Web 2.0 Promotions

At the beginning of March Google introduced the ability to star results in their SERP’s (search engine result pages), which would bring those results to the top of the same search performed at another time. Now this same functionality is being rolled out to mobile search.

As with anything that Google does on the mobile front these days the question is will the new function be offered across different mobile devices or is the new feature an Android only one. This time the new feature seen below is available in the US on all Android, iPhone/iPod and Palm Web/OS devices (Sorry Crackberry users. Looks like this is just another signal that the big loser in the mobile race may be the BlackBerry).

The Official Google Mobile blog tells us a bit more

Earlier this month on the Official Google Blog, we announced how stars make search more personal by allowing you to mark and rediscover your favorite content. Today, we are extending this feature so that you can get to your favorite content on your phone, anytime, anywhere. For example, if you previously searched for “car reviews” and starred a few sites that were useful while researching cars on your computer, searching for “car reviews” on your phone will allow you to rediscover your starred items. If there are additional results that you want to star while on mobile, simply click the star marker beside the result, and you will be able to see it later when searching from your computer or phone.

Google continues to make the experience from desktop to mobile more and more unified moving forward. The faster they move to this end the faster there will be a real battle for the mobile space especially if Apple is really considering their own search engine.

This should get interesting.

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Google’s already made big waves in the international arena this year by deciding to pull out of China after too many censorship demands and a cyber attack targeting human rights activitists’ email accounts. And now another Asian country might get the same kind of press: Vietnam.

Says Google:

These infected machines have been used both to spy on their owners as well as participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against blogs containing messages of political dissent. Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country.

The AP reports that McAfee said the perpetrators may be linked to Vietnam’s Communist government. Similar accusations came about the Chinese government in their cyber attack. The Chinese government denied any involvement.

The Vietnamese cyber attacks were “not especially sophisticated,”
Google said, but like the Chinese attacks, they seemed to target dissidents and opponents to the government. Rather than hacking email accounts, this attack used malware to exploit software that enables Vietnamese users to run windows in their native language.

Naturally, the malware could also potentially target tens of thousands of other users who downloaded the translation software.

All right, let’s play conspiracy theory roulette. Cyber attacks in China eventually lead to Google.cn redirecting to Google.com.hk, which is now being blocked intermittently. Then we see more cyber attacks, targeting several of the most vocal international figures covering the country. And now another communist country sees attack against people who disagree with the government. It could be a massive effort to silence anti-communists—or it could be a massive effort to call attention to people who want to silence anti-communists.

Hm….

(No, I don’t really think that. I have an overactive imagination.)

What do you think? Are attacks on government dissidents up? Why?

Fresh off the “success’ of shouting down Nestle over their sourcing of the some of the palm oil used in products, Greenpeace is now going after some other less edible targets. Maybe they got confused by the Apple logo but Greenpeace has drawn a dotted line between the soon to be released iPad (Coincidence? We think not.) and global warming. Apple is not alone in this claim as Google, Facebook and others’ feet are being held to the fire because of the environmental impact of cloud computing.

eWeek tells us more

A March 30 report from Greenpeace associates the Apple iPad with global warming, as the activist organization seeks to raise new questions about the environmental effects of cloud computing.

According to Greenpeace, if “data centers and telecommunication networks, the two key components of the cloud,” continue to grow at current rates, by 2020 they’ll consume “over half the current electricity consumption of the United States—or more than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.”

It appears as if Greenpeace sure isn’t shy about using those cloud services to get the word out about their organization but hey we’re not here to nitpick. So why the focus on Apple?

With growing cloud-computing needs, in preparation for the iPad, Apple purchased a data center in South Carolina that Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil told eWEEK is “much larger than its existing facilities.”

Fortunately for Apple they aren’t only big name under the Greenpeace hydro-electric powered microscope.

Facebook also recently announced it will be building a data center in Prineville, Ore., which “will run primarily on coal.” In doing so, it missed an opportunity, Greenpeace said, to encourage the use of renewable energy. Offering an example, Yahoo, however, built a data center outside of Buffalo, NY., which is partly powered by energy from a hydroelectric power plant.

I’m not sure what to make of all of this. I appreciate the concern for the environment. Everyone needs to be aware of what we do or don’t do to help take care of the only home we have. Greenpeace seems to be going for a double-dip so to speak. By going after the largest brands and doing it at times when those brands are getting exposure it not only does a lot for the ‘cause’ of Greenpeace but one might think the other side of this has to do with another green: money. If the organization can get out in front of big stories and put their spin on it then maybe, just maybe donations will increase. Call me a cynic but it makes sense.

Rest assured all of you environmentalist Apple users though. You’re not being singled out

Greenpeace stated on its site that it’s not really “picking on Apple” or “dissing the iPad,” but trying to ask the important questions.

“Apple is the master of promotion, and while we marvel at the sleek unpolluted design of the iPad, we need to think about where this is all leading,” Greenpeace wrote, “and how like all good surfers we can make sure our environment stays clean and green.”

I have to ask who is the real master of promotion here? It seems like Greenpeace has been taking some lessons in promoting itself as more than boats racing along side whaling vessels. Heck, saving the whales is so 20th century anyway.

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In January, Google reported a coordinated hack attack targeting Chinese human rights activists’ Gmail accounts. In response, Google (eventually) pulled their search engine from China.

And now the hackers are at it again. The Yahoo “e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders” last month, according to the New York Times. NYT reporter Andrew Jacobs, one of the targeted journalists, said the “hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.”

Several of the affected users received messages from Yahoo after problems accessing their accounts, according to the AP.

Yahoo hasn’t yet decided to respond, as Agence France Presse reports. Yesterday, the side stepped the news agency’s questions on the matter, only stating

Yahoo! condemns all cyberattacks regardless of origin or purpose. We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach.

However, Yahoo doesn’t really have a whole of options. They left their Chinese business in 2005, selling their interests to Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba (which later had an IPO larger than Google’s). They still own 39% of Alibaba, but don’t have operational control of the company. They may be able to shut down their email offerings, which are routed through Chinese servers.

There’s no indication that these are the same hackers (or not), although the targets are substantially similar. Victims this time included “a law professor in the United States, an analyst who writes about China’s security apparatus and several print journalists based in Beijing and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan,” the NYT reports.

What do you think? Should Yahoo shut down its Chinese email?

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A new argument to prevent your competition from buying sponsored search listings, containing your brand, is playing out right now in a Wisconsin court room.

And it sounds like the kind of court case you’d actually enjoy watching unfold!

Habush, Habush & Rottier claims that competing law firm Cannon & Dunphy violated state privacy laws by buying search ads using the keywords "Habush" and "Rottier." As attorneys they likely knew that they wouldn’t win a trademark infringement claim, so they’re taking this novel approach.

Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the defendants pulled a Perry Mason…

J. Ric Gass, attorney for Cannon & Dunphy, accused the plaintiff firm of doing what Habush had said he’d never do – pay to get a Habush, Habush & Rottier ad to appear in Internet search results for other lawyers’ names.

Gass demonstrated his point on Yellowpages.com. Searching for Cannon, Dunphy or Gass, the firms’ information appeared, but beside each set of results was a larger ad for Habush.

I can almost hear the attorney turning to the jury and saying smugly, "then how do you explains THIS!"

Gass then argued that the plaintiff’s had "unclean hands"–legal jargon for "you can’t sue someone for something that you are already doing to yourself."

Despite my legal background–and penchant for John Grisham novels–I’m not normally found enjoying my morning coffee while reading about a court case. However, when you have two attorneys battling to find new ground to protect their internet advertising "rights" it all makes for an enjoyable read. Especially when you are treated to legal rhetoric like this:

"The Complaint demonstrates that the plaintiffs believe that cutting-edge advertising is a sword that only they can wield against their competitors whom they are unable to threaten into stopping such marketing. A simple reading of the statute and the law does not just blunt the plaintiffs’ sword, it breaks it across the knee of the Internet."

You can’t handle the truth!

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Some analyst predicts that Apple will build its own search engine and the soundbite feeds the blogging community for a week!

We’re also going to jump in–hey we have bills to pay too–but our take is a little different. First the prediction:

We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, data generated by the company’s App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which would be a unique offering to Google’s search engine…We believe the odds of Apple developing a search engine in the next five years are 70%…

<rolls up sleeves>

OK, first of all. Just because someone says “search engine” you shouldn’t immediately think of a web search engine such as Google.

Second. It’s quite plausible for Apple to build a search engine for the thousands of iPhone/iPad apps in iTunes. Heck, I don’t think it’s going to take 5 years–maybe as little as 5 months!

Lastly, Apple already has an abundance of search engine technology. If you own a Mac, you’re familiar with the power of Spotlight search, right? Use iTunes? There’s a search engine baked into that. Heck, just head to Apple’s support site and you’ll find a pretty cool search engine.

Still, predicting something that Apple already has doesn’t get you talked about by bloggers. Leaving it up to interpretation–that’s where the money is!

Alright, so the title was lame. It’s been a long time since I even considered overusing the “Tw” that has made Twitter talk funny and incredibly annoying at the same time. Twitter must be really big because this bit of news is about their homepage redesign and not about numbers of Twitter accounts etc.

The Twitter blog tells us about this curious new approach by the world leader in character efficiency (how quickly that could slide into deficiency). Gee, you would think that Twitter is trying to make their site experience better so the third party app crowd might consider visiting the mothership. Wouldn’t that help those revenue generation efforts if more users were on the Twitter site to see those pretty ads etc?

Anyway, here’s the scoop

With the new design, we’re intentionally featuring more dynamic content on the front page, revealing a sample of who’s here, what folks are tweeting about, and the big topics that they’re discussing. The homepage now features a set of algorithmically-selected top tweets that automatically appear every few seconds. It also highlights a random sampling of suggested sources; hover over any of them to see a profile summary and their latest tweet. Trending topics now scroll across the page, allowing us to present a large set of trends using little page real estate. Hovering over some of these trends will show a description explaining why the keyword is (or has recently been) popular.

Here’s a picture.

That’s cool. Twitter has to get more people to come to the site v depending on those third party access apps. If they are going to be selling advertising (I said if!) they want as many active Twitter users using the site thus being in front of those ……. Well, you get the picture.

It appears as if Twitter wants to rid itself of the reputation of being a place where desperate people share the mundane activities of their lives with relative strangers. It wants to play with the big kids now.

All of our recent changes embrace the notion that Twitter is not just for status updates anymore. It’s a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day. With so much being shared, we know that there’s something of value for everyone. People who internalize the value of Twitter understand the power of this simple medium.

I find this interesting but not earth shattering. Twitter is obviously trying to rally the troops to make sure that whatever revenue plans they have up their sleeves has the best chance to succeed in a huge fashion. Who wouldn’t?

So are you interested in this new homepage format? What else would you suggest to Twitter to make using the Twitter site for access more appealing? Let’em know. You never know who may be listening.

A study conducted in May 2009 by research firm Psychster asked consumers how they interacted with ads on social sites (PDF). With almost 700 Facebook users and almost 500 users of the cooking/recipe/social website AllRecipes (who sponsored the study), Psychster showed participants a video of an ad type and an interaction. The participants then had to rate how likely they were to interact with the ad as the video did—and how they viewed the brand sponsoring the ads (either a soup brand or a car brand) in the video.

Perhaps most interesting from the above in that corporate profiles with fans and a logo performed slightly better than those without (though unless there’s a lot of rounding going on in the above chart, they could just as easily be placed in slots 3 and 5). These findings held true for both brands and both websites.

The data, however, should be taken with a grain of salt—watching a video of someone else performing an action is likely to increase the number of people reporting “Oh yeah, I’d do that.” A scientific study would be to observe their behavior instead of prompt it.

Sponsored content also scored the lowest for “I would recommend this brand to a friend” (3.4) and “I see this activity as an advertisement” (3.7). Banners and newsletters (4.2) were most likely to be seen as ads, while widgets and social media profiles only fell slightly behind (4.0).

The seven ad types and behaviors were:

1. Banner – This type consisted of a traditional ad on a website; the narrator clicked the ad to view the brand’s website.

2. Newsletter – This type consisted of an ad on a website; the narrator clicked an ad then signed up to receive the brand’s newsletter.

3. Corporate Profiles with Fans and Logos – This type consisted of a profile page, showing photos and notes left on a message board. The narrator further became a fan of the brand, and upon doing so, places the corporate logo on his or her own profile.

4. Corporate Profiles without Fans and Logos – This ad type was identical to the former, except that no mention of fans or logos is made.

5. Get Widget – This ad type consisted of a widget application where the narrator created a digital product and saved it for him or herself. For the car brand, the digital product was a car with customized interior and exterior colors. For the soup brand, the digital product was a collection of recipes based on an ingredient search.

6. Give Widget – This ad type was identical to the Get Widget, except that after creating the digital product, the narrator sent it via email to a friend.

7. Sponsored Content – This ad type consisted of a special St. Patrick’s Day page with a mix of editorial and user-generated content. Twice during the video, the narrator pointed out that the page was sponsored by a company (either the leading soup brand or the leading car brand).

However, the most significant influence appeared to be matching the brand to the site’s audience. The soup brand performed better on AllRecipes, no matter what ad type they used.

What do you think?

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Hands-up if RipOff Report keeps you awake at night?

Yeah, the site keeps many business owners awake. It takes just one unhappy customer to cause the biggest online reputation headache of your company’s life.

Now imagine a service that could end up doing the same for your personal reputation.

OK, you don’t need to imagine it–it just launched!

While I’m sure the founders of Unvarnished don’t consider themselves to be anything like RoR–and I’m confident that’s not the modus operandi–it likely won’t take long before the new review site becomes the playground of the upset, revengeful, and down-right pissed off.

The site is in invite-only beta, but what we do know of it paints a picture of LinkedIn meets Yelp meets Wikipedia. Yes you can claim your personal profile. Yes, there are some safeguards to prevent flat-out defamation or mischievous reviews. And, yes, the reviews can be moderated by the community. What’s not there is what could cause Unvarnished to become the RoR of personal reputations:

You can claim your profile, but unlike LinkedIn, you have to accept every post, warts and all. And once the profile is up there’s no taking it down. I asked co-founder, Peter Kazanjy, “Will you ever give users the option to take down their profile?” Kazanjy’s reply: “No, because if we did that, everyone would take their profile down.”

Perhaps the most concerning is that review can be left anonymously. I’m waiting for the day when reviewers are held publicly accountable for their comments–maybe then we’ll all be a little more civil to each other!

The lack of moderation by the recipient, the anonymity of the reviewer, combined with an inability for a resolved matter to be expunged, is the exact formula that makes RipOff Report despised by so many.

It’s still early days–the site is still in beta–and maybe Unvarnished won’t get the traction it needs to have any serious impact on your reputation. However, if you thought, as an individual, “I really don’t need to monitor or manage my personal reputation” then consider this your wake-up call.

This month, the Opinion Research Corporation conducted a survey for Adfusion, the article-based ad network division of ARAnet. While it should probably come as little surprise that the survey found that articles that include brand information were the preferred source of online advertising, it’s nice to hear that all forms of online ads saw a reported increase over last year when consumers were asked about how likely they were to act on that ad.

That may be because an article-based ad network was paying for the study—but it may also have to do with the nature of marketing articles. Unlike less successful ad categories like banners and popups, marketing articles usually don’t just sneak up on you and foist themselves upon you. Usually, this is information you’re seeking out because you’re already fairly far along in the purchasing funnel.

Email offers came in a close second. Search ads also performed well, with 40% reporting they were “somewhat” or “very likely” to act upon them.

After reading online articles, consumers are also turning more and more to search. Last year, 50% of consumers “somewhat” or “very frequently” turned to searches after reading articles, and this year 57% reported that behavior, with that rising up to 72% for 25 to 34 year olds.

The survey was conducted last week among a sample of 1,053 adults comprising 509 men and 544 women 18 years old and older.

What do you think? Is article marketing really that effective? Is it widespread enough to warrant your efforts? What kind of marketing are you most likely to act upon?