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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!

Bebo Launches Music Download Service and Bebo Mobile

Finally it’s here, Bebo Mobile was entangled in negotiations with carrier O2, and apparently those deals have fallen through and on Wednesday Bebo will announce that it has partnered with Orange to offer a version on cellphones.

Due to the site’s popularity in the UK, Bebo Mobile will go live there this summer, with expansion to other markets later in 2007. The feature set is vaguely similar to MySpace Mobile: you can edit your Bebo profile, update your blog and add friends from your phone. Presumably you’ll also be able to access Bebo Mail, the internal messaging feature.

In addition to the mobile service, Bebo is also launching a direct competing service to myspace music. Called Bebo Bands. You will be able to sell your songs, if you are a band, through a small widget that can be placed on any site and is built by 7digital.

The inclusion of the widget in Bebo will be huge for them, adding sales from Bebo’s 450,000 registered bands, and enabling them to sell to Bebo’s supposed 31 million users. Bebo Bands will be able to create a Starter indiestore account, which will allow them to sell four tracks, or a Pro account, which supports 20 tracks.

Yahoo Answers is a Political Campaigners Dream!

I noticed today on the front page of Yahoo a link to the Answers section of the site where they have featured Democratic hopeful Barak Obama with a question for everyone to answer.

How can we engage more people in the democratic process?
I will be asking questions to help create dialogue around this and many other important topics so please add me to your Answers Network so that we can begin exchanging ideas and hopefully make changes that will benefit the future.

This question was posed 6 days ago and there are 15 days left for you to lodge your own answer. The total number of answers is nearing 3k, being at 2,954 Yahoos that have answered Obama’s question.

This is a great way for a young candidate to reach out and have his policies be heard by young votes – this is the type of campaigning that will make a huge difference in the 2008 election, one that we may see social networking strategy be a huge part of the outcome!

So, What’s your Answer?

Drum Roll Please: YouTube Video Award Winners

Drum Roll…….YouTube named its first ever Video Award winners Monday.

On top of the list is the Chicago band OK Go for their music video featuring treadmill choreography. You have probably seen this video on MTV and other music award shows, the popularity of this YouTube Video is just amazing. That video, which was seen by 13 million YouYube users took the best creative prize, though in the actual best music video category, voters chose LA-based singer-songwriter TerraNaomi. Users had a week to vote on a dedicated section within YouTube.

Other top winners include:
> Best Series: Ask a Ninja
> Best Comedy: Smosh
> Best Commentary: The Winekone
> Most Inspirational: Free Hugs Campaign
> Most Adorable Video: Kiwi

This is a pretty cool way that Video has changed the internet - I guess you could call it ” CoolSiteOfTheDay 2.0 “

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?

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.

Find The Best Happy Hour Tonight With Unthirsty.com

So if you’re cruising around the town and want to find a local spot and hit up their Happy Hour but don’t know where to go, Unthirsty.com is the place to go! Matt King, a fellow PDX Designer has taken part in creating this unique mashup of Google Maps and Happy Hour Hotspots.

A Trip Around the Blogosphere

Fasten your seatbelts - we’re going for a trip around the blogosphere!
Jeremy Shoemaker is interviewing Melissa Harrington next week, whom is going to be on the Howard Stern show next week. Melissa Harrington apparently is a Top Web Porn Star.
Some of the questions that Jeremy will be asking are:

-How do you acquire subscriptions?
-How do you get new customers?

Crave shows us a $1 million laptop by a company called Luxury Launches that supposedly is “believed to integrate real diamonds and other precious jewelry into the chassis of the system.”

Google has launched their latest version of Google Spreadsheets while one of Google’s First investors and board member, Michael Moritz is stepping down.

SES New York is coming up and if you’re on the fence about whether or not to attend, Lee Odden has 5 reasons to attend SES NY.

And lastly but most important!
Sir Paul McCartney has broken a 43-year relationship with EMI to sign with a new music label set up by Starbucks, the coffeehouse chain. Starbucks is launching their own label to coincide with their HearMusic offerings. This is a pretty smart brand extension for Starbucks if you ask me!

Move Over Alexa – Quantcast is Coming to the Party!

Traffic levels are very important for any business that wants to measure how their competitors are doing and Quantcast has made it their business to count that traffic and display it in a meaningful fashion. They recently finished their round of funding for $5.7 million through a series A round, and investors included the Founders Fund and Revolution Capital. The San Francisco start-up, Quantcast will be in the running for the very lucrative traffic measurement niche. They currently have traffic ratings for over 20.1 million websites and are crawling new sites at a very fast rate.

MyUlist is Targeting the Lucrative College Classified Market

Think of the Facebook and Craigslist smashed together into a very lively mashup of classifies for college students. MyUlist is just that, featuring articles on their site have been submitted by college students across the country- giving the site a little “local flavor” – which I think is one of the key ingredients for any new site to stand out in a crowded web 2.0 world.

One drawback that MyUlist requires a .edu email address to participate, but unlike other social networks, this stipulation actually makes sense and, honestly, makes the environment much more smoothly run and friendly to doing business.

The company hasn’t launched across the nation yet, the main pilot test is at UNC, but it’s also testing Cal, Penn, Stanford and Drexel and they have plans to be nationwide very soon.

The companies founder, David Yu has funded the company thus far and is looking for more funding from interested parties.

Zopa backs up the truck with $12.9M in Financing

Lending is the name of the game and Zopa is trying to lead the pack.

Zopa is a marketplace where members can meet up and lend or borrow money from eachother for a small fee. $12.9M has been infused into the company to help it expand and try to dominate the market. The competition is stiff, Prosper already has a strong hold on the “community lending” market.

The company said it appointed a new chief executive, Douglas H. Dolton, formerly CEO of Chela Education Financing.

The financing was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, an existing investor. Benchmark Capital and Wellington Partners also invested in the latest round. Benchmark has also backed competitor Prosper.

Zopa is well on their way, they have already raised about $34 million.

Google’s Schmidt: Datacenter is King, Not Content

Two Stanford biz students, Matt and Julio, have been interviewing some of the biggest names in the Valley on a podcast called iinovate. They posted an interview with Eric Schmidt yesterday, in which they tell Eric that Google is becoming more of a content company. To this he takes exception:

You used the term content company. We don’t use that term. Google is an infrastructure company that enables content. Google is not in the content business. We have many partners that produce content. We are a distribution mechanism and a monetization mechanism for our partners. This is an important line that we’ve decided not to cross.

Now to the Google Grid, as David Scott Lewis terms it. Schmidt describes it in terms of datacenter (which I think is the same thing as David’s Grid):

Google is much more capital-intensive than our competitors and we’re much further along in the datacenter. We have a competitive advantage because we have the cheapest and most scalable architecture. We hope that in the course of innovation, we will be able to build products that are impossible for our competitors to replicate. Virtually all of our capital expenditures go into the datacenter.

Not a lot of technical detail there, but it gives a good sense of why Google will become the Microsoft of its generation (not in the sense of anticompetitive practices but in the sense of “owning the stack”). Just as nobody could write Windows apps like Microsoft because they simply knew much more about the OS than anybody else, in the future, noone will be able to touch Google in Interet apps. They will deploy their products on architectures so much higher-performing, with less network latency, more scalable, more reliable, etc., that as Schmidt says, they can’t be touched. To beat them you would have had to invest hundreds of millions and had years to build out and have had your pick of the best engineers - and that’s what Google has quietly been doing.

The guys asked Eric where the opportunity is for new biz school grads.

The opportunity is in targeted advertising. That’s essentially the business model of Google. I’m quite convinced that targeted advertising will be a very rich area for many years to come.

He added that the trillion dollar advertising business can be transformed by the targeted advertising approach. He sees not only the “advertising business” per se, but all of the ad-intensive businesses, like cars, as ripe for getting Googlized in a big way.

He would probably object to the term “Googlization.” After all, he thinks its the net, not Google itself, that is changing American business.

Google is an example of an iconic company around a set of changes that are systematic, which are quite significant. It’s really the Internet that is changing companies, and google is a representative of the internet.

Offline Tagging: Kwiry Takes Tagging to a New Level

Founded by a few junior TellMe employess, Ron Feldman (now CEO) and Jon Sugihara, Kwiry promises to reshape how you “tag” the offline world. Using text messaging to share your tags with you friend, Kwiry says it “will revolutionize the way you interact with your offline world. Bookmark information you see in your offline world to store in your locker.”

Start off by creating a proprietary “kcard” and then use that to share information with your friends and new acquaintances. Kwiry has now raised $1M in Series A funding from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.