Internet Marketing Design Innovation ...

Print revenues going down under

"In what's becoming an all-too common theme among old-media companies, the New York Times reported a 5.7 percent drop in overall ad revenues and a 59 percent drop in operating profits. The one bright spot: it's Web properties, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com, saw a 23.4 percent rise in revenues. But it's $81 million in revenues only makes up 10 percent of the company's overall sales, and is still not enough to counter the decline in print. Still, operating profits at About.com alone ($8.5 million) represent 38 percent of the company's total operating profits. Web revenues don't have to rise tenfold before Web profits can offset the decline in print profits. But with online ad growth expected to slow at the Times, it could still be a while."

More on : http://blogs.business2.com/business2blog/2007/07/new-york-times-.html

Design insights ....

From Luke-almost-Sky Walker (not Walter Texas Ranger)

" Former Director of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. and Pentagram partner, Bob Brunner, spoke at Yahoo! Design Week about his experiences with and perspective on product design principles and deliverables. Though most of Brunner's talk was a walk through of product design examples, he also offered the following insights: Clients are what is going to help you be successful. You need to work with people you who believe what you believe in. There's a lot of subjectivity in product design. People can produce a million reasons on a spreadsheet for why not to do something. Having someone (or a culture) that supports you is very important. A lot of the best clients are the ones that are in trouble. They need to change and therefore try something different or take risks. The Apple Powerbook design was not tested with customers –it just felt right. Some usability testing was done to ensure it could be used accurately. Virtually every notebook computer is modeled off the original Powerbook design. Brunner's focus at Apple was developing a design language –a physical vocabulary of objects- across all products. Apple's language was rooted in the desktop or office. They wanted to make it more personal: part of you vs. part of your desk. The design team needed to own design language and educate the rest of the company about "

More on : http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?564

http://www.paysans.net/

Nice french Idea

A SNS on Farmers and rating Bio-Farm Products

Is there a limit to social networking spaces ? I guess not, everything can be scrutinized :)

Widgets and traffic rise

Does it pay to make a custom app for Facebook? Some of the top widgets on Facebook from companies like Slide, RockYou, and HotorNot appear to be driving significant traffic back to the home sites, reports VentureBeat. It makes sense. Widgets tend to have limited feature sets and act as teasers to go to a bigger site.

The question is whether traffic measurement sites like Quantcast incorporate widget traffic in their overall stats or just look at teh main sites. (Anyone know the answer to that, please tell us in comments). Compete shows a similar trend, but Alexa doesn't show quite as dramatic a jump (and actually shows HotorNot declining slightly). Still, if 10 million people added Slide's Top Friends widget onto their Facebook page, chances are a fraction of them will go and check out what else Slide has to offer. At the very minimum, widgets can be a powerful form of marketing. Once companies figure out how to make money inside the widgets themselves, then we might finally see the beginning of a true Facebook economy.

Adsense is out of ordeR ?

Web Strategy Analysis: Homepage Breakdown of the top 10 Blogs

"Analysis Purpose To analyze the homepage web strategies of the top blogs in the world

Background We're all fascinated and drawn to some of the world's top blogs, according to incoming links, Technorati has listed the top 10 blogs. (Although that's not the best way to determine authority) How do blogs get links to them? They do one of two things 1) Be interesting 2) Add Value. As they achieve stardom, the momentum of the brand continues it forward, and the traffic they drive to others increases it further.

Are top blogs afflicted with excess advertising? As blogs reach nuclear status, it's interesting to see how they start to monetize from ads, focus less on navigating away from the sites, and how much content they continue to share. At what point does the user experience suffer from excess of advertisements?

Methodology: I took screen captures at 1400 X 1050, a rather large size. I only took the top page view, so it showed what's above the fold. I then segmented the content types into five major color keys: Identity (as in self-brand), Navigation, Content, Search, and Advertising. This method is modeled after Jakob Nielsen's homepage usability book.

Findings Per Surface area on homepage above fold:

Most use of Identity: TMZ Most use of Navigation: Ars Technica Most use of Content: Huffington Post, Ars Technica Most use of Advertisements: Boing Boing, Techcrunch (3 major areas above the fold) Least amountof Advertisements: Post Secret (none), and my blog Most use of Search: TMZ (two for some reason) No use of Search: Techcrunch, Daily Kos (well at least, not above the fold) Most use of White Space: Post Secret "

More on : http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/07/21/web-strategy-analysis-homepage-breakdown-of-the-top-10-blogs/

Newspapers' Ad Sales Dropping

" Total print and online ad revenue was down 4.8% to $10.6 billion in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to the Newspaper Association of America, compared with its full-year decline in 2006 of 0.3%. (...) In the first quarter, revenue for every major ad category -- classified, national and retail advertising -- was down. The sharpest declines were for classifieds, where spending dropped 13.2% -- not so much a result of competition from the Web as of economic woes affecting certain categories of advertisers. Real-estate classifieds, until recently a bright spot for the industry, have plunged along with the property market. Auto and employment classifieds are also sinking. Financial-news outlets such as the Journal are being hurt by a slump in technology advertising. (...) Newspapers' online ad revenue increased 31.5% in 2006 to $2.7 billion. In the first quarter of 2007, online ad revenue increased 22.3% to $750 million. Still, online represented just 5% of the $49.3 billion in total newspaper ad revenue in 2006. "

More on : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118471859134569679.html

Geek alert - an Enigma machine on sale

"An Italian antiques dealer has recently put to auction a mint condition, fully operational Enigma machine on eBay. The machine, dated circa 1938, will be sold to the highest bidder in just over a week, but after 30 hours of bidding the price has already surpassed $12,000 US. For those of you who can't afford the real thing, why not make your own?"

Its Firefox, baby its Firefox

XiTi Monitor, a French Web survey institute, has published its browser barometer for July, and Internet Explorer continues to lose ground. "The ascension of Firefox continues... Nearly 28% average use rate in Europe in the beginning of July 2007, with a progression in the totality of the 32 European countries studied. Firefox doesn't loose ground in any of the countries."

Google agrees 2 sell Print Ads

"Google Inc. said on Tuesday it is expanding its Print Ads program to allow online advertisers nationwide to place print advertisements in 225 newspapers, serving half of U.S. newspaper readers.

The program, which will let hundreds of thousands of Google AdWords customers place newspaper ads in the same way they buy Web page, radio or TV ad space, follows a 50-publication test started last November among a small group of advertisers.

The 225 newspapers are located in 32 of the 35 biggest U.S. metropolitan markets, with a combined circulation of almost 30 million subscribers. Among the newspapers in the program are The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Seattle Times and San Jose Mercury News.

Google Print Ads lets advertising agencies and advertising customers of all sizes plan and buy traditional newspaper media -- from one-inch to full-page displays in both national and local newspapers via Google's existing ad sales software.

Smita Hashim, group product manager for Print Ads, said it was designed to bring online advertisers back to papers. "We are not actively marketing to newspaper loyalists," she said, referring to print advertisers to which papers typically sell.

Details are at http://www.google.com/adwords/printads/.

Separately on Tuesday, Google rival Yahoo Inc. said it has increased its own ad sales partnership with U.S. newspaper publishers to 17 chains covering 400 newspapers, up from 176 publications when its program began in November. Unlike Google Print Ads, however, Yahoo's program is aimed at helping newspapers sell ads on their online sites, something Google itself already does through its own AdSense program."

More on : http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1727309420070718?feedType=RSS