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31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Despite getting closer to the holidays, it seems the conference circuit is just getting warmed up. If you’re one of my many groupies, here’s where I’m speaking over the remainder of the year. National Tour Association Convention 07 - Nov 2-6 OK, this one’s aimed at anyone in the travel, hospitality, and tours industry. I’m holding two presentations. The first is on blogging for the travel industry. The second one is on search engine optimization. Yep, I fly from Kansas City to Las Vegas to speak at what is shaping up to be the largest blogging conference of the ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Just a heads-up that starting today, we’re going to more strictly enforce our comment policy. In particular: No keywords in author names - we prefer that you use your real name or your normal nickname. If we suspect you’re using an author name to simply include targeted keywords, we’ll either edit or delete your comment. Please use your real name or commonly used nickname. This only applies to those that wish to be considered for the Top Commentators list–which doesn’t use nofollow. If you don’t care to be on the list, feel free to use what you want (within reason)–we’ll simply filter ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Online retail sales are growing by all accounts—but, paradoxically, this is somehow translated as a negative for the industry, indicating that it’s “immature.” Of course, there’s the good news: Online retail sales in the United States jumped 23 percent, to US$28.4 billion, during the third quarter of this year compared with the same July-September period in 2006. The retail surge was led by sales of video games, consoles and accessories, which showed a year-to-year increase of 199 percent. And the not-so-good news (emphasis mine):
“Online retail spending continues to grow at rates in excess of 20 percent year-over-year, which suggests that the market is still ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here InterActiveCorp, owners of such diverse properties as the Home Shopping Network, Evite, Match.com, TicketMaster, CitySearch and perennial favorite underdog search engine Ask.com, released their Q3 numbers today—and their total numbers aren’t so good: Profit fell 4.2 percent. . . . Profit for the quarter ended Sept. 30 fell to $71.8 million, or 24 cents per share, from $74.9 million, or 24 cents per share, last year. However, there is good news. Apparently, the home shopping industry is turning around! What? I know that you’re up watching those informercials at 3 AM. Oh, and the revenue of the media and advertising unit (which includes ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Halloween is a big holiday for spending. Reports that the figure is between $5-7 billion in spending and the average adult spends $65 on the holiday. Just ask Kate Maloney who at 26 made the Inc 500 list as founder and CEO of Costume Craze. Here’s how Halloween spending breaks down: $21 for candy, $12 for cards and $38.50 for costumes (see this post on popular costumes for the season). Halloween decorating is also a big industry, second only to Christmas. Unity Marketing says decoration sales grew 21 percent to $3.2 billion in 2006 over 2005. I always enjoy how into Halloween ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here By Manoj Jasra
As part of the new alliance, personnel from the MSN affiliates will be able to take SEMPO Institute’s Fundamentals of Search Marketing class. SEMPO Institute also offers online classes in Advanced Search Engine Optimization and Advanced Search Advertising. Fundamentals consists of 14 lessons intended to give the student a high level understanding of the essentials ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here MarketingSherpa just ran a great article on how to market yourself or business on Facebook. As they point out the approach to marketing in a social community takes a little different approach than marketing in other contexts. Offending the community means you won’t be trusted. It goes like this. Imagine going to church and thinking that there are a lot of people in your potential market there. So you decide to make an announcement about a big sale at your store. Everyone feels uncomfortable. It’s happened to me and it was in bad taste. Facebook is a community of 46 million members, ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here There’s a lot of waste in the computer industry. IBM has developed a solution that takes scrap silicon disks and makes them into solar panels. Computer chips are made of silicon wafers that have to be perfect to be usable. Imperfect wafers are thrown away after sensitive data is removed. Now, with a new process by inventor Eric White, they can be reused and made into solar panels. Not only are the wafers being salvaged but the process for cleaning them is also improved. No more harsh acid. IBM has been sandblasting the chips instead. But now they use an even cleaner ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Google is no longer just a search engine. With your potential customers, future employers, and members of the media turning to Google for information about your business, Google has become a reputation engine. In helping clients with their online reputation, I’m consistently asked how they can push out negative content that appears on the first page of Google for a search for their name. Whether they were fined by the SEC, ridiculed by an ex-employee, or investigated by their local newspaper, they share one common goal: get that negative result off of the first page! Of course, it’s near on impossible to ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Boo! Yeah, I know, pretty lame. Consider that a warm-up for the deluge of kids that will be at your door tonight. While you’re no doubt snacking on Halloween candy, here are some picks to digest:
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here I know that you’re a smart person. If you receive an email from PayPal or Bank of America, telling you they need you to verify your login details, you laugh, then hit delete. Right? Not everyone is as smart as you, and in fact, there’s one person in particular that’s down about $10 million. Techdirt is reporting an employee of Supervalu received email requests that appeared to be from two important suppliers; American Greetings and Frito-Lay. Both emails claimed that their bank account details had changed and that Supervalu would need to send funds to the new accounts. I’ll let Techdirt take ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Just days after Google apparently lost the opportunity to buy into Facebook to Microsoft, the company is expected to reveal details of its social networking master plan on Thursday. OpenSocial is a new set of standard APIs that will allow application developers to more easily build apps for social networks. Google goal is to help shape the standards used between developers and social networks. Likely the move came from being shutout from Facebook. Not only did Google not get a piece of the social network, but Facebook uses a proprietary API that requires developers build apps specifically for it–sounds much like ...
31 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Now there is almost nothing left that you can’t buy entirely online. Autonation is the first to offer this service for buying a car completely over the internet. They are piloting a program that lets customers buy their car online in the Atlanta market with 14 dealerships. Starting out, you enter your ZIP code, then using drop-down menus you can select a specific vehicle make and model and other features of the car. That includes choosing the color and packages. If you have a trade-in you can also use the used vehicle calculator to get a price for your car. When ...
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here
They created a game that is delivered via malware that is installed on your computer. When you launch Internet Explorer you are introduced to a game. In the game players are shown captchas (text embedded in an image), which are intended to stop computers from signing up for accounts like free email addresses. Each ...
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Just one week until the engraved-invitation-event (oh, if only I were one of the cool kids!) and Facebook rumors are flying at only about the same rate as usual. Not so good for Facebook: many of the stories aren’t so positive. Is the media darling falling on hard times? Read/Write Web reports on the impending announcement, which will presumably be about SocialAds—and possibly about these SocialAds being “portable”:
The rumored technology would work like this: Facebook would place a cookie on your computer (the site already requires users to have cookies enabled to log in), every time you visit a third-party site ...
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here The internet tax freedom act has been extended another 7 years. It was down to the wire, but the vote was unanimous. The House passed the bill that the Senate passed last week. It passed 402-0. The current law was going to expire in two days. It’s expected that President Bush will sign it into law. As stated in this post about the internet tax, the law prohibits state and local government from taxing internet access. It doesn’t address charging sales tax on the internet sales. States that already had Internet access taxes before the ban are Hawaii, New Hampshire, New ...
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Now you can let your fingers do the walking in a whole new way. Long the master of local, YellowPages.com has unveiled another effort to dominate local search—this time on your phones. With its new downloadable local mobile search apps, you can find the best restaurants, stores and other businesses near you. This is delivered through a partnership with AT&T—the apps are available for not only the iPhone but 20 other AT&T devices. It looks like you may be out of luck unless you have an AT&T phone. Of course, since AT&T owns YellowPages.com, this isn’t entirely surprising. I don’t quite get ...
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Brrr, it’s cold. I’m wearing long pants to work for the first time in months, that’s how cold it is in Raleigh today. Still, a nice hot cup of coffee and these hot news stories, and even brass monkeys are happy.
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here
As you know Vanessa was a key part of Google’s Webmaster Tools–that cool dashboard that provides a check-up on the health of your web site as it relates to Google. Now it appears Zillow is getting something very similar. The initiative, officially launched today, will enable homeowners to "claim" their homes and correct errors or eliminate omissions displayed on a Zillow profile regarding their properties. When that happens, ...
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here My feeds were buzzing this morning over a Wall Street Journal article discussing the infamous Google GPhone. At last–I thought–if the WSJ is talking about it, then they must have something substantial to share. Alas, my hopes were dashed. Don’t get me wrong, for the WSJ’s audience, its "Can a Google Phone Connect With Carriers?" article is a good summary of what we’ve (you and I) have been talking about for months. But, don’t read the article expecting to find some solid new information that hasn’t already been dissected elsewhere in the blogosphere. Still, there was one glimmer of news, and here ...
30 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Towards the end of Mozilla’s 2006 Financial statements in the section called “Concentration of Risk” it reads: “Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006 but was renewed for two years and expires in November 2008. Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract.” That one source responsible for almost all their revenue was Google. Now if I could choose a partnership to rely on, Google would be at the top of my list. But there are threats - like a plugin called Adblock Plus for Firefox that ...
29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Hot on the heels of Gmail’s introduction of IMAP support comes upgrades to its interface. Google Operating System has details of what’s being rolled out and Sam Harrelson is one of the first to see the new features. I’m seeing a few subtle and not so subtle changes in GMail tonight. 1) Quicker message loading 2) New graphics (the yellow type found in Google Reader) at the top of the screen for loading messages 3) New contacts manager which is very slick and a great upgrade 4) The ability to add an event invitation when composing or replying to ...
29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here You’ve got to give the just-barely-in-time-to-be-called-an-October-launch Hulu private beta launch some credit: they’re trying really hard. With legal video sharing and embedding, they certainly have some positives going in their direction. And now they’re hoping content deals will bring their new site the traffic—and eyeballs—needed to justify it. Hulu has partnered with MSN and AOL to provide video on a subdomain of each site. MSN TV will be showing some of Hulu’s content, including full-length television shows and movie clips. Hulu’s content is well-integrated with the rest of MSN TV’s content, but the Hulu logo appears in the upper left:
29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Internet retailers are notorious price cutters, and manufacturers are getting fed up. I have been watching with interest the war between internet retailers and manufacturers for years, but there are signs that the battle is getting hotter. Let me give you a brief history of this issue from my perspective. When I first started an internet retail company, I was a price cutter. That strategy worked; at least it worked for me. We did not own a brand at the time but instead specialized on obtaining in-demand products at lower than normal wholesale prices and dumping them on the market. It ...
29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Conduit (which means “Conveyor of Information”) released their first Community Trends index where you can see what online communities are searching for. Conduit analyzes online communities for trends. They collect data with a toolbar that users install and they collect data on community searches. They focus on nine verticals: Sports, Environment, Education, Web Games, Online Radio, Music, Online Radio, Jobs, Travel, and Shopping verticals. I wish they had one for tech or blogs. To see the trends for October 2007, see http://www.conduit.com/Community/CommunityTrends/Default.aspx. I just had to laugh at this description of themselves as entrepreneurial superstars who dream of “patentable ideas” in their sleep ...
29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Media technology company CNET Networks just issued their 3rd Quarter 2007 earnings. First, the numbers. Net losses grew to $16.6 million, or $0.11 per share, from $2.3 million, or $0.02 per share, last yeart. Revenue grew $99.5 million, from $93.3 million in the same period a year earlier. Adjusted earnings were $6.9 million or 4 cents a share. That beat analysts projections by one cent. They projected revenues and earnings for the fourth quarter at $119-$125 million. The company lost on photo-sharing site Webshots which they purchased in 2004 for $70 million. They sold the company to American Greetings for $45M. ...
29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Here’s what’s going on in the world of online marketing today.
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29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Last Thursday, I shared my opinion on why Microsoft needed the Facebook deal more than Google did. Here’s the bottom line… A social network that already has all of the pieces in place: email, instant messaging, blogs, image and video sharing. If Google really wanted to own a social network, it could take the $240M it just saved and put that towards building a kick-ass one. A few rumors, closed beta invites, and denials of competing with MySpace later, and the whole world’s going crazy over Google Connect (or whatever they want to call it). Today, TechCrunch shares some insider knowledge that ...
29 Oct This post is from from my other blog here
Hey, we’re not suggesting the YouTube and Joost online video rival is going to be bad, but even their CEO warned us to expect failure. Fortunately, they also expect to "fail fast"–something Mike Moran would approve of. As part of today’s beta launch, Hulu has announced new deals with Sony Pictures and MGM Studios. According to Reuters… …Hulu will offer about 90 TV shows from the four companies and smaller partners ranging from current prime-time hits such as "Heroes" and "The Simpsons" to vintage ...
26 Oct This post is from from my other blog here How to Measure Social Media Effectiveness Gary Goldhammer, Edelman Interactive The hidden reality: there is no way right to measure social media. We’re all figuring this out. Nielsen is measuring time spent, interactions. We respect what has happened—things that are visible, tangible. We honor the established solutions. But we ignore the things that could have happened. We need to look beyond. That’s where innovation thrives. It thrives in the places that aren’t visible, aren’t tangible. We like to rely on others to write the case studies for us. Low predictability = large impact Forget everything that you know. Put it out of your mind. What ...
26 Oct This post is from from my other blog here The Blogging for Business Conference was held 22 October 2007 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Should Company Employees Blog?Cheryl Snapp Conner et al., Snapp Conner PR If a company blogs, expect reactions. Be open to that dialog, be open to that conversation, be prepared to engage with it to go with it. If your company blogs, blog consistently. Have something to say—make it interesting, compelling, relevant. Make sure it’s something worth reading about. Don’t just use company brochure material, people. Otherwise, save your breath. It’s important to monitor the blogosphere—watch your employees.
26 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Good news for online retailers and ecommerce - the Senate passed legislation that could ban taxes on sales for the next seven years. If passed into law would extend the moratorium on Internet taxes. Called The Internet Tax Freedom Act, it has been in effect since 1998 and has already been extended twice. The extension was much-hoped for and looks promising. An agreement between the House and Senate must be reached and the new law signed before November 1st when the current moratorium expires. The House has already passed a four-year moratorium on internet taxes, so the two must now reach an ...
26 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Mrs. Beal wanted to share with you what she thinks is one of the cutest, search engine interfaces “evah”. While RedZee might not win any awards for search results–and the Zebra might get annoying after a while–it’s certainly cool enough for a Friday mention.
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26 Oct This post is from from my other blog here I couldn’t find much to dissect today–maybe I’m just itching for the weekend. How about you? Anyway, there were some items that caught my eye:
26 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Microsoft had a perfect storm of positive trends to help with its most recent quarterly earnings. Sales of the XBox 360, Halo 3, Windows Vista, and international growth all contributed. Microsoft reported revenue $13.76 billion for its first quarter, which ended Sept. 30, 2007…Microsoft enjoyed a 27 percent increase in its revenue over the same period in 2006. It’s online business looks like a mixed bag. Revenues up, income down… Microsoft’s Online Services Business segment saw an increase to $671 million from $536 million in the same period in 2006, and operating income loss of $264 million compared to $102 million in the ...
26 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Here’s a fun story for SEO on a very timely subject – Halloween costumes. As a fan of both Halloween and online marketing I’m curious what is selling. First, the most popular search, according to Hitwise data is “hanna montana costume.” (here is the Hitwise full download with all the data). Other popular Halloween Costume searches include: Halo 3’s Master Chief, pirates, Wonder Woman, Little Red Riding Hood, and Tinkerbell. What else are people looking for? Ideas on how to make a cheap or for a sexy costume. People often searched on these words describing the costumes: sexy, funny, homemade and cool. The ...
25 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Last week Paul Graham said Silicon Valley was the only place worth being, if you want to have the best chance for success in launching your own Internet startup. This week Charlie O’Donnell has broken down and dissected the idea that creating a startup in NYC is not nearly as challenging as one might believe it to be. In fact Charlie goes into a fairly in depth discussion of acquisition not only of space in NYC, but also talent, legal advice, and funding. With all of that said Charlie feels that the true value of success is most likely industry ...
25 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Just yesterday it seems (okay, to my knowledge it really was yesterday) that the only way to subscribe to comments on a Blogger or Blogspot blog was to click on the link posted at the bottom of all post pages:
But now on the Blogger comments window, they’ve added a new option, if you’re signed in:
Subscribe to Comments is one of the most-requested WordPress plugins. Now it looks like Google has integrated that popular feature into its blog software. If you’re hoping to turn this off for your Blogger-based blog, for now it looks like you’re out of luck. There doesn’t appear ...
25 Oct This post is from from my other blog here It’s time we recognize some of the things people are doing right (aside from buying 1.6% of Facebook). NBC’s The Office Social Network Takes OffIt’s hard to go anywhere on Facebook without seeing an app based on the popular sitcom, The Office. NBC has started to capitalize on this social currency with a social network of its own. Launched last month, the social networking site, Dunder Mifflin Infinity
25 Oct This post is from from my other blog here More Investor Cash for Facebook Yesterday we learned that Microsoft bought 1.6% of Facebook for $240 Million. Today there is another large investment - it’s been rumored that Facebook got an additional $500 million from two New York hedge funds. Part of that deal is that Microsoft will do more advertising on the site. Facebook has a jaw-dropping $15 billion valuation. This is incredible. Together the new investments are for about the percentage that Microsoft owns. Elizabeth Corcoran from Forbes Magazine broke the story yesterday and the news spread faster than the California wildfires (which, thank goodness, are slowing). Facebook was seeking $750 ...
25 Oct This post is from from my other blog here Here’s a niche social network you’ve probably never heard of - it’s like Digg for environmentally friendly stories. That means you can vote for stories and try to promote them to the top of the list. Hugg is a green version of Digg and they even tout that in their of their taglines - It’s Digg for Green. If you go there you’ll find environmentally friendly stories videos, and links. Plus you can share green information with the community of other like-minded [tree] Huggers. So far the community looks small. The first story is “Top 10 Amazing Facts about Animals.” This ...
25 Oct This post is from from my other blog here I know the whole world is talking Microsoft/Facebook, but there’s more going on today.
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by 
Talk about creative workarounds. 
I know that Vanessa Fox’s 
