CEO Bloggers' Club

media trend links

• On Advertising: A Move to Anarchy - There will still be a place for agencies," he said [of consumer generated media]. "They will need to be the orchestral conductors making sense of it all." - Eric Pfanner, via International Herald Tribune
• Virtual Reality 2.0 - It turns out that devotees kept the virtual flame burning, playing games that use the Internet to connect real human players one to another. -Wall Street Journal
• Moguls of New Media - The MySpace member with a million 'friends.' The receptionist with a production deal. Some of the Web's amateur entertainers are becoming powerful players. - Wall Street Journal Online
• Movie Business Now Marketing Driven - Although the movie business is frequently described as being product-driven, the fact is it's becoming increasingly marketing-driven. - Hollywood Reporter
• Monetizing Videos: The Rush Is On - Forget sharing videos for free. The trick right now is to make money from them. -CNET's Rafe Needleman
• How To Create A Video Podcast - Viewers sign up for your video feed once, and any new movies you create are downloaded to their computers automatically. It doesn't get much easier than that. - PC Welt

media trend links

• The New Wave of Dot-Com Riches - Why the price tags of online properties like YouTube and Facebook may keep heading higher. - CNN Money
• Communities Will Likely Drive Online Ad Growth - Combining search and social networks seems inevitably powerful - Bambi Francisco, Marketwatch
• Online Video Madness - Web video sites are proliferating like bunnies that broke into a vat of Viagra - Kevin Maney, USA Today
• Deloitte's Top 10 2006 Media Trend Predictions - From Deloitte: #10: The proliferation of blogs will create the need for a new intermediary, a blog aggregator, which has the potential to lure advertising dollars - Umair Haque, Bubble Generation
• Corporate Blogging, Time of Death 8-17-06 - blogging and specifically corporate blogging, is tantamount to the Second Coming. It's certainly, they [the blogging gang] profess, the cure for whatever ails ya. - Strumpette
• The Tail May Not Wag the Web - I've looked at some of the same data, and some more of my own, and I don't think things are changing as much as he [Chris Andersen] does - Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal
• Attention to Detail Lost in Rush Toward Web 2.0 - many new sites feel rushed and have annoying little bugs - The Inquirer
• Join the Huckster World on the Internet - As consumers whip up catchy commercials, some companies see new age of advertising - Atlanta Journal Constitution
• Blogging Is Big Among the French - the French distinguish themselves, both statistically and anecdotally, ahead of Germans, Britons and even Americans in their obsession with blogs - International Herald Tribune

media trend links

• What Small Businesses Need to Know About 2.0 - Making use of Web 2.0 means, first, considering the Web as the place to run your business applications. From a practical point of view, that means one of two things: either running Web-based software hosted off site through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, or hosting the Web-based software on your own servers. - Small Business Computing
• Brand Slam - When it comes to your image, are you hitting hard or striking out? Cover all your bases with these 4 critical elements of a winning brand - Entrepreneur.com
• The Case Against Web 2.0 - in doling out all our data to central [Web 2.0] repositories, not in our control and not open for us to inspect fully, we’re placing massive amounts of power in the hands of a minority - Sitepoint's Harry Fuecks
• Illicit Adware Infects MySpace Users - Up to a million users of MySpace and other sites serving up an ad for patio furniture this month may have been infected with surreptitious adware - Media Buyer Planner
• Marketing Chiefs Shift Spending - around the world marketers are shifting, if incrementally, their spending away from traditional advertising in favor of those other marketing tools (PR, market research and direct marketing) - Media Life
• Networking Sites' Ad Revenue to Reach $1.86 B by 2010 - Overall, social networking sites are expected to account for $280 million in the United States this year, or 1.7 percent of the total U.S. online ad spend, according to eMarketer - MediaPost
• TIVO Watches What You Do, And Tattles - On average, TiVo has found that its users spend nearly half of their television time watching programs recorded earlier. - New York Times
• Keeping the Web 2.0 Bubble Inflated - Opinion: Web 2.0 faces trouble on the consumer end, but the B2B side is still OK. - Publish
• Today's Blog: More Creative, Less Political - the average blogger is a 14-year-old girl writing about her cat. - The Christian Science Monitor
• Consumers Are the Driving Force in Advertising of the Future - Companies often give participants a theme, a short list of rules, such as running time, and such tools to use as theme songs or photos. To encourage creativity and quality...the rest is up to the consumer. - The Austin Statesman

media trend links

• Yahoo Sees Social Search As Competitive Edge - Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest Internet media company, on Monday named a top academic database expert to head its research team studying links between computer and human-aided Web search. - Reuters
• Murdoch Muses on MySpace - Murdoch and News Corp. are in the vanguard of another media revolution with its recently acquired Internet assets including MySpace.com - Hollywood Reporter
• Amazon Launches Video Download Service - Amazon is focusing its attention on video - AdAge
• MySpace A Launch Pad for Next-Gen Media Biz - Fox Interactive Media president Ross Levinsohn knows what his next move is. Social networking, he assures, was just the beginning. - Hollywood Reporter
• Web 2.0 Not A Game Changer Yet - Show us the money --the long-term viability. Then we'll get on board - Information Week
• Marketing Conversations, How Do You Harnass Them? - A move away from stunts and towards involving people in a brand (seeking and actually using their ideas) has proved...successful - Marketing Web
• Creating Community, The New-Fashioned Way - A Patricia Seybold Group report argues that companies and customers need to be "codevelopers" to develop successful online community platforms - CRM
• Hooking Up With Social Networks - The total US Internet audience has grown 4% over the past year, but several social network sites, including MySpace, Facebook and Bolt, have grown by triple-digit percentages, according to comScore Media Metrix. - eMarketer
• Testing Social Websites Out for Safety- How safe are the top social-networking sites for teens? The WSJ takes them for a test run. - WSJ
• Businessman Blogs Boldly Toward BBQ Restaurant Success - When Jim Reams decided to open a restaurant, he understood the power of the Internet. But he hardly realized the Web’s power to generate business for his Berry Hill barbecue joint. - Nashville City Paper

media trend links

• Tech Companies Hope to Cash in on Web 2.0 - Web-based products are garnering the most interest from small businesses that are attracted to the potentially lower costs, compared with traditional software that must be installed on a computer - Ft. Woth Star Telegram
• Hollywood Clicks on the Work of Web Auteurs - If the Net begins spawning films — and not simply helping to market or deliver them — studios’ grip on the business of putting pictures on screens may be challenged. - New York Times
• Making Gaming Pay Off - No longer the domain of deep geekdom, video games are morphing into the new Silicon Valley golf - SF Gate
• Competition Heats Up for Viral Video Advertisers - Advertisers are creating and distributing videos on sites like YouTube and Google Video, hoping they'll be distributed by thousands of Web users - Business Week
• NewsCorp TV Stations Get 'My' Interactivity - Fox is relaunching the Web sites of its owned-and-operated television stations to feature video players, blogs and photo sharing - B&C
• Celebrity Magazines Threatened by Blogosphere - American Media's Star magazine now vies with celebrity blogs for real-time gossip, heightening concerns about the sustained viability of weekly print models - The Deal
• Advertisers to Get Inside Videogames Like Never Before - Nielsen is to announce a service to track in-game advertising and analyze videogame use and the impact it has on other media - Newsweek
• Advertisers Leveraging Network Sites - When it comes to run-of-the-mill banner ads, agencies report low response rates. Yet many are finding social media is fertile ground for a potentially more valuable purpose: building viral-driven, two-way communication with consumers - AdWeek
• Podcasts Lure Advertisers - According to The Economics of Podcasting, a report released Thursday by Nielsen Analytics, the most successful podcasts get as many as 2 million downloads a month - MediaPost
• Google's 'Wow' Factor - Do Internet users prefer predictable services like Yahoo, or are they more interested in Google’s wow factor? - New York Times
• Social News Is Dead - "The current crop of social news and video-sharing sites are dominated by a relatively small number of posters," said idfive's Sean Carton - ClickZ
• Connecting Advertisers With Readers - "The way things are trending, newspapers may eventually replace their nameplates with the words, "Your Ad Here." - Seattle Times
• The VC Web 2. 0 List - "Venture capitalists are going nutty over Web 2.0 companies" - Silicon Beat

media trend links

• The Spin Doctor's Diary - Lance Price was Alistair Campbell’s assistant between the years of 1998 and 2000 right up to the time New Labour was re-elected for the first time...here is a written diary revealing a glimpse into the machinations and thought processes behind the Government at the time. - Amazon
• They Write the Songs - A linguist argues that Republicans win because they use language that conveys their worldview. "The left has lost the battle of language," says Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley. - New York Times
• A Matter of Timing - Studies "click-density" data and "pass-along" rates in assessing the optimal online media planning strategies - BrandWeek
• The Ultimate Marketing Machine - Thanks to the power of the Internet, advertising is becoming less wasteful and its value more measureable - Economist
• Homo Conexus - A veteral technology commentator attempts to live entirely on the new Web for two weeks - Technology Review
• Wag the Dog - A new book about entertainment, technology and statistics predicts that popular culture - and the businesses associated with it - will be transformed by the Internet - Economist
• Video Games Are Showing a Social Side - New York Times
• Virtual Marketing - Firms create online worlds to reach large audiences - Boston.com
• How Big Media is Wooing the MySpace Set - Hollywood has discovered that social networking sites and viral marketing are the best ways to reach the lucrative teen market. - CNN Money
• Investor Relations & Social Media - Investor relations doesn't mean you only talk about the things you can't talk about, if you see what I mean. There is an abundance of things relevant to your business, your industry and your market that you can include in your social media communication, especially if you take a strategic view of your business. - Neville Hobson

media trend links

• The MySpace "Ecosystem" - Its user audience has tripled since News Corp. acquired the site last year. Now, new third-party partners could help it maintain the pace of growth - BusinessWeek
• 10 Things Small Businesses Get Wrong: #7 is: 7 Going after the wrong sale (supported by a wrong marketing strategy). - The Sydney Morning Herald
• Monetizing Web 2.0 - Media companies are watching Web 2.0 and trying to determine how to monetize this emerging distribution channel. The answer lies in accumulating incremental revenue from multiple sources -Gartner Research
• Slice of Life in a Parallel Universe: Virtual economies get adveriser interest - Guardian Unlimited
• Brands Take New Ideas Undeground: big brands are creating niche, low-key events that are low on audience but high, they hope, on cool. - BBC
• Is it Time for Marketers to Enter the 'Social' Whirl? - Led by MySpace, now the seventh most visited site in the US, social networking is a bone fide cultural phenomenon, but, as an advertising revenue model, it is still "under development." - eMarketer
• Marketers Drool Over MySpace Generation - Teenagers' love of social networking websites, blogging and use of media channels is growing, but so is their false sense of control over the technology. - New Zealand Herald
• Network Anchors Blogging to Lure Viewers in Wired World - Philadelphia Inquirer
• Bush's Backrub Magnified in Cyberspace - Impromptu Back Rub Bush Gave German Chancellor Merkel One of the Most Popular Clips on the Web - ABC News
• The Rise of the 'VideoNet'- "Although the specifics of distribution, control, and monetization are still to be determined, none of the participants doubted that web-delivered video will proliferate to provide an expanding universe of content, both user-created and professionally produced. -Knowledge@Wharton
• WalMart's Amateur Advertisers - the giant retailer’s first venture into the rapidly evolving world of interactive consumer-generated advertising – with an online competition inviting high school students to create their own web pages and videos, with the winners to be used in a Wal-Mart cable television commercial, possibly also for cinema release. - Financial Times

media trend links

• Why Old School Marketing Still Dominates - Viral campaigns, podcasts, and other new ad strategies are all the rage. So why do video-game marketers still love TV, retail, and print? - BusinessWeek
• What is the 1% Rule? - each day there are 100 million downloads and 65,000 uploads - which is 1,538 downloads per 1 upload. That puts the "creator to consumer" ratio at just 0.5% - Guardian Unlimited
• Social Networking Gets Political - New niche social-networking sites connect users based on ideological compatibility. Are they the next best campaign tool or just another way to get a date? - Newsweek
• Survey Finds 12 Million Bloggers - Bloggers are a mostly young, racially diverse group of people who have never been published anywhere else and who most often use cyberspace to talk about their personal lives (this according to a report on blogging called "Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers" released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project). - New York Times
• Why Your Business Should Blog - the three benefits of blogging for your business - MaineToday
• Email Losing Out to Text Messaging - Says Danah Boyd: "Adults who learn to use IM later have major difficulty talking to more than two people at one time - whereas the teens who grew up on it have no problem talking to a bazillion people at once," Boyd says. "They understand how to negotiate the interruptions a lot better." - Sun Herald
• Whitehall's PR Machine is Spinning Out of Control - Parliamentary accountability has undoubtedly been undermined by the heightened proficiency of the Whitehall publicity machine - Online Press Gazette
• Analysis: Winning the PR War - Israel has nearly always managed to succeed on the military field only to be massacred later in the halls of diplomacy. Now it seems that, for the first time in its history, Israel has managed to package a controversial military offensive in a political and diplomatic form that only the most radical of Arab states can reject. - Jerusalem Post
• Nike, Its Not A Shoe, It's a Community - The footwear giant has set up a Web site where soccer fans can network - BusinessWeek

media trend links

• MySpace Makes Room for Advertisers - To lure marketers, the social network adds a humor area away from at-times racy user pages - LA Times
• Front Page of WSJ Will Get Ads - The Journal confirmed yesterday the speculation that it would open its front page to advertisers, probably in September, a move that could bring in tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue. - The New York Times
• What Makes Your Business Unique Is Key to PR - If you cannot tell someone what is the unique, special, competitive advantage of your business in 10 seconds, with a response of less than two short sentences, you are missing an opportunity. - Statesman Journal
• Danah Boyd on MySpace - via Loic Le Meur
• Who Is Strumpette? - She seems to know an awful lot about the public relations industry. - The Washington Post
• Most Bloggers Don't Consider Themselves Journalists - With more than half, or 54 percent, of bloggers being under age 30, storytelling, not journalism, reportedly spurs most US blogs - Reuters
• Bix Is New American Idol - "....having a MySpace page or a top-rated YouTube video is the next best thing to celebrity status." - Mashable
• Concerns About a Dot-Com Crash: Version 2.0 - Investment in Internet companies has climbed so steeply since the dot-com crash of 2000 that some Silicon Valley veterans worry too much money is again pouring into too many unproven, unprofitable ideas — setting the stage for another high-tech shakeout. - St Petersburg Times
• Mainstream Media Eyeing YouTube Video Boom - Advertisers drawn to young audience, but wary of user-made content - MSNBC
• Fans Asked to Submit Cover Art for Janet Jackson Album - Beginning July 18th at 12 noon PST, for one week, 33 images of Janet will be posted at http://music.yahoo.com/janetjackson for voting. - Yahoo Finance
• YouTube: The World's On-Demand Reality Show - While Andy Warhol famously said "In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes," YouTube’s video stars are apparently encouraged to seek about five minutes of broadcast fame (five minutes which could be replayed endlessly). - ZDNet

media trend links

• 11 Suggestions for Not Being a Dot-Bomb 2.0 - "With all the 2.0 hype, I think it’s unfair to unanimously declare all new Internet startups as 100% junk. It can’t be much more than 95%" - Dead 2.0
• 17% of Online Display Impressions Served on MySpace - Nielsen//NetRatings reports that the most popular site with advertisers remained Yahoo Mail, which drew 35.7 percent of impressions. MSN Hotmail came in a distant third, behind MySpace, with 7.2 percent of ads. -MediaPost
• Wal-Mart Green-lights Social Online Network - to appeal to teens with something other than pencils and backpacks during the crucial back-to-school season, Wal-Mart is launching a "highly sanitized, controlled and rather unhip" site at walmart.com/schoolyourway. - AdAge
• How to Build a Video-on-Demand Ad - Said Kristi Faulker of New York-based Words & Pictures: "TV is interruptive, and so when you create TV campaigns, you're thinking about recall and intrusiveness," she said. "But VOD is 100% opt-in, and so you're thinking about relevance and engagement." - AdAge
• Brand Animation - notes Erik Hauser, founder of the International Experiential Marketing Association: "By working with customer-created content we are, in effect, 'devolving' back to the original marketplace concept where 'one on one' meant that you visited with the shop owners and told them what you wanted them to stock for you and, when they responded to your needs, you kept coming back as a customer. So...we are poised on the precipice of devolution while we evolve." - Chief Marketer
• How to Effectively Rebrand - Mistake #4: Not leveraging existing brand equity and goodwill. - MarketingSherpa
• YouTube Hits 100 Million Videos Per Day - According to the latest Hitwise stats, the company has a 29% share of the US multimedia entertainment market and YouTube videos account for 60% of all videos watched online. -Mashable
• Niche Social Network Sites Grow? - Political consultant Michael Bassik said that there may not be a big demand for a political social networking site--especially one that purports to cut across party lines. "If you look at the partisan breakdown of the blogosphere, Democrats tend to read left-leaning blogs, and Republicans tend to read right-leaning blogs. People go to political Web sites to have their views confirmed, not questioned," he said. - MediaPost
• Lessons In Corporate Blogging - On Robert Scoble: "The equity a corporate blogger builds up is portable, in other words. Rather than sticking to the company, it will follow the blogger—even if the blogger heads to a competitor." - BusinessWeek
• The Marketing of Space - Companies eager to expand their market share are turning their attention to the sky and beyond. In the age of globalization, space is the final frontier for advertisers. - Voice of America
• YouTube Launches Own Web Stars - Fame on YouTube doesn't necessarily mean big bucks or a career in the movies. For many fledgling stars, it's about recognition from peers, having a top video, maybe being noticed walking down the street. - USA Today

media trend links

• Alternative Media Outpaces Traditional Media - The report notes that, while alternative media spending surged in the first half of the year, expenditures on traditional media increased only 4.5% in the first half of 2006, reflecting the shift in advertising and marketing spending - PQ Media
• Death of a Brand (Can Burberry Save Itself?) - Burberry is planning to take the brand into the heartland of Middle America, opening stores in Kansas, Indiana and Ohio as part of a big push into the US." The Americanization of Burberry is one response to the company's curious crisis back home. It's looking to the New World to save it from the down-market yobs who've hijacked the brand in England. - Slate
• Web Sites Become Major Hub of Campus Life - Students can socialize, professors get a new teaching tool and alumni stay connected. - Kansas City Star
• Search Engines Battle for MySpace - it appears that MySpace has proven itself to be more than just a passing fad. But it remains to be seen whether a business model which is effective for a startup can have a major impact on the multibillion-dollar bottom line at News Corp - BusinessWeek
• MySpace Has Millions of Users, Not Revenue - Is there Money in MySpace? - Internet.com
• Branding 2.0 - Customization and personalization are now hard to avoid and go with the new technology territory. -AME Info
• Hacking MySpace for Fame & Fortune - "There are a lot of people to be reached and a lot of impressionable minds on MySpace," Hoffman said. "Surprisingly enough, these people want to be 'friends' with car dealers," said a marketer on MySpace. - CNET News
• Where Is Today's Top Story Online? Click Here to Decide - Websites apply 'social networking' to the news, letting users prioritize what's important. - Christian Science Monitor
• YouTube Searching for Ad Profits - Analysts say Web site must walk fine line, because advertising can also drive viewers away - Contra Costa Times

media trend links

• Building A Brand With Optimum Impact - In a recent interview with Multichannel News news editor Mike Reynolds, Gottesman discussed Cablevision’s promotional strategies and focus, the value of the Optimum brand name, and the industry’s position vis a vis satellite and telco competition - MultiChannel News
• A New Emmy for Webisodes? - Academy officials said this week that they haven't worked out the details but that drama series, reality shows, sitcoms and other video programs designed specifically for websites may seek to compete in all 27 prime-time Emmy categories. - LA Times
• PR Bloggers Urged to Fight Against Astroturfing - Trevor Cook asks bloggers to use the power of blogging to campaign on the Astroturfing issue and to at least make people aware of what's so bad about astroturfing and why good PR people need to take a stand against it. - Corporate Engagement
• Casino PR Wars Take Spotlight - In the run-up to the general election in November – voters will be asked to amend the state constitution to make way for a Harrah’s Entertainment casino in West Warwick – interested parties for and against the plan have been stepping up their efforts to sway Rhode Islanders’ opinions. - Providence Business Wire
• Tuna Industry Tries to Hook Consumers Again - Canned tuna producers are promoting the fish as a low-fat protein, laden in omega-3 fatty acids that are believed to benefit the heart. They're trotting out new advertising. And they're moving beyond the can, offering products in foil pouches, including steaks and flavored fillets. - Los Angeles Times (via The Daily News)
• The Strategic Role of Marketing - Management has forgotten, or never realized, the ability of the marketing function to help drive organizational change, says Nirmalya Kumar in his book, Marketing as Strategy: Understanding the CEO's Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation, published by Harvard Business School Press. In this 2004 interview, Kumar discusses how the burden is on marketers themselves to rise above the tactical level and drive organization-wide initiatives to deliver value to customers. -Harvard Business School

media trend links

• Best Small Business Secret: The Small Screen - if you're looking to market your business with low cost effective media targeted to the mediums used today, Spotrunner commercials could be your best tool - CNN Money
• On SecondLife - "There's an opportunity here for marketers to communicate the real meaning of their brands...think if Snickers puts its candy bars in Second Life, and they gave players real energy," - said Chad Stoller of Organic, as quoted by AdAge.com - Clickable Culture
• Business Blogging Still Bogged Down - A new report by JupiterResearch says that 34% of large US companies now have a corporate blog, and that another 35% will have one by year-end. - eMarketer
• Crimes Against Youngsters Increase Online - NYPD investigators say predators can use social-networking sites to discover details about children - New York Sun
• Beltway BigWigs Launch Social Networking Site - Some of the bigger Beltway names are launching a social-networking site with designs on becoming a major forum for the country's opinion leaders -- and stealing away ad money from Sunday political TV talk shows. - AdAge
• YouTube Founder Wows Media Moguls - ``There is a big wave of video coming online and these [media] guys want to work with us to stay relevant in this changing marketplace," Hurley said. -Boston.com
• Digg: A New Wave of Media Disruption - While Digg is far from a mega-mainstream Web destination, it has disproportionate influence on search-engine results and blog memes, primarily in the tech and social-media world. - MediaPost

media trend links

• Follow the Web 2.0 Money - Web 2.0 may be a buzz word, but it's still attracting big bucks. - CNN Money
• PR Machine Wins Bankers Sympathy - The NatWest Three have won acres of favourable press coverage, thanks in part to an efficient media campaign run by two well-connected London-based PR companies. -TimesOnline
• User Content New Challenge for Marketers - Although community sites have been around for a few years, they are suddenly the next big thing on the web, part of what industry watchers are calling Web 2.0. - The Australian
• Google Declares War on YouTube in UK - YouTube may have an army of 25-million users a day, but that hasn’t stopped Google’s ambitious generals from declaring viral video war – its own version of the service has just been launched in eight countries, including the UK. It's called Google Video. - Stuff
• WPP Venture Adds Community to Campaigns - Reports WPP to client: "Your most important customers are going to experience the brand more in these communities than anywhere else."- ClickZ
• Brand Your Life With DandeLife - Want to sell pieces of your "life story"? Well, a new “social biography network” launches which allows users to tell their life stories with text, photos, videos and time lines. Unique to their offer: part of the business model will be to license users’ stories to corporations seeking case studies and brandable narratives. Companies may license your stories for use off-site, as case studies in annual reports or advertisements, or they may sponsor a category of stories aggregated by tag. -TechCrunch
• Branding 2.0 - how new online global brands are being built with zero marketing dollars, simply by leveraging existing social networks like MySpace, YouTube and the blogosphere itself - Mashable
• Friendster's Patent Possibilities - Friendster.com may be losing some of its "friends" to upstart MySpace.com. But the old-school social-networking site just got something that MySpace lacks: a patent on—you guessed it—social networking. - Business Week
• Blogs Are Crap -In his weekly column, Victor Keegan of the Guardian upholds the view that newspapers will win the battle of news. -PSFK
• The Pentagon's PR Machine - The U.S. military doesn't do all its public relations work overseas -- it's also investing in grass-roots efforts here at home. - NPR

media trend links

• Marketing Myths - Five pitfalls to avoid - American Press Insitute
• Too Many CIOs Fail to Ride Web 2.0 Wave -  when it comes to Web 2.0, technology is just a means to an end. The real business value lies in what the technology enables: better collaboration among users. - Search SMB
• How Will YouTube Make Money? - Despite becoming a cultural force, the young company is just beginning to unveil a strategy to make money off a growing audience accustomed to getting what it wants online for free. That's why subscriptions, pay-per-view videos or pay-to-upload videos are not part of YouTube's business plan. - San Jose Mercury News
• WPP in Social Networking Venture - joining IPG's lead, WPP gets into the social networking sphere - AdWeek
• NewsCorp Launches Online Safety Campaign - For its part, News Corp. has recently hired a safety chief and altered its privacy policies to make it more difficult for adults to contact younger teens. - Associated Press
• Google Antisocial About Social Networking Plans - In the last year, MySpace, which lets members include blogs on their personal pages, surpassed Google's Blogger as the top social-networking site by Nielsen's measure in the United States. What's Google going to do about it? - CNET News
• Atlas Creates VOD Ad Network - creating a network for buying, executing and tracking the results of digital video ads, Atlas targets an up-and-coming market - MediaPost
• Web 2.0 PowerPoint Launch: for all your marketing PowerPoint needs, Empressr is one useful new tool. - TechCrunch
• CrowdSourcing: Consumers As Creators - A new trend allows customers to help design the products they buy - BusinessWeek
• One Red Publicity Party - publicity stunts in the blogosphere - BusinessWeek
• Designing Your Site for Web 2.0 - what should you do to your site to make it social? - American Chronicle
• Where Have All the Good Product Managers Gone? - What ever happened to the marketing discipline of assessing consumer needs, identifying gaps, and designing a product to meet the gap? Has this all been turned around by 'user generated content', 'community', 'social networking'? - InfoWorld

media trend links

Storytelling Can Distinguish Brands From Competitors - In an argument about the importance of branding, the thesis of this article is that unless companies can dig into their past and find a real story to tell about their brands to distinguish them from the competition, they will be forced to compete on price alone and will never establish a strong identity. - AdAge

Unique Summer House Is Marketer's PR Dream - Reflecting a growing shift away from traditional 30-second commercials and glossy magazine advertisements toward nontraditional tactics, such as buzz marketing and product placement, The Summer House realized that people want to hear from nonmarketing sources more than ever as distrust of advertisements has grown. - Boston.com

MySpace Reaches Top Internet Site Ranking - MySpace.com reached a new level of popularity the week ending July 8 as it became the number one ranked website in the United States based on market share of visits, according to internet measurement company Hitwise. - iMediaConnection

Big Media Just Wants to Relate - Social networking sites are so popular that advertising companies are spending big bucks to buy their way into the business - BusinessWeek

Social Web or Business Web, Where is the Money? - What do MySpace and Microsoft have in common? One has been anointed the “#1” player in the Social Web and the other has announced its intentions to be the “#1” player in the Business Web. - ZDNet

Web 2.0 Needs to Be Agile to be Successful - Any strategy which plans to engage users and draw them into a positive word of mouth spiral, whatever the technology underneath, must be implemented as quickly as possible and with as much involvement from users as possible. - eConsultancy

The Life & Death of a PR Terrorist - In Shamil Basayev, public relations and terrorist cunning met in a diabolical combination. - Moscow Times

The Rise of the Socially-Integrated Media Empire - Rupert Murdoch built his media empire, News Corp, the old-fashioned way… by vertically and horizontally integrating deep and wide into the layers of the media industry (e.g. from production to distribution). But with his acquisition of MySpace, Murdoch has gone down a new path… a new dimension of strategic corporate development that I like to call “social integration”. - GigaOm

media trend links

• Bad Press Leads to Huge Sales? - How can bad press lead to an 800% increase in your sales? -Boston.com
• If the Web is changing journalism, it's got to be changing corporate communications and public relations. Read: customers are now editors. - Chicago Tribune
• When we look back in time and at how Web 2.0 changed branding, we might refer to books like "The Invisible Employee" as reference. In fact, in retrospect what we will find is that in a then to now comparison of just how active customers will become with our brands - someone should have instead already written: "The Invisible Customer".
• Taking Cues From YouTube - Brian Morrissey at Adweek today reported that Coca-cola has redesigned its corporate sites, both Coke.com and CocaCola.com, "as brand destinations designed to showcase consumer creativity." Visitors can submit 45-second video spots that will be rated by other visitors. - Fast Company
• The Launch of Weblog Wire - Mashable covers the new competitor or PRWeb saying that since the PR world is being shaken up dramatically by the blogosphere, it’s not clear whether this model will work or not. The Weblog Wire could provide one point of entry, rather than hundreds - but only if enough bloggers subscribed to the feeds. That could lead to a serious chicken-and-egg problem. - Mashable
• AdCracker - Looking to create world-class ad and marketing campaigns easily? This CD could be your answer.
• Visual Thesaurus - This new online software called Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus with an innovative display that encourages "exploration and learning". Allowing users to see language in an exciting new way - maybe you'll see your marcom copywriting in a new way as well. Highly recommended.- AdRants

media trend links

• Buyers, Sellers Need to Map Out Garage Sale Marketing Plan - Advice to small town garage sale managers: start your sale on Thursday, if possible and time your sale to coincide with a neighborhood sale to increase traffic. (Wait, should online marketers heed this advice as well?) - Dispatch.com
• YouTube Spreading Its Political Influence - Online video allows life after the 30-second spot. Although it had a projected demise, it's clear the 30-second spot lives online. (Could online video be the next low-cost small business marketing vehicle?) - B2B Magazine
• Dell's Exploding Image - A Dell notebook computer that burst into flames last month in Osaka, Japan, has damaged more than just the conference table where it sat smoldering. The incident, publicized in photos on the Internet, has also hurt Dell's recent attempts to improve its image. - New York Times
• Trying To Define Web 2.0 - AdAge tries to define what Web 2.0 is. (The difficulty in defining what Web 2.0 is could be due to the lack of monetization of all things 2.0.) - AdAge
• Slamming DailyKos & Netroots - Online political blogging gets continually political. - Netroots
• Virtual Worlds - In a virtual world where everyone can choose an avatar who is beautiful, are marketers going to know how to target products to users real identities? Shouldn't matter. Marketers should target products to the avatars (the identities users want to be). - AdAge
• MySpace Books Launches - MySpace and Amazon.com meet the reading needs of youth. - MySpace

media trend links

• Questions for IPG's New CGM Czar - Interpublic Group is among the first companies to set up a formal unit to examine the trend in user-generated content (UGC) and consumer-generated media (CGM), as it's alternately being called. - ClickZ
• How Not to Market - With all the hype surrounding WOMM, little has been focused on the downsides of consumer backlash when this type of marketing is done improperly. - MediaPost
• The Internet Knows What You'll Do Next - It's the connection to marketing that turns the "database of intentions" from a curiosity into a real economic phenomenon. - New York Times
• Monster.com Launches Marketing Channel - Norma Gaffin, director of content for Monster, said demand is especially high right now for online marketing professionals. "Online marketing is huge," she said, adding that job searchers with experience are highly sought after. - Media Post
• Should You Refer to Your Corporate Blog as a Blog? - Perception, meaning, inference, depth, feeling - in short, names are important. And if you call your corporate blog a corporate blog and only think of it in that way, you might miss opportunities to strengthen your online presence - Business Blogwire
• Looking to Take on Apple, Microsoft Plans its Own Handheld Player - Microsoft's digital device would be equipped with wireless Internet capability that would allow users to download music without being connected to a PC. New York Times
• Online Bloggers Battle Old School Media for Political Clout - Many bloggers are vocal political advocates and, occasionally, current or former campaign consultants, even though their online role can also include breaking or reporting the news - Boston Globe
• What's New in Small Business Online Storage? - The Storage World Conference (SWC) took place last month in Long Beach, Calif., and there were plenty of new tools on display that will appeal to the SMB market. For example, EMC Corp's collaboration software — eRoom SMB Edition — is designed to provide secure, Web-based workspaces to help teams share information, manage projects and deliver higher quality products, services and supporting materials. - Small Business Computing
• Where's My Google PC? - It makes sense for Google to develop a Web-based PC. To be clear, a Google PC needn't involve a new gadget like the "thin client" gear of the 1990s. Every computer in the world is capable of running a Web browser. We might not realize it, but we all already have Google PCs. - Slate

media trend links

• Ads Meet Podcasters - San Francisco-based Kiptronic is attempting to simplify the process of matching podcasters with advertisers - MediaPost
• More Trouble For MySpace - Is it MySpace's fault when teenage girls are duped by older men? - FC Blog
• Feeding The MySpace Beast - Mashable says: you can’t build the next MySpace. You may think you can, but you can’t. And don’t go thinking you can win by having more features: social software doesn’t work like that.* In the same way that you can’t beat eBay by charging lower fees, MySpace won’t be beaten by a "feature-rich" competitor. It’s a marketplace, and marketplaces need critical mass. You might be able to beat MySpace (and eventually, someone will) by disrupting their core business, but right now it makes more sense to build services that can ride the social-networking wave - in other words, "feed the MySpace Beast". Pete also takes a look at a bunch of startups that are riding the MySpace wave - Mashable
• Is A Brand What We See On the Tube, or What We Experience? - Saatchi says it's resolved: the most powerful way to touch people is through screens. - Fast Company
• Business & Niche Blogging - Every blog out there that is built to generate revenue, either directly or indirectly, is a business blog - Spero News
• Brave New World for Marketers In MySpace - MySpace may be a just “a hack” website but it offers unique possibilities for brand marketing, says Danah Boyd, a U.S. academic. - The National Business Review
• A Brand Off Target - Australia's Labor Party has popular policies on issues such as industrial relations, yet it keeps losing elections. - The Australian
• The World Brands It Like Beckham - "It's the [brand] battle between Adidas and Nike, Carlsberg and Chang, Coke and Pepsi... the list goes on. Brands that directly sponsor teams or their apparel immediately become part of the "colours" and are embraced in a similar way, at least subliminally to begin with. - Bangkok Post
• Mobile Internet Beats Wired In Japan - 69.2m use web from mobile devices  - PC Advisor

media trend links

• Peter Drucker On Marketing - Today, when top management is surveyed, their priorities in order are: finance, sales, production, management, legal and people. Missing from the list: marketing and innovation. - Forbes
• Product Placement For Blogs - PayPerPost.com links up bloggers with advertisers who want to promote their product or service. If you're a blogger you basically choose from the list of advertisers products and how they want their product mentioned, and hey presto you get paid for it. Like it or not, it's happening - this is just a transparent service. Although, if you're a blogger with a readership you care about, surely you wouldn't sell posts for a couple of bucks? (Or, would you?) - PSFK via BusinessWeek
• Social Computing in the Web 2.0 Era - Forrester Research and others have categorized social computing technology or Web 2.0 into various "buckets" that will be reviewed in Buzz Networks, a new weekly article from WTN.
• Marketing On MySpace - Rob Frankel doesn't suggest turning to MySpace as the stage for a business' digital dance. As a social networking site, says the branding expert and consultant to companies looking to form revenue-generating online communities around their products, it fails to achieve the goal of businesses joining it in the first place: more business. There's a lack of clear organization, he points out, and a lack of someone leading the digital dialogue.
• The Future of Advertising Is Now - Marketers take heed: After years of overhype, the digital revolution is finally mainstream. - Strategy & Business
• What's Next For (Social) Search - Collective sharing is arguably the next chapter of the web, with the user turning publisher. Barriers to entry for content creation on the web are constantly being lowered and new technologies are allowing people to create, develop, produce, market and sell content in ways previously unimaginable. - Brand Republic
• Cell Phones: The New Platform For Social Computing - The Internet is now overflowing with user-generated content -- photos, videos, blogs, wikis, garage-band music. As it becomes easier to transmit this content over cellular networks, the phone -- arguably the first social machine -- is helping to make the "social computing" revolution mobile. - MIT Technology Review

media trend links

• A Blog Mogul Turns Bearish on Blogs - Gawker Media recently put 2 of its 15 sites on the block, reorganized others and laid several people off. - New York Times
• The Elusive Goal of Corporate Creativity: When "thinking outside the box" isn't good enough anymore, perhaps creativity can be harnessed and leveraged. How? Through seven steps by Pat Fallo and Fred Senn.
• PostApp is a new company that makes integrating widgets into your blog even easier. The new service allows users to pull web services directly into their blog or other website without having the technical skills to use the API supplied by the service provider. -TechCrunch
• A Search Engine That's Becoming An Inventor - Google is a solid member of the Fortune 500 with $9 billion in cash, but it is stubbornly sticking to its do-it-yourself approach to technology - New York Times
• Where is the Business Model in 2.0? - The best way to find out how much you'll earn is to sign up and start showing ads on your web pages. - ZD Net
• FCC To Revisit Media Ownership - The continued rollout of high-speed Internet, the improvement in online content and an explosion of handheld devices have combined to give Big Media much greater reach and potentially greater influence than it would have had, were companies allowed to buy a few more television stations each. - Seattle Times
• Teen Social Networking Sites Face Investigation - Networking websites that have attracted millions of young users are to come under scrutiny from anti-paedophile investigators amid growing concerns that children are unwittingly providing material for potential abusers. Who's at fault? - TimesOnline
• Keeping MySpace Safe - In response to complaints about the lack of security on MySpace, its parent company, Fox Interactive Media, has taken steps to increase safety. In May, the company hired Hemanshu Nigam, formerly an online security executive at Microsoft, as its chief security officer. -Washington Times
• How Fox Interactive Got So Sly - How can an "old media" company get so many new things right? - CNN Money
• How to Become A Virtual Star - How to use social media to market the music industry - Ad Age Australia