Here’s a simple way to get your Twitter replies delivered to you via RSS.
That’s it. Your Twitter replies will now be delivered to you via RSS in your favorite reader.
How many words does it take to get to the end of a Google search query?
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Okay, I’ll spare you the tedium. The answer is 32 words!
I’m guessing this isn’t new but it just happened to catch my attention. It would have been far more interesting if they’d stopped at 42.
Now is the time when bloggers go on the record with their thoughts for the year ahead. Place your bets! Stake your claim! Here’s mine.
Facebook Becomes A Portal
Realizing that social media and advertising is like oil and water, Facebook repositions itself as a portal leveraging Microsoft’s Live Search as the revenue model. This also might result in the potential acquisition of Netvibes to provide a more robust offering to compete with Yahoo!
Identity Systems Fail
Confused about the difference between OpenID, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect, users throw up their hands and decide not to use any of the above.
Video Advertising Succeeds
The adoption of video is surging faster than many expected. Longer formats and better quality will bring even more eyeballs who will grudgingly accept advertising.
Microformats Go Mainstream
Why they aren’t already is shocking. Nevertheless, in 2009 we’ll see microformats become a standard and search results will become far more robust as a result.
Banner CTR Becomes Obsolete
Brands will finally realize that measuring success by click through rate (CTR) isn’t working. Measurement ‘beyond clicks’ will be the new yardstick, whether that’s through new brand advertising measurement services like Vizu or through monitoring services like Brandwatch and Trackur among a gaggle of others.
RSS Adoption Spikes
Someone will (finally) figure out how to market RSS to ‘the masses’ who will grasp the sublime benefits of having content come to you instead of the other way around.
Kindle 2.0 Flops
Amid a weak economy Amazon releases the newest version of Kindle. Other readers have gained ground where Kindle has not and at the core Kindle is a solution without a problem.
Google Search Share Stalls
The move by Facebook (see above) causes a radical change in the search landscape. Microsoft passes Yahoo! for second place and talks about a Microsoft Yahoo merger are (unbearably) reignited.
FriendFeed Surpasses Twitter
FriendFeed adoption increases at an accelerated pace due to quick innovation, uncluttered design and an interface that lends itself to communication.
Someone ‘Dies’
Users reach social media overload and VCs get even more nervous about revenue creating social media shrinkage. In this instance ‘Dying’ means a company goes under or is purchased for a song. My short list includes Plurk, Twitter, Digg and Seesmic. This isn’t a reflection of the people or product but the inability to truly reach the mainstream with a service that has a profit model.
There are plenty of other things that I believe will happen in 2009, but they seem more obvious or an extension of current trends. Instead I tried to be a bit more bold, at least on a few of my predictions.
We’ll check in this time next year to see how I fared. In the meantime, feel free to comment and provide your feedback and reaction to my predictions.
I’m still trying to find how to get the most out of Twitter. (I get far more from FriendFeed.) But here’s an easy example of how not to use Twitter.
The level of noise on Twitter seems high. Ditto the number who feel it’s an obligation to follow back. Or perhaps this is just what increased usage gets you?
Wikipedia has secured a $890,000 grant from Stanton Foundation to make the editing process more user-friendly. At first glance this seems innocuous, but it has the potential to ruin Wikipedia.
“Wikipedia attracts writers who have a moderate-to-high level of technical understanding, but it excludes lots of smart, knowledgeable people who are less tech-centric,” Sue Gardner, the Wikimedia Foundation’s executive director, said in a statement Wednesday.
Ms. Gardner is right. But it also excludes the ubiquitous trolls and troglodytes who inhabit the comment space on social networks and forums. Ever peek at the comments on YouTube? Yeah, not the type you want editing material on Wikipedia.
Here’s today’s featured article on Wikipedia.
Now imagine that the monkeys have overwhelmed the safeguards through new user-friendly editing.
Sure it’s an exaggeration but the fact remains that Wikipedia is inviting more people into the editing process. They don’t get to choose just the smart people.
The current editing environment actually provides a filter via the technical and code obstacles. It’s a screening process that, while somewhat biased, helps keep the monkey masses out. Might it not be easier to provide tutorials for the ‘smart’ people who are motivated to contribute to Wikipedia?
User-friendly editing is a can of worms, a Pandora’s box. Wikipedia should be careful for what it wishes.
The other day I updated my StumbleUpon toolbar (well, I was essentially forced to) and immediately couldn’t Stumble posts from this blog or my Used Books Blog. Each time I tried my Stumble just would not go through, stalling at a blank white box where the review and tagging takes place. I tried numerous times on a couple different browsers. Nothing worked.
I assumed that something had gone awry with the new toolbar. I even posted a message on FriendFeed calling eBay lame. But you know the old saying about assuming, right?
I sent feedback to StumbleUpon about my problem and got a prompt reply as follows.
Hello,
Thanks for writing in.
After reviewing your account history, it appears
that you’ve repeatedly submitted content from one
or more sites in particular.Our site software detects behavior like this to
prevent the unauthorized use of StumbleUpon to
promote a specific Web site, product or service.This limit will likely remain in place until you
use the StumbleUpon Toolbar more frequently to
rate, review and discover Web sites that can
shared with other members.If you’re interested in using StumbleUpon to
advertise a Web site, please look into our
Advertising program:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/adsIf you have any other questions, please review our
Terms of Service and Community Rules:http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/rules.htmlThanks for your feedback,
Oops. I admit, I’ve only been Stumbling my own sites lately. However, I think they’re pretty good so I don’t see anything too wrong with that. Also, I’m pretty transparent. I don’t have a Stumble army nor do I have multiple profiles so I can distribute my Stumbles across accounts and dodge the software.
But I get it and I’m not really complaining. It’s not what StumbleUpon is really supposed to be about. And I respect them for protecting the product and StumbleUpon business model. It also got me to Stumble again and I discovered some interesting sites and images. So … thanks for that.
My one nit would be that I had to contact support to get this information. Instead of presenting the white box of frustration I suggest that StumbleUpon simply insert the text I received into that area. Not only would I have immediately understood what was going on and not throw invective into the htmlosphere but StumbleUpon would have saved a bit of money on customer support.
Forgive me StumbleUpon for I have sinned. My penance? Stumble.
Google’s share of US searches continues to rise according to a recent comScore press release. In October 2008 Google led with 63.1% of all searches conducted. The resulting pie chart shows that Google is closing in on a Pac-Man like position in the search market.
It hasn’t been this way for that long though. Following is the historic comScore data I’ve cobbled together showing Google’s share of the search market.
October 2004: 34.8%
October 2005: 39.0%
October 2006: 45.4%
October 2007: 58.5%
October 2008: 63.1%
So, in five years the search market went from a dog fight to a laugher. If Google continues on this path the pie chart will take on true Pac-Man dimensions.
Now, I’m not sure who’s Inky, Blinky, Pinky or Clyde but Google certainly has the other search players on the run.
None of them seems to have the right medicine to reduce the Google fever that has swept the country. Acetaminophen (AOL), ibuprofen (Yahoo!), naproxen (Ask) and aspirin (MSN) have all failed to bring the temperature down. And upstart homeopathic remedies (Powerset, Cuil etc.) haven’t made a dent either.
Would mixing some of these medicines together help? Some Yahoo! and MSN with a dash of Powerset? Not likely. And in some cases mixing medicines can prove lethal.
Zoetrope is a new web tool being jointly developed by Adobe and researchers at the University of Washington. The general idea is to allow users to view the Internet over time. Think of it as the Wayback Machine on steroids. Sarah Perez does a good job writing about Zoetrope in ReadWriteWeb.
Yet, it’s the following video that does the best job of explaining Zoetrope.
Could Zoetrope be used as a SERP tracking tool?
If Zoetrope could capture specific search engine results pages (SERPs), then it could be a very powerful SERP tracking tool.
Let’s say I have 10 high value keywords for which I want to be highly ranked on Google. Using Zoetrope I could conceivably capture the daily SERP for each keyword and link it to the appropriate destination page. This would allow me to see if changes to my page had any impact on SERP ranking for that keyword.
I could even create ‘lenses’ for my competitors and review how they’ve tweaked their site to help influence SERP rank. Zoetrope could provide an unparalleled level of detail and analysis for a savvy SEO practitioner.
Yet there’s a big, actually huge, ‘if‘ in the statement above. I doubt that Zoetrope is or even could capture every SERP. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a way to do this. In fact, I think it provides a pretty interesting business opportunity.
Want Zoetrope to help you track SERP for a group of keywords? Simply sign-up for a subscription and they would begin to capture the information. Toss in a 30 day free trial to get the ball rolling and I think you’d have a number of people clamoring for and using Zoetrope for SERP tracking.
I’m a direct marketer at heart which means I like numbers and I absolutely love testing. The other day I found the Mozilla Blog of Metrics via a FriendFeed post by AJ Batac. The blog is subtitled ‘When in doubt, sample it out …’ and gives me yet another reason to like, perhaps even love, Firefox and Mozilla.
Mozilla is moving forward with multivariate testing but wanted to crawl before they walked. So, they conducted a simple A/B test on the call to action on their download button.
Now, I probably could have told you that ‘Download Now – Free’ would outperform ‘Try Firefox 3′ However, they admit that the test was more about validating the tool and process rather than about the actual test.
What’s exciting (to me at least) is that Mozilla is going to run these tests and (hopefully) follow a fact-based decision making process. Do any of us want to sit through another meeting where the merits of design or copy are debated endlessly? Too many organizations continue to design based on instinct, opinion and best practices instead of testing their way to success.
You and your team are not the target market, and best practices may not be best for your particular product, site or audience. What worked at your last place of business may not work again. In fact, what worked last year may not work now, which is why organizations should always re-test assumptions via challengers.
If we’ve piqued your interest, please note that we’ll soon have some exciting findings related to a currently ongoing multivariate test at the main Firefox product page (www.mozilla.com/firefox).
Yes, you’ve piqued my interest! I’ll be eager to see the results of multivariate testing and hope that Mozilla can help usher more organizations into a test-and-learn, fact-based decision making environment.
What exactly is Web 2.0? There are plenty of ways to explain it and define it, but what is it really? It’s a marketing slogan meant to attract investors, media and users back to the Internet after the dot com crash.
The inability to adequately define what Web 2.0 is a clue that it has roots in marketing. Marketers (and I’m one of them) are good at creating things that resonate without making complete sense. For instance, the phrase ‘virtually spotless’ for a dishwasher detergent seems good but upon inspection really means ‘has some spots’.
Max(x) Barry aptly skewered this situation in his book Syrup.
Pick a random chemical in your product and heavily promote its presence. When your customers see “Now wth Benzoethylhydrates!” they will assume that this is a good thing.
Even Tim Berners-Lee, Web pioneer, sees through the Web 2.0 smoke and mirrors. Ars Technica does a good job of digesting Tim Berners-Lee’s podcast text and presents the most relevant quote about his view of Web 2.0: “nobody even knows what it means”.
But that’s the brilliance of Web 2.0, it can mean whatever you really want it to mean. Want Web 2.0 to include the semantic web? Sure. Want it to be about microformats? You betcha. Want it to be about user generated content? No problemo. Want it to represent a way to use software and technology to connect people to people? Of course. Mashups? Yup. Tagging? Check. Social Media? Okay.
The mythology is that Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty came up with the term at a brainstorming session at a 2003 conference. I don’t think they came up with the term, but O’Reilly created the buzz around it, promoted it and subsequently fought over it. Let’s face it, O’Reilly isn’t a slouch in the marketing department!
Don’t believe me? Well what about Dermot McCormack’s 2002 book titled Web 2.0: The Resurgence of the Internet & E-Commerce.
So instead of trying to figure out who coined the term or what it actually means, just be happy that it ushered a new influx of ideas and investment into the Internet.
Like Web 2.0? Thank your nearest marketer today.
