2007 was the year “blog” became an everyday word. Only twelve months ago, blogs was seen as a fad that maybe, in a few more years, might be seen as credible by the masses.

Oh, how quickly things change. Blogs have taken over, creating a feedback loop between journalists and readers, businesses and customers, you name it — conversation has officially changed the game.

While this may not represent all of the year’s best marketing bloggery, it’s a start. Are there posts…

...continue to read "This Year in Blogs: The Definitive Marketing Posts of 2007"

“Saying Stuff is ‘Dead’ is Dead” by Phil Gomes

“Whiteboard Friday — Controlling the Flow of PageRank & Link Juice” by Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz “‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Button Costs Google $110 Million per Year” by Nicholas Carlson, Vallywag

“Millions in Sales from 3 Simple Words” by Glen Rifkin, The New York Times

“Psychological (’personality’) Types” — Socionics

“Caring for Your Introvert” by Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic

“The Anatomy of Sarchasm: Researchers Reveal How the Brain Handles this Complex Communication” by S.G. Shamay-Tsoory, PhD, et al.,…

...continue to read "Tired of Your Family Already? Read This…"

Joshua Porter of Bokardo.com has taken a serious look at Facebook’s new so-called “opt-in” ad model.

…Facebook is now partnering with 3rd party sites and selling your information to them for money. How does this work?

Here’s a scenario: you go to Blockbuster.com and rent a movie. A little interface element pops up and tells you that Blockbuster is sending information to your Facebook account. It gives you ten seconds to say no…and then it sends it anyway. This is called “opt-out”.…

...continue to read "Opting Out of Facebook’s Disruptive Ad Model"

The Google Public Policy Blog offers a recap of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s visit to the Googleplex yesterday. According to the blog, Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt didn’t waste any time getting to the tough questions:

Barack Obama added another “first” to his already notable list yesterday: he became the first U.S. presidential candidate — and, I’m guessing, the first high-level elected official in any country — to have a ready answer to a standard Google engineering interview question. Asked by Eric…

...continue to read "Speaking at Google, Obama Promises Nation’s First CTO"

A few months ago, we blogged about Markus Frind, a lone entrepreneur and founder of the popular dating site PlentyOfFish.com. On a panel interview with Guy Kawasaki (watch it here if you’ve got 30 minutes), Markus claimed that he was his only employee, and that he basically spends a couple hours each day maintaining the site — that’s it — in his underwear.

Fast forward to yesterday, when Read/Write Web’s Richard MacManus caught up with the entrepreneur, who’d just hired his first…

...continue to read "How to Make a Billion Dollars in Your Underwear"

Spirit Airlines used to have great customer service. It was refreshing, actually. In the late 90’s, you could fly round-trip from, say, Detroit to New York for about $120 in a hand-me-down jet staffed with friendly people. It was a great, low-cost airline that was always able to surpass its customers (even lower) expectations.

But all that’s changed. Today, they have a brand-spanking-new fleet of mid-sized jets staffed with would-be friendly people who, bound and gagged with corporate red tape, can’t…

...continue to read "Spirit Air: You Don’t Have to Turn on the Red Light"

Ever feel like Yahoo’s the Rodney Dangerfield of Search? I tell ya, they’re the the #1 site on this Intertron thing, and still… No respect.

Their latest soon-to-be-overshadowed endeavor, Yahoo! Search Assist, includes an advanced version of the predictive keyword results the major search engines are using, and improved video and Flickr photo search integration.

Here’s what Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal blog had to say:

With this launch, we took some liberties with the search box itself, turning it into an interactive experience that senses when…

...continue to read "Yahoo Launches Search Assist, Gets No Respect"

Rank is something we bloggers take very seriously. The problem is, nobody seems to be that good at measuring it — not yet, anyway.

For the past couple years, bloggers have loosely relied on Technorati to do the job, with blogs ranked according to their number of incoming links from unique blogs. For some bloggers, though, that may change now that Techmeme has announced a new feature, Techmeme Leaderboard, that ranks blogs according to how often they appear on, well, Techmeme.

Over at TechCrunch…

...continue to read "Techmeme, Technorati — Let’s Blog the Whole Thing Off…"

You wouldn’t pick on a 9 year-old, would ya? How ’bout a 9 year-old with glasses??

Microsoft, reeling from Halo 3’s $170 million launch — the biggest release in entertainment history — got serious today with an assault on Google, its 9 year-old nemesis. While battle raged in anti-trust hearings before the U.S. Senate, the search giant came off looking battered, but feeling lucky, as they replaced the second ‘g’ on the Google.com homepage with a cartoon piñata in the shape of a ‘9′…

...continue to read "Mr. Softy Goes to Washington, Picks Fight with 9 year-old"

Announced today, Firebrand (firebrandtv.com) has some lofty ambitions. It wants to do for advertising what YouTube did for cutout gift boxes, or what MTV did for hair metal in the 80’s. By creating a dedicated portal for funny, sexy, action-packed ads and movie trailers, it’s thought that — soon after it launches on October 22nd — Gen Y-ers will converge on Firebrand for promotional offers, pure entertainment, or, hopefully, to buy stuff.

They claim to be, “QVC for the MySpace generation.”

Now, before…

...continue to read "Firebrand Wants to Be a YouTube for Advertising"