Obama asks Americans to tweet their Senators
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama made extensive use of social media to rally his supporters. In the process, he produced one of the best case studies yet on how to achieve results with social media.
Post-election, Obama's use of social media has changed a bit but he's still making use of it.
Are Bing users flocking to advertisers — or away from Yahoo?
Are web surfers that use Bing more susceptible to advertising? If they are — and continue using the search engine — that could be very good news for Microsoft.
A new study by search-advertising network Chitika found that Bing users clicked on an ad 1.5% of the time on average, versus a 0.97% clickthrough rate for Google visitors and a 1.24% clickthrough rate for Yahoo.
If that means Microsoft and Yahoo users pay more attention to advertising, it could be very good news for the smaller search engines. But it could also spell trouble for both if users are simply switching between the two services depending on which has the best advertising at any given moment.
Conde Nast's Style.com. What's in a name?
As old media brands shift online, their most important assets are often name and reputation. But in the case of many magazine publications, the fear of cannibalizing the print product has kept their websites surprisingly dormant. Opportunities to grow the brand online passed by as editors and sales staff focused their attention on making the print publication successful. But now, as print ad rates dwindle, publishing houses have to start figuring out how to make the web work.
This is something that Conde Nast decided to address today. The company announced it would fold its male fashion content on Men.Style.com into print brand websites GQ.com and Details.com. It looks like Conde Nast is finally taking onlne seriously, but will it work?
Google closes in on real-time search
When will Google get into real-time search? Soon enough.
Last week, both Bing and Facebook incorporated Twitter and Twiiter-like features into their services.
This week, Google's Marissa Mayer says Google finds real-time search "interesting," but she's still not spilling the beans on when Google will integrated the service into its search portfolio.
Facebook users are getting older
Facebook may have begun as a network for college students, but if new demographic estimates are correct, the social networks' audience is skewing much older.
According to iStrategyLab, the overall number of users between 18 and 24 years of age has grown only 4.8% between January and July of this year. That's compared to a 513.7% growth among users older than 55.
Of course, more high school and college students use the site than 55 year olds, so there's less room for growth. But if younger users don't replace current users as they age, it could be very bad news for Facebook.
Ask.com gets returns from NASCAR advertising
Microsoft's new search engine Bing has been aggressively trying to scrape away at Google's search dominance with a $100 million advertising campaign, but Ask.com has found traction betting a smaller ad budget on the racetrack.
Since last December, Ask has put nearly all of its marketing resources into NASCAR sponsorships and events. And early returns show that the strategy appears to be working.
Can Microsoft change the economics of click fraud in court?
The company is suing three individuals for $750,000, which may seem like a small sum compared to the $13.7 million in revenue that the software giant brought in last year, but Microsoft hopes that putting a price tag on click fraud will change its economics and curb the practice.
The Gray Lady lends its brand to advertisers
The New York Times, desperate to earn some money in these dire times for media sites, is experimenting with advertising online and seeing some positive results.
Unwilling, or perhaps unable to wait for advertisers to start pouring money into the web, The Times is using its own creative team — and its brand — to make itself more attractive to advertisers.
Twitter may become a search engine after all
In my opinion, Twitter, in its current form, isn't a search engine. The idea that Twitter could be a threat to Google is overblown.
But that doesn't mean that Twitter can't become a search engine. That scenario is looking more likely.
Ten Twitter search tools
If you want to keep an eye on what is being said about your company / brand on the web, then searching Twitter is pretty essential nowadays.
Twitter is currently testing new versions of its search engine and it needs to, because the current version can be frustrating to use at times. There are plenty of third party Twitter search tools around though, so I've been trying out a few of them...
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
