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Your click-based pay varies. A lot. The CPC (cost per click) you see in the various keyword tools might give you the misleading impression that avertising bid amounts are fixed, and that how much you will earn on each click is predictable. Nope. The data is just a broad estimate. How much money you earn changes all the time - because on a day-to-day basis, advertisers' bid amounts change, too, and by fairly wide margins. Revenue from Google AdSense is based on bids by advertisers, who set daily budgets. These budgets get continually adjusted by the advertiser and according to the internal algorithms of Google AdWords. For example, advertisers set their advertising budget over a period of time - say a day or a quarter and even over a fiscal year. During this time span, their bids go up and down as they figure out how to optimize their campaigns and, toward the end, run out of allocated funds. We writers earning by revenue sharing see the effects of these fluctuations daily as lower or higher earnings.
The ads on your content pages change. Even with excellent keywording, the ad relevance - how well suited the ads are to either the content of the article or the visitors' interests - changes depending on various uncontrollable factors, like changing Google AdSense algorithms, new advertiser networks entering the program, and the presence or absence of advertiser competition. So if your click-through rate goes down, it may be because the ads your visitors see (which are not necessarily the ads you see) are not as tempting and "juicy" as they were.
Weather events affect the geographical regions they hit, and beyond...and also the behavior of Internet visitors. Winter storms, floods and the like mean not only power outages in some areas, but also people in the nearby environs being watchful in case they are affected. This means little or no "shopping" type of internet use in that region. If you have your own Google AdSense account, you can test this one by studying where your earnings and visitors are coming from using Google Analytics. For example, I noticed by studying Analytics that during bad weather on the East coast, I had fewer AdSense clicks than normal on my HubPages from the Eastern U.S. regions.
Newsworthy events affect Internet visits. When there is political unrest, a major crime, or any particularly juicy news item, some people who would normally be reading our articles and shopping choose to spend their time keeping up with the news.
Other events occupy potential web visitors elsewhere, such as sporting events, holidays, and major television awards ceremonies. Wondering why both your impressions and earnings are down? Check out the national and international news to see what celebrations and fun events are going on elsewhere in the world.
The day of the week affects earnings, and it varies for different niches. For example, some writers report lower earnings during the weekends, while others notice their earnings peaking on weekends. Plot your earnings daily over the course of months, ideally broken down by niche, and see what your trends are.
The time of year affects earnings. Seasons, holidays, college and school terms and breaks, and financial cycles affect when money is spent in different sectors. This again varies by niche.
Different article websites seem to use different timelines for their earnings calculations. Some follow strict reporting schedules (the Amazon Associates affiliate program, for example), whereas others that rely on reporting from more than one advertising program (like eHow) are more irregular in their earnings reports. This doesn't mean they're not accurate - just that the earnings will appear more erratic from day to day.
Google AdSense itself doesn't always report in real time for all regions. There are occasional delays which might possibly be attributed to variations in the performance of the different servers they have worldwide, regularly scheduled updates, and unscheduled downtime.
Google AdSense earnings reflect the quality of a web page's (or website's) traffic. Pages that were earning well suddenly stop earning so well, depending on how valuable the advertiser found the traffic coming from them. Smart pricing is not a myth - it's real. So, it seems, is "stupid pricing" - my name for what happens when a page gets an unexpected increase in eCPM.
Backlinks to your articles appear and affect your PageRank. When your articles receive good backlinks from high-ranking Web pages, you may notice a marked increase in visitors and/or in earnings. This can happen suddenly when the traffic increase is due to people following the link en masse, or over time when the traffic increase is due to a rising PageRank.
Backlinks disappear or get devalued. As quickly as they can come, backlinks to your articles can disappear if taken off of the linking Web page. Or Google Search might start valuing some backlinks less (something I think is only a matter of time for author-originated backlinks posted on major article sites like EzineArticles or sites designed to provide backlinks, like RedGage or SheToldMe.)
Articles get de-indexed temporarily or permanently. It happens.
Articles get shuffled about in the search index. New articles get a shot at getting noticed on the front page briefly, shoving more established articles behind them, then fall back and have to rise naturally to their more-or-less fixed status (actually, more of the less, since very little is fixed on any search engine - usually, any article's search engine position is only temporary).
The way your articles are indexed can change dramatically when the various search engines make major long-term changes to their indexing algorithm. The changes are rolled out differently in different geophysical locations over different time periods, producing what can look like a seriously wonky effect from person to person. The so-called "Caffeine" changeover is one such change. It's not a ranking algorithm, but it can indirectly affect how pages appear in the SERPs. The Mayday algorithm change is another.
How your web page ranks on the SERPs (search engine results page) and the way ads display on your web page can change dramatically when, say, Google Search starts using personalized search for everyone or when Google AdSense starts using better contextual matching. Keep up with the search engine and advertising blogs to understand the major changes going on.
Traffic from social networking sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and Twitter can skew a writer's impressions-to-earnings ratio. Impressions coming from links at social marketing sites do not lead directly to earnings, typically - this is not generaly considered "high quality traffic" in the marketing sense of the word. Indirectly, it may help earnings by increasing the ranking of the page, or, theoretically, it may hurt earnings by lowering the eCPM of the page and getting it "smart priced."
Competition will spring up, almost guaranteed. You may have "owned" your keyword up till now. But that was just until something better or newer came along. You can't stop competition, but you can improve or add to your Web page, file DMCA complaints if they have copied your content, or just wait it out until the newness of the competing content wears thin.
Your earnings may not really be fluctuating as much as it looks like, because your statistical sample may be too low. This one's a bit abstract, but it boils down to the fact that your numbers may be too low to approach statistical accuracy. In other words, what looked like regular earnings might not have been. Even when you've been observing a pattern that seems as regular as clockwork (such as $3 to $5 per day for two weeks straight), you may have too few articles, or articles that have been up for too short a time or that get too little traffic, to tell what the pattern really is. So when one day occurs with earnings of just $0.85, you think, hey, something must be up! Well, no. In general, the rule is, the fewer articles you have, and the shorter a time period the've been up, the less steady your earnings will be, and the more extreme any day's variations will look when they do show up. For example, let's say you have 100 articles posted and they've been up for two months, and get about 500 visits per day, and that you earn $2 per day on average, give or take $1.00. You suddenly have a zero earning day even though you have the same number of impressions. Although the change looks dramatic from your perspective, it might not be statistically significant - meaning the change is within the normal expected change for that volume of articles, with that volume of traffic, over that period of time, in that niche. When you have more articles - say, 1,000 - and better traffic, and they have been up a full year, you are better able to calculate a reliable standard deviation and be able to determine exactly when a variation from the norm is statistically significant.
The economy is changing. We are in an economic depression. What happens on Wall Street and in the international financial sector affects advertiser spending and earnings from Google AdSense as well as affiliate programs - both directly and indirectly, and both for the worse and for the better. This is stuff out of our control.
Earlier today, Steve Jobs talked publicly about his life saving liver transplant for the first time at a press conference where California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced new legislation to encourage and make easier organ donation.
Jobs, whose health was a subject of great speculation before he eventually took a leave of absence from Apple in January 2009, spoke of the gap between the amount of livers needed and the amount available in California. The Apple CEO ultimately received his transplant in Tennessee.
You can see Jobs' remarks at around the 13:00 mark in the video below. Meanwhile, for details of what California is doing to improve the organ donation process, check out Governor Schwarzenegger's site.
When it comes to accessing Wikipedia on your iPhone, there’s no shortage of options. This week, a new app entered the arena dubbed Articles, and for users who value a solid interface and pleasant viewing experience, it’s an excellent choice.
The app, which is $2.99 in the App Store, features some innovative features, like viewing articles based on your location, a really great photo viewer (complete with the ability to either copy photos or save them to your camera roll), and a multi-page interface that works the same way as Mobile Safari.
The app also features a pull-down menu, a la Tweetie 2, that can set the device’s orientation — perfect for those that want to view Wikipedia articles while in bed or on their side.
You can search both article titles and content, bookmark your favorite articles in folders of your choice, and even view an article at random by shaking the device.
The presentation of the app really takes things to another level: text is clear, readable and beautifully arranged. By double-tapping and dragging on the device, you can easily scroll between sections. Furthermore, clicking on an info box quickly enlarges that section.
We do have a few niggles with the app, however. First, as nice as the double-tap and drag feature is for moving between sections, it’s not a replacement for a table of contents that apps like Wikipanion feature. Second, while reference information appears when you do searches, references aren’t listed in article pages. For normal reading, that’s fine, and it makes the app clean; however, if you want to know about the source of a certain fact, you can’t view it inside the app itself.
Those deficits pale, though, when compared to the overall presentation of the app. One of my favorite features is that you can tap and hold on an intra-wiki link and open up the link in a new page — just like in Safari. I also like how text can be magnified or made smaller by using pinch zoom.
If you’re looking for a way to access Wikipedia and you want the best looking experience possible, give Articles a shot. It has been localized in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish — so it’s a good option for multi-lingual iPhone users too.
What is your favorite way to access Wikipedia on the iPhone? Let us know!
It’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament time — otherwise known as March Madness — and the online streaming initiative from CBS Sports and the NCAA is already netting massive numbers: 3.4 million hours of video/audio were streamed online by three million unique visitors on day one.
Those staggering numbers mean that online viewership is already up 20% over last year’s figures, and apparently a large majority of you have no problem watching from work. In fact, the always clever “Boss Button” — a one-click option to hide your guilty pleasure — has already received 1.7 million clicks.
So far the most-watched game via March Madness On Demand was Florida vs. BYU. The game — which BYU won in double-overtime — was streamed for a total of 521,000 hours across all online viewers. That’s up 50% over last year’s top-streamed game on day one.
The impressive numbers point to a growing interest in consuming live events online. As with the Grammys and Twilight red carpet events, the new trend is an online Field of Dreams; if you stream it, they will come.
For all y’all out there who think that the iPad leaves much to be desired, we’ve got the video for you. This parody, made as an assignment for a Comm 340 class (I hope they got an A), highlights all that’s lacking in the mythical device.
It doesn’t have a camera, you can’t use it to make a phone call, and the name itself has spawned countless parodies — not to mention throwbacks to ‘90s television — that’s basically this video’s beef with Steve Jobs’s newest shiny, shiny baby.
Check out the video below and let us know in the comments: What changes would you like to see in the iPad 2.0? Personally, I’m still waiting on Spice 2.0.
Kevin Nakao is VP of Mobile & Business Search for WhitePages, a Top 40 Web and Mobile Publisher. You can find him on Twitter, and on the Whitepages Blog where he writes about mobile, local, and social media.
While last year's SXSW seemed to serve as the “coming out” party for location-based services (LBS), maybe this year's conference signifies the migration of these platforms into mainstream culture. And perhaps the only real "new" concept to emerge this year is the idea that there is finally a real opportunity to make money via “location.”
Here are five things that companies should consider as they look to utilize location-based services (LBS) as part their mobile strategy.
1. Location Shouldn't be the Only Goal
From finding the nearest ski slope on REI's Ski and Snow Report to a nearby movie on Flixter, there are plenty of Top iPhone applications that have incorporated a "lead with the offer, not the capability" philosophy into their mobile product offering to provide a better service. Build the best service first, then add the bells and whistles.
With all the hoopla surrounding location, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that location's real appeal to advertisers is the fact that with this functionality, you can reach the on-the-go user, who is ready to buy and consume. Just because Twitter and Facebook offer location doesn't make that valuable or new to advertisers. Location-targeting via IP address has been around a while. For the same reason radio is a great advertising channel for retailers, LBS advertising is also valuable: because it can reach the consumer near the point of sale.
However, if you apply any city's share of the total U.S. population, the results show some pretty low estimates of Foursquare users in individual localities. What emerges is a very “long tail” — a steep, narrow graph — of local user adoption. This shows why it is important to achieve scale if you hope to see return on investment in the location marketing space.
For example, using these rough estimates of a city's proportional share of the U.S. population, if a local pet supply store wanted to target people in San Francisco, the estimated reach would be 1,310 Foursquare users. Even if you double this audience estimate, the number is fairly small for even a local marketer. We had to hit around 4 million downloads of the Whitepages iPhone app to achieve the minimum scale needed for advertiser geo-targeting. Today, 80% of our campaigns from major brands are geo-targeted.
Editor’s Note: It’s important to remember that these are just rough estimates. Because Foursquare was initially only available in a handful of major metro areas, the geographic distribution of users may not precisely follow the geographic distribution of the population.
3. Mobile Battery Life is Key
Battery life is the single biggest threat to location. With GPS on, the phone is asking the network where it is, and this chatter can drain battery life — anyone with an iPhone knows what I am referring to. Thus, phone manufacturers will play a critical role in the future of LBS. RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerry devices, faced this problem early on with the energy-tax of e-mail polling, and as a result, their devices now have some of the best battery life.
Foursquare has helped us move forward here as well. “Check-ins" help to address the issue as they offer efficient geo-triggers without having to keep battery-draining GPS features on at all times.
4. Location Will Be the Battleground of the Mobile OS
Looking forward, I predict the mobile platform wars will be fought with location and maps. This is an important feature that a platform can use as a point of differentiation for consumers and developers.
In anticipation of that battle, Apple purchased mapping company Placebase, and Google is starting to provide unique mapping features like turn-by-turn navigation on its Android devices. The only hope I see for Windows Mobile is if they do something completely revolutionary on the mobile location front. A development like this was alluded to at the recent TED conference with its augmented reality layering of geo-tagged Flickr photos and real-time video integration.
5. Location Pays
At WhitePages, we monetize our mobile services through a mix of premium, national display, and sponsored links for local business. Our effective CPM (revenue per thousand ad impressions) for sponsored local links is $30-$50 — double the effective CPM (eCPM) rate we see for premium display ad campaigns from national brands. The eCPM multiple of local targeted ads over ad network rates is a staggering 10x.
Location-based inventory will also become scarce as Apple recently announced that iPhone apps will not be permitted to access GPS capabilities for advertising alone. There now needs to be some consumer benefit and functionality in order to access a user's location. Geo-targeted inventory on mobile will continue to be at a high premium with no excess supply or ad networks to drive it down.
Conclusion
It is my hope that by this time next year, SXSW –- the festival of "emerging" music and technology –- will have finally moved on from location. It's clearly happening now, and if integrated wisely, location will be making companies too much money to be called the "cool kid on the block" any longer
In order to have access to iPad testing units, developers and testers had to agree to keep the device tethered to a fixed object in an isolated room with blacked-out windows, according to a report by BusinessWeek.
That’s pretty hardcore. It’s unclear from BusinessWeek’s report if that was a condition enforced before the iPad was unveiled to the public or if it’s something that will be kept up until the April 3 launch date.
Apple is a notoriously secretive company, especially when it comes to new products. Outside of partnerships with content publishers like The New York Times, Wired and The Wall Street Journal who have either confirmed interest or already shown demonstrations of their applications, the few developers that do have access to the iPad are keeping their mouths shut.
It also appears that in order to be on the list for the iPad, developers or companies had to be pretty high on the totem poll. Not even Trip Hawkins, who founded Electronic Arts and once worked at Apple, could get a testing unit for his new company, Digital Chocolate.
Now, not having physical access to the device doesn’t preclude developers from creating apps for the iPad — Apple actually started accepting apps for review today — but it does make refining the app much more difficult.
As was the case with the iPhone, we expect the best iPad apps to be those that can take advantage of multi-touch in ways that just feel better. Gestures and interactions on a bigger screen are probably features that will need to be refined over time — just as they were with the original iPhone.
The degree of Apple’s iPad-related secrecy might sound well, paranoid, but the fact is, at least for now, the company can get away with it. The mobile ecosystem is so hot — especially for the iPhone — that getting on the iPad and getting on early is worth the hoop-jumping for many developers. Some would even to settle for using an emulator until the product is officially launched.
What do you think of Apple’s corporate culture of secrecy? Let us know!
Researching topics such as health, diet, and (especially) the effectiveness of dietary supplements can be hard and time-consuming. Obscured by thousands of marketing tricks, finding the truth takes days, if not weeks of research.
So, when someone puts in the time to do the research and create an infographic that makes certain aspects of these topics easy to understand, it can be a huge time saver. Read on for some of the best health-related infographics we’ve found online.
As always, consider the figures in these infographics with a grain of salt. No one guarantees that the numbers are correct, and some of them are definitely open to interpretation.
1. Dietary Supplements
This is, without exaggeration, the most amazing and useful infographic I’ve ever encountered. It looks fairly simple, but it took many hours of research to create it, and it is, to my knowledge, the best resource about the actual efficiency of various dietary supplements out there. From the author:
“This image is a "balloon race". The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble.”
The graphic shows the effectiveness of health supplements on the Y-axis (higher is better), and uses the size of the bubbles to illustrate the popularity of that particular supplement among US adults. Anything below the “worth it line,” doesn’t have enough evidence of medicinal benefit and is probably not worth your time, according to the graphic’s creators, who looked at data from over 1500 studies on both PubMed (US National Library Of Medicine) and Cochrane.org. The infographic effectively combines data on both popularity and medical benefits to create a resource that points out the best health supplements, as well as which ones American consumers believe in the most.
Check out the interactive version, which lets you filter the supplements by function, here.
2. Should You Drink Tap Water?
This is a look at five most and least polluted water systems in America (in larger cities), showing that not all tap water has been created equal.
If you’ve been struggling with the issue of drinking tap or bottled water, this info might help you make a decision. Of course, the data in this infographic, created by GOOD, covers only 10 cities, but it highlights an important point – not all chemicals that can appear in tap water are regulated. The graphic illustrates how many pollutants are found in each water system, how often they’re found, and what type of bacteria exists.
Obesity is a known problem in the USA, but which states are affected the most? This is the most recent infographic on the subject we could find, listing obesity rates in all US states, as well as obese and overweight children rates in the USA.
Besides these numbers, this attractive infographic highlights several important points; such as overall high rates of obesity among high school students, as well as the direct and indirect costs of obesity to the US budget.
Right now, one of the most debated topics in the USA is health care reform, and how much the proposed health bill will cost individuals and business. But how much are people paying for health care in other countries around the world?
This infographic, created in a collaboration between GOOD and Way Shape Form, shows the average life expectancy in various countries (indicated by the fullness of the IV bags), as well as several other health-related stats, such as infant mortality rates, and the cost of health care.
This visualization was created by David McCandless, the creator of the Snake Oil infographic mentioned above. It’s a slightly morbid chart, showing the average fatality rates for known diseases — the size of the bubble indicates how likely you are to die from a given disease (larger is more fatal).
It comes, however, with an optimistic second chart. The X-axis shows the fatality rate, but the Y-axis shows how long the cause of the illness can survive outside of the body in ideal conditions. Lesson: wash your hands!
Know of any other great health-related visualizations or infographics? Let us know in the comments!
Ever wonder what it would be like to step inside a giant wire mesh cage, put on a virtual reality headset, walk around like a hamster and shoot crazy alien opponents? No? Luckily our friends at Engadget did, and went hands, eyes and feet-on with the Virtusphere at GDC.
Keep in mind that this product isn’t new, but if you haven’t seen it in action before the video below is well worth the watch.
With a $50,000 price tag, this toy makes spending $170 on some plastic Rock Band instruments seem like a veritable bargain. This is just between us, but we secretly plan on buying a bunch and renting them out like inflatable moonbounce houses.
Would you want one of these things in your living room? Would it fit in your living room? Let us know in the comments.
A non-profit organization called Reboot has a mighty challenge for you this Friday night: Power down your cellphone, let your FarmVille crops languish and sign out of Skype for a full 24 hours. What do you think: Can you hack a single day sans technology?
We’re seen efforts of this nature before — remember when John Mayer wanted you to make like a Luddite for the first week of 2010?
But this event, which Reboot is calling The National Day of Unplugging, goes the extra mile with promotions (ironically enough) through Facebook, Twitter and a website called the Sabbath Manifesto (the day itself is part of a larger movement called the Sabbath Manifesto, a movement started by a group of Jewish artists, writers, filmmakers and social media professionals seeking to integrate traditional rituals into their modern lives).
There will also be a series of events in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco (according to Reboot, they’re private and space is limited). All guests at these events will be asked to check their phones at the door, where they will sleep the next 24 hours away in a cell phone sleeping bag [pictured above].
Tanya Schevitz, a Reboot rep, told us that the idea is spreading. “We are hearing from people all over the county –- and beyond –- that they will create their own events, gather with friends, family, etc. to embrace the Sabbath Manifesto and the National Day of Unplugging,” she said.
Participants are also encouraged to sign on to the Sabbath Manifesto website and report back on their technological withdrawal experiences.
This venture is certainly interesting in light of recent stats that point to our society’s obsession with technological communication and increasing fascination with social media.
"There’s clearly a social problem when we’re interacting more with digital interfaces than our fellow human beings,” said Dan Rollman, Sabbath Manifesto creator and founder of the Universal World Record Database. “Rich, engaging conversations are harder to come by than they were a few years ago.”
What do you think? Do you think digital communications are eroding our ability to truly connect with others? Or do you think Twitter, Facebook and the like serve as channels to bring people together? Let us know in the comments.
The contest is a promotion for American Express (disclosure: also a Mashable sponsor), asking users to follow the credit card company on Twitter and then tweet "Hey @americanexpress I want to be with Coco in (insert city from list below). Pick me! http://bit.ly/bEUqsh #amexConan."
The winners –- who will get two tickets for Conan shows in either New York, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco or Los Angeles — will be selected at random from the tweets sent out between now and 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday.
American Express is sponsoring the tour, but this new twist on its promotion should give the company an opportunity to gain thousands of followers in a hurry, assuming the Twittersphere is still as crazy for Coco as it was when he signed up only a month ago.
If you follow Mashable, chances are you either visit the website directly, or subscribe to our RSS feed, daily emails or Twitter and Facebook pages. Given that there are dozens of ways to follow Mashable, we thought we’d round these up in a useful blog post.
We’re also aware that some people get a little overwhelmed by all the content we create every day. That’s why we recently created separate feeds, Twitter and Facebook accounts for all of the topic channels here on Mashable: Social Media, Mobile, Web Video, Entertainment, Business, Tech, Apple and the Mashable Jobs board.
If you find the full Mashable feed a little too much, please do consider subscribing to these individual channels instead.
Calling all iPad and would-be iPad developers: Starting today, Apple will be accepting apps for review. Only applications submitted to review by March 27, 2010, will be considered for the grand opening of the iPad App Store. After an initial review, Apple will let developers know about the readiness of their app so that changes can be made before a final review submission.
Apple details the steps developers need to take in an e-mail, which you can see here:
According to the Nielsen Company, the global average time spent per person on social networking sites is now nearly five and half hours per month (February 2010 data), with Facebook accounting for the majority of that time. That’s up more than two hours from last year.
In arriving at that conclusion, Nielsen measured social network usage per person across 10 countries and compared that to data from the same time last year.
When looking at specific countries, Italy tops the charts with social network time per person just under six and a half hours per month (6:27:53), and Australia is a close second (6:02:34). The United States — which has the largest unique social networking audience — ranked third in usage with the average person spending just over six hours (6:02:34) on social networks.
What’s even more interesting is that Facebook — with its 400 million members — is far and away dominating the rest of the competition.
Facebook is the number-one social network destination worldwide and accounts for nearly six hours (5:52:00) per person with the average user logging in more than 19 times per month. What that boils down to is that the time spent on Facebook is almost five hours longer than the time spent on MySpace (0:59:33), the second closest social network in terms of time spent on site per person.
Nielsen also found that:
- Globally, the average Twitterer conducts three unique sessions for a total of 36 minutes per month.
- In the U.S. the active unique social network audience grew roughly 29% from 115 million in February 2009 to 149 million in February 2010.
- Active unique users of social networks are also up nearly 30% globally, rising from 244.2 million to 314.5 million collectively.
The Predator franchise of science fiction/horror/action films is coming back into the zeitgeist, this time without the Aliens. The trailer hit the web today; watch it to find out if the franchise is worth revisiting.
The new film is called Predators (evoking Aliens, the sequel to Alien) and the premise seems to be that several of humanity’s most effective killers are stranded on a jungle planet where they’re hunted for sport by a whole legion of predators. The film stars Adrien Brody, Lawrence Fishburne and Topher Grace, and it’s directed by Vacancy and Armored director Nimród Antal. Sin City’s Robert Rodriguez is one of the three credited screenwriters.
Adrian Brody is a surprise choice for leading man, seeing as how the first Predator film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger; let’s just say no one would picture Brody playing Conan the Barbarian. We’ll see if the new vibe works when the movie hits theaters this July.
The e-book war between Amazon.com and Apple is getting uglier. Dennis Johnson cites a report in Publishers Marketplace (subscription required) that alleges that Amazon.com is telling publishers that if they switch to an agency model (ala Macmillan) , they will lose Amazon as a platform for both e-books and print.
This battle, which in many ways mirrors similar struggles between record labels and online music stores, underscores some of the challenges that moving into widespread digital distribution for a formerly non-digital product can bring.
The Agency Model Conundrum
Recently, Macmillian’s CEO John Sargent explained the agency model, as it relates to e-book sales, in his blog:
“Starting at the end of March, we will move from the ‘retail model’ of selling e-books (publishers sell to retailers, who then sell to readers at a price that the retailer determines) to the ‘agency model’ (publishers set the price, and retailers take a commission on the sale to readers).”
In other words, Macmillan wants to be able to control how much digital books are sold for on a per-book basis. Much like music publishers fought (and eventually won) the right to sell certain digital tracks or digital albums for more (or less, in some cases) than the $0.99 per track/$9.99 per album standard, publishers want that same control.
Amazon disagrees. And while it did acquiesce to Macmillan’s position at the end of January, it apparently has no plans of making those same concessions for future publishers.
In the Publishers Marketplace report, Michael Cader writes:
“At least one independent publisher of scale was told categorically by Amazon in a recent phone call initiated by the retailer that Amazon would not negotiate agency selling terms with any other publishers outside of the five initial Apple partners. This publisher was told that if they switched to an agency model for e-books, Amazon would stop selling their entire list, in print and digital form. In conversation, Amazon is said to have reiterated that as matter of policy they are declining to negotiate an agency model with any publisher outside of the five who have already announced agreements with Apple’s iBookstore.”
In other words, the agreements that have been made with the five publishers signed to work with Apple — Macmillan, Harper Collins, Penguin, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster — will not be passed on to smaller publishers.
It seems even the agreement with the other four publishers outside of Macmillan (known as Agency Four) isn’t set in stone.
Cader also writes:
“The indications are that if the Agency Four have not finalized new digital sales agreements with Amazon prior to the launch of Apple’s iPad, they could face delisting from direct sale at Amazon, as Macmillan did.”
Translation: If those publishers don’t finalize a new digital agreement with Amazon before the launch of the iPad, they risk being removed from Amazon.com
Amazon Is Biggest Now, But For How Long?
Because it is both the biggest seller of e-books and print books, Amazon has enormous power in the publishing industry. However, it’s unclear how long it will be able to play hardball with publishers, especially as formidable competitors like Apple (with iTunes) and Google emerge.
Apple, interestingly, held a reverse stance with music executives for many years before finally changing course in January of 2009 with the introduction of variable pricing. However, one reason Apple was able to exert so much influence over record labels pricing was because until Amazon launched its service (again, Amazon took the reverse approach with music, letting publishers set variable pricing for tracks and albums), there was no real competitor in the digital music space.
Amazon isn’t quite as lucky. First, e-books have been around for years and are available in a variety of formats from a variety of different storefronts. In fact, Amazon sold digital books long before it introduced the Kindle.
The e-book market has evolved much more quickly than the digital music space, which leaves less wiggle room for retailers, like Amazon, to exert pressure.
However, make no mistake, for smaller publishers, the risk of losing listings on Amazon.com is still probably a big enough threat to have an effect.
We’ll keep following this situation as it develops.
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere, any time, from any Internet connection.
At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even adding the free versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can keep your employees coordinated.
For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business.
The many advanced features of Gmail really make it a leap forward in the web-based e-mail space, and a lot of these are ideal for business.
If you’re not ready to take the full plunge into the paid Google Apps suite, you can still configure Gmail to function as your business e-mail client through your existing domain name by following the steps outlined in my post, “How to Set Up Gmail as Your Business E-mail Client.”
The first big advantage of Gmail, like all the apps discussed here, is that it functions in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about downloading messages to multiple locations or syncing various devices. Your inbox will look the same from any web or mobile connection. And with 25 gigs of e-mail storage per user (with a paid apps account), it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to clean your inbox or delete old messages.
Gmail works a bit differently than traditional desktop clients and webmail services in that conversations are “threaded.” This means that e-mails with the same or related subject lines are grouped together in a thread so you can see all the messages sent and received on a topic in one place. When a new message is received, the entire thread is bumped to the top of your inbox, making tracking complex and multi-party conversations easy.
Gmail also has a chat feature built right into the interface that lets you send a quick update or discuss a project with an employee if you’re not in the same office. Chats are also stored in Gmail so that you can search and refer to them later.
Google search, the asset that started it all for the company, is of course built right into Gmail, which makes finding information from e-mail conversations (even very old ones) extremely efficient.
Additionally, Gmail Labs offers some extra settings for your inbox that can be extremely valuable for business use:
Signature Tweaks puts your e-mail signature before the quoted text in a reply the way that Outlook would.
Default ‘Reply to All’ allows you to reply to group e-mails with one click, instead of from a drop-down menu.
Forgotten Attachment Detector will notify you if you’ve mentioned an attachment in an e-mail, but forgotten to add one.
Undo Send gives you a few seconds after sending a message to click “undo” in case you forgot something, or sent it to the wrong party by mistake.
Title Tweaks is a great feature that puts your unread message count first in the title of the inbox web page. If you have many windows open while you’re working, you’ll still be able to see when new messages arrive.
Google Docs is a web-based suite for word processing, presentation building (similar to PowerPoint), spreadsheets, and web forms. All the work is done in a web browser, and all the data is saved in the cloud.
The software can be a bit quirky at times, which may frustrate users of more stable products like Microsoft Office, but the payoff in online storage, shareability, and collaboration options may be worth the adjustment for many small businesses.
Because the data is online, streamlined document sharing and collaboration are big perks with Google Docs. Any file you’re working on can be shared with individual team members, or the entire group within the apps system. You can also set permissions for specific users to view and edit documents. And, multiple users can simultaneously view and edit documents, which can be useful for real-time collaborative projects or presentations during conference calls. You can also grant permission for those outside your office network to view and edit documents, which can be especially useful for sharing information and presentations with clients or colleagues.
As you create and share documents, your Google Docs dashboard may start to get a little messy. Be sure to create folders to keep your work organized just as you would on your desktop. You can also share entire folders if you need to collaborate on multiple documents related to the same project.
Google Calendar provides an efficient and intuitive way to keep appointments and events synced across your entire business. With calendar sharing and permissions (similar to those in Docs), you can add other employees’ calendars to your own, and vice versa, in order to see and manage the big picture of your team’s time.
For example, if an executive has an assistant, their calendars may be shared so that the assistant could manage his boss’s appointments remotely from his own account. It’s also a smart tool for coordinating meetings, calls, and shift staffing for multiple employees to avoid scheduling conflicts. Sharing multiple calendars with one “master calendar” creates a color-coded scheduling table for the coordinator that updates automatically when users make changes or additions.
The Calendar app can also be used to create events through Gmail. By adding your employees’ e-mail addresses to an event, they will receive an invitation to respond. Responding ‘yes’ automatically adds a shared event to your calendar that each invitee can view and add notes to. It’s a smart way to coordinate meetings and keep everyone in the loop.
Google Sites is a drag-and-drop web development tool that you can use within your business’s apps to create online information hubs for employees. The websites you create exist within your Google Apps domain, can be public or private, and permissions for employees to add, change, and contribute information can be set from the main account.
Beyond simply being a WYSIWYG web editor, Sites makes it easy to integrate data from other Google Apps into dynamic pages that team members can use to collaborate on projects. Integrating spreadsheets or data charts from Docs, a deadline schedule from Calendar, and team-specific messages from Gmail could essentially create a one-stop project dashboard full of dynamically updating information.
Sites here can be purely functional or informational, or with the aid of some built-in templates or a good designer, a full-fledged dynamic public website for your business that team members have easy access to.
Google Groups have long been public forums where users across the web gather to discuss specific interests or get technical support. Groups for business brings that same functionality into your private internal network.
E-mail can sometimes be cumbersome when coordinating a team. When you need a central space to collect ideas and share documents (but you’re not interested in building a web page in Sites), Groups offers a solution.
Employees can create discussion groups on their own and subscribe, either by e-mail or via a Groups dashboard, which lists new posts like a news reader.
Rather than e-mails going out to individual inboxes, a group thread remains visible to all of your subscribed team members, and users can go back to it for reference, to add more information, and even share docs and calendars.
Using Groups for business discussions and project management creates a communal and searchable database of information that employees can go back to whenever needed.
Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace allows developers of other business web apps to integrate their offerings with Google and sell software directly to Google Apps users. The marketplace currently has over 50 partners, including Intuit, Zoho, and Aviary. This additional space for third-party software means that Apps users will have even more options to tailor their suite for specific business purposes.
Smart Integration Across the Board
While each app has worthwhile features, perhaps one of the best advantages is the way that they all integrate with one another. Documents and appointments can be easily shared via e-mail, and your inbox can be used as a portal for productivity via embeddable widgets, chat, and other notifications.
If your small business is ready for a web-based, collaboration-minded IT solution, Google Apps is certainly a cost-effective way to go, and you can investigate the free versions simply by signing up for a Gmail account to determine if the suite is right for your workflow.
The first car equipped with Google’s Android mobile operating system will hit the streets this April 23. It’s called the Roewe 350, and it will launch at the Beijing Auto Show.
Roewe vehicles are luxury cars made by Chinese car company SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) using technology purchased from British company MG Rover, which has been owned by BMW in the past.
The 2.1 version of Google Android — the same that Google used in the Nexus One and Motorola Droid — is installed on the vehicle’s GPS computer. You can use the computer for directions and traffic reports just as you can with many other GPS devices. But it’s not all vanilla; you can also surf the web and engage in some form of Internet chatting. There’s no telling yet which chat service you’ll be using, but hopefully you won’t be doing it while you’re driving!
We haven’t heard whether or not you’ll be able to install apps from the Android Market yet. We also don’t know how the device connects to the Internet. The car will cost between 70,000 and 130,000 yuan, or about $10,250 – $19,000.
Twitter appears set to tweak search results to return the most popular tweets first — instead of the most recent — for any given search query.
This according to Twitter Developer Advocate Taylor Singletary, who has just updated the developer Google Group announcing the yet-to-be-released product. Singletary says, “This is a beta project, but an important first step to surface the most popular tweets for users searching Twitter.”
The announcement is geared toward developers to prepare them for changes in the search API. The implication, however, is that the appearance of Twitter Search will also be altered to highlight popular tweets. Ultimately, it appears that the revamped search experience will be available on both Twitter.com and third-party applications and clients that move to support it.
While there’s no word on how “popular” is defined by Twitter, we can assume that the popular tweets will be identified by attributes such as quantity of retweets or potentially tweets coming from a user with a high level of followers and engagement.
We think the new feature is an important evolution of the Twitter search experience and one we’re looking forward to seeing in action.
Following a disappointing earnings report, a Wall Street analyst has cut his price target on Palm to $0. In other words, he believes the company's shares will be worthless within 12 months.
The report comes from Canaccord Adams technology analyst Peter Misek, who wrote this morning, “We believe Palm’s troubles will only accelerate as carriers and suppliers increasingly question the company’s solvency and withdraw their support."
Although Palm's revenue tripled in its most recent quarter versus the prior year, less than half of the smartphones it shipped to distributors actually sold. And for the coming quarter, Palm offered a revenue estimate of less than half of what analysts were expecting.
Initial optimism about the Palm Pre and Pixi — which are now also available on Verizon — had sent the company's shares as high as $18/share last fall, but following today's report, the company sees its shares back under $5. As of December '09, the company had an estimated 6% share of the U.S. smartphone market.
Yesterday, David Chen live-tweeted the process of becoming an American citizen when he, along with 900 other individuals, participated in the Naturalization Oath Ceremony at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Chen, the managing editor of /Film, is used to using his Twitter account to live-tweet film festivals or events like Comic Con, but this was something different.
“I didn’t anticipate being able to live-tweet the ceremony, because I had heard a rumor that they would confiscate my electronic devices. This ended up not being true, so after I checked in, I realized I had an opportunity to show people an aspect of citizenship that they might not usually be privy to. And I took it.”
In addition to sending out tweets about the ceremony, Chen also uploaded videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr and even took the time to do an audio interview with another new citizen.
After the ceremony, Chen wrote about the experience on his blog, sharing what it means to be an American to him. Born in Taiwan, Chen’s family came to America when he was two years old. Now more than 20 years later, he’s officially a U.S. citizen.
We’ve seen examples of people using social media to share love, report on breaking news and even on the birth of a child. It only makes sense that we now have one of the first instances of someone live-tweeting the naturalization process.
The mobile nature of something like Twitter — Chen was able to send out updates as he waited in line for his certificate, prepared to say the oath, etc. — makes it the perfect medium to capture some of these life events.
Congrats Dave! How do you use social media to share your stories with the world? Let us know!
Leyl Master Black is a Managing Director at Sparkpr, one of the world’s top independent PR agencies. Leyl has more than 15 years experience driving high-impact communications programs for emerging technology companies.
While more than three million businesses, brands and celebrities have created Facebook Pages, many are struggling to figure out how best to use them. Companies are finding that even when they keep their pages updated with fresh content, they still aren’t seeing steady growth in their fan base.
And yet there are many brands who’ve surpassed the one million fan mark, while their peers have languished in the thousands. What’s their secret? These companies have figured out how to move from “broadcast” mode into engagement. They have engaged people so well that their fans even invite others along for the ride.
Here are four ways that savvy Facebook marketers are using the medium to engage with their fans.
1. Ask Their Opinion
If you post something on your Facebook Page, you might generate a good number of comments. But if you post your content in the context of a question, you provide an easy call to action. With a question, you engage people’s egos and provoke viral distribution of your content — everyone loves to share their opinion!
At the DigiDay: Social conference this month, social media marketing application developer Fan Appz highlighted an example of how a simple question can boost engagement. One of their customers — a leading video content provider with over 300,000 Facebook fans — routinely posts videos on their Facebook Page. The company found that when they paired videos with a question, video plays jumped by a whopping factor of 7 to 10. This simple yet effective strategy also generated 100 times more Facebook media impressions, as people posted videos to their walls in the context of their response to the question.
The NBA has also adopted this approach, issuing a steady stream of “Top Five” polls and other engaging content that has propelled the organization to top the two million fan mark, an unprecedented number for a sports league on the social networking site. The NBA routinely invites fans to rank their top five shooters, point guards and more. During the 2009-10 NBA season, their Fan Page generated nearly 500 million status update impressions and more than six million video views.
2. Test Their Knowledge
Consider testing people’s knowledge with a fun, relevant quiz, and even tying the results to a giveaway or promotion (more on that later). A clever quiz is not only entertaining, but also lengthens the time a user spends engaged with your brand.
One company embracing this approach is Molotov, a digital marketing agency whose clients include comedians such as George Lopez, David Spade and Jamie Kennedy. Molotov worked with George Lopez to create quizzes such as How Well Do You Know George Lopez? to push his fan base over the one million mark and drive viewership for his TV show.
In another Molotov program to promote a client’s new TV show, the company ran a series of quizzes about the celebrity in conjunction with a sweepstakes for signed merchandise. The quizzes were tests of knowledge about the comedian, his comedy, his routines, even about what happened on last week’s show. Giving people the opportunity to test their knowledge got them into a competitive mode and provided an additional incentive to share their results with friends. In the span of a little over a week, the campaign drove over 12 million brand impressions — and the premiere of the show was the highest rated show on the cable network for the year.
3. Pair Promotions with Content
While a contest or sweepstakes may get you some e-mail addresses, simply posting these on your page provides limited incentive to share with friends or even to participate. The way to boost participation is by tying the offer to content. People taking a brand-related quiz are great targets for your message. They may already have an affinity for the brand, so this is the best time to make them an offer.
In the example mentioned above, Molotov gave fans a chance to enter a sweepstakes to win signed merchandise — but the offer was made within the flow of the quiz. This strategy resulted in a 50% conversion rate. For every ten fans who tested their knowledge, five signed up to participate in the promotion, generating over 30,000 sign-ups for the weekly e-mail blast to promote the show.
The offer doesn’t even have to be big. Before the Super Bowl, the NFL ran a How Well Do You Know the NFL? quiz, with one lucky participant selected to receive a $50 gift card to NFLshop.com. Over 10,000 people took the quiz. If you estimate that each participant has 200 friends, that’s a possible two million impressions in the news feed with a relatively small giveaway.
4. Thank Your Fans
Giving your fans something of value — whether it’s as simple as a coupon, or as flashy as tickets to the Tonight Show — is a great way to show that you appreciate their continued support.
But what about picking one fan at random to get something really special?
The NBA again shows that they are on the leading edge. This brilliant strategy taps some of their biggest stars to record personalized video clips thanking select fans. Here’s a picture of Shaq thanking fan #385. If you’re an NBA fan, you could be next!
Put These Ideas Into Action
You don’t have to be a major brand like the NBA to turn your Facebook Page into an engaging destination. Any business can take these ideas and get creative. A restaurant could pair a quiz about famous restaurant movie scenes with a $100 gift certificate sweepstakes, or a Ford dealership could run a poll gauging people’s reactions to the Toyota recall news and give away interest-free financing to one lucky winner. The trick is to think about what your users would be interested in, what’s trendy or fun, then try it out.
In what ways are you engaging with your Facebook fans?
Facebook has warned users to "delete e-mails asking you to open an attachment to get a new Facebook password," in the wake of a new scam making its way around the web.
Earlier in the week, security firm McAfee alerted users to such a threat, saying that because of Facebook's size, the scam "threatens computers worldwide."
In this case, if a user opens the malicious e-mail –- which can appear to come from Facebook as a result of spoofing –- and then the attachment, they're actually installing a password stealer that McAfee says can "potentially access any username and password combination utilized on that computer."
This scam should be easy to protect yourself from –- after all, Facebook would never send you a new password unprompted, let alone one that requires you to open an attachment. Nonetheless, it's probably a good idea to warn your less savvy friends and family.
Earlier today, Steve Jobs talked publicly about his life saving liver transplant for the first time at a press conference where California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced new legislation to encourage and make easier organ donation.
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Following a disappointing earnings report, a Wall Street analyst has cut his price target on Palm to $0. In other words, he believes the company's shares will be worthless within 12 months.
Yesterday, 
