There's been a bit of banter today on Twitter about live blogging and conferences. One side of the line argues that live blogging is a threat to speakers - all of a sudden the speaker is sharing their IP with a wider audience than just the conference attendees. The other side of the line points out that the speaker is putting their information in public anyway - conferences often make the presentations available online, anyway.
I'm interested in this topic for two reasons, 2) conferences are no longer a place to go if you're already in the industry and are hoping to learn and 1) live bloggers can decide the fate of products.
At an event like E3 there is a lot of live blogging and micro-blogging. Manufacturers have to make a good first impression on the the live bloggers or risk FAIL messages zooming around the internet. I'd say that bloggers could make or break some products within seconds of their launch. Seconds.
That's a scary thought, huh? How long before we see digital marketing agencies / search / social marketing agencies lining up to offer stage and presentation advice? Here's how to launch your product during this expo and in such a way as to encourage positive live blogging.
By the way, I tried live blogging SES New York this year. It's hard work! I managed to do a few sessions. I took notes, re-wrote and published during the breaks. I was exhausted. I've no idea how people like Lisa Barone have the stamina and typing accuracy to make it through the three (plus) days!
Friday, May 09, 2008
Live Blogging - good, bad or what you make it?
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Share with Google Reader
I'm already a big fan of the 'Share a Page' Google Reader Bookmarklet.
Sure people can fake out what the page actually says by re-writing the summary of the page but aren't these people supposed to be your friends? Try that once on me and you're dumped.
I share discoveries a lot by RSS. It is simply wonderful to be able to share single pages; suddently my daily Mixx summary is worth twice as much as it was worth before.
I also have a diverse group of friends. What I'd really like from Google Reader is a tag/label based share system. I want to be able to share some content with people and mark it 'search' so it only goes to the people interested in 'search'. I'd like to be able to share different content with people and mark it 'gaming' so it only goes to my geeky RPGamer buddies!
Increasingly Google Reader is the centre of my universal. My web comes to me in RSS streams and I manage all that via Google Reader. I love the way I can handle the incoming data - I just want more control on my outgoing data!
Monday, May 05, 2008
CPC determined by visit history
I seem to be having a t-shirt flavoured Gmail AdWords week. This is Google's targetting system; I clicked on one and so now their system is tempting me with more t-shirt goodness.
This could be my favourite AdWord of all time.
The site in question can be found selling Engrish t-shirts here. Don't go clicking on the poor site's AdWords campaigns.
The ad reads:
Engrish.com can help you with our pleasure. Let's shopping t-shirts!
The t-shirt AdWord which first caught my attention this week was for Torso Pants. I liked the site so much that I bookmarked it using my Google toolbar. I'll buy something later.
Here's a thought; I bookmarked Torso Pants via Google. Google continues to show me AdWords for Torso Pants. If more people actually used Google's bookmarking feature then I, as an advertiser, would want an AdWords option which let me decide whether or not to show my ads to people who had already bookmarked me.
I might decide - they know about my niche store already; I don't want to ad serve them.
I might decide - I want to remind them that I'm here; I do want to ad serve them.
In fact, you can take that concept and simply throw away the Google bookmarking feature. Wouldn't it be a good idea if you could set CPC based on whether the searcher had been on your site recently, some time in the past or never before?
Disclaimer: I'm heavily NDA'd by Google but, at the time of this post, I've never talked to them about CPCs determined by visit history. If I had knowledge of CPC/visit history features then I wouldn't be blogging this!
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Twhirl or Alert Thingy
I'm a Twhirl user. I'm in two minds as to whether I like the way they've integrated FriendFeed support. Why the two windows? Why not one?
Using Twist to measure Twitter chat suggests that the battle between the two applications is going to be a close one.
If you don't see a graph here then that means Twist's embed feature is borked again.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Google cleans up Next Blog >> Presses
Back in January 2007 I did a study on next blog button pushes on blogger and blogspot. Google puts a bar across blogpost hosted blogs which lets users, well, log in, post, search or randomly reach another blog. It's really an advert for the service.
I counted how many button pushes it took for me to reach 100 English language non-spam blogs. It took 241 button pushes. I also discovered a lot of spam; in particular redirects to porn sites.
I've repeated this exercise this week and can say that the random button never once took me to porn at all. On a few occasions it took me to a hard sell site that was essentially a spam landing page.
Google's cleaned up the button. So, it is better? Ah... last year it took me 241 button pushes to find 100 English language sites. This year it took 309.
The difference is in non-English blogs. They've doubled from last year. There are a few reasons for this; Wordpress and SixApart are likely to be clawing market share away from Blogger in the UK, Canada and the USA. The Next Button isn't entirely random it; it's reciprocal and some geographic areas (thus languages) may be more likely to press the button than others.
My chart for 2007 looked like this:
The chart for 2008 looks like this:
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Facebook and Slide gets political: Free Tibet
I'm not checking Facebook nearly as often as I used to. Today I noticed I'd been sent by a political SuperPoke. I'm a little surprised that Slide has gone in this direction.
Time will tell whether this is a wise choice or not. Tibet's a more complex situation than TV reports do full justice too. Annoying China is not a good strategy if you wish to expand into APAC either.
On the other hand, this shows how powerful social networks can be harnessed to promote a positive and peaceful message. I think it's far better to use Facebook to bring attention to the problems in Tibet than trying to disrupt the Olympics is.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Last.fm bad currency
I know the Pound is annoyingly strong against the Dollar right now... but look what happened when I tried to renew my Last.fm subscription today in Pounds (a valid option from Last.fm's own dropdown menu).
This is a problem that can haunt some start ups. I'm surprised to see Last.fm suffering.
Multi-currency is a digital marketing element that is big in Europe but a non-issue in the States. It's one of the biggest adjustments American or Canadian search marketers need to make when they come to practise anywhere in Europe.
