Marketing and Strategy Consulting
I’m really excited about my new BlackBerry Curve (mainly because I can now do pics and videos and send them to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc).
Since I’m replacing my BlackBerry 8830 with the Curve, I figured I’d do a short comparison video:
There’s even some iPhone action in there for the mactards.
Wow. What a crazy week already.
Along with Aunesty Janssen, Billy Kay, Ron Bechdolt and Kellie Stevens, I helped launch a new affiliate marketing forum called AffSpot.
After the launch yesterday, there are already 75 members, 99 threads, over 300 posts, coverage by Shawn Collins and Wade Tonkin and a lot of buzz in the industry.
I’m really excited to be on board AffSpot and can’t wait to see how it grows over the coming years.
So, AffSpot (the new affiliate marketing forum I’ve been working on) is live:
Shawn Collins also has coverage of the launch.
Come join us (lots of people signing up already)!
AffSpot Affiliate Marketing Forum
Don’t think I ever posted this, but Shawn Collins put together this vid of me riding a Segway in February at the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas:
Shawn is a master propagandist, so don’t be fooled… I rode that thing like a champ.
I’m at 2019 fwiw:
via Inquisitr: “”
I was listening to U2 this morning and the song 40 came up.
Made me remember how moving Psalm 40 actually is:
Psalm 40;: “1: I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. “
Good stuff.
I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, but I can’t look at this picture without smiling:
Thanks, Dad!
I’ve been on “vacation” the last few weeks here (and in reality I’m at Lake Keowee with Anna’s family this week), but I’ll be blogging here more often starting next week.
Twitter has taken another step to finally put down the great FailWhale of ’08 by acquiring the real time search service Summize:
Twitter Search
We’re excited to announce that Twitter has acquired Summize—an extraordinary search tool and an amazing group of engineers. All five Summize engineers will move to San Francisco, CA and take jobs at Twitter, Inc. This is an important step forward in the evolution of Twitter as a service and as a company.
Since Twitter’s track functionality has been down, I’ve been a heavy user of Summize (and recommend you do the same through the new search.twitter.com interface).
Here’s to keeping things back on Track on Twitter…
I’ve got a BlackBerry 8830 that I love. However, there’s no camera on the device.
Here’s what I really want… a device (not another mobile phone) that would allow me to take pictures on the fly and wirelessly get them onto the web via wifi.
Anything out there that would accomplish this?
I wish the Apple Touch had a camera!
Really?
Who would call that?
Ugh.
Thanks to Hugh McLeod for pointing this out:
Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy: “This is a lightly edited version of the keynote I gave on Social Software at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference in Santa Clara on April 24, 2003
Good morning, everybody. I want to talk this morning about social software …there’s a surprise. I want to talk about a pattern I’ve seen over and over again in social software that supports large and long-lived groups. And that pattern is the pattern described in the title of this talk: ‘A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.’ “
Something to think about as we trounce forward through the murky and undrained swamp of large scale social technologies (especially as marketers)…
Of course YouTube is owned by Google (and continually pwnd by narcissistic 16 year olds judging from the comments) so it makes sense that your Google Account (the one used to login to GMail, GCal, Google Docs, etc) should include YouTube.
But I saw this for the first time this evening when visiting YouTube…
Did I miss something? Isn’t that new?
And if you’re bored, go watch my awesome Kindle videos onmy YouTube channel. I freaking love that thing.
I’m still dubious of the term “social media” (or marketer for that matter), but here’s an interesting piece with a variety of voices from Tamar Weinberg…
The Definition of Social Media Marketing: How to Find the Best Social Media Consultant » techipedia | tamar weinberg: “With many individuals finding great success with social media (and as an aside, a basic understanding of search engine optimization), they immediately consider themselves social media marketers and consultants (as well as seasoned SEOs) and offer to sell their promotional services. What skills, though, do successful social media marketers have that put these individuals above the average (or addicted) social media user, and better yet, above the traditional marketer? I asked several social media consultants, bloggers, marketers, search engine optimizers, and social media addicts about what they considered to be essential skills and characteristics of the most efficient and results-driven social media consultants. In the many paragraphs that follow, learn from many of the experts and hear what they consider success when using social media to engage with consumers about products and services.”
So, I’ve spruced the place up a bit.
I’m going to be posting here more regularly about religion, history, politics and marketing.
Thoughts?
Want to use your Twitter profile on your FriendFeed page (here’s mine above)?
Here’s how…
FriendFeed Profile – Userscripts.org: “Adds a user profile section on FF user pages. Version 0.1 retrieves Twitter bio if available.”
Pretty nifty.
I’ve got 25 invites to Kwippy, which is a Twitter-esque service.
How is Kwippy different from Twitter? You can find out more at their blog here. I don’t think it’s a “Twitter Killer” but I’m willing to give anything a chance at this point. Clearly, there’s a need for a Twitter-like service that has constant uptime and widespread adoption. Whoever figures out those two variables will be the next web giant.
If you’d like to get an invite, send me an email, direct tweet or leave a comment here.
New affiliate marketing podcast that is off to a great start:
Podcast: 15 Minutes Lessons by NYFalcon: “Making money online is easy once you have a plan. Nyfalcon can help with that as he has already made all the mistakes first. Listen to learn about topics like affiliate marketing and making money with contextual advertising”
Hope they keep it up!
For people like Scott Jangro that are fans of the Disqus API plugin (instead of the Javascript one that has all the fancy features), there’s an update according to Disqus’ Daniel Ha (Disqus being the commenting platform used here and on numerous other sites):
twitter: danielha: If you use the API version of the Disqus WP plugin, we’ve released an interim version with a few updates. Get it here http://snurl.com/2tkt5
I’d love to see the API plugin become as full featured as the Javascript plugin and would probably make the switch if/when that happens. Until then, I’m sticking with the features.
The pics from ShareASale’s party at Affiliate Summit West back in February are finally up on Flickr.
Lots of great shots of affiliate marketers (and lots of shots of Todd Crawford pointing at people)…
Amazon has a nifty new video solution that allows you to embed product links based on what you’re talking about in videos you are hopefully making. At the end of the video, the featured products are then shown in a list with prices and ratings.
It’s pretty straightforward and the video demo does a good job of explaining the new feature.
Be warned that if you watch from 2:04 onwards, your eyes will bleed.
Told ya.
So true…
The Toad Stool by Alan Wolk: Social Media Cards
Red cards will be issued for the following violations:
* Four or more tweets plugging one’s own blog post within a 24 hour period, including tweets from automated services like Twitterfeed.
* Use of the word “monetize” in an unironic way
* Posts mentioning surprise at the number of followers one has, provided that number is greater than 1,000
* Using a bot or interns or both to follow 1,000 or more people in the course of an evening.
* Issuing 50 or more consecutive tweets without ever once responding to an @ tweet
* Using Twitter for the sole purpose of promoting links to stories and/or posts that directly plug yourself or your company.
* Tweeting the UUSWVW (Using Urban Slang While Very White) violation “My Tweeps”
Twitter meets open source meets stable Jabber client??
Say it ain’t so!
I’m at identi.ca/samharrelson if you join up. Feel free to add me. I’d love to see this take off because of the potential of open source to provide the kind of stability that proprietary code (as in Twitter) can’t.
Dave Winer has more.
Shawn, Lisa, Jim and I recorded GeekCast 25 today. It was one of our best (in my opinion).
GeekCast 25: It’s a Google World : GeekCast.fm: “The regular gang of Lisa Picarille, Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and Sam Harrelson once again commenced for GeekCast 25 (our silver anniversary!).
This week, the GeekCast gang all stuck around for the entire show and tackled topics ranging from the PMA to the iPhone to smart blogging.”
Here’s the mp3.
Kowabunga!, rebranded a few months ago from Think Partnership, is divesting itself of Cherish (dating), MarketSmart (offline) and iLeadMedia (lead gen):
Kowabunga! to Divest Several Non-Core Business Units: “The Company intends to focus its efforts on its Network and other interactive businesses which have potential for enhanced growth. The business units that are no longer considered critical to its long term strategy and identified for divestiture are: (1) Cherish Inc., which provides online personals services; (2) MarketSmart Advertising Inc., which provides traditional offline advertising services; and (3) iLead Media, LLC, which provides online lead generation and digital marketing services. Proceeds from the sales will be used to reduce indebtedness and to fund the expected continued growth of the Network segment. “
The company’s stock price has been on the slide since a high of around $6 in 2004 and around $3.50 in 2007.
Kowabunga! has a soft spot in many people’s hearts in the industry (I was a consultant there for a few months) as we remember the “good old days” so hopefully the ship will turn around with this divestment.
What does this mean for video?
Once Nearly Invisible To Search Engines, Flash Files Can Now Be Found And Indexed: “Adobe has come up with a way for the search engines to read SWF files and index all of the information they contain. That means any text or links in a Flash application can now be indexed. This is a huge step forward for Adobe and anyone who develops in Flash/Flex. Michele Turner, Adobe’s VP of marketing for its platform business, explains:
We are releasing technology to Google and Yahoo that enables them to crawl and index SWF files. They are now searchable. This will open up millions of Flash files to search.
Adobe has created a special Flash player for the search engines that acts like a virtual user going through each application. It actually goes through the runtime of each Flash application and translates it into something the search engines can understand. So all of those fancy interactive Flash Websites and other rich Internet applications that have been invisible to search engines, can now be seen by them. “
For sites such as Seesmic which rely heavily on a Flash interface, this is great news SEO wise. While I’m not a fan of the mostly Flash pages (like those that seemed to be the front-end of every DirectTrack CPA network in 2005), a little Flash can engage the viewer/user and turn their stay into a longer one.
Regardless, as Jim Kukral says… start doing video and tagging it properly if you want to have a future online.
Dear People I Correspond with Via Email,
Please stop using those “I’m out of the office until Wednesday July 2” notifications. I’m not your mom, so I don’t need to know exactly where you are and I really don’t care.
You’re a swell person and you probably are on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, ABW or some derivative, so I know enough about you.
If it’s urgent, I’ll try your cell or just google your name and get your number. If it’s not urgent, it probably would take you a few hours or even 24 to get back to me. Otherwise, that “I’m out of town until tomorrow” email I get back just wastes everyone time.
kthxbye-
Sam
