June 2007 - Posts
When people ask me how they get more traffic, more recognition online, sell more, whatever, my response is always the same - "become an expert source." What does that mean? Show off your talent(s), share your opinions, build a community.
So how do you do that? Broadcast yourself. Produce as much content as possible to support your products and/or services and share it with prospective audiences at every opportunity (for example on your site and through social networks). But if you've been suffering from blogging burntout a bit and turning out article after article and post after post, why not actually, well, broadcast yourself instead?
BlogTV is a new service which lets you do just that. If you've got a webcam, you can broadcast your own live show. How cool is that?
BlogTV features include:- Start recording easily after sign up (it literally took me less than a minute to get started)
- Chat with your viewers in real-time (a great way get live feedback)
- Co-host shows by inviting audience members to co-host with you
- Share your shows (send to friends, post to blogs and sites, set up RSS feeds)
- Manage and Archive (organize, change titles, descriptions, tags, pictures, etc.)
Popular social news site Digg has been running a contest to promote the release of the Digg API. While the submissions ended back in May, the winners have now been announced and the results are really impressive - a must see for anyone involved in development or interested in social media marketing.
Entrants had to use the Digg API and the Flash toolkit to create applications which satisfied the criteria of "effective display of data," "usefulness" and "creativity.
The winner was
DiggCity (see below), followed by
Digg Charts and
Digg Expose.
See the winners and the
other finalists at digg.com now.
Yahoo Search Marketing announced several notable improovements to its Panama advertising platform:
Move & Copy Keywords: Users of the platform will now be able to copy and move keywords from one ad group to another. If you're a Yahoo advertiser, just log in and head on over to the Ad Groups page (under the campaigns tab). Then just check the box to select the keyword(s) you want to move or copy to another ad group.
Steamlined Keyword Additions: Yahoo has also made available a new keyword selector tool to advertisers during the sign-up process and to existing advertisers (just use the "+Add Keywords" button on the ad Group page).
Ad Copy Support: YSM users will now be able to preview ads that appear in the sponsored listings for keywords within an account and receive some "best practice" guidance as well. Plus, advertisers are able to view the current ads of their keyword competition.
Leading Web press release distribution service PRWeb.com has expanded its distribution capabilities, creating more than 500 new global and regional RSS feeds. PRWeb users will now have the ability to include their news in specific
country or regional RSS feeds to more accurately target thier news.
"
RSS is becoming the standard through which news and other information is distributed over the web," said Bill Wagner, Chief Marketing Officer of Vocus, Inc. "
By adding these additional local and international RSS feeds, we are able to increase the global reach for our customers while at the same time enabling them to target their news to local audiences."
Content partners now have the ability to publish PRWeb news feeds based on
Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and country. The feeds are available for subscribers using basic RSS and Atom.
Big news in the web application and experience management industry.
Gomez announced the acquisition of
BrowserCam.
BrowserCam Screen Capture and Remote Access services allow web designers, developers and quality assurance (QA) engineers to validate the end-user experience on hundreds of possible combinations of operating systems, browser types and screen resolutions. What that means is that users are given the ability to see how web pages actually appear in many different system configurations.
“
There’s a lot to like about this strategic technology acquisition,” said Gomez CEO Jaime W. Ellertson. “
Gomez gains additional technology expertise and accelerated entry into the on-demand web design and testing market for the benefit of our collective customers. The acquisition also allows us to further introduce the Gomez ExperienceFirst platform to web designers and developers who will be interested in our broad range of solutions for web application experience management as their businesses grow and their needs change.”
Let's hope that Gomez keeps BrowserCam's free 24-hour evaluation period.
Website Magazine covered SharedBook, a
reverse publishing platform provider, in the "Seven
Sizzlin' Site Tools" article of the May issue. What was most appealing to me
as the one that penned the piece was that SharedBook was announcing an open API.
By all accounts, it looks as though there is some interesting development
through that resource now, with the release of
Blog2Print.
Blog2Print enables blog owners to compile their favorite posts into a printed
book format with a single click and provides the ability to monetize content
through the sale of blog books created by their readers. Content owners can sign
up to receive a 20 percent share of the retail price of all books made by others
of their content. Plus, the first 100 bloggers to add the Blog2Print widget to
their Google Blogger sites will be entitled to
a complimentary 20-page hard cover book, valued at $24.95. The offer is good
through Monday, July 31, 2007.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recommended that policymakers "proceed with
caution" in the net neutrality debate, urging lawmakers to neither pass or kill
proposed legislation which would treat all content on the Web the same. Net
neutrality regulations would require telecommunications operators to keep their
networks neutral. To explain it simply, it prevents providers like AT&T,
Verizon, Comcast and Qwest from speeding up or slowing down content based on its
source, ownership or destination.
Why is this important to you as someone in pursuit of Web success?
When you've got a "dog in the fight" you tend to favor what's yours - and
that includes content and of course advertising.
SaveTheInternet says it more
diplomatically:
"Small business owners benefit from an Internet that allows them to
compete directly — not one where they can't afford the price of entry. Net
Neutrality ensures that innovators can start small and dream big about being the
next EBay or Google without facing insurmountable hurdles. Without Net
Neutrality, startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by
big corporations that pay for a top spot on the Web."
There have been some interesting new developments at LinkedIn, the business networking hub, over the past few weeks.
For starters, LinkedIn announced plans to provide APIs that will open the site to developers within the next nine months, according to co-founder and former CEO Reid Hoffman. Many see this as a quick response to a similar move by Facebook - a social networking site that provides complete professional networking to its rapidly growing membership base. Referred to as "social networking fatigue," LinkedIn could be suffering from their defining niche, whereas Facebook offers a one-stop shop for all social and business networking needs. Opening up to developers may help solve the pigeon-hole problem.
But there is good news. Very good news. New CEO Dan Nye says that membership to LinkedIn has doubled - to nearly 12 million users over the past nine months and also predicts revenue to reach "... somewhere in the $100 million range next year." Undoubtedly, about $30 million in backing from Sequoia Capital and Greylock and Bessemer will help catupult LinkedIn towards their planned initial public offering as early as next year.
In addition, three new executives were hired this week: Steve Sordello as CFO (formerly of Tivo, Inc. and AskJeeves), Patrick Crane (former marketing leader for Yahoo Answers) and Anil Khatri (former vice president of engineering at Yahoo).
LinkedIn is making a don't-look-back move into professional networking and has no plans to deviate from the plan. "LinkedIn is a productivity tool," Nye said. "We expect people to come to LinkedIn and accomplish tasks, then move on. We have no intention of becoming a social site. We want to remain focused on productivity that is important for professionals."
Expect big things from LinkedIn in the near future. If you don't have a LinkedIn account, now would be a good time to get started.
Via Reuters, Marchex Inc. is introducing
100,000 websites featuring local services. Sites such as denverautorepair.com
and newyorkdoctors.com are just a few of the properties where Marchex will
provide users with access to more than 15 million of its nationwide business listings.
Marchex has existing partnerships with AT&T Inc. and is affiliated currently with YellowPages.com, through which they sell advertising that appears on the Marchex
local online advertising network.
Marchex hopes to capitalize on organic search
traffic but the competition is sure to be tight. If they can manage to secure sufficient traffic, Marchex will definitely be a place to spend a few advertising dollars in the future. WM will keep you posted on their progress.
Microsoft announced the introduction of two new free online services for Windows Live: Windows Live Folders and Windows Live Photo Gallery. I think it's fair to say that Microsoft is taking Google and Yahoo much more seriously, and will now begin leveraging its existing market position for software running on computers to these new Web delivered services.
About the new Microsoft services:Windows Live Photo Gallery is a new version of the photo application found on Windows XP and Windows Vista which enables users to share photos on Microsoft's social networking platform Windows Live Spaces.
Windows Live Folders will provide up to 500 megabytes of online storage in the United States in a limited test release, giving users the ability to share documents.
The Google Adsense blog
announced they are enhancing the style of its advertising units by enabling
publishers to select the type of corners they wish to display on their web
properties. Previously Adsense publishers were only offered square cornered units, but as of
yesterday, they can now choose two additional styles: slightly rounded corners
and very rounded corners.
A nice addition but will it impact earnings?
Let us know by submitting a comment below.
Pandora (my favorite Internet radio station), along with most Internet radio sites, is observing a "Day Of Silence" and going off the air today to protest a recent ruling (scheduled to go into effect July 15th) which threatens the existence of Internet radio by increasing the licensing fees which Internet radio sites must pay to stream songs.
If you're a net radio listener and wish to protest these rate hikes, contact your Congressional representatives.
Learn more at SaveNetRadio.orghttp://www.savenetradio.org/
Personal publishing platform Freewebs has announced it has developed WidgetCon 2007, the first conference designed specifically for engagement marketers. WidgetCon will provide a full day of discussions to talk about engagement marketing, the widget evolution and successful case studies. The event is an invite-only conference comprised of the leading agencies, innovative clients and widget-savvy publishers (with an impressive lineup of speakers).
More info can be found at www.widgetcon.com.
Takes place at the Tribeca Cinemas in New York on July 11th.
"
WidgetCon 2007 is the start of a conversation between publishers, marketers, agencies, technology and measurement partners about marketing through distributed content, and how increasing the level of engagement a user experiences will impact the media landscape and advertising practices," said Shervin Pishevar, President of Freewebs. "
WidgetCon 2007 is an effort to promote collaboration between all businesses affected by engagement marketing, through sincere dialogue and meaningful networking, whose collaboration is essential to nurture widgets and engagement marketing, and develop expertise."
There's hardly ever a day when you see three press releases about one company (unless it's Google) that all catch your attention. Folks,
BlinkX is on the move. It's easier to write a summary post of everything that's going on.
- blinkx announced a global partnership with digital entertainment services company RealNetworks. Blinkx will power video search for the new RealPlayer through a video search box embedded in the RealPlayer window.
- blinkx unveiled AdHoc, the first contextually relevant video advertising platform. The AdHoc platform will match TV-style ads to an audience on the Video Web. AdHoc leverages blinkx's patented speech-to-text transcription and visual analysis technology to understand video content more thoroughly and effectively than any other service today, and can therefore dynamically place the most pertinent advertising against it.
- InfoSpace announced a partnership with blinkx to offer video search capabilities for InfoSpace's family of metasearch brands including Dogpile.com. The partnership allows InfoSpace to offer users the same breadth and relevancy of video search results as it does with text-based Web search results.
The following are the top voted Web news stories on Share.WebsiteMagazine.com
for the week ending July 22, 2007. Share the news (industry articles,
blog posts, tutorials and more) that you find important at
Share.WebsiteMagazine.com
Yahoo co-founder Yang to replace Semel as CEO
Yahoo Inc. on Monday
tapped co-founder Jerry Yang to replace Chief Executive Terry Semel, bowing to
investor pressure as the Internet media company has failed to keep up with rival
Google Inc.
Online Sales Lose Steam
Since the inception of the
Web, online commerce has enjoyed hypergrowth, with annual sales increasing more
than 25 percent over all. But in the last year, growth has slowed sharply in
major sectors like books, tickets and office supplies.
Report: News Corp. may swap MySpace for Yahoo stake
Rupert Murdoch's News
Corp. is discussing swapping social networking website MySpace for a 25% stake
in Yahoo, The Times newspaper reported Wednesday.
Microsoft to change Vista after Google complaint
Microsoft Corp. has agreed
to modify its Windows Vista operating system in response to a complaint that its
computer search function put Google Inc. and other potential rivals at a
disadvantage, the Justice Department and Microsoft said on Tuesday.
Worldwide Expansion of Google Pay-Per-Action (CPA) Beta
Google announced today
that they expanded the Google Pay-Per-Action beta program to include beta
testers around the world. As of today are willing advertisers and publishers
outside the United States able to participate and apply for a beta account.
Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 Hits Primetime
The Internet on the mobile
phone will take another big step forward with the launch of Yahoo! Go for Mobile
2.0 in general availability in the US and the availability of localized beta
versions in 13 countries on Friday.
eBay attempts to welcome back store owners
After making a series of
decisions that frustrated some merchants, eBay is wooing store owners.
Meredith Acquires Health Search Engine Healia
Meredith Corp. has
acquired Healia, a consumer health search engine, as part of its strategy to
expand reach in the women’s health market and to increase its online content.
'Italian Job' Web Attack Sweeping the 'Net
Online criminals have
launched a widespread Web attack that has turned tens of thousands of legitimate
Web sites into weapons, security vendors said Monday.
Google wins Internet content license in China
Google Inc. has won
preliminary approval from Beijing to provide Internet content in China, the firm
said on Wednesday, potentially allowing it to offer news in the world's
second-largest Internet market.
Skype releases version 1.4 beta
Voice-over-IP is fast
becoming one of the most important tools for the internet-savvy. There are only
two technologies that are worth looking at, i.e., the SIP-standards based
services and Skype, a P2P technology.
The following are a few interesting user submissions from Share.WebsiteMagazine.com
for the business week ending July 22nd, 2007. Share the news (industry articles,
blog posts, tutorials and more) that you find important at
Share.WebsiteMagazine.com
Blog Translation With Yahoo Pipes
Translate your blog into
several other languages. The result just might be a larger, more international
subscriber base.
55 Free Video Sharing Sites AND Metrics
Here are fifty-five free
video sharing sites with some added metrics information from Compete.com,
Alexa.com, Ranking.com, Google PageRank
How To Submit Videos To Video Sharing Sites
To really benefit from
having your videos viewed as much as possible you need to submit them to as many
video sharing websites as you can.
Opening a Store Online Makes More Dollars and Sense
More and more small
businesses are moving away from a ‘brick-and-mortar’ retail store to an online
e-commerce model. This isn’t exactly news, but the pace at which it’s going in
this direction seems staggering.
So You Want To Hack For A Living?
When looking at the hot
security topics of the day, penetration testing AKA ethical hacking has got to
be near the top of everyone's list. With the onslaught of compliance
regulations, this self-testing process is virtually required by law.
When Choosing an eCommerce System, Remember the Search Engines
A thoughful and
intelligent article from Shannon Watters at Digital Web this week, How to Choose
an eCommerce Package, offers some great suggestions on what to look for when
choosing software for an online shop offering goods or services or both.
Taskee Simplifies Web Site Testing
If your web work involves
delivering sites to customers (as it does for many of us), you’ve probably run
into the mismatch between the average customer and the average bug-tracking
system.
Yahoo Patent Filings on Indexing and Advertising Using Geographic Boundaries
Advertisers and searchers
can benefit when a search engine collects geographic information from the Web
and indexes it by associating that geographic information with a system of
overlapping and adjacent geographic boundaries for the locations.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion - The Ultimate Guide
Dynamic Keyword Insertion
is one of those “dirty little secrets” used by PPC marketing agencies and is the
cornerstone of the millions of Internet marketing eBooks written by self
proclaimed “gurus”.
Section 508 Compliance
What is Section 508
Compliance Law? It states that government websites are mandated by law to be
Section 508 compliant…written & coded in a way that makes the website assessible
for people with disabilities to read.
Interviews with DMA Search Marketing Council
Here is a collection of
short video interviews taken during day one of the DM Days conference in New
York.
Merchant Adoption Rates of Google Checkout vs. PayPal Express
Recent news through
Internet Retailer reports that the adoption rate of Google Checkout is slightly
higher with Top 500 retailers than PayPal?s Express Checkout.
Adobe Digital Editions eBook reader released
Reading electronic books
on your computer can be an exercise in futility. Computer screens aren't
designed to display text in a the same way as a book, and it's hard to find a
single application capable of handling all the eBook formats you might want
5 Blogging Tasks You Should Outsource
There are a lot of little
jobs with blogging that seem to eat up your time. The thing is a lot of them are
repetitive and don’t take a lot of brain power or effort… just time.
New attribute requirements: MPN, UPC and ISBN
Google recently added UPC,
MPN and ISBN to the list of required attributes for bulk uploads of the Products
item type. Providing this information will help rank items better and allow for
the delivery of more relevant results to users.
Google Maps has a new feature to enhance local search offering; letting actual
Google users leave reviews on business listings.
From the
Google Lat/Long Blog: Google Maps has offered a collection of reviews
assembled from some of the finest sources on the web for some time, but now
we're augmenting those with reviews from an even better source: you -- and, we
hope, millions of other opinionated Google users.
It's very simple to add reviews (you'll of course need a Google account to get
started). Just search for your favorite places (restuarants, shops, grocery
stores, your dentists, etc) by name or address and click on the "More Info" link
if it's available. From there, click on "Write a Review" and start giving your
two cents.
If you've got a local business with a Web presence, it would behoove you to
solicit existing customers to leave a review on Google Maps as soon as possible.
How many PDF files do you download every week? I'm somewhere in the five to ten download range. White papers, industry reports, press releases, everything seems to be released in PDF format. It's the standard for easily distributable content away from the Web. Therein lies the problem though - reading ebook (electronic book) content on a computer is often challenging as your screen really isn't designed to display content the same way it appears in a book.
Luckily,
Adobe's new Digital Edition eBook reader attempts to solve the problem of reading various ebook formats (PDF, HTML, TXT, PRC, LIT, RB) within a single rich Internet application. Users can make bookmarks, add text notes, and change font sizes with ease. The free Digital Editions download is under 3MB (Windows version) and takes less than two minutes to install over a broadband connection. With an RIA service model, users always have the latest version of Digital Editions, taking advantage of new features and security enhancements.
Microsoft adCenter will be upgrading its system this weekend (starting June
23rd) to expand negative keyword management to the campaign level. During this
upgrade, adCenter will be temporarily unavailable for up to 14 hours, starting
at 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time. While keywords and ads will continue to run during
this time, after this upgrade, reporting will be delayed for up to 24 hours. To
see when your data was last updated, check the timestamp on the bottom of
adCenter Reporting tab.
adCenter seems to be on a roll with its product development. Here are a few
other noteworthy links about adCenter development
There is a lot of potential in the local Web marketing arena - no doubt about that. It is surprising to many however (myself included) that it has not generated the attention (and the advertising dollars) that it in my opinion it rightly deserves from the local businesses that can benefit from it. This does not (or should not) indicate though that there is not a continuous stream of innovation. Case in point, Local.com, a leading local search engine, today announced enhancements to its LocalConnect offering.
From the release: Local Connect enables regional media including local newspapers, radio and television stations and yellow pages companies to incorporate Local.com’s powerful local search technology into their website via a customized, private-label local business directory platform.
In addition, LocalConnect now provides the ability for clients to display partner links within the courtesy listings on their site. Vertical partner links allow users to book travel related services including flights and hotels, make restaurant reservations and access special offers and coupons from businesses. LocalConnect search results also now feature local business ratings and reviews, often cited as a popular feature among local search users. The best part as I see it however is that users have the ability to customize results and produce SEO enabled profile pages to match clients' websites look and feel.
“
LocalConnect provides regional media with a powerful local presence and the ability to add a highly searchable local business directory platform tailored to their specific needs,” said Kim LaFleur, vice president of product management, Local.com. “
The latest enhancements take this platform to the next level and position LocalConnect as an invaluable tool for any local site that wants to connect consumers with the businesses in their area, with an opportunity to generate revenue.”
See LocalConnect in action.
Google launched a limited test of
Pay Per Action advertising back in
March of this year but they will now be expanding that beta product globally. According to the
official release from Google:
“
Starting today, advertisers in the beta will see an alert in their AdWords account informing them that they can now create pay-per-action campaigns. Going forward, advertisers who have enabled AdWords conversion tracking and received more than 500 conversions from their CPC and CPM-based campaigns in the past 30 days will be automatically added to the beta on a rolling basis.”
Google Pay Per Action is a new pricing model available to advertisers to specify a dollar amount they would like to offer publishers for actual conversions (e.g. sales, leads, etc.). Advertisers pay only for these completed conversions, and not on a CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) basis.
buySAFE, Inc. and
TRUSTe today announced that they have partnered to create “TRUSTe for Small Business,” a program that combines buySAFE’s merchant performance certification process with TRUSTe’s privacy certification process.
The program allows merchants with monthly sales of $1 million or less to signal to their customers that they are trustworthy and reliable, adhere to strict privacy principles, and comply with TRUSTe’s Watchdog dispute resolution policy. Merchants that use buySAFE experience higher conversion rates, higher sales, and more frequent repeat shoppers.
To be eligible for the TRUSTe for Small Business program, online merchants must pass the buySAFE certification process and remain in good standing with buySAFE. Approved merchants will be designated with the buySAFE Seal, which certifies that the merchant is trustworthy and reliable, is continually monitored, and that its customers’ purchases can be fully guaranteed with a bond from buySAFE and its surety partners Liberty Mutual, Travelers, and ACE USA. Merchants in the program will also display the TRUSTe for Small Business seal, indicating that they adhere to TRUSTe’s strict privacy principles and comply with the TRUSTe Watchdog dispute resolution process.
There has been a lot of discussion about the imminent rise of video and video
advertising. But once you've created that award-winning video, what video
sharing sites do you upload that content to and ideally reap the benefits from?
Website Magazine has you covered. Here are fifty-five free video sharing
sites with some added metrics information from Compete.com, Alexa.com,
Ranking.com, Google PageRank.
Hat tip to lightreading.com for the original
list of video
sharing sites.
|
Website |
PageRank |
Ranking |
Quantcast |
Alexa |
Compete |
|
http://uncutvideo.aol.com/ |
7 |
|
10,888 |
54 |
Profile |
|
http://www.apnatube.com/ |
3 |
75,291 |
406,052 |
52,281 |
Profile |
|
http://www.babelgum.com/ |
5 |
374,813 |
1,814,775 |
69,655 |
n/a |
|
http://www.blip.tv/ |
8 |
15,627 |
11,878 |
5,489 |
Profile |
|
http://www.break.com/ |
6 |
570 |
1,584 |
307 |
Profile |
|
http://www.brightcove.com/ |
8 |
9,399 |
16,675 |
3,621 |
Profile |
|
http://www.buzznet.com/ |
6 |
762 |
1,265 |
723 |
Profile |
|
http://castpost.com/ |
5 |
22,312 |
47,607 |
25,114 |
Profile |
|
http://www.clipshack.com/ |
5 |
88,612 |
145,502 |
42,591 |
Profile |
|
http://www.dailymotion.com/ |
7 |
289 |
2,007 |
62 |
Profile |
|
http://www.dotv.com/ |
5 |
4,833 |
82,903 |
31,069 |