All posts by Editor

Websites, work connexions

Should Google Acquire A Social Networking Site?

With rumours flying around that Google has purchased Beboo and coupled with the fact the it has just signed a new deal with Nokia It would appear that it is time for Google to consider buying a social network platform. It lost out last month to Microsoft to get piece of Face book. Who would be the obvious choice. Given that Google is a market leader it would be looking for someone to match its market position. With Face book gone there are quite a few companies left to choose form. Here is my selection with comments

 

8. MarkTD : This is marketing networking and considering Google is one of the largest marketers on the internet this is an unlikely choice.

 

7. Newsvine : This network concentrates on news stories, it was launched in March 2006 read, write, and interact with the news. I have put this at number 8 as Google would be unlikely to be interested in Newsvine as it already has its own partners in providing News to it users accounts.

 

6. Plime : The social network that is groomed by users, it is an interesting concept but they have a lot work to do yet to refine the site and make it more workable.

 

5. del.icio.us: This enormously popular social bookmarking was the first before a whole line imitators. Graphics wise it would work well with Google unfortunately Google does offer its own bookmarking service for RSS feeds so it is an unlikely match here.

 

4. Reddit : As it explains in its own words is a source for what is new a popular on the internet. It is slightly more graphical then del.icio.us Probably too small for Google.

 

3. Shoutwire : Is quite similar to digg but not as popular. Yet again it is a question of seize….

 

2. Proppler : I Like this site, I like the way the software works. It has a lot users. Unfortunately they are owned by Aol who again were bought up by Time Warner so unlikely that they would sell to Google.

 

1. Digg: Is my choice. It is pretty much accepted as the site with highest amount of traffic and users, so it would be very interesting for Google. They could easily add it into their array of products where it would combine well with Youtube, Gmail, etc

 

Of course I have a personal favourite for them here but I am biased Wxc

Relationship

Adding Value To The Relationship

Adding value to a network, company or product if one stops to think about it, is really quite easy. When value is added the customer will want more. Yet it is quite amazing the number of people who struggle with this concept and persist in doing it the hard way.

Hence why February the 14 is such a popular day, because we take time to value what matters to us most and that is relationships. It is all about relationships. 

Happy Valentines.

 

brand, business, E-Commerce, service

Do You Trust The Internet?

Yesterday I came across to two glaring examples of misinformation. One was on the News vine site where someone had posted a story about presidential hopeful Obama. Without wanting to focus on the story as it has been removed It was quite clearly unfounded. But it does show how important it is that we remember the old motto believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see. Of course a web 2.0 social community will provide some form of control and editorship in place of where you may have a lone blog spouting misinformation.  
That is the problem in general with speculation, rumour and the internet. There is an awfully lot of information out there that probably is not correct but we have no idea how much. The number of dodgy e-commerce businesses that I have seen is really amazing. All sold by promises that they can never hope to achieve. If something sounds too good to be true it probably is on the internet. If there is none of the usual tracking methods such as feedback, users comments, transaction history then be very suspicious.
business, development, Websites

There is Negotiate the Negotiations

The rejection of the Microsoft deal by Yahoo is puzzling. While there are a lot of businessmen that could say that this is pure strategy as a matter of principle you should always reject the first deal to increase you bargain position. If that is the case then why did they wait 5 days to release that information. Of course by this rejection it could help to increase the Yahoo share price. The Microsoft bid is generous and there is clearly not enough room in the advertising market for three players. What will happen next?

Websites

Leo’s Top Five

Some of the best posts out and about on the internet.

Mathew Stibbe at bad language blog reminds us of the importance of a consultant and why we would hire one.

http://www.badlanguage.net/when-to-hire-a-consultant

Darren Rowse post about growing anticipation in your writing is a great read.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/02/08/more-on-how-to-build-anticipation-on-your-blog/

Aaron over SEO debates the pros and cons of affiliate marketing.

http://www.seobook.com/why-i-think-cj-com-aka-commission-junction-garbage-affiliate-program-service

I love the design of this website and I am not the only one in the short time it has been live it has grown to readership of 3000.

http://thinksimplenow.com/creativity/7-habits-of-highly-innovative-people/

The innovative face book has managed to get their users to translate face book into other languages. I have got to admire it.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/07/facebook-turns-1500-users-into-spanish-translation-slaves/

development, Marketing

Divorce Lawyers and GPS Clever Marketing?

Owen from the just sent this through this morning. It is website that can supposedly track mobile phones. I needed to see if someone was in the vicinity. So I clicked the link to the website. Give it go to see what I mean, and than I will explain more……

 

http://www.sat-gps-locate.com/english/index.html  

 

While the technology really does exist to be able to do this sort of tracking, the joke played upon the individually is humorous. The last laugh though is not on the joker. As you may or may not have noticed the last page was full of advertising. We can say with some certainty that even at a low conversion rate if the advert is visited for example 100,000 times that it will represent significant online revenue. So if you are planning a marketing campaign would you use this technique?