Latest news about Internet marketing
Facebook Nabs New CFO
Facebook now has someone to watch the cash register as they roll toward setting revenue records for the company. After a several months long search, Facebook has found their man according to cnet
Facebook has named former Genentech executive David Ebersman to the office of chief financial officer. He replaces Gideon Yu, whose departure was announced at the end of March.
“We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a quick growing company will be important to Facebook.”
Facebook recently secured $200 million from Russian company Digital Sky Technologies so the importance of having someone in place to make sure that Facebook is moving toward profitability became even more evident. Ebersman will take the reigns in September following about 10 years at Genentech. What apparently was most attractive about his resume was the experience he had at a public company that grew rapidly and was purchased by a much larger company.
The company (Genentech) was sold to Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Hoffmann-LaRoche in March, shortly before Ebersman stepped down.
Ok, so let’s connect the dots. Facebook is growing rapidly and has recently put revenue projections for this year at close to double what was originally thought. They do have an eye on being public (when is the real question) AND they would likely be purchased by a bigger fish (at one that could swallow a Facebook recently valued at around $10 billion). Sounds a lot like the path that Genentech took while Ebersman had the top financial position with the company.
Hey, we Internet folks are never ones to speculate but ………
30 Jun 2009, 6:53 pm | click here to read more
How to Effectively Train an Internet Marketing Staff
One big issue when running a business on or offline is training staff. The main issue that arises is whether you feel comfortable training your future competition. This is especially true in a service or consultancy based vertical, such as internet marketing. In the end, a well trained staff is an asset, and you cannot control [...] Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How ...
30 Jun 2009, 2:45 pm | click here to read more
Flickr Connects to Twitter – Better Late Than Never
VentureBeat reports that Flickr is finally enabling its users to tweet their photos on the service.
What took them so long? Flickr now has a built-in feature that lets members tweet their photos. “You can upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flic.kr URL,” says the company’s FAQ. It also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr.
Flickr spelled out the “how to’s” in the following from their PR firm
To use Flickr 2 Twitter, members need to first authorize Flickr to post to their Twitter accounts. Once authorized, members will be able to tweet photos from the “Blog This” button on their photo page or from their mobile devices.
Mobile uploading is possible once members enable their Upload by Email settings (unique Flickr email upload address + “2twitter”). After you’ve successfully tweeted your Flickr photo, it will look something like this.
Is there anything else out there that hasn’t joined the Twitter trend?
30 Jun 2009, 11:56 pm | click here to read more
How To Find And Hire The Right Internet Marketing Company For Your SEO Needs
An Internet Marketing Company can easily boost up your site's online coverage and accessibility on the Internet. This is perfect for businesses that plan to bring their enterprise to the World Wide Web for better profit.
3 Jul 2009, 8:52 pm | click here to read more
Google Added 25% to Chinese Ad Revenue
After their recent skirmish with the Chinese government over Internet porn, Google China is back online. And they’re already optimistic: apparently they’re poised to announce a Q2 revenue increase in China of 25% over the previous quarter. (And in this economy, that’s not just great; that’s phenomenal!)
Brand Republic reports that Google China will also look operating revenue increases of 45% to 50% over the second quarter of last year. For owning only 30% of the Chinese search market, that seems pretty impressive. And the revenue boost from April, May and June of this year probably wasn’t because of a jump in market share—they’ve only added eight percentage points to their marketshare over the last two years.
Meanwhile, Baidu continues to dominate the Chinese search market with 64%, according to Brand Republic. And it’s not losing ground to Google, either—Baidu is up six percentage points from two years ago. So it would seem that smaller players in the market are losing market share to the two leaders. Brand Republic doesn’t mention on a similar revenue boost in Q2 for Baidu, but the Chinese search giant did have a strong first quarter this year.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt notes that the company continues to work with the Chinese government over its pornography concerns.
What do you think? Is Google betting better at monetizing in China, or are people just suddenly more willing to click on search ads? Do you think Baidu is seeing similar gains?
3 Jul 2009, 6:33 pm | click here to read more
Search Ads Less Helpful than TV, Newspaper
The results of a new poll from Harris Interactive indicate that Internet advertising isn’t as effective as search engine marketers would like to think. When asked what medium’s ads were most helpful in making purchase decisions, the 2500+ American respondents indicated that first television, then newspapers, then search engine ads. Internet banner ads fared even worse:
- 37% said television ads were most helpful in purchase decisions
- 18% said newspaper ads
- 14% said search engine ads
- 3% said radio ads
- 1% said Internet banner ads
Perhaps most revealing, however, is the math. Those numbers don’t add up to 100% because another 28% (rounding effects) said that none of those ad media were helpful in purchase decisions.
The Harris poll also asked about what kinds of ads people ignore. Again, the banner ads didn’t do so well:
- 46% tended to ignore Internet banner ads
- But only 17% of people said they ignored search engine ads
- 13% ignored TV ads
- 9% ignored radio ads
- 9% don’t ignore any of those ad media
The full results (PDF) break out the data by demographic and geography:
I’m nice of torn about these results. I’ve long said that as an Internet marketer, I’m proud to have people so subtly influenced by search engine ads that they don’t recognize that influence later. On the other hand, it’d be nice to be considered “helpful.” On yet another hand, since when is the point of advertising to be found “helpful”? Should that even be our goal?
What do you think? Is this something to receive worried about, or should we go along our merry way, advertising or persuading but not “helping” people?
3 Jul 2009, 4:33 pm | click here to read more
Google AdWords & Ad Planner Get the Mary Kay Treatment
In addition to some minor changes with the blog search interface, Google has been busy updating both the Google Ad Planner and Adwords interfaces.
The AdWords updates are in response to feedback Google has received since it introduced a new look last month. About the only thing that appears to be truly an "update" is a new search feature for finding your keywords.
Searching for keywordsWe heard many of you are looking for quick ways to search for keywords, ad text, or campaign names within your account. In previous posts, we talked about how you can use filtering to focus on the data that matters to you.While text filters allow you to search and act directly on the data you look, they also take a few clicks to set up for the first time. To help you work more quickly, we’ve added a new shortcut that lets you quickly search by text below the ‘Filter and views’ menu on any tab.
The other changes are really just things that Google should have done in the first place. It now loads faster, has less horizontal scrolling, and is now compatible with Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5.
Moving on to Google Ad Planner. The one-year old ad management system gets a complete overhaul–one that will remind you of the new AdWords interface. I guess that was intentional.
I’m not a user of Google Ad Planner, so I can’t tell you if it’s changed for the better, but it sure does look purty! 
3 Jul 2009, 1:57 pm | click here to read more
Google Blog Search, Now With Added Mediocrity
Google has updated the homepage to Google Blog Search, but it seems more like a knee jerk reaction to other web sites, than true innovation.
Take for example the new “Hot queries” section. It highlights the search terms currently most active on Google Blog Search. It sounds like a good idea, but ends up looking like nothing but a rip-off of Twitter’s “Trending Topics.” Google couldn’t even be bothered to match those hot queries to the topic you’re viewing. Switch to technology news, and you still look “tour de france” and English soccer star “michael owen” in the list.
The new “Latest Posts” section doesn’t fare much better. In fact, you could argue it’s worse. While you might discover something of interest in the untargeted hot queries, the chances of you finding a post of interest, among those just published, is unlikely. The section does exactly what it says on the tin–displays the latest posts from everyone. Again, some targeting would have been nice.
Thankfully, the new RSS and Atom subscriptions do change as you switch between topics. So, if you’re interested only in “Video Games” blogs, you can subscribe to updates for the hottest blog posts on that topic.
It seems to me that Google is suffering from juggling too many balls. When you focus on one thing–and do it well–you tend to deliver new features that really appeal to your target audience. When your focus is split between many different products, you end-up with half-hearted efforts like this.
Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!
3 Jul 2009, 1:30 pm | click here to read more
Google Book Settlement Officially on DOJ Radar
Earlier in June we talked about how the Google book settlement reached with Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers was drawing the attention of the Department of Justice. The settlement between these two parties was reached in October 2008. There isn’t even final approval on the agreement and the fairness hearing to determine that approval is still months away. below the settlement, Google’s plan to make available millions of titles copied from various public sources can move forward.
Google would have the right to display the books online and to profit from them by selling access to individual titles and by selling subscriptions to its entire collection to libraries and other institutions. Revenue would be shared among Google, authors and publishers.
The key phrase is the sharing of revenue that until the advent of this service was literally non-existent for many of these titles. Google’s blog post from last October says it pretty plainly
To date, Google has worked with libraries every over the world to make more than 7 million books searchable through Google Book Search, and we’re just getting started. We believe that ultimately we’ll provide access to many times that number, and if approved, this agreement will unlock access to millions of these texts and make the Google search experience even more comprehensive.
With this agreement, in-copyright, out-of-print books will now be available for readers in the U.S. to search, preview and buy online — something that was simply unavailable to date. Most of these books are difficult, if not impossible, to find. They are not sold through bookstores or held on most library shelves, yet they make up the vast majority of books in existence.
Now this settlement, which was reached with the parties who thought Google was getting away with something, is getting the real once over from the Department of Justice according to every Things Digital.
Since we are on the eve of the day that the United States celebrates our independence isn’t it interesting how the government thinks that maybe we have too much of a good thing with every of this “freedom” especially as it relates to business. Remember the good old days when you could receive riled up about the Patriot Act because it was trampling our privacy? If the US government keeps up with its ownership of huge businesses and saying that if they don’t approve then it’s no good, they won’t need Patriot Act like bills. They’ll simply possess or have a say in everything. They won’t to ask themselves permission to do anything. Apparently the relax of us are too stupid to handle our possess affairs.
Ok, I admit it. I don’t think the government should be anywhere close as involved any business (not too obvious, right?) So back to the Internet and Google’s plight. The US ‘gub-ment’s’ official statement from Thursday states
“The United States has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman Act,” wrote William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general. “At this preliminary stage, the United States has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition. However, we have determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry.”
Let’s read between the lines. What is really being said is that they are going to find or make up ways to receive their hands dirty on this one. Good thing Google is ramping up its forces in the DC theater because there will be blood. Any meddling government group worth its salt is sure to have something up their sleeve in order to make a public pronouncement of action taken.
Google’s response?
“The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are glad to answer their questions.
It’s important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S.”
If Google had ‘back-doored’ this agreement or simply ignored the pleas of those who represent the authors rights like the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers then their actions would be troubling. What I don’t receive is why can’t an agreement be reached that BOTH sides agreed to without the government coming in and determining whether they did a good enough job or not?
I am done with my rant. Thanks for sticking around. Please celebrate the 4th of July with a bit of reverence for the sacrifice made millions for the freedoms we still have.
3 Jul 2009, 12:55 pm | click here to read more
Twitter Truly Mirroring the Internet
Well, looks like Twitter has arrived for real. Companies are considering the service for their marketing and customer efforts. There still appears to be significant hype around every time someone at Twitter has gas. Twitter is looking to protect its trademark and is looking to trademark other sounds from nature like chirps and peeps. So what’s next? Well, since it is the Internet what would talking about Twitter be without now mentioning porn and spam?
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has said recently that the service will be a success when people cease talking about it and just accept it as a utility. With MediaPost talking about the proliferation of porn and spam that chatter isn’t likely to end anytime soon. That is, of course, unless Twitter does something about it.
Nude and explicit photographs have become more common on Twitter. While the site has begun to gain momentum for marketing and customer service departments looking to promote products and services, or connect with customers, it has taken a bit of a dark turn into the world of spam, pornography and escort services.
Needless to say, marketers relying on the site to promote family values tied to goods and services don’t seem too thrilled by the topless photo of Mcdowell407 and the accompanying tweet that talks about how badly one boyfriend treats her. Nor do they appreciate the half-dressed women in bra, garters, stockings and stilettos who promote escort services, such as Taylor, by clicking on the “follow” tag. Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
Other companies using Twitter to reach their audiences are feeling the same way as do those who are regular users of the service. While it may be easy to just brush this off as “The Internet is the Internet” Twitter may be called to a higher standard. eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna says
“If Twitter builds an advertising-supported model, they will need to develop a way to isolate the content,” he says. “YouTube did. Facebook did it. They had to be tough cops when it came to the content. On the one hand, they try to provide an open platform, but on the other, if they don’t set limits it could backfire.”
Verna says getting a handle on the spam and the sexually explicit material is another thing Twitter must fix, along with the ability to authenticate celebrity accounts — something they have stumbled with during the last few months.
While I was once would have been sure that this is no surprise to Twitter I can’t say that with complete confidence anymore. It looks pretty obvious that they will not just be able to act as if it isn’t happening. The first reason for this is that the fix for the problem is not rocket science according to Amichai Shulman — CTO at Imperva, an online security company based in Israel and Redwood Shores, Calif.
“The information from the feeds is either based on IP addresses or links, and there are services on the Internet that track and send notifications about known distributors of offending material,” he says. “It would be simple for Twitter to interface with one of those services providers to filter out at least 90% of that content.”
He feels that while the Twitter community is doing good work in policing their territory the onus should fall on Twitter to make more of an effort and it shouldn’t be too much for them to take on this nice of project.
If Twitter does just turn the other beak and not take the same ‘high road’ of YouTube and Facebook it could end up hurting it’s viability as a business tool. Ben Smith, MerchantCircle CEO cuts to the chase.
“The problem with this type of activity is that it undermines the trust in the communication channel, which will have a disastrous effect on the channel.”
So Twitter has another issue to be concerned about that will receive the attention of everyone. When you are as successful as they are everyone looks to look how problems like this are handled. Of course, the critics will always want more. Ask Google. Success comes with a high price. Now if they could only make money from someone for something. We’re every still watching for that trick.
3 Jul 2009, 12:06 pm | click here to read more
Innovated Marketing Group Partners Up With CarbonCopyPRO's Turn Key 'BUSINESS IN A BOX' Home Base Business Opportunity!
South Florida is buzzing with excitement since news leaked out that Innovated Marketing Group had become one of the newest marketers at CarbonCopyPRO. Innovated Marketing Group, an Internet marketer, joins an already power-packed lineup of successful entrepreneurs and home based business owners in the CarbonCopyPRO stable.
3 Jul 2009, 11:53 am | click here to read more
Internet marketing startup ClickFuel gains $2.5 million in financing
BostonClickFuel, a provider of Internet marketing services to tiny and midsize businesses that was launched last year by former Monster Worldwide senior executives, has gained $2.5 million in financing.
3 Jul 2009, 10:13 am | click here to read more
Facebook Rolling Out New Privacy Settings
Last week, we saw that Facebook was taking status updates public for selected test users (a la Twitter). Those selected users were ones that had already set their profiles to a high level of sharing—everyone could look their profiles already.
Now Facebook will make it so that every users will have a very granular control over exactly what gets shared with whom.
These settings can be applied on a message-by-message basis, but there will also be changes to the full privacy settings for every member. As paidContent points out this will eliminate the need to view at least six pages of privacy settings.
And now Facebook announces that they’ll be rolling out this change to the full site very shortly:
To make it easy for users to set their profiles’ level of “openness,” Facebook will be using a transition tool. Here’s the first step:
While some argue that Facebook is forcing us to be more public, these settings are too complex and the publisher settings should list “custom” first, overall, I think simplifying privacy settings and making them easier to set will help. The transition tool will force users who normally don’t change the default privacy settings to think about how much they want to share, at least once.
The full presentation (via David Berkowitz):
What do you think? Is this a step forward or backward for privacy on (and off) Facebook?
2 Jul 2009, 7:32 pm | click here to read more
I Like Websites Internet Marketing Company at ANDIGRAFICA 2009 Trade Show - The Graphic Window of Latin America
Internet Marketing Company ilikewebsites.com took part in one of the most important and respected Trade Shows in the graphic industry in Latin America held in Bogota Colombia last week. Andigrafica 2009 was held from June 23rd to 27th, gathering more than 130 national and international companies from the industry to once again show the world new tendencies and graphic design insights. (PRWeb Jul ...
2 Jul 2009, 7:06 am | click here to read more
I Like Websites Internet Marketing Company at ANDIGRAFICA 2009 Trade Show - The Graphic Window of Latin America
Internet Marketing Company ilikewebsites.com took part in one of the most important and respected Trade Shows in the graphic industry in Latin America held in Bogota Colombia last week. Andigrafica 2009 was held from June 23rd to 27th, gathering more than 130 national and international companies from the industry to once again show the world new tendencies and graphic design insights.
2 Jul 2009, 7:00 am | click here to read more
Internet Marketing - Understanding Search Engine Optimization
Having your possess website on the Internet doesn’t mean that everyone has access to it. Competition is very fierce in the online market and it would take a lot of advertising and marketing to increase your site's online coverage for improved traffic.
2 Jul 2009, 5:02 pm | click here to read more
FeedBurner Adds Custom Email Subject Lines
FeedBurner, an RSS management utility that was purchased by Google a few years ago, has long offered an RSS-to-email service. One of its major drawbacks, however, was that as an RSS publisher you could only set one subject line. So every email from your feed (generated and sent daily) had the same subject line.
The lowly likes of us regular bloggers complaining in the support forums didn’t have much of an effect. The only solution offered until now was logging in every day and manually changing the subject line to match your post—not fun.
But after Darren Rowse’s open letter to FeedBurner two weeks ago on ProBlogger, things are finally changing. Today, the Google AdSense for Feeds blogs announces that “Happiness is more subject in your subject line.” And it’s true!
Now the interface below Publicize > Email Subscriptions > Email Branding offers this “hot tip”:
Note the checkbox at the bottom: if you regularly have more than one post a day, the checkbox opens another menu with even more customization:
This subject line is only used if you have more than one item in your feed that day; otherwise, it reverts to the primary custom subject line.
What do you think? How quick will you be logging in to customize your subject line?
2 Jul 2009, 4:54 pm | click here to read more
Internet Marketing Trying To Police Itself On Privacy Issues
An important element (read: selling point) of Internet marketing is the ability to know more about consumers and their behaviors. Everything can be tracked on the Internet, for the most part, and there is obvious value to marketers and their efforts. The flip side of this ability to track people is the privacy issue and lately the US government has been raising it’s regulatory eyebrows at the ...
2 Jul 2009, 3:51 pm | click here to read more
Web Advertisers Try to Avert the Government’s Eyes Somewhere Else
An important element (read: selling point) of Internet marketing is the ability to know more about consumers and their behaviors. Everything can be tracked on the Internet, for the most part, and there is obvious value to marketers and their efforts. The flip side of this ability to track people is the privacy issue and lately the US government has been raising it’s regulatory eyebrows at the online world. In the past this may not have been such big news but with the current administration’s bend toward a ‘name it and claim it’ government style, web advertisers are looking to self police before they draw any more attention from the feds.
Yahoo Tech reports on the efforts of a group of advertising associations that have arrive together to build a set of rules and regulations that the industry can use to give the consumer the privacy they expect and let marketers keep the freedoms that government intervention would likely hinder.
The centerpiece of these guidelines are the provision of transparency in tracking practices and easier opt-out for consumers. While it is certainly a big question as to how well these guidelines will actually work the wish is that the industry will be less of a focus of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and Congress.
These guidelines are coming from trade associations that represent 5,000 companies. The consortium comprises the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Better Business Bureau. Their members are some of the nation’s largest companies, including Google Inc., General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble Co.
These guidelines include recommendations that companies
- Tell consumers more clearly when they’re being tracked
- Educate consumers on how Web tracking works
- Give consumers an easy way to opt out of being followed
- Provide “reasonable” security for the data they collect
- Limit how much data they retain
- receive consumer approval before making material changes that would erode privacy protections with specific areas such as kids’s personal information, financial data and medical records getting more protection.
Anyone caught by this new group will be reported to the federal government. This plan should go into effect in 2010. Sounds reasonable enough but of course there are those who feel that this will not be enough.
Jeff Chester, executive director of the middle for Digital Democracy, said the online ad industry’s promise to regulate itself through the new guidelines is designed to undercut the federal government’s increased interest in overseeing online behavioral advertising.
He fears that the guidelines don’t go far enough and that there needs to be fair rules passed by Congress that ‘online marketing can thrive but consumers have greater control on how the information collected is being used.’
I am sure that the views of Pilgrim readers regarding government intervention in business are every over the map so we’ll ask you the question: Should the industry police itself or should the federal government be involved? What are the pros and cons of both options? Here’s your chance to form your possess policy for people to look and show off your position on government’s role in business. Sounds like a fun and light topic to consider while enjoying the holiday weekend, right?
2 Jul 2009, 2:07 pm | click here to read more
Early Returns for US Search Traffic are In. Bing!
What would be the best way for a research firm to receive some notice in a market that has two or three dominant players that most turn to? Well, receive the first numbers into the market place around how well Bing has performed for Microsoft. Reuters reports that StatCounter, a Dublin based research firm has done just that.
The company is based in Dublin and has published results that are based on 4 billion pageloads per month monitored through a network of websites. Drumroll please?
Bing, launched on June 3 but available to some users a few days earlier, took 8.23 percent of U.S. Web searches in June, up from 7.81 percent for Microsoft search just prior to its rollout and 7.21 percent in April, said Internet data firm StatCounter.
Google lost share slightly, dipping to 78.48 percent from 78.72 percent before Bing. Yahoo Inc, the perennial No. 2 in the market, rose to 11.04 percent from 10.99 percent.
Cymbal accident! In a nice piece of headline sensationalism, Reuters titled the article “Microsoft’s Bing Search Wins Share from Google”. Good stuff to make you read further but the numbers, at least from StatCounter, don’t really bear out the ‘win’.
In fact, one might say that even though there was an uptick in Microsoft search traffic (as well as a slight one for Yahoo) the change of ½ a percent is negligible at best and could be accounted for in normal mistake ranges as nothing positive at every. Now factor in the $100 or so million that Microsoft has assigned to the rollout of Bing and the frequency of the ads seen for the new decision engine it may be fair to say these numbers are a huge disappointment rather than any form of wish. If Bing doesn’t receive traction early it may just be a true blip and a non-issue for Google moving forward.
StatCounter though, really wants to create some sort of competition here.
“At first sight, a 1 percent increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive,” StatCounter Chief Executive Adohan Cullen said in a statement.
Underlying trend? After one month? That’s almost as bad as basing company performance on short term (quarterly) results and we every know where that leads. Look, I think Google could really use a strong competitor. It would help the consumer and it would be likely to make Google even stronger by being pushed a bit. These numbers, however, will not make anyone at Google even hiccup. In fact, the re-branding efforts of Yahoo are likely to cause more consternation for the Google because at least Yahoo is realistic about its search prospects. Oh and by the way, Yahoo is still #2 despite the Bing rollout.
If Bing can overtake Yahoo for 2nd place then that might be news. Nearly one month into this race, though, this nice of result is difficult to receive excited about and certainly not worthy of the proclamation that Google is losing ground.
2 Jul 2009, 12:58 pm | click here to read more
Twitter Twademarking Tweets
Twitter is attempting to gain some nice of control of the use of "Twitter" and "Tweet" in a way that reminds me of Google’s attempt back in 2006.
TechCrunch got its hand on an email that was sent out to one Twitter app developer:
Hi,
Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our possess. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our possess?
Thanks,
That prompted an official response from Twitter’s chief of damage control Biz rock. The use of "Twitter" appears to be pretty much off limits, but his comments about using "Tweet" have me puzzled:
We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of "going after" the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we arrive across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.
I’m not a trademark attorney–if you are, correct me if I am wrong–but if you register a trademark, aren’t you obliged to police it? I was below the impression that if you didn’t prevent others from using your trademark, you risked losing the protections granted by its registration.
If that is the case, maybe third-party application developers should be worried after every.
In addition, the over sentiment is how Twitter feels about the situation today, but what about in five years from now? What if it’s acquired by Google or News Corp–and they have a more stringent policy on the use of their trademarks?
One blog post does not make a legal exemption. I’d be careful of your use of Twitter or Tweet if your product can in any way be confused as an official company offering.
2 Jul 2009, 12:53 pm | click here to read more
Bing Announces Twitter Integration, But Don’t Get Too Excited
every of us that have called for more “real-time” search results or better Twitter integration, should have done a better job of spelling out our needs.
Apparently Bing misread the memo.
In a move that appears to have more bark than bite, Bing has announced the integration of Twitter with its search results. Before you jump for joy, the announcement is a non-starter.
What we receive is a few thousand Twitter profiles added to the Bing index. Search for “Andy Beal Twitter” or “@andybeal” and you’ll receive a box at the top of your results that looks like this:
What you don’t receive is Bing tapping into those tweets for its actual search results. Let’s take the text from the second tweet listed over and “Bing” it:
Meh.
With just a few thousand high profile Twitter users included, and no honest-to-goodness real-time search, I feel nice of robbed. The next time Bing declares it’s “Bringing a Bit of Twitter to Bing,” I wish it bites off a larger chunk!
2 Jul 2009, 12:33 pm | click here to read more
Internet Marketing Concepts - Putting Your Page On The Top Rank Using SEO
The Internet is vast collection of pages that offers an unlimited amount of information to anyone who needs it. The millions of sites on the Web can be considered as competition when you plan to add your possess to the collective.
1 Jul 2009, 7:22 pm | click here to read more
Internet Marketing Agency Terralever Adds Chief Operations Officer, Chief Financial Officer
Internet Marketing Agency Grows with Key Hires in Executive Management, Web Development, Client Relations, Business Development.
1 Jul 2009, 7:01 am | click here to read more
Google to News: Let Us Bleed Your Videos Dry, Too
You know how they say “Timing is everything”? Well, apparently so does Google. Less than a week after the head of Dow Jones whines about Google sucking newspapers’ lifeblood like a vampire (no, seriously, he said that), Google helpfully instructs news publishers on how to share their videos with the search giant.
Thankfully, unlike many newspapers, most news video publishers seem to be a little more “with it.” Google is asking them to become YouTube Partners. In exchange for their original, professional content, Google says its partners gain (emphasis added):
- Featured Premium Placement. YouTube news partners receive featured placement on the YouTube news page, youtube.com/news, where we feature news videos from partners related to the top news stories on Google News. In addition, if you allow your videos to be embedded, they’ll be eligible to appear on Google News, which means additional exposure to every Google News users.
- clip Costs, Generate Revenue. YouTube offers free hosting for every of your video content and allows you to embed your videos anywhere on the web for free. And as an official YouTube partner, you’re eligible to participate in an advertising revenue share program.
- Viewership Analysis. Learn more about the people viewing and interacting with your videos. Use YouTube’s Insight tool to easily discover troves of useful demographic information and understand what parts of your videos people liked or didn’t like. Geographic information provided can help you focus your marketing efforts.
- Wider Audience. YouTube and Google News have millions of visitors every day searching for the latest news and information. lift awareness around your brand and reach new audiences by making your video content available on YouTube and Google News. As a YouTube partner, you can maintain your brand’s look-and-feel with your possess customized YouTube channel, and you can also steer traffic back to your possess website.
- Community. At its core, YouTube is a wealthy social environment that includes thousands of micro-communities. Build one around your content by encouraging people to interact through comments and video responses. Take advantage of YouTube as a social platform.
Somehow, although I do think most video news sites are more “with it,” I don’t know that they’re quite ready to give over that much control to Google. The benefits are pretty persuasive, but they might not be worth the loss of control.
However, I’m sure that at least a few video publishers will complain about Google stealing their content, visitors and ad dollars (even though this is completely opt-in. But hey, so is participating in Google News or its index, so hey, why start applying logic now?). To those . . . “forward thinkers,” I reiterate Andy’s advice on dealing with the undead (ie Google):
Without Google sending millions of daily visitors to newspaper web sites–for FREE–the newspaper industry would have being snuggling up to the Dodo a long time ago. . . .
People want to read news online. They don’t want to pay for it. They use Google. Google sends you the bulk of your daily web site visitors. Either figure out how to monetize those visitors–like the relax of the world–or block Google via your robots.txt file and close up!
What do you think? Do the benefits of partnering with YouTube outweigh the costs? Or should news sites receive while the gettin’s good?
1 Jul 2009, 6:26 pm | click here to read more
Meebo Guarantees Engagement with New Popups
If you found an ad format that could be up to 900 x 400, feature wealthy media and guarantee audience engagement for at least 30 seconds—with testing showing average engagement of over a minute—you’d think it was too good to be true, right?
But that’s the newest ad format and promises from Meebo. In addition to on-site chat and free-standing IM (integrated with popular clients), the instant messaging company powers MySpace IM and Facebook Chat and some forty other good-sized networking sites. Their new ad format already has up to 85 interested websites signed up.
Reuters reports that new ad format shows up first as an icon on the chat toolbar on a partner’s page. Interested users can click on the tab to open the full ad as an overlay (although in the image below, it says “rollover,” not “click”).
Meebo’s COO, Martin Green, says that because only interested users view the full ad, the engagement is far higher than with traditional ads:
We have done this in testing and in the last couple of months we receive on average over a minute of time spent, which is a massive amount of time with advertisers’ content. Part of the reason is you only receive people who are interested in checking it out.
As shown in the example over, Toyota has already signed on for the new ad format, as has AT&T.
And as for that guarantee? If you don’t receive your audience’s engagement for at least 30 seconds, “Green says the company will make up the time by running a proportional amount of ads to cover the discrepancy.”
What do you think? Has Meebo found a key to advertising by only appealing to interested parties? Or will the appeal still be so limited that it’s simply not worth advertisers’ time?
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1 Jul 2009, 4:47 pm | click here to read more
Is Google Taking Steps to Prevent Top Talent from Defecting?
What do you do if you no longer need your Chief Technology Officer, but don’t want your rivals to receive their grubby mitts on him either? Well, if you’re Google you quietly move him out of that role, give him some other projects to work on, and wish that no one notices.
Unfortunately, every Things Digital noticed:
[YouTube co-founder Steve] Chen left his spot as chief technology officer last fall, though he remains employed at Google, which bought his company for $1.65 billion in 2006. “Steve shifted his focus to help with some Google engineering projects. He’s still involved with YouTube and invested in its success,” says YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes via email.
Still involved with YouTube–except his role of CTO doesn’t actually exist anymore!
The online video space is a tough market these days. While some companies are thriving, others aren’t fairing so well. Reading between the lines, it seems as though Chen’s not as important to YouTube–now that a whole army of engineers are at its disposal–but he could play a vital role at one of its competitors.
We’re seeing execs playing a lot of musical chairs these days, so it would make sense that Google would want to try and keep their top talent from defecting to a rival.
What do you think?
1 Jul 2009, 2:58 pm | click here to read more
谷歌的工具栏现在包括自动语言翻译
Did you understand the title of this post? Well, if you had installed the new Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, you would have been able to automatically translate it to: “Google’s Toolbar Now Includes Automatic Language Translation.”
The official announcement suggest some pretty handy features:
If you go to another page in the same language, you will continue to look translations rather than have to translate one page at a time. And if the page has dynamic content, like Google Reader, you will receive translations in real-time. Finally, if you frequently translate pages in the same language, Toolbar will let you translate that language automatically without any extra clicks in the future.
Right now, translation is available for over 40 languages and a Firefox version is coming soon.
The big questions is: Будет ли кто на самом деле это использовать?
1 Jul 2009, 1:50 pm | click here to read more
Twitter Gets ‘Tweet-itorial’
Looks like Twitter is not looking the other way as much these days. TechCrunch reports that there is some concern at the social networking company that developers are using the term ‘Tweet’ too much. Twitter, in fact, is claiming that the use of that trademark in the naming of any third party app is something they are ‘uncomfortable’ with. Here is an e-mail that was passed along to the TechCrunch folks relating to the subject.
Hi,
Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our possess. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our possess?
Thanks,
The original reason for the e-mail was apparently around a developers attempt to have a UI so similar to Twitter’s that it may have been confused for the real deal. In the hashing out of that information the over e-mail was sent and the questions are starting to flow.
Apparently Twitter has applied for a trademark . Commentor wealthy Hill stated
I just checked the US Patent Office and Trademark website and “TWEET” trademark has been applied for on April 14, 2009 but has not yet been finalized.
The link that was given for the trademark application had expired so if you want to find the application visit the US Patents and Trademarks Office and conduct the search.
So what’s in a name? For the people at TweetDeck, Tweetmeme and many others apparently there is a lot. How will this eventually affect them? Too early to tell and only Twitter can determine just how far they may go to protect the trademark once it is finalized.
I have to wonder that if they thought the term was so valuable why did they wait until April of 2009 to trademark it? Seems that the more we learn about Twitter and it’s business practices (or lack thereof) you wonder what other landmines are out there for them to step on?
Well, we’ll just sit back and keep tweeting while we can still use the term tweet without having to tweet the Twitter legal folks to look if our use of tweet is OK by them. Holy tweet.
1 Jul 2009, 12:23 pm | click here to read more
Yahoo’s Branding Push Gets New Blood
For a while now there has been a lot of talk of the new and improved Yahoo. Since Carol Bartz took over as CEO there has been a more hopeful buzz around the company than back in the days of Jerry Yang.
One nagging question that keeps coming up is “What is Yahoo these days?”. Kara Swisher over at the WSJ’s every Things Digital has been keeping a watchful eye on this process. She has had some interesting conversations with Bartz and now tells of the latest addition to the team that will be leading the Yahoo of the future, Penny Baldwin.
Baldwin became an official Yahoo exec, as SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management.
Baldwin, said Yahoo (YHOO), “will guide the company’s global brand efforts, and is responsible for developing and executing Yahoo!’s brand marketing approach including brand management, corporate messaging, integrated marketing and advertising.”
Said Baldwin in a statement, signaling that Yahoo is poised for an important brand makeover: “This is a seminal moment for the Yahoo! brand and for the business overall.”
As with every things press release related, there is painting of a rosy picture and new opportunity on the horizon (Does anyone really pay attention to the fluff in press releases anymore? It’s really nice of ridiculous. Just the facts please.). Baldwin, who has significant experience at the highest levels of marketing, will be reporting to CMO Elisa Steele. She is replacing Allen Olivo who left Yahoo recently after serving as SVP of global brand marketing and her style is not very ‘Yahooesque’ in the traditional sense. What does that mean exactly?
…. unlike past Yahoo marketing execs, Baldwin has been described to me by many people at the company as much more colorful and bold in her style, and that she has been advocating more aggressive ideas about reinvigorating the Yahoo brand.
“Well, Penny is definitely not Yahoo,” said one Yahoo source, joking about the company’s quainter, yodel-focused and purple-toned image. “Which is probably a good thing.”
So we can expect some changes pretty quickly since the new Yahoo home page is slated for roll out in the fall time frame. There is plenty of work to be done to unify Yahoo’s image and put some shine back on a once high-flying brand that was a front runner and now is more of a reclamation project. As discussed in the past here, just trying to bring the many different Yahoo properties into a more cohesive social networking community is a substantial task from a logistical standpoint . As in many technology situations, it’s easy to outrun reality with marketing and hype so everyone would be better served to look how Yahoo works in reality rather than in the marketing hype that will likely trumpet it’s ‘new and cohesive’ community feel.
According to Swisher, one motto that is being thrown about is “your home on the web”. There are more apparently. Let’s wish so. If this is the new and dynamic road that Yahoo is embarking on then Ms. Baldwin certainly has her work clip out for her. I yawned halfway through that potential byline for the Yahoo brand. What else is out there, “This is not your dad’s Yahoo!”?
Stay tuned. Yahoo is certainly at a critical juncture in its existence. There is so much potential that has been underutilized to this point, is there enough left in the tank to make Yahoo the Internet powerhouse it once was? How do you really view Yahoo? How do you use it? What services do you use in the Yahoo family? Do you even know what properties are owned by Yahoo?
Excuse me, however, I have to go check my Yahoo mail that I have had since forever. Maybe today I’ll look around some more and then again, since there is so much more on the Internet to pay attention to, maybe I won’t.
1 Jul 2009, 11:41 am | click here to read more