Bit.ly has recently added a new click summary map which shows visitor activity within a Bit.ly account.
Bit.ly Weekly Stats
I was surprised to see my Bit.ly account receive 18% of its activity from the Russian Federation.
Archive for November, 2009
Bit.ly Visualizes Stats
November 20, 2009AOL, Inc.: Job Cuts, IPO And Google Adsense Publisher
November 19, 2009This morning the Wall Street Journal reported AOL, Inc. plans to cut 2,500 jobs in preparation for being spun off from parent company Time Warner.
From the Wall Street Journal:
AOL Inc. plans to cut its work force by about a third, or roughly 2,500 jobs, as it prepares to spin off from Time Warner Inc. next month.
AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong will surrender his 2009 bonus, which was expected to be between $1.5 million and $4 million. ”That decision is a personal one and is not a sign for the future payout of the overall bonus plan for employees,” he said in an email to employees Thursday.
Mr. Armstrong is in the midst of a campaign to sell the Internet company to investors as a publicly traded business after years of strategic shifts and disappointing financial performances under Time Warner’s ownership. He has said the company will focus on expanding in online media content and branded display advertising as its dial-up Internet-access business declines.
The CEO began an effort to reduce the company’s cost structure four months ago.
AOL said it will seek volunteers for layoffs through Dec. 11 and will resort to involuntary layoffs if it doesn’t reach its target. It aims to cut annual operating costs by $300 million.
With these staff reductions, Tim Armstrong is repositioning AOL to become the largest single Google Adsense publisher – a super-sized version of Associated Content.
AssociatedContent.com is a new media company built on and monetized by Google Adsense Publishing.
Armstrong previously served as Chairman of the Board of the Associated Content.
Listorious And Top Twitter Lists
November 18, 2009My Twitter profile has made its way on to the Listorious.com site.
About Listorious:
Twitter’s new Lists feature allows anyone to curate the real time web. Listorious makes it easy to find the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic, and for list creator to publicize their lists.
Listorious
Listorious must not update its database very often because I have created several lists and I am on several lists.
Listorious also publishes a most followed Twitter list call the “Most Popular Lists”
Most Popular Lists
Twitter Lists most followed list is the Team by Twitter list with 55,812 followers while the next most followed list is from Mashable by Pete Cashmore with 3,951 followers.
A logarithmic drop in list followers from the first to the second most followed Twitter list suggests the network effect cuts both ways.
Facebook Search Queries Drop 14% In One Month
November 17, 2009comScore has released it October 2009 Search Engine Rankings.
From comScore:
In October 2009, Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.4 percent search market share, up from 64.9 percent in September. Microsoft Sites grabbed 9.9 percent market share, up 0.5 percentage points versus September.
October 2009 U.S. Core Search Rankings
Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in October with 65.4 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (18.0 percent), and Microsoft Sites (9.9 percent). Ask Network captured 3.9 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.9 percent.
October 2009 Search Engine Rankings
No search engine market share surprises. However, comScore’s Expanded Search Rankings press release neglects to mention one major web property’s search query surprise –
October 2009 U.S. Expanded Search Rankings
In the October analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led the search market with 13.5 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.5 billion searches. Bing experienced the largest growth of the top ten expanded search properties with an 8-percent increase in query volume to more than 1.2 billion searches.
Expanded Search
Facebook’s search query volume dropped a whopping 14% from September 2009 to October 2009 – the largest drop of any of the major web properties comScore tracks.
Any ideas why?
Now You See It, Now You Don’t – Wait; Now You See It Again
November 16, 2009Google’s latest experiment Google Social Search went offline sometime yesterday only to reappear again today.
Google Social Search Back Again
In several previous posts I wrote about how I don’t believe social search will get much traction any time soon with audiences beyond those early adopters in the search marketing and social marketing communities.
At some point in the future when I have the time, I’ll explain why I have taken this position and remain convinced social search will remain a non-starter.
Billboard Ad: Rent A Billboard Online
November 15, 2009While driving today, I spotted an innovative message from a billboard company – “Rent A Billboard Online”.
Rent A Billboard Online
This particular billboard company isn’t the first to advertise their billboards availability via one of their unsold signs.
However, I believe they may be the first billboard company to use a direct response call to action message directing the audience to order their billboard online via their website.
Few small companies can afford to run indirect advertising like ads without calls to action.
A simple incremental change in approach like this billboard company’s call to action can often bring outsized results.
About Google Street View
November 14, 2009The following video is a creative look behind the scenes with Google Street View.
See how Google collects imagery and learn about their privacy safeguards such as license plate and face blurring.
Content Is Abundant, Attention Is Scarce
November 13, 2009With 1.2 billion people on the internet each in the throws of becoming their own individual media publishing companies whether through websites or social networks, content has become abundant.
Conversely as content options have become overly abundant, media’s ability to attract let alone retain attention has contracted resulting in the scarcity of consumer attention.
With content in abundance, shouldn’t it be wasted to produce what is scarce and thus which has the most value – attention?
Searching Google Profiles
November 12, 2009I just discovered Google Profiles are searchable – naturally.
Searching Google Profiles
As with traditional web search, a profile search under keyword rich phrases produces long lists of profile results while unique keyword phrases produce shorter lists of results.
Some unique keyword search queries within Google Profiles produce as little as one result.
Search Behaviorist Google Profile
After studying Google Profile search results, I have concluded every word entered into a Google Profile is crawled and then indexed for search.
As far as I can tell, Google Profile search isn’t readily available via Google web search.
Twitter Updates Now Live in Linkedin Accounts
November 11, 2009Today I received the following email from Linkedin.
Twitter Updates in Linkedin
Although I don’t actively use my Linkedin account, I try to keep up with any new functionality or features.
Setting up Twitter within my Linkedin was easy to do.
After logging into your Linkedin account, go to the add applications portion of your home page and find the Tweets application.
About the Tweets application:
With Tweets, you can now display your most recent tweets on your LinkedIn profile. Tweets also gives you instant access to the updates of people you are following on Twitter and the power to tweet, reply, and re-tweet — all from your LinkedIn home page.
Click add application to integrate Twitter account into your Linkedin profile.
Tweets Applications
You’ll then be taken to a Get started with Tweets page.
Linkedin Tweets
Click add your Twitter account.
Linkedin will then take you to a Twitter authorization page.
Twitter Linkedin
Allowing Linkedin will then integrate your Twitter account Tweets into your Linkedin profile.
Once added, Linkedin gives their account holders the option whether to display their Twitter identity on their Linkedin profile or not.
All Tweets can be displayed or just those with #IN or #Li hashtags.
Twitter Added To Linkedin Profile
A Twitter account holder’s most recent Tweets then supply the Linkedin profile update.
Linkedin Network Updates
It will be interesting to see what if anything occurs as a result of my having added my Tweets to my Linkedin profile.
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