The New York Times has a piece about Twitter, including a nice pic of Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey of Obvious Corp. looking pretty pleased with themselves — as they should, considering Twitter’s traffic has apparently tripled in the past month or two since SXSW helped it become the new black. Jason Pontin of MIT’s Technology Review does a nice job of looking at the phenomenon, without trashing it as totally frivolous and irritating.
Should Social Networks Sell Users Data?
Selling the data of social network users could be one way for sites to increase revenue according to a new report from In-Stat.
"Each social networking site collects a plethora of personal and demographic data on each member," said Jill Meyers of In-Stat "and while selling these data to target marketing groups may be unappealing to site members, it may be the best route to profitability for site operators."
Marketers Should Care About Google’s DoubleClick Deal
For those of you who turn off your computers on the weekend, you should know that Google announced Friday that it spent over $3 billion to acquire DoubleClick, of banner ad network fame. You can read from other people what this means from Google’s point of view—I don’t think that is very important to marketers. So what is important about this to marketers?
PR Should Have a Hand in Customer Service
I’ve had two customer service encounters today that have me pondering—again—the link between PR and customer service. If public relations is the management and maintenance of relationships between organizations and their core audiences, customer service should be considered a linchpin. Customers have to be considered a vital audience, and in today’s world, word-of-mouth from customers is worth more than dozens of expensive, traditional PR, advertising, or marketing campaigns. Yet many companies continue to blow it on this most fundamental of activities.
CEOs – They Should Get Out More
A Globe and Mail article this week by Tavia Grant suggested that CEOs are ‘still in the dark’.
(Hat tip to Rick Spence for mentioning this.)
Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham’s Gang?
April 2 is a significant date for many early-stage entrepreneurs as this is the deadline for applying to Paul Graham’s Y Combinator this summer. If you don’t know about Y Combinator, then I encourage you to read up on it as they are one of the few groups doing anything remotely interesting as it relates to very early-stage investment in startups (with an emphasis on software startups).
Online Advertising Should Grow Up
A piece from the New York Times has reignited the debate over online advertising and the monetization of the “long tail” of the Web, one that got a boost recently with a post from Jeremy Liew, a venture capitalist at Lightspeed Venture Partners, who noted that in order to build a business with $50-million in revenue — pretty small beer in most circles — a site would have to have about gazillion page views a month (I’m rounding up).
Another Thing CIOs Should Know About Requirements
I saw this article on CIO magazine – Five Things CIOs Should Know About Software Requirements. It seems to me that there is one more thing (at least) that they need to know about requirements:
Business rules are NOT requirements
Why Topix Should’ve Saved its $1 Million
The WSJ’s Kevin Delaney, provides a broad overview of the issues web site owners face when switching their web site from one domain to another – usually via a 301 redirect. The story focuses on Topix.net…
What Should You Look For In An SEO Firm?
When facing the potential need of SEO services in order to take the next step toward ranking higher in the search engines, a company should have a specific list of criteria in mind in order to distinguish the less than reputable firms from the ones who have legitimate value to offer the customer.