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Digg Dumps Google in Favor of 3-Year Microsoft Deal

posted on July 25, 2007

Kevin Rose has announced Digg has decided to drop Google in favor of a 3-year exclusive deal with Microsoft.

Hey everyone ? I wanted to give you a heads-up before the official announcement is made later today. We?ve signed on Microsoft as our new partner to sell and serve the ads on Digg. It?s a deal similar to the one Facebook signed with Microsoft last year.

This move gives us an advertising partner with a larger organization and a more scalable technology platform to keep pace with Digg?s growth. Best of all, it lets the Digg team completely focus on new feature development. Federated Media, which has been an awesome partner for the last year and a half, will continue working with Digg focusing on integrated sponsorships and custom programs like the Arc project in labs.

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MyBlogLog SchMOes: Two Months Later

posted on July 25, 2007

Hard to believe it’s been two months since MyBlogLog first announced their tagging features—and recommended tagging spammers “SchMOes” for Social Media Optimizers. (Why didn’t they just go with “Spammer”?) While it led to a good bit of backlash, they’ve kept the tag.

But is anyone using it? Not really. As of this writing, there were a grand total of 16 MyBlogLog members tagged as SchMOes. And of those 17, 8 of them had tagged themselves. And not in the preemptive way that Robyn Tippins recommended—they’ve proudly kept the tag as part of their identity, instead of hiding it on their profile.

Unfortunately, it seems that instead of helping to label (and thus discourage?) spammers, tagging has only given spammers another way to get links and promote their sites. Looking through some of MyBlogLog’s top communities and their authors, in addition to some relevant tags, I found some tags in categories like these:

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More Summer Time Search Marketing Tips

posted on July 25, 2007

See also Kelvin Newman’s summer time SEM tips.

By Ryan Douglas

Don’t let the summer whiz past you and leave you unprepared for Q4 holiday season. Spend some of those long, sweltering days prepping your AdWords, YSM, and adCenter accounts. With some work, your search engine marketing performance can shine this holiday season. So grab some popsicles, put down the TV remote and follow these suggestions for beating the heat and preparing for the holiday season.

  • If you didn’t do any “spring cleaning” of your account it is not too late. I strongly suggest that you prune any extremely poor performing keywords or ad copy.

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Pilgrim’s Picks for July 25

posted on July 25, 2007

Happy hump-day! Here’s this morning’s piping hot marketing news.

Whatcha got? You have our blessing to leave a link to your hottest blog post, in the comments below.

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Ustream Adds New Features to Live Video Service

posted on July 25, 2007

Ustream has announced a series of upgrades to their live video streaming service, making it even more interactive with viewers.

Here’s what they’ve added:

The Shout Meter:

Every time you click, you boost both your personal shout volume for the show (how interested you are), as well as the overall roar of the crowd. Both measures of shout volume are dynamic–as soon as you stop clicking, both your personal shout volume and the roar of the crowd start to fade. This lets Ustream measure the second-by-second excitement level of each show, and highlight the most exciting shows by featuring them on the homepage and program guide.

Live Polls:

The new Ustream will also let our broadcasters find out how their audience feels with our new Live Polls. At any time during your broadcast, you can go to the Broadcaster Console and set up an Live Poll just by clicking Poll and filling out the form.

Personal Links:

Add links to your Facebook or MySpace profiles. You can even add a link to a PayPal “tip jar.”

Past Clips:

Want viewers to be able to watch your old clips? Now, with the Past Clips module,viewers can page through your old clips without ever leaving your show page. Better make sure you’ve checked what’s in those archives!

Look for these on next Tuesday’s broadcast of Marketing Pilgrim Live!

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Note to Roy Cooper: Consider Restricting the MySpace Sex Offenders, Not the Kids that Use it

posted on July 25, 2007

North Carolina’s attorney general Roy Cooper is pushing for tighter restrictions on the use of social networks by children, after MySpace revealed 29,000 registered sex offenders were identified as members.

I’m 100% behind Cooper’s efforts to protect children from online predators, but is his solution the best we have? Here’s what Cooper wants:

Cooper is pushing for a state law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles, and require the Web sites to verify the parents’ identity and age. For example, social networking sites would have to compare information provided by a parent with commercial databases. Sites could also force parents to submit credit cards or printed forms.

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Microsoft’s Gatineau to Challenge Google Analytics this Summer

posted on July 25, 2007

Between Dave Naylor’s screen grabs and Microsoft’s own Ian Thomas sharing some info, details are starting to come out for Microsoft’s upcoming Google Analytics challenger.

Gatineau will launch in beta later this summer and I’m assuming will be completely free, in order to compete with Google and give AdCenter advertisers detailed stats on their campaigns.

gatineau

Gatineau promises to take analytics one step further with the addition of demographic data.

Beta 1 will include the ability to segment data by both age and gender buckets, so you can get more of an idea of what kind of visitors you have.

Of course, this sets off all manner of alarm bells – it happens anytime a major search engine discusses user data – but Thomas is quick to stress that no personally identifiable data will be used.