The tale of the lost iPhone prototype has taken a dramatic turn, one that could determine not only whether charges are filed, but also whether or not bloggers should be treated as journalists under the law.
In class we discussed the event, in which an iPhone prototype was "found in a bar" and sold to gadget blog Gizmodo. It was later disclosed that Gizmodo's parent company, Gawker Media, paid $5,000 for the phone, which led to a controversy of whether or not Gawker violated the law by purchasing "stolen property."
Last Friday, police raided the California home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, seizing his computers in order to determine if a crime was committed. Gawker is claiming injustice, because legally under shield law, it is illegal for police to confiscate the evidence and property of a journalist.
This case could potentially change the future of reporting on blogs, and makes me quite skeptical that Apple had anything to do with the iPhone leak.
Want a dream job where you sun yourself, experience a dream vacation swimming, snorkeling, lying on the beach and enjoying the many luxuries of a resort and get paid for it. Yes this is real and but sadly the job is already gone. So what is the job, well you sit around and blog about your experience so you can tell everyone how great it is and get paid for doing all this.
This is an interesting article that provide you 4 specific takeaways from corporate branding. Each point, the article gives you a prospective from both corporate branding and personal branding.
As talked about today in class, Google Voice is intended to make it easier to manage phone calls, text messages, and voice mails. This ingenious application will allow users to route multiple phones together to ring simultaneously as well as manage voice mails easier. Voice Mail is a pain, you have to call it, then type in your password, and listen to the boring voice repeat choices over and over again. Now you will be able to access voice mails on any phones and easily delete them or save them in one location.
Google Voice will have a competitor though and that is Skype, which is owned by eBay. Skype is an internet phone call where you can instantly chat with friends. Although Skype is not a direct competitor it will be a significant indirect competitor and may see sales fall with the introduction of Google Voice. The article also speaks about how telephone companies will be affected and it looks at analytics to see how and when.
Websites like facebook and youtube are key tools to the development of marketing and business strategy. They have changed the way businesses market, and the way that consumers are perceiving advertisements. These websites not only allow companies to get their word out, and fast, but also it allows them to do it very cost effectively. This is especially true for these sites, which cost little to nothing to have content up...
We have all been exposed to the ways of social media and most of us have witnessed the expansion of the simple concept of maintaining a friendship online to the change in use of it for means of marketing. This carried with it the change in approach, as we find social networks accessible via nearly every type of informatic device. A mobile application for facebook is nothing new, yet windows took it a step further with the launch of their new phone the "Kin", specifically designed for users who are heavy users of social networking. They actually got someone to check out all their facebook friends and film their experiences, the marketing concept behind the launch of this phone is quite interesting.
Check this video for the ad and this for a description of the phone
Facebook is moving towards being the center of the social web by allowing companies to advertise even more with unique apps and features on their websites. People will be able to log in to facebook through their websites and when using options on the website millions can learn what song their friends were just listening to, what clothes they like online, what people are buying, the options are endless. Many marketeres look forward to this new opportunity to advertisement more specifically and to target groups. Their ads will be specially modified towards the users profile information and what they "like" online. However, many users are concerned with the amount of privacy they'll be able to have. Some don't wish to have everything they do online broadcast to the world wide web. Facebook anticipated this fear and made a 5 minute video teaching users how to turn off and opt out of this new sharing method and preserve their privacy.
This is an interesting little slide show about banner ads and interactivity. It has some good pointers for why digital ads are more successful for getting people to interact with the ad, which then turns into a better association with the brand (people remember brands more that they have interacted with). It also has some examples of the best banner ads.
This article primarily deals with facebook users' ignorance towards the advertisements that are targeted at them. It evaluates why users ignore advertisements in the first place and what would be ideal in garnering their attention in a positive light. People must have interest in an ad to even consider it, and so companies must do their very best job to target the optimal market at an optimal time. This requires a great deal of time and research, however, without it, advertisements will be rendered useless.
The DNC and RNC are slugging it out in cyberspace and since the 2008 election proved the web as a viable campaign tool, both parties reach out extensively to voters online. The RNC is now charging political collusion in the case of the DNC bidding on the search terms "Goldman Sachs" and "SEC" and displaying a Google Adwords advertisement linking to a DNC website. Google has confirmed the Adwords bids were placed 3 hours after the SEC report came out and refutes RNC claims that the DNC had prior knowledge of events that it used for an online marketing advantage.
Yelp is a well-known review site on restaurants and other businesses. However, recently, they have been sued and other allegations have been flying around this online website. Business owners are accusing Yelp of extortion, in which pressuring business owners to pay to suppress bad reviews, like buy membership or some type of advertising/marketing. In response to this, Yelp has changed policies since they have no other choice. Should they be shut down? I was surprised and also not surprised at the same time.
I was doing some research on search engine optimization and I came across this site. Within the site there is a section that provides users with various tools that could be used to see just how optimized your site is for search engines. These tools includes a keyword competition tool where you input a keyword ( maybe your company name) and see what the top 5 google sites are for that keyword. The site also provides a simulator of how a search engine actually works ( the spider simulator) as well as a backlink checker. I think that this site could be useful when we are analyzing our companies and their competitors. Check it out.
This is an article about a sector that is seldom mentioned when discussing facebook: the US government. However, facebook has recently connected ties with entities such as the Federal Trade Comission. What is even more surpsing and rather scary,is that facebook is now seeping into the world of homeland security and intelligence. This brings about huge concerns about the privacy on facebook, and whether the information can indeed be completely secure. At this time, facebook is a work in progress and Washington DC claims that social networking is currently simply used for the sake of learning how they work and how they connect people, but they do have an eye on the future of government agencies.
This article talks about the recent issue the social media site, Blippy, is faced with. Blippy allows for users to share and display their purchases with other users by tracking their credit card purchases. Recently, credit card transactions that were shared on Blippy have been exposed and displayed full credit card numbers in Google search results. This is obviously a huge problem for Blippy since they are definitely losing credibility as a secure site.
The integration across the internet through facebook's "like" button has been talked about at length already, but two new tools for developers are available as well lately and can have quite an effect on our experience on websites. By releasing programs that allow storage of user data and interests on sites other than facebook, such as a site you're shopping on, companies can use the information you've provided to them to their advantage and streamline their site to what you might enjoy. This could also have a great effect on what keywords companies pay money to have pointed their way, as more information about what people are calling items and "buzz" words will be readily available.
Now that you are a big boy or girl you should be noticing a lot of changes in yourself and your peers. I'm sure you have seen profiles pictures on the Internet from that person who seems to be having too much "fun". I am sure that we can all agree that we do not want potential employers to get the wrong impression of our personal brand, so here are some simple ways to avoid this situation.
• Keep all social media clean – this means no incriminating photos, videos, or any other kind of posts that you would not want your mother to see.
• Stay on top of your rank – make sure to use search engine optimization techniques to ensure employers can find you easily. This can also be done by use of passports, which are essentially multiple social media accounts, if you have many sites where you have uploaded content then recognition of your personal brand will be increased.
• Be creative – if you add new and interesting content on a regular basis, then Google will crawl your site more often.
• Stay social – it is called social media for a reason, more interaction can open many doors for you, so leave comments on blog posts, and even ask questions from time to time.
• Traditional personal branding – most importantly brush up on your face to face techniques, get some business cars, spruce up your image with some professional attire, be well groomed, and work on your body language.
If you use at least three of these tips you can be guaranteed to build some equity on your personal brand, and you might just score that job interview after all.
Since the rise in popularity of social networks, there have been countless incidents in which professionals have lost their jobs, been evicted, or even been arrested for things they have done online. There couldn't be a better time than now to learn the many ways you can sabotage your personal brand and how to prevent them from happening. Here are 5 things you should practice:
First, don't ignore brand mentions. Setup Google Alert to track what people are saying about you. Second, don't spread yourself too thin. Pick the most important social networks to you and stick with them. Third, know your audience. What you post can have different effects on different audiences, some good and some bad. Fourth, limit self-promotion. Successful self-promotion works in moderation. And lastly, be consistent. You want people to be able to recognize your brand across different networks and websites.
Twitter has finally come up with a new revenue source, promoted tweets. This change is sure to affect the advertising world, along with the rest of us. Madison Avenue as ignored advertising on blogs and social media sites up until now because of the small budgets involved. Most ads in the media like TV and even just banner ads are general and unspecified but now advertisers are realizing that the new trend is relevancy. Promoted Tweets will use a "Resonance Model" which will combine earned and paid media using a multiple axis of engagement using many different measurements.
As of this past Monday (April 19th, 2010) developers introduced new changes to Facebook in an attempt to increase the number of connections members have on the website. Instead of the heavy term "Become a Fan," Facebook replaced fanning fan pages with a "Like" button. Also added are "Community Pages" which act like Wikipedia, so you can connect to information all on Facebook. Another, probably even more prominent, is how profiles will be connected to pages and community pages. This will make users feel more connected to the things around and that matter to them.
The members of the online community blippy have recently been alerted that their credit card information is available to anyone who knows how to look for it. The site had a privacy policy that said that the site was secure and would do anything to protect the information but the things they said they would do are not in place at all. This breech will definitely affect the amount of trust consumers have for this site and they will most likely loose business. What would you do if you found out that all your information is open to the world? the full story
I see a lot of people already know about Facebook's "Like" button that will now be available on various websites across the web to increase customization and whatnot. However, what people do not realize is, people who are NOT your friends will have access to the information on your profile page. In fact, it is yet another privacy leak that came to my attention (from a friend that told me) which led me to this article. This "Instant personalization" option is automatically checked so that you will be sharing information with partner websites. While there may be some benefits that appeal to people, this seems like another occurrence of Beacon. If you don't wish to share your information so publicly, here is how to disable this: 1. Go to Privacy Settings in your Account menu. 2. Click on Applications and Settings. 3. Click on "edit setting" for Instant Personalization. 4. Uncheck the box below the picture and click Confirm afterwards.
For more information about this "new" feature, read the rest of the article in the posted link above.
Keeping you personal brand in tact and under control are extremely important. Here are a few easy ways to ensure you don't sabotage your digital self.
Keep an eye on the web through any and all social networks and Google yourself! Sign up for something simple like Google Alert to do the work for you.
Keep your membership down. Try not to be a member of everything! It becomes more difficult to track what is going on. Use ping.fm or hellotxt.com to update everything in one place.
Be aware of your audience. Sometimes it is helpful to make two pages on Facebook, one for friends and the other for coworkers and managers.
It's not all about YOU. Self promoting is good, but too much can be bad. Try to promote others as well which will shine more positively on you.
You are the brand so keep it consistent. Having the same photo, color and font scheme, and general message will help build recognition and familiarity.
Using Google maps Kat Downs, designer, has began to create a map to track serial rapists. All thanks to Web 2.0 allowing users to create and use tools on the internet to further develop widgets... Check out the article here.
This article first starts with talking about the relationship between an advertiser and a consumer and how it is changing. The article's main focus is on companies who use social media as an alternative to advertising to reach consumers and how they did it successfully.
Facebook will very soon track users' activity on other sites in order to target ads based on users' interests. This is definitely a huge business opportunity for marketers and advertisers, but it will bring in another big scale of discussion on users' privacy.
This new system will not track all of users' browsing activity, rather, Facebook will offer sharing buttons to interested websites.Users can use the button to share the links on Facebook. Once the user shares a link , the website will include content from that web page (such as users potential interests) and store as in targeting ad database. Those ads will appear whenever the user visits Faecbook.
We should also be aware of that Facebook already targets ads using information from users' profile!
Revenue and Users' privacy, which does Facebook really care about??? I think, we all know the answer.
The article FTC Privacy Review Could Mean Trouble for Online Marketing discusses the potential of rule changes the FTC seeks going to Congress could have on online marketing and its aggressive target advertising. Wishing to make the opt- in opt-out more readily available and clear to consumers with out it being berried in fine print. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz likens behavioral targeting to stalking saying,
"Imagine that you were walking through a shopping mall, and there was someone that was walking behind you and taking notes on everywhere you went and sending it off to every shop or anyone who was interested for a small fee. That would creep you out; that would be very disturbing, I think, for most people."
I agree that the practice has some shady areas concerning consumer ethics. If the consumer is unaware or does not understand the language being used and/or the information is hidden within pages of fine print, further changes or rules should be in place to regulate the FTC.
Not only is creating a YouTube channel or video a great way for the average person to increase their SEO, it's even better for a company to give it a try. Studies have shown that most people don't stick around for a pre-roll ad on YouTube, so why waste the money when you can promote something for free that people will actually watch?
The first step is to not just plug the product or the company but to make a "home" movie that could include how you pick and choose your product or how the business functions. For example if you are selling wine it would be good to make a video that shows consumers how to pair certain wines with different meals.
After the video is uploaded you must enter a title and description. Here it is important to use key words several times in the title and description. Also put the link of the website in the description.
To build up viewers it is helpful to not only spread the word through Facebook and Twitter but to post your video link in replies to other related videos.
Once the video has about 100 views, it will quickly snowball into more users!
On Wednesday, April 21st Facebook should be announcing plans to implement a web-wide "Like" button. As most Facebooker's know, there is an option to "Like" every post, picture or comment they see on Facebook. Now, Facebook is looking to expand this opportunity using a strategy similar to the "Share" button already located on many websites.
This new feature will allow other web publishers to use that info to customize your web experience on their site.
Businesses now have the ability to monitor the real time flow of information about their brand in the marketplace through a combination of intelligence tools that keep track of text, social media, inbound calls, email and other messaging. These analytics capabilities now allow a company to respond with greater agility to market trends and ongoing events.
Paying for placement is one of the fastest and easiest ways for a company to easily get their way to the top of every search, assuming they want to pay the price. Other advantages are that it is easy and that campaign management is is virtually hassle free. But, this phenomenon is growing in popularity, so one needs to know more about their marketing strategy and keywords. Keywords have been a downfall, due to the amount of irrelevant keywords that accumulate and users stumble on sites that are unrelated.
This article was primarily constructed for search engine optimization in regards to blogs, however, it encompasses some of the main points we covered in class that can be helpful for all Web site creators. The points we covered in class that are also mentioned in the article include friendly html's, title tags, automatic links, simple tags, and redirection.
The power of yahoo search marketing has almost died since Microsoft launched Bing last summer. Yahoo has been losing out on seach market share and pay per clicks traffic. With less traffice and numerous complaints based on the reports provided by yahoo as well as there accound malfuncitions: some accounts have new accounts added to them without alerting he account owner. Other accounts ahave keywords added or disabled without alerting the account and the lack of customization even though several complaints have been issued. Comparing YSM to Google ADwords and Micorsoft adcenter it's performance and ppc market is steadily declining. The author places yahoo search marketing in to the "dog" catergory of dying business units for yahoo.
The article gave interesting percentages about girl bloggers verus boy bloggers. All in all girls blog more than teen boys. Girls also put up more pictures than boys. But teen boys put up more videos than teen girls. Teens like to blog and with them putting up content it creates a creative output, they are participating in conversations, and getting other peoples interests.
This article is about how paid search and social media are both extremely important marketing channels that are entirely different. Social media is an experimental brand-building tool that is difficult to measure. Marketers are being faced with the challenge of making use of social media tactics on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, video sites, and other platforms in addition to their paid search advertising.
Studies have shown that social media helps to increase the effectiveness of paid search since target audiences are more likely to search and click on your ads. Because of these higher click rates, ads are placed higher on the page.
In order to try to create a marketing strategy that successfully combines search and social, marketers should create social search-friendly campaigns, experiment with keyword advertising on social media sites, and also create paid search campaigns that are influenced by social media.
Just last month, Facebook passed Google to become the most popular destination on the Web according to the Web metrics firm Hitwise. The same week this was reported, Hitwise found that Facebook accounted for 7.07 % of all U.S. Internet visits, barely passing Google at 7.03%. The site now counts more than 400 million users and has had a 185% increase in traffic count from last year. It is important to note that Hitwise's figures are only for Facebook.com and Google.com, not including Google's other properties like YouTube and Gmail.
Google has been making moves toward the social space, including the integration of UGC like Twitter posts found in their search results and the recent launch of Buzz, a social network built out of Gmail. These moves make it clear that Google feels threatened by Facebook and it will be interesting to see how marketers change their strategy to reach their target audiences based on this fact.
Who works behind the scenes of Google AdWords? The company has really become popular in the last few years with more and more companies advertising online, so who works with these companies. The answer is the Ann Arbor headquarters of AdWords, which opened in 2006, and since then has been assisting businesses in shaking up the advertising world. The division has a goal to reach its optimal employment level of 1,000 by the end of 2011, and they are paying current employees over $47,000 a year. Many Ann Arbor employees are account managers, salespeople, and customer service representatives with a host of innovative ideas. One example is the cost per click, which uses keywords relevant to its businesses to cause their Web site links to appear under "Sponsored Links" when a user performs a Google search, in turn companies pay AdWords a fee for each click of their link. The advertising revenue that the division has generated has significantly increased Google's stock price in the past couple years.
Google adwords is adding the ipad as a mobile device platform so that customers of add words can optimize there advertising for their audience watching on the ipad. The touch screen of the ipad opens a whole new area for businesses to advertise and market to. I think this will work wonderfully what do you think? read full story here: here
This article discusses offers suggestions for how companies should approach advertising on Twitter. It mentions the necessity for the searches to remain as organic as possible, as well as the fact that advertisers need to step up and create meaningful, engaging ads to post on the social network in order for users to stop and click.
Marketers are cautioned to keep the way that Twitter works and how users use it in mind when creating ads, and must create content that encourages sharing and user interaction.
To print at home, you need to rely on your local operating system and the necessary hardware. This isn't often a problem, but for mobile users or users based on a mobile device (using the iPad or Google Chrome for example) the software can't connect to the hardware. But, with Google Cloud Print, any application on any device can print to any computer.
New waves of technology always affect marketing because with it brings new competition and new technology. It will be interesting to see how the public uses this software and what Google's competition comes up with.
European brands like Louis Vuitton, sued Google for the use of trademarks as keywords in their AdWords system. Basically, Louis Vuitton did not like the fact that when people searched "Louis Vuitton bags", that ads for fake Louis Vuitton bags were showing up. This is an understandable argument, however, the European court ruled in Google's favor, which was no surprise. Google said that if there were a restriction of this, it would prevent the free flow of information over the web. What do you think?
This article builds on what we have learned in class about creating effective google adwords campaigns for our companies. The article provides good examples of steps that can be taken when determining the most effective keywords to use when creating an ad. It also explains somes tips and tricks that you can use to keep the cost of the campaign to a minimum. Perhaps the most useful part of the article are the steps they provide to make sure that the ad you create only reaches potential buyers of your product or service, in turn lowering the amount of dead end clicks; and lowering campaign cost overall.
So it turns out Twitters new ad model is going to work very similarly to the way google adwords works. It will be interesting to see how this works of the king of microblogs, and how if it will have an effect on the current success. Twitter will try to keep there ads as organic as possible in search content. Interesting Article.
Not on the topic of SEO or SEM but this is interesting. Twitter is talk about adding an ad system to their website in attempts to generate some revenue, but like Twitter it wont be in the most conventional of ways. Check it out. It's quite innovate!
Facebook fan pages are rapidly growing and starting to become more popular with businesses. Companies are setting up fan pages on Facebook as a way of keeping fans up to date about promotions and any other information about the company. Making your fan page more popular can be key to your success believe it or not, here are ten different ways you can attract more fans and encourage engagement:
1.Advertise your page
2.Send out a direct invitation
3.Build your facebook brand
4.Share lots of company information
5.Create a landing page with a call to action
6.Scream your web address
7.Add plenty of content
8.Push offers, events and more
9."Direct Marketing"
10.Solicit email subscribers
For more suggestions on how to market through Facebook click here
Marshall Simmonds, Chief Search Strategist, is interviewed discussing SEO techniques for news papers. A cool look at a different perspective on SEO. Check out the full article here.
This post isn't really of relevance to anything covered in the class other than being a cool commercial. With the recent release of the iPad many are lining up in the stores to get a glimpse of this ill device and many more made the sacrifice not to eat next week in order to afford this iPod maxi ! It has about the same purpose of the Mac Book Air, so none, other than being a cool gadget and that's about it. For those who appreciate their iPadnanos (ipod, iphone) and their iPad flip (your macbook) you might find this commercial quite entertaining.
It is safe for work but don't let your supervisor hear it anyways.
Striving to stay relevant in the constantly evolving world of marketing, businesses such as George's Greek Cafe, Hotel Maya, and West Coast Choppers have joined many in turning to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to reach customers in a moribund economy.
For example, George's Greek Cafe has implemented a "What Would George Say?" promotion which, after visiting the site for the weekly answer, the customer can give the answer and win a free appetizer.
Title the video appropriately by including the entire phrase and don't forget to tag it with a few relevant keywords.
Embed the videos into pages of your Web site so that they play seamlessly as part of the site--not as files that viewers have to download to their own computers
Speed:
Several tools can be used to boost up the speed, such as, validator which rids your code of redundancies and inelegant programming loops and gzip which compresses your Web site's files (using any easy-to-find compression software) and ensures your CSS and javascript code has no redundancies or inelegant loops..
When searching on the Internet, many will stumble across blogs because they naturally attract search engine traffic. Many blogs will be linked to other sites, therefore they also get more traffic from these sites. This article lists the top five ways to optimize your blog visits.
In todays' world where online Ecommerce is sometimes preferred more than shopping in stores, the top online retailers are missing out significantly in online search engine optimization. With over 88,000 keywords listed of top selling products and services listed in search engines only 33% of those companies "highest-priced keywords appeared in the top 50 natural search engine query results" according to the article. The companies lack of seo also was contributed to the limited amount of content they provided to be search, allowing for too few or many words to be searched and find the company. The same was found true for companies on the Fortune 500 list. However, a little less than half now plan on spending more on SEO finally realizing the benefits of dominated the first page of search engines.
Site speed has now been added into Google's algorithm as a new ranking factor for websites. Google's algorithm is made up of around 200 factors, and quality of the site should still remain the first concern. Site owners should not compromise quality in order to gain page speed.
This site speed factor was added after "strong lobbying" inside Google because evidence showed that site speed impacts business metrics and also that users prefer fast pages. Google proved this point by purposely slowing down their own search results to determine what the impact would be on the search behavior, and what they saw was less engagement. Google measures the page speeds of sites based on how the page responds to Googlebot and the load time of the page.
This article has three main ideas: the first two explain just how science and art are used in SEO, but concludes by arguing that a huge key to success is based on using precisemathematics to understand competitors. SEO seems to have been boiled down to a list of steps that changes as it gets transferred from one source to the next. John Alexander, the author of this article, states that many companies get hung up on SEO being a "science"and constantly battling to find algorithms to reach true optimization. He says that some key scientific applications to SEOincluding figuring out which areas will have the most impact and which 200 words will prove most useful in SEO for the month. The art and creativity play in when trying to separate the company from competitors by figuring out the most logical key words customers will use and finding different appeals such as nostalgia to gain increased site traffic.
While these two areas must come together for SEO, Alexander states firmly that in the end success is using precise mathematics the first time and using that not only to discover advantages for the firm, but also predict competitor strengths and weaknesses.
In the March 29 Adweek article by Mark Dolliver writes about how search-engine marketing is growing and is becoming more important. A survey issued by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization and Econsultancy went into more detail on the movement. Companies are willing to pay more for SEO.
However, 47% of the surveyed companies said that they preferred in-house SEO. Rather than be charged by outside firms bigger companies try to keep these specialist within the company to keep up with the trends.
In this information age hackers are always looking for ways to fool their prey, and this article describes one of their latest tricks. Hackers have now learned how to edit links that are indexed in search results in order to make them appear safe. Its called SEO poisoning, and the aim is to bring a user to a dangerous website that can install a virus on their computer. In a recent experimental study approximately 26% of search results returned by Google had poisoned URLs, and about 86% of sites established in Singapore had SEO poisoning. These results were all found in sites that were indexed by Google, so if the worlds greatest search engine is encountering these problems, then how much worse is this problem with less reputable search engines.
Opening day for a new baseball season is a deep-rooted American tradition. It signals the coming of summer, the warming of the weather, and every baseball fan's team is still in first place, if for only a few more hours. As people move about the country, it's more difficult to keep up with your favorite team's live games if you're not in their broadcast range. Major League Baseball's official website for all video, MLB.tv, has a service that allows a fan to pay an amount and watch any games from their computer. The only restriction to what games can be seen is that if a citizen is in a "blackout" area, or an area where the game can be found on television, the game can't be shown.
Opening Day 2010 came upon us a few weeks ago and large numbers of subscribers to the service were told that the game they were trying to view was being blacked out in that area...regardless of where that area was. The ramifications for a business based around the online televising of live baseball games having a massive breakdown on arguably the biggest day of the season are far reaching. For every fan of a team that was excited about opening day, that excitement is now gone. The excitement of opening day can't be recreated, and the amount of potential subscribers lost because of a gaffe like this is substantial.
Google announced they are going visual, audio, location-based, social and real-time this past December. The new enhancements include a visual search tool known as Google Goggles, audio search tool Google Voice, a real-time audio language translation, location-based "what's nearby?" searches, and up-to-the-second, real-time searches incorporating Twitter and news feeds.
Google spokesperson Amit Singhal claims that new information is being created from around the globe every second from the many different forms of user-generated content, as well as regular Web page activity. Rather than crawling the Web for new data once a month, as Google used to do, they must serve up new data instantly as it becomes available. Their goal is to create a seamlessly integrated information environment.
The real time search feature scrolls along a section of the results page. It has a pause button to allow users to stop the scrolling and a scroll bar to allow users to see what they have missed.
When building your website or optimizing your content it is important to consider a number of things. Anything from relevant keywords in broad matches to exact phrase matches to apropriate use of flash and propper navigation.
Outspoken Media came up with an very good checklist for all your SEO needs. In order to save you a few grand in expenses and a weekend seminar at a Hilton hotel in an obscure location frequented by shady characters, Outspoken Media has outlined the main characteristics of SEO and what one should look for.
You will realise, as they mention, SEO is not just a checklist of to do things about your website, it is part basic components which have to function and part intuition as you have to be able to realise what works and what doesn't.
Check out the article here for your full checklist.
This article asks the question is UGC actually profitable for companies. The article goes over the rapid growth of user generated content over the past 3 years mainly by looking at Google's acquisition of You tube. The article state that as of now You tube one of the largest most popular sites for UGC in the forms of video has yet to create a profit for Google since they bought it. This article explains some of the new strategies that Google plans on implementing to try to gain some sort of profit from You Tube. These strategies include enabling ads and revenue sharing on individual videos that prove to be popular, Click-to-Buy” links ( to itunes for songs) , advertising space before, during or after a video, as well as working with TV networks to get full length show on the site. In my opinion if feel that these strategies will provide Google with a profit but will these ads deter users from the site, or clutter the site content, or will it push users to generate better quality content. I guess we will see.
Google Adwords is a way that businesses can bring in more customers at a lower cost. Google Adwords enables a company to implement precisely targeted advertising. The article states that with proper presentation and execution , starting Google Adwords can be like planting a money tree that will provide your business with a steady stream of revenue. To start Google Adwords first the company needs a goal. The company then needs to make a list of keywords that relates to their company or product. Then the company needs to make sure their website is eye catching and easy to use. Google Adwords is a way to get people to your site and keep them coming back for more.
This article concerns how Internet marketing is evolving to become less about more directly asking consumers for their opinions and feelings, but is becoming more about listening to the clues that already exist. Surveys are very common ways in which marketers get a clue from their consumers, but consumers oftentimes choose not to contribute (partially because they're so weary of getting asked so often) and also the data collected is not always reliable or completely honest (for various, psychological reasons). With web tracking, marketers are less intrusive on the consumers behavior and can get some very reliable information. Word-of-mouth can be explored much more readily online rather than off-line.
The issues this article explores about web-tracking is that, for now, it is not entirely understood how much better this method is versus old methods of getting information about consumers. Statistical data is still missing, but this will come with time.
Apple has stated that they are not putting Adobe, the makers of flash, on there new ipad. This will be a bad decession for everyone. Adobe will lose money becuase they will not have the founds from having there product on those ipads. Consumers loose because they will have a hard tome running videos and seeing certain pages on there computer because most people use flash. Businesses online and otherwise will loose money because there website will not work or be as affective if they use flash on there website to all those who use the ipad. This choice will essentially cut off an entire segment of people from certain advertisements and web sites. i think this is a bad move on the part of the makes of the ipad what do you think?
Facebook's search function which provides web results inside of the Facebook application has now outpaced AOL for a greater share of the search market and is close behind Ask.com. This presents both a threat and an opportunity to Microsoft's Bing search product as Facebook (of which Microsoft has a 240M stake)could overtake Bing in it's overall share of the search market. If Microsoft capitalizes on it's investment and strikes a deal to serve Facebook search results, it could be a huge although expensive win against Google.
This article clearly lays out what the five most important aspects of search engine optimization. To drive higher traffic and rankings for your website the number one rule is to have as many links as possible on your site. Next is working to be an authority and create trustworthiness on your website, edit your title tags, create a solid base of HTML content, and work on creating solid meta descriptions. All these five aspects are looked into deeper in this article, along with the reasons why they are so important.
It is becoming more and more easier to acccess the mobile web due to the large growth in applications. Applications not only eliminate the confusing browser, they also make it easier to go where you want. With the new Twitter application you can go directly to the website and update rather than using your browser. Apple's iTunes recently passed the 3 billion download mark, and many of those applications didn't even require a web site visit. There are problems that will occur with the use of web browsing going down but nothing that can't be controlled.
As more people are participating with some kind of user generated content it is becoming apparent that the phenomenon that was once considered just entertainment is now becoming a serious business. One concern that has been raising eyebrows is what to do about UGC consumers that are posting material that has a copyright. Critics are now arguing that UGC providers must include stipulations in their terms of agreement that specify what can and can’t be posted. Also all UGC providers are now being held to standards that would expect them to have “Identification Technology” to detect and remove any illegal content. It seems that if user generated providers are doing all they can to keep away from infringement, then copyright owners will not take legal action. It will be interesting to see what kind of restrictions will be put in place due to these incidents, and whether or not this will affect the profits of UGC providers.
In our continuing conversation about Twitter and its growth, some entrepreneurs are attempting to predict the potential success and/or failure of movies using data gathered from Twitter. The two Silicon Valley researchers claim they have discovered a way to use the popular social media service to gauge real-time interest in movies. Using this information they hope to accurately predict how they will perform at the box office on opening weekend. Market research at its finest. It never ceases to amaze me the lengths information form Social media can be used to solve marketing problems.
oogle succeeds at marketing to customers without being overly intrusive. Look at its sponsored text ads, appearing in its search results: They work. But as more and more marketers use the Web to reach customers, many companies fail to transmit product information without breaching their customers' sense of privacy.
A new study suggests ways companies can better target individuals without crossing a line. Avi Goldfarb of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Catherine Tucker of the MIT Sloan School of Management, the study's coauthors, had access to a database that tracked just under 3,000 online ad campaigns.
Startup businesses are notoriously low on cash, but need to employ successful marketing strategies in order to be successful. Social media exists as a low cost, highly effective means of marketing and communication for such businesses. Social media is essentially free, and allows startups to use money that would traditionally be allocated to promotion for other, necessary costs like production, research and development. Here are four ways that startups can use social media as a cost saver successfully:
1. Customer service - customers can receive a response in real time with social media 2. Building Community - Providing encouragement and invites to events 3. Product Marketing - Allows journalists and potential customers to have immediate and easy access to product information 4. Staying Organized - Streamlines work flow and creates an "online office environment" between employees who work from home
Find out more about how startups can effectively use social media here.
Facebook is solidifying ground in the advertising space by partnering with heavyweights such as Adobe owned analytics giant Omniture to bring it's ad technology to partner networks. This move will provide advertisers with a deeper level of visibility into the effectiveness of social media ad models.
Everyone knows that with a search campaign you get wasted clicks that don’t turn into conversions. Despite all your efforts of optimization in the keyword, ad copy, bidding, and landing page areas, most search marketers still end up with a significantly higher percentage of clicks that don’t convert as to those that do. Many advertisers look at those non-converting clicks as casualties in the fight towards covering the search market. However, if you combine your thought processes and analytics of your search and display campaigns, you will see there is a retargeting gold mine sitting right in front of you.
Akvelon (a technology consulting firm) unveiled a new real time web statistics service for online retailers who service thousands of customers daily. The idea for the service came from the request of a client who wanted real time statistics on its' online business. Akevelon chose Microsoft to partner with because of it's ability to process and analyze data on the go without having to store it first. The result: business can now process online traffic and analyze it's statistics, advertisements, downloads, etc in a cost effective way.
Marketing platform developer Alterion has just launched a software-as-a-service product that will allow web retailers to not only view traditional metrics but also statistics such as what a visitor hovers over or selects.
The new service allows for more behavioral tracking and "experts" that can turn that behavioral data into meaningful insights.
A new web analytics software, developed by the London-based firm Alterian, allows web retailers to track customers on an even closer level. The program, referred to as WebJourney, is able to track what a visitor hovers over or selects on a website and even how long he/she spends with specific items on a particular web page. Combined with the traditional metrics measured, web retailers would be able to provide highly specialized forms of marketing, through e-mail, social media, and the internet.
WebJourney is designed to record the process individual customers go through before purchasing an item so that when they visit in the future, the website can adapt and try to recreate the same process. It's almost like getting into the mind of the consumer and giving them exactly what it takes to make a purchase.
Hulu's content providers are getting antsy for more money and the rumored next step is a subscription based plan for content on the site. Hulu, now in it's third year of operation, has seen a tripling in their streaming of videos every month from this time last year, but advertising revenue has leveled off and companies are starting to pull their content. Hulu is currently walking a fine line, by trying to keep their content providers happy while not taking away too many of their main source of revenue, cable television. With the recent release of the iPad, Hulu could finally give the people an alternative to watching their content somewhere besides a computer, and as such could introduce a subscription service at that time.
This article describes 5 steps in getting started with Online Marketing.
Define goals for what you want you web site to do (easier said than done)
Define metrics for measuring these goals
Collect data to understand the current situation
Analyze the data
Make changes and go back to Step 3 (Collect Data) It then goes through each step, and gives more details about them. It is a good article to reference to.
Clouding is outsourcing of data that is held in privately owned computers to an other server where the data is stored. Now businesses and individuals are worried about how secure clouding is. The information that is stored is really imporant to many people and could be really dangerous if it got into the wrong hand or gets deleted. Clouding is only done to save money in IT costs of hardware and software but is becoming more dangerous. What happens to the people who do not realize this is being done and looses there information. People need to be more aware of the privacy policies that they are agreeing to when signing up for programs and social networks. What would you do if you lost all your important information or family picture off you computer?
An interesting article talking about Google analytics. German officles seem to think that it is illegal and are trying to ban it in Germany. As of now 13% of all sites in the .de domain use Google analytics and if German officials are successful in finding that it is in fact illegal they will impose fines to those sites that have used it. The reason to why they are doing this is that they see that the information Google Analytics hold could be seen a a breech in user privacy laws. If they are successful in banning it in Germany will it eventually be cause on by other countries in Europe or even the United States?
Article:Google Will Soon Allow You to Opt Out of Google Analytics Tracking Link: Here
The implications this could have on many businesses' marketing efforts seems pretty negative. If Google allows users to opt out of tracking their own personal data/information, site owners will be losing extremely valuable information they use to analyze their consumers and audience. Google being one of the top services for web analytics, this could take a toll on many. Read more from the article link above.
This article joins the debate on whether or not the US government can use google analytics in their agencies. Although there have been assertions that they can and should, this article states that they cannot due to google's use of persistent cookies for data collection. Although many agencies would like to use GA, because they use cookies to gather their data, the agency directors strictly forbade it. There has been some debate in Washington whether or not to loosen restrictions on their persistent cookies policy, but there hasn't been any word yet about a decision.
Google is to launch its own SEO agency in May 2010; being the worlds first search agency to guarantee first page rankings and winning the most prominent keywords. Other SEO agencies will now find the competition even more stiff and the odds stacked impossibly high against them. In order to be successful at what you do, you must be able to adapt and bend with the morphing market, so current SEO agencies will have to focus on other aspects of the industry in order to keep a float.
However, Google SEO's services have high early estimates of their services with the average minimum being $25,000 per month.
Facebook is has been the dominant social networking site in terms of traffic and revenue, and now is topping other charts as well. Web search is "the terms people use either to find information or navigate to websites." Facebook has recently surpassed Amazon, Walmart, Netflix, and Google and has become the most common brand name in web searches according to reports from Hitwise.
It is interesting that users still search for the term "facebook" instead of typing in the site's web address into the address bar, which to me seems like it would be much quicker.
This article is relelvant to web analytics because of the web search data that was collected by Hitwise to make this report.
Overstat is a web analytic and visitor intelligence company. It announced on 3/30 the launch of its web analytic.Many says that Stat will change the web analytics environment.
Unlike legacy web analytics tools, majority of which require users to have web programming skills or other technical knowledge to use them effectively, the company, Overstat focused on non-technological users. The product allows non-technical users to see the web page context of the analytics and readily understand the significance of the information and help them to make better decisions about their website.
This interesting competitor will change the environment dramatically.
We know now that a popular and thriving business model is that of selling data. Companies who aggregate this sort of data can figure out a scary amount of information on any one person. But now it seems like companies such as Aperture are also pulling data from companies like Experian (credit reports), Acxiom (marketing services), and Nielsen's Claritas (buyer behavior) and then combining that with Datran's database of e-mail addresses. They can then put consumers into neat, marketable, and useful demographics.
Basically the difference between Aperture and every other data collecting company is that it can pull massive amounts of "sensitive" data from offline sources to market to consumers. At hearings in early March, the Federal Trade Commission discussed whether this offline material should be kept out of marketers hands. Congress is debating whether this area needs some, or any, restrictions to protect privacy of consumers.
Companies can, and more commonly will, integrate the information consumers sign away when they access the internet and information from credit reports as well as sexual preference, organizational affiliations, and lists of friends and family members.
The original article is here. This is part of EBSCO Host on the library's website.
Despite the fact that this does not relate to web analytics, I'm posting anyways because this is interesting. Apparently Woot is changing their business model! Instead of offering just one deal a day, they are starting to offer many. The catch? Well, you have to navigate through a bunch of pages to see the different items that are being sold that day. Even though this may frustrate users, Woot admittedly says that they do not care.
"Yes, we fully expect to drive most of you away in frustration and disgust. That’s fine with us. As Michael Jackson and Prince have taught us, what good are a huge fanbase and massive public goodwill if you can’t squander them on crazy acts of ego-driven insanity?"
Now, I may be going out on a limb here... but April Fools! You almost got me WOOT... almost.
