Alliance Blog Reviews

Maybe you can have too much of a good thing. As the Internet allows advertisers to slice and dice large segments of desirable markets into thinner, more defined slices it also creates something that is much less desirable: smaller profits. How is that you say? How is it possible to make less on my advertising spend when I am advertising directly to the group that most needs or wants my products? Well, it’s simple supply and demand. While you are targeting a much more defined market you are not going to be alone in that quest to advertiser to just the people that will buy. Remember those pesky competitors? They want those people too because their claim is that they are better than you. Now you are going to find a price war that drives up costs for advertising and makes customer acquisition costs rise which in turn hurt the bottom line. So maybe there is too much of a good thing after all. MediaPost tells about a study performed by the MIT School of Management that has looked at this in detail Professor Alessandro Bonatti, working with Yale University economics professor Dirk Bergemann on this research, says “… newspapers have a very limited ability to target audiences… specialized magazines can do better… Google has a very good ability to target who’s browsing each page… (though) online advertising has the potential to drive out traditional advertising, it does not necessarily follow that online advertisers will make more money… ” Bonatti continues, “…as technology keeps improving, more and more web sites can sell very narrow products to very specialized audiences… with lots of people targeting the same audience the profits to be made through specialized advertising become more and more spread out… instead of competing for one large pool… you will have price war in each targeted segment as the slice gets more and more narrow.” Bonatti concludes that, “… the better the technology, the lower the profits for advertisers… “ Not the news that advertisers want to hear but it sure is music to the ears of the niche ad networks that attract these more narrowly defined groups. Advertising price war? We’re in! Woo-hoo! Different verticals are responding more rapidly and it also is dependent on just how far CPM’s fell during this downturn / recession / economic morass. Real estate is seeing an increase in CPM’s jumping 17% from Q2 to Q3 of last year while foodies are driving that category up almost 91% in the same period. Here is a chart from Adify Vertical Gauge for you to gloss over and wonder what it really means. So be careful what you wish for advertisers. Sure it’s great to advertise as close to the buyer as you can but you’re not the only one with that strategy. Let’s hope you are the one with the deeper pockets at least.

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For Ads the More Targeted May Mean Less Profitable

We in the online world take every opportunity to turn our nose up at traditional media like newspapers because they are so 1900’s. Just take a look over the past year of posts that I have done and I at times can lead that charge. For the record, I do not relish in the fact that newspapers are going by the way side in many ways. I see that they are and it’s hard not to notice. It’s not the idea of newspapers in general that is the trouble, it’s their slow adoption of the online space and the price they are paying that is most difficult to watch. Put simply I would hate to see newspapers “go away”. It’s not likely that there will be no newspapers someday but it is likely that the consolidation and attrition in the industry will continue. Many in the online space so “So what?! Goodbye and good riddance!” I don’t. The reason I don’t has nothing to do with the nostalgia of newspapers. If I never got ink on my hands again from flipping the pages I would survive. What does scare me, however, is just how the news is actually uncovered and then reported if there was not the front line of the traditional media. A recent study in the Baltimore metro area showed that while there is significantly fewer traditional media outlets in the area the remaining ones are still responsible for the reporting of 95% of the “first run” news. The New York Times reports : Looking at six major story lines that developed over one week last July, 83 percent of the reports in local news media “were essentially repetitive, conveying no new information,” said the study, by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center. Despite diminished resources of established news organizations, “of the stories that did contain new information, nearly all, 95 percent, came from old media — most of them newspapers,” it said. “These stories then tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets.” 95%? That’s a little scary if you are trumpeting the end of the newspaper medium. From an advertisers perspective it’s easy to pick on the industry but from a news uncovering and development perspective we need to be careful to not cut our online noses off to spite our face. So is Baltimore indicative of the rest of the country? Maybe, maybe not. What is of interest though is that people crave information. They crave details on events. Let’s forget about the mindless blather of the celebrity world. If you want something that superficial and fluffy then anyone can produce it. It doesn’t matter. If a mistake is made in reporting about Oprah Winfrey’s weight we’ll all survive. In things that truly impact lives it is still the job of “journalists” to report and to hopefully give the information without bias (I know, I know that doesn’t happen but one can dream….). It’s at that point that bloggers and the like can comment and help shape the news. Where are you on this one? Would it really be a good thing if newspapers and their reporting dried up and went away? Are there enough credible and scalable online news agencies to cover the amount of “stuff” that is generated and deemed important in each new 24-hour period? I don’t think so. As a result, I am a little concerned about what might actually happen if the online world got its wish and made the newspaper industry disappear. Your thoughts?

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Newspapers and Traditional Media Still Produce Most News

How many times have you heard it said in business (or anywhere for that matter) that how you respond to a problem is more important than the problem itself? It’s said over and over again because it’s simply good advice. Well, Google had a chance to practice that principle last night when it began sending out e-mails to those with listings in the Local Business Center. Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz reports of the issues that occurred . Starting last night, Google began sending out the monthly (or so) Google Local Business Center updates. The updates go out via email and contain analytical information about how many times a listing was viewed, clicked on, and other miscellaneous analytics. The analytics are a summary of what they would see in their Google LBC analytics dashboard. But instead of these emails going to their actual business owners, they went to the wrong business owners. Schwartz received information for a business that was 1,500 mile from his location and he was not the only one having the experience. To Google’s credit they recognized the error and set things straight as quickly as one might expect. The following was sent to Barry so he could help the rest of us get some clarity on the issue. Of course, it doesn’t hurt your ability to get these kinds of responses when you are the News Editor of Search Engine Land. In other words, not everyone received the following explanation right away. As you’re aware, we send a monthly newsletter to our Local Business Center users, featuring product news and a glimpse at the Dashboard statistics which show the traffic Google properties drive to their listing. Shortly after sending the newsletter to a small portion of our users last night, we discovered that some emails included incorrect business listing information. We promptly stopped sending any further emails and investigated the cause, which we found to be a human error while pulling together the newsletter content. We’d like to sincerely apologize to all the business owners impacted and assure all our users that we’re working hard to ensure that nothing similar will happen again. Oh no! It appears that there may be a Googler who is, gulp, human and made a mistake. Of course it would never be one of the thousands of faithful servers around the world, it had to be one of those pesky human thingys. All kidding aside, as Schwartz points out, the data is pretty innocuous. It could even be looked at as a sideways form of advertising to a very small market because now people know about a business somewhere else that they never heard of before. Google later sent an automated reply to all those impacted by this glitch and it appears that all is well in the world again. While I would rather not have something like this happen I have to give Google credit for calling themselves on the error and working to make it right. Hopefully, any of the business owners who got the wrong data would treat one of their mistakes with the same approach. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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For Google Maps It’s Not the Problem but How You Handle It

As much as many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our use of Twitter, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier. In the last couple of weeks I’ve adopted some fairly radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, which I’ll share with you here. 1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow The temptation when you first start using Twitter is to embark on a ‘follow rampage’. You add the news sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, colleagues, business contacts and in turn many of the people that follow or are followed by these accounts. This seems like a great idea at first, but you find you soon reach a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people, Twitter had become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative Tweets getting lost amongst the junk. Even by setting up userlists in Seesmic Desktop (the desktop app I use), I was finding it ever harder to keep up. A couple of weeks back I made the decision to cut back on who I followed. It was time to ‘purge’. Before hitting the unfollow option in earnest, I realised it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep: – Is the person i’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth. – Is the person i’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff i’m already getting from other sources? – Does the person i’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there? I’m sure there’s plenty of further criteria of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me personally. Next, I realised that as I was currently following so many people, it would take me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Your Twitter Karma , so i’ll describe the process I went through in using this tool specifically. When you log in to Your Twitter Karma (be patient – it can take a few minutes to load your details) you’re presented with a huge list of Twitter users. Under each itemised Twitter account it tells you whether you follow that person, whether they follow you, or whether you both follow each other. Clicking on the avatar brings up that person’s Twitter profile, so you can refresh your memory as to who they are, what they do, and whether their tweets are of value to you. Next comes the evil part! The purge… Select the users that you wish to stop following, by clicking the checkbox next to their avatar. This can be quite a time-consuming process, but it’s well worth it in the long run. When you’ve selected everyone you want to unfollow, click the ‘bulk unfollow’ button at the bottom of the page. All done! Now check your Twitter profile to check that your follow count has dropped to what you expect. Be prepared that your follower count may also drop slightly, as some people use auto-follow / auto-unfollow tools that will drop you if you drop them. 2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow In my case, once I’d purged my account I was left with around 200 people I was still following – a drop of over 2000! In return about 200 people stopped following me. Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with. This next step is very easy to undertake. Most desktop Twitter applications (such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck ) allow you to set up usergroups, whereby you can classify the people you follow into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘collegues’, ‘business’, ‘celebrities’ etc. In future when you get a new tweet for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with far less difficulty. Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way. 3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love With Twitter All Over Again I know that what I’ve described sound quite radical, but believe me, if Twitter has become an out of control stream of tweets that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option. Now i’ve drastically cut the number of people I follow down to the bare bones, I’ve rediscovered my love for this great tool. Additionally, whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Twitter on my iPhone, now I can login to the likes of Tweetie and thumb my way through tweet after tweet of valuable information (and the odd piece of celebrity gossip!). The value is back! Please note: Undertake the steps I’ve outlined at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for anything that may happen to your Twitter account as a result of following what you read here. Also be warned that it is not advisable to bulk-unfollow Twitter accounts then bulk-follow new accounts, as Twitter may deem you to be mis-using their service and suspend your account without notice. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why it Pays To Purge – Making Efficent Use of Twitter

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Why it Pays To Purge – Making Efficent Use of Twitter

If you want to know what’s hot, what’s not, and what the freshest news seems to be, Twitter might be the place to be on the cutting edge. However, just how reliable is the news you see on Twitter? Just like you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers or magazines, or believe everything you see on television, Twitter has its good points and bad points when it comes to breaking news. Twitter is populated with journalists, writers, photographers, and a plethora of celebrities. Sometimes false rumors can make the rounds, such as the reported death of Jeff Goldbum back in July, and sometimes breaking news hits the nail on the head, as in the case of the Iranian election. The first thing to do when you see a breaking news item on Twitter is to consider the source. Is it reliable and from someone you trust? In other words, has this person reported other newsworthy items on Twitter that has proved to be true? Even so, your best course of action before passing along a news item is to check out the source yourself and try to verify it from more than one. Misinformation can be damaging and hurtful, so check out where it’s coming from carefully before telling the Twitter universe something that turns out to be false. Consider with care the actual rumor. Jeff Goldblum ’s presumed death was nothing more than misinformation that traveled the landscape of Twitter, until his agent made a statement to the press. Imagine the worry and panic of his family until frantic phone calls were made to ascertain the truth, and the trouble taken to refute the ugly rumor. Someone, somewhere in Twitter failed to vet their sources, and passed along something that was patently false. Although having no lasting effects in this case, some rumors can cause irreparable damage to innocent reputations which can be difficult to refute in the court of public opinion. Just as in television reporting and newspaper or magazine coverage, errors can be made but in the case of Twitter, they might be a little more difficult to refute or retract. By the time a rumor makes the rounds, it could be nearly impossible to squash it and mitigate any damage. The old adage still applies – if you can’t say anything nice (or verify its veracity!), it might be best not to say anything at all. All Twitter users bear a certain amount of responsibility for the content they create and pass along to other Tweeps. If you can’t confirm a breaking news item, the best thing to do is keep quiet about it. Although not perfect, Twitter can be a source of what’s happening in the here and now, but in order to keep its credibility, Twitter users must use good common sense when assessing information. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . The Reliability Of News On Twitter

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The Reliability Of News On Twitter

Reading Biz Stone’s op-ed in the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper almost had me snoozing. Not that Biz is boring–he’s actually quite fascinating–but the article was just a recap of stuff we already knew. Then I saw these closing statements: ..It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news… In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world… (Emphasis added) Er, did he just say billion? With a “b”? Does Google know about this? You don’t need to answer that, I know it knows. But seriously, Twitter’s serving 1 billion search queries a day–and it’s not even a search engine? No wonder Google and Bing rushed to sign partnership deals with the micro-blogging site. No wonder neither of them could find the right price to acquire the company! According to recent estimates , Google is handling around 300,000 to 500,000 million searches a day–about half of what Biz boasts Twitter is seeing. And, let’s not forget, Google IS a search engine. I can’t make up my mind the exact reason Biz slipped that into the piece. I’ve narrowed it down to two reasons. One: Twitter just wanted to fire a warning shot across the bow of traditional search engines. Put them on notice, if you will. Two: We’ll see a Twitter IPO in the next 12-18 months . Twitter has far more users than Google had when it went public. If it can reveal revenues anywhere close to $100 million a year, then I think investors will be tripping over themselves to buy in. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Twitter’s New Year Resolutions: 1 Billion Searches a Day & an IPO?

As much as many of us like to think that we’re highly organized and efficient when it comes to our use of Twitter, there is in fact a lot we can do to make our lives easier. In the last couple of weeks I’ve adopted some fairly radical measures to streamline and improve my use of Twitter, which I’ll share with you here. 1 – Cut the Number of People You Follow The temptation when you first start using Twitter is to embark on a ‘follow rampage’. You add the news sites you read, the bloggers you respect, friends, family, colleagues, business contacts and in turn many of the people that follow or are followed by these accounts. This seems like a great idea at first, but you find you soon reach a tipping point – in my own case, by following close to 2000 people, Twitter had become nothing more than a never-ending deluge of noise, with useful and informative Tweets getting lost amongst the junk. Even by setting up user lists in Seesmic Desktop (the desktop app I use), I was finding it ever harder to keep up. A couple of weeks back I made the decision to cut back on who I followed. It was time to ‘purge’. Before hitting the unfollow option in earnest, I realised it would be a wise idea to set myself some criteria for who I should keep: – Is the person I’m following bringing any real value to me? The million dollar question. It’s very easy to follow someone just because everyone else is, or because you they have a job that gives the assumption that their tweets will be useful. Often this couldn’t be further from the truth. – Is the person I’m following tweeting unique information and links or are they mainly retweeting stuff I’m already getting from other sources? – Does the person I’m following follow me and if they do, do they ever communicate with me or retweet what I put out there? I’m sure there’s plenty of further criteria of your own that you could add, but this is what suited me personally. Next, I realised that as I was currently following so many people, it would take me many hours to go through everyone using Twitter on its own. Thankfully there’s some great tools available to help you. I used Your Twitter Karma , so I’ll describe the process I went through in using this tool specifically. When you log in to Your Twitter Karma (be patient – it can take a few minutes to load your details) you’re presented with a huge list of Twitter users. Under each itemised Twitter account it tells you whether you follow that person, whether they follow you, or whether you both follow each other. Clicking on the avatar brings up that person’s Twitter profile, so you can refresh your memory as to who they are, what they do, and whether their tweets are of value to you. Next comes the evil part! The purge . . . Select the users that you wish to stop following, by clicking the checkbox next to their avatar. This can be quite a time-consuming process, but it’s well worth it in the long run. When you’ve selected everyone you want to unfollow, click the ‘bulk unfollow’ button at the bottom of the page. All done! Now check your Twitter profile to check that your follow count has dropped to what you expect. Be prepared that your follower count may also drop slightly, as some people use auto-follow / auto-unfollow tools that will drop you if you drop them. 2 – Effectively Manage the Remaining People You Follow In my case, once I’d purged my account I was left with around 200 people I was still following – a drop of over 2000! In return about 200 people stopped following me. Once I’d got over what I’d done, it was time to effectively manage who I was left with. This next step is very easy to undertake. Most desktop Twitter applications (such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck) allow you to set up usergroups, whereby you can classify the people you follow into distinct groups, such as ‘friends’, ‘colleagues’, ‘business’, ‘celebrities’ etc. In future when you get a new tweet for someone you have allocated to a group it will appear in the appropriate group column. This way you can find and read it with far less difficulty. Twitter now also allows you to set up lists as well, so you can group together people in a similar way. 3 – Be Prepared to Fall in Love With Twitter All Over Again I know that what I’ve described sound quite radical, but believe me, if Twitter has become an out of control stream of tweets that you can’t keep up with, it really is your only option. Now i’ve drastically cut the number of people i follow down to the bare bones, I’ve rediscovered my love for this great tool. Additionally, whereas before I wouldn’t have dreamed of using Twitter on my iPhone, now I can login to the likes of Tweetie and thumb my way through tweet after tweet of valuable information (and the odd piece of celebrity gossip!). The value is back! Please note: Undertake the steps I’ve outlined at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for anything that may happen to your Twitter account as a result of following what you read here. Also be warned that it is not advisable to bulk-unfollow Twitter accounts then bulk-follow new accounts, as Twitter may deem you to be mis-using their service and suspend your account without notice. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Why It Pays To Purge – When and How to Unfollow

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Why It Pays To Purge – When and How to Unfollow