Biznology

Image by JVManna via Flickr

by Frank Reed
Sure, there are a million opinions about the announcement this week of the Microsoft and Yahoo! becoming joined at the hip (in a very businesslike way). Fortunately, it is a big Internet and there is always room for one more. I have been looking at this entire proceeding now for several months and just at the start of this week had become so tired of the chatter around who did or didn’t do what that I whined about it. Yup, I whined. I got fed up with all the speculation, rumors and outright fables being spread around that I threw up my hands and asked, “Who cares?”

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Image by mark knol via Flickr

One of the odd things about getting so many services for free on the Internet is that we might feel obligated to be grateful even when something doesn’t work as well as we need it to. Just that situation cropped up for a speacialty retailer who struggled to make use of Google Website Optimizer. It’s free, and it works very well for many companies, boosting their conversion rate with relentless testing of possibilities through multivariate testing. But what if it doesn’t work for you? What do you do then?

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Image by oskay via Flickr

by Eva Lyford
If your company is like most, you worry a lot about how you are coming across on the Internet. Most companies that weren’t born on the Web come off a bit old-fashioned sometimes, especially when it comes to things like company policies and practices. It’s especially scary when you realize that even those cool companies don’t always get it right—Amazon has one of the best integrations between these two arenas, and even they make missteps. How well do your business policies and practices translate to the online world, or how well does your online experience transfer outside of that arena?

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Image by Matt Hamm via Flickr

We often talk about social media marketing, and extol the virtues of YouTube videos, blogging, Twitter and many other ways to get the message out. And those things are all important. And marketers really should be taking notice. But I think that, in some ways, we are missing the boat on the bigger revolution. To me, the most important parts of social media are not marketing at all. Social media is important in so many different parts of a business that I thought I should start ticking them off.

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Image via CrunchBase

Everywhere you look, you read more reports of just how much money Google is hemorrhaging from YouTube. The servers, the storage, the bandwidth, oh my! The speculations on Google’s sinkhole have left estimates all over the map, and Google won’t say what the real number is. But Google can afford anything, right? Nevertheless, if you’ve been posting videos on YouTube, should you be worried that the free ride will come to an end? If you are, check out my new post on Search Engine Guide, “Google’s YouTube Money Pit.”