Digital Download 6/16/08

MSN AND YAHOO ARE OFFICIALLY OVER

Yahoo signed an agreement with Google just hours after its very last talk with MSN this past Thursday . With Yahoo’s finally farewell to negotiations with MSN, Google comes out on top (as usual) with the 10 year agreement that will have Yahoo serving its search ads on its portal. This means big bucks in the future for Google who could gain up to $1 billion from the ad pack. What does this mean for advertiser? The positives include a more convenient and manageable search campaign as well as access to a much larger search-ad inventory. The downsides include higher bidding prices, antitrust questions and one less option for marketers to choose another search provider.

DADS CAN GET SOCIAL WITH THEIR KIDS TOO

Just in time for Father’s Day, the new beta social network for dads called Odadeo was announced last week. It’s currently in private beta mode and it serves to help patriarchs keep in touch with their children, get parenting tips from fellow dads, and build blogs about their kids with photo and video sharing capabilities. Stef Lewandowski is one of the service’s founders and believe Odadeo is a great social channel for parents, specifically fathers, to communicate and connect closer with their children as well as other families who may share the same interests and hobbies.

HAVE ONLINE GUIDE, WILL TRAVEL

A new beta site called TravelMuse will sure to be plenty of competition for Travelocity, Expedia and TripAdvisor. It’s a new online portal that blends travel planning tools with quality editorial content topped off with a weekly theme or destination. TravelMuse is a one stop destination for reviews, trip planning and travel booking service. This site is perfect for those travelers who are not sure of where to go and like to see where others have enjoyed recent travels and what recommendations are popular. This goes for product purchases as well as global journeys. They present new feature destinations on a routine basis, plus the requisite tips, tricks, and specials like book reviews and ecotourist picks. In addition, TravelMuse users can transfer bookmarklets to their browsers to collect third-party data to keep in one cloud-based location. This option can prove very convenient if one’s itinerary becomes rather elaborate.

PLURK IS RUFFLING TWITTER’S FEATHERS

Plurk is another new microblogging site that has seen plenty of traffic in the past month due to Twitter’s constant problems and errors. Plurk offers a very similar service to Twitter, but throws in a curve ball with its horizontal timeline of updates, extended freedom of conversation, and “karma” points for avid users. It’s similarity to Twitter attracts Twitter users, it’s unique layout intrigues those who are looking for something “different,” and now, third party applications will promote widespread activity. The experience is similar to reading comments on FriendFeed, however, the layout of the site only creates unnecessary confusion. Regardless, many internet users (mostly Twitter fanatics) have visited Plurk enough to quadruple the site’s number of visits this month.

LEAVE YOUR MARK WITH RETAGGR

Welcome the new way to pass on your business card. Retaggr is a new site that lets you compile all your online activities into one interactive profile. The result is a virtual business card that acts as a widget wherever your name appears on blogs or other Retaggr-enabled sites. You can use Retaggr to let people see your photo, twitter status, a link to your blog, and links to other social sites like Facebook. You can add any web widget to your Profile Card including Gtalk, Flickr, Youtube, Tumblr and more. What’s great about Retaggr is that it acts as the ultimate business card 2.0 for internet users who want to let people know who they are on the web as well as expand their personal brand. Likewise, Retaggr works as an ideal tool for bloggers who want their community of readers to get to know each other and participate more frequently. Names now become links that expand the Profile Card widget and showcase each owner’s virtual information without ever having to leave the site. Plus, blogs and sites that use Retaggr also get the photo tagging functionality which is similar to Facebook and Flickr, but takes it further by letting you see the names and Profile Cards of people in a picture all at one time.

Digital Download 5/27/08

IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT BLOGS ANYMORE

BusinessWeek posted an article this morning in retrospect to its 2005 story "Blogs Will Change Your Business.” They’ve come to the self-realization that today’s business world is beyond blogs which are just one of the do-it-yourself tools out there on the net. Social connectors like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are changing the dynamics of companies around the world. Millions of companies are engaging with customers, befriending rivals and clicking through pictures of coworkers and friends. Top executives are playing the social field like Sun Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan I. Schwartz who has his own blog. IBM set up its own social network for employees, Beehive which boasts over 30,000 employees. A Dell employee who goes by “Ggroovin” tells BusinessWeek that Dell's service on Twitter has brought in half a million dollars of new orders in the past year. Some even use Twitter to find job potentials. "The new résumé is 140 characters," tweets 23-year-old Amanda Mooney, who just landed a job in PR. Major investors and corporations have been focused on the profit potential of social sites; they promise relationships in return of companies’ investments. Even MySpace is struggling to figure out the financials. And there's no guarantee that Web masses will stay loyal for the long haul. Sophisticated social metrics are still in the works and hopefully we’ll hit the jackpot while the space is hot.

STARBUCKS IS GETTING STEAMED OVER NEW LOGO

Remember last week’s section on the evolving scandal over Starbucks’ resurrection of its old logo? Well, a recent post in Ad Age had reported the company’s attempt at a redesign in reaction to the controversy online buzz. Company executives first planned to release the old logo nationwide as part of its 35th anniversary but they limited its release to the Northwest. It didn’t matter because one Washington school district banned Starbucks coffee cups during the limited-time offer unless students concealed the mermaid’s breasts with a cup holder. The logo redesign has been recently under fire by a Christian organization with just 3,000 members whom took issue with what they saw as sexual connotations. Earlier this month, the group and its media-savvy leader got news outlets flocking for a piece of the action. "If you make a comment about the Starbucks logo, it goes all over the news. It's a fascinating phenomenon," said Mark Dice, a 30-year-old Wisconsin native who leads the Resistance Manifesto. The organization's home page lists the founder's many media appearances, including "The O'Reilly Factor," the London Telegraph and Pakistan's Daily Times. Mr. Dice said the response has been overwhelming. He said he's gotten his share of hate mail, but has also managed to expand his mailing list, and participation in his online forum is up. "We've made points on various issues but nothing has gotten the exposure of this," Mr. Dice said. "This one took off and went viral." Adding to the frustration at Starbucks is the widespread misperception that the logo change is permanent; the Pike Place cups will only be in circulation for a few more weeks.

FACEBOOK IS GETTING A FACE LIFT



Big changes for Facebook are planned to push out next month. The most important component reveals that user profiles on the service will evolve from the current and often cluttered page into four tabbed sub-pages highlighting the feed, info, photos and applications. Users will have more control over their feeds and what information their friends see about them. The info tab will contain all the data typically found on Facebook pages today like the user’s education and location. The photo tab will have a portfolio of images. Finally, programs created by third-party developers since last summer and installed by users are relegated to a fourth “application boxes” tab and will generally become less visible. But Facebook executives said there will be new opportunities for some developers who create the best applications to get their programs mentioned prominently on feed pages, and to entice users to create custom tabbed pages devoted to their programs. The changes come as Facebook aims to simplify its user pages in response to the criticism of it being a bit too visually chaotic as well as indications that its growth might be tailing off. According to a recent report from Nielsen Online, 22.4 million users visited Facebook in April, down from 24.9 million in March. Overall year-over-year growth slowed to 56% from last year’s 98% growth rate.

LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE THROUGH A NEW SOCIAL SITE

Palabea just announced today that it’s now open to the public after spending several months as a limited-access resource. Palabea is essentially a social networking site with the intentions of bringing different cultures and languages of the world together where people can interact while teaching and influencing each another. Everything here is a platform and everything is social. Users can upload most anything relevant to a modern learning experience such as documents, videos, podcasts and pictures. It even has a visually appealing layout that makes it fun for members of all ages. There’s even a place to hold virtual classrooms. Want to connect with particular site members? You can. Want to take your language learning to another level and consult with language specialists and schools? You can do that, too. Anyone is welcome from the casual and curious visitors to the serious pursuers. Palabea has also established partnerships with several companies, including Deutsche Welle, Cafe Babel, Babylon, and TANDEM Fundazioa. BBC Learning English will soon be adding resources as well.

FROM HOME BREWING TO BEER TWITTERING

Here’s something fun and halfway relevant: a Mashable article highlighted 13 online tools for beer lovers alike. A few listed sites include: AllAboutBeer.com which is based on the same-named magazine and hosts details on beer locators, guides and articles; Beer100.com which has info on home brewing, calorie counts of major brands and links to bar webcams; BeerInfo.us is a customized Google search engine bringing you all the info there is to know on beer; BeerSuggest.com helps you locate beer related events, rate and tag beers and breweries; Chugd.com is a social network for the beer drinkers who can create a profile, tag & rate beers and find beer related events and post photos from parties; Coastr.com is similar but let’s you review those places and give them a rating; and last but not least, Foamee.com, a Twitter tool to help you keep track of whom you recommend a beer or coffee to, and vice-versa.

Digital Download 5/12/08

Hope you guys had a great Mother's day weekend. Without further ado, here's this week's digital download.

SOCIAL STYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS

An article in last week’s Forbes listed five exclusive social networking sites that were upcoming in the world of elitists. "It's taken a while for wealthy consumers to start using networking sites, mostly due to privacy issues and concerns," says Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, a New York-based research company that focuses on high-net-worth individuals. "But now they want to leverage all those social-networking advantages.” The social networking sites listed were aSmallWorld, Diamond Lounge, Squa.re, Quintessentially and LuxuryRatings.com. Your membership depends on who you know and, in one case, how much you are willing to pay. An interesting finding reported by Luxury Institute was that Participation levels for the wealthy in leading social networks were 16% for MySpace, 13% for LinkedIn and 11% for Facebook.

WIMAX GETS $500 MILLION BACKING FROM GOOGLE

Google is serious about mobile wireless broadband. So much so, it announced a $500 million contribution to the new Clearwire-Sprint WiMax business last week. Of course, Google has its own best interests in mind since this investment ensures that the resulting broadband network is as open as possible and accepts Android handsets and devices. Rumors say Google will most likely be the default search engine on devices connected to the network. Google hopes the network will expand advanced high speed wireless Internet access in the U.S, allow consumers to utilize any lawful applications, content and devices without blocking, degrading or impairing Internet traffic and engage in reasonable and competitively-neutral network management. These are exciting times prefacing a new wireless era!

SOCIAL MEDIA POWER IN 48 HOUR ACTION

Andrew (Andy) Sauter, also known as the author of smoexpert.com, shows us an example of how with only an hour of work on a Saturday morning, a zero dollar budget and a 56K modem, he made international news within 48 hours. The subject? A Clinton Obama gun mailer. Thanks to all the social channel players who made it possible: Flickr, Digg, Reddit, Technorati and YouTube; CNN and NewsWeek picked up the buzz and took a mundane negative mailer and made it an international sensation. A mailer, which was probably only meant to be viewed by maybe forty to fifty thousand people, reached millions on an international level. This is just one example out of millions of the power of social media optimization.

SEE WHO’S SPORTING THE LATEST BRANDS AT COOLSPOTTERS

Coolspotters is a newly launched site that focuses on celebrities and the products they wear in various photos. It allows users to track stars, products, brands, TV shows, movies, places and events and encourages them to talk about and purchase those items shown. The idea of the site is to show connections between people and things. These connections are called “spots” (i.e. “I spotted that”), and show details on the item. If something is incorrect, users can change or remove it, and add new people and things. Coolspotters is the first collaborative site that gets users to do most of the work where it’s essentially a structured data wiki. The end result is a ton of highly structured, highly valuable information. Users can search, find and purchase related things all in one celebrity-filled hot spot.

MYSPACE MAKES FRIENDS WITH TWITTER

Myspace decided to jump on the Twitter bandwagon and announced an added profile-sharing function (called Data Availability) which will enable users to update both profiles at the same time. The new service allows MySpace users to indicate whether they would like to make information in their MySpace profile visible on other sites such as eBay, Yahoo and Photobucket too. MySpace said it would like to expand it to other partners who might be interested as well. It seems Myspace is trying to become a social network aggregator itself and following the idea behind the likes of Digsby and Yoono. When asked on a conference call whether Facebook would eventually become involved in the program, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe said "This project is open to any site out there that wants to work with us. We're happy to work with Facebook if they want to join up with us on this project."