A growing number of blogs are now including community news sections, including DesignM.ag. My experience with the news section is that it’s a great way to encourage readers to get involved by submitting items, and it can also reward them with a link and some traffic, not to mention that it gives readers the latest blog posts that might interest them without needing to search through tons of blogs to find them.The community news is especially popular on design and development blogs, but not as much outside of this niche. I also have a blog, Traffikd, where I write about topics...
Lingerie connoisseurs will be happy to know that CBS has launched a multi-media, multi-platform Victoria’s Secret assault on all senses. That’s right: no longer will you have to search through the Internet’s wastelands to get your Victoria’s Secret fix; it’s all there on the official website and on your mobile. Social Features The new website will feature behind the scenes videos, interviews with models, photo galleries, model bios, and other original content. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will be broadcast on December 3, and if you’re the chatting type, check out www.cbs.com/socialviewing during the show, as you’ll be able...
I’m happy to announce that we’ve just released the first issue of the Productive Magazine! 33 Pages, 17 articles, 3 MB FREE PDF download that looks like this: Productive Magazine #1 Before you download… watch the video of me introducing you to the magazine (only 6 minutes): To download, just click here! What’s in the magazine: Interview with the David Allen himself – the best-selling author of the Getting Things Done book 17 great articles by the most active productivity bloggers in the blogoshpere, make sure to check these out! Thanks to all the contributors and to everyone who helped...
We have recently reported on a Russian company Era Vodoleya that expressed its intentions to sue Google for a huge amount of $3 billion (which is 15% of Google’s revenues) because of Google allegedly infringing a patent with its contextual advertising technology - the one that turned Google into a multi-billion company. In the post I thought that the entire situation looked more like the company was trying to attract some publicity to itself instead of actually having the resources required to sue the internet giant - patent or no patent. After the post was published, the issue was widely...
Image via CrunchBase There has been much discussion lately about how easy Twitter is and FriendFeed is harder to get into. I completely understand this, but I have also noticed that people mentioned they want to know how “power users” use FriendFeed. First, let me state that FriendFeed is a tool, and you can use it however you want. I wrote recently that the early adopters should be guides for when the mainstream starts to use these tools. Daniel Pritchett wrote about some “secrets” of FriendFeed power users with the idea of helping people tap into the power of...
Before you read this post, you might want to know a little bit more about subscribing and rss so that you can keep things in context! Got it? Great. Feedburner is a tool that many bloggers (including myself) use to: a) Provide blog readers with an rss feed of their posts b) Track their rss subscription statistics (ie: how many people are subscribed to their blog) Without a doubt it’s a decent tool, but here’s the problem: it’s not terribly reliable. Just check out a screenshot of my supposed subscription stats over the last couple of weeks: Feedburner Stats These...
Iran has blocked access to more than five million Internet sites, including Facebook and YouTube as part of a crackdown on content perceived to be immoral and anti-social. Abdolsamad Khoram Abadi, an advisor to Iran’s prosecutor general told the media that “The enemies seek to assault our religious identity by exploiting the Internet.” The Internet “inflicts social, political, economic and moral damage, which is worrying….social vice caused by the Internet is more than that by the satellite network.” Iran has around 21 million internet users from a population of 70 million people. Persian bloggers are frequent participants on online...
Turn that frownie upside downie. (Thanks Flickr user suanie) Six Apart, the company behind major commercial blogging platforms TypePad and Movable Type, has launched the Journalist Bailout Program, offering to provide free blogs to out-of-work media types. If you thought blogs were already free, you're mostly right -- sites like Blogger.com, LiveJournal and WordPress have long offered instant, cookie-cutter blogs to anyone with a ... well, to anyone. But the "Pro"-level membership Six Apart is giving out usually costs $150 a year, and comes with enough features and customer support to allay most technical worries -- allowing the unemployed...
Yesterday we heard from Eric Hamm from Up-And-Coming-Blogger and “Motivate Thyself” and Sean Platt from Writer Dad who wrote about the power of finding a blogging buddy to work collaborate with in your blogging. Finding that special blogging buddy (or buddies) isn’t anything you can place on Craig’s List. Like any relationship worth developing, only the proper combination of time and place will lead to conception. It is important to understand that part of the challenge lies in the patience it takes to wait for the right blogger to enter our lives. Of course, while being patient, it wouldn’t hurt...
San Francisco-based blogging startup Six Apart has announced they will be giving away free accounts on their TypePad blogging system for professional bloggers and journalists who recently lost their jobs as well as those who fear the axe is coming. Cleverly dubbed the "Journalist Bailout Program," the service includes one free blog, a place in the Six Apart Media advertising program, promotion on Blogs.com, a as well as other tools and advice on driving traffic to your site, all courtesy of Six Apart. Sponsor The TypePad Journalist Bailout Program The program launched over the weekend through via this lighthearted post...
One thing that bugs me about Twitter is that the term followers, the people who elect to see your microblogging updates, sounds like a cross between a group of zombies and a collection of cultish fanatics that you might want to keep at arm’s length. We use other terms like friend, contact, colleague, and buddy to refer to these different kinds of people who pay attention to what you do and say. Image by toprankonlinemarketing A lot of people (including both you and me?) like the idea of building up these follower numbers for several reasons. It can come across...
[China's Top Web 2.0 companies, the categories & potential Western rivals. Photo by Shel] Georg Godula, founder & managing director of Web2Asia, an incubator for Western Interactive Media companies in Asia, served as our very over-qualified tour guide on our China 2.0 tour. His group co-produced this first-ever event with The China Business Network and my sense is that Georg had the contacts that gave us access to so many high quality entrepreneurs. When he was not striking poses that reminded me of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, in often frustrating attempts to gather an unruly...
While, the “Motrin Moms” debacle thrust the influential power of social media networks like blogs and Twitter into the limelight, it also highlighted the enterprise ambivalence around use of social media. Some experts placed the blame on Motrin’s poor use of social media, when in reality, Motrin didn’t leverage social media for its ad campaign or to quell the uproar over its highly controversial ad, instead it belatedly responded with a standard press release on its site. Despite all the hype and publicity surrounding social media, there are plenty of well-known companies who are either reluctant and/or clueless, when it comes to social media adoption. Larger companies are risk-averse and typically invest in communication/marketing channels that are mature and thoroughly vetted. Twitter is a...
We have already heard voices in the blogosphere that media people (both bloggers and reporters from traditional media outlets) should be cautious about how we cover various economic events in these hard times as we are partly responsible for what our readers will think and how they will behave. And since it is hardly arguable that the financial crisis is partly due to panic and irrational behavior of traders and investors, this issue definitely deserves our attention and consideration from every reporter or blogger. It looks like here in Russia the authorities have already figured out how to cope with...
Copyright Clearance Center has just launched Ozmo, a new web-based service focused on helping photographers, bloggers, and other content creators license their work for commercial use. Ozmo supports Creative Commons’ CC+ protocol (see the press release about CC+ for more information), meaning that it enables creators to license their work to the public under one set of terms via a Creative Commons license, and offer the ability to obtain a private license via Ozmo’s licensing system — to purchase rights not offered by the CC license a work is under (e.g., commercial use if the work is under a CC NonCommercial...
