VideoClix.tv is attracting a good deal of attention and for good reason. Basically, anything mentioned in a video becomes a keyword that leads to a clickable affiliate link. Even Revision3’s Diggnation is employing their technology…
I can’t imagine this sort of technology remaining independent for too long and expect to see a Google or someone snap them up or replicate the idea.
This is the future of affiliate marketing…
OK, good.
Let’s get back to business.
But seriously, I have had offers to buy CPN, offers to blog under my name, offers to roll CPN up into other marketing blogs… but I just can’t pull the trigger.
I’ve been blogging here since October ’06 (around the time I started on Twitter coincidentally). That’s not a good reason to keep anything going, but in this case I can’t leave the place that made me a Z lister.
This blog has been such a constant in my life and I strangely miss it when I take a week or four off.
So, from here on out I’m back to the 3-4 posts a day covering the strange and fascinating world of performance marketing and its intersection with whatever is next.
Thanks for playing along… it will be worth it, I promise.
So I’ve gotten really lax with my decision to open source as much as I can with my life as a form of my own little protest against corporate control of our content and art production.
I’m typing this on a Mac while listening to DRM’d music on iTunes, so clearly I failed.
However, I’ve been playing around with the new Ubuntu distro and it’s quite compelling. It’s compelling enough to make me consider going back to Ubuntu as my full time operating system (as it was for about 2 years during the 5.10-6.10 days).
But, as with all things, there’s a tradeoff. I enjoy the simplicity yet power of the Mac when it comes to podcasting, movie editing and even blogging (MarsEdit ftw). That’s not to mention great apps like Evernote, TextMate, Skitch, Pukka, Coda and wireless EVDO that I use on a hyper daily basis. I know there are analogs for all of these within Ubuntu or on any Linux distro, but they aren’t as polished and intuitive on the front end.
Not only that, but the “cloud applications” that I use and love such as GMail, Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc are things that I would need to give up to make myself feel more at ease. I could certainly use Ubuntu’s built in suite of apps or either move to platforms like Fastmail or 30boxes that don’t sare me as much as Google’s suite (I know, I know… tin hat).
Yet, Ubuntu keeps calling to me. Others have done it.
Anyway, just thinking out loud here.
So true…
Frustratingly sad…
New Babylonian Town Found: “He added that his team has come across several cuneiform tablets but ‘there is no one to read the ancient writing because Iraqi experts with the knowledge to decipher Mesopotamian script have fled the country.’ “
I feel like we’re living out an Arthur C Clarke story.
I’m in San Francisco for Web2.0Expo this week (see banner thingy over on the right). I participated on a great panel (I thought it was great) this morning with a few of my favorite people on the topic of affiliate marketing in the social media world… fun stuff.
I’m shooting some video that I’ll upload this evening. The best way to follow my whereabouts is via my Twitter stream (again, see the banner thingy over on the right).
In the meantime, here’s a great new vid from Mark of 45n5.com:
Why Most Cpa Companies Suck: “I know some great people at a few CPA networks and hope they don’t take it personally but Cpa networks suck because they run fraudulent offers in my opinion, and hopefully they will clean up their act.”
Mark’s comments go hand-in-hand with something I wrote four years ago about my disgust with parts of affiliate and performance marketing (and I still think it’s the best thing I’ve written about affiliate marketing)…
Looking for an Angry Fix: “Over the next six hours, I one by one dissected all the programs present and tried to figure out where things were coming from, who was serving them and how they got onto my poor father’s hard drive. Many were unexplainable. Almost all of them contained affiliate links to the big networks or affiliate programs that we are all familiar with and some that are even represented in this forum. I wrote down everything and was shocked at some of the brands, links and deliveries present. Of course the favorites were there but there were a good deal of surprises.”
Thanks for making me revisit that, Mark.
More soon from sunny San Fran.
I talk a good deal about cloud computing. If you listen to the GeekCast podcast, you might here me arguing with Shawn Collins over our cloud-based future and how it will be a reality as soon as variables, such as ubiquitous highspeed internet connections are available and accessible here in the US as well as the continued maturation of “cloud” based web apps such as GMail or Google Docs, are made more reliable.
I also talked with Andrew Wee about the cloud computing issue on his latest Friday Podcast and how I thought cloud computing was not only the future here in the West but also presented an amazing opportunity for more “developing” societies to leverage and improve increasingly complex web apps using cheaper and thinner computer machinery.
In other words, I’m a major proponent of cloud computing and see our futures there. However, I have to disagree strongly with this new post from Mashable…
The Web OS. It’s Coming, Just Not Too Soon.: “I’ll offer up my own prediction here that cloud-based operating systems will advance and grow to become popular, mainstream options for computer users in less than a decade’s time. Yes, 10 years from now, I imagine a portion of both the corporate and consumer populace will be logging on straight to the World Wide Web, without need for Windows Vista or Windows 7 or whathaveyou. If wireless broadband is to become a far-reaching utility and relatively inexpensive commodity – which I think it very well might, if telecoms really know what’s good for them – then there really will be no need for much of the public to continue to straddle the offline-online divide. The paradigm will shift. It is already doing so to large degree.”
My basic argument with this premise that we’ll be operating on a “Web OS” is that there’s no need for such a platform or system. In a decade’s time, the web will be omnipresent on our mobile devices, our HDTV’s, our AppleTV’s/DVR’s/TiVO’s/PS5’s as well as our more traditional web terminals that we have traditionally associated with desktops. However, we won’t need a web OS.
Web apps that work on our mobile devices, entertainment devices and more traditional computing machines will be OS agnostic and the browser will slowly but surely be the main “program” needed on a “computer.” Welcome to the fracturing.
Merchants and affiliate marketers have been able to avoid the complication of state taxes on transactions, but that may be coming to an end if a New York state bill is made law and catches on with other cash-strapped states…
InternetNews Realtime IT News – ‘Amazon Tax’ Lands in New York: “The so-called ‘Amazon tax’ closes a loophole for Internet retailers who derive sales through affiliate programs in which Web site owners place a link to the merchant on their site and earn a commission on sales made from referrals. In lobbying for the bill, the industry group representing New York retailers had argued that the exemption from the sales-tax collection requirement gave out-of-state online retailers an unfair competitive advantage. “
Keep an eye on this one.
