'Net Features : week22-2011

Want Fair Reviews? Go to Yelp.

Mike Phillips — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:14:00 GMT

According to a study titled Anonymity, Social Image, and the Competition for Volunteers: A Case Study of the Online Market for Reviews, by economics professor Zhongmin Wang, Yelp.com offers the most balanced business reviews when compared to those of Citysearch and Yahoo Local.

The findings show the proportion of 5-star ratings at Yelp (24.4 percent) is less than that at Citysearch (50.3 percent) or Yahoo Local (58.8 percent). The same holds true for 1-star ratings, with Yelp showing proportions of 5.9 percent, compared to Citysearch (16.4 percent) and Yahoo Local (6.9 percent). In other words, where Yelp is more balanced, Citysearch and Yahoo are more extreme.

Another interesting finding was that Yelp reviewers are much more active. Just 9 percent of Yelp reviewers had posted only one review. Compare that to Citysearch, where 71 percent of users posted only one review, and Yahoo Local (56 percent).

As business owners, it appears that Yelp is the place where you can get the fairest, most trusted reviews of your business. Not only is this important for your own research purposes but also a sign that Yelp is trusted by other consumers, making it a site that must be monitored. On the other end, Citysearch and Yahoo Local might not be as popular, but be on the lookout for extreme reviews.

The entire study can be found here.

Get Smart: Competitive Pricing Intelligence

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:30:00 GMT

When you know what your competition is doing it makes decision making for your own enterprise easier. There are a variety of solutions available on the market currently including ChannelIQ, Gazaro, and Vendavo but Ugam Interactive is another and they are making headlines today.

Ugam Interactive released a new version of its Competitive Intelligence Solution PriceTrac® which provides retailers a method of tracking competitors’ pricing, promotions, and product assortments. In its latest release is the “Watch List” feature which allows the user to identify, track, and define alerts on specific products within their own, or competitors’, assortment. The alerts on Key Value Items can be based on business rules defined by each individual user.

“The Watch List feature is yet another avenue for PriceTrac to provide actionable insights into valuable competitive data.” says David Schoenfeld, VP of Sales and Marketing. “For the first time, users of PriceTrac can create user defined lists of products and, in turn, merchandisers and buyers can be immediately alerted when their pricing does not meet strategy on the products that matter most.”

Email Plus Social via Incredimail

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:30:00 GMT

Consumer application company Incredimail (NASDAQ: MAIL) has integrated Facebook into its popular email product offering, giving users access to the popular social network from their desktop.

You may be asking yourself who iuses desktop mail anymore. The answer apparently is quite a few: Incredimail.com receives well over 3 million unique visitors per month (according to Compete), has amassed a 600,000 strong fan base on Facebook, and has sold more than two million of its product (and that's the latest number we could find circa 2009).

Incredimail hopes this feature will eventually lead it towards becoming a full-fledged, multi-purpose communication product - likely now a key to survival with the increased use of cloud-based email.

Users of the platform's new feature will be able to read and post comments or updates to and from Facebook, automatically synchronize their address book with their Facebook friends, upload photos to Facebook with one click, and download and search photo albums.

“This is the first step in evolving IncrediMail into a multi-purpose communications product. Based on our consumer research we identified a need from our users, primarily consumers over the age of 40, who said they wanted help making social networking easier to use,” said Josef Mandelbaum, IncrediMail’s CEO. “We are proud to be one of the first email products to integrate Facebook in such a manner and provide our users a simple, safe and fun Facebook interaction right from the desktop.”

Measuring Social Reach with PeekYou API

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:30:00 GMT

Search technology company PeekYou, which is on a mission to re-index the public web around people, announced the launch of its Social Analytics API. Through the API, PeekYou partners are able to identify and map an individuals' digital footprint, then structure, categorize and analyze the public content.

The API’s output includes geo-demographics, social insights, spam filtering, and specialized scores that measure an individual’s social reach. The API is aimed at complimenting data services like Gnip or DataSift and helps companies measure, plan and track their social marketing strategies. In practice, the data is going to be very interesting. Developers will be able to combine geo-demographic data to brand mentions and understand not only the profiles and reach of their social audience, but benchmark and track gains in specific markets.

“We are excited to supply a unique set of insights and scores to our partners, and are very proud that we are setting the standard of delivering non-personally identifiable information through a process that respects consumers’ private data and platform Terms of Service,” said Josh Mackey, GM of Product for PeekYou.

Ping Identity Streamlines Authentication

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:30:00 GMT

Ping Identity released PingFederate released a solution this week dubbed Cloud Identity Connectors which enables organizations to rely on cloud services providers and social networking sites for third-party user authentication. Ping Identity is a rather significant player in the market, securing 40 of the Fortune 100 using secure, open, standards like SAML, OpenID and OAuth.

The Ping Identity "Connectors" enable businesses to allow sign-on through (and connect with) six of the largest cloud service and social network sites, including Google (and other OpenID 2.0 providers), Salesforce and Facebook.

In a report from Blue Research released in February 2011, titled "Consumer Perceptions of Online Registration and Social Sign-In", 75 percent of line shoppers stated they may leave or note use a site that requires registration. When you successfully remove the barriers (in this case user registration) the result is not only a better user experience on the whole but higher user adoption, usage and purchase rates.

“The registration process is a source of frustration for consumers online – they are just as likely to leave a site as they are to spend the time to create a new identity profile. To increase registration and purchase rates, online businesses need to make access easier, without compromising security,” said Roger Oberg, Vice President of Marketing for Ping Identity. “PingFederate Cloud Identity Connectors provide our customers with ways to simply and securely authenticate their users into their Web properties by leveraging LinkedIn and other popular social networking services.”

Online Ad Revenues Jump 23 Percent

Linc Wonham — Thu, 26 May 2011 16:30:00 GMT

Online advertising revenues in the U.S. hit $7.3 billion for the first quarter of 2011, representing a 23-percent increase over the same period in 2010, according to figures released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

This marks the highest first-quarter revenue level ever for the industry and a significant increase over last year’s first-quarter revenue level, which had been the highest on record to date.

“The consistent and considerable year-over-year growth we’re seeing demonstrates that digital media is an increasingly popular destination for ad dollars, and for good reason,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “As Americans spend more time online for information and entertainment purposes, digital advertising and marketing has emerged as one of the most effective tools businesses have to attract and retain customers.”

Search made up for 46 percent of the ad revenues, followed by display advertising with 24 percent. Sponshorships (3 percent of the share) have grown 88 percent since 2009, and classifieds (10 percent) are up 15 percent.

Listrak Adds Another E-Commerce Partner

Linc Wonham — Thu, 26 May 2011 14:30:00 GMT

For the fourth time in the past two months, e-mail marketing firm Listrak is announcing a new partnership with a leading e-commerce solutions provider.

Shopping cart software company X-Cart is the latest to adopt Listrak’s automated shopping cart abandonment solution, joining Magento, Miva Merchants and 3DCart. A fifth partnership with an undisclosed e-commerce solutions provider is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Shopping cart abandonment has risen to 71 percent, as reported by Forrester, translating into an $18 billion issue for online retailers. With 7 out of 10 carts being abandoned, it is imperative for online retailers to put a strategy in place to recoup that lost revenue.

Listrak’s partnership with X-Cart provides a shopping cart abandonment solution that recaptures abandoners with automated remarketing campaigns. The solution incorporates dynamic merchandising to remind abandoners of the items left in the cart and prompts them to complete the purchase.

Listrak’s solution also provides the opportunity for retailers to do a series of messages, test offers and incorporate product reviews to recover that lost revenue.

“In our world of high competition and limitless interruptions, online shoppers abandon carts at increasing rates,” says Alex Mulin, X-Cart VP of Sales. “Partnering with Listrak allows us to provide our retailers with an integrated solution to combat this issue. In fact, one of our retailers is already recovering 20 percent of its abandoned carts from this automated solution.”

More WordPress Plugins for Affiliates

Linc Wonham — Wed, 25 May 2011 19:30:00 GMT

About six months ago we published a popular list of WordPress plugins for affiliates. While we stand by that list and urge you to take a look, six months is a long time in the digital world. Below is a new 2011 list of WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers and other Web professionals:

Google XML Sitemaps
Will automatically create a special XML sitemap of your website to help the search engines better index your content. This plugin also automatically notifies the search engines whenever new content is posted to the site.

WP Super Cache
Creates static html files from your WordPress blog, ensuring faster-loading Web pages that will result in better search engine results and lower bounce rates. The approximately 1 percent of users who do not see static files will also benefit by seeing different cached files -- which are still better than uncached files.

ClickTrackZilla
This WordPress Analytics plugin offers extensive conversion tracking for affiliate sales including what site and page a hit originated from; which search engine found your site; what keywords were used, the landing page visitors entered from and much more. Tracking is currently available for ShareASale and ClickBank, but more networks are expected to join in the near future.

FD Feedburner Plugin
Automatically redirects the main feed to Feedburner.com without the need to modify templates, set up new hidden feeds, modify .htaccess files or asking users to migrate to a new feed. There is an option to also redirect the comments feed, and all existing feeds become Feedburner feeds transparently for all users.

HeadSpace2 SEO
Fast becoming considered the best WordPress SEO solution, this all-in-one meta-data manager has dozens of features and provides an import function for numerous other SEO plugins including the All in One SEO Pack from last year's list.

Digg Digg
Don’t be misled by the name as Digg has certainly seen better days. However, this all-in-one social buttons plugin provides display counts not only for Digg but also for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TweetMeme, Topsy and many more.

AskApache Password Protect
Uses fast and proven built-in features that add multiple layers of security to your site. Affiliates can set up password protection using basic authentication or the more secure digest authentication, building a virtual wall to stop attacks and also block spam.

Login LockDown
Another security precaution, this plugin limits the number of login attempts from a given IP range within a certain amount of time. It defaults to a one-hour lockout of an IP after three failed login attempts within five minutes, but the times can be modified through the Options panel.

Yodle Expands Local Search Marketing Reach

Linc Wonham — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Local online marketing leader Yodle has announced its acquisition of ProfitFuel, creating the largest independent provider of local search marketing in the United States.

Yodle, which has developed an integrated approach to signing up and serving local businesses that are transitioning their marketing budgets online, is the fastest-growing provider of local search engine optimization (SEO) services to small businesses across the United States. The company has historically focused its services on small businesses that typically spend budgets of more than $1,000 monthly to advertise locally across hundreds of locations.

With over 11,000 clients, ProfitFuel has served small businesses that have moderate marketing budgets. Outrank, the company’s main service, is designed to generate inbound phone calls and emails cost-effectively by delivering prominent rankings on top search engines for clients.

The acquisition gives Yodle a new product and a sales force capable of serving a much broader set of clients who have smaller marketing budgets, but who still want the accountability of measuring their marketing performance.

“With ProfitFuel, Yodle is doubling down on its approach of providing a clear ROI to the local advertiser, delivered through a combined 450 person sales and client service team,” says Yodle CEO Court Cunningham. “ProfitFuel’s dedication to customer results and sales excellence made it a natural fit with Yodle. I look forward to bringing Yodle’s expanded suite of SEM, SEO, social and display marketing products to market more quickly in collaboration with ProfitFuel’s world-class team.”

New York City-based Yodle plans to grow ProfitFuel’s Austin, Texas office and fully integrate the company’s infrastructure and technology by the end of 2011.

Top Tech Jobs in the Industry

Mike Phillips — Wed, 25 May 2011 14:03:00 GMT

CyberCoders, a leading worldwide recruiting firm, has done some heavy research and found that the tech hiring picture is looking rosy. Not only are companies hiring more tech positions but also at higher salaries. In February 2010, CyberCoders listed 59,500 tech job postings, compared to 150,000 in February 2011.

"There is a heavy demand for job candidates with experience using JavaScript, C#, and SQL, MySQL, and PHP," said Matt Miller, chief technology officer, CyberCoders. "Developers are required to build rich dynamic web applications, and with the mobile and web industries moving faster than ever before, engineers are needed across a multitude of verticals. Companies must have a diverse tech team that can handle web, mobile and app development as companies grow. We are also seeing companies continue to pay high salaries for these difficult to fill positions."

According to CyberCoders, the most common tech job available is Product Manager, with an average salary of $106K. That's followed by IT Manager ($94K) and Systems Engineer ($87K). As for the top skills sought after in 2011, CyberCoders lists JavaScript (1), followed by Java (2), SQL (3), HTML (4), C# (5), CSS (6), MySQL (7), PHP (8), Linux (9) and AJAX (10).

But haven't we seen this before? Companies went on all-out hiring binges before the dot-com bust of 2001. But, according to Heidi Golledge, CEO and co-founder of CyberCoders, "There is a greater demand for candidates who have diverse skill sets than in the late nineties and 2000-2001. Typically the hiring demand ten years ago was fueled by the need to build websites backed by new venture funding – and a hope that a companies’ concept would be the next Google or Yahoo. Companies were hiring based on projected revenue. Start-ups now, typically have more experienced management, a sounder foundation and a much higher chance of success."

Amazon RDS for Oracle Database

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:45:00 GMT

Deploying and managing databases is complicated, time-consuming, and expensive – it’s of the most complex activities in IT and demand is high for those skilled and knowledgeable enough to get it working and keep it working. The complexity and cost can be magnified when working with more “robust” databases. That may be coming to a fast end.

Amazon announced the availability of Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) for Oracle Database today, allowing database administrators to run multiple editions of Oracle Database (11g Release 2) via Amazon. Developers can now provision a pre-configured Oracle database and scale the underlying hardware through the AWS Management Console. Amazon RDS also manages time-consuming database administration tasks, including continuous backups, software patching, and exposing key operational metrics.

Amazon RDS for Oracle Database can be run under two different licensing models – with the license include or BYOL (Bring-Your-Own-License). The "License Included" pricing (No need for separately purchased Oracle licenses as the Oracle Database software has been licensed by AWS) starts at $0.16 per hour, inclusive of software, underlying hardware resources, and Amazon RDS management capabilities. This model currently supports Oracle Database Standard Edition One.

The Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) is for those who already own Oracle Database licenses. , you can use the "BYOL" model to run Oracle deployments can be run on Amazon RDS under the BYOL model with rates starting at $0.11 per hour. Developers and database administrators can run Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, and Standard Edition One Oracle Databases in the AWS cloud.

Computer Programmer? You're Hired

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:30:00 GMT

Computer programmers remain in high demand, according to WANTED Analytics, a business intelligence solution for the talent industry. More than 220,000 job ads for programmers have been placed online over the past 30 days.

The company reported that within “Computer Programming” as a category, Computer Systems Analysts lead the hiring demand with 40,000 new job ads placed online over the past thirty days, a year-over-year increase of 24%. Other high-demand positions were Web Developers, with 32,000 new jobs posted in the past 30 days (a 21% increase from 2010) and Computer Software Engineers, with just over 28,000 new job ads placed (a 29% increase versus prior year).

WANTED Technologies measures conditions in local job markets by comparing hiring demand and labor supply. Its Hiring Scale offering, part of the company’s analytics platform, indicated that New York City, Atlanta and Chicago are the top metro areas that have been recruiting programmers over the past 30 days.

uTest Offers Website and Web App Testing for Startups

Linc Wonham — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Based on the success of uTest Express in mobile app testing for early-stage startups, uTest is expanding its Express services with the launch of uTest Express for websites – giving startups an affordable way to professionally test their Web apps.

uTest Express is designed to help emerging startups – even those without any formal quality assurance experience or resources – ensure that their Web apps function as designed across the ever-expanding matrix of operating systems, browsers, plug-ins and third-party applications.

Although uTest has always provided Web testing services for enterprises such as Microsoft, AOL and Intuit, this is the first time its Web app testing services have been packaged and priced for early-stage startups. This expansion also makes uTest Express valuable to a much wider audience since there are approximately 300,000 mobile apps in existence, but nearly every startup has a website or Web app. In fact, the market for mobile commerce is predicted to reach $119 billion by 2015, but that is still only eight percent of the total e-commerce market potential, according to ABI Research.

“The interest in uTest Express for mobile apps since our launch two months ago has been tremendous,” says Matt Johnston, uTest CMO. “The numerous requests from Express visitors and customers confirmed our belief that there is a sizable unmet need among early-stage startups for cost-effective, high-quality professional Web app testing and real-world feedback on their sites.”

uTest Express makes it easy for early-stage startups to purchase professional testing services at a price that meets their limited budgets. At the conclusion of each Express testing project, customers receive a list of well-documented bugs, including screenshots and videos with steps to reproduce them. Customers also receive expert feedback from the testers about the Web application.

Through June 30, uTest Express is offering 50 percent off all Bronze and Silver testing packages for Web or mobile apps. For this limited time, test cycles can cost as low as $249. Interested startups and Web developers can find more information here.

Kenshoo Introduces Facebook Advertising Platform

Linc Wonham — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing software provider Kenshoo has publicly released its new enterprise technology following an exclusive beta period in which leading marketers and agencies secured more than 24 billion targeted advertising impressions on Facebook through the Kenshoo platform.

Kenshoo Social is designed to help drive brand engagement through social network advertising campaigns in a more efficient and effective manner. After becoming one of the first companies to be granted access to the Facebook Ads API, Kenshoo quickly launched a beta program for select blue-chip advertisers and agencies to create and optimize Facebook ad campaigns. Since that time, Kenshoo Social has evolved based on customer feedback with dedicated research and development around the areas of audience targeting, bid management, attribution and social metrics optimization.

“Kenshoo Social is among the most advanced platform for managing Facebook ads,” says Sam Bloom, GM Interactive at Camelot Communications. “Through the robust feature-set and sophisticated algorithms, we’ve seen ROI increases upwards of 70 percent for some of our clients. The Kenshoo Social graphical editor also saves our team a ton of time when it comes to setting up targeted campaigns and pulling actionable reports.”

Kenshoo Social enables advertisers to increase efficiency by identifying only the most valuable audience segments. Through an intuitive interface and algorithms customized for Facebook, campaign managers can significantly reduce time spent setting up campaigns and generating returns from social media.

“The emergence of social media, and Facebook in particular, is the next big bang we’ve been waiting for in the online space,” says Kenshoo CEO Yoav Izhar-Prato. “We see social network advertising as a unique play and I’m very proud of the fresh approach Kenshoo has taken. The Kenshoo Social solution is a significant leap forward for brands and agencies looking to build a strong persona and generate demand through the social graph. We’ll continue to iterate and innovate with the product to ensure our customers can harness the full power of Facebook and other social networks to drive business results.”

Twitter is Today's Rising Star

Mike Phillips — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:39:00 GMT

Twitter has officially acquired TweetDeck, the Twitter management service popular with Twitter's most active users. This will streamline the entire experience for Twitter users and is an indication that Twitter is closer to embracing its role as an information hub and broadcast channel for those who find it most valuable. For marketers and business owners, TweetDeck and Twitter coming together should provide a more fluid experience and make Twitter an even more valuable tool.

But that's not the only new news concerning Twitter.

Twitter has also launched a new feature that will send email notifications when your account is followed, a tweet is re-tweeted of if another user marks one of your tweets as a "favorite." For some, this could result in a deluge of email but for others this provides an excellent way to maximize on your reach on Twitter. These notifications will help you strike when the iron is hot.

And finally, YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have acquired Tap11, an analytics platform that can tap into the entire Twitter firehose and Facebook, as well as the ability to be linked to other social and publishing platforms. It's a strong move to enhance the social analytics capabilities for marketers and will become a part of AVOS, the new company from Hurley and Chen which earlier acquired Delicious, the social bookmarking service.

If these recent developments are any indication, Twitter has moved far beyond a curiousity for sharing that day's lunch menu and into a legitimate business tool.