All posts by Editor

brand, business, Marketing, News, sales, service

Has Google Become Too Big?

Everybody loves Google or so the saying goes. A few years ago if you wore a Google T shirt you would be greeted by smiles as you walked down the street. But that was a couple of years ago. The market place has changed with Google now controlling at least 75 percent of the search engine market and respectively the same amount of advertising and they now hold a very secure position. Fundamentally Google has not done anything wrong. It is just that you have no choice when it comes to advertising. Small and big e-commerce sites all use Google advertising. For example Tech crunch , Digg etc.

Effectively there is no competition which means that Google can dictate terms and conditions and have a very big say over who does what in the market. If a website owner was to say the wrong thing they could find themselves on the other side of the fence with no advertisers. Now the much talked about takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft is the first step in readdressing this problem. I am still not comfortable though. Both of these companies have such a large influence and control of the most dynamic communication medium. Is it time that we should start to worry?

Maybe not just yet, but the signs are there. While we have all become Google search converts. What would it take for some of us to start using another search engine? The array of products that Google provides are truly amazing. From Gmail to Youtube all for no cost to the user and paid for by advertising. But as the old saying goes Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is Google too powerful?

Links, Owen, Traffic

What is Link Bait?

Internet Gurus will know what it is, but many that are new to the internet an e-commerce will not.

What you have to do is:

Think of a topical piece of news, that concerns you and your readers.

They will return the link because they think it is interesting or funny what you have written.

This is one of the keys to getting listed higher in google or social networking sites.

Then link in all relevant parties who have been discussing this.

It could be a list of your favorite websites, or list of resources.

Then let people know that you are linking to them. Like this one to Owen

development, Personal, work, writing

How Many Times do you Need to Blog

 I was just reading some history about Darren Rowse and how he got into blogging. He recommended that if you want to climb the ranks of blogs you would need to be blogging quite a few times a day. While I can see the effect in this: it would keep the search engines busy and your readers too. Most of us being frank probably only have one really good idea every couple days so blogging more than that could became a bit stale. Of course if my readers wanted to hear my opinions about the American elections and the price of oil and gold I could be persuaded, I would still probably want to blog within a team. Just for the editorial checks… What are your thoughts? would you like to write severely posts a day?

development, Marketing, News

Are you Going to be Watching the Election on the Internet?

I just came across this on the Tech Crunch blog, It was predicted and now it is happening. Instead of watching the elections on TV or reading it in the Newspapers. A lot of Americans will be getting their election news through blogs in Particular Ustream.TV.

Excerpt from blog:

“For those of you without C-SPAN, the Republican National Convention will be streamed live over the Web, and Ustream.TV has been chosen to be the official provider of live video streaming technology. (No doubt, other live streaming services such as Justin.TV,, Blog.tv, or Mogulus will be used by journalists and bloggers covering the event as well). The announcement is being made right now on Ustream.TV“

business, development

Failure can be Good

How many of us feel a fear of failure? asks Daniel Peters (Can not seem to locate his blog) from Petercorp. He claims that failing is good, his argument is, if everyone succeeded all the time. Not only would the world be an extremely boring place but there would be no opportunities for learning. By failing you learn a lot more if you the treat the experience as a way of doing things better next time. It can be good….. Do you punish your employees if they fail? or encourage them to learn? Where do you draw the line?

What are your best failures?

Personal, sales

Three Answers Yes, No, Maybe

Just yesterday I was talking about it again. It is not the first time. It always annoys me how presumable reasonable clever people are unable to answer their emails/calls. If someone writes to you or sends you something. There are three answers Yes, Maybe, No. The amount of people that have a problem with this is amazing. Of course we all know that no answer means that the person is not interested, but I would have much more respect for somebody who can write that in a e-mail. What do you think…?