Viacom Sues Google, YouTube

Do Pre-made Stores or Merchant Sites Have Any Value?

Question: I recently purchased a website at mydomain.somecompany.com as a store to sell somecompany.com's products and was wondering if the site had any value, and how I could do SEO on the site if I couldn't change the content? Answer: Many companies sell the right to resell their products online, but most of them that require you to use their domain or subdomain for your…

Topix Worries About Domain Change

After paying $1 million to purchase the rights to the Topix.com domain, Topix.net CEO Rich Skrenta now has to deal with a couple of daily realities in the search world: changing domains could cause a dropoff in search engine-driven traffic, and Google isn't exactly Nordstrom or L.L. Bean when it comes to customer service.

Paid Blog Posts and Misleading Content

The LA Times reports that thousands of bloggers are writing sponsored posts touting such diverse topics as diamonds, digital cameras and drug clinics. The bloggers are spurred by new marketing middlemen such as PayPerPost that connect advertisers with mom-and-pop webmasters.  Thanks to Daily Dog for this item. Why should there be concern about this practice?

Cisco Bets on Social Media for Marketing Strategy

In addition to their acquisiton of Five Across, which makes social-networking and forum software to help companies improve their internet marketing strategy and their communications with customers, Cisco sealed a deal this week to purchase software assets from, and acquire employees of, social-networking site operator Utah Street Networks.

Kicking Shows More Respect Than Ignoring?

There’s a bit of debate lately due to a Microsoft lawyer bashing Google’s book scanning program and their positions on copyright. It’s one of those stories everybody has to comment on, despite merely being a case of one company sniping at another, so naturally I stayed the hell away from it. Still, Lawrence Lessig made an argument that so defines the opposite of compelling that…