WICKED Wordpress Theme Generator - My New Favorite Tool

Yvo Schaap has created a WICKED Wordpress Theme Generator - literally allowing you to create a new WP theme on the fly.

If you’re like me…and short on time and dont want to mess with CSS - this would be a great tool to use if you pump out several wordpress sites over a weekend.

The Wordpress Theme Generator lets users create their own custom themes and layouts for Body Size, Sidebars, Menu and overall presentation; then download the files in Zip format for easy upload to their Wordpress blog.

Realtime features allow you to see what you’re making as you build it.

check it out

Robert Scobble: “Ebay is about to announce a gadget that you can put on your blog and consumers can buy products - but not leave your site”

Robert Scobble - “I study how people outside of ‘us’ find people and things”

It’s a Google World:
Podcasters aren’t optimizing their content for Search Engine Optimization - and they are leaving traffic on the table.

Aggregate of the traffic is what gets you found. “Google is worth understanding” - How do people find you? When someone searches for “funny videos” - you’ll want to be found. “If you’re not thinking about how you rank on Google - you’re missing a ton of new business.”

It’s a People World and Word of Mouth World:
Robert thinks that we need to not ignore the word of mouth traffic - remember that, especially with Youtube, AskaNinja, Twitter, etc.
When he reads his feed reader - things that make him slow down are keywords, interesting photos, or “authoritative” people. These are the things that makes his eye stop and actually read the content.

It’s a Distribution World:
If you want to care about the apple tv - you need to care about the format, higher resolutions work better and will drive more traffic. It takes twice the time to code - and the bandwidth can be spendy, but you need to listen to what your readers or listeners care are the formats that they use.
Joost is starting a sister site that uses a “mashed P2P network that is far cheaper than today” - this will allow for the lower level Vbloggers to bring their content to the masses.

Getting bloggers to talk about you is exponential - it will bring in a ton of traffic!
“At Podtech we built a player that allows users to put content on their own site - which allows users to consume content without going outside of your site, and traffic trippled in 1 week.”

Nice little Tidbit of news:
“Ebay is about to announce a gadget that you can put on your blog and consumers can buy products - but not leave your site” — Look out AuctionAds!

Trump Loses Domain Name Dispute

A recent WIPO Complaint against “estore” a Brooklyn, New York company was brought up by Real Estate Tycoon, Donald Trump. The domain in question was TrumpFurniture.com and The Donald really wanted to get that name into his own hands. In a rare case of Donald not getting his way, the WIPO panelist, Douglas M. Isenberg ruled:

“The nature of the “other word” is particularly important where the trademark is not exclusive to the complainant. In this case, the Panel observes that the TRUMP trademark is also an English word with multiple meanings (including, for example, to “produce a sound as if from a trumpet”; “playing card in the suit that has been declared trumps”; “outdo”; “proclaim or announce with or as if with a fanfare”) and also a part of trademarks owned by parties other than Complainant. In light of the above, the Panel is not persuaded on the record before it that the Disputed Domain Name is confusingly similar to a trademark in which the Complainant has rights.”

It looks like one of my favorite businessmen doesn’t always get his way!

IDNs vs ASCII Domain Name Brand Protection

One thing that I see all the time lately is a company that has an older web 1.0 domain name like companname-fr.com or companyname.fr and yet, they fail to realize that the IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) version of their brand is still unregistered or even worse, it’s owned by someone else. IDNs are growing even more important for businesses, it’s really Local Search of Steroids, you have a person that speaks a certain language, searching from a certain location, and they already have certain expectations about the content that they find when they access the website. IE. if someone in Russia types in школы.com, they would expect to find information about “schools” in Russian.

I came across a thread at IDNforums that discussed this a little but, (it was actually about using “articles” like “EL or “L” in french names, but you’ll see where I am going here…

There are a few examples given where “articles’ are used in French domain names:
lemonde.fr
l-hotel.com
delamour.com

I want to take a closer look at l-hotel.com. This company does have a real usage for this domain as, l’hotel means “the hotel” in French, however this company, L’Hôtel, a large world-wide brand, fails to protect their brand from an IDN standpoint. Hence, take a look at L’Hôtel.com

– Now, if you’re IDN savvy, you’ll realize that the this domain is actually different, when it’s converted to Puny Code, www.xn--lhtel-7ta3296c.com. But the concept remains, if L’Hôtel really wanted to protect their brand, then they need to pay attention to the IDN version of their domain name.

Hotels.com
I will show you another example, and I’ll keep it very simple, but you’ll see that there are many more possible combinations than I use in the example.

Hotels.com owns hotels.fr - But, Do they own; hôtels.com (hotels in French) or hôtels.fr NOPE!

This will be a challenge for companies in the future, as they not only need to protect their brands from a .com perspective, but, in all CCTLDs and in close to 200 different languages. In many cases there may be several companies that can claim rights to the IDN version of a domain name and to a ccTLD version or a combo of the 2. Especially with generic words like “hotel.”

Venture Capital Activity: Technorati Buys Personal Bee, Akami Buys Red Swoosh, LinkedIN, Y Combinator

Technorati Buys Personal Bee

Technorati said Wednesday that it has acquired Berkeley-based Personal Bee, an online service which allows people to create their own personal sites using RSS feeds. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ted Shelton, founder of Personal Bee, will join Technorati as its VP of Business Development.

Akamai Buys Red Swoosh
Akamai Technologies said today that it is acquiring San Mateo-based Red Swoosh, a developer of client side technology for media distribution, in a deal worth $15M. Akamai said it purchased Red Swoosh in an all-stock merger transaction, and that it will use the acquisition to augment its services. Akamai said that Red Swoosh will be integrated into its existing engineering team in California.

LinkedIn Claims 10M Users
Palo Alto-based LinkedIn, the online social networking web site focused on business professionals, said today that it has reached 10 million users for the site. The company said that it is currently growing at the rate of over 130,000 members a week. LinkedIn provides social networking tools targeted at business users, and has received funding from Sequoia Capital, Grelock, Bessemer Venture Partners, and the European Founders Fund.

Y Combinator is Breaking VC Ground!

The Mercury News has a good description of how Y Combinator works:

Here’s how it works: twice a year, Y Combinator invites “hackers,” or programmers, to fill out an online application, outlining who they are and a business idea. One winning batch of teams is funded in winter and the other in summer. With Y Combinator’s help, each becomes a real company - one that is expected to create its product within three months. The amount of money Y Combinator gives each group - $5,000, plus an additional $5,000 per founder - is a pittance for what it asks in return, which is, on average, a 6 percent stake in their start-up. That money has to really stretch. Beyond their living and working expenses, it must also cover relocation costs, as the winter winners must relocate to the Bay Area and the summer winners to the Boston area.

Google to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1B

Seeking to expand its already well-honed ability to sell targeted Internet advertisements, online search leader Google Inc. said it has agreed to pay $3.1 billion in cash to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc.

The two companies announced the deal after the markets closed Friday. The boards of both companies have approved the takeover, which is expected to close by the end of the year.

New York-based DoubleClick helps its customers place and track online advertising, including search ads, which Google — more than its nearest search competitors Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Microsoft Corp. — has turned into an extremely lucrative business.

Shares of Mountain View-based Google rose 3 cents to $466.32 in after-hours trading. DoubleClick has been privately held since 2005.

The sellers are San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, along with JMI Equity and DoubleClick management.

Commentary:
From DoubleClick’s announcement of the exchange:

Using the new platform, publishers and other sellers make specific inventory available for purchase. Sellers define a minimum bid value - or “reserve price” - for the inventory and specify rules to restrict certain advertisers, formats and content. In parallel, buyers specify the inventory they wish to purchase, and the associated bid value for that inventory. They can also specify a rule to dynamically control the bid so that the bid price is automatically adjusted in line with inventory performance.

From the New York Times:

DoubleClick, which was founded in 1996, provides display ads on Web sites like MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and America Online as well as software to help those sites maximize ad revenue. The company also helps ad buyers — advertisers and ad agencies — manage and measure the effectiveness of their rich media, search and other online ads.

DoubleClick has also recently introduced a Nasdaq-like exchange for online ads that analysts say could be lucrative for Google.

“Google really wants to get into the display advertising business in a big way, and they don’t have the relationships they need to make it happen,” said Dave Morgan, the chairman of Tacoda, an online advertising network. “But DoubleClick does. It gives them immediate access to those relationships.”

From Bloomberg

`Deep Pockets’

Google declined to give financial details for DoubleClick, whose headquarters are in the same building as its own New York offices. The purchase eclipses the $1.65 billion Google spent to buy video-sharing Web site YouTube in November and was 50 percent more than Hellman & Friedman had wanted. A person with knowledge of the talks said last month the firm may seek about $2 billion.

“The amount is mind-blowing,” said Richard Fetyko, an analyst at Merriman, Curhan and Ford in New York. Fetyko follows DoubleClick rival AQuantive Inc., which he rates buy and doesn’t own. “Apparently there was very competitive bidding. Microsoft has deep pockets, but apparently everything has its limits.”

Friday’s Trip Around the Blogosphere

Kathy Sierra’s - Creating Passionate Users
You really ought to check out Kathy Sierra’s recent post about “outspending vs. outteaching”.

Is Google Acquiring G.CN ?

The China Search Engine View blog writes:

[W]hen you search the whois here, you may find there is one item more, “Registrant Organization: 北京刘元和君咨询有限公司” (Jan Liu & Associates), the attorney for Google’s case of googel.com.cn and googel.cn. Has Google really got g.cn?
This looks pretty realistic to me – and I must say that it’s an interesting branding play for Google China!

Speaking of Google – Aaron Wall has a great discussion about Google being and invisible hand in online marketing .

Aaron takes a look at the perception of trusted advertisers and how that affects your marketing spend and budget.

Their newest ad unit is an unmarked text link ad, which only displays any ad notification AFTER people hover over the link. Publishers who refuse to sell links directly will publish the ads, and if they spread anything like AdSense does, what happens to links to commercial sites? What happens when virtually nobody is willing to link to a commercial site unless it is through Google? What happens when their affiliate payouts are not high enough to solicit a review? And what happens to those businesses when Googlers decide they want that market for themselves, like real estate?

Facebook Buy Passed up and Mozilla’s COOP Launch: I bet you Missed these Important Marketing Developments Today

Facebook was a goldmine – and Yahoo passed on it!

Co-written by analyst Mark May, an analyst report that covers consumer Internet, references Facebook’s most recent traffic numbers (about 1.5 billion pages/day) and says social networking could one of the most important growth areas of the Internet over the next five years.

By referencing Facebook’s doubling in growth, the reports also implies Facebook may be worth twice what it was last year, suggesting the business may have a $3 billion value to a buyer based on last year’s supposed $1.6B Yahoo “offer.”

Was Facebook’s Mark Zuckerman ready to sell? – Maybe, should Yahoo have wined and dined him until he was willing to sell. YES.

Mozilla released a new product called the COOP – which is social networking for your browser.

Check out Mozilla’s Coop!

Russia’s Largest eCommerce Site Raises $18m

OZON.ru has raised $18M led by Index Ventures with Holtztbrinck and Cisco. Baring Vostok, a private equity investor, did a $3M acquisition in 2000 of a controlling stake in OZON.ru. OZON.ru claims to be Russia’s largest eCommerce site. It sell books, CDs, DVDs, software, games, electronic products, etc. It says that it delivers more than 3K orders per day. OZON plans to use the capital to build out more distribution centers in Russia.

If you think the Russian eCommerce market is new, take a glance at CISCO’s announcement from Tuesday that they would focus on Russian Venture Capitalism opportunities.

Korean Video Site PandoraTV Closes $10 Million Financing

Sometimes billed as “the Korean YouTube,” PandoraTV has completed a second funding round of $10 million led by Silicon Valley-based DCM. Previous investors Altos Ventures, STIC International and Saehan Ventures also participated in the round. The funding will be used to support the company’s growth, expand its service offerings and finance the further build-out of its network infrastructure. PandoraTV also reported that David Chao, co-founder and general partner of DCM, has joined its board of directors.
The Seoul-based video sharing site was founded in October 2004. PandoraTV claims to have 12 million monthly uniques.

One aspect that differentiates PandoraTV from other video sharing sites is its concept of “personal TV stations” that allows users to post video clips, run their own TV shows, and even advertise products or services in each personal TV channel. Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom recently launched programming on PandoraTV’s viral service. Release
– The financing comes at an interesting moment for Korea’s entertainment industry. The Hollywood Reporter notes that one aspect of a Free Trade Agreement signed with the U.S. lifts restrictions on the programming of foreign content, while another steps up pressure on South Korean internet service providers to protect intellectual property.

Get Caught up on Search Marketing & VC

Kontrib Offers a Digg Alternative for Non-English Speakers

One thing that Digg lacks is foreign involvement due to the interface being in purely English. Kontribb offers the solution!

To submit and vote on articles at Kontrib, you first register. After you submit an article, Kontrib’s linguistic machines immediately translate articles into supported languages. These are Arabic, English, French, and Spanish, with more to come later. Kontrib is slick because it translates both the article summary hosted at Kontrib’s site, and the original article linked to. Comments are also translated.

Until now, language translation has remained clumsy. There are text translation sites such as BabelFish, or Google’s language tool. The coming Worldwide Lexicon Project promises to help bloggers translate their sites by mobilizing interested readers. Human volunteers will translate sites with higher quality, argues Brian McConnell, the project’s leader, and they’ll translate into any language. Though, we’d argue that human efforts will vary in quality.

What is FaceBook up to?

Recent traffic statistics at social networking site Facebook are impressive and we’re wondering if there’s a wider story here.

Facebook tells us the site is seeing about 1.5 billion page views a day, up from about 1 billion daily views last month — statistics that haven’t been released until now. That’s a huge jump.
Read more over at VentureBeat

So How Did you Learn SEO?
Here’s part of Rand Fishkin’s Story about SEOmoz:

“In 2001, the company that would become SEOmoz (at the time just Gillian, Matt & myself) began taking on some e-commerce development projects. Previously, we had designed static websites in Flash & HTML and done some consulting in usability, but with the addition of Matt to the team, we were ready to take on some beefier projects. We designed and developed several sites for clients and”

Rand over at SEOmoz would like to know how you got your start!

ZoomInfo - The HeadHunter’s Best Friend Expands

ZoomInfo today launched its Business Information Search Engine, a service that offers information on more than 3.5 million companies. Although the company profiles are similar to those offered by Hoovers.com and other subscription-based providers, ZoomInfo business profiles are free. More about Zoominfo at Search Engine Land

Is Neil Patel Proving the 10% / 90% rule?

Neil Patel challenged Jason Calacanis have had a little bet going on lately to see if SEO is really a useful strategy or if it’s just a bunch of Bull.

Whitehat is the name of this game, and Neil showed Calacanis that by making a few changes he was able to increase his traffic by 21%. Oh and by the way, only 10% of the changes that Neil recommended have been implemented. Is this the 10%/90% rule in action? If you make 10% of recommended changes and they are the changes that are big enough to make an impact, will you see 90% of the value right off the bat?

This really makes me think about time management for an SEO – Do you have to spend numerous hours collecting links and digging through content or even building content for that matter to receive the full, or almost full benefit? — Or can you implement just a few Key SEO techniques and receive a huge amount of value by focusing on what you do well, and outsourcing the time consuming aspects?

Take a look at the results, What do you think?

4 Keys to Creating Your Personal Brand

Do you want to be Famous?

Some people actually have to work at becoming famous, a few people come to mind, Donald Trump, being 1 that hits the pavement every day and night to stay on top. Some others just simply have to be born to be famous, ever heard of Paris Hilton? – Yeah, I thought you may have. Remind me again, what does she do for a living?

If you’re a small-time blogger that wants to make it to the A-List or just someone that wants to have their 15 minutes of fame, then “Personal Branding” is something that you can focus on.

Personal Branding is a unique approach to marketing where instead of being known in the general sense, you can be known for a specialized skill or topic. Who is the Master of PPC, Link Baiting, Domain Names? More mainstream examples may include Disney positioning their movies as family friendly or Starbucks being known for premium coffee and the place away from work and home. - All these people and companies have positioned themselves to be the authority in a certain category, thus, they have created a brand.

People can brand themselves in a very similar fashion, where you create a situation where others may depend on your insight or expertise in a field and overtime you are someone that others rely on to get information or advice. Passion is key to branding, without it, you’re just another SEO, Celebrity, or Technology Blogger.

The 4 keys to creating your Personal Brand:
- Be an expert
- Be Different than others
- Establish your target audience
- Be Passionate

Once you have these keys under your belt, it’s time to spread the word about your “Brand” and in a short amount of time, you’ll have a following that will begin to spread the word about your “Brand” for you!

Paypal’s Mobile Purchase Service

The word on the street is that PayPal is upping the ante on mobile shopping with anew service that allows shoppers to buy online through their mobile phones. Last year PayPal came out with a service that allows customers to text-to-buy, but that is a bit far away from a full blown mobile shopping experience, this new product should be far beyond the current one.

DeGardener has plenty of details on how this would work using PayPal’s Mobile Check out system.

Currently PayPal’s current offerings are simple:

“With a web-enabled phone, you can go to your favorite site, buy, and check out easily with PayPal. You’ll log on and securely confirm payment just like you do on a computer. Look for it on select merchant sites.”

PayPal is digging their heels deep into this project that is apparently already in testing mode and should be available to the public “within a few months,” says a source that I spoke to on Saturday.

If PayPal can bring this service mainstream, it will be one of the key steps in bringing mobile shopping and browsing to a larger market.

Are your Customers Actually Reading Your Newsletter?

Newsletters can be one the best ways to open up to a customer and gain important information about your customers that you can then use to sell them a product or service. Often times many businesses that I’ve consulted with for Search Marketing spend hours crafting a Newsletter and many more hours sifting through their email list to send out targeted emails. The problem is, how do you ensure that those customers are actually going to read that email?

Newsletters are tricky for 1 main reason; they’re a dime a dozen, you can probably find quite a few in your email box, or even wose, in your spam folder. How many people ACTUALLY READ a newsletter and come away from it not feeling like they were just SOLD something? This 1 reason is why so many people feel like their newsletter campaigns aren’t getting the ROI or buzz that they feel like they should have.

So what does an effective newsletter need to be successful?
Four concepts should be addressed in a successful newsletter:

Informative - Eye Catching - Interest Holding - Wanting More

Create valuable information for your readers, are you an expert in your industry, or better yet, does your company want to position themselves as an authority in your industry? This is key, if you’re an authority, then show it! Be the source for updates and inside access for your industry. Give the reader a little more than they’re expecting and far more than your competitors are giving. As you write your newsletter, take a few seconds and think to yourself what you’re leaving out of your newsletter, then do 1 of 2 things. Either you should write a little extra and answer those lingering questions or you should provide a link to your own site where that information can be found.

Energize your readers with eye catching photos or commentary. Technical talk has it’s place, but so does uniquely presented content. If you can figure out a way to differentiate how you discuss and position your product from your competitors, you’ll be miles ahead.

Your readers are valuable; show them just how valuable they are!
Don’t forget that often the best stories come from the “trenches” – do your customers have a really cool application for your product or some enhancement ideas that you think others may enjoy hearing about? Take the time to listen to your customers and showcase some of the best aspects of how your product or service is being used in the “real world.” I guarantee you that if a customer submits a question or comment and you include that in your newsletter, that they will forward your newsletter to all their friends and family…How’s that for buzz marketing?!

One of the last but most important strategies that you can use is to place the contents of your newletter online with a little bit of extra content. Then invite your reader within the newsletter to visit your site if they want more information. You’ll be gaining traffic and, if done correctly, you will have created an excellent conversion opportunity for yourself.