ad:tech San Francisco kicked off today, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was present to give the opening keynote presentation. His speech was called "Wikipedia, Wikia, and the Future of Consumer Generated Content," and it nicely complemented an introduction by Drew Ianni on the state of the overall industry.
FTC to Regulate Blogs and Social Media?
The Federal Trade Commission plans to begin regulating blogs and social media. While they’re getting tougher on results-based advertising, they are also looking at going after blogs and social media users who portray products they’re promoting in a less than accurate light. AdAge explains:
Hosting Company Defends Hiring Twitter Hacker
The seventeen-year-old hacker who gave Twitter a busy weekend earlier in the month was subsequently hired by hosting company exqSoft Solutions, a reward that may have inspired further bad behavior.
Surveying The Mobile Landscape
In the ad:tech MobileMix keynote session "Surveying the Mobile Landscape in 2009," Mike Wehrs, president and CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association, offered his views on the mobile industry.
Google Improves Search-Based Keyword Tool
Back in November Google introduced a new keyword tool called simply Search-based Keyword Tool that enables paid search advertisers to see what keywords they may be missing out on based on searches that are leading to your site. Today Google has announced wider availability and some improvements to the tool.
Google’s Need For Freshness Sours Search Results
Every so often SEO professionals produce a list of what they believe to be the top factors influencing search engine rankings. The latest update to this list of proposed factors looks much like past lists, focusing on traditional factors like links, content, HTML tags, and domain registration age, and some new ones like geographical factors and personalized search history. But one term might be new to many people: link velocity.
Using Twitter For Link Building
Links on Twitter are already nofollowed and most are shortened anyway by a shortener. What use can Twiitter be for link building? Link building Eric Ward says the site is perfect for finding niche experts.
It’s not about huge amounts of followers or traffic spikes. You can get that kind of traffic from Digg. But the advantage of Twitter, says Ward, is that people specific to an industry are out there, findable on Twitter.
Google’s Dominance and Microsoft’s Perseverance
Year after year, and month after month we keep an eye on the search engine market share picture. Over and over again in the US, we see Google completely dominating (more so with each year it seems), Yahoo a ways back, and Microsoft even further back.
Scientists Create Brain-Twitter-Interface
For the unfamiliar, a tweet in all caps announcing SPELLING WITH MY BRAIN seems unnecessarily shouted and profoundly obvious; after all, it’s not your hand that can spell, is it? But no hands were involved, only thoughts, and this is what somebody thought onto Twitter.
Online Video Popular In Canada
In February 21 million Canadians viewed more than 3.1 billion videos online, according to a new report from comScore Video Metrix.
The average Canadian online video viewer spent 10 hours viewing videos in February, an increase of 53 percent from their average viewing time last year.
"Canada’s high broadband penetration and tech savvy Internet users make it an optimal environment for online video to flourish," said Bryan Segal, vice president of sales, comScore Canada.