'Net Features : week18

Personal Networking: Better Sites than Facebook

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:00:00 GMT

Google added several new sources into its real time search results this week. Those looking for opportunities to increase exposure need look no further than towards sites such as Quora, GoWalla and Plixi. Google’s list of sources has expanded gradually over the past few months but what many Web professionals might be missing are the personal connections needed to truly drive traffic and engagement to receive the many benefits (traffic, exposure, conversion). Outside of Facebook and Twitter, what other sites should you consider adding to your list of key “personal networking” sites?

Many of the sites in the “personal networking” space will be unfamiliar to the majority. That does not mean however that they do not carry some value in their ability to drive traffic to your website, improve the general perception of your products and brand, and establish a deeper level of engagement with existing user and prospective buyers.

Compete.com estimates that the "personal networking" category generates nearly 150 million unique visitors a month, nearly five billion visits, and nearly 100 billion page views. And don’t think for a minute that the time spent on these sites isn’t significant either. Compete again estimates that the time spent in minutes is nearly 100 billion in April alone - a 6% increase from March 2011. If these statistics aren’t whetting your online marketing appetite nothing will.

Keep in mind that the definition of "personal networking" will vary for everyone based on their experience level, demographic, experience, location and a number of other factors. The list of destinations in this category is extensive (to say the least) but the sites that we should ultimately pursue are those which offer the best opportunity for a genuine degree of participation.

So where should you look for networking opportunities on the Web, outside of those you may already know such as Facebook and Twitter? Here are several sites Website Magazine has identified as those which perhaps present the best chance of shoring up personal and professional connections and yes, driving more traffic.

Pulse.Yahoo.com

Classmates.com

Wikia.com

CafeMom.com

Fanpop.com

FormSpring.me

Tagged.com

MocoSpace.com

Badoo.com

Yuku.com

Omegle.com

CircleofMoms.com

Listal.com

Fotolog.com

Woome.com

PayPal Adds Heat to the Mobile Payments Fire

Linc Wonham — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:00:00 GMT

PayPal parent company eBay is on a bit of a tear in the acquisitions department, and the latest move adds heat to an already sizzling mobile payments industry.

PayPal has acquired Boston-based mobile payments startup FigCard for an undisclosed amount, merely a week after eBay purchased WHERE to bolster its positions in local, social and mobile commerce.

In the announcement on PayPal’s blog, senior director of mobile Peter Chu described FigCard as having “developed an extremely easy way for merchants to accept mobile payments in stores by using a simple and very low cost USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. All the consumer needs is the Fig app on his or her smart phone. We loved their approach to point-of-sale, particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal – in the future, transactions can be as smart as a computer and not as dumb as paper. We won’t need our physical wallets. We’ll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy.”

The mobile payments space is hotter than ever as major corporations such as PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Google, Apple and others compete to find the best solutions for turning our smartphones into wallets, and startup software and technology companies such as FigCard and Payfone are either being acquired or receiving funding as in the case of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Square with Visa.

Add location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla into the mix, and daily deals leaders such as Groupon and LivingSocial -- and now also Facebook and Google -- and mobile commerce is about as exciting and explosive as any other category on the Web.

Bing Shopping Gets More Social, Visual

Linc Wonham — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:30:00 GMT

Microsoft has redesigned Bing Shopping to help consumers make “more informed shopping decisions”, according to the announcement on the Bing Search blog.

The revamped homepage provides a more visual display of the most popular items and content, where articles and categories are arranged next to top searches, popular products and the leading brands to give users better ability to research and browse items for a more streamlined experience. Bing now also allows consumers to connect their Facebook accounts to Bing Shopping so that they have immediate access to birthdays and upcoming events involving their friends.

New content will include general articles on shopping, product categories and the most relevant trends such as the latest swimwear and the most popular Mother’s Day gifts. New articles will be added each week based on what users are searching for and what is most relevant to the current season.

Larger images have also been added to the top of the search results page, and improvements have been made to the left side of the page. Shoppers can insert their own price matches in the left rail, and Bing will also display similar searches from other users.

Consumers can also find out more information about products by hovering over the item, and they can share their shopping lists on Facebook to receive feedback from friends. Bing Shopping Senior Program Manager Larry Cologiovanni also writes that the team is currently working on even more new features and updates.

For merchants, the redesign adds more focus to basic principles such as keeping all product information accurate and up to date, creating fresh and original content, providing clear and compelling product images and taking advantage of the most powerful social features such as ratings and reviews and Facebook integrations.

Appia's PPD Ad Network Arrives

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 23:35:00 GMT

App marketplace Appia today launched a new performance based advertising network for app developers. The service is launching today at the 2011 AppNation conference in San Francisco as a “pay per download” opportunity.

Appia’s new ad network enables developers to promote their apps by targeting ads by country and platform to promote their apps; it supports Android, iOS, Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Palm; and developers only pay for actual downloads of their apps.

“While developers scramble to figure out discoverability in light of new policies within Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Marketplace, we are providing new options for developers to market and promote their apps and only pay for results,” said Jud Bowman, founder and CEO, Appia. “Our performance-based advertising network gives developers a powerful way to directly influence the placement and traffic of their apps, leading to greater discoverability and increased downloads.”

Appia delivered 22 million downloads in March, reaching over 200 million mobile subscribers in 200 countries.

Movers & Shakers: ChannelAdvisor

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:15:00 GMT

E-commerce platform provider ChannelAdvisor, a software provider that helps retailers manage sales (through product catalog feed distribution) within channels such as marketplaces, paid search and comparison shopping engines, is on the move.

The company brought on 320 new customers in the past quarter alone including top retailers like Motorola, Deckers Europe, Misco and Cloggs. This brings ChannelAdvisor’s client roster to more than 3,000 retailers globally. Other retail brands utilizing the service include Nike, Wal-Mart, Dell, Victoria’s Secret, Under Armour, Staples, Crocs, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Jos. A. Bank, Urban Outfitters and more.

“We’ve come into 2011 with our foot on the accelerator,” said ChannelAdvisor President and Chief Operating Officer David Spitz. “This quarter was our largest first quarter ever and marks our fastest growth in more than two and a half years, and we’re forecasting continued acceleration in growth for the rest of 2011. Our business continues to grow at such an impressive rate because we’re incredibly well-positioned within a global market that is projected to grow to $1 trillion by 2014.”

Recent WM Coverage of ChannelAdvisor:

- Sears and ChannelAdvisor

- ChannelAdvisor Offers Inventory-driven Paid Search

- Online Shoppers Want One Thing This Holiday Season

- ChannelAdvisor Introduces Fully Loaded Mobile Webstore

WM Tool-of-the-Day: WhatFont

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:55:00 GMT

If you're in the process of a redesign and are busy checking out the competition to ensure your newly retooled Web presence is in line with the competition, check out the WhatFont Tool.

The bookmarklet and Chrome Extension makes it easy to find out what fonts are being used in a webpage.

With the extension installed, by hovering over the font you like, you'll be able to see at a glance what web fonts are in place.

While you could use extensions like Firebug or Webkit Inspector to do the same, WhatFont is a far simpler, far more elegant solution.

A snapshot of the WhatFont tool is below. It's pretty fun to play with so check it out!

Mobile Paid Search Impressions Skyrocket

Mike Phillips — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:56:00 GMT

A new study by Performics (paid search marketing specialists) shows that mobile paid search impressions accounted for 10.2% of all paid search impressions (desktop and mobile) for Performics' client base in Q1 2011. It's the first time 10 percent has been reached, and marks an impressive 195% increase in mobile impression volume.

Mobile clicks are rising, too. In Q1, mobile click share accounted 9.8% of all paid search clicks, for an overall increase of 230% -- compared to clicks from computers which rose 13.7%

While this is just one study, the hard evidence points to mobile paid search as an increasingly important part of marketers' strategies. And while the volume of mobile paid search rises, mobile cost-per-click (CPC) remains well below that of desktop CPC. In March, mobile CPCs were 42.1% lower.

Facebook Passes Google for Top Social ID

Linc Wonham — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:30:00 GMT

Facebook has surpassed Google in another key metric that’s indicative of the social Web’s continued development.

During the first quarter of 2011, and for the first time ever, Facebook was the top network for social sign-in – meaning it was the most popular network ID with which users signed in to websites where they could share content. Social sign-in has become an increasingly important mechanism for Web marketers and content publishers, as it builds engagement from users who share their profile data that can be used for targeted marketing and customization.

Facebook, which overtook Google for time spent on site last August and most 2010 visits in December, earned 35 percent of the Q1 2011 social sign-in share according to the numbers from social media user platform Janrain Engage. Google was next with 31 percent, after beating Facebook 38 percent to 27 percent in Q4 2010.

Yahoo was next with 13 percent, followed by Twitter at 7 percent, Windows Live at 6 percent, and the remaining 8 percent consisted of networks such as AOL, LinkedIn and MySpace.

Social sign-in provides not only a competitive advantage for marketers and publishers, but it is also a significant convenience for consumers. For that reason the practice will increase steadily, and the likelihood is good that Facebook’s edge over the field will also continue to climb.

Fetchback Adopts Retargeted Ad Icon

Linc Wonham — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:00:00 GMT

One of the leaders in the retargeting space, FetchBack, has announced its adoption of the Advertising Option Icon provided by the Direct Advertising Alliance. All FetchBack retargeted ads will now include the icon, visible in the upper right corner of each ad.

The symbol is trademarked by the Direct Advertising Alliance (DAA) with the intent of making it a universal symbol for consumers. By clicking on the icon, consumers can find out which participating companies are tracking them through online targeting. It includes an “opt out” selection for consumers that do not wish to be tracked online.

FetchBack, a part of the GSI Commerce Global Marketing Services division, is one of the first retargeting companies to adopt the symbol and joins the list alongside Yahoo and Google.

“It is an important part of FetchBack’s culture to be transparent with our approach to retargeting,” said Chad Little, CEO and founder of FetchBack. “The Advertising Option Icon is a perfect opportunity to show that retargeters have an ethical responsibility to consumers. The inclusion of the icon builds brand trust and credibility by sharing information with the consumer that they otherwise would not have had access to. We stand behind this as a universal symbol for transparency in marketing.”

The Direct Advertising Alliance created the icon as part of the organizations Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. The icon provides detailed information to the consumer to help them better understand how and why they are being tracked, as well as provide the “opt-out” option for those who do not wish to be followed.

Numerous professional and industry organizations are working hard to make the Advertising Option Icon a cross-industry standard piece of every online ad.

Datafeed Solutions that Work

Linc Wonham — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:30:00 GMT

Datafeeds are both valuable files and processes for transferring product information from one system to another in a predetermined form for e-commerce merchants and their affiliate partners. There is no more powerful method for retailers to distribute all of their product data across multiple channels, and no faster solution for affiliates to import that data onto their own websites or applications.

But they can also be complicated to use, cumbersome to manage and they require a certain level of technical expertise. The SEO benefits of highly integrated datafeeds can also be lost without the proper know-how, and merchants and affiliates who do not proceed with care risk not being properly attributed and, in some cases, even alienting their users.

There are, however, a number of third-party datafeed aggregators that aim to simplify the process. Below, then, are some of today's solution providers in the affiliate datafeed space:

PopShops
Regarded as the most popular affiliate feed aggregator with more than 60 million products and deals in its database, PopShops is a free tool for merchants and offers some additional premium services for affiliates on top of its basic no-cost package. SEO features include server-side snippets of PHP that will render product names, descriptions and other content to users and the search engines at the most basic level, and the premium plans include keyword customization, dynamic search, custom redirects, profiles and stylesheets.

GoldenCAN
The second-leading provider in the space, GoldenCAN has SEO benefits that include a strong internal linking structure that can dramatically influence search rankings, as well as options for optimized code and content. Their fee structure leaves something to be desired for some affiliates, however, with two categories of merchants. The first group is the Free of 4th Click Merchants, in which affiliates pay no share of their traffic and receive 100 percent of the commissions from the merchants in that category. Affiliates share 25 percent of their traffic with GoldenCAN for the second merchant group, and for every 4th click generated GoldenCAN replaces the affiliate site ID with its own and subsequently gets that commission should the 4th click convert into a sale, order or lead.

FeedShare
After PopShops and GoldenCAN, the space drops off considerably, but more than 2,500 affiliates use FeedShare’s 89 available datafeeds that currently include about 1.5 million products. Merchants using the FeedShare solution include Overstock.com, and 93 percent of them continue to use the service after the free 30-day trial. The service is completely free for affiliates with no charges or percentages of commissions given to FeedShare.

Datafeedr
This is a WordPress plugin that has become a very popular method for users to create and embed their own affiliate shops into their WordPress blogs. Datafeedr makes the store creation as easy as possible and to date has aggregated more than 104 million products from 16 affiliate networks. WordPress users can search the products by keyword or niche and promote as many products from as many merchants and networks as they want. Pricing runs from $27 per month for one store with unlimited product updates to $97 per month for unlimited stores and higher-level SEO features.

LivingSocial Users Younger, Richer, Smarter than Groupon Users

Mike Phillips — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:45:00 GMT

Want to reach the young, smart and affluent with your daily deal offering? Then use LivingSocial instead of Groupon.

According to a survey* by Nielsen Co., LivingSocial buyers are 49 percent more likely than the average American to earn at least $150,000 -- compared to 30 percent for Groupon. LivingSocial users are also more likely to be under 35 years old than Groupon's audience. Also, LivingSocial's users are smarter -- 46 percent of them attended or graduated college, compared with 39 percent for Groupon.

This is a pretty interesting study and could be quite useful. Based on this, an upscale restaurant (should they even offer a deal), might find a better target audience on LivingSocial instead of Groupon, for example. In all, depending on the product or service offered and the intended audience, businesses might find success with a little targeting.

Of course, both LivingSocial and Groupon have bigger things to worry about right now -- the 800 lb. gorilla known as Facebook Daily Deals.

*Nielsen surveyed a panel of 200,000 Internet users.

Criteo, TagMan Partnership a Bullseye for Retargeters

Linc Wonham — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:00:00 GMT

A new partnership between Criteo and TagMan merges display retargeting and data management in such a way that underscores the rapid movement toward much more highly targeted marketing on the Web.

TagMan provides the leading real-time attribution and tag management system that enhances online campaign tracking, ensures that marketers are complying with the latest privacy and data-collection standards and improves slow page-loads due to excess tags. Criteo's scalable personalized retargeting platform enables global e-commerce companies to re-engage with website visitors who have left their sites via highly targeted personalized display ads. The collaboration is designed to benefit those e-commerce companies that are looking to attribute ROI of their online retargeting campaigns in real-time across all channels – not just search or display.

“We’re excited to work with Criteo and its e-commerce clients to bring even more insight and control over campaign performance, multi-touch attribution and privacy,” says TagMan CMO Chris Brinkworth. “Criteo’s platform already provides robust reporting capabilities, and with their solution existing within our tag management system, Criteo’s advertising clients can instantly access and manage an additional layer of control, attribution analytics and de-duplication for their marketing campaigns, including exactly what search term individuals typed after being exposed to a retargeting banner.”

The partnership was formed to simplify and accelerate Criteo’s retargeting campaigns and to provide Web marketers with increased visibility to retargeting’s role in the online sales process. Criteo’s clients that use TagMan’s tag management system will be able to manage and unify unique customers’ paths to conversion across touch-points such as retargeting, organic and paid search, as well as social media, while engaging tighter controls on targeting, privacy and page-weight challenges.

“Online advertisers have long wanted more visibility into their online campaigns, retargeting being one type, to accurately measure the effectiveness of their retargeting efforts,” says Vincent Meyer, strategic partnership manager at Criteo. “By partnering with TagMan, Criteo is bringing even more flexibility and value to our platform. Our relationship with TagMan makes it easy for advertisers to integrate advanced tagging management and attribution capabilities into their display retargeting campaigns.”

Retargeting has become a hot-button issue among Web marketers and privacy advocates in the past year, and opinions differ greatly on the impact that highly targeted display advertising has on consumers. An undisputed leader in the industry, however, Criteo has unquestionably bolstered its offerings in the space with this new affiliation.

Google Realtime Search Now Includes Quora

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:59:00 GMT

Google has added several new sources into its realtime search results including emerging Q&A site Quora, Gowalla, Plixi, Me2Day, and Twitgoo. If you're looking for opportunities to increase exposure, consider adding these sites (particuarly Quora) to your Web promotions list.

Google is indexing Quora activity such as asking Questions, adding Answers, upvoting Answers, and submitting Posts. If you're interesting in learning more about optimizing your exposure on Quora, read this February 2010 post: Quora Optimization - Write Great Answers.

The list of sources included within Google's real time search is growing rapidly. News and blog links from Google, new and fresh Web pages indexed by Google, updates from FriendFeed, Jaiku, Identi.ca and TwitArmy were all part of Google's Real Time Search when it launched in December 2010. MySpace and Google Buzz posts were added in February, as well as Facebook Fan Page updates.

Cloud-Based Web Performance Testing with Yottaa

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:08:00 GMT

In lieu of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) downtime over the past several days, optimizing websites for high performance in the cloud may seem a bit too risky for many Internet businesses.

Yottaa however believes differently, today launching a new Web performance optimization service which aims to help improve website speed and development through a variety of techniques including domain sharding, CSS spriting, and CDN balancing.

"Web-based businesses understand that visitors to their sites have a 'need for speed,' but many are held back by the complexity and expense of manual optimization," said Coach Wei, Yottaa's CEO and co-founder. "Yottaa Optimizer empowers businesses of all sizes with a simple but powerful solution that instantly accelerates website performance, and unlocks business value for Web teams."

Yotta's web monitoring solution (which WM covered back in August 2010 here) identifies performance issues resulting from third-party widgets, DNS errors, and latency. Yottaa's cloud based Web optimzer will impliment the suggestions identified.

The Facebook Send Button: What it Means to You

Mike Phillips — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Facebook has launched the Send button, which includes some provisions that will have an immediate impact on website owners and the content they produce.

To start, the Send button allows Facebook users to send a Facebook post to their friends and groups. But, as with the Like button, it also enables publishers to install the Send button on their own sites so that a blog post, product or other piece of content can be shared. Most important, the Send button allows email sharing outside of Facebook -- so users can enter email addresses (even to non-Facebook users) and send the content anywhere. The image below is taken from a Wall Street Journal post after clicking the Send button.

Besides the obvious advantage of sending a story via email and Facebook simultaneously, any "sends" are also added to a Page's Like total; now calculated by adding Likes, shares, comments and inbox messages containing a URL. This, of course, has an overall impact on a brand's Facebook presence. In all, it has become paramount to get your content "sent" via the Facebook Send button. Let's look at some ways to do that.

Write very strong headlines. Not to be confused with keyword-heavy headlines traditionally used for SEO, craft headlines that grab interest, make someone think or laugh, or otherwise compel them to share the content. Most content management systems allow for customizing the content's URL, so keywords can be effectively used there without changing the consumer-facing headline.
Put the most important information as near the top of the content as possible. Like the headline, you want to grab interest immediately to induce a "send". Like always, remember your audience so that your first few lines of content speaks their language. When sharing content via Facebook, by default the first few lines of content will usually appear to the recipient before they click through. Therefore, it is critical to convey the content's value immediately. Using Open Graph meta tags, publishers can specify what is shown for the title, image, and description.
Embed the Send button at the top of every post, product page, video or any other piece of content. It's no secret that the Internet has resulted in short attention spans. Make the button immediately visible before a user scrolls down, reads half of your post then abandons the page. It’s all the better if you can incorporate the button into a sticky sidebar so that it stays on the page even as a user scrolls.
Using CSS, consider embedding the Send button in the content itself. After reading a few paragraphs or flipping through a few photos, the user might be compelled to share the content. Embedding the Send button in the middle of content could act like a "friendly reminder" to share.
Use images and video. More often than any other types of content, video and photos go viral and get shared. Be sure to include all types in your content mix.

Website owners and users have a new Facebook toy. Only, this is not about fun and games but about driving interaction, branding and conversions through the largest single collection of Internet users on the planet. Use it.

Get the Facebook Send button code.