Micro Persuasion

Yahoo 360: The Blog Ghost Town

Rafat Ali points to an AdAge scoop that Yahoo is launching a consumer tech vertical site tomorrow that will serve as a model for future launches. The site will include a mix of licensed, original and consumer created content.

The social media highlights include user reviews from Yahoo's shopping site and Yahoo Answers. In addition, Yahoo Tech will feature a small group of bloggers, such as fomer USA Today columnist Robin Raskin (a friend o'Steve) and Gina Hughes, who will focus on gadgets.

I think this continues Yahoo's leadership in driving citizen's media revolution.But curiously, Yahoo 360 is noticeably absent - at least from the story, which most likely means from the product as well. Whether it's in or not, can someone tell me what the heck is going on with 360? Is Yahoo marketing it? It's like Geo Cities all over again. Nielsen said it had 3M users in March. MSN Spaces has double that - just in Europe.

I am beginning to think that Yahoo 360 has slipped and that Yahoo is quietly sweeping it under a big purple rug with a yellow "Y!" on it. It has very little mindshare. Unlike MSN Spaces, which is a bona-fide hit, and Blogger, the granddaddy of blogs, Yahoo 360 is largely a forgotten product. I can't remember the last time I read any blog on 360. Worse, the fact that virtually all of Yahoo's blogs, such as news and health, utilize other technology is a sign that Yahoo 360 is largely Geo Cities 2.0. (Disclaimer: Edelman is one of Microsoft's PR agencies.)

Technorati Tags: Yahoo 360, Yahoo

SelfcastTV

The company behind the Blinkx video search engine has launched SelfcastTV, a UK video sharing site that's similar YouTube. According to Pocket-lint.co.uk, SelfcastTV has many of the same features as YouTube, plus the ability to publish videos direct from a mobile device.

Technorati Tags: Blinkx, SelfcastTV, UK

Web 2.0 Categorized

Categoriz is another big giant directory of Web 2.0 sites and services.

links for 2006-04-30

• Direct-link versions of Digg feeds
  No longer are you forced to hit the digg page.
  (tags: digg rss)
• adverlicio.us | online advertising archive | World's Tastiest Collection of Online Advertising
  World's Tastiest Collection of Online Advertising
  (tags: advertising)

United 93 Blog Ads Buy Hits a Glitch

According to the Movie Marketing Madness bog, the marketing team behind United 93 got into a bit of hot water for making a Blogads buy solely across their conservative blog network. They later corrected this by also purchasing ads on liberal blogs.

Technorati Tags: Movies, United 93

Social Media Product Placement

Pete Cashmore shows us how any old Joe, like Ask a Ninja, can build a global social media brand overnight with zero marketing dollars by utilizing all of the existing social networks.

I don't think a corporation could pull this off in the same way. However, the stars in the social media universe are ripe for product placement. The big question is will their fans accept it. I expect that we'll see products popping up in shows like Ask a Ninja and Rocketboom later this year as well as in popular podcasts and blogs too.

Technorati Tags: Peer Media, Pete Cashmore, Product Placement, Mashable

links for 2006-04-29

• » Findory Mobile » InsideGoogle » part of the Blog News Channel
  Findory has launched a mobile version
  (tags: findory media news mobile)

We're Out of Pockets

When marketers dream about mobile devices we talk about reaching folks on the coveted "third screen" (the TV and computer being the other two). Third screen marketing is bankable, although the accepted methods are still nascent. At Edelman, we are already developing mobile marketing programs for our clients. Some of these will succeed, others won't and we'll form best practices and learn from them. I am less confident, however, that there will be fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh screens.

The big reason is not technology, but clothes. We're out of pockets. How many of you carry three or more devices? I carry a BlackBerry, an iPod and a cell phone. I put one gadget in each jacket pocket and attach the other to my belt. Come summertime I won't be happy. I will have to reduce this load down to two - an iPod nano and my BlackBerry, which also has a so-so phone.

This is why I am not particularly bullish on the latest array of e-paper devices. We simply don't want another device to carry. We don't want the complexity. Although there has been a lot of buzz recently about electronic newspapers and mobile devices like the Sony Reader, I don't feel they will attract widespread use in the near term. Media and marketers should focus instead on proven platforms while keeping an eye on the coming, yet still elusive era of convergence.

The Financial Times has the right idea, although their initial effort needs work, Today the the FT released a special application that puts a link to the The Financial Times Web site on your Blackberry home screen. Hopefully, in the future they will add RSS to the delivery mechanism so that it automatically pushes the full content of the paper to BlackBerry subscribers.

In summary, look at the people around you and the devices they are using and experiment there before placing bets on unproven nascent platforms that add bulk to people's belts.

Tag Your Technorati Faves

Technorati has added a new feature that allows you to categorize your favorite blogs with tags. Unfortunately, they still have not changed how blogs are tagged under the Technorati Blog Finder. They need to marry these two concepts together so that users too can categorize bloggers. In other T'Rati news, you can now browse tags on a mobile device.

Technorati Tags: Technorati

links for 2006-04-28

• Gillmor Gang » Blog Archive » Syndicate Gang Part I
  First in a three-part conversation between Syndicate NY keynoters Amanda Congdon, Jeff Jarvis, Doc Searls, Richard Edelman,
  (tags: edelman podcasts PR blogs Web2.0)
• Google Calendar Button Creator
  Create a button for your blog, MySpace, or website for your next event, party or show.
  (tags: calendar Google)
• Facebook expands to corporate social networking; again with staggered rollout strategy at Inside Facebook
  Facebook publicly opened registration beyond the world of students for the first time to people with select corporate email accounts.
  (tags: SocialNetworking facebook)
• Media firms work to stay ahead of Net consumers | CNET News.com
  "Big media companies must keep finding ways to reach on-the-go users and make money doing it to stay relevant in an online marketplace that values convenience and novelty"
  (tags: media mobile marketing advertising)
• Erin Caldwell’s PRblog » Miss Caldwell Goes to Washington
  Welcome to Edelman, Erin. We're thrilled to have you.
  (tags: edelman blogs PR)
• How To: Run other OSs on your Mac with Parallels Workstation - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
  A basic how-to
  (tags: OSX Windows Virtualization Apple Mac)

The iPod will Lose its Grip on Podcasts

BBHub notes that the BlackBerry platform will get its first media player software, BerryCast, starting next month. If this is half as good as it sounds and if it's an open platform based on RSS, the BlackBerry could rival the iPod as a device for consuming "podcasts." I would much rather have podcasts follow me around on a 3G device than have to remember to sync them to an iPod.

Expect iPods to continue to rule music. However, I am betting that other devices like Treos, Windows Mobile smartphones and BlackBerries will start to encroach on iPods as podcast consumption tools as broadband wireless becomes more prevalent.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Treo

AOL's Stock Blogs Will Get More Companies Blogging

Whether intended or not, AOL's big move today in launching Blogging Stocks will get more corporations using blogs as a communications tool - perhaps reluctantly. AOL, under the lead of new employee Jason Calacanis and Weblogs Inc., launched blogs tracking Google, Microsoft, General Electric, Wal-Mart, Apple, eBay, Time Warner and Yahoo.

With this launch, many more employees inside some of the biggest corporations in the world will have a big incentive to start reading blogs. In addition, so will investor relations professionals, analysts, press and any other stragglers. Suddenly blogs aren't just a sideshow, but a major influence that can impact companies positively and negatively where it matters most - shareholder value.

Blogging Stocks and Google Finance, which lists blog posts, bring weblogs out of its perceived geekdom and puts them into the forefront. Blogs now have more power to change the game in  the stock market, a scorecard that many of us follow.

All of the stocks that AOL is tracking so far are very blog savvy. All eight firms have at least one blog. Three of them - Microsoft, GE and Wal-Mart - are Edelman clients. As AOL builds out this network it will start covering companies that do not have blogs. Once they do, they will start reading and over time realize they need to get into the conversation actively.

Calacanis and AOL would be wise to be launch more blogs and/or networks that track major companies. Once major marketers feel the power of such blogs there will be little reason not to advertise on them. Just like the trade rags once did. Influence brings ad dollars.

Technorati Tags: AOL, Blogging Stocks, IR, Investor Relations, Stocks

Google Juice 101

Leslie Walker at the Washington Post explains how how to boost a web site's rank by increasing its Google Juice. One suggestion is to not go for the top keywords but related ones. Blogs definitely help here.

Technorati Tags: Google Juice, Google, SEO

Will Social Media Shatter the Glass Ceiling?

Despite our country's great strides in working to give women equal rights in virtually every aspect of society, there is still a "glass ceiling" both in PR and in the broader Fortune 500. There are small signs of improvement.

According to Fortune, there are more women running Fortune 500 companies this year than there were last year. Currently, 10 Fortune 500 companies are run by women (up from 9 last year), and a total of 20 Fortune 1000 companies have women in the top job (up from 19). Still, this number is shameful given the strides we have made in our society to give women their deserved equal footing. (Note: Edelman's US CEO, Pam Talbot, is a woman and there are many women in senior leadership positions in our firm.)

Sun Ho Shim is tracking this on her blog, which is aptly called The New Majority in PR: Women. In January she noted that women account for approximately 20% of all PR bloggers. This is despite the fact that 60% of the PR workforce are women, according to a recent survey by PR Week. We need more of our female colleagues joining us.

Social media and blogs specifically have played a major role in creating a flat Earth. I told a group of MBA students from Baruch College in New York this week that if they wanted to they could find a under-served niche in the blogosphere, create an active blog to serve it and conceivably earn money in the process. Despite all of the wonderful changes in marketing and PR over the past couple of years, we still have a long way to go in leveling the playing field for women in our workforce and overall as well.

I believe that over time, at least here in the US, social media can level this inequality. If more women blog about this situation, it has will mobilize them to a) find each other and b) act together. This will accelerate if the mainstream media takes notice. Could social media create a new movement? History has repeated itself before.

Technorati Tags: Social Media, Women

links for 2006-04-27

• VIPBloggers.com
  They are trying to sign up 10,000 bloggers. Why anyone would pay for this is beyond me.
  (tags: blogs)
• Tech Jobs: Design, Programming, Rails, Executive, and more.
  "A listing of design, programming, business/executive, and other jobs offered by companies looking for the best of the best in the online industry."
  (tags: Jobs Search Web2.0 37Signals)
• 'Berkeley on iTunes U' available to the public - Yahoo! News
  (tags: podcasting Bekeley apple itunes)
• JiWire to Go - SMS Cell Phone User Guide
  Find out the nearest wifi using SMS.
  (tags: SMS wifi lifehacks)
• "Blooks" Are In Bloom
  "Many aspiring writers are starting out as bloggers, and publishers are taking note. But do good blogs make good books?"
  (tags: blogs books)
• Microsoft buying Massive - AdJab
  "In-game advertising network Massive is being bought by Microsoft. according to the Wall Street Journal."
  (tags: microsoft advertising gaming advergaming)
• TechCrunch » Facebook Goes Beyond College, High School Markets
  Facebook is now allowing new users from corporate networks, in addition to high school and college students.
  (tags: facebook SocialNetworking)

Here's Why You Should Delete Your Test Blogs

If you're like me, you're constantly setting up test blogs to show clients, friends and others how easy it is to launch and maintain one. Perhaps you even use them to "jam." I always make sure to keep these private. Furthermore, I delete the blogs as soon as the show ends. However, it's very easy to forget.

Apparently, Weblogs Inc. (WIN), now part of AOL, forgot. Earlier this year their BlogSmith coders got together to jam and they launched a special blog called BlogJovi. BlogSmith powers all of the Weblogs Inc. blogs. As of the time of this writing the test blog is still live. There are no links to it on Technorati.

There isn't anything particularly damaging on the blog. Although it does talk a bit about knowledge sharing between the WIN teams and AOL. Still, if I were an advertiser on Weblogs Inc., it would give me pause. It's a bit of an embarrassment to the WIN team, even if it is a good reminder for the rest of us.

Technorati Tags: AOL, Weblogs Inc

Southwest Airlines Blogs

Josh Hallett has discovered a new blog from Southwest Airlines called Nuts About Southwest. It includes, among other things, a guide for participants.

A Social Network for Feed Fans

Feed Collectors is a site where users can collect and share their RSS feeds in a social network environment. It's basically another way to aggregate your favorite blogs, podcasts, video podcasts, or news feeds and tag and share them. If this sounds familiar, it should. This is very similar to Squidoo.

Study Puts Blog Readers in Buckets

A new survey of 36,000 blog readers conducted by BlogAds reveals there are different types of blog readers.

* Political types, according the the survey, read five blogs each day, although it's not clear if this is by browsing or RSS. More than two-thirds of these readers are male.

* Meanwhile, the ladies are digging for dirt of a different kind. Seventy-seven percent of gossip blog readers are women, and over 49 percent are ages 22-30.

* Last but not least, there's the mom blog crowd. This group is naturally 90 percent female and they read motherhood and parenting-related blogs.

The problem with surveys like this one is that the blogosphere has a lot of gray areas. There are some blogs that are about cats. There are others that are about world affairs. And there are even more that are about cats and world affairs on the same page. How do you classify which is which?

The same applies to readers. There are moms who are political types. It's all very mushy. There are no hard edges in the blog world like there are in vertical media. A far more useful survey would be about where the lines blur among blog readers and bloggers themselves. For example, do bloggers and readers stick to one topic or many. There's a lot of cross pollination here, making the blog world difficult to analyze the way we do traditional media.

Technorati Tags: BlogAds

A New Take on the Airplane Safety Video

Blogger Chris Pirillo mimics the United Airlines instructional video in this send-up on YouTube. If I worked for United Airlines I would substitute the models in the current video for the one of Chris. It's more engaging and real. (A PS to YouTube, your vids should have trackbacks too.)

Technorati Tags: YouTube