I’m tempted…
How Google Doodles Are Made – Technology – The Atlantic Wire: “Doodling, thus, “isn’t something that’s taken lightly” at Google. Creating a Doodle typically takes four weeks, with special consideration given to ones for the search engine’s international sites. “
Bloggers (especially those who understand how to create sites, use an FTP client and make use of podcasting) continue to take over the reigns…
Have We Seen the End of Blogging as We Know It? | Edelman Australia Blog: “The creative blogger of tomorrow – the influential content creator – is well placed to fill the void. They are nimble, tech and social media savvy, and often specialists who operate in specific niche areas of expertise thus have deep knowledge of, and passion for, their subject matter”
No, blogging is not dead. It is far from dead. What might be dying are the “I have a blog on Blogger or Tumblr, so I’m a blogger!” type. They are transient beings who have no real foothold beyond a glancing blow at creating content online. However, to really put your flag in the sand, you’ve got to get your hands dirty with the code and show that you care.
Those who can upload a podcast and embed it in a post or know how to edit their CSS or a php file on the fly will continue to succeed.
…especially affiliate bloggers…
At least I hope so.
Apps like this will be insanely popular and influential in 2012…
App Store – TGI Black Friday: “Black Friday (November 25th, 2011) is the busiest shopping day of the year. Use this app to plan your holiday shopping weeks before Black Friday ads are available in the newspaper. Please check the app frequently for new ads from your favorite stores such as Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Sears and many more.”
Start flipping through your Xcode for Dummies book now.
One of the reasons I’ve sculpted PPT to look the way it does (simple, black text-on-white background, center justified, clear font for both web and iOS reading) is because I do most of my reading on a screen or on an iPhone/iPad.
I want a similar experience across all three of those mediums and I want to be able to get to the heart of what I’m reading without having to click things out of the way or zoom in to avoid ads that are irrelevant.
Please let this not be the future of reading on the web: “The thing is, there are better ways to make money from writing – ways that are more respectful of readers. Ad networks like The Deck come to mind, as well as the growing number of sites that offer memberships (like The Loop and Daring Fireball).
It’s time for publishers to think different.”
Marketers, affiliate publishers in general, are especially guilty of loading up the above-the-fold content of a page with information that is either static to the point of eliminating a dedicated community or stuffed with irrelevant ads that don’t do much but clog http calls.
There’s a better way to do advertising that results in concrete clicks and conversions based on cultivating respect and an experience.
Do yourself a favor and go grab Instacast if you have an iPhone (and who doesn’t except for Buy-A-Dell Shawn Collins?)…
App Store – Instacast: “Instacast is the best solution to consume audio and video podcasts. It has been designed from the ground up with ease of use and incredible performance in mind.”
Fantastic app that has saved my life on more than a few occasions since I don’t have to worry about syncing my iPhone to a certain computer’s iTunes library to get new podcasts.
Beyond that, the streaming function completely made Thanksgiving travel tolerable this year.
BTW, what ever happened to the golden age of affiliate podcasts? Sad. I miss Jeff Molander’s Weekly Insight and it’s terrible quality but awesome content.
Jeff throws out both and makes a logical jump to the wrong extreme on ReveNews…
Chasing After Influence: A Social Media Trap or the Holy Grail?: “But might all the hype about influencers be a trap? Could all of this focus on influence be a big waste of time? Perhaps what we’re really talking about here is nothing more than passive, quantitative clicking posing as true, outcome-producing influence.”
Instead, companies should be paying attention to not just what Jeff labels as influencers (he mentions the Biebers and Kardashians of the world) but also the more realistic picture of influence (including not just first adopters but first droppers).
Very cool…
Product Roadmap – Media Temple: “We will be launching our new (mt) Mail product for Grid users. Soon, you’ll be able to access your mail, calendar, and address book in a fast, simple, beautiful interface.”
I love MediaTemple and use them for all of my hosting. If you’re looking for reliability, scalability, responsiveness etc, you can’t go wrong with them.
In general, I like to use cloud services that I know I either pay for or are super reliable. Yes, you can do that with Google Apps but there’s something vaguely askew for me using their services for all of my private data (most importantly email).
Thanks to Devin T for the heads up.
From wtfmobile
I wonder when/if we’ll ever see affiliate sites or affiliate ads that make use of multi-device compliant marketing?
The Rise of Digital Omnivores (comScore Voices): “On a weekday, mobile phones are used to consume news steadily throughout the day, while the use of computers for news consumption is heaviest during work hours while tapering off significantly at night. Interestingly, tablet usage peaks in the later evening hours as people are unwinding for the day. The variance in these daily patterns shows that consumers may favor some platforms over others at various points in the day, even as they use multiple platforms to consume different kinds of content throughout.”
Increasingly, affiliates and advertisers must fact check their stats not just on a daily click-thru type basis but almost on a real-time conversion basis. The need is growing to discern from stats not just “how many” clicks or buys a site or campaign is producing in a day but a “when” as well.
The rise of mobiles and tablets (iPads) as secondary (and primary) devices for consumers will continue to disrupt our stats if we focus on whole 24 hour blocks.
Micro-chunking is at work, full force.
If you’re an affiliate marketer or network using Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (and honestly, if you’re not then you’re probably already obsolete), you need ThinkUp:
ThinkUp 1.0 and Software With Purpose – Anil Dash: “Today, ThinkUp is out of beta and available for free. If you have a presence on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ and know how to run a PHP/MySQL app on a web server (or on EC2), you should install it and get it started now. ThinkUp will collect all of your activity across these networks and give you great analytics, search and archiving for them.”
And here is Gina Trapani’s post (she’s the main developer and you should read/follow her work) on the 1.0 release
I’ve been running ThinkUp on my own personal server since the early betas a couple of years back and it has provided me with a wealth of information (and backups) simply not available anywhere else.
If you know the least bit about tech, you’ll be able to set this up on your own server.
Go do yourself a favor and learn/archive more about your social interactions.
