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New century is seeing more digital developers put lipstick on a pig

Now, I adore pigs, saw "Babe" 11 times, don’t eat ‘em, and pet them at the kiddie zoos. Yet I would never encourage lipstick for an oinker. So why do developers of digital products that won’t sell, chirp: “Let’s spin the click potential, sell advertising on it, and give it away?”

by Tina Whitfield 13 May 2009 19:27pm 12 comments

Social media and affiliate marketing: a slippery subject

Social media has opened up quite a few cans of worms. Lots of people have been forced to reevaluate how they handle certain things in light of social media's increasing prominence with consumers.

Add another can of worms to the debate: the potentially treacherous combination of social media and affiliate marketing.

by Patricio Robles 12 May 2009 10:01am 9 comments

Q&A: Steve Heyes of LearnAsOne on using Twitter for charity

We've looked at how charities are using Twitter before; The Dog's Trust is one good example of how causes can be promoted on the site. Another is LearnAsOne, which will be aiming to Tweet from a community in Zambia.

LearnAsOne is a charity that has launched a project to build a community school in Zambia, and will be using Twitter, and its blog to promote the scheme and encourage donations, as well as showing people how their money is being spent.

The charity was set up by Steve Heyes; he is out in Zambia now and will be documenting the project for the next two weeks. I've been asking Steve about his use of social media.

by Graham Charlton 11 May 2009 13:43pm 2 comments

The Telegraph pulls in 75,000 visitors a day from social media

The Telegraph's social media strategy seems to be paying dividends, as its website now receives 8% of its daily traffic from news aggregators like Digg and Reddit, as well as Twitter.

The newspaper's Head of Audience Development Julian Sambles revealed this figure to Malcolm Coles on his blog, and based on the Telegraph's 28m uniques in March, this equates to around 75,000 visitors per day from social media.

by Graham Charlton 11 May 2009 13:19pm 4 comments

Social media is about the steak, not the sizzle

When you read a news story about social media or come across a job posting for a 'social media expert', chances are the tools of social media will be front and center.

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace. If you had no exposure to social media, you'd probably assume that these popular services were the end all and be all of social media.

by Patricio Robles 11 May 2009 11:10am 6 comments

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.

by Patricio Robles 08 May 2009 09:00am 5 comments

A 20-step starter’s guide to using Twitter efficiently

While you might imagine that everybody in the world now uses Twitter, the reality is somewhat different.

Even in the internet industry there remains something of a Twitter vacuum. I have spoken to at least half a dozen people in the past few days who haven’t yet set up an account, for one reason or another.

I’m not saying Twitter is for everybody, or is right for all brands, but we find it useful and many of the people I’ve been talking to would benefit from using it.

So for the purposes of any further ‘how do you do it?’ discussions I thought it would be a good idea to explain how I (currently) use Twitter. There are of course a hundred ways of skinning a cat, and I’m quite sure that there are lots of far more advanced Twitterers out there, but this works for me...

by Chris Lake 06 May 2009 15:45pm 12 comments

Distribution vs. dependence

With the rise of 'open platforms' on the web, particularly on popular consumer-oriented services like Facebook and Twitter, it's never been easier for individuals and small upstarts to get their applications in front of millions of consumers quickly and efficiently.

The appeal of open platforms is easy to understand: instead of having to deal with the dreaded chicken and egg challenge most new consumer internet upstarts have to contend with, you can leverage the existing userbases of popular services.

by Patricio Robles 06 May 2009 09:10am 1 comment

Web 2.0 needs Customer Service 1.0

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. These are but a few of the services many of us have come to enjoy.

Yet there's one thing that seems anything but enjoyable about them: dealing with their customer service.

by Patricio Robles 05 May 2009 11:00am 8 comments

Don't pretend to be something you're not

At some point, when you start a new business you come face to face with an interesting question: what the heck are we doing?

Chances are you had some idea of what you were doing before you started on your journey. You saw a problem. You thought you had a brilliant solution. You know the story.

by Patricio Robles 01 May 2009 11:45am 4 comments