Jason Calacanis sticks up for 'poor' entrepreneurs but is the effort misguided?
Jason Calacanis has declared war on organizations that charge entrepreneurs to pitch investors on their startups. With "boiling blood", he used a post on his blog this weekend to shame these organizations and to threaten them with extinction.
Singled out: a number of groups, including the well-known Keiretsu Forum. All of which charge entrepreneurs fees to present their businesses to "rich angel investors" who Calacanis believes are exploiting "poor" entrepreneurs.
Blogger rules, net neutrality & regulation versus free markets
It's probably no surprise that the blogosphere caught fire when the FTC officially announced rules meant to regulate blogger payola and social media endorsements. And it's probably no surprise that, by in large, some of the blogosphere's most prominent voices found plenty to criticize in the FTC's efforts.
And for good reason. Because no matter how well-intentioned the FTC's regulations may be, they're going to be pretty darn difficult to enforce. After all, it appears that the rules would cover activity on plenty of websites and the number of people who could potentially violate them is astronomical. If you live in the United States and can set up a blog or post an affiliate link somewhere, you could conceivably qualify for an "educational" experience courtesy of the FTC.
The New Statesman vs The Guardian - spot the difference
Redesigning websites is always a challenge. On the one hand you want to improve things and innovate. But on the other it’s a case of ‘why reinvent the wheel?’.
Why indeed? But even wheels should have their own identity. In some cases the idea of doing what works best isn’t executed with distinction.
Mirroring usability and functionality is one thing, but copying the look and feel from another website is not particularly big or clever. Especially when that website is one of the world’s larger media sites.
You be the judge...
Just how sophisticated is click fraud? You may not want to know
Click fraud is a real problem for advertisers. Not many deny that. But just how big of a problem is it? If you listen to companies providing PPC advertising services, it's manageable. They've got things under control.
But a click fraud ring recently uncovered by click fraud monitoring firm Anchor Intelligence may lead you to believe otherwise. The size of this ring is remarkable: it employed over 1,000 people, 10,000 websites and 200,000 IP addresses. All told, Anchor Intelligence reports that it generated $3m worth of fraudulent clicks in a two week period of time before it was discovered.
We mustn’t let the cookies crumble
Everyone in our industry is looking for a better solution than the hoary old ‘last click wins’ payment model. Advertisers want the ability to measure their customers’ complete purchase journey and networks and publishers want to be able to prove the wider reaching value that they know that they provide.
Yet, while the industry should of course continue to explore and pioneer new systems, such as eBay’s Quality Click model or AgencyDMGs ‘Digital Brain’, we shouldn’t take our eye off the last click ball.
Viacom has 'smoking gun' evidence in YouTube lawsuit: report
According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google willingly paid a $1bn premium to acquire YouTube back in 2006. And if Viacom has its way, he'll soon be paying another $1bn 'premium'.
In the search giant's legal battle with the media giant over copyright infringement, Viacom has fired a potentially devastating salvo: it claims it has evidence that YouTube employees were uploading copyrighted content without authorization.
Pharma companies and social media
Healthcare in Europe is vastly different to healthcare in the US. The key difference that UK visitors notice on a trip to the US is the plethora of prescription-only medicines advertised on television. In contrast, this kind of brand marketing to consumers is forbidden in Europe and all prescription-only drug marketing is tightly regulated.
Cervical cancer jab: Please help inject some sensible advice into Google's results
Google risks undermining the cervical cancer vaccine program with the negative, scaremongering slant of its search results. Any parents searching for information on the vaccine in the light of the tragic death of Natalie Morton are presented with a page of negative and alarming stories.
There's something we can all do about this - that's link to the relevant NHS page and try to get that in the top 10 results for relevant Google searches. Here's how YOU can help.
Do news organizations sell objectivity? Should they?
The Washington Post's Twitter crackdown has created a lot of debate. At the heart of it: whether it's okay for journalists to express their opinions publicly through social media outlets.
It's an interesting debate and there are a lot of ways to approach it. A central issue -- whether or not expressing an opinion jeopardizes a news organization's journalistic credibility -- is a fascinating subject. After all, most news organizations like to present themselves as objective sources who deliver truth and fact. But the debate over online postings that show their journalists and employees to (gasp) have opinions raises interesting questions: do news organizations even sell 'objectivity'? Should they?
Malicious ads: are lawsuits on the way?
Online criminals are looking to infect your computer and they're increasingly turning to online ads to deliver malicious software.
The New York Times was recently hit by a sophisticated scam in which criminals pretended to purchase ads for a well-known, legitimate brand, only to later serve an ad hawking fake anti-virus software laced with malware.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
