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Is Facebook ready to compete with Google for ads?

The internet may be becoming a less anonymous place, but does that mean Facebook will take it over?

Wired's Fred Vogelstein thinks that Facebook is poised to take over display advertising the way that Google has dominated search.

by Meghan Keane 23 June 2009 18:40pm 3 comments

Q&A: Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist

In 1995, Craig Newmark started an email distribution list for events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It moved to the web in 1996. Today, the non-profit company's classifieds community - craigslist, in case you hadn't guessed - is available in over 500 cities around the world.

We briefly caught up with Craig in advance of his appearance at next month's Traveling Geeks roundtables hosted by Econsultancy in London (other participants include Robert Scoble, Howard Rheingold and Susan Bratton). Here he answers a few questions on craigslist's history, Web 2.0 and dealing with customers.

by Patricio Robles 23 June 2009 17:47pm 1 comment

Facebook's click fraud problem

Click fraud is a major issue when it comes to search marketing and big money is at stake.

The source of the most insidious click fraud: rogue third-party publishers who participate in PPC ad networks run by companies like Google and Yahoo and who use click fraud in an attempt to intentionally inflate their earnings.

by Patricio Robles 22 June 2009 09:45am 3 comments

MySpace's lays off 30%, are its better days behind it?

Friendster provided the quintessential story of a hot company that rose quickly and fell even quicker. At one point, Friendster seemed set to dominate the social networking market.

Then two upstarts, MySpace and Facebook, left it battered and bruised. While the company still exists, the chances that it will ever recapture its past glory seem, to some observers, slim to none.

by Patricio Robles 17 June 2009 11:35am 0 comments

Convincing the boss to invest in social media

So, you've decided to 'get social' with customers on the web, but how can you build strong reasoning to support the decision? How can you get the boss on your team and actively investing in social media at your side?

by Jeff Molander 15 June 2009 14:21pm 1 comment

Q&A: Steve Snyder of Frontier Airlines on the challenges of social media

In November, blogger Andrew Hyde tried to fly standby on Frontier Airilnes. Instead, he got delayed for six hours and began a customer service Twitter feed for the brand and wrote an angry blog post about the company's customer service. Steve Snyder from Frontier's communications department responded, and I wrote a post about what Frontier was missing out on by not getting into the space from a customer service angle.

Our tech reporter Patricio Robles then wrote a follow up post about risk management in soclal media, and this week I spoke with Steve Snyder to get his side of the story, to see what Frontier is doing in the social media space, and the problems with assuming that companies need to use Twitter for customer service purposes.

by Meghan Keane 12 June 2009 14:54pm 5 comments

Facebook vanity URLs coming this weekend

Cancel your weekend plans. At 12:01 am EDT on Saturday, June 13, Facebook will open the floodgates on a long-awaited landrush.

At that time, all Facebook users will be able to select a vanity URL (eg. www.facebook.com/username/).

by Patricio Robles 10 June 2009 09:10am 3 comments

Top ten online PR fails

A number of brands have fallen foul of social media over the last few years, either due to lack of understanding of how information spreads online, or by attempting to manipulate the system and getting caught out.

I've listed ten examples of companies who have suffered PR nightmares online, in most cases the bad publicity has come via social media sites...

by Graham Charlton 08 June 2009 14:23pm 15 comments

Digg translates its strengths into advertising

Social news site Digg is introducing a new “social advertising platform” this week that will allow users to vote advertisements up and down the way that Digg users currently curate news content. The approach may not be new – companies like Facebook and RazorFish have created similar ads — but the Digg community offers a lot of potential for the strategy.

For starters, Digg users are already in the business of rating content.

by Meghan Keane 04 June 2009 18:55pm 4 comments

The A-Z of social media for brands

Here’s an A-Z braindump that I compiled in about an hour. It is aimed at providing a snapshot of what social media is all about, and what brands need to focus on before wading in.

The A-to-Z of social media You might be familiar with social media, but hopefully you'll give me a pass as some of this stuff bears repeating. However I think this A-Z is going to be more useful if you’re somebody who is trying to convince your boss that adopting a social media strategy is a good idea (it is). Good luck with that!