&ndash;the newspaper industry would have being snuggling up to the Dodo a long time ago. </strong>It drives me batty (pun intended) when I read about newspaper execs blaming their demise on Google. They seem to believe that the newspaper industry would still be thriving, if it weren&rsquo;t for the search engine making it easy to serve up their content.</p> <p>Let&rsquo;s think about that, shall we? As a publisher, you&rsquo;re placing your content on your web site, right? If you didn&rsquo;t want your online content to cannibalize your printed daily offering, why post it to the web? Oh, I see. You have to, because that&rsquo;s where people prefer to get their news these days. OK, you want people to find your news story and not your rivals&rsquo; right? How are you going to do that? Hmm, seems like there&rsquo;s one channel that hundreds of millions of people use to find new content each day? Do you remember the name of that place? Ah, yes, Google!</p> <p>OK, you get my point, so I&rsquo;ll stop the sarcasm and get back to the facts.</p> <p>People want to read news online. They don&rsquo;t want to pay for it. They use Google. Google sends you the bulk of your daily web site visitors. <strong>Either figure out how to monitize those visitors&ndash;like the rest of the world&ndash;or block Google via your robots.txt file and shut up!</strong></p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/google-sucking-the-blood-out-of-the-anemic-newspaper-industry.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=lZO4U4OlI_4:C8y3jt3qxco:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=lZO4U4OlI_4:C8y3jt3qxco:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=lZO4U4OlI_4:C8y3jt3qxco:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=lZO4U4OlI_4:C8y3jt3qxco:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=lZO4U4OlI_4:C8y3jt3qxco:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/lZO4U4OlI_4" height="1" width="1"/> Google Dow industry Jones Newspaper vampire Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:01:30 -0400 Andy Beal 50782 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/25/dow-jones-exec-calls-google-a-vampire-to-the-newspaper-industry http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/7667MIy3B_A/introducing-the-new-ceo-of-linkedin <p>Well, looks like some folks over at LinkedIn are going to be busy updating their profiles. Reid Hoffman&rsquo;s will now include Founder and CEO of LinkedIn followed by Chairman of the Board of LinkedIn followed by interim CEO of LinkedIn and now landing at Executive Chairman of LinkedIn. Good thing Reid has stuck around to fill in the gaps.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/linkedin-logo.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>LinkedIn has now announced the move of making president, Jeff Weiner, the new CEO of the company. Weiner came over from Yahoo in January and this move is not raising any eyebrows. Hoffman had stepped into the CEO role for the past 6 months or so after Dan Nye left in December of last year after two years in the post. Now the transition to Weiner looks complete.</p> <p><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10272210-36.html?part=rss&amp;subj=news&amp;tag=2547-1023_3-0-5">cnet reports</a></p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;LinkedIn was founded to harness the power of the Internet to create a tool that would help individuals become more effective and successful professionals,&rdquo; Hoffman said in a release. &ldquo;Over the past six months, Jeff has done an exceptional job leading the company and I look forward to continuing the work that we have begun together.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>LinkedIn claims 42 million members which makes their audience bigger than Twitter but far smaller than Facebook&rsquo;s 200 million plus members. What LinkedIn can claim that neither of the other two can is that it</p> <blockquote> <p>hopes to be profitable this year for the second year in a row; it makes money not only from ads, but from premium subscriptions and &ldquo;corporate solutions.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Profitable? For a second year in a row? Not often we use that word here in the present tense when it comes to social media companies let alone talking about starting a &lsquo;profitable year streak&rsquo;. In the past, Hoffman has expressed the desire to go public and last year was looking for a billion dollar valuation when raising $53 million. If you want to play the &ldquo;What is LinkedIn worth now?&rdquo; game go right ahead. In this market it looks like anyone&rsquo;s guess is as good as the next.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/linkedin-names-new-ceo.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7667MIy3B_A:m6MkvKOcQKo:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7667MIy3B_A:m6MkvKOcQKo:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7667MIy3B_A:m6MkvKOcQKo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=7667MIy3B_A:m6MkvKOcQKo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=7667MIy3B_A:m6MkvKOcQKo:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/7667MIy3B_A" height="1" width="1"/> CEO LinkedIn member new Reid Hoffman Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:57:44 -0400 Frank Reed 50781 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/25/introducing-the-new-ceo-of-linkedin http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/I0vvYVm0sRY/the-power-of-twitter <p>Two recent reports illustrate the power of Twitter in two important metrics&mdash;driving visits and purchasing power. <a href="http://hitwise.com/">Hitwise</a> analyzes overall downstream traffic for Twitter, while <a href="http://www.npd.com/">NPD Group</a> takes a look at downstream purchases generated by Twitter.</p> <p>Hitwise took a look at the most popular categories of <a href="http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2009/06/twitter_sending_traffic_to_online_media_but_not_retail.html">downstream traffic for Twitter</a>, comparing them with Facebook, Google UK and Hotmail. Nearly a quarter of Twitter&rsquo;s downstream traffic goes to entertainment sites, and another ~15% went to social networks:<br /> <img height="548" width="442" class="size-full wp-image-11187" title="Downstream_traffic_from_twitter_google_uk_facebook_hotmail_2009" alt="Downstream_traffic_from_twitter_google_uk_facebook_hotmail_2009" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Downstream_traffic_from_twitter_google_uk_facebook_hotmail_2009.png" /><br /> <small><em>Source: Hitwise</em></small></p> <p>Interestingly, Twitter also leads in downstream traffic to news &amp; media sites, lifestyle sites and music sites&mdash;and, taken with a new <a href="http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_090623a.html">study from NPD Group</a>, that&rsquo;s good news for the music industry. As <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55N0M020090624?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=technologyNews">Reuters</a> reports:</p> <blockquote> <p>active Twitter users buy 77 percent more digital music downloads on average than non-users. Additionally, 12 percent of those who have bought music in the last three months also report having used Twitter, versus 8 percent of overall Web users.</p> </blockquote> <p>And that&rsquo;s not all the good news for the music industry. NPD also found that:</p> <ul> <li>A third of Twitter users listened to music on a social network</li> <li>41% of Twitter users listened to online radio&mdash;compared to 22% of all Internet users</li> <li>39% of Tweeple watched a music video online&mdash;compared to 25% of all Internet users.</li> <li>Twitterers were more than twice as likely as average Internet users to visit MySpace Music or Pandora.</li> </ul> <p>But is all that translating into revenue for record companies? Oh yeah:</p> <ul> <li>33% of Twitter users bought a CD in the last three months&mdash;compared to 23% of all web users</li> <li>34% purchased a digital download&mdash;compared to 16% of all Internet users</li> <li>On average, Tweeple purchased 77% more digital downloads&mdash;obviously, Twitterers spent more money when purchasing music.</li> </ul> <p>Clearly, Twitter users are likely to click on music-related links <em>and</em> translate that action into purchases. What do you think&mdash;what should the music industry do to get more mentions on Twitter?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/twitter-clicks-entertainment-buy-music.html">Comments</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=I0vvYVm0sRY:bBcgcrSuqSI:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=I0vvYVm0sRY:bBcgcrSuqSI:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=I0vvYVm0sRY:bBcgcrSuqSI:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=I0vvYVm0sRY:bBcgcrSuqSI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=I0vvYVm0sRY:bBcgcrSuqSI:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/I0vvYVm0sRY" height="1" width="1"/> Social Media CEOs. Network facebook Hitwise Twitter Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:53:39 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50767 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/24/the-power-of-twitter http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/bOyEEOZDtJs/within-a-year-facebook-triples-its-advertiser-base <p>I know you&rsquo;re tired of hearing the same old &ldquo;the economy is going down the tubes&rdquo; sob story, so I brought you something different today&mdash;a company that&rsquo;s actually increasing its advertiser base. And not just any company&mdash;a social media company (and you <em>know</em> how tough it is to really make money there&mdash;you know, other thank from VCs).</p> <p><img height="100" align="right" width="200" class="alignright size-full wp-image-6788" alt="facebook-logo" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/facebook-logo.jpg" />Facebook has tripled its advertiser base in the last year. Yes, <em>tripled</em>. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=auU3eSGIPVzs">Bloomberg reports on the uptick</a> (comparing it to Google&rsquo;s first sequential drop in quarterly sales last quarter), speaking with Tim Kendall, Facebook&rsquo;s director of product marketing for monetization.</p> <p>In case you&rsquo;re wondering, the specific advertising product that&rsquo;s garnered so much popularity was first unveiled in 2007. Bloomberg describes it thusly:</p> <blockquote> <p>The automated ad system . . . lets companies make small edits to their ads during campaigns and suggests words for advertisers to target users. The ads, which appear on users&rsquo; Facebook home pages, allow 25 characters in the title and as many as 135 characters in the body of the text and an optional photo.</p> </blockquote> <p>And it turns out that Facebook is employing a revolutionary idea to get these and other ad formats (such as their &ldquo;Engagement ads&rdquo;) out there.</p> <p>Wait for it.</p> <p>Wait for it.</p> <p>A <em>sales staff</em>. I know, seriously, can you believe it?! Aside from selling advertising inventory, this staff also:</p> <blockquote> <p>The company also has been helping advertisers target users when they become fans of certain products or brands. Users can visit fan pages where they learn more about the products and connect with others.</p> </blockquote> <p>And if their advertiser base has tripled YOY, it sounds like they&rsquo;re doing their job&mdash;especially in light of recent reports of <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/facebook-and-click-fraud.html">rampant click fraud</a> on the social network&rsquo;s ads.</p> <p>eMarket Analyst Debra Aho Williamson told Bloomberg, &ldquo;Everything is starting to solidify for [Facebook]. They&rsquo;re definitely getting the hang of it.&rdquo;</p> <p>What do you think&mdash;is Facebook hitting its stride or does it have a long way to go to catch up?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/facebook-triples-advertiser-base.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=bOyEEOZDtJs:1sN8Ic8cVs0:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=bOyEEOZDtJs:1sN8Ic8cVs0:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=bOyEEOZDtJs:1sN8Ic8cVs0:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=bOyEEOZDtJs:1sN8Ic8cVs0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=bOyEEOZDtJs:1sN8Ic8cVs0:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/bOyEEOZDtJs" height="1" width="1"/> advertise Base Economy facebook triple Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:28:51 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50753 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/24/within-a-year-facebook-triples-its-advertiser-base http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/OlC14I0TBQE/biz-stone-talks-about-driving-revenue-for-twitter <p>With Facebook talking about reaching their lofty revenue goals for 2009 you would have to suspect that Twitter has to address the issue as well. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=anyUq3GLTV8A">Bloomberg reports</a> today that Twitter is planning to show revenue in 2009 from clients like Dell, Whole Foods and Starbucks. This is coming from Biz Stone himself but when it comes to the details, well, let&rsquo;s just say they fall well short of the 140 character limit.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/twitter-logo.jpg" alt="" /></p> <blockquote> <p>&ldquo;The idea is if they are getting value out of Twitter then we could add more value to what they are doing and we could get some revenue,&rdquo; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview today. &ldquo;We think we&rsquo;ll get to something this year, however simple, that shows we&rsquo;re making some money.&rdquo; He declined to give sales estimates for this year.</p> </blockquote> <p>Not exactly the kind of words that you hang your hat on so to speak. Twitter is as much a lesson in hype as it is a lesson in the next level of social media. Sounds negative? Well, what do you believe anymore? If any other company did this &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have revenue maybe, kinda, sorta&rdquo; dance they would be pushed to the curb. Twitter gets a pass on these things because there isn&rsquo;t much else to talk about apparently.</p> <p>Stone himself realizes that the window of opportunity could go away at just about any time.</p> <blockquote> <p>When asked how long the hype around Twitter could last, Stone said he&rsquo;s realistic about Internet trends.</p> <p>&ldquo;This kind of stuff doesn&rsquo;t last forever and you have to have a healthy attitude toward it. Far be it from me to say when it would end, that would be a total guess.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Predicting Internet trends and the &ldquo;time to live&rdquo; on Twitter&rsquo;s ability to capitalize on revenue opportunities apparently fall into the same category of being a total guess. His descriptions of how the Twitter bird would line it&rsquo;s nest in San Francisco with cash is just as open ended.</p> <blockquote> <p>The San Francisco-based service could make money by verifying Twitter accounts, said Stone, so users &ldquo;following&rdquo; brands would know it was really Whole Foods or Coca-Cola Co. sending Tweets, or instant messages that can be 140 characters long. Twitter could also offer statistics to businesses detailing how effective their Tweets are and offer multiple accounts to large businesses with many branches, he said.</p> </blockquote> <p>I think people are ready to hear something a little more definitive than Twitter &lsquo;could&rsquo; do this or that to make money. There is no denying that many are using the service as part of their marketing mix but how much does a company invest in putting together programs with a company&rsquo;s service that is not making any money and appears to have no real plan to get there?</p> <p>In addition, Stone sounded resolute in the area of acquisitions. The direct quote is that &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not having those acquisition discussions, we&rsquo;re not engaging in them.&rdquo; OK, that one seems pretty plain and direct. So if that is the case where is the money going to come from to continue growth or to just make sure that the infrastructure doesn&rsquo;t break under the weight of the new users coming on board?</p> <p>Ok, so let&rsquo;s take off the gloves. What is the best way to monetize Twitter? Is real time search a real time possibility? Unless it was left out of the original article there was no mention from Stone about the thing that many feel could make Twitter a juggernaut. Are they able to deliver on that or are they just trying to redirect attention to other options because search isn&rsquo;t quite there yet? Will companies pay for enhanced services? Is this all just chasing after the latest and greatest rumored &lsquo;can&rsquo;t miss&rsquo; Internet service? Do tell.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/twitter-talks-the-revenue-talk-but-will-it-walk-the-revenue-walk.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=OlC14I0TBQE:nixRJBr-iug:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=OlC14I0TBQE:nixRJBr-iug:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=OlC14I0TBQE:nixRJBr-iug:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=OlC14I0TBQE:nixRJBr-iug:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=OlC14I0TBQE:nixRJBr-iug:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/OlC14I0TBQE" height="1" width="1"/> Ad Biz Biz Stone earn facebook Revenue Stone Twitter Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:28:03 -0400 Frank Reed 50736 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/23/biz-stone-talks-about-driving-revenue-for-twitter http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/te9juWt6sxo/myspace-makes-official-announcement-concerning-staff-cuts <p>In a second wave of major restructuring, MySpace announced this morning that it will cut 300 of its 450 international staffers and close at least four overseas offices.. The moves on the heels of&nbsp; <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/facebook-passes-myspace-in-us-worldwide.html">Facebook passing MySpace</a>in both visitors and page views in the US and worldwide and just a week after the social networker reduced it's <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/official-myspace-cuts-staff-30.html">domestic head count by 30%</a> cutting 420 staffers.<img align="right" src="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20115705213f1970c-150wi" alt="" /></p> <div style="text-align: justify;">Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become regional hubs for MySpace&rsquo;s international operations. Offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain would be placed under review for possible closure. Locally owned and operated MySpace China and a joint venture in Japan would not be affected.</div> <div class="entry-more"> <p style="text-align: justify;">&ldquo;With roughly half of MySpace&rsquo;s total user base coming from outside the U.S., maintaining productive and efficient operations in our international markets is important to users worldwide and our immediate financial strength,&rdquo; said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta in a statement.&nbsp; &ldquo;As we conducted our review of the company, it was clear that internationally, just as in the U.S., MySpace's staffing had become too big and cumbersome to be sustainable in current market conditions. Today&rsquo;s proposed changes are designed to transform and refine our international growth strategy.&rdquo;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/myspace-cuts-66-of-international-staff.html">Comments</a></p> </div><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=te9juWt6sxo:2ke1mct5L8o:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=te9juWt6sxo:2ke1mct5L8o:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=te9juWt6sxo:2ke1mct5L8o:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=te9juWt6sxo:2ke1mct5L8o:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=te9juWt6sxo:2ke1mct5L8o:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/te9juWt6sxo" height="1" width="1"/> announce cut employee MySpace staff worldwide Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:20:56 -0400 Bruce Houghton 50735 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/23/myspace-makes-official-announcement-concerning-staff-cuts http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/Ebyszi9OddE/more-than-half-of-executives-under-40-say-they-use-twitter-daily <p>Forbes and Google have released a new report called <em><a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html">The Rise of the Digital C-Suite: How Executives Locate and Filter Business Information</a>.</em></p> <p>It&rsquo;s a fascinating read&ndash;mostly because it highlights the difference in internet habits of C-level executives,&nbsp; based on their age. Why is this important? Because those executives that are under 40 will likely, in the next 5-10 years, be the ones taking over the CEO role.</p> <p>When they do, we&rsquo;re going to see a dramatic shift in the way company executives research and contribute to the web.</p> <p align="center"><img alt="" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Picture-13.png" style="margin: 5px; width: 439px; height: 437px;" /></p> <p>And there&rsquo;s good news for search marketers too!</p> <p align="center"><img alt="" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Picture-21.png" style="margin: 5px; width: 446px; height: 67px;" /></p> <p>Get your <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/digital_csuite/index.html">free copy of the report</a>!</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/c-level-executives-under-40-blog-tweet-click-more.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Ebyszi9OddE:HZ74GC79lcE:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Ebyszi9OddE:HZ74GC79lcE:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Ebyszi9OddE:HZ74GC79lcE:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=Ebyszi9OddE:HZ74GC79lcE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Ebyszi9OddE:HZ74GC79lcE:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/Ebyszi9OddE" height="1" width="1"/> 40 c-level CEO daily Executive half Twitter Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:42:10 -0400 Andy Beal 50726 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/22/more-than-half-of-executives-under-40-say-they-use-twitter-daily http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/yaT-YJgucFc/facebook-deals-with-some-click-fraud-problems <p>Facebook is charging hard toward hitting that $550 million in revenue number that was put in front of potential investors recently. Of course, their pay per click model of advertising is going to be a critical component of getting there. It seems that there have been some troubles with click fraud for the past month or so which as <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/21/facebook-click-fraud-enraging-advertisers/">TechCrunch reports</a>, has set off some heated discussion of Facebook and its inability to tell advertisers &ldquo;what&rsquo;s on their mind.&rdquo;<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/facebook-logo.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p>As initially reported yesterday there were click fraud complaints that up to 100% of clicks were fraudulent. While click fraud is nothing new to pay per click advertisers this was a bit different. Many Facebook advertisers were getting charged for clicks that simply never happened. In &lsquo;traditional&rsquo; click fraud (if there is such a thing) the clicks are seen by advertisers but they are ID&rsquo;d as not legitimate sources thus labeling them fraudulent. Facebook advertisers just were getting charged and there were no clicks.</p> <p>While there are always problems with pay per click models it was Facebook&rsquo;s apparent lack of attention given to complaints until there was recognition of the issue with TechCrunch. Many complaints were found on <a href="http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/50450-new-facebook-ads-26.html">WickedFire</a> and there was some heated discussion including (in which I have replaced some of the wonderful language that these folks use to communicate)</p> <blockquote> <p>This is experienced by not just those that use 202. When in doubt, look at your raw apache logs &ndash; which I did. The result: 15% &ndash; 20% clicks never make it to my LP. Clearly a case of click-fraud going on. Tested on 3 different servers at 3 different DCs (not a network issue).</p> <p>Sucks how high the numbers are today. Its clear the problem is getting worse daily. I&rsquo;ve moved most of my &ldquo;%$#^&rdquo; off facebook for the time being and magically my %$#^ is all positive again. Crazy how that works. There are lots of places to buy traffic, some that will even actually give you the traffic you are paying for. Facebook is never going to admit to whats going on. I can almost guarantee you that.</p> <p>Facebook is still reporting 20% more clicks than I actually get. This is bull$#%#. If I were at least getting bot traffic or something that would be one thing, but right now Facebook is simply stealing 20% of clicks that I paid for, which adds up to thousands of dollars. Someone should threaten legal action, this is straight up fraud on Facebook&rsquo;s part.</p> </blockquote> <p>What really got under the skin of the advertisers is the response they had received from Facebook regarding their issues.</p> <blockquote> <p>According to the WickedFire posts, Facebook isn&rsquo;t officially acknowledging the problem or giving any refunds so far. But they are asking some advertisers to send in logs to show the discrepancy. So far, advertisers who go to the trouble to do this aren&rsquo;t getting the response they wanted: &ldquo;I was asked to send in my logs so I spent over an hour compiling logs over the time period in question, and they replied with their &amp;^#$ing scripted bull^%#$. I was sooo ^#$%ing pissed, since I took the time to do that and they churn out a 2 second response.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>So if you are Facebook, what should you do once this becomes something that is more than a few compaints? Well, Brandon McCormick at Facebook chimed into the comment stream over at TechCrunch with</p> <blockquote> <p>This is Brandon on the Facebook communications team. I wanted to chime in to make sure that our voice was part of this discussion and to clarify how we are addressing this issue.</p> <p>We take click quality very seriously and have a series of measures in place to detect it. We have large volumes of data to analyze click patterns and can identify suspicious activity quickly.</p> <p>Over the past few days, we have seen an increase in suspicious clicks. We have identified a solution which we have already begun to implement and expect will be completely rolled out by the end of today. In addition, we are identifying impacted accounts and will ensure that advertisers are credited appropriately.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/21/facebook-admit-click-fraud-problem-says-fix-coming-today/">TechCrunch has published an update</a> for this post that outlines some aggressive (but apparently not real subtle) attempts to grab some business from Facebook. As with anything in life it&rsquo;s actually never about the problem. Stuff happens and in the Internet space that is even more prevalent. What is most important is how a problem is dealt with.</p> <p>Had Facebook addressed these complaints differently from the start do you think the level of frustration expressed on WickedFire and elsewhere would have been as damaging? Online reputations are just like &lsquo;traditional&rsquo; reputations (once again, if there is such a thing) in that the best way to handle any problems is quickly, head on and with transparency. Does it mean you will get a perfect solution every time? Absolutely not. It does, however, give you the best shot at making a bad situation better. So Facebook, remember that when you ask &ldquo;What&rsquo;s on your mind?&rdquo; you have been cleaning up your side of the street.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/facebook-and-click-fraud.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=yaT-YJgucFc:NbqYaU2ssms:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=yaT-YJgucFc:NbqYaU2ssms:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=yaT-YJgucFc:NbqYaU2ssms:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=yaT-YJgucFc:NbqYaU2ssms:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=yaT-YJgucFc:NbqYaU2ssms:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/yaT-YJgucFc" height="1" width="1"/> Advertising Click facebook Fraud TechCrunch Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:34:32 -0400 Frank Reed 50725 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/22/facebook-deals-with-some-click-fraud-problems http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/FOOv3DxibLg/wikipedia-adding-video-by-end-of-the-summer <p>Okay, no, not really&mdash;but the encyclopedia anyone can edit <em>is</em> looking to add video to its offerings, according to <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/web/22900/page1/">Technology Review</a> (via <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikipedia_getting_video_within_months.php">RWW</a>).<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/489px-Wikipedia-logo-en-big-150x150.png" alt="" /></p> <p>To launch in the next 2-3 months (by the end of the summer), Wikipedia&rsquo;s new system will allow users to contribute and even edit clips for articles, posting the entire clip or only portions. Wikipedia itself will only allow videos from the Internet Archive, Metavid and Wikimedia Commons.</p> <p>No video editing software is necessary to post full or partial clips, but &ldquo;One of the requirements for any video added to the site is that it be based on open-source formats.&rdquo;</p> <blockquote> <p>The project also includes developing Web tools to create smooth methods for transferring and editing videos. When a Wikipedia editor finds relevant snippets, he will be able to preview them, and set the &ldquo;in&rdquo; and &ldquo;out&rdquo; points, without having to worry about file conversions. &ldquo;Presently, the work flow is pretty atrocious&rdquo; for people trying to download, convert, and edit video, says [Kaltura software engineer Michael] Dale, citing the notoriously confusing array of incompatible video formats now in use. With the new Wikipedia system, &ldquo;people will be able to easily inject media into pages, in a way that wasn&rsquo;t possible before,&rdquo; he says.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com/">Kaltura</a>, an open-source &ldquo;video solution provider&rdquo; (Sigh. Buzzwords.), which has been a partner with Wikipedia since January 2008.</p> <p>What do you think: a good move or yet another opportunity for spam on Wikipedia?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/wikipedia-to-add-video.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FOOv3DxibLg:rca2He19jlU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FOOv3DxibLg:rca2He19jlU:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FOOv3DxibLg:rca2He19jlU:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=FOOv3DxibLg:rca2He19jlU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=FOOv3DxibLg:rca2He19jlU:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/FOOv3DxibLg" height="1" width="1"/> Information Open Source Video wikipedia YouTube Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:36:02 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50715 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/22/wikipedia-adding-video-by-end-of-the-summer http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/CL1jZ-FY9QI/six-small-changes-for-youtube <div class="entry-body"> <p><img align="right" src="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20115704924e7970c-200wi" alt="" />&nbsp;Rather then a big splashy make-over, YouTube has been rolling out an ongoing series of changes and improvements that marketers and uses should pay attention to.</p> <ul> <li><strong>Download MP4 Files of Your Own Videos</strong>: You no longer have to panic when your computer crashes and you lose the original files of videos. Find the video you want in YouTube's &quot;My Videos&quot; and hit the &quot;Download MP4&quot; button to save the MP4 file of the video back to your new computer.&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>A More TV-Like Experience:</strong>&nbsp; One new feature hides the player control bar when viewers are in full screen for a more TV-like experience. You can also &quot;pop out&quot; any video by clicking on a button and it will open in a new window, without any of the surrounding features or videos. This feature won't work when embedding has been disabled.</li> </ul> </div> <div class="entry-more"> <ul> <li><strong>Mobile App in Six New Languages</strong>: A few months ago, they launched a new YouTube Mobile Application for video streaming on Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. Now they've added in 6 more languages: French, UK English, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch.</li> <li><strong>The Wonder of &quot;Wonder Wheel&quot;:</strong>&nbsp; The next time you search for a video on YouTube look for a link on the right-hand side of the page labeled &quot;Wonder Wheel.&quot; This beta search option from Google let's you navigate through &quot;also try&quot; suggestions graphically. Wonder Wheel displays related searches rlike spokes on a wheel. You can click on any of the wheel's spokes to see a new wheel with more related topics and browse new relevant video results.</li> <li><strong>Improved Advanced Search:</strong> Advanced Search allows you to specify many more details than our normal search, including when a video was uploaded, the location it came from, and its length.&nbsp;</li> <li><strong>Remaining Time Display on Upload Progress Bar: </strong>Just what it sounds like.Useful to us multi-taskers.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/youtube-rolls-out-6-incremental-improvments.html">Comments</a></p> </div><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=CL1jZ-FY9QI:TrhwXOJijOk:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=CL1jZ-FY9QI:TrhwXOJijOk:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=CL1jZ-FY9QI:TrhwXOJijOk:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=CL1jZ-FY9QI:TrhwXOJijOk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=CL1jZ-FY9QI:TrhwXOJijOk:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/CL1jZ-FY9QI" height="1" width="1"/> change improvement MP4 Video YouTube Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:32:36 -0400 Bruce Houghton 50712 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/22/six-small-changes-for-youtube http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/u6zen_nvnsQ/youtube-financial-woes-arent-as-bad-as-first-indicated <p>Back in April, Credit Suisse issued a report stating that <a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/04/youtube-could-lose-470-million.html">YouTube stood to lose $470M this year</a>. But now it looks like the financial services company was overly pessimistic (and, really, they&rsquo;re probably just used to that, with the economy the way it is). <a href="http://www.ramprate.com/pdf/youtube+googles+phantom+loss+leader.php">New estimates</a> from research company RampRate puts the losses for the most popular video website in the world far more conservatively:</p> <p align="center"><img height="200" width="396" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-11010" title="ramprateyt" alt="ramprateyt" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/ramprateyt.png" /></p> <p>RampRate lowered the estimated bandwidth costs, stating that by locating its data centers in &ldquo;out of the way&rdquo; locations like Iowa and Finland, the company saves significantly on the cost of transmitting data. RampRate also took into account peering costs for what they say is a more accurate estimate.</p> <p>While a $174M loss is still a significant loss, it&rsquo;s not the sob story we&rsquo;re used to seeing with YouTube and its <a href="http:///">tireless search for profitability</a>. RampRate takes a cynical line on Google&rsquo;s motivations for not correcting reports like Credit Suisse&rsquo;s:</p> <blockquote> <p>Google is no doubt thrilled to let YouTube be known as a financial folly. In the dangerous waters of online content, a whiff of potential profit is an irresistible lure for predators such as copyright lawyers circling user generated content monetization and content partners that are all too ready to turn on their distributors in a feeding frenzy.</p> </blockquote> <p>They also take Google to task for shielding their relative profitability from their contributors, who might (well, probably not, but you know) be able to claim a share of that money:</p> <blockquote> <p>The key is its lack of leverage with premium content partners, and the thousands of copyright holders whose content is posted by users onto YouTube without the owner&rsquo;s permission. Any appearance of profits leads to more draconian revenue share demands from partners and additional lawsuits from owners of unlicensed content. An apparent loss deters this behavior, making it eminently advisable for Google to let the rumors of YouTube&rsquo;s losses grow and compound. This perception of a loss-making business is one of the factors that contributed to ASCAP collecting only $1.6M instead of $12M from YouTube in a recent court judgment.</p> </blockquote> <p>Ouch. What do you think: is Google hiding YouTube profits (or at least its less-impressive losses) or is YouTube a serious drain on Google&rsquo;s resources?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/youtube-not-losing-that-much-money.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=u6zen_nvnsQ:Y6R9GtAMZUg:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=u6zen_nvnsQ:Y6R9GtAMZUg:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=u6zen_nvnsQ:Y6R9GtAMZUg:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=u6zen_nvnsQ:Y6R9GtAMZUg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=u6zen_nvnsQ:Y6R9GtAMZUg:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/u6zen_nvnsQ" height="1" width="1"/> Google bad estimate Finance woe YouTube Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:18:52 -0400 Jordan McCollum 50702 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/19/youtube-financial-woes-arent-as-bad-as-first-indicated http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/Kkusaf42HLE/staples-utilizing-facebook-for-a-worthy-cause <p>How about a nice &lsquo;feel good&rsquo; story to take you into the weekend? The news in the Internet marketing industry has been focused on negative numbers, downturns and dire forecasts for quite a while now. Personally, I get a little worn out by it. It&rsquo;s good to be reminded, however, of just how potentially life altering (a little hyperbole never hurt anyone) the use of social media can be. Staples, one of the best known brands for those with school age children, is using its name via Facebook to do some good for kids who may not have the means to even have decent school supplies.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Backpack.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="http://www.clickz.com/3634128">ClickZ reports</a> on the office supply giant&rsquo;s efforts to help kids help kids. Of course there is a tremendous display of altruism here but let&rsquo;s also remember the good business sense that a campaign such as this makes. This one smells of a win / win which is cool.</p> <blockquote> <p>The office and school supplies retailer tapped New York agency <a href="http://www.mryouth.com/">Mr Youth</a> to create a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/dosomething101">Do Something 101 Facebook page</a> and an <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/adoptapack/">&ldquo;Adopt a Pack &rdquo; Facebook application</a> where participants can tag friends, virtually &ldquo;fill&rdquo; a backpack with school supplies, and then go to a Staples store t &ldquo;o buy the supplies they selected and have them donated to other students who are living in poverty.</p> </blockquote> <p>How is this good business? Let us count some of the ways:</p> <ol> <li>Helping kids in poverty is a good thing all by itself</li> <li>Helping kids in poverty is great PR for your brand</li> <li>Helping kids to help kids in poverty is good for society</li> <li>Helping kids who do have money to know your brand for something other than office supplies is just plain smart</li> </ol> <p>Staples did something similar last year through <a href="http://www.dosomething.org/">DoSomething.org</a> (who is still involved) but changed things up a bit this year to focus on the social networking habit of kids and, in many cases, their parents.</p> <blockquote> <p>Mr Youth Managing Partner Doug Akin said the campaign will be publicized through outreach to youth bloggers and some online media. He declined to say how much the campaign will cost and he said it&rsquo;s too early to provide metrics about its early success. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s definitely been strong adoption of it and users are tagging many friends and creating multiple images,&rdquo; Akin said.</p> </blockquote> <p>Of course, the hope is that there is a high participation rate and lots of kids learn good lessons and get the supplies they need to succeed in tough situations. While this type of activity to help young people is not unique to Staples by any means it certainly can give the company a chance to cut through the clutter of a noisy marketplace and tell a story that might influence someone come to them instead of their competition. Good cause, good business and I wish them good luck.</p> <p>A side note: Have a great weekend and Happy Father&rsquo;s Day to all you dads out there. Your role in helping to shape the future with kids who would take part in something like this could have impact far beyond your own little world. Make sure you hug your kids this weekend. They need you.</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/staples-uses-facebook-to-help-school-kids.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Kkusaf42HLE:clj1ijyCenQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Kkusaf42HLE:clj1ijyCenQ:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Kkusaf42HLE:clj1ijyCenQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=Kkusaf42HLE:clj1ijyCenQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Kkusaf42HLE:clj1ijyCenQ:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/Kkusaf42HLE" height="1" width="1"/> Social Media Books children facebook kids Staples Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:14:01 -0400 Frank Reed 50700 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/19/staples-utilizing-facebook-for-a-worthy-cause http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/5YDvhM9jTWI/north-carolina-following-new-yorks-lead-with-affiliate-taxes <p><img align="right" alt="" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/top-logo._V11874419_.gif" />It appears that North Carolina is about to follow New York&rsquo;s lead and implement a tax collection scheme that will see Amazon.com shut down its <em>Associates</em> affiliate program in the state. Today, all Amazon Associates in NC received this gloomy email from the online retailer:</p> <blockquote> <p>We regret to inform you that the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) appears ready to enact an unconstitutional tax collection scheme that would leave Amazon.com little choice but to end its relationships with North Carolina-based Associates. You are receiving this e-mail because our records indicate that you are an Amazon Associate and resident of North Carolina.</p> <p>Please note that this is not an immediate termination notice and you are still a valued participant in the Associates Program. All referral fees earned on qualified traffic will continue to be paid as planned.</p> <p>But because the new law is drafted to go into effect once enacted &ndash; which could happen in the next two weeks &ndash; we will have to terminate the participation of all North Carolina residents in the Amazon Associates program on or before that same day. After the termination day, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com nor will we accept new applications for the Associates program from North Carolina residents.</p> <p>The unfortunate consequences of this legislation on North Carolina residents like you were explained in detail to key senators and representatives in Raleigh, including the leadership of the Senate, House, and both chambers&rsquo; finance committees. Other states, including Maryland, Minnesota, and Tennessee, considered nearly identical schemes, but rejected these proposals largely because of the adverse impact on their states&rsquo; residents.</p> <p>The North Carolina General Assembly&rsquo;s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.</p> <p>We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates program, and we will apprise you of the General Assembly&rsquo;s action on this matter.</p> <p>Sincerely,</p> <p>Amazon.com</p> </blockquote> <p>Last time I checked, adding new taxes in a recession were a bad thing. Amazon is a huge retailer and many people&ndash;myself included&ndash;supplement their income using its affiliate program. If others follow Amazon&rsquo;s lead, then what affiliate revenue will be left to actually tax? NC would still not have any tax revenue from affiliate marketing AND those making a living from affiliate marketing lose their income. Nice move NC&hellip;.not!</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re one of those that will be affected, then you might want to contact your <a href="http://www.ncleg.net/GIS/RandR07/Representation.html#byZIP">state representative</a> (thanks <a href="http://www.artisaninteractive.com/">Scott</a> for that suggestion!)</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/north-carolina-ready-enact-affiliate-taxes-amazon-first-to-pull-the-plug.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=5YDvhM9jTWI:b8WtyEyzi_Q:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=5YDvhM9jTWI:b8WtyEyzi_Q:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=5YDvhM9jTWI:b8WtyEyzi_Q:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=5YDvhM9jTWI:b8WtyEyzi_Q:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=5YDvhM9jTWI:b8WtyEyzi_Q:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/5YDvhM9jTWI" height="1" width="1"/> Affiliate Amazon associate Carolina lead North North Carolina tax Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:58:13 -0400 Andy Beal 50675 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/17/north-carolina-following-new-yorks-lead-with-affiliate-taxes http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/Mj4nY4sinBk/facebook-is-now-ahead-of-myspace-in-the-us-and-globally <div class="entry-body"> <div style="text-align: justify;">New data from ComScore shows Facebook passing MySpace in total unique US visitors for the first time in May. Facebook had 70.28 million U.S. users in May beating MySpace's 70.26 million. According to ComScore, Facebook users almost doubled from last year while MySpace lost 5%.<br /> <br /> The story is much the same worldwide with 123.9 million unique visitors globally visiting Facebook in May beating MySpace's 114.6M Facebook had 50.6 billion page views compared to MySpace's 45.4 billion.<br /> &nbsp;</div> <div style="text-align: center;"><a style="display: inline;" onclick="window.open( this.href, '_blank', 'width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0' ); return false" href="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e201157118e420970b-popup"><img border="0" width="400" src="http://www.hypebot.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e201157118e420970b-400wi" class="at-xid-6a00d83451b36c69e201157118e420970b" alt="Myspace vs Facebool 6-15" /></a> </div> </div> <p>The momentum also seems to be with Facebook for the forseeable future.&nbsp; The recent <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/bands-brands-hit-snag-registering-custom-facebook-url.html">addtion of vanity urls</a> should strenghten the social networker's position.&nbsp; MySpace is contiually rolling out innovations, but most seem to be greeted with a yawn in the press and fail to bring any measurable jump in traffic.<br /> <br /> MySpace still dominates in music.&nbsp; But even there a promised rollout of a by option remains spotty leaving most users more content to buy their music elsewhere and label partners unhappy with the results.<br /> <br /> Be sure to vote in our <a target="_blank" href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/vote-myspace-vs-facebook-for-marketing-music.html">MySpace vs Facebook</a> poll.</p> <p><a href="http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/06/facebook-passes-myspace-in-us-worldwide.html">Comments</a></p><br /><a href="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/cc?z=1"><img src="http://aj.600z.com/aj/63590/0/vc?z=1&dim=9392" width="500" height="75" border="0"></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Mj4nY4sinBk:VQV1Olsrvic:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Mj4nY4sinBk:VQV1Olsrvic:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Mj4nY4sinBk:VQV1Olsrvic:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=Mj4nY4sinBk:VQV1Olsrvic:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=Mj4nY4sinBk:VQV1Olsrvic:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/Mj4nY4sinBk" height="1" width="1"/> comScore facebook figure international MySpace US view visit Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:25:13 -0400 Bruce Houghton 50652 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/16/facebook-is-now-ahead-of-myspace-in-the-us-and-globally http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~3/pDiRlYASNUw/television-could-be-headed-in-the-same-direction-as-newspapers <p>We have chronicled the slow death of the newspaper industry for a while now. First, there was the thought that maybe the Internet could displace newspapers with the delivery of content in a more timely and personalized manner. Newspapers decided that they were doing just fine and that they were moving into the digital world in a way that could help them maintain their content delivery fiefdom with no problems. Now, we see a landscape of wreckage where some of the most venerable names in newspaper including the Boston Globe are losing value both monetarily and in reputation. It&rsquo;s been painful to watch but now there is even more carnage predicted as a result of the Internet age.<img align="right" src="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/TV-With-No-Picture.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=137304">Henry Blodget penned a column over at Ad Age</a> that can be summed up neatly in its headline &ldquo;Sorry, There&rsquo;s No Way to Save the TV Business; It Should Take Its Cues From What Happened to Newspapers&rdquo;.</p> <blockquote> <p>The traditional TV industry &mdash; cable companies, networks and broadcasters &mdash; is where the newspaper industry was about five years ago: in denial.</p> </blockquote> <p>If this is even half true the folks on the TV side of the ledger better wake up and smell the erosion. The erosion of their leverage, profits and influence is taking place but it is believed that the arrogance that led to the dismantling of the newspaper industry is just as active in the TV world.</p> <blockquote> <p>Specifically, the TV industry&rsquo;s attitude is the same as the newspaper industry&rsquo;s attitude was circa 2002 to 2003: Stop calling us dinosaurs. We get digital; we&rsquo;re growing our digital businesses; we&rsquo;re investing in digital platforms; people still recall ads even when they fast-forward through them on DVRs; there&rsquo;s no substitute for TV ads. And traditional TV isn&rsquo;t going away: Just look at our revenue and profits!</p> </blockquote> <p>Blodget posits that the Internet still represents such a small percentage of profits and revenue of TV today but as it continues to grow the tide will quickly turn. As a result, the traditional broadcast industry will buckle and eventually crumble under the weight of its own in cost structure. Sounds painful.</p> <p>So why is TV still successful? The old model may still have some legs but it is certainly aging out fast. Less and less people are dependent on TV of their information and entertainment. A quick comparison shows the following:</p> <p>Television Depends On</p> <ol> <li>Few options at home other than TV</li> <li>No way to get video content other than TV</li> <li>Only broadcast, cable and satellite options to get TV content</li> <li>Choke points for delivery give inordinate control to those who own the access points</li> </ol> <p>Reality Is</p> <ol> <li>More and more simple fun options including games, Internet, social media etc.</li> <li>New ways to get traditional TV content like Hulu, YouTube, iTunes etc.</li> <li>More options for video content including telcos and cable companies providing broadband</li> <li>The Internet is everywhere. You can connect more easily, more often than ever and that will only get better</li> </ol> <p>So how has the TV industry responded?</p> <blockquote> <p>Thus far, the TV industry has reacted to these changes the way most people would: by trying to port its existing model to the new world and maintain its hold on power and money. This is why we&rsquo;re getting so many ridiculous, consumer-unfriendly TV solutions</p> </blockquote> <p>These solutions include, but are not exclusive to, market-based control over what can or can&rsquo;t be watched, single episode downloads that expire after 24 hours and time shifting of popular shows.</p> <p>So Blodget&rsquo;s conclusion is as you may have guessed; TV is headed for the gallows and a slow death from their own ignorance and arrogance.</p> <blockquote> <p>You won&rsquo;t have five channels, or 50 channels, or 500 channels. You&rsquo;ll have millions of channels. You&rsquo;ll be able to watch anything you want, live or taped. You&rsquo;ll be able to watch it wherever you want &mdash; TV, computer, mobile device. You won&rsquo;t have to sorry about &ldquo;slinging&rdquo; video content around or programming your DVR. You&rsquo;ll just plug a pipe (internet) into a box (device) and watch.</p> </blockquote> <p>So all of folks in TV land better take heed. The same day that you reach for your morning paper that no longer exists at your desk in the corporate office could be the same day that your control is handed over your viewers and they leave you for greener pastures. Then what?</p> <p><a href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/06/tv-better-learn-a-lesson-from-newspapers.html">Comments</a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pDiRlYASNUw:iHN1JAWsG2Q:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pDiRlYASNUw:iHN1JAWsG2Q:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pDiRlYASNUw:iHN1JAWsG2Q:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?i=pDiRlYASNUw:iHN1JAWsG2Q:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?a=pDiRlYASNUw:iHN1JAWsG2Q:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WebpronewsBlogTalkRssFeed/~4/pDiRlYASNUw" height="1" width="1"/> dvr industry Internet media Newspaper Television Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:19:01 -0400 Frank Reed 50650 at http://www.webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/06/16/television-could-be-headed-in-the-same-direction-as-newspapers