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November 2007

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Google Reader Now Recommends Feeds

Google Reader has added a feature that recommends feeds for you. Recommendations for new feeds are generated by comparing your interests with the feeds of users similar to you as well as by looking at your web history. A help page explains the process...

The "Top Recommendations" section lists a few feeds you might be interested in, but aren't subscribed to yet. You can get more recommendations by clicking the View all link next to those recommendations, or by clicking the Discover link in the sidebar.

You can preview a feed in Reader before making a decision to subscribe or not; just click on the feed in the list of recommendations. There's also some extra information about the number of subscribers to the feed and approximate posts per week. If you find a feed you like, just click the Subscribe button to add it to your reading list. If you've decided you're not interested in one of the feeds, just click No thanks to take it off your recommendations list.

Your recommendations list is automatically generated

Here's a screen shot of what this looks like in my reader. Though it's not very controversial since all of the data is anonymous, it would be great to see Google give you an opt-out choice since some people may not want to share their reading habits with the world - even anonymously.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

links for 2007-11-27

Monday, November 26, 2007

links for 2007-11-26

Sunday, November 25, 2007

links for 2007-11-25

Saturday, November 24, 2007

links for 2007-11-24

Friday, November 23, 2007

Visualize Local AIM Chatter Volume in Google Earth

Though it's not as sexy as new ways to communicate like social networking, instant messaging remains a huge part of our online lives. And AOL Instant Messenger is still one of the more dominant platforms. Now you can see just how much people use the network every minute.

Earlier this year AOL Greenhouse quietly added several KML feeds that you can plug into Google Earth (here's why/how). One of them (KML) uses IP-to-city geocoding to display all the AIM conversations that have started in the last minute- in real time. Another (KML) tracks the locations of the top AIM Fight users. These are a bit buggy, so I would advise using the combined KML feed.

The data stream is fun to watch and gives you a sense foe just how chatty your town is. Keep in mind that a lot of this maps back to the IP addresses of ISPs so not every city and town is adequately represented.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

links for 2007-11-22

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

links for 2007-11-21

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

links for 2007-11-20

Monday, November 19, 2007

Could a Billion TinyURLs Go 404?

TinyURL, a free and extremely popular five-year-old web service that shortens URLs and is a staple of tools like Twitter, has suffered some brief downtime lately. It's down as of this writing, as you can see from the screen shot below.

As a result, some are starting to imagine what might happen if such a single point of failure should go down for an extended period of time or, worse, shut down or be acquired. Twitter is far from the only company using the TinyURL API service.

The thought of an evaporating TinyURL - a wonderful tool that remind you is provided to us all for free - especially considering its rising popularity is all more than a little bit frightening, yet fascinating. Take a look at the chart below, which comes from Google Trends. It shows TinyURL clearly rising. No wonder it's having a hiccup!

Perhaps Google or someone else will buy TinyURL at some point. Still, that's not a good solution since all roads still lead to one. All of this points to a big weak spot in the web as more people and services rely on the terrific TinyURL service (and its alternatives).

Good fodder for a short week!

Tinyurl

UDPATE:: TinyURL is back up. Dave Winer reminds us why centralization is bad.

links for 2007-11-19

Sunday, November 18, 2007

links for 2007-11-18

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Feed Subscription Options

It's hard to be all things to all people. The good news is that you have options. Here are different ways you can subscribe to my content, should you choose to ...

My Frankenfeed - An aggregate lifestream of my Twitter tweets, AdAge column, blog posts (which includes my del.icio.us links) and whatever else I decide to add one day, all in one uber feed

Blog Only Feed - This includes my del.icio.us links, which get republished here nightly

Trimmed Micro Persuasion - Thanks to an enterprising Yahoo Pipes user you can skip my del.icio.us links and just get the essays

My del.icio.us links - and nothing more

My Twitter Stream - and nothing more

AdAge Column - my bi-weekly column and nothing more

Comment Feed - Track the comments here

Reply Feed - Responses to my Twitter streams, in-bound links to this blog. I may add my comment feed as well as a Google News search feed.

links for 2007-11-15

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Moneyball Marketing Era

Moneyballsbn The conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue is that reach rules. In other words, in the digital realm you can't go wrong making a buy or launching a campaign on a site or social network that has scale. However, that's all going to change as money flows online, competition rises and marketers find they need to pay more to drive sales.

To cope, advertisers should adopt new digital media planning model. This one ignores common metrics like unique visitors, pageviews or even time spent in favor of more esoteric statistics like cost per action. We're entering the Moneyball Marketing Era - an age where some big online properties will suffer a slow death by a thousand cuts from tiny niche sites that deliver greater ROI.

Moneyball Marketing liberally borrows the concepts outlined in Michael Lewis' 2003 bestselling baseball book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. In the book, Lewis chronicles how the Oakland A's and its general manager Billy Beane were able to build a successful team in a rather unconventional way, all with a significantly smaller budget than rivals like the Yankees have.

Beane and his team eschewed conventional wisdom that dominated baseball for decades. Rather than selecting and evaluating players based on common statistics like home runs and runs batted in, the A's switched to a model that favors on-base percentage (how often a batter makes it to first) and slugging percentage (a way to measure a hitter's power). The end result is an elegant, efficient model that enabled the A's to get better players for less money. The methodologies described in Moneyball have since been adopted by dozens of contending teams and in some industries as well.

Here are three ways you can apply Moneyball Marketer in your organization today:

1) Become a Super Cruncher - Look beyond the common methods for evaluating media and identify more meaningful, perhaps esoteric statistics. For example, make a buy based on a site's ability to drive consumers to complete high value tasks.

2) Skip Reach, Go Niche - As hard as it is, try forgoing some of the larger sites in favor of emerging niche ones that deliver a higher percentage of your target. Work with them to create measurable, outside-the-box programs. For example, consider Takkle - an emerging social network focusing on high school sports.

3) Think Relationships, Not Impressions - The most successful companies in business today recognize that relationships rule. Consider launching programs that allow you to hone your relationships with narrow segments of your audience. Go beyond impressions.

links for 2007-11-14

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Help Wanted: Warm Bodies That Can Spell Web 2.0

At least that's the takeaway I get when I look at this chart...

Just as interesting, San Jose leads all markets in job listings per 1000 people.

I will leave this to you to decide if this is a sign of a bubble or not. However, on the surface, it all looks very reminiscent of a bygone era. To quote Prince, "Tonight we're going to party like it's 1999."

Monday, November 12, 2007

links for 2007-11-12

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Blogging Heroes Book Excerpt

Bloggingheroes_2Blogging and other Web 2.0 technologies has had a significant impact on the lives of millions. However, none perhaps more so than on people who found new vocations and streams of income.

A new book called Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the Top Bloggers chronicles this through in-depth interviews. Lifehacker's Gina Trapani, TUAW's Scott McNulty and Dowload Squad's Grant Robertson are among those featured in the book.

The publisher has wisely allowed each blogger to post a PDF of the chapter he/she is featured in. Here's mine (PDF). The book is available for pre-sale on Amazon.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

links for 2007-11-08

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