Marshall Kirkpatrick - Getting access to information early in the conversation

Marshall Kirkpatrick Speaking at the PodCastHotel in San Francisco - Live Blog Post!

Getting access to information early in the conversation-
Timeliness - reporting on information as early in the news as possible. This is key to building the media properties that has built. SplashCast has been on digg several times, and that’s because of the timeliness of the content and news that is being broken.
Splashcast being dugg on the front page drive between 3,000 to 15,000 uniques to their site. Scribbed.com has had 9 front page diggs in the last month and this is due to timely PDFs that they have provided.

Twitter “is good for community rather than breaking news”. The earthquake story has been one of Marshall’s favorite stories related to Twitter.

Production time for podcasting or video is enormous - and that slows down the amount of speed that you have to break a story. The biggest changes in video blogging will be quickness to bring content online. Using Twitter or other live event notification tools can be used in conjunction with video blogging to let others know that a new story is being broken, needs digging, etc.

YouStream style live video - where it is an end-to-end model is the best that we have, and others will be moving towards this.
Free Speech Radio News uses several different podcasters to provide news - this is a great way to get a lot of content from many sources, quickly.

Reaching out to low-bandwidth and less tech-savy users is really the key for growth in podcasting and video blogging - bringing the un-tapped crowed into the “know” about these type of technologies.

Mini Cologne - has a program in San Francisco that teaches minorities to record and promote pod casts - this one of Marshall’s favorite examples of others reaching into the un-tapped crowed.

I’m Heading to San Fran For the PodCastHotel Event

I’ll be heading down to San Francisco this weekend to attend the PodCastHotel event, and I’m really excited about this one!

The Podcast Hotel is a conference that is going to allow people to get together to hear people speak but also to create their own works, learn a ton, discuss issues and exchange ideas. The Keynote speaker is Andrew Baron, Founder, Rocketboom, which has become of of the most successful video podcasts in the world. I’m looking foward to hearing him speak!

A few of the speakers are:
Chris Pirillo, Founder, Lockergnome
Mary Hodder, chief executive officer, Dabble
Josh Wolf, The Revolution will Be Televised
Robert Scoble, Vice President, Media Development, Podtech

This should be an awesome event, and I’ll post some notes from the speakers over this weekend!

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.

Why I Blog - Am I Crazy?

Thanks to Eric Hebert for tagging me in the latest Blog Meme game!

I’ll jump right into the 5 reasons of why I blog….

To Share Ideas
I’m a very strong believer in collaboration. Some of the best ideas or concepts can come from sharing similar situations or findings and then creating your own conclusions or solutions based on what other people have experienced. I like to share what I am thinking so that hopefully others will learn a little and share that with others.

To Learn From Others
It’s my blog, but you can comment too!!! - Some of the best ideas that I hear from other people come from blog comments that people leave for me after I make a post. Thanks everyone!

To Create Controversy
Do you every get bored surfing blogs with regurgitated content? - I sure do! I like to stirr things up a little bit when I can. It’s always nice to see SEO controversies in the blogging world!

To Be Credible
Everyone gets their five minutes of fame, but once that’s up, what do you do then? Well….how about blogging to get another 15 minutes of fame! Some 4 letter domain name comes to mind here, it starts with a “DI” and ends with a “GG”. All kidding aside, when you do SEO for several years, I have learned quite a bit and it’s great to share with others and build a small following of readers that look upto you and actually care about what you say. Rock on!

To Have a Little Fun
Blogging sometimes can be too serious, I like to chat about things that you wouldn’t normally see from an SEO/M Blog.

Alright, Time for a little Tagging!

Steve Alledia - Good Domaining Friend and Joomla Master
Tim Germer - PPC Pro and founder of NorthWest Noise
Frank Schilling - Blending Domainer & SEO worlds puts him on my list of marketing pros!
Earl Grey - Long Time BH Friend
Paul Madden - The SEOidiot

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!

Iminent Brings Video-add-ons to Instant Messaging

Iminent, startup based in France provides video-add-on applications for instant messaging systems. Do you remember the old days of IRC or ICQ? Well, imagine those on steroids! Iminent has secured nearly $4 million from French-Italian investment group 360 Partners, AC reports. Iminent’s video system, which is currently in beta test mode, allows users to make short videos and attach them to IM when chatting. IMer’s can use “emovids,” which is a short animation that is intended to serve the same function as an emoticon. The company’s website says that the application is free, though it offer any other details about how it is to be marketed.

Top University Sites that Google Trusts (Top 20)

Check this out!

Alexander Fedrov has posted the top 20 universities (American), that have the highest Google “Conditional Trustrank”.

1. [uic.edu] trust [673]
2. [uiowa.edu] trust [580]
3. [byu.edu] trust [564]
4. [mit.edu] trust [457]
5. [loyno.edu] trust [428]
6. [umn.edu] trust [383]
7. [uoregon.edu] trust [345]
8. [ua.edu] trust [340]
9. [stanford.edu] trust [312]
10. [ucdavis.edu] trust [312]
11. [cwru.edu] trust [269]
12. [vjc.edu] trust [263]
13. [dongguk.edu] trust [245]
14. [case.edu] trust [239]
15. [harvard.edu] trust [223]
16. [cie.edu] trust [210]
17. [ucne.edu] trust [199]
18. [sdsu.edu] trust [199]
19. [cmu.edu] trust [197]
20. [sage.edu] trust [184]

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

Matt Cutts Blog Hacked on April Fools Day

Ok, I was a bit surprised to see this nice little piece of hacking work done on Matt Cutt’s site by the DarkSEOTeam.

Click for the full size screen capture of Matts Blog:

Once you take a look at Matt’s Site, you’ll want to cruise over to the www.darkseoteam.com site where you’ll see the following:

Of course I’m lying when I make everyone believe that content is King.
Of course black hat SEO and spamdexing are the only Kings.
Google is just a stupid algorithm relying on spammy backlinks.
But you guys had no right to let everyone know. That’s why I defaced your bloody DST site. To show the entire world how evil a white hat can be.

In fact, I’m as evil as my employer
All your backlinks are belong to us !

Elaborate April Fools Joke? Or really good hack job?
You be the judge!

Ultra-Mobile PCs: The Next Step

Have you ever heard of OQO?

This small company was started way back in 2000 in San Francisco, and they were the first to load a full Microsoft Operating system onto a handheld device.

The Guinness World Records cites the OQO’s first commercial version of their handheld product as the smallest, fully loaded computer.

Cool Stuff!

OQO is still around today and pushing forward with their goal of ultra-mobile PC platforms, one that the recently released the second generation of. Demand for these type of PCs is still low and really unknown, but its an emerging market that will surely need a sector leader. OQO is definitely up to the challenge!

These ultra-mobile PCs are smaller than laptops and even tinnier than tablet computers that many computer makers are currently pushing as a mobile solution. The difference is that these small and moble PCs are smaller than laptops and more powerful than your mobile phone.

They also include a wide range of nifty features. The Asus R2H, for instance, features a 7-in. touch screen, fingerprint scanner, 1.3-megapixel camera, and embedded GPS, all on a machine that weighs just 1.8 lb. Samsung’s NP-Q1 includes built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and a flash-based memory drive. Sony and Samsung each outfitted their most recent ultra-mobile PCs with a flash-memory drive which lets programs boot and run faster, while conserving battery life.

This will be a very interesting market to follow!

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?

Yahoo Launches Mobile Publisher Services

Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services are the front runner right now in the mobile search and development game. Take a closer look at the features that Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services is offering.

The Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services will go live today across 19 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, US and Vietnam.

Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network

The Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network will allow mobile publishers to have syndicated advertising served on their mobile content and services. Publishers will be able to select the ad formats they want to have run, such as display, sponsored links, video or in-game placements.

By bringing together the global audiences of Yahoo!’s popular mobile services with those of participating publishers, Yahoo! will create a combined pool of valuable inventory. Yahoo! will use its leading global sales force and proven ad-serving technology to sell and serve this valuable inventory to leading advertisers.

Launch partners in the Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network include MobiTV, the global leader in mobile and broadband television and music services, Opera, the leading provider of Web browsers for mobile devices, and go2, the leading location-enabled mobile content network in the U.S. The first advertisements will go live in the second quarter of 2007. Yahoo! plans to expand the number of partners in the Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network over the coming months.

Yahoo! Mobile Content Engine

The Yahoo! Mobile Content Engine will enable publishers to bring their content to Yahoo!’s mobile audience. It will also help enable publishers who do not have a mobile site or only have a limited mobile offering to quickly distribute their content to consumers on their mobile phones.

The Yahoo! Mobile Content Engine will allow publishers to make their content, such as listings or articles, discoverable to consumers by integrating it into Yahoo! oneSearch. For example, a real estate company could publish a list of homes for sale, enabling a consumer to find them and get the detailed listing information they need all through Yahoo! oneSearch.

Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory

The Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory will allow publishers to make their mobile media content accessible directly through Yahoo! oneSearch. Publishers could submit a catalog of their content such as ringtones, games, video and applications.

Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory will combine Yahoo!’s editorial expertise, innovative search technology and the power of ratings and reviews from the Yahoo! community to drive discovery of mobile media. For example, a mobile game publisher could submit a list of their games, enabling a consumer to more easily discover a game, get relevant information like ratings and reviews all through Yahoo! oneSearch, as well as go to the publishers’ mobile site to get the game.

Yahoo! Mobile Site Submit

The Yahoo! Mobile Site Submit will allow publishers to provide information about their mobile site, such as a description and relevant tags, to ensure that their sites are accurately indexed and available to consumers through Yahoo! oneSearch. For example, a hotel could submit their mobile site, including description and tag, enabling weekend travelers to find their location and see if they still have rooms available through Yahoo! oneSearch.

Loren Baker over at the Search Engine Journal has a great compilation of Yahools Mobile publisher services that have recently been launched.

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.