Marketing and Strategy Consulting
I have a hat fetish. I admit it. I can’t help it.
So, I was very excited to see my new awesome hat arrive from Canada (via eBay):
Yeah, it’s Indiana Jones-esque but that’s sort of the point. I’ve been searching for years for the perfect that I can wear on the trail, in an airport or on the road. This one might solve that problem (plus it looks pretty cool and can provide some good branding material… maybe I should add a beard?).
Thoughts?
So even though I now work at Motive Interactive, I think this is a great promotion by the ShareASale team. Nicely done and I’d wager that you will definitely be copied on the idea!
UnsubCentral and the Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC) are holding a free conference call next Tuesday to discuss the recent changes to the federal CAN-SPAM law and what mailers and marketers should know about the changes.
Total Compliance: What the Changes in CAN-SPAM Mean for You
Join experts from the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and UnsubCentral as they team up to help marketers discover the information needed to successfully navigate the new CAN-SPAM rule provisions. Register today!
Date: Tuesday, June 10
Time: 2 PM EST / 11 AM PST
Duration: 45 MinutesYou will learn:
How to clearly interpret the new regulations
How the new rules affect your daily business
How the new rules will apply to different scenarios
What you need to know to avoid legal issues”
One of my good pals and bright guy John Engler from UnsubCentral and Justin Weiss, Associate Counsel at the Digital Policy Group will be the speakers. This looks like a great event for mailers and CPA marketers / networks as well as anyone interested in the legal side of performance marketing. I’ll be on the call taking notes as well.
One of the things I put at the top of the priorities list during my first week at Motive Interactive was to make sure we owned our online reputation in terms of subscribing to the various vanity feeds (Technorati, Twitter Track (still down at the moment), Google Alerts, Yahoo Pipes for YouTube and Flickr tags, etc) as well as making sure we popped up with favorable items when you search for “Motive Interactive” on Google.
It’s common sense, but SO many marketers and networks overlook this very foundational step in their reputation and brand management.
For instance, if you search “sam harrelson” on Google, my web activity (all of it really favorable) dominates up to the very last listing on page 10 when another Sam Harrelson from Washington State shows up as a part of a political donation site (ironically enough, he donated $1500 in ’05 to a House race in New Jersey… the home state of my political arch-nemesis, Shawn Collins). You have to go to page 26 to find another Sam Harrelson mentioned.
But the key is that your rankings look interesting, unique and relate to your mission in life/work/career/whatever. Video, audio and pics are essential for that.
That’s not a huge deal since people rarely get to page 26, but if you are trying to build your company or personal brand and grow a positive reputation, you surely need to make sure you are ranking well for your own name since going to Google has become the new indicator of “Whuffie.”
Just something to keep in mind and yet another reason to get involved in the social web.
Want:
Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary « Biblical Studies Notebook (BSN): “II Kings (Volume 11 in the acclaimed Anchor Bible) is the chronicle of the raging conflicts that tore the United Kingdom of Israel apart, creating the rival nations of Israel to the north and Judah to the south. It tells of the time of the great prophecies of Elijah and Elisha, and of the legendary conquerors of not only the Jews, but the whole of the Middle East – Sennacherib, Hazael, Tiglath-pileser III, Nebuchadnezzar, and Shalmaneser.”
Looks like a great translation by two highly respected scholars.
I’m in San Diego for the week as I begin my first full week as the Director of Performance Marketing at Motive Interactive.
You’ve probably heard of Motive Interactive if you’re in the affiliate space but probably not exactly sure who they are, what they do or how they stand out from the crowd of CPA and affiliate networks that have been in full bloom for the past five or so years.
That’s what I’m here to change (as well as grow the network of course).
I got my start in the world of affiliate/performance marketing years ago with an email firm (SubscriberBASE) that eventually morphed into a CPA network (AdDrive), so I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the pure CPA world. Along with that, I’ve always been a firm believer that one day a network would bridge the gap (chasm?) between the CPA world and the pure rev share world and thereby get the best of both for publishers and affiliates. A few networks have tried it, but no one has been successful. I’ve got the opportunity to do that here at Motive. So, when this position was offered to me, I couldn’t turn it down.
So what makes Motive stand out from the crowd?
Let me show you.
Tomorrow (Thursday May 29), I’m doing demos for a few larger affiliates as well as folks who might be interested in what Motive is doing and why I would be crazy enough to get back into the turbulent world of CPA networks while I preach social media marketing. I’m here all day and night and I’d love to show the affiliate managers here the power of blogging by saying “Oh yeah, I’m giving this person a walk through because I blogged to see if anyone would like a walkthrough.”
Not only is this a demo and walkthrough of the network, but we’re launching Advent2.0 (Advent is the technology behind the Motive network) later in June and I’d love to have your input as to what you would like to see, what tweaks we could make to improve things and what sorts of offers you’d like to see in a network.
All that said, give me a call/txt (803.413.6834), send me an email (sharrelson@motiveinteractive.com or any of my other 97 email addy’s), send me a direct Tweet (samharrelson), send me a Facebook message, comment here… you get the point… and let’s set up a quick 5, 10, 30 or whatever time slot and chat. It’s not a pitch as much as an explanation.
I’d love to show you what we’re up to, where we see the industry heading and why you should be interested in Motive. Good things are happening here, trust me.
Seriously, I’d love to show you around. Get in touch.
(Special thanks to Linda Buquet! BTW, If you’re not following her coverage of the NY state affiliate tax, you’re missing out.)
I’ve long been an explorer and proponent of “the cloud.”
However, I’ve recently begin to not only rethink that dedication and allegiance to remote server data storage for all of my email, docs, calendars, pics, spreadsheets, notes and feed reading (all through Google btw), but to also pull back and start relying on desktop applications like Mail.app and NetNewsWire and iCal on my Mac.
I’m even missing working on Ubuntu full time these days. If you’ve been following me here on CPN over the past few years, you know that I was a devoted user of Ubuntu as my sole operating system. I got away from that when I bought this MacBook Pro last November, but I’ve recently been playing with the new release of Ubuntu called Hardy Heron and I must say that it’s incredible and makes me ponder switching back to my open source ways.
I have always been a rebellious spirit, so when I read things like this, my inclination to rage against the machine kicks in again…
BBC NEWS | Technology | Storm warning for cloud computing: “The issue was recently highlighted by reports that the Canadian government has a policy of not allowing public sector IT projects to use US-based hosting services because of concerns over data protection.
Under the US Patriot Act the FBI and other agencies can demand to see content stored on any computer, even if it being hosted on behalf of another sovereign state.
If your data hosting company gets a National Security Letter then not only do they have to hand over the information, they are forbidden from telling you or anyone else – apart from their lawyer – about it.
The Canadians are rather concerned about this, and rightly so. According to the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that helped the Internet Archive successfully challenge an NSL, more than 200,000 were issued between 2003 and 2006, and the chances are that Google, Microsoft and Amazon were on the recipient list. “
So, who knows… I may be making the Big Switch back to Ubuntu even though I do love the adaptability and applications that this Mac affords. It’s a splendid machine… but it feels soul-less. When I was on Ubuntu, I was constantly enjoying the benefits and the challenges… the surprise compatibilities and the frustrating inconsistencies.
There’s something to be said about freedom in software and freedom from oppressive governments that circumvent constitutions in the name of protecting that freedom.
I’m doing a solo presentation on the Sunday of https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=afc1&client=affsumAffiliate Summit East in Boston about how to use “social” media in the context affiliate marketing.
My opening line is “you probably know of and maybe use Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed, Google Reader and Ning, but you are probably using them wrong if you’re connecting them with your affiliate program…”
I’ve got a rough sketch of how the rest of the hour will go, but I’d like to make sure I cover the bases you’d like covered. So, comment (or email, call, twitter, etc) below and let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like to hear about using social media in an affiliate program.
Affiliate Summit East 2008 Agenda: “Leveraging Social Media
Location: Harborview Ballroom 1
Time: 1:30pm-2:30pm(This Session is Open to Full Conference Pass Holders Only)
This session helps affiliate marketers, networks and merchants recognize the power of adapting and adopting social media platforms into their programs for increased traffic, conversions and profit.* Sam Harrelson, Director of Performance Marketing, Motive Interactive”
For instance, I’ve got close to 2,500 people following me on Twitter and the platform provides a nice stream of passive and active traffic (when Twitter is up). However, I don’t just throw affiliate or even site links up to get that traffic. There are very specific and practical steps that you can take to be a productive part of a community like Twitter and still derive benefits.
So, let me know what you’d like to hear…
Affiliate networks are beginning to get more active (or at least more vocal) on the New York state affiliate tax issue.
CJ has weighed in with a general call for due diligence, ShareASale has been more proactive and involved with the issue both on their blog and in the ABW forum. Then during the GeekCast podcast yesterday, Shawn Collins discussed Linkshare’s partnership with the DMA over the issue.
Here is the email Linkshare is sending out to publishers today:
LinkShare has issued the following invitation to a teleconference on the New York State sales tax change and affiliate marketing:
On April 9, 2008, New York State passed a law mandating that any retailer that (1) meets a certain sales volume from sales to New York customers and (2) has an affiliate program with New York based publishers that refer customers to the retailer and are paid on a commission basis must charge and collect New York sales tax on all sales shipped to New York.
We have been actively working with, and providing support to, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to clarify this law. The Direct Marketing Association is the leading global trade association for businesses that use direct marketing tools and techniques. LinkShare is proud to be their partner. As this issue continues to develop, we are committed to making available the insights of authoritative partners like the DMA to help inform and guide you.
To this end, we are pleased to invite you to be LinkShare’s guest for the DMA’s conference call on this issue, featuring DMA Tax Counsel George Isaacson this Thursday, May 22, 11AM to 12Noon Eastern. He will provide an overview of the bill and the DMA’s interpretation of it. There will also be an opportunity for Q&A.
To join the call (Thursday, May 22, 11AM to 12Noon Eastern), email government@the-dma.org to receive personalized dial in information. Please let them know you are a member of the LinkShare Network.
Of course, while the DMA provides an authoritative source for information, since every business has a unique situation, we urge all our partners to seek out individual independent tax and legal advice. The New York Department of Taxation and Revenue‘s Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) and DMA’s analysis of it are available on our site at http://www.linkshare.com/advertisers/ny_state_tax/
For details, please contact:
Mark Kirschner
LinkShare
646-943-8359
mkirschner@linkshare.comDan Dent
Blanc & Otus Public Relations for LinkShare
617.451.7351
ddent@blancandotus.com
I’ll be on the call (from a hammock on Hilton Head Island, SC while my monkey butler brings me drinks…) and will share my thoughts here tomorrow afternoon.
Affiliate Summit’s Social Network on Ning is growing more and more every day.
I subscribe to the general RSS feed of the network to keep up with who’s joining and what’s going on (yet another cool feature of Ning is the RSS implementation… I can keep an eye on the network without having to login every hour) and it seems like it’s really catching momentum.
Here’s the view from my feed reader:
I hope the network keeps rolling as it could be a very valuable place and facilitator of offline interaction as well come August.
Commission Junction is currently sending out this very legal sounding email to publishers encouraging them to perform due dilligence with a link to a PDF from NY state’s tax office…
As you may already know, the State of New York recently enacted new legislation that addresses tax registration, collection, and other time-sensitive obligations. As with all laws, this law may or may not apply to you and your business. We are actively monitoring the law and will use reasonable efforts to protect ourselves and our publishers as we deem appropriate.
The application of the law is dependent on particular business and factual circumstances, and Commission Junction is not in a position to provide legal and tax advice regarding this law. However, we encourage you to perform the appropriate due diligence as it relates to your business.
For your convenience, we have provided a link to a memo from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Tax Policy Analysis, Taxpayer Guidance Division that addresses the new legislation:
While certainly not as personal and emphatic as ShareASale’s response on their blog or on the ABW forum, it is a little heart warming to see CJ addressing the issue.
I was hoping for more of a “these are the steps we will take to educate merchants and protect our publishers” type email, but it looks like this is all we’re going to get from CJ at this point.
Last Spring, it seemed as if the world of affiliate marketing would be saturated with bloggers. BUMPzee was riding high and everyone was trading links, trackbacks, comments and bumps.
It was the short lived golden age of affiliate blogging.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still some great places to read about affiliate marketing such as Shawn Collin’s AffiliateTip Blog, Scott Jangro’s blog, Linda Buquet’s 5 Star Blog, Mark’s 45n5 blog, Zac Johnson’s blog, ReveNews as well as many others that I’m surely leaving out. There are some great new blogs such as Trisha Lyn’s blog, but things don’t feel the same.
However, last year it wasn’t uncommon to get 10-15 “bumps” on a thought provoking post from BUMPzee that made you feel as if something unique was happening in the affiliate blogging space.
And it wasn’t uncommon to see many new and interesting blogs popping up addressing real affiliate marketing issues. Maybe it was BUMPzee’s influence? Maybe it was the market boom last year?
It just doesn’t feel the same.
What happened?
Last week, Scott Jangro wrote a great piece comparing the Disqus API and Javascript plugins for blog integration.
Most people would just scratch their heads and say “so what?” but there are some pretty big implications for the behavior of the commenting plugin and how search engines see blog comments, etc.
“Search engines cannot see the comments rendered with the Javascript plugin. They do see the comments displayed via the API version of the plugin.
The Javascript implementation does have its benefits. In addition to ease of integration and feature updates, the fact that comment text is unavailable to search engines means that comment spam is rendered completely ineffective. There are other ways to accomplish this, and for now, I’m uncomfortable with using a full Javascript implementation.”
Plus, the Javascript plugin has all the new features that Disqus has been rolling out compared to the API plugin which has been seemingly neglected lately.
However, according to a tweet from Disqus’ Daniel Ha, that looks like things will be changing soon.
I look forward to switching over to the API plugin myself!
Missy Ward and Shawn Collins of the https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=afc1&client=affsumAffiliate Summit have put together an “offline” publication that looks like it’s going to be a great read based on the talent assembled for the articles.
I contributed a piece describing the best ways to get things done in affiliate marketing using web2.0 tools:
FeedFront Articles in Issue 1 : FeedFront: “Issues will be mailed in June 2008. Here are the articles in the first issue:
* Editors Note: Missy Ward & Shawn Collins
* Five Ways to Evaluate a Merchant’s Landing Page: Dan Murray
* Pros & Cons of Utilizing Multiple Networks: Brian Littleton
* Twitter Grabs Attention: Lisa Picarille
* GTD in Affiliate Marketing with Web 2.0: Sam Harrelson
* Affiliate Marketers Give Back: Missy Ward
* Online Video Advertising: Tim Carter
* Nobody Would Use a Search Engine with Paid Results: Dan Gray
* Building Profitable Customer Relationships by Following These Simple Email Axioms: Tom Kulzer
* Are You the Next Super Affiliate Blogger?: Zac Johnson
* Ad Networks, Vertical Ad Networks, and Affiliate Networks: Peter Figueredo
* Affiliate Manager Compensation: Shawn Collins
* My 3 Favorite Blogs You May Not Visit: Wil Reynolds
* My 3 Favorite Tools You May Not be Using: Wil Reynolds
* Get Off Your Butt and Start Making Videos: Jim Kukral “
You can get a subscription to FeedFront here.
Brian Littleton of ShareASale weighs in on how his network plans to address the delicate situation surrounding the NY state tax on affiliate revenues and provides a nice model that other networks may want to consider (both in terms of practice as well as openness with the affiliate community):
ShareASale Blog » NY State and the “Affiliate Sales Tax” Law…: “Our plan at this time, is to treat any case where a merchant wishes to terminate NY affiliates with great care and caution. If a merchant requests to do this, there is little we can do to stop them – but ShareASale will be performing the task so that merchants aren’t accessing information which traditionally is considered private within the network.
There is a chance that this plan will not work. My hope is that we can warn merchants that terminating NY is a bad plan – and one that needs rethinking. If our plan doesn’t work – and we end up needing to provide more information to merchants, we may end up having to do so… I say this as a heads up to affiliates because while we don’t like to give out info, we also don’t want to put merchants in a place that makes it difficult to adhere to the laws of their state or others.”
Great job for addressing the situation and letting us know your thoughts from a network perspective, Brian and team.
I joined a new political themed podcast with a few friends from the online marketing industry today:
RedHatBlueHat 1: Who’s Wright and Who’s Left? : GeekCast.fm: “This is the inaugural episode of the ongoing weekly political podcast RedHatBlueHat featuring Todd Crawford, Tim Jones, Shawn Collins, Mike Allen and Sam Harrelson.”
The show goes about an hour but is really entertaining and full of political theory and analysis from all sides of the playing field.
Here’s the mp3 or head over to GeekCast for the stream.
Let me know what you think!
kwiry is a neat mobile based service that I’ve been following lately. In essence, it turns text messages, emails, voice calls, or photos, into online reminders by texting anything to 59479 (k-w-i-r-y).
Those notes, emails, photos, etc can be shared or sent to iCal, Twitter, RSS, Facebook or a user’s profile page for later access. The service reminds me of a cross between Jott and Evernote.
I’ve been using Jott and Evernote (both together and separately) everyday for the last few months and find the ability to create notes on the go, both visually and audio wise, incredibly helpful to my workflow.
So, when I found kwiry I was hopeful that it could do in one application what I was doing with two separate ones. However, the initial limitations of not being able to grab photos and send to my own kwiry page and the lackluster mobile page itself led to some frustrations.
It looks like the kwiry folks have been working on those improvements and they are rolling out to the service. So, users can now take pics on the fly and send them in with a specific email address along with the text and audio notes.
kwiry also has a much improved mobile site at m.kwiry.com with a nice iPhone interface (even though I’m on a BlackBerry, it’s still much improved).
So, with these improvements I’ll probably give the service another shot and see how it can hold up to my Jott / Evernote paradigm. There are still things that Jott /Evernote does better (Evernote has incredible handwriting and tagging as well as a fantastic desktop app for the Mac that I can’t put away and Jott integrates nicely with my RememberTheMilk todo lists and GMail), but kwiry could serve as a nice on the fly notes grabber.
For all of you stats monkeys out there who have been waiting patiently to see a geographical breakdown of the viewers of your YouTube videos, the wait is over.
You can find YouTube Insight under your www.youtube.com/my_account page:
YouTube Insight is fairly simple in its offerings but should be adequate for the needs of most YouTubers. It reminds me of a simplified Google Analytics.
Oddly enough, the majority of my viewers are 45-55 year old males. Darn.
This iteration of the Affiliate Summit Network is really taking off.
I think a good deal of its success so far has to do with it being hosted on Ning instead of Confabb as in years past. I love the integration of RSS, Twitter streams, Flickr, YouTube, etc that Ning provides and it makes the entire network feel much more robust and inviting than years past.
There are already over 70 pretty active members (growing daily) signed up and we’re discussing the NY state affiliate situation, how to market to marketers and all sorts of relevant topics that will surely be hot buttons at the conference in early August.
So, if you’re going to https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=afc1&client=affsumAffiliate Summit East (15% off if you use that link plus the code ase08afc15), make sure to join up on the network.
And if you do, make sure to add me as a friend.
A wise man once said, “Alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” If we extend that metaphor to tech, it looks like BeerMenus.com is doing some interesting things with a mashup of local beer menus, Google Maps, dynamic search and RSS:
Bruisin’ Ales Beer Blog: “We love this! In NYC, two disgruntled corporate guys (and brothers) launched a new site, Beermenus.com. Will and Eric Stephens’ site is dedicated to providing beer menus of restaurants in the NYC metro area—’a growing compendium that lists 263 beer menus and 1,386 different beers from pubs around Manhattan and, now, Brooklyn.’ As the popularity of beer continues to grow, this could easily expand into something for big beer cities across the country. “
Right now, this is primarily for the NYC metro area (yet another reason NY is the greatest city in the world), but I hope it expands to include more regions and areas (and develops a mobile app or site).
These sorts of sites could easily add affiliate marketing to the mix and make a ton of money. Hopefully they’ll do that so that the service can expand.
Michael Vorel posted an interesting tweet this morning:
I am concerned many NY affiliates will loose interest in affiliate marketing, solutions?
which was followed up with a tweet from Shawn Collins:
@vastplanet I think it could help to publicize Amazon’s battle and try to bring grassroots blog pressure on NY to get more mainstream media
The back and forth refers to the developing situation surrounding recent legislation in New York state that seeks to collect taxes on online revenue generation and immediately effects large merchants as well as the NY state affiliates.
There was a question as to whether Amazon would drop NY state affiliates, but it looks like the first large merchant to take that step is Overstock.
Shawn Collins covered it first and best at AffiliateTip Blog:
Today the Small Business Blog reports that Overstock.com has issued a notice to all New York state affiliates that they are being dropped from the Overstock Affiliate Program, effective May 20, 2008.
As the day went on, more bloggers and discussions started appearing about Overstock’s actions. Even Saul Hansell of the NY Times is following the developments with an in-depth piece and link back to Shawn’s piece:
There were two predictable fallouts from New York State’s move to force online companies to collect state sales tax: There would be a lawsuit. And some online merchants would cut off their affiliates in the state.
Then, over on ReveNews Heather Paulson covered the situation and got a very precise comment from Todd Crawford:
I am very concerned that NY sees affiliate marketing differently than other forms of online advertising like CPM and CPC. I do not understand the logic they are using that affiliate marketers create nexus for advertisers allowing them to charge sales tax. If this is not overturned, I would expect NY to extend the nexus to any online advertising – including CPC and CPM. Idiots!
As Todd and others have pointed out, this is a very short term play from NY state and will eventually cost them revenue in terms of sales tax and income tax generation from merchants and affiliates. However, states are cash strapped (I won’t get too political, but let’s just say the current administration’s fiscal practices haven’t exactly helped states deal with rising health care and education costs) and looking for ways to get into the black during an important election year when the turnout is going to be exceptionally high.
Will more states follow NY? Yes. It’s almost a certainty if NY is successful at collecting taxes from large companies such as Amazon (which it looks like will be the case judging from the NY Times piece). Does this mean affiliate marketers or merchants will suffer and eliminate affiliates working in those states? Perhaps, but I don’t think that’s a necessary certainty.
Instead of making the case that affiliates are being treated unfairly, I think our best bet as an industry is to make the case to state governments that this is an economically short minded tactic. Robbing Peter to pay Paul never works and the states will loose more long term revenue in the form of sales and income taxes than they will gain by a tax system that will surely have more holes than a sieve.
I fear it will be the affiliate marketers themselves and not the merchants who have to make this case. The merchants seem willing to either pay the tax or to stop working with NY state (and eventually others) affiliates instead of making the case against such a tax scheme.
Industry organization anyone?
Magnify.net is releasing a very exciting new WordPress and MovableType plugin aimed at making it easier for bloggers to find and include images and videos into posts.
Basically, the plugin integrates easily and nicely into either a WordPress or MoveableType install and allows for a blogger to include a keyword relevant image or video to be embedded in a post within a few seconds.
As most bloggers know, finding relevant images or video content for a post can consume a great deal of time and often lead to frustration. So, the Magnify Publisher program definitely solves a much maligned problem.
Magnify Publisher searches through popular video sources such as YouTube, Metacafe, Veoh, Blip.tv, Google Video, AOL Video, RedLasso and a number of others. At the moment, Flickr is the only available image search source but Magnify CEO Steve Rosenbaum tells me that this will soon be expanded.
Here’s an example of the video search and embedding feature:
And here’s an example of the image search and embedding feature:
Perhaps most compelling is the ability to also directly and easily incorporate webcasts into a blog post. So, instead o recording a video on a webcam then uploading that video to YouTube then grabbing the embed code then embedding that code into a WordPress blog, a blogger can simply press a couple of buttons and instantly get their webcam video embedded into a post.
Here’s an example:
These are very innovative features from the Magnify team and definitely needed improvements to the current paradigm of blogging. When I spoke with Steve Rosenbuam today, he mentioned his ardent belief that popular blogs of the immediate future would be those that best blend the visual, video and text components of content creation rather than those that just focus on one specific medium.
Magnify’s Publisher plugin goes a long way in supporting his idea.
Disqus continues to make blogging more enjoyable.
Now, you can enable video comments through Seesmic integration with Disqus. To turn this on, just head to the Configuration tab on the Disqus dashboard:
Give it a go in the comments if you’d like to test it out (you’ll see a “Record Video Comment” option).
I’m still not sold on the general concept of video commenting, but I know that some people prefer firing off a quick video rather than typing out a response. While I’d rather type out comments on most blogs, I do see tremendous value in encouraging people to participate in whatever way they feel comfortable.
Hats off to the Disqus (and Seesmic) team for making blogging fun again.
I’m a big fan of JetBlue, so this is a neat promotion for the next Affiliate Summit in Boston this August…
Special discount from jetBlue for Affiliate Summit | Affiliate Summit Blog: “Here are the details on how to book via the jetBlue promo page…
Code: ASE08
Discount: 5%
Valid Cities: Any City to BOS
Travel Dates: Outbound: 8/6-8/8 / Return: 8/12-8/14
Promo Valid: 5/2/08-8/7/08”
The discount is good for a few beverages and hot dogs at Fenway at the very least!
The 21st century has brought us many great wonders… like new ways for phone companies to charge outrageous prices while locking us into contracts (at least here in the US):
Scientist Says Texting is More Expensive Than Downloading From Hubble | Universe Today: “One space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Nigel Bannister from the University of Leicester looked at the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble and compared it with the cost of sending a text. His calculations? ‘The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.'”
I guess this adds new fodder for the people who claim that Twitter is a huge waste of time and money.
Hopefully, the invisible hand of the free market will one day deliver us from our overcharging mobile overlords.
Video aggregation and community site Magnify.net has launched a “Pro” offering for users wishing to replace the standard AdSense ads on the site with customized ads.
Social network creator Ning as well as other web2.0 properties have tested out this sort of thing before. For example, on Ning you can purchase a Pro account for $19.99 a month to replace their AdSense ads with your own ads.
However, Magnify.net is doing something a little different with the option to pay for custom ads based on pageviews in units of 5,000 ($24.95), 25,000 ($84.95) and 50,000 ($159.95). Users can also remove Channel Creation links ($5.95 monthly) and enable contests for a premium monthly fee ($125.00).
This is interesting. Basically, sometime tonight you’ll be able to grab a snippet of code and install it on your site/blog allowing you to combine that site with your activities in various social networks…
Google Press Center: News Announcement: “Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.”
Here are some of the more “long tail” implications of Friend Connect:
“Google Friend Connect is about helping the ‘long tail’ of sites become more social,” said David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google. “Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there’s an emerging wave of social standards — OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making ‘any app, any site, any friends’ a reality.”
And here are the immediate benefits possible:
Without requiring coding experience, Google Friend Connect gives site owners a way to attract and engage more people by giving visitors a way to connect with friends on their websites.
Drive traffic: people who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.
Increase engagement: access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.
Less work: any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network.
I see this as the culmination of the widget craze that swept the online world in 2007 and a way to start bringing in tangible benefits for website owners and bloggers. In other words, the more efficient back-and-forth between social networks and sites/blogs will only increase traffic and exposure for both (if the person behind them is interesting, relevant or adds something to the viewers’ lives).
via bub.blicio.us
If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that I’m a chronic social networker. I jump on things like Twitter, Facebook, Pownce, FriendFeed, Seesmic, etc and often call them the “next big thing.”
I know it’s annoying, but sometimes I do get it right (like with Twitter).
So, I’m particularly excited to see the new Affiliate Summit network being moved to Ning…
New Affiliate Summit Social Network | Affiliate Summit Blog: “Affiliate Summit has launched a new social network for conference attendees on Ning.
Based on a poll, as well as feedback on Twitter and directly to us, Ning was the clear favorite over the previous social network technology from Confabb.”
If you’ve never played with Ning, you really should. It beats forum software like phpBB etc hands down and offers a number of options for integration with things like your blog feed or Twitter or Flickr.
And I’m especially excited about the Summit’s move to Ning because the previous Confabb system was atrocious from a usability standpoint.
This time around for the ASE Boston show, I really think we can derive some benefits from this iteration of the social network.
Head over and sign up. You just might like it (and find it profitable).
I’ve been arguing that Twitter users should abandon desktop clients (until Twhirl gets their xmpp gateway going) and use GTalk for Twitter. Not only is the GTalk gateway real time, but there are a few key benefits that enhance the Twitter experience.
Here’s a great post from @tw3nty3ight about how he uses Track and GTalk for Twitter in a similar fashion that I do (on the desktop and on the BlackBerry):
Tw3nty3ight.com: How I Get The Most Out Of Twitter: “There is a very useful Twitter command that is overlooked by many. The TRACK command is the most underused command on twitter. In order for me to be notified of someone mentioning anything pertaining to myself I simply utilize this feature. There are two main ways to use this command, text (SMS) or IM with Google Talk. “
I follow around 1500 people. Watching that kind of a stream all day would render Twitter pretty useless for my needs. So, with the device updates setting on IM, I’m able to “turn on” just the 50 or so people that I’m really interested in following and use Track for my name or topics I want to hear about to catch the rest.
Give it a go if you need to cut the signal-to-noise ratio.