Social media policy, ur doin it rong

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/feb/25/ryanair-socialnetworking

Blogger finds fail on Ryanair website, blogs about it. Ryanair employee leaves comments on his blog that are fairly inflammatory. Blogger inquires if they are authentic, receives this response from Ryanair’s corporate communications (!):

"Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won't be happening again.

"Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel."

SFChronicle may shut down

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE51O03Y20090225

It's hard out there for a print.

Your Ad Impressions v. Lent

Do you think anyone would give up visiting your site for Lent?

Apparently it's happening to Facebook: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123509424821028985.html

Web 2.0, UGC Fail

Restaurant review site Yelp is, apparently, now willing to bury the bad reviews of your restaurant - for a fee.

What good is user-generated content to the end user if it's censored to hide all but rave reviews?

The phone calls came almost daily. It started to get creepy.

"Hi, this is Mike from Yelp," the voice would say. "You've had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You've had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those."

Even worse, this article almost sounds like Yelp is doing it Mob style, moving the worst reviews to the top and trying to extort payment. Way to tank your site in the name of a business model.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/yelp_and_the_business_of_extortion_2_0/Content?oid=927491

Math Is Tough

Wow... half of marketers forgo analytics?

Marketers will continue to invest significantly in online marketing this year, but less than half (47%) actually use analytics to measure their campaigns, and one-fifth only have a ‘basic’ website, according to the sixth annual marketing survey from Alterian.

Depressing. You'd think nowadays you'd want to focus more on ROI, not less.

http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/frustrated-by-difficulty-half-of-marketers-forego-analytics-7993

Mobile

Learned it from Twitter: Omniture customers in Japan log more pageviews from mobile handsets than the personal computer.

I'm a heavy browser on my phone, but still nowhere near that point.

Yahoo - GROWING search share?

...wha?

After years of steady decline, Yahoo's domestic share numbers (YHOO) had increased for five months in a row. Well, the good news continued in January, with Yahoo's share jumping a half-point to 21%, per comScore.

Google's share, meanwhile, dropped a half-point, to 63%. You don't see that every day.

http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-search-share-rises-againand-google-falls-2009-2

The Value Of Omniture Testing

Best Buy experimented with Omniture (either multivariate or A/B testing; wish they went into more details in this article) to determine the financing plan that converted best among their customers:

In trials, Best Buy offered financing at different levels: $499, $699, or $999. Every time a customer signed up for payments, Omniture (OMTR) tracked purchase details and homed in on the answer: $499. Within weeks, the software cranked out data that the store's own systems, with their antiquated databases, couldn't have matched.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2009/db2009028_712098.htm

EW Scripps writedowns

Saying "print is dead" is like kicking a dead horse, I know. EW Scripps reported huge losses, nearly $50MM in writedowns.

For every tunnel, though, there is a light. The bright spot:

In the case of its online newspapers, there was one glimmer of good news: Revenue from pure-play advertisers who only purchase ads on the company’s newspaper websites more than doubled to $3.7 million, suggesting that most newspapers move away from print upsells should help them draw more ad dollars on the digital side.

(Emphasis mine.)

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-earnings-ew-scripps-posts-loss-on-48.8-million-in-writedowns/

Micropayments

Micropayments for journalists - would anyone pay?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/blnk/

Banner Blindness

Interesting hypothesis - Sarasota County voters failed to make their choice in one particular contest because it was at the top of the page, and all the time we spend on the Internet leads us to disregard the top third of anything we see on a screen as if it's ad space:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness-ballot-design.html

Comparing ad impressions to Zimbabwe's currency

This article compares the tremendous glut of available impressions on the www to the printing of currency in Zimbabwe that has rendered it pretty much worthless, and suggests we need to start worrying less about the # of impressions we can create and more on things that can generate real value (interactive pieces, mini-sites, partnerships)… selling high-quality ads people are engaged with rather than an ad tied to 438,035,802,232 pageviews.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123483323444195983.html


Epic burn: “Indeed, the Web is likely heading for a shakeout on a scale unseen since the dot.com bust. Those that could struggle include newspapers or magazines still trying to establish a strong online brand.”

Mapquest vs. Google Maps - A Lesson In User Experience

A look at MapQuest's rapid loss of market share in the last year vs. Google Maps, all the ways MapQuest has been outclassed and how they can fix it.

A few examples of suggestions:

- Find your one-line "voice", or mission statement, in the market
- Recover your organic traffic with creative and niche SEO
- Get local
- Get mobile

http://www.businessinsider.com/mapquest-a-symbol-of-everything-thats-gone-wrong-2009-2