Category: Technology

I’ll be speaking on a panel at the upcoming Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Lisa Picarille (Revenue Magazine), Stephanie Agresta (Affiliate Karma), Marc Levin (formerly of Yahoo) and Cam Blazer of DoubleClick Performics and I will be discussing responsible affiliate marketing strategies in a web2.0 world…

The Changing Landscape of Affiliate Marketing: Bloggers, Social Media and Online Merchants : Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2008 — Co-produced by CMP Technology & O’Reilly Conferences, 04/22/2008 – 04/25/2008, San Francisco, CA: “Affiliate marketing is a proven way to monetize online content, and emerging publishers know it’s important to maximize relationships with merchants. Merchants also derive value from the growth of the blogosphere and social media. Experts in affiliate marketing (representing the publisher, merchant and affiliate network perspectives) will explore how these new publishing paradigms use existing affiliate models, and further enhance strategies for monetization of blog and social media content.”

Should be a blast and will be the first time I’ll have spoken at Web2.0 Expo. Let me know if you’ll be there.

BTW, where is everyone staying? I need to “get a room.”

MH hacks the Asus eee FTW…

If you’re here for affiliate or online marketing posts, you might also want to check out the revived CostPerNews site that I love so much and get to keep…

Cost Per News: “As part of my settlement after leaving ReveNews, I get to retain the ownership of CostPerNews.”

It’s going to be a blast dusting off the cobwebs and getting that place back in order. Join me?

Wow… just saw this in my Google Calendar settings!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

I wonder how long it will take to roll this into GMail. Then we’re talking cloud apps, folks.

Shawn, Jim, Lisa and I did a special GeekCast (our weekly geek marketing podcast) today with weblebrity Jason Calacanis of Mahalo.

I think this is our best show yet and offered a ton of practical affiliate marketing advice along with the customary humor and irreverence.

GeekCast 9: Jason’s First Time : GeekCast.fm: “Lisa Picarille, Jim Kukral (Kurkal), Shawn Collins and Sam Harrelson were joined by Jason Calacanis for a 45 min long conversation about how Mahalo should incorporate affiliate and performance marketing monetization techniques. The conversation became a workshop applicable to any business looking to monetize content through the affiliate channel and has a high amount of practical value (as well as the normal ratholes and humor).”

Go have a listen on the GeekCast page or download the podcast mp3:

Yahoo is embracing semantic web standards / microformats…

Yahoo Embraces The Semantic Web – Expect The Internet To Organize Itself In A Hurry: “What does all this mean? It means we can expect the web to get itself organized, in a hurry. At stake is a significant amount of traffic from Yahoo search, and anyone else that may choose to build applications on top of this data.”

In other words, all those random social networks and places of content creation that you have joined or participated in (MySpace, LinkedIn, blogger.com, etc) are going to be more easily incorporated into Yahoo search because the data will be properly structured on the backend.

This is huge and has been a coming avalanche one snowflake at a time.

Hats off to Yahoo and all the open standards evangelists like Chris Messina that have made this happen.

Updated: Marshall Kirkpatrick has a great piece about what this all means on RWW

http://seesmic.com/Standalone.swf?video=umtTQeTvyk

I hope my daughter gets to experience great cartoons like I did…

TechCrunch is reporting on a new set of Facebook Apps from Amazon.com. First, let me say that I absolutely love Amazon.com and it has changed how I buy everything from toilet paper to music (the DRM-free mp3 store kicks iTunes’ butt) to toys to electronic gear.

In no small way, that game changing is due to the feedback and product reviews from actual purchasers and users. They still make a big difference if I’m torn between two competing products. Even if I’m at a physical store like Best Buy, I’ll often browse to Amazon on my mobile and do some quick research on the fly before a purchase.

So, it would be killer if Amazon could or would integrate its associate program with this new Facebook app…

Amazon’s Latest Product Launch is a Couple of Facebook Apps: “Amazon has now officially joined the Facebook craze. It has launched two of its own Facebook applications: Amazon Giver and Amazon Grapevine.

Amazon Giver shows your Amazon wishlist on your Facebook page. Of course, there are more than a dozen apps on Facebook that already let you do that, but only Amazon Giver lets your friends actually buy those gifts for you without leaving Facebook. Ah, distributed commerce. Your friends can also click on a recommendations tab that creates Amazon product recommendations based on interests reflected in your Facebook profile. So if you are ‘fan’ of The Killers, it might recommend one of the band’s CDs. If you are a ‘fan’ of a soccer page, it might recommend a soccer ball. It also provides recommendations for your friends, conveniently listed by closest birthday.”

Think it’ll happen? I’m not so sure, but this would be a very steady revenue stream for Amazon and influencers who use Amazon and Facebook.

I’m chalking this one up to a possible “affiliate marketing future” paradigm, even if it is the old skool Amazon program.

I’ve been in the beta of Hulu for the last few months, and I have to say that I’m loving the service. New shows, old shows, rather new movies and old movies…. fantastic.

Between this, bittorrent, Joost (they are carrying March Madness live this year) and Apple’s iTunes movie rental service and ability to download Lost, I’m seriously considering canceling cable. Now if Nascar would only go online…

Here’s a clip from The Jerk, which I’m watching now:

http://www.hulu.com/embed/HsIOWOOx6OKr1bnfM0uNjg

The ability to share, create a profile and embed stuff from Hulu is really nice and will help with the adoption. I just wonder if they’ll keep that around since I could basically just embed entire movies here.

The age of having to watch or listen to a program at a certain time is over. I rarely listen to FM music anymore with my ever growing collection of music and iPod. I do have a thing for AM radio, but there’s a great app for the Mac called Radioshift which allows you to rip AM from the stream. Add to that the two dozen or so podcasts that I actively listen to and I just don’t have the time or need for scheduled programming.

Amazing times we live in, folks.