I knew it wouldn’t be long until search marketing was seen as cool (ahem). But now theres proof it’s hitting the underground rap scene, forget sex, drugs and drive-bys….. PPC, SEO and social are the new status symbols on the mean conference streets.
Here’s Poetic Prophet with PPC 101 to ease you in, also check out his other work on his youtube profile…..
Add comment March 30th, 2008
I’ve never had much fun with MySpace, but i thought i’d re-visit the tired old dog and see if their recent raft of changes would entice me into becoming more involved…..
I tried updating my profile first but the UI is still as messy, the photo uploader crashed on me and when i did manage to get a photo up it distorted my face to fit its parameters so i now look like Gollum. Not a good start.
For inspiration i went fishing around other people’s profiles and some of the new featured celebrities they’re now pushing on the homepage including a strange mix of Katie Price and Rihanna. Hmmm not the best.
However that was the tip of the iceberg, a strange thing always happens when i open a myspace page, my web connection drops out. EVERYTIME. Now is this because there’s too much crap on people’s pages? Does my ISP drop my bandwidth because it thinks i’m downloading heavy content? Or does Tiscali just hate MySpace too? Whatever it is it’s the only site the does this everytime guaranteed. So i gave up. That’s the end of my MySpace experience for now.
So Tom you can do one, you ain’t my friend.
Add comment March 20th, 2008
Is this another nail in the coffin of real social networking? Another media giant trying to make money out of people’s inbuilt intuition to communicate? Are they going to do anything clever or just whack display ads all over bebo (genius)?
I wasn’t too thrilled to hear the news but bebo going for a more ‘realistic’ $850million shows the silly-money market for social networks calming down a little. So what are they going to do with it? Well, bebo’s users are predominantly teenagers who are heavy future influencers but cash poor and prone to dis-loyalty.
AOL’s first thought is to integrate their messenger products like AIM and ICQ into bebo, ok i can see that working…. but supported by, you guessed it, loads of display ads from their platform A system. Ugghhh. Turning it into myspace is not the right way to go!
I think we’ll see a backlash from bebo users (who are predominantly in the UK) with less usage patterns occurring and a migration to other platforms as we near the 18 month churn period. As everyone knows the worst person in the world to piss off is a teenager.
What they should be doing is nurturing this audience for the long-term in the way that banks (sometimes!) get it right. AOL need to consider this young intelligent audience and their future potential for having a positive view of AOL and it’s products over the next 5 years. If they get it right and genuinely offer more to this community now such as quality content into bebo’s Open Media platform then there might just be a glimmer of hope for turning around the ailing fortunes of AOL.
They need this to be a positive generation-shift to move away from the tarnished old AOL users like me.
*Definition: ASBO - Anti-Social Behaviour Order (For my American friends, just spend a week in the UK and see any chav worth his salt has at least one)
Add comment March 14th, 2008
Remember i posted that January was all about verticals? So… this week i’ll be mostly talking about travel and social media… to be more precise, tomorrow in Austria at the ENTER 2008 conference. The pain is that there only seems to be one flight in and out each day according to BA, oh well a bit of snow and fresh air never hurt anyone although i might cough up a London air-filled lung.
Travel is probably one of the most advanced areas when it comes to social media; review sites, communities, weather checks, and videos of shabby hotels in Greece all help us make judgement on where we end up heading on holiday.
So with a keynote from Eric Basha at Microsoft with a focus on the future, i’ve decided try and get people thinking about the future possibilities if you get just a little creative and use the technology we already have available.
I think i’ll leave my shorts at home…..
1 comment January 23rd, 2008
Happy New Year everyone!
So….. it seems there’s a lot of predictions flying around as to how social media will develop in 2008, Bah! The truth is, no-one has really cracked it yet. Social media, lets not forget is all about being social right?
People are so hung up on how to make money out of it immediately, they’re missing the bigger picture of what this is all about….. Sharing. You need to really understand how communities interact and what you can really offer that will give value to both them and you.
So, in terms of growth this year, my stab is that it will be technology and sector reliant as people start to verticalise (is that a word?!) not only their friends but also how they use and 
interact with social media. Now this is handy as i’m speaking on two such topics this month; mobile and travel.
I have to admit. I’ve avoided mobile web for years as the experience has been too lethargic and non-engaging due to speed/data restriction and walled garden browsers. However i think this could be the year of the mobile due to two things: iPhone (obviously) and social networks. The iPhone has changed the game in mobile web experience massively, utilising the safari browser we’re all used to, wi-fi and a decent size screen. Add to this a new generation of social networks that are location-based and you can now be truly social and catch up with friends in the same vicinity when you’re out and about. What am i on about? Check out loopt to see what i mean. I’ve also been using facebook mobile for a while now and am finding it very useful, especially for micro-blogging so it’s taken over from Twitter for me! I’ll be covering this and other things at the Mobile Search conference this Thursday the 17th January over at BSG House in London.
Next week, Travel and Social Media in Austria. More on that and snowboarding later….
1 comment January 14th, 2008
I’ve been testing the new QDOS Beta, which attempts to measure your digital status based on an algorithm presented in 4 factors as you can see in the pic here. You can then compare yourself against various celebrities/personalities, so i did…. and i have a higher QDOS score than Eamonn Holmes whatever that means.
To do this you need to let the system know your profile names for facebook/linkedin/your own site etc. Based on the amount of friends, incoming links, how often you blog etc, this will be refined over time after you first claim your profile.
At first i thought this was a bit of a waste of time, but i was intrigued as it comes from Garlik, the creators of Egg and first direct….. I think this could be a glimpse at the future in terms of a new type of ‘credit score’. How you control the information portrayed about you online and your resulting ‘QDOS’ score, can be controlled with a degree of knowledge due to this system and essentially this aids you becoming your own reputation manager. Hopefully it will be a good wake up call to all those people who publish crazy amounts of personal information online only to be a victim of fraud or rejected for that next job….
Add comment December 18th, 2007
Another $60 million to be exact from a Hong Kong Billionaire called Li Ka-shing. With a name like that it sounds likes it’s April Fools…. apparently not.
He is the 9th richest man in the world and has an estimated wealth of $23 billion, so this is like loose change. Here’s the fella on the right, although i cant’ work out what his expression is; strained or happy? and check out those gigs, thats real old school.
My question is why has he done this? I’m still struggling to see how he and Microsoft can make their money back before the cycle of people jumping networks every 18 months kicks in.
Initial testing of the new facebook SocialAds system has showed great targeting potential but low interaction from users, add to that the amount of porn spam that i’ve been seeing lately and it’s a shaky start.
Perhaps i’m completely missing the point and he just wants to make more friends, can’t wait to see his status update “Li Ka-shing is hoping facebook makes some money after dropping $60m on it”. Searches for his facebook profile are through the roof right now, so he’ll be getting spammed to high heaven with friend requests (if it really is him) and i vote he uses this as his profile picture.
Add comment November 30th, 2007
Seems to be a growing trend with artists giving away free music, i’ve just stumbled across MSN offering a free listen to every track in full from Kylie’s new album X. I’m sure this promotion won’t last long so check out the page here.
Just click on each of the Kylie thumbnails to hear a different track in full. I think this kind of move and her new social network which has just launched proves that she moves with the times and always gives her fans what they want. Go on Kylie!
Add comment November 29th, 2007
Ok, if you don’t know Justine Ezarik you probably have a real offline life and don’t spend that much time on social networks. However, since it’s my job (lame excuse i know) there isn’t a day goes by without me seeing her.
At 23, Justine has become an online celebrity just by completely embracing every social network or application there is. She jokingly describes herself as ‘i am the internet’ but the amount of content this girl produces is phenomenal. For a start she’s covered the obvious bases (yep she’s one of my facebook friends) with myspace (48804 billion friends - really?), flickr, a blog etc. But shes also on every new thing to take off.
If you really want to know how you should be using any social network or application Justine is your girl. Hell you can even watch her live on cam all day long! I really cannot believe how much time it must take her to update all her profiles or to even manage all her friends. However, the only thing i’m left wondering is, would she be so successful using these things if she wasn’t so hot?
Add comment October 26th, 2007
It looks like something from ‘Alien’ but it’s actually a giant spider web in a Texas Park!
Sweet, apparently it looked cool at first but its now caught so many mosquitos you can hear them screeching for miles away.
What’s the best bit? Spider experts say this is the result of ’social cobweb spiders’ who work together to create something so huge. Isn’t it great when communities just get along…
Add comment August 31st, 2007
