Web 2.0 Promotions

If you’re debating which of the remaining 2009 internet marketing conferences you should attend, I have a suggestion for ya: PubCon!

PubCon is returning to Las Vegas November 10th thru 13th and it promises to be better than ever! The four day event is packed with great sessions, great speakers, and great networking. In fact, the last day is all about the drinking networking!

Whether you’re a beginner or pro, you’ll find just about every aspect of online marketing is covered, including:

• SEO/SEM
• Web 2.0 (Social Media)
• Affiliate marketing
• Domaining
• Video/Multimedia

Perhaps the best thing about PubCon is the price tag. Despite the awesome content, PubCon is less than $600 $750–for a full week pass! Is it selling itself short? Let’s ask founder Brett Tabke:

“We know that we need to keep the conference affordable and provide the best content available at any related conference. It’s a difficult task trying to reconcile these two with the corporate attendees that aren’t as price sensitive. They see us priced at $599 and compare that to a conference at $1999 and assume PubCon content isn’t as good, when in fact we have deeper content than the $1,999 conference.”

You heard him folks. A $2,000 conference for $600 $749! What are you waiting for? Hotels in Vegas are less than $50 a night, so register now!

Note: While this is not a sponsored post, Marketing Pilgrim is a media partner for PubCon. No money changed hands and no animals were hurt in the creation of this post.

Sony and Google would like to confirm that, “it’s not what you know, but who you know” is alive and well.

At least, that’s the official basis for Sony agreeing to make Google’s Chrome the default browser in all Vaio notebooks sold in the US.

“Our decision to carry Chrome is based not only on the browser’s quality and functions, but also on our relationship with Google,” a spokesman for the Japanese electronics conglomerate said.

Keep in mind that this is the same Sony that ships its computers with all flavors of Microsoft’s operating system, so what does that tell you about the state of that relationship?

I’ve not seen Sony offer any Windows alternative on any of its notebooks, but perhaps the forthcoming release of Google’s Chrome OS might change all that. Speaking of which, here are the latest screenshots of how Chrome OS will look.

Real or fake?

The New York Times is reporting that eBay has a deal to sell Skype thus ending a rather tragic acquisition saga that began in 2005 when eBay ‘won’ in their fight with Google and Yahoo to buy the Internet phone service. Since that time the original deal which was for $3.1 billion has resulted in a $900 million write-down by eBay and more than its share of problems including a lawsuit in a British court over a core peer to peer technology with Skype founders.

So who are the new owners?

The investment group is likely to include Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture capital firm headed by the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, these people said. One of the people added that Index Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm that was an early investor in Skype, and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners were also involved. A price was not disclosed, but eBay has said it wants around $2 billion for Skype, which is on track to take in more than $600 million in revenue this year.

Skype has been surrounded by speculation of a public offering in 2010, possible sale back to its founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis via investment firms and the Times even reports that Google was involved with talks regarding the service as recently as a month ago. Google got cold feet, however, regarding the possible legal actions against Skype could expose the search giant to some serious financial hits. In addition,

Google also worried that owning Skype might alienate wireless carriers, which offer their customers phones running Google’s Android software, the person said.

The Times article wraps up with the idea that maybe the founders are involved in this deal in some way which would make the legal concerns go away but that is not clear at this time. One has to think that if that were a possibility it would certainly be worth the effort to make happen.

So we don’t know what will happen to Skype. I would be upset if it changed significantly or was forced to change by the courts. One thing I have learned though as of late is that nothing, and the heavy emphasis on nothing, stays the same for very long in this world. The Internet space proves that every day.

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Yet another reason to be careful what you say online: the tax man cometh, and he’s totally reading your MySpace. According to the Wall Street Journal, state tax revenue agents have begun checking social media profiles and announcements to make sure their citizens are staying honest.

The WSJ gives multiple examples from around the country:

• In Minnesota, authorities were able to levy back taxes on the wages of a long-sought tax evader after he announced on MySpace that he would be returning to his home town . . .
• . . . agents in Nebraska collected $2,000 from a deejay after he advertised on his MySpace page that he would be working at a big public party.
• In California . . . when one delinquent was identified as a rigger of sails, a curious collection agent searched his name and the term online and found a discussion board used by local riggers. In one thread someone asked where the rigger was because his store had closed, and a reply was posted, “Oh, he moved across the bay.” The agent found the man and collected a four-figure sum.

The IRS declined to comment on the story, but do you think they’re going to be outdone by state tax commissions?

However, before we get into a privacy uproar, let’s look at the guidelines these revenue agents are using. In Nebraska, for example, agents must only use information that is public—which means Facebook is most likely off-limits, but MySpace is usually fair game, since its profiles are available to the public by default.

Despite the WSJ’s headline (”Is ‘Friending’ in Your Future? Better Pay Your Taxes First”), agents are not supposed to falsely add people as friends to access their information. Says Nebraska tax official Steven Schroeder, “Agents are not allowed to ‘friend’ someone using false information.” California uses the same standard.

Obviously, not all states have resorted to this level of investigation yet—but many are thinking of it. The WSJ talked to Wisconsin and Oregon tax departments, which were both considering it. Massachusetts, on the other hand, noted that they don’t have a “systematic program” for monitoring social media.

What do you think? Will you be more cautious about posting about your next big deal (or will you just pay your taxes?)?

Not sure what you should do with Twitter? Are you hearing that it’s the most important breakthrough since breathing but not sure how to take advantage of it? Well, you may need to stop listening to everyone and think a bit outside the box like Fox is doing to inject some new life into a re-run of the edgy TV show, Fringe. Of course, this type of show is probably a perfect place to run this kind of experiment. PC World writes about the TV and Twitter convergence.

Fox has come up with a new way to get viewers hooked into watching repeats of two episodes of the TV show Fringe. On Thursday at 9 p.m., the penultimate episode of Fringe will be accompanied by Twitter commentary from two of the show’s cast and producers.

During the episode, a scroll bar at the bottom of the screen will provide insight from cast members Josh Jackson and John Noble and producers Jeff Pinker and J.H. Wyman. Dubbed “tweet-peats,” the Twitter messages will also be available online and viewers can participate and ask questions.

I have been intrigued by Fringe promos on Fox in the past during sports broadcasts but have not made the move to give it a try. This might actually make me take a look though. While it may seem ‘gimmicky’ it falls in line with most things as they relate to Twitter and its applications. No one has had this kind of capability in the past so why not experiment? If no one has done this on network TV (if they have please let us know) then it will be hard to screw up!

In addition to the Fringe Twitter treatment Fox will run a similar format for a re-run of the show Glee immediately following the show. While I have no idea whether that show has a chance or is simply on lie support and looking for a boost from this Tweetment of the show it again falls into the category of “Why not?”.

Here’s how to play along

If you want to get involved in Fox’s “tweet-peats,” all you have to do is follow the show Fringe on Twitter (http://twitter.com/FRINGEonFOX) and Glee (http://twitter.com/GLEEonFOX). The question streams from users will be moderated, so not everybody’s tweets will be aired.

Since I am probably the only person on the planet to not DVR anything I may or may not be there because Thursday night is also the start of the college football season. After all, Twitter’s powerful but not omnipotent.

The words “about time” come to mind, but better late than never: Radically Transparent is now available for the Kindle!

It’s been 18 months since the original print edition was published and today Radically Transparent is still the most comprehensive guide to online reputation management out there! Actually, it’s the only one out there!

If you own a Kindle, and would like to pick up a copy of Radically Transparent, head over to Amazon immediately!

And, don’t forget to leave a review while you’re there. Thanks!

Admit it: when you first heard about Microsoft Live’s cashback promotion, you thought it was a kooky idea that wouldn’t last long. Announced in May 2008, the program offered to share revenue from Microsoft’s shopping partners with you, the buyer. At the time, we said it sounded like a last-ditch attempt to buy our loyalty.

But over the last year, cashback has surprised us a bit—and not just by sticking around. In October and November, the service was showing an increase in traffic, sales and revenue for participating partners. Still, the promotion didn’t really help them in overall traffic, and seemed like mostly an afterthought—until now. Check out the latest Bing commercial:

The newest addition to Bing’s marketing blitz touts the cashback program.

TechCrunch also reports that Bing was running a promotion this month for double cashback on certain purchases—and that promotion was so successful they had to end the program three days early, when they ran out of money allotted for the promotion.

What do you think? Is cashback going to put Bing over the top? Or will it remain a bit of a search oddity, little known despite the commercial?

I given Wolfram|Alpha a hard time, but I think the service might be on the brink of finding its calling in life. After the highly speculated–but widely accepted as accurate–deal with Bing, it now appears Wolfram|Alpha will open up an API and become the provider to a host of data mashups.

At the moment, Alpha generates results that you can see on the website, export as a PDF or "play" using a Mathematica plug-in. Soon, Wolfram will be opening up its curated data that can be queried using an API, Conrad Wolfram said. This will provide yet another source of data that you can use to create projects and mash-ups with the information that we provide at the Data Store.

Bingo!

Seriously, I can’t see how WA can ever find success as a destination site, but as the data provider to other search engines? Absolutely!

Now, there’s just the embarrassing situation of why Wolfram|Alpha can’t seem to answer the following simple question:

Hmm, even Wikipidia knows the answer to that one!

(via)

Here’s something that Google might want to nip in the bud, before it becomes true via urban legend.

Over at the Google Webmaster Help forum we get an unsubstantiated claim that an ex-Google employee has turned evil:

Around May I discovered another competitors site recent appearance that looked very similar to mine, in fact even the sentences on my homepage were copied directly to his.  Then by reading the press release for the company I found out it was started by a high up google employee who quit his job with google to form the company.  Shorty after contacting the owner politely introducing myself, I received a threat letter back through email.  I don’t know if I can publish the email on this site so I will hesitate for now.  Basically the owner said he was going to crush me with his skills he had received from google…

…So at the end of all of this my page rank dropped from a two to a zero.  And now my site has started showing up on malicious porn sites on the internet and in bad forums, and some seem to be in the form of hidden links that appear to be bought by someone else.

OK, so we have two reasons to doubt this is true.

1. How do we know this poster is telling the truth?
2. How do we know that the attacker ever was a Google employee?

The answers are, we don’t. However, this is an example of how rumors and speculation can inflict as much damage on a company’s reputation as the truth. Now that both Barry Schwartz and I have reported on this, it risks becoming an urban legend. (Yes, I’m aware that I’m helping to spread this “rumor”, but that’s like saying the cancer wouldn’t spread, if only the doctor hadn’t told the patient).

What Google should do is try and get to the bottom of this and, quickly, prove that this thread is a figment of someone’s over-active imagination. Unless, of course, ex-Google employees are venting after many years of not being able to do any evil.

There’s just one problem with the chart below:

If correct, cable companies are likely losing millions of subscribers that are instead getting their TV fix from online sources, such as Hulu. The problem? Online TV watching doesn’t generate anywhere near the revenue of cable programming.

If we all switch to watching TV via Hula et al, what happens to the quality of the programming? If we continue down this path, we’d better figure out a way to make online video ads successful–and fast–or we may see the end of quality shows such as LOST and House.