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Facebook Gets Into the Q&A Game July 30, 2010 
Facebook has jumped into the online Q&A space with Facebook Questions, a beta feature that can be viewed by all Facebook users. This is how it works: Click on the "Ask Question" feature, which can be found in the status bar. Type in a query -- say, "What is the best pizza restaurant in Adams Morgan?" The question becomes visible to all Facebook users.
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YouTube's Extra 5 Minutes Could Buy More Than Time July 30, 2010 
YouTube uploaders who wish to follow 60s pop-art icon Andy Warhol's advice and grasp their 15 minutes of fame now can do so fully. YouTube has raised the maximum length limit on submissions from 10 to 15 minutes, announced Product Manager Joshua Siegel on the company blog. While an additional five minutes may seem trivial to some, it represents an increase of 50 percent in video length, which is significant.
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Geo-blocking: Jamming a Square Peg Into a Round Hole July 30, 2010 
When many individuals attempted to watch the recent World Cup games online, depending on where they were located and from which website they tried to view them, they may have found the following statement on their screen: "The requested video cannot be displayed in your region" rather than the game itself. That pop-up message was due to "geo-blocking" or "geo-fencing."
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Google Gets Playful With Facebook Rivalry July 28, 2010 
Google's "Facebook killer" came a step closer to reality Wednesday, when it was revealed that the company has been talking with game makers for potential inclusion of their wares on a new social network. Originally brought to light by a tweet last month from Digg Founder Kevin Rose, the new "Google Me" offering could include games from Playdom, Electronic Arts' Playfish, and Zynga Game Network.
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Why That Mountain of Leads Is a Molehill of Sales July 28, 2010 
In the struggle to grow revenues in tighter markets, most companies are pushing their marketing departments to provide greater market coverage and deliver more sales opportunities. Yet statistics reveal that an astonishing 79 percent of leads generated by corporate marketing departments are never contacted by corporate sales groups.
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Yahoo Japan May Succeed Where Yahoo Failed July 27, 2010 
Yahoo Japan has announced that it will begin a relationship with Google to power its search functions and also administer ads that appear on the site. In this deal, the company is not following in the steps of its U.S. counterpart, Yahoo, which cut a deal with Microsoft's Bing, announced last year.
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Facebook Has Half a Billion Members but Few Real Friends July 21, 2010 
Facebook, one of the most popular sites on the Web -- now claiming 500 million users -- also has the dubious distinction of being one of the lowest-ranked in terms of customer satisfaction. Facebook scored a paltry 64 on the 100-point scale of the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report. That puts it in the bottom 5 percent of all measured private sector companies.
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Apple Defends Opt-Out Privacy Policies in Letter to Congressmen July 20, 2010 
As if it didn't already have enough problems explaining why the iPhone 4 has reception issues, Apple also finds itself trying to convince two high-ranking members of the U.S. Congress that it's not invading its customers' privacy. Reps. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, asked Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in a letter dated June 24, to clarify recent changes to Apple's privacy policy.
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Brand Building Ain't What It Used to Be July 20, 2010 
Branding is often undervalued. The mantra at many companies is "leads and sales, leads and sales," with most marketing investments going toward lead generation activities. In addition, marketers often believe that branding results are difficult to measure. The Internet has relegated these notions to the garbage bin.
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The Sweet Smell of Social Media Success - and the Funk of Failure July 16, 2010 
How's this for tying together Old Spice's winning social media strategy and Apple's current iPhone problems: While the cologne and deodorant company is ending the week smelling like a rose, Steve Jobs' tech colossus is in danger of stinking up the joint. Follow along with me as I attempt to marry the two top tech stories of the past few days.
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Twitter's Earlybird Lands With Groupon, Gilt on Board July 15, 2010 
Twitter on Wednesday launched its @earlybird service, aimed at providing its some 75 million members with daily deals and creating a revenue stream for itself. The first offering from the service was a discount on tickets to see the critically panned movie "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" from Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
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Will Zynga Deal Help Google Zero In on Social Gaming? July 12, 2010 
Google has reportedly invested a significant sum of money -- between US$100 million and $200 million -- in social games company Zynga in order to build out a Google Games offering for the search engine giant. The investment, which was reportedly made by Google and not Google Ventures, is a highly strategic move for the company.
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Twitter Digs for Worms With Earlybird Specials July 07, 2010 
Microblogging service Twitter has announced its second major attempt to monetize -- the @earlybird service. This will let advertisers pay a fee to promote exclusive events, tout time-sensitive special deals and offer sneak peeks at products to Twitter users. The service had signed up more than 15,000 followers by press time.
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Don't Just Build a Community - Engage It July 07, 2010 
Social media can be wonderful tools for sales and marketing, but so far most companies and most anecdotal evidence that I have seen point to practices that are mired in old-think, with the result that social media is being questioned as a strategy. Here are some ideas that I give my clients when they are trying to figure out an approach involving social media. It's a new world, so stop treating it like the old world.
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Socializing the Storefront, Part 2: Navigating the Scene June 28, 2010 
Incorporating social media strategies into your marketing plan is no cut-and-paste job. You've got to know your clientele and what appeals to them, and you have to engage them in a conversation rather than simply spew offers at them. In fact, if you don't have the desire to commit yourself to social marketing, don't even bother, says small business marketing expert Jay Ehret.
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Working Your Digital Assets to the Bone June 25, 2010 
There is a new mindset is pervading the world of digital assets, particularly in a cost-conscious economy. Organizations are looking to maximize the value of all their digital assets, both to reduce their up-front costs and to increase ROI on each and every outlay.
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