The Daily Show, Colbert Report Leave Hulu
“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are both leaving Hulu, probably because of ad revenues. But it’s only a matter of time before someone else brings together the fragmented world of online video. (TechCrunch)
Facebook Analytics Gets More Interesting
The battle for the landscape of Facebook analytics might be heating up. On the heels of WebTrends’ unveiled Facebook tracking services, Omniture and Coremetrics have introduced their own flavors of analytics offerings. This could signal the increasing flow of big advertisers to Facebook’s performance ads. (ClickZ, Inside Facebook)
Google PageRank to Get a New Name?
Google has long felt that PageRank received excessive attention, though it remains in the Google Toolbar. According to the company’s director of research, some re-branding might be in store for PageRank. (WebProNews)
Google Grades its Own SEO
The search engine king seems to have a lot of work to do in its own SEO efforts. In a 49-page report, Google grades itself on various SEO metrics and finds that it’s failing in a variety of categories. (CNET)
Off-Putting Facebook Ads
Those self-service ads on Facebook’s pages can oftentimes be off-putting and just plain freaky. “What a marketer might think is endearing, by knowing a little bit about you, actually crosses the line pretty easily.” (NYTimes.com)
E-Mail Revenue Tree
“Revenue trees” can help e-mail professionals diagnose revenue failure. (ClickZ)
What’s the Deal with Angel Investors?
Why do angels (who invest) exist? This blog post by Ben Horowitz gives a quick history lesson about venture capitalists and angel investors and explains the differences between the two. The post also discusses when to seek an angel round and when to raise a VC round. (blog.pmarca.com)
SEO-less SEO
Testing meta descriptions, running PPC on branded keywords and tweeting strategically for real-time search are a few of the ways to boost your site’s traffic in conjunction with SEO efforts. (Search Engine Journal)
Top Facebook Pages, Games
Texas Hold’em Poker is the top Facebook page this week, followed by Alice in Wonderland, Mafia Wars, Converse and The Artifice. Meanwhile, FarmVille remained the top Facebook game in February, followed by Birthday Cards, Café World and Texas HoldEm Poker. (Inside Facebook, Inside Social Games)
Affiliate Marketing is Child’s Play
All you need to know about affiliate marketing was learned in kindergarten. Playing fair, sharing and not taking anything that’s not yours are just some of the basic principles needed to thrive in this space. (Share Results)
AOL Gives Patch $50 Million
AOL continues to focus on building tons of content, as it set out plans to set aside $50 million for Patch, its hyperlocal news site. (Seeking Alpha)
10 Places to Find Designers
Sortfolio, Authentic Jobs and Elance are just three of the 10 great places to find designers, according to this post. (Mashable)
Online Gaming Hours Grow 10%
According to The NPD Group, the average number of hours spent playing online games has increased 10 percent from 2009. About 20 percent of all games purchased were digitally downloaded, which is a slight uptick from 19 percent last year. (WebProNews)
Facebook: $1.1 Billion in 2010
Facebook’s expected revenues for 2009 are between $600 million and $700 million, mostly thanks to brand, performance and Microsoft advertising. “A wide variety of sources” expect revenues for the social networking giant to pass $1 billion this year. (Inside Facebook)
Social Media Marketing Do’s and Don’ts
Do build a strong social network, drive your campaign with a blog and stick to your brand philosophy, but don’t spam on social sites, display blatant marketing tactics and drop search in favor of social. These are among some of the do’s and don’ts of social media marketing. (Search Engine Journal)
Firefox Losing Ground, Plans Tweaks
Firefox continued its downward slide in February, losing market share for the third consecutive month, according to NetApplications. The search engine lost 0.2 percentage points to finish with 24.2 percent of the market. Meanwhile, Google’s Chrome browser gained share for the 16th consecutive month. Mozilla is planning on unveiling some improvements for its faltering darling. (InfoWorld, WebProNews, CNET)
AOL Sells Buy.at
AOL sold its affiliate marketing firm Buy.at to Digital Window, based in London. A company spokesperson says this move does not signal a shift away from AOL’s advertising objectives. (ClickZ)
Google Acquires Picnik
Google bought Picnik yesterday. The online photo editing service was closely associated with Flickr, which might change in the near future. Picnik should be integrated with Picasa and follows two other acquisitions by the search giant in recent weeks. (TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb)
Half of US Adults Use Social Network ‘Joiners’
According to Forrester Research, half of U.S. online adults are “joiners,” or people who interact with social networks at least once a month. Of this group, 78 percent are on Facebook, 51 percent are on MySpace and 16 percent are on LinkedIn. Joiners are more likely to spread product opinions and talk with friends and family before making purchases. (Seeking Alpha)
Twitter Helps Engagement in Classrooms
Twitter might be as much of an engagement-booster for students as it is a distraction. The social networking site might increase participation and create a closer-knit community of learners. (Mashable)
Efficient Social Media Practices
Checking in at increments, scheduling tweets in advance and segmenting your social media universe are three of the five ways you can boost your social media marketing productivity in the workplace. (Search Engine Journal)
Google Buzz for Small Businesses
Google Buzz may have some similarities to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, but it boasts some unique qualities that make for opportunities, particularly for small businesses. (Mashable)
Google Search Gets Closer to You
Google recently added a “Nearby” search tool to its Search Options panel. Just like it sounds, this option lets users refine results based on a particular location. (Mashable)
Facebook Matures: RIP App Notifications
Those horribly annoying application notifications that showed up in news streams are now faint memories for Facebook users. The social networking giant took a huge step forward by placing the interests of its users ahead of the short-sighted interests for app developers. To developers who will complain about being pushed further into the darkness? Build a good app and users will find you. (ReadWriteWeb)
Online Dating Succumbs to Recession
While some of the big, pay-to-use dating sites struggle mightily during the recession, a handful of exceptions, including the free PlentyOfFish, are thriving. (paidContent.org)
Facebook, Not Twitter, is the ‘Point Guard’
While Twitter is good for exposing consumers to a brand, Facebook is better at showing them the path to action. In basketball terms, Twitter is the small forward and Facebook is the point guard, who can “actually have complete engagement all the way through to conversion.” (VentureBeat/DigitalBeat)
LeadsCon Recap (in Links)
Here are six links that paint a summary of LeadsCon 2010. (DoublePositive)
LeadsCon Summary
This year’s LeadsCon was a big success, not necessarily thanks to the content, but more because of the networking opportunities. LeadCouncil is a long-overdue idea that should be good for the industry, diversification is key and lead gen has arrived. (Blogation)
How to Launch a Mobile Search Campaign
With mobile search spending set to boom in the next two years, it’s key to understand how to solidify your mobile search campaigns. Thanks to Google’s mobile data in Google Analytics, this becomes a bit easier. (Search Engine Journal)
Newspaper Sites are Trusted for Local Content
According to comScore for the Newspaper Association of America, 57 percent of respondents said local newspaper Web sites are the top online source for local information. (WebProNews)
Blogging from Your E-Mail
For those who travel often, blogging via e-mail is a very convenient way to blog from your mobile phone. Here are three ways to do this for WordPress, Blogger and Posterous. (Search Engine Journal)
Best Option for Filing Taxes?
Here’s a look at the pros and cons of TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxAct. There’s also an explanation of the pros and cons of filing taxes online as opposed to filing on desktop software. (CNET/The Download Blog)
DiggAds Finds Success
Digg took a risk by thrusting its ads in-line and allowing users to digg or bury them, but all indications point to the venture being a success. Might Twitter follow in Digg’s footsteps? (Mashable)
Facebook Wins Patent on News Feed
Depending on who you believe, Facebook’s recent patent for its News Feed might be big news or an insignificant blip on the radar. The social networking giant could be a bully and start suing its competitors, or it can choose to focus on its ad revenues instead. (ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Venture Beat/DigitalBeat)
Social Gamers are Older Females
More than a half of online social gamers are female, and nearly half of all U.S. weekly gamers are over 50 years old. (eMarketer)
4 Reasons for Sagging Search Engine Traffic
Though some European companies seem to think Google unfairly submarined their search rankings, there are other more feasible possibilities for why any company might be seeing decreased traffic from search engines, according to one SEO expert. (MarketingVOX)
Marketers Should Consider Age
When targeting consumers by way of digital and mobile media, marketers should consider their ages, according to someone at Experian Marketing Services. A recent report released by the company shows that while younger adults prefer IMs, text messages, cell phones and social networking sites, older consumers prefer the Internet to their mobile phones. (MediaPost/Marketing Daily)
U.S. Ad Spend Down 9% in 2009
Advertisers spent around $117 billion on U.S. media in 2009, reflecting a fall of 9 percent from 2008, according to Nielsen. This was the sixth straight down quarter, though the steepness of the decline is slowing. The Internet saw a slight year-over-year increase in ad spend of 0.1 percent. (MediaPost/MediaDailyNews, Nielsen)
50% of Tweets Are in Foreign Languages
A Paris-based company recently released a study that found about half of the updates on the U.S.-based Twitter are in English, down 25 percent from last year. The other top five foreign languages used on the microblogging service are Japanese (14 percent), Portuguese (9 percent), Malay (6 percent) and Spanish (4 percent). (TechCrunch)
Music Download Buyers Down, Average Spending Per Buyer Up in 2009
Though there were 1 million fewer music download buyers in 2009 compared to 2008, according to NPD Group, the average amount of money buyers spent on downloads rose to $50 per year from $33 per year. (CNET/Media Maverick)
Business Still Just Experimenting with Social Media
While 25 percent of businesses surveyed by E-Consultancy, in association with the Online Marketing Summit, say they “are heavily involved in social media,” a whopping 61 percent say they “have experimented with social media but not done much.” One of the hurdles seems to be the difficulty companies have measuring ROI for social media efforts. (WebProNews)
Facebook Status Updates Appear in Google Results
Google’s real-time search results are now including Facebook status updates from Pages. (Venture Beat/DigitalBeat, TechCrunch)
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