by
4 Comments

Reddit Asking For Alms. Conde Nast Must Be So Proud!

posted on July 12, 2010

I had to do a double take this morning when I read about the plight of reddit, one of the original social news websites. Apparently things aren’t so good over at the Internet property. It’sso bad that they have started to ask for donations to keep the site afloat. I bet you that their owner, Conde Nast, must be so proud.

eConsultancy reports

Making money online isn’t always easy, especially when you run an ad-supported business. And that’s not just true for the small fries; it can be even more true for popular, heavily-trafficked sites.

That’s the case for reddit, the popular user-generated news site. It was purchased by Conde Nast Digital in 2006, but a blog post last Friday indicates that all is not well at reddit.

by
7 Comments

Social Networks Driving CPM’s’ Down

posted on July 12, 2010

In economics any time there is an abundance of supply the price for that particular good goes down. The easier to obtain, the less ‘valuable’ that resource is. In today’s online world there is no shortage of traditional Internet measures like ad impressions because of the huge amount of traffic being run through social networks.

The trouble is that another traditional measure for advertising, cost per thousand or CPM then gets taken down with it. Of course, not all sites on the Internet are created equal when it comes to what kind of ads are served and how they are received but when clumped together, social network traffic is the high volume low cost drag on the overall market pricing. AdAge reports (with a hat tip to paidContent)

by
2 Comments

Content Mission: YouTube Looks To Increase Video Quality Through Grants

posted on July 11, 2010

First of all, you may be wondering what “Content Mission” is. It’s simple. These days everyone is on a mission to discover, develop, create, utilize and monetize online content. It’s easier said than done and the content marketing industry is evolving rapidly as the discipline does as well. Each Sunday I will take a look at some content related story from the week that may be helpful to our Marketing Pilgrim readers. It’s my mission of sorts.

This week I was alerted to a post on the YouTube blog by paidContent.org (a must read for you content folks, by the way). It’s about YouTube’s program to put $5 million into a small group of partners and video producers to help ‘up the ante” more with high quality video. YouTube describes the process as follows

by
2 Comments

Cup of Joe: Before You Can Truly Speak From Authority You Must Become An Authority

posted on July 10, 2010

Taylor Mali reminds us that speaking from a place of authority is still cool. Speaking from authority is important but, it’s more important to not only speak like an authority but to be one.

The other day I saw a link on Twitter to a blog post about about Google Caffeine. Being the uber search geek that I am, I clicked it. The blog post was horrible. There were two main problems with the post. It was riddled with inaccurate information, and it did a horrible job convincing the reader of the ideas presented. So what was the root cause of such a bad post?

The author didn’t know what the heck she was talking about! Because of this, she presented downright false data and, more importantly, looked unsure and quite honestly like an amateur.

by
5 Comments

Week in Review on Google’s Street View

posted on July 9, 2010

While Google has made nice with China and had its ‘operating license’ renewed, their Street View efforts are getting mixed reactions around the globe. Recently, Google has come under serious pressure from the likes of the EU’s European Commission and countries directly (Germany) about its ‘accidental’ collection of data from unsecured wireless networks while making its rounds. Well, there was some relief from that side of the pond at least as reported by Reuters

Google Inc (GOOG.O), which is at the heart of a controversy over its data collection methods, has decided to resume gathering images in four countries for its Street View mapping service.

After conversations with regulators, the Internet search company will start driving its cars in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden from next week, it said on its European Public Policy blog.

by
5 Comments

After All That, China Renews Google’s License

posted on July 9, 2010

Well it looks like the “Will they renew or won’t they renew?” arc of “As Google-China Turns” is over and it has a happy ending for Google. In the past few weeks Google had backed off its hard line stance on China by not redirecting its in-country traffic to the Hong Kong site. Instead it started to offer the opportunity for Chinese visitors to go to the Hong Kong uncensored version via a link on Google China’s home page.

Industry experts like Danny Sullivan wondered if that move would be enough to keep Google’s license in China.

“If the Chinese government isn’t happy with them running uncensored search results out of the Hong Kong site — I don’t see why they’ll be any happier just because it becomes one click away,” Danny Sullivan, who runs the search-analysis Web site Search Engine Land, told Bloomberg News.

by
6 Comments

Throw Away the Plugins! Gmail Gets Multi-Signature Support

posted on July 9, 2010

One of the reasons I waited for Google Chrome to add extension support was my use of a plugin that provides a different Gmail signature, depending on the email address I used.

I use a lot of different email addresses.

Well, Chrome added extensions months back and now Gmail has gone all native, with full support for graphical signatures.

What’s more, you can use a different signature for each email address you send from.

So now, you can happily rock a new signature!

Want yours? Head to “Settings” in Gmail and look for the new option.