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Oct30
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Staring in November, MTV Networks will build song lyrics into its MTV, CMT and VH1 brands, across all the platforms it provides its content on; including TV, the Web and mobile devices. The initiative will start in November, and go on through sometime in the middle of 2008. On television, the MTV network will rename what it was originally calling "Spankin' New Music Week" to "Spankin' New Lyrics Week," which will take a look at lyrics and what the inspiration behind them were. VH1 will focus on its show "Boxset" to include lyrics in the show. CMT will interview fans about what their favorite country song lyrics mean to them. The MTV, CMT and VH1 web sites will include lyrics when people search for a song. A little down the road, all three properties will feature single and muliplayer online trivia lyric games to play.
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Oct30
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MySpace (NWS-A) is going deeper with its music artist community, as its teaming up with Zazzle.com Inc., to empower musicians with MySpace profiles to build and develop an online store featuring posters, T-shirts and a number of other types of...
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Oct29
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The long-anticipated launch of Hulu by the News Corp. (NWS-A) and NBC Universal (GE) alliance, has been received with surprising, positive remarks by a number of online sites and blogs.While I've been positive about it from the beginning, because I...
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The news that a women from Minnesota was killed after responding to a craigslist ad looking for a nanny, has shaken up a lot of people that use the popular web site to transact business.While police haven't revealed how she died,...
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Oct28
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For the first time in their existence, Yahoo! (YHOO) is opening up its home page to link to other sites. Understanding the addition of links can bring even more traffic to the site, the company is pursuing the new strategy.The...
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Oct27
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With the recent acquisition of a piece of Facebook by Microsoft (MSFT), everybody's been throwing around the 1.6 percent stake means Facebook is being valued at $15 billion. I suppose if all you did was use the percentage of stake...
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Oct26
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The installment of Drew Carey as the new host of "The Price is Right" has brought with it some other changes that will include more of a digital footprint for the popular game show.Included with the effort will be a...
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Film Trailer Draws Huge Internet Audience The documentary "Hillary Uncensored -- Banned by the Media," has been hot on the Internet over the last couple weeks, with over 1 million viewers watching the trailer for the upcoming release of the documentary.According...
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With Halloween season upon us, I thought I'd mention something important to marketers, that the costume market for Halloween helps illustrate.This year, the trend has been for people to make decisions to buy costumes based on characters from films or...
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Oct25
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With the announcement that Wal-Mart (WMT) is about to enter the online grocery market, it looks like years after online grocery sales was expected to happen, it is now finally upon us.Of course most of us know that Amazon.com (AMZN)...
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I want to talk this post on how understanding a little about national currencies can help you in your online businesses.I'll keep it simple here: just look at the current parity of the U.S. and Canadian dollars.How does that help...
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Microsoft (MSFT) was successful almost across the board with its various units, as the company posted a first-quarter profit for its fiscal year of $4.29 billion, equal to 45 cents a share. That is a huge growth from its $3.48 billion, or...
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Awareness of the importance of creating buzz and viral effects needs to be part of everything we do in online marketing; or any marketing for that matter.While we must do our research and trials to see how a product or...
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Oct24
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Statistics in the online celebrity gossip category show that for the time being, there may be an overload that people are starting to take a break from, as a number of big gossip web sites have had declining numbers recently.Nielsen/NetRatings...
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Citing a New York Times article, Webmetricsguru reported Microsoft is going to pay $240 million for a tiny 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, valuing it at $15 billion. "The astronomical valuation for Facebook is evidence that Microsoft executives believed they...
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In a survey of by Burson-Marsteller in August, it was found that community forums and product review sites are becoming less trusted sources of input for consumers.Ame Wadler, chief strategic officer at Burson said, "There's now a skepticism of what...
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The disaster that plagued the selling of tickets for the Colorado Rockies World Series games at Coors field, will soon be forgotten, as this time around the ticket sales went off without a hitch, as 50,000 tickets sold in less...
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Oct23
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Continuing its push as a destination site for entertainment, MySpace (NWS-A) is readying itself to launch a gaming site on the social network. The strategy is to team up with Oberon Media Inc., an online gaming distributor. The social networking...
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In spite of reports to the contrary, of which I've also reported on, the results of Amazon.com's (AMZN) third quarter sales and net income could be an indicator that the economy isn't as strongly impacted by the credit crunch as...
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The tragic fires sweeping across California give an interesting look at how online applications can be used by people to keep them updated on a continuous basis.An example is the LA Times using Google Maps to give continuous updates on...
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Oct22
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A press release from comScore shows that a number of areas on the Internet have started to pick up after Labor Day.Concerning politics, which was the largest growing category, Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix said, “Traditionally,...
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// "Paciolan," online ticket provider for the Colorado Rockies, had their system crash as people bombarded the site with requests.In the first hour-and-a-half of sales, the site received 8.5 million visits for tickets for the World Series game at...
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The marketing of brands, especially celebrity brands, has taken on a real edginess over the years, as people fight to keep their name in the public eye. Some of the outrageous, scripted behavior has many times exceeded decency and acceptance...
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While the temptation is great to hook up with one of the big tech companies to scan books and put them on the Internet, a number of libraries are choosing to go with the Open Content Alliance instead.Companies like Google...
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Oct21
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It looks like the revenue-sharing relationship between NBC (GE) and YouTube (GOOG) is officially over, as the channel and NBC clips can longer be found at the video-sharing site.While it's not a surprise to see this happen, when the new...
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The credit crunch is looking like it's spreading beyond risky loans, and may be larger than originally thought. This could cause a definite change in consumer psychology in the near future.Some are already saying that Wal-Mart may make gains in...
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While marketing, and online marketing specifically, faces its own share on campaign hurricanes, scientists are actually trying to harness the forces of nature and steer real hurricanes in new directions.Actual simulated scientific breakthroughs have now been made that are able...
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Oct20
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UK retail web companies may lose a lot of sales this year, according to a Webcredible study. While revenues are projected to increase to £10 billion, says IMRG, a lot of online retailers in the UK will miss out on...
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While the social media landscape has received a ton of coverage, the migration of advertising dollars to the medium has been slow to catch on.Citing a study by TWI Surveys, Inc., the New Communications Network wrote that 70 percent of...
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Oct19
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Pepsi (PEP) is taking its new global restyle advertising campaign to Crackle.com, where they'll sponsor a number of retro shows on The Minisode Network. The Network will be adding new programming to bring the number of channels to 18, with...
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With people throwing around numbers like $10 to $15 billion as a price tag for Facebook, Rupert Murdoch responded saying the valuations were senseless.He said it made "no sense" for any company to buy or buy a stake in Facebook,...
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Saying they want to provide a faster and more reliable digital download for its customers, Starbucks (SBUX) announced an agreement with Akamai to that end.The partnership will include Akamai running on service within Starbucks' stores, making the downloads a local...
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At the annual sharholder meeting in New York, Rupert Murdoch said concerning the digital properties of News Corp. (NWS-A), they are starting to reap dividends for the company. "Revenues have grown an average of 14 percent a year over the...
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Viacom (VIA-B) is getting serious with its "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," as it's offering the entire catalog of shows from its beginning in 1999 on a website. It includes around 13,000 video clips, showing every moment of the show...
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Oct18
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A group of media and tech companies agreed on a set of "collaborative principles" offered as guidelines for the growth of online video, which would also value copyrights.Included in the agreement were Microsoft (MSFT), CBS (CBS-A), Walt Disney (DIS), NBC...
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With Holiday shopping just about ready to kick off in a big way, it's good to take inventory of consumers' moods as we enter into the season.While shoppers are expected to spend more this year than in 2006, they are...
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The death of Joey Bishop today reminded me of how popular "The Rat Pack" was back in the day. Members of the famous gang included Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford, along with Bishop.One thing that...
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Oct17
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About 10 months after the anticipated roll out of a video ID filter, YouTube (GOOG) has launched a filtering tool called simply "Video Identification."The new technology works in conjunction with content owners who provide copies of copyrighted video content so...
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The quarterly performance of Yahoo (YHOO) under new CEO and founder Jerry Yang, exceeded expectations, with revenue increasing, although net profits dropped by 5 percent. Even so, analysts and investors were heartened by the news, and the stock performed well...
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While the overall profits for Yahoo! (YHOO) for the third quarter dropped by 5 percent from last year, the company still was able to beat expectations for the quarter. Net income for the quarter which ended in September, finished at...
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Oct16
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I like how Disney's promoting their upcoming film "National Treasure: Book of Secrets." While it's nothing new to put up a website, which they did of course, they are doing something that I think will keep people thinking about the...
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For about 30 years I've been in the customer service business, one way or the other. One thing I've learned over the years is there is an occasional time when someone who buys something from you really isn't a customer.I...
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Vimeo is a video-sharing site, a unit of Barry Diller's IAC, which is going to announce sometime this week that it will start distributing videos with a high-definition resolution of 1280 pixels by 720 pixels. That definition is the standard...
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Oct14
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The resignation of Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom recently, underscores the importance of managing the expectations of our various strategies. It wasn't too long after the purchase of Skype by eBay (EBAY) that questions arose of how they were going to...
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An excellent article on the Boston Globe internet site, revealed an interesting contrast between American football heroes Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.Identifying that the two are in fact a brand, they take a look at the differences between the duo....
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Oct13
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The postal strike in Britain underscores the absolute necessity of having backup carriers in whatever Internet business we're in. With online marketing, delivery is everything; if that isn't secured, you won't have an Internet business, as some smaller firms in...
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Blinkx has added a new element called the AdHoc Widget, which can be used to overlay text ads on embedded video.It works by sending a request for the ad whenever a syndicated or embedded video clip are played on the...
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The British like their social-networking Web sites, as they handily beat out all European countries in usage in all categories measured, according to data from comScore's Segment Metrix H/M/L analytical tool.For the overall European social-networking market, there were 127.3 million...
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Oct12
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The announcement that Drew Carey asked his girlfriend Nicole Jaracz to marry him, seems to coincide with his upcoming debut as host of The Price is Right daytime television show on October 15.It's an interesting look at how announcing things...
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The bid by Oracle (ORCL) for BEA Systems (BEAS) has set off a lot of chatter on what the reasoning behind it may be, and if it has much real value for Oracle.BEA Systems is a company specializing in software...
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Oct11
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CBS has acquired another Internet entertainment web site, adding celebrity gossip site Dotspotter to their growing stable of properties.Some of the other sites CBS (CBS-A) has purchased is Last.fm, which is a social networking music site, and Wallstrip, which features...
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Most of us have heard in the past that it's far easier to make money on existing customers than it is to get new customers. It's also a lot more expensive to attain new customers also.In the area of online...
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The awarding of the Nobel prize for literature to Doris Lessing, and the immediate response by her saying, "Oh Christ ... I couldn't care less," along with some critics saying it was "pure political correctness," underscores the importance of properly...
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Oct10
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Talking to reporters in Cannes, CBS (CBS-A) boss Leslie Moonves communicated a lot about the strategy of the company and new media.One thing he mentions that's worth talking about is branding in the new entertainment world.Moonves said concerning TV shows, for...
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Turner Broadcasting (TWX) will offer its CNN news channel, Turner Classic Movies, Adult Swim and Nuts TV on YouTube, starting this month. Turner has also inked a deal with Joost to offer content from CNN International and Adult Swim for...
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Oct 9
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Most of us know earlier in the year that BitTorrent Inc. went legitimate and opened an online video store selling licensed video from Hollywood studios. They are now going to offer that same technology to other online companies as well.The...
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Google (GOOG) is about to begin distributing video across the web, including ads with them in an attempt to monetize their YouTube video catalog.As with the videos they've been showing on the YouTube site, it'll be a small representation of...
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Oct 8
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Yahoo! (YHOO) is the No. 1 provider of general, financial and sports news on the Internet, says forbes.com citing comScore; beating out rival Google (GOOG) and other sites.About 40 percent of those that use Yahoo! end up taking a look...
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Just when you think people have stretched the limit of common sense, as we talked about last post, you hear another story showing the depths of the stupidity of those running companies and marketing departments.I'm referring to the extraordinary outrage...
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Melinda England, the teacher in Tennessee that disgraced herself by posting partially nude photos on MySpace and other Web sites, is finding out, as Vanessa Hudgens recently did, that everybody is a brand and that brand must be consistent with...
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RottenNeighbor.com is a new Website that allows people to check out a neighborhood or specific house before buying something nearby. What the site does is offer people the chance to let out their frustrations with their neighbors and talk about them...
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Oct 7
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Newsvine founder Mike Davidson announced on his blog today that the company had been acquired by MSNBC.com. Newsvine is a social news site that offers a combination of user-generated and professional content. Newsvine was started in 2006. The Newsvine blog...
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Michael Eisner, former Walt Disney Co. (DIS) CEO has made a deal to send his web hit "Prom Queen" to France and Japan, where they will turn the short-form videos into television programming and other content forms.The Tornante Company, Eisner's...
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The growing fragmentation across the Internet has of course changed the advertising landscape forever. Advertisers now look for a centralized place that can send out their ads in a decentralized way. This is why the big players have been buying...
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Oct 6
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The news that Movie Gallery (MOVI) will be soon seeking protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, shows the misunderstanding they had of the changing marketplace when they bought Hollywood Video in 2005, outbidding Blockbuster (BBI) in the process. Now they're wishing...
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Some of the disappointment and controversy surrounding the Miley Cyrus "Best of Both Worlds" tour shows how the Internet has allowed new problems to emerge that must be solved by online marketers.A very short time after tickets go on sale,...
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Oct 5
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Richard Roberts, the son of the Oral Roberts University founder, was sued along with the university alleging a number of improprieties.This looks like it'll be a dirty, vicious battle, as some of the attacks and allegations target Roberts' wife Lindsay...
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The recent law suits against Isiah Thomas and Bob Barker are interesting from a marketing and branding standpoint, as it seems over the long term they don't really do that much to impact a company in a negative way -...
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Oct 4
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The admission by track superstar Marion Jones that she had indeed used steroids before the 2000 Olympic games in Sydney has caused quite a stir around the Internet. For years she has denied using performance enhancement drugs during her sports...
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In one of the strangest events I've ever heard in the business world, the case of Louise Ogborn against McDonalds (MCD) for $200 million underscores the tremendous need for communication in any business.Several years ago a phone call from someone...
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