Devour The Web

Here are some great posts from the Sphere on social marketing and social media.

Social Blogging Using The Facebook Dashboard Widget For WordPress - If you like to keep up with what is going on with your friends on Facebook then you may like this handy little social blogging plugin. The plugin requires WordPress 2.5 and above. To quote from this social blogging plugin’s homepage: …

More Social Bookmarking Sites To Consider - When we consider social sites we automatically think of Facebook, MySpace or perhaps Bebo. Social media sites include YouTube and Flickr. There are many social bookmarking sites that can be used to deliver traffic to your sites. …

Social Media to-do list for Flickr and Facebook - Flickr Social Marketing list for Metropolitan Area Children’s Museums Facebook Social Marketing list for Metropolitan Area Children’s Museums The benefits of using social media marketing to market your business online are described …

Twitter; Social Marketing or Just Social? - In her post, Social Marketing Pitfalls & The Twitter Time Suck, Lynn Terry’s definition of “social” explains exactly how I’ve tried to conduct myself in business all along; by being personable and not so personal. Lynn wrote, …

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When you are involved in RSS everyday you get to see the fantastic opportunities RSS can bring to the web and how it can contribute to bettering the browsers experience and the webmasters bottom line. Unfortunately there is a dark side of RSS use.

It continues to amaze me how some webmasters always see ways to abuse new communication mediums. It is well know that email has become synonymous with spam. Email was a great communication tool when it arrived, but individuals soon started to abuse email by sending unsolicited messages to everyone with an email address. Now the same seems to be happening with RSS.

More and more webmasters are starting to use RSS to improve and maintain a good relationship with their readers. They are using RSS the correct way by keeping their readers informed and using RSS to syndicate content around the web. I talk more about this at http://www.newsniche.com/ where I help to inform and educate webmasters about RSS.

A day after Senator Barack Obama denounced his former pastor and his statements, a search for “rev. wright” brought up these sponsored results:

The first to appear comes from PreachingSermonsToday.com. The site says it has over 300 sermons for sale, including the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s “The Audacity to Hope” speech. It’s available as a Word file for $4.95.

Another paid link, labeled “The Audacity of Hate,” leads to a column in the Philadelphia Church of God’s publication. The “audacious message of hate…does little in the way of helping the black community,” Steven Flurry, the columnist, writes.

“Jeremiah Wright Supported,” links to a site registered to Boyce Watkins, a CNN commentator, a finance prof, and self-described “huge fan” of Rev. Wright. “The point that Pastor Wright makes is both correct and clear: America is a racist country. It has been in the past and continues to be to this day,” Watkins writes.

And they say politics and religion don’t mix. Need further proof?

His book, which is flying off the shelves worldwide, is called “Predictably Irrational.” His name is Dr. Dan Ariely. He’s a behavioral economist. And he provides a fascinating look at human behavior that completely debunks traditional economists assumptions about people and how they make decisions.

Dave Lakhani did an interview with Ariely recently (don’t ask me how he got someone who everyone wants to talk to right now to do an interview) and really got in depth with Ariely on the irrationality of people when making small to huge economic decisions in their lives.

To a marketer, this information is like pure, molten gold. I highly suggest you not only buy Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational, but that you also listen to this interview Dave Lakhani just posted with Ariely.

This is incredibly good stuff. Its ground-breaking. It will give you a metric ton of new insights into how people think, decide, and act when making decisions on purchases of all kinds. It will make you a better marketer.

Tags: dave lakhani, dr. dan areily, predictably irrational

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IAC’s media and advertising revenues enjoyed a Q1 boost thanks to the company’s renewed ad partnership with Google. Ask.com improved both its revenue per query and overall revenues during the period, “even excluding the benefits of the renewed contract.” However it’s clear from IAC’s statement that the company’s buddy up in Mountain View deserves much credit for its solid search performance, especially considering total queries were down. A reduced marketing budget also helped profits.

Meanwhile, there was predictable pain over in IAC’s Lending Tree unit, which is set to be spun off along with other non-advertising businesses. The company noted it had lowered its marketing investment for lending products, which translates to reduced spending on online lead generation. Again, no surprise there.

IAC’s not the only Google partner sitting pretty today. Another party to benefit greatly from its relationship with the borg is TW’s AOL, which today reported strength in search advertising thanks in part to the relationship. Meanwhile display advertising revenue on its own sites shrank — largely due to anticipated factors, it should be said.

Curbed Network, an urban real estate blog,
takes possession of Gawker Media’s Gridskipper travel blog tomorrow.

On the phone with Curbed president Lockhart Steele today, he mentioned Gridskipper will go into “quasi-hibernation” until it relaunches before Memorial Day. (Steele is Gawker’s former managing editor, while Gawker’s Nick Denton has a stake in Curbed.)

Count on Gridskipper, billed as “the urban travel guide,” to pare back its coverage of smaller cities such as Austin, TX. “I have nothing at all against Austin,” Steele said. But while he was at Gawker, Gridskipper had focused on the “best stuff from the most important cities.”

Last month, Gawker Media shed three of its 15 titles including Gridskipper, Wonkette, and Idolator. Wonkette was sold to Buzznet, while Wonkette was spun off to its managing editor.

Challenge is, can each of these site’s new owners do a better job at attracting revenue and readers than Gawker?

What do the words “Search Engine” make you think of? I get immediate mind-pictures which vary but all have similar themes. Sometimes I see one of those tiny submarines which are used to explore the deepest parts of the ocean bed. I have this picture in my mind of the tiny submarine underwater in complete darkness apart from the beam of its searchlight which is probing the gloom. Other times I see a horse-drawn carriage driving through dense fog with only its weak lamp relieving the darkness. This scene is from a movie where the police are racing through London in search of Jack The Ripper. The final picture is of a line of policemen in old-fashioned uniforms advancing across a moor in darkness through rising mist with only their flashlight-beams to light their way.

It can get a bit scary inside my mind at times. If these were dreams rather than passing thoughts, they would probably be analysed as meaning an obsession with darkness and getting lost. Maybe the lights penetrating the darkness symbolise a fear of ignorance (or maybe a fear of getting found out). The obvious link is that these pictures all relate to a search of one kind or another. The first one might represent a search for knowledge, the second one is obviously the search for a criminal and the final one a search for clues at the scene of a crime.

The MET in NY has a special exhibit right now Jeff Koons on the Roof, which possibly I can see a glimmer of from the roof of my building. Possibly that’s why Google’s doodle of the day is inspired by the work of the same artist.

Google has collaborated with almost 70 artists to create iGoogle art themes. Artists, designers, rock stars, pop stars, dancers, and athletes are involved: Jeff Koons, Dale Chihuly, Coldplay, Diane von Furstenberg, Dolce & Gabbana, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Michael Graves, Philippe Starck, Robert Mankoff, Mark Morris, Oscar de la Renta, Anne Geddes and Tory Burch, to name a few.

Here’s full gallery of artist themes.

My Search Engine Watch colleague Kevin Heisler has a somewhat racier post about iGoogle’s work with artists.

Shouldn’t marketing be more than just going through the motions?

Over coffee the other day, one of the top e-mail consultants in the country told me about a surprise revelation from a client, one of the major broadband providers in the country.

She’s charged with an e-mail retention program aimed at the telco’s broadband subscribers. So naturally you’d think that the more subscribers who re-upped their annual contracts, the better the program was performing, right?

Not so fast.

In a recent meeting, the client let drop that subscribers who don’t renew their DSL contracts are charged higher monthly fees, and that the majority of lapsed subscribers simply don’t notice the rise in costs. “So,” my friend incredulously asked her client, “you’re telling me that the more this program doesn’t work, the more money you make?”

“Well…yes,” came the reply.

Guest Post By Michel Fortin

If you played video arcade games in the late 80’s, even early 90’s, you might remember Zero Wing — a game in which a battle takes place in the year 2101, where you must defend the planet Earth from an alien invasion led by the dreaded warrior Cats.

Zero Wing may have been a favorite among teenagers, but like the Cabbage Patch doll the fad faded… Until Sega Genesis came out with their version of the popular arcade game in ‘98, giving Zero Wing new breath. But this time, one is offered an animated introduction in preparation for the space battle…

“In A.D. 2101, war was beginning.” And a dialogue between the ship’s captain and Cats ensued, offering these priceless gems:

“You Have No Chance To Survive Make Your Time.” “All Your Base Are Belong To Us.” “What you say!” “Someone Set Up Us The Bomb!” “Move ‘Zig’ For Great Justice!” And many more.

Now, what does a video game have to teach us about copywriting?