You are currently browsing the archives for March, 2007.
From Boing Boing:
ReviewMe.com, a ripoff site, claims that you can buy a review on Boing Boing for $500. It ain’t true, and if you’ve given these scumbags $500 for a review here, you got ripped off.”
ReviewMe’s Patrick Galvin sent a reply to Boing Boing, which is published along with Cory’s post.
Another snafu moment for brands whose ads ended up sites they didn’t want to be on. (Thanks for sending, Lester!) From CNN:
“At least three major companies want their ads pulled from Ann Coulter’s Web site, following customer complaints about the right-wing commentator referring to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a ‘faggot.’ Verizon, Sallie Mae and Georgia-based NetBank each said they didn’t know their ads were on AnnCoulter.com until they received the complaints….. Verizon, Sallie Mae and NetBank said the ads were put on a variety of sites by a third party company. In many cases, advertisers do not know which sites feature their ads.”
That’s the finding from a recent survey by UK ad agency SpannerWorks.
“An examination of the most popular sites among 17 to 25-year-olds in the US has revealed that social networking website Facebook has consolidated its status as the demographic’s favourite website. And the community site, once the preserve of university students but now open to all, extended its lead over MySpace with both males and females. Almost 70 per cent of women surveyed chose Facebook as one of their top ten online destinations, compared to the 38 per cent who chose MySpace.”
I don’t see an overview of the methodology, and the results are surprising given that Comscore MediaMetrix, in December 2006, estimated My Space’s audience to be 73 million uniques versus Facebook’s 19 million. But perhaps the concentration of Facebook’s audience around the 17-to-25 demo explains the difference.
Like more and more traditional news publishers, USA Today is adding community-participation features to its site to appeal to readers who have been leaving traditional sites for UGC news sites like Digg.com. From Mediapost:
“AS WITH MANY TRADITIONAL MEDIA outlets, USA Today has opted to embrace the same ‘new media’ forces now threatening its longtime hold on consumers. Targeting today’s interaction-hungry readers, the Gannett-owned paper this weekend relaunched its Web site in the guise of a social network laden with video, blogs, dynamic content-sharing and recommendation tools.”
“‘Our readers are always looking for new ways to engage more directly in discussions,’ [SVP and online publisher Jeff] Webber said.”
Mediapost reports on a study that says blog readers are very loyal to their favorite sites: “of the blogs they read most often, 68.3% of respondents said they read them daily.“Â In reader surveys we’ve conducted at about 90 FM affiliated blog sites, we see similar numbers.
In a special column for the Detroit News Ford’s design director, Peter Horbury, shares his management style and his strategy to keep the creative juices flowing. Here, for example, is what he reads:
“I monitor Left Lane News, Car Design News, CarConnection.com and, to keep up with what’s going on at home in England, I look at the BBC and the London Times online.”
Did he say Left Lane News, one of the pillars of FM’s auto federation?! I think he did!
At the second annual Podcast Peer Awards, Ask A Ninja took home “two of the most prestigious awards,” Favorite Video Podcast and Best Comedy Video. What a day for the Ninja!
Morning Edition’s Renee Montagne (NPR) interviewed Rob Walch this morning, author and analyst behind the site Podcast411 and the book “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters.” Walch called out Ask A Ninja as one of the handful of independent podcasters (among the 90,000 total) who’s starting to make a real living off his program. Oh, but that’s only the beginning!
AOL Sports and Sports Business Journal collaborated on a list of the 20 most influential sports bloggers, which includes Tyler Bleszinski, of Sportsblog Nation, Athletics Nation and FM’s Sports Federation.
And Christopher Null published at PC World a list of the overall most influential people online. FM’s own John Battelle finished first in the second half (#26)! Congrats to all the FM partners and friends who made the list: Jimmy Wales of Wikiapedia and Wikia, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of DailyKos and Sportsblog Nation, Mike Arrintgon of TechCrunch, Kevin Rose of Digg and Revision3, Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Publishing (and investor in FM and the company behind FM partners Makezine and Craftzine) and Drew Curtis of Fark.
…. An analyst friend who covers Google reminded me that not all Google pages are search-results pages carrying ad links — only 70-75% of Google pages carry ads — which explains the difference between the $68 eCPM figure and the $92 figure. Multiply $0.54 average CPC with 17% average click-through rate with 74% pages that carry ads with 1000 to convert to revenue-per-thousand-pagviews and you get $68.
For the full calculation, and its implications on Google getting serious about selling programs to brand advertisers, check out my post from last week.