CEO Bloggers' Club

media+marketing business trend links

• Is the Internet A Long Tail Ghetto? - I think trying to define where the Long Tail ends and the Vert Ramp begins is critical, because the fact of the matter is: No Content Creator wants to be on the Long Tail. Anyone who has ever created content realizes that there is a very thick bar a bit above the the base of the Vert Ramp that acts as a content ceiling (thanks to Oliver Luckett for the term). that they are desperately trying to break through in order to get off the long tail and on to the Vert Ramp. - Mark Cuban
• Slumping Yahoo Is Far From Giving Up - A redesigned home page went live in September. It is delivering online services to Hewlett-Packard Co.'s consumer PCs and offering a Web-based photo sharing service with AT&T. - Andrew Leckey @ Chicago Tribune
• Social Networks and Urbanization - Far from substituting for urbanization, social network sites will increase the value we reap from locating in urban environments. The two will play off each other in interesting and unexpected ways. - John Hagel @ Edge Perspectives
• The 100th Birthday of the Press Release - The press release turned 100-years-old over the weekend. As search marketers debate over the future of the online press release, we can learn some important lessons from the early history of public relations - Greg Jarboe @ Search Engine Watch
• The High Priestess of Internet Friendship - Boyd says online social networks have become a vital space for young people to express themselves and build their personal identities. While adults worry about the culture and dangers their children are exposed to on the internet, she says that what parents think children do online and what they are actually doing is very different. -Graham Bowley @ The Financial Times
• Brightcove Unveils Video Syndication Platform - an online video marketplace for content owners to syndicate their video clips throughout the Web - is launched. = MediaPost
• Don't I Know You from the Internet? - In a strange new twist where the Web is replacing television as their vehicle to stardom, some performers are parlaying online celebrity into deals with big media. Soon they may be able to just stick to the Web - Catherine Holohan @ BusinessWeek
• YouTube Is Purging Copyrighted Clips - In a sticky situation, media content generation companies tell YouTube to remove their goods - Noam Cohen @ The New York Times
• Marketers Demanding Better Count of the Clicks - Concerns about click fraud and viewer statistics do not appear to be affecting online advertising revenue right now, but ad agency executives said the issues must be resolved before large advertisers would want to pour much more money online. - Louise Story @ The New York Times
• Blogging For Dollars - Still, aspiring bloggers should take note of the key words "lucky" and "few." The odds of actually making a living off a blog or personal Web site are low. - Pasadena Star News
• Viral Marketing: 25 ideas for the Financially Challenged - For those of you whoaren’t yet familiar with the term, Viral Marketing isthe technique of enticing others to promote yourbusiness by distributing something of value with yourmessage attached. - Marketing How To
• How to Boost Your Business With Testimonials - here is another very effective marketing tool that requires no skills, can be applied to your business immediately and will help you to gain many new clients. Simply get testimonials from your current clients! - Biba Pedron
• It's A Brand-You World - Need a job? Or a love life? Personal-marketing consultants can help you stand out from the crowd - Jennine Lee-St. John @ Time Magazine
• For TV Marketers, Viewers Are Now A Moving Target - Technology offering new watching options is forcing media players to rethink ad and content delivery. - Jennifer Mann @ Kansas City Star

media+marketing business trend links

• The Reinvention Of Martha Stewart - The domestic guru is once again the face of her brand, but she's no longer calling all the shots - BusinessWeek
• How Specialized Engines Could Make Web Search Better- Google's new tool, which lets anyone build a specialized search engine, could be the key to advancing Web search. - MIT Technology Review
• Birth of a Brand Operating System - Via Seeking Alpha, the Stalwart reports on Google’s incremental development of a “Google operating system” before our very eyes. I would interject that Google doesn’t realize it yet, but this is really a “brand operating system.” To date, however, there’s not much Google brand to be seen. - Brands Create Customers
• Some 10% Online Consumers Watch TV Online - Some 10% online consumers watch television broadcasts online, according to the latest Consumer Internet Barometer, produced by The Conference Board and TNS. - Metrics 2.0
• From CPM to CPM(2): Moving Beyond the First Impression into a Second Life - Now, as we find ourselves living in a convergence culture, a “new kid on the block” has emerged (translation: new medium) that is gently challenging this model. Virtual worlds – as a medium – are capable of accommodating a form of advertising where the M in CPM becomes multi-variate. In other words, a single “ad campaign” can produce a number of different types of impressions and consumer touchpoints, both primary and secondary. - ADOTAS
• Economics Of Abundance Getting Some Well Deserved Attention - Dave Hornik has a wonderful post about Anderson's talk while Ross Mayfield is also discussing how he's come to realize that the economics of scarcity doesn't apply digitally. - TechDirt
• Small Is Beautiful For The Net Giants - 'Web 2.0' highlights how the online world is changing: amateurs come up with the ideas, then the big boys open their wallets, says Julie Meyer - The Observer
• Retailers tackle The Long Tail - Online firms have shown that there is money to be made from dusty back catalogues. Now everyone wants to cash in - Dominic Rushe @ Times Online

media+marketing business trend links

• A New Campaign Tactic: Manipulating Google Data- Fifty or so other Republican candidates have also been made targets in a sophisticated “Google bombing” campaign intended to game the search engine’s ranking algorithms. By flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, it is possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those articles to the top of the list of search results. - Tom Zeller @ The New York Times
• ComScore Releases Worldwide Ranking of Top Web Properties - Of note were the gains experienced by Wikipedia Sites and Youtube.com during September. Both sites were up 12 percent versus August. - ComScore
• Video Web Sites Rush To Fulfill Viewer Demand - "There's a huge appetite for this stuff," he added, referring to the celebrity-driven news that TMZ features. "People want to see people as they actually are in public. This stuff bounces around the Internet like a boomerang." - Carly Mayberry @ Washington Post
• Holding Your Company In Trust - Although there are countless surveys out there in which large numbers of consumers say they would rather buy from companies that show good citizenship than those that don't, they know only too well that the percentage that really reflect this in their buying behaviour is tiny. - Ethical Corporation
• Why Brands Should Upload Their Video Onto YouTube - As I'm posting the clip, it had attracted 87.075 views, it's been commented 224 times and 1226 people added this clip to their personal favourites. These are impressive stats. - iWisdom
• Product Placement in Consumer-Generated Videos - "Plinking is the process of adding a product or service link to a visible object or image in a video. When deployed, it will have an interface for users to upload and tag video. Users will freeze a single frame and define an area where the product is located. It can be any product from an iPod to particular jacket or pair of jeans. Once tagged, the item will be clickable throughout the runtime of the video, and will link to an e-commerce page." - MIT Advertising Lab
• YouTube: A Case Study - With YouTube's acquisition for $1.65 billion, I thought I'd take an opportunity to post a chart that demonstrates the company's quick growth from obscurity in October 2005 to market dominance in mid-2006. The chart below depicts the market share of visits to YouTube.com based on all internet visits in the U.S - Hitwise
• Why Is Mobile Social Networking Worth $3.45b? - I can't count being dyslexic, so my job is to ask why? What are the drivers to all this activity. Because its not about technology. its more about the inter-relationship between biology, social network theory, anthropology, Darwinism, cultural theory, economics, marketing, fan fiction, mobile, the internet, science, game theory, of course peacocks, cheese making and.... trust. - Communities Dominate Brands

media+marketing business trend links

• Is Your Business Ready for Virtual Business? -  It's looking more and more probable that major businesses will start to gain traction entirely in the "virtual" world. - Sean Carton @ Publish
• How to Survive and Thrive Your Business Online - In order to succeed online, your business needs to be organized and able to handle the increased business your web site is going to generate - Wendy Suto @ Market Day
• Making Money by Matching Surfers to Marketers - “The new advertising business is like the old direct mail,” Mr. Ng said, “where you sent envelopes out to thousands of people and hoped they would open the envelope and read the material inside and act on it. The Internet allows us to target your message much more precisely and to lead the prospect, click by click, through all those steps.” -  James Flanigan @ The New York Times
• Attend the eComXpo Virtual Trade Show - a 100% virtual online free trade show.
• Insightful Business Books To Read This Fall - I think good business books can provide more substantive insights than magazines and conferences. - Marc Kramer @ The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
• Hidden Market Research on Ebay, Amazon, and Others - Find out about the wealth of market research that can be found on Ebay, Amazon, and other hidden goldmines. - Kim Roach @ Promotion World
• Drive Brands With Digital Marketing -Marketing agencies must embrace digital marketing if they are to do full justice to the brands of which they are custodians. - Marketing Web
• U.S. Congress To Investigate Virtual World Commerce - The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) has announced that it will look into the business activities carried out in virtual game worlds.The investigation does not mean that in-game trading will be taxed. The Committee says the probe was triggered by the "dramatic increase in the popularity of online gaming". - Josephine Roque @ All Headline News

media+marketing business trend links

• Second Life, Other Virtual Worlds Reshaping Human Interaction - "As strange as it might seem, it's not that different from being a reporter in the real world," Adam Pasick, the Reuters correspondent who will serve as the virtual bureau's first chief, said in a Reuters report. "Once you get used to it, it becomes very much like the job I have been doing for years." - National Geographic
• Wal-Mart Vs. The Blogosphere - The episode may turn out to be an even bigger public relations disaster for Edelman, the retailer's PR firm. - Pallavi Gogoi @ BusinessWeek
• Big Blue Brings Web 2.0 to School - Designed to attract computer science students and build advanced skills for the next wave of IT jobs, IBM and the University of Arizona will announce on Oct. 19 a Web 2.0 classroom curriculum. - Deborah Rothberg@ eWeek
• A Virtual World But Real Money - the budding fake world is not only attracting a lot more people, it is taking on a real world twist: big business interests are intruding on digital utopia. The Second Life online service is fast becoming a three-dimensional test bed for corporate marketers, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Sun Microsystems, Nissan, Adidas/Reebok, Toyota and Starwood Hotels. - Richard Silkos @ The New York Times
• Yahoo Sees Social Networking Sites Competing for Ads - After years of charging premium ad prices to reach users of its Web sites and communities, Yahoo now blames a weaker growth outlook partly on a glut of competing advertising on the hugely popular social networking sites. - Michele Gershberg & Eric Auchard @ Reuters
• GoogTube Deal To Change Media Economics - If you believe that there is no going back from a future of on-demand digital TV programs, movies, music, data and communications, then the new Google-YouTube union offers the interactive infrastructure and tools needed to manage and monetize Web-based digital video that is for now unmatched by broadcast, cable, satellite and telephone platforms. - Diane Mermigas @ The Hollywood Reporter
• Yahoo! Ranked #1 in Number of People Streaming - Fox Interactive, which includes MySpace.com, led the way with 1.4 billion streams during the month, or 20.1 percent of the market. Yahoo! Sites ranked second in video streams initiated with 823 million (11.8 percent share), followed by YouTube.com with 688 million (9.9 percent share). - ComScore
• The Real Reason That Google Bought YouTube? - Buying YouTube will give Google a platform on which advertisers can experiment with television commercials, writes David Kirkpatrick. "Google can buy ad inventory in TV, radio and print to place ads there it pre-tested online." Google "could even create its own offline media products." - via CNN, iWant Media
• Project RED Campaign Gets Boost from MySpace Campaign - Gap which is promoting a line of (RED) apparel, was the leading beneficiary of traffic from Join (RED) website, receiving 26.9 percent of visits to the site for the week ending October 14, 2006. - Hitwise
• Google Website Optimizer Launches - Google will soon begin offering AdWords advertisers a new tool to experiment with a variety of different landing page layouts in order determine which one gains the most conversions from site visitors. - TechCrunch
• Corporate Blogging: Wal-Mart Fumbles - Good business blogs put a face on impersonal institutions. But, Wal-mart's Edelman-backed blog, didn't. - Marc Gunther @ CNN
• After the Walmarting Comes the Edelmaning - Last week, Wal-Mart was pummeled for a fake Wal-Mart blog set up by Edelman PR, which after nearly a week of silence has owned up to the deception - sort of. - MarketingVox

media+marketing business trend links

• Google to Pocket a Quarter of Online Advertising - DoubleClick? 24/7 Media? Google is on track in 2006 to become the first company ever to take home 25% of all U.S. online advertising spending in a calendar year, according to a new report from eMarketer - CBS Marketwatch
• Google's MTV Deal May Hint at Its YouTube Plans - With Google giving little information on how it plans to monetize YouTube, analysts are left to examine Google's past video projects for clues. - Marketing Vox
• Big Media Gets a Second Life - Wired Magazine takes up residence in the virtual world - Olga Kharif @ BusinessWeek
• Lawyers Must Get Creative About Marketing - Sometimes the buzz can even be the marketing method itself. In May 2006, to experiment with profiling the expertise of the firm and its lawyers, Torys started a video series that viewers could watch on PCs and iPods. -Ari Kaplan @ Law.com
• AT&T Brand Will Dominate After BellSouth Merger -the disappearance of Cingular and BellSouth will be gradual. - Emily Burg @ MediaPost
• Edelman Apologizes For Wal-Mart 'Flog' - Critics of Wal-Mart and Edelman ratcheted up criticism of both companies throughout the week--the latter coming under increasing disapproval for positioning itself as one of the most forward-thinking communications companies in the area of blogs, yet not addressing the elephant in the room on any of its executives' numerous blogs. - Tom Siebert @ MediaPost
• Two Rating Services Launch for Small Business, One From LinkedIn - On LinkedIn members of the site can now recommend service providers to other members. The more people recommend a business, the more prominently that company's profile is displayed in search results. -Kate Kaye @ ClickZ
• Disney Says It Will Link Marketing to Nutrition -Walt Disney plans to curtail the use of its name and characters with food items that do not meet new nutritional standards. - Landom Thomas @ The New York Times
• Social Networking and Online Commerce Converge to s-Commerce - Growth in online social networking has been explosive consumer visits to social networking sites have increased 109 percent since January 2004, while site usage (measured by pages viewed per member) has increased 414% over the same time period, four-times faster than member growth - SDA India
• What is PopTech!? - Suffice it to say, if you’re interested in how science and technology are changing the world, hiking up to Camden, Maine, in October (this year Oct. 19-21) for the three-day conference is akin to Christmas coming two months early. -Christian Science Monitor
• Defending Your Brand Online - You can sidestep the common mistakes that erode brand equity and consumer trust. This article includes five common assumptions to avoid – and how to do it instead. - Mike Denning @ Verisign

media+marketing business trend links

• How Safe Is Web 2.0? - Technology commentator Bill Thompson says the latest incarnation of the web, dubbed Web 2.0, is prone to the same flaws as its predecessor -BBC
• Why YouTube Is Not (Yet) The Future of TV - YouTube was fooling us; they do run at a profit - Robert Cringeley @ PBS
• YouTube hype isn't like last time. Really - Google isn't buying YouTube for the revenue, but for the flatulence, er, we mean the community - Simon Beck @ Globe & Mail
• ComScore vs. Hitwise - comScore says that Google and YouTube combined account for nearly 10% of the video-viewing market. Hitwise says that GoogTube accounts for nearly 60%. OK! Which methodology is more reliable? - Bambi Francisco
• Getting The Most FromOnline Advertising - "As a small business owner, how can I get better visibility for my business online when I don't have a lot of money to spend on advertising?" - Bruce Freeman @ Scripps News
• Content Owners Target Google - Time Warner chief says media company will play hardball in protecting its video copyrights. - Red Herring
• China relaxes block on Wikipedia - The Chinese government appears to have partially unblocked access to Wikipedia, according to a notice on the online encyclopaedia's website.- VNU

media+business trend links

• The YouTube Effect - The anxieties of YouTube fame. - Ben McGrath @ The New Yorker
• The Walmarting of the Blogosphere - MediaPost writes that Business Week this week called attention to the promotional stunt by Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), which was launched by PR firm Edelman and is funded primarily by Wal-Mart. "While there is a Working Families banner on the website, nowhere does it mention that Wal-Mart has paid for the flight, the RV, the gas, and the blog entries," Business Week writes. - MediaBuyerPlanner
• Google for Educators - Google recognizes the central role that teachers play in breaking down the barriers between people and information, and they support educators who work each day to empower their students and expand the frontiers of human knowledge. This website is one of the ways they're working to bolster that support and explore how Google and educators can work together. - ZDNet
• Web Video Market: Who Will Win The Big Ad Money? - EMarketer estimates that $385 million will be spent on online video ads, equating to just over 2% of the total $15 billion or so in online advertising estimated this year....Web video is so hot that venture capitalists and angel investors are chasing the opportunity by pouring money into new ventures that hope to make money via advertising. - Bambi @ Marketwatch
• The Cult of the Superstar - Television and consequently money have redefined modern sport, making phenomenons such as Sharapova the norm. Not the exception - S. Ram Mahesh @ Sportstar Weekly
• Social Media and E-Commerce Converging: Report - The report, “s-commerce: beyond MySpace and YouTube,” finds consumer visits to social networking sites have increased 109 percent since January 2004, and page views per visitor have grown by 414 percent in the same time period. - ClickZ
• DVDs: They Will Survive - Doomsayers say DVDs are dinosaurs, but they're dead wrong. These discs will not only make it through the digital age - they'll thrive in it. - Chris Taylor @ Business 2.0
• Budgeting For A Robust Internet Marketing Strategy in 2007 - This article takes a closer look at some important aspects of Internet marketing in hospitality and what marketing activities and line items comprise the 2007 online marketing budget. - Hospitality eBusiness Strategies, Inc
• How Likely Is A Second Dotcom Crash? - Technology commentators are predicting the second coming of the dotcom crash, five years after the first one wrecked confidence in the internet business and sent countless paper millionaires on to the streets.  - Paul Trotter @ PC Advisor
• Counting Web Users Often Sticky - "Ad measurement is the currency of this business; it's where the money trades hands," Stuart said. - Brian Deagon @ Investor's Business Daily
• Viral Marketers Under Siege - You can blame LonelyGirl15 who shot to one of the top viewed videos on YouTube. Just as advertising agencies, movie moguls and Fortune 500 companies began to feel their way into the foreign turf of viral videos, the Federal Trade Commission has decided to flex its regulatory muscle over stealth marketers. - Kyle Niederpruem @ Inside Indiana Business

media+marketing business trend links

• GoogTube: Huge Ad Platform for Small Businesses - Television continues to be the number one advertising medium. But small businesses (which Google and every other search engine keeps trying to reach) can't afford it. But they can afford video. It's already happening. - Frank Barnako@ Seeking Alpha
• Is There An Innovations Drought? - At eBags, an $80-million-a-year luggage e-tailer in suburban Denver, marketing Vice-President Peter Cobb says the pressure of weak financial markets has helped make the company hold back on everything from adding Web 2.0 features like video and social networking to spending $100,000 to translate its ebags.de site into German. - Timothy Mullaney@NewsFactor
• Loved and Hated Brands: Brands We Love, Brands We Hate - As brands fight for a much-coveted place in consumers' affections, a major survey has revealed which have ended up on the winning side and which on the losing. - Jane Simms @ Design Bulletin
• The 10 Biggest Mistakes Marketers Make - Marco would have had a much better shot at winning approval for his proposal if he had spoken the language of business. For example, he might have said: "Because our Web site is confusing to visitors, 15 percent of the people who come to the site depart without buying anything. That translates into between $100,000 and $300,000 dollars in lost sales every quarter." If he had spoken in terms of lost sales, he would have quickly gained his audience's attention. - Roy Young @ MarketingProfs
• Finding The Right Ad Model - YouTube is about to unleash software to help it comb through videos posted on the site and pinpoint those using copyrighted entertainment. Other sites are likely to follow. - Heidi Dawley @ Media Post
• How To Promote Your Small Business On the Internet - Dr. Wilson quotes a July 2004, Nielsen//NetRatings + MegaView Search factoid which found that 24.4% of searchers on major search engines conducted searches that were local in scope. - Web Marketing Today
• New Business Buzzword Dictionary - Pompous jargon pervades English these days, from corporate speak to silly legalisms. This lighthearted look at how English is being mangled reveals the underlying meaning, as well as the attitudes behind the meaning, of more than 1,000 buzzwords. - Brian Moore @ The New York Post
• The Land of the Video Geek (Korea) - All in all it was a typical night in South Korea, a country of almost 50 million people and home to the world’s most advanced video game culture: Where more than 20,000 public PC gaming rooms, or “bangs,” attract more than a million people a day. Where competitive gaming is one of the top televised sports. - Seth Scheisel @ The New York Times
• In Scripts on YouTube, Politicians Reveal Their Unscripted Side - It's an increasingly used tactic in the 2006 campaign, the first election in the age of easily accessible Internet videos....they post their [competitors'] embarrassing snippets on the Web, where some of the clips can become instant sensations, spread by bloggers and political junkies - Amy Schatz @ The Wall Street Journal
• Google-YouTube Deal Expands Broadband Nation - The new-media paradigm of on-demand, downloaded, streamed and shared digital video is the powerful catalyst behind the Google-YouTube deal, which will become a growth driver for all content players smart enough to heed the call. - Diane Mermigas @ They Hollywood Reporter
• How To Best Spend Your Marketing Budget - So where should you spend your money? The obvious answer is to spend it where you get the most return. The harder part of that is to determine what will bring the best return for you - ISEdb

media business trend links

• Business 2.0's New Strategy: All Journalists Must Blog - Quittner is charging every journalist at the Time Inc. title with creating a blog. Such a move will offer "more ad revenue opportunities." - Rohit Barhava @ Influential Interactive Marketing
• Use Case: How Companies Can Use Photosharing Correctly - We gearheads at CrunchGear are fairly skeptical when it comes to hardware manufacturers trying to tap the excitement of social networking/sharing sites - TechCrunch
• Advanced Creation and Editing of Wikipedia Articles - Part two of our look at the online encyclopediadia anyone can edit shows how to create brand-new articles - What PC?
• Google Is Said to Set Sights on YouTube - Google is in discussions to acquire YouTube for $1.6 billion, people involved in the talks said yesterday. - Andrew Ross Sorkin and Peter Edmonston @ New York Times
• Are Sleeper Films Fading to Black? - "Movies do not come out of the blue. As studio marketers have become more aggressive, all the freshness has been appropriated by the campaign. So it's almost impossible to have a sleeper." - Stephen Farber @ The New York Times
• DM to the Long Tail - Online retailers like Netflix and Rhapsody generate nearly as much revenue from unconventional titles as from mega-hits. Having escaped the shelf-space constraints of bricks-and-mortar stores, retailers are finding unforeseen moneymakers among their vast inventories. - Ray Kingman @ DM News
• PayPerPost Funded to Launch Consumer Generated Advertising Revolution - PayPerPost, a marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers, videographers, photographers, podcasters and social networks, today announced it has secured $3 million of venture capital. Florida-based Inflexion Partners led the Series A round, with Village Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) participating. -TechJournal South
• Page views? Unique Visitors? Hits? How the Internet Methodically Measures Its Users - But people outside of the business often stumble over the meaning of Internet-specific measurement terms such as "hits," "page views" and "unique visitors," to name some of the most common ones. - BelleVille News Democrat
• Should Corporations Control Online Discussions? - The reason participatory citizen media have been so popular and successful is partly due to the fact that their platforms have been relatively independent of corporate control; therefore, they have allowed people to espouse independent points of view. - Steve Andersen @ Rabble
• Marketing Shifts In Changing E-Tail Landscape - This year, much of the focus will be on the fact that online searching often leads to offline buying. "Search is now an invaluable tool to holiday shoppers" - Keith Regan @ Ecommerce Times
• Analysis: New Media a Weapon in New World of Politics - Drudge is a news site, not a blog, according to blog empress Arianna Huffington - Washington Post

media business trend links

• Building eBay 2.0 - Clobbered by Wall Street. Fierce competition from Google. Meg Whitman's had a rough couple years. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky finds out how she's trying to turn eBay from ultra-hot to built-to-last. - Adam Lashinsky @ Fortune
• Dot-Com Bubble Part II: Why It's So Hard to Value Social Networking Sites - What makes this hard is that these companies seem to be so many years away from the kind of earnings that the valuation numbers are forecasting for them," says Andrew Metrick, finance professor at Wharton. The $15 billion MySpace figure "would imply that a lot more people will be on MySpace than are currently on it." - Knowledge@Wharton
• More than Half of MySpace Visitors are Now Age 35 or Older - "Last year half of the site’s visitors were at least 25 years old, while today more than two-thirds of MySpace visitors are age 25 or older.” - ComScore Research
• Forecasters On Lookout For Next Big Color - The environmental movement, for example, is fueling green's popularity. Forecasters noted the public's tolerance for the shade rose in the 1990s (post-avocado, people had had little patience for green) and the growing popularity of environmentalism has made green a symbolic, and more acceptable, color. - Nicole Tsong @ Seattle Post
• How Businesses Can Put Web Video To Use - New products from Cisco and others will help them make informal video like YouTube's relevant to their companies. - J. Nicholas Hoover and Larry Greenemeier @ Information Week
• Microsoft to "Socialize" Podcasts - "Microsoft (MSFT) is going to 'socialize' the idea of subscribing to content," Klau told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview. "They're taking the idea of bookmarks, 'content you want to go to," and applying it to RSS and podcasts, 'content you want to come to you.'" - Frank Barnako @ Seeking Alpha
• Listening To Your Customers - Ecoute! You know there's a conversation about your brand happening out there online, but you don't know where to go to listen. Tom (Underscore's president) shows you the way. - Tom Hespos @ Underscore Marketing
• Marketers Turn to Ads on Social Media Sites: But, Consumers Still Wary - 20% of online advertisers surveyed by Jupiter Research say they plan to test viral marketing in vehicles such as blogs this year—but Jupiter also found that most consumers don’t trust product information they get on social media sites. - Internet Retailer
• In Web Marketing It's the Pitch, Not the Hits, That Counts - The yardstick of success isn't the number of hits per se, but rather the conversion rate. When you think about it, this is a fascinating divergence of two very different modes of web marketing: search mode vs. pitch mode. -Scott Brinker @ AdAge
• Sun Microsystems Wants to Blog News - CEO Jonathan Schwartz has sent a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission head Christopher Cox asking permission to disclose news about Sun Microsystems on his personal blog. Such a change would be a major shift in the way business news is distributed. - Red Herring
• Economies of Scale Don't Apply to Virtual Worlds? - Second Life's denizens are concerned that the entrance of big business into the world will drive them out. They're right to be concerned. Their businesses are as at risk as the local bookseller's business before Barnes & Noble comes to town. - Joystiq via BubbleGeneration
• The Rise and Fall (And Rise?) of AOL - AOL, which recently abandoned its 'pay to play' model, is now trying to succeed as a free service in a very crowded marketplace. Can it succeed? We look at AOL's past and possible future. - Jennifer Bosavage @ Tech Web
• Investor Shy Away from Web 2.0 Startups - "But we have trouble determining whether we can ever make money in this [Web 2.0] space, because there have not yet been these type of exits that generated venture capital type returns." - Tom Sanders @ VNUNet.com

media trend links

• NextFest's Long Tail Coverage - With a book cover styled like the Tipping Point (did anyone else notice that the paperback features a paper match, while the hardcover sports a wooden match? nice), The Long Tail has been beach reading for all those Crackberry dads spending "quality time" with their kids at the playground on Saturday mornings, and now a full-fledged bestseller. -Core77
• Don't Break Your Brand Promise - How many times have you clicked on a banner or email link only to be disappointed by landing on a generic page that has nothing to do with the reason you clicked? - Justin Talerico @ imediaconnection
• Google 'Universal' Widgets Released - Site publishers can now make it even easier for their visitors to get driving directions, view Picasa photo albums or play hang-man - Mashable
• Time For a New Model: Listening-Centered Marketing - Brands will have a very difficult time succeeding in this new environment unless they figure out how to dance in this zone of "tension" between marketer and consumer interest. - Pete Blackshaw @ ClickZ
• Marketing Pros Key to entrepreneurs Growth - "A lot of businesses fail in the first 24 months because they have a great idea but they take it to the wrong market," says Michael Snyder, a principal at The Mek Group. - Caryln Duffy Marsan @ Indianapolis Star
• Do It Yourself E-Commerce - Rather than going door-to-door to drum up business or setting up a "mom and pop" store in the neighborhood, people are using the Web -- together with a mix of old and new communications, marketing and promotional strategies -- to build their own e-commerce businesses and entice customers to buy -- and then come back to buy again. - Andrew Burger @ Tech News World
• How Will The Clintons Harness the Political Force of the Blog? - While blogging has caught on everywhere, presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton still does not blog — or at least not much. - David Perlmutter @ USA Today
• Rebranding Ask.com - How do you engineer a major overhaul to your web site to increase traffic and user satisfaction? Ask.com's Senior User Experience Analyst describes the company's careful yet bold approach to its recent redesign in this wide-ranging interview. - Rae Hoffman @ Search Engine Watch
• Calculating the ROI of Corporate Blogging - You could apply the same benefit/risk analysis to any form of corporate communications. The difference is that blogging, which is just a kind of Web page, a container for content, applies the notion that markets are conversations, which is not build into the DNA of most corporations. - Charlene Li @ Forrester Research
• Getting Paid to Play: Landing a Job in the Video Game Industry - With sales over $7 billion annually and 42% of Americans purchasing, or planning to purchase a video game in 2006(1), video games are shifting from the edge of pop culture to mainstream entertainment. - Yahoo Finance
• Web 2.0: What's It Mean for Nokia? - Location-based services and Widgets on the way... - Jo Best @ Silicon.com
• blogs saying the retailer has closed its teen-oriented social networking site - called ‘ The Hub ’, among other things. - econsultancy