Are middlemen a luxury, or necessity?
Joe Hewitt is the Facebook employee responsible for the super-popular Facebook iPhone app. But thanks to Apple, he's decided to move on.
On Twitter, he announced that he "handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer". Soon after, he revealed the reason why: the tyranny of Apple.
Load time: coming soon as a Google ranking factor?
Google's algorithm looks at a significant number of ranking factors when it decides where a site should be in the SERPs. These ranking factors, and the weight they're each given, change over time.
Last week at PubCon, Google's Matt Cutts revealed a new ranking factor that may debut in 2010: page load time.
Can Tim Armstrong make AOL king of content by 2010?
AOL's new CEO Tim Armstrong has been quickly buying up talent and increasing AOL's media properties in the lead up to the company's tkt from parent Time Warner later this year.
At the Roosevelt hotel in New York today, Armstrong went into AOL's continuing strategy.
AOL's CEO announced that online content can be "much better."
"That's why we are making such a big bet there," he said during a keynote appearance at the annual Media and Money conference, hosted by Nielsen and Dow Jones.
It's true that content online has a long way to go. But is AOL the one to make it happen?
EU: no cookies without consent. Will EU affiliate programs be killed?
Earlier this year, I wrote about an EU plan to require that internet users consent to cookies before they're placed on their computers. At the time, I called the plan "absurd".
Which must be precisely why the Council of the EU has approved a directive amending legislation to do just that. The announcement of this potentially horrendous action? Well-hidden in an 18 page Council press release.
Coupons and discounts sustain etailers
The economy has been making some hints at ressurgance in the past few months, but it's nowhere near a complete rebound, and according to ComScore today, most of the bright spots in third quarter are only relative to the dismal results that occured last year. During its quarterly report "State of the US Online Retail Economy," ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni characterized a generally dismal third quarter for retailers.
However, it's not all bad. Amid struggling revenues and rising unemployment, some retailers are increasing conversion rates and site visitations. What's their secret? Low prices and reliable online experiences. And there is promise in the fact that young, upper income earners are opening up their wallets again.
Salon bets on ecommerce for Black Friday and the future
As media sites around the internet contemplate erecting paywalls to make up for lost revenue, Salon.com is moving in the opposite direction. Long a proponent of the subscription model, the politics and culture site today announced a redesigned website that backs off of its subscription model in favor of more engaged advertising and shorter content. The company is hoping to increase its readership with shorter, faster posts and make up for lost revenues in a new place: ecommerce.
Starting the day after Thanksgiving, Salon will launch a permanent online store that sells retail items the publisher thinks will dovetail with its readers' interests. While it's not clear that Salon will be able to counter recent revenue losses, the move represents a step that many media companies are likely to make: revenue diversification.
IAB: Media companies need to make a "triple play" for digital business
Everyone online is trying to shift business online. But there are more than a few reasons why the digital shift has hit speed bumps. According to a new study by the Internet Advertising Bureau and Bain & Company, media companies need to offer a true triple-play service model — from direct response to awareness to high impact brand engagement — if they want to earn and keep digital business.
How can companies go about achieving that? Well, there are a few options.
Will Netflix throw its customers under the bus for higher profits?
Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of Netflix. The movie studios don't really like you. They think low-cost rental services like Netflix are cutting into DVD sales, which have declined. So they come up with a plan to block rentals of new releases for a short time, perhaps a month.
The question: do you oppose this plan or do you look to negotiate with the studios for some sort of benefit?
Google: expect a Caffeine jolt after the holidays
Google's Caffeine update is coming. Billed by Google as "the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions", Caffeine is not your regular Google update.
When Caffeine was announced, Google did something it had never done before: it offered up a sandbox so that the public could preview search results with Caffeine and provide Google with feedback. While that sandbox is no longer available, you won't have to wait long for your Caffeine jolt: according to Google's Matt Cutts, Caffeine is coming after the holidays.
YouTube introduces "skippable" video ads. Uh oh.
Well it was good while it lasted. While television networks and advertisers morned the introduction of commercial fast forwarding on television, they have found solace online, where consumers have consigned themselves to sitting through pre-rolls and interstitials if it means streaming high quality video content.
YouTube is trying to change all that. The video giant today announced today that it is launching "skippable" pre-roll ads on some of its videos. The move will help YouTube create better ads, charge better rates for the ads that are seen and improve its ad model. It could also lead to further erosion of video ad views overall, which networks won't be happy about.
The good news: networks won't have to worry about that for a while.
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
