BlastGroups Launches Public Beta!

August 20, 2008

[Excerpt from the BlastGroups Blog]

Today, we’re proud to announce the launch of the Public Beta Version of BlastGroups.

What does this mean for you?  For the past few months, BlastGroups has been available to a small test audience, and in that time it has been used to create public and private communities throughout the World.  Starting today, BlastGroups is now available for anyone to use and enjoy… Continue Reading over at the BlastGroups Blog »

20 Great Free Resources on Social Media

August 12, 2008

One of the blogs I subscribe to and frequently check out is ChrisBrogan.com. Well the other day he wrote a post on 20 Free eBooks About Social Media that I found very useful. They all look intriguing and cover pretty much the whole gamut of Social Media so I thought I’d post them for your benefit too. For each, the first link is for the direct PDF and the second link is to the author’s site.

20 Free eBooks on Social Media

  1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing - David Meerman Scott
  2. Marketing Apple - MarketingApple.com
  3. Masters of Marketing - Startup Internet Marketing
  4. Podcast Marketing eBook - Christopher S. Penn
  5. Google Adwords Secrets - SEOBook
  6. Get Viral Get Visitors - Stacie Mahoe
  7. Marketing With Case Studies - Dynamic Copywriting
  8. How to Write a Marketing Plan - Geisheker Group
  9. SEO for WordPress blogs - Blizzard Internet
  10. Social Web Analytics - Social Web Analytics
  11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter - Geekpreneur
  12. The Zen of Blogging - Hunter Nutall
  13. What is Social Media - iCrossing
  14. A Primer in Social Media - SmashLab
  15. Effective Internet Presence - Effective Internet Presence
  16. Introduction to Good Usability - Peter Pixel
  17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program - CRM Transformation
  18. We Have a Website. Now What? - Craig Rentmeester
  19. Blogs & Social Media - PRSA
  20. The Podcast Customer Revealed - Edison Media Research

His list is getting even more comprehensive from people contributing in the comments so again, check it out over here.

Know of any other great ones? I’d love to find some more so please share any if you have them.

Latest from the BlastGroups Blog

August 11, 2008

Our latest post from the BlastGroups Blog is out, head on over to see the post, “Why I should Start a BlastGroup?”

Google and Yahoo Make it Easier to Opt Out of Their Ads

August 9, 2008

Recently there has been a lot of talk in the press about the large amounts of data that big Web companies are collecting on users through the use of cookies. These companies collect information as you browse the Internet by dropping a cookie on your browser (no personally identifiable information is gathered, just a users’ IP address.)

The types of information collected include what websites you visit, what types of things you are searching for, and what ads you click. They use that information to then serve customized ads that are more closely based on your assumed interests. For example, someone who goes to many consumer reviews sites on BMWs, visits car shopping sites for BMWs, and searches for “2008 BMW X5″ would then be considered an in-market car / BMW shopper in terms of data, and thus receive more ads about cars and BMWs instead of ads about other interests such as food and restaurants. This targeting technology is called behavioral targeting.

The Web companies that are under the most scrutiny are the big Web publishers such as Yahoo! and Google, the big Ad Serving solutions such as Doubleclick and Atlas (owned by Google and Microsoft respectively) and other big Ad Networks such as Platform A (mainly includes Ad.com and owned by AOL) and ValueClick.

Well this week Yahoo and Google both made it easier for you to opt out of their ad targeting on both their internal sites and their ad networks across the Web. Yesterday Yahoo announced a new one-click opt-out policy, and two days ago Google announced it was possible to opt out of both Google and Doubleclick ad targeting in one click as well.

Many think that both of these announcements are preemptive measures by Yahoo and Google to protect themselves as Congressional scrutiny over these issues is heating up. The fact is that these new policies will not amount to much.  The majority of people will never hear about the ability to opt out and those that do will probably not bother with it anyways.

I, for one, am in the minority and will not be opting out, not because I am too lazy but because I actually like the idea of customized targeting, showing me ads more along the lines of what I actually want to see. I also know firsthand of some cool new changes going on in the online advertising space and am interested to see how these targeting technologies develop in the near future.

Again, I know I’m in the minority there though, so if you want to opt of ad targeting for either of these, i.e. don’t want their cookies, you can do so for Yahoo’s here and Google’s here.

We almost got a much Creepier Joker

August 8, 2008

I’ve previously written on The Dark Knight before, having posted about some of the newest posters that were released to gain even more momentum before the movie premiered.

Well earlier this morning I came across some more interesting Dark Knight news (again found on Digg, surprise surprise). This picture shows one of the early, pre-Heath Ledger concepts for the Joker. While I prefer the version of the Joker we got and can’t imagine it any other way, this picture reveals that we almost got a more sinister, even creepier version of The Joker.


The Joker Concept Art - 2


Some more concept art pictures for the Joker can be found here. These pictures as well as the entire shooting script are featured in the book The Art of the Dark Knight.

What do you think? Do you prefer the Joker as pictured here or the one we got?

An Explanation of RSS

August 7, 2008

What is RSS?What is RSS? I’m often asked this question so thought I’d spend some time to create a permanent page that defines what RSS is and hopefully clear up some of the issues. You can find my page on ‘What is RSS?’ here. 

A Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users!

August 6, 2008

The last post of mine was recently posted on Reddit.com and has become quite popular, reaching the top of the front page. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the service, Reddit is a social news site where users can post links to content on the Web and then let the community vote those links up or down.

The link on Reddit along with all the comments (330 and counting!) can be found here: Paris Hilton Responds to the McCain Ad = McCain gets served. There are some interesting and hilarious conversations going on over there so I encourage you to check them out.

But I just wanted to give a Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users who have checked out the post and my site! I definitely didn’t expect this much attention when I made this post but sure welcome it. :)

If you liked this video and want to see other viral and funny ones, check out this Online Community - Viral Videos . Or if you just like making fun of McCain and Republicans you can check out this site all about Funny pictures of President Bush.

Also, if you’re interested in reading about other social news and media, please check out my other two posts on the subject:

I’ll be posting more about social media and other social news sites like Reddit soon too, so stay tuned! To make sure you catch those posts and others, you can Subscribe to the RSS Feed here.

Paris Hilton Responds to the McCain Ad

August 6, 2008




[Link: Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad.]

Update: Wow, so this post has gotten a lot more attention than I ever thought it would! Largely due to a posting on Reddit (link with comments here.) , so I just wanted to say a Big Thank You to all you Reddit Users!

Update #2: Also, if you liked this video and want to see other viral and funny ones, check out this Online Community - Viral Videos .

I’ll also be posting more soon about other social media sites like Reddit too, so stay tuned! To make sure you catch those posts and others, you can Subscribe to my RSS Feed here.

Dr. Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

July 29, 2008

Noted Computer Science professor Dr. Randy Pausch passed away last Friday at age 47.  He is most famous for his “Last Lecture,” written for his kids but delivered to a crowd of 400 colleagues and students at Carnegie Mellon.

For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, his inspiring speech is well worth watching:





[Link: Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture.]

You can support the Randy Pausch Honorary Fund here.

You know you’re a Geek when…

July 23, 2008

…you get such a huge kick out of font humor. :)





The guys over at CollegeHumor have done it yet again.

[Link: CHTV - Font Conference.]

The Social Media Landscape

July 21, 2008

Just the other day I wrote a post to give an attempt to define what social media is. So then I started to think about the broad range of platforms and tools out there and was thrilled when I came across Fred Cavazza’s post on the current Social Media Landscape. He does an excellent job of analyzing the many social media players out there and does an even better job of displaying these graphically.


Social Media Landscape

[View this image in full size on Flickr]

A few missing tools worth noting
There are a few changes that I would make to this hierarchy and graphic though. First of all, I would change the Social Aggregation tools to just be “Lifestreaming tools”. I would also add an entirely new category titled “Social News Aggregators.” When I think of aggregators, I think of social news sites like Digg. These sites are on the rise, becoming ever more important in social media and deserving of it’s own category. Other sites that could be included in this category as well as are Yahoo! Buzz, Reddit, Mixx, and others. (I’ve previously written about the importance of these sites, specifically about Yahoo! Buzz and Mixx, here and here, respectively.)

Another subset of social media deserving of it’s own category would be “Social Bookmarking” to include many of the popular bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, furl, and others.

There are also a couple of notable sites and tools that are missing worth mentioning. Disqus, which offers a great way to enhance your blog’s comments (notice mine) and create a companion forum for them should probably be under the Discussion Tools section. There’s also Weebly, a very easy to use website creation tool, and in my opinion the best available, which should be added to the Publish section.

Here is Fred’s original list of sites and tools organized by category:

I personally don’t use all of these sites he mentions here, i.e. many of the gaming sites, but stay tuned because I’ll soon be writing in more detail about the ones I do most frequently use. And the ones I couldn’t live without. :)

So wait, what exactly is “Social Media?”

July 17, 2008

I’ve already referred to “Social Media” a few times on this blog and as it can sometimes be seen as a pretty vague term, I thought I’d expand on my definition of it.

First, a look at Traditional Media
The best way to get an idea of what Social Media is, is to first take a look at “Media” as a whole. Media can often be thought of, as Wikipedia puts it, the “tools used to store and deliver information or data.” However, what comes to most peoples’ minds is all the books, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, music, and movies that we encounter on a daily basis. These forms of traditional media are usually presented as a finished, mastered and “professional” product for you to consume.

The Web as a Platform
However, as most all of you are well aware, “Media” as as we know it, is actively being re-invented and has been for quite some time by our current Internet Revolution. Most of the traditional media companies are looking at their core businesses today and finding that they are losing ground fast. This is certainly true for television, radio, music, newspapers, and magazines.

It’s a very interesting time to be alive as we are now seeing a fundamental shift in the way that people consume their media and I think it will be very interesting to watch over the next couple of years as many of these traditional forms of media transition and adapt to the new Internet world order.

Social Media Explained
Social Media, on the other hand, is a new type of media that has fully embraced the Internet Revolution and can be found almost exclusively on the Web. The difference is that while traditional media is usually presented as a professional product for you to consume, social media is developed when people collaborate, using technology in order to connect and engage with other “like minds,” to create something with a meaning that can change every time someone else contributes to it.

Today there are all sorts of rich and powerful applications, tools, and platforms that allow anyone to become a legitimate content contributor, letting them easily share pieces of media and distribute it across a very wide audience all over the world. These websites and tools can be thought of as “Social Media Publishers.”

But the crux - or the secret sauce if you will - behind social media is the people. Some have embraced social media heavily, having started a blog, created personal and group websites, launched a podcast, etc. At it’s most basic level though, everyone (yes, including you) is now contributing to social media and can be considered “Social Media Contributors.”

Now, with all of the new sites and platforms that make the sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas and content (photos, videos, etc) so easy, it’s possible for almost anyone to become a part of the Media.

Every time you’ve uploaded a photo or video to a social networking site, added a comment to a piece of content you have an opinion on, talked with others on a discussion board, or shared a link with friends and family, you’ve contributed to the huge amount of “Social Media” that’s available on the Web.

And the fact of the matter is, whether you like it or not, this new Social Media is occurring with or without you. So I say dive out into it, and embrace the plummet.

First Impressions of the iPhone App Store

July 10, 2008

And they’re off! That’s right folks, the iPhone App Store officially launched today. I don’t even own an iPhone yet; my current phone is 3G so I wanted to wait out my current plan and upgrade to the iPhone as soon as the new, 3G, app-powered version comes out, which incidentally happens to be tomorrow.

10apps2190.jpgWith all the talk and hub bub over the new iPhone, the real story here is the launch of the App Store. As I wait to get my iPhone, I can still daydream and browse through the App Store, which by the way, is really awesome. It’s fast, easy to navigate, and already filled with a lot of rich and powerful apps. There’s an overview of some of these apps here.

An interesting statistic is that the iPhone App store had 552 applications at launch, with 135 (or 25%) of them being free. Details and a graph here.

To me, this App Store and all the available apps is the single biggest reason to own an iPhone. The apps will only continue to get better too as developers and businesses clamor to get out their own. Apple has done a really good job to provide enough incentives to the developers of these apps, giving them back as much as 70% of sales. The market is extremely receptive as well, with venture capital and investment firms creating funds specifically for the creation of iPhone apps, most notably Kliener Perkins’ $100 million “iFund”.

A few of my favorites so far are the apps for Yelp, Whrrl, Pandora and Twitterific. Of course, I’m sure this list will change quickly once I start using them on a daily basis.

Can’t wait to what other cool upcoming apps are in store for us in the weeks and months to come!

Some Sweet Dark Knight Posters

July 2, 2008

So I came across the latest poster for The Dark Knight today here on Digg and thought it was so sweet that I had to share it.

Here’s some other quick info on the movie:

The top one is the newest that came out today and the others are a couple more of my favorites:

newviralposterfortdk.jpg
dark_knight_ver4.jpg
darkknightposter-fullbig.jpg

Social Media Explained by Video

June 19, 2008

I just came across this great description of Social Media over at Common Craft. If you have a few minutes it’s worth checking out.

From the Common Craft post:

“This video focuses on basics of social media: new technology that makes everyone a producer and tools that give everyone a chance to have a say.”

[Found over at ExperienceCurve.]

MySpace Gets a Facelift

June 17, 2008

Let’s face it. MySpace is not really known for it’s great design.

In fact, they constantly get bashed for it. Just the other day, I found this on Digg. It’s a Firefox add-on, called AmIOnMySpace, that saves you if you “accidentally” navigate to MySpace, and takes you back to the website you just came from. You can download it here.

But it looks like MySpace is finally starting to listen. Next week they will be launching a pretty substantial redesign. Most notably, their top navigation will be significantly reduced. The top links will be brought down to just five main links (Home, Mail, Profile, Music and MySpaceTV). The other lesser used navigation links will still be accessible, just under a drop down menu.

Here’s a screenshot of their soon-to-be revamped homepage:

MySpace Homepage Redesign

[View larger version here.]

There are also some more screenshots of the other redesigned pages here.

MySpace is mainly using this redesign to fight back with the hope to get more users and to boost usage.

We’ll have to wait and see if these changes really accomplish that. But in the meantime, I think this latest batch of redesigns is a big improvement from a usability standpoint.

Furthermore, I am very impressed with MySpace for the timing. The move comes just as Facebook is planning to launch their own redesign. They’re supposed to begin rolling out these changes starting tomorrow.

Microhoo Finally Goes Kaput, Yahoogle Stirs to Life

June 13, 2008

A while back I wrote about Microhoo and how the Yahoo! - Microsoft merger was not to be. In the past few weeks Microsoft and Yahoo! have been in talks about arranging some sort of deal, and were in talks about the sale of just Yahoo! Search to Microsoft while Yahoo! kept control of it’s display properties.

That is, until yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, Yahoo! announced that they were concluding talks with Microsoft. A lot of what I’ve been hearing is that Yahoo! is opposed to the outright sale of their search business because they are trying to remain “consistent with their view of the converging the search and display marketplaces.” That is to say, without a strong search offering they would be very limited in the advertising solutions they could offer (i.e. only display).

Later in the day, Yahoo announced a non-exclusive search deal with Google. This is not really surprising and in fact many viewed this deal as Yahoo’s last option given their current stock price.

Here are some more details on the deal:

More informative than anything though, is this Q&A with Yahoo’s Jerry Yang (CEO) and Sue Decker (President) on the deal.

The telling quote I thought came from Sue Decker, saying:

“We are open to networks in display in the way we are now with Google. We think an open approach will assure scale and the best advertising rates and the best match for consumers.”


It will be interesting to see how far Yahoo! takes this open approach in the coming months.

Also, if you’re interested, here’s Google’s blog post on the deal.

Kanye’s Glow in the Dark Tour

June 6, 2008

So I’m going to the Kanye West concert tonight at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. It’s a part of the Glow in the Dark tour which looks sweet. Check out some of these pics:

Kanye on an extended stage

Kanye Float

Kanye - Glow

Kanye Glow

N.E.R.D. on stage

NERD

[Source: Kanye West’s Blog.]

Who else will be there:

Hopefully I’ll get some good pics from the concert and be able to post them in a couple of days too.

The CNN.com Effect

June 3, 2008

I wrote a post a while back about the Yahoo! Buzz-Effect and how it sends tons of engaged traffic to publishers. Well yesterday, Techcrunch issued a report that shows the reverse side of this social news site-to-publisher relationship. The post was about the social news site Mixx and the large amounts of traffic that CNN was sending to it since they added “Mixx it” buttons to the bottom of every news story and article at the beginning of the month.

So just how valuable is that kind of exposure? Not surprisingly, it turns out very valuable.

As the graphic below suggests, the number of unique visitors to Mixx more than doubled from 380,000 in April to 904,000 in May.

The CNN Effect

This article and graphic shows the true power that can come from being associated with prime time publishers such as CNN and others, effectively doubling Mixx’s audience in just a month.

An All Crazy lesson in Viral Marketing

May 27, 2008

In my last post, I wrote about Weezer’s new video and their amazing understanding of viral marketing.

But what do you do when you don’t have all the resources of a band like Weezer and can’t fly all the actual Internet Stars themselves out to your studio to record? Well, you improvise. :)

Here’s a great example of a video by the band All Crazy that is also a play on some of the familiar Internet stars and their viral videos…


[Link: All Crazy - Wrong Time]


Likin’ the sounds of “hip-rock” and want more?! You check out more of them here:

All Crazy’s official MySpace

The CD - “Sex, Drugs, and Hip-Rock”


Disclosure: I’m a friend of the band and die-hard All Crazy fan. :)

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