"Mashable’s 2007 Predictions"
By Pete Cashmore
December 28, 2006

Dave's Comments: Ever heard of Mashable? Mashable claims to have more than 150,000 email and RSS subscribers and in excess of 1 million monthly pageviews, making it the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on social networks. I think it's a good read on a VERY hot topic, one that every online marketer should be at least familiar with. And here's a good place to start - Mashable's 2007 Predictions.

"It’s now only a few days until 2007, and a good time for the yearly prediction posts to start rolling out - including one from Mashable. To add a more interesting spin, we’ll throw in a mini-game of blog tag - a few people “tagged” at the end of this post can blog their own 2007 predictions in their niches, if they wish. They can tag other blogs and so on. Also note that derogatory comments aren’t just accepted on this post - they’re positively encouraged as part of our Insulting Comments Contest. So now to Mashable’s predictions…

1. Online Contests Become Huge: Competitive social sites became a trend in late 2006, with the Bix acquisition highlighting their mainstream appeal and sponsorship opportunities. Also check out Xuqa, the Yahoo Talent Contest, YouTube Underground, Islandoo and many more precursors. Media has become so abundant online that attention is becoming the new currency: 5 star rating systems, social news sites and online competitions are all about voices being heard above the noise. To put it another way: now that everyone is a mini-celebrity on MySpace, how do you become a megastar? We’ll see many more social networks based around competition launching in 2007."

See all of Mashable's 2007 Predictions by clicking on this link:

"Mashable’s 2007 Predictions"


Technorati Tags:Business, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

"Web Analytics: The Power's in Integration"
By Jason Burby
Clickz

Dave's Comments: The KEY concept for me from this article - "Integration is helping many clients better understand the 95 percent plus people who DON'T convert on the site." This article focuses on Omniture's new Genesis product, but be sure to checkout what WebSideStory and WebTrends are up to when it comes to integration.

"Last week I attended Omniture's release of its new offering, Genesis. The event was very well attended. Omniture Genesis is basically automated integration (think plug and play) that allows marketers to easily integrate other data and common systems right into the tool.

This helps satisfy a longstanding frustration. I've written a fair amount about how Web analytics data is valuable on its own but becomes much more valuable when integrated with other insight. We often combine attitudinal and competitive data with behavioral data like Web analytics. Of equal value is the ability to truly integrate marketing drivers and other site-side tools.

Yes, people have been tracking e-mail campaigns, banner campaigns, and onsite search effectiveness through analytics tools for years, and all the vendors have the ability to do so. But the trend we're seeing now is a much deeper integration of this data type in an even easier framework."

Read the entire article at by clicking on the following link:

Web Analytics: The Power's in Integration

Technorati Tags:Business, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

"Yahoo and IBM Team up in Enterprise Search"
SearchEngineWatch Blog

"A minute after midnight, Bill Snyder, Senior Writer for TheStreet.com, broke the story about IBM teaming up with Yahoo in enterprise search.

As of today, the two firms are offering IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition as a free download. The underlying technology for the new product belongs to IBM, but the interface is Yahoo's."

Read the entire article at by clicking on the following link:

Yahoo and IBM Team up in Enterprise Search

Technorati Tags:
Business, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing