Thursday, April 29, 2010

Twitter No Longer Operating in the Red

Microblogging service Twitter took a step towards crushing the 'when are you going to get a business model?' question yesterday, introducing ads in the form of Google-style "Promoted Tweets" to appear among search results. The ads are based on keywords, with Twitter charging clients per thousand impressions. Best Buy, Bravo, Starbucks and Virgin America are among 10 initial advertisers to test the service.

Meet iAd

The internet is buzzing about the unveiling of Apple's 4.0 iPhone operating system. The next generation iPhone OS is expected to support multitasking (the ability to run multiple apps simultaneously), as well as feature an integrated geo-targeted mobile banner ad solution for the first time. Apple, which lost out to Google in a bidding war for AdMob last fall, purchased mobile ad company Quattro Wireless for $275 million in January and has been working on developing a working iPhone ad platform for advertisers.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, criticizing existing current rich media and search-based mobile ad solutions, said the key to iAd's success will be the ability to serve actionable ads without having to leave the app you're using. The iAd platform will also allow advertisers to find out where users are and supply ads relevant to their current location. Apple will sell and host the ads which can appear as mini-applications that offer free content such as movie trailers, casual games or wallpapers - while developers will retain 60% of the revenue generated.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

The mother of all social media lists

The people over at GraphicSEO.com put together a list of 250 social media sites along with their Alexa.com traffic rankings. The 250 sites are split up into categories dealing with everything from fashion/clothing based social networks to health and wellness social media websites.

Links and Resources:

  • Alexa.com is the leading traffic-measurement company on the net (like the Nielsen TV ratings, except for the Web). It is an Amazon-owned service that measures traffic-popularity based on a sample of millions of users who are tracked as they surf, providing comprehensive traffic ranking figures.

Monday, April 5, 2010

New Wine Into Old Bottles

Interesting perspective on social media strategy from the Harvard Business Review: