Thank You for being a Friend

Posted by on January 31, 2007 at 09:55 AM

Log on to social networking giant MySpace and included right in the company logo is the slogan: a place for friends.

So, who exactly is a friend?

Growing up, a friend was most likely someone that you met in school, someone with whom you had common interests; maybe you would get together and hang out on the weekends. Your parents would often become friends with your friend's parents. During summer vacation you might call one another on the phone or write letters back and forth, always looking forward to the day that you would see each other in person.

Times have changed in a hurry. Communication is instantaneous with cell phones, text messages and e-mail. It's now possible to keep in touch with someone almost anywhere on the planet, and find out what they are doing right that minute.

It kind of takes away from the anticipation of receiving that letter a week or so later in the mailbox, don't you think? Still, there was something personal about that letter from your friend; the kind of stationery it was on, their handwriting style, it all added up to something that you saved, tucked away in a shoe box. Personality can get lost with e-mail in Times New Roman, font 12.

Back to MySpace, or really any of the social networking sites out there, people often have thousands of "friends". But I wonder, of the 382,079 friends I saw on one site, how many are really friends? Do you know each other's birthday, favorite restaurant, family or even real name? Is it in fact even safe to give personal information out to these "friends"?

As much as I may have looked forward to seeing my classmate in person, I cannot say that I would feel the same way about meeting an internet friend. Maybe it goes back to how people get to know each other in the first place. Whatever it is that brings two people together in friendship, an interest in snowboarding or similar taste in music, it takes some time to develop.

This is not to say that sincere, long lasting friendships cannot be found on the internet. But they will also take time to develop, which often goes against the nature of instant friendship that goes hand in hand with the online social networking scene.

When internet friends have a disagreement, there is a chance that the friendship could be over as fast as it began. A quick e-mail sent back and forth between parties, then it's off to the recycle bin and delete. It's hard to imagine ending a relationship with someone that I had spent some time with in this manner. In addition, rarely are the details of a friendship, good or bad, privy to thousands or millions of people.

While this basic human relationship has been affected by the internet, there are so many ways to use it to our advantage. The internet can be used to locate an old friend that we have lost touch with. It can be used to share pictures, videos or remind us of birthdays or anniversaries. It can bring together people that have common interests or situations to share experiences. The internet may even help introduce us to people around the world that we would never have known otherwise.

How we choose to use this tool to define friendship is up to us.

C.P.L. for Dummies

Posted by on January 30, 2007 at 01:56 PM

Raise your hand if you know how much you’re willing to pay for a lead through pay per click advertising, or any other marketing channel for that matter.

(If you raised your hand, take that same hand and give yourself a hearty pat on the back. You, my friend, are awesome!)

For those of you who didn’t raise your hand, listen up!

Online lead generation is one of the fastest growing trends in online marketing. Organizations of every size whose final sales process & closing happen both on and offline are turning to the web as a great source of highly qualified leads. The possibilities are great, as are the pitfalls for those who are less than well equipped.

Managing a paid search campaign without a definite understanding of the value of a lead is like wearing a welder’s mask while walking through the woods at night.

Before we go much farther, it’s worth defining this thing called a lead, and how it differs from a sales transaction. A lead, is generated when a prospect, or potential customer provides information to an organization in hopes of learning more about a product or service, but no sales transaction is made - yet.

Determining how much you’re willing to pay for a lead is relatively easy. Except that some thought needs to be given to the amount of site traffic needed to ultimately produce a sale.

Let’s do a story problem...

Company A’s ppc campaign produced 200 leads over the last three months. From those leads, 6 sales averaging $800.00 were closed. How much is one lead worth to Company A?

(sales / leads) x average sale = value of a lead

( 6 / 200 ) x $800.00 = $24.00

Armed with that knowledge, Company A can not spend more than $24 to profitably acquire a lead.

Now, if you didn’t raise your hand earlier, chances are you’re wondering the following:

"Hmmm, that’s nice, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China, or more importantly, my ppc campaign strategy?"

By determining that Company A shouldn’t spend more than $24 to acquire a lead, they can greatly refine their more granular performance metrics by examining the campaign data for that three month period of time:

:: Impressions: 18,000
:: Clicks: 2,600
:: Average cost per click: $0.45

So, if 2,600 clicks at $0.45 each translated into 150 leads, we know that Company A is currently paying $7.80 per lead. They deserve a pat on the back too! With such a comfortable gap between their current cost per lead, and the newly established ceiling of $24, Company A is free to expand their campaign in a more aggressive fashion in hopes of generating more leads and thus, more sales.

It’s well worth mentioning that while establishing these values, it’s VERY important to use campaign & sales figures that span a substantial period of time. Generally speaking, three months of data should suffice. Seasonality, social trends, marketplace competition etc. will greatly affect this as well, so be sure to consider those external factors in these calculations.

Now, go sharpen your pencil and dust off your adding machine; it’s time to do some math.

Keyword Inflation. . . Is It a Bad Thing?

Posted by on January 29, 2007 at 02:18 PM

Advertisers and marketers are abuzz about dreaded keyword inflation, also called cost-per-click (CPC) inflation. More advertisers are entering the paid search market and those that are already in are spending more on their campaigns.

According to TNS Internet, advertising will increase by 13.4% in 2007 while traditional media ad spending will decline in some channels such as newspaper (- .9%) and spot TV (-2.8%). eMarketer predicts an increase of 18.9% in ad spending in 2007 and a 22.1% increase in 2008. The increase in spending can cause inflation.

Keyword inflation can also be caused by other factors. Chris Sherman of SearchEngineWatch.com predicted in July 2006 that keyword inflation would explode over the next few years, especially as big brands enter the online advertising market and try to protect their brand-related keywords.

Seasonal ad spending can cause temporary inflation. During the 2005 holiday season cost per click hit a high and then dropped in January but not to December 2005 levels. The same happened during the 2006 holiday season. Although reports with actual 2006 data are not out yet, I’ve seen this phenomenon with my own clients.

The costs of paid search advertising may be going up but the market is also changing and effectiveness is going up. Marketers are diversifying beyond the big three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) to vertical search engines. Smart marketers are taking advantage of the search tools that specifically target a particular audience demographic by using geo-targeting, day parting, and by writing highly-targeted ads.

Consumer behavior is also changing. The Interactive Advertising Bureau suggests that consumers are now more likely to make a purchase or request additional information than in previous years.

Paid search campaigns had a special benefit for many retail companies this holiday season. Not only did consumers purchase products online, they also visited retail stores after clicking on online ads.

All of this tells me that we are in an exciting time for online marketing. It’s growing. It’s changing. It’s evolving. As with any campaign, daily monitoring of key performance indicators such as cost per acquisition, conversion rates, and return on investment is critical. Keep these numbers in line and enjoy the ride.

Determining Search Engine Optimization Workload

Posted by duncan on January 26, 2007 at 09:28 AM

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a complex process that requires both marketing smarts and technical verve. However, it is possible to discuss the topic if you know anything about search engines and web sites.

I talk to people every day who are thinking about optimizing their web sites to position better in the natural/organic search engine results. Today I want to share a few tips on how to figure out just how much work may be needed to get you closer to the top.

As you look for ways to optimize your site you'll find everything from cheap twenty dollar do-it-yourself software solutions to robust outsourced enterprise solutions that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why the disparity? It all has to do with the scope of your needs. I doubt the do-it-yourself software solutions have ever worked for anyone, and yet not everyone needs (or can afford) the far reaching enterprise approach. So, where to begin?

I like to look at three major factors to get the conversation started:

1. How many keywords would you like to target?


2. How competitive are those keywords, or better said, how many sites that position well in search results for those keywords are heavily optimized?


3. Where is your site currently positioning for your keywords?

Here’s how these three factors affect the amount of work you'll be setting out to do if you want to catch the top ranking sites and position among them.

1. The more keywords you want to target, the more work you'll need to do.


2. The more competitive the keywords are, the more work you'll need to do.


3. If you are currently thousands of results from the top, you'll have more work to do than if you are currently positioning near the top.

The only way to sensibly tackle SEO is to take a best practices approach. Give the search engines what they want, rather than trying to trick them into believing your site belongs near the top. Neither the search engine owners and engineers, nor your potential audience will be happy if they find a site in the top listings that is obviously there because of trickery.

While today’s tips only scratch the surface, they always seem to help new people understand what may be ahead of them. No one should be fooled into thinking they can pay a small price and rocket to the top of search results. If it were that easy, every site would be a guaranteed number one listing. Impossible? Yes, impossible. There are no guarantees when it comes to SEO.

Street Smarts vs. 'net Smarts

Posted by on January 25, 2007 at 08:56 AM

What's Happening :: Part I
It used to be television, now it's myspace.com that garners that valuable real-estate about three inches in front of our kids' noses. And just as my parents encouraged me to turn it off and go outside, the next wave is happening; only this time there is a new twist.

Some neighborhoods require a little more street smarts than others. I grew up in Detroit. Spending time outside and getting to know my environment and its inhabitants was a crucial part of my safety, as it allowed me to hone the social intuitive skills that we often refer to as street smarts. With the emergence of social network sites, however, the time our teens spend interacting online is starting to become as important as the time they spend outside.

As any parent knows, you try your best to give your kids all the tools they need in life as early as possible, because one day, when they have to start making decisions for themselves, you want them to make smart decisions. But what can we do when our kids are growing up in a social environment that is very much different than the one in which we grew up?

As a parent, I say we continue to talk to them about 'net safety and let them keep practicing. In a world where digital communication continues to reach into unpredictable new territories, the 'net sense they are gathering now, will serve them well later.

What Does it Mean :: Part II
When I put on my marketing hat, however, it's interesting to see how this new 'net dynamic is turning the tables. Kids, as they gather more 'net sense, are going to be adults with an unprecedented degree of 'net sense. They will have seen just about every cheap marketing trick in the book along the way, and they'll know what you're trying to do before you do.

The lesson? Just as social networks can be a breeding ground for people who may wish to trick or deceive our kids, the time our kids spend on these sites is increasing their ability to differentiate between what is honest and what is BS.

If you are a marketer trying to push your product through deceptive means like spam or flogs, you will immediately be tossed in the BS pile by the generation that has more buying potential than any other generation in history.

But if you jump in the fray and meet them on their terms with promotion of your products and/or services, you might just win over some fans. And having 'net-smart fans on a social network is just what you want.

Search Darwin-ism

Posted by drew on January 24, 2007 at 02:58 PM

The web is constantly evolving around us; that much is obvious. A new website here and a new technology there allow us to see where the web is headed.

But what about technologies outside the realm of the Internet?

A recent Search Insider blog post speculated a statement made by MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson that MySpace has "replaced MTV." The blogger concludes that MTV hasn't been replaced, but has evolved with a changing generation.

So are offline technologies evolving into web 2.0 technologies?

Spout.com is another example of evolution. If MySpace is the web 2.0 MTV, Spout is the HBO. Spout brings a new dimension to the world of movies, films and DVDs by creating the social networking that this area of interest was desperately searching for.

How often do you and your friends talk about movies? Spout serves up movie blogs with reviews and news from the industry. How often do you find yourself walking the aisles of a video rental store or perusing the Netflix library looking for an interesting title? Spout has also incorporated movie lists into its site, allowing users to share opinions in a Top 10-style format.

And who hasn't already made the comparison that the PPC ad is the new newspaper ad? Strikingly similar even in appearance at times, these two forms of media are obviously related. MTV seems to be surviving well if MySpace is really evolving above it, but the newspaper industry is in desperate need of help. Google sees promise in this media still though (see my previous post: Apple Hitmen & Google Bodyguards).

So what else will make the evolutionary transition to the web?

Wikipedia Adds Nofollow Tag to Links

Posted by teal on January 23, 2007 at 11:44 AM

In an attempt to limit/reduce linkspam, Wikipedia has implemented a nofollow attribute to all external links.

Essentially what this does is tell the search engines to ignore that link.

Because of its high Google PageRank and fabulous reputation with the search engines, Wikipedia has positioned itself inadvertently as the hotspot for link building and linkspam. With these credentials, who wouldn't want a backlink from Wikipedia?

A Wikipedia page has been developed to help explain the change - because as you can imagine, there are a lot of people concerned or just plain up in arms about this. Arguments against the nofollow attribute seem to revolve around/stem from the following arguments, which can be found at Wikipedia talk:Nofollow:

... linkspam can be quickly removed. The bot made 67 spam edits in 10 hours, and a spam URL remained in the article (PHP) for hours despite reversion, because an early reversion was not fully done and later reversions just reverted to it.

....spammers will be undeterred by "nofollow". Unsophisticated spammers who add links manually might not be aware of "nofollow", but the operator of a sophisticated bot that constantly switches domains and IPs would probably be knowledgeable enough to be deterred by "nofollow" if he had known that we had implemented it only a few week earlier.

And some that agree that the nofollow is the way to go...

Wikipedia is a big target, and provides a big payoff for spammers when they manage to get a link hosted....Wikipedia is the single largest wiki out there (or if you count the languages as separate wikis, it's the largest three wikis and eight of the top ten). With nofollow active, linkspammers should quickly get the idea that wikis aren't a good place to target....

It's an ever debated topic and everyone has an opinion or thought on the matter, including Matt Cutts. In an interview with SEOMoz, Cutts states that in a perfect world,

....Wikipedia would add nofollow to their untrusted links, but work out ways to allow trusted links to remove the nofollow attribute.

Overall, the consensus is that Wikipedia should remove the nofollow tagging and revitalize their fight against linkspam with other, more specific tools like blacklists, spam guards, and IP blocking to name a few. Most believe that the spammers will continue to add illegitimate links, either unaware of the nofollow or disinterested in what it might mean for their efforts.

Having gone back and forth on this issue for quite some time now, Wikipedia's decision to implement this tag obviously comes with some repercussions - instead of punishing just the "bad links" they are also stripping legitimate links of the much-stressed link popularity, the main determinant in PageRank.

Tags:
Wikipedia & NoFollow
Google PageRank
Link Popularity

Be A Guru By Knowing One — It'll Help Your SEO

Posted by on January 22, 2007 at 02:21 PM

Recently I’ve noted a number of B2B companies successfully aligning themselves with celebrity names--gurus. What I found interesting was the alliance improved that company’s reputation as an expert, a leader, a celebrity.

In fact, I’ve seen gurus aligning themselves with other gurus. For example, Seth Godin reviewing Tom Peters’ book. Peters has written all those great “Excellence‎ and “Passion‎ books that have propelled more than a couple decades of corporate change; Godin has a brilliant blog and a library of books including Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.

These alliances are showing up in search results.

Here’s how it works: someone types in “Tom Peters business tips‎ and the first natural Google result is Tom’s website. And listed in the SERP copy is Seth Godin’s name. Why? Because Seth has done a review of Tom’s latest book and has a text mention on Tom's site.

One of my favorite gurus, Tom Kelley, co-founder of leading design and invention firm IDEO and author of The Art of Innovation asked Tom Peters to write the forward of his book. Searching Google for “Tom Kelley innovation tips‎ turns up an Amazon listing where Tom Peters name is part of the SERP copy. And so on and so forth.

I just read a ClickZ recap of a publishing marketing seminar telling that the average book sale volume is 500 per year. Yikes! I’m sure that 20 percent of the business-book-reading public buys 80 percent of the books. So the smart author is cross-marketing to increase reach and book sales to find all those volume buyers. Incidentally Seth Godin was on that panel.

Now I should mention a pet peeve of mine in the implementation of this practice of alignment: drive-by connections.

I’ve had the chance to meet Tom Peters in person. Actually had dinner with him. Nice guy, great speaker, inspirational lifestyle. I spent a day with Tom Kelley. Another great guy. A little different delivery style, but the same level of poignancy. Gave me some of the best personal career advice of my life. I also had the pleasure of spending a couple days with Steve Zades, co-founder of the Odyssey Network and author of Mad Dogs Dreamers and Sages: Growth in the Age of Ideas. He’s one of those courageous voices in my head that drives me outside my comfort zone. And of course I get to work every day with our own Oneupweb visionary, Lisa Wehr, who continues to re-invent online marketing even as I write. I’ve seen her inspire corporate-wide change in a single phone call. Of course, she’s a motivating force in my world forever.

I mention these people because being aligned with them would be an honor for me. And even a small amount of interaction with them, anchors my connection.

Therefore, I personally find it cold, parasitical and self-serving to leverage the reputations of strangers. That’s not to say that it can’t work. I’ve never met Godin, for example. (Can you tell just by reading this post?) One can get a sense of his personality through his blog and I can effectively use his tactics as examples. But the reference still lacks something, doesn’t it?

And so I challenge you. Add “get connected and aligned with B2B celebrities‎ to your list of New Year’s resolutions. Meet someone great and use that meeting to be greater.

MySpace for Your Pooch?

Posted by on January 19, 2007 at 12:21 PM

Laugh all you want - but one of the biggest trends in niche social networking is the online pet community.

If humans can have Friendster, Facebook, and MySpace (to name a few), why can't our beloved pets have a place of their own?

Celebrating its third anniversary, Dogster and sister site, Catster, are laughing all the way to the bank. Founded in 2004, Dogster offers pet lovers and their furry friends a place to talk about their pooches in groups, forums, diaries, videos, photos and profiles. Within minutes you can create a profile for your pet featuring likes, dislikes, and favorite food and tricks.

As a social network, users can connect with other users and feature their top doggy friends. Some Web 2.0 features exist such as tagging and blogs, all with a Web 1.0 look and feel to it - but recently Dogster raised $1 million in funding from investors to grow the site and add more Web 2.0 features.

Dogster reports having over 240,000 members and serving 10 million page views last month. Through the use of Google AdWords, banner advertising and premium memberships, reports show that Dogster and Catster have been profitable with a six-figure monthly revenue - highly unusual among Web 2.0 companies. Maybe Dogster can teach other Web 2.0 companies a few tricks.

With 63% of U.S. households owning pets, large corporations have jumped on the Dogster and Catster advertising bandwagon including Disney, PetsMart, Clorox, Warner Bros and VPI Pet Insurance.

The fact is - people are crazy about their pets. Dogster and Catster are a place where pet-lovers can look for information, find pets to adopt, get advice, meet new friends and even find exclusive hotels for cats and dogs.

I recently created a Dogster page for my dog, and within hours he already had "pup pal" friend invites from other pooches in the area. At this rate, I'm beginning to think that my dog is more popular than I am.

Web 2.0 & the NBA

Posted by on January 18, 2007 at 12:54 PM

Being a closeted Chicago Bulls fan in the heart of Detroit Pistons territory, I’d like to spend a moment on the Dallas Mavericks and owner Mark Cuban.

For as obnoxious and odd-looking as he is, it’s admirable that Cuban has not been content to sit around and count his dot-com boom money. Instead, he has continued to innovate in a way that’s resulted in arguably the most passionate fans in the NBA. (Following their owner's lead, they're probably also the whiniest.)

Cuban's blog is poorly punctuated and sometimes nonsensical, but generally entertaining. In some ways, it’s the precise example of how a corporate blog can boost a brand.

BlogMaverick.com shows the owner’s passion for his team and its fans, whether he’s pontificating on awful NBA officiating, the worthlessness of the three-piece suit, or his latest NBA conspiracy theory.

The Mavericks took another step as the nation’s most forward-thinking sports franchise earlier this week, when they launched a wiki committed to the franchise. The Mavericks are encouraging fans to post memories, photos, and thoughts on the team and, as a wiki, it promises to be ever-evolving.

Early on, content is a mixed bag.

The entry for this year's November 12 Mavericks win over the Portland Trailblazers, for instance, includes the full Associated Press report as well as complete game stats.

Meanwhile, the entry for the November 24th game features a more personal spin on the game:

“I actually had to take my old girlfriend out on a date this night. Luckily, I dropped her off at her house and turned on my radio and listened to the last 4 minutes of play. With 1 minute left in the game, I made it home and watched the ending. And what an ending it was! Clutch free throws by Nowitzki secured the win.‎

So, no, it’s not perfect, but that’s kind of the point, right? It’s another way for the Mavericks to develop an even deeper connection with their fans and, as a search engine marketer, I’m impressed.

Staying Up-to-Date with Your Backlinks

Posted by steve on January 17, 2007 at 01:10 PM

Backlinks. Their importance has been discussed to nearly a nauseating point. Most webmasters realize that in order to increase the relevancy of their site in the eyes of the search engines, acquiring quality backlinks is a vital piece to the puzzle. What I want to talk about is not the importance of acquiring backlinks, but the importance of keeping the backlinks you have acquired up-to-date.

It's no secret that increasing your site's link popularity can be extremely time consuming. This is how the search engines want it. They prefer you build natural, relevant inbound links over time; not using a reciprocal scheme or inadvisable, spam technique.

You're a webmaster who didn't want to risk being penalized or banned by the search engines, so you spent the time writing and submitting articles, authoring press releases for distribution, writing reviews, submitting your site to worthwhile directories, and partaking in a number of other prolonged link-building initiatives. It took months, but you eventually increased your link popularity ten fold.

Six months later the new site goes live, and all is lost. At least temporarily.

This type of example happens on a frequent basis. Domains change and all previous link-building efforts are abandoned. It often takes a substantial amount of time to acquire quality backlinks, so why not allocate a fraction of that time to find out who is/was linking to you, and take the necessary steps to get those sites to update the links accordingly?

When receiving notice of an upcoming domain change, putting forth an all but obsessive effort to update all current backlinks should be at the top of the priority list. If the new site is launched before you are able to notify all those who link to you, continue your endeavor until each backlink has been updated, or at least an attempt has been made.

Updating your inbound links not only applies to domain changes, however. Several circumstances may call for the assessment of your site's backlinks, including the addition or removal of available products and services, pricing updates, contact information, or even the location of your business.

Staying up-to-date with your backlinks not only ensures that your site is generating the highest level of traffic possible, it also guarantees that both users and search engines are provided with an accurate reflection of your company and brand image.

Let's Face the Gen Next Facts

Posted by anne on January 16, 2007 at 01:59 PM

With online social networking being a hot tip-of-the-tongue topic, one group in particular has embraced this use of technology and the internet to make the connection with people in new and distinctive ways.

Meet Generation Nexters.

Generation Nexters are those born between 1980-2000 (69.7 million people to date). They are those born of Boomer parents and early Xers into our current high-tech times. Although the youngest workers, they represent the most technologically adept and fast learners. Defining events with this group include school violence, multiculturalism, and TV talk shows. They value civic duty, achievement and diversity.

The NewsHour with Jim Lehr highlights Generation Nexters covering current topics, demographics and documentaries.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and MyYearbook, allow members to post a personal profile complete with photos and descriptions of interests and hobbies. After some research, I’ve learned of some of the statistics of usage: A majority of Gen Nexters have used one of these social networking sites and more than four-in-ten have created a personal profile. The fact that this group embraces this new form of socializing online makes it easier for them to stay connected with their friends and family.

On a political front, Generation Nexters are somewhat more interested in keeping up with politics and national affairs than were young people a generation ago. Still, only a third says they follow what’s going on in government and public affairs “most of the time.‎ According to Pew surveys conducted in 2006, nearly half of young people (48 percent) identified more with the Democratic Party, while just 35 percent affiliated more with the GOP. This makes Generation Next the least Republican generation. In fact, voter turnout by this group has been the highest ever as a result of their tech-savvy abilities to stay in tune on political issues along with MTV’s hype on the importance of voting, “Rock the Vote.‎ Between 2000 and 2004, voter turnout among young people increased significantly interrupting a decades-long decline in turnout among the young.

As a HR professional and proud Boomer parent with a couple of Generation Nexters of my own, my concern is that we’ve become too comfortable with communication on the web and thus may allow our oral communication skills to suffer.

Will face-to-face interviews become more difficult for individuals who depend on these social networks to serve as their mainstream of communication? Will it become more difficult to find those individuals with excellent interpersonal skills? Will candidates possess the ability to be comfortable or at ease with an in-person interview or will they drop to their knees and beg for a keyboard? I hope not. I hope they will see when it is necessary to play the communication card and meet their feared enemy face-to-face.

The word has its place. Let’s hope social networking allows others to communicate and keep in touch with one another and not take a toll on our ability to communicate in person. If we’re smart, we will see its value. As an employer, telecommuting is not always an option.

Survival, Socialization, Entertainment

Posted by on January 15, 2007 at 10:59 AM

Rodney stares longingly out the grimy window of his second-story apartment at the orange glow of the slowly setting sun, reflecting on the day's tasks and achievements, taking his last draw on a dying cigarette. He can feel his heart pounding violently within his chest as if trying to break free from the horrible darkness racing wildly through his veins. One final rush of hot blood to his face and the calm takes back over — he has a new MySpace friend request.

Rodney is fictional—his name has been changed to protect his innocence, or his guilt. What do you see when you look at MySpace? Pathetic people with too much free time and nothing better to do than to waste their life reading and posting frivolous content to a digital world rife with puerile adults and aspiring anti-socials? Or an altruistic society; a virtual utopia garnering limitless praise from its denizens, limited only by the bounds of the author's creativity?

"Technology is what we make of it, and neither business nor technology will change the basic nature of human needs and yearnings. As with everything else, the evolution slowly but inexorably will cause technology to move away from plain survival through a society based on communication and finally into the realm of entertainment."

—Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux. From the book Just for Fun, the inspiration for this post.

Don't bite your thumb at the new shift in society. Instead, be glad the web has finally evolved into a source of perpetual entertainment and communication. Take comfort knowing that we are now more connected as a species than we ever have been; drop your preconceptions and bias — maybe even get involved. Sitting on the sidelines just means you're missing out on where the world is heading. (Think of MySpace as a way to connect Eleanor Rigby with the priest, before her funeral.)

Social Semantics & Web 2.0

Posted by on January 11, 2007 at 09:00 AM

Ask anybody what Web 2.0 means - or is (is it a concept? a thing? a phenomenon? all of the above?) and you're bound to get a variety of answers - all of them different.

As fellow employees have pointed out here and here, the majority of ideas (both accurate as well as misguided) about Web 2.0 seem to be evolving faster than I can type this blog post.

Aside from a litany of interpretations about what Web 2.0 is, other jargony new buzzwords are also popping up left and right, such as Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization. I would like to tell you how these two things are different, except I have no desire to be held responsible for a definition that is likely to expire in a matter of days.

And would someone please explain to me, once and for all, why Social Tagging and Social Bookmarking continue to be lumped into the same category? There are a litany of sites that use tagging, but if one more person says to me that Flickr is a bookmarking site, I am going to scream.

Speaking of semantics and social tagging, I also wanted to add that the social networking/bookmarking/media or whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it phenomenon is also something that is of great interest to social and cognitive scientists.

From James Surowiecki talking about the wisdom of crowds (not to be confused with the anarchy of the mob) to George Lakoff analyzing what categories reveal about the mind in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, there's a lot to be learned - and defined - when it comes to Web 2.0. I mean social media marketing. I mean... oh, never mind.

EV SSL Certificates – The New Look of Internet Security

Posted by chip on January 10, 2007 at 11:18 AM

In an effort to increase internet security and to combat increasingly sophisticated phishing scams, the CA/Browser Forum, a group comprised of web browser creators and certification authorities, has created the Extended Verification SSL Certificate.

What this new and improved security certificate is attempting to do is create a vetting process for obtaining a certificate that is more uniform and more rigorous than ever before. This is supposed to ensure that sites that have obtained an EV SSL Certificate are who they claim to be, secure and able to be trusted.

To accompany this improved level of authentication on the back end, most of the major web browser companies, including Mozilla, KDE, Opera and Microsoft (I say most because Apple's Safari is noticeable absent) are releasing updated browser versions. These updated web browsers are specifically designed to display the status of a web site's security certificate in a fashion that is more obvious than ever before. Taking the https URL and the padlock icon further, this new look of security comes with color coding.

That's right; by the end of this month IE7 and Opera 8 (and quite possibly others) will be communicating the presence of the EV SSL Certificate, and the security level of the site, to users through a color coded message that appears right in the address bar. If a site is EV SSL-secured, the user's address bar will turn green and include information about site ownership and the associated certificate authority:

If a site is deemed "suspicious" the user will get a yellow address bar (please don't confuse this with the yellow bar currently used by Mozilla to communicate that a site is secure – maybe that wasn't thought all the way through?):

If a site is deemed a phishing risk the address bar turns red:

(Screenshots courtesy of cabforum.org & blogs.msdn.com)

What this means to the user: They can feel more secure than ever processing online transactions of all sorts with the confidence that is provided by this new standard in security verification. Assuming of course that this system proves to be reliable - it doesn't take too many false positives/negatives or system glitches for people to either turn a feature like this off or simply ignore it altogether.

What this means to the ecommerce website: Site owners should do all they can to ensure that users don't get that scary red address bar when they come to make online purchases. In my opinion, this includes not only purchasing an EV SSL Certificate, but running tests across all browser types to ensure that things are working properly and your site isn't giving off a false negative.

What this means to Certification Authorities: A sudden surge in revenue as their entire client base suddenly upgrades security certificates. You didn't really think that you were going to get away with purchasing an EV certificate for the same price as a regular SSL certificate, did you? Quite the contrary; VeriSign is charging almost 4 times as much.

While that may seem like a significant price hike, it pales in comparison to losing the confidence of your customer base. As any online store owner should know, making potential customers feel safe and secure is vital to continued success.

Do You Lead a Second Life?

Posted by on January 09, 2007 at 10:54 AM

For a tech guy, I can sometimes be a little behind on all the latest and greatest tech news, though it's one of my new year's resolutions to fix that.

A couple months ago I was hearing a lot about Second Life, so I checked out their website, and soon forgot about it. My interest was piqued when, just yesterday, the source code to the Second Life client was made open-source. I've always been a big fan of open-source software, and applaud Linden Lab for releasing their client.

For those of you not sufficiently familiar with Second Life, it's precisely that, a virtual second life rendered in 3D graphics. Users interact with this virtual world via a piece of client software that they install on their computers. In Second Life you have a virtual self called an avatar; you can own land, buildings, vehicles, businesses, etc.

The unique aspects of Second Life that distinguish it from MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing games), is that in it you can create “anything‎, build “anything‎, and set it to life using scripting. So not only can you interact with your surroundings, you can change them too. And now with the client software going open source, the innovation of others may allow even further customization.

Now, one might think, that's cool and all, some nifty technology and stuff, but what's it all really worth? What becomes interesting to businesses is the currency of Second Life, the Linden dollar, which is bought with real money.

At the time of this writing, the statistic posted on the Second Life website was $1,096,200(USD) spent within the Second Life world in the past 24 hours. People buy and sell all sorts of things within Second Life: real estate, clothing, cars, stereos, guns, swords. Those Linden dollars can then be exchanged back for real world money.

Second Life has a fairly large real world presence. On the Second Life website there are links to several blogs and fan-sites. A Technorati search resulted in 229 blogs, and over 11,000 blog posts related to Second Life. With some 2.5 million registered users, 10,000 to 20,000 concurrent users, and a good size web presence, the Second Life community could present a great deal of marketing opportunities, both in “real life‎ and “in-world‎.

To be successful, I think one would have to have something that would be worthwhile to Second Life users - maybe a product that is a bit pricey in real life, but users could easily own in their Second Life. Strong product name recognition may also benefit “in-world‎ products. Second Life may also present a way to garner some additional audience for your product, such as artists exposing their work to new audiences, musicians getting their name out (yes you can perform live music in Second Life too), inventors trying out their inventions in a virtual world to see if they're well-received.

Anything one creates in Second Life, one retains Intellectual Property rights to, both “in-world‎ and offline. So if you have a brand or product, you might think about having a Second Life presence. Selling your product “in-world‎ might just increase sales in the real world, and you make money on both. Not a bad deal.

I hope to soon download the source code for the Second Life client, and play with it a little more. Perhaps I'll have a little more to say about that next time. Till then.

Schizophrenic Thoughts of Santa as a Halloween Ornament

Posted by on January 08, 2007 at 01:16 PM

I admit it. I’m one of those whining traditionalists who scream when the red and green holiday crape paper starts running its colors atop the orange pumpkins. I cry foul when the animated Dracula guarding the store entrance is sitting astride Rudolf, and the poor deer is showing suspicious puncture wounds. I go screaming from the store if I hear “Jingle Bells Rock‎ on the supermarket intercom a week before I consider shopping for the Thanksgiving turkey.

That’s the sentimental me. But there’s another me. There’s the marketing guy me, the one that says you fish when the fish are hungry. And if the online holiday fish are circling around Halloween, spooky as it sounds, you’d better get ready to wet your line.

We just finished a study about 2006 online holiday shopping trends. Based on the aggregate behavior of over a million shoppers on a range of e-tailing sites, we tested some prevailing wisdom about when and how people do their online holiday shopping. We looked at traffic, sales and conversion rates week-by-week starting the last week in September and continuing through the end of the year.

As expected, holiday sales and traffic rose as expected, peaking during the weeks from December 4th through December 17th and dropping the week following. The study also showed that sales and traffic levels the week before Christmas were still higher than our base week; sales, in fact, were substantially higher.

Though not the start of the buying season, Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) lived up to expectations, marking high traffic and conversion rates and extraordinary sales levels. And, two out of three of the biggest sales days were, as predicted, Mondays.

All that’s fine and good. But the study also found that online holiday shopping season starts earlier than once believed. Traffic started rising prior to November around (gulp) Halloween, and continued until a predictable pre-Thanksgiving lull in traffic and conversions. Another surprise: while conversion rates generally followed the expected trends, peaking between December 4th and December 17th, the post-peak activity did not decline as quickly as expected. Apparently, later is better than not at all, when it comes to seasonal gifting. (Another blow to this holiday traditionalist.)

So, part of me is in mourning – this holiday creep is only going to get creepier. The hackneyed “Christmas in July‎ sale may no longer be a novelty promotion. Meanwhile, the marketing guy says, “Let’s get this baby on the road sooner. Let’s test during 'Back to School', tweak the creative and be ready to hit the ground running in time for the Sci-Fi Channel’s Freddy Krueger marathon."

The complete study will be ready on our website, Oneupweb.com, any day now. Until then, let me be the first to wish you and yours a great Fourth of July.

Vertical vs. Horizontal Search

Posted by vern on January 05, 2007 at 01:36 PM

There seems to be an increase in the press about vertical search engines recently. And calls to my office from vertical sales reps are on the rise. "Highly targeted, extremely relevant, cost effective" are phrases used in practically every sales pitch.

But when you get right down to measuring effectiveness by ROI, conversion rates and traffic levels, how do they stack up against the horizontal engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN?

We've been testing paid placements with a number of verticals for some time and results have been mixed. As recently as 9 months ago, choices were pretty limited in the vertical search engine arena. Not anymore! Regardless of the client business focus and industry, there's a vertical search engine that promises to deliver the highly targeted and extremely relevant search exposure the sales reps promise.

Relevancy is one thing. But can the vertical engines deliver the goods when it comes to conversions? Our experience has shown that conversion rates with the verticals is certainly on par with the horizontals and, depending on the client, can deliver higher conversion rates.

The downside is search volume. Sure, traffic is very targeted and converts well, but the volume of traffic we see from the verticals is disappointing.

By their very nature the vertical search engines are attempting to exploit interest in various niche markets and therefore see much less traffic than the horizontals. The more targeted their audience the smaller the pool of users. And despite the low traffic levels, costs are typically higher than the horizontal engines. Many suffer from inadequate marketing budgets and haven't yet grabbed the attention of their target audience. Some even lack a basic level of traffic reporting that makes campaign management a challenge.

What's a responsible search marketer to do? Diversify!

At Oneupweb we take an integrated approach and develop a comprehensive online marketing strategy for our clients. Our recommendations and initiatives are based on their immediate and long-term goals and objectives.

SEO, PPC, podcasting development and delivery, custom landing page design, shopping engine feed management, banner advertising and more are all examined as potential elements of the marketing battle plan.

The point is that one single thing - vertical search engines for example - cannot do the job alone. The verticals certainly have demonstrated to us that they can add value to the marketing mix.

Take an integrated approach to your search marketing efforts and reap the rewards diversification can bring.