Not to brag or anything, but I called it big time! The ZunePhone is here:

Google's trying to not be evil with Maps' Street View images.

Google's Marissa Mayer
told the audience at the Search Engine Strategies conference that the company will remove images from its Street View upon request if they contain faces or license plates.

In many folks' minds, Google crossed the line in privacy in keeping the faces in the pictures. This begs the bigger question about Google's ability to organize information into a public forum. Yes, people didn't opt in for their pictures to be put into Google Maps, but they aren't identified by name either.

We live increasing public lives (as is evidenced by the Spock search engine, which will "face" similar issues as it grows in function and popularity since it searches both images and textual information.

Social networking and public databases are both empowering and endangering (as Rudy Giluliani's daughter knows) for connecting people. Between Flickr, MySpace, and LinkedIn, Santa will find it much easier to know who has been naughty or nice, and what they look like.

I was just playing around with Microsoft's new research/search visualization tool Tafiti, and I was impressed right away.

The interface is incredibly slick (did they hire people from Apple for this project?) and unbelievably quick in returning results. You can search the greater web, within books, RSS feeds, and images, but the news search really stands out. Results are listed in the form of a newspaper column, with easy to ready headlines and varying column widths that breaks up the monotony of rows of search results.

You can store your results on "shelves," which enables you to link together relative results, and images indicate where the result came from (ie the greater web or news). You can save your research, e-mail it, or automatically post it to a Microsoft Live page. You can also narrow search results through a filter. Tafiti requires Microsoft's Silverlight media plug-in, and you must log in using a LiveID to save your results.

Tafiti is the most intriguing, unique and useful online application that Microsoft has developed in a long time, and a good counter to Google's universal search.

Balihoo is a great example of a niche search engine that fills an obvious void -- a service that can help advertisers identify likely media companies where they should be advertising.

The company takes the local search model of giving away basic listing and charging for premium listings to the national media landscape. With so many types of media that cross many technologies -- web publishers, bloggers, IPTV, video companies, social networking sites -- it is impossible to know where to turn.

That's where vertical networks (such as the one I'm building can also come in handy. With thousands of media companies launching each year, it is impossible to know them all, even with a vertical such as "moms" or "clean technology."

Having a search engine connect the dots will be a big help to buyers and sellers.

Source: Idaho Statesman

A study conducted by ROI Research (and commissioned by DoubleClick Performics) shows that when it comes to mom's looking for the where to buy clothes, toys or gadgets for their young'uns, there's no place like search.

A few tidbits from the study:

“Searcher Moms – A Search Behavior and Usage Study.”

86 percent of respondents said search engines are the most efficient way to find information

57 percent use search engines to gather information before making any offline purchase

Search engines were used to compare prices and find retail locations of consumer packaged goods more than 70 percent of the time

64 percent reported using a search engine to gather more information after seeing an ad

Much of this jibes with our continued use of search first instead of using a shopping-specific portal. This means that sites such as CleverMoms have considerable opportunity to fill the need for trusted shopping direction. Comparison shopping is growing, but search still plays a vital role. Right Shannon?

After a year, Google has finally figured out a plan for monetizing YouTube's traffic. Video overlays that hang out on the fringes of the video screen, will be the preferred ad revenue stream.

Google is touting these ads as less invasive and more likely to receive a click through. The company smartly is allowing advertisers to target viewers by demographic information, time of day, and which videos they will run against, so big name brands won't fear their products appearing alongside childish or obscene content.

The $20 CPM Google will charge is low by video advertising standards but high for user generated content. The first ads will run against professionally authored content, so rates my fall for UGC.

As YouTube goes so will the video advertising industry, so if pre-rolls aren't part of the mix and national advertisers are happy to develop overlays, that's where the majority of the creative will be.

Pre-roll ads have always been suspect, so this could be the death knell. Let's see how long it takes for other video sites to follow and shun pre-rolls.

Thank goodness someone is putting "Real" pressure on Apple's iTunes and introducing some competition into digital music. Wal-Mart will sell digital rights management free tracks for just 88 cents, and RealNetworks is combining with MTV and Verizon to deliver music to mobile phones.

At the gym this morning I was thinking how the music industry and retailers led by iTunes have limited consumer choice by selling nearly all tracks from the major labels for the same price. Good for Wal-Mart for shaking up the pricing structure sans DRM. RealNetworks is trying to get up off the mat with the MTV deal, which felt the Urge to purge itself from dealing Microsoft's lame music service.

I recently helped someone set up iTunes on a new PC, and it was a slow, clumsy nightmare to copy tracks from a CD. The files were taking forever, but after he registered for iTunes, the service somehow got faster. Go figure. Competition will keep Apple from taking advantage of its legion of diehard iPod lovers.

Why oh why do companies continue to forget to integrate their offline and online pitches? A study commissioned by iProspect and conducted by JupiterResearch shows that more than two-thirds of consumers who use online search are influenced by word of mouth, TV and print campaigns, yet so many times users are forced to use search to find the corporate website.

Why aren't there more tv ads with URLs at the end of the spot, or even at the bottom of the screen? With so many mobile phone users adopting search and a growing number of people who web search and watch TV simultaneously, most ads should make driving traffic to their sites paramount in their creative.


The same goes for billboards -- putting a custom URL at the bottom of the ad space can welcome offline users responding to a specific campaign and generate valuable data.

President of iProspect Robert Murray explains in his press release:

"Today, it's incumbent upon marketers to integrate search with their offline efforts. Quite simply, their offline messaging needs to be memorable and facilitate search, and their search efforts need to echo that messaging and integrate those keywords. The bottom line is that integration is no longer optional."

For search marketers, the lack of integration enables competitors to steal away potential customers by bidding against company and product name keywords. If users don't know the name of your website, you've opened a window for competitors to benefit from your offline marketing dollars.

Maybe their is some study about consumers reacting negatively to URLs being displayed on screen that I don't know about.

Source: MediaPost.

As studies have shown, videos are more impactful than textual content, so the higher CPMs for video ads are deserved. While the cost of production can be higher, Pete Blackshaw at ClickZ makes the case for optimizing videos so that they are the top results in response to consumer concerns.

There is nothing like the intimacy of seeing someone in person, and the virtual equivalent can go far in generating an emotional response when people are in an agitated state over product safety or customer service issues. Blackshaw nails it when stating that hearing from the CEO or someone in customer service gives the perception that companies care, and as we know perception is reality. Peppering search results with videos provides a unique way to show and not tell consumers your side of the story, which is especially useful when negative press is working against you.

I'd also recommend replacing the "about us" section with videos of management or employees describing the company, especially for brands trying to earn recognition. The phrase "putting a face to a name" became a cliche because it has value, especially when the name is a brand.

A while ago I posted about the huge Myspace AIM virus because it posed a serious threat to a lot of people, well now there is another one. This one is a phishing attempt that has to do with MSPlinks url rather than a virus and for those who don't know a phishing attempt is one someone tries to deceive you into entering in your information so they can steal it and do what they want with it, which in this case is spam other users.

This MSPlink phishing attempt appeared as a comment on my profile page and because I know the user who posted it, I knew something was fishy. She's a nice girl and wouldn't post anything like this willingly so something had to be wrong with it.

It starts out with a comment posted to your profile that says "can't believe she put pics like that on her myspace.. talk about slut.." and along with that is a link to something like http://www.msplinks.fuseaction.MDFodH... and when you copy and paste the URL into your browser, it brings you to a page that looks just like MySpace (see image) asking you to login. Thankfully, FireFox (I haven't tested in IE7) recognizes this page as a phishing attempt and prompts you with a warning that this site is fake but unknowing people will undoubtedly enter their information.

After you enter your information friends on your profile are spammed with the same sort of comment and URL and thats how its grows virally. This one is more tricky then simply a deceiving URL because MySpace actually uses MSPlinks in their URLs to help deter other phishing and spam attacks. So if you go to a profile and enter a comment with HTML, it will redirect through MySpace owned URL "MSPlinks.com" as you can see on just about any MySpace profile.

What to Do If you See This Phishing Attempt
1. Tell the user who's profile you are looking at to remove the comment.
2. Remove this comment from your profile
3. Post a bulletin warning people about this scam (send a link to this blog post for reference if you want)
4. Change your password immediately if you've fallen for this or if this appears on your friends profiles from a comment you did not make.
5. Contact MySpace and tell them to do something about it (contact form here).

Please Comment here if you have any questions or concerns.

According to analyst firm e-consultancy spending on SEO will surpass search marketing this year in the U.K. While both industries are expected to grow by more than 50, concerns over click fraud and keyword inflation are driving more people to focus on organic search, according to the 'Search Engine Marketing - A Buyer's Guide' report.

Here in the U.S., an update to the SEMDirector Paid Insight application enables marketers to compare the effectiveness of their paid and organic spending in near real time. The Summary Portlets feature integrates both types of campaigns into a single view, and was released at the sure-to-be-interesting Search Engine Strategies conference.

Mastering organic search is more complex and can cost more up front than paid search, but it is more effective in nearly all cases. Consumers will always look to organic results first to fill their needs. SEO firms who prove their worth will continue to rake in the bucks as they help marketers understand the interaction between content, search algorithms and linking.

Retailers are winning teens and tweens by fusing social networking and entertainment with their websites. This marketing shift will continue to be effective as long as retailers create entertaining content, and it is more transparent than TV shows' increasing dependence on product placement.

Now 96 percent of online kids use social networking sites and technologies (the other 4 percent must be from Utah), and parents are buying more stuff for their kids online, according to the Washington Post.

Retailers have been slow to take advantage of entertainment and social networking to lure kids into their online stores, but they are catching on to the marketing power of Facebook and MySpace.

Department stores and specialty retailers alike are experimenting with these new venues. At Sears.com, visitors can create avatars, or virtual versions of themselves, outfitted in the chain's latest styles. Wal-Mart started a Facebook group about dorm room style. J.C. Penney and American Eagle Outfitters developed short films to air in weekly installments on their sites.

If kids find it fun they will hang out and prod their parents to open their wallets and buy more clothes etc. online. You know what you are getting when you watching something on a retailers site.

However, I'm increasingly getting turned off by the blatant product pitching during TV shows. During USA Network's Dead Zone last night, there was a shameless plug for Visa that included several lines of dialog focusing on how wonderful the swipeless credit card is. TV production companies have to make a buck, but the marketing pitches are beginning to drive the content.