[ About Us | Popular | Marcom | AdNet | IChannel | Glossary ]

May 3, 2008

Social Media Weekend

Calvert Creative announces social media and business seminar at ...
PR.com (press release), NY - 8 hours ago
The seminar, slated for May 8 at 12:00PM, is designed to introduce businesses to social media and to begin discussions of how this new marketing may be used ...

VNUNet.com
Nielsen Forms Social Media Research Arm
Daily Research News Online, UK - 18 hours ago
In the US, Nielsen Online has formed a Digital Strategic Services group, to help advertisers manage their online reputations on social media platforms. ...
Nielsen Online Launches New Digital Services Group Mediapost.com
Nielsen Launches Group to Help Manage Online Reputations ClickZ News
Nielsen launches digital strategic service PRWeek
MEDIAWEEK - ADOTAS
all 27 news articles »

CNET News.com
Social media's future looks bright, apply sunscreen
CNET News.com, CA - May 1, 2008
At an Internet conference here Wednesday, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs tried to predict the future of the social-media business. Guess what? ...
Travel brands 'should exploit social media'
Opodo, UK - 21 hours ago
Travel companies have been urged to make more use of the social media phenomenon and exploit the potential of sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. ...
Major brands fail to capitalise on consumer passion through social ...E-consultancy (press release)
Banks 'ignoring importance' of Facebook word-of-mouth Brand Republic (subscription)
all 5 news articles »
Are Forums "Social Media" Sites?
Search Engine Roundtable - May 2, 2008
Before reading on, would you consider forums "social media?" This is the question that is posed on a High Rankings Forum post. Many people find that the ...
National Geographic Wins Three Ellies, Y&R Mails, Social Media ...
Adrants, MA - 23 hours ago
smashLAB has crafted a white paper on social media designed to be a primer for those clients who look at you with a blank stare when you utter the words ...
Putting social media to work: Seven practical ideas for taking ...
Business Wire (press release), CA - May 2, 2008
PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IABC Philadelphia is hosting an event to explore real-world opportunities for using social media tools that demonstrate clear ...

Profy
Are You and Your Significant Other Both Social Media Mavens?
Profy - May 2, 2008
I started thinking about how spouses and partners react to social media yesterday, after receiving a few comments about my interactions with my husband on ...
Neighborhood America Leads Workshop at 2008 Digital Hollywood ...
PR-USA.net (press release), Bulgaria - May 2, 2008
Breed will discuss social media strategies that actually drive ROI versus applications that are deployed for the sake of following the latest fad. ...
AuthorityDomains.com launches new social media marketing service ...
PR Web (press release), WA - May 2, 2008
Search Engine Marketing company AuthorityDomains.com has recently launched a new set of bundled Social Media Marketing services. ...

Blog Weekend


PopMatters
Bissinger blasts blogs' 'journalistic dishonesty'
Globe and Mail, Canada - May 2, 2008
A debate on the pros and cons of sports blogs is getting old, but a fistfight on the set would have been new and interesting, not to mention consistent with ...
Costas, Bissinger and the blind spot SportingNews.com
Both heat and light on the sports blog debate Baltimore Sun
Costas gets it right on bloggers Kansas City Star
FOXSports.com - Kansas City Star
all 65 news articles »

Sportsnet.ca
Long live blogs
Sportsnet.ca, Canada - 11 hours ago
It's obvious there are a lot of old-school reporters out there who can't stand blogs. Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post is a hater of blogs...

CityNews
Blogs report sightings of RIM's `iPhone killer'
Toronto Star,  Canada - May 2, 2008
With an updated version or, possibly, versions of Apple's iPhone expected this summer, the rumour mill surrounding BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion ...
Hype Report Financial Post
3G iPhone for $199 and Blackberry’s surprise iPhone-Codes
Bernstein’s Sacconaghi: AT&T subsidy would dramatically boost ... MacDailyNews
all 153 news articles »  RIMM - T - AAPL
Gays, lesbians and blogs
Globe and Mail, Canada - May 1, 2008
The study, using a statistically c redible sample of 2733 US adults, said that 51 per cent of gays and lesbians who use the Internet regularly read blogs...
Journalists urged to blog, set examples online
ABS CBN News, Philippines - 6 hours ago
“Ethics should show in your blogs,” Teodoro said. HofileƱa stressed that journalists should be very careful because the “the standard for a news reporter is ...
Local Blogs
News-Leader.com, MO - 6 hours ago
Many of you know that KSGF's Vince Jericho has lied both on and off the air about me, my beliefs and this blog. I had pretty much decided to no longer ...
On Plagiarism
SportingNews.com - 3 hours ago
I will not name names because as far as I know, nobody on this site has ever stolen one of my blogs...and if they did; they could have probably done better ...
Search Community / blogs:
NetworkWorld.com, MA - 16 hours ago
Until the economy turns around all H-1B visas should be stopped. Hire the US worker! How much of this fine is going to the US workers who were not hired? ...
7 Must-Read Stock Blogs
Motley Fool - May 1, 2008
By Matt Koppenheffer May 1, 2008 The Motley Fool's CAPS investing service is another great way for investors to work together to beat the market. ...
BLOG ROUND-UP: Get to know some of the new blogs and bloggers at ...
WBIR-TV, TN - May 2, 2008
These are just a few of the blogs we've launched this week at the all-new WBIR.com. Keep checking back for new bloggers, and new interactive features. ...

AdNets Weekend


The Money Times
Viacom profit rises on "Rock Band," MTV
Reuters - 2 hours ago
Based on ratings at its cable networks and rates for spot advertising, also called the scatter market, "we continue to expect our (second quarter) domestic ...
Viacom works the media mix magic CNNMoney.com
Viacom Reports 33% Rise in Net As 'Rock Band' Boosts Networks Unit Wall Street Journal
Viacom posts profit rise, affirms long-term forecast MarketWatch
New York Times - Reuters UK
all 237 news articles »  VIA.B
Cox Enterprises to Acquire Adify, an Ad Tech Firm
New York Times, United States - Apr 29, 2008
Adify, founded in 2005, helps Internet publishers build vertical advertising networks. These are groupings of sites about specific content, like travel or ...

Multichannel News
MONITOR: Upfront Undone
Multichannel News, NY - 2 hours ago
Executives from competing networks named MTV Networks as the biggest victim of C3 falloff. But the programmer's president of advertising sales, Hank Close, ...
Cox Shells Out $300M to Cash in on Vertical Web Ads
InternetNews.com - Apr 29, 2008
... today said that it's spending $300 million to acquire Adify, an online ad technology provider specializing in powering vertical advertising networks...
Inside The World's VIP Social Networks
Forbes, NY - 16 hours ago
The fee eliminates the need for online advertising, which, Pedraza says, would be a conflict of interest. "People are unhappy with the free-for-all at ...

Direct Traffic Media
DoubleClick in mobile ad network integration
Epiphany Search News, UK - 11 hours ago
DoubleClick, the advertising company purchased by Google earlier this year, is set to integrate with a number of mobile advertising networks...
DoubleClick announces mobile ad network integration Direct Traffic Media
Google meshes DoubleClick to mobiles Brand Republic (subscription)
DoubleClick integrates AdMob and AdSense Mobile Entertainment
all 4 news articles »  GOOG
Automotive Advertising Shifts Focus Online With AdAgencyOnline.Net
PR-USA.net (press release), Bulgaria - May 1, 2008
Auto industry experts and automotive advertising agencies have thrown their support to online technology platforms and automotive advertising networks like ...
Automotive Advertising Agencies Panic - AdAgencyOnline.Net ...PR-USA.net (press release)
all 7 news articles »

Los Angeles Times
VoilĆ  (Sort of)!
New York Times, United States - 9 hours ago
In the midst of extravagant audiovisuals, musical numbers, comedy sketches, pricey giveaways and celebrity appearances, the networks divulge their fall ...
The Lowdown on the Upfronts New York Times
all 12 news articles »
Adman learns to swim in a sea of digital media
Los Angeles Times, CA - 14 hours ago
The networks got a late start this year on their TV pilots and few are finished. That means when the advertising sales season kicks off next week in New ...
Mobile advertising leads the way for social networks
E-consultancy (press release), UK - May 1, 2008
Its range of mobile advertising services can target specific pages and channels of the Flirtomatic mobile site as well as user targeting through gender, ...

May 2, 2008

NEWS: Watercooler: Yet another social network app company that’s making money

Watercooler: Yet another social network app company that’s making money

Nobody really knows how much social networks applications are worth, which leads some people to think that they’re not worth much of anything. But try telling that to the companies that are building businesses through applications, and they’ll laugh at you as they continue on their way to the bank. This new social network application market, that only started around 11 months ago with the launch of Facebook’s developer platform, has produced a wave of companies whose impact is being felt across traditional media.

Latest example: Watercooler, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that offers more than 700 applications based on the idea that lots of people want to talk about their favorite sports teams and events or television shows within social networks. It creates an individual application for a team or show. The application includes a forum, a feature for leaving photos, a user ranking system, quizzes, community moderators, and other features designed to encourage lots of interaction.


So far, the company has 20 million total users, with more than 18 million of them on Facebook. Its method of growth is based on real-world connections between, say, sports fans. Your friend on Facebook is a fan of Manchester United, and so are you (or not) — they add the Watercooler ManU application and invite you to talk with them (see above and below)...


List of CMS Providers

List of content management systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a list of notable content management systems that are used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Many of them are built on top ...

Best Open Source Content Management Systems

Choose among the most popular CMS software

Creating a successful website is now easier than ever due to the Content Management System (CMS). With CMS you can
Joomla CMS

create and publish web content, 
present it to your audience, and 
archivate it safely.

CMS helps you keep your website

well organized and comprehensive,
increases the data security, and
reduces the site maintenance costs.

In this manner CMS is an outstanding solution for your small or middle sized business as well as for your personal websites.

What exactly is a CMS?

CMS is a multifunctional application. It is capable to create a powerful portal website in a matter of minutes and it has wide supporting community. The CMS portals offer intuitive administration and dispose of detailed tutorials. CMS consists of a content management application which enables the management and modification of content without advanced webmaster knowledge, and a content delivery application, that uses new information to update the website.

In this article we have selected some of the most popular open source, free to download and use CMS tools. You can choose any of them for your website depending on your particular needs or organizational requirements...


4 Best Content Management Systems

I have tried 22 different CMS's in the past 6 years. I have narrowed down the absolute best of the best to these 4.

Enterprise level - Dont attempt to play with these unless you are an experienced webmaster/coder. You can build some of the most powerful sites on the internet with them, but you need to know what you are doing.

The 2 most powerful open source cms's out there are: Krang and Bricolage.


Bricolage powers sites like Entertainment Tonight, The World Health Organization, The Ad Council, MacWorld, MacCentral, and PlaylistMag.

http://www.adcouncil.org/
http://www.macworld.com
http://www.playlistmag.com
http://www.et.yahoo.com
http://www.who.int/

Another beautiful site made with it: http://www.grist.org/

Bricolage can be found here: http://www.bricolage.cc/

Krang is simply amazing as well. Powering sites like New York Magazine (New York Metro), Motortrend, and Import Tuner Magazine. Krand is also used to power all 220 websites in the PriMedia Corporation portfolio of news and magazine websites.

http://www.newyorkmetro.com
http://www.motortrend.com
http://importtuner.com/

Krang can be found here: http://krang.sourceforge.net/

Commercial and Portal Sites:

For commercial sites I only use CivicSpace. Its the same cms Mozilla.org and SpreadFireFox.com use to power their sites. For ease of use and stunning array of tools, its absolutely perfect. Also it is an absolute dream for SEO minded builders.

CivicSpace can be found here: http://civicspacelabs.org/home/


For portals I recommend nothing besides CPG-Nuke's newest creation called DragonFly. DragonFly easily blows away Mambo, Xoops, Typo3, PHP-Nuke, Siteframe, Drupal, Geeklog, PostNuke, ezPublish and Movable Type combined.

DragonFly's main benefits:

- disgunstingly fast and simple to use, create, and setup
- uses less then half the bandwidth then most of the CMS's I listed above.
- Took 2 of the best open source projects online (PHPBB and Coppermine Gallery) and fully integrated them into the core of the basic DragonFly install.
- the most SEO friendly CMS I have ever used. Puts Mambo and all the others to shame as far as SEO goes.

CPG-NUKE DragonFly is found here: http://www.cpgnuke.com/

Obviously though, these are just my opinions. 

NEWS: OJR's Robert Niles: Three roadblocks to successful online journalism

OJR's Robert Niles: Three roadblocks to successful online journalism

After attending a session at the NewsTools 2008: Journalism that Matters conference, Online Journalism Review's Robert Niles has highlighted key problems with today's online journalism, as discussed by participants at the conference.
  
Unwillingness to accept the public beta concept

Niles points out that when a website launches, it is inevitably imperfect and needs time live in the field, along with user feedback, to perfect its functioning. But journalists are accustomed to having the product be complete when it goes public; after all, it has passed through a series of edits before ever reaching the reader.
  
The general consensus: "Journalists would do better to think like programmers in the sense of recognizing incremental success and not getting too depressed when initiatives fail." It is the kind of new approach in journalism that can be seen, for example, in the Telegraph's brand new online innovation lab.
 
Being introspective, in a bad way

According to Niles, it is always the same type of people who come to journalism conferences and brainstorm solutions on how to improve the industry, an approach that he compares to the political party who always hires the same losing campaign manager.
 
"The journalism industry typically looks within itself for potential solutions to technical and business challenges online, when it should be looking to people outside the "news" industry who have taken on, and solved, many of the same challenges."

Monotonous content 

Online content cannot be all hard-hitting in-depth profiles and investigative pieces; plain and simple, it will not attract an audience. As Niles puts it, "even the New Yorker runs a hell of a lot of cartoons." The gimmicks that make websites a brand name are important too. 

"Journalists need to treat their websites like a dinner party," Niles writes. "You can't just dish out a plate of veggies. You need to invite your readers in, chat with them, serve 'em a drink and get them comfortable."

Source: Online Journalism Review 

NEWS: ABC.com To Push The Envelope On Multiple Commercials For Online Video Episodes

ABC.com To Push The Envelope On Multiple Commercials For Online Video Episodes

Disney-ABC Television Group plans to test viewer reaction to the presence of multiple commercials within long-form online videos on its ABC.com streaming media player, THR reports. It's fairly standard for videos sites like Hulu to run only one marketer/one commercial between breaks in full-length streaming episode. Albert Cheng, EVP, digital media at DATG, concedes that viewer tolerance might not extend beyond the one-ad-per-pod model for online video, but he also feels that given the nascent stage of the format, it's premature to accept this rule as set in stone.

-- Raising CPMs: On average, the major TV networks charge about $25 CPMs, with $40 CPMs commanded by highly rated shows. Most video sites are in line with those figures, though the larger sites tend to command much higher prices by dint of the greater target viewers. By offering a series of ads, ABC.com hopes it can take advantage of that and wrest more revenues out of its onlline videos. ABC.com has been particularly aggressive in trying out different paths from CBS (NYSE: CBS) and NBC over the past two years. It initially resisted syndication when its rivals quickly embraced that distribution model, though ABC.com eventually switched gears on that front. Still, ABC.com was the first of the major TV nets to run full-length episodes online, starting with shows like Grey's Anatomy and Lost

-- Better targeted ads: The key to pulling off this gambit depends on marketers being able to create ads better suited to the internet, Cheng tells THR. That means not running repackaged TV spots. ABC research claims that it found significantly higher responsiveness to spots that had an interactive component, like casual gaming. In the end, if the research says that multiple ads don't work, Cheng promises that ABC.com will readily abandon the strategy.


NEWS: Social media's future looks bright, apply sunscreen

May 1, 2008 10:00 AM PDT

Social media's future looks bright, apply sunscreen

 MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--At an Internet conference here Wednesday, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs tried to predict the future of the social-media business. Guess what? It looks a lot like the Web business model we have now.

Why the prognostication? VCs and executives are all trying to figure out how they can build the next Bebo, a social network that sold to AOL for $850 million. But because those deals are few and far between, especially in a shrinking economy, executives are taking a much more practical stance on the kinds of companies necessary to deliver social-media sites to the next level, or beyond "pokes" and "hugs."

Promising companies are new advertising networks, e-commerce applications, payment systems, and infrastructure providers for social networks, according to executives here at the Dealmaker Forum 2008.

It sounds like a rehash of what went into Web 1.0, with a social twist.

Social media is in the spotlight because from a consumer perspective, it's causing a shift in how people spend their time online and how they relate to media. All those involved, from advertisers to entrepreneurs to major media companies, are trying to figure out what it means to their business and how they should take advantage of it. What's more, many social-media companies are still figuring out how to turn a profit.

The definition of social media can vary depending on who you talk to. But in general, the term refers to any media (text, photos, video, etc.) that has a social element built around it on the Web. Examples can range from Flickr for sharing photos, to user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia, to Muxtape for publishing music playlists, to Facebook for "poking" and staying up on friends.

"It's really an evolution of media from a one-way direction to a highly interactive model, where people are developing relationships around content. That drives engagement...and creates a whole new opportunity for business," Mike Jensen, director of technology group at Credit Suisse, said during a panel discussion at the one-day conference.

That said, later in the panel Jensen likened some of the high-ticket acquisitions in social media to "drunken sailor" behavior. He didn't name deals. But Google, for example, paid $1.6 billion for YouTube and CEO Eric Schmidt said only recently that the company still hasn't figured out how to make money from the video-sharing site.

One opportunity for new business is in e-commerce.

Dave McClure, an angel investor at 500 Hats, believes the future of the business will be in so-called social commerce, or the intersection between online shopping and socializing. Netflix might be an example of early social commerce because it encourages members to recommend movies to friends. But he envisions social commerce going much further.

"Social commerce is where (the business is) headed. Companies that have mined enough social graph data and can combine shopping to it--whoever figures that out, they will be set," McClure said during a panel.

"Social commerce is where (the business is) headed. Companies that have mined enough social graph data and can combine shopping to it--whoever figures that out, they will be set."
--Dave McClure, angel investor, 500 Hats

Early companies in this arena are ThisNext and Kaboodle, which sold to publishing conglomerate Hearst Corp. for a reported $40 million. Kaboodle and ThisNext offer services that connect people with similar shopping tastes, or offer recommendations from that data.

Jason Oberfest, vice president of business development at Myspace, said on a panel that, in the future, he believes a "significant portion" of MySpace's revenue will come from leads generated for online retail sales.

Oberfest added that the industry also needs companies that specialize in payment processing for social networks so that people can more easily purchase real or virtual goods. That business isn't being served by PayPal or other existing players, he said. "It's a big area of need," Oberfest said.

Much of the hype in social media has gone to application makers like Slide and RockYou, which have amassed valuations as high as $500 million. But most of the smaller widget makers aren't going to be lasting companies, according to Charlene Li, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "You can get viral quickly, but let's track and see how long that app stays around," Li said.

Charlene Li, Forrester Research analyst

(Credit: Forrester Research)

Instead, she said, more developers should be working on applications that provide utility to people, rather than just entertainment. For example, spin-offs of Twitter for health care or emergency workers could hold promise, she said. Li even touted Dogster, a social network that helps dog lovers arrange play dates, as a hit in the arena. An executive from the company was in the audience and suggested that the company was for sale.

Sergio Monsalve, a venture capitalist at Norwest and former executive at Photobucket and eBay, said companies like Affinity Labs are also highly valuable. Affinity Labs, which sold to Monster Worldwide in January, builds social networks for specific communities, such as nurses or teachers. Sergio said even though that company isn't a household name, it generates $20 million to $30 million in revenue inside Monster.

Advertising redux

Another major area of innovation--or rehash--is advertising, which is the economic engine of most social-media sites. Thanks to social networks like MySpace and Facebook, companies are armed with much more data on people's habits, preferences, and social behavior. Executives believe that data, if used right, can build the next advertising giant.

"To take Bebo to a billion dollars, you have to automate it...and build a (Google) AdWords for social networking," said Jim Scheinman, entrepreneur in residence at Charles River Ventures and an early employee at Bebo.

Still, social networks have long been challenged to sell their inventory to mainstream advertisers for several reasons. For one, advertisers are squeamish about putting their brands next to a user-generated video of high-school band practice, for example. Another reason is that salespeople from social networks don't speak the same language of metrics that traditional advertisers and agencies speak.

"The promise for this space is that you've got this engaged audience--people spending 20 to 40 minutes talking to each other in a way they haven't before--and if you put these ads in front of them, what do you call it and how do you sell it to agencies?" Scheinman said.

Early companies in this arena include social-ad networks Lookery and SocialMedia Networks.

MySpace is seeing early success for its advertising service called hypertargeting, which lets advertisers reach customers by their behavior on the social network. Oberfest said people are responding more positively to those ads.

Seth Goldstein, founder of SocialMedia Networks, an advertising platform for social networks, said that he envisions an open system from Facebook or MySpace that would allow companies to look at a person's social graph, or collection of their friends. Then the company could extract who is most influential to that individual in areas like travel or movie recommendations.

"If I can select the right person to have influence over you, I can choose that person to send you a message," he said.

Nicolas Kardas, senior product manager at Microsoft's Windows Live Platform group, said despite the forward twist on social media, the business models aren't that different than those of years past. It's just that with social networks, companies know much more about the consumer, and that information delivers the option of a much bigger premium for advertising.

"It's better targeting for advertising. But from a business standpoint, I haven't heard anything new than what I heard before," Kardas said.

That isn't slowing the competition in social networking and media. For that reason, venture capitalists expect more consolidation and buyouts in the market.

"I think big media companies will continue to be aggressive in this area. But in my mind there will be a lot of carnage," Credit Suisse's Jensen said.


Support Our Sponsors: