Huis - Jake Matthews

Facebook Errors

I'm sick and tired of facebook errors.  "wall not currently available", site server timing out etc.  I would estimate that 2%-4% of the time, I get a site error on facebook.

facebook has claimed to be a software company but with the amount of errors in processing requests to the site () I don't see how they can gain more traction as a "software company".  The site has so much potential, but they really ought to get the site errors in check, quickly.

New Media Industry buzzing along

Andy points out a recent study from PQ Media / USA today showing that online search spending will grow 113% from 2008 to 2012, up to $26.1 billion.  Video and other areas will grow too - obviously.  Pretty cool to see such positive predictions with all this negative news that's been out there.

IM-NY Charity Party: Great Success

Having raised over $16,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the recent IM-NY Charity Party was a great success.  Thanks much to all the sponsors including the crew at Best of the Web, Search Engine Land and Sphinn, to a whole host of contributors and volunteers large and small:

• Greg Niland
• We Build Pages
• Pepperjam
• Vintage Tub and Bath
• The Outreach Center
• Neil Patel
• Chris @ Black Finn

I'm sure the next one in October 2008 during SMX East, will be off the charts. ;-)

By the way, I found some outstanding photos at and more IM-NY Charity Party pics here. :-) 

Guy Kawasaki - Art of Innovation

One of the best "Marketing" videos was a keynote from Guy Kawasaki at the 2007 Event Marketing Conference.

Very inspirational Guy - thanks!

IMNY - Best of The Web Charity Party / SES NY

IMNY and BOTW are putting together another great charity party in NYC during the SES NY 2008 week.  The purpose of the party is to raise money and donate it to a charity that wins a series of online voting by the community.  The charities are: 

• HMBANA Milk Banks
• Camp Interactive
• Leukemia and Lymphoma Society   
• National Association for Colitis and Crohn's Disease

The charities will be voted on by the public (on the BOTW page) and the one with the most votes gets the funds! The winner will be announced March 6th.

The event will be held at the centrally located Black Finn (NYC Pub) on March 18th, 8pm-Midnight.   Spread the word folks! It should be a great time for a great cause.

Yahoo's webmap on Hadoop

John points out that Yahoo! is now using Apache Hadoop to scale out it's webmap.  Jeremy interviews two leaders of the Yahoo team on the history of Yahoo's webmap and where they are going.  Pretty interesting video to watch in this post.  1 trillion links between indexed pages- fun, fun!

Funniest Digg Thread of All Time

This was the funniest Digg story and thread I have seen to date.

Yahoo Mobile Advertising: More Major Brands - BofA, Subway

It's been a while since I looked over some of the major brands that are employing Yahoo's Mobile platform to get their brands out there.  Lately there have been a ton of ads from FlyCell which is rather appropriate because they are simply selling ringtone downloads (of all the known 1 hit wonders) to mobile phone users. Personally, I can't stand music ring tones...

But some bigger brands are really leveraging things well.  Here are a few that I have seen lately... and I really like some of the simplistic designs because they still have impact:

Subway - Doctor's Associates, Inc.

Avis - Avis Rent A Car System, LLC

iShares - Barclays Global Investors, N.A

Bank of America - Mobile Banking

This last one is interesting because they really leverage the mobile angle well from design through to conversion. The Bank of America ad links out to this page which allows you to either submit your email to get a direct link back to the BofA dot-mobi site or just click through to www.bofa.mobi which forwards to https://www.bankofamerica.com/mobile/. 

I've spoken about getting dot-mobis and how I think that can be valuable and important for big brands. The company implementing the mobile component herein is Ipsh and they state the value of the mobile side as such on their site:   

"How can the mobile campaign actually move the needle and address a marketing paradigm for the brand? Is it about 1) user acquisition? 2) retention? 3) loyalty? 4) increased transactions? 5) a brand new revenue channel? Whatever the need of the brand is, we’re addressing it. Maybe mobile isn’t the right call. If it is, which technologies do we employ? SMS, WAP, WAP ADVERTISING, JAVA, BLUETOOTH, LBS? Perhaps it's a combination of them all. Maybe just one."

I think that the ads and the mobile approach is pretty powerful stuff.  The more and more un-teathered we get the better.  As marketers, reaching people on the run is going be increasingly important.

In the end, I really just enjoy seeing the different banner designs that come out in mobile form and the individual approach / pitch each one makes.

Google Economics - Prediction Markets

A fascinating study by Bo Cowgill (and professors at UPenn and Dartmouth) at Google about prediction markets and information flows in the corporate workplace.  They produced a cool heatmap of the results showing GooglePlex in NYC.

Search Marketing Offers Hit a New Low

Today I was browsing some blogs and Andy Beal pointed me to a post by Karl Ribas regarding Sam's Club offering Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services.  Good luck folks!...I had to giggle when I saw this.  Do you think we have a problem when Sam's Club is offering SEM services starting at $50/month?

FYI - here is the offer right on the Sams site.  PuLLLEASE.    I think it's being offered by a company called Innuity...and I won't link to them.

Thanks for pointing this out Karl and Andy.