Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Consumer Ratings and Reviews on RateItAll.com

Consumer Ratings and Reviews on RateItAll.com
This is a great social media site i spoke with today.

Mininova Closes Distribution Deal for TV-Show | TorrentFreak

Mininova Closes Distribution Deal for TV-Show | TorrentFreak
The “old media” is slowly realizing that BitTorrent is a great distribution platform, and above all, an excellent marketing tool. Today, The Red Band Film Company and Mininova announce the first official deal to distribute a TV-show on the popular BitTorrent site.

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

By MIGUEL HELFT and BRAD STONE

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30 — Google and some of the Web’s leading social networks are teaming up to take on the new kid on the block — Facebook.

On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.

The strategy is aimed at one-upping Facebook, which last spring opened its service to outside developers. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site’s users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a “news feed” that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

The New York Times learned of the alliance’s plan from people briefed on the matter. Google, which had planned to introduce the alliance at a party on Thursday evening, later confirmed the plan.

“It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook,” said a person with knowledge of the plans who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the alliance. The group’s platform, which is called OpenSocial, is “compatible across all the companies,” that person said.

“Facebook got the jump by announcing the Facebook platform and getting the traction they got. This is an open alternative to that,” the person also said.

The alliance includes business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle, who are moving to let third-party programmers write applications that can be accessed by their customers. The start of OpenSocial comes just a week after Google lost to Microsoft in a bid to invest in Facebook and sell advertising on the social network’s pages outside the United States. And it comes just before the expected introduction by Facebook of an advertising system next week, which some analysts believe could compete with Google’s.

Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google, said that the alliance’s conversations preceded Microsoft’s investment in Facebook. “Obviously, we would love for them to be part of it,” Mr. Kraus said of Facebook. Facebook declined to comment.

Facebook’s success with its platform has proved that the combination of social data and news feeds is a powerful mechanism to help developers distribute their software. They are now seen as must-have functions for many Internet companies. Other social networks and Web companies, including MySpace and the instant messaging service Meebo.com, have announced plans to open their sites in similar ways.

For now, however, Facebook has become the preferred platform for software developers.

By teaming with others, Google hopes to create a rival platform that could have broad appeal to developers. A person briefed on the plans said the sites in the alliance had a combined 100 million users, more than double the size of Facebook.

The developers of some of the most popular Facebook applications, including iLike, Slide, Flixter and RockYou, are expected to be present Thursday evening at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., where they will announce that they will tailor their programs to run on the OpenSocial sites.

The effort faces several hurdles. Developers may not see the advantage to writing programs that run across such remarkably different networks as, for example, LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals, and hi5, which is popular in Central America.

For Google, the effort could breathe new life into Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and other countries, but not in the United States. While the move could also help some rival social networks, Google could benefit from their success, in part, by helping to sell advertising on those sites.

Indeed, that strategy would fit into a model that Google has begun talking about recently. Vic Gundotra, who heads Google’s developer programs, said last week that Google would soon begin an aggressive project to create software tools and give them away free in an open-source format.

The goal, he said, is to improve not just Google’s applications, but any software that runs on the Web. That, in turn, would drive more Internet use, and Google would benefit indirectly by selling advertising, he said.

Google has not been able to establish itself as a force in social networking, and it clearly wants to. “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. “If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real.”

Google said it has advertising relationships with several social networks, including a $900 million partnership to sell ads on MySpace, which the company said is performing well. Google is also making some money on Facebook, through ads that run inside applications that are used on that network.

A person familiar with Google’s efforts said that those applications have been far more effective for advertisers on social networks than users’ personal pages. “It is early, but those ads work very well, whereas the ads in overall social media platforms have shown less performance,” the person said. Mr. Kraus said that over time Google hoped to bring other social elements to Web applications, whether or not they run inside social networks. Analysts expect other Google services, including iGoogle, to be equipped with social features eventually.

Googles Response to Facebook:"Maka-Maka"

Google’s Response to Facebook: “Maka-Maka”
Erick Schonfeld
15 comments »
Google may have lost the bidding war to invest in Facebook, but it is preparing its own major assault on the social networking scene. It goes by the codename “Maka-Maka” inside the Googleplex (or, perhaps, “Makamaka”).
Maka-Maka encompasses Google’s grand plan to build a social layer across all of its applications. Some details about Maka-Maka have already leaked out, particularly how Google plans to use the feed engine that powers Google Reader (known internally as Reactor) to create “activity streams” for other applications akin to Facebook’s news and mini feeds. But Maka-Maka goes well beyond that.
Maka-Maka will be unveiled in stages. The first peek will come in early November. As we reported previously, Google is planning to “out open” Facebook with a new set of APIs that developers can use to build apps for its social network Orkut, iGoogle, and eventually other applications as well. To recap what we wrote earlier:
Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. They’ll start with Orkut and iGoogle (Google’s personalized home page), and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time.
On November 5 we’ll likely see third party iGoogle gadgets that leverage Orkut’s social graph information - the most basic implementation of what Google is planning. . . . Google is also considering allowing third parties to join the party at the other end of the platform - meaning other social networks (think Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, Digg and thousands of others) to give access to their user data to developers through those same APIs.
We’ve now learned that the original November 5 date Google is shooting for may be delayed. “They need more time,” says one outside developer working on the project. “It is a challenge for them,” confirms another. Still, the expectation right now is that some announcement will be made the week of November 5 (perhaps the 8th or the 9th), and will most likely be limited to Google’s existing social network, Orkut. The APIs will be announced, along with as many as 50 partners that have created applications on top of the APIs. (Most of the top app developers for Facebook will be included—think RockYou, Slide, iLike, SocialMedia, etc.—and a few new ones as well).
All eyes will be on Google, but don’t expect anything too earth-shattering straight out of the gate. Many of these apps will be copycats of what is already available on Facebook (just as the very first apps on Facebook were ported over from other parts of the Web). This first go-round, Google will just be trying to match Facebook’s ante. Remember, even on Facebook, the best apps didn’t emerge on Day One. And now Facebook has a six-month lead.
The bigger challenge for Google in the U.S. is Orkut itself. While there may be 24.6 million monthly visitors to Orkut worldwide, only 500,000 of those are here in the U.S., according to comScore. Cool social apps aren’t much good if none of your friends use them.
That’s where the bigger plan for Maka-Maka comes into play. Maka-Maka is very strategic for Google. Responsibility for it goes all the way up to Jeff Huber, the VP of engineering in charge of all of Google’s apps. Huber is on record as saying that the way Google plans to compete is by using the Web as the platform instead of trying to lock developers into Google’s own platform. One way it will do that from the start is by creating two-way APIs so that any app created for Google can be taken to other Websites. (Whether this will extend to actual user profile data within Orkut or elsewhere inside Google remains to be seen because of privacy issues, but the apps themselves will be portable). And data from other social sites will be able to be imported into Google’s social apps as well.
The bigger vision is to combine all of Google’s apps and services through Maka-Maka. Google already has so much data on you, depending on how many Google apps you already use. It just needs to bring everything together. Your contacts are in Gmail. Your feeds are in Google Reader. Your IM buddy list is in Gtalk. Your upcoming events are in Google Calendar. Your widgets are in iGoogle. And don’t forget about your search history. Overtime, Google will connect all of these together in different ways, along with data about you from other social services across the Web, and give developers access to the social layer tying all of these apps together underneath. The real killer app for Google is not to turn Orkut into a Facebook clone. It is to turn every Google app into a social application without you even noticing that you’ve joined yet another social network.

BlogRush : blog syndication network

BlogRush is a free service that was created to help bloggers solve their #1 need:
More Readers For Their Blog.

By adding the BlogRush Widget to a blog, a blogger can get instant distribution for their latest blog post titles across a network of related blogs.

BlogRush users earn "syndication credits" (the right to have their blog post titles shown inside a widget on another related blog) based on their own traffic (loads of the widget) as well as the traffic of other users they refer to BlogRush. Users can automatically refer others to BlogRush via special links on the widget, as well as through the promotion of a special referral URL they are given.

BlogRush is a "Cooperative Syndication Network" that rewards its users for their contributions to the network -- from the impressions they provide of the BlogRush Widget to the referral of other users through 10 'generations' of activity and the impressions of the widget that they provide. BlogRush was designed to be incredibly viral and to provide its users with tremendous distribution leverage to receive exposure for their blog content (onto related content blogs) that they could never achieve on their own; at least without a massive advertising budget.

BlogRush is the brainchild of Internet entrepreneur, John Reese. Mr. Reese is the founder and CEO of Income.com, a soon to be launched social network and media company for entrepreneurs. BlogRush is the first Web property of the Income.com Network, a network of sites and services to help entrepreneurs and business owners succeed. Income.com is based in Orlando, Florida.

Pay Per Click Is Popular, But Results Vary

OCTOBER 31, 2007

Pay-per-click, but how much?

More than one-half of the US online retailers surveyed by NetElixir and the e-tailing group in October 2007 said that up to 40% of their orders now come from pay-per-click marketing.

As a result, nearly nine in 10 said they planned to increase their PPC budgets in 2008, with 30% planning increases of 26% or more, according to the survey results published in NetElixir's "E-tailer Pay-Per-Click Stress Study." "Although merchants are getting more seasoned and innovative, knowledge levels and sophistication required to maintain and grow this valuable area can be stressful," said Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group, in a statement.

Nearly eight in 10 online merchants said they mainly used return on investment to decide how well PPC worked.

Still, many search marketers find that measuring PPC ROI is difficult. Nearly three in 10 US search marketers in a MarketingSherpa study, also published in October 2007, rated PPC as "highly variable" in its ROI, making it more of a question mark than any other marketing tactic in the survey.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Specific Media Gets $100M; Is it the Next Tacoda?

from Mashable! by Kristen Nicole

Specific Media, an online ad network, has reportedly raised $100 million in a round led by Franciso Partners. With a pre-money valuation reported at $200 million, several ad networks are lining up to be the next DoubleClick or Tacoda.

As VentureBeat reports, Specific Media’s point of appeal is supposedly its elite advertising options for premium networks, where only top brands can be involved. This works on the publisher’s end too, seeking out quality over quantity. For some brands, this approach is preferred over something like Glam’s ad network, which some advertisers feel has a few unattractive websites in the mix. While this usually won’t deter advertisers to a large extent, it’s clear that Specific Media is playing up the custom, high end approach to ad distribution.

Beyond it’s premium network approach, Specific Media offers behavioral ad targeting, based on a user’s cookies. It also uses a Demographic Prediction System that will make an educated guess towards an individual’s age and gender, based on web behavior. This is similar to AdInfuse, which has taken a similar approach to mobile advertising.

Privacy Advocates Propose Bureaucratized Advertising

from Mashable! by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

donotcall

Privacy advocates are in the midst ofproposing the creation of a do-not-track list akin to the Do Not Call Registry, and are expected to announce this proposal at a news conference tomorrow, according to AdAge.

There are very real privacy concerns with regards to user data, especially with recent developments in advertising relationships with Facebook and Microsoft, not to mention the ever advancing juggernaut of the Google data acquisition machine.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Action, and the Consumer Federation of America as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation are among the privacy advocates proposing for the do-not-track list. The groups are suggesting that there be a requirement that advertisers, as a part of their online ads, give those that they advertise to the details of what they intend to track about them.

Not to downplay the privacy concerns of these organizations (or even my own privacy concerns), but my reaction is about like the Caveman’s reaction on that Geico commercial: “Yeah. What!?” I can agree with many of the assertions of these organizations: most consumers don’t understand how data collected on them is being used, privacy policies are often a farce, and private data is often not safeguarded enough.

But it’s as if no one thought about the feasibility of enforcing restrictions on advertising companies, or how, for instance, you’d initiate an agreement to share demographic information with a user downloading an advertising supported podcast. In a world where these privacy advocates have their way, am I going to be inundated with privacy policy pop-ups every time I navigate to a new domain?

It’s simply not feasible for something like this to be executed, and even if it were, would we want the government in charge of enforcing compliance?

Maybe those APML guys are right - if we start volunteering information about our attention in a way that everyone can understand, perhaps it’ll keep these privacy advocates from lobbying Congress to get even more involved in bureaucratizing our lives and surfing habits.

The Quantified Self

The Quantified Self
Amazon examines its digital archive of several hundred thousand scanned books to extracts what it calls Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs). This process compares the sentences in each book to the millions of sentences in the rest of the library to find distinctive and improbable phrases. Rare sequences of words inhabiting the same few books suggest these works share more than that phrase. For instance, one of my books ("Out Of Control") employs the phrase “perpetual novelty” more than once. That word-pair shows up in 22 other books. When I click on those references I am brought to the exact place in each these books where that passage occurs. I can quickly see the relevance (or not) of these works. Amazon highlights two dozen other improbable phrases in my book; each one leads to another cluster of related works that I was unaware of. Clearly this helps Amazon to sell more books (“If you like this one, you’ll like these.”) But it is also a new way of knowing. Once text is digital, books seep into each other’s binding to create the wisdom of the library. Books know about each other. And they carry links between books and what people say about them. The collective intelligence of a library allows us to see things we can’t see in a single book.

Advaliant President Jivan Manhas Speaks on adtech Affiliate Panel

Jivan Manhas to speak about the evolution of affiliate marketing.

New York, NY (PRWEB) October 24, 2007 --

WHO: Jivan Manhas, Co-Founder and President, Advaliant, Inc. Advaliant's work for PlayPhone was recognized with the 2007 ad:tech award for "Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign."

WHAT: ad:tech New York

Session -- The Evolution of Affiliate Marketing
Last year, MarketingSherpa estimated that affiliates worldwide earned $6.5 billion in bounty and commissions in the areas of retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing and forms of lead generation other than contextual ad networks. Far beyond revenue sharing, today's affiliate marketing channel is evolving more and more into performance marketing and playing a larger role in online marketing strategies. This panel, moderated by Rosalind Gardner, CEO of Webvista, Inc., will help attendees understand which industry sectors are the most active for affiliate marketers and those that are poised for the greatest growth. Manhas and other panelists will discuss the pros and cons of running affiliate programs in-house versus using third-party services to track referral traffic or sales. The audience will learn how advertisers are connecting with publishers through affiliate networks, and how to extend and protect brands through affiliate marketing.

WHEN: Thursday, November 8 at 4:15 p.m.

WHERE: Hilton New York
1335 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10019

For more information on ad:tech New York, please visit http://www.ad-tech.com/ny/

About Advaliant
Advaliant (www.advaliant.com) is MediaTrust's performance-based affiliate marketing network. The Advaliant affiliate network connects publishers and advertisers in a trusted online community that is overseen by industry-leading experts. Advaliant's services group leverages performance-based media to create unique, customized, and high ROI solutions for its advertisers, agencies and publishers. Advaliant brings together on a single platform all the key performance marketing channels so that marketers have a single destination for acquiring customers, creating brand awareness, generating sales and driving traffic.

About MediaTrust
MediaTrust (www.mediatrust.com) is an ecosystem of online media properties. MediaTrust combines innovative interactive media and advertising technology with human service and expertise. Companies that choose MediaTrust benefit from relevant and intelligent online campaigns that deliver higher ROI and greater success in acquiring customers, creating brand awareness, generating sales and driving traffic.

MediaTrust is comprised of Advaliant, a performance-based affiliate marketing network, Advario, a proprietary ad serving platform, leading-edge media technologies and the MediaTrust Integrated Solutions Group (ISG). The ISG is comprised of specialists that analyze customer needs and build custom performance-based campaigns that optimize returns for each advertiser and publisher.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Technology Review: The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream

Technology Review: The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream
During the course of a day, the average person who works at a desk deals with torrents of information coming from many sources: e-mails, Web searches, calendars, notes, spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. Sorting through the information is tough, and for the most part, it's done in an ad hoc manner. But in the next couple of months, there may be a better way. Radar Networks, based in San Francisco, is releasing a free Web-based tool, called Twine, that it hopes will change the way people organize their information.

eMarketer on Microsoft-Facebook

OCTOBER 29, 2007

By Debra Aho Williamson and David Hallerman, Senior Analysts

When Microsoft Corp. paid $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook last week, it acquired the rights to sell Facebook advertising around the world. With 34.5 billion page views in September, according to comScore Media Metrix, Facebook is now the fourth most highly trafficked Web property worldwide.

Need data for presentations? eMarketer subscribers can download charts instantly — over 50,000 choices.
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Just how important is the international part of the equation? Facebook in September racked up 14.7 billion page views in the United States, comScore reported – just 43% of its worldwide total. Yes, the validity of the page-view metric is debatable, but for Microsoft’s sales organization, that is a flood of new inventory any way you look at it.

Monetizing that inventory is a question surrounding all social networking sites. How many of those page views of individual profiles and news feeds will attract advertisers, especially when measured against less risky options such as online video provided by established TV networks? While Microsoft may have a plethora of new inventory to sell against, it is worth asking whether the sales will be much more than low-CPM banners.

The good news is that consumers around the world are embracing social networking. According to Datamonitor, 75% of worldwide social networking members come from outside of North America.

Social networking penetration is already quite significant in Europe. In August, 78% of UK Internet users ages 15+ visited a social networking site, according to comScore. Half of German and French Internet users did as well.

Although Facebook is growing rapidly in many international markets, it will compete against MySpace and homegrown social networks such as France’s Skyblog.

Confirming the importance of the non-US market to social networking sites, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe told Bloomberg this month that the company will operate in 30 countries next year (from 23 currently) and could generate half its sales from outside the US by 2012.

So, as the quest for social network ad dollars continues to ratchet upward, the international market is looking more and more likely to be the source of the biggest revenue growth.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

On The Media

News Programming

Isn’t it about time your nightly news was delivered by an avatar? No that's not already the case! But it could be in the future. Thanks to a new project called News At Seven. Chicago Public Radio’s Shawn Allee explains.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Google Prepping Big Brand Marketing Dashboard

by Tameka Kee, Thursday, Oct 25, 2007 6:00 AM ET

GOOGLE IS WORKING ON A "fully functional marketing dashboard" that will integrate data from advertisers' search, display and offline marketing efforts, allowing them to "look across assets, metrics and user engagement cycles," Tim Armstrong, president of advertising and commerce for North America, told analysts during an Analyst Day session.

No further details or timeline for the dashboard were given, but Armstrong said the "high velocity of interest from brand agencies and media partners" in Google's offline solutions, as well as newer ad models like Gadget Ads and YouTube overlays, warranted the development of a robust, integrated reporting platform.

"The more measurement you can put on this type of functionality the better," said Armstrong--noting that once the DoubleClick acquisition closed, its display metrics would add yet another layer of functionality.

Analysts got a deeper look into the key components of Google's "Search, Ads and Apps" strategy on Wednesday, with presentations from the search giant's top brass as well as product managers (almost all of whom were recent college graduates). The panelists and demos offered insight into advancements that have been made on all three fronts--from both a consumer and an enterprise perspective--and also gave details on future developments.

Such brands as Nissan and Global Hyatt have already made use of the search giant's lesser-known assets like Google Trends. According to Albert Cheng, product manager for Google Trends, the feature was created to "make our search data universally accessible and useful."

Consumers were "tapping into the wisdom of the crowd" to figure out the answers to their questions (Cheng and his wife had used Google Trends to determine the most popular way to spell their soon-to-be-born son Connor's name), but even Global Hyatt had used the data to determine whether to dub their newest Caribbean property "Hyatt Regency Trinidad" or "Hyatt Regency Port of Spain."

Ultimately, the hotel giant chose the former (undoubtedly after considering other factors), but said the sheer volume of searches for the keyword 'Trinidad' compared to the relative lack of searches for 'Port of Spain' was a primary reason for the decision.

Meanwhile, Nissan used Google Trends data to help determine whether the multichannel campaign (including product placement in NBC's "Heroes", print, TV and online ads) behind the launch of their new Rogue crossover SUV was working. The automaker compared search volume for 'Nissan Rogue' and 'Honda Pilot,' and noted that there was a definite spike in queries that coincided with the launch efforts.

At that point, "the marketing manager can ask for more money," said Cheng, "because it's clear that the campaign is working."

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Mobile Marked by Promise, Problems

OCTOBER 25, 2007

Majority of users still deleting ads.

Average mobile marketing campaign prices have increased tenfold since 2005, according to mobile ad software vendor Third Screen Media, as cited in an Advertising Age article. Third Screen also said that the average age of mobile Web users was over 30.

The audience for mobile Web-based campaigns is growing, and more marketers are experimenting with the medium. But many brand managers are hesitant to commit big budgets. "Brand marketers will start spending heavily on [mobile] when the users are there either in sheer mass or enough of the target audience has moved into the channel," said John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer.

Mobile marketing spending has been on the cusp of a major breakthrough for years. In April 2007, US marketing executives listed mobile as one of the top five media on which they planned to increase spending in 2007.

But roadblocks persist.

A Nielsen study cited in Advertising Age found that only 10% of mobile data users responded to ads on their mobile phones. Another 11% viewed the ads but did not respond, and nearly eight in 10 did not view the ads at all.

More than one-half (53%) of those who ignored the ads said they were not interested in what was being advertised.

More than two-thirds of mobile data users thought that mobile ads were unacceptable. However, nearly 45% of mobile video viewers were willing to watch ads in exchange for an unspecified benefit.

Targeting the right mobile users with the right messages remains a challenge.

Jivan Manhas to speak about the evolution of affiliate marketing.

Jivan Manhas to speak about the evolution of affiliate marketing.

New York, NY (PRWEB) October 24, 2007 --

WHO: Jivan Manhas, Co-Founder and President, Advaliant, Inc. Advaliant's work for PlayPhone was recognized with the 2007 ad:tech award for "Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign."

WHAT: ad:tech New York

WHEN: Thursday, November 8 at 4:15 p.m.

WHERE: Hilton New York
1335 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10019

For more information on ad:tech New York, please visit http://www.ad-tech.com/ny/

MEETblog - Forbes.com

Facebook Rumors: Making Friends with More investors

Two hedge funds from New York have apparently jumped into the Facebook deal.We've got our ear to the ground to figure out who it is but each put in about $250 million--for $500 million total--at the same valuation as Microsoft Corp.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg should be feeling pretty flush tonight!--Elizabeth Corcoran

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Microsoft to Pay $240 Million for Stake in Facebook - New York Times

Why YOU Should SEO

I speak to prospective clients every week about Search Engine Optimization and many aren’t familiar with the concept. Those that are usually tell me how gung-ho they are about it, but when the time comes to talk about implementation it’s the last thing they want to spend their money on. It always comes down to cost and instant gratification.

SEO takes time to implement and weeks or months before a client usually sees results. On the other hand, a client can spend the same amount of money on paid search and see results immediately. The question then becomes do you want to lease search engine traffic or buy it? When you pay for SEO, you are making a long term investment in keeping your business visible in organic search rankings on Google and Yahoo. Essentially you’ve earned the ranking you’ve worked hard to obtain. When you do straight paid search, you may be at the top of the heap, but that only lasts as long as you choose to pay for keywords. Both techniques are important, but SEO should be the foundation of any sound Internet marketing strategy. Besides building brand awareness and reinforcing the perception that you’re an expert in your field, there is an inherent amount of trust gained when a perspective visitor to your website finds you on the first page of Google vs. being the first banner ad on the page.

So now that I’ve sold you on SEO, you naturally want to know what sort of techniques work to get your site the attention it deserves.

• Make sure your site can be easily “crawled” by Google and Yahoo spiders. Often, we design a website to look appealing to human eyes, but the tools that search engines use to actually learn what your site is about can’t read the content because all your text is buried in graphics.

• Know which keyword terms you should be targeting. Do research on your competition and see what is working for them. Type several search queries into Google and see how your site ranks. If you’re on the first results page, then you’re doing something right. If not, then you have some work to do.

• Update your content regularly. Search engines want their results to be fresh. Just because you published your website to the world doesn’t mean you don’t have to update it for a year. Ideally you should be adding new content every week.

• Become an expert in your field. Google and Yahoo want to highlight the experts in a given industry. By writing articles and blog entries on topics relevant to your business, you establish yourself as a thought leader. That leads to better page ranking.

• Don’t try and “game” the system. Tricks and other “black hat” techniques may work for while, but search engines will catch you if you try and cheat the system. That means no link farms, no keyword stuffing, and no hidden text on your site. The only thing harder to overcome than a low Google ranking is a low Google ranking on a site that’s been penalized for cheating the system.

Hopefully the items above give you a starting point in regard to mounting a successful SEO campaign. If you decide to outsource your SEO (many companies do), make sure you do your research and find a company that won’t do more harm to your business than good. Beware of firms that promise the #1 spot on Google, or guarantee a time frame in which you’ll see results. SEO, when done properly, takes weeks and often months. There are no shortcuts. Set aside a budget, and give your SEO firm six months. You’ll be amazed at the return on your investment.

Scott Parent is the Vice President of Search and Social Media Optimization at MediaTrust. His division specializes in Search Engine Optimization and Marketing, and Social Media Production and Optimization.

Radar Networks Ties Together Web 2.0, Semantic Web With 'Twine'

The online knowledge management service ties together social networking, wikis, and blogging with RDF, OWL, SPARQL, and XSL technologies. By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
October 23, 2007 01:49 PM

Startup Radar Networks has launched in private beta an online knowledge management system that's among the first to use computer-driving semantic Web technologies to find and organize information for people.

Called Twine, the service was unveiled at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week. The service has elements of Web 2.0 technologies, such as social networking, wikis, and blogging, but goes a step further with an underlying platform built on Web 3.0 technologies defined by the Worldwide Web Consortium. Those technologies include RDF (Resource Definition Framework), OWL (a markup language), SPARQL (an RDF query language), and XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language).

In general, the service enables a person, or groups of people, to organize information and share it with others. People can upload contacts, pictures, and documents from their desktops, and save text, videos, and images from Web sites. Twine also uses software agents to import content and metadata from other sites, based on the knowledge the system builds about the user.

In other words, Twine is smart enough to discover relationships between information on the Web and the information stored by users. "By analyzing content, it builds what we call a knowledge network for you," Nova Spivack, founder and chief executive of Radar Networks, told InformationWeek.

Data brought into Twine is analyzed and tagged, with the system understanding if the keywords refer to people, places, or things. The tags are listed on a user's Twine page. Clicking on the keyword will bring up all the related information saved by the user or shared by other people in his network.

Radar Networks, funded by Leapfrog Ventures and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital, believes that the semantic Web will enable it to build a knowledge network that provides users with a richer experience than other services using older technologies.

The idea behind the semantic Web is to build Web sites that publish information in a form that can be processed and integrated by computers. If the technology takes off, then machines could theoretically perform many of the tasks that today require human direction, such as finding and buying the cheapest DVD, or gathering information on specific topics.

Radar believes marketing teams or other groups in organizations that today may use traditional groupware or other form of collaborative software could eventually use Twine. "If you compare this to a wiki or existing groupware, it's a lot more efficient," Spivack said. "It takes a lot of the load off of individuals, and it sees patterns that they wouldn't see themselves."

The service is currently being offered in private beta for testing and feedback, Spivack said. The company plans to launch a public beta next year. In time, Twine will be offered in two versions: a free, ad-supported version, and a subscription-based premium service. In addition, Radar Networks, which is based in San Francisco, hopes to partner with content providers.

CPG Marketers May Have Found Their Mass-Reach Vehicle: Search

Study Finds Large Audience Online for Package-Goods Brands
Source: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=121437

By Jack Neff
Published: October 23, 2007

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- Research released today by ComScore defies long-cherished beliefs that people don't care enough about package-goods products to do online search about them or go to their websites.

According to ComScore, people who visited package-goods sites via search rather than other means tended to be higher income, better educated, more female and bigger category spenders.

The study found a majority of U.S. consumers visited at least one package-goods website during the three months ended in April, with search driving a substantial proportion of those visits.

Food, baby-care sites
Food product sites drew 93.7 million visitors collectively during the three-month period, 47% of them coming from search, according to ComScore. Baby-care sites got an even bigger proportion of their 26 million unique visitors from search at 60%.

Collectively, those audiences are huge -- bigger certainly than the vast majority of TV programs or print media plans for most package-goods marketers. Those 26 million visitors to baby-care sites compare to only 20 million children under 5 years old as counted by the 2000 U.S. Census, indicating some grandparents, expectant moms or baby-shower shoppers may be swelling the ranks, too.

Ironically, the data would seem to indicate that search, along with brand websites, could be the mass-reach vehicle package-goods marketers have found lacking since media began fragmenting in the 1970s.

"Search really can be thought of as a reach vehicle, and even more powerfully, reaching people who clearly are engaging with your product," said James Lamberti, a former Clorox Co. executive who's now senior VP-media for ComScore.

Under-spend in category
Yet the surprising traffic comes despite the fact package-goods marketers continue to under-spend many other industries online, with most industry marketers, including study participant Procter & Gamble Co., spending low-single-digit percentages of their measured-media outlays on the internet, according to TNS Media Intelligence data for the first half of 2007. P&G spent 2.1% of its $1.6 billion outlay online, up from 1.4% a year ago.

The measured data doesn't include search, but research firm Jupiter estimates search currently accounts for less than 20% of overall package-goods online media spending.

Even so, P&G, whose partners in the study include Yahoo and the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, sees the data as a sign of the power of search marketing.

"I think there's this mentality that 'This is package goods. Sure they're going to use search for a car or a mortgage, but they're not using it for deodorant or skin care,'" Mr. Lamberti said. "But in fact they do."

"P&G wants to increase our spending on the marketing elements that have the best return on investment for us," said Randy Peterson, search innovation manager for P&G. "It's increasingly looking like search is a good way to spend marketing dollars. Is it a panacea for us? No."

One of the most interesting aspects of the study, he said, was the extent to which it showed people are using search to find information in their daily lives.

"It started in the technical world, moved to books, DVDs and travel," he said. "Now people are realizing, 'I can even look up information about coffee and laundry detergent online.' It's become a natural way people use to get information of all kinds."

Of particular interest, Mr. Peterson said, was that searchers who came to package-goods sites were much more category-involved and bigger spenders (by 20%) than non-searchers. "That tells us something about how we should spend our marketing dollars," he said.

Gaps in search buys
But the study also found huge gaps in search coverage by major brands on key terms in their categories. Even though ComScore's survey of online searchers found 71% expect to see major brands come up in the results when they do a search. For example, searches on the term "anti-aging" returned nothing in the top organic or paid listings for the biggest media spender and leading brand in the segment, P&G's Olay. But Johnson & Johnson rival Neutrogena has bought the top paid listing on Google and Yahoo.

Lack of significant paid search by most major brands is a key reason why only 2% to 3% of clicks for package-goods-related searches go to paid listings, compared to 12% to 13% overall for search, Mr. Lamberti said.

Among other surprises in the research, coupons and promotions play less of a role in driving traffic to package-goods sites than he expected. Only 40% of searchers and 47% of non-searchers said they went to brand sites to seek promotional deals, compared to 73% and 58% respectively who went there seeking information and help.

Overall, people who visited package-goods sites via search rather than other means tended to be higher income, better educated, more female and bigger category spenders, also underlying the relative value of search advertising, Mr. Lamberti said.

Matt Wilburn, senior category director for Yahoo on package goods, does see a trickle of movement of industry marketers toward search, which he believes could turn into more of a flood within a few years.

"As we've gone into planning meetings with clients for '08, search consistently is being asked for," he said. "CPG companies tend to be like battleships. They're slow to make big turns."

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Is Search Still Worth It?

OCTOBER 23, 2007

The SEO effect is great, but gauging ROI is tough.

Search marketing budgets are set to increase in 2008, according to MarketingSherpa's "Search Marketing Benchmark Survey."

Responding marketers said they planned to increase their pay-per-click budgets by at least 11% in 2008. One-third of search marketers whose spending was average said they planned to do so on Google AdWords. Respondents rated both PPC and search engine optimization as effective search marketing tactics. "Just as the personal nature of word of mouth makes it one of the most accepted forms of marketing among consumers, so is search engine optimization, a somewhat stronger tactic for increasing ROI than is paid search advertising," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

"That's because for SEO, as with word of mouth, the absence of overt marketing cues makes it a more powerful influencer," he said. "At the same time, the more subtle nature of SEO makes it harder for marketers to gauge than more traditional direct response media such as e-mail or paid search."

MarketingSherpa said that most of the budgets were growing because search marketers thought that keyword prices would go up, according to Stefan Tornquist, the company's research director.

"The concern over rising prices has been ongoing, but it's reached a new high," Mr. Tornquist said in a Search Engine Watch article.

Respondents ranked SEO as the second most effective tactic behind house e-mail marketing.

SEO spending is past due for some marketers, judging by an August 2007 study by Oneupweb. While one-fifth of the top 100 US online retailer Web sites were well optimized, more than one-quarter were not optimized at all.

Facebook Set to Introduce Major Ad Play

Social Network Could Unveil 'SocialAds' at NYC Event Next Month

By Abbey Klaassen

Published: October 23, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The invitation, sent to advertisers and agencies in New York, arrived carved onto a Lucite brick:

Facebook has an enormous database of people's demographics, relationships, likes and dislikes -- all offered up voluntarily -- which can be used for targeted advertising on and off the site.

"You are invited to a discussion with Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook executive team as we unveil a new way of advertising online."

Facebook is keeping mum about exactly what it is unveiling at the Nov. 6 event, but ad-industry executives familiar with the company's plans said the social network is looking to better use the data its users voluntarily offer up on their profiles. Of course, that much seems like a no-brainer (although it's actually not easy to implement). But less obviously, a couple of industry executives familiar with the company's plans suggest Facebook could use some of what it knows about people -- and their relationships with others on the site, what is known as the "social graph" -- to target them off Facebook as well.

Twist on traditional technology
Such a system would be a twist on the traditional behavioral-targeting technology that is already on the market. A Facebook representative wouldn't comment on any specific ad plans.

While the company sounds unlikely to bore down into a detailed discussion on Nov. 6 as to how it plans to target advertising to users even when they're not on Facebook, people familiar with Facebook said it has detailed such a play as part of its long-term plans.

A recent trademark filing could lend a clue. On Sept. 24, Facebook trademarked the term SocialAds, described as "advertising and information distribution services, namely, providing advertising space via the global computer network [and] promoting the goods and services of others over the internet." According to the filing, the trademark concept's first use in commerce was Sept. 20.

Facebook does indeed need to come up with a killer monetization platform and likely needs it to reach beyond its domain to justify the valuation of the company. Current funding negotiations value the company at up to $15 billion.

Upgrade to earlier system
Facebook has already tried to improve its targeting capabilities for ads on its own domain. On Sept. 13 it introduced an upgrade to its Flyers system, which allowed advertisers to pay based on a cost-per-click model vs. just a cost-per-thousand-viewers model and to target users based on profile details such as political affiliation, work network and keyword.

One person described Facebook's advertising moves as creating an alternative revenue stream to that of Google, although it should be noted Google offers a markedly different targeting service. With two-thirds of the search market in its grasp, Google has vast amounts of data about people's intent -- what they are actively searching for online. It also segments pages based on the context of those pages. Those two tools are a powerful combination.

Facebook, on the other hand, has an enormous database of people's demographics, relationships, likes and dislikes -- all offered up voluntarily based on what people choose to write on their profiles. Ideally, it knows more about its users than many other internet sites, although some aren't convinced that the data allows Facebook to determine intent.

Privacy policy
Facebook's privacy policy addresses its ability to use data to serve ads, but notes it does this without identifying people as individuals to third parties: "You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they're more likely to be interesting to you," it reads. "For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don't tell the movie company who you are."

And, of course, all of Facebook's ad-targeting plans presume people are honest and real about the information they offer up about themselves on the site.

Online Publishers Still Having Difficulty Counting

Online Publishers Still Having Difficulty Counting
The common advertising problem that "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" was promised to be remedied by the introduction of the supposedly measurable medium of the Internet.

Top 10 US Social-Network and Blog Site Rankings Issued

Civic pride

MySpace.com continues to sit comfortably atop the rankings of top US social-networking sites with 58.6 million unique visitors in September.

And Google's Blogger remains the top blog site with nearly 29.6 million visitors, according to a custom list of top US social networking sites and blogs compiled by Nielsen Online, reports MarketingCharts.

In a distant second place among social-networking sites, Facebook increased the number of visitors to 18.1 million, growing some 133 percent year over year. MySpace visitors increased 24 percent year over year.

The top 3 social networks' number of visitors decreased slightly from August, whereas those ranked 3rd through 6th increased visitor numbers from the previous month. (Compare with August data.)

Among blog sites, Blogger increased its visitors a significant 50 percent from the year-earlier period, with second-place Six Apart Type Pad also growing - 46 percent - to nearly 11 million visitors in Sept.

The most significant year-over-year growth, however, came from third-place WordPress, which increased unique visitors some 290 percent, from a mere 2.7 million in Sept. '06 to more than 10.4 million this September.

(See the previous month's chart to make month-to-month [Aug. '07 vs. Sept. '07] comparisons.)

Managment Leadership

Powerful Transparency
By Patricia Wheeler

About a year ago we were asked to help a promising executive who was struggling in his new role. Jason had been heavily recruited for his technical expertise, his track record of innovation, and his willingness to be a “change agent” in an otherwise careful and conservative organization.

The problem was that he was experienced as too aggressive, overly ambitious, and as someone who did not understand the culture of the company. He received critical feedback from peers and direct reports in his 360 feedback process and his boss was alarmed by hearing 3rd party criticism about Jason’s style. Jason had been hired to be a change agent in a world of scientists. And yet he was seen as ambitious, pushy, abrasive and unsuccessful in driving change.

Jason was confused and resentful. A strong introvert, he responded by communicating less and pushing harder. Yet when we had an opportunity to interview Jason, we experienced a passionate and caring man who was driven by his dedication to finding a cure for a disease that had claimed the life of his father. He made this decision at the age of fifteen, which had influenced all subsequent career decisions.

As you read this account, think about what happens when others’ perceptions of us do not match our real intentions. What happens when we feel deeply misunderstood – when our deep passion is not recognized or appreciated?

Do you make a choice to move on – to leave your current situation and look for a place where you can feel more appreciated? Or do you put your head down and try even harder to push through it? Or is there a middle ground….a way to bridge the gap between intention and behavior?

Jason clearly needed to realize when his push for change outpaced the tolerance of his company’s culture. He needed to have a greater line of sight into the impact his behavior had on others. And he needed to acknowledge the difficult position of change agents who are tasked with taking actions that push the existing culture into discomfort. But in this case behavior change alone was unlikely to create lasting trust and drive the needed changes within his team.

Jason’s focus on increasing his transparency to others was an important part of his coaching plan. His peers needed to understand his deeper intentions and his passion which led to his drive for results. They needed to know that his ambition was not about increasing personal recognition or climbing the corporate ladder, but about something deeper and more meaningful.

And Jason needed to understand that to succeed meant that he had to work through others – both peers and direct reports. The key for him involved increasing his transparency leading to increased trust in the eyes of his team.

We structured a meeting agenda in which Jason asked his peers to describe what was really important to them – why they were engaged in this line of work. And he went first. He told them about his father and the decisions that have driven his life. He told them how difficult it was for him in the company. And he asked for their help. As his team began to understand his real intention, they rallied around him and began to understand each other’s goals and the real priorities of the team. They made agreements on how to support one another going forward, how to give ongoing feedback and feedforward on a regular basis, and how to deal with conflict when it arose. They began to work as a team rather than a collection of brilliant individuals and drove this alignment to the next level inside the organization.

The continued success of this team, and of Jason, was driven by increased transparency – the ability of those around him to read his intent and see behind his surface behaviors. And this allowed Jason to show more of his humanity and to translate his drive into team success and a win for his organization.

Copyright 2007, Leading News
Patricia Wheeler is an executive coach and consultant who helps smart people become better leaders. As Managing Partner in the Levin Group LLC, she has spent 15 years consulting to organizations and coaching senior leaders and their teams. You may contact Patricia by E-mail at Patricia@TheLevinGroup.com or by telephone at 404 377-9408.

MediaTrust Launches Industry Publication RelevantlySpeaking

Mediatrust an innovative interactive media, advertising & technology company has launched RelevantlySpeaking (www.relevantlyspeaking.com) a industry publication about online media and advertising, the web, relevance, technology, culture, and our products.

Social Networking is a FEATURE

RelevantlySpeaking A MediaTrust Industry Blog
Sun, September 30, 2007

Trip Foster

Social Networking is a FEATURE

Picture%206.png

Based on recent experiences with Facebook and several blog entries from insightful and skeptical prominent bloggers, it has become apparent that social networking has become a very “commoditized” component of the online experience. Social networking has become a feature, not a destination. In effect, as the web has become more writeable and user-generated, social networking functions will be standard on EVERY website, thus setting us on the course similar to that of the late 90’s: users migrated away from the main “portals” to smaller, more focused niche sites for richer and deeper content and community.

This fact may explain why Facebook has “opened” up so much (with the goal of becoming a social networking fixture on other sites). A smart move in my mind, as stand alone “meta social networking” has seemingly begun to “jump the shark”. It also may explain Googles recent legitimate salvo in this battle.

In my opinion, David Bohnett, the founder of GeoCities, said it best in the recent article in the Journal :

“It’s the same as it is today — people want to feel like they’re connected, give them a set of tools and they’ll do it.”

Anywhere you go on the web, you should see social networking capabilities. People want to create community anywhere they spend time. They use this community function as a place to make a spectacle of their lives, interests, and expertise…to provide legitimacy to their desire to belong to the community.

Rather than making predictions now about the demise of facebook and myspace, I’d rather discuss the future…

The real long-term question in this game is: Will any company get it right for the end user? There is no reason (other than a walled garden’s need for revenue and unique users!) that an end user should maintain several different online profiles and manage the content in each across the many communities in which they they socialize. I like the idea of the single login for all Google apps. It makes my life easier, and it makes the ads Google serves up more relevant and ultimately more profitable.

Nirvana for end users would be to have a traveling profile that they can access across several niche sites. Why shouldn’t my movie preferences be used in helping me determine what books I’d like and vice versa?

Sadly, I don’t think this nirvana is a reality in today’s landscape, as the large social networks like myspace and facebook rely on logins to target and these businesses will certainly not welcome the idea of an open ID for social networking features that span all sites. It is my hope that when most tier 1, 2, and 3 sites have social networking features, the ability to open these profiles to other networks will exist. If looked at intelligently, its a win-win. The end user gets a profile that travels, lessening his or her burden, and those sites that accept this traveling profile benefit by more relevant recommendations for ads and content (higher eCPM). The good news is, I don’t think that technology is too far away…it looks to be right around the corner. For some interesting reading about these kinds of solutions, read Alex Iskold’s Piece on the Attention economy and read about Attention Profiling Mark-up Language (APML).

So what do you think? Will it ever happen?

NYC Behavioral Ad Network Collective Media Raises 1st Round

collective media.png
We have heard from people in online advertising that site quality no longer matters. With behavioral advertising its all about getting appropriate ads in front of the right audience no matter where they might be. We think this is an absurd notion. Some brands would freak to see their ads on some stinky web sites.

Collective Media's idea is to wield behavioral advertising technology but only on very high quality sites like Reuters, TV Guide, AP, and Discovery. It has focused on creating relationships with news sites. The New York City based firm has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A led by Greycroft Partners with iNovia Capital.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Political Ad Spending Great in 2008

OCTOBER 22, 2007

Are you already tired of the campaign? Just wait.

Media looks like an early front runner in the 2008 election.

Spending should be impressive even without politicians. Interest groups have already opened their wallets, spending $6.2 million on TV ads in 2007 so far on state and local ballot measures, according to the TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group.

"Next year, spurred on by the largest outlay for political campaign advertising in US history, total media ad spending will shoot past the $300 billion barrier for the first time," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

"What we expect to see between now and the end of the primaries and through the general election, is groups will take a more aggressive stance on their advertising and actually target candidates," said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer at TNS-MI, in a CNN.com article.

"With 17 Democratic and Republican candidates running for president, CMAG predicts that more than $800 million will be spent on TV ads in the battle for the White House," Mr. Tracey said.

The presidential elections will also help online ad spending growth increase from 18.9% in 2007 to 22.1% in 2008, according to eMarketer.

PQ Media predicted that political online ad and Web-development spending would reach $80 million in the 2008 election cycle, as cited in The Wall Street Journal.

TNS predicted that TV ads alone would reach $3 billion.

Collective Media Raises Funding for Online Ad Network

from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

collective media

Collective Media, an online advertising network, has raised a Series A round from Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital. The company focuses on behavioral targeting (aka – delivering ads based on user habits versus contextual), delivering primarily branded advertisements. The company claims its network reaches more than 120 million unique users per month.

Collective Media says the funding will be used to continue to enhance its platform and increasing the size of its sales force. The company might also be well suited to use some of the funding on acquiring collectivemedia.com, which is currently a spam link site. Their current homepage is at collective-media.com.

The amount of the funding round was not disclosed.

[via PEHub]

How Many Site Hits? Depends Who’s Counting - New York Times

Political Ad Spending Great in 2008

OCTOBER 22, 2007

Are you already tired of the campaign? Just wait.

Media looks like an early front runner in the 2008 election.

"With 17 Democratic and Republican candidates running for president, CMAG predicts that more than $800 million will be spent on TV ads in the battle for the White House," Mr. Tracey said.

The presidential elections will also help online ad spending growth increase from 18.9% in 2007 to 22.1% in 2008, according to eMarketer.

PQ Media predicted that political online ad and Web-development spending would reach $80 million in the 2008 election cycle, as cited in The Wall Street Journal.

TNS predicted that TV ads alone would reach $3 billion.

The eMarketer Political Marketing report will be published in January 2008. Please click here to be notified when it is released.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Announcing: widgetQube iPhone Edition

Now, you can run the award winning oneQube widget on your iPhone. widgetQube iPhone Edition is available for download here.

widgetQube

The way the ‘always on’ generation stays informed. widgetQube is an interactive virtual desktop accessory that makes it easy to view news from favorite websites and blogs by leveraging rapidly growing widget based standards and technologies. widgetQube makes it easy to see what’s going on in the world, with up to the date news conveniently delivered right to your desktop. No searching or surfing required! widgetQube is a constant and ‘always on’ desktop companion. Its persistence will insure that you stay informed and up to the minute with news and information in our busy modern age. Best of all, widgetQube is free.

Check out our other widgets at http://www.widgetqube.com, including our Mac widget, which was picked for the Apple.com Staff Pick List for the week of May 07, 2007 and made the top 50 most downloaded widgets list for the same week on the Apple.com Widget Gallery. Our Yahoo widget was aYahoo Gallery Pick the following week and made the top 50 most downloaded widgets.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Analyst: Social networking faces uncertain future

By Natasha Lomas

http://www.news.com/Analyst-Social-networking-faces-uncertain-future/2100-1025_3-6214355.html

Story last modified Fri Oct 19 10:21:48 PDT 2007

Social-networking sites will enlist 230 million active members by the end of the year and will keep attracting new users until at least 2009, according to an analyst report. But investors are still wary--and for good reason, as long-term growth is by no means certain.

A report by U.K.-based Datamonitor, titled "The future of social networking: Understanding market strategic and technological developments," predicts that growth in the number of people signing up to be a part of the cultural phenomenon, which has put the likes of Facebook on the map, will peak by 2009 and plateau by 2012.

It also suggests revenues from social-networking services will hit $965 million this year, swelling to $2.4 billion by 2012.

Growth in the membership of social-networking sites varies dramatically by region, according to the analyst, which predicts Asia Pacific will account for 35 percent of global social networking users by the end of this year, followed by EMEA (28 percent), North America (25 percent), and the Caribbean and Latin America (12 percent).

However, while Datamonitor likens the current hype and excitement around social networking to the heady days of the dot-com boom, it said there is anxiety as well, and warns that investors are pulled in two directions. They do not want to miss out on the "next Google or Yahoo" but are cautious of being overconfident about a Web phenomenon that is not proven over the long term.

It is for this reason that most social-networking sites would be wise to postpone an IPO, said the analyst.

Speaking at a Web 2.0 conference in the US recently, Mark Zuckerberg, this year's top Agenda Setter award winner and founder and chief executive of Facebook--very much the social network of the moment--said his company is "years" away from any such flotation.

Ri Pierce-Grove Technology, analyst at Datamonitor and author of the report, said in a statement: "The extraordinary proliferation of online social networks is fueled by real innovation and is substantially changing the way we communicate. However, the hothouse atmosphere of easy capital, media attention and user curiosity which stimulates creativity will not be sustained indefinitely."

The analyst added that players must develop a "two-pronged strategy in order to survive the extremes of heat and eventual chill which this market will undergo."

Datamonitor said the current growth in social networking offers opportunities for businesses to get involved in supporting the infrastructure needed to run such sites, and it advises technology providers to look for ways to support social-networking services in the areas of scalability and availability.

The analyst also takes the view that consolidation in the marketplace is likely as it becomes more crowded, but said this does not necessarily mean individual sites will be swallowed up. For instance, it predicts special interest social-network sites will continue to play a role.

iPhone Open(Somewhat) To All

iPhone Open(Somewhat) To All
Written on October 18th 2007 Author by Editor Feed XML Feed

After a vocal disapproval to its previous policies, Apple has changed its stance on outside software developers. Apple is now encouraging independent developers to create programs for the iPhone.

In February, Apple will put out a developer’s kit which will give independent software makers the ability to create applications for the device; however this is a limited form of inclusion for other developers. Apple has also not changed its policy on prohibiting users to unlock the iPhone to use it with other carriers, according to a report in The New York Times.

Apple has been criticized for being too exclusive and too controlling over its product software. More developers on the mobile device could also lead to the attraction of more mobile marketers and advertisers. The situation could be a win-win should the company loosen its grip slightly.

Jobs posted a letter on the Apple site that cited the company’s intent on protecting their products, and yet keep them open to developers. “Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones – this is simply not true,” he posted. Jobs continued “We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third-party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.”

Analyst Michael McGuire, who works for Gartner said to the Times that the company had probably planned a developer’s kit all along and added that the company must have realized that the eventual acceptance of independent software was inevitable.

Adobe sees full shift to Web

Adobe sees full shift to Web
Adobe Systems Inc. is working to deliver all of its software via the Web as a service rather than a packaged product, but the transition to earn money from subscriptions or advertising could take a decade.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Will Social Features Make Email Sexy Again? - WSJ.com

Will Social Features Make Email Sexy Again? - WSJ.com
Email providers are trying to steal some of social networking's thunder as fast-growing services like Facebook Inc. begin to encroach on their turf.

'Lobbyconners' crash tech conferences to schmooze, cut deals

Some of Silicon Valley's digerati don't let $3,600 admission prices keep them from attending technology conferences.

They simply loiter in the venue's lobby - without paying - in hopes of mingling with other entrepreneurs, collecting business cards and cutting deals.

if:book: ted nelson is still on the job

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Has UK Marketing Peaked?

OCTOBER 17, 2007

Fourth quarter will decide.

UK marketing spending, which has been propped up by online ad spending, is likely to see some pullback, according to NTC Economics' "Q3 2007 Bellwether Report."

NTC said that financial market turmoil was the main reason that UK marketing spending may start to flatten out. "Growth in Britain's marketing industry has been strong overall, and some sectors have seen record gains," said Karin von Abrams, senior analyst at eMarketer. "Online spending in particular is robust and expanding.

"But the impact of recent turmoil in the financial markets should not be underestimated, especially in the UK," Ms. von Abrams said.

The Web accounted for more than 6% of all UK marketing spend in the third quarter of 2007, according to NTC. The company also found that more than 40% of companies allocated at least 5% of their total marketing spending to the Internet.

As recently as June 2007, the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Wilkofsky Gruen Associates predicted that UK online ad spending would reach $9.9 billion by 2011.

"Marketing budgets tend to be cut quickly in response to changing business conditions, so the strength of the Q3 survey suggests that marketing spend held up well in the face of the current financial turmoil and that the real economy remains so far largely unaffected," said Chris Williamson of NTC Economics, in a statement.

"However, it will no doubt take some time for the full effects of the banking crisis to be felt, so it is likely that these strong Q3 numbers represent a peak in the current cycle," Mr. Williamson said.

eMarketer shares the view that advertisers are a little cautious as a result of financial market uncertainty.

"In fact, we picked up signs of growing uncertainty in the early summer, and our existing forecasts for 2008 and 2009 reflect this change of mood," Ms. von Abrams said.

eMarketer's 2011 UK online ad spending projection is $1.7 billion lower than the IAB UK figures.

"It is encouraging that growth in the industry in Q3 remained strong and appears to be unaffected by the upheaval in financial markets," said Moray MacLennan, chairman of UK-based ad trade group IPA and chairman of Europe at M&C Saatchi, in a statement.

"The data for Q4 will be key in revealing the extent to which recent economic news has affected marketing budgets," he said.

Find out what US marketers can learn from their British counterparts. Please read eMarketer's UK Online Advertising report.