25 Things E-Mail Marketers Should Know
In Us Weekly style, here’s a list of 25 things e-mail marketers don’t seem to know, but should. Included in the list are encouraging recipients to respond to your e-mail, there is no such thing as the best time to send e-mail and incorporating social components can boost your reach, big time. (MediaPost/Email Insider)
7 Good Social WordPress Plugins
CommentLuv, Add To Any and GD Star Rating are among seven great plugins for WordPress blogs to make them more social and shareable. (Mashable)
Vringo Lets Users Pick Their Ring Tone – On Their Friend’s Phone
Vringo is flipping the ring tone game on its head by enabling users pick what ring tone plays on someone else’s phone. Not only that, but it allows users to tack on a video with that ring tone. It hasn’t made much money yet, but it’s intriguing at the very least. (NYTimes.com/Bits)
Firefox Mobile for Android Coming This Year
Mozilla’s Firefox browser is going mobile for Android sometime in 2010, according to the vice president of mobile at the company. (WebProNews)
Prestige is the New Monetization Model
Advertising is so 2009 – the new monetization model of choice is based on prestige or achievement. Just look at the popular social games on Facebook and Foursquare. The tie-ins with virtual currency and real-life financial rewards make this new model an important one to watch this year. (paidContent.org)
Facebook is the Second Most Popular Site in the U.S.
According to Compete.com, Facebook is the second most popular Web site in the states, beating Yahoo! by around 1.6 million users in January. The social networking now has Google to overtake, and already accounts for more time spent online.
5 Notes About Google’s ReMail Acquisition
ReMail, a company that creates tools to improve mobile e-mail experiences, was recently purchased by Google. This move could have some consequences for Gmail. This post highlights five interesting things about ReMail’s tools and its new role in Google’s schemes. (ReadWriteWeb)
E-Mail Still Key Communications Venue, Despite Social Networks
Yes, social networking sites are gaining lots of steam, but e-mail remains an important communications tool for the vast majority of users. Not only do social network users check their inboxes more frequently than their “non-social” counterparts, they also tend to use the same inbox for their social networking alerts and permission-based e-mails. (eMarketer)
Where to Have Businesses Lunches in NYC
With the help of Time Out New York, Business Insider takes a look at the best places to take a client or CEO to a business lunch in the Big Apple. Where to go on a tight budget is also covered. (Business Insider/War Room)
Microsoft’s New Mobile Software
On Monday, Microsoft is set to unveil its new, long-awaited mobile operating system at a wireless industry in Barcelona. The company, which has to play catch-up with Apple and Google, will introduce a new mobile OS that resembles its Zune HD music player’s look and is touch-friendly. (WSJ.com)
Google Buzz “Fix”
Google unsurprisingly tweaked its Buzz product to be more respectful of its millions of customers’ privacy concerns. The first dialogue box that pops up when a user publishes their first Buzz message, a checkbox appears offering the option to show or not show the list of people the user is following and is being followed by. This is unsatisfactory, according to Business Insider. TechCrunch highlights a woman’s horror story courtesy of Google Buzz’s disregard for privacy matters. All of this is somewhat moot, according to CNET, since it’s unlikely users will transition from a giant like Facebook. (Business Insider/Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch, CNET/The Social)
Valentine’s Day on the Web
Don’t assume who will be searching for your products, or what products they’ll be searching for, according to a marketing manager at Personalization Mall. They were surprised to find that the number of women searching for men’s products was five times larger than the number of men searching for women’s products. The ratio was 3:1 last year. Also, on a more romantic note, meeting mates through friends is the only method that tops meeting them through the Internet, according to a study conducted at Stanford University. (MediaPost/SearchBlog, NewsFactor)
Guest Posts are a Bad Idea
Is guest posting a bad idea for building links? Maybe, according to someone in the custom men’s dress shirts industry. He highlights five areas of concern, including expertise vs. true relevance, site and page semantic irrelevance, and duplicate content hurdles. (Search Engine Journal)
Google, Bing, Yahoo! Improving Their Maps
The Big Three in search are all bulking up their maps offerings. Bing is gradually rolling out new features, including indoor panoramas and real-time video overlay technology. Google is opening up nine features through Google Maps Labs. Yahoo! is getting set to introduce a mobile app. (WebProNews)
Google Gets Aardvark for $50 Million
The search giant, which has been having a busy week, quietly spent $50 million to acquire social search service Aaardvark, which utilizes artificial intelligence to connect users with questions to other users who might have valuable answers. This could be another piece added to users’ Gmail windows in the future. (TechCrunch, Technology Review)
Silicon Valley Lost 90,000 Jobs in 2009
Most of us knew that jobs were being shed in Silicon Valley in 2009, but now we know just how many: 90,000. Is this just a rut, or a call for a “complete overhaul”? (ReadWriteStart)
Huge Potential for Local Businesses and Real-Time Monitoring
Mat Siltala recounts a simple yet intriguing story after checking in with his Yelp iPhone application. After doing so, he received an e-mail from a nearby store offering him a discount on a purchase. “The crazy thing? I thought it was awesome. It was a huge discount, I was going to be shopping around there anyway. I probably would not have gone to that shop, but I did now – and ended up spending money with them.” Clearly, the potential for this kind of thing is enormous for local businesses who are adept enough to use these location-based tools to their advantage. (Search Engine Journal)
Mobile Data Usage to Reach 40 Exabytes Per Year, Driven by Video
According to a recent forecast by Cicso, mobile data traffic will reach 40 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes) per year by 2014. This figure encompasses laptop air cards as well. The company notes that 66 percent of all mobile traffic data will be mobile video-related by this time, 66 times the usage in 2009. (ReadWriteWeb)
Is Yahoo! Still Relevant to Your Search Strategy?
The quick and dirty answer is yes, the second banana in search should still be a key part of your search strategy. Besides the recent string of advancements Yahoo! has put in place lately, each search engine’s users have their own set of demographic and psychographic profiles. In January, Yahoo! finished with 14.6 percent of the search market, according to Experian Hitwise. (WebProNews, ClickZ)
Google Buzz Kill
It didn’t take too long for a lash back against Google Buzz. For one thing, it presents something of a privacy horror for those who care about that sort of thing. It’s following the same rocky, opt-in road that Facebook traversed and is disclosing connections and contacts in public lists without asking for a user’s permission. Oh, and there’s the question of whether or not Buzz, or Twitter and Facebook, are a smart way to spend your time and brain power. (CNET/Molly Rants, InfoWorld/Security Central, Harvard Business Review)
Best Mobile App Stores for Developers
In a keen analysis of the major mobile app stores, Distimo found that the Apple App Store topped the overall list, but there’s reason to believe that the future of app stores will be much more fragmented. The BlackBerry App World took the cake in terms of customer reviews, the only category that Apple didn’t win. (VentureBeat)
Big Four See Continued Online Ad Growth in 4Q
Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL, the four biggest online advertising companies, saw cumulative online ad revenues grow 10.2 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter to $9.1 billion, which marks the second consecutive quarter with positive growth, and a vast improvement from the measly 1.2 percent rise in the third quarter. All four players contributed significant growth, which could indicate that display advertising is making a comeback. (TechCrunch)
Google’s Broadband Experiment
While it might not get the buzz that Google Buzz is receiving, the search giant quietly announced a plan to experiment with gigabit-per-second broadband connections (100 times faster than the ones Americans are accustomed to) to between 50,000 and 500,000 homes in several U.S. cities. This has a handful of interesting storylines, including Google’s stance on net neutrality and the company’s dive into the ISP realm. (paidContent, NewsFactor, O’Reilly Radar, Seeking Alpha)
10 Ways to a Higher Level of Writing
Write more books (and fewer blog posts), listen to albums from start to finish and feel free to unplug every now and then. These are a few of the “10 Pathways to Inspired Writing,” which are here to help your blog and your writing from burning after six months. (Copyblogger)
Getting Paid on Twitter
In a thorough two-part series, Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb examines the realities, myths and outstanding issues with this burgeoning section of the Twitter economy. Some highlights are that the average user won’t make enough to quit their day jobs, engagement levels matter and the uncertainty advertisers have about the real worth of traffic from paid-for tweets. (ReadWriteWeb Part 1, Part 2)
Nearly 40% of U.S. Households Still Don’t Have Broadband
According to a survey conducted by the Census Bureau and sponsored by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), about 36.5 percent of U.S. households do not have broadband Internet connections, while 38.2 percent do not have a computer. In rural areas, the lack of availability is a reason for not having a broadband connection for 11.1 percent of households, while 22.3 percent say it’s just too expensive. In urban areas, 27.6 percent of households say it’s too expensive. About 38 percent of households in both areas say they don’t need a broadband connection or aren’t interested in having one. (CNET/Wireless)
6 Ways to Improve Your CTR
Equipped with screenshots, this post walks through six examples of ways a simple creative can be tweaked to lure more clicks. Among the techniques are adding a scrollbar, appearance of a video player and going with multi-zone layouts. (MrGreen.am)
Facebook Almost Doubles its Audience, MySpace Continues to Bleed
According to the latest figures from comScore, Facebook finished January with 112.4 million unique visitors, up 96.5 percent from its audience in January 2009. It also gave the social networking giant a reach of 53.2 percent of the U.S. Internet audience. MySpace finished January with 57.8 million visitors, down 23.5 percent from the same month last year. Twitter finished the month with 21.8 million visitors, up 836.7 percent from the first month of 2009. (ClickZ)
View Your Own Mouse Tracks
A Russian graphic designer and programmer has developed a free application for download called “mouse pointer track” which allows you to see the flow of your mouse movements. (NYTimes.com/Bits)
Facebook Accounts for 44% of Sharing Online
Or 33 percent, depending on who you ask. Gigya found that over the past 30 days, Facebook drove 44 percent of shared items on the Web, followed by Twitter with 29 percent, Yahoo! with 18 percent and MySpace with 9 percent. AddThis pegs Facebook’s sharing at 33 percent, followed by E-mail with 13 percent, printing with 9 percent and Twitter with 9 percent. (TechCrunch)
Facebook Search Volume Rises in January
While it still lags well behind the other search giants in the land, Facebook saw its search query volume rise 13 percent to 395 million, up from 351 million in December. A new redesign emphasizes the search box at the top of the page, and Bing is set to deepen its search relationship with Facebook. (Inside Facebook, comScore)
8 Dancing Elephants
Google, Apple and Netflix were among eight big tech/science companies that thrived in the midst of a struggling world economy in 2009. (Seeking Alpha)
Google Buzz Quiets Down
It seems that Google just can’t seem to get the social networking thing right. After failing with Orkut, it seems that Google Buzz, Google’s newest foray into the social networking realm, has tripped out of the gates. The company has taken a few steps to mend their initial wrongs, but it may not be enough to carry it over the hump it seems to have created for itself. Also, spam is already permeating Buzz. (Seeking Alpha, WebProNews)
E-Commerce: Killer Phone App?
E-commerce is hot right now in the mobile phone world, and that may be cause to believe that it will replace advertising as the business model of choice for new startups. One-click purchases and real-time payments from the convenience of a mobile phone is something that any business currently based on advertising must transition toward. (O’Reilly Radar)
Best E-Mail Practices Don’t Mean Best Results
Aligning e-mail campaigns with best practices doesn’t always lead to best results. For instance, Overstock’s notoriously spam-like subject lines always perform better than “more artful ones,” according to the company’s strategists. The bottom line is that best practices work most of the time and there are exceptions, but they shouldn’t make the rule. (MediaPost/Email Insider)
Five Reasons Why Apps Are Not the Answer
While no one should be flat-out ignoring the app space, there are reasons to keep us from believing that it will be the major area that absolutely must be invested in by everyone. Five reasons for steering clear of drinking the app Kool-Aid include the fact that very few apps make much money, apps are still loss leaders/low-margin leaders for hardware makers, and app overload (Techdirt)
iPhone App Development Booms Thanks to iPad
According to Flurry, an analytics company for mobile-app developers, iPhone application starts nearly tripled in January from December, reaching 1,600 app starts in the first month of the year. The iPad is to thank for this surge and gives Apple the momentum is lost in December when Android app starts were closing the gap between the two platforms. (CNET)
Making a Niche Site Relevant
While some sites are based on obscure subjects that seemingly lend themselves to no relevancy or hope of search success, thinking about them with four degrees of separation in mind may help – a lot. Making the jump from hydraulic hoses to construction site safety is just one example of how using the four degrees method of logical connections can turn a niche product into a very targeted and relevant one. (Search Engine Journal)
Google Buzz + WordPress
Google Buzz can be easily integrated into your WordPress blog, whether it’s through using buttons, placing a Buzz plugin in your sidebar or allowing commenters to Buzz their comments, there are already a variety of options for WordPress users who want to hop on the Buzz bandwagon. (Mashable)
Four Questions to Ensure Quality Leads
Asking good questions on your lead forms is key to making sure only solid leads are found on your site. Identifying your target customers, disqualifying bad leads, using form data for lead scoring and collecting actionable information can help toward this end. (HubSpot)
Americans Use Mobile Web Nearly 3 Hours Per Day
In yet another piece of evidence that the mobile realm just can’t be ignored, PR firm Ruder Finn found that Americans spend 2.7 hours on the mobile Internet each day, with 91 percent saying they socialize, more than the 79 percent of traditional Web users who do the same. Forwarding content is also a popular activity for mobile Web users in the U.S. (MediaPost/MarketingDaily)
Digg 
