Russian retailer's defiance riles British music biz
The British music industry has reacted angrily to a show of defiance from a Russian online music retailer that has been accused of selling singles and albums illegally.
California sun to power third of Googleplex
The world's biggest search engine is set to become America's biggest solar energy-producing office space when it begins converting its headquarters into a massive solar electricity park next month.
Internet buoys UK marketing spend, says IPA
Increasing outlay on internet advertising saw UK companies' marketing budgets rise slightly in the third quarter of 2006, according to the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising.
Although budgets have now declined for eight consecutive quarters, the IPA's latest Bellwether Report found the rate of decline had slowed for the third time in a row.
MySpace trumpets video in GooTube wake
MySpace has improved its low-key video sharing offering in what has been interpreted as a tactical response to Google $1.65bn purchase of YouTube last week.
Five hot new visual metrics make analytics for humans
E-consultancy analyst Linus Gregoriadis last week solicited suggestions on a
sexier name
for "web analytics". But five new Web 2.0 services currently brewing in beta are threatening to take the whole online marketing measuring practice into a more sexy paradigm entirely.
All these new products ask is that you place some Javascript in your header - but they promise to serve up juicy thermal imaging, in-page indicators or movable feasts that produce easy-to-use visual metrics for left-brain webmasters.
So what are these new tools? Let's take a look...
What MySpace means to Murdoch's space
It will come as news to few that MySpace is the social media phenomenon
du jour
. Picked up by News Corp for $580m, 90m members, and that oh-so juicy teen demographic to market to when no-one under 30 is buying newspapers anymore? Strewth, Rupert Murdoch's got a fair dinkum bet there.
So you may be perplexed by this suggestion Rupert should spin MySpace off on its own, from MarketWatch's wonderfully named Bambi Francisco:
"Clearly, MySpace -- if it were a standalone company -- would be the hottest kind of stock, one that every sell-side analyst would gladly hawk. It's very likely the thought has crossed the minds of executives as well as MySpace founders. Prior to the sale to News Corp., MySpace founders had considered an IPO, according to someone close to the company."
Videoblogging star makes acrimonious exit from show
The nearest thing the videoblogging arena has to a superstar has quit her show in a move that leaves its future uncertain.Amanda Congdon has cut a dash at the anchor desk of Rocketboom, helping make the snarky, daily net culture news roundup amongst the highest-profile video blogs in the world with around 300,000 downloads per episode.
Pay-for-blogging market faces questions on disclosure
PayPerPost, a new service that helps advertisers pay bloggers for writing about their products, launched a few days ago to a predictable cacophony of protest.
"Get Paid to Blog", reads the blurb on the latest blog advertising network's front page. "Advertisers are willing to pay you to post on topics - search through a list of topics, make a blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It’s that simple.”
And PayPerPost tells its affiliated advertisers: "You provide the topic, our network of bloggers create the stories and post them on their individual blogs." Bloggers can earn $5 to $10 per post, writing about anything from loan sharks to bubble wrap.
Is Google the Alanis Morrissette of the web?
Scott Karp
thinks so
. The venerable web powerhouse has been taking quite a kicking of late - not from free-speech campaigners angry at Google's policy toward search results in China, but from observers critquing the Mountain View, CA, outfit's "ready, fire, aim" approach to launching new products.
What started out life as a humble search engine has now grown to number in the region of 50 services, notable recent launches having included Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheet, Writely and Google Checkout.
But a good number of Google's non-search services are still in beta (and still feel so much like they're in beta) and the latest edition of Business Week lays into the company for dropping the ball on everything other than its bread and butter.
Fans and bands collide - grassroots lessons
Want another example of how your customers can communicate your message for you? Check out upcoming new Australian band Wolfmother, which is asking fans to snap and send mobile video clips that will form the basis of the act's next promo.It's supported by a moblog powered by the London-based moblogUK service, which was popularised when survivors of the city's 7/7 bombings posted camera phone pictures to the site last summer.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
