Month: January 2007

Categories
Geek Stuff SEO and Paid Search The Marketeer

More on Click Fraud and Sausage

A couple weeks back I wrote a post about The Sausage Manifesto, a great piece by Jeffrey Rohrs talking about click fraud. Mr. Rohrs did a fantastic job summing up some complaints advertisers have with pay per click. My perspective was not as promising as his; I saw a number of reasons why the search engines have no reason to address click fraud and tried to be clever with my Bratwurst Defense.

I was kind of bummed that it didn’t generate any further conversation (pretty heavy on the geek factor, I know), so I was very happy to get an email today that it had been picked up in The Scotland SEO Blog. How cool is that! I may have to swing by there on the upcoming UK tour!

As far the conversation – ASM’s post is saying “suck it up” fraud is a cost of doing business, and I have to agree. There was a speaker at SES Chicago and I’ll have to dig through my notes to find her name, but she had a great point – the problem is not click fraud, it’s click crap – the clicks from the wrong people that your creative is bringing in that are not really leads. My gut is that’s where the real savings are to be generated.

Hooray for Scotland!

Categories
Gaming Geek Stuff

Boston WebInnovators

Tonight I went to the latest Boston WebInnovators session. The cat is out of the bag on this one, I think there may have been more than 200 people there. A bunch of social media folk were in the house including Steve Garfield, C.C. Chapman, Bryan Person, Chris Brogan and Dan Gorgone. There was also staff from EmergePR including the principal, Mara Bartucca who I always enjoy catching up with.

But most important were the concepts!

  • Guild Cafe – Jon Radoff showed off their Social Network for Gamers. Pretty cool for that niche, but I imagine competition is going to get fierce in this space between established players like Gamespot and existing networks such as XBox Live. However I can see it making money if it can build a critical mass and allow it to become a marketing vehicle for new games without an established base. Something like Diablo 3 could stand on its own. I wanted to ask what they thought about the social stigma of being a gamer but decided to shut the hell up.
  • MyPunchbowl – Matt Douglas showed evite on Web 2.0. Lots of cool AJAX… no, lots and lots. I’m not sure how hot this spot will be, but the guys that can set up that many partnerships and integrations that fast will make it big. It’s not a matter of how, but when.
  • Goombah – Diane Sammer showed off their client app that enables a social network based around what’s in your iTunes library. Also very cool but there’s a lot of fighting in that space. I don’t follow it close but I can think of iCueMix and Pandora right off the top of my head. This is also a space that iTunes could take if it wanted to (although maybe that would include buying Goombah….)

It’s all about the social networks. I get the feeling these will all be dogfights, I didn’t see anything that I would consider new, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to make a lot of money but they’ll have to be more persistent than the guy next to them on the web.

Categories
The Marketeer

Viral Video Experiment Continues

I have been working on the customer newsletter. Not exactly exciting stuff. Gather the articles, see what people think, send it out. So – an update on the viral video. Episode one now has over 2,400 views. Not shocking by YouTube standards but incredible when you think that the leading e-zine in the space has around 40k readers.

There was some question on how to deal with comments. I had initially replied, outing a 42 year old man who was trying to be street by spelling tough “tuff”. The opinion was that we did not need to be defensive, the video speaks for itself. In hindsight I think this is the right thing to do. My first instinct was to follow the “mean streets” blogosphere and immediately call the comments for what they were – vested parties trying to look neutral (who out there is surfing for videos on software configuration managment besides insiders?).

The silent method has been funny though, watching people work hard to criticize and remain neutral, when a Google search reveals their true identity. We know we have buzz when major players at other vendors are watching it so we must be doing something right…

For those who are up for some SCM humor, part 2…

[youtube]d-Ny2zYowVM[/youtube]

Categories
Geek Stuff Graphic Design

Pimp your XP and Listen to The Show

The latest M Show is going up right now. One other cool thing, if you want to give your Windows XP a cool new look without upgrading to Vista, check out this theme. I’ve been using it for the past week and really like it…

Categories
Brain Buster The Marketeer

Jury Convicts Former CEO

This story is unbelievable to me. Just in case you’re not interested in the link, the former CEO at DCI, where I worked 1998 to 2000 was convicted of tax fraud conspiracy and tax evasion. I’m not too sure of the timeline, but from everything I’ve seen there it looks like I showed up just as everything was finished. How strange that events that happened prior to my arrival there, now almost 10 years ago, are still playing out.

The company was flush with cash when I came on, the bubble was growing rapidly and the first thing to rise are the trade shows and events.

Now I can add criminal conviction as a chapter in my book. I’ve already seen sexual harassment, insurance fraud, nepotism and a bunch of other bizarre stuff including plastic surgery, but those are stories for another day.

In some ways I thought that I shouldn’t blog about it, but it’s a matter of public record so there’s nothing to hide. I’m not sure how I feel about all this, but one thing I do know – in Business it’s always a battle and a game to see who gets the money, but in my mind taxes are not part of that game. When you strike a deal that’s sound business and leveraging information. When you try to do the same thing against the government you can end up picking up trash along the highway in an orange jumpsuit. I have no interest in any part of that.

Categories
Geek Stuff Podcasting Productivity Booster

Understanding HD

Long time podcaster Aaron has just launched a new cast all about HD. I’m started to get 720p and composite cables, I still have a lot to learn, but I do know that HD movies and games look incredible compared to standard TV.

You can check out The HD Podcast here, or subscribe to the CAPOW channel on Gigadial and you can get all the cool podcasts I stumble onto.

Categories
Brain Buster SEO and Paid Search The Marketeer

Sell your Google, here comes Wikipedia

Remember when Yahoo ruled the world? How long ago was that? 7 years?

In the past 2 months I’ve seen some interesting signs that Wikipedia is on a tear like we’ve never seen. I monitor 7 major keywords that I want to score on and since Q4 2006 wikipedia is on page one for all of these terms.

It’s also a major referrer for all of my sites. In 2 months.
So the question is: Will Google shut off the oxygen? Or is it already too late?

Categories
Daily Life Geek Stuff

Media Download

So I’ve been running like crazy for the past couple of days, but I have seen some good stuff:

Ali Rap is a DVD by ESPN showcasing the poetic talent of Muhammed Ali, only an hour and even the lovely Carin found it fascinating to watch.

24 – I downloaded the latest episode to watch at the gym this morning. My vedict is still out on this season, but I’m still watching.

Galactica – Got this off the Tivo waiting for Carin to come home

Dr. Who – An episode before bed off DVD

3 Media formats – no commercials.

That’s all I’ve got for today, we have an all hands company kickoff tomorrow, and the Sales Kickoff that started today continues.

I’m also doing a session on Podcasting for Non-profits in April, anybody know of any good ones?

Categories
Podcasting

5 Podcasts You Should Be Listening To

Just a few from my list that I hold in high regard:

365 Tao – God forbid, I actually take five minutes to put down the machine gun and reflect. (FEED)
The Ethicist – Around 5 minutes, always good for a laugh (FEED) you can also get David Pogue there.
On Digital Media – This has pushed other marketing casts out of my queue (FEED)
On the Record Online – I had heard Eric on FIR but only checked out his show recently – fantastic guests. (FEED)
Steve Wright – Ask Elvis – another short one for a laugh that easily fits in (FEED)
Please share any casts you feel are undervalued…

Categories
Email Marketing Lead Generation Productivity Booster SalesForce.com SEO and Paid Search

Salesforce.com in Boston

So I went to the Hyatt Harborside (right next to the airport with a nice view back on the Boston skyline, small place though) for the Salesforce event today. It was time well spent, even if just for getting to hear from a product manager directly. He was able to explain Apex in about 5 sentences better than anything I’ve read anywhere.

Apex is a language that you can query and script Salesforce with. It’s a new language that looks alot like a mashup of SQL and Java. They key is it runs on Salesforce servers. The product manager was a hardcore admin in a prior life and was talking about how they would set up a linux box out in the dmz to query SF and do cool stuff – for example hit the database once a day and round up all the contacts that sent in POs and send them the thank you message and kick the accounting system to send them an invoice. Sort of like Automated Procedures for Goldmine folk, but on steroids.

My hopes for finding a SF/Adwords ninja were dashed when I was one of the few (maybe only?) guy to raise his hand when they asked who was using it out of the probably 200+ people in the room. Either I really do have superpowers, or I was the one-eyed man in a room full of blind people.

Some other interesting stuff – ConVoq has webinars integrated into SF including VOIP, Dreamfactory has some project management and even SCM stuff that I need to check out. SalesGenius can tell you when your contacts are visiting your site (and also did a cool lead gen that got me a $5 Starbucks card). iNeo had some interesting stuff that automated the creation of landing pages. And one of these days I’ll get a chance to become an ExactTarget customer again, their integration is very cool and would take some labor out of the cycle and standardize outgoing messages.

Overall it’s time well spent to see what the next round of features will be. Also a major brainbuster – I gave Salesforce kudos for their ideaExchange – basically a Digg site for features for the product managers. I didn’t realize that this fit into a master plan for them of having startups create apps in apex – using ideaExchange as the perfect customer survey tool. They even have office space in the valley for these people to use, and of course VC will be trolling weekly. Brilliant! I’m buying shares this week.