ECommerce
Social Media and Publishing: Revolutions Online and Offline
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 15, 2009 | Share This
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When Iran had their most recent popular revolution in 1979, people around the world had no 24 hour news source to convey what was happening. CNN would be launched the following year by Ted Turner so coverage was limited to shows like ABC’s Nightline (which was created in response to the hostage crisis which grew out of the uprising) and the regularly scheduled network new programs, as well as the daily newspapers like The New York Times and newsweeklies like Time magazine. The Internet? A gleam in Al Gore’s eye.
Social Media: Do Search Engines Show Us How Social Media Will Prosper?
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 13, 2009 | Share This
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The reaction was swift and merciless last night. “Retweet this if you disagree with Twitter’s decision to hide replies to people you don’t follow #fixreplies.” That message has been going out ever since, now that users have discovered that Twitter has blocked the ability for them to see responses from people that don’t already follow them.
The irony is that folks will just continue to migrate to third party platforms like Tweetdeck that give them the functionality that Twitter lacks, which will begin to dilute the number of folks who log into Twitter’s actual site on a daily basis. My theory on this is that more and more companies like Comcast are using Twitter as a customer service interface and the Twitter folks see this as an area they could charge for within premium corporate accounts.
Social Media: Twitter, bit.ly and Whoopi Start to Channel the Data Flow
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 6, 2009 | Share This
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Twitter is like a series of tubes…no, wait, that’s the Internets. Ok, try this, Twitter is a river of information, a veritable data flow that can be strained and redirected in all sorts of ways. That being said, the wide-open nature of the platform has opened the door to data that is (to some folks at least) the equivalent of a power plant dumping PCB’s into the river. For instance, Twitter founders @ev and @biz were on The View today and got an earful from Whoopi Goldberg who doesn’t use their service, but who is represented on Twitter by an impostor.
Search 3.0: Direct Response Marketing in an Indirect World
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 23, 2009 | Share This
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The bread and butter of the paid search world (and of many forms of advertising and marketing) is good ‘ol direct response. Though not as “sexy” as some other forms of marketing when done right it is swift and to the point. Click here to buy my stuff.
On a search engine reply page a good direct response ad can be gold, indicating clearly and relevantly to the user that you got, to paraphrase James Brown, what they need.
In Search 3.0 however, those intangible qualities that are associated with brand marketing come tromping onto the reply page like a high school marching band playing “Louie Louie”, whether marketers want them to or not.
Search 3.0: Real Time Search Poses Real Time Challenge for Engines
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 21, 2009 | Share This
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When things start happening quickly, it can be tough to control results. It’s one thing to drive Germany’s legendary Nurburgring racetrack in a dimed-out Olds Cutlass at 85 MPH, but quite a bit more challenging when you’re behind the wheel of a Formula One car doing 150-plus.
Accelerating the speed at which search results are indexed and served up by search engines similarly challenges the ability to respond to erroneous or purposely malicious results. I posted earlier about Google News being the test bed for Google’s future search offerings, it’s only fitting that the fastest index part of the Googleverse should also be a testing ground for future Black Hat trickery.
Web 2.0 Expo: Real Time Comes to Analytics with Chartbeat
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 2, 2009 | Share This
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We’ve been beating the drum for a while now about the concept of real time search, especially as Search 3.0 ushers in more real time interactions like twittering which find their way into traditional search engine results and drive traffic to non-social media sites. The one place that continues to lag woefully behind this movement is web analytics.Using typical analytics tools to determine what’s happening on your website or blog in real time is like driving down the street while only using your rear-view mirrors to see. 9 out of 10 times you’ll hit that neighbor kid on a skateboard. And they’re usually on the sidewalk. I know - I’ve tried it. (more…)
Search News: Welcome to Search 3.0
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 30, 2009 | Share This
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Sometimes the world is like a Chuck Close painting: standing up close allows patterns and colors to be discerned, but it’s only by taking several steps back that what seems abstract congeals into a recognizable set of strikingly realistic features. Right now, that’s the way the world of search and social media feel – we all know that they are converging, and we all know that they affect each other, but it’s difficult to actually wrap our heads around what this will look like from a marketing point of view – let alone as users.
In Advertising Age’s latest Digital Issue, Reprise Media Managing Partner Peter Hershberg does the equivalent of taking three big steps back in the museum and reports on what he sees. What he reveals is something that we like to call Search 3.0 and it’s not just where search and social media are right now – it’s where it’s going in the future.
Advertising: Why Super Banners are Lame and Publishers are Perishing (Even Online)
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 10, 2009 | Share This
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When people don’t pay attention to me I like to get up in their faces and SCREAM REALLY LOUDLY. What gets me is that they run away and avoid me after that – sometimes they never come back. OK, fair enough, I don’t actually scream in people’s faces, unless I’m doing my favorite scene from Full Metal Jacket at office happy hours.
So if a reasonable person (and I like to think I am one) wouldn’t expect to scream and wave their arms in people’s faces and say “HellOOOOO Loook at MEEE!” and expect to keep any friends, why do 27 major online publishers think that doing the advertising equivalent of the same will answer their monetary prayers?
Search News: Don’t Be Fooled by the Noise of Volume
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 3, 2009 | Share This
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Someone owes me a beer. Last month I read a post on Nielsen Online Research’s blog, the headline of which was “Online Vehicle Shopping Increases, Underscores Potential for Increased Sales.” I leapt from my desk chair and screamed “I’ll bet any of you a beer that sales go down.” Then I wiped the spittle from my lip.
Granted this was an easy bet to make – the auto industry as a whole has been suffering from month over month decreases. So why was Nielsen so all-fired sure that sales would increase? Site traffic, plain and simple.
Social Media: Facebook, Tumblr Switch Channels
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Written By Noah Mallin | February 18, 2009 | Share This
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Facebook learned a lesson in both how to and how not to engage with their community over the last few days. By changing their Terms of Service (TOS) quietly in a way that highlights the permanent nature of sharing information and posting items online, they riled up their users and the blogosphere. They have since reverted back to the old TOS and opened up a forum for users suggestions and comments about how their content should be used.
Reprise Media Managing Partner Joshua Stylman shared his take on this in a post for Advertising Age’s Digital Next column. He makes a number of important points there but I want to highlight one line in particular that should be taken to heart by anyone engaging in search and social media marketing (and indeed any online marketing):
“Regardless of your individual perspective, the one certainty is that there has never been a lower barrier to produce and distribute content for others to see. With that emerges a new responsibility for people (and companies as well) to think about their own digital footprint.”
When I spoke to Josh about this he elaborated in a way I found striking – saying (and I’m paraphrasing here) that we operate online as our own media channels now – from a corporate level right on down to the individual.