Last.fm struggles for streaming, international revenue

Last.fm struggles for streaming, international revenue

Last.fm is struggling to generate revenue in some parts of the world, so a couple of changes to the CBS subsidiary's service should help—although users are predictably none too happy. International users will soon be required to purchase a subscription, and so will third-party app users. Growing pains have arrived for the leaders in music streaming.

Music streaming community Last.fm has made some important changes to its services with the intention of generating revenue. The struggling ad market has forced the CBS subsidiary to require subscriptions in many international markets, and streaming to third-party apps is now being restricted to subscribers. The honeymoon of "free" streaming music appears to be ending.

As announced on Last.fm's blog, the company will soon require most international users to purchase a monthly subscription to use Last.fm Radio. Users in the US, UK, and Germany are excluded, but all others will need to begin paying €3.00 per month on Monday, March 30 if they hope to keep rocking out. Last.fm boasts a global user base of 30 million monthly users (double what it was just a year ago) and, as you might guess, many of them have already expressed dissatisfaction over no longer having free access to the company's seven million tracks.

Last.fm used its forums to let users know that the company is also changing the rules for third-party streaming apps. First, only subscribers will be able to stream music via these apps unless developers negotiate something directly with Last.fm. The obvious justification for this rule is that the company "need[s] to get the money to cover royalties," the forum post reads.

The second new rule for third-party apps is that they will not be able to stream to mobile phones or, perhaps more accurately in this 21st-century gadget landscape, over cellular networks. Last.fm blames this on limitations in its licensing agreements, though it may be able to "make an exception" if developers plead their case. But, unless those developers act fast, unofficial apps for Windows Mobile, Symbian, and BlackBerry will stop working next week. Last.fm's official clients for iPhone and Android will reportedly continue to work without requiring a subscription.

Third-party apps that allow users to "scrobble" (or share, in mundane English) information with Last.fm about music played in various media players will "always be free," and this is no surprise. Collecting information about community and user behavior is a business model in and of itself for companies like Last.fm.

Naturally, all manner of complaints have been lodged in the comment threads, with many saying that Last.fm has sold out and willingly destroyed "thousands of free development hours." On the road to generating revenue out of a "free" service, though, these bridges sometimes need to get burned. Since CBS acquired Last.fm for $280 million in 2007, it has been looking for a way to boost the music streaming community's profitability. In December, 20 percent of Last.fm's staff was let go. While the company does not elaborate how its users are distributed, its US and UK operations are presumably still generating enough revenue (via ads and optional subscriptions) to avoid imposing this requirement—at least for now.

Licensing seven million tracks is no small financial feat. Even Pandora, a streaming music competitor, took a page from traditional radio's book in January this year and introduced ads that run in between songs. All things considered, it may simply be time for costly Deep Web services to start exploring other business models more aggressively.

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Twitter weird: a half dozen oddball Twitter experiences

Here at Ars, we all use Twitter and not just because it's a kind of virtual pub, but because as a communication tool it sits in between immediate and long-term: it's far more in-the-moment than e-mail or blogs, yet it's more enduring than instant messaging or IRC. You can talk now with whomever is listening, and your tweets provide a breadcrumb trail of your life that anyone can catch up with at any time.

So Twitter is a lot of things, and often, it's just plain weird. That's because with gadzillions of utterances from its users and a robust API, developers were bound to build on the service and create new ways to use it. Some of these Twitter add-ons are fabulous and useful; many are not. Here are our six favorite Twitter oddities: strange ways that people have chosen to interact with Twitter.

Transform Twitter into Poetry

For those with a romantic heart, Twistori transforms the public Twitter timeline into a real-time poem. Select from "I love", "I hate", "I think", I believe", "I feel", and "I wish" to create a constantly updated (and beautifully styled) free-verse creation. Twistori converts random tweets into a pulsing themed presentation. Like most poetry, the results are not nearly as deep or poignant as they could be, but like all art, the test is in the observer not the creator.

Rock out to other people's bad day

If Twistori sets out to elevate tweets to the Art House, CurseBird aims squarely at the Burlesque show. CurseBird tracks a real-time feed of tweets as people swear on Twitter. Yes, it's exactly what that promises: you can view people cursing at each other, at the world, or at themselves with automatic updates. It's pretty hilarious and tends to cherry pick strongly emotional tweets--particularly those of people dealing with the daily challenges of waiting at Airports and dealing with the DMV. Visiting CurseBird can be greatly satisfying, assuring you that other people are having worse days than you.

Listening to laundry

Imagine if you will, a twitter account tied to a washing machine. It posts only when it has finished its load. Now imagine that there are over five hundred people willing to subscribe to this twitter feed. It's not your imagination, it's PiMPY3WASH. With what is probably the most insanely boring feed ever produced, someone has actually done this. Here's the video proof. (The sound was apparently removed for copyright violations but you can pretty well follow along without.)

I wish I could qwitter you

More and more, people tend to measure their Twitter prowess by obsessively counting their followers. Now, you can take that obsession to an entire new level. With Qwitter, you receive e-mails whenever someone stops following you on Twitter. You can then @reply them (once they stop following you can no longer DM them) and harass or woo them into returning to the fold. Why not set a new legal precedent and become the first person cited in a Twitter-related restraining order?

Pretend you're tweeting when you're really not

Sometimes real life sometimes intrudes onto Twitter time. Services like FutureTweets and TweetLater let you schedule tweets for later. These free services let you write your tweets and add a posting date and time. It's handy for pretending to be at work or just making people think that you tweet around the clock, psyching them out with your twit-fu. But who are we to judge.

Bring Twitter into IRC

For those of us who never really left the 1980's, the Twitter IRC Daemon transforms Twitter into an IRC channel. With it, you can connect to the daemon with any IRC client, join #twitter and update your status by, well, just typing and pressing return. Your friends' statuses will update on-channel and your @replies will appear as personal messages. It's the future meeting the present meeting the past meeting geeks.

Find more on deep web search

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Apple Co-founder Lends His Skills to Deep Web Search

MARCH 24, 2009 – Sunnyvale, CALIF — DeepDyve, the research engine for the Deep Web, today announced that Steve Wozniak has joined the company's Advisory Board. In this role he will advise on technology trends and user experience. As co-founder of Apple Inc., Wozniak's engineering skills led to innovations that redefined the boundaries of personal computing. As a member of the Advisory Board, he brings that same vision and creativity to DeepDyve, a company that is changing the way people conduct research on the Internet.

"The Deep Web holds an almost limitless wealth of data, yet most of that information is collecting dust because nobody's come up with a way to mine the data in a way that's useful to researchers and consumers," said Wozniak. "DeepDyve's search technology is a breakthrough compared to the traditional keyword search that we know today. The company has the potential to transform Deep Web search, and I'm excited to help bring about that transformation."

For years, researchers and other information-savvy individuals have tried in vain to use the Deep Web for research purposes, yet an estimated 99.8% of the Internet is still hidden from many of today's search engines. To address this problem, DeepDyve developed its KeyPhraseTM technology, enabling its users to type in a few words, or copy an entire article as their query and find all related articles from only the best sources in the Deep Web. Whether someone is a professional researcher or simply a consumer who wants and expects a more powerful form of search, DeepDyve is the solution for those who want to access expert content previously hidden in the Deep Web.

"Steve's place in the history of computing is already well established. But what sets him apart is his passion for technology and his commitment to mentoring and fostering the next generation of technology companies," said William Park, CEO of DeepDyve. "We're honored that Steve has chosen to work with DeepDyve, and we're excited about the strides that we'll make together."

In addition to his participation at DeepDyve, Wozniak maintains various business and philanthropic interests, and has been especially involved in supporting elementary education initiatives local to the Silicon Valley. Most recently, Wozniak has been a competitor and fan favorite on ABC's Dancing With The Stars.

About DeepDyve

DeepDyve, formerly known as Infovell, is the research engine for the Deep Web. DeepDyve unlocks the vast and rich collection of information that is out on the web, but is hidden from today's search engines. Using DeepDyve, people find the in-depth, high-quality information they need to answer tough research questions. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, with offices in Shanghai, China.

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Setting Expectations for Search Engine Optimization

How many SEOs have suffered because of unrealistic expectations from clients? Sure, there are times when an aggressive commissioned salesperson can get you into situations that are difficult to overcome. But, how many of you actually spent the time before any agreement was signed and before a check was cut to have a very frank and sincere discussion with your client about what they can expect from your efforts?

Not just the "rah rah...SEO rocks!" discussion. The one that involves telling a client how much work is truly involved on their part, as well as the agency's, in making the effort a success.

How many times, when it came time to renew an agreement, did the client forget about all of that and tell you that they were disappointed in the program? This is what just happened to me.

Case Study

Twelve months ago, a client approached my company. The client told me that they had enough cash to last another six months, but then their business was in serious jeopardy of going out of business. They had read my columns, and felt like they needed a SEO expert to help save their business.

As I do with all prospects, we discussed expectations. I told them candidly that we would make recommendations for additional content, but it was up to their team to generate the content (we would edit for SEO purposes). The monthly fees were $6,000 per month and based upon a 12-month agreement.

These fees are about average for firms that provide our level of service. I realize that rates will fluctuate wildly among firms and individuals (I've seen monthly rates from $150 to $20,000).

My company did exactly what our agreement said that we would do, and more. We:

• Optimized their on-page elements (title tags, description tags, headers, internal linking, content, sitemap, etc.).
• Introduced them to blogging.
• Promoted their blog through pretty extensive social media marketing.
• Obtained many high quality links for their Web site.
• Gave them a design refresh to help with conversion rates, and only asked that they either pay us to develop this, or that they use another resource to do the actual Web development (they never implemented).
• Ensured that their analytics were tracking everything correctly from the beginning and set up Google Webmaster Tools correctly.

Flash Forward to Today

"We are very disappointed in your services," the client tells us. "We know that you know the industry. We are only asking, 'Why didn't you do what's necessary for us?'"

My immediate thought was, "You have got to be kidding me."

We increased their organic search traffic by more than 1,700 percent. I can't be as precise with the increase in backlinks (we didn't have Google Webmaster Tools installed at the very beginning), but if you looked at the number of backlinks indexed in Google at the beginning of our engagement via the [link:www.example.com] operator, you would have seen 31 backlinks indexed in Google. Today, Google Webmaster Tools shows more than 1,200 backlinks.

The client actually said that we've done "nothing" to move them up in the rankings or to generate links to their deep Web site.

"If we've done nothing, as you say, then how do you explain the 1,700 percent increase in organic search traffic?" I had to ask.

"Well, we wrote all of the content," they said.

Well, of course they did. We told them they would have to do that before signing an agreement and before any checks were cut. We also optimized all of that content.

Not to mention, we also introduced them to blogging and promoted your posts. That 1,700 percent increase in organic traffic doesn't even include the amount of traffic that they received from our promotion of their blog posts through our extensive social media marketing efforts.

We Haven't Done Our Job? What?

How can they say that they're "nowhere" in the search results?

Their answer: "We are not ranking for our two most important keyword phrases."

Oh. My. God.

The keyword phrases they referred to are extremely competitive. Web sites that buy a huge amount of links dominate the rankings for these phrases. We estimate that these Web sites are spending anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000 per month in link buys.

Also, these sites have had thousands of pages of content for quite some time. Our client had fewer than 100 pages indexed when we started.

For one of the two "most important keywords," the conversion rate was 8.70 percent when we had it ranking (it was number four for a few weeks and then bounced away; we expect it to return, with more work). So, I'm not denying the value of this keyword. It's a "head" keyword and has a significant number of searches performed against it.

However, the other "long tail" keywords are converting, too (anywhere from 0 percent, as many keywords will do, to 33.33 percent). There's also something to be said for the added exposure and the increase in direct traffic (people typing in their branded keywords or company name to find them).

To our client's credit, they did what we recommended. They aggressively added content. Without their assistance seeing things through, our efforts wouldn't have been successful.

Measuring Success

I'm sharing this with you, dear readers, because I'm certain that many of you have faced similar circumstances. It's very possible (likely?) that we won't be working with this client much longer (if we can't get on the same page).

To me, if you help a company who was on their way out of business, to now expanding and opening another office, that's success. Their investment was worth every penny, and then some.

Last April, they had just over 4,000 organic search visits for the month. In February, they had more than 54,000 organic search visits. From February 13 to March 15, they received 63,814 visits via organic search. Their average CPC (when they were doing PPC) was $2 per click.

I won't argue about the precise value comparison, but 50,000 times $2 equals $100,000. Some might say that $6,000 per month is starting to look really cheap. And, this isn't "crap" traffic. As I said, their business is growing.

I welcome every SEO out there to post comments below with your thoughts on this column. Have you had similar experiences? Perhaps I'll even direct my (former?) client to this piece.

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Mix 09: Microsoft Improves Web Development Tools

Microsoft showed off improved Web development and design software Wednesday at its Mix Web developer conference, including a rapid Web application prototyping feature in Expression Blend and a browser compatibility feature in Expression Web.

Expression Web 3, the next version of Microsoft's Web development software, will include a feature called SuperPreview, which allows Web developers to see how their Web pages look in multiple browsers, even ones they don' t currently have installed. Super Preview uses a cloud service to help with that, and can therefore show developers writing Web pages on Windows what their sites will look like in various Mac browsers as well.

SuperPreview will support at least Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer, as the demonstration Wednesday showed. It will potentially compete with an application Adobe has under development called Meer Meer.

In SuperPreview -- a standalone version of which that supports only Internet Explorer is available now -- developers can overlay different browser views over the control version of their layout to immediately identify any differences. In the overlay, developers will be able to see key information on site elements to help them diagnose problems. However, user interaction will not show up in SuperPreview because the preview is static. That could limit SuperPreview's usability in a day where more and more Web sites are becoming highly dynamic. Expression Web 3 also will add support for PHP and better CSS diagnostics.

Expression Blend 3, Microsoft's rich deep Web application design software, includes a feature called SketchFlow that allows Web designers to rapidly prototype rich Web applications. Specifically, SketchFlow lets designers create sketches and even working mock-ups of application workflows and behaviors without doing any coding.

That way, clients, business managers and others can see what a site will look like and how it will act earlier in the development process than in the past, while developers and designers can experiment with different ideas and bounce them off clients throughout the development process.

"[SketchFlow] fundamentally shifts the way you build apps, and the way the agency and the designer collaborate," Brian Goldfarb, director of developer platform and tools at Microsoft, said in an interview. "Today, the prototyping process starts with ideation and to completion, there are about six steps in between. This actually combines those middle steps into a cohesive unit."

For now, SketchFlow will only be available as part of Expression Blend, though clients will be able to view prototypes without Expression software. That limits its use to .Net and Silverlight apps. Goldfarb racked this up to the fact that designers tend to prototype richer experiences more often than HTML, but if that were the case, SketchFlow also appears to be a feature that Flash and Ajax designers could appreciate.

The next version of Expression Blend will also allow designers to import Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files and will add XAML, C# and Visual Basic IntelliSense support for those who want to do some heavier coding.

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Asset Managers Must Use Web for Cost-Effective Distribution

Asset managers must find a way to distribute more costeffectively, according to a new report from asset management consultant kasina.

Due to a combination of market performance and outflows, assets under management at many firms have fallen 35% or more, and revenues have fallen in concert.

The days of 3040% margins are over, and the firms that find a way to sell by using inexpensive and scalable resources, such as the advisor Web site, to reduce their dependence on expensive wholesaling forces, will be betterpositioned for profitability in coming years, kasina noted.

In its latest study, "Using the deep Web for Cost-Effective Distribution, kasina said advisors that use a firm's Web site sell at least 25% more than advisors that do not. Looking at the firms that scored well, kasina identified the three potential areas of highest value to be interactive and comprehensive product information, timely commentary and insight and action-oriented business-building support. In today's environment, wholesalers must maximize their time spent in truly consultative roles with the "right" advisors, and by integrating the Web site into the overall sales strategy, a firm can accomplish this goal, kasina said.

"While firms are currently struggling to think of cost-effective solutions, the Web clearly needs to be an integral part of the discussion. Those who aren't thinking about it are likely to be leaving money on the table," says Mike Ma, principal at kasina.

"In our research, we've found that most wholesaling organizations are under-utilizing the Web site, and this presents a potential low-cost, competitive advantage," added Lindsay Geimer, senior consultant at kasina and lead author of the study.

"Given current economic conditions and the distribution challenges our industry is facing, firms should take time now to consider how they can integrate online and offline sales efforts to increase efficiencies."

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Divining the Future of Professional Media in a Web 2.0 World

For years we have been hearing about disintermediation. Banks were disintermediated in the 1970s by brokers, brokers were disintermediated by online brokers, active funds by passive funds, passive funds by ETFs, and on and on. The banking, brokerage and wealth management worlds have been going through some stage of eating one another's lunch since time began. This is about as shocking as the sun rising in the east.

But while disintermediation has always been a mainstay of the finance business, we are now seeing traditional media crumpling under the weight of the ubiquitous Internet. For example, the Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News and the San Francisco Chronicle all either are in or close to bankruptcy.

And it is not only the newspapers -- it's all advertising-driven content. As the economy sours and advertisers are bruised, magazines and broadcast television are also threatened as cable splinters viewership, content is increasingly downloadable, interactive games siphon teens, and technology makes it easier for folks both to work longer and to be more distracted.

So what does the destruction of professional media mean for an industry focused on high-speed, accurate and intelligent information? Do we really only need three newspapers, two market data companies and two broadcast financial news organizations? Is a new media needed as the business model devolves and the content fragments?

The Value of Content

While our industry certainly understands the value of content, we, too, are bombarded by messages, as everyone today can be a publisher. Distribution tools make it easy to get your message to the market, as e-mail, instant messaging, GPS, blogs, YouTube, Facebook and now Twitter can track your every move, thought and burp.

How will this evolution change what you read? How will it change how content is aggregated and delivered, if you will pay for it, and how it is protected? And perhaps most important, how will it change whom you can trust? All of these questions need to be answered before a new business model can be developed.

Certainly content drives media. But how it is monetized drives the quality, its producers and its distributors.

For music and books, we have seen form drive adoption. The iPod and the Kindle are changing the face of music and publishing. Music is downloadable by the drink, and books no longer need to be printed. Gone are records, CDs and tapes that clutter the house, and while books continue to do well, think of students carrying a 10-ounce Kindle instead of a 50-pound backpack -- the impact is sure to be significant.

But what does it all mean to financial markets and the developers of financial content?

The Value of Brand

While content is king, brand is increasingly critical. More and more the consistency, clarity, value, support and brand behind content will dictate what firms buy. As content originates from anywhere and everywhere, we need to know whom to trust and how it is biased.

Delivery and integration will also be key. Our media products say "Bloomberg" and "Thomson Reuters," not "iPod" or "Kindle." But is there a market for a new device, a new distribution channel or a new way to integrate content into our daily workflow -- be it a data feed, an algorithmically digestible news product, a better news browser, or a better way to aggregate and search for content in the deep Web?

While I wish I knew which products will win and who will survive, the answers to these questions are increasingly difficult to discern and surely in flux. Just as the iPod disintermediated the major record labels and the Kindle looks to change publishing, the models for advertising-driven content (i.e., newspapers, magazines and broadcast television) are changing, and the person who can answer "What's next?" will have the keys to launch a very interesting, innovative and rewarding business -- a business with many zeros as part of its bottom line.

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Outsource Web Development Services - Save web development cost up to 50%

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Some Facts of Search Engine Optimization

Optimization process of web sites or web pages for search engines to get higher ranking in organic searches by targeted keywords called SEO. It is the technique to understand the algorithms of search engines.

With the evaluation of search engines, optimizations for websites take position in the world of organic results. It is a continuous process of making websites informative, relevant and easy for users as well as search engines.

To get a web page in higher ranking it is necessary to optimize that web page by relevant keywords and content. There are some process and facts of search engine optimization to get web page in right position by the right keywords.

At 1st market deep web research is the basic aspect of search engine optimization. Market research includes competitor research, keywords research, theme research, content research along with site synopsis research.

Content of web page known as king so, content should be fresh, unique, informative and useful. According to the web page there should be a unique content, short and meaningful title including targeted keywords. Keywords prominences should be in right way in the title, h1 and within contents.

Inclusion of robots.txt file and sitemaps are the necessary aspects for any web sites. Interlinking creates a stronger position for a web page by targeted keywords.

All these things includes in on-page SEO while there is off-page optimization also in search engine optimization. Most of the web pages are getting higher ranking because of huge back links by related theme. To create back links for a web page there are many aspects like – link exchange, directory submission, article posting, forum posting, blogging etc.

Back links of a web page make that stronger for search engines. Another aspect in SEO includes SMO. After the web 2.0 revaluation Social Media Optimization in online marketing took place very strongly.

SMO is the way of deriving visitors by social media, social sites, news sites and through viral marketing. It is the facts of technological development in search marketing.

Gian Brett is an expert writer of various subjects. He has written many articles on SEO and Web Design also.

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Mastering Internet Marketing in 2009

In the tough year that 2009 is turning out to be for hoteliers, it is crucial to know where every marketing dollar is being spent.

When reevaluating marketing plans – as most of you have had to do this year - hoteliers also need to consider whether or not they should shift marketing dollars from offline to the more measurable online initiatives, what their peers are doing, and how they can evolve with the industry without wasting valuable dollars on unproven tactics.

How are hoteliers budgeting for their Internet marketing this year? Are they focusing on Web 2.0/Social Media initiatives in this recession? What percentage of business should be coming from your website?

In the 3rd Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices in Hospitality, HeBS set out to answer these questions and identify trends in online marketing in hospitality. The purpose of the survey was to assess hoteliers’ 2009 Internet marketing priorities and strategies in order to compare with the responses received last year, and to provide the industry with insights on how internet marketing strategies for the hospitality industry are developing.

Who Participated in this Survey?

The survey experienced global participation, with almost half of respondents from the US and Western Europe. Hospitality executives included general managers (20.6%), sales and marketing directors (49.6%), e-commerce managers (13%), and revenue managers (29.8%).

The full spectrum of hospitality and travel verticals are represented in this survey, including boutique hotels, upscale hotels, budget, mid-scale and luxury franchised properties, major brands, real estate groups, resorts, hotel management companies, casinos, and more. Most participants were hoteliers from independent properties; however there was a heavy influence this year of franchise/hotel brand hoteliers.

Main Findings from the 3rd Benchmark Survey

Hoteliers strongly believe that Internet marketing produces the best results. We asked hoteliers whether they thought Internet marketing, traditional marketing, or a mix of both produces better results and 55.7% said Internet marketing (up from 49.2% in the 08 survey and 37.7% in the 07 survey). Hoteliers are right on target as the online channel will be the only growth channel in hospitality in 2009-2010.

Even in this current economic environment, 63% plan to increase their Internet marketing budget in 09 - and a majority of hoteliers are planning on raising their online budget more than 15%. A larger percentage of respondents this year (33%) will be keeping their 09 budget at 08 levels. Where is the money coming from for hoteliers that are increasing their Internet marketing budget? Fifty-three percent of respondents are shifting money from offline marketing budgets.

In the 2009 survey, we introduced ‘the economic environment’ as one of the multiple choice options when we asked hoteliers what factors they will consider in planning their 2009 budget. Not surprisingly, 81.6% of respondents said that the economy will affect their budget planning for 09. We also saw that ‘what my peers are doing’ and ‘industry averages’ had less of an influence on hotel budget planning this year.

The types of Web 2.0 marketing initiatives planned for 09 vary greatly from 07 and 08. In previous years, hoteliers selected Surveys and Comment cards as the Web 2.0 initiatives they were planning. This year, hoteliers selected advertising on Social Media sites (i.e. TripAdvisor), creating profiles on social networks and a blog on the hotel website.

Almost half of all respondents believe their property does NOT conform to industry’s best practices in terms of Internet marketing. While hoteliers are getting more educated about the direct online channel, many of them do not have the internal resources, bandwidth or knowledge to deal effectively with this highly dynamic field.

This year, hoteliers overwhelmingly responded that they thought website optimization produced the best results and the highest ROIs (81.6%). Search optimization – organic deep web search was next at 60.9%. Indeed, both website and search optimizations are the most-cost effective initiatives for hoteliers in this economy.

This year, 85.6% of franchise/major brand hoteliers respondents said they did not find there to be major restrictions in online marketing due to brand restrictions. This percentage is increasing over the years (81.8% in 2008 and 76.2% in 2006) as more and more franchisees embrace best practices and launch local Internet marketing initiatives that complement their brand efforts.

The percentage of hoteliers who are participating in Paid Search increased from 50% in 2008 to 59.8% in 2009. The use of Meta search and local search is also increasing year after year. Also, Web 2.0 Paid Search (e.g. TripAdvisor) was big this year as 32% of respondents are spending marketing dollars on this initiative. These responses are in par with industry practices and show that hoteliers are aware that as much as 60%-80% of traffic and bookings on hotel websites originate from the search engines.

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Search Engine Marketing Is Cannibalizing Print Media

Spending on search engine marketing (SEM) in North America is expected to hit $26 billion by 2013, as the industry continues to grow and SEM and search engine optimization (SEO) become deeply embedded in marketers’ advertising strategies, according to the 2008 annual survey and forecast from the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO).

The new 2008 report estimates industry spending in 2008 at $13.5 billion, and forecasts spending to reach $14.7 billion in 2009, $16.7 billion in 2010 and $19.8 billion in 2011. These projections have been revised downward from the 2007 report to reflect the current state of the economy. (Click charts to enlarge.)

SEMPO previously predicted the industry would grow from $15.7 billion in 2008 to $18.8 billion in 2009. Despite the downward corrections, the report predicts an upswing in spending as the economy recovers in 2011 and as marketers become more interested in new search-targeting technologies, such as “search retargeting.”

“The State of Search Engine Marketing 2008″ study, conducted by Radar Research, also reveals that SEM is currently poaching budget money from other, mostly traditional media, but that this cannibalization appears to be leveling off as new budget dollars get allocated to SEM.

The report provides key details about the search engine marketing industry size, where spending is being directed and key industry trends, as well as a spending analysis for 2008 by tactic and spending forecast for 2008 to 2013.

Key findings are detailed below.

Industry Spend: $13B and Growing

The 2008 report forecasts that North American spending on SEM for 2008 will total more than $13.4 billion.

• The bulk of spending (88%, or $11.9 billion) will be spent on paid placement.
• 91% of advertisers say they engage in organic search engine optimization (SEO), which will account for approximately 11% of overall spending, or over $1.4 billion.

• The market for SEM technologies, including leasing, agency solutions and in-house development, will account for 1.1% of overall spending, or $141 million.

Factors that are less predictable that may affect the growth of the SEM industry include the overall effect of the recession and the impact of potential consolidation among the major players Yahoo, Microsoft, Time Warner and Google, SEMPO said.

Google Reigns as Market Leader

The gap between the unquestionably dominant Google (GOOG) and other deep web search engines continues to widen. Today, nearly every engine marketer (98%) is advertising with Google AdWords, while the number of campaigns on Yahoo (YHOO) and MSN (MSFT) search engines are declining:

• In 2006, more than 4 out of every 5 advertisers (86%) ran campaigns on Yahoo Sponsored Search, but that number dropped to 70% in 2007 and in 2008 fell to 68%.
• MSN remains in third place, behind Google and Yahoo, with 54% of respondents running campaigns on Live Search by MSN, consistent with 2007.

Branding & Direct Sales Top Objectives

Consistent with previous years’ findings, respondents report their primary objectives for paid SEM spending are increased brand awareness (63%) and direct sales (61%). More than half of respondents (56%) are also trying to generate leads they will close (as opposed to the 14% who are trying to generate leads for sales a dealer or distributor will close), and 44% report they are trying to drive traffic to an ad-supported site.

Despite the emphasis on branding as a top objective, advertisers are using standard web performance metics to gauge success, while just 21% use more sophisticated measurement methods to track or measure branding impact. The overwhelming majority (75%) track increased traffic volume, 73% measure conversion rates, and 70% track click-through rates.

SEMPO notes that for the most part, advertisers are still extremely focused on immediate, demonstrable ROI rather than longer-term metrics such as branding, site stickiness, or correlating search behavior to other advertising programs such as TV advertising.

SEM Poaching Budget from Traditional Media

The study also reveals that SEM efforts are poaching budget from other media, especially offline marketing channels. Though this has been the case for the last two years, it represents a pronounced shift from 2005 when budget was moved from online media such as web development and affiliate marketing.

There is also a shift in terms of what budgets are cannibalized in favor of SEM. More than one-quarter of advertisers report they are shifting budget away from print magazines, and another 21% say budget is being shifted from direct mail. Rounding out the trend toward cannibalizing print, 19% of advertisers report they are shifting budget from their print newspaper advertising.

SEMPO also predicts that advertisers will be far more cautious about their spending in 2009 than in previous years. In 2007, two-thirds of advertisers said they would increase their spending on paid placement campaigns in 2008. Now, just over half of advertisers plan to increase their spending in 2009. Additionally, almost a third expect to spend the same as last year, a jump from 18% who reported they planned on spending the same in 2007. Yet despite the increased cautiousness, only 14% of advertisers claim they plan on spending less in 2009 than they did in 2008.

Satisfaction with SEM Agencies Up

Though uncertain economic times might logically breed increasing dissatisfaction with agency performance, the study found that this is not the case. More than half of respondents (54%) report they were either “very” or “moderately” happy with their SEM agencies for paid placement campaigns, an increase from 2007 (when 42% percent were happy with their agencies) and from 2006 (33%).

Behavioral Targeting Most Attractive

Marketers are most attracted to SEM targeting based on behavior, with three-quarters of advertisers willing to bid more for clicks targeted to in-market consumers.

Additionally, search retargeting based on behavior is still in its infancy but interest is growing.

About the survey: SEMPO contracted with Radar Research, Inc and Intellisurvey to conduct an industry-wide survey among advertisers during December 2008 and January 2009. In total 890 respondents completed the survey. North American firms (US and Canada) made up three-quarters of all respondents. Respondents from other countries included Argentina, Australia, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden. SEMPO notes that stabilizing year-over-year figures indicate that the search engine marketing market is reaching relative maturity.

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Rev up the Search Engines

Your web startup needs to cut through the clutter and reel in customers, and search engine optimization (SEO) can be just the ticket. SEO helps improve your search rankings so your website shows up higher on Google, Yahoo and other popular search engines. "SEO is really [fundamental]. It should be a line item when you're developing your website," says Greg Bozigian, founder and chief media officer of new media marketing company Visionary View.

Know Your Tools

You'll hear a lot of jargon around SEO. This glossary will keep you in the know.

: Using unethical SEO techniques to boost rankings. Can result in the banning or penalizing of a site by search engines
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: Using keywords over and over again in an attempt to artificially inflate your search rankings

: Nonpaid methods of SEO that naturally boost your deep web search engine rankings

: A paid search approach to SEO that lets you buy ads on search engines. Usually used in conjunction with organic SEOSearch engine marketing (SEM): A blanket term for paid and organic search optimization methods

SEO is about attracting quality leads and buyers ready to make a purchase. Here are six tips for getting the most out of an SEO initiative, according to SEO expert Steve Wiideman:

1. It can take up to six months for competitive search terms to see results through Google.

2. Make a list of the top 20 search keywords relevant to your business and create content that's thematically linked with those terms.

3. Search engines have gotten smart enough to weed that out.

4. The magic formula is relevance and popularity. Having a well-written and well-structured website is a big part of the battle. Mentions and links from bloggers and other websites can be a big boost as well.

5. How do you measure SEO? . A good SEO expert can actually measure the amount of traffic that results in a lead or in somebody making a purchase.

6. If you choose to work with an SEO consultant, If he or she tries to guarantee you an instant No. 1 ranking in Google, run the other way.

Creating useful content like articles, blogs, forums, metatags, page titles, item descriptions and YouTube videos will help keep your SEO initiative going for the long run. Plan to roll out your SEO strategy over time, tweak it as needed and look beyond keywords to see the big picture.

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Website Promotion for Business Success

(NewDesignWorld Press Release Center) -- There is no use having a colorful website which does not enjoy good ranking in leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN or AltaVista. If you are really aiming to improve your sales and increase your revenue through your online business, what is important is to have a search engine friendly website. Web site optimization techniques can help a lot in improving your website rankings. A website which is appropriately optimized definitely receives increased traffic and accordingly, increased sales and profit.

For availing of the best search engine placement and marketing services, it is wise to seek the assistance of competent companies that offer natural SEO services. Moreover, many of them are offering their services at reasonable service charges. The major web site promotion services offered by such companies include:

• Analysis of the site
• Research of keywords
• Creation of web contents
• Meta tag optimization
• Building of reciprocal links
• Submission of articles
• Creation of blogs
• Pay per click advertising
• Maintaining ranking reports
• Directory submission
• Optimization of HTML codes
• Submission to search engines

If you are serious about your business and you wish to reach to a large audience through your website then the key to success is a web promotional tool. Web promotional programs are customizable and so it can be designed to work in various ways based on the type of site you have. Site promotion is something that brings life to your business. It is not limited to only one promotion tool because a tool that seems to be working for you today may not be that beneficial after few days. It is better not to settle simply with one tool. You can try one each month and learn, develop and implement it to see dramatic improvements in the site visitation.

Web designing can be considered as the best promotional tool for your site. It is predicted that there are about three seconds to convince your viewers. The consumers are not willing to read the details but at the same time they want instant and full access to your offerings. Web design is a vital tool in the promotional puzzle. Your content should be appealing, fresh and at the same time be informative. If your site looks maladroit and incomplete the consumers will not stick around it. Design and function of a website is the foundation from which all promotional tools spring. Your site promotion strategies can be improved through the use of visual arts.

As an experienced web site promotion consultant I have been surprised to learn that more than half the struggle in getting started comes with having to convince business owners that they need to actively promote their web site. I was probably naive to think all I had to do what tell people I was 'out there' and they would come flocking to my business in droves.

Search engine optimization and web promotion in general has evolved as the deep web search engines have created more sophisticated ways of judging the value of a web page. Having a beautiful web site that is designed to capture the visitors attention and answer a call to action is a complete waste of time if no one searching the web can find it.

Paying to have a business web site built merely so you can give the URL of the site to your customers so they can go and see how pretty it looks is a complete waste of time and money. Your web site should be a work horse, tirelessly working to attract visitors. And those visitors should be 'targeted' shoppers -people who are actively looking for your goods and services on the internet. Unless your business name is already a household word with most of your target market, chances are no one will ever get to see your web site unless you are actively promoting it.

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5 Tips to Help Your Website Compete

RISMEDIA, March 14, 2009-As real estate professionals who want to make a success of our Internet presence, we should know some of the terminology. But, we should also know how to concentrate our time and efforts on what’s important when it comes to tracking visits to, and activity on, our websites. These two goals go hand-in-hand when it comes to sorting out website traffic statistics. Let’s look at some terms and see how we want to use these site traffic statistics.

Hits - This one has been around since the beginning, and you’ll still hear a great many people say things like “How do I get more hits on my website?” The truth is, you really shouldn’t look at hit count for any meaningful measure of what’s happening on your site.

A “hit” is a file sent to a browser by a Web server. If you have text and 10 images on a page, the stats will record 11 hits for every time that page loads in a browser. That’s because each image is a hit. Twenty images, 21 hits. As you can see, this doesn’t tell us anything valuable at all. So, hearing someone bragging about 20,000 hits a day doesn’t tell you how many visitors were there, or how many pages they viewed, only files downloaded.

Visits - Each time a user comes into a site, it is recorded as a visit. One user may visit a site several times in one day. In real estate, they may be coming in at different times of the day to search for listings. Obviously, the more visits your site gets, the more likely you are to generate business from it.

Visitors - There are a great many statistics measurement software and online solutions out there. But, they all definitely measure visitors, as this is a very important metric for your future success. Properly recorded, you’ll only show one visitor count if the same visitor enters the site several times in a single day. The site will attempt to track the IP address of the visitor, or set a cookie on their hard drive to uniquely identify that visitor and not count them twice in a day. Their visits will get counted, however. So, one visitor stat may yield multiple visit counts.

Your goal is to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization), various forms of marketing, and maybe some PPC (Pay-Per-Click) marketing to continue to increase your visitors over time. If you’re not growing the visitor count, you’re not going to generate more business from your website or blog.

Page Views - This is another very important measurement of how effective your site is, and how useful it is to your visitors. It counts the number of pages viewed, and most will give you an average page views/visit in their statistics. This tells you if your site visitors are finding their way around, as well as if they are locating other information from your navigation that they want to view. Another word for this is “stickiness.” Are they sticking around? You want lots of page views, and definitely a reasonable average per visit, indicating they are moving around in the site.

Another way some statistical tools report this is as “depth of visit.” How deep into the site did the visitor go? You can see a graph of the number of visitors that only viewed one page, and another with those who viewed 20 or more pages, as an example. Watching these statistics, and trying to improve on them, means that you want to create content that visitors want, and give them easy ways to locate it and navigate to it.

One thing we need to remember as real estate sites with IDX searches is that many repeat visitors will be coming back over and over directly to the search page. They bookmark it, do deep web search for a while, and leave without moving around elsewhere in the site. So, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if our average page views aren’t growing like we want, but our time on site is getting longer.

Length of Visit - The statistics tool should also give you data as to how long visitors are staying on your site. Of course, the longer the better, as that means they’re finding what they want. As mentioned above, many of your repeat visitors may only come to the site to search for listings. They have bookmarked the IDX search page, and they never leave it on most visits. That’s OK. You’ll see that the time on site is excellent, meaning they like your search interface.

You should always be tracking your site’s performance with these statistics, no matter which analytical tool or software you choose. The goal is to grow the number of visitors, while increasing the time they stay and the number of pages they view. That’s how you build a loyal audience who eventually become leads and commissions.

Peyman Aleagha is the founder and President of RealtySoft.com. RealtySoft provides Realtors with Real Estate Web Design (http://www.realtysoft.com), Real Estate Print Marketing and Free IDX (http://www.realtysoft.com/freeidx.php) solutions.

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Optimize your website for search engines to find

IWAS recently flying in from Boston when I noticed my native West Pubnico from the air, clearly distinctive because of its 17 power-generating windmills, and I remarked how it reminded me of looking at Google Earth on my computer.

Then, it occurred to me how strange a thought this was: that reality was reminding me of a virtual image rather than the other way around. It was life imitating illustration, if you will.

That’s pretty much the way it is. Our sense of reality is becoming viewed more and more through the lens of the Internet, and this is something you need to take seriously if you’re depending on your website to carry your message.

Many people think that all you need to do is create a website and people will find it. That’s akin to printing stacks of marketing brochures and putting them in a warehouse, hoping someone will stumble upon them.

Others think that registering their website with search engines will do the trick. That would be like putting an ad in a few newspapers telling people where they can go to get your brochures.

Still others feel that if you put in enough keywords, then that will make your website popular. It will definitely help, but it’s far from the full story.

If not done correctly, it will hurt more than help. Why? Because search engines don’t like to be tricked. If the keywords don’t match the content and follow search engine rules, then the search engines may downgrade the site in their listings.

But help is available. There is a whole industry around making sure your website gets found by the right people via search engines, a process called search engine optimization. Here are some of the important facets of search engine optimization:

•Start by compiling an initial list of key terms that relate to your home page, your main section pages and the individual content pages. Then you can test these terms out and prioritize them according to their ability to drive traffic to the site. Search sites like Google and MSN provide facilities to help researchers determine which are the most popular and most effective search terms.

•Revise the list based on the research. Be prepared to add and remove content based on this revision.

•Create unique page titles and descriptions that reflect the key terms, and enter them into your meta tags. Meta tags are hidden areas in your website that contain information for search engines to find.

•Adjust your content so that key phrases appear at optimal locations. Search engines change how this works over time. This is an art because now you are modifying your message to suit the search engines. But by doing so, you are also modifying your message to suit your target audience, which is a good thing.

•Submit your website to search engines. This consists of going to these search engine sites and following their process for doing so. You can also tell the engines how to display the information on the search pages once your site is found. If your site description is well laid out rather than random snippets of words, chances are higher that it will get selected over the competition.

•Check to see what search terms people are using to find your website and which other websites are directing traffic to yours. Google provides training for web professionals to learn how to do this effectively.

•Finally, revisit your decisions frequently. It may take a few months before your changes are fully reflected throughout the Internet, so an evaluation every few months would be about right.

I’d like to thank Ryan Grant and Greg Ord for helping me with this article. Where do you find these guys? Simple: use a deep web search engine.

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Twitter for the geographically-challenged outsiders

Search for relevant keywords

Twitter’s Advanced Search is great tool for finding interesting people and topics serendipitously. Define the keywords you are interested in, run the deep web search and subscribe to the RSS feed. My search terms are “Jussi Laakkonen”, “social games”, “casual games”, “funware” and “virtual goods”. See who tweet about the topics you are interested in and what the discussion is.

Trawl thru the following lists

This tip comes from @mitch_olson of Small Worlds, who trawled thru my following list to find new people to follow. If you find an interesting person to follow, check out who they follow to find more interesting folks.

Add yourself to WeFollow

Simply tweet “@wefollow #yourtag #yourtag #yourtag” to classify yourself to make yourself more foundable. First, checkout the most popular tags on WeFollow. To find more interesting people to follow check the WeFollow lists on the tags you classify yourself with.

Re-tweet and see who re-tweet you

Re-tweeting is about sharing something valuable. You are doing a service to the person who you are retweeting as well as to the people who follow you. See who re-tweet you for more interesting people.

See who they are conversing with

Often you follow a particular person, and they are chatting away with @ replies with somebody you are not yet following . See who that other is, perhaps she will be worth a follow.

Establish a tweeting style & reinforce it at your profile

I personally use Twitter for business and tend not to share personal stuff or tweet funny jokes. Your followers will expect consistentency, so when they check your profile, they’ll decide at an instant if they want to follow you or not. Your latest ten tweets and secondarily your 160 char description play a huge role on who follow you.

Check before you follow

The corollary to the above is to check the profile before you follow someone. I’m picky about who I follow people to avoid cluttering my stream (if only Tweetdeck had a longer backlog of tweets ;-)).

Hashtags

Hashtags make some sense out of Twitter, especially during conferences like SXSW. Tweetdeck nicely supports hashtags by integrating to the Twitter Search. It’s a godsend for tracking topics especially when I’m 7-10 timezones away and top discussions take place in the middle of the night (for me).

Tweetdeck

Some prefer Thwirl, but Tweetdeck is the way to go ;-)

Read Guy’s advice

Guy Kawasaki has further advice on How to use twitter as twool.

If you have more advice for geographically-challenged Twitter users, please share it in the comments!

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Twitter- How many tweets are too much to follow?
• How To Effectively Follow 15000+ People On Twitter Using These Tweetdeck Tr…
• Parking Tickets and Twitter, Expert Advice At Your Thumbs?
• WeFollow: user-tagged Twitter directory

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How to Submit Your Business Web Site to Search Engines

Once you have optimized your business Web site for indexing, you are ready to begin submitting your site to search engines. This process can be as easy or as complicated as you make it, depending on the options you use and what results you want.

There are many services that promise to submit your site to thousands of search engines or guarantee placement with different engines. These services may not be necessary to your site?s success, and your money may be better spent in other areas. But if you don't have the time to submit your site on your own, this option may work for your company.

But be careful before you write a check to a submission company. Some search engines have accused submission companies of spamming, so do your homework and make sure the service is legitimate.

Although it's been estimated that there are upwards of 3,500 search engines out there, the top four deep web search engines ? Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL ? garner the vast majority of traffic. That's a big relief if you plan to submit your site yourself. These four big players are the obvious place to start.

To submit your site to Google, click here and enter your site?s URL and some carefully chosen keywords. Although Google has a powerful spidering technique that covers most of the Internet, it's a good idea to submit your site for inclusion with your keywords, just in case.

Yahoo!'s submission process is simple, but it requires you to have a Yahoo! account. Once you're registered and signed in, visit their submission page and select the directory where you would like your listing to appear. Inclusion can take a long time, and there's no guarantee that your site will be listed after you have submitted your link. It's all up to the discretion of the people at Yahoo! who review your site.

Go here to submit to MSN. AOL's search is powered by Google and so submission to Google effectively covers inclusion in AOL searches.

From there, you can drill down to the second-tier engines, such as AskJeeves, Lycos, Excite, and others. One way to get listed on many of these sites is through Overture. For a fee, this Yahoo!-owned company can list your site on a variety of search portals, including MSN and, of course, Yahoo!

There may be other, smaller search engines in your industry. Adding your company to these industry-specific search engines can be invaluable. While their traffic won't approach that of any of the major players, the people who use them are already looking for the kinds of goods and services you have. And a few targeted leads can be worth more than a boatload of untargeted searchers.

Once you have submitted your site, do check back regularly to make sure you're appearing near the top of the results in the appropriate search categories. Don't resubmit your site every week. Most search engines will view this is as search spamming, and they may even remove your listing.

If your site does not appear in the first few search results, or even worse, doesn't appear at all, you've got some optimization work to do. Visit AllBusiness.com's Internet Marketing area for the latest information on search engine optimization.

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Search Marketing (PPC) for the Small Business

A few pointers for small business owners looking to dive into search marketing (also known as pay-per-click, or PPC):

1. Think relevance. The search providers want ads to be relevant, and add value to the search results. They actually quantify this as a "quality score". An ad with a high quality score may get a higher page position at a cheaper price than a competing ad. A high-quality-score ad is relevant to the keywords being purchased, and users who click on the ad don't jump back into Google immediately -- the ad leads them further in a productive search.

To create a relevant search marketing campaign:

• Use focused adgroups with relevant keywords.
• Make sure you ad copy is relevant to the search and keywords.
• Experiment with a landing page that works, keeps users on the page, and leads to conversions.

2. Pay more in the beginning. Deep Web Search involves a healthy amount of trial and error. Costs will go down and performance will increase over time.
**Don't be afraid to start out with higher bids. You can lower them later, but higher bids appease the algorithm god in the early stages.
**Know that some keywords (usually your favorites) may not make the cut. Check into keywords services and mine your weblogs for good stuff.

3. Separate search campaigns from content campaigns. This makes analysis much easier. If you want to sell a product on Google's content network, for example, set it up on its own campaign.
**Keywords for content should relate to the text of the page they are being served on, and aren't always interchangeable with search keywords.

4. Read blogs and news on PPC, and other forms of online marketing. You can learn a lot as you read and investigate the meaning of pro jargon. Plug them into Google Reader and it'll only take a few minute a day. There's a lot to learn, but it's fun and you can come up to speed fairly quickly.

Here are a few blogs to try:

• The PPC Blog
• Jonathan Mendez Blog
• NickyCakes.com (an affiliate marketing blogger, but great info on PPC here too)
• Cinema Meow (when you've finally gone insane and need a laugh)

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Search Marketing (PPC) for the Small Business

A few pointers for small business owners looking to dive into search marketing (also known as pay-per-click, or PPC):

1. Think relevance. The search providers want ads to be relevant, and add value to the search results. They actually quantify this as a "quality score". An ad with a high quality score may get a higher page position at a cheaper price than a competing ad. A high-quality-score ad is relevant to the keywords being purchased, and users who click on the ad don't jump back into Google immediately -- the ad leads them further in a productive search.

To create a relevant search marketing campaign:

• Use focused adgroups with relevant keywords.
• Make sure you ad copy is relevant to the search and keywords.
• Experiment with a landing page that works, keeps users on the page, and leads to conversions.

2. Pay more in the beginning. Deep Web Search involves a healthy amount of trial and error. Costs will go down and performance will increase over time.
**Don't be afraid to start out with higher bids. You can lower them later, but higher bids appease the algorithm god in the early stages.
**Know that some keywords (usually your favorites) may not make the cut. Check into keywords services and mine your weblogs for good stuff.

3. Separate search campaigns from content campaigns. This makes analysis much easier. If you want to sell a product on Google's content network, for example, set it up on its own campaign.
**Keywords for content should relate to the text of the page they are being served on, and aren't always interchangeable with search keywords.

4. Read blogs and news on PPC, and other forms of online marketing. You can learn a lot as you read and investigate the meaning of pro jargon. Plug them into Google Reader and it'll only take a few minute a day. There's a lot to learn, but it's fun and you can come up to speed fairly quickly.

Here are a few blogs to try:

• The PPC Blog
• Jonathan Mendez Blog
• NickyCakes.com (an affiliate marketing blogger, but great info on PPC here too)
• Cinema Meow (when you've finally gone insane and need a laugh)

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The $6 bird seen by millions…

Imagine if you were a massively successful website with staggering month over month growth. You would think that such a website would pay dearly for a recongnizable logo as to identify themselves to the world. Today we’re looking at Twitter, the quickly expanding micro blogging site that is taking the world by storm. More and more people are signing up for Twitter. And individuals aren’t just the only ones signing up. Businesses, such as HTC, are using Twitter to announce products reaching an audience that they might not otherwise reach. For a company growing as fast and having as many users as Twitter does, one would guess they rake in millions of dollars. In actuality, they don’t bring in a single dime. All of their revenue comes from sponsors and such. You’ll find it equally intriguing that their little bird logo, which is one of the most easily identifiable logos currently, cost them a whopping…

$6! Yes…6$! Simon Oxley, a Japanese-Brit licensed the infamous bird logo to Twitter through iStockPhoto. No mention of Simon’s work on the bird or even link back to a site/account in his name is present. Simon didn’t ask for a credit, nor is Twitter techically required to do so. You see, Twitter began using Simon’s bird logo back when Twitter was still unpopular/unknown. However times have changed and Digg now has Twitter listed as the 84th most popular website on the deep web. Now Simon’s little design is getting quite a bit of attention.

Twitter definitely got a great deal as they have quite possibly one of the cheapest *purchased* logos ever for such a distinguished website. Does the fact that prices for goods and services are constantly being eroded to the point that quality is taking the backseat to quantity and convenience make you a tad angry? Does the fact that even though Mr. Oxley didn’t want any credit that he can’t be repayed for his services? Shout it out below.

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Beef up Web search applications with Lucene

Architecture overview

The architecture of a common Web search engine contains a front-end process and a back-end process, as shown in Figure 1. In the front-end process, the user enters the search words into the search engine interface, which is usually a Web page with an input box. The application then parses the search request into a form that the search engine can understand, and then the search engine executes the search operation on the index files. After ranking, the search engine interface returns the search results to the user. In the back-end process, a spider or robot fetches the Web pages from the Internet, and then the indexing subsystem parses the Web pages and stores them into the index files. If you want to use Lucene to build a Web search application, the final architecture will be similar to that shown in Figure 1.

Implement advanced search with Lucene

Lucene supports several kinds of advanced searches, which I'll discuss in this section. I'll then demonstrate how to implement these searches with Lucene's Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Boolean operators

Most deep web search engines provide Boolean operators so users can compose queries. Typical Boolean operators are AND, OR, and NOT. Lucene provides five Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT, plus (+), and minus (-). I'll describe each of these operators.

• OR: If you want to search for documents that contain the words "A" or "B," use the OR operator. Keep in mind that if you don't put any Boolean operator between two search words, the OR operator will be added between them automatically. For example, "Java OR Lucene" and "Java Lucene" both search for the terms "Java" or "Lucene."
• AND: If you want to search for documents that contain more than one word, use the AND operator. For example, "Java AND Lucene" returns all documents that contain both "Java" and "Lucene."
• NOT: Documents that contain the search word immediately after the NOT operator won't be retrieved. For example, if you want to search for documents that contain "Java" but not "Lucene," you may use the query "Java NOT Lucene." You cannot use this operator with only one term. For example, the query "NOT Java" returns no results.
• +: The function of this operator is similar to the AND operator, but it only applies to the word immediately following it. For example, if you want to search documents that must contain "Java" and may contain "Lucene," you can use the query "+Java Lucene."
• -: The function of this operator is the same as the NOT operator. The query "Java -Lucene" returns all of the documents that contain "Java" but not "Lucene."

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boxee iPhone remote app available on the App Store

took a while, but we finally got our iPhone remote app approved.
should be good news for anybody who lost their tiny Apple remote.. : )

it is very basic, but we think it’s a good start.
based on your feedback we’ll add more functionality to it.
so please post your ideas on getsatisfaction.com/boxee

tips:

• the boxee remote app has two modes: Gesture and Buttons
• in the Gesture mode you need to hold down your thumb and move it around in order to navigate.
• clicking on the boxee logo acts as Select/Play/Pause
• dragging the boxee logo to the edges of the screen will act as a continuous up/down/left/right
• clicking in an input field will open up the iPhone Qwerty keyboard and will enable you to easily enter text
• the app works over WiFi, so make sure the WiFi on your iPhone is turned on

boxee is the developer of the first “social” media center. boxee plays media from your computer and other devices in your home network, as well as connect you to various Internet sources that allow you to stream or download movies, tv shows, music and photos. Use deep web search to find more information about widjets and technologies.

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Social Media, Web 2.0 marketing, and Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is nothing new, but as all things SEO and web 2.0 it takes time to rise above the antiquated methods of the past from a traditional advertising perspective. As marketing modalities from yesteryear continue to fall by the wayside as obsolete, there are a few noteworthy trends in automation and viral marketing occurring a break neck speed.

As RSS feeds, social bookmarking and virtual communities seeding the exchange of information, it doesn’t take hours or days to disseminate information and create a buzz, merely the click of a button.

Instead of a multi million dollar ad campaign which would have been the preferred method in the past for a new product launch. With a little ingenuity, the proper understanding of the flow of the deep web 2.0 phenomenon (and how it impacts search engines) along with some clever link bait, one can essentially create a spike in traffic or sales within hours from the time they publish their content.

Not to mention the mere thought of this viral outbreak in internet marketing would make a traditional advertising & marketing agency exec lose sleep at night just trying to figure out (a) why they never thought of that and (b) how much money they could have made if they had.

It’s not always about the Benjamin’s, it’s more about the integrity of the message and the ability for millions to share a funny post, put a red flag on some activity to stir things up in the blogosphere or just to ride the wave of the future of information technology. Whatever the impetus, there is no sign of this form of communication (blogging, link baiting, e-commerce & social marketing) to stand down any time soon.

Here is the breakout on a typical day that someone’s link goes hot…

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How We Search With The Twitter “Help Engine”

Is Twitter a search engine or not? There’s been plenty of discussion and debate about this recently. I’d say yes, in a way. It’s clear to anyone who watches a twitterstream that people put out questions to Twitter similar to how they use search engines. But if anecdotal examples aren’t enough, a survey I conducted last week confirms that Twitter is used as a search resource.

If you’re scratching your head about the phrase “help engine” in the headline, my companion piece, The Rise Of Help Engines: Twitter & Aardvark, goes into more depth about the new class of search engines I’m calling help engines and why.

Before diving into the survey numbers, let me start out with one of the comments I received about the survey, which ran for several days:

I just want to mention that this poll is totally unscientific and thus the results are meaningless. It is likely totally biased toward those that use Twitter frequently and obviously biased toward those that use your site. If your aim is to get some anecdotal data, that’s fine, but please don’t try to draw any conclusions from this poll.

You don’t want to get me going about the number of “scientific” polls I’ve read over the years that are nonetheless meaningless for a variety of reasons. I’ll save the longer debate of the “science” behind many polls for another time. But the comment deserves some attention.

My poll cannot tell you what everyone does on Twitter with any certainty, in terms of search. Moreover, I’m not certain how anyone could get a “random” sample to produce such a poll. Those with many followers are not the same as those with a few. Do you calculate the percentage of highly followed users and ensure they answer in the same proportion as those who take a survey? And how do you “random dial” these people? What percentage of people are Twitter novices versus those with experience, which might also influence any answers about how they use Twitter for search?

No, this survey doesn’t provide a perfect picture of how people search via Twitter. But I think it’s a good first step beyond the anecdotes that people report. It provides a few preliminary hard numbers to put behind all that commentary about Twitter as search.

It’s also important to understand this survey is NOT about Twitter Search. That’s a separate part of Twitter, where people can explicitly do a deep web search against past tweets to find information. Instead, this survey was about how people use Twitter itself — their network of followers — to ask for help directly, especially when in the past, they might have first turned to a search engine.

Finally, when I write that Twitter is a search engine, or being used by some who see it that way, I think it’s important to understand that I don’t mean this is Twitter’s primary purpose — nor that Twitter as a micro-blogging service sees itself as a search engine. I simply think this is a by-product of the service.

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TripAdvisor’s Meta Search Opportunity

On February 27th, TripAdvisor took the wraps off of its new air Meta Search engine. It includes industry-first features such as a built-in fees estimator that other sites do not offer. What makes TripAdvisor the most formidable new competitor within Meta Search, however, is the millions of existing site users who theoretically can be nudged into adopting the product. The challenge will be convincing consumers to put down the hotel reviews for a moment and give the new flight product a try.

Compete data shows that TripAdvisor.com now attracts over 8 million U.S. visitors per month. Since most of TripAdvisor’s content is related to trip, resort, lodging, and other travel reviews, the consumers on the site are predominantly hotel shoppers. Thankfully hotel shoppers tend to also need flights and other travel products, which is where TripAdvisor has an opportunity with its air Meta Search tool. 55% of existing TripAdvisor.com users already shop for flights on other websites in the same month.

The trick for TripAdvisor will be getting its existing site users into a flight-shopping mindset. While 55% of existing site users also shop for flights elsewhere, they don’t look for both at the same time. In fact, when TripAdvisor users shop for flights, only 13% will do so on the same day as their TripAdvisor.com usage.

The market opportunity for TripAdvisor within the air category is significant – a fact that certainly was not lost on the company when it made this decision. Existing TripAdvisor users, however, are spread across thousands of different content areas on the site related to destinations, hotels, and reviews. In order to be successful, TripAdvisor must aggressively channel these consumers into the new “flights” tab, otherwise people may not find it on their own. With the right strategy to do this and grow usage of the product, TripAdvisor is poised to be a major new competitor to the current deep web Meta Search engines.

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